Journals of Provinces and Colleges

The Historical Archives of the EUM Province does not only keep documentation but also numerous valuable journals. Today we discover a part of this heritage, which is less well known than the archive sources.

Each of these magazines was destined for its own audience – benefactors, boarding schools and their families, faithful, Jesuits, communities – so tens or hundreds of copies were printed for each issue, depending on the number of subscribers. For this reason, it is not uncommon to find some in public libraries. The latter, however, only keep a few issues, rarely possess the complete collection of a magazine and none possess all the magazines in one place. This is why the historical archive has decided to make them available in the study room, so that researchers can consult them all here and are free to use them for their research. Together with Boston College, our Archives are carrying out a project to digitise this important heritage. Several issues of: Il Mondragone, Il Massimo, Vita Vera, L’Arecco and the single issue of Il ricordo del Pavone.

Consultability

Being printed material, the journals are an exception to the rule on the consultability of the fonds. We would like to point out that currently only documents produced up to the end of the pontificate of Pius XII, October 1958, are open for consultation.

This means that thanks to magazines it is possible to read articles and information published even in years very close to our own.

The magazine was already a genre in society at the end of the 18th century, but only during the 19th century were there more structured magazines. For the colleges there were several costs to consider printing, the mimeograph to reproduce the pages in several copies, the time to devote to this activity. It is due to these factors that there were no magazines for the colleges’ active in the first half of the 19th century. The oldest visit we currently keep in the study room dates back to 1876, Il conforto, while the most recent issue is Gli amici di P. Picco from 2020.

Our journals

Since our archives officially opened for consultation in 2017, there have been numerous funds consulted. Many of the searches have generated articles, monographs and exhibitions. However Journals have been much less used than archival sources, but they can offer a great deal of information to supplement that contained in the archival papers. Often, for example, articles from those of the colleges were written and signed by alumni and professors. Therefore, if you are looking for a former pupil or teacher, you might also find some of his or her testimony in one of the journals. Often, the editors would decide to report in detail on certain events: an excursion, a film viewing that were missing from the home diaries. Magazines also host advertisements, necessary to receive funding for publication, which in turn are a source for the history of graphics, consumption, companies and advertising. It is not uncommon to find advertisements for products no longer on the market or for companies that still exist.

Some themes are transversal to the magazines: the apostolate of a Jesuit may have found a place in the magazine of the province of which he was a member, or in that of the colleges where he worked. The missionary day, a fundamental moment in the life of the residences but also in the colleges, is described in detail in the magazines of different institutions.

The list of journals is available on our website.

At present, our study room houses 47 journals to which we must add those that will arrive in the coming months, totalling 54 titles and hundreds of volumes. Most are in Italian but a copy of a Maltese magazine, dating back to the period when Malta was part of the Sicilian Province, is on its way.

In this episode, we try to divide them into a few categories, depending on the institution that published them.

Journals of Provinces

Each province had as its organ of diffusion and communication with benefactors and faithful an official magazine: Notizie dei gesuiti della Provincia Veneto – Milanese, Amici della Rivista Torinese, Gesuiti della Provincia Romana. Already ten years before the birth of the Province of Italy, the five provinces began to unify their contents by publishing the magazine ‘Notizie dei Gesuiti della Provincia d’Italia’ as early as 1967. However, the provinces did not close their own magazines, which continued to be published until the 1970s. The magazine of the Province of Italy was published until 2010. In total, we have six provincial magazines. We also include in this category ‘Vita Vera’, a colour magazine published by the Neapolitan Province but intended for children and completely cartoonish.

Journal of colleges

Most of the journals found in our study room belong to this category. Each college had one, but often students have tried their hand at several magazines before finding the format and title that has continued over time. This was the case at the Collegio dei nobili in Villa Mondragone where students wrote for Il conforto, il Pavone, la ricreazione ed il drago, before the college’s magazine of the same name took over.

Even at Istituto Massimo, students initially wrote for the omnibus, a name chosen because of the tramway that stopped right in front of the Institute’s second location and saw only a few issues before the birth of the magazine Il Massimo. Magazines such as L’eco del ricreatorio and L’Angelo della Famiglia published by the S. Giuseppe boarding school in Florence also fall into this category. These boarding school magazines are perhaps the richest in details, photographs, drawings and even rebuses.

The boarders themselves, coordinated by a Jesuit who was part of the editorial staff, produced them.

Journals of individual institutions other than boarding schools

Magazines such as ‘Agli amici di p. Picco’ (‘To the Friends of Fr Picco’) fall into this specific category. This is a bulletin published since 1954 to inform the faithful about the cause of beatification.

Also included in this category are the numerous magazines published by the Apostleship of Prayer throughout its history: Il Crociato, Il lievito, C14.

We also include here the magazine Missioni, organ of the Jesuit missionaries run by the mission office of the Vento – Milanese Province. The magazine would change its name to ‘Popoli’ and evolve again into the present ‘Aggiornamenti Sociali’.

Edifying letters

Before the spread of magazines as a means of communication, the Provinces resorted to the publication of edifying letters as early as the 1880s. We can consider them precursors of magazines.

These too are a veritable mine of information: they contain not only the correspondence of missionaries with the Provincial but also the obituaries of Jesuits, reports from superiors on pastoral activities. Again, this source is still much neglected by researchers.

Maria Macchi