Salvatorians
The Archive of the Generalate
WHY DO WE HAVE AN ARCHIVE?
1. Archives are important for all institutions and organizations which, like the church, play a role in public life. Just as recognized communities of religious life, congregations,
orders and secular institutes are involved in the public sphere on various levels, Salvatorians too participate in the public sphere and thus can be included among these institutions.
2. The concrete contact persons oder cooperators are the confreres in a local community. They are represented by their house superiors. The contact persons on the next level is the provincial superior with his consulta. And at the highest level it is the general superior with his consulta. By law, their activities, decisions and contacts must be written down. Even in today’s digital age, their actions are only credible and binding once they appear in black and white.
3. The necessity and importance of having all this black and white attestable and readable results raises mountains of files and paperwork. Once the need appears to organize these many documents (e.g., alphabetically or chronologically) we can begin to speak of a real archive. Therefore, single persons perhaps only need folders, communities soon find they need file cabinets, and even larger organizations in the end find they need to set aside whole rooms for archives or sometimes entire floors or whole buildings.
4. But why all this effort and expense? Two reasons are easy to understand: We document in this way for the sake of history and for authentication.
a) First, only documentary research makes the writing of history possible. Such research in turn gives an organization its identity.
b) Appropriate inquiries for data and facts can only be answered based on a study of the files.
Archives preserve the records of yesterday and today for the sake of tomorrow; they establish a group’s identity and keep us from forgetting.
OUR GENERAL ARCHIVE
5. The Archive of the Salvatorian Generalate (Archivum Generale Societatis or AGS) is located on the second floor of the Salvatorian Motherhouse on Via della Conciliazione 51 in Rome, Italy. It is first and foremost the archive of the Generalate and it houses those documents that were sent to the Generalate or which were sent out from the Generalate. For the most part, the documents sent here are originals, though some are carbon copies, photocopies, or handwritten copies depending on what the adressant or sender had available.
6. When a confrere dies, when a foundation closes, or when an operation is completed, the relevant documents are sent by the primary repository to the General Archive where they are to be stored permanently and made easily available. But often because the original alphabetic or chronological way of organizing these documents is no longer sufficient, a more detailed classification system is needed. Because some of these classification systems were neither consistent nor comprehensible, many flaws could be found in this regard, and the old system yielded many surprises! So, beginning a new system will be an important step forward.
7. Of particular importance are the documents of our founder Fr. Francis Mary of the Cross Jordan, but also of his successor and second general superior Fr. Pancratius Pfeiffer as well as of some of the first Salvatorians like Fr. Otto Hopfenmüller or Fr. Bonaventura Lüthen. What was written by them, or later about them, make the very beginning of our congregation better understandable. Up to now, all the documents and materials of our Founder were kept and stored in the former ‘Postulation-Archive’ and used for the beatification-process, now after the archive-renovation they will be integrated into the general archives again.