Father Scassellati was Superior General from 1659 to 1665. With innovative ideas, he lived through the period of partial restoration of the Order granted by Alexander VII in 1656. In this historical approach by Father Santha, the reader can get closer to the relevant figure of this General with a humanist profile.
He wore the Piarist habit on 1-5-1626, took his solemn vows on 5th March 1628 and was ordained a priest on 22nd March 1636. He taught humanities and rhetoric in Naples, Genoa, Pisa, Narni, Frascati, Nursia and Rome. He was rector of the Nazareno College for 32 years (1646-1678). General Assistant (1656-1659) (1671-1678). Father General (1659-1665). During the decade of the «Innocentian» reduction of the Order, he endeavoured to raise the prestige of the Nazareno College and, together with other meritorious Piarists, to obtain the partial restoration of the Institute, which was granted by Alexander VII (1656). When he made the request, an irrepressible desire arose in him to obtain the appointment of Father General and he spared no direct or indirect means to achieve this. He even drew the lines of the future Restoration, which clearly deviated from the original spirit of the Founder, provoking the reaction of the current conservative faithful to his ideas by systematically obstructing the government of the peaceful and indecisive Fr García, who nevertheless maintained the traditional and conservative line in the spirit of the Founder, as General Assistant together with Fr Fedele. In the General Chapter in which he was elected General, he managed to impose some of his innovative ideas, softening the primitive austerity and abolishing certain traditions, and on this line he later imposed his own modernising criteria as Father General, but the conservative current put a spanner in the works through a Pontifical Brief in which his innovations were rejected. He succeeded in weakening the restrictions of the Alexandrine Letter of the Restoration, such as those relating to the number of novices and the age for beginning the teaching ministry. He founded three interprovincial juniorates: Chieti (1660), St. Pantaleon (1661) and Horn (Austria, 1664). Three new houses were opened and one was closed. The Provinces of Sardinia and Poland were declared autonomous provinces. As for the beatification of the Founder, he did nothing positive to promote it, except that he was a witness at the Ordinary’s trial and appointed Fr Berro as postulator, by force majeure. Nor did he take any steps to achieve the complete restoration of the Institute as a Religious Order with solemn vows, as he considered it better to remain a Congregation of simple vows. He unsuccessfully sought re-election as General and was re-elected as Assistant after a six-year term. Apart from his outstanding abilities as an educator and humanist, he did much good for the Order, but we must deplore his ambition for leadership and his personalism in governance. It must also be recognised that his innovative ideas, although they clashed with the conservative mentality at the time, were almost all accepted in the course of history, since the excessive disciplinary rigour and certain monastic nuances imposed by the Founder, had to be abandoned in favour of a greater effectiveness of the piarist apostolate.
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