Colleges, orders and alliances: the institutions of reform

The Collegio Elvetico in Milan

The decisive weakness of the Church in the Catholic Confederation, in Borromeo's analysis, was the lack of educated priests. The Catholic cantons had no university and no seminary. The Tridentine decree of 1563 obliged every diocese to establish a seminary for the training of its clergy, but the Swiss dioceses lacked the means and, in the case of Constance, Chur and Lausanne, were themselves divided by confession. Borromeo's answer was a college in Milan reserved for Swiss students. He founded the Collegio Elvetico in 1579 for the formation of the Swiss clergy and endowed it with fifty scholarships. The economic basis came from Rome: between 1576 and 1579 Gregory XIII created four foundations whose income was bound to the admission of at least fifty Swiss students, and Cardinal Mark Sittich von Hohenems later raised the number of places to seventy-four.¹ The college was housed first at the church of Santo Spirito and moved in 1583 to the former monastery of Santa Maria di Vigevano in Porta Nuova, which had belonged to the Humiliati, the order suppressed in 1571.² The building that later housed the college reflects its importance. Construction of a new seat began in 1608 under Carlo's cousin and successor, Cardinal Federico Borromeo. From 1613 Fabio Mangone was the engineer of the college and designed its porticoed courtyards with classical orders. After Mangone's death in 1629, Francesco Maria Richini designed the concave façade, completed after 1652, which is one of the landmarks of Milanese Baroque architecture. Later works continued under Gerolamo and Giovanni Battista Quadrio and, after 1776, under Leopoldo Pollack. In 1786 Joseph II, in the course of his reforms in Lombardy, confiscated the building and the clerics were transferred to the seminary of the Canonica. Napoleon suppressed the college itself in 1797 and assigned its assets to the hospital of Milan. Its purpose survived in reduced form: from 1842 Austria, and after 1860 the Sardinian and then the Italian state, financed twenty-four free places for Swiss students at the archiepiscopal seminary of Milan, which 366 students used between 1842 and 1900, most of them from Ticino, the Grisons and Uri, and the places were transferred to the seminary of Venegono in 1935. The palace housed the government of Austrian Lombardy, the Great Council of the Cisalpine Republic, the Ministry of War and, from 1809 to 1814, the Senate of the Napoleonic Kingdom of Italy, which gave it its current name of Palazzo del Senato. Since 1886 it has been the exclusive seat of the State Archive of Milan.³

For two centuries the Collegio Elvetico was the most important centre of theological training for Uri, the Grisons and the Italian-speaking south, and it trained clergy for the other Catholic cantons as well. Its graduates became parish priests, canons, abbots and bishops. They brought back to the Alpine valleys the Milanese conception of the priest as a resident pastor, catechist and administrator, and with it the Milanese standards of record-keeping and accounting. The college also created a network. Priests who had studied together in Milan corresponded with each other and with the Milanese curia, recommended candidates and exchanged information. For the Italianspeaking parishes, the college confirmed the orientation towards Milan that their position in the Ambrosian and Comasque dioceses already implied.⁴

Notes

1. Crivelli, "Borromeo, Carlo" (above): "fondando nel 1579 a Milano il Collegio Elvetico, destinato alla formazione del clero sviz. e dotato di 50 borse di studio"; Hans Stadler, "Collegio Elvetico", in DSS, version of 11 March 2010, https://hls-dhs-dss.ch/it/articles/010430/2010-03-11/ (four foundations of Gregory XIII, 1576–1579; extension to 74 places by Mark Sittich von Hohenems). ↩
2. Archivio di Stato di Milano, "Palazzo del Senato", https://archiviodistatomilano.cultura.gov.it/en/institution/palazzo-del-senato (first seats of the college and building history). ↩
3. Archivio di Stato di Milano, "Palazzo del Senato" (as above): closure of the college in 1786 and transfer of the clerics to the Seminario della Canonica; later uses; State Archive from 1865, exclusive tenant from 1886. Stadler, "Collegio Elvetico" (as above): confiscation of the building by Joseph II in 1786 "nel quadro delle riforme attuate in Lombardia"; suppression by Napoleon in 1797 and transfer of the assets to the hospital; 24 places financed from 1842, confirmed by the Sardinian state in 1860; 366 students 1842–1900; transfer to Venegono in 1935. ↩
4. Stadler, "Collegio Elvetico" (above), which calls the college the most important centre of theological training for Uri, the Grisons and Ticino and notes the prominent ecclesiastical careers of its graduates. ↩

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