Conservatorio dei Poveri di Gesù Cristo

Marcello Fossataro, a Franciscan tertiary born in Nicotera in 1565, founded the Conservatorio dei Poveri di Gesù Cristo (Poor of Jesus Christ) in 1589, in order to make up for the misery in which poor boys lived in the streets of Naples. At that time, the city of Naples walked through a very troubled period because of political unrest and the succession of plagues, famines, wars, uprisings and eruptions of Vesuvius. Fossataro used to beg in the streets of the city with the slogan: “Give alms to the poor of Jesus Christ”. It was the Archbishop of Naples, Cardinal Alfonso Gesualdo to sign in 1602 the authorization for the recognition of the orphanage with the obligation to instruct the children to read and write and to the Christian Doctrine. In fact, the Conservatorio dei Poveri di Gesù Cristo will become the only of the four male institutes to fall under the jurisdiction of the archbishop. At the head of the institute there were two “governors” elected by the archbishop. The internal control structure was entrusted to the “First Official”, also called “Guardian” on which depended “Masters” and “Lower Officials”, divided according to the tasks in Sacrestano Rationale, Portinaro, Despensiero, Guardarobbiero, Refettoriero, Cuciniero and Infermiero. The school was located at the Church of Santa Maria a Colonna, in the square of the Girolamini. Initially the children of the Conservatorio dei Poveri di Gesù Cristo were dressed in the gray Franciscan cloth, but Cardinal Caracciolo wanted they wore with the red “skirt”, the blue “cloak” and the blue hat, recalling the colors of Christ’s garment. The conflicts with the Fathers of the adjacent Oratory of the Filippini were frequent to the point that the latter came to prohibit that in the chiesa dei Poveri di Gesù Cristo bells sounded and mass was celebrated during the hours devoted by the Fathers of the Filippini to spiritual exercises. In 1744, due to numerous riots that caused serious disciplinary problems within the conservatory, many young people were expelled, but despite this the archbishop Spinelli, who was in charge of the Conservatory, preferred to dissolve it distributing the students in the other three music schools that in the meantime had arisen in Naples. Among the artists who played a major role in the institute we remind Gaetano Greco, who was called at the end of the seventeenth century to the direction of the conservatory. At his death, in 1728, he was replaced by Francesco Durante, then Francesco Feo, Alfonso Caggi, Geronimo Abos, Niccolò Jommelli, Giovan Battista Pergolesi, Giuseppe Porsile, Nicolò Porpora, Leonardo Vinci, Giuseppe Arena, Giuseppe Avossa, Giacomo Insanguine, Tommaso Traetta.

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