Before one begins reading Don Bosco’s autobiography, it is helpful to know something about the circumstances of its composition, and it is essential to know why and for whom he was writing it. In his foreword, Don Egidio Viganò has explained why familiarity with the Memoirs of the Oratory is important for the men and women of Don Bosco’s Salesian Family. This introduction suggests the value of the Memoirs to educators, scholars, and general readers. Finally, one cannot fully understand Don Bosco’s activity and thought without understanding his world; so we have added an extensive description of the historical and social background of the Memoirs.
1. Origins of the Text”1”
In the Memoirs of the Oratory of Saint Francis de Sales we have a precious and unique document. It is not so much the story of an institution as it is the story of a man and his vocation.
Yet it is not a story that has come to us easily. It is true that Don Bosco often spoke to his first disciples about his origins and the origins of his works. When they wrote his biography for the same period (1815-1855), they filled four volumes.
What is unique about the Memoirs is that in these few pages the man himself speaks to us. In some instances, they are the only source from which we know particular episodes of his life or how he understood certain events. What is precious about them is not only their uniqueness but our good fortune in having them at all. Don Bosco wrote 148 textbooks, biographies, rule books, position papers, and devotional books, as well as thousands of letters. But he never meant to write an autobiography. He did so only under obedience, and even so never completed it, and then tried to prevent wide distribution of what he did complete.
When Pope Pius IX met Don Bosco for the first time, in 1858, he already knew a great deal about the boys’ priest of Turin. But he wanted to hear Don Bosco’s story directly, especially any part of his story that might be considered supernatural. After Don Bosco had told him everything, the Pope urged him to record his experiences, especially his dreams. Such an account, the Pope thought, would be a perpetual family heirloom and inspiration for the congregation which Don Bosco hoped to found.”2”
Don Bosco was both busy and modest. He ignored the Pope’s recommendation. When they met again in 1867, the Pope asked whether he had obeyed. Realising the insufficiency of his recommendation, the Pope commanded:
Well, then, I not only advise you, but order you to do it. This task must have priority over everything else. Put aside the rest and take care of this. You cannot now fully grasp how very beneficial certain things will be to your sons when they shall know them.”3”
Even so, Don Bosco did not obey at once: he had so many journeys to make, so many problems to handle; and a grave illness, during 1871-1872, nearly killed him.
The only external evidence as to just when he composed this mini-autobiography comes from a conference which he gave to the superiors of all the Salesian communities in 1876. He insisted that they should all keep chronicles concerning their communities. He had already set the example:
I have already summarily jotted down various items concerning the Oratory from its beginnings until now; in fact, I have detailed many things up to 1854.”4”
This seems to mean that the Memoirs were finished in 1876.
External evidence points to revision of the text between 1878 and 1881, with his secretary Don Joachim Berto recopying most of it at that time. In January 1879 Don John Bonetti (1838-1891) began publishing his History of the Oratory in the Salesian Bulletin, one chapter a month. (He later revised this history into the book published in English, as St John Bosco’s Early Apostolate.) In the January 1882 issue of the Bulletin, he used material taken substantially from the last twenty-two pages of Don Bosco’s manuscript; so those last few chapters were certainly completed no later than November 1881.”5”
The internal evidence leads us to believe that he wrote it between 1873 and 1875 and revised most of it after 1878. In Don Bosco’s manuscript are two pointers to the 1873 starting date. In chapter 10 of this English edition, he referred in the first draft to Don Joseph Gazzano as still living in Upper Moltado in this year (1873). When he revised the text, he eliminated the reference to the year and inserted a variant without a date. In chapter 43, Don Bosco speaks of his recovery from a near-fatal illness in 1846 and remarks, For the next 27 years I had no need of either doctors or medicine.
There are likewise two indications as to when Don Bosco finished the first draft. Chapter 45 alludes to the current episcopal dignity of two prelates; in the original manuscript he puts 1875 in parentheses there. In chapter 56, but this time in Don Berto’s copy of the manuscript, 1875 was added next to the reference to the Oratory’s chapter of the Saint Vincent de Paul Society.
Since there is at least one reference to an event in 1878 in a note added later (in chapter 47 on the Church of Saint John the Evangelist), Don Bosco did at least some of the revision after that year.
Internal evidence also indicates that Don Bosco intended to continue the Memoirs of the Oratory by writing a history of the Salesian Society. He says so in chapter 48 when speaking of the first spiritual retreat offered at the Oratory.
Did Don Bosco himself mean to write such a history? In the above-mentioned 1876 conference, after asking the directors to keep community chronicles, he outlined the advantages of doing so and laid down guidelines. Such records, he said, would be invaluable sources for later historians of the Salesian Society. He referred to what he had written about the beginnings of the Oratory, and continued:
From 1854, we concentrate on the Congregation, and the subject matter becomes considerably vaster and more complex. I see this work as very useful to those who will follow after us and as redounding to God’s greater glory. Hence, I shall strive to continue writing.”6”
Unfortunately, he failed to carry out his resolution. The relentless pressure of expanding and financing his work and the infirmities of age made it impossible. He was satisfied that he had done the minimum that Pius IX had ordered him to do.
The original autographed manuscript, preserved in the Salesian Central Archives in Rome, fills 180 pages in three large exercise books (29.5 x 20.4 cm).”7” These pages are closely written but have a generous left-hand margin which is sometimes filled with additions and corrections. The manuscript, except four passages, is entirely in Don Bosco’s handwriting, and so are the additions and corrections. The last pages of this manuscript contain some additions and changes in another hand, but these were copied exactly from those made by Don Bosco in Fr Berto’s copy.
Fr Berto made a second copy of the manuscript.”8” He was skilled at deciphering Don Bosco’s terrible, awful, miserable script, as the saint himself described it.”9” The copy, most likely, was for Fr Bonetti to use in preparing his series of Salesian Bulletin articles.”10” Fr Berto accurately incorporated all of Don Bosco’s marginal notes, filling six more 29.5 x 20.4 cm exercise books. Since he left every other page blank, Don Bosco had ample room to make further revisions and add fresh material – which he did in abundance through the first 143 pages of the text, i.e. as far as chapter 50. He did not revise the last thirty-seven pages of the copy because Don Berto did not complete them until 1913,”11” long after Don Bosco’s death.
The Italian text which Don Eugenio Ceria (1870-1957) published for the first time in 1946 is based on Don Berto’s copy as revised by Don Bosco, after a meticulous comparison with Don Bosco’s original manuscript.
2. Contents of the Memoirs
As important as the Memoirs are as a spiritual and historical document, it is not a polished, carefully written essay. Nor is it in any sense the kind of soul-baring autobiography to be found in writers like Saint Teresa of Avila or Saint Theresa of Lisieux. It is a down-to-earth, matter-of-fact account of events, inner moods, hopes, and frustrations.”12”
Don Bosco, here as much as anywhere in his correspondence, speaks as a spiritual father to his sons. He has spent a lifetime establishing the Salesian Society. Now an old man nearing sixty, he has experience to pass on to them, the family story of ups and downs, heartache and triumph, fatigue and, above all, the mystery of God’s grace. These are memories for his beloved sons to treasure and learn from.
To his children a father speaks freely and informally, from the heart. So does Don Bosco in these recollections. Even if he had wanted to speak more formally, to refine his style, he simply did not have the time. He seems to have written his 180 pages in fits and starts, whenever he could snatch a free moment at his desk. His thoughts flowed easily and he wrote hurriedly, without pausing to wait for just the right words to come. As in his letters, Piedmontese words and expressions fell readily from his pen – something he avoided when writing for publication.
Don Bosco never kept a diary. To recall his youth, his education, and his early apostolic efforts he had only his own memory, a few notebook pages (e.g. retreat resolutions), plus an occasional document that Don Berto located for him (a chancery rescript or an earlier publication).
So we are not surprised to find frequent errors of dates and first names, misspellings, omissions of words, and similar slips in details of lesser importance, even in the revised copy. These will be noted in the commentary, not to question the chronicler’s authority or reliability but to aid his memory, as it were.
The mood which runs through this story does not dazzle and excite the reader; rather, it gives limpid clarity and calmness. The writer makes the events unfold undramatically, just as they did when they were happening. The language is plain, frank, and unadorned. For this reason, some who have used the Memoirs have tried to serve Don Bosco by polishing his words. The only trouble with that is that the words are no longer his.
Don Bosco’s aim was to record the events concerning the beginning of the work of the festive oratories, from which sprang the Salesian Society. Following two chapters on his boyhood (1815-1825), he presented his efforts in three periods: his early education (1825-1835), seminary training and the wandering Oratory (1835-1845), and planting firm roots in Valdocco (1846-1856). He wanted to show how each decade saw a striking development in his career and his apostolic work.
Intimately related to the Oratory’s development and the birth of the Salesians are details of the founder’s lowly origins, his family, his schooling, his vocational growth, and his priestly training. These are the main thrust of the first part of the Memoirs. The providential work which Don Bosco initiated is the focus of the second and third parts. God encouraged him, but one obstacle after another was raised in his path. Against the odds of poverty, misunderstanding, and political turmoil he not only persevered but finally succeeded in anchoring his work in a secure place, by God’s grace. He is already beginning to gather permanent helpers about him – the young future first members of his religious family – when the narrative breaks off.
His broad aim of recording the significant events of the Oratory’s beginnings had two more immediate ends. First, it was to be instructive, to provide examples whereby his sons might see the marvellous hand of God at work and from which they might learn: It will serve to make known how God himself has always been our guide.... It is always to be hoped that the sons will draw from these adventures...some spiritual and temporal advantages. Second, it was to be entertaining, to tell a good yarn with many a touch of humour:
It will give my sons some entertainment to be able to read about their father’s adventures.... A father delights in speaking of his exploits to his dear children.”13”
Don Bosco certainly has not told us everything about himself, his experiences, or his accomplishments. In some cases he seems simply to have forgotten something. For example, his title to chapter three includes Bird nesting, but he gives that topic just a few phrases in the text. The diaries of Don Dominic Ruffino (1840-1865) and Don John Bonetti show that he spoke of it in much greater detail.”14” In other cases, omissions appear to be deliberate, e.g. the two and a half years that he spent at the Moglia farm.”15”
Even after all the research of the Salesians Giovanni Battista Lemoyne, Michele Molineris, and Pietro Stella, among many others, much about him remains unknown, especially from his boyhood, youth, and early manhood. What Don Bosco has given us here is what he considered to be the most significant persons and happenings in his life, together with some individual occurrences illustrative of a number of events or a period of time. His biographers have fleshed these out tenfold. But in these Memoirs Don Bosco supplies what no biographer ever could: a look into his own heart.
3. Publication History
The first publication of the Memoirs of the Oratory was controversial. Don Bosco said expressly in his preface, I am writing for my beloved Salesian sons; I forbid that these things be made public during my lifetime or after my death. To reinforce this prohibition, at the beginning of each of the three parts he wrote, For Salesians Only.
This ban had several causes. Firstly, Don Bosco was modest in speaking about himself. Secondly, the Memoirs lacked that literary polish which Don Bosco liked to give to his publications. It was his habit to submit his work to others for editing and always to revise, revise, revise. Thirdly, some people still living might have been embarrassed by publication.
The constraint of the founder’s ban was enough to discourage the early publication of the Memoirs. On the other hand, so many authors drew on the manuscript or quoted from it, often without any acknowledgment, that a stage was reached when, in one form or another, the whole text had been published piecemeal. That alone seemed not only to justify publication but even to demand it, entire and authentic.
By 1946, more arguments in favour of publication had been brought forward. The lack of polish in the Memoirs, far from detracting from it, leads the reader to appreciate the author’s spontaneity. The Salesians had become a worldwide congregation, and few members could go to Turin to see the manuscript.
Don Ceria (and the Salesian superiors of 1946) also felt that they had to justify publication in the eyes of the beloved author. Don Bosco’s words, taken at face value, meant clearly that the contents of the manuscript were not to be revealed to any but the Salesian Family. Don Bosco wrote about himself and his adventures for a very limited readership, his own Salesians, a prohibition emphasised by repetition. Those who had known him, like Ceria, like the Rector Major, Don Peter Ricaldone (1870-1951), would not lightly violate his wishes.
Fr Ceria turned Don Bosco’s own words against his ban. At the directors’ meeting in 1876, Don Bosco had recalled the events that marked the birth of the Salesian Society. When he spoke of the need to prepare material concerning its history, he said:
Many things must be heralded unto God’s greater glory, the salvation of souls, and our Congregation’s broader expansion.... We may say that nothing has happened which was not known in advance. Our Congregation took no step that had not been suggested by some supernatural occurrence, and approved no change, improvement or expansion that was not prompted by God.... We could have recorded everything that has happened even before it occurred, in every detail and with preciseness.”16”
He foresaw the objection that nobody could retell these events in detail without involving him:
This matter brooks no opposition from Don Bosco or anything else. Since Don Bosco’s life is bound up with that of the Congregation, let us speak of him....
Don Bosco does not matter in this regard. What do I care if people talk well or ill of these things? What does it matter to me if people judge me one way or another? Let them say what they will.... It matters little to me, and I shall be not one whit more or less than what I am now before God. But God’s interventions must be made manifest.”17”
Thus one can say that as early as 1876 Don Bosco himself indirectly approved the publication of his Memoirs. Two years later he was revising it and making it available to Fr Bonetti; so, indirectly, Don Bosco himself supervised its publication, almost from beginning to end, in the Salesian Bulletin.
Publication of the Memoirs in 1946 marked two significant centennials, as well. One was the permanent foundation of the Oratory of Saint Francis de Sales in the dilapidated building belonging to Francis Pinardi. The other was the election of Pius IX as Pope. Salesians are ever grateful to that venerable Pontiff as to a co-founder of their family – and to one wise enough to command that these memoirs be recorded. It was to him that the Salesians dedicated that 1946 edition.
The basic text for this first English translation is Fr Ceria’s 1946 annotated edition, which is not, in the technical sense, a critical edition.”18” But it is a reliable and careful one. We have also consulted the French version translated by Fr Andre Barucq and annotated by Fr Francis Desramaut, and the modern Italian version by Fr Teresio Bosco, both of which follow Fr Ceria but are helpful with certain obscure words and with their notes.
Clearly an English edition, by the very fact of being a translation, removes the reader one step from Don Bosco’s own written word. The translator and his editors have tried to be faithful to that word, as well as to his flavour, without sacrificing fidelity to idiomatic English.
4. The Text and the Commentary
As we said, Don Bosco introduces his Memoirs with two chapters on his boyhood and then divides the rest into three parts, or decades. Each decade was divided into chapters, which Don Bosco titled and numbered, except for the last six. He numbered them starting from 1 in each part. Fr Ceria followed that system.
This edition has kept the threefold division and Don Bosco’s titles as being integral to the text. But we have made two changes. First, we have followed the modern style of providing a unifying chapter title for most chapters, turning Don Bosco’s titles into subtitles. Those chapters lacking subtitles have Don Bosco’s original title (except for the last six). Second, we have numbered all the chapters consecutively.
We have left Don Bosco’s original text in its human simplicity; we have not corrected even his obvious mistakes, e.g. the spelling of proper names. Wherever possible, we have retained his italics, numbering, abbreviations, personal titles, etc. We have likewise tried to preserve Don Bosco’s ability to play on words, as well as certain usages, such as his almost random use of giovani (boys, youths, young men), giovenetti (youngsters), fanciulli (children), and occasionally, ragazzi (boys). Where either Fr Ceria or the translator has had to insert a word or phrase, this has been put in brackets.
To run a commentary alongside Don Bosco’s text might seem to detract from the simplicity of his style, or worse, from what he has to say. He is not a lofty theologian like Saint Thomas Aquinas, nor is he far away from our time and culture like the scriptures. The extensive commentary offered here corrects errors of fact; clarifies the now-distant memories of our Salesian beginnings and makes them more intelligible to new generations who did not live with Don Bosco; explains various points of Italian history, geography, or culture; familiarises the general public with matters of Saint John Bosco’s and the Salesians’ history, spirituality, and methodology that the Salesians themselves take for granted; and identifies Catholic practices for readers who may not be familiar with them.
5. Importance of the Text
A document like the Memoirs is valuable for more than one reason. Besides everything else, it presents us with precious autobiographical and psychological documentation concerning a major figure in the history of the Catholic Church, Church-State relations, and education in the nineteenth century. Pope John Paul II has said:
Don Bosco is a landmark in Church history. In fact, he has left behind him a concept, a teaching, an experience and method which have become part of our heritage. In the words of my venerated predecessor Paul VI, he was ‘a renowned genius of modern pedagogy and catechesis but, above all, a genius of holiness.’”19”
His memoirs are an indispensable primary source for what he did, why he did it, how he did it.
Who might be interested in them? First and most obvious are the members of Don Bosco’s Salesian Family. Second are educators at all levels and in all types of schools. Third are scholars interested in nineteenth-century Europe, Church history, or the development of religious congregations. This edition has been prepared with these audiences in mind. The more general reader may certainly profit from the text.
John Bosco was a man of action, the founder of the Salesian Family, one of the largest in the Church. It includes the Society of Saint Francis de Sales (Salesian Congregation), the Daughters of Mary Help of Christians (Salesian Sisters), the Salesian Cooperators, the Don Bosco Volunteers, and (as of 1989) eight congregations of sisters inspired by his charism. He sent missionaries to the far corners of the world to preach the Gospel and to educate the young as he had done in Turin.
The Catholic Church ranks Don Bosco as a hero, a model for imitation, a canonised saint. His memoirs reveal his humanity; his struggles with himself, with others, with his environment; his human and his spiritual development. They reveal his mother’s role as his first and best earthly teacher.
In his simplicity, the saint confesses some of the defects of his youth. He condemns rather severely some of the outbursts of his as yet uncontrolled, generous energy. He speaks of his surrender to vanity and his occasional inconstancy. Such faults are like sparks or flashes here and there showing that he is still on the pilgrim road of obedience to divine grace.
What is the best lesson to be learned from these memoirs? Don Bosco himself tells us that chronicle will be a record to help people overcome problems that may come in the future by learning from the past. It is true that he had the Salesians in mind, but the statement itself is more wide-ranging. His life story tells of the difficulties that impeded the journey of a great saint but did not stop him from reaching the goal set for him by Divine Providence. His example is a lesson to all who must overcome hardships to reach an appointed or a chosen goal.
The Memoirs of the Oratory bears witness not only to a saint’s spirituality and to the beginnings of a great apostolic enterprise but also to an exciting, formative period of European history. Scattered throughout the Memoirs are reflections on the political and religious personalities and questions that marked a challenging period of Italian history. In these pages we witness the beginnings of the urbanisation and industrialisation of Italy, and the currents of nationalism and anticlericalism that produced a united Italy in Don Bosco’s lifetime.
Don Bosco does not focus on these events as such. But the social changes were the reason for his work, and the political changes could not help affecting it. His few candid observations on statesmen and the Church-State conflicts of his time are the more telling because of the dispassionate mood of his writing. That very dispassion helps to explain why he could, on at least four different occasions, have been called upon as a reliable intermediary between the Sardinian-Italian government and the Vatican. (He proved so discreet and trustworthy a channel that it is nearly impossible to trace his steps.)
The Memoirs is the autobiography of a great modern educator who is hardly known in the English-speaking world. He is not a theoretician but a practitioner. His few directly pedagogical writings – the little treatise on the Preventive System, an essay on punishment, confidential advice to directors, and a circular letter on the spirit that animated the Oratory in its pristine days – are more practical than theoretical, based not on some philosophical or psychological premise but on his years of experience.
The Memoirs of the Oratory recounts that experience. It is not purely anecdotal, for it tells us why Don Bosco did what he did and attempts some analysis of the success or failure that resulted. The first part, especially, abounds with material about guidance, peer pressure, moral formation, and methodology. The Memoirs describes, and in a sense embodies, the essential groundwork of an educational project that, one hundred years after their author’s death, involved 17,650 Salesian priests and brothers working in 1,572 youth centres, schools, parishes, mission stations, and publishing houses in 99 countries; 17,144 Salesian Sisters in 1,508 centres; and countless Salesian Cooperators and alumni.
Don Bosco’s educational ideas and method – his Preventive System – are proven by more than their anecdotal success or the huge family that is his most apparent legacy. His ideas and his method produce saints. One may point, if one is so inclined, to the number of his priests, religious, and Cooperators whose causes of canonisation are under study.”20”
But the greatest proof of the efficacy of Don Bosco’s educational method comes from its pupils. Many have led edifying lives – and the Church herself has said so by recognising the sanctity of three of them. She has canonised Dominic Savio, beatified Laura Vicuña, and Ceferino Namuncurà, all of them students no more than nineteen years old when they died.
The founder of so vast and so successful a project has something to say to educators everywhere: Christian or non-Christian, in public or private schools, in kindergarten or university. The method of reason, religion (or, at least, fundamental moral values), and loving kindness transcends boundaries, cultures, and age.
Michael Mendl SDB