RZYMSKIE ARCHIWUM TOWARZYSTWA JEZUSOWEGO: GENEZA, ZASÓB I FUNKCJONOWANIE
THE ROMAN ARCHIVES OF THE SOCIETY OF JESUS: ORIGINS, RESOURCES AND OPERATION

Summary/Abstract: The Roman Archives of the Society of Jesus, known by its official Latin name, Archivum Romanum Societatis Jesu, is the main (central) archive of the Jesuits. It is located in the General Curia of the Order and its task is to collect, organise and make available to researchers a collection of documents from the 16th to the 20th centuries. It is a central archive in the sense that it contains documents pertaining to the central body of the order, not all documents pertaining to Jesuits from every era and country. From 1541 to 1773, it was located in a house at the Church of the Gesu, where it remained even after the suppression of the Order, although the instability of the times led to the disappearance of many documents. In 1873, the Jesuits had to leave Rome because of the policies of the Italian government. The General Curia moved to Fiesole near Florence, where it remained until 1895, while the archives were first hidden and then sent in secret to Exaten in the Netherlands, where the German Jesuits had their house of study. By the end of 1893, the archive was spread across three different locations: the fundamental part of it was in the Netherlands, the more recent documents (those from after 1814) were in Fiesole and the archive of the Procurator General of the Order – in 1870 located in the Jesuit Collegium Romanum – was confiscated by the Italian government along with the Collegium’s library. This book collection became the origin of today’s Vittorio Emmanuele II National Library in Rome. The archives were returned to their rightful owners in 1924. After the General Curia was returned to Rome in 1895 and the archives returned from the Netherlands in 1939, all three parts of the archives were brought together in 1945 in the new Curia at Borgo Santo Spirito 4, where they remain to this day; since 1995 they have been housed in a special building. In its current form, the archive consists of the following departments: 1) the documents concerning the ‘old’ Society (before the suppression of the Order in 1773); 2) the files from the time of the ‘new’ Society (after the rebirth of the Order in 1814); 3) the so-called Fondo Gesuitico, or archive of the Order’s Procurator General, containing mainly property and litigation files; and 4) the special collections. The resources are being compiled on an ongoing basis and made available for scientific study to researchers from around the world. The number of digitised archival materials is also increasing successively.

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