The
Pontifical Croatian College of St. Jerome, lin Italian the
Pontificio Collegio Croato Di San Girolamo a Roma, is a Roman Catholic college, church and a society in the city of
RomeRome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated municipality , with over 2.7 million residents in , while the population of the urban area is estimated by Eurostat to be 3.46 million. The metropolitan area of Rome is estimated by OECD to have a population of 3.7 million...
intended for the schooling of
CroatiaCroatia , officially the Republic of Croatia , is a country in southeast Europe, at the crossroads of the Pannonian Plain, the Balkans, and the Mediterranean Sea. Its capital is Zagreb...
n clerics. It is named after
Saint JeromeSaint Jerome is a Christian church father, best known for translating the Bible into Latin.Saint Jerome may also refer to:*Jerome of Pavia , Bishop of Pavia...
. Since the founding of the modern college in 1901, it has schooled 311 clerics from all bishoprics of Croatia.
In an apostolic letter
Piis fidelium votis, dated March 21, 1453,
Pope Nicholas VPope Nicholas V , born Tommaso Parentucelli, was Pope from March 6, 1447 to his death in 1455.-Biography:He was born at Sarzana, Liguria, where his father was a physician...
granted the ruinous church of St.
The
Pontifical Croatian College of St. Jerome, lin Italian the
Pontificio Collegio Croato Di San Girolamo a Roma, is a Roman Catholic college, church and a society in the city of
RomeRome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated municipality , with over 2.7 million residents in , while the population of the urban area is estimated by Eurostat to be 3.46 million. The metropolitan area of Rome is estimated by OECD to have a population of 3.7 million...
intended for the schooling of
CroatiaCroatia , officially the Republic of Croatia , is a country in southeast Europe, at the crossroads of the Pannonian Plain, the Balkans, and the Mediterranean Sea. Its capital is Zagreb...
n clerics. It is named after
Saint JeromeSaint Jerome is a Christian church father, best known for translating the Bible into Latin.Saint Jerome may also refer to:*Jerome of Pavia , Bishop of Pavia...
. Since the founding of the modern college in 1901, it has schooled 311 clerics from all bishoprics of Croatia.
History
In an apostolic letter
Piis fidelium votis, dated March 21, 1453,
Pope Nicholas VPope Nicholas V , born Tommaso Parentucelli, was Pope from March 6, 1447 to his death in 1455.-Biography:He was born at Sarzana, Liguria, where his father was a physician...
granted the ruinous church of St. Marina and its precicts to a brotherhood of
CroatianCroats are a South Slavic ethnic group mostly living in Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and nearby countries. There are around 5 million Croats living in the southern Central Europe region, along the east bank of the Adriatic Sea and an estimated 9 million throughout the world...
priests on the Borgo San Pietro, Rome. At this location, next to the
Mausoleum of AugustusThe Mausoleum of Augustus is a large tomb built by the Roman Emperor Augustus in 28 BC on the Campus Martius in Rome. The Mausoleum, now located on the Piazza Augusto Imperatore, is no longer open to tourists, and the ravages of time and carelessness have stripped the ruins bare...
on the left bank of the
TiberThe Tiber is the third-longest river in Italy, rising in the Apennine mountains in Emilia-Romagna and flowing through Umbria and Lazio to the Tyrrhenian Sea. It drains a basin estimated at...
, they built a refuge and a hospital, and re-dedicated the institutions to
Saint JeromeSaint Jerome is a Christian church father, best known for translating the Bible into Latin.Saint Jerome may also refer to:*Jerome of Pavia , Bishop of Pavia...
.
The brotherhood was renamed
Congregatio (congregation) in 1544, and
Pope Paul IIIPope Paul III , born Alessandro Farnese, was Pope of the Roman Catholic Church from 1534 to his death in 1549. He came to the papal throne in an era following the sack of Rome in 1527 and rife with uncertainties in the Catholic Church following the Reformation...
sanctioned its bylaws and awarded it a
CardinalA cardinal is a senior ecclesiastical official, usually a bishop, of the Catholic Church. They are collectively known as the College of Cardinals, which as a body elects a new pope. The duties of the cardinals include attending the meetings of the College and making themselves available...
as a sponsor.
Pope Pius VPope St. Pius V , born Antonio Ghislieri , was pope from 1566 to 1572 and is a saint of the Roman Catholic Church...
raised the Church of San Girolamo to the status of a Cardinal
titulusIn Christian archeology, a titulus is one of a set number of Early Christian churches built round the edges of the city of Rome, which were ascribed to patrons, whose names often identified them:...
on February 8, 1566. On November 20, 1570, Felice Cardinal Peretti of Montalto became its sponsor cardinal, and remained in this position until March 24, 1585 when he was made
Pope Sixtus VPope Sixtus V , born Felice Peretti di Montalto, was Pope from 1585 to 1590.-Biography:Felice Peretti was born at Grottammare, in the Papal States, son of Piergentile di Giacomo, nicknamed "Peretto", and Marianna da Frontillo. He took the surname "Peretti" in 1551 and was more generally known as...
.
Pope Sixtus V rebuilt the church of Saint Jerome (finished in 1589), to be used specifically for the people who spoke the
IllyriaIllyria was in Classical antiquity a region in the western part of today's Balkan Peninsula, inhabited by the Illyrians, a heterogeneous coalition of tribes, about whom very little is known, though a number of them are assumed to have been united by a common Illyrian language.Illyria and the...
n language, referring to the Croats from the eastern Adriatic,
DalmatiaDalmatia , is a region on the eastern coast of the Adriatic Sea and is situated in modern Croatia. It spreads between the island of Rab in the northwest and the Bay of Kotor, in Montenegro, in the southeast...
and Boka Kotorska. He also established the
Capitol, a college of eleven Slavonic clerics at the Church, in his papal bull
Sapientiam Sanctorum of August 1, 1589. He named Aleksandar Komulović (1548-1608) from
SplitSplit is the largest Dalmatian city, the second-largest urban centre in Croatia, and the seat of Split-Dalmatia County...
the first arch-priest. Between the Capitol's establishment and its abolishment in 1901, over 120 Croatian priests worked in it.
In 1598,
Pope Clement VIIIPope Clement VIII , born Ippolito Aldobrandini, was Pope from 30 January, 1592 to 3 March, 1605.-Cardinal:...
gave permission for the hospice by the church to be transformed into a clerical college, but this did not actually happen until two centuries later, when on February 27, 1790
Pope Pius VIPope Pius VI , born Count Giovanni Angelo Braschi, Pope from 1775 to 1799, was born at Cesena.-Early years:...
opened a
seminaryA seminary, theological college, or divinity school is an institution of higher education for instructing students , sometimes at the postgraduate level, in philosophy, theology, spirituality and the religious life, to prepare students for ordination as clergy or other ministry...
for men who previously used the services of the St. Jerome Capitol. But even then, the seminary functioned only for brief periods without interruption: 1793-1798, 1863-1871, and finally 1884-1901, after which point the Capitol was abolished.
The College was officially founded on August 1, 1901 by
Pope Leo XIIIPope Leo XIII , born Count Vincenzo Gioacchino Raffaele Luigi Pecci, was the 257th Pope of the Roman Catholic Church, reigning from 1878 to 1903, succeeding Pope Pius IX. Reigning until the age of 93, he was the oldest pope, and had the third longest pontificate, behind Pius IX and John Paul II...
. His apostolic letter
Slavorum gentem called it
Collegium Hieronymianum pro Croatica Gente ("Hieronymian College for the Croatian people"), but after diplomatic intervention from the Kingdom of
MontenegroMontenegro , is a country located in Southeastern Europe. It has a coast on the Adriatic Sea to the south-west and is bordered by Croatia to the west, Bosnia and Herzegovina to the northwest, Serbia to the northeast, Kosovo to the east and Albania to the south...
, on March 7, 1902 it was renamed to
Collegium Hieronymianum Illyricorum (
IllyriaIllyria was in Classical antiquity a region in the western part of today's Balkan Peninsula, inhabited by the Illyrians, a heterogeneous coalition of tribes, about whom very little is known, though a number of them are assumed to have been united by a common Illyrian language.Illyria and the...
n Hieronymian College,
San Girolamo degli Illirici in Italian).
Some Croatian priests received scholarships from the society in 1907, and in 1911 several students enrolled at the college, but this was again interrupted in 1915 due to the First World War. The College reopened after the war, as Italy and the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes signed the
Treaty of Rome, 1924The Treaty of Rome of January 27, 1924 was an agreement by which Italy and the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes revoked the parts of the Treaty of Rapallo from 1920, which had created the independent Free State of Fiume...
and acknowledged the clerical institution under the breve
Slavorum gentem. A rebuilding of the College's facilities ensued in the period between May 28, 1938 and December 10, 1939, when six existing buildings were torn down to make way for new ones. The College has functioned without interruption ever since.
By decree of
Pope Paul VIPope Paul VI , born Giovanni Battista Enrico Antonio Maria Montini , reigned as Pope of the Roman Catholic Church and Sovereign of Vatican City from 1963 to 1978. Succeeding Pope John XXIII, who had convened the Second Vatican Council, he decided to continue it...
dated July 22, 1971, the College was renamed
Pontificium Collegium Chroaticum Sancti Hieronymi (Pontifical Croatian College of St. Jerome), and this was accepted by Italy by decree of the President on October 11, 1982.
In 1999 the College was among the defendants in the
Class action suit against the Vatican Bank and othersAlperin v. Vatican Bank is a class action suit by Holocaust survivors against the Vatican Bank and Franciscan Order filed in San Francisco, California on November 15, 1999...
to retrieve
Nazi gold "Nazi gold" refers to the assets in gold transferred by Nazi Germany to overseas banks during the Second World War. The regime executed a policy of looting the assets of its victims to finance the war, collecting the looted assets in central depositories. The occasional transfer of gold in...
.
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