Collections

Collections are groups of documents or resources related to a subject or to a single author; a collection usually contains unpublished material owned by APUG or study tools such as bibliographies or finding aids.

To access to a collection click on the title of its section.

Angelo Secchi

Angelo Secchi (1818-1878) was a jesuit astronomer and scientist, one of the fathers of the modern Astrophysics. APUG preserves a large amount of his works, both handwritten and printed - with a lot of manuscript addition - and his extensive correspondence with the most important scientists of his time. With about 8,000 letters and more than 1,500 people involved, this correspondence is a treasure for the History of Science studies.

Annali del Seminario Romano

Compiled in the years 1640-1647 by Jesuit Father Girolamo Nappi and divided into three volumes, it contains lists of clerics and boarders according to the year they entered, biographies, statutes, regulations, notices, customs and various documents on the activities carried out within the Roman institution. The history of the Roman Seminary, one name after another, runs through these pages from its origins in 1565 to 1647.

Balthasar Loyola Mandes

The Gregorian Centre for Interreligious Studies in cooperation with the Historical Archives of the Pontifical Gregorian University started digitizing the unpublished writings of Baldassarre Loyola Mandes S.J. (1631-1667). Son of the king of Fez (Marocco), Muley Mohammed el-Attaz a Muslim prince converted to Christianity, after he was capture by the Knights of Malta, while he was travelling to Mecca for pilgrimage. He took the name of Baldassarre Loyola Mandes to honor both the day of his baptism (July 31, 1656, feast of Saint Ignatius of Loyola) and the knight who made him prisoner and who was his godfather (Balthasar Mandols). A few years later, the 11th General Congregation of the Society of Jesus, gathered in Rome, authorized his admission to the novitiate at Saint Andrew at the Quirinal (1661). Desiring to leave on a mission to the empire of the Great Moghul, he died in Madrid at the beginning of his journey. His life, well known in the first Society, was staged by Pedro Calderón de la Barca and it was played in all the Jesuit colleges. Baldassarre was the only former Muslim admitted to the Society of Jesus until the abolition in 1946 of the decree of the 5th General Congregation (1594), which forbade the admission of net-converts.

Giuseppe Gianfranceschi

The fonds preserved in the APUG mainly document Fr. Gianfranceschi's academic activity at the Università Gregoriana and the research he carried out in various scientific areas (mathematics, physics, chemistry, astronomy, etc.) that often flowed into the publications of the Società italiana per il progresso delle scienze and the Regia Accademia dei Lincei. Alongside this production are documents relating to his participation in the North Pole Expedition, the direction of Vatican Radio and the Catholic Explorers Movement (ASCI).

Jesuit Drama

APUG conserves numerous manuscripts of plays written by rhetoric professors at the Collegio Romano and other Jesuit colleges from the mid-16th century onwards.

Pasquale D'Elia

This collection contains the bibliography of all the Pasquale D'Elia's publications. D'Elia (1890-1963) was a jesuit, sinologist and professor at the Pontifical Gregorian University and at Sapienza University of Rome. More information about his life and academic career is available here (Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani).

Pierre Favre Memoriale

With the Pierre Favre collection our aim is to produce a digital edition of the manuscript FC 1042, a recently and previously unknown copy of Favre's Memoriale. To do this, a digital reproduction of the manuscript has been made and uploaded to GATE: it is available at this link. A full transcription of the manuscript is now undergoing and when it will be ready, 'our' text will be collated with the canonical one - published in 1914 in the Monumenta Historica Societatis Iesu - in order to highlight all the variants. During this work a critical comment will also be added to the transcription.
This project is also intended as a chance to create a permanent Pierre Favre 'workshop', to deeper study his works and his time. For this reason, we have also set up a Pierre Favre bibliography, where all the publications about this Jesuit will be recorded: the bibliography will become the starting point for any future research about Favre and his Memoriale.

Possession et Délivrance

The aim of this collection is to study a group of 12 manuscripts preserved by APUG, which contains the text of an exorcism happened in Paris between 1876 and 1880. The exorcism was conducted by the jesuit Maximilien de Haza Radlitz (1831-1909) and involved the young girl Désirée Léjeune (1846-1940). This documentation is a peculiar case study to observe the medical system within the modern society, during a time in which it starts to emancipate itself from the religious morality.

Robert Leiber

Since the opening of the archival fonds of the Holy See relating to the pontificate of Pius XII (1939 - 1958) on 2 March 2020, the documentation of the Jesuit Robert Leiber (1888-1967) has begun to arouse some interest. The Leiber Fund consists of 14 folders of correspondence containing over 3000 letters and 10 folders, containing lecture notes, drafts for articles or lectures, bibliographical notes, newspaper cuttings and journal extracts. Binder XIX contains the Registers of Letters from 1945 to 1967.

Varia Spiritualia

In this section a series of codes are grouped which, from the point of view of certain taxonomies, could be included under different themes: "Notices", "Rules", "Directory", "Spiritual Exercises", "Ascetics", etc. These classifications work, creating a certain consensus, to the extent that they are not looked at closely, that is, they are not historicized.