The persistence of the "claustrum" from “Pontificis castra” to places for the “public good” in Austrian Lombardy (1768–1797)

Among places historically closed to the city, monasteries and convents have an emblematic role. In his famous De re aedificatoria (1452), Leon Battista Alberti wrote “Pontificis castra quidam sunt clausura” (“the stronghold of the religious is the monastery”). The seats of religious orders stood as large, impenetrable and autonomous building volumes, located in the heart of the city. During the reign of Empress Maria Theresa of Austria (1740-1780) and her son Joseph II (1780-1790), these places, mostly closed to the community, were taken by the State from the control of the Church and put at the service of the “public good”. Aligned with the new Enlightenment ideas, these rulers financed the construction of public buildings not just for cultural enrichment, but also altruistic care for a vast range of groups in need – from orphans and widows to the unemployed and mentally ill. This was possible thanks to the abolition of religious orders and brotherhoods and the confiscation of their assets: income, land, precious goods, and above all property – the latter of which was often typically well suited to the activities necessary for modern social transformation due to the spatial characteristics of its unique typology: dimension, position, and distribution, which were made even more favorable thanks to the monastery’s auspicious separation from the city. The case of the territory known as Austrian Lombardy (including the territories of the former duchies of Milan and Mantua) is of particular interest, as it constituted the first “laboratory” of religious reforms both in relation to the rest of the Habsburg Empire and to the other pre-unification states of the peninsula (more involved by the Napoleonic suppressions). Since 1768, in Milan, Pavia, Lodi, Cremona, Como, Casalmaggiore and Mantua the first monasteries were suppressed, and, after careful evaluations regarding the “public decorum”, expertly repurposed by the selected chamber architects into hospitals, prisons, workhouses, orphanages, public schools, and administrative offices. Thus began the process of transformation of “Pontificis castra” to places for the “Public good,” which would continue for the next 200 years.