Somaschi

SOMASCHI. - Religious order founded for the care of orphans by the Venetian patrician St. Jerome Emiliani (or Miani [v.]) in 1528, in the parish of St. Basil in Venice, with the moral support of St. Cajetan of Thiene and of Bishop Gian Pietro Carafa (the future Paul IV), spiritual director of Emiliani.

Little by little the work grew, and by around 1532 there were eight houses, scattered throughout the Venetian State as far as Somasca (Bergamo), whence the name of the Order. In that year Emiliani, seeing that his work had developed into a religious congregation, gathered his co-workers at Merone for a kind of consultation for the purpose of coordinating methods and work. This is the first Chapter of the Order, or rather — according to the name that the Saint then gave it — of the Company of the Servants of the Poor. At the death of the founder (1537), however, the Congregation did not yet have canonical standing. The most faithful then gathered in a second Chapter at Somasca and officially elected as head Father Angiolo Marco Gambarana, with the task of obtaining from the Holy See the confirmation of the Company, which was granted by Paul III on 4 June 1540 with the bull Ex iniuncto nobis. Six years later the same Pope, at the request of the fathers S. and of Cardinal Carafa, united the two Congregations of the Theatines and the S., leaving the latter free from pronouncing solemn vows. The purpose of this union was to supplement with Theatine elements the work of the S., who were too few in number relative to the orphans assisted, but it soon became clear that Emiliani's charitable work would end up disappearing, given the different mission of the Theatines; therefore the same Cardinal Carafa, having become Pope, again separated the two institutions. The S. thus returned to the statutes of the bull of Paul III, reconfirmed also by Pius IV through the personal intervention of St. Charles Borromeo. Finally St. Pius V, with the bull Iniunctum nobis of 6 Dec. 1568, elevated the Company of the Servants of the Poor to the dignity of a religious Order with the name, which thereafter remained constant, of Regular Clerics of Somasca, or S. The first solemn religious profession was on 29 Apr. 1569, and the aforementioned Father Angiolo Marco Gambarana was elected first superior general; the church of St. Maiolus of Pavia was also established as the mother house. Whence in some documents the wording: « Clerici Regulares a Somascha sancti Maioli de Papia ».

To the orphanages of the Veneto there had meanwhile been added those of Lombardy, Liguria, Piedmont, Romagna, the Marches, and Tuscany: at Cremona and Milan the Fathers had aroused and embraced as their own the work of Christian Doctrine, thereby obtaining the popular title of « Fathers of the works ». In 1566 St. Charles Borromeo entrusted to the S. the parish of Somasca, recently erected, and established there under their full direction a rural Seminary. Thus the Order broadened its initial purpose. The outcome of the new direction met with full approval, so that Cardinal Madruzzi, prince-bishop of Trent, entrusted to them the Seminary, which was followed by those of Venice, Alessandria, Rome, Lodi, Naples, Tortona, Treviso, Cremona, and Brescia. When later, in 1595, Clement VIII called the S. to direct the largest College of the City, called precisely the Clementine, for the education of nobles destined for any career, the Order acquired its definitive character, which is the one that has since been maintained in the following centuries: care of orphans, instruction of youth, and assistance to the secular clergy in parishes.

Subsequently other colleges were accepted: at Brescia, Salò, Bergamo, Venice (called the Ducal Seminary), and four at Naples. To this expansion of the Somaschan institutions throughout every region of Italy there also corresponded an increase in the so-called « professed houses », that is, houses of religious formation. In 1627 the religious numbered 438 and in 1713, 450; the orphans were about 300; the boarders and other pupils in the colleges over 1000. In 1616 the Congregation of Christian Doctrine of France, founded by the venerable servant of God Cesare da Bus, asked to be aggregated to the Order of the S.; Paul V granted it, while however maintaining a certain distinction, so much so that the superior general had to bear the following long title: superior general of the Regular Clerics Somaschi in Italy and of the Christian Doctrine in France. In 1626 the union was reconfirmed by Urban VIII, who also approved the Constitutions and the rules common to the two institutions. Thirty years later, on the other hand, the French Doctrinarians, desirous of their ancient autonomous form also because they were excluded from the generalate, asked and obtained from Innocent X to reconstitute themselves as a congregation of their own. In 1661, Alexander VII prescribed the division of the Order into three provinces: the Lombard, comprising the Duchies of Milan, Savoy, Mantua, and Parma; the Venetian, in the Republic of Venice; and finally the Roman, which extended from Tuscany to the whole of southern Italy and included Liguria. Meanwhile the Order had expanded even further. In 1583 Cardinal Tolomeo Gallio had entrusted to the S. the college that still bears his name at Como, with the express purpose of serving as a bulwark against Lutheranism in the city. During the plague of 1630 about a third of the priests died, but a rapid recovery was noted after the terrible scourge, so as to register almost immediately the golden century of the Order. The S. gave to the Church during this period of time 22 bishops, among them 4 cardinals; they held chairs in several universities, and when Clement XIV in 1773 suppressed the Jesuits the S. replaced them in some of their institutions, for example, at the Nunziatella of Naples.

Also from this period are Fathers Jacopo Stellini, philosopher, who continued and documented the theories of Vico; Gian Antonio Santini, professor at the Sapienza, correspondent of Galileo and chosen by St. Joseph Calasanz as instructor of the first Scolopi; Gaspare Leonarducci, a poet of good repute and restorer of the cult of Dante; the theologian Agostino De Angelis, later bishop of Umbriatico, and, among the pupils, Benedict XIV who, at the S., first at Bologna, then at the Clementine of Rome, completed all his studies. To the S. also belonged Father Giuseppe Maria Puiati, a famous Jansenist, who, despite his great learning and an irreproachable life, asked and obtained to leave the Order. In

In 1769 secularism launched its first attacks. The Republic of Venice forbade the religious to take part in the General Chapters and ordered them to govern themselves separately; almost immediately Austria did the same in Lombardy. Thus the Order was split into three fragments, and in 1784 four provinces were created from the territories where it was still free, namely the Piedmontese, Ligurian, Roman and Neapolitan. But in '89 the King of Naples cut off the latter as well. Though the Order always remained united internally, it could not but suffer from the lack of unity of government. Therefore, following the closure of other houses carried out by the French in 1797, the whole Order had to be made into a single province; indeed, in 1810, with the Napoleonic suppression, the Somaschi retained only the single house of Lugano.

When Pius VII restored the religious Orders on 22 Aug. 1814, the Somaschi were able to reconstitute themselves fairly easily in Piedmont, Liguria and the Papal States, thanks above all to fathers who, at the time of the suppression, had managed to remain in certain houses as parish priests or as private holders of colleges. Four years later the novitiate of Somasca was also reopened and the Piedmontese, Genoese and Roman provinces were reconstituted, and later the Venetian and Lombard ones as well, united into a single one. Of the previous religious houses only the Collegio Gallio of Como and the novitiate with the parish of Somasca were taken up again. With the suppressions of 1866 and 1874 eighteen houses were lost, among them the Collegio Clementino, and 165 religious priests and 65 lay brothers were dispersed.

Various attempts to open houses abroad failed, and only in 1901 was it possible to open a college at Bellinzona in the Canton of Ticino, and in 1921, acceding to repeated requests of bishops, they established themselves in the State of El Salvador in Central America, then in Honduras. In 1939 a commissariat was formed in Central America. At present the Somaschi number 300; the orphans assisted are about 700; the pupils of the schools over 1000; they have 26 houses in Italy, 1 in Switzerland, 6 in Central America.

Giovanni Battista Pigato