The Old Society and its archives

Many researchers contact us thinking that our archives contain the funds of colleges and provinces produced between 1540 and 1773. When they discover, not without regret, that we do not keep any of those funds, they begin a long search to locate them.

This is why we have decided to devote today’s episode to this topic, explaining the reasons for this important gap, which characterises all the historical archives of the Society’s provinces, and providing research trails for those interested in the subject.

Besides giving an account of where most of this patrimony is today, we also indicate which Jesuit and non-Jesuit sources are the most useful for reconstructing the history of the Jesuit presence in certain places and the history of residences and colleges. This research should however always be preceded by the study of the bibliography.

In fact, it is first necessary to check the publications already available, monographs and articles, because in the footnotes the authors cite the funds consulted and the institute that preserves them.

After the suppression

The absence of papers produced between 1540 and 1773, a period that we in the archives refer to as the ‘Old Society’, is due to the suppression. When the Society of Jesus was suppressed, at the behest of Clement XIV, all the properties of the colleges, residences and provinces were confiscated by the Old Societies, both Italian and European, according to their respective territorial jurisdiction. The archival and book funds that were located within them were also forfeited, becoming part of the archival and book heritage of each State. Of this enormous documentary complex, nothing survives today in the historical archives of the EUM Province, except for a few scattered letters and a few inventories of assets, but these are individual documentary units and not archival funds or chunks. In fact, all our funds were produced following the reconstitution of the Society of Jesus in 1814.

The Unification of Italy

The Old Italian States retained possession of this forfeited heritage, of which they had become owners from 1773, until 1861, the year of the Unification of Italy. With national unification, the funds of the Old Italian States became part of the national archival heritage, constituting its first nucleus. For this reason, the former Jesuit papers are not now in various locations of the Italian State Archives, which we recall are located in provincial capitals throughout the country. However, they are not the only institutions in Italy that preserve the papers produced by residences, colleges and Jesuits.

The former Jesuit archival heritage today

Indeed, we cannot expect to find this huge heritage all in the state archives, since every single archive fund has had its own history and to find it is often necessary to reconstruct the vicissitudes that have characterised the building of the college or residence, starting from 1773. For these reasons, it is very complex to reconstruct, even virtually, the enormous former Jesuit heritage. It is a huge amount of papers, extremely fragmentary and very lacunar because with the suppression, but also because of the events that led to national unification. The papers were often dispersed, moved from one place to another, causing the archival bonds to be broken. This enormous heritage has therefore not only not been reconstructed virtually, but there is not even an estimate of its size (probably several linear kilometres). However, we would like to remind you that it would no longer be possible to ask for it back as ownership has now passed to other entities: the State, mainly, some dioceses, private individuals.

State Archives

However, our archive has been carrying out a project for some years now to map these funds. We started by consulting the General Guide to the State Archives, an impressive work published between 1981 and 1994 that is still very useful – although in many cases the funds have changed location – to census at least the large ex-Jesuit funds.

In fact, the Guide indicates many funds of colleges and residences, giving information on the consistency, documentary chronology, and sometimes the documentary types that make up the series. We have supplemented the information in the Guide with information from SIAS, the information system of the state archives and from the web pages, the online inventories of the individual sites of the national archives.

Often we find these papers under the heading ‘Jesuit funds’ or ‘Jesuit axes’ or even ‘Jesuit holdings’. In other cases, the papers of residences and colleges have found their way into the funds of suppressed male religious congregations in many locations of the national archives.

Thanks to the survey sent to the various institutes, we discovered that among the state archives with the largest ex-Jesuit funds are those of Naples and Palermo, while smaller funds are in those of Venice, Pesaro, Verona, Ravenna, Florence and Rome.

Since this is a very large project involving the verification of funds, fragments of funds, single archival units for each conservation institution throughout the country, the involvement of thesis students, PhD students and scholars is necessary.
We hope that by reading this episode, future undergraduates and doctoral students may become interested in this topic and decide to undertake this research in collaboration with our archive.

In the State Archives, there are also non-Jesuit funds that are useful for research on the Jesuits. The colleagues in the State Archives can suggest the institution that interacted with the Society for their own purposes (tax collection, property registration, registration of documents). It depend on the history of each Ancient Italian State, the magistracies active within it and its funds.

In the State Archives in Rome, for example, the Fondo della Congregazione del Buon Governo is preserved. This was a congregation created at the behest of Clement VIII to administer better the Papal State, as its name suggests.

One of the series of the fund is dedicated precisely to individual cities.It consists of hundreds of folders relating to each city of the Church State, in alphabetical order. They contain reports on territorial borders, civic uses, and the organisation of particular ceremonies. We often recommend this source to the researchers studying the Jesuits in the Church State between 1540 and 1773.

It is not a sufficient source to provide information, on its own, on the Jesuits and their work but must be related to other sources. Another very useful source for verifying real estate is the Alexandrian cadastre and even more so the Gregorian cadastre, the first particle cadastre of the Papal State.

Historical diocesan archives

Some fonds or fragments of fonds of the Old Society may also be found in diocesan historical archives. There is still no guide for diocesan archives like the general guide for state archives, and many diocesan archives are not yet reordered. A lot of information about the residences can be found in some sources preserved in these archives, such as the visitae ad limina. These are three-yearly reports that each bishop writes after making a visit to his diocese. They are destined for the Holy See, while a copy remains in the historical archives of the diocese. They serve to give the Pope an account of the administration of the diocese, the spirituality of the faithful, problems or initiatives of worship. This is a very useful source on the Jesuits in a specific area because the bishop visited every church and thus gave a summary account of the work of the Jesuits and other religious orders in the diocese. In addition to this source, the bishop’s correspondence is certainly also fundamental.

Public libraries

Even public libraries, in some cases, are today custodians of part of the former Jesuit heritage. Why, if a library preserve books and not documents? It is actually not so rare for libraries to preserve manuscripts or archival collections. However, the case of the National Library of Rome is particularly emblematic in this respect.

After 20 September 1870 the Collegio Romano, as well as all properties of religious orders, was taken over by the state. Half of the property housed the first public high school in the capital, the Visconti, which is still there today, while the other half became the first home of the National Library of Rome, Vittorio Emanuele. It was precisely the book collection of the Collegio Romano, the library’s first nucleus. When, during the 1970s, a new location was found, the current one at Castro Pretorio, the library moved and the space was allocated to the Ministry of Culture. This is why, even today, the Collegio Romano’s archive collection, together with its manuscripts, can be found in the Vittorio Emanuele library.

The National Library in Rome is not the only Italian library to possess former Jesuit material.

Other Archives

Our project continued through a questionnaire sent to the State Archives. From their answers, we learned a lot of information, due to the movement of funds after the publication of the Guide. We thus discovered that in many municipal historical archives there are former Jesuit funds.

Former Jesuit records may also have found their way into private historical archives: family or individual archives. This is suggested by what happened in Loreto. In 1860, when the Jesuits saw ‘Piedmontese’ troops at the gates of the city, they sent for the parents of the boarders and before closing the boarding school they handed over precious objects to some families to prevent them from falling into the hands of the soldiers. We cannot exclude that something similar happened in 1773 with the oldest papers of residences and colleges that then remained in the family funds.

Vatican Apostolic Archive

Also at the Vatican Apostolic Archive, formerly the Vatican Secret Archive, it is possible to find former Jesuit material. This is the Jesuit Fund, also mentioned in the guide to the institute’s funds.

However, this very important archive also holds many other funds that can provide information on the Jesuits and their works. For example, for those who study the missions, the funds of the Nunciatures are fundamental and for the Italian territory the Legations.

The original visitae ad limina that each bishop sent to the Pope over the centuries are also here. It is always indispensable to contact colleagues for indications on other useful funds for this research; many hints are in the Garampi, in the index room.

ARSI

Many researchers believe that ARSI, the central archive of the Society of Jesus, holds the funds of the ancient residences of the Society. The misunderstanding stems from the fact that there is a lot of documentation dating back to the Old Society and some funds of very old residences in the institute. However, these are some funds of individual residences, such as that of the Gesù Church or the novitiate of St. Andrew’s at the Quirinal, which, in the past, the archivists of the Roman Province gave to the General Curia. These are therefore exceptions and are only a few Roman residences or some particular funds.

Most of the documentation dating back to the Old Society and preserved in ARSI concerns the correspondence of the Fathers General. In fact, the institute preserves the letters received by the Generals from the time of St Ignatius to the present day and the minutes of those sent. In addition to the correspondence, ARSI also keeps a copy of the historiae domus and the historical catalogues of the Provinces. However, these are sources created for the General (the letters, the historiae domus, the catalogues to allow the writer to verify where the Jesuits are) not documentation produced locally by each residence. The Collegia Fund is a useful source if you are interested in Jesuits or colleges in the Old Society. It does not contain, as one might mistakenly believe seeing the name, the funds produced by all the colleges. Considering that the list of envelopes goes from Acireale to Znoima, for a total of 692 colleges, it is clear that if ARSI really had to preserve the funds of all these colleges, the entire property of the Curia Generalizia would not be enough to do so. Instead, it contains some papers that the colleges sent to the Fr General: deeds of sale, plans, accounts, a few property inventories. Not all the colleges have all these documents. It is therefore a fund that must always be taken into consideration but which, again, on its own cannot provide sufficient information for research but can do so if put in relation to all the others mentioned in this episode.

The former Jesuit heritage therefore still needs to be reconstructed along with the history of its formation and dispersal. We hope that this episode can provide some research leads for interested scholars.

Maria Macchi