VENEGONO INFERIORE, SEMINARY AND FACULTY OF THEOLOGY OF. - A modest municipality in the province of Varese, which rose to prominence in Italy and abroad when (1927) the Church of Milan built there, as a homage to Pius XI, an important building (v. aerial view at the entry SEMINARY), a common seat for the lyceum seminary, coming from Monza, and for the theological one, transferred from the ancient seat built by St. Charles himself in Milan.
The students of the two seminaries combined number around five hundred. The lyceum division is equipped with an experimental chemistry-physics laboratory, a mineralogical and zoological museum, and oversees the regular operation of two very modern observatories, meteorological and seismographic. The main Library, flanked by special libraries for the students of both divisions, contains approximately 80,000 volumes, among them several incunabula, and receives, in exchange or by subscription, over two hundred national and foreign journals. In the theological division is located the Pontifical Faculty of Theology of Milan. Created by Gregory XIII in 1580, at the request of St. Charles, suppressed by Maria Theresa of Austria in 1774 for political and hegemonic reasons, it was re-established by Leo XIII in 1892, at the request of the Archbishop of Milan L. Nazzari di Calabiana, and opened to the theologians of all the seminaries of Lombardy. Among the ranks of its students or teachers are illustrious names of cardinals (Maffi, Minoretti, Ruffini) and prelates (Orsenigo, Cazzani, Tredici, Bernareggi, etc.). To respond to the requirements of the constitution Deus scientiarum, consideration was first given to a coordination or incorporation of the Theological Faculty with the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart, which could have give it a broader development and range of action; but this project, so far unsuccessful for various reasons, remains only a possibility for the future. Confined within the scope of the Seminary, the Theological Faculty was therefore forced to reconcile in its new statutes, approved by Pius XI in 1938, two purposes, if not opposed, certainly quite different: the purpose of a faculty, which is to train scholars, and the purpose of a diocesan seminary, however large it may be, which is to train professionally pastors for the care of souls. For this twofold purpose the Curriculum studiorum, in the new statutes, was divided into two periods; the first, of four years, although having a large part of its chairs distinct from those of the seminary courses, has a predominantly institutional character and concludes with the "licentiate"; the second, of two years, has a monographic character and is obligatorily attended by those who intend to obtain the "doctorate". Hence the Theological Faculty of V. acquired the characteristic of having six courses. From 1902 the College of Professors of the Faculty had assumed the editing and direction of the journal La scuola cattolica (v.).
Bibliography
Carlo Figini