News and Events

Every year, AUR welcomes a host of U.S. students who arrive at AUR’s beautiful Rome campus to experience Italian culture and enrich their studies through a study abroad experience.

On Wednesday 9 October 2019 at 18.00  Professor Paul Gwynne will give a lecture entitled 'The Villa Farnese at Caprarola and its gardens' on behalf of the British Institute of Florence.

Professor Paul Gwynne, Division Chair of Arts and Humanities, has just returned from a presigious conference in Innsbruck where he presented a paper on 'Love and Heroism in Jesuit Epic: Refashioning Nisus and Euryalus'. 

In 1583 five Jesuit brothers set out with the intention of founding a new church and mission in India. Their dream was almost immediately, and brutally, terminated by local opposition. When their massacre was announced in Rome it was treated as martyrdom. Francesco Benci, professor of rhetoric at the Collegium Romanum, immediately set about celebrating their deaths in a new type of epic, distinct from, yet dependent upon, the classical tradition: Quinque martyres e Societate Iesu in India.

This is the first critical edition and translation of this important text. The commentary highlights both the classical sources and the historical and religious context of the mission. The introduction outlines Benci’s career and stresses his role as the founder of this vibrant new genre.