Church of the Jesuit College
A 17th-century Jesuit church and college at the heart of historic Trapani.
The Church of the Jesuit College is a 17th-century Baroque church in Trapani, forming part of a former Jesuit religious and educational complex.
Key facts
Site type:
Comune:
Church
Trapani
District:
Historic centre
The Church of the Jesuit College forms part of a major former Jesuit complex on Corso Vittorio Emanuele in the historic centre of Trapani. Dedicated to the Immaculate Conception, the church developed alongside the adjoining college, which became an important centre of education in the city.
The Society of Jesus established a presence in Trapani in 1580, initially using an altar in the church of the Confraternity of San Michele. In 1616 the Jesuits moved to the site of their new college, and on 13 June 1638 the new church was solemnly consecrated by Cardinal Spinola, Bishop of Mazara.
The church has three naves divided by marble columns and retains an elaborate decorative programme of marble, stucco and gilding. Giuseppe Maria Di Ferro, writing in 1825, recorded that the entire interior had been intended to receive sculpted marble decoration, but the project remained incomplete when the Society of Jesus was suppressed in Sicily in 1768.
The adjoining college developed around a quadrangular courtyard and contained classrooms, meeting rooms and other institutional spaces. After the suppression of the Jesuits, the complex continued its educational role under secular administration and by Di Ferro’s time housed Trapani’s Royal Academy of Studies.
Photo: Martin Moxer, Alamy
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Explore the history of the Jesuits in Trapani, the architecture and unfinished decoration of their church, the artworks recorded there in the early nineteenth century and the educational institution that developed within the former college.
The Jesuits in Trapani
Writing in 1825, the Trapanese historian Di Ferro traces the presence of the Society of Jesus in Trapani to 1580, when the Jesuits established an altar in the church of the Confraternity of San Michele. The altar was dedicated to the Conception of the Virgin, anticipating the dedication subsequently given to their own church.
In 1616 the community moved to the site occupied by the Jesuit college. The new church was solemnly consecrated on 13 June 1638 by Cardinal Spinola, Bishop of Mazara, under the dedication of the Conception of the Mother of God.
The resulting complex combined the religious, communal and educational functions characteristic of the Society of Jesus. Church, college, classrooms, meeting rooms and other offices eventually occupied a substantial urban block in the centre of Trapani.
The church and its unfinished decoration
Di Ferro’s description of 1825 provides a detailed record of the church before many later changes. He describes a façade constructed from marble and local soft stone and an interior divided into three naves by marble columns.
The vault was richly decorated with stucco and gilding, while a multicoloured marble pulpit incorporated figures in relief and half-relief. Marble decoration was intended to extend much further through the building: according to Di Ferro, the entire church was to have been clad in sculpted marble.
The programme was never completed. The suppression of the Society of Jesus in Sicily in 1768 brought the work to an end, leaving traces of the intended decoration on the wall leading towards the sacristy and on the pilasters of the principal chapel.
Artworks recorded by Di Ferro
Di Ferro records a rich collection of paintings and sculpture within the church in 1825. Among them was a painting of Saint Francis Borgia attributed to the artist he calls the “celebrated Morrealese”, together with representations of the Jesuit saints Aloysius Gonzaga and Stanislaus Kostka.
The chapel of the founder of the Society of Jesus was decorated with local libeccio marble columns, figures of angels and gilding in work attributed by Di Ferro to Giovanni Biagio Amico. The presbytery contained a marble altar and an elaborate tabernacle incorporating lapis lazuli and gilded silver.
Di Ferro also records a marble representation of the Immaculate Virgin surrounded by angels by the Palermo sculptor Ignazio Marabitti, and a painting of Saint Francis Xavier whose authorship was already uncertain in his own time.
Above the sacristy furnishings were twelve small paintings depicting the heads of the Apostles. Di Ferro regarded them as original works by Jusepe de Ribera, known as Lo Spagnoletto. This is an important historical attribution, although it should not necessarily be understood as a modern confirmation of their authorship.
From Jesuit college to Royal Academy
The adjoining college formed an extensive educational complex organised around a quadrangular courtyard with marble columns. Di Ferro attributes the architectural façade of what had become the Royal Academy of Studies to the Trapanese Francesco Pinna and dates its execution to 1659, when Father Gregorio Tagliavia governed the Jesuit college.
Following the suppression of the Jesuits, the educational function of the buildings continued. By 1825 the former college housed the Royal Academy of Studies, offering an unusually broad programme of instruction.
Di Ferro lists subjects including theology, civil and canon law, theoretical and practical medicine, surgery and anatomy, logic and metaphysics, geometry and algebra, physics and mathematics, drawing and fine arts, rhetoric, humanities and grammar.
His account therefore preserves an important stage in the history of the complex: although its original Jesuit administration had ended, the former college remained one of Trapani’s principal centres of education.
Sources & further reading
Explore the historical and local sources used to document the Church of the Jesuit College, from the establishment of the Society of Jesus in Trapani and the construction of its religious and educational complex to its architecture, artworks and later use as the Royal Academy of Studies.