Tomorrow, Tuesday 22 October, and on Wednesday 23 October, in Rome, at the generalate house of the Ministers of the Sick, a few steps from the Pantheon, a conference will be held on ‘St. Camillus and his Friends: Religious Orders and Art between the Renaissance and the Baroque’, conceived and organised by Lydia Salviucci Insolera of the Pontifical Gregorian University

The scientific committee, which has followed all the organisational stages of the conference, is made up of Father Alberto Marques de Sousa and Father  Eugenio Sapori, both of whom are Ministers of the Sick, and by members of the scientific committee of the Order of the Ministers of the Sick: Johan Ickx, Luciana Mellone, Marco Pizzo and Daniel Ponziani.

The idea of the conference arose on the occasion of the celebrations for the fourth centenary of the death of St. Camillus de Lellis with the goal of analysing the points of contact in the artistic field between the various religious Orders in Rome and in relation to Rome, between the Renaissance and the Baroque, its central reference point, however, being St. Camillus and the Camillian religious.

During the two days of this conference an attempt will be made to understand the relationship between the various forms of spirituality and art, and their influence on each other as well; to comprehend the application of the charism of each Order on the basis of their architectonic and figurative commissions; and to establish, therefore, the connections, the divergences, and the similar and opposing lifestyles that may have existed. All of this, however, will be located within a constant and circular analysis, like, indeed, the relationships of friendship and spiritual sharing of the various religious Orders, the protagonists of the life of the Church in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in Rome: the Camillians, the Capuchins, the Jesuits, the Oratorians, the Theatines, the Carmelites, etc. The great saints of the epoch will thus emerge, who, indeed, were friends: one need only think of St. Camillus de Lellis who was a friend of St. Filippo Neri, who in turn was the friend of St. Ignatius di Loyola.

Through the various contributions of the speakers, who are from leading Italian and foreign universities and institutions, the direct and indirect contacts between the various religious Orders and St. Camillus de Lellis will be brought out, although much space will be left for the investigation – 8 out of 15 papers – to the commissions of the Camillian religious.

Also in the programme two visits to ‘Camillian places’: one to the Church of St. Mary Magdalene and one to the St. Camillus de Lellis Museum inside the generalate house of the Camillians.