The century's atmosphere of religious controversies and polemical anti-clerical and anti-Jesuit pamphlets and diatribes required, for appropriate rejoinders, that access be given to the foundational documents of Jesuit life and history.
Encouraged by General Congregation XXIV (of 1892) the Superior General of the Jesuits Luis Martin established in 1893 a 'College of writers' in Madrid, with mission to establish critical editions of the foundational documents of the Society of Jesus, particularly those regarding the life and times of the founders, Saint Ignatius of Loyola and his first companions.
The purpose was also to provide material for accurate regional and national histories of the Society to be prepared in various European countries.
In 1930 the superior general Wlodimir Ledóchowski gave the official name to the institute[1] and decided to transfer it to Rome, where it settled in the ‘Curia Generalizia’, headquarter of the Jesuit Order.
In 2010, the apostolate of Jesuit history at the Curia in Rome was reconstituted within the context of the Archives (Archivum Romanum Societatis Iesu - ARSI).