entry August 2009
The Pontano Institute
The Pontano Institute is a
Catholic middle and high school run by the Company of Jesus (Jesuits) in
Naples. It is named for Giovanni
Pontano (1426-1503) the humanist and poet active
in Naples for many years. There are approximately 500
students; the curriculum is traditionally humanist and
religious, but the school has both a Classical and
Scientific Lyceum. The Institute is located on Corso
Vittorio Emanuele at the "Cariati" section of the road,
which has taken that name from the original name of the
building where the institute is now housed, the villa
Cariati. The building was first a 15th-century farm
house, then transformed into a private residence in the
1700s by Giovanbattista
Spinelli, Prince of Cariati. It was acquired by
the Jesuits in 1921 to be the new premises of the
Pontano Institute.
The
institute, itself, came into existence in 1876 and
before the definitive move to Cariati had been housed at
four or five other sites in the city and had even borne
other names. The foundation of the institute is
interesting when viewed within the context of the entire
relationship between the Jesuits and the Kingdom of
Naples and then with the successor state (after 1861),
the new Kingdom of Italy. By the 1870s, the Jesuits had
a long history of getting themselves expelled from
various places in Europe, including Naples: from
Portugal in 1760, France in 1762, Spain in 1767, and
Naples in 1777. Then, of course, Napoleon
closed all religious orders. The Jesuits came back into
Naples after the Crowned Heads of Europe were restored
(1815); however, in the tumultuous year of 1848, they
were expelled from Naples again. When Garibaldi took over Naples in
1861, he confiscated whatever the order had left. Yet,
the Jesuits hung in there and worked in Naples in order
to get at least some property back in the face of the
extreme anti-clerical stance of the new Italian
government. The result was (1) the San Luigi Papal
Theological Seminary of Southern Italy, and (2) the
Pontanto Institute.
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