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Restoring Jesuit Identity through Martyrial Militancy in 1930s Rome: Early- Christian, Late- Antique, and Medieval Revivals in Father Ledóchowski SJ’s Borgia Oratorium Publicum
Abáigar de Villegas, Jimena
Abáigar de Villegas, Jimena
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Abstract
In the early decades of the twentieth century, the Society of Jesus rearticulated its artistic identity in Rome through a visual language rooted in Early-Christian and medieval traditions, deliberately challenging the Late Renaissance and Baroque aesthetics historically associated with the Order. In pursuit of professing a renewed vision of Jesuit identity and proposing an alternative model of sacred experience—one distinct from the emotive and theatrical environments of traditional Jesuit Roman churches—the Oratorio Borgia, never before studied, originally functioned as a public devotional space enclosed within the Curia Generalizia della Compagnia di Gesù, in immediate proximity to Saint Peter’s Basilica. This is confirmed by the previously unexamined documentation preserved in the Archivum Romanum Societatis Iesu, and further substantiated by the ecclectic iconographic program devised for the oratory’s decoration—a scheme fundamentally oriented towards the faithful—that articulates a theological procession culminating in Salvation through the Most Holy Sacrament of the Eucharist. Within this eschatological visual construct, whose telos is the believer’s union with Christ, participating in the endurance of His redemptive sacrifice is rendered imperative, as it is through this expiatory act that humanity was reconciled to God. In much the same way that the early Jesuits, in the aftermath of the Society’s foundation and the establishment of their first missions, turned to the paradigms of martyrdom in Early- Christianity—as they themselves excavated and venerated the Roman catacombs—as models for apostolic fervor, perseverance in times of persecution, and the sanctifying values of sacrifice, so too did Father General Ledóchowski SJ, head of the Society of Jesus and commissioner of the oratory, appropriate this historical and spiritual framework in response to what he perceived as the threads confronting Catholic faith and tradition in modernity, including atheism, secularism, relativism, or communism. v It is through the act of opening the oratory beyond the Jesuit community within the Curia Generalizia that the Government of the Society of Jesus was able to visibly assert an active spiritual and intellectual militancy of the Papacy by therefore reiterating their role in a renewed Counter-Reformation, still intrinsic to the Jesuit identity even after the Restoration of the Order in 1814. To sanctify the world, and to shield the Church from its decay, addressing devotional Modern currents as remedies for Modern struggles—such as the cult of the Sacred Heart of Jesus—the decoration of the Borgia Oratory drew consciously from Early-Christian and Byzantine revival. Its historical, and spiritual strategy, materialised by two Jesuit brothers, enacted a revivalist theology of sacred art as militant sanctification.
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Master of Arts in Art History -- John Cabot University, Spring 2025.
Date
2025
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Włodzimierz Ledóchowski, 1866-1942, Jesuits
Citation
Abáigar de Villegas, Jimena. "Restoring Jesuit Identity through Martyrial Militancy in 1930s Rome: Early- Christian, Late- Antique, and Medieval Revivals in Father Ledóchowski SJ’s Borgia Oratorium Publicum". Master's Thesis, John Cabot University, Rome, Italy. 2025.