Description

 

The establishment of the Fathers of the Company of Jesus in the city of Andújar would be promoted by don Francisco Perez de Vargas when giving the property of his primogeniture to the aforementioned order with the obligation of "founding a school house in this city or in the suburbs of this city in the site that seems comfortable... nor that they are sold or inagenaren for the said effect or any other property of the said assets because my determined will is that they remain forever for food of the religious sayings".

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And all this provided that the Fathers of the Company have "two or three teachers to teach the children Christian doctrine and read and write and count... and forced to have four teachers who teach grammar and Latin to children of the neighbors and others who want it without taking any interest for what they have to do in the said house and school general rooms arranged with the employers that I will name in one of which is to read the principles to the minimum students, the second to the minors, in the third medium, in the fourth the elders and the convenient rhetoric so that the said students leave entirely educated in said Latinity and rhetoric ".

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Between the death of the benefactor (1606) and the fulfillment of his will, more than a decade passed. In November of 1614, the Company communicated to the Council the reasons for the delay: "not being able to sell anything of the property of the founder, Don Francisco Pérez de Vargas, there is no way with the rents of buying the lot and making the factory for said school". Among the assets included in the primogeniture were: 5 olive groves, 25 rainfed hectares, a vineyard, an orchard, four houses, an oil mill and 31 redeemable censuses that rented annually 77,434 maravedíes

 

In view of the difficulty expressed by the Order, the Council has to provide some houses while the new school was being built, while at the same time donating six ducats for the realization of it. Four years later, the term granted by the council to the Jesuits for the foundation of their convent house and construction of the school, everything remained the same. For this reason, in the municipal session of April 9, 1620, the council handled the possibility of breaking all commitments with the Company and requesting that they be replaced by Fathers Teatinos. In 1625, the presence of the Society of Jesus in the city was already a reality.

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These assets were alienated and sold in public auction with the expulsion of the Order in the reign of Carlos III, but what was convent house and school, remained in the hands of the City Council, which allowed to continue teaching in it for some time.

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The building began its sanitary function from 1844 to become a Military Hospital, becoming years later municipal hospital. As of 1869 the Hospital has the obligation to take care of the sick people of the towns of its Party, in agreement with the order dictated in that year by the Provincial Delegation and from July of 1871 is declared provincial Hospital by the Provincial Delegation, reason why that their support ceased to be an exclusive concern of the municipality. This function still has the building but reduced to that of a simple dispensary.

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The building has undergone various works since the year of 1765, year of the expulsion of the Jesuits. The internal organization is carried out around a double-floor patio, with flat walls with wide molding frames separated by Tuscan pilasters.

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Emphasizes inside the ladder, type empire, made by Don Francisco Gomez in the first third of the seventeenth century. Its cubic space covered with orange half on scallops decorated with fleshy stucco leaves. On the second floor a second dome of smaller size.

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Association of Friends of the Patrimony of Andujar