austraLasia #3259
The 'Cenno storico' or
Historical Outline
11
August
2013 -- A document no Salesian would want to
miss
- but only now available in English with a complete set of
notes as
prepared by Fr Pietro Braido in his Don Bosco the Educator,
the
complete and revised English translation of which is also
available. We
are
speaking of the Cenno
storico,
or Historical Outline, the first and most interesting
testimony of
Don Bosco's on the work that became the Oratory at Valdocco
and the
Salesian Congregation. Here is how it begins:
This Oratory, a
gathering of young people on Sundays and holy days, began in
the Church
of St. Francis of Assisi. For many years during the
summertime, the
Rev. Fr. [Joseph] Caffasso used to teach catechism every
Sunday to
bricklayers’ boys in a little room attached to the sacristy
of the
aforementioned church. The heavy workload this priest had
taken on
caused him to interrupt this work, which he loved so much. I
took it up
towards the end of 1841, and I began by gathering in that
same place
two young adults who were in grave need of religious
instruction. These
were joined by others, and during 1842 the number went up to
twenty,
and sometimes twenty-five.
What do we notice? Here, and as this 11 page document
continues, the
work of the oratories is presented as the work of several
clergy and
also lay people from Turin. It is not yet a 'Salesian' work.
Notice
too, no mention of Bartholomew Garelli: it all began,
according to this
testimony, with 'two young adults...in grave need of religious
instruction'.
There are many little surprises in store as you read through
this
document. You recognise the fact immediately that Don Bosco
went back
to it many years later when he was putting his Memoirs of the Oratory
together,
but there are many details not included
in the latter: we discover, for
example that a certain Savio Ascanio was the first person in
the
Oratory to receive the clerical habit (1848). In fact he
received that
at Cottolengo House - he was supposed to be at the diocesan
seminary
but it was closed so Don Bosco took him in. He helped Don
Bosco but did
not become a Salesian, though he did become a priest and was
Rector at
The Refuge. The Memoirs of
the
Oratory rightly point us to another clerical
investiture of
importance - Rua - a few years later.
So hopefully your appetite has been whetted. You have two
choices. You
can download the brief document in its English translation (it
also
includes some 70 footnotes by Braido), or you can download the
complete
PDF copy of Don Bosco the Educator, from which it is taken.
Additional single original documents now in English have been
added to
those placed in SDL last week: the prefaces to Don Bosco's Sacra storia (Bible
History), Storia
ecclesiastica, and Storia d'Italia (History of Italy);
his introduction to The
Companion of
Youth, the Draft
Regulations
of the Oratory (intro only), and several
interesting letters:
one to King Victor
Emmanuel II
asking for financial support, another to Marquis Michele Benso Cavour,
and a Circular sent out
about his first Lottery (by a group of
'Promoters', but
clearly written by Don Bosco himself).
