The Apostleship of Prayer collection at ARSI, Rome
Archival holdings and research perspectives
Sergio Palagiano
Archivist, Archivum Romanum Societatis Iesu, Rome
Thursday, 3 April 2025 | online
11:30 CET ROME ● 15:00 IST GOA ● 18:30 JST TOKYO
The archive of the Apostleship of Prayer, an association founded by the Jesuit François-Xavier Gautrelet on December 3, 1844, at the novitiate of Vals-près-le-Puy in France, is one of the most significant aggregated collections at the ARSI, Rome. The sixty-five linear meters of documentation represent a crucial asset for historical research on the worship and devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, the spirituality underlying the association, Catholic associationism, the relationships of the Society of Jesus with the works founded by its members, and the broader context of Catholic devotional movements in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The presentation is structured in three parts. The first will outline the historical and institutional profile of the association from its origins onward, creating a timeline that provides necessary chronological references. The second will focus on the reorganization and inventorying of the archive: the starting situation, the study of the entity producing the documents, the proposed arrangement, a description of the collection, and its organization into series and subseries, with an emphasis on the challenges encountered during the process. The third and final part will explore potential research directions, drawing from examples found in the preserved documents.
Sergio Palagiano graduated in Medieval Art History, and holds a degree in Paleography, Diplomacy, and Archive Administration from the Italian National School of State Archives, a Master’s degree in Digital Archives Management, as well as a degree in Modern and Contemporary Archive Administration from the Vatican School of Paleography, Diplomatics, and Archives Administration. Since 2013, he has been an archivist at the Archivum Romanum Societatis Iesu where he has reorganized the archival fonds “Jan Philip Roothaan”, Superior General of the Society of Jesus from 1829 to 1853, “Pietro Tacchi Venturi”, mediator between Pope Pius XI until February 1939 and then Pope Pius XII and the Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, “Holy See”, which holds the correspondence of the Holy See’s dicasteries with the Society, and “Apostleship of Prayer”. For the opening of the archives of the pontificate of Pius XII on March 2, 2020, he reorganized and inventoried the fonds of several provinces of the United States of America and Eastern Europe for the period 1939-1958. He is currently reorganizing and inventorying the “Censurae”, which contains documentation produced by the internal review process within the Society of articles, essays, and monographs written by Jesuits and proposed for publication from 1814 to 1970.
- This seminar will be held ONLINE.
- Registration in necessary. Please register here.
- You will then receive a Microsoft Teams link to join the seminar.
