COLLEGE OF SAN PIETRO IN MONTORIO. — Founded by Fr. Tommaso Obicini da Novara. He had spent ten years in Palestine as a missionary and knew well the importance of the Arabic language for missionaries. Having come to Rome in 1621, he proposed to the Sacred Congregation of Propaganda Fide that a course in that language be established for the Friars Minor of the convent of S. Pietro in Montorio. Having obtained its approval, on 3 June 1622 the said convent’s course was established, and the same father was placed at its head.
At first the purpose of the course was twofold: to train professors of Arabic and to teach the language to future missionaries. In 1668 the course was confirmed by Clement IX in the brief Crediti nobis and placed under the Congregation of Propaganda. To the study of Arabic, the brief added that of controversies concerning the faith, that is, concerning the Catholic doctrines from which the Eastern Christians dissented; this study, moreover, had already existed there previously. In 1762 Arabic was replaced by Albanian, because at that time many fathers were being sent as missionaries to Albania, Macedonia, and Serbia, while the college of S. Bartolomeo on the island provided for the East; the study of Arabic was resumed only in the 19th century, after the upheavals of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic wars. In 1722 the study of moral theology was also prescribed.
Other disciplines were also taught temporarily, such as Syriac, Ethiopic, Coptic, Greek, and Chinese, according to the needs of the missionaries. In the case of the last, however, the students attended lectures at the college of Propaganda. Mathematics and geography, too, were taught temporarily, and in order to acquire some knowledge of medicine the students practised in the hospitals of the City.
The lecturers or professors were proposed by the minister general of the Order and appointed following an examination in the presence of the secretary of Propaganda, which sent the students to the missions. Special mention should be made of the public disputations, held in the convent church and almost all printed in the Propaganda press.
By order of the same Congregation, canonical visitations of the college were carried out from time to time. The course lasted two years, but was often shortened because of the needs of the missions. Until 1706, the superiors’ certificate was sufficient for someone to be sent to the missions; from that year onward, however, the students had to submit to an examination before their lecturers, with the assistance of a delegate of Propaganda.
The college lasted until 1870. The teaching lecturers numbered approximately 70 and the students approximately 1,000. Among the former, several distinguished themselves through their published works: in Arabic, Fr. Obicini, Fr. Domenico Germano della Slesia, an excellent scholar and translator of the Qur’an, Alessio da Todi, Antonio da Aquila, and Marco da Lucca. Among the lecturers of Albanian, Fr. Francesco Rossi da Montalto distinguished himself through the grammar and dictionary he published in that language. Works on the controversies were published by Fr. Carlo Francesco Fraida da Varese: Selectiores huius temporis contraeoriae dogmaticae (Rome 1688) and Promptuarium Scoticum (there 1690), and especially by Fr. Carlo Francesco Camozzi da Breno with his Manuale missionariorum Orientalium (2 vols., Venice 1726).
The students went as missionaries to Albania, the Lucerne Valley, Egypt, Ethiopia, Constantinople, Asia Minor, the Holy Land, Tripoli in Barbary, China, and also South America. Among them were some martyrs for the faith, such as Fr. Giuseppe d’Atina, Fr. Felice da S. Severino, Francesco da Mistretta, Ludovico da Laurenzana, and Clemente Raiffer. Several were appointed apostolic vicars and bishops in the missions, among whom Daniele Duranti d’Arezzo, Giuseppe Rizzolati da Clauzetto, Alessio Filippi, Eusebio Semprini, Celestino Spelta, Ezechia Banci, and Eustachio Zanoli distinguished themselves. Some of them also published grammars, such as, for example, Fr. Agapito Dapra da Val di Fiemme: Flores grammaticales Arabici idiomatis (Padua 1687), which was of particular value because, in addition to the classical language, it also treated the vernacular and was therefore widely adopted for the practical use of missionaries. It remained in use at the seminary of Padua until the 19th century, and when it was desired to reprint Erpenius’s grammar for the college of Propaganda in 1845, Fr. Agapito’s was reprinted precisely because of its practicality. Francesco Maria da Lecce composed the first Albanian grammar: Osservazioni grammaticali nella lingua albanese (Rome 1716), as well as a dictionary.