Maestre Pie Venerini

MAESTRE PIE VENERINI. - They were founded at Viterbo on 30 August 1685 by the venerable Rosa Venerini (v.), with the approval of the bishop Cardinal Urbano Sacchetti and with the purpose of the Christian education and instruction of young women, especially of the common people. The teachers were sometimes also called Maestre Pie Teatine, Jesuits or Jesuitesses, because they were under the direction of the Jesuits.

In 1694 Venerini contemplated new foundations, and already before 1700 she had opened two schools at Bagnaia and Oriolo. Others followed outside the diocese of Viterbo, so that in 1713 the Institute counted 19 houses in seven dioceses, and in 1728, at the death of the foundress, 40. Meanwhile in 1713 a house had been opened in Rome, and there was a cardinal protector. The Institute, which in 1800 counted 46 houses, after the Napoleonic storm saw them reduced to 27. After 1814 Monsignor A. G. Severoli, bishop of Viterbo, later cardinal, worked hard to make it flourish again, and claimed to appropriate its government to himself and to do without the mother general and the cardinal protector, citing the example of Montefiascone, where the Maestre Pie Filippini were under the direct dependence of the bishop. Thus there came to be almost two Institutes of Maestre Pie: one diocesan at Viterbo, dependent on the bishop, the other interdiocesan at Rome: the split lasted from 1822 to 1875. In the meantime the Institute underwent other trials. Leo XII willed that the schools and the Maestre Pie outside Rome, of whatever origin, be subject to the respective Ordinaries, thus creating as many small diocesan institutes, to which were imposed the Rules already approved in 1760 by the Holy See for the Maestre Pie Operaie (Filippini). In Rome itself two distinct families were created out of a single institute: the one that depended on the apostolic almoner, and the one that depended on the cardinal datary. However, under Gregory XVI, Cardinal A. Rivarola soon obtained the full re-establishment of the Venerini Institute inside and outside Rome; and through his care in 1836 there was a new edition of the Rules conformable to the spirit of the foundress and adapted to the times; Rules then approved by Gregory XVI himself.

The suppression of the religious Orders decreed by the Italian government and the obligation for the teachers to be State-certified graduates at first arrested its rebirth, which later became very promising, so much so that at present the teachers number over 600 in 75 houses, with a novitiate at Ariccia Nuova (Italy) and one at Fitchburg (U.S.A.). Pius XII in 1941 constituted the Institute as a religious Congregation with vows, whereas previously the sisters, although living a wholly religious life, did not take public vows.

Silverio Mattei