Aristocratic whims, even nobles are expelled

We are almost at the end of the school year, time for report cards, promotions and failures. Let us see what the reasons could be for being expelled from one of Rome’s most prestigious boarding schools.

The boarding school for the nobles of Rome, already active in the Ancient Company and once again assigned to the Jesuits by Leo XII in 1826, was one of the most elite boarding schools in Rome, destined for the education of young aristocrats or sons of the upper middle class, coming not only from the Papal States, but also from other Ancient Italian and European States.

Counts, marquises, grandsons of popes and cardinals, even the brother of Ferdinand of Bourbon studied here, as we have already seen in a previous episode.

One might therefore think that these pupils, who came from an already rather strict family upbringing, were beyond reproach, yet even among them there were several who were expelled or not readmitted to the college.

The source that accompanies us today is the register of boarders, where the names of all those enrolled from 1816 until 1870 were recorded; the boarding school closed within a few years of the end of the Papal State and was never reopened. Because of the shortage of Jesuit education in Rome, due to the seizure of the Convitto dei Nobili, the Collegio Romano and other institutes, Fr Maximilian Maximus would decide, 14 years after the end of the Papal States, to found a new school, which would take his own name.

The register of boarders at the Convitto dei Nobili contains various data, very useful for reconstructing the identities of the pupils: their names and those of their parents with their relative titles of nobility, the city and date of birth, date of entry into the boarding school, date of communion and confirmation, notes on vaccinations – it should be remembered that vaccination was required well before the 20th century – date of exit and any observations.

It is precisely the space designated for observations that contains the information that is often most useful for our researchers and also for the column, as it is here that details of character or information on expulsion are noted down that would otherwise not have reached us, as the school records of the boarders are completely lacking.

For some boarders, the transfer to other Roman institutes is noted: the Clementine boarding school, the Nazarene boarding school, the American boarding school or entry into the novitiate; for others, the reasons for leaving are specified.

In the series, even the nobles have their tantrums, we begin with Marquis Pacca who on 3 December 1833 left the boarding school at only eight years of age on the advice of the Rector ‘for reasons of study and unwillingness to stay at the College’.

We then move on to Anton Barone ‘of such a shrewish disposition that he could not reduce himself in eight years and more by any means. And they were all tempted”.

There are those who end their studies with this note ‘dismissed because dangerous’; even Marquis Collenea ‘was dismissed because he was strange and sometimes half furious, ill-tempered, foul-mouthed and of dangerous habit, not without having first used many means to cure him’.

Dangerousness probably refers to behaviour that was disrespectful towards the fathers and doctrine and that could easily be taken as a model by younger boarders and thus constitute a negative role model.

Another Marquis Pacca, from one of Rome’s most distinguished aristocratic families and close to the papal throne and perhaps well aware of his rank, was expelled because he was “indecent, used to divert his companions from spiritual things and not very modest”. In the same year of Pacca’s expulsion, 1841, the rector persuaded the father of another boarder to take him back because ‘in a curmudgeonly mood, he had intended to do nothing, and was very intent on doing nothing’. It takes application even in not studying….

The following year, another father was advised to remove his son from the boarding school because he was ‘very negligent and of a dangerous habit, with no hope of emendation, all attempts at improvement having failed’.

Some boarders are withdrawn from the family and it is noted “he was an unteachable young man”. Some pay for the little humility shown and are expelled “for an immodest act”, like Giulio Della Porta, who came from a branch of the same family as the mother of the future Fr Massimiliano Massimo.

Count Ginnasi, on the other hand, is transferred to the Nazarene College “to remove with this [decisione] the monomania of returning home, evidently feeling homesick, even if the “change of air” is only a few hundred metres, those that separated the Collegio dei Nobili from the Nazarene, run by the Scolopi.

Others in later years leave the boarding school ‘for lack of docility’ or for ‘inability to study the classics. There are also numerous positive notes for all the pupils who distinguished themselves at the college, some later entering the novitiate at St. Andrew’s in the Quirinal. Aristocrats of yesteryear or today’s pupils, they are still children of the same age, who between a whim and a whim faced the school path to become better.

Maria Macchi