The name of the Abbey derives from the name of the village – vicus – Mirasole, in which it was located. Certainly, due to the presence of a religiously significant place such as an Abbey, the name Mirasole also takes on a different allusion, evoking the tension of the ascetic life to keep one’s gaze fixed on Christ, the sun of life.
The grange of Mirasole (the granges were rural units dependent on an Abbey, around which a group of buildings used for agricultural and residential purposes was composed) was born between the 12th century and the early 13th century by the Umiliati brothers, with a community of lay people only. The Umiliati, recognized in 1201 by Pope Innocent III as a true order, spread throughout Lombardy, founding numerous houses – including Mirasole – and becoming part of the agricultural and spiritual reclamation project that led to Milan being surrounded by a crown of Abbeys. The rule of the Umiliati was an absolute novelty, as it adapted the Benedictine and Augustinian precepts to the intense work activity of its members, particularly in the field of wool processing. The Umiliati were the first in the history of the church to have a third order, the so-called tertiaries, that is, lay people recognized as an integral part of the religious order, while living in their own homes.
In the 13th and 14th centuries, the Humiliated Abbey of Mirasole was a thriving center of religious life and agricultural activity. Suffice it to say that in 1344 the community was made up of 44 members: 29 friars, 11 nuns and 4 servants; and that the annals of the Fabbrica del Duomo report, between 1387 and 1398, an intense collaboration with Mirasole for the annual supply of fine wood to the Veneranda Fabbrica. Probably for defensive purposes, the entrance tower dates back to the 14th century, which configures the Abbey as a fortified grange with a quadrangular plan, originally surrounded by a defensive moat with two entrances equipped with a drawbridge.
Starting from the second half of the 14th century, as a result of the demographic and economic crisis caused by the black plague epidemic, the tertiaries no longer exist and the number of wage earners is insufficient to work. The friars then decide, as was usual for religious orders of the time, to grant exponents of the Milanese bourgeoisie and nobility the lease of increasingly larger lands to recover liquidity. The friars limited themselves to collecting negligible rents and, in addition to this, the tenants benefited from all the productive activities.
In 1482 Mirasole was reduced to a commendation, that ecclesiastical provision by which the Pope grants a vacant office, for example that of abbot, to a religious or lay person who enjoys the income of the Abbey without becoming its owner and being able to administer the property through his representative.
Following the failed attack on San Carlo Borromeo, by a member of the Humiliati family of the Brera, in 1571 Pope Pius V abolished the order of the Humiliati. In 1582 the ownership of the Abbey of Mirasole passed to the Collegio Elvetico of Milan, established by Pope Gregory XIII for the education of the Swiss clergy. Here, after more than three centuries, the monastic life of Mirasole ended and, except for the church and the cloister, all the Abbey buildings were destined to tenant farmers and wage earners. The subsequent historical and architectural events of Mirasole were influenced by Napoleon. After the Italian campaign, in 1797 Napoleon suppressed the Swiss College and donated the Abbey, complete with funds and farm, to the Ospedale Maggiore in Milan, to reward it for the care provided to his sick and wounded soldiers.
In the early 19th century, the tenant farmer occupied the entire manor house, built the neoclassical portico with terrace and even transformed the cloister into the courtyard of his home. In 1876, the Hospital obtained a reduction in Masses from the Archbishop's Curia of Milan, due to the insufficiency of alms; in 1903, the Church was declared closed to religious services and, from this moment, began a long period in which Mirasole was inhabited exclusively by peasant families. The last ones date back to the 1950s.
The Hospital promoted a first restoration project in 1930 and, in 1964, another of greater scope. The final works took place in the 1980s, thanks to the work of Franca Chiappa, a benefactor of the Hospital.