“Our roots”

The seventeenth century

Mother Lucia Perotti, was a noblewoman from Cremona, born on November 18, 1568. Her generous gifted nature, with penetrating inventiveness” made her great icon in 17^th century. Her Generosity, the concrete capacity to love, a profound sensitivity towards young people made her resilient to initiate religious movement  adopting the mission of Christ  “helping souls” (The Charisma, SBV constitution -5).Reading the signs of the time she started a mission “education of youth” especially for girls in the city of Cremona. She believed that a religious and intellectual culture superior to that which the pedagogical thought of the time granted them was appropriate for not only the young men but for women of  that time. Making her belief a vision, In 1610 Mother Lucia Perotti founded the college for young girls. As she was having a filial devotion to Mother Mary, she named the college “Collegio della Beata Vergine”. From this institution she wanted to produce women of courage who can transform the society. 

Mother Lucia Perotti always wanted her spiritual daughters to attend to her own sanctification by helping others to reach to the perfection “She stated her mission from extremely noble girls, instructing them in the spirit, and in the Christian virtues, and in the noble ornaments of reading, writing, sewing and good manners.

The College of the Blessed Virgin is an absolute novelty for those times and the Mothers are aware of it, because they adopt the apostolic active life, not the cloister like monastic orders. It is also a novelty because Mother Lucia Perotti wants the “interns” to be welcomed in the school “le scolare”, that is, those who return to the family every day and for whom teaching is free.

The accusation came out to regarding the nuns lifwe style as if were too open to the world. But Mother knew how to make the living, harmoniously balancing, interior life and educational apostolate. Let us think of the extraordinary significance of Mother Lucia Perotti’s work, which clashes with not a few difficulties, not a few resistances, not a few criticisms. But Lucia feels strong in the inspiration of God, who encourages her to implement her project, even if doubts, moments of despair, melancholy, inner confusion afflict her. Then, she turns to Our Lady, imploring her for the light of Truth. It is November 21, 1609 and Lucia receives an extraordinary confirmation of her vocation. «It seemed to me that the Oratory was filled as if with fog or smoke, and in the middle of it, surrounded by bright light like fire, I saw the Blessed Virgin dressed in white, who said to me: “Go ahead and fear not. I assure you that not only you will not turn away from God, but you will receive the Spirit of the Lord” Since then Lucia becomes adamant and continues in her intent.

On 6 May 1610 Lucia Perotti retired to a small house near the Church of Sant’Omobono with her first companions, the three Reina sisters: Costanza, Teodora and Ottavia. She thus responds with sensitivity and courage to divine inspiration, and is supported by the Jesuit father Giovanni Mellino, who follows the Institution in its birth and accompanies it in the first decades of life, contributing significantly to the drafting of the first Rules in 1618. Father Giovanni Mellino who had founded a College of Virgins in Arona with the aim of educating girls in a Christian way and had suggested something similar to Perotti for Cremona. And so it happened. With fine educational intuition and with evangelical wisdom, Lucia Perotti traces the fundamental signs of what will remain her “pedagogy of hers”. “May the teacher be a loving mother … treat with kindness … always correct with gentleness».

The eighteenth century

The relationship between the College of the Blessed Virgin and the College of the Jesuits was always very close,  even during dark phases in the history of the Order, such as its suppression in 1773. The College of the Blessed Virgin was also called the “Jesuit” or “Gesuitesse”, because his spirituality was based on Saint Ignatius of Loyola and the spirit of the Society of Jesus. The Jesuit Father Giovanni Mellino, as we have said, had encouraged the work at its beginning and had accompanied it in the following years; the Jesuit fathers were the spiritual directors and also helped the Mothers in educational activity. In the Historical Memories of Father Gerolamo Bonesi (1785) “She intended to do nothing in the city and with the female sex, than the Jesuits, by virtue of their vocation, do with every people all over the world”.

The Company of Jesus is the majestic tree in the shade of which “the little chestnut” does not fear. The support and guidance of the Jesuit Fathers sustain the life and development of the College. What characterizes the life of the College is the family spirit and this favours the balanced growth of the pupils and a fruitful relationship of real collaboration between school and family.

The eighteenth-century teaching program includes the following disciplines: Christian doctrine, work, reading and “other things that circumstances and times have wished to be introduced later”. Towards 1770 it was Father Bonesi himself who advised the Mothers to open up culturally: “it would be wisely done if the boarders were taught the French language”. In 1780 Maria Theresa of Austria died and her son Joseph II succeeded her, determined to continue the spirit of reform already begun by her mother. He uses the supreme right of revision of the state over the Church and in ecclesiastical reforms he follows case by case.

In 1784 he comes to Cremona in person. The Mothers of the College are in great apprehension even though the imperial decrees concern strictly cloistered monasteries and the work of the Sisters of the Blessed Virgin is instead open to educational apostolic activity and has no cloister. In early March 1784, Emperor Joseph II visits the College. The Superior Mother Teresa Crotti and the Mothers go to meet him, prompt in responding to his requests. The emperor wants to make sure they are free, not subject to cloister; he then wishes to visit the boarders’ apartment and finds them on the staircase, prepared to receive His Majesty, with their simple and elegant uniform which is very popular, and Joseph II praises “that decency which prevents it from being neither ambitious nor rustic”.

He entertains with them, marvelling at their ease and preparation; he inquires about the subjects that are taught and welcomes speaking in French with some of them.

The nineteenth century

With the establishment of the Kingdom of Italy during the Napoleonic Empire and then under the Austro-Hungarian dominion, the difficulties were not lacking. new government started  controlling  the functioning of the College. In the historical archive of the Institute there are the documents that allow to know the literary education project for the Collegio della Beata Vergine di Cremona. The subjects are as follows: Literature, Calligraphy, Arithmetic, Italian Language, French Language, Epistolary Style, Elements of History, Elements of Geography, and Notions of the Armillary Sphere, Notions of Astronomy, Sacred History, Profane History, Natural History, and Geography. The subjects are divided into “elementary” and “secondary school”. The school follows the provisions of the civil and scholastic authorities, but it is important to emphasize above all the educational work that the Mothers of the College carry out with admirable dedication, alongside cultural teaching. The educational method is always based on the family spirit.  a real balance between the demands of discipline and character formation are to be preserved . A practical educational method, attentive to everything that can be pedagogically adequate and effective for the harmonious growth of the person. Times evolve, the woman begins to leave the recollection of the house to enter external work environments and is called to ever greater responsibilities.

The College of the Blessed Virgin keeps up with the times. Ideas are open to new horizons and this can be deduced from the “ratio studiorum” of those years. On September 15, 1868, prof. Giacinto Gallini, in a speech that remained famous, the Academic Prolusion, addresses to the students of the College a passionate invitation to culture, underlining the importance of women’s emancipation. «Because the woman has great power in social and civil life».

And again «Education is the sweetest companion in life, a very valid instrument of education, indeed a precious education itself. The wisely educated woman, the woman educated in the culture of the classics, in the beauty of our language, in the study of gentle arts, she gets used to admiring the true, the beautiful, the good, and she falls in love with it ».

The twentieth century and the 2000s

At the beginning of the century, thanks to the industriousness and foresight of Mother Giovanna Viganò , the College enjoyed a period of intense splendour. She decides, in fact, in line with the pedagogical principles of openness, kindness and acceptance pursued from the beginning, to give life to the festive oratory for the alumni.

Cultural, recreational and spiritual activities find in this place a possibility of opening towards the outside and provide the College with the opportunity to introduce new, extremely innovative teaching means, such as cinema shows. In 1907, moreover, the introduction of sacred chant to expand the activities of the College: Maestro Caudana, the new organist of the Cathedral, comes to give lessons to the students. It is the Master himself who writes the hymn of the College of the Blessed Virgin.

In the second decade of the century, the dark period Italy went through as it was about to enter the war could never fail to influence the College, which in 1917 was used as a military hospital. This does not discourage the Mothers, who persevere in their educational and didactic mission without neglecting the charitable spirit of the “gift” at the service of the neediest. It seems almost a miracle that the college comes out of the Great War not with irreversible damage, but renewed in the spirit of its educational mission, which receives no less than the favour of the authorities and obtains, in 1933, the recognition of the Holy See, becoming a Congregation of Pontifical Right. And, in 1946, that of the state as a legal entity.

The twentieth century sees in the rectorate of Mother Anna Maria Zanchia charismatic figure with a strong link with tradition and openness to the outside world. For the love of her “dear daughters”, Mother Zanchi opens new houses in Italy, to ensure that they are “helped to serve the Lord in holy joy, happy to have given themselves to Him and to Our Lady”. It is precisely, this reconciliation between widest respect for centuries-old tradition of the College and Mother Perotti’s pedagogical and didactic innovation ensure that the College is not only a school, but a reality of life. Whoever enters in to the college allows to be educated as schoolchildren and as women for whom «to come to the College is to come among friends. Inside the college, there is a heart of a mother who knows how to take on our burdens, because the followers of Mother foundress are formed to be friends, teachers, and trustworthy companions. This pedagogical and professional mission developed rapidly obtaining the petrification of the Middle School in 1936 and the Gymnasium, in 1938.

At the end of the war, in the second half of the century, the Mothers not only continued the spread of the educational and human message of Mother Perotti with the opening of the communities of Milan, Sestri Levante and Rome, but started the missions in Sri Lanka, first of all in Gampola and Batepola Dunagaha, passing through the mission of Tawalantenne, where the school is present, up to the current eight communities in Sri-Lanka and sixteen in Kenya.

Devotion to Our Lady and education are the cornerstones of the Institute’s charisma. In Sri Lanka, as in Africa and Italy, the educational project has an ethical soul, safe values ​​that it proposes and defends, targeted and engaging programmatic choices, favouring positive life experiences. 

Otherwise, culture does not promote man. A path that follows in the footsteps of the charitable spirit of Mother Perotti has guided the Sisters of the Blessed Virgin over the centuries. It is Mother Lucia Perotti who wants her daughters to be called this way, in honour of the Virgin Mary, mother of hope and consolation who supports them in their mission and accompanies them during the day, as still happens today in the school of Cremona, where constantly the image of the Virgin recurs.

Again, therefore, we are faced with a situation of harmony between past, traditions and present. A past that inspires and guides towards the discovery of new horizons, new frontiers and new challenges on which to operate, such as that of a human and professional training that on the one hand must necessarily follow the rhythm of the times and of the evolving society, but from the other owes its educational foundations to some universal pillars of constant relevance of the pedagogy of its founder:”Charity”, “sense of giftedness”, “Christian education”, “kindness and gentleness in correction”, “family spirit”, the “truthfulness”, the “beautifulness and goodness of the soul ” have spanned the centuries.

For example : An emblematic testimony of this reconciliation between tradition and innovation is represented by the current schools in Italy. The Liceo Linguistico was a far-sighted intuition that in the Cremonese reality of fifty years ago was already ahead of its time and never as it is today of extreme relevance, in a Europe that makes multilingualism one of its founding principles.

Absolutely worthy of mention our education methods are not only focused on theories but exploring the beauty of whole humanity and even the nature. The centuries surpassing experiences allow us to understand that education is not done only on books, but has its own continuity with real life, promoting team spirit, interpersonal relationships and leadership, which are the primary objective of education.