History of the University


The Collegio di Sant'Anselmo in Roma, erected for the first time by Pope Innocent XI with the Apostolic Constitution Inscrutable of 22 March 1687, destroyed instead by the insult of time in the year 1837, was restored by Pope Leo XIII on 4 January 1887. The College of Sant'Anselmo began to have a greater increase when he set up his residence on the first of November 1896, in the buildings on the Aventine Hill, erected thanks to the munificence of the Supreme Pontiff himself. At that time also the first external students were admitted to attend lessons in the College and shortly afterwards three faculties were established: philosophical, theological and juridical. The faculty of Canon Law was then suspended in 1928.
Pope Pius X, with Motu proprio, of 24 June 1914, confirmed and established the right to confer the doctorate and academic degrees, which had already been granted orally by Pope Leo XIII,

so that the College... of Sant'Anselmo..., similar to the other academies existing in Rome, obtains in perpetuity the privilege of conferring all academic degrees both in philosophy and in sacred theology and canon law to the students of the secular clergy. and regular that they have attended according to the norm the lessons of the praised College in the faculties mentioned, and that, having passed an exam in front of the Professors of the College, they have obtained the majority of the suffrages.


In 1933, on 15 January, Pope Pius XI awarded the Academic Institute of Sant'Anselmo with the title of "Pontificio". With a decree of 21st April 1934 the S. Congregation for Seminaries and Universities approved the Statutes of the Pontifical Anselmian Athenaeum and prescribed that they be observed. Subsequently, on 21 March 1952, the Sacred Congregation itself approved the Monastic Institute for the Faculty of Theology, which now takes care of the following specialisation monastic, seen in the historical and theological context. This specialization belongs to the second cycle of the Faculty of Theology.
At the end, at the Pontifical Anselmian Athenaeum, the Pontifical Liturgical Institute (PIL) was erected, by decree of the Holy Congregation for Seminaries and Universities promulgated on 17 June 1961 "so that more conveniently both the masters of liturgical disciplines and the Directors of the Liturgical Commissions of the individual dioceses were instructed by scientific method". In the same year, on 17 June, the Statutes were approved by the Sacred Congregation itself. of GDP.
On 14 May of the Year of the Lord 1973, the Sacred Congregation for Catholic Education approved the new statutes of the Pontifical Institute for an experimental period of time, together with the instruction alcune norme of the same Congregation. With a decree promulgated on 23 August 1978, the Sacred Congregation for Catholic Education recognised the PIL as the Faculty of Sacred Liturgy.
The new Statutes of the Athenaeum were first drawn up, according to the Instruction alcune norme in 1970, and approved for a specific time, on an experimental basis, by the Sacred Congregation for Catholic Education on 14 May 1973. Promulgated in 1979, the Apostolic Constitution Sapientia Christiana, the Statutes were again reviewed and approved on an experimental basis for a three-year period on April 2, 1982, by the same Congregation.