The Azienda Ospedaliera San Giovanni Addolorata in Rome (Italy) is one of the largest hospitals in central Italy; the current administrative designation refers to one of the largest and oldest hospitals in the city, commonly designated as San Giovanni hospital.
History
The Confraternita del SS. Salvatore
The hospital of San Giovanni originates from the "Archconfraternity of the Holy Savior" (Arciconfraternita del Santissimo Salvatore), established to ensure protection and homage to the acheropoieton of the Saviour kept in the Sancta Sanctorum. Even before the 13th century "twelve optimate and principal gentlemen of Rome, called Ostiarii, Porters or Recommended by the Holy Savior were established to guard it perpetually". The membership in the congregation – which also dealt with the administration of the assets, that were given to charity to fund the charitable works on behalf of the holy image – soon became hereditary among the "optimate and principal gentlemen of Rome" and in 1332 the congregation itself was raised to the status of Confraternity by Pope John XXII.
But times were barbarians, the sanctuary suffered thefts and administrative troubles, the senatorial families were dying out, while the institution had acquired a remarkable economic, no less than religious importance, and therefore had to be brought back under the control of the Bishop of Rome. Once the Popes had returned to Rome from Avignon, first Martin V, then Nicholas V and Sixtus IV and finally Alexander VI put in order the management of the congregation and its assets, entrusting it entirely to the Confraternity, which was intimately linked to the Lateran Chapter and had become meanwhile a powerful economic entity.
The works of charity
The Confraternity – as recalled by Gaetano Moroni – "practiced various works of charity. On the feast of St. John it supplied clothes to twelve poor people and then hosted them for lunch: on Holy Thursday it drew up another table for twelve religious, it gave each of them a pair of shoes, a giulio and a bread; it also provided the dowry to poor maidens; it provided hospitality to poor widows; and finally it took care of the hospital of St. John at Sancta Sanctorum and the colleges Capranica, Nardini, Crivelli and Ghislieri. Such merciful works exhorted the charity of the faithful to nourish them with new subsidies; and in fact, the memory of the generosity of Cardinal Giannantonio Sangiorgi from Piacenza, legate in Rome a latere during the absence of Alexander VI, as well as that of Julius II, who designated the Confraternite as heir of his assets, may be everlasting.".
The building stages
According to tradition, Honorius I in 626 would have transformed his family house into a church dedicated to Saint Andrew, near which, in 1216, Cardinal Giovanni Colonna founded and outfitted a hospice for pilgrims entitled to the same saint.
In 1333 the Confraternity obtained some dilapidated buildings near the church of St. Andrew to found its own hospital; among these, a chapel dedicated to St. Michael the Archangel, that gave the name to the new hospital. Over time, the hospital was repeatedly expanded thanks to the bequests of benefactors who thus thought of earning the salvation of their souls.
In 1580, Pope Gregory XIII Boncompagni started the construction of the new wing, which still today overlooks the Lateran square towards the west. The long building work of the hospital continued under various popes (Sixtus V, Clement VIII and Urban VIII) until 1639, and were directed by Giacomo Mola from Lugano, who arrived in Rome as the nephew of a bricklayer member of the Confraternite and who in turn joined it in 1606.
At the beginning of the 18th century, the hospital, open to "all patients of any nation, sex, and age", had 120 beds for men ("which are doubled according to the needs and mainly in summer"), while "the women's one, on the other side of the public street, and enlarged by Pope Alexander VII, contains 60 beds.".
At the beginning of the 19th century (the exact period is not clear, perhaps during the French administration), the hospital was completely intended for women and, according to Morichini, could accommodate over 500 women, although normally the patients did not exceed 200. The "Statistics of the Commission for the hospitals in Rome for the year 1863" reports 215 patients at 31 December and 2,563 admitted during the year (446 of them died, the other ones "healed or improved'"). In 1892 the Hospital of San Rocco at the Port of Ripetta, intended for travailing women, was suppressed and all patients were transferred to San Giovanni Hospital.