Francisco Cubells Sch. P.

CALASANZIAN STUDIES

www.edicionescalasancias.org

41

Calasanzian Studies

Author: Francisco Cubells Sch. P.

Year of publication: 2025

Publicaciones ICCE

(Instituto Calasanz de Ciencias de la Educación)

Conde de Vilches, 4 - 28028 Madrid

www.icce.es

Translator: Fr. Antonio Marco Moreno Sch. P.

Copyright is reserved.

Reproduction, publication and distribution, whether total or partial, of all the original material contained in this book is expressly forbidden unless written authorization has been given.

For further information contact: www.icce.es

CALASANZIAN STUDIES

Introduction

The province of the Pious Schools of Mexico has had the joy of having a great Piarist in his last years of life, Fr. Francis Cubells Salas, who arrived in these lands of America in 1992 and remained there until his departure to the Father’s House on December 23, 2004.

Fr. Cubells from his first years of religious life distinguished himself for his kindness and intelligence, his tenacity and his prodigious memory, but above all for that special way of carrying so plainly his witness to the Gospel in a simple and generous way, Calasanzian to the end.

He held various positions, among them that of Master of juniors in Irache, from 1955 to 1961, Master of theologians in Salamanca from 1961 to 1967, Director of ICCE in Madrid from 1961 to 1992, General Delegate of Spain from 1977 to 1992.

Specialized in theological and educational sciences, he studied the charism of St. Joseph Calasanz for many years, of whose life and spirit he would become a notable specialist in the Order.

He directed several publications, among them Hermanos Escolapios, Analecta Calasanctiana (1968-1970), Revista Calasancia, later called Revista de Ciencias de la Educación (1968-1972) and Comunidad Educativa (1972-1978).

During his stay in Mexico, and at the request of the editors of the informative magazine of the Province, “Chiautempan”, especially of Fr. Rafael Hernandez, who with “religious insistence” was able to periodically “extract” his contributions, Fr. Cubells wrote a series of articles on the thought and pedagogy of St. Joseph Calasanz which have been compiled by Fr. Francisco Aísa, Sch., and which are now in your hands. Many of them you may already know. Their compilation obeys to a desire to have a more agile way to have them available in the formative processes of the new Piarists and of so many lay people who accompany us in the mission of educating.

You will come across such simple things of everyday life that, sometimes for the scholars could go unnoticed, but that bring us closer to understand the Calasanz “on foot” who watches some children playing and takes advantage of the game to teach them; who is not afraid that the religious also play and that they taste a loaf of bread, or that the little ones of the Jewish community or the Protestants enter his classrooms; or to cite sentences to give advice...

For Fr. Cubells, it was a beautiful Piarist challenge to make Calasanz accessible in a Community of Faith with the characteristics of the parish of Progreso Nacional, in a popular neighborhood of Mexico City, with humble people eager for God, in need of those who could help them to mature their faith. It led him to look for the simplest way to show them God, and an example of following and sanctity in Christian life, in the thought and spirituality of Calasanz.

It was the children, young people and catechists with whom he had that close and daily contact, who led him to articulate from his vast folder, topics as varied and deeply Calasanzian as the ones you can now read.

I invite you to savor these capsules of Calasanzian pedagogy and spirituality. It is possible that some may find that these articles do not meet all the scientific rigor. The writings have their own critical apparatus; to expand it will be a work for those who, interested in these topics, would like to substantiate them.

Thank you, Fr. Cubells for these lessons, which I hope will continue to reach those for whom you have written them. Thanks to you, Fr. Aísa, for giving yourself to the work of compiling this richness, and that you now allow us to enjoy.

Fr Fernando Hernández Avilés, Sch.P.

General Assistant of the Pious Schools for America

1. An attempt to analize a Mystical Moment of Calasanz

By a single divine word

More than strong, very strong, was the impact on Fr Berro of the reiterated, Calasanz’ repeated confidence, though always veiled, that with a single word that God had said to him, it was enough to endure “joyfully” fifteen years of “very serious works”, ten years of “very great persecutions”. What an impact it was, that it was not enough for him to record neither once nor twice in his Annotazioni. More wonder, however, since Calasanz did not consider this divine speech as a privilege granted to him by God as a favored one; rather, as something within the reach of any humble and self-sacrificing Piarist. This is clear from the reading of Berro’s testimony: “I remember having heard many times from his mouth, when he exhorted us to sweep the schools and to work hard voluntarily for the love of God, to add that His Divine Majesty, to those who work hard for it, gives special spiritual and interior help, and that a single word that he says interiorly to the soul gives such vigor and strength, that it voluntarily and joyfully endures any great work. But the spirit of God is so delicate that it is perceived only by one who is very attentive and whose soul is very well purified and detached from all the things of the world and also of himself. I know of a person who, with a single word that God spoke to his heart, he suffered joyfully for fifteen years of great labors that befell him” (Annotazioni, t. I, p. 79).

According to this and other texts, with which Berro transcribes this repeated confidence of Calasanz, it seems that such effective words, as the one that God spoke to his heart or soul, are accessible to anyone who prepares himself with humility, sacrifice and detachment of self; on condition that he is attentive or vigilant to grasp such divine calls.

Divine locutions

There is no doubt that this “single word” can be catalogued among what theologians of spirituality call extraordinary phenomena, given the effects that Calasanz attributes to it. It is a question of the so-called “locutions or speeches”, which come to be what, in the psychology of religiosity, has been called “interior perceptions”. Of these Wilhelm Pöll, following Carl Albrecht, recognizes three species; “inner visions, inner whispers or voices, and the inner perception of mystical effects”. Since it is a word, the one perceived by Calasanz surely belongs to the so-called “inner voices”, which are already manifested in the form of inner audio perceptions, or in the form of the apprehension of unarticulated contents of thought, which, according to Albrecht himself, can “crystallize into clear, concrete, unobjectionable commands”.

Apart from these speculations of the psychologists of religiosity, we have what the great mystics bequeathed to us about the so-called “supernatural locutions”. Saint John of the Cross dealt with them in the Ascent of Mount Carmel and St. Teresa of Jesus in The Book of her Life and in The Interior Castle or The Mansions.

Such locutions can be corporal, imaginary and intellectual. St. John of the Cross divides the latter into successive, formal and substantial. That locution received by Calasanz could be placed among the latter, that is, the substantial ones. St. John of the Cross says that the locutions called successive “always occur when the spirit is recollected and absorbed in some very attentive consideration”. This is a condition that Calasanz does not require, since he implies that in order for the voice of God “to be perceived”, “it is very important to be always vigilant, lest they come suddenly and pass without producing any fruit”. On the other hand, formal and substantial locutions can come “now the spirit is recollected, now it is not”, in the expression of the Doctor of Carmel. The so-called formal locutions it is because the spirit is not recollected, as in the successive calls, who “for itself usually goes forming” such words or reasons; rather “formally it seems to the spirit that a third person says them without him putting anything into it”.

Referring to these formal locutions, St. John of the Cross asserts that the safest thing to do is not to pay any attention to such talk, but rather to be governed by reason and by the teachings of the Church. “For the soul that is not an enemy of such things will not be able to avoid being deceived in many of them”. This is a danger that Calasanz does not run, since he is very cautious about such mystical phenomena.

In the Rules given by him to the novices, we read: “In the application of the senses, be careful not to tire the head or give yourself to it in such a way that it seems to you to have a vision or revelation, which are never to be desired, but rather to be avoided by considering one’s own life and the danger they bring with them”.

Therefore, the fact that Calasanz accepts the above-mentioned “word” and does not reject it is an indication that it belongs to the so-called “Substantial Locutions”. Moreover, the “word” received by Calasanz is one of those that “substantially imprint in the soul” what is told. This made St. Teresa exclaim: “Oh, what a good Lord and how powerful! He not only gives advice, but the remedy. His words are deeds. Oh, God help me, and how faith is strengthened and love is increased!”

The notion of these substantial locution fits, then into the “single word” that God spoke to Calasanz, since it produced in his soul the very thing it signified, namely, the supernatural strength to face “most joyfully” long years of “very grave labors” and “very great persecutions”.

Will every assiduous and humble worshipper receive effective words from God?

The greatest difficulty with the confidence that Calasanz made to Berro lies in the fact that that the latter “considers such talks attainable to all those who make themselves worthy of them with certain practices. But it will happen that a person will have to exercise in many works and he will not receive these touches, and another in many less, and he will receive them and with great abundance”.

It could happen that, in this case, Calasanz did not differentiate between that grace that God gave him through the “one word” from those ordinary inspirations, which He gives to the humble, to the detached, to the pure of heart. The gifts of one or the other category, all would enter indistinctly under the common denomination of divine words.

Or perhaps Calasanz is referring to that “perfection of intellectual prayer by an infused practical knowledge”, of which Antonio Cordeses speaks, in his Treatise on Mental Prayer. A manuscript of this work, postponed to that of the Itinerary of Christian Perfection, also by Cordeses, was in Calasanz’ possession and he provided a copy of both to the General of the Conventual Franciscans, Fr Giacomo Montanari de Bagnacavallo. Such an infused knowledge can be obtained in the three species into which Cordeses divides the prayer that he calls intellective, namely: cogitation (elevation of thought to God in a momentary and unplanned way), meditation and contemplation. According to this author, “ to those who are studious of prayer and desirous of perfection, the Holy Spirit usually infuse them by means of the gifts of the Holy Spirit himself [...] on the said supernatural light”, that is to say: “our natural one, although endowed with faith and aided by the help of God, another special light of practical knowledge [...], with which the said prayer is elevated and perfected and is made much more fruitful than it was before”. Cordeses calls “practical” both knowledge “because if it is not accompanied by piety and humility but we pray for that, it would be nothing to pray but to study. The other knowledge is practical, which is always accompanied by the will and always moves it to different acts”. And although prayer with that light of the Holy Spirit “is more God’s work than ours [...] it is up to us to prepare ourselves for such an infusion with cleanness of heart and much humility”. Furthermore, the same author recommends “that when we begin to pray, we should first of all to prepare our spirit for this knowledge rather than to the other natural knowledge, and to ask God for it with humility”.

It cannot be denied that there is a certain apparent coincidence between the texts of Cordeses cited above, and the doctrine of St. John of the Cross about the “successive locutions”. The difference, however, is radical, for although for the Mystic Doctor it is a matter of a grace that God gives to whomever He wills, for Cordeses it is something that the Holy Spirit “usually” infuses into those who pray assiduously and who have prepared themselves for it, especially with great humility and purity of heart. This comes to coincide with the practice of the humility in sweeping the school and with the fatiguing for the pure love of God, which, according to Calasanz, brings to the soul interior words that supernaturally invigorate it.

Both, the “successive locutions” of St. John of the Cross as well as the “supernatural light” of Cordeses, are transmitted when “the spirit is recollected “. Although at any moment that this recollection occurs, the Lord can speak, Calasanz said, as Berro testifies, that among the moments in which the Ipsum audite of Tabor actually takes place, stand out in a special way those in which the soul is recollected in prayer before the Blessed Sacrament. Then -Calasanz affirms- “the Lord makes himself felt”.

2. Calasanz and the antiphon “We fly to your patronage”

It was prescribed by our holy Founder that all the prayers of the Piarist communities should end with the antiphon Sub tuum praesidium, which, translated into English verses, begins with the words “We fly to your patronage…” This antiphon is the oldest of all known Marian prayers. Originated in Egypt and formulated in Greek, it appears as early as the III century. This is demonstrated by papyrus 470 of the J. Rylands Library Manchester, discovered in 1938. Long before the Council of Ephesus, celebrated in the year 431, Our Lady was already invoked as Mother of God - Theotokos, in Greek -, her most honorable title that the Holy Fathers had already given her.

The liturgical use of this trope suggests that it was a very ancient custom of the Christian community to request Mary’s help in difficult moments, invoking her under the sublime titles of which her divine maternity and her virginity make her worthy, uniting them to Elizabeth’s greeting proclaiming her doubly blessed.

The Greek original differs notably from the Latin translation “sub tuum praesidium” or “sub tuum refugium”, from which derives the English “We fly to your patronage…”. The exact translation of the original Greek would be: “Under your mercy we take refuge, Mother of God. Do not reject our supplications in need; but in danger deliver us, only chaste, only blessed one”.

It could, therefore, be considered an antecedent of the “Salve, Regina”, composed by St. Peter Mezonzo, Bishop of Compostela in the XI century, to which St. Bernard, in the XII century, added the final exclamations. It would also be a precedent of the second part of the “Ave Maria” - “Holy Mary, Mother of God...”- which dates back to the XIV century and was extended to the Universal Church in 1568, when St. Pius V reformed the Breviary.

I do not know the reasons that induced St. Joseph Calasanz to introduce it in our prayers. Perhaps he received it from the Lucca Congregation of the Mother of God, the same as, according to Fr. Giovanni Ausenda, he also took the Greek abbreviations of Meter Theou (Mother of God), which appear under the anagram of Mary on the emblem of the Pious Schools, and are synonymous with Theotokos.

But it was not only at the end of the acts of community that Calasanz wanted this antiphon to be recited. According to Br Francesco Noverano in the Process of Beatification “he wanted that all his religious with great devotion prayed the Sub tuum praesidium many times, deeply bowed and even prostrate on the ground, proclaiming her to be our help and our refuge”.

It is not surprising that Calasanz added such an accompaniment of body language to this Marian prayer. This is not the only occasion that he considered pedagogical to accompany the prayer by gesturing. Thus, he suggests Fr Salazar Maldonado that, since the majority of his community were beginners in mental prayer, the superior should pray aloud an act of contrition or of humility or of obedience, and while all were making them, they would accompany it, sometimes with their hands behind their back, others with their faces to the ground, for he considered that these were actions that moved beginners.

Prostration, besides expressing a feeling of helplessness or fear, is also a feeling of humiliation (occupying the smallest space and touching the dust with the forehead) and even of self-giving. Let us remember Jesus in Gethsemane. But also, to be lying down - prostrate or face down - evokes the symbolism of the horizontality or lowliness of the earth or the ground. The vanquished in the wars of antiquity, before being executed or sold as slaves, served as a footstool for the victorious foot placed on their neck, as narrated in the book of Joshua. Symbolically, the defeated kings were sculpted, in position to be stepped on by the victor, as the footstool where he placed his feet when he sat on the throne. So, Valerian, emperor of Rome, who, imprisoned by the Persians, was used by his king Sapor as a stirrup, every time he rode his horse. The earth, in Isaiah, is called the footstool of God. Calasanz, according to Berro, used to lie on the ground to be trodden on by his religious.

The prostration of the Sub tuum praesidium was addressed to the Blessed Virgin Mary, since it was to her that our founder declared himself a slave. Undoubtedly, he wished that the Piarists would live this slavery as well.

It was not only Calasanz who used, in the Pious School, corporal expression, to symbolize intimate and deep religious feelings. Our Blessed Peter Casani made use of it in some spiritual exercises, which Father Berro relates when he lived as a novice in Savona. But, on that occasion, corporal expression reached levels that today we would call role-playing or perhaps psychodrama.

In the catechesis of our students, in continuous prayer or in prayer workshops and in Eucharistic celebrations with a majority of children in attendance, as authorized by the “Directory for Masses with Children”, we should make more use of this pedagogical resource.

Some years before the Christian era, Cicero already said: “In sacred ceremonies, body and soul are subject to the same influences: what is happening in the soul, is expressed through the body, since the soul cannot manifest by itself”.

3. The continuous prayer according to Calasanz

Pray as often as possible

Continuous Prayer, in its purpose, structure and nomenclature, offers aspects of the Catholic religiosity of the times of Calasanz. He gave it, however, a very original nuance, when he applied it to the Christian formation of the students.

Analogous devotions already existed, whose purpose was, on the one hand, to fulfill as much as possible the Pauline exhortation, inspired by the will of Jesus as expressed in Luke, “pray at all times”; and on the other hand, to honor the Sacrament of the Altar with greater intensity, in reparation for the attacks it received from Protestants. Erasmus of Rotterdam pointed out ten moments for prayer spread throughout the day. He also recommended the devotion of the Clock of the Passion, consisting of distributing at different times of the day, the episodes of the passion and death of Jesus. Calasanz also composed one of these clocks. In addition, his students, when the clock struck the hours, interrupted the classes to pray reciting acts of faith, hope, charity and contrition.

An intensely Eucharistic piety

At least in its origin, the Eucharistic practice of the 40 hours, to which Calasanz was always very devoted, was a continuous or continual prayer. In his early Roman years, the regulations of the Confraternity of St. Mary of Suffrage and of the Archconfraternity of the Wounds of St. Francis obliged him to do so. This devotion was instituted in Milan, in the Carnival of 1534, by the Capuchin Joseph of Piantianida, who projected some acts of atonement for the sacrilegious attacks of the Protestants on the Eucharist, with a solemn exposition of the Blessed Sacrament for 40 hours, the time that it was believed that Jesus remained in the tomb. In 1548 they were celebrated in Rome on the first Sunday of each month.

At the request of the faithful, Clement VIII, in his Bull Graves et diuturnae, of 1592, ordered to pay this homage in perpetuity, establishing the 40 hours to be held, in the churches of Rome, day and night and for the whole month, in turn, so that, without interruption, constitute a continuous prayer. The same Pope granted plenary indulgence for one hour of adoration. Paul V, in 1616, granted it to lesser participation, but always praying for the usual intentions of the Pope: “to placate the wrath of God provoked by the offenses of the Christians and to counteract the efforts and machinations of the Turks for the destruction of Christianity”.

Calasanz had a special interest in the celebration of the 40 hours in the schools. His letters, in which he congratulates for the devotion and frequency of sacraments that accompanied them, are proof of this. Although he complains about the excessive expense, especially for hiring musicians to compete with other churches. He wants them to be duly solemn, in imitation of those celebrated by the Jesuits, without lacking, in addition, a preaching, even by a cleric or a student. This is one more resource of his pedagogy of piety. “We will try to introduce devotion to the Blessed Sacrament among our students, for it is a very holy thing,” he wrote to the Provincial of Naples. All this was very much in keeping with his great Eucharistic piety in Urgel and in his years of residence at Palazzo Colonna.

The Continuous Prayer, original of Calasanz

Calasanz’ Continuous Prayer consisted in praying for the Pope’s intentions, the same ones that appear at the end of the Crown of the Twelve Stars (which probably was composed to be part of the Continuous Prayer); apart from the fact that it was already a condition for gaining plenary indulgence. It consisted, in addition, of an instruction about the easy way to pray, to examine the conscience, to go to confession, to receive communion and other useful teachings according to the age and capacity of the students.

All the students of the school, in groups of nine, ten or twelve, for one or two quarters of an hour, were to go “promptly and in order” when it was their turn. They also prayed for the benefactors, since Calasanz offered the prayer of the poor children in return for donations in the collections made by some appointed Brothers. On some occasions also prayed for the solution of problems of the houses and of the Order. Cardinal Louis Torres, the first protector of the Pious Schools, obtained permission for him to expose the Blessed Sacrament after the first class until the end of the last one. In addition to the aforementioned purposes, Cardinal Mistrángelo attributed to the Continuous Prayer that of “destroying the monotony that results for the child from two and a half hours of uninterrupted class”.

As an inspirational antecedent of this devout exercise, it has been pointed out the so-called “continuous prayer”, which Calasanz may have known, instituted in Tremp by the Dominican friar Caspar Esteban, for the 12 members of the community of the convent Schola Christi. His model was neither this nor the prayer “continua e non mai intermessa”, as G. Marangoni describes it in his biography of Ven. Giovanni Agostino Adorno, as it is in the Constitutions of the Clerics Regular Minor (Caracciolini), from which our Founder took material for his own. But the praying “caracciolini” were the members of the Congregation, who took turns day and night for an hour before the Tabernacle.

The Continuous Prayer of Calasanz must be placed in the clear line of his education of piety. Castelli says in his Apology, it was not limited to teaching what “must be done”, but in practicing it well, in “how to do it”; that is, “how to go to confession and receive communion, how to pray, to hear Mass, to sanctify the feasts, how to read devotional books, to listen to the word of God, how to resist vices and do acts of virtue, how to behave in temptations, labors and dangers, and in similar situations; all of this is poorly known and not well practiced by the wisest in the world”.

4. The crown of the Twelve Stars

The Crown of John of Jesus Mary OCD

There is no serious argument to affirm that the “Crown of the Twelve Stars”, written in the handwriting of St. Joseph of Calasanz and probably sent to all the schools, is a derivation of the Exercise to make a Crown of Twelve Stars to the Virgin Mary in honor of her most blessed Assumption, a document found among the unpublished writings of friend and spiritual director of our Founder and, according to Bossuet, “summus theologus et summus mysticus”, Fr. John de San Pedro y Ustarroz or Fr. John de Jesus Mary, O.C.D. It could be said that the Crown of the illustrious Carmelite is a collection of texts, most of them biblical, for sermons to be delivered during the duodenary of preparation for the coronation of a certain image of Our Lady, in order to offer her “a better crown”; or to honor her on the feast of her Assumption. For, as it is stated in the aforementioned writing, “it could begin twelve days before the solemnity, reciting one each day, which, according to comfort and devotion, and could be repeated a few times”. Aside from the fact that the Calasanzian Crown was composed in honor of the Immaculate Conception, it does not seem that could be maintain the assertion that “the respective introductions are almost completely the same and more or less correspond to the twelve privileges of Mary that are placed for veneration”.

Coincidences and discrepancies

It is true that there is coincidence in nine of the Marian privileges that are the object of praise in both crowns, but in Father John’s crown there are six splits. And those indicated under the following epigraphs do not appear in that of Calasanz: “Love of continuous contemplation; our advocate; universally venerated”. On the other hand, the following four Marian privileges are exclusive of Calasanz, namely: “the most chaste betrothal of St. Joseph, the education of Jesus in his infancy, the revelations of very high mysteries that she received from her most holy Son concerning the redemption of the world; that Mary was the first to whom the name of the Holy Spirit was most clearly revealed”.

The devotion of Calasanz to his onomastic saint Joseph, manifested by the dedication of altars or chapels to St. Joseph in the churches of the schools founded by him, justifies the inclusion of the first of these privileges, the granting of which is attributed to God the Father who chose him as his substitute for Jesus during his childhood.

The second privilege is justified by considering Mary as the pedagogue of the humanity of the Infant Jesus in that house of Nazareth, which was then believed to have been miraculously transferred to Loreto, a place and title of very special devotion of Calasanz. To this place he went on pilgrimage and made his religious to go also there. In addition, the shortage of personnel prevented him from accepting the foundation that was proposed for that place.

The third original privilege of the Calasanzian Crown consists in applying to Mary a particularity of the consequences of that prayer of Jesus: “I praise you, Father, Lord of Heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and prudent and have revealed to little children. Well, Father, for such has been your judgment. All things have been entrusted to me by my Father, and no one knows the Son fully except the Father, nor the Father except the Son and the one to whom the Son chooses to reveal him”. No one became as little as Mary. When the Angel announced her as the mother of God and of the Messiah, she declared herself to be a humble slave. And when the Holy Spirit proclaimed her, through the mouth of Elizabeth, “blessed among all women,” she admitted that her beatitude was simply the work of him who had contemplated the humility of his handmaid.

The fourth privilege is inadmissible as it is formulated in the currently diffused versions of the Calasanzian Crown. Before Mary, the Angel already names the Holy Spirit when announcing to Zechariah that his son John the Baptist would be filled with it from his mother’s womb. However, given the Old Testament environment that surrounded the Baptist and his parents, it is not clear if this expression should be catalogued among other similar expressions referring to the prophets, especially Jeremiah. So, the “clear” revelation of the name of the Holy Spirit supposes a special privilege, given that the divine revelation of one’s own personal name is accompanied by an investiture for a special mission in the economy of salvation. Thus, the Father manifests his name to Moses in the bush and invests him as deliverer, guide and legislator of his people. Peter declares that Jesus is the Son of the living God, and Jesus names him as the rock of his Church and gives him the power of the keys. The Holy Spirit, by “clearly” revealing his name to Mary, makes her the figure and Mother of the Church and of each one of the members of the mystical body of Jesus, her son.

A very old devotion

The Calasanzian Crown follows the scheme that would later be assigned to the Crown of the Twelve Stars by St. Louis Marie Grignion de Monfort, namely, Our Fathers to the three persons of the Holy Trinity, each followed by four Hail Mary. This is what he indicates in his book True Devotion to Mary, where he also says that “this practice is very old”. In spite of this affirmation, perhaps its origin cannot be placed beyond the XIII century, if it is St. Bonaventure the first to identify the woman of the Apocalypse with Mary. Nevertheless, the Church of Constantinople, in its Hymn Amatista, the first version of which dates from the year 626, addresses twenty-four stanzas to Our Lady, following the letters of the alphabet and alternating the shortest with the longest and in the latter including a greeting to Mary twelve times repeated with a different title. In one of his of his letters, Calasanz mentions the Santissima Madonna di Constantinopoli.

The Crown and the Marian Slavery

St. Louis Marie Grignion de Montfort gives to the Crown of the Twelve Stars the category of a second practice assigned to those belonging to Marian slavery. The first is the personal consecration as a slave of Mary. Calasanz declared himself a “slave of Mary”, according to what Fr Giuseppe Fedele and the painter Francisco Gutierrez affirm in the processes of beatification. It is also evidenced by the medal that he had coined when he took simple vows. In it, a Piarist religious receives some chains from Our Lady, whose explanation appears on a cartouche held by an angel: foedus perpetuae servitutis (commitment of perpetual slavery).

The devotion to Marian slavery was widely spread throughout Europe, in the time of Calasanz, by the Trinitarian Saint Simon de Rojas, canonized by John Paul II. Calasanz studied humanities with the Trinitarians in Estadilla. Their influence is attributed to the poems he composed in his adolescence dedicated to the Holy Trinity. The outline of his crown is markedly Trinitarian. The same is the focus of his spirituality. Another coincidence: Saint Simon de Rojas, on November 21, 1611, founded in Madrid the “Congregation of Slaves of the Most Holy Name of Mary”.

5. The Litany of Loreto

Its origin and fame

At the end of morning and afternoon classes, the students of the Pious Schools in Calasanz’ time, prayed or sang the Litany of Loreto. Was it to imitate them, that in 1646 it was ordered that in all the schools of Rome, on Saturdays, these litanies were also recited? These litanies bear the nickname of their place of origin, Loreto, where they were probably composed in 1500. There is venerated a house that was believed to be that of Nazareth, where the Virgin received the Word when he became man. According to this belief, the angels would have moved it, when in 1291 Islam evicted the Crusaders from the Holy Land. First, they took her to a place on the Dalmatian coast, and from there to Loreto, an Italian city near Ancona, in the Marche. Pope Sixtus V accepted the truth of this miraculous aerial translation, without reservation, and in 1586 erected Loreto as a diocese. Clement VIII, who governed the Church from 1592 to 1605, doubting the veracity of the miracle, sent a commission to Nazareth to investigate whether the foundations there corresponded to those of Loreto. All in all, the liturgy supported the popular belief and in 1632 the feast of the translation for the provinces of the Marche was approved, to be celebrated on December 10. From the end of the XVI century, this tradition was used by the Jesuits to make Loreto a center of Marian pilgrimages, in the context of the Counter-Reformation.

The sanctuary was much visited. Famous people made pilgrimages to it or intended to do so. Columbus, in his diary, recorded his promise to visit Loreto. Descartes promised to make a pilgrimage there, in thanksgiving for having freed himself from skepticism, by means of the principle “I think, therefore I am”. The famous painter Velázquez passed by this sanctuary on his trip to Italy. St. Camillus de Lellis undertook to make a pilgrimage to this holy house to obtain the elevation of his Congregation to the Order of solemn vows. Cervantes, in El licenciado Vidriera, respects with sincere heart the sanctuary of Loreto, the same as Baldasarre Castiglione had done in his short story I due compagni e il blasfemo. This one, believing himself to be punished by God vowed to make a pilgrimage to Loreto and to eat only bread and water for breakfast every Saturday. Erasmus of Rotterdam had composed a Lauretan Liturgy for his feast, consisting of mass and homily, which were authorized by the bishop of Besanzon for his diocese.

Saturday, a day dedicated to Mary

Since Saturday was a Marian day, the litanies had a special solemnity in the Piarist schools. Sanchez de Vercial, in his Libro de los Exemplos, says that this designation of Saturday as a Marian day had its origin in Greece, where an image of Mary miraculously lost the veil from evening on Friday to recover it at the same time on Saturday. The prodigy was interpreted as a special attention to sinners who, on that day, prayed or fasted. The Marquise de Villars, in a letter dated 1680, attests that on Saturdays abstinence was observed “in all of Spain”. A writer attests that at that time even prostitutes kept this vigil. It is not surprising, then, that Calasanz assigned Saturday to give solemnity to the litany of Loreto, singing it. All the more so, when Paul V, in 1613, ordered that Saturdays, morning and evening, these litanies be sung in Saint Mary the Major. This devotion was imitated by all the churches of Rome, among them that of Montserrat. Fr Tomás Viñas supposes that our Founder took them from there for his schools. Based on this hypothesis, Fr. Josep Teixidor considers Calasanz “the introducer of the Litany of Loreto in the universal Church”. As for Saturday fasting, Calasanz wrote and crossed out in the Narni codex of his Constitutions the following: “Moreover, fasting will be observed on Saturday in honor of the Blessed Virgin herself, on which day our Congregation was born. This we only advise it, desiring that devotion urges what the mandate does not order”. Nevertheless, in Calasanz’ time, abstinence of egg and milk products was observed on Saturdays “ad honor della Madonna Santissima”.

Two boarding houses with Nazareth denominations

Calasanz also showed special devotion to Our Lady of Loreto with his pilgrimage of 1599 to her sanctuary and with the intention of repeating it in 1633, in spite of being 76 years old. He saw to it that his religious visited Loreto, especially when traveling to Ancona. For lack of personnel, he refused the foundation requested from there.

At the coronation of Paul V, he offered her a commemorative medal, on which are the Holy Trinity and the Holy House of Loreto, with the Holy Family and some children venerating it. An inscription reads: “The children of the Pious Schools piously meditate on the mystery of the Holy House of Loreto, for them, for the health of our Most Holy Lord Paul V and for the happy state of the Holy Roman Church, and beg for the help of such a pious population”.

Also outstanding for its devotion to Our Lady of Loreto was the Collegio Nazareno founded by Cardinal Tonti, Bishop of Nazareth. The name derives from the bishopric of Nazareth, a title of a Palestinian archdiocese of that name, that disappeared when it was conquered by the Turks. Its archbishop took refuge in Barletta (Italy), where there was a temple dedicated to St. Mary of Nazareth, which was erected as an archiepiscopal metropolitan church.

Cardinal Tonti ordered in his testament that, in Collegio Nazareno, there should be a chapel in which an image of the Madonna of Loreto, brought from the city of Nazareth, would be venerated. Its patronal feast should be celebrated on December 10. While Calasanz was still the rector of Collegio Nazareno, the “Lauretan Congregation” was instituted, that Urban VIII approved and enriched with many indulgences, by a Brief of January 7, 1644.

The only two boarding schools that Calasanz accepted, in spite of his conviction against this education, were requested by two cardinals, Tonti and Dietrichstein. Both institutions were under the protection of Our Lady of Loreto. Near Nikolsburg, in the land of the Germanic Empire, there was the sanctuary that exactly reproduced the Holy House of Loreto. Cardinal Dietrichstein, its founder, maintained a choir called “Lauretan Seminary”, in which nine children from 8 to 14 years of age had to sing the daily mass and the litanies of Loreto. The education, including musical education of these boys, was the responsibility of the Piarists, one of whom composed the music for the litanies that were sung there.

6. Calasanz and the apostolic poverty

Apostolic life and evangelical life

In the beginning, the life of the primitive Christian community of Jerusalem was called apostolic life, as described in the Acts of the Apostles (2:44 and 4:32). Also that of the medieval monks who were assimilated to it. In the XII century, it was called evangelical life the life of those preachers who, in imitation of the apostles sent by Jesus, only took with them for their itinerary what was described in the Synoptic Gospels (Mt 10, Mk 6, Lk 9). St. Vincent Ferrer, faithful to the Constitutions of St. Dominic de Guzman, describes in his Treatise on Spiritual Life, the future evangelical men, who will live in a very poor and simple way. Calasanz refers to this passage of the Valencian saint, quoting it by name, when in the Memorandum to Cardinal Tonti he affirms that the reform of all Christianity will be the work of “very poor and very simple men of apostolic life”. St. Vincent Ferrer called them evangelical men; Calasanz, men of apostolic life, a name taken in his time by those who, in imitation of the apostles, with a similar baggage to the one assigned to them by Jesus, marched to the conquest of unevangelized lands in Asia and the recently discovered America. This denomination did not take long to refer not only to the missionary, but also to all detachment. Thus, the book published in 1618 by G.B. Castaldo Pescara, with biographies of illustrious theatines, is titled Apostolicae vitae priscorum aliquot patrum ex Ordine Clericorum Regularium. Already In 1582, the disciple of St. John of Avila, Diego Pérez de Valdivia, defined the apostolic life in this way: “It is a rich life, going about preaching with poverty and humility in places ubi annuntiatur verbum Dei”.

The Gospels to the letter

According to Matthew, Mark and Luke, when the Lord sends his apostles out to preach, he commands them “not to wear gold or silver or copper in their girdles, but to wear sandals and not to wear two tunics”. According to the teachings of Plato, the Stoics, the Cynics, Seneca and Epictetus, there was a belief in the existence of a very high human type, the “divine man”, a messenger of Zeus, on a mission to men. Such divine messengers appeared from time to time in Greece and Asia Minor. A sign of their divine kinship was their voluntary poverty and independence from the things of men. To peoples of this mentality were sent Paul, Barnabas and other Apostles and preachers of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The detachment guaranteed their supernatural origin, their unequivocal and full trust in divine assistance.

Calasanz had this idea of the Apostles, as it is evident from the letter he wrote to Fr. Alacchi, promising to send him a crucifix, “which you would have to wear as the Apostles did when they went to distant provinces to preach the holy Gospel. The fewer things you take with you is a sign that you trust more the crucifix, and the more things, the less. And if the Lord gives you this trust in him, it will be of great benefit and grace for you to do great things to your neighbor. No wonder that on the last pilgrimage to Santiago, you were robbed several times, because the Lord wants his ministers to the apostolate as true apostles and ambassadors of his, and in this true trust consists the effect of the fruit of the fatigues made for the love of him” (L. 1301).

The intention of Calasanz, faithful to that of Jesus, lies in the example of detachment, essential in the Piarists, “as subjects chosen by God to reform the youth, which is an apostolic office”. Likewise, he speaks of dressing “in the apostolic”, referring to the habit of which the sandals, also known as “sandali all’apostolica”, were part of the habit. The implicit reference to the Gospel passages cited above is evident. Calasanz goes so far as to interpret the command not to wear two tunics as a prohibition to wear any garment under the cassock. Nevertheless, by medical prescription, he had to allow the shirt, because the vitriol, with which the fabric of the cassocks was dyed, caused dangerous abrasions on the skin. By a similar literal interpretation of the aforementioned evangelical passages, it was forbidden to touch the money materially, under penalty of excommunication, as in the case of the Capuchins and the Reformed Augustinians, according to Calasanz in a letter to Father Castilla.

However, he wished that his religious did not lack what was necessary for their food and clothing (“il povero vitto e vestito”). He did not allow the Fathers of Cosenza to live in huts and barracks, when their school was destroyed by an earthquake.

Poverty to evangelize

It was precisely the “strict poverty and apostolic life “ of the Piarists, the instruments chosen by God for the conversion of Protestants in their own countries. For the same reasons, the Pious School were “admired and sought after even by the infidels”, as Calasanz declared in his Memorandum to Cardinal Giulio Roma.

He also wanted the poverty of the Piarist to have a Marian character. He called his impoverished cassock “habito della Beatissima Vergine”. Suffering the effects of poverty, he considered it a proof of the condition of the poor of the Mother of God, title with which the Piarists are honored. And she, for her part, attends to those who are her own poor and not those of men, for unlike the latter, she is not bothered by being importuned with insistent requests, as Calasanz writes to Fr. Cananea. It is not surprising, then, that Calasanz went so far as to boast that “there is no religious order poorer than ours and more concerned with the service and benefit of the poor”.

7. Calasanz and seven marian feasts

A popular and monastic tradition

One of the manifestations of Calasanz’ Marian devotion is the celebration of the “seven feasts of the Blessed Virgin after penitential preparation in their respective vigils. The article 120 of his Constitutions does not appear in any of the immediate sources, the Constitutions of the Jesuits, Theatines, Clerics Regular Minor and Capuchins. But it was a devotion practiced by popular piety and with antecedents in monastic legislation. In the Avisos de Jerónimo Barrionuevo, this gossipy writer of the XVII century affirms that “the king of Spain Felipe IV kept abstinence on the eve of the feasts of Our Lady”, in particular that of her Presentation in the temple. In the Regula S. Salvatoris (Rule of the Savior) or Constitutions of St. Bridget Persson or of Sweden, which she wrote for Vadstena, her mixed monastery with communities composed of monks and nuns, approved by Urban VI, in 1374, we read: “They must fast on bread and water on the days mentioned below, namely, before the four feasts of the Blessed Virgin Mary: Purification, Annunciation, Assumption and Nativity”. St. Bridget mentions only four outstanding Marian days. In the time of Calasanz there were already seven. As for the fasting on bread and water, our early Constitutions preserved something of this rigor. For these vigils the Piarists were to be content “with only bread and water and a single dish according to custom and even a little wine for the stomach” (CC 119. Cf. 1 Tim 5:23). The General Chapter of 1637, whose Minutes were subscribed by Calasanz, allowed some fruits for dinner. Until the Constitutions of 1940, these penitential days called “of Pulmentum” were observed.

Why only seven feasts?

To the four feasts mentioned by St. Bridget, three others were added: the Visitation of St. Elizabeth, the Immaculate Conception and the Presentation of Mary at the Temple. Perhaps only seven were chosen because of the cabalistic character of this number, so prominent in the symbolism of all cultures. It could also be attributed as correspondence to the seven main feasts of the Savior that were being celebrated: Incarnation, Christmas, Circumcision, Presentation of Jesus in the Temple, Death, Resurrection and Ascension.

The beginning of the celebration of the feasts of Our Lady was not simultaneous, as already can be seen. Their respective feasts had the origin in different times and for different reasons. That of the Annunciation includes, in addition, other events, which were artificially made to coincide with it. According to the Martyrologium Hieronymianum, on March 25, “Christ was crucified, conceived, and the world was created”. For Calasanz, March 25, 1617 was the day of the foundation of the Pious School, when the first fifteen Piarists took the habit. There is no doubt that it would be a memorable date for him, as he wanted all Saturdays to be, because “on such a day,” he wrote, “our congregation had its origin”.

Basis and origin of the seven Marian feasts

Three of these festivals have an explicit biblical foundation: the Annunciation, the Visitation and the Presentation of Jesus in the Temple, which was also called the Purification. To these were added the Immaculate Conception, the Nativity, the Presentation of Mary in the Temple and her Assumption into heaven.

The Visitation was decreed in 1263, by a General Chapter of the newly founded Franciscan Order. Urban VI, in order to impel the end of the Western Schism, ordered the celebration of this feast with a universal character, not immediately after the Annunciation, as it had been celebrated in the past, but outside Lent, on the day after the octave of St. John the Baptist, because of his relationship with the Precursor. On this July 2nd, was celebrated in the East, since ancient times, the feast of the deposition of Our Lady precious garment. Boniface IX inscribed the Visitation in the calendar of the universal Church with a vigil, fasting and octave. Clement VIII prescribed the Office and the Mass, which were celebrated until the liturgical reform following the Vatican II. However, it would not be celebrated with great solemnity nor would it be enthusiastically welcomed, since in 1610 St. Francis de Sales, when founding the Visitation, chose this title “because it was a hidden mystery, which was not celebrated in the Church like the others”.

The Presentation of Mary has a very ancient tradition, although its foundation is found in the apocryphal Protoevangelium of St. James and the Book of the Nativity of the Virgin Mary. It seems that there were women in the Temple of Jerusalem, as there had been in the Sanctuary of the desert (Ex 38:8) and in that of Shiloh (1 Sam 2:22). According to Jewish tradition, in the time of the second Temple, these virgins offered themselves freely or were “consecrated” by their parents to the Lord. According to the sources mentioned, Mary at the age of three was consecrated by her parents to the Temple. She alone ascended the fifteen steps corresponding to the gradual psalms that are believed to be sung while ascending this staircase, which separated, according to Flavius Josephus, the courtyard of the women from that of the men. In 1568, Pius V ordered the suppression of this feast, because of its dependence on the apocrypha. But the proofs of its antiquity, presented by the Jesuit Francisco Torres, moved Sixtus V to restore it in 1585.

Preceded by the teachings of the Holy Fathers, which implicitly or more or less explicitly declared Mary immune from original sin, the feast of the Immaculate Conception was first celebrated in the churches of the East, beginning in the VIII century, followed by those of Ireland and England, and then Germany, France and Spain. Throughout the XII, XIII and XIV centuries, unfavorable opinions arose from theologians, some of whom questioned and even went so far as to deny such an exceptional Marian privilege. From the XIV century on, these opinions began to be refuted. The celebration of the Immaculate Conception was the initiative of the Council of Basel, which declared Mary immune from all original and present guilt and promulgated the corresponding Mass and office. In 1438, on the occasion of an epidemic, the city of Madrid vowed to fast the day before and to keep the feast, celebrating it with a solemn procession in honor of the Immaculate Conception, a vow that was renewed in 1621, adding the oath to defend this doctrine. On December 8, 1661, Alexander VII, by his constitution Sollicitudo omnium ecclesiarum, declared that the object of the feast of the Conception of Mary is her immunity from original sin, and not her simple sanctification in the womb of her privileged mother. Finally, Pius IX, alumnus of our school in Volterra, in the Bull Ineffabilis Deus, in 1854, declared the Immaculate Conception of Mary a dogma of faith. In this Bull, he stated that since childhood he had professed special devotion to this Marian privilege. Undoubtedly, he was alluding to the prayer of the Crown of the Twelve Stars of Calasanz, in which praise is given to God the Father, because he preserved Mary from all fault in her Immaculate Conception.

If in all these feasts, mortification prepares the Piarists for their celebration in tune with popular religiosity, Calasanz accentuated the preparatory rigor for the feast of the Assumption, which, although it was not declared a dogma until November 1, 1950, by Pius XII, it was “the oldest of the proper feasts of Our Lady”. The Article 120 of the Calasanzian Constitutions states: “The fast of the Assumption, according to custom, will begin from the feast of St. Lawrence”. About this prolonged fasting, I have only been able to have news that it was observed in Majorca – maybe also in the whole Kingdom of Aragon? - attributing to it favors with magical or superstitious character.

8. The psychodiagnostics of Calasanz

Our holy Founder does not limit himself to demanding that every teacher adapt to the evolutionary psychology of the student, as was to be expected of someone who introduced the graduation in elementary education. He also wants attention to be paid to the particular aptitudes of the teachers in the distribution of tasks and responsibilities.

In this sense are the points 194, 196, 197 and 238 of his Constitutions, in regard to students, and 191, as far as the teaching staff is concerned. “To adapt to the capacity of the pupils”, “to lower oneself to the capacity of the children”: these are recommendations reiterated ad nauseam in his epistolary. A prerequisite is to know each one of them in depth: to see if “they are well or badly inclined” (EGC 2581 and Regulations of Collegio Nazareno, c.I, 5).

With regard to the teachers, he orders the superiors to “know the talents of each one in order to make better use of him” (EGC 3264); “that they entrust to each one that occupation for which one has talent”; therefore, “it is convenient to know the inclination of each one” (EGC 1226).

He also declares that the superior should not want “everyone to be like him” (EGC 549). Therefore, while recognizing the great zeal of Fr. Pellegrino Tencani, he should not lead everyone to perfection in the same way, but “according to the talent of each one” (EGC 2441, Constitutions 23 and EGC 1910). For, according to Calasanz, “it is great prudence to know how to make use of the talents of each one and to be secondary in some aspects, as long as God is not offended, since not all subjects can be governed in the same way” (EGC 2344). It must not be forgotten that, for Calasanz, the aptitude comes from the Spirit that God gives to whom he pleases (EGC 2559 and Constitutions 23).

Calasanz wants knowledge of the temperament of his subjects and pupils: “vi vuole molta oratione per sapper regere diverse volontà et complessione di huomini” (EGC 1816) (much prayer is required to know how to govern the diverse wills and temperament of men). He recognizes that some must be led by appealing to feelings (EGC 2118).

The authority of Galen persisted in the time of Calasanz and, therefore, the Hippocratic theory of the four temperaments corresponding to the tetralogy of the elements that Empedocles supposed to be the components of the cosmos: air, water, earth and fire.

These four elements, endowed with the corresponding cosmological qualities, characterize the temperaments: cold is associated with phlegm, dampness with black bile, dryness to the bile and heat to the blood. These four temperaments -phlegmatic, melancholic, bilious, and sanguine-, according to a text attributed to Hippocrates, “constitute human nature and give rise to diseases when one of these humors is lacking, or in excess, or isolated in the body, and is not combined with the rest”.

In Calasanz’ epistolary there are allusions to the Hippocratic humors and their influence on diseases (EGC 143, 375, 788, 789, 2153, etc.). This is why he recommended bloodletting to restore the blood humors to their rightful measure (cf. EGC 114, 118, 148, 383, etc.). There was also the belief that the excess of atrabilis or black bile produced melancholy, about which Calasanz frequently warns in his correspondence (EGC 35, 67, 110, 196, 594, 902, 931, 1057, 1148, etc.).

In his Constitutions, among the impediments to enter the Piarist family, he had written: “melancholia gravi laborare” (suffering from severe melancholy). But the censor struck it out because he considered that the superior “ad hoc oculos habet” (has enough eyesight) to become aware of it during the novitiate year.

Fr. Vincent Berro affirms that Calasanz was of “complessione biliosa”. Note the coincidence of the word “complessione” with that of the saint in his letter 1816 cited above. On the other hand, the buon ingenio of his letters 2581 and 4183 refers, at least, by association, to the Examen de ingenios para las ciencias, where Huarte de San Juan, a follower of Galen, bordered on heterodoxy, as far as he had to do with the Inquisition, for allowing himself to be influenced too much by the Galenic treatise Quod animi mores corporis temperaturam insequantur. The Piarist Ignacio Rodriguez published in 1795 his treatise Discernimiento filosófico de ingenios, which the Bompiani Dictionary of Literary Authors affirms “that it is, in part, a derivation of the work of Huarte de San Juan”.

At the end of the XVII century, temperamental or characterological fatalism was exaggerated, for example Locke, in his Some Thoughts concerning Education and Charles Perrault, in his Parallèle des Anciens et des Modernes. The latter says: “Those who are brutes when they grow up were brutes when they were small”. The former wrote: “God has imprinted in the spirit of men some characters which perhaps, like the defects of the body, can be somewhat corrected, but which it is not possible to change for others that are completely opposite”.

In these aspects, Calasanz is optimistic and believes in the reform of young people and in the conversion of even the most wayward and deviant (EGC 247, 386, 4242).

9. Did Calasanz believe in astrology?

Picanyol attributes to “the supernatural sense with which Calasanz considered all events”, the meaning he implicitly gave to two extraordinary phenomena that appeared in the sky of Rome in March 1629 and in November 1630: “May the Lord make it for the mercy of this city; may the Lord make it be a sign of mercy and bless us always”.

The first of these events consisted in the surprising apparition, at about 12:00 noon, in the Roman sky, of a blue circle, or, to put it better, an ashen circle, the size of almost the whole city, with four large globes symmetrically distributed, which shone and presented in their center an iridescent color; while around the sun appeared another circle of the same color, but much smaller, which did not last as long as the large one (EGC 1081).

The following year, at three o’clock in the afternoon, there were seen in the sky two stars that joined and then disappeared (EGC 1537). Both phenomena were contemplated by numerous witnesses. Today they would be considered as UFO apparitions.

On August 17, 1630, he wrote to Fr. Cherubini about some astrologers who were dealing about Urban VIII (“che trattavano di questo Papa”) who had been imprisoned with bad expectations (“stanno in prigione a mal termine”) (EGC 1465). Undoubtedly it is about conspirators with the support of the Grand Duke of Tuscany and of the Spanish party of Rome, who met in the bookshop of Inghirami, near San Pantaleo. They trusted the success of their revolutionary enterprise, in which the star of the Barberini, that is to say of the Pope, according to horoscopes, was in the doldrums. Campanella was involved in the conspiracy.

It was common at that time to believe in the influence of the stars on men and events. It was not a question of extraordinary manifestations of God’s knowledge and the will of God, who warned by the voice of extraordinary phenomena that interfered in the regulated happenings of nature, as Calasanz manifested in view of the two prodigies mentioned above. It was, rather, a belief in an ordinary causality of the stars, codifiable in a kind of grammar with which to decipher and give meaning to the astral messages. Still, in those centuries, this belief was common in great personages of the church, of the politics and even of the science. A neo-Platonic humanist, Marsilio Ficino, was the astrologer of the Medici, in whose “impresa”(emblem) the zodiacal sign of Capricorn appeared, with the motto “fidem fati virtute sequemur” (we will follow with faith the promise of destiny), a clear allusion to his belief in astrology. Ludovico il Moro consulted Ambrosio Varese de Rosate, an astrologer who is said to have foretold the death of Innocent VIII. Rodrigo Falerio accompanied Magellan and advised him, consulting the stars, on that first voyage of circumnavigation. Caffarel was Richelieu’s astrologer. Wallenstein could afford the luxury of relying on the astrological predictions of the great Kepler. And Galileo himself, inventor of a telescope - the Sidereus nuntius-, during his stay in Padua, drew many horoscopes of which there are examples in his Ricordi autographi and in his Carteggio; perhaps he made them as a hobby, or like Kepler, to earn money. The Pope Julius II commissioned astrologers to find a suitable day for his coronation. Paul III entrusted them with the investigation of the most suitable hour for his Consistories. Leo X hired a professor of astrology for the Sapienza, the university of Rome. Among the doctors in charge of the health of Louis XIV, three astrologers were selected. He who had been nicknamed the Sun King could not but be cared for in this way. Even Montaigne was the bearer of a medal on which were engraved some celestial figures, for which he considered it an amulet against sunstroke and headache.

Undoubtedly believing that his astrological advice would be well received, our Blessed Peter Casani dared to write to Calasanz what I summarize below:

“The disposition of the heavens goes hand in hand with the malice of men. According to the Perpetual Almanac, this year, which, according to the said book, ends on the 21st of next March (1633) will see many wars, depopulations, fires and many controversies and evils. Also, calamities and disturbances in the religions and state of the religious. By this celestial influence, our religion will be damaged more than any other”.

Then he goes on to advise something more concrete: The influence of the stars on Fr. Giacomo Graziani, who had reached his 63rd birthday. So, then, he writes the following: “And while we are on Astrology, beware of Fr Giacomo; it seems to me that he has entered the 63rd climacteric year. Let us pray for his health”.

This climacteric year of which Casani is speaking, according to Heinrich Cornelius Agripa von Nettescheim -better known as Cornelius Agrippa-, author of the magic and cabalistic work De occulta Philosophia, is none other than the 49th year of life, as the product of 7 x 7. But in Calasanz´ time, some astrologers considered that was the year 63rd, as the result of multiplying 7 x 9, for being, according to the Pythagoreans, the product of 9 (square of the first odd number, that is, 3), which symbolizes Medicine, by the number 7, which represents reason.

Did these two predictions of Casani disturb Calasanz? Our saint showed himself serene during the year 1633, in spite of being the year of the accusatory memorandums, which he defined as the year of the “greatest infamy”. In his letters, not a single allusion to the prophecies of the Perpetual Almanac, transmitted by Casani. Regarding Graziani, in spite of Calasanz reminding him, in his letter 2142, that “ordinarily the trips usually produce some annoyance, above all to the elderly”, until his death in October 1634, he sent him very frequent and extensive correspondence, by which he entrusted him with very delicate matters, since he kept him as his delegate in Naples, trusting him for the flourishing of the religious spirit in that province.

In short: it seems that Casani was right in giving credit to the astrological forecasts; while Calasanz, apparently, was also right ignoring them.

10. Stoning a crucifix

Calasanz had a deep devotion to the image of Jesus crucified. For the chapel of the Crucifix of the Neapolitan school of La Duchesca, he requested plenary indulgence for six years, to be counted from the day of the Cross of September of that year 1628. He entrusted himself to the Crucifix when he began to worry about the devastating actions of Mario Sozzi. This is how he communicated it to Fr Giorgio Chervino on April 26, 1642, “Mi raccomanderò sempre al Ss.mo Crocifisso...”. The Crucifix - and not Jesus crucified - is thus named by Calasanz. Undoubtedly, he professed to him that cult of latria which, according to Thomas Aquinas, is due to any cross, even naked, which represents that of Christ (Sum. Theol. T.3, q.25, a.4).

In the time of Calasanz, Bellarmino only gave the cross a worship of dulia, notwithstanding the antiquity of the adoration proper to this sign of our Redemption. Julian the Apostate had accused Christians of worshipping crosses. And Tertullian had previously described them as crucis religiosos. A confirmation of this practice could be the famous anti-Christian graffito of the III century, preserved on a wall of the Geolotiana mansion of the Roman Palatine, where it is satirized, as a zoological cult, the one paid to a crucified man with the head of an ass, at which “Alexander worships his god”. We must not forget that the Church, every Good Friday, makes us participate in the liturgy of the “Adoration of the Cross”.

Calasanz, for whom Christ crucified is “the proper object of the intellect” (EGC 2921), could not but believe, as we read in the contemporary Catechism of Ripalda (year 1617), that “every faithful Christian is obliged to have devotion wholeheartedly to the Holy Cross of Christ, our Light, for on it he wanted to die, to redeem us from our sins and from the evil enemy”.

It is not surprising, then, the pedagogy of the Crucifix that is testified by the Processes of Beatification of our holy Founder. Many times, when dismissing his students, he would take a crucifix in one hand and turn the other to it, and fixing his eyes on the children, he would apostrophize them saying: “My children, my dear children, who among you would dare to throw stones at this divine Lord?” to which they answered with a cry of horror: “None of us, Father, none of us!”. “Well then,” Calasanz replied, “know that he who commits a sin does the same as he who throws a stone at Jesus Christ. And you, beloved children, will you sin again?” To which they, aware of the evil of sin, answered unanimously: “No, no, never, never”. Then the saint concluded: “Since you have sinned at other times, now ask him for forgiveness with me. And I will ask him for you”. And he dictated to them a heartfelt act of contrition.

The stoning of Christ with the cross on his shoulders, on the way to Calvary, by a group of children, was a popular belief in the XV, XVI and XVII centuries, shared with the artists of Burgundy. This was the height of opprobrium, inferred, as it was, by those who occupied the lowest rung of the social ladder of the time. Vincent de Beauvais, in his Speculum historiale, narrates what happened in Brabant, because of a stone ominously thrown against an image of Our Lady and the Child. The blood flowed from the arms of Christ “as if from a living man”.

There are many the images of the crucified Christ that are said to have bled when they were criminally outraged. Perhaps the first surviving account of such a prodigy is that of the Christ of Beyrut, narrated in the Patrologia Latina, by Jacques Paul Migne (vol. 129, 283ff.). Here is a summary of its transcription in the Golden Legend, by Jacobus a Voragine. Leaving a rented mansion, a Christian left behind a Crucifix. The new tenants, some Jews, reproduced, in their own way, the opprobrium that he really suffered in his passion. One of the Jews pierced the side of the image with a lance and, at once, the wound bled and the liquid collected made miraculous cures. The Christian who forgot the image was asked about the origin of the image. He declared that its author was Nicodemus, who made Gamaliel heir to it; Gamaliel bequeathed it to Jacob, the latter to Simon, and Simon to another. Thus, it passed through successive owners, until the destruction of Jerusalem.

When this happened, some Christians transferred the Crucifix to the kingdom that Claudius granted to Agrippa, son of Herod Agrippa, the one who, with his sister Berenice, had met with St. Paul, before the Roman governor Festus. From there the crucifix passed to Beyrut. The legend continued and became popular. Thrown into the Mediterranean, it reached places where crucifixes were venerated and identified with the Beyrut. Thus, the one called El Salvador, venerated in Valencia (Spain), since the XIV century, to which St. Vincent Ferrer and St. Thomas de Villanueva had great devotion. It was also believed that by going upstream the rivers Ebro and Segre, the Crucifix of Beyrut arrived to the city of Balaguer, where with the name of Christ of Almatá, it has a sanctuary where a reproduction of the one that was destroyed in 1936, during the Spanish Civil War, is venerated.

Precisely, in this sanctuary, on April 17, 1575, Joseph Calasanz received the clerical tonsure from the hands of his bishop John Dimas Loris. Would this legend have influenced Calasanz to consider symbolized the painful effects of our sins in the image of Christ in a cruel way? In any case, Calasanz would have in mind in a realistic way, the strong expression of the author of the so-called Letter to the Hebrews, which today is also entitled Homily on the High Priesthood of Christ. In it, referring to sinners, he declares that “they are again crucifying the Son of God and exposing him to public scorn” (Heb 6:6).

11. The apparition of Our Lady of Monti to St. Joseph Calasanz

Among all his devotions, it was remarkable Calasanz’ devotion to Our Lady of Monti (Madonna dei Monti). In his church, located in the Roman rione dei monti, he celebrated many days, when he was not yet fully dedicated to his schools. Afterwards, he continued his deep veneration for the aforementioned Marian title until the end of his life.

And the Mother of God corresponded, in an extraordinary way, to his deep devotion to her. Two or three days before his death, he declared that Madonna dei Monti had appeared to him and had assured him that he could be joyful, that he should not fear death, for he had dedicated his life to the service of God. And she promised him that she would help her sons, the Piarists, to be united and in holy charity.

The confidence of this tender and consoling visit was attested to by those who received it from the lips of the sick man, who always retained the integrity of his faculties: the Piarists Castelli, Scassellati, Berro, Caputi, Morelli and John Garcia and the Barnabite Constantino Palamolla, some of whom attested to it with an oath in his Beatification Process.

Our Lady of Monti is represented in a fresco painting, seated on a throne with her Son in her arms. Accompanying her on both sides, in perfect symmetry, the martyr deacons Stephen and Lawrence, standing, and Saints Augustine and Francis kneeling. The painting could be attributed to the Umbrian-Sienese school, most probably from the beginning of the XV century. It was discovered in 1579, in a small building already in ruins, converted into a hayloft, which had belonged to a convent of Poor Clares, abandoned at the beginning of 1500, and which had been founded - it was said- in the time of St. Francis. It was, therefore, Our Lady of Monti one of the Marian invocations of more recent veneration in Rome, due to its fame as miraculous. In 1623, the Vatican Chapter solemnly crowned her.

It is not known if this apparition of the Mother of God, was identified as Our Lady of Monti by Calasanz, because she declared herself to be such, or because of some significant details of the aforementioned painting or by direct inspiration of God or by simple human intuition. It is not known if it was an imaginative vision or a real apparition, in which case it would be either a transportation of the wall or of the part decorated by the fresco, or of the images of the same without any physical support.

This last case would be analogous to the one that occurred on August 1, 1879, at Knok (Ireland) and that has originated a world center of pilgrimage, which is considered the most popular in Europe with the exception of Lourdes. When John Paul II visited Ireland, he went to Knok. The portentous event consisted in the apparition of a group of motionless and silent figures at the end of the roof of the village church; namely: an altar with a lamb on it and the Virgin Mary with some saints. The apparition remained all night. Although the figures appeared to be of bulk, one of the seers went to kiss the feet of Mary, but she only touched the wall on which the images were projected.

It is not difficult that a pictorial representation of the Virgin spoke to Calasanz. The fact is not unusual, if we follow the declarations of witnesses of similar phenomena. It is relatively recent an alleged prodigious case occurred in Cinquefrondi (Italy), where, since October 26, 1971, the Virgin Mary, represented in a painting, has been shedding tears on different days and addresses messages to her owner, a humble dressmaker, Bettina Iamundo.

The translation of Our Lady from her temple to the room of Calasanz is not difficult either. Miraculous changes of place are attributed to the images of Our Lady of Ocotlán (Mexico) and to Our Lady of the Angels, affectionately called the “Negrita”, which is venerated in Cartago (Costa Rica). There are legends of paintings that were inexplicably moved from one place to another, such as the canvas attributed to Antonio Vivarini, transported from Albania to Genazzano, near Rome, in April 1467. A crowd at the market saw it flying through the air and landing in the church of the Augustinians.

Likewise, in the Dominican Republic, the canvas with the painting of its patron saint, Our Lady of Altagracia, in the first half of the XVII century, flew several times from the private oratory of an exemplary family in the town of Salvaleón de Higüey, to the place where she wanted to be venerated.

Our Lady of Monti would not be, then, the only case of prodigious translation of a painting of Mary. Perhaps it is that of a fresco painting. In this way, Our Lady, under her invocation of Madonna dei Monti, while rewarding the great devotion that Calasanz professed to her, was going to give solidity with her promise to the Pious Schools that she herself had contributed to found.

According to one of the witnesses of the Process of Beatification of Calasanz, the idea of dedicating himself to the education of children was inspired to him in one of his many visits to his temple in “rione dei monti”. “On this occasion - the witness affirms - seeing in that street a great number of vagabond and ignorant children, he thought that it would be necessary and at the same time a great service to God to teach them the Christian Doctrine. Reflecting on the answer that Jesus gave to St. John, Pauperes evangelizantur, but conscious that if he decided to teach only Christian Doctrine it would be difficult to gather and retain them, he thought that would be more fruitful and successful to teach them, in addition, to read and write, grammar and abacus, according to their respective ability and application. He immediately took the resolution to gather them for this purpose and effectively began this pious work, I seem to have understood, in Santa Dorotea”. So much for the witness. In this statement we have the initial nucleus of that inner voice Look, Joseph, look and the Tibi derelictus est pauper (The poor have been entrusted to you) with which hagiographic fantasy adorned with prodigious supernatural interventions what was indeed an inspiration, although within the common ways of divine grace.

It confirms this Marian initiative in the foundation of the Pious Schools, what Calasanz wrote to Fr Paul Grien, on October 20, 1646: “It is necessary that we turn to the help of the Blessed Virgin, under whose protection this work was founded”.

12. Calasanz and the modern science

It was in XVII century that science took new directions. Bacon of Verulam and René Descartes were its two most conspicuous reformers. But while Descartes had some successes with the application of his method, Bacon’s method gave its inventor no other glory than that of having formulated it.

Not for this reason was the experimental method sterile in its values. In the same XVII century, scientific geniuses addicted to this methodology shone, among whom the distinguished Galileo Galilei stands out. We can, therefore, establish a parallel between Descartes and not Bacon, but Galileo, because if these two are identified in the evaluation of the method, the latter is ahead in the practical results obtained by the same.

Descartes, proceeding a priori, extracts all his science, more geometrico, from the consciousness of the self, while Galileo, inducing a posteriori, wants to submit everything to experience. And so, while Descartes lays the foundations of his philosophy enclosed near a stove, in Germany, where the Emperor’s coronation had brought him, Galileo invented a telescope to make his experience reach far beyond the narrow circle that could be encompassed by immediate observation.

It is unquestionable that both methods represented a very significant triumph over the tendency of the time to postpone the data obtained by experience to the aphorisms of the ancient philosophers.

Both methods, that of Galileo and that of Descartes, were used by Calasanz, in his eagerness to Christianize science, to direct it by its legitimate channels; of which, proud of its first conquests, already in its beginnings it tried to deviate. For this reason, he put all his efforts into making it Christian, not only by halting its steps when it went beyond the light of reason alone, but above all, by ensuring that were Christians who would have the mission of guarding and propagating such a sacred deposit. For he said: “If the knowledge of the truth leads us away from the Truth, by what road shall we return to it?”.

Of his appreciation for the experimental method, aside from his friendship and admiration for Galileo, I will cite two testimonies of its use in the early days of the Pious Schools. The first is the famous, at that time, Trattato della direzione di fiumi, (Treatise on the direction of rivers), by the Piarist Francesco Michelini, heir to Galileo’s chair at the University of Pisa. It was a work which, according to Fr. A. Canata was the fruit of “costly trial experiments”. The second, also taken from the same book The Catholic Educator according to the spirit of St. Joseph Calasanz is a letter of our holy Founder in which he replies to another one in which he was told him of the invention and construction of some instruments of Physics by a Piarist residing in Messina.

It is evident that the system of deducing from the “I” all the knowledge proposed by Descartes could not be completely applied in the pedagogical field, as John-Jacques Rousseau tried to do a century and a half later. There is a great analogy between the pedagogical method of the Genevan and the philosophical method of Descartes. If Descartes deduced from the “I” all the knowledge, the other makes emanate from the conscience of his Emile all the knowledge necessary for his education. But the method of Jean-Jacques is utopian, and the practice confirms its inadequacy. This was implicitly recognized by Pestalozzi. After affirming that “all that one is, all that one wants, all that one should, starts from oneself,” he reduces the task of the educator to gathering “in a narrow circle what nature scatters at a great distance”, in order to help the natural development of the learner. This is, with very few variations, the essence of the Rousseaunian thesis. Then, however, he is compelled to make this confession: “But, in the circle of the child’s experience one does not find sufficient motives for this point of view, that of education”. So, Pestalozzi has to recourse to maternal authority for the youngest children, and to God’s authority for the older ones.

Descartes also shunned definitions, on the pretext that “there are things that in wanting to define them we make them more obscure, for since they are very simple and clear, it is impossible for us to know and understand them better than by themselves”. It is evident and praiseworthy this attitude Descartes adopted in order to discard the farrago of distinctions and definitions of Scholasticism, but it does not cease to have disastrous pedagogical results, if it is conceptualized in an absolute way. It is not enough for us, much less for the child, the intimate awareness of things. Correctly Pestalozzi was right on this point, when he said that “in order to clarify the child’s dark conscience, he needs language”. It is necessary to provide the child with a precise terminology so that he can master the knowledge that he is acquiring of the surrounding world. For, as Balmes says: “The lack of precision of words indicates confusion in ideas”. This was the opinion of Calasanz. Even if he did not judge, like the pedagogue of Burgdorf, that the first reading book for the child should be the dictionary, the saint ordered that already in the lower classes, after the reading exercises, the teacher should explain “some difficult words and some abbreviations”.

Nor could Calasanz follow Descartes in his exaggeration of the usefulness of the method, going so far as to consider it nothing less than omnipotent as far as learning is concerned. Far from believing in the equal genius of all men, attributing the variety of opinions to the “diversity of methods”, he admitted the immense distances that mediate from one talent to another. Like Balmes, he was convinced that few men, or perhaps none, “attain an equal capacity for everything. Thus, consciously or unknowingly, he admitted with Luis Vives that “there are men who are very suitable for manual labor, while others, on the other hand, devote themselves to abstract things; that “there are men who are constantly attentive to themselves, others on the other hand continually direct their eyes towards objective matters”.

Eloquent testimony of this criterion of Calasanz is the separation introduced, already at the beginning of the Pious Schools, between humanistic studies and technical or commercial studies, the admission of the children of artisans to the study of the humanities, and the vocational orientation introduced from the foundation of his work.

There is, however, a point of contact of Calasanz with Descartes: the teaching or education of the art of thinking well, not by the rules of logic, but by the exercise of mathematics. The author of the Discourse on the Method says that he practiced them, as a preparation to enter into the investigation of his new method. We also have an eloquent example of this, from the early times of the Pious Schools, narrated by Father Vincenzo Viviani, one of the last Piarist disciples of Galileo. Having this Father asked Fr Clement Settimi who was secretary of Galileo when he lost his sight, which was the best book to learn logic, Fr Clement replied, pointing to a geometry book: “Here is the best logic in the world”.

13. Religious pictures, rosaries and agnusdei for prizes

Calasanz rewarded the application and conduct of the pupils in his schools with promotion to dignities, the highest of which was that of the infant Emperor; also, with titles or points of honor and, especially, with objects of devotion. “I have sent you -writes to Fr Salazar, resident in Cagliari (Sardegna)-, a large box with many devotional items for prizes of the students”. In other letters he mentions the sending of holy pictures, rosaries, images, booklets and agnusdei or Agnus Dei (EGC 13, 182, 213, 746, 800, 1009, 1325). Already in the Breve Relazione, the so-called Basic Document of Calasanz’ Pedagogy, in which he describes how his schools functioned in the year 1610, it is mentioned that “to the most diligent are given little printed saints”. These were printed images, some of them to promote devotion to the Blessed Sacrament (EGC 923), others to Jesus Crucified or to Our Lady (EGC 182), while a good number of them represented saints, especially “children saints” (EGC 213). There were those that represented the main saint of each day of the year, surrounded by the most outstanding scenes of their historical or legendary hagiography.

When Calasanz was under the despotism of Mario Sozzi, he went to the latter to ask for money for these objects of devotion, to reward the students. Fr. Vincent Berro, at one time secretary and confidant of the saint, tells that having received a donation of about one hundred escudos, he immediately brought all the money to Fr. Mario, in his capacity as Superior. And once it was given to him, he asked for a small amount to buy pictures to send to Fathers who asked for them as a reward for the students’ application. The answer was: “Take it”, and while he deposited in the saint’s hand one or more small coins called giulii, he sarcastically counted “one, two, three, four, etc.” When he had reached twenty-five, the old Saint Old Man told, “enough.” And without offering him any more money, he dismissed him coldly.

They were also among the prizes awarded in the schools of Calasanz agnusdei or Agnus Dei (EGC 447 and 1302). Their purchase is listed among the expenditure in the Libro di uscite of some schools. These agnusdei were small medallions of wax, which had coined a Paschal Lamb with the book of the seven seals or with the banner of the risen Christ. They were blessed, in the beginning, by the Pope. The use of this object comes from the Christians of the first centuries, who, on Holy Saturday collected the wax that dripped from the paschal candle. Later on, the wax was molded in the form of the aforementioned medallions, which were displayed on the altar during the Easter Saturday Mass. They were used as protection against the devil. Apparently, they replaced ancient pagan amulets, such as pendants around the necks of children. This custom became an Easter Saturday ritual, when they were distributed in the Sistine Chapel. In the time of Calasanz, Pope Paul V granted the right to prepare these wax agnusdei to the Cistercian monks of the Holy Cross in Rome.

The attribution of defensive powers against the devil to these agnusdei, arrives in some places until the XIX century, at least. Thus, to a fragment of one of these pieces of wax inside a small pocket, pinned to the clothes or to the door of the house, it was attributed the faculty to protect against the satanic attacks. Similar use had, in some parts, the so-called Corpus wax. It consisted of small circular seals of red wax coined with the image of the Crucifix, which on Maundy Thursday were placed inside or under the tabernacle, during the time in which Jesus was honored in the so-called Monument.

This character of sacred relic, attributed to the wax by a contact or closeness with the Holy Host, is confirmed in a letter of our Blessed Peter Casani which mentions the conjunction between the agnusdei and fragments of bones of the saints. The letter is addressed to his relative Fr. Charles Casani, also a Piarist. In it the Blessed writes: “If I can get in my hands an Agnus Dei filled with the bone powder of the twelve Apostles and other saints, which I think it is logical to believe are among the safest coming from the hand that I know, I will send it to you”. The Counter-Reformation environment in which the cult due to relics was enhanced, and opposed by the Protestants, can give the explanation of a belief that is as naive as it is implausible.

14. The educational efficacy of example

The Castilian saying goes that “there is no better preacher than Friar Example”. Calasanz was very convinced of the efficacy and the eloquence of facts. Alluding to St. Francis of Assisi, who, just by walking around the city with another friar, affirmed that they had been preaching with the exemplarity of his presence alone, our founder wrote to Fr. Stephen Cherubini: “It is worth more to preach with an example of modesty, of humility, of patience in any adversity, than a lot of sermons”. In addition to this exemplarity which the saint wished to see shine in every teacher, he was always addicted to what we would call today vicarious learning (that is based on the observation of a model), and also to what some call the pedagogy of the hero. He therefore wished to narrate examples to his pupils, especially those of holy children. This is how he told in his Constitutions (317, 328) to confessors and preachers when they had to deal or address the children. In the Common Rites, it is prescribed that teachers converse with their pupils by telling them “some example of virtue rewarded and of vice punished”. In a letter to Father Castilla, he asks him to see to it that all the teachers, at least two days a week, relate some examples suited to the ability of the students. The Costituzioni del Collegio Nazareno order that, the readings that are taken at meals in that boarding school, should begin with the life of the saint of the day. For the use of the professors, Fr. John Francis Apa collected a Centuria di esempli notabili di alcuni Fanciulli e Giovani, a collection of examples ordered according to the ten commandments of the Decalogue. This work was in manuscript during Calasanz’ lifetime and was printed in 1649 in Naples.

The saint also wanted the professors, especially those of the humanities, to compose epigrams in praise of the saints of each day, which, written with excellent calligraphy were to be posted on the door of the school or church. He also distributed holy pictures of the saint of the day with the main scenes of his life.

Although he was very cautious in allowing theatrical representations with children, since they would distract them from their studies, he gave in exceptionally when it was a question of stagings the lives of saints or symbolic representations of them, allowing the students to act as actors or to attend as audience to those that took place in Rome for the Carnivals, to counteract the debauchery of such dissolute days (EGC 389, 849, 1967 y 2334).

The Calasanzian epistolary is also peppered with examples. Sometimes they are biblical, like the allusions to Adam, Abraham, Esau and Job (EGC 1817, 2197, 3384 and 3808). Actually, Job is presented as an example, for not saying “the Chaldeans stole my camels”, but “the Lord, who gave them to me, has taken them from me”. From the New Testament he reiterates the triumphal entry of Jesus into Jerusalem cheered by the children, to which he also alludes in the paragraph 108 of his Constitutions (EGC 437). He also proposes the example of St. Paul, of whom God, in a certain way, wasted his gifts as a conspicuous propagator of the Gospel, allowing him to remain imprisoned for two years (EGC 2498).

He also gives examples of the saints. St. Augustine is presented as a model in his refraining from conversing with women, even those of his own family (EGC 2122). St. Maurus is given as an example of submission to the divine designs, when, on going to found in France, God tested him with illness (EGC 2276). He mentions the contradictions experienced by St. Dominic of Guzmán, when his friars resisted to accept his proposals of poverty (EGC 2232). St. Francis of Assisi is a model of humility in renouncing to the priesthood, in contrast to the Piarists who aspired to be ordained when they had professed as lay brothers (EGC 3706). On two occasions he keeps in mind as a warning, of how much the famous Friar Elia made suffer St Francis (EGC 2232 and 3052). Great example of evangelical poverty gave St. Raymond of Peñafort, when accompanying the Cardinal legate of the Pope, in the preaching of the Crusade, he did not want to change the regular observance in his way of life (EGC 1951). He puts St. Charles Borromeo, of whom he was very devoted, as an exemplary bishop of intense spirituality (EGC 3461).

In letter 2362, he proposes to Fr. Joseph Frescio the example of patience of that widow of Alexandria who asked the Patriarch to choose for her a poor woman to lodge and serve her in his own house, but who had to bear her with meritorious patience when she revealed ungrateful and insulting in word and deed. In this same letter, Calasanz expresses an opinion that shows the high pedagogical and pastoral concept in which he had the examples: “Li esempii sono scritti per nostra dottrina” (the examples are written for our teaching).

Nor did he hesitate to relate examples from his own life, when a good advice was needed to those who required it; as was the case with his exemplary refusal of the temptation of Valencia, when he was a student and a lady wanted to seduce him. Or the examples raised by the contact with people and clergy, when he was visitor in the lands of the diocese of Urgel located in the Pyrenees mountains.

It is not surprising that Calasanz was so enthusiast of illustrating his teachings with examples since his biographers already present him to us as a child climbing on a chair, at the signal of his teacher, reciting before his fellow disciples the Miracles of Our Lady, those versified by Gonzalo de Berceo, just as his exemplary mother made him learning by heart.

15. Calasanz and the Graphic Arts

Johannes Gutenberg was born more than six hundred years ago. The year was 1397. Initially dedicated to coin minting, his father’s trade, he moved to Strasbourg at the age of 30, where he worked as a stone polisher, mirror maker and bookbinder, most of them manuscripts. Perhaps it was this last occupation that suggested him a better printing technique than that of carving page by page with a burin on a wooden board all the writing that was to be engraved. Around 1440 he made his first attempts at what he called writing, when he conceived the idea of composing the text with movable metallic types, capable of an indefinite use. Around 1450 he used an alloy of lead and antimony that gave greater consistency and is the one which has been used almost up to the present day. The first book printed with this new process was the Bible.

Thanks to this type of printing, the diffusion of the book took on a breadth never before known. Gutenberg did not actually invent the art of printing, since in Japan as early as the VIII century A.D., the carving of characters on wooden boards was already in use. But it was the genius of Mainz who greatly facilitated the printing of books and writings, with the use of independent metallic type for each letter.

Book publishing was booming throughout the XVI century. But, after 1620, experienced a continuous and generalized decline. The bookstore trade is deteriorating, due to inquisitorial harassment and sieges, monopolies and shortages of quality paper.

Great were the benefits of this great revolution in the presses. Admiring its contributions to civilization, Rolewinck wrote: “The art of printing is the art of the arts. By its rapid diffusion, the world has been enriched and enlightened with a treasure of knowledge and science, magnificent and hitherto hidden”. And Jacob Wimpheling, referring to the Christian cause, affirmed: “As in former times the missionaries of Christianity went forth, so now the disciples of the sacred art go forth from Germany to all countries, and their printed books are, as heralds of the Gospel, preachers of the truth and science”. Non verbo, sed scripto praedicantes (Our preaching is not oral but written), such was the motto of the Fraterherren, the Brothers of the Common Life, the first representatives of humanist pedagogy and great propagators of the “marvelous secret of Gutenberg”.

But the Gutenbergian printing press was also the vehicle that spread throughout Europe the paganizing currents of the Renaissance and the heretical currents of the Reformation. Although it can be considered a reaction, the first printing press exclusively for the exclusive purpose of Catholic propaganda were founded by St. Francis de Sales. This has earned him the antonomastic title of “Apostle of the Good Press” and, in some countries, he has been erected as the patron saint of journalists.

Calasanz also distinguished himself in this field of the press apostolate. He wanted that the books used in his schools be of good printing (optimis caracteribus insigniti: di buona e chiara stampa). And as for the content, such that not only the pupils, but also the parents, would benefit from reading them.

Calasanz also wanted the books of religious formation to contain beautiful illustrations. For this reason, he took care that both the illustrations in the books and the single prints (pious images engraved on paper with a copper plate) were the object of careful printing, for which he eagerly awaited the alms from his benefactors (EGC, 386).

He procured quality paper for the reprinting of the book of Fr. Filippo Angelini O.P. Avviamento… per bene confessarsi e comunicarsi. A consignment was sent him from Foligno, a city with an ancient reputation in the publishing industry, where the Divina commedia was printed for first time in 1472 (EGC, 956).

An example of his exquisite sense of art, especially that of engraving, is that he retained until his death in his room where he slept, among a few books, that one whose abbreviated title is: “Compendio de las solemnes fiestas en la beatificacion de N.M.S. Teresa de Jesus” printed in Madrid in 1615, and of which Diego de San José is the author. It is a book that is highly valued by scholars of engraving. Figure in it the copy that the Flemish Jan Wierix made of the portrait of Saint Teresa painted by Adrian Boom. The book offers a cover, very ornate according to the taste of that time; it is an intaglio print by the famous Flemish engraver Pieter Perret, in the style he introduced in Spain from the frontispiece of the Conquest of the Moluccan Islands, by B.L. de Argensola, the typical frontispiece of the Plantinian school of Antwerp.

16. The daily celebration of the Holy Mass

In the Libro de los exemplos by A.B.C., a collection of anecdotes, which in the XV century, was compiled by Sánchez de Vercial, archdeacon of Valderas (Spain), there is one whose Latin epigraph translates as Celebrating Mass every day is very pleasing to God. It is written like the others in pre-Cervantine Castilian and based on the testimony of St. Gregory the Great. It narrates the holy death, prophesied beforehand, of a certain Cassius, bishop of Carmesia, as a reward for his pious “custom of saying Mass every day”.

But neither bishops nor priests were faithful to such a pious practice, which the present-day Canon Law “strongly recommends, even if it cannot be celebrated with the assistance of the faithful” (Canon 904). In the time of Calasanz, it was considered very exemplary the priest who often celebrated the Eucharist, even if not on a daily basis. Von Pastor writes that one of his contemporaries, Pope Gregory XIII, said Mass several times a week, in addition to feast days and throughout Lent. St. Charles Borromeo celebrated every day, which was a cause, if not of scandal, at least of murmuring, from his diocesans. “What fault could our archbishop have committed,” they commented, “to deserve the punishment of celebrating Mass every day?”. Of another contemporary of Calasanz, St. Philip Neri, his biographer Giovanni Marciano narrates “that from the time he was ordained priest, he never ceased for any reason to celebrate daily, and this custom was observed by the other better-known priests. And those who, under the pretext of resting or going to the countryside for a day’s rest, he would say: “Whoever seeks recreation outside the Creator, and consolation outside Jesus Christ, will never find it”.

It is very likely that St. Cajetan of Thiene had much to do with the revival of this praiseworthy custom. In the course of the XIV and XV centuries, it was clear the ineffectiveness of synodal and conciliar decrees and sanctions for the reform of the clergy. So, the idea arose of reviving the authentic clerical life by the example of clerics who, by virtue of their character as regulars, would be subject to religious discipline. Thus arose the first of the so-called Orders of Regular Clerics, to which our Pious Schools would later belong. This idea of such a singular reform of the clergy arose, like that of Calasanz, in the shelter of the venerable walls of St. Dorotea in Trastevere. The “Oratorio del Divino Amore”, a group of laymen and priests, used to gather there with the relentless intent of a reform of the Church. Saint Cajetan belonged to it and this Oratory of Saint Dorotea is considered the germ of the Religious Order of the Theatines. Saint Cajetan, in his Constitutions, demands to the religious of his Order clericalem vitam ducere, quae inserviat tamquam typus et exemplar ecclesiasticis (to lead a clerical life that will serve as an example and model for ecclesiastics). Among such exemplarities, the daily celebration of the Holy Mass could not fail to figure. The same Constitutions, precepts: Sacerdotes quotidie missam celebrent (the priests will celebrate Mass every day). A precept that Calasanz picks up from these Constitutions and inserts it into paragraph 56 of the Piarist Constitutions, reinforcing it with the analogous one, inspired also of the Theatines, that the Clerics Regular Minor or Caracciolini inserted in theirs: Sacerdotes quotidie sacrificent. Not less could be expected from Calasanz, who demanded daily participation in the Holy Sacrifice from the students of his schools.

According to the testimony of Fr. Vicent Berro, former secretary of our Founder, he already celebrated the Holy Sacrifice daily, even before founding his Order. By the contrary, the negligence of the clergy in such a matter is not surprising, given the state in which the ecclesiastics of that time found themselves. Not even the clergy of the diocese of Rome attained the minimum level of theological and moral knowledge required for an acceptable fulfillment of their sacred duties. Guerrino Pelliccia affirms, on the basis of abundant and significant documentation that, in the XVII century, in order a priest to be approved in Rome to celebrate Mass, it was sufficient “to read straight and distinctly and to understand it at least grammatically, to pronounce and to accentuate appropriately what is contained in the office of the Mass”. In order to administer the sacraments, it was enough to “know the number of sacraments and the matter and form of each one and to know how to administer them”. For confession, in the case of having had a special preparation, it was necessary “to know how to distinguish between leprosy and non-leprosy, that is, between what is sin and what is not, and to impose the salutary penance.”

Nothing is said, in such documents, about the knowledge of the rubrics, while Calasanz was extremely meticulous in the observance of them. It is read in his Processes of Canonization that “he wanted his religious to observe strictly the ceremonies, as he himself did, reprimanding them when he noticed any fault”. And it is cited a severe punishment imposed by him on the sacristan for being slow in serving the cruets, “wishing in this way to testify to the seriousness of the least negligence in divine service”. No doubt Calasanz, like Teresa of Avila, would also be capable of affirming that “for the slightest ceremony of the Church, I would put myself to die a thousand deaths”. In his letters, he insists on the necessity for his religious to know the rubrics, especially those who were on the eve of being ordained priests. In the recreations of the religious, he wanted the liturgical ceremonies to be read and commented, even with the assistance of the lay brothers. Among the books found in his room after his death was the one entitled De ritibus Ecclesiae Catholicae, by John Stephen Durant, a faithful follower of the symbolic explanation of the liturgy, which his medieval namesake (William Durando of Mende) expounded in his famous Rationale divinorum officiorum, a book also used by Calasanz, when he held the position of master of ceremonies at the Cathedral of Urgel.

17. 400 years of school for all

It would seem that history is only interested in the resounding revolutions that have marked new directions for mankind. When these changes have been the object of a silent revolution, they go unnoticed, even if their impact has been among the most important ones. In terms of their transcendence, it would be difficult to find a revolution comparable to the one that gave access to the culture to all social classes. Four hundred years have passed since the date that marked such an important milestone in history as opening the doors of the school to anyone who wanted and could learn. In 1597 St. Joseph Calasanz opened the first free popular school in Europe. This is attested to, among others, by the historian Ludwig Von Pastor.

In a humble parish in the Roman Trastevere, the school for all had a silent beginning. But this was not the only contribution of Calasanz that imprinted new characters on the pedagogy of the West. The elementary school, until then was unitary, in which the instruction of infants was simultaneous with that of adults. Then began to be graded, as we know it today. This was also due to the work of Calasanz, who opened the way to an education that was both simultaneous and individualized, applying for the first and perhaps the only time, what today is called the “automatic promotion”. Staggered exams throughout the school year allowed students who had mastered the subjects to move up to the next level of the curriculum.

But the Calasanzian revolution did not stop there. It was a society characterized by impermeable social strata, in which the access of the manual worker and even the merchant and the craftsman to the upper echelons of society, private domain of the nobility, was prohibited. To admit to the study of the humanities -equivalent to what today we call middle or high school studies- anyone who did not belong to the nobility, whether by blood or upstart, it was considered little less than a political heresy.

For Sebastian de Covarrubias “each one in his state and way of life has order and limits”. The reason is given by Friar John de Pineda (+1597): “each of these states requires a different upbringing from the others”. The King of Spain Philip IV, in a Pragmatic of February 10, 1623, orders that “there cannot be studies of grammar in the hospices where foundlings and abandoned children are raised: and that the administrators and managers should be careful to apply them to other arts and particularly to the exercise of seamanship in which they will be very useful for lack of pilots”. This was the reason for the founding of San Telmo Seminary in Seville in 1681. Similar measures against the generalization of the teaching of the Humanities were adopted in other countries. As far as Italy, the most reliable testimony makes immediate reference to Calasanz, who had to bear great pains and merciless attacks for having opened the door of Latin grammar, Greek and Rhetoric to students belonging to the popular classes. One is the testimony of the philosopher Campanella, who dedicates to Calasanz and to his work one of the two apologies he wrote. The other was of Galileo Galilei, also a friend of Calasanz. In his writing, he brings the following accusations of his detractors against Calasanz´ social action, putting in their mouth: “...Besides, Aristotle teaches (7 Polit.) that in society it is necessary to distinguish between nobles and servants, assigning to the nobles the priesthood, the militia, the regime of the city; and to the servants the arts, trade, commerce, and agriculture, etc., and does not allow the transit of the latter to the former and the former to them. And he says that the nobles are capable of happiness, while the servants are not. But the Pious Schools of Calasanz teach sciences to the wretches and the poor and thus disturb the Republic...”. The same aberrations were refuted by the then ambassador of Spain in the Papal States, Saavedra Fajardo, in his book Idea of a Christian political prince.

This rigid separation of classes based on their nature was being challenged by the emergence of an egalitarian concept of humanity, which had its origins, in good part, by the discovery of America. With it, started a turning point the concept according to which the peoples beyond the Pillars of Hercules were beings in communication with demons, idolaters, cannibals, sodomites. Ginés de Sepulveda sustained the right of the Spaniards to dominate them, based on the fact that they were beings as different from them “as monkeys are from men”. Against him polemicized Friar Bartolomé de las Casas, in the presence of the emperor Carlos V, demonstrating that “the natural laws and rules of the Law of Nations are common to all Christian and Gentile nations and of whatever sect, law, state, color and condition they may be without any difference”.

Despite this change of ideas, the separation of classes continued to deny the poor and commoners access to higher education. Calasanz was the first to dare to break down these barriers, to the point of to see his work destroyed by a Brief of Pope Innocent X, rather than admit that the teaching of the commoners should be reduced to what we now call basic or primary studies. The Secretary of State of Innocent X, Giovanni Giacomo Panciroli, -who, together with Mazzarino, made Europe be considered governed by two Italian cardinals- argued that the Pious Schools, founded by Calasanz, were harmful to the world because “they uplifted the poor”. Therefore, we owe to Calasanz not only the school for all, but also to have made any type of education, even in its higher grades, accessible to anyone who wanted and could have access to them.

Calasanz also has the glory of having extended in Italy the instruction and education from “the most tender years of life”. He admitted into his school children of ages which at that time were still considered proper for maternal care.

In Calasanz’ time, judging by the classical authorities invoked, the controversy initiated in ancient times persisted. Even in our days there are discussions whether one should “teach your baby to read,” as the title of a controversial book says. The advocates of early learning relied mainly on the authority of Chrysippus of Soli; their opponents invoked Hesiod, who have maintained that, at an early age below seven years, the instruction of children should not be started. Erasmus of Rotterdam, in his Declamatio de pueris statim ac liberaliter instituendis and in his Colloquia, had already refuted the arguments of those who held that “the first age is too rough and unfit for disciplines and too tender to be able to bear the work of studies. Consequently, they maintain that the performance of that age was very less, so it was not necessary to make expenditures or to support the work of studies”. So, Erasmus adds: “I find painful to believe that a man of mature years can really be pious, if he was not accustomed to piety in his early years. There is nothing better learned than what is learned in childhood”. And here comes a sentence that Calasanz almost literally transfers to the foreword of the Constitutions he wrote for the Order of the Pious Schools: “The earlier the child is given to the one who is to form him, the happier will be the result”. It was not only in writing that Calasanz transferred this idea, ahead of others; he put it into practice in his schools.

Not everyone can pursue middle and higher education. Lack of talent and the economic situation of their parents sometimes required them to enter the world of work when their age permitted. Calasanz took advantage of a socioeconomic situation of that time. In the XVI century, an international network of exchange fairs began, where the major trade was in money combined with credit: bills of exchange were drawn or issued, oscillating according to the length or narrowness of the market. Trained people were required to certify the deeds, contracts, bonds and others. In France appeared the so-called “verificateurs” who certified titles (because they knew the writings) and certified accounts (because they knew the figures and the calculation). The science of writing corresponded to what today we ask of typography: the transcription of texts into a more legible form. The notary had to adopt different types of letters according to the services and it was necessary to resort to him, even knowing how to write, when it was necessary to draft a document destined to be notarized and whose reading could not be misleading. But these notaries were at the same time accountants: they knew how to keep double-entry account books, foreign exchange, the systems of weights and measures, whose variety made it difficult to establish equivalences. They were entrusted with the verification of accounts and calculations, as well as verifying deeds. For not everyone knew how to make accounts, not even prominent personalities in the world of letters. Montaigne declared that he could count “ni a jet ni a la piume”, neither with the abacus nor with the pen.

Calasanz takes advantage of this situation and opens up the area of commercial studies. Not all of his students will have access to university degrees. But another door was opened for them to enter into the life of society. With all this, Calasanz was aiming at the reform of this society and that of the Church. For, as Erasmus of Rotterdam had already pointed out a century before, if from the earliest years children are educated in piety and letters, it is to be expected that they will have a happy course in life through their participation in a society that has been tempered.

18. Calasanz and the christmas cribs

A teacher, not a Piarist, of the Pious Schools

Declared by Pius XII as patron of the Christian popular school, St. Joseph Calasanz contributed greatly to the use of the crib as a pedagogical and educative resource of religiosity in childhood. According to the famous historian Ludwing von Pastor (1854-1928) Calasanz was who, in 1597, founded in Rome, “the first free popular school in Europe”. Before Comenius, with this and other plastic procedures, Calasanz had already applied the intuitive method in his Pious Schools.

The initiator of what we could call “ pedagogy of the crib”, among the Piarists, was a teacher at Calasanz’ school, Caspar Dragonetti. He lived for 115 years and kept his energy and capacity for work until very old age. A contemporary describes him as follows: “he was healthy and robust, possessed a sonorous voice, never wore glasses and always kept all his teeth”. He was so popular in Rome and such was his fame as a teacher of Latin - for whose didactics he composed an original method - that Pope Urban VIII called him to develop before him and high dignitaries of his curia, a class of Latin, with which he astonished everyone by translating and commenting on a passage from Virgil.

Dragonetti’s humility moved him to choose not to be ordained a priest; he received only minor orders. Nor was he a Piarist, since he did not take religious vows, although he was greatly appreciated by Joseph Calasanz, the spiritual director of the centenarian old man. He was, therefore, a non-religious teacher, although he was always considered a Piarist.

The second free popular school was opened by Joseph Calasanz in 1616 in Frascati, a town near Rome. There he sent Fr. Dragonetti and soon we have evidence of his fondness - or rather devotion - to the crib, stimulated and maintained by the complaisance and collaboration of St. Joseph Calasanz. From Rome, the latter writes to Fr. Cananea on October 19, 1618: “Fr. Caspar, because of his great desire to leave something in perpetual memory in these Pious Schools of Frascati, has bought here figurines of quality to mount a nativity scene that will move great devotion. He has also brought with him many things necessary to make it to perfection in due time. I would be very pleased if you would do your utmost to help him in everything you can with your skills and knowledge of architecture”. The following year, going Dragonetti to Rome, Calasanz writes to Frascati to take great care (grandissima cura) of the figures that the old professor left there. According to the specialist Rudolf Berliner, it would surely be a somewhat complicated montage, with very delicate small figures, probably because the head - and perhaps the feet and hands - were made of wax.

In Rome, Father Dragonetti’s eagerness to represent the birth of Jesus in a plastic way did not diminish, but rather increased. His more than centenary age obliged him to take a long time for the construction of the nativity scene in the church of the Piarist school of San Pantaleo. Proof of this is that on October 27, 1625, the report of the Apostolic Visitation made to that church states that, in the chapel of Saint John the Baptist, it was not possible to examine the painting of this saint because was covered by the materials for the nativity scene that was to represent there in an honorable way (honorifice repraesentandum) the mystery of the birth of Our Lord. A biographer of Dragonetti also provides the following data: “Many things were done by the aforementioned Fr Caspar in order to represent worthily the Mystery of Christmas and that of the Epiphany of the Lord, both in Frascati and in Rome, building magnificent nativity scenes and in a certain chapel of St. Pantaleo, one with great sculptures of the entire Holy Family and also of the Holy Magi, of which the one called Caspar was sculpted in the image and likeness of the aforementioned Father”. At his death these statues remained in such a dignified place, because, in the Apostolic Visitation of December 22, 1661, when describing the chapels of the temple, it is stated that “the first of the four is entitled of the Most Holy Manger with the adoration of the Magi and various statues”. It was the wish of Father Dragonetti to be buried in this chapel and Calasanz fulfilled it just as he had expressed it to him in his last illness, as he notifies it in a letter to Fr. Castilla, ten days after his death, which took place on the eve of the Feast of the Immaculate Conception of the year 1628.

Calasanz and the pedagogy of the “crib”

Repeated is the reference to nativity scenes, as well as stimuli for their construction, found in Calasanz’ letters. From them we can deduce, among other details, that there was a transfer of figures from one school to another, who requested them, sometimes not being able to satisfy all of them. Likewise, it is clear the coexistence of different styles of cribs in the Piarist schools. The books of domestic economy and other documents show amounts destined to the expenses of the crib. There were even some who spent too much and Calasanz was forced to call to order, all the more so because the excessive expense was due to the desire to compete with other temples. In the construction of the cribs, Calasanz wanted them to appear “well devout” and to attract many people to visit them “for the greater glory of God and for our greater merit”.

Although built in the temples of the schools, the students participated more than as mere spectators or pious visitors in these nativity scenes. In a letter, dated October 13, 1628, addressed to Calasanz from Savona, Fr. Santino Lunardi writes, “We will manage to build in the church the nativity for the next Christmas and we will represent that sacred mystery as best we can. We will have some of the students recite a dialogue and other compositions for the spiritual good of the people who visit it”. The practices of religious piety before the nativity are always very present at Calasanz. Thus, in congratulating for Christmas the Abbess and Sisters of the Convent of St. Bernard, in Narni, he wished them that “the Lord may grant to all of you on these holy feasts the spirit of holy humility to converse with fruitfulness and spiritual consolation with the Most Holy Madonna and her little son and with St. Joseph, in front of the crib”. It was customary at that time for the nuns to renew their religious vows before the crib on the feast of the Epiphany, a day formerly destined for the consecration of virgins.

It was also customary to hand out to the nuns - and sometimes also to the faithful who visited the crib - leaflets containing an annually assigned personal patron saint protector, a phrase from Sacred Scripture and a virtue to be practiced during the year that had begun.

The dark days came for Calasanz. The enemies of his work were always powerful. The education of the children of the people by facilitating their access to the higher echelons of society, never seemed good to certain influential groups. They feared the undermining of that social order that did not allow the popular classes the minimum enjoyment of what were considered the peculiar and inalienable privileges of the upper classes. The conspiracy became so strong that it convinced the Pope himself, Innocent X, to sign on March 16, 1646, the practical destruction of Calasanz’ work, by prohibiting the admission of novices and facilitating the incardination of the Piarists to other religious orders or to the dioceses, of which the schools became dependent. Only the tenacity of a large group of Piarists, faithful to Calasanz and to their sacred commitments to the Order, facilitated that another Pope, Clement IX, would restore the Pious Schools on October 21, 1669, twenty-one years after the death of the Founder.

Meanwhile, the Piarists were frowned upon by some and pitied by others, the latter and the former foreshadowing an early demise of the Calasanzian work. At this moment of maximum desolation, some comforting letters arrived to Calasanz from Sardegna. A Piarist religious, not a priest, Brother Salvatore Signorini, built in Cáller a very artistic nativity scene with large life-size figures (figure grandi come uomini naturali), which attracted the attention of the whole city. Father Carlo M. Rosiani writes to Calasanz referring to such an extraordinary nativity scene, which “has left this city astonished, saying with one voice that we (the Piarists) are resurrected, being so that by the sayings of some, who love us too well, had been imbued with the idea that we were dissolving. But the demonstrations that we accomplish every day by Grace, convince them that they were deceived”. We can suppose that in his immense grief for the loss of his work, Joseph Calasanz would have received a soothing news with this letter that praised the crib of Brother Signorini, which had the virtue of vitalizing schools and educators in the city of Cáller, whose spirits were in such a state of decay.

The tradition of Nativity scenes has not been interrupted in the Pious School, even though the links that go from Calasanz to the present day have yet to be investigated. With regard to the present and the times immediately following our own, I would hope that they would not be forgotten some of the names of the Piarists who became famous for the construction of artistic nativity scenes. For many years it can be said that the whole of Pamplona (Spain) used to parade through the school of the Piarist Fathers to see the crib with special effects designed and built by Fr. Alejandro Pérez Altuna. What we could call the last edition of this nativity was given to the Pamplona Nativity Association, where it can be visited at present. In Valencia Frs José Ramón Ferrís and Vicente Frasquet made famous the one of the Calasanz School. The latter, in addition, for many years assembled, by order of the City Hall, the open-air nativity scene that during the Christmas holidays was exhibited in the square of the City of Turia called La Glorieta. Also, I would like to just mention some of the Piarist names that have stood out the most in this Christmas art: Faustino Osés, Antoni Peralva, Angel Mitjavila, Luis Gaja, Modest Galofré, Josep Forcada, Eusebi Oller, Angel Torra, Antoni Batlle, Joan Camp, Celestí Miguel. In the archives of the Piarist Province of Catalonia are preserved medals with which some of these nativity scene makers were awarded. Special mention deserves the nativity scenes that have been reinstalled in the places where they were built the first two promoted by St. Joseph Calasanz. In Frascati, in the 1920s, Fr. Domenico Contenti introduced luminous effects in the nativity of that Tusculan school. A layman, Tito Dolciotti, has continued his art to build it up to the present times. The Church of San Pantaleo in Rome, today as in the time of Fr Dragonetti, has a nativity scene built in Spain and then transferred to Rome and installed there personally by its author, Fr. Jesús Ramo. This Piarist, famous for his nativity scenes in Logroño, culminated his career in Madrid where his award-winning productions for the Instituto Calasanz de Ciencias de la Educación (ICCE) have earned him the title of Master Nativity Maker, awarded by the Association of Nativity Makers of the Spanish capital.

In this, as in other aspects, the pedagogy of St. Joseph Calasanz, the celestial patron of the Spanish teaching profession and of the Christian popular school, maintains today its pristine vitality.

19. The medal of the five saints

During the Roman period of Calasanz, the following saints were beatified: John of Sahagún (1601), Louis Beltrán (1608), Ignatius de Loyola (1609), Teresa of Jesús (1614), Thomas of Villanueva (1618), Pascual Baylón (1618), Isidore the farmer (1619), Peter of Alcántara (1619), Francis of Borja (1624) and John of God (1630). From the beatification of Saint Teresa he kept, among the few books in his room, “Compendio de las solemnes fiestas…” that the Carmelite Friar Diego of Saint Joseph composed giving an account of the solemn celebrations that were held on that occasion throughout Spain. This is a book of artistic and excellent typographic composition. In its inside there was a little leaf with a formula to prepare oneself to die well.

Likewise, in the Roman time of Calasanz, the following saints were canonized: Raymond of Penyafort (1601), Francis Nolasco (1628) and on January 5, 1622, the five saints to whom St. Joseph of Calasanz was so devoted; namely: Philip Neri, Ignatius of Loyola, Francis Xavier, Teresa of Jesus and Isidore the farmer. Pope Gregory XV, who canonized them, also professed great devotion to these five saints, confident in their powerful intercession before God. To the Elector of Bavaria, Duke Maximilian I, founder of the Catholic League in opposition to the Protestant Union and leader of the German Catholic party in the Thirty Years’ War, this Pope addressed a letter to in which he emphasized that the help of these five saints was to be especially effective in the fight against the heretics. So convinced was he of this that the Pontiff had little difficulty in acceding to the numerous petitions for their canonization that he received from various authorities, including the Emperor and the kings of France and Spain, so that he would deign to proceed to the canonization of the five Blessed. For the canonization of St. Ignatius, petitions were sent first by Louis XIII of France, then Maximilian of Bavaria and Isabella of Spain. To Ignatius, the Pope spontaneously joined that of Xavier. And although Teresa’s canonization had been asked by the Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand II, Gregory XV had already shown special veneration for the distinguished reformer of Carmel.

With the exception of St. Philip Neri, all were Spaniards. This motivated the presence in Rome of compatriots of Calasanz, postulators of the respective causes of canonization. A year later, Don Diego Barrionuevo, a Knight of the Order of Santiago, was still in Rome. He was perpetual Regent and Major Ensign, who came as procurator for the Beatification and Canonization of St. Isidore and who attended the first solemn mass of Fr. Castilla, as Calasanz informed Fr. Cananea, in a letter dated February 26, 1623. He also sent to Fr. Cherubini, on July 22, 1628, the hagiography of St. Francis Xavier written by Fr. Juan de Lucena.

On the occasion of this quintuple canonization, celebrations were held at St. Peter’s in the Vatican. Thirty-nine virtues of St. Isidore were depicted in them, inspired by the famous work entitled: Iconologia, ovvero descrittione dell’Imagini universali cavate dell’Antichitá et da altri luoghi, da Cesare Ripa Perugino. In this work, virtues, vices, affections and human passions personified are described. This book was used by Calasanz, who in a letter dated May 20, 1628, wrote to Fr, Castilla, resident in Frascati “Send me a book that you have there entitled Iconologia etc. of which we need for compositions to be made for the feast of the saints Justus and Pastor”. There is not the slightest doubt that he is referring to Cesare Ripa’s book, since during the XVII century - according to J.F. Esteban Lorente, of great competence in History of Art - the word “Iconologia” was applied exclusively to this work. (Cf. Tratado de Iconografía, Madrid, Istmo, 1990, p. 4). In the present library of our mother house of San Pantaleo, there is a copy of the 1625 edition, perhaps the one used by Calasanz.

Joseph Calasanz held in great esteem and veneration a medal with reliefs of the five canonized on January 12, 1622. He gave it as a gift to his benefactors (EGC 5790) and to his Piarist religious. Fr. Andrew Greyssing asked for it from the distant Nikolsburg, in a letter dated December 28, 1643. On August 29, 1626, Calasanz notifies Fr. Cherubini that perhaps he could send him two hundred of these medals. He tells him that they have a blessing from Pope Urban VIII, who does not grant it to others. In fact, Calasanz obtained, for this medal from the Roman Pontiff, the concession of a plenary indulgence under certain conditions, grace comparable to that of the privileged altar with plenary indulgence for each Mass celebrated on it. Calasanz had no doubts about this equation of the medal with the privileged altar. In a letter of May 6, 1634, addressed to Fr. Graziani, he ordered him to avoid some diocesan priests who received a special stipend for celebrating in the privileged altar in the chapel of the Neapolitan school of the Duchesca, “since - he affirms - the same plenary indulgence is acquired by the priest with the medal of St. Charles or of the five saints, as in the privileged altar”.

Nevertheless, in that private audience in which Pope Innocent X told Calasanz that he had nothing against him, when they were already plotting the ruin of the Pious School that would consummate the Innocentian decree of March 16, 1646, Calasanz asked the Supreme Pontiff to confirm the plenary indulgence applicable to the souls in Purgatory, for the medals of St. Charles Borromeo and the five saints. The Pope refused, saying: “If your medals have such a blessing, I will not take it away. But if they do not have it, I do not grant it, because it would be like granting them a privileged altar”. As I have indicated, privileged altars were those to which the privilege had been attached that every Mass celebrated on them, in suffrage of a deceased person, was granted plenary indulgence, a privilege that was also granted in a personal capacity to cardinals and to some priests in any altar in which they celebrated. The Apostolic Constitution Indulgentiarum doctrina of Paul VI abolished these privileges on January 1, 1967.

The category of the five canonized, the unusual fact of a quintuple canonization and his intention to make them advocates of the Catholic cause against the Protestants in the Thirty Years’ War, aroused in Calasanz a globalized devotion to the five intercessors, as expressed by Pope Gregory XV in the prayer on the day of his canonization: “God who glorifies those who glorify you and honors you in the honors of your saints, grant propitiously that all of us who venerate the glorious merits of Saints Isidore, Ignatius, Francis, Teresa and Philip, may we experience their patronage with you”.

20. The gift of agility and the visit to the seven basilicas

In the Process of Beatification of Calasanz, the Promoter of the Faith (popularly called Devil’s Advocate), Bishop Prospero Bottini, expressed himself in this way. “It is said that from 1592 to 1617, the Servant of God was at the service of Cardinal Colonna, he belonged to the Confraternities of the Suffrages, of the Twelve Apostles, of the Pilgrims, of the Christian Doctrine and of the Wounds of St. Francis, made the visit to the Seven Churches, daily for seven years or for fourteen years, as Bandoni says, and he made other charitable exercises together with St. Camillo de Lellis in the hospitals and prisons of the Urbe [Rome], etc. And all these reports are based on general hearsay, in public voice and fame and even in the testimony of the Servant of God himself. And what is more serious, it seems implausible that, while in the service of Cardinal Colonna, he had so much free time to devote to so many and varied ministries”.

Of all these activities, the most noteworthy was the visit to the seven Basilicas, for it is humanly impossible to visit them all in a single day without neglecting the obligations of the school ministry. These churches are the four jubilee churches, namely St. Peter’s in the Vatican, St. Paul’s Outside the Walls, St. John Lateran and St. Mary Major. To these are added three more: St. Sebastian “ad Catacumbas”, Saint Cross of Jerusalem and Saint Laurent Outside the walls. The route is about twenty kilometers. To the time spent on it, we must add the time spent for each visit in the aforementioned temples. This was a devotion of ancient Roman tradition, to which St. Philip Neri gave great impetus, particularly during Carnival and Lent. In it these urban pilgrims occupied a whole day, according to one author. An indication of the popularity of this devotion are two books published during the life of Calasanz: the one by Ottavio Panciroli, entitled I tesori nascoti dell’alma città di Roma (1625) and that of the Oratorian Giovanni Severano, Memorie sacre delle sette chiese di Roma e di altri luoghi che si trovano per le strade. Since its institution by Boniface VIII in 1300, to win the Jubilee, the four Jubilee Churches should be visited, for thirty days the inhabitants of Rome and only fifteen days for foreigners. They were to be visited in a day, so they remained open at night.

Regarding Calasanz’ visits to the seven churches - apart from the exaggerations of Fr. Bandoni, who affirms that these visits lasted fourteen years-, the first biographers -the author of the Breve Notizia and Berro- limit themselves to say, without specifying, that he was very assiduous in these visits, that he visited them very often. Berro points out that, if he could not visit them during the day, he visited them at night. In the Beatification Process, Fr. Scassellati, affirmed that he visited them both during the day and at night. Brother Ferrari, limited them to the Holy Year of 1600, and Fr. Armini affirmed the same. And Fr. Morelli testified “that he visited, among other activities, the Seven Churches almost every day, from which he returned in time to run the school; and he said this on the occasion of remarking to him that he exaggerated the excellent complexion that God had given him, and I heard him tell it more than once”.

There is no doubt that the admiration of the declarants makes it difficult to deny the extraordinary nature of this Calasanzian practice. This is what Fr Severino Giner affirms. Taking the sleep from his eyes and lantern in hand, we can imagine him in this pious nocturnal journey, as Father Morelli seems to insinuate. Neither even before the teaching ministry in the Holy Year of 1600, we cannot consider it possible that he spent a whole day in these visits. The activities of attending to the pilgrims would absorb a great deal of his time. Although his inscription in the Confraternity of the Holy Trinity of Pilgrims and Convalescents dates, apparently, from July 10, 1600, but before that time, on July 18, 1599, he had previously been enrolled in the Confraternity of the wounds of Saint Francis. And it is on record that both confraternities received money from the Pope and the Cardinals to welcome the indigent pilgrims who came to Rome in that Jubilee Year.

This - let us call - spatiotemporal antinomy of the daily activity of Calasanz, would have at least one of three explanations:

1. The one to which modern hagiographers of Calasanz are inclined, could be summarized in these paragraphs of Fr. Giner: “The most plausible explanation is that during the Holy Year he wanted to win the jubilee a few times, and if each jubilee demanded thirty days of visits to the four basilicas, he could give the impression that he made them almost daily. Perhaps the days of feast or vacation days he completed the tour of the seven churches and on school days he would visit two basilicas in the morning before dawn and another two at sunset”. Although it can be admitted that Calasanz repeated the visits to earn the jubilee, as it is recorded Clement VIII did it in 1600, this explanation does not attend to the totality of what is declared in the Process of Beatification of Calasanz.

2. It could be a spiritual visit to the Seven Churches. It is recorded, according to Fathers Berro and Caputi, that to a young crippled girl, miraculously cured by Calasanz, in 1600, he taught her to make daily spiritual visits to the aforementioned churches. “She would go mentally to St. Peter’s and at the door he would humble himself with the act of contrition. Then she would visit the seven altars and ended prostrating herself before the Confession, make the act of faith and bid farewell to the Prince of the Apostles. She would then set out for St. Paul’s and prayed the Most Holy Rosary along the way. She fulfilled her devotions in that basilica and then went on pilgrimage with her imagination to St. Mary Major, effectively praying more mysteries of the Rosary. At one of the seasonal stops, she would devoutly hear Mass and at the priest’s communion she would approach the communion rail and practiced spiritual communion with her normal thanksgiving...”. And so went the whole course of this mental pilgrimage. If this hypothesis perhaps solves the problem of the journey on foot, it does not solve the problem of the time required by the pious acts performed during that long journey. On the other hand, it is in contradiction with the affirmations of the witnesses of the Process.

3. A third hypothesis resorts to the supernatural aspect of the facts, as did his hagiographers up to the Critical Biography of Fr. Bau, although without explaining how. It would be one of the extraordinary mystical phenomena, the so-called “agility”. This consists in moving bodily and almost instantaneously from one place to another, bridging distances of any length. It is not a question of bilocation, a mystical phenomenon that occurred in our St. Pompilius. In the venerable Glycerio Landriani it is not clear from the Berro’s two narrations, whether it was bilocation or action at a distance, when, at the death of the said venerable in the Novitiate, Calasanz received the announcement of his death when he heard three knocks on the door of his room in San Pantaleo, knocks that were interpreted as a request for permission to die, since the knocking ceased when the saint gave him his blessing.

That the phenomenon of “agility” occurs in still mortal bodies is attested to by the Bible, in the cases of Habakkuk and the deacon Philip. Similar cases of agility appear in hagiographies of saints. Saint Anthony of Padua, to defend his father, accused of murder because the assassins had thrown the corpse through the wall of his house, moved, in a single night, from Padua (Italy) to Lisbon, brought the dead man back to life so that he could declare that Antonio’s father had no knowledge of his death, returning after to the previous state, and St. Anthony returned to Padua with the same speed the following night. Similar cases are told of St. Philip Neri and St. Martin de Porres. It remains in doubt if it is bilocation or “agility” what St. Teresa says of St. Peter of Alcántara: “A year before he died, he appeared to me while he was absent and said that he was going to rest”.

Analogous to this mystical phenomenon of “agility” and at times concomitant with it is that of a prodigious elasticity of time. This would also explain the mysterious daily visit of Calasanz to the seven churches. Thus of St. Patrick, an emulator of the centenary genuflections of St. Bartholomew and St. Martha and her companions in their convent of Tarancon; it was read, in the Office of Matins, that every day he prayed the whole psalter, with hymns and canticles, and added to it two hundred prayers and bent his knees a hundred times to praise God, without neglecting the obligations of a life of intense activity. It is also said that Calasanz repeated every day a thousand times the invocation “Mary, Mother of God”. But similar phenomena have occurred in servants of God of our times. From Fr. William Doyle, S.I. (1873-1917), we read that “his aspirations, multiplied to a hundred thousand, were for him the costliest of sacrifices”. From the Belgian Brother of the Christian Schools, Mutien-Marie de Ciney, killed in a bombardment in 1940, it is said that after a constant and heroic rehearsal based on fervent prayers that he repeated a thousand, two thousand, and even three thousand times a day, he came to simplify the procedure enormously by changing the fervent prayers for aspirations, with which he came to control, by an ingenious method of accounting, the figure of three hundred and seventy thousand aspirations of love in a day, on January 30, 1935.

Perhaps this mystical phenomenon of “agility” occurred twice more in Calasanz, if it was not bilocation. During his lifetime, he appeared twice to Fr. Caspar Croce: once in the Novitiate while the saint was residing in San Pantaleo; another time from there to Frascati, where that Father had taken the novices.

21. The book of Calasanz

Bossuet, in his Discours sur l’Agonie de Jesu-Christ, says: “There is nothing in the world so great as Jesus Christ; there is nothing so great in Jesus Christ as his Sacrifice; there is nothing so great in his Sacrifice as his last sigh”. The Passion of Jesus was the object of the kerygma, already on the very day of Pentecost. The extent given to it in the Gospels indicates the importance given to it in the catechesis of primitive Christianity. Paul does not want to know or preach anything other than Christ crucified (1 Cor 1:23 and 2:2).

In Religious Orders, it has always been given a prominent place -perhaps the most prominent- in the devotions prescribed in their Rules, Constitutions and traditions that derive from the genuine foundational sources. For St. Joseph of Calasanz, devotion to the Passion of Jesus occupies a preeminent place, both in his personal practices, as well as in what he ordered or recommended to his religious, the Piarists.

Calasanz, as follower of what we would call tradition, considered the Passion of Christ as his favorite book, his book par excellence, and so he wanted his religious to consider it. He wrote to Fr Stefano Busdraghi on January 18, 1631: “I will try to send as soon as possible two books of the Exercises of Fr Don Sancio and six or eight of the Imitation of Christ or Kempis, in the vulgar language, and if you think they will be useful to you, I will send you more, as well as the Instruction of the novices of Fr. John of Jesus Mary. But the true book in which all should study is the Passion of Christ, which gives the wisdom suitable to the state of each one”. I do not know what Sancio’s exercises are, nor if it is a spiritual work or one of the didactics of Brocense, also nicknamed “Santio”. The books of Fr. John of Jesus Mary are entitled Instructio Novitiorum and Instructio Magistri Novitiorum.

There were several saints who called the Passion of Christ a book. St. Francis of Assisi to a friar who asked to advise him on a book for his greater spiritual usefulness, he replied: “Read the book of the cross”. On another occasion he declared: “Nothing is so delightful to me as the life and Passion of the Lord, which is familiar and frequented by me, and if I were to live to the end of the world, I would need no other reading”. St. Bonaventure was asked by St. Thomas Aquinas about the books where he learned his science. He limited himself - it is said - to showing him a crucifix. This is how Zurbarán painted it in one of the canvases of the life of the saint for the Franciscan College of Seville. An analogous gesture is also attributed to the same Aquinas, responding to a similar question. Saint Philip Benizi, on his deathbed, exclaimed: Give me my book! They offered him several, but he refused them, repeating with great vehemence: “My book, my book! As they noticed that his gaze was directed to the crucifix, they brought it close to him. And St. Philip exclaimed radiantly: “This is indeed my book, I have read it many times, and I want to finish my life by reading it. Following this tradition, the same sentence appears on the lips of other saints and servants of God.

Our venerable Piarist Chrysostom Salistri wrote: “O my Jesus, how great vanity is the science that is not learned from You! You are my only book and in it I have found all the treasures of heavenly knowledge and wisdom, which, compared to what is learned in the books of the world is the same as trying to compare light with darkness”. Saint Gabriel of Our Lady of Sorrows considered the crucified Christ as the “Book written inside and outside” as it is told in Rev. 5,1. Inside with its internal pains and virtues; on the outside with the external pains and virtues of the Divine Crucified.

It is not surprising, then, that Calasanz, like Paul, considered the true and superior science “to know Christ and Christ crucified” (1 Cor 2:2). This science, with this book, he inculcated in his students, showing them the crucifix and saying to them: “Who among you would dare to throw stones at this Divine Lord? Know that he who commits a sin does the same as the one who throws a stone at Jesus Christ”.

In a letter to Fr. Jerome Laura, dated August 14, 1638, he says: “It seems to me that to the religious, who is not lacking in food and clothing, God gives an occasion to use his intelligence in its proper object, which is the blessed crucified Christ, in whom there are infinite hidden treasures”. No wonder, then, at his conviction that, “None of the ancient philosophers knew true happiness and joy, and, what is worse, few, not to say very few, know it among Christians, since Christ who is our teacher has placed it on the cross, which, though it seems to many that it is very difficult to practice in this life, nevertheless it has within itself so many internal goods and consolations that it surpasses all earthly ones” (EGC, 1662). Hence, the Cross of Christ is not limited to being a book of meditation; it is above all a practical manual of Christian life. This is what emerges from the fragment of this letter that I have just quoted. In case there were any doubts, it is clarified and confirmed by a letter that Calasanz writes to Fr. Gian Domenico Franchi. It reads as follows: “I will pray to the Lord, as I have done before, to give you in particular the true light to truly know the invisible things that God has prepared for those who imitate him in his most holy Passion, for through it, they will come to the knowledge and love of these things” (EGC, 4392). In case any doubt remained, it is made clear by this exhortation to Fr. Gian Baptista Ferraris: “Try to be devoted to the Blessed Virgin and imitate as much as possible the Passion of the Lord” (EGC, 2180).

We enter here into the very call to suffering, adopted by some saints, to the point of making it the motto of their lives. Thus, St. Catherine of Siena exclaimed: “It is either to suffer or die,” a saying that is also attributed to St. Teresa of Avila, although others point as her motto “To suffer, not to die”. The motto of St. John of the Cross was “To suffer and be despised”. That of Calasanz: “To die in trials and on the Cross as my Redeemer”. This imitation of the Crucified One consists mainly in receiving with humility and patience “the mortifications that God sends us” (EGC, 4439). But also those inflicted on oneself, especially on “Fridays, the day on which Christ suffered the cross for our sins” (CC 89). For that day he prescribed a stricter fast “in memory of the Passion of the Lord” (CC 119).

In our days, suffering for Christ has been a cause of suspicion even among Christians themselves. The causes of this deviation are complex:

1. The loss of the sense of sin and of its dire consequences for humankind.

2. The misunderstood displacement of the devotions of the cross (via crucis, rosary, devotion to the Heart of Jesus, etc.) towards the riches of the liturgy, especially since Vatican II.

3. The exaggerated optimism with regard to a utopian victory of science over pain and illness, so that suffering need not be endured.

4. The development of social conscience, accentuated by the consequences of the World War, the emergence of the Third World and the publication, by the mass media, of the situation of the oppressed and racial minorities, in addition to the Social Encyclicals of the Roman Pontiffs. All this has given rise in many people to a strong determination to remedy the great poverty and sufferings of so many, that it has completely absorbed them, away from the spiritual forms of the past, considering the Passion of Christ as irrelevant to the urgent remedy demanded by the needs of the humanity.

5. The greater importance given to the resurrection of Christ in the Paschal Mystery, forgetting other important aspects of him.

However, a group of German theologians, among them Moltmann and Karl Rahner, concerned about the current neglect to which Christ’s Passion has been reduced in the Redemption and in the life of Christians, have made it clear that the mystery of his death is so intimately united to that of his resurrection, in the life of Jesus and in the Christian experience, that the accentuation of his resurrection illuminates with special brilliance the meaning and necessity of the cross.

This is why the choice of St. Teresa of Avila has not lost its force today. Accepting that there are different ways to go to God, she declares: “I would always choose that of suffering, just to imitate Our Lord Jesus Christ, even if there were no other gain, that in fact always there are many” (The Mansions VI, 7). This was also Calasanz’ option, who in one of his sentences summarizes all his thoughts on this subject: “He does not know how to win Christ who does not know how to suffer for Christ”.

22. Meditation on the Passion of the Lord

If for Calasanz the proper object of human understanding is “Christ crucified, in whom are infinite hidden treasures” (EGC,2921), it is not surprising that he considered essential for his religious the methodical meditation of the Passion of Jesus. The daily and regulated practice of mental prayer dates back to the XV century, with the masters of the Devotio moderna, from Gerard Groot to John Mombaer. It is probable that Calasanz knew of the latter the Rosetum Exercitiorum Spiritualium (EGC,187). The religious orders and congregations founded later adopted this practice. Thus Calasanz, in his Constitutions, orders: “We should take great care not to break the custom of praying twice a day, namely: one hour at dawn and half an hour in the evening, before supper. Rather, with profound silence and calmness of body and soul, kneeling or in some other suitable way, following the Divine Paul, we will contemplate and imitate Jesus Christ crucified and his virtues and to remember him during the day” (CC44). This article of the Calasanzian Constitutions is, in a small part, taken from the Constitutions of the Theatines and of the Clerics Regular Minor (Caracciolini). From those of the Theatines, he took almost literally the posture of kneeling and the “calm and silence of body and soul” (silentio et quiete). In turn, this prescription for mental prayer is already found in St. Bernard: “Juge quippe silentium et ab omni strepitu saecularium perpetua quies cogit coelestia meditari” (Add, then, meditate in silence and with perpetual repose from any disturbance caused by the affairs of the world) (Epist.78,4; P.L.82, 193). From the Constitutions of the Caracciolini, he took the assignment “twice a day”, with “an hour of prayer in the morning and half an hour in the afternoon” and, in addition, the topic, namely: “Jesus Christ” and “his virtues”. Original to Calasanz is the clarification “crucified” and the reference to St. Paul (1Cor 2:2).

Not content with this prescription of the Constitutions, Calasanz wants to particularize the matter to meditate with the distribution of the so-called “steps” of the Lord’s Passion throughout the week. An enumeration of these steps is given by a contemporary of Calasanz, Antonio Cordeses, in his Treatise on purgative life; namely: “the prayer in the Garden, the imprisonment, the presentation to Annas the Pontiff, the presentation to Caiaphas, to Herod, the scourging, the crowning with thorns, the Ecce Homo, the sentence to be crucified and the carrying of the cross, death and burial. This dozen steps, to which some add the Last Supper and all of them the Resurrection, is adapted to the days of the week as a daily meditation by the following authors, contemporary or close to Calasanz: Bernardinus of Laredo, in Ascent of Mount Sion (1535); Saint Ignatius of Loyola, in the third week of his Spiritual Exercises (Vulgata, 1546); St. John of Avila, in his Audi filia (1555); St. Peter of Alcantara, in his Treatise on Prayer and Meditation (1556); Friar Luis de Granada, in his A Memorandum of the Christian Life (1565) and in his Book of Prayer and Meditation (1566); Miguel de la Fuente, in his Exercises on Mental Prayer collected from various authors... (1615). (1615); Jerome Gracián, in his book De la oración mental (1616).

There is a manuscript, preserved in the Regestum Calasanzianum, XIV, 74, entitled Essercitij Spirituali che si praticano dalli Chierici Regolari Poveri della Madre di Dio delle Scuole Pie ordinati dal loro P’re Fondat. et Generale il veneravil servo di Dio Gioseppe della Madre di Dio. It was translated into Latin for the schools in Germany, with the title Preces vocales ad usum quotidianum Clericorum Regularium Pauperum Matris Dei Scholarum Piarum, Provinciae Germaniae secundum morem Romanum Ecclesiaeque ritus. Translated into Spanish, retaining the Latin for the psalms and prayers, was published in Barcelona in 1871, with the title Directorio de preces de los Clérigos Regulares Pobres de la Madre de Dios de las Escuelas Pías (the so-called “Hebdomada”). In this manuscript, it is attributed to Calasanz the following distribution of the mentioned Steps: on Monday, meditation of the washing of the feet of the apostles, institution of the Blessed Sacrament and prayer in the Garden of Christ our Lord. On Tuesday: imprisonment of the Lord and appearance before the tribunal. On Wednesday: Scourging of the Lord Jesus Christ tied to the pillar. Thursday: Crowning with thorns. On Friday: Our Lord with the cross and his crucifixion. On Saturday: the wound to the heart of Our Lord, the descent from the cross and his burial. On Sunday: the liberation of the saints from Limbo and the glorious resurrection of Our Lord.

Except for St. Ignatius, who prescribes one meditation in the morning and another in the evening, according to the order adopted in his Spiritual Exercises, the other authors mentioned above have their own variations in the assignment of days and only coincide in the meditations of death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus assigned respectively to Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Laredo, St. John of Avila and Miguel de la Fuente do not have the meditation of the Last Supper. Here, St. Peter of Alcántara considers the institution of the Eucharist, while Gracián focuses on the washing of the feet. On the other hand, Fray Luis de Granada and St. Joseph Calasanz consider both. Gracian’s distribution is the most similar to that which the aforementioned manuscript attributes to Calasanz. In addition to this probable contact, we know of another of Calasanz with the first Provincial of the Discalced Carmelites, a teacher so praised by St. Teresa that he devotes him an entire chapter of the Book of Foundations, attacked by his brothers in religion, both calced and discalced, but appreciated and favored by the Roman Pontiffs. Father Jerome Gracián, together with a friend of Calasanz, the Oratorian Francis Soto, contributed to the foundation of the first convent of Discalced Carmelites in Rome, at Capo le Case, on Monte Cavallo or Quirinal. First, in a private house, Gracian gathered six or seven maidens, of whom Father Soto knew of their vocation. There he taught them “the ceremonies of the discalced women by reading them the Rule and trying to get them to do what they do, so that they were trained without having a discalced foundress, because Father Soto felt it was very difficult to found a convent for them without having someone to teach them the exercise of the Rule and constitutions”. Gracian would teach them the Rule of St. Albert, patriarch of Jerusalem, corrected by Innocent IV, without mitigation. The Constitutions, undoubtedly, were the ones that Gracian gave to the Discalced Carmel in 1576, which, according to Crisologus of Jesus, bore the approval of St. John of the Cross or at least took up the instructions written by Friar Antony of Jesus and Saint John of the Cross, in Duruelo. In another place, I have exposed the possible influences of these Constitutions on those of Calasanz. This coincidence of prescriptions would not be surprising, since Cardinal Marcello Lante, protector of the above-mentioned convent of Capo le Case, when Gracian was absent because the Pope had sent him to Africa to promulgate the Holy Year, and Cardinal Baronio died, who, in representation of the Holy See, governed it, begged Calasanz to “test, assist and instruct” these nuns “in perfection and mortification”, and particularly to some of them that the Cardinal “held in great esteem, so that they would not be deceived by the common enemy. With all his affection and charity, for a long time and to the great advantage of those Brides of Jesus Christ”, Calasanz exercised the office. But he had to resign when the Pious Schools were his main objective. (Cf. Berro, V., Annotazioni, t. I, pp. 66-67).

So much Calasanz wanted the Piarists to meditate daily on the Passion in the morning and the Novissimi in the afternoon, that in response to a letter from Fr. Peter Francis Salazar, in which he notified him that, in meditation, they also used the letters of Fr. Luca Pinelli, S.I., praised this decision, but told him: “I would not want the reading of a letter to last so long as to read a whole chapter or a quarter of an hour, but only about 25 or 30 lines that would be in keeping with the virtue or step to be imitated” (EGC, 2974). From Fr. Pinelli, who died in 1594, I do not know any publication of spiritual letters, unless some of the following works of his authorship belonged to the epistolary genre: Meditazioni sopra i principali misteri della Vita, Pasione e Resurrezione di Christo (a work recommended by St. Francis de Sales, in his Introduction to the Devout Life), his Trattato dell’altra vita, and his Piae meditationes de SS.Sacr. Eucharistiae.

Such was the devotion that Calasanz professed to the Passion of the Lord, that, in his last illness, not being able to attend the community act of meditation, he frequently had the Passion read to him.

Faithful to the spirit of Teresa of Jesus, he considered the contemplation of the sorrows of Jesus in his Passion as obligatory even in the most advanced degrees of perfection, because it is -according to the Saint- “the way of prayer in which all must begin, improve and finish, and a very excellent and sure way until the Lord leads them to other supernatural things” (Life, C. XIII, 12).

23. The clock of the Passion

In article 44 of his Constitutions, Calasanz not only prescribes the knowledge and meditation of Christ crucified, but he also wants his religious to strive to remember him throughout the day. To help in this remembrance, he distributes various moments that bring to mind the Passion of the Lord. Thus, the examination of conscience, which he prescribes for midday and evening, is followed by prayer. “We adore you Christ and we bless you, because by your cross and passion you redeemed the world; have mercy on us”. He also wanted the students to pray this prayer, genuflecting to the Blessed Sacrament, as they entered and left the church. In the dining room or refectory, the lector, interrupting the reading that took place during the entire meal, would say three times at lunchtime, and twice at supper: “Let us remember, Fathers and Brothers, the gall and vinegar that the Redeemer of the world tasted on the holy wood of the Cross”. This call to reflection was related to another one that preceded the reading, recalling that, at the hour of death, “a close account will be asked of the fruit that we have failed to draw” from what was read in the dining room. According to Fr. Berro, these prescriptions were inspired to Calasanz by some words of St. John Climacus, in his Sermon 26; “The attentive meditation of death and the fixed and continuous remembrance of the gall and vinegar of our Redeemer Jesus Christ, comes to be the mother of abstinence”. Perhaps Berro was unaware that, in his Climax or the Ladder of Divine Ascent, the same author writes: “When you sit at the table to take food, put in the middle the memory of death and judgment; thus, you will restrain little or much your gluttony. When you go to drink never forget the gall and vinegar of the Lord”. At the end of the meals, Calasanz wanted a lay Brother, on his knees, to encourage the Community: “Let us remember, Fathers and Brothers, to meditate on the Passion and Death of Jesus Christ, which is the true way to go to Heaven”. This practice originated in the spontaneity of a cook Brother, who, bursting into the dining room, exhorted the community in this way.

In the book Moralia, by St. Gregory the Great, of which, according to Fr. Scasselati, Calasanz was an assiduous reader, it is prescribed: “The first thing is that the mind, before beginning any work, foresees what injuries it may suffer in it, and reflecting on the opprobria suffered by its Redeemer, to prepare itself for the adversities”. This is how Calasanz wanted his religious to act. Brother Eleuterio Stiso found it very hard to go out begging and the Saint wrote to him: “When you go begging for alms, consider that you are walking behind Christ when he carried the cross. Even if your cross is no match for the cross He carried out of love”. Father Francis of St. Charles testified: “When I came home from the novitiate and went to ask him for a blessing, the first words he would say to me were whether I had accompanied Christ, our Savior, to Mt. Calvary, and again and again he would begin a reasoning about the Passion that seemed to be carved in his heart. It was the desire to fulfill St. Paul’s exhortation. “Pray at all times” (1 Thess 5:17), or as Tertullian glosses it, “pray always and everywhere”.

Since the number seven symbolizes a totality, Psalm 119 also refers to all times when, in verse 164, it says to Yahweh: “Seven times I praise you in the day”. However, these words were taken literally and an attempt was made to accommodate the Liturgy of the Hours to the number seven. To this end, the Lauds was considered as a mere appendix of Matins (today called Office of Readings). In this way, it totalized seven together with the other six Hours: Prima (today suppressed), Tertia, Sexta, Nona, Vespers and Compline. Perhaps by way of substitute the prayers of these Hours for the laity or to meditate them during the recitation of the psalms, a distribution of Passion Steps appeared for each canonical hour. Thus, in the XIII century, a book appeared whose translated title is the following: Booklet for meditating on the Passion of Christ during the seven hours of the day. In 1550, J.B. Agnesio published in Latin his Seven Hours of Prayer to the Heart of Christ, covering the principal acts of the Passion of the Lord. This work is considered to be the origin of the so-called Clocks of the Passion. One of them was written by Calasanz for the use of his students. Although they already were similar clocks of the Passion covering almost the twenty-four hours of the day, the original seven-hour clocks still lasted, according to the one that in 1644 Fr. Paulo Vallejo de Orellana published in Ecija (Spain): Relox de las horas canónicas para eclesiásticos. (Clock of canonical hours for ecclesiastics). Apart from the hours of the crucifixion and the death of Jesus, the rest of the hours of the day assigned to the remaining moments of the Passion may have their origin in some tradition. François Mauriac, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1952, in his book Maundy Thursday, transcribes a fragment of another one entitled Mystical Life in a Dominican convent of the Middle Ages, where it is narrated that a nun thought to see Jesus cruelly mistreated by the henchmen and this vision impacted her in such a way that she could never sleep. Once when she went to bed at the hour of Prima, she thought to see Jesus in front of her, saying: “At this very hour I was standing before the judgment court; you, by the contrary, have gone to bed and were sleeping.” The assignment of a Passion passage to each canonical hour of the Divine Office or Liturgy of the Hours was also the practice of St. John Mary Vianney, in whose prayer book, with his own handwriting, he prefixed the title of a Passion scene to each canonical hour.

The clocks of the Passion were praised by Erasmus of Rotterdam, in his juvenile work De praeparatione ad mortem, where he expresses himself in this way: “As I understand, those souls who established a kind of timetable of the Lord’s Passion devised a pious practice indeed, so that the Christian faithful, even from childhood, should become accustomed, every day of the year, to remember, with thanksgiving, of some moments of his Passion”. Calasanz gave great importance to his Clock of the Passion of Christ, since he made to be printed with his catechism for children, entitled Alcuni Misterii della Passione di Cristo Signor nostro, a booklet that he repeatedly recommended in his letters (EGC 423, 438, 440, 441, 1009, 2916, 3022, etc). Like other similar clocks, it begins in the evening of the day and ends at the same time of the next day. The scenes assigned to each hour range from “The Supper with the disciples” to the “Descent and burial”.

Since Calasanz was accustomed to meditate on the Passion of Christ throughout the day and late at night, it is not surprising that it came to his mind at peak moments of his life. Calasanz himself told Fr. Jerome Simona that on that Friday, August 8, 1642, when he was led through the streets of Rome as a prisoner of the Inquisition, “in that trance he had meditated on the path of bitterness that Christ Our Lord walked to Calvary”.

24. The sign of the Cross and the Crucifix

The Cross, as a symbol or as a painted or sculpted image, has been used by Christians since very ancient times, although there is no record of it in the times that remained under the so-called Arcane Discipline. It was avoided to give publicity to certain rites and symbols that could scandalize the mentality of the pagans. Cicero said, in his defense of Gaius Rabirius: “Even the name of the cross alone should be far not only from the body of Roman citizens, but also from their thoughts, their eyes, and their ears”. However, after the conversion of Constantine and the finding of the cross of Christ in Jerusalem by his mother St. Helen, a very notable impulse was given to the public veneration of the Holy Cross, which became a kind of official symbol.

The same did not happen with the making of the sign of the cross. This practice was widespread among Christians, at least since the second century. Tertullian wrote: “We sign ourselves on our foreheads at every step and every movement”. Identical testimony is given by Lactantius. St. Jerome advised Eustochia that, “before any action, she should make the sign of the cross with her hand”. Saint Joseph Calasanz “frequently made the sign of the Cross, habitually meditating on the sufferings of Our Lord”. Father Joseph Font describes the behavior of the Saint when he met with the youngest students: “He would put his hand on their heads and make the sign of the Cross on their foreheads and he would say to them: ‘God bless you, be good’ or similar things”.

He would also impart the blessing by tracing a cross with his right hand, both personally and by delegation, having one of his religious do it. Thus, on one occasion, the house of St. Pantaleon seemed to go up in flames. Frightened, the religious ran to the room of Calasanz, who was talking with Fr. Garcia. He ordered the latter to go and make the sign of the Cross over the fire. The priest obeyed and immediately the fire disappeared, which was attributed to an insidiousness of the devil. On another occasion, Calasanz heard the lamentations of a poor man whose donkey had just died. He sent him the Ven. Glycerio to make the sign of the Cross over it, and the donkey was resurrected.

The crucifix has been object of Christian worship. Theologians dispute as to whether it is worship of latria (worship due to God alone), as St. Thomas Aquinas teaches, or only worship of dulia as Bellarmino maintains. The naked cross has also been the object of worship and has been considered as an invitation to sacrifice. Raymond Lull, a penitent in Puig de Randa (Majorca, Spain), was honored with an apparition of the crucified Jesus. When he took it in his hands, the image disappeared, leaving him only the cross and a burning desire to suffer for Christ. Saint Lawrence of Brindisi, on entering the Capuchins as a postulant, felt able to bear all their austerities, seeing that in all the rooms of the convent there was a crucifix. Calasanz wanted a picture of the Crucified in the rooms of his religious, at least in those of the novices (EGC,1360). He sent portable crucifixes to the houses. He considered them, moreover, as a kind of credentials of the superiorate, since he wanted them to be carried “as his guide and authentic patent of Superior, as the apostles did when they went to distant provinces” (EGC1301). Could it be an ancient tradition that attributes this practice to the Twelve? It is said that St. Jude Thaddeus wore on his chest a medallion with the face of Jesus. In other of his letters, Calasanz also deals with the sending or request of crucifixes (EGC 500, 1079, 1360). In an enigmatic way, he writes to Fr. Peter Cananea, on November 5, 1624: “Brother Joseph wishes a crucifix of the kind that he says you have; but tell him that when he is in a position to help his neighbor, by going to visit him in the infirmary, he will be given permission; for now, it is enough the +”. Is this an allusion to the custom of the Polish people to precede the announcement of a misfortune with the delivery of a cross to the one who is to be notified of it?

Calasanz also asked to give a crucifix to the religious sent for obedience, so that they would be protected during the trip. On April 21, 1629, he sent five Piarists to Naples, among them the Cleric Joseph Apa. They went to embark with other passengers at Ripagrande, a wharf on the Tiber. Each one carried a twenty-five-centimeter wooden cross on his chest. When they reached the Mediterranean, the captain thought they could put to sea, as the wind was favorable to them. But when the ship entered the waters of Gaeta, such a storm broke out that the sailors considered themselves hopelessly lost. Then Cl. Apa, fully trusting in God because of the merits of Calasanz, encouraged everyone to hope, although he made everyone say the act of contrition in chorus. With the cross that the Founder had given him, he blessed such a threatening squall and then threw it into the rough waves. At once the sea calmed down, the storm ceased, a favorable wind blew, and that same afternoon they reached Naples. But when they disembarked, the cross of Cl. Apa was seen by all the passengers in front of the bow, having guided the ship for miles to the longed-for port,

Devotion to the Passion of the Lord accompanied Calasanz until his last illness. Prostrate on his bed of pain, he asked that the Passion be read to him. Monsignor Balaguer, bishop of Malta, had given him as a souvenir a baked earthen cup with a bas-relief depicting the eight-pointed cross, the Maltese cross, and the emblems of the Passion. Calasanz had high fever. That time, febricitants were not allowed to drink. Caputi asked him if he wanted to rinse his mouth. “Yes”, he answered, “but I want to do with the cup of the Maltese cross”. Perplexed, the assistants could not figure out what he meant. Finally, they understood him and gave him the cup that he kept in the tavolino (small table). For the sick saint wished to recall one of the mysteries of the Passion symbolized there. After refreshing himself a little, he kissed each of those images of the objects of torment with which Jesus was tortured.

These objects with which Jesus was tortured by his executioners later took the name of arma Christi, constituting a heraldic shield of the Redeemer. They figured in the art and in the popular devotion, represented in the banners of the processions of Holy Week and also hanging from a large cross, which, in some places, is improperly called the cross of curses. These objects vary somewhat from artist to artist and from reproduction to reproduction. The XV century Castilian poet Iñigo de Mendoza, in his Stanzas to Veronica, lists the following: “A crown of thorns - a heavy pillar, - some strong disciplines - some blood-stained robes, - a bloody rope, - a badly planed cross, - nails, hammer, ladder, - a bitter gall, - a reed and a steely spear,- are your weapons and banner”. They were objects of veneration, since medieval religiosity had introduced a way of praying by breaking down and analyzing the story of the Passion. An example of this is the prayer “Soul of Christ, sanctify me...”, wrongly attributed to St. Ignatius of Loyola, since it was already being prayed in the XIV century.

An example of one of these breakdowns could be one of the exhortations that Calasanz addresses to his superiors. It goes like this: “Jesus, being very rich, became poor in order to enrich his little children, suffered hunger, thirst, heat, cold, fatigue, and also endured scourging, thorns, nails and spear, and in his extreme need he wanted to be watered with gall and vinegar, (he who, on the other hand, had turned water into wine) and finally he wanted to die naked on the tree of the cross. If anyone wants to worthily imitate Him, carrying a little of His holy Cross, let him do what the humble emperor Heraclius did, stripping himself of the royal robes of self-love and, with the bare feet of good example, clothe himself from head to foot with the mantle of Holy Charity, which leads to the joyful fulfillment of that admirable phrase of the Apostle: Charitas no quaerit quae sua sunt (charity does not seek its own interests)”.

25. Calasanz and the women

The opinions and prescriptions of St. Joseph Calasanz about women must be judged according to the mentality of his time. He wrote in his Constitutions, inspired by those of the Caracciolini and the Theatines: “In a great way, it is necessary to avoid deal and conversation with women, no matter how religious they may appear to be” (CC 113) and “let us not be familiar with women, even if they are relatives and honest” (CC 40). In his letter 2122 he wrote: “I have resolved to issue a general order for our religious order that both superiors and subjects are forbidden to go - and I do not say only to frequent - the houses of the students and more particularly where there are women, except in case of sickness to confess them and help them to die well”. In the same letter, he forbids a superior to go to his mother’s and sister’s house, referring to the fact that St. Augustine also abstained, because in the house of relatives, there are often other women or servants. In letter 2916, he forbids the Piarists who collaborate with the parish to teach catechism to the girls, but only to the boys, leaving the instruction of the girls to the parish priest. Likewise, he prefers that the Sunday catechesis be held in the parish, since the house of the Piarists “is distant and separate and not all kinds of women can go there without causing murmurings” (EGC 2452). Excessive and even obsessive may seem to us his injunctions about the proximity of his religious houses to those inhabited by women (EGC 395, 405, 440, 615, 633, 778). For he considers detrimental to the religious state even to “perceive their voices and to hear them coming down the stairs day and night”.

These precautions are not surprising, if we take into account that it was a recent disposition of Pope Clement VIII obliging to close the windows facing the street in all the convents of cloistered nuns. Calasanz mitigated this provision making cover with lattices or blinds all the windows of one of his houses that gave to windows where there were women (EGC 3718).

Although in his Constitutions he tolerated the hearing of confessions of women in our churches, he wrote to one of his communities “that little by little you should be relieved of confessions, especially of women, because they are not very much in conformity with our institute” (EGC 1523). Nor is this precaution surprising, since these confessions lent themselves to scandals. There was even a case of a denunciation - filed at higher ecclesiastical instances and after transmitted to Calasanz - about a young girl who frequently went to confession to a Piarist in the church. At first, she was dressing a “nun’s habit”; later as “a vain young woman” (EGC 2239). Recently there, was the tragic case in which St. Andrew Avellino intervened, who threw out of his confessional a woman who, in love, tried to solicit him. And having she sought another confessor, he was murdered a few months later by a son of the unfortunate woman.

The actions of Calasanz, in the circumstances mentioned, usually obeyed the ecclesiastical laws of the time. And he was more tolerant when these did not oblige. Thus, when the works of the house of Moricone were about finished, he allowed women to enter, because the building was not yet subject to enclosure (EGC 923).

The misogynistic mentality of the authors of that time provides the key to interpreting Calasanz’ excessively rigorous precautions. Skepticism abounds in those authors about the virginity of the “single”, an equivocal word, because those without blemish were called “maidens”. But even these were distrusted.

The argumentation with biblical texts, taken in a literal sense, was common among misogynist authors of that time. And based on them, they reasoned bordering on sophistry. Thus, Fray Cristóbal de Fonseca, starting from the Pauline text that women should cover their heads, deduced that this is a sign of the woman’s slavery to her husband. Fray Hernando de Talavera emphasizes: “Nature teaches that women were provided with long hair, with which they could walk covered, but not so for men”. Also supported by Plato’s Phaedrus, according to which the good thing is “upright and erect” and the bad “counterfeit and heavy”, some argued that women are bad for being formed from a curved bone, such as Adam’s rib.

Calasanz’s mind is far from such twisted hermeneutics. He distinguishes what is hyperbole from what it is meant to accentuate or emphasize. This can be inferred, when in his letter 3082 he implicitly quotes that text of Ecclesiasticus which says “All wickedness is light compared to that of a woman” (25:26). Calasanz considers it a mistake to take this hyperbole in a literal sense; so, he argues thus: “Even it has been written that there is no malice so great as the malice of woman, it seems, however, that the malice of the passionate and obstinate religious is much greater”.

However, it is to be believed that he would agree with the writers of his time who considered women to be fragile and voluble. “Frailty, you have woman´s name”, puts Shakespeare in the mouth of Prince Hamlet.

The condition of women was one of subjection and seclusion; it was impossible to think of independent activity. Apart from the iron subjection to the father and later to the husband, the woman had no other way out than the convent; if not as a professed, then as an unprofessed without vows. Hence the extreme nature of feminine modesty and seclusion at home or in the cloister. Fray Cristóbal de Fonseca wrote: “Let them be very homely and recollected; a philosopher said that women should go out three times: to be baptized, to get married and to be buried”. The Jesuit John Eusebius Nieremberg, as a solution to the problem of a woman who was seeking a divorce, advises “obedience to her husband”, showing to him “with pleasure even closer obedience, in a certain way, than that of a religious” to his superior.

The ultimate reason for this subjection to the husband or to the father or to the religious superior was rooted in politics, since the guardianship of honesty, through this lifelong subjection, was intended to prevent the dissolution of a society founded on the sole command of an absolute monarch. Gaspar Lucas Hidalgo, in his Diálogos de apacible entretenimiento published in 1605, based this absolute subjection of women on the following reasoning: “As nature abhors more than one head in everything, so it seems to be natural law that woman should be a pledge of only one owner and a member of only one head, and until she reaches this state of having an owner, she should belong to none and be kept in the enclosure of the honest and virginal state”.

The aforementioned Fr. Nieremberg goes even further: “Not only in his decent virtue, but also in her demure gentleness, her honest and grave look, and more so among men, of whom only she should look slowly at her husband”.

With such a mentality, it is not surprising that Calasanz, in the Rules for the novices of the Pious Schools, given by him, orders those to be professed: “Neither he should dare to fix his gaze on the faces of others, especially young girls or women, even if they are acquaintances, relatives, brothers, sisters and even his own mother”.

Nevertheless, the woman was granted an opportunity to free herself from such a constricting yoke: a visit to the temple. This became a place of courtship and transmission of love notes, by means, sometimes, of the squires and the “dueñas”, who guarded the honesty of the ladies. Against such abuse the moralists cried out in these or similar terms of one of them belonging to that time: “Light lads who come to the churches not only to offend God in his beards, and in his house you are winking at the one and pinching the other, and making signs and other worst gestures, standing at the doors of the churches”. In the face of such relaxation, it is not surprising that Calasanz forbids his religious to converse with women in the temple, because “although there is no offense to God in it, nevertheless, too much conversation caused scandal” (EGC 1442 and 2244).

In his spiritual and pastoral relationships with women, Calasanz greatly softens this rigidity caused by environmental conditioning. He manifested great balance in his contacts with them, whether in the Congregations of Mothers of the Family he founded, or with the benefactors attending the so-called Academies, or, above all, in the correspondence which we could call of spiritual direction or accompaniment. These are letters which, in spite of their brevity, can be placed with those addressed to ladies by St. Francis de Sales, St. Vincent Ferrer and the recently canonized St. Claude de la Colombière, who was the spiritual director of St. Margaret Mary of Alacoque.

26. Calasanz and the education of women

According to Abbé François Moigno de Villebeau, at the end of the XIX century, there was a persistent opinion that women should know no more arithmetic than was necessary to keep the accounts of the household economy, and nor more geography than enough to know the stones of her house. If these prejudices persisted in the twilight of the last century, how much livelier and more accredited they would be in Calasanz’ time.

Hush, child,” said the Quixote’s inn woman to her daughter, “it seems that you know a lot of these things and it is not good for maidens to know and talk so much”. Even in higher social classes, there were identical prejudices. Father John Eugene Nieremberg wrote to a married lady: “If you have a lively wit, beware of gallantry in your speech and of acquiring with it the opinion of being discreet and knowledgeable, because she is more so who only allows to be understood by her husband”.

The reputation of the educated woman was very bad. In the interlude Los alcaldes de Daganzo, Cervantes speaks through the mouth of Humillos, responding to the question “¿Do you know to read?”: “Nor will it be proven in my lineage -there is a person of so little character- that try to learn those chimeras, that lead men to the brazier and women to the flat house”. That is to say, if knowledge led men to the bonfires of the Inquisition, in a similar way it led women to the brothel. Similar testimony can be found in a XVII century novel, La fuerza del amor (The Power of Love), authored by a woman who is considered a precursor of feminism, María Zayas y Sotomayor. “There is a father who considers it of the least value that his daughters know how to read and write, giving as a reason that knowing it, they are bad, as if there were not many more who do not know and are bad”. The enmity against the literate woman goes as far as to the point of identifying her with the woman devoid of beauty. Bomli affirms, in La femme dans l’Espagne du siècle d’or: “The incompatibility of talent and science with beauty has its expression in many authors, whatever the literary genre to which they belong”. Thus, Baltasar Gracián, in El Criticón: “Another one who was itching for discretion, asked for a knowledgeable woman. They found him a very ugly one, all bones, and that everyone talked to her”.

Since orthodox knowledge was forbidden to women, it is not surprising that they gave themselves up to witchcraft and pseudo mysticism. Friar Martin de Castañega, in his Very subtle and well-founded Treatise of Superstitions and Sorceries, published in 1529 and reprinted throughout the XVI and XVII centuries, states that women are more prone to witchcraft, because “they wish to be singular in knowledge, just as nature denies it to them”. And Caspar Navarro, in his Tribunal de la superstición ladina, published in 1631, writes: “Let be taken into account the sex of the one who has the revelations, that is, if it is a woman or a man..., because this feminine sex is weaker in the head, and the natural things, or illusions of the Devil are considered by her as those of Heaven and of God”.

This supposed impermeability of the feminine nature for the knowledge, lead Friar Luis de León to affirm: “nature did not make them for the study of the sciences”. And Huarte de San Juan, in his Examen de ingenios para las ciencias, wanted to provide scientific support. Huarte undoubtedly based himself on the treatise On Regimen, where Hippocrates established that women “are engendered from a greater quantity of water” that comes from cold, wet and soft things; “males partake more of the fire that comes from food”. It was this Hippocratic opinion that led the famous Navarrese physician to advise: “Parents who would like to have wise children and who have the ability for letters, should see to it that they are born male, because females, by reason of the coldness and dampness of their sex, cannot attain profound wit. Those who are literate, cannot learn more than a little Latin, and this because the work of memory”.

It is true that, thanks to Renaissance humanism, the idea that women could be educated had made inroads. In this minority and elitist approach, it was probably Erasmus of Rotterdam the first to place no restrictions on what subjects could be the object of women’s knowledge. Luis Vives wrote in the Instruction of the Christian woman, that “there is no good woman, if she lacks education and doctrine, nor will you find a bad woman, but the foolish one and lacking knowledge”.

It was recognized, however, the existence of literate women in antiquity. It was celebrated Sappho, the inventor of the poetic stanza that her name qualifies; Corina called the lyric muse; Aspasias courtesan of Pericles; Aristoclea or Themistoclea presumed sister of Pythagoras; Diotima priestess of Mantinea, who, according to Plato, taught Socrates philosophy; Argentaria wife of the poet Lucan... From times closer to Calasanz, are those that Cervantes, in El Buscapié, perhaps ironically, puts in the mouth of the hunchback bachelor; namely: the Countess of Tendilla, mother of the three Mendozas, Mme Passier and Oliva Sabuco de Nantes, whom Cervantes describes as a philosopher, because she considers her own that work that her father, Miguel Sabuco, attributed to her “only to give her honour”.

Against this background, we should not be surprised by the text with which Calasanz appends a letter addressed to Father Giuseppe Fedele. As it appears, the latter had written to him about a girl prodigy of the city of Naples. To which the saint replied: “I remember that in Lyon, France, there was a Catalan girl who looked like a freak of nature, not only speaking Latin, Greek and Hebrew in prose and in verse, but also in Italian, French and German; she played all kinds of instruments and what is more, being only thirteen or fourteen years old, she learned laws and had public conclusions in Lyon. And as a result of all these sciences and qualities, it all ended with the girl becoming engaged to a wealthy gentleman who took her as his wife without her father’s knowledge. God grant that this young girl does not fade away in the same way, with as much popular applause, as the other one did, who was the daughter of a rich merchant from Barcelona, called Don Marcelo” (EGC 3468).

The story of Calasanz only wants to show that much knowledge is a source of pride, if it is not accompanied by virtue, especially the virtue of docility to the father. In that society, it was up to the father to negotiate the marriage of his children. Even in the humblest social groups, this was done by contract, in which was stipulated in detail, after hard negotiations, the contribution of each of the future spouses: the woman’s dowry, the man’s pledge, the trousseau of the bride-to-be, with little or no regard for the feelings of the spouses.

Cervantes justifies this right of choice of spouse on the part of the parents, in these terms: “If all those who love each other well were to get married,” said Don Quixote, “the choice and jurisdiction of parents to marry their children to whom and when they should marry would be taken away. And if it were left to the will of the daughters to choose their husbands, the one would choose her father’s servant, or the one she saw passing by in the street, in her opinion bizarre and intoned, even if he was an unruly swordsman; because love and fondness blind the eyes of understanding”.

Among the moralists of that time, the condemnation of unequal marriages and those not agreed upon by the paternal authority was unanimous. Here is a sample of the arguments of these censors: “God punishes, ordinarily, those who marry by their own free will against their parents’ will, and, on the contrary, those who are submissive, humble, obedient and allow themselves to be ruled and governed by their elders, God gives them a thousand blessings, and all happens well, and they live in great happiness, and God prospers their house and their family”. Regarding such a divine punishment to these disobedient ones, Calasanz’ opinion would probably agree, since, in a letter to Mrs. Flaminia Recami, he fears that the disobedience of his son Francesco will cause him to die a sudden death, which is very often what happens to such disobedient people (EGC 2097).

As far as the instruction of the woman is concerned, the criterion of Calasanz can be inferred. He who was extremely circumspect with regard to the treatment of women by his religious, was nevertheless in agreement that Brother Eustace Ravaggi, in spite of his youth, was the preceptor of Princess Giovanna Rivera, and that the religious should reside in a convent of conventual Franciscans in Palermo, given the problems that this case caused Father Provincial Melchior Alacchi.

This permission to give classes in the same viceregal palace has such an explanation in a text of the Rules for the novices of the Pious Schools, given, if not written, by Calasanz. It reads as follows: “Never enter without a companion in any place where there are women, unless they are princes or princesses.

27. Calasanz and the nuns

The rigorous severity that Calasanz shows in dealing with nuns, even in the confessional, has its explanation in the situation of female cloistered life in our Founder’s time. It is not necessary to call back to unpleasant memories of the time when in Spain, in Urgel, he had to intervene in “a delicate matter between the Abbess and the nuns in the monastery of Alguaire”. Excellent would be, on the other hand, his experience “testing, assisting or instructing in perfection and mortification” to the Discalced Carmelite nuns of Capo le Case. Rome.

The paragraph referring to the nuns that appears in his Constitutions, could not be more categorical -omnino abstineant (abstain completely)-, than that of the Caracciolini, from whose Constitutions he adapted it. But in the original codex of Narni, Calasanz wrote: “If a most urgent cause should arise, with the permission of Fr. Provincial, they can act as extraordinary confessors for a short time”. The censor crossed it out and wrote in the margin: “See the Decrees of the Congregation, issued for the Religious”. So Calasanz suppressed what was censored, substituting it in this way: “but observe the Decree of the Sacred Congregation”. I have not been able to find this Decree. There are two late Decrees of the Sacred Congregation of the Council. One dated May 11, 1669, which points out as mortal sin and threatens with excommunication the religious who, without permission, speaks in the parlor with nuns, even for a few seconds. The other one is dated November 25, 1678 and clarifies that the religious sent to preach to the nuns does not have permission to entertain them. It is to be supposed that the decree alluded to by Calasanz would be in line with these two.

On December 4, 1563, the Council of Trent (1545-1563) dealt with the reform of the religious, with a Decree of 22 points. In its canon 5, it renews what had been decreed in the Bull Periculoso of Boniface VIII (1294-1303) and obliges the bishops to establish with all rigor the enclosure of the nuns, asking, if necessary, the intervention of the princes. Pius V, by his Bull Circa pastoralis of May 29, 1566, established enclosure for all the feminine convents, although it was not in their Rules or they had abandoned it since very ancient times.

When Calasanz studied in Lérida (1574-1578 and 1581-1583), probably was still in force the Edict on cloistered nuns of the famous bishop Antonio Agustín, dated on May 29, 1566: “We order that no student over the age of 14 go to any monastery of nuns without our license, even if he or she has a relative or relatives in it, under penalty of excommunication”. Similarly, the Provincial Council of Seville in 1565 and the synodal councils of Pamplona in 1591. In Piacenza (Italy), on January 3, 1564, two individuals were publicly executed for “violating sacred things and having sexual intercourse with the nuns” of the convent of St Barnabas. In 1597, in Seville (Spain), Lucía Sánchez was hanged, for procuress of nuns, giving place “in her room so that a young man could take advantage of a nun and to spoil her”. This woman was also accused of giving “place for some nuns to go out for a walk in the city”. No less rigorous was the punishment inflicted on delinquent nuns. Virginia Maria de Leiva, real character introduced by Manzoni in I promesi sposi (The Betrothed), as the intriguing Nun of Monza, it is historically recorded that she was imprisoned for 13 years in a punishment cell, the size of 5 by 8 meters, in the convent of the converted nuns of Santa Valeria in Milan, with only a small window for food and a ray of light to pray the Book of Hours. The crime was her love affair with Gianpietro Osio. In addition to them and for similar crimes, there are two similar imprisonments of twenty-five and thirty-five years respectively for a nun from Pistoia (Italy) and Sister Benedetta Carlini, abbess of the Monastery of the Mother of God of Pescia (also in Italy).

Before the Council of Trent, the nuns could receive visits in ad hoc departments. The sick could go out to be cured at their parents’ homes. In addition to cell, some nuns had up to six rooms at their disposal: an entrance room for visitors, a bed room, an oratory, a toilet, a kitchen and a room for the maid who looked after them. At the end of the XVII century, Madame D’Aulnoy, the author of Account of the Voyage to Spain (1679-1681), testifies that the nuns still had “very well-furnished rooms and each one has three or four women who serve them”. In America, the number of these maids was exorbitant. In the convents of Mexico, Queretaro and Havana, these maids numbered as many as five hundred, not yet a hundred nuns, for some had as many as six, and even the novices were allowed to have them. At times, there were lawsuits on the matter in New Spain, but they were always won by the nuns. Until the Viceroy, Marquis of Mancera, reached a Solomonic sentence, leaving the convent of Querétaro with only one hundred and ten maids and another in Mexico with forty-six. But even so, the nuns did not want to obey. Mme. D’Aulnoy herself affirms of Spain: “There are convents where the nuns see more men than the ladies who remain in the world”.

In the nuns’ convents, theatrical plays were staged and dances were organized, such as the Chacona, of which Cervantes affirms, in La ilustre fregona that with other dances, “such as the merry zarabanda, the pésame and the perra mora, to enter through the chinks of the religious houses and disturb the honesty that dwells in the holy cells”.

Quevedo, at the end of Life of the Buscón Don Pablos, makes the latter “Galán de monjas”, whose longing was, like that of those of such picturesque job, to “see a woman through nets and stained glass like a saint’s bone” and even “they ask us to be jealous of those outside, saying that true love is theirs, and they find elaborate reasons to prove it”. This is how Quevedo expresses himself, who also presents the orifices of the cloistered walls “full of indications”: a hand, a foot, a rosary, a handkerchief, a glove, a green ribbon… There were also nuns’ poets, who fed them and served as “shameful muses”, as Cervantes, in El coloquio de los perros, puts it in Berganza’s mouth.

Such an anomalous situation can be explained by the large number of nuns without vocation, among other causes, because the great lords locked up in the cloisters their bastard daughters and those who could not be sufficiently endowed to marry them. The dowry of a nun was quite inferior to that of a married woman. Despite the fact that the Council of Trent decreed that the novice had to be more than 12 years old and to be examined when she asked for the habit and before her first profession by her bishop about her vocation, the king Philip IV placed his natural daughter Ana Margarita of Austria, being still a child, in the convent of Madrid. And the bastard John of Austria made his three natural daughters enter religion. Another reason of forced vocations was to increase the “legitimate” (part of the inheritance) for the brothers who were left in the world, since the novices could “renounce the paternal legitimate, under the petition made by the parents”. Hurtado de Mendoza puts in the mouth of a nun this bitter complaint: “That our parents in order to give their sons the estate, wanted to dispossess us and, above all, to confine us where God is so offended”.

Also, some, in view of the perversity of men, sought refuge in the cloister. Thus, Hamlet advised Ophelia: “go to a convent; why expose yourself to be the mother of sinful children? We are all bad baddies”.

In the face of this deplorable panorama and with such drastic ecclesiastical legislation, are not surprising the prohibitions of Calasanz with respect to the Piarists who frequented, even to confess, the feminine convents (EGC 212, 691, 1302, 1441, 1643, etc.). Cardinal John Peter Carafa, later Pope under the name of Paul IV, ordered that the confessor of nuns “must not be a young man, no matter how holy he may be, even if he works miracles’’. And in his Memorandum Pro Reformatione Monialium, he orders that the confessor must not live in the nuns’ monastery even if he is ninety years old.

It is true that Calasanz, on one occasion, forbids, under penalty of excommunication ipso facto, two religious “to speak with nuns, to write to them or to make them speak through an intermediary”. He is nevertheless pleased, so much so that he is happy that Fr. John Chrysostom Peri “have dedicated yourself, for the pure love of God, to these holy nuns of Millesimo, in such a way as to be of spiritual benefit to Your Reverence and to the good nuns”, as he writes in a letter on January 19, 1648.

28. The habit of the most Holy Virgin

On December 11, 1632, Calasanz wrote to Fr. Melchior Alacchi, then in Venice: “I am glad that Bro. Paul de Andrés is dressed and I would like to know how he wears the habit of the Blessed Virgin”. This is what Calasanz calls the Piarist cassock. What this habit was like is described in articles 154 to 160 of his Constitutions. But, if we want a synthesis of this mean and vile habit, as a testimony of extreme poverty and profound humility, we find it in the Annotazioni of Fr. Vincent Berro: “It consisted of a black tunic, long to the feet, with a single opening in the chest, closed with wooden buttons, and a cloak that reached to the knees, made of the same black cloth and so rough that it was frightening, because it was made of the rustic cloth used to make the packs of beasts; with bare feet and closed shoes, although a few days later they wore them open, that is to say, sandals in the apostolic style. At the beginning they did not wear shirts, but later, on the advice of the doctors (for fear of the vitriol of the dye), they made shirts of thick and rough hemp, but after some time, they ended up wearing woolen shirts.” This was the habit that Calasanz received from the hands of Cardinal Benedict Giustiniani, on the day of the Annunciation, March 25, 1617.

In Summary of the Institute of the Pauline Congregation of the Poor of the Mother of God of the Pious Schools, published by Fr. Adolfo García-Durán, we read concerning the habit of the fathers of the said congregation, that is, the Primitive Piarists: “The dress is of black cloth with mantle and cassock like priests and it is of what vilest that can be found; they wear a shirt of sackcloth or serge, their bare feet with sandals”. In another of the four analogous Summaries that have been preserved, we read: “To this poverty corresponds the dress, which is of black cloth, but of the vilest that can be found. They wear woolen shirts and open shoes with bare feet”. The date of this document is not known, although Father Picanyol, in Epistolario of Calasanz, places it among the letters of 1616.

It is worth noting the word “vile” with which Calasanz, here and in the Constitutions, adjectivizes the clothes with which the habits of his religious are to be made. He is not content for it to be vile... he wants it to be “of the vilest” (viliores, according to the Constitutions mentioned above). The word vile as applied to the clothing of the Church can already be found in the Partidas of Alfonso X, when the habit of public penitents is mentioned: “with a vile vestment of cloth that is of a color that well resembles penitence”. In turn, the Kempis, in chapter 54 of the third part, in which nature and grace are contrasted, says: “Nature seeks to have things that are curious and beautiful and abhors those that are vile and coarse”. And in the Constitutions of the Capuchins of 1536 -which influenced those of Calasanz- reads: “Dress in the vilest cloths, abject, austere, coarse and despised cloths, which can be easily can be found in that province in which they reside”.

Special attention should also be given to the shirt. In one of his sermons, St. Augustine recommends to the faithful not to give linen tunics to clerics. It should be noted that the shirt is an evolution of the short tunic, while the cassock comes from the talar tunic. Saint Dominic of Guzmán, in Liber consuetudinum of his Order, prescribes that “they should not wear linen in contact with the flesh, not even the sick”. Likewise, Alfonso X also in the Partidas, writes: “Therefore, it was good for the Holy Church to show some things that the monks should keep, and these are that they should not wear linen shirts...”.

The apostolic sandals take their name from the Gospel of Mark, when Jesus sends the apostles to evangelize and orders them a clothing and a baggage that coincides with those that the Jewish brotherhood of the Essenes wore in their travels.

Regarding the black cassock -whose use Calasanz also describes as “dressing in the apostolic”-he himself recognizes in the Summary, as we have seen, that it is identical to that of the priest. The clerics regular, to which the Piarists belong, inasmuch as they were created for the reform of the secular clergy, have as their habit the black cassock, which at that time was called the “habit of St. Peter.” The bachelor Samson Carrasco says to Don Quixote “Because of the habit of St. Peter that I wear...”

Instead of the long cloak or mantle -white that of the Carmelites, black that of the Dominicans-, Calasanz settled for the short cloak of the Capuchins: “long to the measure of a kneeling man, he orders in his Constitutions; “the mantle should not exceed the extremity of the hands”, we read in the Constitutions of the Capuchins of 1552.

The one described up to here is the one that Calasanz called “the habit of the most blessed Virgin”. The Carmelites, who influenced the discalced form of the early Piarists, were perhaps also imitated in this denomination to a certain extent. That very poor habit that St. John of the Cross wore for the first time in Duruelo, made by the saintly Mother Teresa of Jesus and her nuns inside the cloister, and tried it on in the parlor by the saint, he considered it “a gift of the Mother of God”, honoring himself “every day by appearing dressed with it, to the point of making diligence in the chapter of 1581 so that it was decreed: “We establish that our friars always sleep with the scapular.”

This considering oneself clothed in the habit of Mary is the accentuation of a devotion spread throughout Medieval Europe and that lasted until much later: the devotion to “Our Lady of the Mantle”, with which she shelters and defends the human beings, under the invocations of Our Lady of Grace, Our Lady of Mercy, Our Lady of the Gonfalon, Our Lady of Secours, Our Lady of Mercy, Our Lady of Graces. Since the late Middle Ages, the habits of the confraternities have been created. The laying of Mary’s mantle over the confraternities was symbolized by the respective habit. In XIV century, the disciplinants adopted a white habit, for which in Italy they were called the Bianchi (whites). In one of their Lauds, they put in the mouth of Jesus Christ: “Sinners, I have forgiven you, - those of you who have confessed, - because of the garment which you have worn, - of my sweet Mother.” In the time of a contemporary of Calasanz, Miguel de Cervantes, this was still the clothing of the disciplinants. In Don Quixote’s quarrel with the goat herder, as well as in the joke played on him by the Dukes in their palace, there appear “men dressed in white – ensabanados (with white bed sheets) they will seem to Sancho - in the manner of disciplinants.

Moreover, the Marian troubadour Gautier de Coincy (1177-1236) relates Our Lady´s dress or mantle to the very ancient prayer Sub tuum praesidium (We fly to your patronage...), which was so dear to St. Joseph Calasanz.

29. A sacralization of the meals?

For Calasanz, the refectory or conventual dining room was more than a place where to attend to the indispensable need of food. He attributed to the Piarist refectory the functions that the capitular hall performs in monasteries. The adjective capitular was given to this monastic room because of the daily reading of a chapter of the monastic Rule that was held there. Calasanz also ordered the reading of the Constitutions or Rules at the beginning of the midday meal. As in the monastic Chapter Hall, in our refectory was also the distribution of offices, although not daily but weekly. In the monasteries, the Chapter Hall was the place for the prayer of Prima, today suppressed from the Book of Hours of the liturgical prayer. It was part of the office of Prima, the reading of the Martyrology or the list of the saints of the day. Calasanz also introduces this reading, which, in a certain way, he parallels the Bible (the Sacra Lectione) by assigning it the first place in the dinner readings. Calasanz also assigns to the dining room the Chapter of Faults or public confession of faults against the Constitutions and the fulfillment of many of the penances imposed on the self-accusers (Constitutions, 94).

Calasanz attributes something else to the refectory, to the point of demanding that whatever is eaten must be taken in the refectory. This prohibition appears repeatedly in his correspondence. Neither eating dried fruits nor eating fresh fruits in the vineyard, not even those fallen from the tree (EGC 337, 460, 562, 762, 882, 1442, 1479, 1483, 1536, 1613, 2153, 2226, 2246, 2250, 3454, etc.). In his Constitutions, he could not be more categorical: “Without the Superior’s permission, one cannot eat or drink outside of the established hours” (Const. 126). This text is an adaptation of its counterpart in the Constitutions of the Clerics Regular Minor. But in the latter, there is no the prohibition of drinking. The censor of those of Calasanz, the Jesuit P. Alagona, in the original code, underlined the word drink and noted in the margin the adjective harsh. Why did Calasanz include the prohibition of drinking? It could be a hygienic reason.

At that time the aphorisms entitled Regimen sanitatis salernitanum, a didactic poem in 300 hexameters, with internal rhyme, were still authoritative. It is attributed to the masters of the school of Medicine of Salerno, but it seems that its origin is a Latin epistle written by Juan de Toledo and dedicated to a Spanish princess. Among these aphorisms is the following: “Ut minus aegrotes, non inter fercula potes” (So that you get sick less, do not drink between meals).

Another reason can be found in the Confessions of St. Augustine (Book IX, chap. VIII, 17). The doctor of Hippo narrates that his mother and her sisters were severely educated by a servant of great trust, who, outside of meals, forbade them to drink water, even if they burned with thirst, for she said: “Now they drink water because they have no wine. Then they will hate water, but the habit of drinking will prevail”.

John Cassian, in his Institutiones cenobiticae, goes so far as to consider it a sacrilege “not only to taste the fruit that falls on the ground in the orchard, but not even to touch it with one’s hand (Book IV, Chapter 8)”. Would he consider it sacrilege because a sacralization of the dining room and the food eaten there? Cato, in his De agricultura, orders: “Ubi res divina facta erit statim ibi consumtio” (When a divine ceremony has been performed, it is immediately consumed on the spot). Did Calasanz also consider that every meal participated in the sacredness of the Eucharistic agape attributed to the first Christians? Was there in the Pious School of Calasanz’ time a current that proposed to configure the Order according to the primitive Church, or was it only an idea of Fr. Antonio Vitali? (EGC 2752).

There is no doubt that Calasanz links the conventual meals with the Last Supper of Jesus. The text of the blessing of the food “according to the Roman Breviary” is allusive to the Eucharist. As well as the washing of the feet of the strangers, an office of the in charge of the dining room, as the Saint precepts in his Dichiarazion circa le nostre Costituzioni, Regole e Riti Comuni. To the bread (of which one can eat as much as one needs) according to his letters 2153, 2244 and 2246) Calasanz adds wine, sufficiently poured. Neither in the Constitutions of the Capuchins, nor in those of the Theatines, nor in those of the Caracciolini nor in those of the Jesuits, from which Calasanz drew his inspiration, contains any prescriptions regarding wine. In paragraph 124 of his Constitutions Calasanz orders: “The wine in which there is lust according to the Apostle (Eph 5:18) let it not be precious or pure, especially for the young”. In the Piarist houses, wine was drunk at meals, also on Friday, the day of penance. St. Jerome wrote: “Only the elderly should drink wine”. The wine was watered down, as the Regimen Sanitatis Salernitanum mentioned above prescribed, bene linphatum (well-watered down). Italian and Spanish wines allowed to this, but not French wines, according to Luis Vives. For his part, Calasanz preferred the Romanesque wine because it withstood water better than that of Frascati. Vives himself, in his Dialogues, makes the character Democritus say: “Pour me first the water up to the middle of the cup, and on top of it the wine, according to the ancient custom”. In the Rules for the Novices given by Calasanz, we read something similar: “Put the water in the glass first and then the wine in a small quantity”. It could be said that this was a ritual.

The observance of poverty on the part of the diners was also careful. In various Calasanzian documents, there is the prescription that the religious in the dining room to use a napkin (Const. 127). The reason is that the poor did not eat with tablecloths. This is attested to by the proverb: “He who goes from napkin to tablecloth - God save us from him”. In the letter Don Quixote wrote to Dulcinea, from Sierra Morena, he tells her that he intends the penance of imitating the noble Marquis of Mantua, who committed himself to “not eating bread at tablecloths”. The Capuchins in the Constitutions of Albacina stated that the napkin without tablecloth was the custom of the poor: “Put on a napkin for each friar and for each poor person”. When Father Cherubini replaced Calasanz in the government of the Pious School, he wanted to attenuate the rigor of poverty. And in the Constitutions which he wrote and which were never approved, he prescribed that, in addition to napkins, there should be tablecloths. There were two ways of arranging the napkin. One mentioned by Luis Vives, in his Dialogues: Spreading it on the lap. The other is the one mentioned in the aforementioned Rule for the Novices: “spreading one part on the table and the other in front of him”. Another sign of poverty was the cutlery: the knife and fork were made of iron, but the spoon had to be made of wood. Calasanz did not want the food to be taken the most usual way in his time, that is to say, without forks, grabbing it with the hand and getting their fingers dirty. Even in the XVII century, the fork was a luxury, satirized as “the frivolous Italian invention”. As for the spoon, the humble classes used preferably those of boxwood for their hardness or those of juniper wood for their characteristic taste.

It can also be considered a rite to wash hands before and after meals. In the ancient monastic orders, the bell was rung with a special ringing to summon the monks to the “ablutorium”. This sound was called “ad manus lavandas” (to wash the hands). Also, this ablution - more indispensable than today, because food was taken with the hands - was sacralized not only in the monasteries, but also by the faithful people. Erasmus of Rotterdam, in his Colloquia, says: “The Christians at table represent that most sacramental and last meal which our Lord Jesus Christ celebrated with his disciples. From this has come the custom of washing hands among Christians, so that in this they may take care that if any rancor, hatred or envy or any ugly liking resides in the mind of the Christian who has done all this, to leave and purify it before the food arrives, so that he may be worthy of it, as well as because it will without fail be healthier for the body by eating it with a pure and calm mind”.

The ablution at the end of the meal, which is to precede the thanksgiving, is prescribed by Luis Vives and Erasmus himself. In Don Quixote, this ablution is mentioned both in the house of the Knight of the Green Overcoat and in the Palace of the Dukes. According to Erasmus, the hands are then washed “to cleanse the spirit if, by any chance, any stain of excess has been contracted in this meal”. This is a pious way of making a virtue of the need to wash hands soiled by the condiments of the meal. The Regimen Sanitatis Salernitanum, mentioned above, gives a less pious reason: “Lotio post mensam tibi confert munera bina: mundificat palmas et lumina reddet acuta” (The washing after eating provides two benefits: it cleanses the palms of the hands and sharpens the sight).

30. Calasanz and the father of Juan Palafox, Bishop of Puebla

An outstanding figure of the Viceroyalty of New Spain was undoubtedly John Palafox y Mendoza, the controversial bishop of Puebla de los Angeles. He was born in Fitero (Navarra, Spain), on June 24, 1600, natural son of a friend of Calasanz, the Marquis of Ariza, don Pedro Jaime de Palafox y Rebolledo, and of a lady surnamed Casa Matey de Espes, who, according to the story, wanted to drown the newborn in the Alhama River, but was saved by the faithful servants Pedro and Maria.

The little John was educated in the school of Saint Gaudioso, of Tarazona, and he studied in the Universities of Huesca, Alcalá and Salamanca. Ordained a priest, he was treasurer and canon of the cathedral of Tarazona (1626-1630). The Count-Duke of Olivares appointed him prosecutor of the Council of War (1626) and of the Council of the Indies (1629). He traveled in Italy, Moravia, Bohemia, Sweden, Flanders and France, as almoner and chaplain to the sister of Philip IV King of Spain, Maria of Austria, later wife of Ferdinand of Hungary.

Consecrated Bishop of Puebla, he arrived in Mexico on April 21, 1640, with the mission to proceed against the previous viceroy. After, he proceeded as well against the present viceroy, Duke de Escalona, whom he deposed and substituted as interim viceroy, from June to November 1642. He then handed over viceregal power to the Count of Salvatierra. He was a great organizer. He completed the cathedral of Puebla. He erected the Episcopal Palace and the triple Seminary of Saint Peter, Saint John and Saint Paul. He founded several schools and the library called Palafoxiana. Also, a school for poor maidens. He distinguished himself for his charity with the indigenous people.

Palafox had to face the hostility of the Franciscans, Dominicans and Augustinians, who by virtue of their privileges, subtracted themselves from the authority of the bishop. But his greatest conflict was the one he had in 1647 with the Jesuits, which lasted several years and reached moments of great passion. He submitted the cause to the Holy See and moved to Europe to defend his rights.

In 1655 he was transferred to the diocese of Burgo de Osma (Spain), where he died in the fame of sanctity on the 1st of October 1659. His Process of Beatification was Petitioned in 1694 and initiated in 1726 by Pope Benedict XII, but was suspended by Pius VI in 1777. This process played a prominent role in the whole campaign for the suppression of the Society of Jesus. But, once it was dissolved, interest in Bishop Palafox died out. Until it was resumed in 1990. The process of beatification of the XVII and XVIII centuries was perfect and once approved the heroicity of his virtues and a miracle attributed to his intercession, was declared Blessed on June, 5, 2011.

Palafox was the author of numerous works, among which stand out: Sitio y socorro de Fuenterravía y sucesos del año 1638 (Madrid, 1639), Varón de deseos (1642), Spiritual Year (1656), Excellencies of St. Peter, Prince of the Apostles (1659), Testament and Protestation (Osma, 1659), History of the Conquest of China by Tartari (Paris, 1670), The Shepherd of Noche-Buena, Book of Virtues of the Indian, Pilgrimage of Philotea to the Holy Temple of the Cross (1659). He edited the letters of St. Teresa of Jesus (1658). After his death his autobiography was published, with the title Don Juan Palafox y Mendoza’s Interior Life (1687). In the thirteen volumes in folio of his works, published in Madrid in 1767, appears his Juicio político de los daños y reparos de cualquier monarquía (Political judgement on the damages and reparations of any monarchy), which is, among other things, a plea against the uniformism of the Spanish regime of his time. Of the fame of his works is the fact that the Jesuit Juan Eusebio Nieremberg (1595-1688) recommended, in a letter to a spiritual daughter, together with La perfecta casada, by Friar Luis de León, “the prudent documents of the Bishop of Puebla, a very discreet writer”. And he adds: “In the meantime, please receive these notices from really good sources”.

Archbishop Palafox was the natural son of Pedro Jaime de Palafox y Rebolledo, II Marquis of Ariza recognized and legitimized after his marriage in 1610 with his cousin Ana de Blanes y Palafox. The title of Marquis had been granted in 1611 by the king of Spain, Philip III, to Don Francisco Palafox y Próxita. When he died, his brother Pedro Jaime Palafox y Rebolledo inherited it in 1613; he was the second Marquis of that title. He was related with Saint Joseph Calasanz in Rome when the future marquis intervened in the imports to Rome of wheat coming from the kingdoms of the Spanish monarch Philip II, particularly from Sicily, which traditionally supplied the Crown of Aragon. In 1590, Pope Gregory XIV wrote an autograph letter to Philip II asking him to send wheat, because the situation in Rome was so critical due to the hunger and famine, which caused, in February 1541, the Roman people to assault the grain depots. It has been attributed to a confidence of the marquis of Ariza the allusion of Calasanz, in a letter to the parish priest of his native village, to the wheat coming “from the King’s land”.

As soon as Pope Clement VIII was elected, he appointed, according to custom, secret stewards. The title of secret steward, a position now called Chaplain of His Holiness, was given to certain dignitaries linked to the person of the Pope, exercising this function, in a regular way, at the Pontifical Court. On this occasion Clement VIII appointed three more closely linked to the service of the Pontiff. These were Francis of Dietrichstein, a close friend of Calasanz and introducer of his Pious Schools in Germania, Guido Bentivoglio, later also a cardinal like the previous one, and Pedro Jaime Palafox. The latter was highly esteemed by the Pope, who twice commissioned him to deliver the red biretta to the Spanish cardinals Bernardo de Rojas y Sandoval in 1599 and Antonio Zapata in 1604. He was also a Commander of the Order of Santiago. In a trip to Spain, he had his son Juan, the future bishop of Puebla. Some identify Don Jaime Palafox y Rebolledo, second Marquis of Ariza, as the “secret steward” who obtained for Calasanz the canonry of the diocese of Urgell”, but that the Datario did not want to grant it to him.

There was epistolary correspondence between Calasanz and this marquis, who wrote him at least three letters from Spain. Two replies from Calasanz, dated in Rome, are preserved. To the request of the de Ariza for a foundation of the “Pious Schools of Rome”, in the lands of his marquisate, Calasanz shows him, in a letter dated 26th May 1614, his intention to “correspond with as much affection and brevity”. The saint is optimistic, because the fathers of the Lucca Congregation of the Mother of God, with which Calasanz merged his schools for a time, had opened a novitiate in Rome near the Trevi Fountain, and the subjects who are formed there “besides showing proof in mortification and spirit” some of them are Spanish, so it is to be hoped that soon, his schools could be “extended to other parts” and give satisfaction to the “holy intent” of the marquis. Already in this letter two concepts appear which are intimately Calasanzian. Namely: the “fervent desire to help the poor with such useful and necessary help, as it is the knowledge united to the holy fear of God at such a tender age that the benefit is very certain”.

On February 28, 1615, nine months after the previous letter, Calasanz continues to encourage the Marquis’ hopes. It is based on an increase of vocations, since the religious of the congregation resulting from the aforementioned union with the fathers of Luca will be able to be ordained “titulo paupertatis”, that is to say, as poor people without patrimony. Until then they had not needed of it, since they all belonged to noble and rich families of the Republic of Luca. In letter of January 4, 1615, the de Ariza gave Calasanz news about his family. Then, Calasanz considers “good occasion to thank the Lord, very particularly for the health and the contentment in which His Divine Majesty favors Your lordship and the Lady Marquise and her blessed family”. Among these family members was her son John, the future bishop of Puebla, who would be fourteen years old at that time.

It is to be supposed that these desires for a Calasanzian foundation were transmitted by the Marquis to his son John. Perhaps he had them in mind when he governed the diocese of Puebla. In 1678, only 25 years after Palafox had left the diocese of Puebla, a formal proposal for a Piarist foundation was sent from Mexico to Rome, signed by the Prelates, magistrates and Judges of the Viceroyalty. How did they get to know the Pious School only 30 years after the death of its founder? The petition is of even greater merit if we take into account that, in 1644, the municipality of the Mexican capital recommended the suspension of new religious houses, since the economic burden was excessively onerous.

31. Origins of the emblem of the Pious Schools

Coat of arms, emblem, blazon, shield, escutcheon, aegis, are related words and some have considered them synonymous. The shield covers, but also manifests; therefore, since ancient times, the warrior has stamped his emblem on it. It was called blazon each of the figures or symbols of the emblem; but, like the emblem, the blazon was also assimilated to the complete shield. To the latter was also equated the aegis, a word that, in its origins referred to the skin of the goat Amalthea, armored with the head of Medusa, which, as a mantle or breastplate, was the attribute of Jupiter and Minerva.

The shield, in ancient times, was of such size that it covered the entire body of the warrior. Therefore, it doubled the personality of the warrior, considering it as his representative. Hence the great characters aspired to carry in it a kind of universe of their own that would characterize them: The world supports my reason for fighting, so, if I am defeated, the whole universe will resent it. The fighter protected by his shield, adopts the symbolism of the emblem that decorated it. The complexity of this emblematic decoration on the shield of Achilles, is described by Homer in Iliad. To such representations it was sometimes attributed the virtue of causing fright to the enemy, in imitation of Athena, who placed in the center of the shield the head of Medusa that turned into a rock whoever dared to look at it. Perseus petrified the Gorgon, using his shield as a mirror in which she reflected her hideous head with hair like serpents

The origin of the emblematic shield some want to trace it back to Noah, or at least to the twelve tribes of Israel. Others, to the king of the Medes or Alexander the Great. It is not lacking, however, who observes that Aeschylus, in his tragedy Seven against Thebes, already mentions shields with emblems. But more solid is the attribution to the crusaders returning from the Holy Land. It was not until the XII century that the arrangement of the heraldic figures stamped on the coats of arms was regulated.

St. Paul had assimilated the shield to the faith, with which “can be extinguished the incendiary arrows of the Evil One” (Eph 6:16). In the Renaissance, the shield is an attribute of strength, of victory, of perspicacity, of chastity. Especially of chastity, to stop the arrows of Eros or Cupid. Mantegna, in his painting “Wisdom victorious over vices”, which is exhibited in the Louvre, represents Minerva embracing a translucent shield. This Renaissance mentality may have influenced Calasanz when he conceived the emblem of his Pious Schools. All these attributes can be considered in this coat of arms. It is defense, it is representative of the Pious School, it is terror for the Evil One, it is honor of those who embrace its most noble aegis.

The emblem of the Congregation of the Mother of God of Lucca, at a time merged with the Pious School, already bore the abbreviations of the two Greek words Meter Theou (Mother of God), but arranged differently. Above them, Calasanz placed the anagram resulting from the superposition of the first and last letters of Mary’s name. In this way he proclaims the greatest glory of the Blessed Virgin: that of being the mother of the Word in the flesh. (These abbreviations are the equivalent of the motto that declares the concept or moral contained in the emblem). All this is surrounded by a crown of rays, some straight, others wavy, which, according to Fr. Caputi, are of gold (raggi d’oro) and signify “the glory that the Blessed Virgin deserves”. A cross crowns the apex of the letter A.

This coat of arms of the Pious Schools is the one that was coined on the medal that Calasanz had stamped on the occasion of his profession of perpetual vows on March 19, 1619. On one of the sides of this medal, it is represented a Piarist kneeling before the Mother of God with her divine son in his arms, who, from a cloud offers him a kind of chain or shackles of slavery. The explanation comes in a Latin cartouche: Foedus perpetuae servitutis (Commitment or covenant of perpetual slavery). The scene is framed by three angels with chains, on which appears a phrase, also in Latin, that completes the previous one: Vinculo indissolubili votorum (With the indissoluble bond of the vows). It refers to those of poverty, obedience and chastity. The vow of teaching will appear later in the formula of solemn profession of 1622. On the other side of the medal, the coat of arms of the Congregation: a large M interspersed with an A, and below them the aforementioned Greek abbreviations. Above the A, the cross, and at the lower end of the Greek abbreviations, the heart of Mary, pierced by the seven swords of her sorrows. The straight and wavy rays surrounding the shield enclose the inscription Professus Congr. Paulinae Pauper. Matris Dei Schol. Piar. (Professed of the Pauline Congregation of the Poor of the Mother of God of the Pious Schools). The crown that today appears between the cross and the cusp of the A was added after 1619.

The Greek abbreviation Meter Theou appears on Byzantine icons of Our Lady. Among others we can see them on the lower part of the icon of Our Lady of Perpetual Help. This is a Byzantine image dating from the XII or XIV century. Venerated in the Roman church of San Matteo all´Esquilino, it fell into oblivion until 1866, when Pius IX entrusted it to the Redemptorist, who used to celebrate its feast. With this title of Soccorso (Help), the Blessed Virgin was venerated at least four centuries before. In the Epistolary of Calasanz, there is mention of “Santissima Madonna del Soccorso”, which he described as “miracolosa” (EGC 3045/1).

On the other hand, it is great the similarity of the coat of arms of the Pious School, as it appears on the aforementioned medal, with the adverse of the so-called Miraculous Medal, that Our Lady ordered to propagate to Saint Catherine Labouré in her apparition of November 27, 1830, in the convent of Sisters of Charity, rue de Bac, in Paris. On this medal, the M of Mary’s monogram appears with a cross supported on a horizontal bar, which joins the two vertical lineation of this letter. Someone has interpreted this bar as the Greek letter “iota” of the monogram of Jesus and in the superimposed cross the letter “Khi” of the same language, which would come to represent the monogram of Christ also in Greek. Now, below these monogrammatic signs, appears, as in the medal of Calasanz, the heart of Mary, but pierced by a single sword. It is also accompanied by the Heart of Jesus surrounded by thorns. An oval crown of twelve stars encloses all these symbolisms. On presenting the medal to St. Catherine Labouré, Our Lady ordered: “Have a medal coined with this figure. Whoever wears it around his neck and has confidence in it will receive abundant mercy”.

The Heart of Mary, which in Calasanz’ medal appears pierced by seven swords of sorrow may indicate a very special devotion to this Marian invocation and leads us to suspect that Calasanz recited daily or often a Latin prayer addressed to Our Lady of Sorrows, which was sung every day, in the church of Montserrat in Rome and of which our Founder kept a copy in his room.

All the virtues and qualities that have been attributed to the coats of arms, can be applied to that of Calasanz: especially that of our defense. Berro says: he placed the name of Mary as “his weapons”, since “he recognized Our Lady and not himself as foundress”. This is confirmed by what Calasanz wrote to Fr. Peter Paul Grieg on October 20, 1646: “It is therefore necessary that we have recourse to the help of blessed God and to the intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary, under whose protection this work was founded”.

32. Calasanz and the Bible

Ascetic Constitutions is an ancient book, attributed to St. Basil. There, he begins with this statement: “Every action, my dear, and every word of our Savior Jesus is a rule of piety and virtue”. It is not surprising, then, that in the Constitutions of Calasanz, there is a notable number of explicit and implicit quotations of scriptural passages. These quotations and references, with rare exceptions, appear in passages that do not belong to the immediate sources of the Constitutions: those of the Jesuits, those of the Theatines, Caracciolini, Capuchins and Discalced Carmelites. So, we can suppose that belong to the spiritual Calasanzian heritage.

In the mentioned Constitutions of Calasanz appear 61 biblical passages, reproduced or simply alluded to. Of these, 45 belong to the New Testament and 16 to the Old Testament. The Old Testament books most quoted or referred are the Psalter and the Book of Proverbs (four times each). Of the New Testament, 27 references correspond to the Letters of St. Paul and 14 to the Gospels. The New Testament book most often cited or mentioned is that of St. Matthew (9 times). This may be explained by the ample space that the liturgy gave to this book in times of Calasanz. This Gospel was read at Sunday Masses from the 17th Sunday per annum until Septuagesima (three before Lent).

Some chapters of these Calasanzian Constitutions are headed, by way of justification, with a biblical quotation or mention of the doctrine developed in them. These are the chapters that deal more directly with ascetical themes and those dedicated to the religious vows.

The number of references and quotations from the Bible contained in his Epistolary is also immense. In these as well as in those of the Constitutions, there are slight variations in construction and lexicon if we compare them with those of the Vulgate. This leads us to suspect that Calasanz was using a Vulgata edition prior to the Sixtus-Clementine revised version of 1592.

In the theological studies that Calasanz attended before this date, special importance was given to the Bible courses. The University of Valencia had two chairs of Sacred Scripture, one for each Testament. In the course of 1579-80, in which Calasanz is supposed to have studied at the University of Alcalá de Henares, the Chair of Sacred Scripture was held by Dr. John Cantero, “one of the most learned and staunch disputants” who was substituted in November 1580 by the Dominican Jerome Almonacid. In Alcalá, the study of the Bible was compulsory for at least two years.

Can be appreciated in Calasanz some interpretations of biblical passages not common among his contemporaries. He flees from literalism in the reading of hyperbole. For example, in the passage “All wickedness is light compared to the wickedness of the woman”, of the chapter 25 of Sirach, in contrast to contemporary misogynist authors, Calasanz writes in letter 3082: “Although it has been written that there is no malice as great as the malice of a woman, it is much greater the malice of the passionate and stubborn religious”.

He also makes use of symbolic interpretation, as can be seen in that of the famous number seven, in his letter 912: “No one knows how to take four steps without falling to the ground; and this is true in the righteous, who are said to fall seven times, which means many times a day”. Calasanz does not share the opinion of those who literally interpreting this passage of the Book of Proverbs (24, 16) made of Matins (Office of Readings) and Lauds (Morning Prayer) a single canonical hour so that there would be seven times daily that the priests and the religious men and women of choir prayed daily.

Calasanz accepted the patristic interpretations of the Word of God, even at the cost of twisting the texts. An example of this is the accommodating conjunction of Psalm 137 (“Blessed is the one who seizes your children and dashes them against the rock”), with paragraph 4 of chapter 10 of the first letter to the Corinthians (“And the rock was Christ”). Thus, in article 112 of his Constitutions, following the saints Ambrose, Augustine, Jerome, Hilary and Benedict, as well as Cassian and Evagrius Ponticus, apply these two texts to the lustful temptations identified with the sons of Babylon, which must be eliminated with the thought of Christ, the cornerstone, or with his commitment to him: “You will avoid the impure thoughts,” he writes, “with all your might, crashing them at birth against the rock” (and not “against the stones”, as we read in an erroneous translation).

Calasanz wants the continuous reading of the Bible to be done in the dining room as a seasoning of the food: “Let the food be seasoned with the sacred reading” (Const.133), that is, with Sacred Scripture, as confirmed by the parallel places in the respective Constitutions of the Theatines and of the Clerics Regular Minor, in a tradition that goes back at least to St. Augustine: Nec solae vobis fauces sumant cibum, sed et aures percipiant Dei verbum (So, not only your mouths get the food but your ears receive the Word of God).

The private reading of the Bible was done by Calasanz, every night, in the Missal, following day by day the readings of the daily Mass. He also showed special interest in the homiliaries of the readings of the Sunday Masses. He alludes to these books in letters 110, 187 and 202, of one of which he says: “al meno me era bonissimo” (for me it was very good).

The imposition of the Psalter as a text for spelling and reading in the smallest classes of their schools, a custom of that time, has its origin in St. Jerome, who, writing to Leta and Pacatula, insists that their respective little daughters begin their reading apprenticeship in the Book of Psalms. This apprenticeship had to be in Latin because of the prohibitions of Paul IV (1559) and Pious IV (1564) to read the Bible privately in the vulgar language, without special permission from the Holy See.

Moreover, he applied biblical texts, in an accommodating sense, to the punishments with which, God, he believed, scourges nations for the sins of their rulers. With the invasion of Venice by the plague in 1630, whose ravages Manzoni masterfully describes in his famous novel I promessi sposi (The Betrothed), Calasanz recalls the successive punishments inflicted on the Pearl of the Adriatic, according to the prophecy of Cardinal Baronio. He, made it against Venice in his Paraenesis ad Rempublicam Venetam, when it was under the interdict that was uselessly fulminated by Paul V, “wanting to repeat - as the historian Joseph Lortz says - in a somewhat anachronistic way the pretensions and delusions of grandeur of the medieval popes”. Local interdict was a canonical penalty that affects all the inhabitants of a territory, in which the celebration of liturgical services is forbidden and even the administration of the sacraments is prohibited, except in danger of death, and even the ecclesiastical burial is not permitted. Calasanz refers to the conflict that originated this interdict, recalling the prophecies of Baronius, the culmination of which he sees in the plague that was ravaging Venice at that time. In the letter to Father Melchior Alacchi, then resident in the Venetian Republic, Calasanz argues to this nation with Baronial expressions: “Woe to you, who dwell in many canals, rich in treasures, for your end is coming to you, the end of your robberies. The Lord bestowed true knowledge of the cause of the scourges of our time, for which he has suffered grievously, though with none of them has made amends. The 1st is the loss of people, money, and reputation in the business of Gadisca; the 2nd was the oppression of the Duke of Osuna, which led him to a bad end, and the 3rd is the present, greater than the 1st and 2nd, and I would not wish to wait for the 4th, because, in a similar case, the Prophet says: Super quartum non convertam (“By the fourth I will not revoke anything”)”. The first biblical text of this letter of Calasanz is from Jeremiah (51:13) and refers to Babylon; the last one is from Amos (2:4), in the judgment of Yahweh on the nations bordering Israel.

This is not the only occasion in which Calasanz accommodates biblical references to contemporary politics. In letter 3123, also addressed to Fr. Alacchi, who was in Spain, referring to the latter’s news about the drought, the war called “dels segadors” and the lack of cereal in the country, Calasanz writes to him: “I think that the King’s sins cause these scourges, being true the rule that says publice peccantes, publice sunt arguendi (Those who sin publicly should be reprimanded also publicly) and being true that the Old Testament is a figure of the New, it is clearly seen that the punishment that God gave to the kings that publicly committed some crime also gave it to all the people; and to some he gave temporary punishment and to others eternal punishment. In summary: it is necessary to receive from the hand of God all things both prosperous and adverse, and to humble oneself before his holy secret judgments”.

From what we can see, Calasanz had a providential concept, although supportive and progressive, of history. Like Bossuet, he could also say: “Humanity advances, but God guides it “.

33. Calasanz and the intuitive method

“The foundation of all teaching is to present sensible objects well to our senses, in such a way that they can be easily understood”. This affirmation is by John Amos Comenius. It appears in the prologue of his Orbis sensualium pictus, a work published in 1658. It is at such a late date that many place the moment of the appearance of what in pedagogy is called the intuitive method. For, in the case of the impossibility of directly contemplating a sensible object of learning, this book by Comenius represents it in small wood engravings the size of a mail stamp, with their respective names in Latin and in the child’s vernacular language. A few years earlier, in 1617, an Aragonese zoologist, Francis Marcuello, had already used the same procedure in his Historia natural y moral de las aves (Natural and Moral History of Birds). The method can, however, be credited with a more ancient tradition. Just look at the sculptural and pictorial imagery of the temples of almost all religions. And in the secular absence of audio-visual artefacts to endow the contemplated image with movement and sound, sacred theatrical representations have more than filled their place. We cannot deny them a didactic character, when they were considered, that time, as a school of conducts.

Joseph of Calasanz could not but use this intuitive method in the didactics of his students, in spite of the precariousness of the didactic means of his poor schools. He mainly used it in the lower classes, since intuitive instruction gives good results in small and poorly gifted pupils, while the more developed ones benefit more from intelligible intuition, also called intuitive thinking.

Images engraved on paper, religious pictures, are repeatedly mentioned in his letters. He sends them to different schools to be distributed, especially as a reward among the students. And even at the moment of the greatest humiliation on the part of the one who succeeded him as Superior General, Calasanz, after giving him the large amount of alms he had received, did not hesitate to humbly beg him: “Some of our people outside Rome have asked me for holy pictures: if you would be good enough to give me something to buy some for them...”.

In addition to the holy pictures, medals, little images and wax Agnus Dei, the Calasanzian correspondence includes “painted posters” for the celebration of feasts, with the mandate that after the solemnities “they should decorate the schools and the oratory”. Also are mentioned “pictures of the Holy Scriptures” whose size is so large that they need to be sent to Naples, by sea, “by some kind of falucho”.

Contrary to the Jesuits, who distinguished themselves for their educational use of the school theater, Calasanz put obstacles in its way, because its staging and rehearsals consumed time that he considered precious for the rapid training of poor schoolchildren whose parents urgently needed help. On some occasions he allowed the theater, but without scenery. However, in the library of the San Pantaleo, in Calasanz’ time, there were small theatrical works, among them one by the famous Giambattista Basile, author of Lo cunto de li cunti (The tale of tales), later titled Pentamerone, where the most famous tales of the repertoires of Perrault and Grimm Brothers were already included.

More than school theater, Calasanz preferred allegorical representations, in which human virtues and qualities were personified. This is what he expresses in his letters. That his preparation was not improvised is proved by the fact that he used the most famous treatise on this subject. In a letter dated May 20 1628, he wrote to Father Castilla, resident in Frascati: “Send me a book that you have there, entitled Iconologia, etc., of which we have need for compositions that are to be made for the feast of Saints Justus and Pastor”. There is not the slightest doubt that he is referring to the book by Cesare Ripa, since during the XVII century, as Juan F. Esteban Lorente affirms, the word “iconologia” was applied exclusively to this work. Its full title reads as follows: Iconologia, ovvero descrittione dell’Imagini universali cavate dell’Antichità et da altri luoghi, da Cesare Ripa Perugino. Opera no meno utile che necessaria à Poeti, Pittori et Scultori, per rappresentare Vitii, Affetti and Passioni humane. In the present library of San Pantaleo there is a copy of the 1625 edition. The fame of this work was so great that celebrities of the fine arts used it as a source of inspiration: for example, in the Clementine Hall of the Vatican, by Giovanni and Cherubino Alberti; and in the fountain of the rivers in Piazza Navona, whose design in 1647 was won in competition by Bernini and inaugurated five years later. The fame of Cesare Ripa could have come to Calasanz for the thirty-nine virtues represented by him, in Rome, on March 12, 1622, on the occasion of the canonization of what he called “the five saints” - Isidore the Farmer, Ignatius of Loyola, Francis Xavier, Teresa of Jesus, Philip Neri - to whom he had great devotion and whose medal he gave to the benefactors of his Pious Schools, and for which he wished to obtain special indulgences from the Supreme Pontiff Innocent X.

In these allegorical representations, Calasanz combined corporal expression with oratorical declamation. He held the declamations in such high esteem that he had no qualms about giving the floor to children in the celebration of the Eucharist.

He also used another pedagogical procedure in which he united sensitive intuition with situational creativity. Great was Calasanz’ fondness for the nativity scenes also called cribs. The origin of these is attributed to St. Francis of Assisi, when in Greccio, on the night of Christmas, he placed the image of the child Jesus in the manger of a real mule and an ox. Although there are traces of such representations from the III century onwards, Francis’ work had the merit of mobilizing Christian piety. From it derive the representations of the mystery of Bethlehem with more or less artistic sculptures of natural or small size, scattered in realistic or allegorical settings, with greater or lesser respect for the laws of perspective, mounted with noble materials or with those that conserve their natural state such as moss and the outer bark of the cork oak.

It is not surprising, then, that Calasanz, a great devotee of the Seraphim of Assisi, should show similar fondness for the representation of the Nativity. Many are the quotations from his letters that could be adduced here. Among the Piarist contemporaries of Joseph who distinguished themselves in the art of nativity scenes, Caspar Dragonetti, his great collaborator, centenarian in age but young in spirit, is worthy of special mention. His nativity scenes were famous: he started them two months in advance, he had very delicate small figures with wax head, hands and feet, very common at that time. He wanted, however, that for the church of San Pantaleo statues were sculpted for the so-called “Stmo. Presepio” chapel. In it, the adoration of the Magi of the East with their retinue of page boys, slaves and servants. And the most remarkable thing: Fr. Caspar himself with his venerable beard, served the sculptor as a model for the homonym of the three holy kings.

The pedagogical practice of Calasanz, although with yesterday’s means -some of which are still of today-, led him to employ an intuitive instruction in which the iconic and symbolic contributed to an authentically audiovisual teaching, without today´s means, albeit with an identical or perhaps greater effectiveness.

34. Calasanz in La Salle and in Don Bosco

St. Joseph Calasanz founded only one religious Order, that of the Pious Schools. But throughout history, there has been no lack of founders and foundresses of religious teaching families who have erected, as patron and mentor of their own apostolate, the saint pedagogue who opened the first popular school in Europe. These religious institutes of Calasanzian inspiration are the Priests of the Schools of Charity (Istituto Cavanis), the Sisters of the Christian Schools of St. Joseph Calasanz (Sisters of Vorselaar), the Pious Institute of the Religious Daughters of Mary of the Pious Schools (Piarist Sisters), the Congregation of the Sacred Heart of Jesus (Fathers of Timon David), the Pious Calasanzian Institute of the Divine Shepherdess (Religious of the Divine Shepherdess), the Congregation of Christian Workers of St. Joseph Calasanz (Kalasantiner), the Poor Daughters of St. Joseph Calasanz (Calasanziane). All of them constitute what has been called the Calasanzian Family.

Other Institutes called or call St. Joseph of Calasanz Father. Cardinal Wiseman founded and placed under the protection of the Saint an institute dedicated to teaching in the Hammersmith district of London. Father Hugo Verelen, a Dominican, brother of a nun of Vorselaar, founded in the Congo (Zaire) the Congregation of Religious Sisters for the Education of Youth, placing it under the protection of St. Joseph Calasanz. Father Liborio Portolés, a Piarist, founded in 1944 in Madrid, a group of nuns called, at the beginning, Calasanzian Missionaries of Jesus, Mary and Joseph. In Belgium there existed, in 1792, a congregation entitled Sisters of St. Joseph Calasanz. In 1830, Antonio Provolo founded in Verona (Italy) the Company of Mary for the education of the Deaf and Mute under the patronage of Our Lady of Sorrows and St. Joseph Calasanz.

Moreover, the Calasanzian influence also reached the founders of the great teaching congregations: the Brothers of the Christian Schools and the Salesian Society, founded by Saints John Baptist de la Salle and John Bosco, respectively.

Thus, on page 94, chapter XX, of the Vita di Giovanni Bta. de la Salle, written in 1888 by a religious of his Institute, we read: “I beg you to give me detailed information about the Fathers of the Pious Schools; what rules they have, how they live and govern themselves; if they have spread, if they receive money. Find out as much as you can about this matter and communicate it to me with all the details you can” (Letter of St John Baptist de La Salle to Brother Gabriel Drolin, 11 February 1707).

St. John Bosco visited the Piarist Collegio Nazareno at least three times during his trips to Rome in 1867 and 1869. On 31 January 1867, Don Bosco visited the school and befriended its rector, Fr Alessandro Checcucci. This Piarist, by the will of Pope Pius IX (a former pupil of the Pious Schools of Volterra), directed the Collegio Nazareno, giving the classes a “new orientation” and the regulations a “new observance”, faithful to those written by Calasanz when he founded the school. Saint John Bosco remained in Rome until 26 February 1967. Before leaving, he made another visit to the Nazareno. He made a third visit to this school between 16 January and 5 February 1869.

These visits of St. John Bosco to Collegio Nazareno were not mere courtesy visits. It is shown by the letter that, on September 26, 1867, he wrote to the aforementioned Fr. Checcucci. From it we extract a few paragraphs: “I will say, moreover, that the teaching is not the least important aspect of the Nazareno, having found there, good methods and noble stimuli and what counts most, very wise men, whom I was happy to meet”. A few lines earlier he had written: “But this would be little if in my visits to the Nazareno I had not admired, above all, the naive and modest, but easy-going and festive nature of your pupils, who clearly reveal in their faces the benevolent and affectionate sentiments of a sincerely good soul, without tinsel or fiction. And that heart that I discovered in all those youngsters, with unmistakable traits of candid simplicity and tender kindness, convinced me once again how gentle the exercise of virtue is if it is not imposed with severity, but insinuated with gentleness”.

It could be said that, in these pupils of the Collegio Nazareno, St John Bosco saw embodied the ideal of those children, young people and educators who, in his oratory in Turin and in other institutions of what was to be called the Salesian Society, received or taught what he called the preventive method.

35. Calasanz’s devotion to the Holy Trinity

St. Joseph Calasanz’ devotion to the Most Holy Trinity was very unique and profound. Throughout his life, he was marked by the impression left on him, in his adolescent years, by the school of the Trinitarian Fathers in the town of Estadilla, where he studied “grammar and rhetoric with much profit in verse and prose”. From his step in this town, where the said religious had a humanities school, there is a record in the declarations of Miguel Jiménez Barber.

Calasanz composed a poem about the Mystery of the Trinity during his university years, which was, along with other poems, in a manuscript book that Fr Luigi Cavada, in 1677, saw in the hands of the Vicar of Benabarre, and he could not get it, nor made a copy of it. It can be considered lost. We only know, from the same testimony, that they were “something exquisite”.

According to the Exercicii Spirituali che si practican delli Chierici Regolari Poveri della Madre di Dio delle Scuole Pie, ordinati del loro Pre Fondatore el Generale il Venerabile Servo di Dio Gioseppe della Madre di Dio (the so-called Hebdomada), the Piarist religious, upon awakening, must address a greeting to the Most Holy Trinity, reciting the antiphon Bendicta sit Sancta Trinitas et individua Unitas; confitebimur Ei quia fecit nobiscum misericordiam suam (Blessed be the Holy Trinity and the undivided Unity; let us confess it because it has exercised its mercy on us). The Rosary, according to the same manual of pious exercises, should begin with the doxology Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit. And before each Mystery, the following should be recited Ave Filia Dei Patris; ave Mater Dei Filii, ave Sponsa Spiritus Sancti; ave Templum Sanctissimae Trinitatis (Hail, Daughter of God the Father; Hail, Mother of God the Son; Hail, Bride of the Holy Spirit; Hail, Temple of the Most Holy Trinity). And the part of the Rosary corresponding to the day ends with the invocation Per Dominum nostrum Jesum Christum Filium tuum, qui tecum vivit et regnat in unitate Spiritus Sancti, Deus, per omnia saecula saeculorum (Trough Our Lord Jesus Christ, who with you lives and reigns in unity with the Holy Spirit and is God for ever and ever).

In the medal that Calasanz had coined and that his students offered to Pope Paul V at his coronation (it could not be offered to Leo XI because of his untimely death), some children are represented in the House of Loreto, adoring the Holy Trinity and venerating the Holy Family, the Trinity of the earth.

In his Crown of the Twelve Stars, first it is adored and thanked the Most Holy Trinity, because it manifested to us the Virgin Mary dressed as the Sun with the moon under her feet and a mysterious crown of twelve stars on her head; then we praise and thank successively the three divine Persons for graces granted: four by the Father to his beloved daughter; four by the Son to his Mother and four by the Holy Spirit to his spouse. In the children’s Catechism Alcuni misterii della Vita e passione di Cristo, composed by Calasanz, there are these questions and answers:

Who created heaven and earth out of nothing?

God.

Is there only one God or are there more gods?

One God.

Is there only one person in this God or more?

There are three divine Persons, namely Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

The Father is God, the Son is God, the Holy Spirit is God?

Yes, Father.

Then there are three gods?

No, Father, for he has one and the same essence, one and the same power and goodness.

In the Exercise of Continuous Prayer which, for half an hour, in front of the Blessed Sacrament, “ten or twelve children in pairs, taking turns, from all the classes” of the school, one begins with an act of faith, at the beginning of which he invokes God Omnipotent and Eternal, One in essence and Triune in person, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. It ends with the recitation of the Creed; and after the acts of faith, hope, charity, contrition, self-offering and offering to the Blessed Virgin, comes an Act to the Most Holy Trinity.

The formula of Religious Profession, which Calasanz includes in article 33 of his Constitutions, is taken from the Constitutions of the Society of Jesus. But, where these say voveo Omnipotenti Deo (I offer my vows to Almighty God), the Founder of the Pious Schools added Patri, Filio et Spiritui Sancto.

In the Chapter for the election of the General of his Order of the Pious Schools, the Vicar General heads the decree of election with these words: “In nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti”. And he ends the act with the recitation or singing the Te Deum, which is a hymn to the Holy Trinity.

Calasanz instilled in the new Piarist priests that the Holy Mass is an audience granted to them by the Most Holy Trinity, so they must celebrate it with great reverence, fear, devotion and humility, because in this way they will draw benefit and consolation (EGC 2954, 3459, 3647, 3669, 3683).

About the doxology Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, now and always and forever and ever, Calasanz writes to Fr. Melchior Alacchi: “I have received the last letter, where you try to justify the past actions and to explain, consequently, the present ones; but I have to tell that in the psalms of David, at the end, the Holy Church, governed by the Holy Spirit, sings the Gloria, and we should expect the same from all our actions, because the end crowns the work”.

36. Saint Joseph Calasanz and the protestants

I

The missionary activity of Calasanz with his schools among the Protestants of Germany, Bohemia, Moravia and Poland is well known, with the applause of the Sacred Congregation of Propaganda Fide, which saw the Pious Schools as a providential strategy for the return of heretics to the bosom of the Catholic Church.

Before Calasanz founded his schools, when he was still residing in Spain, his actions with the Protestants of England and France were very different.

During the period in which Calasanz was master of ceremonies of the Cathedral of Urgel, in 1588, special cults were held, at the request of King Philip II, for the success of the ill-fated Armada called Invincible, which this monarch commanded against the Protestant England. An index of the fervor aroused in Spain for the preparation of this gigantic enterprise was, according to some historians, the revival of the novels of chivalry, a genre in crisis since 1550 and of which in the decade from 1580 to 1590, there were thirty-one editions of this genre. Spain sought to emulate the glory of Lepanto.

From March 25 to the end of July 1588, under the direction of Calasanz, Master of Ceremonies, were held at Urgel, for the triumph of the Armada, daily prayers, Eucharistic cults and processions, among which stands out the most solemn procession that went through the city on the day of the Annunciation, March 25, presided over by the ecclesiastical and civil authorities and attended by the inhabitants of nearby towns.

But God allowed the clamorous naval catastrophe of the Invincible. For, far from the title, it succumbed at the end of June 1588 off the British coast, harassed by the English ships and by the storms of the sea, that brand-new fleet that had sailed from Lisbon on May 20, 1588, with 130 warships and about 20,000 men. It is said that Philip II, upon receiving the news of the disaster, exclaimed: “I sent the Armada to fight against the English and not against the elements”.

Calasanz’ confrontation with the French Protestants was more direct. These were the so-called Huguenots or confederates, who were victims of persecution and revenge, in the period from the bloody Night of St. Bartholomew (August 24, 1572) until the promulgation of the Edict of Nantes in 1598. Groups of these Huguenots joined, in Catalan lands, with professional bandits, who, in turn, were affiliated with one or the other of the warring factions, the commoners, or Niarros, and the nobility, or Cadells. Of the nobleman who gave his name to the latter, Galcerán Cadell, there is evidence that he was allied with the Huguenots.

In the second part of Don Quixote, published in 1615, Cervantes assigns the adjective “Gascones” (French people from Gascony) to a part of the bandits that the nobleman of La Mancha encountered in his wanderings through the lands of Catalonia. Calasanz, uses the same adjective -gascons- in his thirteenth and last of the letters, that as secretary of the canons and Chapter of Urgel, addressed to the Viceroy of Catalonia, Manrique de Lara y Girón, to the bishop-elect Andrew Capilla, to the archdeacon of Berga, John Font and to the canon Rafael Durán. In the aforementioned letter, dated April 1, 1588, Calasanz writes in Catalan to his bishop Capilla: “Your Lordship will be so kind as to watch over your sheep and answer for as many oppressions as they suffer, since, besides the fact that this city and region and the public roads are tyrannized and oppressed and with all immunity human blood is spilled and the poor are not masters of their estates and wives, the Gascons and other people have been given themselves up to captivating so many priests and mistreating them to extort greater ransoms from them, that the city is full of parish priests, forced to leave their residences to avoid death or captivity”.

Both Cervantes and Calasanz distinguish between the French and those of the country, unlike the Portuguese Francisco Manuel de Melo, who accused the Catalans in general of banditry, in his Historia de los movimientos, separación y guerra de Cataluña (History of the movements, separation and war of Catalonia). He wrote it in Spanish and published in 1645 with the pseudonym Clemente Libertino.

La Seo de Urgel, on the border with France, allow itself to incursions of bandits and heretics who, together with local robbers, entered France when they were persecuted, finding refuge in the county of Foix, to which Gascony partly belonged. Letter after letter, in the name of the Chapter, Calasanz requested armed people for the defense of the Urgelitan Seo. And the help did not come. He only asked for sixty soldiers, who never arrived. The consuls of the city behaved so slowly that neither in sentries nor in making the rounds nor in procuring ammunition, was seen in them the slightest zeal for the defense of the city. This passive attitude on the part of those in charge forced the canons to equip themselves with arquebuses, weapons better to the stone weapons (pedreñales) with which, according to Cervantes, the majority of the members of the heretical-criminal faction were armed. Recently appointed secretary of the Chapter, Calasanz wrote a Memorial de los arcabuces que se han prestado a los señores canónigos (Memorandum of the arquebuses that have been lent to the canons) on 13 April 1587. At the end of the list is written: “Calasanz, one harquebus with flask and “frasquillo” without bag”.

With great vehemence, Calasanz lists, in the aforementioned letters to the Viceroy, a series of homicides, fires, kidnappings and sacrilegious robberies, perpetrated by the heretics. He mentions their threats to sack the Cathedral of Urgel. So, in the last of his letters to the Viceroy, he writes: “Having crossed these days some Lutherans from France, in number of twenty to thirty, led by a certain Plometa, with demonstrations in their words of carrying out it (the sacking of the Cathedral), today, in company with other thieves and facinous people, they have come to skirmish this city, so that in order to look to the honor of God, many ecclesiastics have had to take up arms”.

On January 27, 1589, Calasanz left the Cabildo of Urgel and wrote in the book of minutes: “Calasanz returned two arquebuses to the Chapter, one for him and the other for Rostoll, with their flasks and ‘frasquillos’”. Did he ever shoot? – asks Severino Giner, in his documented work San José de Calasanz. Maestro y Fundador.

II

Calasanz’ attention to the proportions that the Protestant Reformation was taking in Germany, Bohemia, Moravia and Poland, is well demonstrated by a good part of his letters, in which he asks and gives news about the events of those unfortunate countries, involved in a bloody war at that time. The Saint followed the events of the Thirty Years’ War with great interest and expectation, despite his reluctance to deal with public or political topics in his conversations.

Moreover, he even followed with intense interest the course of events in the news “from the press” - according to Father Canata - or in those brought by the “post”, located very close to San Pantaleo.

Calasanz lived those events. When the dazzling victories of Gustav Adolf of Sweden, which culminated in the capture of Munich, moved France to enlist with the Protestants, the Saint wrote: “Today faith is so scarce and men of so little goodness, that many desire more the victory of the Swede with his heretics than that of the Emperor and the Catholics. And still more would they wish that the Swede to come to Italy, which the Lord will not permit. In any case, we shall see how things will be settled in Germany. I hope that the roles will be changed and that the wicked who desire the propagation of heretics will not succeed in their attempt. May the Lord, in his mercy, have compassion on poor and reduced Christianity and always exalt it” (EGC 1817). Such expressions may seem unusual from the pen of a man who, on a certain occasion, dealt with a heated dispute between two of his religious about the politics of France and Spain. “It is a shame, -he said to them - that the religious speak of such things. I do not like to hear them anymore”.

He makes clear his joy for the victory of Tilly in the battle of the White Mountain (1620), in which the Carmelite Dominic Ruzola -great protector of the Calasanzian work and advisor to its founder-, mounted on a white horse, harangued the Catholic troops, hoisting as a banner a picture of Mary, to whom the victory was attributed. This culminated in the conquest of Prague, from where the spark that ignited the Thirty Years’ War had been started, with the defenestration of the imperial governors Martinice and Slawata by the Bohemian Protestants (Cf EGC 54 and 56). On the other hand, he bitterly regrets the defeat of Tilly by Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden at Breitenfeld (1631), rejecting him as far as the Danube, a year before he fell mortally wounded at Lech (April 15, 1632). As for the things of Germany,” he wrote on October 11, 1631 “yesterday came the terrible news that the Emperor’s camp had been defeated and General Tilli (sic) taken prisoner, which for the Catholics would be a great ruin” (EGC 1693).

When it came to the cause of Catholicism, Calasanz did nothing more than put into practice the teachings of the mystics of his time. St. Teresa of Jesus sang in energetic verses:

“All you who militate

under that flag

sleep no more, sleep no more,

for there is no peace on earth”.

And Friar Thomas of Jesús did not disdain to exhort in his spiritual treatises, to pray for “those who defend and protect the Church either with arms, like the Christian princes, or with the punishment of the disobedient and rebellious, like the Holy Inquisition”. It must not be forgotten that, for Calasanz, the resolutions of the Holy Office were inspired by the Holy Spirit. Like this he tells to Fr Francesco Michelini, in a letter dated 7 December 1631, when the Inquisition appointed the unworthy Mario Sozzi, Provincial of Tuscany, with the power to choose superiors and religious at will and from everywhere, without Calasanz, the General of the Piarist Order, being able to prevent him from doing so. Such was the position of Calasanz, in accordance with the distinguished men of the Catholicism of his time, that of the Counter-Reformation. It is not strange, then, that he wrote from Rome. “With regard to the events in Germany, here we pray every day for the victory of the Catholics and for the extirpation of heresies. We hope that the Lord will deign to miraculously defend the Emperor and the other Catholics of Germany” (EGC 4261). “I rejoice that the news in favor of the Emperor are true and that the Swede who has been a murderer, stealing from so many important churches, be rejected with great humiliation” (EGC 1772).

Calasanz’ extraordinary interest in the variations of the Thirty Years’ War can be documented with the following letters from his Epistolary: 1075, 1203, 1204, 1220, 1226, 1395, 1693, 1726, 1755, 1763, 1765, 1772, 1817, 1822, 1856, 1869, 1873, 1896, 1901, 2362, 2447, 2479, 3052, 3079, 3126, 4074, 4075, 4240, 4261, 4263, 4299, 4462. The data of these letters are complemented with the letters that Calasanz received from Bohemia, especially those written to them by Fr. Ambrose Leailth (Cf. G. Sántha: Epistulae ad S. Iosephum Calasanctium ex Europa Centrali, 617-733).

III

The Protestant Reformation, far from promoting instruction, as was to be expected by whom prescribed the reading of the Bible for all, it was the ruin of the schools that had previously existed and of those that were founded later on. In vain did Luther endeavor to break down the opposition of the Reformed peoples to education, for they thought, as the heresiarch himself wrote, that they did not need “any learned man, much less study, but to loaf and seek to eat and get rich.

The schools of Calasanz, besides possessing other characteristics of a moral order, such as strict poverty, regular observance, seriousness in the schools, etc., which aroused the sympathy of the heretics themselves, possessed “material” qualities, which made them appreciated by this kind of people, Thus, the generosity of a Religious Order that educated the youth with the sole aim of providing them with a happy future even in this life (Constitutions, 2), could not fail to have a singular attraction in a society that was wary of monastic schools, due to the accusations that Erasmus of Rotterdam had made against them of recruiting the most talented boys for their congregations.

In 1524 Luther himself addressed the rulers of all the cities of Germany to establish and maintain Christian schools: “We are seeing today in the German countries how the schools are being ruined. The universities are enervated, the monasteries are declining... and no one sends their children to study, because they say: what will they learn, if they are not to be priests, friars or monks?” And he returned to the charge in 1530, in his Sermon on the need to send children to school: “It is one of the greatest evils of the accursed Satan to have thus bewildered and deceived vulgar men, who do not want to send their children to school or have them taught, and who inspire them with these evil thoughts: Since there is no hope of friaries, nunneries or priesthoods, as heretofore, we have no need of learned men, nor of much study, but we are to strive for sustenance and riches. But if Scripture and Art perish, what will be left in Germany but a coarse and ferocious huddle of Tartars or Turks, and perhaps even a pigsty and a herd of beasts?” So much for the words of Martin Luther.

But those people, whom heresy had made allergic to instruction, surrendered to the humble school of Calasanz.

The teaching of mathematics, as it was taught in the Pious Schools, was bound to be a powerful stimulus for those people whom Luther had described as positivists. And above all, the spirit of tolerance of Calasanz, which in the Eternal City had opened the doors of his schools even to the Jewish “getho”, could not fail to offer a welcoming asylum to the children of families infested by heresy.

It is worth noting that, in these Piarist missions, a strategy was tried for the first time, which was later considered as one of the postulates of missiology: to make use of the school as a means of evangelization. Already then, Calasanz understood that there is no better strategy than to use children to reach the hearts of the parents and that, once they are captivated, the prejudices that darken the minds easily crumble, surrendering them to the splendors of the faith and to the indispensable action of grace.

In fact, an apology of the Pious Schools, written by the then Secretary of the Congregation of Propaganda Fide, Francesco Ingoli, reads as follows: “From the information that are found in the Secretariat of Propaganda Fide, it is proven that these Fathers of the Pious Schools have worked many conversions of heretics in Germania, even of entire cities. They are well considered by the heretics, so that they send their children to the schools of the said Fathers. They are called by many lords and princes to their dominions, promising to make foundations for them. Repeatedly great Lords have written to the Sacred Congregation of Propaganda Fide to obtain permission to introduce the said Fathers to their States, and to obtain orders to the General of the said schools to send them to them. But the Sacred Congregation had refused, because of the scarcity of subjects that the Religion suffers and because it is new and austere”. So much for the Apology of Francis Ingoli.

It is highly significant that Lennart Torstensson, the so famous marshal of the Protestant Swedish Protestant armies, when he entered Moravia with blood and fire, only respected the schools of the Piarists, saying: “If only we had in Sweden Fathers like these, who do not go hunting for gold, but for souls”. In taking Nikolsburg, he not only respected our school, but also befriended the Piarist Fr. Ambrose Leailth, ate with our religious and promised that, as soon as he returned to Sweden, he would introduce the Piarist schools there.

37. The horn of the unicorn

By a single divine word

To describe Calasanz’ allusion to the unicorn in his letter 1235 as a “superstitious belief” is an anachronism, to say the least. We could today - and even in the XIX and XX centuries -would label as superstitious anyone who held such an opinion, anyone who believed in the existence of such a singular animal, but by no means in the distant XVII century.

Such a belief was then considered to be demonstrated by the Bible, due to a mistranslation of the LXX -from which the Vulgate derives- of the Hebrew word re´em, most probably designating a species of wild ox, the bos taurus primigenius, which some identify with the buffalo.

Also in that century, the existence of the unicorn was also supported by the prestige given to Pliny the Elder by his 36 books of his Natural History. No lesser was the authority of Ktesias, a Greek physician who visited Persia in 416 B.C., and attended to the ailments of its king Artaxerxes II, called Mnemon because of his prodigious memory.

Ktesias, in his Indika, describes a wild animal from India: larger than a horse, with a white body, a purple head, deep blue eyes and a horn of about 45 cm, on the forehead, white at the base, black in the middle and crimson at the pointed end. In Ktesias already appears the medicinal and, above all, antitoxic virtue of this horn. With him the Indians elaborated some glasses that drinking in them, they were saved of incurable diseases, because neither spasms nor poisons attacked them. When they had drunk some noxious substance, they vomited it up. The exaggeration is increased by Philostratus of Athens, who, in his Life of Apollonius of Tyana, affirms that on the day when one drinks from a cup of unicorn horn, one neither falls ill nor feels the pain of a wound, one can pass through the fire, and is harmless to the deadliest of poisons. This explains why, in the Middle Ages, knives with unicorn horn handles were sold, which were said to turn black when in contact with poisoned food.

Medieval kings and dignitaries, exposed to the risk of assassination by poisoning, procured such horns with large sums of money, for which reason they were considered very valuable prizes. As such, they appear in the treasures of St. Mark’s in Venice and in the cathedral of Milan, in those of Elizabeth I of England and of James III of Scotland. The Medicis had them and, in the Museum of Cluny, one can contemplate the specimen which Harun-al-Raschid gave as a gift to Charlemagne in the year 807.

The unicorn also enjoyed a religious prestige because of the symbolism given to a legend spread by a book of the II century of our era, entitled Physiologus Graecus, compilation of the Greeks of Alexandria. In each of its pages it offers two figures: one of them is realistic of an existing or imaginary animal; the other is symbolic representing a hagiographic or biblical scene. According to Physiologus, the unicorn is an untamed animal that cannot be hunted by any chaser. But, if a virgin lady remains solitary in the forest, the unicorn comes to sleep in her chaste lap. This legend has provided, in the fine arts, the theme of La Dame à la Licorne, a collection of XV century tapestries on display at the Museum of Cluny in Paris. But this motif is considered a major work of a contemporary painter of Calasanz, Domenico Zampieri, Il Domenichino, called The Maiden with the Unicorn, in Palazzo Farnese in Rome. The legend passed from Physiologus to the Etymologies of St. Isidore and to the Bestiaries (species of zoological catalogues), as well as the versified one of Thibaut of Champagne, king of Navarre, vassal of St. Louis, king of France, and the Tesoretto of Brunetto Latini, Dante Alighieri’s teacher.

Through the Fathers of the Church, the unicorn occupied a place among the Christian symbols. For Origen, it represents the universal power of Christ, who “will extend his sovereignty over all kingdoms”. It also symbolizes our Redeemer, for the mythical belief that the unicorn could cleanse a fountain or a pool of poison by diving into it. Its so prodigious capture symbolized the Incarnation of Christ in the virginal womb of Mary. This is how it appears in medieval bestiaries, such as in that of Pierre de Beauvais, that of William le Clerc de Normandie and that of Philippe de Thaun, who completes the symbology by representing: the unicorn to God, the virginal maiden to Mary; her bosom to Holy Mother Church.

Given the high esteem in which the horn of the mythical animal was held, and given its absolute non-existence, it is not surprising that narwhal or walrus teeth were sold as substitutes. They were called “marine unicorns” because they believed that every land animal had its counterpart in the ocean. It was not until the XVIII century that the origin of these supposed unicorn horns began to be suspected. However, their definitive scientific rejection can be considered to have occurred only when, in the XIX century, Cuvier studied the narwhal in his Histoire naturelle des cétacés.

As for the therapeutic properties attributed to this prodigious horn in the XVII century, in addition to being considered a counter-poison, as attested by Cervantes, among others, it was believed that its powder healed wounds. In addition, it was medical opinion that the horns of all animals, as well as their skin, hair, nails, flesh, blood and even their dung ‘possessed great medicinal virtues’. This is what Barthélemy, l’Anglais, a XIII century Franciscan, states in his Liber de proprietatibus rerum, a work that was the subject of numerous reprints, the last in the XVII century. In this encyclopaedic work, the existence of the unicorn is admitted.

In the same XVII century, the Polish naturalist John Jonston, in his work on Natural History, “paints and describes” - according to Cabrera - no less than six unicorns, two of them with manes and one, which he calls a sea monceron, with duck-footed hind limbs. In one of the drawings, the unicorn appears pursued by the hunters, galloping towards a maiden, who solicitously holds out her arms to him.

Thomas Bertholin, the discoverer of the circulation of the lymph, was one of the most reputable anatomists of the XVII century, and an advocate of William Harvey, from the beginning with his discovery and synthesis of the large and small circulation of the blood, which completed the findings of Miguel Servet, Realdo Colombo and Giulio Cesare Aranzi. The said Bartholin did not consider it detrimental to his scientific prestige to write a monograph on the unicorn and its medicinal uses.

Calasanz’ conviction about the existence of great healing virtue in the supposed horn of the unicorn is not out of place. In the aforementioned letter 1235, addressed to Fr. John Garcia, resident in Frascati, he expresses himself in this way. “I am sending you the small box, warning you that the small piece belongs to the true horn of the unicorn; be very careful”. This his faith in the existence and the medical properties of the unicorn horn can in no way be described as superstitious. According to Askevis-Leherpeux, of the René Descartes University in Paris, the following are to be considered superstitions: “Beliefs which, in a given epoch, are contrary to the doctrines and practices held by the dominant factions of the scientific community and/or of the most culturally important religious community” (La superstition. Presses Universitaires de France, 1988, p. 30). In Calasanz’ writing about the mythological horned specimen, there is no opposition to either the scientific or the religious factions: both were convinced of the existence of the unicorn and the therapeutic properties of its horn.

38. In his childhood, Calasanz played

“It is necessary to realize,” writes Montaigne in his Essays, “that the games of children are not games, they must be judged as their most serious actions”. From this, Schiller affirms: “Man only plays when he is a man in the full sense of the word, and he is only fully man when he plays”. It is not surprising, then, that in a modern book, already a classic on the subject, Huizinga’s Homo ludens, we find the following remarks: “Play is not a chore. There is freedom to abandon it at any time. It is an escape from daily life. It is limited to a certain time and space. It is a creator of order, which makes it akin with the aesthetic”.

Play, on the other hand, is subject to a rigorous conservatism. It is enough to examine the creations of the plastic arts in which the child begins to appear at play -which someone traces back to the representation of the putti- to verify that the games of yesteryear are the same as those of our days. The only difference is their transfer from one social group to another, Games that used to be played by noblemen and the educated, have passed into the domain of peasant children. It can even be verified seeing those calendars of past centuries, illustrated with scenes from games, distributed throughout the year. In them, it can be seen that, to a certain extent the same annual rhythm as in the past, is maintained today. Thus, in some places, the following order is kept nowadays, with more or less rigor: kites in February and March, spinning top in Lent; marbles at Easter; hopscotch -the airplane- in May and June; the yo-yo in summer; the elastic in October. It is not surprising that in an exhaustive work dedicated to the subject, Días geniales o lúdricos (Great and playful days), by Rodrigo Caro, published at the beginning of the XVII century, appear as games of that time, many of the games that amuse the children of our days.

We can suppose that in some of these games, whose antiquity goes back to Greece and Rome, Calasanz participated in the years of his childhood. His biographers give us only two indications. One: the narrations of the miracles of Our Lady. The other: the “little dagger” with which Joseph as a child tried to kill the devil.

The treatises of the ludic theme include among the games, the oral narration of legends, traditions, stories and advices, in the winter evenings of the family gathered together around the fireplace. During these evenings, the pious mother of Calasanz would recite to her children, the miracles of Our Lady, the Virgin Mary, versified by Gonzalo de Berceo, in his famous monorhythmic tetrhrastics, or she would narrate them in prose, as marvelous stories, transmitted by oral tradition.

The tiny “little dagger”, which appears in the account of the witness of the expedition of the boy Calasanz to the encounter with his enemy the devil, could suggest a toy, as sharp and cutting as we would like to suppose, given that the same testimony includes that it had a sheath. For the children belonging to royalty and nobles, as Ariés says in The Child and the Family in the Ancien Régime: “dolls and German games before the age of seven, and later, hunting, riding horses, weapons...”. And Rodrigo Caro, in the aforementioned book, affirms of the children of the XVI century: “As the children grew up, they had other toys, such as swords, hatchets, pointers, etc.”

It is, moreover, probable that when Calasanz was small, the children of Peralta de la Sal fought, without weapons or violence, in a game that has lasted until our times. This is suggested by the game “moros i cavallers” (Moors and knights), played today by the children of Peralta and which Fr Manuel Arcusa, a Piarist, has collected in direct research, seeing the little boys play it. The allusion to the Moors - the invaders of medieval Spain - suggests considerable antiquity in this game, an antiquity well before the days of Calasanz’ childhood.

Because of their widespread use, there are two toys that we can imagine in the hands of the child Joseph Calasanz: the rattle and the spinning top. The first one, the oldest of toys, appears in distant civilizations, as well as in primitive societies of today. Its materials were ivory, bone, horn, coral, mother-of-pearl, etc. Coral rattles and wolf’s teeth rattles were attributed with the protection against evil spells. This was propagated by Pedanius Dioscorides and Pliny in antiquity and by Paracelsus in the Renaissance. They were also made of metal, such as those found in the ruins of Pompeii. During the XVI century, Spanish goldsmiths made them from precious metals, with those of Cuenca and Valladolid standing out.

Luis Gracia Vicién, in his work Juegos Aragoneses. Historia y Tradiciones (Aragon games. History and Traditions), mentions the spinning top, to which he gives the name of “peón” and identifies it with the “trochus” of the Greeks, so called for its noise similar to that of a rattle, since it was hollow and had pebbles inside. A description from the XVII century, which brings this author leaves no room for doubt: “a small piece of wood, almost conical in shape, with a crown-like head, and on the opposite side an iron point, with which the boys play with, surrounding it with a rope, and shooting it, they make it go round and dance”. It was already known in Roman antiquity. Persius and Virgil called it “boxwood”, for being made of this wood. Cato recommended to the parents the spinning top as a toy for their children, in substitution of the dice. In England, during the XVI century, the parishes each had their own spinning top and on Shrove Tuesdays they organized contests among them. Even St. Thomas Moore, in his poem Childhood, sings in a humorous tone:

“I am called Childhood, in play is all my mind,

To cast a quoit, a cokstele and a ball,

A top can I set and drive it in his kind;

But would to God these hateful bookes all

Were in a fire burnt to powder small;

Then might I lead my life always in play,

Which life God send me to mine ending day!”[1]

1 Source text for modernization comes from The English Works of Thomas More, editors W.E. Campbell, A.W. Reed, R. W. Chambers, and W.A.G. Doyle-Davidson, 2 volumes (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode Limited, 1931). See: https://thomasmorestudies.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Pageant_Life.pdf

It is not surprising that the Saint liked to recommend to his children to “take the meat of virtue and knowledge, seasoned with the sauce of play”.

39. Did Calasanz play in his youth?

There is no probability that Calasanz participated in games of chance during his student days. These games were the object of both ecclesiastical and civil prohibitions. “The medieval Church -affirms Philippe Ariés– condemned all kinds of games, without exception or reservation”. The Council of Sens, in 1485, forbade religious even to play ball, especially in cassock and in public. The game was equated with revelry. Even games of moderate physical exercise, such as bowling and bocce, were forbidden, sometimes completely, during the XVI and XVII centuries, because they provoked tumultuous fights.

Pascal, in his Pensées, published in 1669, condemns, as is to be expected from a Jansenist, all kinds of amusements and pastimes. He says that the purpose of these is “to let time pass without feeling it or, above all, without feeling oneself, and to avoid, by losing this quality of our life, the bitterness and inner unpleasantness, which would necessarily result from introspective attention, which is not exercised during the time spent in amusement”.

H.J.Ch. Gimmelshaussen, in his novel The Adventurer Simplicissimus, set during the Thirty Years’ War and published in 1668-1669, puts in the mouth of the old man Herzbruder: “And since gambling is the devil’s own invention and are not few the successes it brings him, he has deployed gambling devils all over the world, whose sole mission is to incite men to gamble.... Hence the saying, as true as it is sad, that the devil does not abandon any gambler, without first having sucked the last drop of his blood”.

In Poor Robin Almanack, 1676, we read: “Cards and dice.... the devil’s books and the devil’s bones”.

In Velázquez’s time, in Spain, everyone had a place where they could play cards; places that were authorized, as long as they did not involve forbidden games or dice. The latter were strictly forbidden and their manufacture and sale were punishable by a two years’ banishment for the sellers and heavy fines for the players. This drastic persecution of dice may be explained by the frequency with which they were counterfeited. The novel The Adventurer Simplicissimus, mentioned above, offers the following repertoire of loaded dice: “Among the false dice, there were those called Dutch, which had to be rolled by sliding, since the planes on which the fives and sixes were marked were as pointed as the backs of donkeys on which the soldiery is placed. Others were made of staghorn, light above and heavy below, others filled with mercury, lead, matted hairs, sponges, straw or coal, the edges were sharp and polished, long as nails or wide as tortoises”.

These prohibitions were even stricter for students, especially those housed in seminaries, colleges and junior colleges. In the Constitutions of the College and University of San Ildefonso, in Alcalá de Henares, edited and ordered by Cardinal Cisneros, in 1510, it is ruled: “Omnes autem ludos alearum.... strictissime prohibemus” (We strictly forbid all games of chance).

The prohibition reached even the families that housed students. In an Instruction for Bachilleres de Pupilos (Instructions for those who lodge students), given a few years later in Salamanca, it was ordered: “Those who lodge students shall not consent to games of cards or dice in their houses, and if they do, they will be deprived of the permission for tenants and disqualified to have it from now on, and in addition pay all that they play with double, for the hospital”.

In the Statutes of the University of Valencia, in the year 1500, the Rector was ordered to prevent the establishment of any gambling or stumbling house near the school. It was not so easy for Calasanz, already established in San Pantaleón, to escape from a similar danger. In the adjoining Piazza Navona, the gamblers of the forbidden games were established, and when the police appeared, they escaped by taking refuge in Palazzo di Francesco de Cupis, the residence of the Austrian Ambassador.

In spite of so much prohibition and surveillance, the students played. Luis Vives, in his Dialogues, sums up the situation in Paris of XVI century as follows: “Among the students, they only play ball during recess, but sometimes they play cards and chess in secret, the children play horses and the more mischievous, dice”.

It should also be noted that, as Ariés says: “from the XVII century to the present day, the moral attitude towards games of chance evolved in a rather complex way. While there was a widespread feeling that gambling is a dangerous passion, a serious vice, the practice tended to transform some of them by reducing the part of chance (which continued to persist) at the expense of the calculation and intellectual effort of the player; so that certain card or chess games became increasingly leaving the condemnation without possible appeal, which affected at the beginning the game of chance”. Already in his days, Luis Vives himself gave rules of moderation in the game and even admitted that money should be played. He points out in his Dialogues, when to play, with whom (to avoid quarrelsome people), what game to play and how much to bet. “The bet -he says- should not be minimal, it would be absurd and one gets fed up with it very soon. But neither should it be so large that it disturbs the gambler’s reason”.

With the exceptions mentioned above, games of physical skill, especially those played outdoors, were very popular. In 1601, the father of the future Count Duke of Olivares wrote to his relative Don Laureano de Guzmán, “ayo, maestro y padre” (tutor, teacher and father), in Salamanca, of the aforementioned future minister of King Philip IV, then a student at the University of Salamanca. In this writing, he specified “the hours and modes of amusement, allowing him to play bowling and ring, and in no way the cards”. The game of bowling consists of nine pins (that is to say nine pieces of round stick) placed standing on the floor in three equidistant rows and to knock them down with a single ball or with another pin, thrown from a certain distance. The ring is a game in which a ball impelled by a concave paddle must be made to pass through an iron ring stuck in the ground.

Another game of dexterity - in this one Calasanz did exercise himself - is the one that, Rodrigo Caro in his Días geniales o lúdricos (Wonderful and playful days), written in 1615-1617, calls “tirar la barra” (throwing the bar). It is possible that Joseph practiced it as a student, given the dexterity shown on the outskirts of Tremp, when he was Vicar in that city. It was Calasanz himself who told Fr Vincent Berro that, on a certain occasion, he met a group of ecclesiastics who were exercising in a game of strength, practiced in those parts. The game consisted of throwing a large iron bar with one’s arm. The winner was the one who could drive it farthest into the ground. To show that he enjoyed this amusement,” writes Father Berro, “he took the bar and threw it two or three times, overcoming in each throw, almost the double of theirs”. Fr. Caputi rounds out the scene, adding that Joseph, the champion, imposed on the other defeated players the task of saying a few prayers.

40. The games of Calasanz’ pupils

In a letter to Fr Jerome Laurenti, Calasanz writes: “Do not allow them to play during school time, nor allow the pupils to bring games to the schools or to the playground, and when they go to school, they should attend to preparing themselves to study and to make profit”. The same attempt to reduce the time spent in school for the benefit of an early insertion of the poor pupil into the world of work and into the world of classical studies for the more intellectually gifted, led Calasanz to consider play strictly as an auxiliary to the intellectual work of the pupils; to play in order to study better. It could be said that he wanted to go beyond the saying of Baltasar Gracián in the Manual Oracle: “His time should be jovial; all the rest should be serious”. Luis Vives, in his De tradendis disciplinis, advocates that the time devoted to play “should be comforted and spaced out to bear the weight of daily work”. In the Constitutions - or Regulations - written by Calasanz for the boarding students of the Colegio Nazareno, we read: “every week a day of holiday will be given, as has been said above; in summer they will be sent outside in the morning to get some fresh air to preserve their health and then be able to attend to their studies with more fervor”.

According to Fr. G. Sántha what Calasanz “intended was that everyone should exercise and stay away from cards, dice and all sedentary games”. He agreed with Fenelon who said “The games that children like best are those in which the body is in movement, children are happy just to move”. In Campanella’s Città del Sole, teachers “make children play and run to strengthen them”. What is more, they force them to go “barefoot and uncombed until they are seven years old”. Another contemporary and admirer of Calasanz’ work, Cardinal Silvio Antoniano, in his treatise Dell’Educazione Cristiana e Politica de’ Figliuoli argues with the philosophy of that time: “Without doubt the movement and the agitation of the body help them admirably, since the natural heat is awakened and dilating itself in all parts gives growth and perfection to the members, which with jumping, running and with varied movements, become consolidated and reach greater agility and robustness. For this reason, the games of children and young people should not be played sitting down or idly, but rather by exercising the body, as has been said of jumping and running...”.

Also, in line with the pedagogy of the time, Calasanz wanted the games to be non-violent. As Luis Vives prescribed in his aforementioned De tradendis disciplinis, where he wrote: “Choose games in which the body is invigorated, not that it reaches ferocity”. In his Constitutions of Collegio Nazareno, Calasanz orders that in recreations “the exercise should not be violent but moderate”.

Little can be said about the games allowed to the pupils of the Calasanz schools. In his writings we find: pallone, boccie, palla, piastrella, boggette. The last three appear in the Constitutions that Calasanz wrote for the boarders of the Collegio Nazareno. They could be translated as ball, hopscotch, ninepins, shuffleboard, bowls. To these must be added those recommended or mentioned by teachers and writers contemporary or close to the time of Calasanz. Luis Vives mentions the ball, the balloon and races. Juan Rufo, in his epistle in verse to his son advises: “And becoming you, they will seem good to me the first exercises, spinning tops, wedges, small mortars, jumping, hopping and running, and playing hide-and-seek, hunting wasps and crickets”. The father of the Count Duke of Olivares, as we have mentioned, allowed his son to play skittles and ring. Silvio Antoniano, in addition to the aforementioned jumping and running, recommends ball and “trucco”. Rodrigo Caro in his Dias geniales o lúdricos collects a multitude of games, not all of them children’s games, of which he gives a history of their Greco-Roman origins, while describing others that were exclusively practiced in the antiquity.

The ball game is often quoted. Homer mentions it in the Odyssey as being practiced by Nausica, the daughter of the king of the Phaeacians; but its popularity in the time of Calasanz is undoubtedly due to the fame still enjoyed by Galen, who attributes therapeutic virtues to it. Card. Silvio Antoniano undoubtedly alludes to this when he says “that it is highly recommended by physicians”. Galen wrote a work, De parvae pilae exercitatione (Exercises with the small ball), in which he states: “I highly praise this exercise (of the ball) which gives health to the body and concinnity to its parts, as well as vigor to the soul: this is the exercise of the little ball, for it can not only benefit the soul for everything but also exercise all the parts of the body in an equally great way”. Rodrigo Caro called the ball the most beautiful health aid.

Calasanz, in his Piae sententiae, so often quoted by St. Alphonso Maria de Liguori in The Holy Nun, compares the ball game with the diabolical dalliances of religious evil: Veluti pila ludit daemon religiosi vano, which Fr Cueva translates: “The devil plays ball with the vain religious”.

In Calasanz’s time, there were several ball games: the one called “Coryco” by the Greeks, which consisted of hitting a ball suspended by a rope and filled with flour or sand; also, the “loca”, “la olla”, “la chaza” and the “mallo” or the “chueca”, which were played with balls or medium-sized wooden balls by rolling them along the ground with the blows of a mallet with a long end. Sometimes the ball was played not only with the mallet, but also with the paddle and the racket. The latter, already mentioned by Ovid in his Ars amandi, is made - according to Rodrigo Caro - of a net stretched tightly over a round arc and somewhat prolonged with its handle or end to hold it and play with it. Another ball game recorded by Caro himself is what Seneca called spheromachia, but with the difference that in his time it was played by hand and in Caro’s time it was played with sticks. Another game was the shuttlecock, which consisted of throwing a small cork ball with feathers stuck in it, using rackets.

The game of “ hopscotch “ or “tile” takes its name from the piece of tile, brick, stone, metal, etc. used for this game. It consists of placing an anklebone (bone from the tarsus of a cow) upright and throwing at it with tiles and stones. The “marro” takes its name from the “marrón”, the name of the stone used to throw at a pin stuck in the ground. The “tangano” consists of throwing a “chito”, the name given to the taba or astragalus, which the shots have to hit.

The “calva” is played by throwing stones from a certain distance at a wood or a horn that is placed on the ground in order to hit the top of it without hitting the ground first.

I have already reported on the game of bowling in a previous study published in this section. The “boccie” is a game played between two or more players, shooting at a certain distance with medium-sized balls and a smaller one, the winner being the one who comes closest to the latter with the others.

To these games mentioned by Calasanz we must add those that appear in his letters 621 and 3597, the “palone” (ball) and the “boccie” known as petanque, in our days.

41. Calazanz and the recreations of his religious

Calasanz, aware of the need for recreation for those who, like his Piarist religious, were intensely devoted to an educational pastoral, provided them with occasions for what today we would call physical exercise. The daily recreations, used to review the liturgical rubrics, resolve cases of conscience, read the Constitutions and propose and discuss initiatives about the improvement of teaching in the schools, had no such purpose.

In his Dichiarazioni circa le nostre Costituzioni, Regole e Riti comuni, Calasanz orders: “The local Superior may grant a day of physical recreation only once a month. But it is ordered that it be also spiritual, that the Superior participate, that it not be held in the countryside, but in a place in the house or in the garden, as it seems to the Superior, and that all immodesty be avoided. If the Superior gives permission for some to go on excursions, it is ordered that a mature priest shall always go with them, to whose obedience they shall all submit. They will not go out to eat in the open, nor to other people’s gardens or orchards, especially those of our students; but only and exclusively, to replenish their physical and spiritual strength, they may go to a beach, if the coast is near, or to another place, if it is not...”.

As can be seen, the actual recreations of the religious were granted to them when the pupils had a full holiday. “The holidays will allow them to go out from time to time as your reverence sees fit”, Calasanz wrote to the Father Minister of Florence (EGC 3187). “As soon as the common holidays are given..., the other religious take recreation, so that they return for lunch and, in the evening, for supper”, the saint ordered Father Castilla (EGC 337).

Another recreation granted to those Piarists was the cultivation of the conventual garden. To Fr. Matteo Reale, Superior of Carcare, he praises the fruit of this work, not only in terms of merit, but also in terms of physical health: “exhort them on my behalf,” he urges him, “to do a little exercise, as the Capuchins do” (EGC 782 and 869).

As for the games themselves and what today we would call sports, Calasanz had no choice but to submit to the rigid discipline of the Church of that time. According to it, the obligation of giving special witness to the religious, in the integral practice of the private and public Christian life, demanded of him the commitment to perfect himself in his state with the greatest possible separation from the “world” and from everything that was a typical expression of worldliness, So the game, in this context, was certainly an occasion of sin and scandal for the laity. As Enrico Baragli, Professor of Pastoral Sociology at the Pontifical Lateran University, says: almost until the post-Vatican II Council, “the most effective means to keep the clergy and religious away from entertainment were the disciplinary prohibitions graviter onerata conscientia, with serious canonical sanctions for transgressors”. “In this highly ascetic and repressive environment, reactions of this kind are not surprising in Calasanz: “As for those who went to Poggioreale and played, they will be forbidden, during eight feasts with holiday, to leave the house. They have to recreate themselves there with some spiritual book, which is better than going out to offend God with scandal of the neighbor” (EGC 2230). “From Naples they write to me that Brother John of St. Stephen has arrived in Palermo from Carcare. So that you may know him well, I inform you with this letter that, while he was in Naples, they wrote to me that he was so relaxed that, together with others who were relaxed, he played cards, in spite of the Superior” (EGC 2351). “V.R. absolutely remove the scandal of our people playing checkers or Boccie (a kind of petanque) and any other kind of game, intimating them on my behalf that, if they do not obey, they will be locked up in prison” (EGC 3597).

As can be seen, even the game of draughts was banned, even draughts and chess. According to Udo Becher, this “game of kings and king of games”, which originated in India from the “kshatrya” caste, “was modified in India, China, Japan and Europe according to their own cultural idiosyncrasies. Indian chess represents the Indian ideal of governance, the preservation of the rules and categories of caste society, and has never been very dynamic. Chinese chess hierarchizes space and sees the world as a closed universe, at the center of which is the palace of the ruler who orders this world. Japanese chess also divides the board into two territories, like Chinese chess, the figures do not have an autonomous definition, but are determined by a decentralized and variable meaning. European chess, on the other hand, has a completely courtly character, by means of new rules (increasing, for example, the radius of action of the rooks, queen and bishop; and the possibility of castling) it was thought to dynamize the time and space of the game.

With such sophisticated symbolism, it is not surprising that books with titles such as the following were published: De moribus hominum et de officiis nobilium super ludo scaccorum, by Friar Jacobi of Thessalonia O.P., from the end of the XIII century; and its translation Dechado de la vida humana moralmente saccado del juego de ajedrez, by Martin de Reyna (1546), De ludo scacchorum in legali methodo tractatus, by Tommaso Abezio (1583).

Even St. Teresa of Jesus, in chapter XVI of her Way of Perfection, applies to the spiritual life examples taken from the game of chess, “For believe,” she writes, “that he who does not know how to arrange the pieces in the game of chess, he will know to play badly, and if he does not know how to check, he will not know how to checkmate.... The queen is the one that can do the most damage in this game, and all the other pieces help. There is no queen that can make him yield as well as humility”. But to the Saint this comparison with a game seemed light and frivolous, which appears in the autograph codex of El Escorial. And in the Valladolid autograph, she tore out the five pages dedicated to this allegory, not finding the paragraphs with which she introduces it sufficient justification: “So shall you reprove me, because I speak in a gambling matter, when there is none in this house, nor shall be any in this house. Here you will see the mother that God gave you, who even knew this vanity; rather they say that it is sometimes licit”. This book of St. Teresa, Way of Perfection, is recommended by Calasanz, as spiritual reading to his religious, in the letter 2860. I do not know if the Italian translation they were using, contained the pages that were deleted.

The reason Calasanz gives for disapproving the game of chess is the following: “I do not approve of the game of chess for the reason you write to me.... Our entertainment will be much more suitable to prepare ourselves to die well; our life being brief and its hour uncertain, and if here we will not do penance in this short time, we will do it there in a long time” (EGC 2087). (EGC 2087). That chess or draughts can make us forget death, even the imminent death of an execution, can be seen in the anecdote given by Seneca in De tranquilitate animi ad Serenum (Lib. XI,2,38). Cano Julius, condemned to death by Caligula, “was playing chess when the centurion who was bringing the crowd of those condemned to death, ordered that he too should be brought out. When he was called, he counted the pieces and said to his companion: Beware lest you lie after my death, saying that you have won. Then beckoning to the centurion, he said to him: “You will be a witness that I have taken him a score”. Seneca himself, in his Epistulae (Lib. XVII, 106, 11) writes: Latrunculis ludimus, in supervacuis subtilitas tentur (We play checkers: the subtlety of wits is spent on superfluous things).

Times have changed and so has the ecclesiastical discipline. The Second Vatican Council, in the Decree Presbiterorum Ordinis, advises priests to “meet together willingly and cheerfully for recreation of spirit” and the Ecclesiae Sanctae prescribes that every day religious, “in addition to the time devoted to spiritual things and to work, should have a certain amount of free time, as well as a certain possibility of distraction”.

42. Decurions

Calasanz did not build up the whole pedagogical edifice of his schools from the ground. His initiative was a response to a pressing need of his time. He could not, therefore, waste time and energy on psycho-pedagogical essays and theoretical speculations on what an excellent education for children should be. On the contrary, he had to concern himself as soon as possible and from wherever he could, with the means and the guiding ideas he needed to satisfy that imperative requirement of the Christian Republic. That is to say, an education was required for the benefit principally of the poor - though not exclusively for them - which, in the shortest possible time, would enable them to give a Christian meaning to life, to face it with the dignity given by knowledge and good habits, and to provide them with the security brought by a certain well-being, in order to achieve, with all this, the reform of the Church and of the society.

It is not surprising, then, that Calasanz’ pedagogical norms and tasks are not entirely original, and not a few of them are inspired and even copied from those used in the most reputable educational establishments of the time, although he stamped them all with his own characteristics seal, like an unmistakable Calasanzian trademark.

There is no doubt about the influence of the Ratio Studiorum, the “carta magna” of the pedagogy of the Society of Jesus, in the schools of Calasanz. Or rather, an influence taken by the Jesuits of those pedagogues from whom they gathered much of their educational and teaching knowledge, namely: Erasmus, Luis Vives, the Jeronimians, the Sorbonne, Sturm, and Valentin Friedland, called Trotzendorf.

The Ratio Studiorum is the origin of the daily, weekly and monthly tuitions, as well as the literary evenings or academies and the system of decurions, established by Calasanz in his Pious Schools. The same origin must be attributed to the polemics or verbal challenges with which the pupils in pairs, divided into two camps, each led by his Imperator, also known to the Jesuits as dictator, consul, public censor or decurion maximus praetor, questioned each other on the subject matter they had learned. The names of these factions were also taken from classical antiquity: Romani and Carthaginenses. Calasanz adds to these names, other not so bellicose ones: Equites and Pedites, Legio velox and Legio florens. And in keeping with the markedly pious orientation that the saint gave to his teaching and education: Pars pia and Pars angelica. For it was not only “Pro Patria et pro dignitate” that these little contenders of the Calasanz contests fought.

In the Jesuit schools, the pupils were paired, each one having his emulate or rival on the opposing side. As Emile Durkheim says in L’évolution pedagogique de France, at that time, in the Jesuit schools, “school work involved a kind of perpetual hand-to-hand combat... the emulators watched, corrected and reprimanded one another. Sometimes the teacher did not hesitate to confront pupils of unequal strength... each of them might even fight a battle with a pupil of a higher grade, and if he defeated him, he took his place”. The Ratio Studiorum, in the Common Rules for teachers of the lower classes, orders the preceptor of this level: “distribute some compositions to be corrected by the rivals of the class. In order to make this procedure more convenient, each one should write on the back of the paper not only his own name, but also that of his rival”. As for the confrontations of didactic emulation, he says a little further on: “The contest, which ordinarily consists of the teacher questioning and the rivals correcting each other, or the rivals questioning each other, should be highly esteemed and practiced whenever time permits, in order to foster healthy competition (honesta aemulatio), which is the great stimulus to study. They can confront one to one, or several from one side to the other, especially among those who have offices, and even one alone may attack several. Usually, the normal disciple will challenge his equal, the one who has an office will challenge another of his rank. Sometimes also the one who has no office will challenge the one who has it, and if the former wins, he may obtain the dignity of the latter, or some other prize or symbol of victory. For reviews of what has been learnt, the following alternative is offered: “One can repeat everything without interruption, or repeat each of the teacher’s questions, while the rival corrects his competitor if he makes a mistake or is quicker to answer if the other is late”. For the Humanities, Higher and Lower Grammar examinations, the Ratio sets out in great detail the proposals that the opponents can put forward against each other.

Calasanz also imitated the system of decuriae from the Jesuits. Ruiz Amado, S.I., attributes it to the humanist pedagogue Johannes Sturm (1507-1589), a Protestant, a great friend of Erasmus and Melanchthon, who applied it in the famous Gymnasium he founded in Strasbourg, under the motto Sapiens et eloquens Pietas. Sturm was expelled from the school he founded because of his irenist theological orientation. In this Gymnasium, each class represented a “curia”, which was divided into ten decuries, at the head of which there was a decurion, who was responsible for checking the written works, taking the lessons and reading certain subjects or authors. Father György Sántha, a Piarist, states that the Jesuits drew their inspiration for the decurions from the University of Paris, which they received from the Brothers of the Common Life or Jeronimians, through the Colleges of Montaigu, of John Standonck. The Jeronimians, in turn, were inspired by the German Stadtsschulers, although the system dates back to the Middle Ages, having been introduced by a certain Faraeolus, Bishop of Narbonne (France) (553-581).

The Ratio Studiorum states the following about the role of the decurion: “The teacher should also appoint decurions to listen to those who recite the lessons from memory, to collect the compositions, to note with dots in a notebook how many times the memory of each pupil failed, who neglected to write the composition or did not hand in the double copy, and to observe other dispositions of the preceptor”.

The Pious Schools already had decurions from the beginning. The venerable Glycerio Landriani called them normatori. But the decurions of Calasanz are notably different from those of the Ratio of the Jesuits. In the Regole del Maestro and in the Dichiarazioni alle Costituzioni, our Founder orders that, in choosing the decurions, the approval of the majority of the pupils in the class be taken into account (faccia li suoi decurioni et altri officiali per sodisfationi di tutti li scolari). Their mission was rather disciplinary, helping the teachers with the maintenance of proper order, especially during Mass, and giving an account if they have been absent from school and from festive oratories.

But their function was very different from that of those who in the pedagogy of the Society of Jesus were called syndics, pupils whose mission, according to the Regulae circa bonos mores scholasticis externis servandos, was to observe their companions secretly and to denounce them, in secret also, to the competent superiors (syndicus secretus sit et secrete deferat).

Nor does it seem that they had the task of taking the lesson recited to them by the members of their decuria. According to the above-mentioned Sántha: “Since most of the documents - with the exception of only one - in speaking of the decurions say nothing about this cooperation in the didactic work, it is to be assumed that in this field their help was of no great importance in the total system”.

And even with regard to this didactic cooperation, it seems that the action of the decurions of the Piarists was the opposite of that of the decurions of the Jesuits, since, in the Ordini da osservarsi dali maestri Poveri della Madre di Dio delle Scuole Pie, the decurions do not take the lessons recited by heart by those of their decuria, but they are the ones who recite them to the other pupils. Calasanz’ thinking, in this respect, is more inclined to encourage pupil participation rather than strict control of the pupils and to encourage competition.

43. The pedagogy of the game

The need to alternate, in education, moments of recreation and play, with those of school work, had already been defended and practiced by pedagogues and thinkers long before Calasanz. Aeneas Silvio Piccolomini, who later became Pope under the name of Pius II, Guarino of Verona, teacher of St. Bernardino di Siena, and Vittorino di Feltre with his Casa Giocosa, had introduced the game in alternation with the didactic practices of the schoolchildren. For Guarino, instruction was to be received “in a free, harmonious and welcoming atmosphere, enlivened by music, dances and songs, as well as by physical exercises and games”. Vittorino da Feltre had teachers of horsemanship and fencing, as well as of music, painting and singing. He himself personally practiced many physical exercises and was particularly fond of ball games.

Contemporaries of Calasanz also supported the need for physical exercise. Campanella, in his Città del Sole, insists on gymnastics and outdoor games. Cardinal Silvio Antoniano in his work Dell’ Educazione Cristiana e Politica de´ Figliouoli, sings of the pedagogical excellences of movement and bodily agitation: jumping, running, ball games, trucco (a game similar to croquet), excursions.

However, according to Guerrino Pelliccia, historian of the Roman school from XVI to XIX century, the pupils, at the time of Calasanz, “were forced to remain immobile for long hours in a single classroom, often crowded together in exorbitant numbers and not always sitting on benches or on seats for the lucky ones. The daily duration of the school day was five to six hours interrupted by a short break for lunch. It was not until the middle of the XIX century that one hears of a little relief, a quarter of an hour in the middle of the morning and half an hour in the afternoon, in the schools of the Pontifical States”. The Jesuits in Italy had a regulation in 1556 that the teacher could allow the pupils outside the school some time for “recreation” with a game “worthy of the letters and honest”. According to an account of 1564, the boarding students of the Collegio Romano, after the afternoon lessons, “do bodily exercise for half an hour, such as sweeping, cleaning the garden and the rest of the house”. In addition to these environmental conditioning factors, Calasanz had two restrictive ideas about the time dedicated to leisure in his schools: one of them, the need to instruct and educate in the shortest possible time, since the vast majority of his pupils belonged to needy families. The other restrictive idea was the concept that Calasanz had of the virtue of modesty, a concept similar to that of the Christian pedagogues of his time. It is not surprising, then, that in the Regulations that Calasanz wrote for the school of Narni, the following prohibition appears: “Neither do they bring to school any instrument either to play or to interpret music, flowers, fruits, or other trifles that may cause distraction from the study”.

The school day of the Pious Schools of Calasanz lasted, both in the morning and in the afternoon, two and a half hours only, without intervals for recreation. Cardinal Mistrangelo, a Piarist, has noted that the Continuous Prayer, practiced in the Oratory by groups of children, during the school day, “corresponded to a natural need for movement: it was a distraction and at the same time it made religion a vital atmosphere”. One can consider this practice of Continuous Prayer “as a relief in the evangelical style”, says the aforementioned historian Pellicia.

The large number of holidays in the Roman school calendar provided Calasanz with an opportunity to compensate for this lack of recreational spaces in the school timetable. Father Sántha says, referring to these holidays: “The recreations that took place after the Christian doctrine on Sundays and feast days were particularly well organized. In the time between the doctrine and vespers, or immediately after vespers, some Fathers accompanied the pupils - who on the way often sang the litanies or the Laudi spirituali - until they reached an open field outside the city, where they could play”.

This regulation was so strict that it did not allow playing on school days either in the school or in the courtyard, although it seems that in some places it was played either in the school or in some courtyard of the same, because, in a letter to Father Cherubini, Calasanz complains that in Narni it was allowed, in the large room of the school, to play ball, “which sometimes perhaps hit the image of the Blessed Virgin”. But the prohibition on playing in school was very strict in the Common Rites, which do not allow play in the classrooms “under any pretext whatsoever; even less so, in times of carnival or rain, to keep the pupils from something worse; nor does the Prefect of Schools have the authority to dispense from this; much less is it to be observed that play is not allowed, in school time, on the pretext that they are few or that the school exercises are finished”.

Luis Vives in his De institutione Feminae Christianae says that the little ones should play only with their equals in age and sex and under the immediate care of the mother, or of a person of virtue, love and prudence. Calasanz, in his Regulations for pupils of Collegio Nazareno, prescribes: “Do not go from one class to another, nor let the older ones deal with the little ones”. And not only were they to play with the “sober and prudent” presence of their teachers, but - the Common Rites prescribe - the teacher may not converse with the pupils, nor separate themselves from the others with one of them, nor even with several of them, except to warn them of some fault; nor should the teachers “play or indulge in any levity with the pupils or in their presence”. This prescription, which may seem exaggerated today, is in keeping with the concept of modesty, mentioned above, which was in vogue at the time, and which we will perhaps discuss on another occasion.

In the Common Rites it is ordered: “From time to time, the games can be interrupted and they can be made to practice some act of virtue or to exercise them with fervent prayers so that they do not become too engrossed in the game and to accustom them more skillfully to the presence of God”. He prescribes the same so that they are not absorbed in school activities. What these prayers consisted of can give us an idea of what we read in an old regulation of the Pious Schools of Sardinia, which became the practice of the first Piarist schools in Spain: “At the end of each class hour, the Mother of God is to be praised, so that all the grammarians stand up with the teacher and one of them says in a loud voice and devout chant: Laudetur Sanctissimum Eucharistiae Sacramentum, necnon Beatissimae Vìrginis Mariae Inmaculata Conceptio and the others respond In saecula praying the Ave Maria afterwards, and continuing the literal exercise in the classroom”. In Spain, the pupils in the elementary classes sang it in Spanish. This practice lasted until XX century and was known as the Alabado (Praised), since the fervent prayer was translated as follows: “Praised be the Blessed Sacrament of the Altar and the Virgin conceived without original sin”.

44. The emperor of the students

Among the incentives for emulation of the pupils of the Pious Schools in Calasanz’ time, the investiture of emperor granted to the best pupil, undoubtedly stands out. Attired with crown and scepter, in a private party, he was granted - according to Father Sántha - the right to enjoy as “absolute master of the class or classroom” for the whole school year (EGC 356). In particular, he enjoyed the privilege of granting two or three graces to punished pupils (Breve relazione or Documentum princeps). All the classes elected their emperors, some for a week, but subordinate to this annual and absolute one. The emperors ranged from the youngest pupils of the Santa Croce class (Berro V. Annotazioni l.2, c.20, p.154) to the oldest pupils of the First (EGC 1428) and Abacus (EGC 2733), as well as the Reading class, as recorded in the Breve relazione.

A figure equivalent to that of this scholastic emperor, although without this name, appears in the Ratio Studiorum of the Jesuits. Article 37 of the Regulae Praefecti Studiorum Inferiorum states: “In each class, according to the usage of the region, appoint a public censor, or, if this name is undesirable, a decurion praetor. In order to be esteemed among the students, he must enjoy some privilege, and he will have the right, with the approval of the superior, to intercede for the students in the lightest punishments. He is to see if any of his fellow pupils wanders about the courtyard before the signal is given, or enters a class that is not his own, or leaves his own class or his place. He should also inform the Prefect of those who are absent each day, if any stranger has entered the class, and finally, if there has been any misconduct in the class in the absence or presence of the teacher.

From the comparison of this Jesuit “censor” with the Calasanzian “emperor”, it appears that the one in the Ratio is subordinate to the teacher in his pardons of the punished and carries out a supervisory and policing mission regarding the conduct of his fellow disciples, all of which does not appear in any document referring to the performance of the office of “emperor” in the school of Calasanz.

As for the name “emperor”, it may have its origin in a catechetical dispute which, in XVII century, children of all the schools, had in Rome, aspiring to the title of Imperatore della Dottrinella or Emperor of tutte le dottrine (Emperor of the Catechism).

However, its distant origin can be traced back to ancient Rome, where the so-called “Game of the King”, in Greek basilinda, existed. Pedro López de Montoya, in his Libro de la buena educación y enseñanza de los Nobles (XVII century), states: “The Romans had ordered certain games for the children of their Republic, in which the prize of the winner was to be considered king and superior, and the other children, while the game lasted, obeyed him as king”. The one who was appointed king commanded the others to do humiliating actions, such as: shouting expletives against themselves, dancing naked, carrying a large stone on their backs, according to Lucian of Somosata, in his Epistolae saturnales (II century). In some countries this game of the king has survived to the present day. In Spain, the childish monarch sings “and I am the king - who makes the law - and all that I do - you must do - Lal, lal, lalal - lalal, la, la, la (encore)”. To which his little vassals respond in chorus: “This is the king - who sings well - and we sing - in tune with him - Lal, lal, lal, lalal - lalal, la, la, la (encore)”. The series continues with other onomatopoeias as a refrain, on the part of the king, which the others must imitate, while imitating the gestures of the mini-monarch.

Apart from the offices held by Calasanz when he studied at the University of Lérida, another possible precedent of this scholastic emperor could be the so-called Festa del Obispillo or Festa del Niño Obispo (Feast of the child bishop), which was celebrated in student and ecclesiastical circles, and which is still celebrated in some of them, as in the Monastery of Montserrat, on the day of Saint Nicholas, under the name of Festa del Bisbetó. In some places, these celebrations began on All Saints’ Day or on the Feast of the Immaculate Conception. In others they were delayed until the Vespers of the Holy Innocents, because the verse “Cast down the mighty from their thrones and exalt the lowly” was sung in the Magnificat or Vesperal Canticle. The boy chosen for bishop was invested with surplice, cape, crozier and miter. He ruled over the others and, at Montserrat, he also enjoys the privilege of obtaining grace for those of his companions who were punished. I do not know if this feast was already celebrated in that monastery when Calasanz was there from 28 October 1585 to the end of February 1586.

All this seems to derive from the Roman Saturnalia, in which, in imitation of the equality that reigned in the time of Saturn, slaves wore the toga of the patricians, occupied places of honour at their masters’ table and pretended to rule over them. As a reminder of the licentiousness of these festivities, the so-called Feast of Fools was celebrated in ancient times and in the Christian Middle Ages, from the day of the Holy Innocents until 21 January. The different social classes exchanged their clothes and even their dignity and functions, giving the spectacle of a world turned upside down. In Rome, even the Pope of the Fools was elected. In Paris the garbage collectors’ carts were loaded with canons and priests and were followed by a mob of lowlifes, simulating illnesses, disabilities and physical defects. This crowd was called the Court of Miracles because, at night, they regained their health and bodily integrity. These feasts were condemned by Saint Augustine (Sermon 215), the Council of Toledo in 633 and the Council of Rome in 745.

Far from this debauchery was the Calasanzian pedagogical resource of the “Emperor”, however derived from it. The ceremony of his investiture, although private, had a solemn character. The crown was transferred from one school to another (EGC 356), as it was of some value. However, I think that the description of that crown in a Processus ob furtum of 1631 is exaggerated, namely: “a most beautiful jewel with many real diamonds set in it”. For Calasanz’ intention was not ostentation, but “to encourage the pupils to learn more diligently” (EGC 2733).

45. Very modest games

Commenting on the pedagogical work of the Piarists in Savona, Fr. Vicente Berro writes: “In the afternoon, on feast days, between the Doctrine and Vespers, and also during the holidays, they (the pupils) walked with the Fathers to many places in the city for recreation, being exercised in very modest games (in diversi modestissimi giuochi) and from time to time also in spiritual lauds (hymns)”.

In pedagogy, both at home as at school, in Calasanz’ time, the education of the virtue of modesty had a very important part. The mentors of childhood and youth were faithful to what Cicero wrote: “It is necessary to repress and dominate the passions and to enliven consideration, care and diligence so that we do not do things perhaps without reason, without advice and without reflection. Nature has not placed us in the world for games and pastimes, but for a serious life and for actions of gravity and importance. This is not to say that we should never have fun and amusement; but just as we use sleep and other forms of relaxation, after we have satisfied our serious and grave needs. And these same pleasures should not be too free or indecent, but rather gracious and honest” (De Oficiis, L. I Fig. c.XXIX). Recreation and play, then, are only admitted as a function of work, of industriousness, and with characteristics analogous to them. Luis Vives, in his De tradendis disciplinis (L.III, c.IV), gives criteria for the choice of games: “Choose those in which there is both correction and joy.... They should be held in view of an elderly person and with the intention of invigorating the body, not of bringing about ferocity”. It is not surprising, then, that Calasanz repeatedly orders the pupils to observe and the teachers to inculcate in them a modest behavior. That, in the pupils, the teacher should “assiduously encourage civility and modesty” (EGC 432); that he should exhort them to “walk in the street with judgement” (EGC 2835 and Breve Relazione), that the superior should “visit the schools to see if the pupils are in due modesty” (EGC 266 and 610). The Ordine per i Maestri prescribes similar diligence on the part of the teacher: “Let every teacher take great care to ensure that his pupils are as modest as possible” (EGC 266 and 610). Modesty is also demanded in the regulations given by Calasanz to the pupils of Rome, Campi and Collegio Nazareno. Sometimes he links modesty with civility (creanza), and in the Common Rites it is prescribed that the “libretto delle buone creanze” be read daily to the pupils. He also considers that modesty has a beneficial effect on school learning (EGC 266 and 4000).

Not only the prestige of civility; not only the safeguard of virtue, attributed to modesty, as Joseph Addison would formulate, years later, in The Spectator - “Modesty is not only an ornament, but also a guard to virtue”. It is also the character of angelic virtue and imitation of Jesus Christ that Fr. John of Jesus Mary O.C.D. attributes to modesty in his booklet of Calasanzian inspiration Liber de Pia Educatione (c. XIV): all this constitutes an inescapable recommendation to inculcate this virtue in schoolchildren.

In educators of the times immediately after Calasanz, there is also an outstanding insistence on inculcating modesty. Pedro López de Montoya, in his Libro de la buena educación (1525) declares: “Obedience and modesty are also things to be learned at a tender age”. Jane Grey, Queen of England for only nine days, after which she was condemned to be beheaded to death by order of Mary Tudor, expressed her memories of her family upbringing thus: “One of the greatest benefits God bestowed on me was to give me such severe and strict parents. For when I am in the presence of my father and mother, whether I speak or be silent, whether I sit or stand, whether I walk, eat, drink, whether I am sad or merry, whether I do anything, whether I play an instrument, dance, or do anything else, I must do it, as it were, as perfectly as God made the world, otherwise I am subjected to such mockery, such cruel threats, sometimes even being pinched and slapped, and in other ways which I will not name for the respect I owe them, and I am so extremely confused that I believe I am in hell”.

According to the Règles de Biénseance of Saint John Baptist de la Salle, the child should try to be still, but not in a rigid or languid posture that would be insolent. He was not to zigzag or nod his head. Nor should he reveal his emotions “by movements of the forehead, eyebrows or cheeks”. These rules went as far as the posture the child was to maintain in bed, “so that those who approached could not perceive the shape of the body”.

Port Royal Jansenism believed “a perfect watchfulness over the girls was necessary, never allowing them to be alone anywhere.... Their teacher must hear everything they say so that they do not learn to use deceit, in order not to conceal faults which they do not wish to be known”.

Everything dissolute was to be avoided, as Calasanz prescribed for his religious in his Constitutions: “Caveant omnes...ab omni eo quod speciem immodestiae aut disolutionis praeseferar” (Let all beware of anything that has the appearance of immodesty or dissolution). Friar Pablo de León, in his Guide to Heaven, orders “that the person should not be completely dissolved in the game, but that it should have its gravity, even if it laughs and relax”. Cardinal Silvio Antoniano, in Dell’Educazione Cristiana e Politica de’ Figliuoli, referring to children’s play, says “they should be measured in their movement and rest, taking care that by excessive exercise their strength is not dissolved (le forze non si dissolvono) or that otherwise they do not incur some danger to their health”.

This concern that immodesty should not harm bodily health is also found in Calasanz. In his Constituzioni del Collegio Nazareno, he orders that in recreation, “exercise should not be violent but moderate; for the rest, no one should dare to run or walk with such haste that it exceeds the terms of modesty, so that bodily health is not harmed” (Niuno ardisca a correre o a caminare così in fretta che passi il termine della modestia, accio ne venisse a resultare danno a la salute corporale) (c.VI, 3) Such a hygienic precaution requiring modesty in running and walking can perhaps be explained by the theory of the four humors: blood, bile, phlegm and atrabilis. In his letters, Calasanz shows that he appreciates the influence of the balance or imbalance of these four humors on the health of the body. Perhaps Calasanz had in mind when he wrote the aforementioned text the pneumatic theory that attributed vital and pathological phenomena to a particular fluid called “neuma”. The pneumatic tone was known through the pulse, which, in its alterations, denoted the loss of the equilibrium of the humors. The effort in running and even sudden movement would produce a humoral imbalance manifested by tachycardia. We must place ourselves at a time when the mechanics of muscular movement had not yet been studied in depth. The first to give an acceptable explanation of it was the famous Giovanni Alfonso Morelli, in his posthumous work De motu animalium. He could not give it his last hand, for in 1679 he died in misery, charitably palliated by the Piarists of San Pantaleo, in Rome, where he was received as a guest. In Calasanz’ time, the step was being taken towards the systematic substitution of conceiving philosophy as a “movement of substances”, characteristic of the theory of humors, to a new one conceived as a “set of laws”.

Or perhaps the belief that the muscles, when set in motion, were swollen with those “animal spirits”, which supposedly occupied all parts of the body, had to do with this opinion of Calasanz. Francis Glisson had not yet shown that the muscles in motion far from swelling, are actually compressed.

46. Daily confession

According to the testimony of a witness in the Processes, Calasanz went to confession “every day with Father Castilla, before mass”. Presumably it was not always with Fr Castilla. We may be astonished at such assiduity in obtaining forgiveness for the most venial sins, every day. However, this practice was not only by people with a reputation for sanctity, but also by some non-canonisable laymen. According to the account of the Viscount of Walsh, in his poetic picture of the Sacraments, Jonah, bishop of Orleans, testifies that laymen confessed their faults daily, a practice advised by St. Bede the Venerable. Walsh also quotes Louis the Pious, who went to confession every day with his brother Drogon, bishop of Metz, and that St Philip of Bourges “every evening, after Compline, washed his soul in the salutary and sacred pool”. On the other hand, the Rule of St. Columban prescribes confession several times a day. Saints closer to Calasanz, such as Vincent Ferrer, Cajetan of Thiene and Ignatius of Loyola, also observed the practice of daily confession. In his later years, St. Charles Borromeo went twice a day to the Sacrament of Penance. St. Andrew Avelino also went to confession daily and often several times a day.

This daily practice of confession is already formulated and recommended by St. Augustine: “Quoniam quotidiana est offensa, oportet ut quotidiana sit remissio” (Since the offence is daily, it is appropriate that forgiveness should be daily). St. Philip Neri, according to his biographer Giovanni Marciano, “advised to frequent confession more than communion: so many of his penitents went to confession every day, and not every day they received communion”. Of the famous Count-Duke of Olivares, minister to the King of Spain, Philip IV, his biographer Gregorio Marañón writes that, after the death of his daughter María, “an infinite and at the same time extravagant melancholy took possession of him... his religiousness was exacerbated, increasing his prayers and making daily confession and communion.... At five o’clock in the morning he would get up and receive the confessor”.

This eagerness to reiterate the Sacrament of Penance must be attributed, according to a modern author, to the Council of Trent, which emphasized the devotional use of confession, giving rise to the hardening of this practice by the “servile repeaters of the Council, to the point that the Sacrament is taken as an end, as an ideal: to confess as often as possible is proof of holiness”. So much for the opinion of the aforementioned author. But, in my opinion, there were other reasons which contributed to this multiplication of devotional confessions: a practice, which I have already pointed out, is of more ancient origin. One of these reasons could be the parsimony in authorizing frequent communion. Thus, penance became the only sacramental source of grace whose repeated use was then available to the faithful. The statement in the Catechism of the Council of Trent, which answers the question “what good the Sacrament of Penance communicates to us”, may also contribute to this practice. The answer is: “Grace by which our past faults are forgiven and our future faults are preserved”. The Catechism of Ripalda transcribes literally from the Catechism of Trent the translation of this question and its corresponding answer. According to the teaching of St. Thomas Aquinas, everything that makes more remote falling into sin, increases holiness. It is not surprising, then, that Confession, by which future sins are “preserved”, is considered a means of sanctification. All the more so when Aquinas himself affirms that “grace provides us with a more efficacious means than our own acts to avoid sins” (Summa Theologica Supplement, q.25 a. 1, ad primum). In a letter to Fr. Alacchi Calasanz wrote: “The confessional is a tribunal which, if well administered, should not only remedy the past, but also preserve for the future” (EGC 1759).

Another reason for this repetition of confession could be that at that time there was an intense horror of committing any kind of sin, venial sin being no exception. The wife of Louis XIV of France, Marie-Thérèse of Austria, declared: “A venial sin.... It was an offence against God and this is enough to have opened a mortal wound in my heart”. Today, this legitimate hatred of sin, especially venial sin, has diminished in some people to the point of disappearing.

But this rigor with which the devout daily penitents, including Calasanz, went to confession, was not always demanded of their penitents. Diego Pérez de Valdivia, author of works of spirituality, disciple of St. John of Avila, was prosecuted by the Inquisition in 1575. In his indictment, it is stated: “That in another sermon he said that they could go to communion ten years in a row without going to confession, as long as they did not have mortal sin”. However, in the same process, the following is stated in defense of the accused: “That he said mass every day, or most of the days; and ordinarily went to confession to say it...”

In the Rules given by Calasanz for the novices, they are ordered: “If he is a priest, he will ordinarily go to confession three times a week, on Sunday, Wednesday and Friday; if he is not a priest, twice, on Sunday and Thursday”. In a letter dated 3 December 1633, addressed by Calasanz to Brother Arcangelo Sorbino, then still living in Cesena (outside the Community for administering the goods inherited from Cardinal Tonti), we read the following: “I hope that things will still go well there, especially if prayer is done morning and evening; confession and communion on Sunday and Thursday”.

Calasanz, in his Constitutions (article 58), had adapted, perfecting it, a paragraph of those of the Clerics Regular Minor (Caracciolini), avoiding, although he had it in view, the counterpart of the Theatines which says: “The priests, if they do not confess every day, let them do it at least several times a week”. In his Constitutions, our Founder had written only that religious priests and others should confess their sins twice a week, as prescribed in the aforementioned Constitutions of the Caracciolini. But the censor, appointed by the ecclesiastical authority, instructed Calasanz to add - as he did in the Code of Narni - the following clause: “Si quotidie debent celebrare, quotidie confiteantur, si necesse fuerit” (If they must celebrate daily, let them confess daily, if necessary). This article 58 of the Constitutions reads as follows: “Both priests and others shall go to confession at least twice a week to the priests appointed for this purpose. As for the priests, if they have to celebrate daily, let them go to confession daily, if necessary, lest the religious who have set out on the path of perfection, through disregard for minor faults, slip little by little into greater ones”.

47. The act of contrition

The famous Cardinal Franzelin, whom Leo XIII called the greatest theologian of the XIX century, speaking about contrition for sins committed, said: “If I could go as a preacher, from country to country, I would speak everywhere of the importance of this kind of repentance”. This zeal to inculcate contrition could also be attributed to Calasanz, on the basis of his work in the pastoral care of children and youth. Sántha writes: “To the acts of the three theological virtues Calasanz wished to add the acts of humility and contrition.... Acts of contrition were particularly insisted upon, so that the pupils could always live in the grace of God, and such acts were made at the end of the lessons, both in the morning and in the evening, and also during the Continuous Prayer...”. Fr. John of Jesus Mary, O.C.D., in his Liber de pia educatione, dedicated to the schools of Calasanz, included a Catalogue of the spiritual exercises suitable for the children, in which the following appears: “Let them seek the presence of God, that is, let them frequently remember God and make some acts of love, hope, charity and contrition directed to Him”. The Common Rites prescribe to the Piarists: “At the signal to finish school... remembering the obligation to give an account to God of their promise, and having finished, the usual student or the teacher himself will say. Tu autem Domine miserere nobis. R/ Deo gratias (You Lord, therefore, have mercy on us. Response: Thanks be to God). Teaching them to beat their breasts and make acts of contrition, asking God’s forgiveness for the errors committed particularly on that day”.

In order to better carry out this act of contrition and those of the aforementioned virtues, Calasanz had some sheets printed and had them distributed profusely to the students, because he considered it “very shameful and an enormous fault that the older students did not know how to make the acts of faith, hope and charity, humility and contrition, which are so necessary” (EGC 2835, 3022 and 3027). Perhaps for greater diffusion, in the booklet Avviamento chiaro et facile al Sacramento della Confessione et a quello della Comunione per bene et santamente confessarsi e comunicarsi, dato in luce dal P. Filippo Angelini dell’Ordine de’ Predicatori.... per uso degli scolari delle Scuele Pie ristampato, wanted “the spiritual exercises of the scholastics and the mysteries of the life of Christ in one or two folios, so that everything could be kept in one book” (EGC 882). If so, these acts or spiritual exercises would probably be included in successive reprints (EGC 882, 904, 942, 956, 2835, 2916, 3022, 3027, 3036, 3920). However, in one of the books that Calasanz had in his room, Fr. Adolfo García Durán found two little leaflets from the edition of 1641, later, therefore, to the letter in which he requested its inclusion in the little book of Fr. Angelini. The letter was from 21 June 1628. The formula of the act of contrition which appears in these little sheets is the following: “I repent, Lord, and I am heartily sorry, more than for any other evil, that I have offended you, acting so often against your most holy will, and I firmly resolve never to offend you and to fulfil your holy law. And so that you may forgive me my sins, I want to confess them as soon as possible”.

The act of contrition of the Continuous Prayer with the children was as follows: “I repent and it grieves me that I have offended you so many times, for you are my only, true and perfect good. With your divine help, I firmly resolve never to sin again and to die before committing the smallest sin. I resolve to flee from all occasions that may lead me to sin, I am resolved to love and serve you always. I confess before Almighty God...”.

Calasanz insisted all the more on the contrition of his Piarist religious. Twice a day, at noon and in the evening, he ordered them to examine their conscience in a community act in the oratory. If they were unable to attend this community act, he ordered the novices, in the Rules he gave them, to do so “as soon as possible in particular”. These Rules include a formula for the examination of conscience analogous to the “manner of making the general examination” proposed by St. Ignatius of Loyola in the book of his Spiritual Exercises. This examination consists of five points, namely: “1. To give thanks to God for the benefits received; 2. To make a diligent investigation of the defects, faults and sins committed; 3. To be very sorry for them; 4. To make a firm resolution to amend oneself with divine help; 5. To impose some penance on oneself according to the faults committed”.

Such a repetition of acts of contrition is not surprising in an age, like that of Calasanz, when great value was attached to the so-called compunction of heart for Christian perfection. Nowadays it is hardly mentioned in treatises on the spiritual life. The ascetic author Louis de la Palma (1560-1641), in his A Treatise on the Particular Examen of Conscience, devotes much attention to compunction, which for him is synonymous with contrition. Thomas of Kempis, in addition to writing a booklet entitled Libellus de vera compunctione cordis, devoted a detailed analysis to it in chapter 21 of the first book of his Imitation of Christ.

In it is found the apt statement: “Da te ad cordis compunctionem et invenies devotionem” (give yourself to the compunction of the heart and you will find devotion). It is not surprising that Calasanz, who was so fond of Kempis (EGC 557, 1009, 1020, 1563, 1568, 1569 and 2371), attached so much importance to contrition, because it is through contrition that devotion or piety is achieved.

This multiplication of acts of contrition was not something extraordinary in Calasanz’ time. The great Jesuit theologian Francis Suárez (1548-1617) is recorded as saying that, in the midst of his intense studies and his numerous writings -it is amazing how he had so much time to write them down- he still found time to make the act of contrition a hundred times a day. Calasanz also wanted a singular frequency of this compunction of heart for his religious. Apart from the acts of contrition made with his pupils, he wrote in article 48 of his Constitutions - an article whose antecedents in the Constitutions of other religious families from which he drew his inspiration are unknown - the following memorable paragraph: “With all earnestness we exhort all in the Lord, as far as possible, to exercise themselves in acts, whether external or principally internal, of humility, contrition, thanksgiving and others, as the Holy Spirit dictates, so that the heavenly Father, who sees in the unseen, may reward them and raise them to a perfection of solid virtues”.

48. Atrition and contrition

It was a scene often repeated when, at the end of school, Calasanz, crucifix in hand, asked the children: Who among you would dare to throw stones at this divine Lord? The children’s answer was unanimous: none, Father, none. To which the Saint replied: He who commits a sin does the same as he who throws a stone at Jesus. The scene used to conclude with these words of Calasanz: Since you have sinned at other times, ask him now for forgiveness with me, and I will ask him for you. He would then dictate to them a heartfelt act of contrition. Likewise, when he knew that a pupil had fallen into mortal sin, he would call him alone and tell him of the danger of condemning himself: How have you dared, he would say, to fall into disgrace with God and declare yourself his enemy? And taking him by the hand, he led him to kneel before the image of Mary, the refuge of sinners, to make an act of contrition. From there he would accompany him to confess his sins.

The fruits of such a fruitful sowing did not fail to appear. One day in the year 1601, as Berro narrates and Bartlik records in his Annales, the Bishop of Luca, Monsignor Alexander Guidiccioni, was strolling through the orchard of his Roman residence, when one of his gardeners, while picking fruit, broke a branch of the tree on which he had climbed and was left hanging by one foot, upside down, unable to help himself and in danger of falling to his death. His little son, eight or nine years old, was at the foot of the tree and, unable to help him, he began to cry out to him: “Father, say to me with all your heart: My Lord Jesus Christ, I repent of all my sins...” and continued the act of contrition. The bishop and his companions, after helping the gardener out of danger, were amazed at their son’s pious initiative and asked him who had taught him to proceed in this way. I go to the Pious Schools,” replied the boy, “and my teacher, Father Joseph, has told me to make the act of contrition in this way when I am in danger”.

A similar case has been reported by Fr José Jericho, in his Varones insignes en santidad de vida del Instituto y religión de Clérigos Regulares Pobres de la Madre de Dios de las Escuelas Pías (Distinguished men in holiness of life of the Institute and religion of the Poor Clerics Regular of the Mother of God of the Pious Schools). One day, while retiring home at midday, Msgr. Sixtilio Mazzuca, titular bishop of Alesia and canon of the Vatican Basilica, saw a man lying on the ground, in a secluded street, who was barely showing signs of life. He was a bricklayer who, having been left alone when his companions left, fell from the top of the building where he was working. Beside him, kneeling, a boy of seven or eight years of age, his voice straining, dictated to him the act of contrition. The prelate ordered the injured man to be taken to the hospital and, in the meantime, asked the boy where he had learnt such a salutary practice. To which the child replied that he was in the Pious Schools, whose father prefect Calasanz taught them how much the act of contrition well done is worth and how to say it in danger of death. Accompanied by the little boy, the bishop visited the Pious Schools, whose existence, still very recent, he was unaware of. There he met Calasanz and became a generous benefactor of his work.

Even on his deathbed, the saint encouraged the act of contrition. On the eve of his death, among the dying man’s visitors was a gentleman who, kneeling at his bedside, begged for his blessing. He refused, looking at him with a stern face. The gentleman reflected and found himself in mortal sin. He made an act of contrition and promised to go to confession and change his life. The saint then smiled and blessed him. Then he recommended him to fulfil the resolutions he had made. Amazed, the knight exclaimed, in the presence of those present: “He is a Saint; he has read the depths of my conscience!”.

In Calasanz’ time, the polemic continued about the motives for repentance of sins: the love of God, that is, contrition, and the ugliness or filthiness of sin and the fear of hell, that is, the attrition; and whether or not this was sufficient to obtain the forgiveness of sins in the Sacrament of Penance, today better called Reconciliation. The word attrition - according to Jean Delumeau, whom I follow in the historical exposition - goes back to the beginnings of Scholasticism, that is to say to the first half of the XII century. In the following century, in particular for St Thomas Aquinas in his In IVm Sententiarum, contrition is perfect repentance: our freedom, flooded by grace, rises to the level of charity and the sinner experiences remorse for his faults out of love for God. At the most, attrition only prepares the arrival of grace and opens the way to contrition. At that time, the motive leading to attrition was not really clear. For the Master of the Sentences, Peter Lombard, absolution had, above all, the function of assuring the penitent and the Church that the sin had been forgiven by God. St Thomas is certainly a “contritionist”, because for him, as for his predecessors (the authors before the 13th century, including St Albert the Great), there can be no remission of sins without a contrition born of love. But it was in the XIV century that a Dominican who challenged St Thomas, Durandus of Saint-Pourçain, called Doctor Resolutissimus, bishop in three dioceses and a nominalist philosopher, was one of the first, if not the first, to distinguish remorse for sins arising from the love of God from that derived from the recognition of deserved sin. Another challenger of Aquinas, the Franciscan John Duns Scotus, entitled Doctor Subtilis, expanded the postulates of the attritionist current, exalting the power of the confessor’s absolution. For him the essence of the sacrament of Penance does not lie in the three moments hitherto considered essential - contrition, confession and satisfaction - but in the pardon granted by the priest in function of the Power of the Keys.

The polemic continued to the present day, for the Council of Trent did not wish to resolve the controversy. It limited itself to declare that attrition “is commonly conceived by the consideration of the ugliness of sin and by the fear of hell and its penalties, and if it excludes the will to sin and goes together with the hope of pardon, not only does it not make man more hypocrite, more sinful, but it is a gift of God and impulse of the Holy Spirit, who does not yet inhabit, but only moves and with whose help the penitent prepares the way for righteousness. And though without the Sacrament of Penance it cannot of itself bring the sinner to justification, yet it disposes him to impetrate the grace of God in the Sacrament of Penance”. And in its XIV session of 25 November 1551, the Council further declared: “This imperfect contrition, which is called attrition, because it is commonly born of the consideration of uncleanness or the fear of the pains of hell (...). Inasmuch as it cannot of itself lead sinner to justification without the Sacrament of Penance, it nevertheless predisposes him to obtain God’s grace in the sacrament”. However, the polemic continued, to the point that Pope Alexander VII (1655-1667) had to forbid the polemicizing theologians to brand each other as heretics.

From the time of Calasanz, therefore, the polemic persists with the official and unofficial silence of the Vatican. Both the Roman Catechism (1566) and the Roman Ritual (1614) avoid the word attrition. In 1617 Saint Robert Bellarmine published a widely distributed work, De gemitu columbae sive de bono lacrymarum, in which he exalted the gift of tears and the “true contrition” of Mary Magdalene.

On March 1, 1631, Calasanz writes to Father Melchior Alacchi, resident in Venice, praising what he does for the plague-stricken and tells him: “Even if you did nothing more than get one single person to make an act of contrition, all your effort would be well spent; all the more so because it is to be believed that many will be saved by the administration of the sacraments, since atrition with the sacrament becomes contrition” (EGC 1584). The last sentence is a transcription of the scholastic aphorism: Ex attrito per justificationem fit contritus.

The most common opinion among moralists today - according to Häring - holds with St. Thomas Aquinas and the majority of post-Tridentine theologians, that “for the reception of the Sacrament of Penance at least an attrition containing some germ or principle of charity is necessary (...). In conclusion: the confessor must bear in mind the admonition of the Holy Church to try to awaken in the penitent a perfect contrition. For his part, the penitent is seriously obliged to tend, at least, to a principle of love. In a matter on which eternal health hangs, the safest way must be chosen”.

49. Paying for confession

For some Piarist contemporaries of Calasanz, the confessional was a reason for desertion from the exercise of teaching. This is what the Founder says in a letter to Fr. Vincent Berro, dated July 2, 1639. It reads as follows: “And as often as our religious do not attend to this ministry (of teaching), they relax the Institute, as is clearly seen in the desire to hear confessions of lay people. When one of our religious becomes a confessor of lay people, it seems that he leaves aside the Institute of the schools. And if someone says that hearing the confessions of laity is an opportune means of obtaining alms, I reply that blessed God would send them by another way, as we have seen in more than twenty years when we have had no church, but only an oratory, where only Mass was said for the students and their confessions were heard. No doubt the schools and the holy fear of God were much better than they are now”. So much for Calasanz’ letter. The procurement of alms - very necessary indeed - was the pretext for devoting oneself intensely to the confession of adults. The abuses went so far that, in order to attend to the confessions of lay people, the pupils were sent to confession in other churches, dispensing them from the last hour of class (EGC 793).

In such a way Calasanz privileged the ministry of teaching over that of confessing adults, that in a letter to Fr. Ciriac Beretta he warns Fr. Nicholas Genesi “not to deceive himself by seeing the need for confessors that there is out there, since our main Institute is the schools; so that if one of the two ministries has to suffer, it is better that it suffers the ministry of confession than that of the school, since confessors are not lacking, while teachers are so few” (EGC 3871).

The problem is aggravated by the fact that Calasanz maintains, under penalty of excommunication, not only to possess, but also to touch money. Severe decisions were taken on 12 October 1627 by the General Congregation of the Order. Although physical contact with money was not threatened with excommunication, Calasanz, by virtue of his powers as Superior of the Order, imposed the penalty of excommunication ipso facto incurrenda on those who touched money in any way, for there were those who soothed their conscience by touching money through a piece of paper, a rag or some other intermediary. The saint was inexorable in this prohibition. Let no one touch money “even if it is offered to him by the laity” (EGC 1931), “even if some alms are lost” (EGC 676), “if anyone wants to give alms, let him refer to the bursar or administrator of the Religion” (EGC 727a).

This prohibition was well endorsed by the decree of the General Chapter of 1641: “As for those who are forbidden to touch money, it is understood that this includes confessors in particular, and also the Superior in the confessional or in the act of confessing”. Already in the Rules for the Novices of the Pious Schools given by St. Joseph Calasanz, the following article appeared: “Do not keep money in your possession or in the possession of any other person, even if it is given to you for the common service of Religion, or to give it to the poor, or to make some restitution, except when you are asking for alms, in which case you will receive it in the box that you will carry in your hand for that purpose. Therefore, direct to the Superior the persons who offer them, so that they may deliver them into his hand, or so that he may give him permission to receive them. The same is to be understood of anything else”. The allusion to restitution perhaps refers to the novice priests with license to hear confessions. Receiving the money “in the box which he shall carry in his hand for this purpose” suggests a prohibition against touching money, and thus against receiving it in his hand, and rather, putting it in the collection box.

But the prohibition points to something more than a rigid observance of poverty, which would correspond to a reformed Order, as for Calasanz the Piarist were, the same as “the Capuchins and the Reformed Fathers of St. Augustine”, who were excommunicated for touching money (EGC 673). In article 323 of his Constitutions, Calasanz orders: “It is not licit for anyone to ask for something or to receive it from those whose confessions he hears, nor from anyone else, even if he gives it to distribute it to the poor or to return it in the name of the one who must satisfy, unless the superior has granted him permission, once he knows the reason”. Was money asked from the penitents? It was, perhaps, demanded from them? Friar Anselm of Turmeda (1352- 1423?), a renegade Franciscan, who embraced the Muslim religion and married, wrote, among other works, La disputa del asno contra Fray Anselmo de Turmeda (The disputation of the ass against Friar Anselm of Turmeda). In this play, the superiority of man over animals is questioned, in which the donkey refutes Turmeda’s arguments. In one of these trials, some stories are inserted, in the style of Bocaccio’s Decameron, to demonstrate that the friars commit the seven deadly sins. In the Tale of the Sins of Avarice, a Dominican friar is mentioned by name and surname and the convent where he confessed, who demanded a florin from a penitent sailor, after having forced him to confess falsely that he was unjustly retaining ten florins. My son,” says the friar, “you see that the sum you unjustly hold is ten florins, of which one florin belongs to me: give it to me and I will absolve you of your sins”. This is a case of simony. A totally different is the case that Giovanni Marciano relates in the Life of the Glorious Father and Patriarch St. Philip Neri. Namely: “A penitent came to him who was accustomed in his country to give something to his confessor, and not having any money with him, he excused himself, saying: Forgive me, Father, I have nothing. Philip smiled at this strange departure and, taking advantage of it, added: “Well, instead of the money you wanted to give me, I want you to offer me to confess again next Saturday”.

But, on this matter, we do not lack the testimony of Calasanz himself. In a letter to Father Melchior Alacchi, dated March 6, 1632, the Saint wrote: “It seems to me one of the worst customs is to collect money for confessions, because it is usually the occasion of serious disorders. If the Superiors would know how to eradicate it, there would not be so many invalid confessions, nor would they go about looking for penitents, as many do, even without accepting money in the confessional, since the confessional is a tribunal where, if it is well administered, not only past things are remedied, but also future things are preserved, without human respect” (EGC 1759).

50. Death, judgement, gall and vinegar

I still knew the traditional Piarist practice of certain devout actions exercised in the dining room or refectory. When we had just sat down after the blessing of the food, before the reader began to read some verses from the Bible in Latin (i.e. from the Vulgate), with our hands joined, we meditated briefly on the exhortation that the reader addressed to us in Spanish: “Let us remember, Fathers and Brothers, to be attentive to the lesson, because at the hour of death we will be asked to give a close account of the fruit that we have failed to bring forth”. In addition, he interrupted the reading three times during the mealtime and twice during supper to join hands and invite the diners to a brief meditation with these words: “Let us remember, Fathers and Brothers, the gall and vinegar which the Redeemer of the World tasted on the Holy Log of the Cross”. On hearing this exhortation, the diners would join hands and keep them together during their brief meditation, remaining seated.

This practice goes back to the time of Calasanz, as Father Berro attests in his Annotazioni (t. I, l.I, pp. 100 and 106): “In the middle of the meal and supper, the reader recalls, two or three times, the gall and vinegar, which Christ, our Lord, tasted on the wood of the Holy Cross”. “And, -continues Berro - it is my opinion that our V.P. Founder and General took this from St. John Climacus, as well as having a skull on the dining room table, because St. John Climacus, in Sermon 26 Ut in privilegio similitudinem, says: “the attentive meditation of death and the fixed and continuous memory of the gall and vinegar of our King Jesus Christ are the mother of abstinence”. Later on, Berro reiterates: “Let one remember, while eating, the gall and vinegar given to Our Lord on the holy cross and at the end the imitation of his Passion, which are the mother of abstinence, as St. John Climacus says, in sermon 26 on the privilege of similarities”.

However, I do not believe that this quotation is the background to the texts of the above-mentioned “let us remember” read at the beginning and during the meals. For, the same holy Doctor of the Church wrote in his work (from which he took the adjective of his onomastic) the so-called Climax, also known as The Ladder of Divine Ascent, the following: “When you sit down to eat, remember death and judgement, for badly or moderately you will thus restrain gluttony. When you go to drink, never forget the vinegar and gall of your Lord, and wholly or moderately you will drink or groan or certainly you will be humbled” (Ch. 14). This Climax text refers both to the “hour of death” and the judgement where we will be “called to a close account”, and to the memory of the gall and vinegar that the Redeemer tasted. However, the memory of these refers not only to drink, but also to any edible or drinkable food. This is what is indicated in the Rules for the Novices of the Pious Schools given by Saint Joseph Calasanz, in chapter XXI, on the table: “Pay attention to what is read, applying your understanding in due time to the gall and vinegar which were given to the Redeemer of the world at the hour of his death, as the reader remembers”.

This text, reminiscent of an episode of the Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ, is not exact, because he did not taste the gall and vinegar on the cross. Before his crucifixion, when he arrived at Calvary, when they stripped him of his clothes, they gave him to drink “wine mixed with gall”, according to Matthew (Mt 27,34) or “wine with myrrh”, as Mark declares (Mk 15,23). When He was already on the cross, He was given to drink the “posca”, a sour or vinegar drink, which was carried by the Roman legionaries to quench their thirst. The divergence of the Evangelists on gall and myrrh is attributed by some to an error of the Greek translator of Matthew, who read “merora” (gall) for “mora” (myrrh), while others maintain that, both in the LXX and in various literary texts, the Greek term “cholé” denotes, in a general way, all kinds of drugs to numb the senses, thus wine mixed with myrrh, resin, saffron, laudanum, etc. It could be called, in general terms, wine mixed with gall. Calasanz, as well as John Climacus, could also refer, in this text of Jesus tasting gall and vinegar on the cross, to the Vulgate translation of Psalm 68: “Et dederunt in escam meam fel et in siti mea potaverunt me aceto” (For food they gave me gall and, in my thirst, they gave me vinegar), when the authentic version of the Hebrew text, according to the Jerusalem Bible, would be: “They have poured poison into my food, they have quenched my thirst with vinegar”.

51. Calasanz and the devil

It is common in hagiographies to find accounts of the struggles of saints with the infernal enemy. In antiquity, Saint Anthony Abbot is the undisputed champion. In times closer to us, Saint John Mary Vianney. In the tender childhood of Calasanz, we find his puerile intention to kill the devil with a little dagger, later mythologized by his biographers, until it became a bitter fight at the top of the famous “olive tree” of Peralta de la Sal, with the unharmed fall of the child, knocked down by Satan breaking the branch of the tree on which he had climbed. Perhaps, in that attitude that we could call “satanicidal” of Calasanz as a child, may have had an influence the listening and memorization of the Miracles of Our Lady, by Gonzalo de Berceo, which his teacher made him recite “just as his mother taught them to him”. Among these “miracles” are some in which Our Lady defeats the infernal enemy. These are: The Impudent Sacristan, The Pilgrim to Santiago, The Drunken Clergyman and a version of The Miracle of Theophilus, who sold his soul to the devil. The theme of this “miracle” has been prolific in literature, from Paulo Warnefrido, called Paulo the Deacon, to Goethe’s Faust, and including Mira de Amescua’s El esclavo del demonio and Calderón de la Barca’s El mágico prodigioso.

From Calasanz’ stay in Estadilla, it is said that, if any fellow student dared to utter obscene or offensive expressions in his presence, he reprimanded him saying: “These words are sin, they are words of the devil”.

His biographer Talenti, fantasizing about his childhood - as Giner says - wrote: “The devil (...) tried to terrify him and hinder him in his holy works, appearing to him in the horrible forms of atrocious and monstrous beasts, and even tried several times to drown him and throw him into a well”. But Talenti shows a certain predilection for the demonic theme in Calasanzian hagiography, and as Giner notes, at least a hundred pages of his Vita del Beato Giuseppe Calasanzio della Madre di Dio contain references to the devil.

Berro testifies, with more seriousness, that in 1602, when Calasanz placed a bell in the Vestri Palace to better fulfil the school timetable, a shadow, testified by the neighbors, pushed him and threw him to the ground from a height as to kill him, breaking his leg and hip.

It is Berro himself who narrates the dominion of Calasanz over two possessed women of the devil, introducing them in two temples, gently grasping them with his thumb and index finger, those who had touched the Consecrated Host in the masses celebrated in the church of Saint Praxedes, in the Chapel of the Flagellation, or in Santa Maria Maggiore or in Madonna dei Monti, which is where he used to celebrate when visiting the seven basilicas. It is on his return from them that Berro locates the exorcism of the second possessed woman. Castelli narrates a similar event, this time with a man, but it seems to be an erroneous duplication. In this account by Castelli, we find the phrase addressed by Calasanz to the madman: “And don’t you know the power of those two consecrated fingers?” The biographer Marciano also writes of Saint Philip Neri that to make sure that the mystical phenomena of the venerable Ursula Benicasa were not the work of the devil, “after celebrating Mass, he applied to her nose the two fingers that had touched the Sacred Host; the demoniac feel these touches very much”. It seems that this was a kind of exorcism very common in the time of Calasanz.

Another action of Calasanz with a possessed person took place in 1625, in the city of Carcare, where he was received in procession. A mute demoniac was making loud screams that disturbed the accompaniment. Calasanz ordered the demon to be quiet, who obeyed immediately. He then freed him from the diabolical possession and restored him the use of speech.

There is a case in which Calasanz seems to have the conviction that the Holy Spirit acts on a demon-possessed person. This can be deducted from the instructions given to Fr Giacomo Graciani: “Brother Benedict of Jesus, since the Holy Spirit has given him strength, after having left, to return to our convent, let us help him in this healthy inspiration, being, as it is believed, possessed (obsesso), we will look for the most opportune means to free him. And I will see to it here with Fr. Peter (Casani) that prayer is made in the novitiate for his deliverance” (Letter 2164). Calasanz had faith in the prayers written by Blessed Peter Casani, which he ordered to be printed (Letters 2164, 4529, 4551, 2175, 2240 and 2249). The title of these prayers, translated into English, is the following: Exorcisms against the infernal spirits, earthquakes, thunderstorms, storms and all evil infections.

Calasanz also attributed to the devil a rabid hatred against the Pious School. Thus, he wrote to Fr. Cherubini, resident in Naples: “I hope in the Lord that, with your presence, things will go as they should go in the House of Porta Reale, just as it has happened in that of the Duchesca. But be very careful that the devil, who is always the enemy of all good, does not succeed in preventing you from opening the way to good works, since the better one can do and does in the service of one’s neighbor, the more he persecutes him”(Letter 822). A similar idea is contained in Letter 1372. This is the reason why he judged an apparent fire that broke out in the novitiate in Rome to be the work of the devil. While they tried in vain to quell it, Fr. Castilla, Master of Novices and Superior of the Casa, sent two young men to the school of San Pantaleo to report the incident to Calasanz, who, according to Fr. Berro himself, replied: “Go back, it is nothing. If you had prayed, the devil would not have mocked you as he did. Tell Father Castilla that you should all go and pray, that you should not be bothered by the fire, which is not fire”. The two young men returned, told everything to their Father Master and, doing what Calasanz had said, the fire vanished. Father Berro tells how the next day, together with others, he went to the Novitiate to see the damage caused by the fire and, in the kitchen, they saw no sign of fire on the combustible objects and, when they asked Brother Lodovico, the cook, what had burnt, he answered with a smile: “The devil has made a fool of us”. He also said that they heard him laughing sarcastically, mocking that his trick had not been known until it was discovered by the Holy Founder. Berro also mentions that on other occasions he heard a large wheel spinning for hours in the garden of the Novitiate, and when he went out to see it, he could not hear any movement whatsoever. The noise was therefore attributed to the devil, who wanted to disturb the novices, “to prevent or avert them in the service of His Divine Majesty”.

At the time of the conflict of the Cleric Brothers who were unduly ambitious for the priesthood, there was a very pious young woman from Norcia, whose spiritual director was one of the Fathers of the school. She, without being a nun, wore a religious habit and attended some days the mass of the Piarists. She saw many times that the clerics were accompanied by an angel on each side, when they approached to receive communion. One day, however, he saw that one of these religious was preceded by a mob of demons jumping and dancing, while his guardian angel followed him weeping. After receiving communion, the religious appeared as hideous as a demon, while the faces of the other communicants shone splendidly. When the mass was over, she told what she had seen. Terrified, the Brother confessed his intention to enter the priesthood, which was forbidden to him. Contrite and absolved, at the next communion, the young woman saw him as resplendent as the others, with the difference that his angel showed an extraordinary joy.

In chapter XVIII of the Rules for the Novices of the Pious Schools given by St. Joseph Calasanz, we read, concerning the siesta, the following: “He who does not want to sleep at that hour, in which the meridian devil prowls about, it is not good for him to be shut up in his room, but to take a spiritual book, and go to the oratory or to another public place with the permission of the Superior, and there use that time profitably”. Caputi alludes to this paragraph when he points out that Calasanz had liturgical rubrics read to the religious gathered at that hour. A translation of Psalm 90 (91 of the Hebrew) in The Seventy and in the Vulgate, in line with other ancient versions, has given rise to this typification of an extraordinary satanic action at noon - “a daemone meridiano” - corresponding in modern translations to: “the epidemic that ravages at noon “or “the scourge that devastates at noon” or “the plague that ravages at noon”. Ángel González, in his commentary on verse 6 of Psalm 91, says: “geteb is the name of a demon: here we can allude to demons and evil spirits that Yahweh controls and which he counteracts with the attitude of the guardian angels”. This belief in the demon of noon is also shared by St. Philip Neri, of whom Giovanni Marciano writes: “He introduced in his room the conferences and spiritual exercises, so that particularly in the hours of heat, when the devil is most inopportune, finding them in such good occupation could not offend them; and so, he succeeded in effect, for not only preserved them from guilt with these exercises, but he raised many to a high degree of perfection”.

In his Piae Sententiae, Calasanz devotes 5 of them to the wiles of the devil. They are as follows: “The devil hunts the idle religious. The negligent religious is the joy of the devil. The fervent religious is the scourge of the devil. The devil plays ball with the vain religious. The wrathful religious is the thunderbolt of hell that disturbs everything”.

In his letters, Calasanz also mentions a multitude of the devil’s tricks, among them the following: Calasanz relates the “enemy” to carnal sins, in order to destroy the Pious School with them (EGC 942*); he denounces the devil as the instigator of gluttony (EGC 584 and 1410), the counsellor of those who are part of gossiping groups or parties (EGC 2559, 2559-1 and 2759); the one who does all he can to destroy the Order (EGC 2568-1 and 4474); the one who can defeat those who do not communicate their problems to the Superior (EGC 736); the enemy of all good (EGC 822); the one who is influenced by false illnesses (EGC 2903); the one who suggests enormities, but the tempted can reject them at once (EGC 1961); who deceives the envious (EGC 2638); who deceives those who do not follow the path of humility (EGC 2390); who opposes humility because he is proud (EGC 2529); his gain is discord in the community (EGC 1486); under the guise of greater tranquility he tries to introduce a false freedom based on self-love (EGC 4462); he prevents the laity from devoting themselves to the service of God, and he places infinite obstacles in the way of the religious so that they do not bear fruit for their neighbor (EGC 1842); but the union of the religious in holy charity drives out the “enemy” (EGC 810).

52. To crash temptations on the rock which is Christ

As a good spiritual father and guide on the path to holiness, Calasanz was assiduous in warning against the temptations that endanger religious perfection, and even eternal salvation. The remedies or weapons with which he equipped his correspondents for the spiritual combat were varied. As is to be expected, he did not disdain the three weapons of the biblical and patristic tradition: prayer, mortification and helping the needy. The Archangel Raphael recommended them to Tobit and Tobias: “Prayer is commendable with fasting; and almsgiving with righteousness is better than riches with iniquity. It is better to give alms than to hoard gold” (Tobit 12:8). There are three things, brethren,” says St. Peter Chrysologus, “three things by which faith endures, devotion bears, and virtue undergoes: prayer, fasting and mercy. Prayer, mercy and fasting are three in one, and they mutually give life to each other”.

Calasanz did not doubt the efficacy of this ascetic triad. Thus, he wrote to Father John Francis Apa: “Prayer is the only remedy for overcoming temptations” (EGC 3357). The fourth chapter of the second part of his Constitutions is entitled Other means of observing chastity, among which are fasting, abstinence, and that moderation in daily food “so necessary for our ministry”. Regarding mercy, it must be said that the whole work of Calasanz is based on the first of the spiritual works of mercy: “to teach those who do not know”. And he considers it as a remedy against suggestions, because it gives “strength and spirit to resist the temptations of the infernal enemy” (EGC 3357, 4465 and 4466).

He also proposes other means. Thus, he writes to Fr. Joseph Frescio: “As a good soldier, fight bravely, distrustful of yourself, trusting in divine favor and continually demanding it with great importunity” (EGC 1165).

There are temptations that cannot be overcome facing them, because victory lies in flight. Lorenzo Scupoli, in his Combattimento spirituale, points out two: lust and anger. It is not surprising, therefore, the promptness Calasanz demands in rejecting temptations against chastity. Among his Piae Sententiae is this one: “He is not chaste who does not immediately drive away the enemies of chastity”. This idea is amplified in chapter II of the Rules for the novices of the Pious Schools given by St. Joseph Calasanz: “Do not allow sensual thoughts to come near your heart, but be ever vigilant to guard it; as soon as you see the shadow of them in the distance, or smell their odor, throw them away bravely, always with disgust and holy disdain”.

Another strategy recommended by the ascetic authors and also by Calasanz is to communicate the temptation to the spiritual director or spiritual companion. In Calasanz’ time, this was identified with the superior, so he wrote to Fr. Stephen Cherubini: “The only remedy is to communicate to the superior (...) all your inner feelings, so that the enemy cannot overcome you in any way” (EGC 736).

He also points out as a remedy, to avoid all singularity. The Rules for Novices, mentioned above, already ordered: “Avoid as much as possible all singularity in public actions, and conform yourself as much as possible (even in what pertains to the body) to the common use of Religion”. And in a letter to Fr Melchior Alacchi, so fond of being singular, he writes: “Often the enemy of mankind disguises himself as an angel of light and uses all the insidious tricks he can to deceive the religious, and those who are most in danger are those who want to appear singular. Be very vigilant because you have enemies who surpass the strength of Samson, the holiness of David and the wisdom of Solomon” (EGC 1919). He also affirms that “he who misses morning prayer is too weak to resist temptations during the day” (EGC 2249).

He also recommends turning to the protection of the Guardian Angel, especially when the temptation is horrible and persistent. Thus to Fr. Alacchi he writes: “As for temptations, if your Reverence had a little more knowledge of the assistance of the Guardian Angel and dealt with him more familiarly, you would feel very great and manifest help, but great purity of heart is required. If, when the enemy suggests you something enormous, you would promptly reject it and, unable to do so, have recourse to the help of the Guardian Angel, you would find a remedy” (EGC 1961).

To Fr Alacchi he recommends devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary as a remedy against temptations: “Be very chaste in all things and go about with holy simplicity teaching the letters and the holy fear of God to the pupils without inventing new things, and effort to impress on all the devotion to the Blessed Virgin, trying to be the first, and you will see the great effects, especially on temptations” (EGC 1928).

Another of the strategies proposed by Calasanz consists in using the experience of those who were tempted, because it can help those who now struggle with similar temptations. Thus, he writes to Fr. Peter Mussesti: “Since, by the grace of God, your reverence has not allowed to be overcome by the passions, you should put all your efforts into helping those who allow themselves to be overcome by them, for you will do a work very pleasing to God” (EGC 2683). Calasanz himself put this strategy into practice, with a Piarist priest and with Brother Lawrence Ferrari, when he told them what happened to him in Valencia, “insisting on the care with which one must flee from evil”. For “when he was studying in that city, he was asked to be the secretary of a lady of the high nobility, who, taken by his modesty and good manners, became so fond of him that one day, having ordered her ladies to leave his sight to attend to other duties, she was left alone in the bedroom and called Calasanz, who discovered her lascivious desires. So, he fled in search of his confessor, and there he determined not to set foot in the house of that seductress nor to pass through her street. Indeed, to escape the occasion, he left the city, without regarding the benefit of which he was depriving himself with such a drastic decision”.

But, above all, union with Christ is, for Calasanz, the most effective remedy against temptations. In paragraph 112 of his Constitutions (a paragraph that is an amalgam of its counterparts in the Constitutions of the Theatines and of the Minor Clerics Regular or Caracciolini) the saint introduces a phrase that does not appear in their Constitutions, namely: - “in principio illas ad petran allidentes” (crashing into the stone, from birth, impure thoughts). This clause, in official or unofficial translations, has been rendered as “ crashing it, at its birth, against the stones “. The clause alludes to two biblical quotations expressed in Latin in the Vulgate version. One of them belongs to Psalm 136 (137) “Beatus qui tenebit et allidet pavulos tuos ad petram” (happy is he who seizes and dashes your little ones against the rock). The other alludes to 1 Cor 10,4: “petra autem erat Christus” (and the rock was Christ). The first has caused astonishment among exegetes, to the point of being suppressed in the liturgical use of this psalm. Vatican II admitted the cultic use of the entire Psalter and the liturgists in charge of preparing the new liturgy of the Hours were of the same opinion, but its suppression, like that of the imprecatory psalms, was due to a personal intervention by Paul VI, aware of the problem that many felt it posed. Nevertheless, the cruelty of the literary psalmist has its parallels in other biblical verses (2 Kgs 8:12; Is 13:16; Hos 10:14; 14:1; Nah 3:10; Est 8:11 and Lk 19:44). It is a way of expressing the total destruction of a city; indicating that it will not rise again, since it will have no descendants. But the Holy Fathers and ecclesiastical writers have given an ascetic meaning to this cruel extermination. They have identified the little Babylonians with the evil thoughts newly born in the mind; and the Stone with Christ. This is how St. Augustine, St. Jerome and St. Hilary proceeded in their respective commentaries on this psalm (Enarr in Ps 136,21 and Comm in Ps, Trat in Ps 136,14). Evagrius Ponticus says: “He who causes evil thoughts to perish in his heart is like one who dashes small ones against a stone” (Sententiae ad coenobium). St. Ambrose writes: “Happy is he who dashes his infants against the stone. That is, he who eliminates the inconsistent and lubricious thoughts in Christ” (De poenitentia 2,106). St. Benedict in his Rule declares: “Cast evil thoughts into Christ as soon as they reach the heart” (Regula. Prolog. 28 and chap. IV). John Cassian in his De institutis coenobiorum prescribes: “It is necessary, moreover, that we exterminate the sins of our earth” (peccata terrea) (Ps. 8, that is, sensual thoughts, and this already at the beginning, when they are born in us. It is necessary to “dash the sons of Babylon against the Rock” (Ps 136,9), Jesus Christ, while they are still small. For, if we do not put an end to them in their first age, they will grow older thanks to our condescension, and then, gaining greater strength and vigor, they will rise inexorably against us to lose us, or at least, we will not be able to defeat them except in exchange for many tears and groans”. (De institutis coenobiorum, 6,13)

As can be seen, Calasanz is situated in an exegetical and ascetical tradition that counts among its credit outstanding figures of the Patristics. Regarding this interpretation, even contemplated from the XX century, it is interesting the judgement made by Luis Alonso Schökel and Cecilia Carniti: “The Christian finds within himself the values and standards of Babel, which seek to captivate and suppress those of the gospel. He seeks to subdue them, to stifle them, and feels that they are reborn. He tries to suppress them when they are about to be reborn by undoing them against the firm rock of Christ and his gospel doctrine. Faced with such a spiritual reading there are two attitudes: to smile with indulgence or to discover and appreciate its profound intuition” (Psalms, Ed. Verbo Divino, 1993, t.II, p. 1575).

53. The seven feasts of our Lady

Among the devotions with which Calasanz honored Mary, the Mother of God, the seven hagiographic feasts stand out. These are: Immaculate Conception (8th December), Nativity (8th September), Presentation in the Temple (21st November), Annunciation (25th March), Visitation (2nd July), Purification or Candlemas (2nd February) and Assumption into Heaven (15th August).

The tradition of these celebrations varies in antiquity. It is known for certain that Pope St. Serge (687-701) established that four feasts in honour of Our Lady should be celebrated in Rome: the Annunciation, the Assumption, the Nativity and the Purification. All four also appear in the Regula S. Salvatoris sive Constitutiones S. Birgittae approved by Urban VI in 1374. There it is prescribed for the nuns the preparatory fasting to be observed on their vigil.

Calasanz also mentions the seven Marian feasts (CC 120) in his Constitutions on the occasion of the fast of the vigil. In letter 910, he notifies that the granting of indulgence for the celebration of these feasts is in process.

The Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception is an initiative of the Council of Basel (1437), which declared Mary “immune ab omni originali et actuali culpa” and made the corresponding mass and office be composed and promulgated for the Seven Feasts of the Virgin Mary. Madrid has the honor of having been the first town in Spain to take a vow to defend the Immaculate Conception and, after fasting on the eve, to keep the feast and celebrate it with a solemn procession. This vow, first taken in 1438 on the occasion of an epidemic, was renewed in 1621 and an oath was added to observe and defend the doctrine taught by this Marian mystery of the Immaculate Conception. On 8 December 1661, Alexander VII promulgated the constitution Sollicitudo omnium ecclesiarum, by which he declared that the precise object of the feast was Mary’s immunity from original sin and not her simple sanctification in her mother’s womb. And on 8 December 1854, by the Bull Ineffabilis Deus, Pope Blessed Pius IX, proclaimed the Immaculate Conception of Mary a dogma of faith. He was a pupil of the Pious Schools of Volterra, and therefore prayed the Crown of the Twelve Stars composed by Calasanz in which he praises “the Eternal Father who preserved the Virgin Mary from all guilt at her conception”. He could rightly say in the aforementioned Bull that he had maintained devotion to this Marian mystery “from his tender years”.

The Nativity of Mary was first celebrated in the East. Presumably it was celebrated in the West before Pope Serge established it in Rome. It is already recorded in the Calendar of St. Willibard (704) as well as in the Martyrologium Hieronymianum (600).

The Presentation of the Virgin Mary in the Temple is a legendary episode that appears in the Protoevangelium of St. James, apocrypha that in the complete form in which we know it today cannot be traced back beyond the 5th century, although its first two parts already existed in the first half of the 2nd century. It is not a very ancient feast, even in the East where it originated under the name “Entrance of the Most Holy Mother of God into the Temple”. Probably, this feast originally commemorated the dedication of New Church of St. Mary of Jerusalem (543). The feast was recorded in Greek synaxaries dating back to the 10th century. Although it was celebrated sporadically in the West, in England in the 11th century, it was considered to have been introduced by Gregory XI (1370 - 1378) in Avignon. Later, Sixtus IV (1471 - 1478) introduced it in Rome.

In Spain it was celebrated in the time of Cardinal Cisneros (+ 1517). Because of its dependence on the apocrypha of the New Testament, St. Pius V had it suppressed from the Roman calendar in 1568. It is said, however, that because a mass with such a barbaric sequence of language was in the Roman Missal, “it may be supposed that Pius V preferred to suppress the feast rather than allow the burlesque poem to continue to be recited”.

But in 1585, Sixtus VI re-established it and extended it to the whole Western Church on the evidence of its antiquity presented by the Spanish Jesuit Francis Torres. In the Liturgy Commission of the Second Vatican Council there were votes to suppress this feast. It remained for two reasons: First, its tradition among the Greek Orthodox; second, because it was discovered that on 21st November in Jerusalem the consecration of a church dedicated to Mary was celebrated inside the site of the Temple, next to the mosque of El Aksa. Could it be because of this fluctuation about the authenticity of this feast that Calasanz postulated, in a memorandum addressed to the Pope, the granting of plenary indulgence for each of the other six Marian Festivals, omitting the Presentation in the enumeration of the same? Unless it was a “lapsus calami”, an involuntary omission, since, in a letter to Fr Cherubini, he notifies that the issuing of the indulgence “of the seven feasts of the Most Holy Madonna” is still in process (EGC 910). In fact, in the Pious Schools at the time of Calasanz, the feast of the Presentation of Our Lady was celebrated (EGC 1267).

The Feast of the Annunciation is difficult to determine both the beginning of its celebration and its date. Related to Christmas Day, its celebration nine months earlier clashes with the custom of not celebrating any feast in weekly days during Lent. The Trillense Council, in 592, finally defined the rule of not celebrating liturgical feasts during Lent except on Sundays and the Annunciation on 25 March. This feast has already been mentioned among the four feasts established for Rome by Pope Serge at the end of the 7th century, and from then on it was included in the Gelasian and Gregorian Sacramentaries and finally accepted throughout the West.

No doubt this feast would be very appreciated by Calasanz, because one Holy Saturday, March 25, 1617, Cardinal Giustiniani personally dressed the Piarist cassock to Calasanz in his chapel and the same day in the oratory of San Pantaleo other fourteen received it from the hands of the founder. The Order of the Clerics Regular Poor of the Mother of God of the Pious Schools was thus definitively founded.

The Feast of the Visitation of Our Lady to her cousin Saint Elizabeth is of Franciscan origin. In 1263, when the Order had just been founded, the Franciscans decreed in a General Chapter to celebrate this feast together with those of the Immaculate Conception, Saint Anne and Saint Martha. In 1389 it was extended to the whole of the Western Church. Boniface IX, in 1401, inscribed it, with vigil, fast and octave, in the calendar of the Universal Church.

Mother de Changy, in her biography of Saint Jeanne-Françoise Fremiot de Chantal, says that Saint Francis de Sales chose it as the titular of the Congregation of the Visitation of Our Lady “because it was a hidden mystery. And that it was not solemnly celebrated in the Church like the others”. However, in 1608, two years before the foundation of the Visitation, Clement VIII prescribed for this feast the Office and Mass of the Nativity of Our Lady with the Epistle or first reading from the Song of Songs (2, 8-14), in memory of the Virgin’s ascent of the mountain: “Behold, here he comes, leaping over mountains, leaping over hills...”. In the East, this feast is celebrated only by the Catholic Melkites, the Maronites and the Malabar.

The Feast of the Purification was called among the Greeks the Hypapante, which means meeting, as it commemorated the meeting of Jesus with Simeon. In the East this was a feast of the Lord. It seems to have originated in Jerusalem, as the Pilgrimage of Silvia Etheria or Egiria refers to a very solemn feast that in the last decade of the IV century, forty days after the Epiphany, was celebrated with a procession to the Church of the Anastasis (Resurrection) where the bishop and the priests preached “on that passage of the Gospel where Joseph and Mary brought the Lord to the Temple after forty days”. In the V century it was already celebrated in Jerusalem; a candlelight procession was held on the feast of the Hypapante. As early as 540 or perhaps earlier we see the feast established in Ephesus. According to St. Bede the Venerable, in his De temporum ratione, written around 721, he describes it as a “lustratio”, a torch-lit procession that has been celebrated in Rome since the time of Numa Pompilius in February. Hence, attention was drawn to the pagan festival called Lupercalia, a fertility rite for a symbolic purification of the earth, accompanied by debauchery and depravity. Christianity replaced this objectionable festival by importing from the East the celebration on the fortieth day after Epiphany of a procession with lights, the Candlemas, which was later moved to 2nd February.

The Feast of the Assumption of Mary Body and Soul into Heaven was originally celebrated, as with the other saints, as her “birth into heaven” (dies natalis). The feast was called “birth”, “dormition” and “assumption” interchangeably. In some places, this feast was first celebrated in winter because of the apocryphal tradition that assigned the day of Mary’s death to the anniversary of her son’s birth, Christmas Day. As this day was consecrated to Christ, the celebration of Mary had to be postponed. St. Gregory of Tours states that in Gaul this feast was celebrated in mid-January. But it is also known that in Syria the celebration was held around August. Gradually the practice spread to the West. By the middle of August, it was already being celebrated in England in the year 690. For centuries the Assumption of Mary did not have the status of a dogma of faith. According to Benedict XIV, it was a probable opinion, which could not be denied without impiety and blasphemy. But in 1950, Pius XII, after consulting all the bishops, proclaimed this dogma, on November 1st, by publicly promulgating in St. Peter’s Square in Rome the Bull Munificentissimus Deus, in which he affirmed “with infallible certainty that the privilege of the Assumption was a truth revealed by God”.

Among all these feasts, Calasanz undoubtedly emphasised the feast of the Assumption. The preparatory fast for this feast consisted of four days, beginning with the feast of St. Lawrence on 10 August (CC. 120, EGC 2087). The other six feasts were preceded by a one day fast. The abstinence from the vigil of the Feast was dispensed from all of them when it coincided with a day on which it was obligatory, substituting it with eggs and milk and milk products (EGC 691 and 3483). School holidays were observed during these festivities, although there was an Oratory, which consisted of substituting school activities for devotional acts, with pupils being asked to attend, and requiring a personal excuse from their parents for those who were absent.

At a time when the reception of Communion was very restricted, the pupils received it on these Marian feasts, being this Communion of the pupils what Calasanz emphasized most in his celebration, which in itself was of great solemnity and required great dedication from the Piarists and their pupils (EGC 1085, 1267, 1350, 1355 and 3961). It seems that the octaves of these seven Marian feasts were also celebrated (EGC 75).

54. Calasanz and the mute and deaf

I am not aware that Calasanz had any intention of attending to the education of deaf-mutes. His thaumaturgy was certainly exercised, on some occasions, for the benefit of those with the speech and hearing impaired. On the tenth of April 1625, when the Saint made his triumphal entry into Carcare, where he was carried in procession to the chapel of San Sebastian, a certain Tommaso Pastor, possessed by a mute demon, began to shout loudly as the procession passed by, greatly disturbing such an honorable accompaniment. In an unaccustomed manner he exhaled stentorian roarings and shook himself without being able to utter a single articulate word. Calasanz ordered him to be quiet and his cries ceased; he prayed over him and suddenly delivered him from the demon and, at the same time, restored his speech.

Father Calasanz Bau writes that, after the death of the Saint, by simply kissing his relic, “a polyp disappeared from the ear of a deaf woman who was about to undergo surgery for its removal”. In the Processes there is no record that she was deaf in either ear; it only mentions the miraculous disappearance of the polyp, without leaving any trace or scar, when her ear was blessed with the relic of Calasanz by Father Folchi, while he recited in Latin: “Through the intercession and merits of Blessed Joseph Calasanz, may the Lord free you from this illness”.

However, it was his children who took care of the education of the deaf and dumb. In 1828, with the help of Grand Duke Leopold II, Fr. Tommaso Pendola founded in Siena what later became the “Regio Istituto Toscano di Sordomuti”. Father Pendola, based on the philosophy of Rosmini, so condemned by the Holy See, replaced the mimic system in the education of the deaf and dumb with oral teaching. Of Rosmini, condemned among other ideas for advocating the substitution of Latin for the vernacular languages in the liturgy, Father Pendola said that his enemies “either had not read his works or had not understood them, for the philosophy of Rosmini is the philosophy of the Gospel”. Father Pendola wrote on many different subjects, but above all on the pedagogy of the deaf and dumb, whose oral system he divulged in the journal Dell’Educazione dei sordomuti and which was later approved at the I Congress of Teachers, organised by him in Siena in 1873.

In addition to being a polygraph and pedagogue, Fr. Pendola was a very exemplary person. Blessed Frederic Ozanam, Founder of the Conferences of St. Vincent de Paul, is witness to it. He, writing from Siena, where he visited the Pendolian work, says: “It is said that many in Siena were attended by angels, I can also say that I, personally, have been attended by an angel: Fr. Pendola.

But before this distinguished Piarist, other brothers of his in Religion had educated deaf-mutes in Spain, as recorded in the youth magazine Minerva de la Juventud Española (Cuaderno I, August 1833. Madrid. Imprenta de Tomás Jordán, pp. 62 - 64). The article attesting to this is endorsed by the signature of Juan Manuel Ballesteros, Medicine Doctor, who devoted his activity to the education of the deaf and dumb, for whom he founded a printing press (1794 - 1869).

I cannot resist the temptation to transcribe this work of the illustrious doctor in its entirety: “In 1775, Father Diego Vidal, Piarist in the school of Saint Thomas in Saragossa, taught the deaf-mute Gregorio Santa Fe, a native of Huesca, who later lived in Madrid at the beginning of 1795. He attracted much attention, because in addition to his not at all vulgar instruction, he understood as perfectly by the movement of his lips as if he had perfect hearing. When asked how he had obtained this instruction, he said that Father Vidal had been his teacher; that from the age of five to ten and a half he had gone to teach him at his house; that first he taught him by his fingers, and then by the movement of his lips; all this without anything of his ability being known in the school of Saint Thomas or in any other part of the kingdom, leaving his secret as obscure as his death, which occurred in a village in Andalusia. Nobody but me has ever remembered him again.

The charity of His Catholic Majesty, Charles IV, established in 1795 in the school of Piarist Fathers of Avapiés in this court (Madrid) a public school of this art, of which Father José Navarrete was in charge. He was followed by a lieutenant colonel called Juan de Dios Lotus, then by the abbé Lorenzo Hervás y Panduro, and finally by the illustrious Don Tiburcio Hernández, who directed the only school for deaf-mutes in Spain and which exists today in Turco Street until the year 1823, leaving us these two very valuable works relating to the instruction of these unfortunates. The first in his Escuela Española de Sordomudos, printed in Madrid in 1795, two volumes in 4°; and the second one in his Plan de enseñanza a los sordo-mudos el idioma español, printed by order of S. M. year 1815, one volume in 4°”.

55. The manna of Saint Nicholas, the heart of Landriani and the Gospel of Saint John

A requirement of Calasanz’ extraordinary humility was to conceal his thaumaturgic power by attributing many of his numerous miracles to others.

Sometimes it was the prayers of children, as in the disputed resurrection of the baby of Frascati; sometimes the blood of the “Martyr Doctor” Saint Pantaleo, as in the instantaneous cure of the double tertian fevers that afflicted Donna Hortensia, the widow of the Marquis of Biscia. Perhaps Calasanz also implied the relics of St. Blaise, because on November 30, 1630 he wrote to Fr. Cherubini: “I hope that you will have with great devotion the relic of St. Blaise, if you wish to obtain many graces through it, because it is genuine. Cardinal (Mario Ginetti) obtained it, by special grace of the Pope, from the convent of St. Lawrence Outside the Walls, where there are so many distinguished relics” (EGC 1537. Cf. EGC 1018, 1036, 1049 and 1067). I do not know if the proof of authenticity that Calasanz alleges in this letter would be sufficient. A Spanish personage resident in Rome in the XVII century, the Inquisitor Francis Antony Diez de Cabrera, in a Treatise on Diplomacy, writes among other news of Roman life: “I have no doubt that if the relics of Saint Blaise that today are venerated were put together, a hundred bodies could be made, in which I know how few, not to say none, can be true” (March 5, 1654).

But it is reiterative Calasanz’ thaumaturgic attribution to the “manna” of St. Nicholas, to the heart of the Venerable Glycerio Landriani and to the Gospel of St. John.

His faith in St. Nicholas of Bari is not surprising, since he is today and was then, the patron saint of school children and choirboys in church choirs. Even the lay teachers celebrated the feast of the saint with a gathering, according to the letter 1915 of Calasanz to Father Melchior Alacchi. This celebration probably came from very ancient times, as Jacob of Voragine insinuates in a prodigy he inserted in his Golden Legend (XIII century).

This patronage of Saint Nicholas over the little children originates from the legend of the three children whom an innkeeper killed, butchered and preserved in salt, to serve their cooked meat to his guests, but whom the saintly bishop brought back to life, despite the fact that they were cut up and salted. This is a distortion of a legend or story of three officers of Constantine’s army, falsely accused and saved from capital punishment by the saint’s intercession. In medieval stained glass the three officers are depicted in a tower that is intended to be the prison and, as was customary at the time, the figure of St. Nicholas appears much larger than the others. This led to the confusion of the three condemned men as children and the tower as the barrel in which they were preserved in salt. For other authors, the origin of the legend of the three children was to identify the little heads with the three bags of gold coins that, in the representations of the saint, appear at his feet, alluding to another legend, according to which he threw in them by the window or the chimney of the house of a ruined nobleman, who, unable to provide dowry for his three daughters, thought of prostituting them.

In two letters addressed to Fathers Cherubini and Bandoni, Calasanz mentions the little bottles of “manna” of St. Nicholas (EGC 1392 and 1405). The miraculous cure of the so-called “Catatonic of the Sapienza” was performed by the saint by giving her a spoonful of “Manna of St. Nicholas”. What was called “manna” of Saint Nicholas at that time? According to Jacobus a Voragine, in The Golden Legend, when the saint died in Myra, the city of which he was bishop, his body was placed in a marble tomb. Those present saw a spring of oil gushing from the head of the tomb and a spring of water gushing from the opposite end. From that time until the XX century, a holy oil has constantly flowed from its members, with the anointing of which many sick people have been cured. When Myra was conquered by the Turks, in 1087, a group of pilgrims from Bari - according to the same Jacob de Voragine - arrived at the place where the saint was buried, opened the tomb and found his bones floating on a raft of oil. They were transferred to Bari, where they rest today in the cathedral built between 1087 and 1098, which was visited by John Paul II on 26 February 1984, despite the fact that the Church had removed St Nicholas of Bari or Myra from the calendar in 1969, although it allows him to be worshipped locally. In Myra it was said that ‘the venerable body of the bishop Saint Nicholas, embalmed in the oil of virtue, sweated a soft myrrh that preserved from corruption and cured the sick, to the glory of him who had glorified Jesus Christ, our true God’. The phenomenon was not interrupted by the transfer of the remains to Bari. According to Herbert Thurston and Donald Attwater, editors of the 1954 edition of Butler’s Lives of the Saints, the “manna of St. Nicholas continues to flourish today and is one of the main attractions for pilgrims from all over Europe”. In a separate note it is stated: “There is no lack today of those who ardently defend the manna of St. Nicholas; for example, P. Scognamiglio, La Manna di San Nicola (1925)”.

In a letter dated August 14, 1630, Calasanz wrote to Fr Stephano Cherubini: “The mother of Y. R. has been suffering from tertian fevers for many days, but she is much better by the grace of the Lord. Twice I have visited her and brought her the heart of our Father Abbot (the Venerable Glycerio Landriani) and two ampoules of manna from St. Nicholas of Bari”. We find here two of the pious instruments used by Calasanz to prevent the miracles he performed from being attributed to him.

The heart of the Venerable Glycerio, kept by Calasanz in a glass cup, cured Father Vincent Berro, as he himself testifies in his Annotazioni, and also Brother Sylvester Bellei, who was suffering from a violent fever. Thus, he obtained cures with this relic, until, without any resistance on his part, it was taken from him by Mario Sozzi. Nevertheless, the reliquary with the heart of the Venerable is among the objects that were enclosed in a walnut box for preservation after Calasanz’ death.

Also, to cover up his miraculous gifts, the saint made use of a practice of popular religiosity, very widespread and which still remains today in many places, where the priest is asked to read the Gospels to a small child with problems. In the processes for the beatification of Calasanz, healings are mentioned with the reading made by him of the Gospels in general (as in the case of Brother Lorenzo who was evicted by the doctors) or the Gospel of Saint John (in the healing of Donna Hortensia’s grandson, mentioned above, and of Brother Ferrari); but also of chapter 16 of Saint Mark, in the healing of the Cleric Angel Dominici. This choice of the second synoptic is interesting, as this chapter is one of those selected from each Gospel for the blessing, protection and defense of the faithful devotees. These texts were: John 1, 1-14 (Divine generation and earthly manifestation of the Word); Matthew 2, 1-12 (Adoration of the Magi); Luke 1, 26-38 (Annunciation to Mary and Incarnation of the Word); Mark 16, 14-20 (Missionary mandate of Christ and powers given to the apostles, among them “they shall lay hands on the sick and they shall be healed”).

Since the Middle Ages, the Gospel of St. John had been particularly highly regarded because of its Christological character, being valued as a blessing. In the XII century it was read to the sick before administering the last sacraments; in the XIII century it was read to newly baptized children; in more recent times this reading was replaced by the inclusion of its written copy in a pouch to be carried by the child. In the same XIII century it began to appear at the end of the Mass, in the Dominican missal: a custom that became a prescription by the Dominican pope Saint Pius V, to put an end to the custom of bringing crowds of children to the end of the Mass, so that the prologue of the Gospel of Saint John could be read to them. Pope Ghislieri’s prescription remained in place until the liturgical reform brought about by the Second Vatican Council. Also, from the XII century onwards, the prologue of St. John began to be used for the blessing of the weather - so it is engraved on bells - which then became the blessing of the four cardinal points, especially on the day of the Cross of May. I have also observed such a blessing with the itinerant image of Saint Michael In Excelsis, with a reading of the beginnings of the four gospels facing the cardinal points, in the lands of Navarre, in Andéraz. The prologue of Saint John, in particular, has always had a defensive character against satanic powers. The folklorist Gabriel Llompart states that, in the pastoral visit of Bishop Diego de Armedo, in 1570, in Llucmajor (Mallorca, Spain), it is mentioned how a woman reciting a fragment of this prologue defended herself against witches or Satan.

56. On napkins and long tablecloths

Years ago, I was surprised by the fact that, in his Constitutions, Calasanz ordered that in the dining room or refectory one napkin should be given to each religious: “Singulis manipula singula tamtum apponatur” (CC. 127). I marvelled even more at the insistence with which this prescription appeared in the Founder’s reports on the religious life of the Piarists: “At the table they have only one napkin”, he relates in the Sumary of the institute of the Pauline Congregation of the poor of the Mother of God of the Pious Schools (1617); “nel reffett.o usano una sola servieta per uno”, reads the document entitled Del modo como debbono essere le Scuole Pie (presumably from 1619); “at the table they have a single napkin without tablecloths”, Calasanz states in the report Ai Prelati della Visita Apostolica dated 27 October 1625.

As can be seen, through these quotations, a contrast between napkin and tablecloth is made explicit. Where it appears with greater clarity, facilitating the interpretation of this contrast, is in the Constitutions of the Capuchin Fathers, from which Calasanz probably drew his inspiration. Thus, in the Constitutions of Albacina (n. 11), it was ordered “And that it [the refectory] should not be furnished with tablecloths, but that a napkin should be placed for each friar and rather poor one”. In the Constitutions of 1552 (n. 53) it was written: “And as a sign of poverty, tablecloths are not to be used at table, but only one poor napkin per friar”. And in the Statuta pro domibus recollectionis Hispaniae it is stressed: “Fratres resplendeant pauperate [...] quapropter non habebunt mappas in refectorio, sed parva manutergia” (“The friars shine for poverty [...], for which reason in the refectory they will not have napkins, but small manutergia”). The purificator or handkerchief with which the priest dries the chalice and his fingers at mass is called manutergio.

The popular wisdom of the proverb appreciates this contrast and, referring to the arrogant haughtiness of the nouveau riche or of those who rise to a high social status, predicts: “Whoever goes from napkin to tablecloth, - God save us from him!”

In Don Quixote, Cervantes distinguishes the status of the hosts by the use of tablecloths. Thus, the meal at the house of the Knight of the Green Overcoat ends with these two participles: “the tablecloths were lifted, and thanks were given to God and water to the hands...” (Part 2, Ch. XVIII). In the residence of the dukes: “the meal was finished, and in lifting the tablecloths four maidens arrived”, and Sancho addressing the duchess: “I say, madam,” he replied, “that in the courts of other princes, I have always heard it said that in lifting the tablecloths they give water to the hands but not bleach to the beards” (2nd part, Ch. XXXII).

According to the historian Carlos Fisas, the tablecloth appeared in Rome in the time of the emperor Domitian, with equal rights of use for all social classes, but in the Middle Ages it came to play an important role in gastronomic rituals. Thus, eating in the same tablecloth implied an equality of status: servants who ate with their master and guests of low status were deprived of the tablecloth that honored the host. To degrade a gentleman, it was enough to cut off the tablecloth in which he ate. In addition, knights vowed not to eat with tablecloths until they had performed an extraordinary feat. Thus, we read in Don Quixote: “You will also tell her (Dulcinea) that when she least expects it, she will hear how I have sworn an oath and vow, like that which the Marquis of Mantua made, to avenge his nephew Baldovinos, when he found him to expire in the middle of the mountain, which was, not to eat bread with tablecloths, with the other nonsense he added there, until he avenged him...” (Part 2, Ch. XXIII).

According to Fisas, the napkin was gradually introduced into the customs of the European courts. Its use changed with fashion: it was placed on the left forearm, then on the shoulders, and in the reign of Henry III of France it was knotted around the neck to protect the ruff.

Another way of using the napkin is prescribed in the Regole per li novizi delle Scuole Pie proposte da San Giuseppe Calasanzio della Madre de Dio fondatore dello stesso ordine. These Rules for novices, in chapter XXI, “On the Table”, say: “Unfold the napkin, spreading one part on the table and the other in front of you”.

And yet another modality in the use of the napkin could be added. It is the one proposed by Blessed Peter Casani, in his Pusilli Gregis Idea. He says: “The religious triclinium, commonly called the Refectory, should be a hovel or thatched hut large enough to accommodate the number of Poor who are to be sustained in it. There shall be no table or chairs in it, except for the reader, or at least they shall be very plain and ordinary. If there are no tables or chairs, all will sit on the floor next to the wall, with their napkins spread out on their knees and their glasses on the floor or in their laps as they please...”

From the aforementioned respective uses of tablecloths and napkins, it is clear that the napkin was relegated to the poor. And both Calasanz and Casani wanted the Piarists to give witness of detachment not only to the world, but also to themselves. This was reflected in the Constitutions of our Founder and in that Pusilli Gregis Idea, Casani’s unborn project, which aspired to turn the Pious School into a unique utopia of poverty and humility.

57. Who was the author of the Rules of Novices?

Opinions are divided as to who was the author of the Rules for the novices of the Pious Schools. Some attribute them to St. Joseph Calasanz; others to Blessed Peter Casani; not to mention those who erroneously deny the authorship of both. They base their argument on the fact that, in Chapter XVI, St. Vincent is cited, followed in some copies by the surname “Paul”, whereas St. Vincent de Paul was only entitled to the title of saint after his canonization by Clement XI in 1737. But the implicit quotation referred to in the text is from the Treatise on Spiritual Life (Ch. XI) of St. Vincent Ferrer (1346 - 1419), not de Paul.

“It is the result of recent research, the news that the Servant of God Fr. Pedro Casani is the author of these rules for the novices of the Pious Schools”, affirms Fr. Claudio Vilá in the Positio for the Beatification of the said Piarist. And he quotes Fr Adolfo García Durán, who in his Itinerario espiritual de San José de Calasanz de 1592 a 1622 (Spiritual Itinerary of St Joseph Calasanz …), seems to imply that these Rules are the development of a nucleus written by Casani in the first time he was Master of Novices. He quotes as well Fr Severino Giner, El proceso de beatificación de San José de Calasanz (The process of beatification …), where he limits himself to saying, without evidentiary argumentation: “we do not know whether the Rules of Novices have been written by the Founder, but tradition attributed them to Peter Casani”.

This tradition that Fr. Vilá says that we know since 1717, would not be very firm, since Fr. John Charles Caputi, in his Notizie historiche (around 1670-1680), wrote about Calasanz the following: “To avoid the flattening, the sleep and the dangers of the meridian demon in the extreme heat of the summer of Rome, from the Colonna house, he used to go to the second cloister of the Holy Apostles and there he would walk praying the rosary or take a little book and do spiritual reading, which he later introduced in the Rules of Novices...”.

Nor can the tradition which gives the paternity of these Rules to Fr Casani be considered very firm, since the Congregation of Rites, by a Decree dated 11 March 1719, gives the approval of three booklets of Calasanz, one of them, the Rules that must be followed by the Novices of the Poor of the Mother of God of the Pious Schools.

Furthermore, Fr. Peter Gómez, Vicar General of Spain, in the prologue or notice published as a presentation of the edition of the Rules of Novices of 1898, says: “When the first novitiate of the Pious Schools was opened in Rome, our holy Founder wrote some Rules, which served as a guide in the education of the novices”.

For all these reasons, I believe that we must subscribe to what Fr. Severino Giner says in his work San José de Calasanz Maestro y Fundador: “There seems to subsist a double tradition that attributes them to Calasanz and to Casani (...) It seems more probable that the Rules of Novices were Casani’s, as an instrument and program of his task of spiritual-religious formation. And this hypothesis is supported by the ideological parallelism observed with regard to the Constitutions of the Congregation of Lucca, in whose composition he took part”.

This parallelism, to which Father Giner refers, is the one established by Father Claudio Vilá in the Positio mentioned above. It does not seem to be definitive proof, since it is a matter of prescriptions set out on the basis of epigraphs of observances common to many religious orders. Unless the literal formulation of each one of these epigraphs presented a meticulous literal coincidence that accredits an indisputable redactional concordance. Some of these coincidences can certainly be seen between the Rules of Novices and the two drafts of the Constitutions Pusilli Gregis Idea by Casani, and Regole Communi de’ Poveri delle Madre di Dio, which are most probably attributed to the same. Such a coincidence can be affirmed from the following articles of the Pusilli Gregis Idea with their counterparts in the Rules for the Novices of the Pious Schools edited by M.R.P. Pedro Gómez: “Oculos igitur in faciem mulierum praesertim et puerorum ne figunto eosque huc atque illud versare, immo in hominum frequentia (...) Facie, manibus pedibusque exceptis, nudam et propiam et alienam carnem videre horrendo. Tangere autem quamqumque alieni corporis seu nudam seu vestitam partem, mulierum praesertim et puerorum, nisi necesítate impellente, ne per iocum quidem, perpetuo fas esto»[2]. There is no doubt that there is a clear convergence between these lines and those of the Rules of Novices which I quote below: “Do not dare to fix your gaze on the faces of others, especially young men or women (...) Beware of looking at any part of another’s body or your own uncovered (...) Never touch anyone, not even for play”. In both works there is a precept which reads as follows: “Be especially careful not to extend your eyes beyond your height, according to the advice of Saint Bernard”. In the Pusilli Gregis Idea, this singular prescription appears, but not its attribution to the saint of Clairvaux.

2 “Therefore, do not fix your eyes on the faces of women, especially, and children, and turn that, rather to the multitude of people (...). Except faces, hands and feet, be horrified at the sight of naked flesh, their own and others. And touching any part of a stranger’s body, whether naked or clothed, especially women and children, unless compelled by necessity, not even as a game, never is right.”

Nor, as has been said, are there any lack of coincidences between the Rules of Novices and the Regole Communi. The most notable is that of the two chapters on humility, whose articles not only coincide, but are arranged in the same order, right up to the final article on simplicity and plainness.

But, to my mind, the following statement in Chapter IV “On humility” deserves the greatest suspicion, not to say conjecture, and would even be a hypothesis of the literary paternity of Casani on the Rules of the Novices: “Let him never pretend to be heard to apologize, not only to his superiors, but even to his equals and inferiors, taking away in everything his reason, and always desiring with all his heart to have it taken away, considering that it is one of the things that in due time he must profess in Religion, to renounce the natural right to defend himself, even if he is unjustly wronged.”

This fourth or fifth vow never appears in the legislation of the Religion of the Pious Schools, nor is it even added to the enumeration of the vows of poverty, chastity and obedience which appear in the Pusilli Gregis Idea. It is found in documents in Casani’s own handwriting. In this Pusilli Gregis Idea, it is prescribed for the novices: “maxime vero de renunciatione iuris naturalis se defendi, in ipsa profesione facienda admoneatur”. In the Regole communi, he wrote: “Anzi, che si dichiarano inhabili, per essere udito in qualsivoglia tribunale, cosi laico come ecclesiastico” (Indeed, that they declare themselves incompetent, to be heard in any court, whether secular or ecclesiastical). But these documents were written close to 1617 and 1620. And Casani insists on his idea even after the Constitutions of Calasanz were approved, in which neither explicitly nor implicitly there is any allusion to the renunciation of the natural right to self-defence. Nevertheless, at the time of the famous Apostolic Visitation of 1625, Casani presented the Visitors a Memorandum entitled Quae conducere posse videntur ad institutum nostrum firmandum et perficiendum (What could help our Institute to be firmer and more perfect). It contains, in seventh place, the following: “Ad mansuetudinem vero fovendam expedit, ut nobis defensio omnis citra tamen vitae, mutilationis, vulnerum et gravis persecussionis periculum, interdicatur, praecipue vero circa res temporales singulis, vel communitati ad usum concessas, quae contra inicuos invasores aliquando tueri fas est. Quare in ipsa professione emitenda huic juri naturali sponte renuntiare jubeantur”[3]. Did the Casani seek a reform of the existing Constitutions? It seems so. What is certain is what Fr Sántha affirms in a note to the Pusilli Gregis Idea: “Great importance is attributed here to the renunciation of the natural right to defend oneself, which renunciation was urged by Father Casani”.

3 “To encourage meekness it is fitting that we should be forbidden to defend ourselves on this side from all danger of life, mutilation, injury, and severe persecution, but especially with respect to temporal things granted to individuals or to the community for their use, which it is sometimes right to protect against unjust invaders. Therefore, they should be ordered to voluntarily renounce this natural right which is granted by issuing the same profession.”

Where did this urgency come from for our Blessed? In this Memorandum to the Visitation of 1625, he argues with that text from the Gospel of St Luke: “To him who strikes you on the one cheek, present the other also; and from him who takes your cloak, do not withhold your tunic. To everyone who asks you, give; and from him who takes what is yours, do not demand it from him”. This argument is not surprising, since in the Pusilli Gregis Idea he says that he wants this to be “a rule for living the Holy Gospel (...) ad litteram (as they say) and without glossa, fulfilling it exactly as far as human frailty allows”. “Ad litteram et sine glossa” is no doubt an allusion to an episode in the life of St. Francis of Assisi. When Friar Elia and other friars did not want to submit to the Second Rule of the saint, approved by Honorius III, a voice from heaven said: “Francis, in this Rule there is nothing of yours, everything is mine, everything I want to be kept to the letter, to the letter, to the letter; without gloss, without gloss, without gloss”.

Perhaps also in the Seraphim of Assisi we find an antecedent of this renunciation of the natural right to defend oneself from unjust grievances. In the “Ladder to reach eternal Glory” which the saint of Assisi wrote for Friar Bernard, it appears in its fifth step: “Che con ció sia cosa che tu ti senta obligato al tuo Creatore; tu non domandi che ti sia fatta ragione da veruna criatura”, which has been translated in this way: “That together with all that, feeling yourself obliged to your Creator, you do not ask that any creature do you justice”. Likewise, among the sentences of St. Francis, there is this one: “If you excuse yourself, God accuses you; if you accuse yourself, God excuses you”.

58. The belt of chastity

In the Middle Ages, a husband who went off to war guaranteed his wife’s material fidelity by girding her with a metal belt with a lock. In addition to this barbaric instrument of temporary pseudo-castration, there have been belts, girdles and cinctures that encouraged perfect and voluntary chastity by means of appropriate symbolism. Apart from the exceptional erotic significance of the Belt of Venus, which the goddess lent to Juno to attract Jupiter, as Homer recounts in Iliad (14, 214 ff.) and which inspired artists such as Giuseppe Zucchi on the ceiling of Palazzo Rucellai and Veronese in Villa Maser, the symbolism of the girdle as a guardian of purity has prevailed, without detracting from other meanings such as strength, power and loyalty to a group. As a circle separating the lower half of the body from the upper half, it has imposed itself with the polar meaning of spirit and matter, the latter being concentrated in the lower half, while the upper half is related to the heavenly experience, the idea of God and the ethical demands of this region.

Jesus Christ also gives the cincture a sense of submission to a law superior to that of one’s own will, as appears in the epilogue of the Gospel of John, addressing Peter: “I tell you the truth, when you were younger, you girded on your garment and went where you wanted to go; but when you are old, you will stretch out your arms and another will gird you and lead you where you do not want to go” (Jn. 21, 18). It reinforces the sense of the girdle as a promotion of chastity, the belief that the kidneys were the seat of concupiscence. Thus, when the priest dressed himself for the Eucharistic Sacrifice, when he girded on his cincture, he prayed thus: Precinge me, Domine, cinculo puritatis, et extingue in lumbis meis humorem libidinis, ut maneat in me virtus continentiae et castitatis. A similar meaning is given to the belt or cord or girdle that forms part of the habits of monks, friars and nuns. In various cultures, the bridal girdle, together with the veil, was a symbol of pre-marital virginity, so that both were forbidden to prostitutes, under severe punishment.

The angels were also depicted with girdles, based on a fragment of the Pseudo-Dionysius Areopagite. “The angelic intelligences”, writes this author in his De coelesti hierarchia, “are clothed with a garment and a girdle which must be understood symbolically”. “The belts signified the care with which they preserve their genesic powers; the power they have to collect themselves, to unify their mental powers, concentrating on themselves and harmoniously withdrawing into themselves in the unfailing circle of their own identity”.

St. Joseph Calasanz, in the dressing of his religious, does not give the girdle a symbolism related to the keeping of perfect chastity, but links it to the passage from the Gospel of John, accompanying its imposition with the words of Jesus to Peter mentioned above. This allusion is also used in the dressing ceremony of the Benedictine Order, but linked to an allusion to chastity or the imitation of Jesus Christ, as Isaiah prophesied of the Messiah (Is. 11:5): “Let righteousness be the girdle of your loins. Think that another shall gird thee...”

Calasanz led his pupils to join what was to be called the Angelic Militia. Father Fedele in the Processus ne probationes perirent (p. 235 -236) tells: “on the day of St. Thomas Aquinas, Calasanz provided all the pupils with a little cincture that he had previously blessed, with which the children were girded in order to impetrate from H.D.M., through the intercession of St. Thomas and in imitation of him, the gift of chastity”. The formula used in the imposition of the aforementioned cincture was the following: “Per merita Angelici Doctoris puritatis donum Deus tibi concedat. R/ Amen”.

This practice has its origin in the episode that happened to St. Thomas Aquinas in the years 1243 to 1245, when, kidnapped by his brothers on the road to Acquapendente near Siena, he was imprisoned first in the castle of Rocca Secca, then in the castle of Monte San Giovanni. His brothers’ intention was to dissuade him from remaining in the Dominican Order. To this end they sent him a very beautiful girl, dressed as a prostitute, who tried to seduce him into sin. Thomas, filled with holy anger, grabbed a burning wood from the fireplace and chased the girl, throwing her out of the room. Then he returned to the corner of the room and traced the sign of the cross on the wall with fire, with the tip of the burning wood. Kneeling before it, he implored with tears the cincture of perfect chastity, which he had just defended in such a singular battle. Then he fell asleep. Angels from Heaven appeared to him and told him that his prayers had been answered by the Lord. Then they girded him as they said: “Go, as you have asked, on behalf of God we are surrounding you with the cincture of chastity, which can no longer be taken from you by any struggle; and what cannot be gotten by the merit of human virtues is granted to you by the gift of divine generosity”. And St. Thomas Aquinas, until his death, was able to observe perfect chastity. According to the model of this cincture, other cinctures were made and worn, for which the Popes granted indulgences. In the Roman Ritual, in its edition of the first of June 1925, there was still the Blessing of the girdle of chastity in honor of St. Thomas Aquinas, which included this prayer: “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the living God, you love and keep chastity. Therefore, we invoke you in your immeasurable goodness: As by the hand of the Angels you girded St. Thomas Aquinas with the girdle of chastity and kept him from defilement in body and soul, so bless and sanctify this girdle, that those who reverently wear chastity in their works and keep it may be purified from all impurity of spirit and body and may deserve to be presented before you by the holy Angels at the hour of their death”.

Pious XI mentioned this dream of Aquinas in his encyclical Studiorum ducem of 29 June 1923, for the 600th anniversary of the saint’s canonization. He therefore recommended the propagation “everywhere, and especially among the students of the clergy, and the society of the Angelic Militia, founded to preserve and guard purity under the tutelage of St. Thomas”. He also granted that those who form part of the said Militia may wear, instead of the cincture, a blessed medal around their necks, which has on one side the image of St. Thomas, girded by angels, and on the other that of Our Lady, Queen of the Most Holy Rosary.

The Angelic Doctor was not the only one who is recorded as having been girded by the angels with a belt of chastity. It is said that the Piedmontese Blessed Catherine of Racconigi (Caterina Mattei) (1486 - 1547) experienced the same favor.

According to what Fr. Picanyol published in Eco dei nostri centenari (n. 4, p. 9), this commemoration of St. Thomas, on his onomastic day, had an extraordinary development in some Piarist schools in Italy, Spain and Bohemia. In the Novitiate, Fr. Master Antonio Tasi imposed the cincture on us on that day. To the other juniors of my batch and the two adjoining ones, in Albelda de Iregua, it was also imposed by a Dominican Father, uncle of a junior of my batch, later Superior General, Fr Ángel Ruiz.

59. The moderate rigor of fasting

All ancient peoples, except the Persians, honored their deities by fasting. Perhaps this is the reason why in Spanish it is a familiar phrase accepted by the Spanish Academy of Language, “ayunarle a uno”, in the sense of paying special worship to him, respecting him, fearing him. Cervantes puts it in Sancho’s mouth in chapter XXV of Don Quixote: “Mal me conoce, pues a fe que si me conociese, que me ayunase” (He does not know me well, because if he knew me, he would fast me). Fasting was not only to honor the gods, but also to be favored by them, as Horace says in Ode 16 of the third book: “Quanto quisque sibi plura negaverit, ab deis plura feret” (The more one denies oneself, the more one will receive from the gods).

The main reason for fasting was to consider the body as an enemy to be subjugated. Thus, Palladas, a Greek epigrammatic poet who flourished around 400 AD wrote: “The body is an affliction of the soul, it is its hell, its fatality, its burden, its necessity, its heavy chain, its tormenting punishment”. St. Augustine would also say: “Nullum peiorem patior quam corpus meum in quo habito” (The worst enemy I suffer is my body, in which I dwell). We could multiply the quotations from authors, all the way back to the time of Calasanz. A contemporary of his, St. Andrew Avelino, said in conversation: “I like nice delicacies, certainly, and a good chicken stew; but as a religious, I must not give so much to my body, because it is the enemy of the spirit”. Calasanz could not but share this ideology hostile to the body, when Descartes was reviving in modern garb the anthropological dualism of Plato: body-horse, soul-rider or rather amazon. In letter 2148, which our Founder addressed to Fr Giacomo Graziani, Assistant in Naples, he writes: ‘The spirit should be given according to its needs and the body according to its needs and no more, because the body is kicking against the spirit and makes him committing mortal sins and becoming, as St. Paul says, animalis homo’.

Other reasons have supported the necessity of fasting and abstinence. Saint Athanasius and St. Jerome hold that if, by food, Adam and Eve were expelled from Paradise, it will be by fasting that they will enter it. Saint Ambrose equates the “mystical table of fasting” with that of Psalm 23: “You prepare a table before me in the sight of those who trouble me”, for with sobriety one sips “that intoxicating drink of the heavenly sacraments”. Origen had already made the bi-weekly fast the guardian of chastity. To which he added the study of the Holy Scriptures and the subsidy of the poor with what is saved by abstaining from food. For, as St. Clement Romanus and a second century author teach, if “fasting is better than prayer, almsgiving is better than both”. The excellencies of fasting are sung by St. Athanasius in his treatise On Virginity (C 370, 7): “See what fasting accomplishes: it cures diseases, removes humors from the body, puts demons to flight, drives away evil thoughts, makes the mind clearer, purifies the heart, sanctifies the body, and places man on the throne of God.... Fasting, then, is the life of angels; he who practices it is to be judged as belonging to the angelic order”.

Luis Lobera de Ávila, physician to Emperor Charles V, in his work Banquete de nobles caballeros, dated 1530, states the following: “Although Avicenna says that men should be content to eat once a day and, if they were skinny, three times in two days, likewise big men should eat more than small men, that ‘fasting twice a week would be healthy’” (The quotation marks appear in the original text).

Calasanz, who ate only once a day, prescribed in his Constitutions (Pars. I, Chap. IV) such a quantity of fasts and abstinences, that the Jesuit Pedro Alagona, appointed Censor of the Constitutions by will of the Pope, found them excessively hard for religious of an active life, such as the Piarists. Perhaps our Holy Founder was under the influence of the Constitutioni della Congregatione de’ Patri della Dottrina Chistiana, which prescribed: “Thus in the Congregation, fasts, prayers, disciplines and other established works have been instituted, which should serve as means to obtain from God graces to teach better and more fruitfully the Christian Doctrine”.

Indeed, in the Constitutions of Calasanz, in addition to all the fasts prescribed by the Church, it is ordered to fast during Advent. This fasting is also prescribed in the Constitutions of the Theatines and of the Clerics Regular Minor. In addition, fasting is to be observed on Wednesdays and Fridays throughout the year. Already the Didache, referring to the days on which the Pharisees fasted, warned: “Do not fast on the same days as the hypocrites, Mondays and Thursdays, but on Wednesdays and Fridays”. In the Itinerarium of Etheria it is recorded that in the V century these two days were fast days, even for catechumens.

Calasanz also prescribes that the vigils of the seven main feasts of the Blessed Virgin should be fasted. The feast of the Assumption is to be preceded by fasting from the day of St. Lawrence, the 10th of August. Bau in his Biografía crítica de San José de Calasanz, calls these four days of fasting “the Lenten fast of St. Lawrence”. There have been superstitious attributions to the fast of San Lorenzo in the Balearic Islands and perhaps throughout the Crown of Aragon. The folklorist Mn. Antoni M. Alcover has compiled the following extolment (which I will allow myself to translate from Mallorcan popular speech), entitled The Fast of San Lorenzo: “Those who practice this fast, their saliva cures the burns: whatever it touches does not burn. This fast should be done when they are young. Up to the age of seven they are in time. On that day they may only eat fruit that has not been touched by a cutting tool. The water they drink must come from seven wells and they must drink it from a gourd pierced with a stone. They must not use anything made with the help of fire. So, boys, you know what you have to do if you want your saliva to heal your burns”. The superstitious character of this fast excluded it from Calasanz´ mentality, but the day of St. Lawrence was left out of the fast of this “small Lenten” period. By decree of the General Chapter of 1637, signed by Calasanz himself, it was clarified: “a festo Sancti Laurentii intelliguntur exclusive”. It is, therefore, a remainder of the so-called “little Lent of the Dormition of Mary” to prepare for the feast of the Assumption, fasting from 10th to the 14th of August. Calasanz calls these days “the fasts of preparation for the feast of the Assumption” (EGC 2087). Already since Alcuin (735-804), Saturdays had been consecrated to the Virgin Mary, with a votive mass. Soon a month was consecrated. The Byzantine rites were ahead of the Latin rites in consecrating the month of August, before the West dedicated the month of May to her, linked to the ancient “ludi florales”, coinciding with the spring bloom. The reason why the Greek church chose August was because it was the month of the Assumption of Mary, known by the Byzantines as the “Dormition of Our Lady”. Blessed Peter Casani, in his Regole communi de’ poveri della Madre di Dio, also proposed fasting “from the first of August until the solemnity of the Assumption of the Mother of God”. The other fasts prescribed in these Regole del Casani, coincide with those of the Constitutions of Calasanz, except for the abstinence on Mondays, which our Founder took from the Constitutions of the Clerics Regular Minor or Caracciolini. But St. Francis of Assisi, in the Rule of the Tertiaries or Brothers of Penance, prescribes: “Let all abstain from meat on Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays, unless necessity or weakness requires otherwise”. I do not know the meaning of this abstinence from the feria secunda (Mondays), which the censor Father Alagona mistook for a fast: “Feria secunda et feria quarta jejunaverint. Nimis durum in vita activa”. To which Calasanz responded by writing after the words “feria secunda”, “Non jejunnatur”. Perhaps he is referring to the remains of some of the more vigorous penances of the first Christian centuries, such as those of the so-called hebdomadaries and the apotactites mentioned in the Itinerarium Aetheriae. St. Jerome mentions some “Triduanis ieiuniis” (Three-year fast) in his Epistula ad Furiam.

Today, among others, Islam and Mormons fast, and in the Greek ortodox church fasting is observed every Wednesday and Friday of the year, except for the fortnight between Christmas and Epiphany and the weeks following Easter and Pentecost. The Catholic Church has reduced the days of fasting and abstinence to a symbolic minimum, in the hope that they will serve as a stimulus for other voluntary mortifications inherent in all true conversion.

60. “Duelos y quebrantos”[4] on saturdays

4 Literal translation: “Griefs and afflictions”.

In the original text of the Constitutions of Calasanz, the so-called Narni codex, here is what he wrote and then crossed out in chapter IV of the second part: “Moreover, the fast of Saturday in honor of the Blessed Virgin, on whose day our Congregation was born, we only recommend it, wishing that devotion urges what the precept does not command”. Calasanz did not urge fasting on this day, but he did urge abstinence. Already in his holographic document entitled Del modo come debbono essere le Scuole Pie, whose date is supposed to be in the year 1619, our holy Lawgiver wrote that the Fathers of the Pious Schools “eat meat three times a week, that is to say: on Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday”. Likewise, in the Memorandum which he gave to Bishop Antonio Seneca, President of the Commission of the Apostolic Visitation of 1625, he wrote: “On Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays they can eat meat”. Saturday abstinence was strictly observed, even excluding eggs and milk. Thus, in letter 643, we read: “I do not think that on Saturdays should be used in any house, nor do I intend to dispense it, because on that day the Blessed Virgin is to be reverenced”. In letter 1419 he calls this penitential practice “uso nostro antiquo”. Even though, Calasanz granted some dispensations for egg and milk products. On the occasion that the feast of St. Cassian, patron saint of Narni, fell on Saturday, he granted such dispensation to the Piarist community of that town, according to a letter dated 28th June 1626. Also, almsmen, when they are away from home begging, “may eat eggs and cheese, but if they can abstain from them, it will be an act of virtue and good example” (EGC 1410). The reason for this insistence is perhaps to be found in what he wrote in the so-called Dichiarazioni circa le nostre Costituzioni, Regole et Riti comuni (which he intended to present at the General Chapter of 1637); namely: “Inasmuch as the Constitutions do not prohibit milk products on Saturday, we do not intend to tax the weight more than what is stated in our Constitutions, leaving this to the prudence of the Provincial; where scandal may arise, do not allow them to be eaten, especially where there is ease of fish”.

Apparently, fasting or abstinence in Saturdays was a very common practice among the Christian people, to the point that breaking it could cause scandal. This could be inferred from what Bocaccio, in Il Decamerone, puts into the mouth of Nefile, who symbolises lascivious voluptuousness: “Since I am going to be your queen, I will tell you my plan briefly. Tomorrow is Friday and the other day is Saturday, and it would please me if we could devote ourselves to prayer rather than to stories. On Saturday the women are accustomed to wash their heads and to clean the dust accumulated during the week; besides, we shall fast in honor of the Virgin”.

Friar Cristóbal de Fonseca, in his Treatise on the Love of God, published in Salamanca (Spain), in 1592, reports: “But a woman, however naughty she may be, will never give up her rosaries, her fasts, her Masses of Our Lady, and abstaining on Saturdays from eating fat meat”. St. Francis of Assisi introduced in his Rule of the Third Order: “Let all abstain from meat on Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays”. The Marquise de Villars, in her Letter VIII, dated 9 February 1690, writes: “We have been obliged, for fear of scandalizing seculars and religious, not to eat meat on Saturday. We do not eat on that day what are called “legs”. It is a mediocre mortification. This is done all over Spain”.

The reasons for this Saturday penance are very varied. According to Ermanno Ancilli, “the use of fasting on Fridays (and in some places also on Saturdays) has been a universal practice since the first centuries of the Christian era”. The monk Alcuin (753-804) is credited with creating seven formularies for votive masses, one for each day of the week; Saturday was dedicated to Our Lady, thus consecrating the last day of the week to Marian devotion. The Carmelites were the most active in propagating this Marian Saturday. There was no lack of legends to support this Saturday devotion.

Clement Sánchez de Vercial, in his Sacramental (between 1421 and 1423) narrates that in Greece an image of Mary, whose head and face were covered by a veil, this veil disappeared on Friday evening and returned on Saturday after noon. He attributes this miracle to the intention of showing that on Saturdays the merciful face of Our Lady is kind to sinners who pray. For this reason, first the Greeks and then the Latins established the solemnity of Saturdays in honor of Saint Mary. Pope Urban II (1090), according to the same Sánchez de Vercial, at a Council held in Claromonte (Clermont?) endorsed this devotion, establishing that the hours of Saint Mary should be solemnly celebrated on Saturdays. The Decree of Paul V, dated 15 February 1615, may also have contributed to the solidity of this practice, putting an end to prolonged discussions about the authenticity of the so-called Bula Sabatina (Saturday Bull) of Pope John XXII. In it was determined the conditions to benefit from the Marian privilege in favor of the Carmelite Confraternity in Purgatory. They would enjoy a “special protection from Our Lady after their death, especially on Saturday (a day consecrated to her by the Church), the brothers and confreres who died in charity, on the condition that they have worn during their life the scapular, have kept the chastity proper to their state, have recited the Parvo Office or, if they cannot recite it, have observed the fasts of the Church and have abstained from meat on Wednesdays and Saturdays, unless the feast of Christmas falls on one of these days”.

In Spain, a semi-abstinence - duelos y quebrantos (Griefs and afflictions) - was kept on Saturday in commemoration of the triumph of the Holy Cross, a feast instituted to celebrate the victory of Navas de Tolosa, won in 1212 by Alfonso VIII of Castile, Pedro II of Aragón and Sancho VII of Navarre, against the Islamic warlord Mohamed-ben-Yacub, a victory of great importance in the Reconquest of Spain from the power of the Arabs. There was also the belief that whoever fasted on Saturdays would not die without receiving the Sacraments. We have already mentioned Calasanz’ motivation for this abstinence, based on the foundation of the Pious Schools on a Saturday, the 25th of March 1617. This fell on Holy Saturday, when our Founder and fourteen companions wore the Piarist cassock on that day.

This Saturday gastronomic penance took different forms. Countess D’Aulnoy, in her Account of the voyage to Spain (17th century), writes: “Bulls are sold at the Nuncio’s house, and the Bull, which is bought for three reales, permits the eating of butter and cheese during Lent and offal on Saturdays throughout the year. I find it incomprehensible that it permits eating the legs, the head and the kidneys, when it is forbidden to eat the body of the animal”. Lazarillo de Tormes, when he settled with a clergyman, also recounts: “On Saturdays, in this land, ate heads of mutton and sent me for one that cost three coins”. Here we come across the famous “duelos y quebrantos” of the Saturday diet of Don Quixote de la Mancha, which has given rise to so much discussion.

According to Covarrubias, in his Tesoro de la lengua castellana and also the Diccionario de Antigüedades, the omelette made with eggs and brains was called “duelos y quebrantos” (griefs and afflictions). Rodríguez Marín gives this name to egg omelettes with torreznos (pieces of fried bacon), a very popular delicacy, also called “chocolate de la Mancha”, perhaps because this dish was served as breakfast, instead of the cocoa in a cup which was so popular elsewhere. Lope de Vega says in Los melindres de Belisa: “We ate some torreznos -with their duelos and quebrantos”. According to other researchers, these referred to a custom in La Mancha, where shepherds presented their owners the cattle that had some broken member. The broken bones were used to make a pot on Saturdays, since on those days in Castile, it was not allowed to eat the other parts of the body. This meal was called “duelos y quebrantos”, alluding to the grief or mourning that such a loss of livestock usually produced in their owners. According to the distinguished Cervantes Piarist scholar José López Navío, in the journal Anales Cervantinos (VI, 1957, 169 - 191), “duelos y quebrantos” (griefs and afflictions) were the rind (head, brains, feet and hands), and the offal (heart, liver and intestines) of animals.

This Saturday gastronomy disappeared in 1718, when Pope Benedict XIV abolished the semi-abstinence of the Sabbath.

61. Bread as much as you like

Calasanz, like other ascetics of his time, not only links gluttony with lust, but also attributes to it the backwardness and even total defeat in the struggle for religious perfection. At least the following letters bear witness to this: 112, 144, 375, 562, 584, 621, 664, 872, 1410, 2146, 2153, 2252. For chapter IV of the second part of his Constitutions, he takes from those of the Clerics Regular Minor (Caracciolini) the words “praeter quotidianam exigui victus frugalitatem, jejunii rigor quandoque addendus” (in addition to the daily frugality of meagre food, the rigor of fasting must be added from time to time). Calasanz, however, added to these, two paragraphs referring to food, “sufficientis tamen” (but sufficient) and “nostro Instituto apprime necesariam” (to our Institute very necessary). With them he modifies “the daily frugality of the meagre food”. He also described the rigor of fasting as “moderatus”. To all this we must add, in the same chapter of his Constitutions, such a numerous prescription of fasts and abstinences that it alarmed the censor P. Alagona and gave rise to an insistent casuistry throughout the saint’s correspondence.

Given this panorama, the attitude of Calasanz regarding the indefinite quantity of bread to be eaten in the communal meals, when the rest of the victuals was so rigorously priced, cannot but surprise and marvel: “See to it that at mealtime there is no lack of bread” (EGC 112), “let them be given as much bread as they wish” (EGC 2153), “see that there is no lack of bread on the table” (EGC 2175), “as for the meal, see that they have as much bread as they want” (EGC 2244), “towards the middle of the meal, pass around a basket of cut bread, so that those who have used up their ration may have more and cannot say that we are making them hungry for bread” (EGC 2246).

This attitude coincides with that expressed by St. Ignatius of Loyola in his Rules for ordering oneself in eating from now on, which he includes as an appendix at the end of the third week of his Spiritual Exercises. Namely: “The first rule is that it is less convenient to abstain from bread, because it is not a food on which the appetite tends to be so disordered, or to which temptation insists as it does with other delicacies”.

Spanish proverbs contain similar concepts regarding the quantity of bread to be consumed: “Bread to the full and wine in moderation”, “Bread should remain, meat should be sufficient and wine should be lacking”.

There are several reasons that can support this respect for bread. God commands man to obtain it by the sweat of his face (Gen. 3, 19). But he warns him that “man does not live by bread alone, but by everything that proceeds out of the mouth of God” (Dt. 8, 3). Bread has come to represent all bodily nourishment. This is expressed in the popular saying: “to earn one’s bread” or “bread winner”, and also in the proverbs: “Bread makes the mourning less”, “He who is hungry dreams with bread”, “With plenty of bread there is never a bad year”. Jesus himself makes us beg for “our daily bread” referring to any kind of sustenance. Perhaps in order to unite food and the Word of God, the table is blessed and the bread is marked with a knife or a finger by tracing on it the sign of the cross, for the cross of Jesus Christ sums up every word that comes from the mouth of God contained in Revelation and Tradition. The presence and sacrifice of Christ in the form of bread in the Eucharist may itself have motivated the privileges accorded to the matter chosen by Him for this Sacrament.

Another reason may be the common insistence of the four Evangelists, who in recounting the multiplication of the loaves by Christ, always note that the multitudes ate bread and “were filled”. If Jesus allowed bread to be eaten to satiety, how can we forbid anyone to eat it?

Bread has also had a sacred character in many religions. Perhaps because it is considered a microcosm resulting from the conjunction of the four primordial elements of ancient alchemy: earth, air, water and fire. For wheat is produced in the earth, ground by the air that moves the blades of the mill, kneaded with water and cooked with fire.

Another reason could perhaps be the indispensable use of bread instead of plates and spoons in medieval meals. Erasmus of Rotterdam, in his De civitate morum puerilium, still points out in his time that, if there is no plate, the meat is placed on a thick slice of bread. As Carlos Fisas notes, “in medieval paintings and manuscripts depicting a banquet or even the Holy Supper, it can be seen that the only utensils are the bread, which was used as a plate, and the knife, which each guest carried his own”. The use of the spoon, whose absence was made up for by previously hollowed out bread, was a late arrival. The heresiarch John Hus (1373- 1415) tells us: “When I was a poor student, I used to make a spoon with a piece of bread, until I had finished the mash, then I ate the spoon”. This extensive use of bread as improvised tableware might give a clue to its later generous concession as a supplementary delicacy.

Calasanz should also be grateful to bread for having benefited from its therapeutic qualities. Berro tells in his Annotazioni that, in the year 1627, when Calasanz returned from Naples, he was seriously afflicted in one leg, to the point that his pains were so intense that they prevented him from sleeping. Mrs. Francesca Castellani suggested the remedy. It consisted in applying to the damaged part, white bread boiled with the strongest red wine that could be found and as hot as possible. Applying the remedy, not without first consulting Francesca’s brother, Dr. John Mary Castellani, one of his doctors, Calasanz felt such a great relief that he was able to sleep and healed with unusual speed.

Our Founder was not unaware of the damage to health caused by eating too much bread. The pathology of his time did not include the so-called gluten enteropathy, also known as primary bad absorption syndrome, which, according to international statistics, affects one in a thousand people whose small intestine is sensitive to gluten and cannot absorb it. On the other hand, obesity and indigestion were not overlooked, as can be seen from letters 566, 590, 684, 1231 and 2391. For, as the Latin adage says: “omnis saturatio mala, panis vero pessima” (all satiety is bad, out of bread is the worst). Medical adage to which Calasanz alludes in a letter to Fr. Giacomo Graziani, from Naples, dated 27 February 1627: “Sebbene tutte le repletioni sono male, quella però del pane si dice pessima”.

62. From sudden death, deliver us, oh God

Clement Sánchez de Vercial, archdeacon of Valderas in León in Spain, author of the XV century, in his Libro de los Exemplos por A,B,C, narrates the following: “On their way, two brothers found a man murdered by thieves. They wanted to bury him, but he made signs that he was alive. They asked him if he wanted to go to confession, to which he replied in the affirmative, for the Virgin Mary, in whose honor he fasted on Saturdays, would not let him die impenitent. A priest was brought to him, he went to confession and, having received absolution, he gave his soul to God”. Sánchez de Vercial accompanies this example with the following moral: “Jejunans ob Virginis amorem impenitens non moritur”, which the same author translates as follows: “He who for the Virgin fasts with devotion - death does not leave him without confession”.

Stories of “post mortem” confession are not lacking in history or legend: St. Ignatius of Loyola is said to have brought back to life a hanged man, who, having confessed and been absolved, died again.

St. Philip Neri, after praying beside the corpse of Fabricio Massimi, sprinkling him with holy water, pouring a few drops in his mouth, blowing in his face and calling him twice with his hand on the head of the deceased, brought about his resurrection. Philip was left alone with the resurrected man, who placed a crucifix in Fabricio’s hands and listened to his confession. After talking with him for half an hour, he asked him twice whether he wished to die or to live. He chose to leave this world to enjoy the beauty of God in the company of his mother and a sister, who had preceded him in departing this life. “Go, then, my son,” said the Neri, “and pray to God for me”. And the young man died again in the arms of the saint.

The Massimi palace in Rome is adjacent to our mother house of St. Pantaleo; from the windows of our oratory one can still today contemplate the little chapel built on the roof of the Massimi mansion to commemorate such an extraordinary prodigy.

It is even said that deceased people centuries ago were granted the opportunity to go to confession, thanks to the intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary. St. Alphonso de Liguori, in Chapter VIII of The Glories of Mary, introduces the following account: “Pelbartus of Themeswar also writes that, as the Emperor Sigismund was passing through the Alps in his time, they heard a cry for confession coming from a skeleton, adding that the Virgin Mary, to whom he had been devoted in life, being a soldier, had granted him life in those bones until he went to confession; and he confessed and died”.

Among the legends of Mexico City, there is one that happened relatively recently. One day in April 1830, in the evening, Father Lanzas was on his way to play a game of tic-tac-toe with some friends, when an old woman asked him to assist a dying man. The woman led him to a miserable room located in the alley of Padre Lecuona. There, on a mat and covered with a blanket, lay a man. By the light of a candle, Father Lanzas approached the recumbent and could see a bony head with his hands folded on his chest. Excited, the priest declared to the woman that the man was already dead, but she denied it and said that the dying man’s last wish was to be reconciled with God through confession. The woman blew out the candle and in the dark the sick man made his confession with allusions to dates and events of long ago. The confessor thought he was delirious, so he moved him to contrition for his sins and absolved him. The priest then turned, but did not see the woman. Nor did she appear after waiting for a few minutes outside the house. While playing with his friends, Father Lanzas wanted to wipe his sweat with his handkerchief, but he did not have it with him, so he thought that he had dropped it next to the sick man. He sent one of his servants to fetch it, who returned and said that he had knocked at the door of the house and no one answered. Even the night watchman told him that the room had been locked for more than four years. The next day, with great effort, they forced the rusty lock and managed to get the door to give way. The nauseating smell that Fr. Lanzas had smelled before, returned. Lanzas felt it again, as did his friends who were present. He found there the handkerchief, the only testimony of having been in such a place. Some time later, when the room was demolished, a human skeleton was found, which apparently had been there for a long time in a wall. Although it did not manifest itself in an obvious way, the protective action of the Virgin Mary is insinuated by the presence of the mysterious old woman who provided the deceased with spiritual help.

The impossibility of receiving the so-called last sacraments was like an obsession of medieval man, which has had consequences that have lasted until very recent times. Hence the horror of dying a sudden death. In the prayers which, before the Second Vatican Council, were added to the litanies of all the Saints chanted by the Christian faithful on Temples and other occasions, the supplication was: “A subitanea et improvisa morte libera nos Domine” (From a sudden and unforeseen death, deliver us, oh Lord).

Calasanz also had his fears about sudden death. In a letter to Fr. Stefano Busdraghi, dated 24 August 1630, he writes: “I am not happy that Pinella’s godson has turned out to be so terrible, given that when he is released from prison, if he does not retire to do penance, he will die a violent death, and may the Lord, in his mercy, does not allow it”. His judgement on sudden death appears more clearly in a letter to Madame Flaminia Recami, dated 20 August 1633: “I am writing to Signor Francesco and I hope that he will still remember to take some state in which he can save his soul, for he is not doing well and I doubt whether his disobedience to his mother will cause him to die an unexpected death, which very often happens to such disobedient people”.

The horror of dying without repentance and sacramental reconciliation was stereotyped in a phrase that is usually was pronounced when great danger threatens: “God take us confessed”.

But for great evils there are great remedies. There are, it is believed, ways of escaping the danger of dying without the sacraments. Thus, in many cathedrals a colossal fresco of the giant St. Christopher can be admired. According to legendary tradition, whoever gazes upon it will not die that day without repentance. This is borne out by the verses that accompany one of these paintings: “Cristophori faciem quacumque in luce videris -isto namque die non morte mala morierirs”. (On whatever day you see the face of Christopher - on that day you will not die a bad death).

To St. Edmund of Abingdon, Archbishop of Canterbury (1240), the infant Jesus appeared as a child and showed him the words Jesus of Nazareth written on his forehead and said to him: “Every night devoutly trace this name on your forehead and it will fortify you against sudden death; and the same will happen to whoever does it”. From then on, every night, St. Edmund signed his forehead by tracing the letters INRI and recommended this practice to his friends.

Michael Mullett, in his recent work Popular culture and popular protest in late medieval and early modern Europe (1987), seeks to explain the spread of the recitation of the second part of the Hail Mary - pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death - because “given the medieval horror of unexpected death, and the likelihood of sudden death, at least for many, especially because of the plague, this prayer provided deep comfort”.

The scapular of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, and the Communion on the first nine Fridays of the month without interruption, are also considered a means of obtaining grace at the last moment. This privilege is recorded as the twelfth Promise - the so-called Great Promise - made by the Sacred Heart of Jesus to St. Margaret Mary Alacoque: “I promise you, in the excessive mercy of my Heart, that his omnipotent love will grant to all those who receive communion nine first Fridays of the month in succession, the grace of final perseverance. They will not die in my disgrace and without having received the sacraments. My divine Heart will be their safe haven in the last moments”: The saint wrote that these words were said to her one Friday, during communion.

José Luis Martin Descalzo, in his award-winning novel The Frontier of God, writes that nothing would be more to be desired by the devil than for all men to be assured of their eternal salvation. For if this were the case, God would be more and more offended by many, who would abuse their very safe condition of impunity.

63. The child preacher

In a chair for pulpit, the teacher of Peralta accommodated the little Joseph Calasanz, so that he could sermonize to his companions the monorhythmic tetrastics of the Miracles of Our Lady that Gonzalo de Berceo versified. It could perhaps have been these childhood memories that prompted Calasanz to select the voice of childhood to exhort to divine praise by expounding the Word of God.

His pupils are not the only case of a child preacher under the sacred vault of a Temple. In 1564, Giulio Cesare Russo, who later became St. Lawrence of Brindisi, at the age of five, preached in the cathedral by order and in front of the bishop.

An immediate precedent was St. Philip Neri, according to Calasanz in a letter to Fr. Vicente Berro on May 14, 1638. “At Forty Hours one young student could recite a little sermon telling some moral, as it is used in the “Chiesa Nuova”. In this temple, the famous meetings originated from the so-called Evening Oratory, which in Neri’s time were held in different places: in San Giovanni dei Florentini, the Minerva, the Rotonda and, after Easter, on the Mount of San Onofre, and from the first of November until Easter, in the Oratory of their house.

Because of the sweltering heat, they were also held in the Church of St. Eustace and, in the saint’s last years, in the new Church of St. Agnes in Piazza Navona, near San Pantaleo.

These meetings began in the time of St. Philip with the singing of a spiritual litany by selected musicians. Apparently, this is where the Oratorio took its name, which, together with the Opera and the Cantata, was one of the three great philharmonic forms of the XVII century, later made famous by George Frederick Haendel, who, although blind, continued to compose them until the end of his life. The above-mentioned meetings were followed by a short speech memorized and recited by a child.

Then the Fathers of the Congregation of Rome pronounced two short sermons with an interspersed antiphon and finally with another song to conclude the exercise.

Calasanz paid special attention to the children’s sermon. Perhaps this practice was initiated in the usual catechesis. Father Ansano Lenzi wrote from Poli, on 23rd April 1630: “At the end of the doctrine, one of our pupils recited a sermon very well” (EHI, p.1313).

From here he would pass -maybe alternating- with the weekly devotional exercise of the Forty Hours, so dear to Calasanz, and from which perhaps he derived his Continuous Prayer, as I explained in one of my previous articles. Thus, Calasanz wrote in letter 1442: “In the feasts, do not longer preach in the Forty Hours or Exposition of the Blessed Sacrament that takes place weekly, as it was done in the past; rather, if it seems convenient, a child will recite a little sermon”. And in the aforementioned letter 3084(1) he reiterated: “And as for the Forty Hours, some little sermon could be recited. First examined by some father of Saint Dominic or another religious, so that there would be something that could not be repeated by the schoolchildren; telling some moral by some youngster, as it is used here in the Chiesa Nuova”.

And he even allowed such interventions of sacred oratory for children in the same sacrifice of the mass. It seems that these were proposed to replace the school theatrical performances about which Calasanz was always reticent. Thus, replying to a letter of Fr. Gabriel Bianchi, he wrote on 27 February 1636: “I have heard that some people are planning to have some plays. This that seems good, it is a temptation; the pupils, amused by these things that flatter the senses, are diverted from the study that is of greater benefit. So let it be your intention to make them learn, first of all, the fear of God and at the same time the letters, and so that the laity may see something, every fortnight or once a month, have them recite a little sermon at mass, at the hour when there are more people, and leave the performances for another occasion; for when it is opportune, I will let you know”.

The boarding students of Collegio Nazareno, by regulation, had to recite some homily or some fervent prayer before communion on the days when communion was allowed. In chapter VII, nº 8 of the Costituzioni del Collegio Nazareno, written by Calasanz, we read: “To keep the pupils trained, the Superior will make the pupils recite every month some Discourse or Poem, according to the opinion of the said Superior; and many times recite in the same way, in order and in turn, some sermon in vulgar language on the Gospel of the day or on another subject, as the Superior orders; which they will also do on the eve of Communion day and before communion, teaching them the manner of doing it...”.

This cultivation of children’s sacred oratory was continued in the Piarist schools, especially in Italy. The first Italian Nobel Prize winner, the distinguished poet Giosue Carducci (1906), recalled the little sermon he delivered in the Piarist church of San Giovannino in Florence, on the feast day of St. Aloysius Gonzaga.

64. Calasanz and the jews

Although he received the tonsure and minor and major orders in lands of the Crown of Aragon and by prelates of the same, Calasanz had to prove purity of blood, that is to say, not to count among his ancestors neither Moors nor Jews; they were old Christians. According to historians, in the old kingdom of Aragon there was greater tolerance in terms of purity of blood: the peasant of Old and New Castile was proud to be an Old Christian, but not the peasant of Aragon. Cervantes ridiculed those peasants, his countrymen, in Don Quixote and Novelas Ejemplares (Exemplary Novels). Sancho Panza points out as one of his honorable qualities “being a mortal enemy of the Jews, as I am” (Don Quixote II, Ch. 8). And the Licentiate Vidriera “being at the door of a church, he saw a farmer of those who always claim to be old Christians and behind him came another one who was not in as good opinion as the first, and the licentiate shouted loudly to the farmer saying: Wait, Sunday, let the Sabbath pass”. Likewise, Rinconete considered “being a heretic or a renegade” as the worst, in order of evils.

At that time the magistrates of Toledo had passed a statute which, if it is exact the text inserted by Noah Gordon, in his historical novel The Last Jew (1999), would order as follows: “We declare that the so-called conversos (converted), offspring of perverse Jewish ancestors, are to be considered by law infamous and ignominious, unfit and unworthy to hold public office or benefits in the city of Toledo or in the territory of its jurisdiction, or to act as witnesses to oaths or in the representation of notaries, or to exercise any authority over the true Christians of the Holy Catholic Church”.

It is therefore no mere poetic invention what appears in the dialogue that Lope de Vega includes in Act II of Los novios de Hornachuelos, for when Berrueco says to Marina: “Swear it”. She replies: “As a Christian”. But Berrueco refuses: “It’s no good because you’re new”. In addition, Julio Caro Baroja mentions books published in defense of such actions: namely: Defentio statuti toletani a sede apostolica saepe confirmati, pro his, qui bono et incontaminato genere nati sunt, authored by Diego de Simancas (1575). And the Tractatus bipartitus de puritate et nobilitate probanda, by Juan Escobar del Corro (1637).

This discrimination against the conversos was justified by the conviction that heterodoxy was transmitted by inheritance and suckled on the mother’s milk. Hence the rejection not only of a marriage to a new Christian, but also of wet nurses who did not prove their purity of blood. According to Julio Caro Baroja, “the doctrine that even religious beliefs were suckled with the milk of mothers and wet nurses is reflected in several texts” quoted by him in Las formas complejas de la vida religiosa (Siglo XVI y XVII) (1985). Fray Juan de Pineda, in his Diálogos familiares de la agricultura cristiana, puts in the mouth of Filótimo: “Many times I heard a man of good sense and conversation say that the half a quarter of Jew he had, never stopped bothering him to take himself as a Jew”.

If, as a feudatory of the Crown of Aragon, Calasanz had to be tolerant towards Jews and converts, his openness was undoubtedly accentuated in Rome by the benevolent policy towards Jews and converts observed by the Popes and the Roman curia and popular atmosphere. Both were widely tolerant in the Papal States and especially in the Eternal City.

The preoccupation with displaying purity of blood and inexorably persecuting the Judaisants - baptized people who secretly practiced Hebraic law and worship - led the Italians to believe that the Spanish population, except for a small minority, was made up of descendants of Jews and Moors. Paul IV, from Carafa family, anti-Spanish to the point of hydrophobia, the one who unfortunately dared to defy Charles V and Philip II, went so far as to call the Spanish “seed of Jews and Moors”.

Francisco Antonio Diez de Cabrera, Spanish diplomat to the Holy See during the pontificates of Urban VIII, Innocent X and Alexander VII, wrote from Rome in a letter dated 15 May 1652: “It has not been many years since a cardinal has been seen with close relatives living in a ghetto or Jewry; and there are some of whom it is said that their elders, and not of many degrees, came from the same part. Also for other things, I have said that it is very different to look at matters from near or far, because there in Spain it is a great horror that one descends from a heretic or Jew, and here they laugh at these objections, and at us because we do it”.

Pope Clement VIII opposed the oppression of the Jews, issuing successive bans. The first “Che non si debbono molestare ne dare fastidio alli Hebrei”, published in 1592, was followed by those of 1596, 1599, 1603 and 1605. However, it was this same Pope who, in the summer of 1592, reintroduced the sermons for the conversion of the Jews, which they used to receive on Saturdays in the Oratory of the Holy Trinity of the Pilgrims. The new seat of such meetings, by the “Notice of 29 July 1592”, was set up in San Lorenzo in Damaso, located near San Pantaleo. Pope Paul V showed his concern for the Jews, whose Ghetto lacked drinking water, by installing a fountain in the Synagogue square, decorated with the image of the dragon and the menorah or seven-branched candelabrum. It is not surprising that Calasanz, immersed in this atmosphere of tolerance, which reinforced the one he had inherited from his relatives of the Crown of Aragon, admitted Jewish children in his schools. Tolerance that, if brief and minority, was not the Saint’s will but due to an absurd distrust together with the stubborn intransigence of the Roman rabbis.

Fathers Gabriel Bianchi and Vicente Berro, former secretaries of Calasanz, left a reliable testimony of this model of openness of their holy founder.

Father Bianchi limits himself to a brief testimony: “And in Rome there were some Jews who sent their children to our schools; this Institute of ours was held in such esteem”.

Berro is more explicit, and testifies: “The fame of the schools grew to such an extent that the Jews themselves tried to go to them and, in fact, about twenty of them went for a few days. But the devil, fearing that these beginnings might be the beginning of the loss of many souls, aroused the rabbis to such a rage that they ordered the parents of the boys not to send them to the Pious Schools. Father Joseph promised them not to discuss religion with them, but only the virtues necessary to live in the fear of God, but there was no way. They opened a free school in the Ghetto and kept the ban in place at all costs”. That school was probably a kind of addition of primary education - reading, writing, counting - to the ancient school attached to the Synagogue and inspired, after the Babylonian captivity, by the traditions of the Talmud. Even in ancient times, the boys of the Diaspora, from the age of five or six, entered the so-called “vineyard”, the synagogal school that today we would call Kindergarten. There they learned the main content of the Torah - the Mosaic Law - in chapters five and six of Deuteronomy, as well as memorizing the Great Hallel (Psalms 113 to 118), which was sung on the great festivals. And there was no lack of explanation of the significance of the memorial days celebrated throughout the year.

We are not aware of Calasanz’ attitude towards the Judaizants, i.e. those who relapsed into Judaism and who continued to pretend a Catholicism in which they did not believe. Such an attitude could perhaps be assumed in view of the attitude the Saint adopted towards Galileo, Campanella and the Protestants in Germany. On the other hand, Calasanzian thought about this opening, which we could call “pre-ecumenical”, would presumably be analogous to his ascetically benevolent attitude towards the religious who abandoned the Pious School. In a letter of 22 February 1624, he wrote to Father Pietro Cananea: “Io non lascio di voler bene alle persone ancora che la conditione non sia approposito de la religione” (I do not cease to love people well, even when their condition is not suitable for religion).

65. Calasanz and John Gerson

No doubt Calasanz, in the Preamble of his Constitutions, included Jean Le Charlier Gerson in the group of the philosophers of right judgement (Philosophi recte sentientes). Born on 14 December 1363 in Gerson-les-Barby, in the diocese of Reims, he was Grand Chancellor of the Sorbonne, succeeding his master Pierre d’Ailly, the famous cardinal who was erroneously believed to have inspired Columbus’ discovery of America with his work Imago Mundi. But his disciple Gerson was famous for his intervention in the Great Western Schism and the Council of Constance and for his numerous works on Theology and Mysticism. The last years of his life were devoted to the education of the children of Lyon, in their religious aspects, a subject to which he dedicated some of his works, among which De parvulis ad Christum tradendis (On the way to attract children to Christ) stands out. It is also interesting in this regard Doctrina pro pueris ecclesiae parisiensis (Doctrine for the children of the church of Paris). He died in Lyon on 12 July 1429.

It is probable that this figure of the medieval Church attracted Calasanz because Gerson was a great promoter of the devotion to St. Joseph, Spouse of the Virgin Mary, because of his faith in the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary and because he was an inducer of frequent communion.

But Calasanz mentions Gerson by name in a letter addressed from Naples to Fr. Giacomo Graziani, dated November 21, 1626. He says: “As for Fr. Antonio Maria (Vitali), I am very happy that he is examined and approved for confessions. I would like he to devotes himself to the study of cases in which young people often fall into, since this is our main institute. If he could get the works of Gerson Parisiense, in one of whose volumes he devotes a special treatise to it, which is very appropriate”.

This treatise is undoubtedly the aforementioned De parvulis ad Christum tradendis, where Gerson defends himself with solid reasons against those who criticised him because a man of so much knowledge devoted himself to confessing little children, whom he invited to go to the Sacrament of Reconciliation where they were given a very kindly welcome.

In another letter of Calasanz, addressed to Fr. Stephen Cherubini and dated 28th February 1629, he announces him the sending of “three little books of the practical mode from the little book of John Gerson”. Although according to the expression - practical mode and the first name of the author - it must be the aforementioned book De parvulis ad Christum tradendis of the Grand Chancellor of the University of Paris, it could, however, be about booklets of the Imitation of Christ, which at that time was called the Gerson or the Little Gerson, as Saint Ignatius of Loyola called it.

The Kempis, as the book of The Imitation of Christ is commonly called, is so named because its authorship is attributed to Thomas of Kempis. At that time, it was sometimes called by his surname and sometimes by that of Jean Le Charlier de Gerson, to whom the Kempis was attributed for a time. The book was also attributed to the Abbot of Saint Stephen of Vercelli John Gersen and to the initiator of the “Devotio moderna”, Gérard Groot.

The recommendation of the treatise included in the works of Gerson to which Calasanz refers in the above-mentioned letter addressed to Fr. Giacomo Graziani would probably be the first edition of his Opera Omnia, published in Cologne, in four volumes, in the years 1483-1484. In the work De parvulis ad Christum tradendis, we find two recommendations analogous to the one Calasanz states in the Preamble of his Constitutions: “In cujus diligenti exercitatione generalia Concilia, Santi Patris necnon Philosophi recte sentientes consistere Republicae christianae reformationem unanimi consensu affirmant (In whose diligent exercise - that of our institute of Christian education of children - the Ecumenical Councils, the Holy Fathers and the right-thinking philosophers unanimously affirm that the reform of the Christian Republic - or Society - lies). Gerson, in volume IV of his Opera Omnia, states: “A pueris videtur incipienda Ecclesiae reformatio” (By the children it seems that the reform of the Church must begin). In volume II he had already declared: “Non fallebatur ergo sed circunspectissime considerabat qui affirmavit reparationem morum ecclesiasticorum, si quaeratur fieri, incohandum esse a parvulis” (He was not mistaken, therefore, but rather he considered it with great circumspection who stated that the reform of ecclesiastical customs, if it was to be carried out, had to begin with the infants). And a little further on he points out: “Quod si justa deductionem hanc reparatio Ecclesiae et ejus cultura initianda esset a parvulis (sicut esset) ubi precor, efficacius sanctissimum opus exercebitur quam in celeberrima civitate Parisiensi” (That if, according to this deduction, the reform of the Church and its culture would have to begin with the infants - as it should be - I am of the opinion that where it would most effectively exercise this most holy work would be in the celebrated city of Paris).

It was not in the Gallic capital, but in Rome, that such a work was begun, which Gerson has no qualms in describing as most holy; and its promoter was Calasanz.

66. Small pieces of paper with names of saints

Calasanz’ devotion to the saints was intense; intense and very explicable, given the Counter-Reformation environment in which he lived. Luther had eliminated from his creed the cult of the saints, not their existence or their exemplarity. He considered it idolatrous, above all, because in his theology of Justification there was no need for an advocate. Trent in the XXV session of its Sacrosanct and Ecumenical Council had legislated: “That the faithful be diligently instructed concerning the intercession of the saints..., teaching them that the saints who reign with Christ offer their prayers to God for men and that it is useful to invoke them with petitions..., and to obtain from God, through his Son Jesus Christ, to have recourse to their prayers, help and assistance”.

It is therefore not surprising that, given this Tridentine backing, a series of significant actions of the so-called Teaching Church took place, in addition to the intense popular devotion. In 1588, Sixtus V created the Sacred Congregation of Rites, not only to promote the liturgical reform established at Trent, but also to achieve the processes of beatification and canonization, the causes of which Gregory IX (1227-1241), the Pope of the Decretals, had already reserved to the Supreme Pontiff. In 1586, Cesare Baronio produced a critical edition of the Martirologio Romano or Catalogue of the Saints. In 1643 the first volume of Jean Bolland’s Acta Sanctorum appeared. In 1602 a corrected and enlarged edition of the Breviarium Romanum was published. A copy of the latter, whose cover bears the emblem of Urban VIII, Pope Barberini, was given to Calasanz by the Cardinal Protector Berlinghiero Gessi, who, seeing that the Saint was praying with a very old and deteriorated breviary, exchanged it with his own of the last edition of 1634. According to a procedural declaration, Calasanz “was in the habit of reading at night or having it read to him - when his sight was very weak - the mass of the following day in order to meditate on it at night, and he would reread it the following morning and for the third time before getting dressed”. The liturgy then included a very rich hagiographical panorama. Calasanz undoubtedly made use of the new edition of the Missale, a collective work in which two very illustrious Cardinals, Roberto Bellarmino and Cesare Baronio, stood out.

Calasanz and Cardinal Baronio professed mutual admiration for each other. The latter, since when, together with Cardinal Antoniano, commissioned by Clement VIII, visited the Pious Schools (Cfr. C 132 a).

Father Joseph Jericó recorded the following in his Annals about Baronio: “The singular love he showed for the Pious Schools from their beginnings, whether by telling a thousand good things about them to Popes Clement VIII and Paul V, or by frequently honoring them with visits and alms, or by protecting them on all occasions from calumny and envy, with the adorable shadow of his purple”.

Calasanz’ admiration for Baronio can be inferred from the allusion that the Saint brings in his Letter 1620, addressed to Fr. Alacchi in Venice, referring to the Prophecy that the Cardinal issued about this Republic in the time of the ineffective Interdictum, the last of the history fulminated over a whole country. This prophecy of Baronio, to which Calasanz alludes, is an implicit quotation from his Paerenesis ad Rempublicam Venetam, published in 1606 and immediately translated into Italian under the title Essortazione... alla Republica di Venezia (Rome 1606).

But let us return to the devotion professed by Calasanz to the saints. During his Catalan-Aragonese and early Roman years, two Flos Sanctorum (Flower of Saints) were published in Spain: That of Alonso de Villegas (1588) and that of the Jesuit Pedro de Ribadeneira (1599-1601). The latter states that, in addition to some works by other authors, he made use of the Annales Ecclesiastici and the Annotations on the Roman Martyrology of Cardinal Baronio.

In three of his letters, Calasanz alludes to a custom practiced in the Pious Schools from very early in their history. In letter 602 he thanks Fr. Giacomo Graziani for sending “the memorial of the saint of the month, which is the glorious Saint Leo Pope, already of many, many years”, he says, “my advocate, but to whom I am not very devoted”. In Letter 1009 to Fr. Matteo Reale, he writes: “I will send the saints of the months for a whole year”. And in Letter 2371 he announces to Fr. John Francis Apa: “I will send the saints of the month and a Thomas of Kempis in the smallest size I can find”.

It seems a Piarist custom that lasted until the Second Vatican Council. Every year, in some provinces, and every month, in others, some small pieces of paper were distributed among the religious with the name of the saint who was assigned as protector for that month or year. A biblical sentence or one of Calasanz’ maxims was usually added, as well as the name of a recently deceased Piarist to commend him to God.

This devotion, also practiced by St. Francis de Sales, is attributed to pagan origins. According to Alban Butler: “In order to abolish the pagan custom of young men drawing lots the names of young girls, in honor of their goddess Juno Februata, on the 15th of this month, several zealous Pastors subtracted this custom by writing the names of saints”.

In addition, one of the Lupercalia ceremonies has survived in the villages of Europe, consisting of placing ballots with the names of young unmarried women in a box and offering them to unmarried men to select one. This custom has also been related as an antecedent of the greetings sent on 14th February, St. Valentine’s Day, which coined the saying: “For St. Valentine’s Day every Valentine chooses his Valentine”.

67. Relics of saints and non-saints

It was siesta time on August 25, 1648, when the professor of anatomy of the Sapienza, the university of Rome, after having prayed on his knees, proceeded to the “notomy” (old name given to the postmortem) of the corpse of Joseph Calasanz. His heart, which was larger than normal, was placed in a big glass cup, to be locked with a triple key in a walnut chest, together with the other viscera (brain, tongue, liver and spleen), with the reliquary of the heart of the Venerable Glycerio Landriani and with the originals of the Constitutions of the Order and of the Collegio Nazareno, written in the handwriting of the holy founder.

According to the historian Orest Ranum, “it was very frequent until 1700, among the princes and in the great families, the custom of separating the heart from the corpse, in order to deposit it in the favorite place of the deceased and his relatives. The selection of the heart was done according to a strict hierarchy from greater to lesser sanctity of the parts of the body”.

Apart from these official honors paid to the corpse of Calasanz, the presence of the Roman plebs and the nobility was also clamorous, and they practically stormed the church of San Pantaleo where the body of the Saint was exposed for the funeral. To the repeated cries of “miracle, miracle”, they plundered his corpse, cutting off pieces of his alb, cassock, hair and even toenails. It was necessary to change his alb and replace the liturgical vestments with which he had been shrouded.

A few years before such a popular and pious event, on 21 October 1621, another very different event took place in the Plaza Mayor in Madrid: the execution of Don Rodrigo Calderón, Count of Oliva and Marquis of Sieteiglesias. Who had been the main minister of the King of Spain, Philip III, was to be executed.

The nobility of his bearing, the magnanimity with which he forgave the enemies who had condemned him “to die with his throat slit on a scaffold”, the serene resignation with which he accepted the sentence, changed, -in the words of Diego Saavedra Fajardo- “the common emulation and hatred of his fortune, into esteem and pity”. And to put it in the words of Gregorio Marañón, “Those people, who cried out for the minister’s head all the time and who suddenly, on seeing his magnificent gesture before the scaffold in the Plaza Mayor in Madrid, turned him into their idol, keeping as relics pieces of cloth soaked in his blood”. The Count of Villamediana dedicated this satirical epitaph to him: “Here lies Calderón, -passenger, you who are walking, see - whom in stealing and in dying well - resembles the Good Thief”.

These are two examples of the Baroque desire to possess relics of very different origins: a reaction of the Counter-Reformation to the Protestants’ condemnation of the cult of relics. In his Spiritual Exercises, St. Ignatius of Loyola prescribed in the 6th rule “for the true sense that we should have in the Church militant”: “Praising relics of saints, venerating them and praising them in prayer: praising stations, pilgrimages, indulgences, pardons, crusades and candles lit in churches”. The cult of relics reached such an extent that, when consecrating a cathedral altar, there was a bishop who buried, together with the relics, a consecrated host. A custom of which there were still traces in 1648, when the bishop of Mallorca, Friar Thomas Rocamora, forbade the Eucharist and relics to be kept together in the tabernacle of the church.

It is therefore not surprising that Calasanz showed great devotion to the relics of the saints. Already I reported about the Manna of St. Nicholas and the Heart of Landriani. Also, it was mentioned the relic of St Blaise. In at least twelve letters (979, 1018, 1036, 1049, 1049, 1057, 1067, 1071, 1096, 1288, 1333, 1525, 1537), Calasanz mentions this relic. On the other hand, the Inquisitor Francisco Antonio Diez de Cabrera, in a Treatise on Diplomacy, declared on March 5, 1654: “I have no doubt that if the relics that today are venerated as those of Saint Blaise were put together, a hundred bodies could be made, in which I know how few, not to say none, could be true”. Calasanz also alludes to various relics in letters 55, 931, 1331, 4211. Apart from his devotion to the “agnus Dei”, wax medallions with the figure of the Mystic Lamb in bas-relief, whose origin perhaps stems from the custom of taking fragments of wax detached from the paschal candle on Holy Saturday to use against the devil. The falsity of some relics reaches the height of absurdity in the liquefied milk of the Virgin, which was shown to Erasmus of Rotterdam, to his derision, in the Marian shrine of Walsingham. Worse still, there were several places where possession of the milk was claimed, on one occasion in the XIX century.

It was not all about popular worship of the relics of saints, worthy, if authentic, of special devotion. Between the XV and XVIII centuries a relic of a saint was embedded to the rings to give them special dignity. In the XVII century there was a widespread custom among ecclesiastics of wearing rich reliquaries around their necks. Blessed Peter Casani, on 4 September 1632, wrote to his relative, also a Piarist, Fr. Charles Casani: “For the rest I wrote to you, that as I do not like to carry relics on my person, nor do I like our people to carry them, so I neither have them nor am I good at looking for them. However, if I manage to get hold of an Agnus Dei filled with bone dust from the bones of the twelve Apostles and other saints, which I believe are the safest, coming from the hand I know, I will send it to you”.

Calasanz is more drastic in condemning the custom of adorning oneself with reliquaries. This is how he expresses himself in letter 2153: “And to avoid the introduction among us of the custom that I saw in the religion of Santa Maria in Portico, that everyone tried to have reliquaries and some of great value, with gold set in rock crystal, Your Reverence will order from my part that no one in those houses in Naples should have in their possession or in the possession of other small or large pictures, or relief figures except in accordance with our rules, and only priests who go to help the sick or dying may have a small crucifix with a wooden cross”.

Relics have their reasons to be venerated, but there are those who give them the value of a dubious object of piety, if not with a well-founded suspicion of superstition, with some perhaps attributing a similar cult to a blood-soaked cloth of a prisoner serenely accepting his fate, or to a hair that the Beatle John Lennon gave to a “fan” on 26 August 1964 in Denver and which has recently been auctioned for $ 46,780 paid by a Hong-Kong citizen.

68. Alms in exchange for prayers

Whether in Indian, Judeo-Christian or Greco-Roman culture, the poor enjoyed singular veneration. “Res est sacra miser” (The poor are sacred) wrote Seneca (IV,9). “I was hungry and you gave me to eat...”, cried Christ, identifying himself with the poor. “These are the treasures of the Church”, St Lawrence replied to the Prefect, showing him a crowd of sick and miserable people.

In the Middle Ages, the poor were sometimes considered to be endowed with powers. And a mental deficiency could be interpreted as a prophetic gift and even be attributed with the faculty of attracting, by a glance or a curse, an accumulation of misfortunes to any miser person.

In the Modern Age, the Church considered the poor to be among the most faithful to Jesus Christ, as Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet testifies in his Sermon on the eminent dignity of the poor in the Church.

The religious society of the XVI and XVII centuries considered the poor to be the closest to God. His prayer is the most welcome in heaven. The rich can give alms; the poor, prayers. The blind man in El Lazarillo de Tormes, installed in the vestibule of the Church, asks: “Who has to pray for? Periquillo Sarmiento, already in the XIX century, hung up his monastic habits because “he had to pray more than a blind man”. In a XVI century Pragmatic Decree, King Philip II ordered, referring to the poor: “Let them be supported with the charity and alms due to them”. The same monarch ordered in 1565 that each parish should appoint “two good men” to take a census of the poor and sign the document of poverty that each poor person had to carry with them, together with another from the parish priest certifying that they had complied with the precept of confession and Easter communion. And in addition, another signature of the local judge to ask alms only within his jurisdiction, which used to be within six leagues around. In the aforementioned order of Philip II, when requiring the poor to show proof of their paschal fulfilment, it was written: “For care is taken to maintain souls much more than bodies”. These were the “recognized” beggars, who were considered a private “good” of each town to redeem the sins of its inhabitants in life and death, with prayers in exchange for alms. For, as Juan de Zabaleta says in Día de fiesta por la tarde, “To refuse alms to a poor person is an infamous vileness”.

There was, however, a whole picaresque system to benefit from such income, without the aforementioned recognition. There is evidence of this picaresque system in Mateo Alemán’s Guzmán de Alfarache (1599-1604) and in Jerónimo de Alcalá Yánez’s El Donado hablador (1624-1626). Apart from the “vistos oracioneros” (fake blind men) mentioned by Cervantes in La ilustre fregona and other simulators with an abundance of tricks, such as pretending to have an “amputated” arm, or decorating their body with false lacerations or giving their countenance a deplorable cadaverous appearance, and other tricks that Cristóbal Pérez de la Herrera reports in his Discurso del amparo de los legítimos pobres y reducción de los fingidos, a work that appeared in 1598. Thus, the proverb: “Poor man is all miseries” is accredited.

There was also the poor man who, like the blind man in El Lazarillo de Tormes, “claimed to know prayers for many and various purposes: for women who did not give birth, for those who were in labor, for those who were unmarried, that their husbands would love them well”. He even “gave predictions to pregnant women if they had a son or a daughter”.

Mateo Alemán, in his Guzmán de Alfarache, attributes similar traits to the Roman beggers of his time. He even proposes a curious way of obtaining, in a later assault, the alms that were not obtained in the first attempt: “When they do not give you alms, answer with devotion: God be praised, he will give it to your mercies, with great health, peace and contentment of this house, so that you may give it to the poor”. This trick,” adds Guzmán, “earned me a lot of money, because when I answered them with such kindness, and with my hands on my head, raising them with my eyes to heaven, they called me back and gave me what they had”. The same author establishes a typology of donors located in Rome: “He taught me, at the beginning, how to ask to one or to the other, that it should not be to all with a tone or a harangue; men do not want suplications, but a plain request, for the love of God; women have devotion to the Virgin Mary, to Our Lady of the Rosary; and so God directs their things in his holy service, and deliver them from mortal sin, from false testimony, from the power of traitors and evil tongues. If this is recited, well pronounced, and with vehemence of words, it tears the money from them as by the roots. He taught me how to pity the rich, to hurt the common, and to compel the devout”.

Some theologians argued that all kinds of beggars, even cheaters, were, by their mission, pleasing to God, since their trickery was an appeal to the hard-hearted; for if beggars were forced to pretend, it was only because of the lack of compassion of the greedy rich.

Against such a flattering situation for the poor, voices soon arose calling for severe restrictions on the problem of begging. Luis Vives in his treatise De subventione pauperum, inspired by the reforms carried out in various European cities (Nuremberg, Strasbourg and Yprès), appealed to State subsidies and the income of the labor of the poor. The aforementioned Cristóbal Pérez de Herrera advocated for shelters in the main cities, compulsory work for able beggars, the repression of female prostitution and the reception and education of foundlings. But the project failed with the accession to the throne of Philip III, as the controversy between those who advocated private charity as opposed to public charity made it difficult to implement the proposed reforms.

The Dominican theologian Domingo Soto defended free charity “because through it the rich can save themselves”. Along the same lines was Miguel de Mañara, founder of the Hospital de la Caridad in Seville (1627-1679), whose disorderly life prior to his conversion is said to have provided inspiration for Tirso de Molina’s El burlador de Sevilla, the antecedent of Zorrilla’s Don Juan Tenorio. On the occasion of the establishment in Madrid of a shelter for the poor called “Ave Maria”, Mañara wrote a terrible letter to a gentleman of the Court, from which I extract the following paragraphs: “These beloved brothers that you have as political prisoners, are they not the bearers of the goods of the rich to heaven? How do you hide them from the eyes of the rich? The wounded poor man, crying out, does he not often move the hearts of the rich?”

Likewise, for Quevedo, poverty is not a misfortune, but a gift from heaven. Therefore, he also “is in favor of direct and unorganized charity. And he advises the king not to give a penny to the poor, because he should be suspicious of anyone who asks for others”.

What was Calasanz’ attitude in this clash of opinions? He greatly valued the prayers of the poor. This is attested by his letter of 1st January 1633 addressed to Fr. Alacchi, then in Venice: “Give yourselves with all diligence to help the poor well, that they with their prayers will preserve the work”. There was also an exchange of alms for prayers. Osvaldo Tosti, in no. 31 of Archivum Scholarum Piarum, published a copy of the obediential letter with which Calasanz accredited the religious he sent to beg. His translation reads: “Because our Religion of Clerics Poor of the Mother of God is founded on extreme poverty, we have recourse with all humility to the charity of pious persons. Herewith, therefore, we recommend Brother Angelo (Cherubini) professed in the said Religion with his companion, whom we send for the collection of oil, offering in exchange for this charity, the prayers (offrendo in contracambio della carità che con essi useranno, le orazioni) not only of our religious, but also of our pupils, whose number exceeds a thousand. Given in Rome, at the Pious School of St. Pantaleo, 22 January 1624. Joseph of the Mother of God, Minister General, manu propria”.

However, a difference can be seen between this prayer-alms exchange and the attitude of those who, it seems, wanted to buy their salvation by assisting the poor. Calasanz, according to letter 1545, wants a priest confessor to accompany the alms-collecting Brothers. It is not a question of obtaining the forgiveness of sins by a “bite”, so that the rich can be saved by mere almsgiving. Rather, the prayers are intended to bring about the imminent conversion of the wealthy sinner, if this should be necessary.

69. The sixty spiritual maxims

I

The tradition of the Piarist Order had been attributing to Calasanz, if not the authorship, at least the adaptation and verbal formulation of the maxims that his biographer Vincenzo Talenti included at the end of his Vita del Beato Giuseppe Calasanzio della Madre di Dio and called “Sentenze sacre del B. Giuseppe Calasanzio Fundatore delle Scuole Pie”. Dionisio Cueva in his collection Calasanz, Spiritual and Pedagogical Message (1973) states: “The 60 sentences are included, not so much because they appear in some previous publications, but because special historical research proves their Calasanzian authenticity”. Cueva himself in his unpublished work, to which he refers in a letter to Fr. Claudio Vilá dated 1 December 1988: “If you do a study, I hope you will exhaust the subject. I have one prepared, which does not go as far as that, but perhaps it will come close”. (Archivum Scholarum Piarum n° 27, Romae 1990, p. 89). I wish that my dear and admired Fr. Dionisio would publish this evidential research of his, because the mentioned authorship of Calasanz remains today in open discussion.

In January 1519, a friend of Calasanz, Fr. Giacomo Montanari de Bagnacavallo, being Minister General of the Order of Friars Minor Conventual, published a work entitled Ratio Studiorum, of an internal nature for his Order, in which he included the 60 sentences under the epigraph: “Sententiae spirituales sexaginta, pro scholasticis religionis nostrae valde propicuae, alterius devoti Auctoris”. Under the anonymity of this “devout author” it has been believed that the authorship of Joseph Calasanz is hidden.

Without knowing of Bagnacavallo’s publication, in 1753 the Talenti published these sentences at the end of his Vita of Calasanz and attributed them to Calasanz, according to immemorial tradition. He declared that he copied them from a loose folio then in our General Archive, which has now disappeared. The compilation is not attributed by Talenti to Calasanz, but to his sons, who, from among the many sentences used by the saint, selected these sixty. And Talenti accompanies them with this observation: “Le dicevano propie di lui, benché alcune si vedano usate da’ Santi Patri o Maestri di Spirito”. (They were said to be original to him, although some of them are already in use by Holy Fathers and Spiritual Masters).

Without mentioning neither Bagnacavallo nor Talenti, they were published by Fr. Guido Nicht, Piarist, in 1772, included in his Documenta Spiritualia ex epistolis S. Josephi Calasantii a Matre Dei (Nicolsburg 1772). They were translated to Spanish (adding two more) by Fr Carlos Lasalde, in his little work Espíritu de San José de Calasanz (Madrid 1886). Adding two more to these, they reach the figure of sixty-four in the Rules of the novices of the Pious Schools (Madrid 1906). A list of sixty-four was also published by Father Leodegario Picanyol in his Enchiridion sodalis calasanctiani (Rome 1943). According to Fr. Severino Giner, in San José de Calasanz Maestro y Fundador, “over time the list has varied and the number has increased, so that today there are at least seventy-one”.

According to Fr Claudio Vilá, in his wide and documented study Two friends of Calasanz: Frs. Bagnacavallo and Larino (Archivum Scolarum Piarum n° 27, Romae 1990), the Calasanzian authorship of these sentences or spiritual maxims must be denied: our Holy Founder would take them from the list that appears in the Ratio Studiorum of Bagnacavallo. Severino Giner considers that his arguments would need “more solid reasons than those put forward by C. Vilá”. The reasoning of the latter is based on his hypothesis, previously put forward by him, that Calasanz did not think of founding a Religious Order until very late, so that these sentences, as exclusive of the religious life, could not be elaborated and applied before their inclusion in the work of Bagnacavallo, because there was not enough time to do so. Fr Giner is opposed quoting from Fr Antonio Bernardini, the General of the Congregation of Lucca, who wrote in his Chronicles, in 1613, that the Prefect Calasanz “havendo havuto molto tempo prima desiderio di formare una Religione...” (Calasanz had long before had the desire to found a Religious Order).

Without pretending to settle the question of Calasanz’ authorship of these maxims, I allow myself to provide some data that I think are of some utility.

If these maxims were said repeatedly by Calasanz to his religious, they must necessarily have appeared in his letters. Certainly, four of them appear in their Latin formulation. Others only in concept, perhaps because he would pronounce them in Italian and then they were translated and reformulated in Latin by his compilers.

Of the last four sentences added to the sixty in Picanyol’s repertoire, we have literal and Latin quotations in letters 866, 1374, 3055 and 4544. Thus, in letter 866 he writes to Fr. Stefano Cherubini: “It seems to me that the Provincial is relieved of all fatigue and therefore of all merit, since venale est regnum coelorum et pretium ejus est labor”. The translation of the Latin sentence is “The Kingdom of Heaven is for sale and is bought with labour”.

In letter 1374 he writes to the Provincial of Naples: “Those who do not obey simply show a great sign of reprobation, and for this reason it is rightly said that multi vocantur ad Religionem, et pauci tendunt ad perfectionem” (many are called to Religion and few tend to perfection).

In letter 4544, he writes to Fr. Thomas Accardo: “For it is certain that the Religious tantum habet virtutis, quantum habet humilitatis” (The Religious possesses as much virtue as he has humility).

And to Fr. Giuseppe Apa he writes in letter 1374: “Try to teach everyone in school and in the oratory how important the Holy fear of God is in the hearts of the young; this is the highest doctrine that can be taught in this life and the most meritorious one, which can only be done out of pure love of the Lord, being certain that inter opera divina divinissimum est cooperari saluti animarum” (from the divine works, the most divine is to cooperate for the salvation of souls).

In letter 4204, addressed to Fr. Giuseppe Fedele, Calasanz includes, with a probable mention of the author, a quotation that appears in Picanyol with the number 52 and is conspicuous by its absence in the other repertories that I have at hand. Our Founder writes: “I do not remember which saint it is from, although it seems to me that it is from St. Augustine, who says: qui orat bene facit sed qui juvat melius facit (He who prays works well, but he who helps others works better).

We also find in Calasanz’ Epistolary Latin sentences analogous to those collected. For example, in letter 3579, he writes to Fr. Francesco Leucci: “Being true that remarkable sentence which says: Non vidi meliores quam qui in religione profecerunt, neque deteriores quan qui in religione defecerunt (I did not see better people than those who progressed in the Religion, nor worse than those who failed in the Religion). This sentence could be considered analogous to the third in Picanyol’s repertory, to which the numbering of the sentences used in this article corresponds: Semper déficit religiosus, qui in sua vocatione non semper proficit (The religious who does not continually progress in his vocation, also continually regresses).

In his epistolary, we also find concepts that appear in the aforementioned maxims and, moreover, formulated sententiously. For example: “Che li gioverà la sanità corporale, se non si emenda et mortifica nelle passioni che li impediscano la sanità spirituale? (What good will bodily health be to him, if he does not amend and mortify the passions that prevent him from spiritual health?) This could be a gloss on the sentence: “Vae religioso, cui magis est sanitas quam sanctitas (17)” (Woe to the religious who cares more for his health than for his holiness).

“Si viene alla religione per patire in questa vita et far penitenza et non per esser relassato et svanito (One enters Religion to suffer in this life and to do penance and not to be relaxed and alienated) (EGC 164). It is equivalent to “quid tibi proderit reliquisse mundum nisi poenitentiam in religione egeris? (23)” (What good will be for you having left the world, if you do not do penance in the Religion?)

“L’otio suol esser causa di qualche relassatione” (Idleness is often the cause of some relaxation) (EGC 29): analogous to “Religiosum otiosum daemon venatur (29)” (The idle religious is hunted by the devil).

“Mi pare che egli ha tanto del propio giudizio che con tal voto farà poco propósito” (It seems to me that he is so possessed by his own judgement that with this vow he will make little use of it) (EGC 2138). It would be another formulation of “non est obediens qui in obediendo proprium sequitur judicium (32)” (He is not obedient who in obeying follows his own judgement)

“Quanto al fratel Paolo quando non vuol una cosa dice que non stà bene” (Brother Paul, when he does not want to do something, says that he is not well) (EGC 201). It is like applying to Bro. Paul the sentence 34: “Non Superiorem, sed se fallit qui pro nolle, dicit se non posse” (Not to the superior but he deceives himself, the subject who instead of saying I do not want to, says I cannot).

“Ne mai guarirà de la propria volontà che è una infirmità pessima” (EGC 161). (He will not cure, because to do his own will is a very bad sickness): “venenum Religiosi propia voluntas” (35) (To do one’s own will is poison for the Religious)

“I servi di Dio, che non dico per evitar un peccato mortale, ma per solo evitar un veniale, devono levar ogni ocassione” (The servants of God must avoid occasions, I do not say to avoid a mortal sin, but even if it is a venial sin) (EGC 408). For it is true that “non religiose vivit qui venialia non curat (37)” (He does not live religiously who does not take care of venial faults).

“Non debbiamo lasciar il nostro profitto spirituale per giovar alli altri che nulla ci rileverebbe nel giudicio divino” (We should not neglect our spiritual profit in order to help others, for nothing like this will show up in the divine judgement (EGC 2034), for “aliis prodesse, et sibi nocere stultitia est non charitas (48)” (To harm oneself in order to do good to others is not charity but madness).

II

Although these sixty or sixty-four maxims are little known at present, and space does not permit me to copy them verbatim, I have thought it most practical to comment on the contents of Picanyol’s 64 maxims, sticking to the numbering of the latter so that any reader of this article can be aware of them. The first 44 maxims in Picanyol’s collection refer to the religious life; to confirm this assertion, it is enough to see in them a predominance of words religiosus (29 times), Religio (7 times). The rest are the words Religiose, Superior, cella (room), valetudinario (infirmary), reliquire mundum (to leave the world), pauper (poor), castus, obediens. The other sentences in this collection belong to asceticism in general. Although with the last four (numbered 61, 62, 63 and 64), which do not appear in the other collections (those of Cueva, Bagnacavallo and Timon David-Talenti, which are the ones I have had at hand), the words Religio and Religiosus appear once each. With the remaining maxims another group can be formed in which they appear: Servus Christi and Servus Dei. The remaining ones can be put together in a heterogeneous group. Thus, three blocks of sentences or maxims stand out, which I present followed by the numbering of Picanyol and Salvador López

1. THE RELIGIOUS:

- Obtains in Religion the crown by toil and struggle (1).

- He lives securely in Religion if he does not live for himself, but for God (2).

- If he does not progress in his vocation, he regresses (3).

- If he lives in Religion without bearing fruit, he commits theft (4).

- When he does not speak to God in his room or does not work for Christ, he makes bad use of it (5).

- If in life he does not work for the Lord, how will he die in the Lord? (6).

- He should not speak of how long he has lived in Religion, but of how long he has lived well in it (7).

- He is adorned with knowledge. but virtue crowns him (8).

- By his examples, he is death or life for the layman (9).

- He uses his tongue as a trumpet of thought and heart (10).

- He must be far from having the voice of Jacob and the hands of Esau (11).

- If he is curious, he will live forgetful of himself (12).

- If he is busy with other people’s things, he forgets his own and himself (14).

- When he walks in the street, remember that he is a religious man and not a painter (13).

- If he has no self-control, he cannot serve God (15).

- He does not know how to love himself if he is too indulgent with himself (16).

- Woe to him if he cares more for his health than for his holiness (17).

- He is as dear to God when he is healthy as when he is sick (18).

- If he is patient when he is sick and if the nurse has charity, they will avoid the shouting in the infirmary (19)

- He despises the world and rejoices to be despised by it (20).

- He lacks humility if he leads to evil or does not wish to be despised (21).

- He considers it a good to have abandoned the world, but he considers it an even greater good to see to it that the world has abandoned him (22).

- If he does not do penance in the religious life, he will not profit from having abandoned the world (23).

- He is not a religious no matter how much he has fled from the world, if he is absorbed by his concern for his relatives (24).

- He will be an authentic religious if he can truly say: My God and all my things (25).

- He cannot call himself poor if he does not experience the discomforts of poverty (26).

- He loses more than he gains if he believes himself to be the owner of his own things (27).

- He is in no way chaste if he does not instantly drive away the enemies of chastity (28).

- If he indulges in idleness, the devil hunts him (29).

- If he is negligent, the devil rejoices (30).

- The fervent one is the devil’s scourge (31).

- He is not obedient, if in obeying he follows his own judgment (32).

- If he does not have the Superior in the place of God, neither will God have him as a son (33).

- He deceives himself, not the Superior, when he says I cannot instead of saying I don’t want (34).

- He fears like a poison his own will (35).

- The religious indifferent is a precious pearl of Religion (36).

- He does not live religiously, if he does not pay attention to venial faults (37).

- He considers that if venial sins displease God in a layman, less will they please him in a religious (38).

- If he is a vain man, he is the devil’s plaything, as if he were a ball (39).

- When he is wrathful, he disturbs everything like an infernal thunderbolt (40).

- The gentle man is the honor of his state and the ornament of Religion (41).

- If he wants to have peace with his brothers, let him contradict no one (42).

- If he is not good in religion among the good, how will he be good living among bad people? (43).

- He is ungrateful if he believes that he has contributed more to religion than he has received from it (44).

- He has as much virtue as his humility (62).

2. THE SERVANT OF CHRIST:

- He endures patiently, speaks little and works much for Christ (49).

- He is dear to God, if he is sensible, not if he is delicate (50).

- He serves himself, and not God, if in the service of God, he seeks his own comfort (51).

- He does not live to eat, but eats to live and serve (54).

- He seeks to be holy, not to appear holy (55).

- For the love of Christ, he does not care about his comforts (59).

3. THE REMAINING MAXIMS:

- He who prays works well, but he who helps others works even better (52).

- Woe to him who is evil living among the good ones (53).

- You will live restless as long as only one passion reigns in you, no matter how much the other passions are mortified (45).

- Woe to him who destroys by his example what he teaches by his word (46).

- How can you be the light of the world, if you do not even give light to yourself? (47).

- He does not enjoy familiarity with God who is not a friend of prayer (56).

- It is not charity, but folly to do good to others by harming oneself (48).

- He does not know how to win Christ who does not know how to suffer for Christ (57).

- He who works more for Christ owes him more, for his work is the fruit of Christ (58).

- You have given nothing to Christ unless you have given him your whole heart (60).

- Although many are called to the religious life, few are those who strive to be perfect (61).

- The most divine of all works is to cooperate for the salvation of souls (63).

- The Kingdom of Heaven is for sale; its price is work (64).

With this collection, the author tries to present a profile of the Tridentine religious of active life. The words religiosus, Religione and religiosa predominate in thirty-nine maxims. To these are added argot words belonging to institutes of religious life, such as Superior (33 and 34), cella (room) (5), valetudinario (infirmary) (19), relinquere mundum (to leave the world) (22 and 23), spernere mundum (to despise the world) (20). In addition, a maxim is dedicated to each of the vows of Poverty (26), Chastity (22) and Obedience (32).

The religious presented here is not the contemplative, but the one of mixed life. Twelve of these maxims refer to work (1, 5, 6, 8, 46, 47, 48, 49, 52, 58 and 63), one to dedication to science (17). It is an imperfect religious; we would place him in the traditional purgative path of the Pseudo-Dionysius Aeropagite, called of incipient or beginners by Thomas Aquinas. Thirty-six maxims have a negative formulation. The negation “No” (non est, and similar) is reiterated, and the interjection “Vae” (Woe to him!). In addition, the “fuga” (flight) or contemptus mundi (contempt of the world) is very accentuated: not only to leave the world, but to be left by it (22); one has not truly left it if one does not lead a penitent life in Religion (23). One must leave it to the point of not being attached to one’s family (24). It is even described as the place of the evil ones (25), “If you are not good in Religion living among the good, how will you be good living among the bad ones?” (43).

He even addresses the religious dominated by a passion (45) and alludes to the capital sins as enemies of the religious. The following are mentioned: pride (21, 39, 44, 55, 62), avarice (26, 27), lust (28), anger (40, 41, 42), gluttony (54) and sloth (4, 29, 30). Envy does not appear unless it refers to an aspect of it, the maxim 14: Religiosus qui aliena curat, sibi suisque deest, which Salvador López translates: “The religious who takes care of other people’s lives, forgets his own life and his business” and Cueva: “The religious who takes care of other people’s things, neglects himself and his things”, which almost coincides with the translator of Timón David, Fr. Dionisio Fierro Gasca: “The religious who occupies himself with other people’s things, abandons himself and his own things”.

Modesty (12, 13, 14), moderation in speech (10, 11, 49) and self-control (15) resulting from not condescending to oneself (16, 26, 50, 51, 59) cannot be omitted. He also refers to exemplarity (9), although he warns against hypocrisy (7, 10, 11, 55).

We can also observe an insistence on the action of the devil (29, 30, 31, 39, 40).

If these maxims refer to the purgative way or the way of the incipient (beginners), there are others - although fewer in number - which could perhaps be applied to the illuminative way or the way of the proficient and even to the unitive or the perfect.

Therefore, maxims (1, 3, 4, 61) refer to spiritual progress. Also, expressions such as: bonus religiosus (good religious) (18, 20, 22, 22, 43, 53), vere religiosus (true religious) (25), religiosus fervens (fervent religious) (31), vivere religiose (to live religiously) (37), bene in Religione vivere (to live well in the Religion) (7), vivere Deo (to live for God) (2), familiaris Deo (to be of the family of God) (56), religiosus indifferens religionis gemma pretiosa (the indifferent religious is a precious stone of Religion) (36).

Perhaps this collection of maxims may fit into another classification of the stages of spiritual progress: I am referring to the “three ways of humility” that St. Ignatius of Loyola presents in his book of Spiritual Exercises (164-168). The first way of humility necessary for salvation consists in the fact that “even if I were made master of the world, nor for the sake of saving my temporal life, I would not deliberately break a commandment, whether divine or human, which would oblige me to mortal sin”. The maxims condemning the non-observance of the vows, uses and customs of religious life, partly assimilated to Christian life in its most elementary manifestations, are to be found at this stage.

The second Ignatian way of humility demands indifference with regard to long or short life, honor or dishonor, riches or poverty “being equal service to God our Lord and the health of my soul; and with this, that for all that is created, nor because my life is taken from me, may I not deliberately commit a venial sin”. Most of the sentences headed by the expression Servus Christi (Servant of Christ) or alluding to it and those referring to venial sins would refer to this stage: He does not live religiously who is not concerned with venial faults (37). If venial sins displease God in a layman, how much more will they displease him in a religious (38). Also, that which praises the indifferent religious (36).

The third way of humility, according to St. Ignatius, is when “being equal praise and glory of the divine majesty, for the sake of imitating or appearing more presently like Christ our Lord, I desire and choose more poverty with Christ poor than riches, reproaches with Christ full of them than honors, and to desire more to be esteemed as vain and mad for Christ, who was first considered as such, than as wise and prudent in this world”.

The following maxims refer to this degree: He lives secure in Religion who lives not for himself but for God (2). The good religious despises the world and rejoices to be despised by it (19). He is not a humble religious who does not bear, or does not wish to be despised (21). He is a true religious who says with truth: My God and all my things (25). The servant of God endures patiently, speaks little and works much for Christ (49). He is not a friend of God who is not a friend of prayer (56). He does not know how to win Christ who does not know how to suffer for Christ (57). You have given nothing to Christ unless you have given him your whole heart (60). The greater the virtue of the religious, the greater his humility (62).

III

It is perhaps more important, for the argumentation, the fact that some of these maxims - formulated in Latin and verbatim configured in the collections - are attributed to Calasanz himself by Fr. Vincent Berro in his Annotazioni. He is a very qualified witness, since Fr. Berro was Calasanz’ personal secretary from September 1647 until the death of the Saint. When he was rector of Narni (1656-1659), he wrote down what he heard from the lips of his Founder in that year that he spent at his side as secretary, together with the materials with which he was preparing his cause of beatification.

The Piarist historian Fr Giovanni Ausenda states: “It is the most reliable account of the origin of the Pious Schools and their development until 1643”.

Here are the testimonies of Fr Vincent Berro: “Our venerable Founder and General wrote in chapter 7 of the first part of our Constitutions [...] and in a writing: “Tutus in Religione vivit non qui sibi sed qui Deo vivit” (Who does not live for himself but for God, lives secure in the Religion) (Annotazioni t I, cap.XXI pag 225). The quotation appears with the number two in the compilation published by Picanyol.

“It has been found written by his own hand (Calasanz’) this beautiful sentence about what has been said: Religiosum ornat quidem scientia, sed virtus coronat - vae (sic) tibi qui alios verbo instruis et exemplo destruis” (Science embellish the religious, but virtue crowns him – Woe to you who builds with your words and destroys with your example) (Ibid t I, cap. V pag. 193) (He promises a sentence and gives two whose reference numbers are 8 and 46).

“On this basis he orders, in the same chapter, the frequency of Holy Communion for those of us who are not priests, twice a week and the feasts of first and second class and the holy sacramental confession whenever there is need of it, exhorting us to give great importance to light faults so as not to fall into serious ones, and he said: “Vae, vae illli, qui inter bonus malus est” (“Woe to him who among the good is evil”) (Ibid. T I, cap.XXI p.225). (In Picanyol it appears under number 53).

“But our V.P. Founder used to say: Quo magis laboras pro Christo, eo plus debes Christo, quia fructus suus est” (“The more you work for Christ, the more you owe Christ, because it is his fruit.”). (Ibid. L 2 ch. 18 p.151).

In Italian there are two sentences which Fr. Berro puts in the mouth of Calasanz and which gloss Pícanyol’s 62: “Religiosus tantum habet virtutis, quantum habet humilitatis”, (“The religious has as much virtue as he has humility.”) namely: “La misura o peso di questa vita è la humiltá” (Ibid. L. 2 ch. 19 p. 153). 2 ch. 19 p. 153) and “You want to be holy, be humble, you want to be more holy, be more humble, you want to be the most holy, be the most humble” (ibid t. I, l. II, p. 84).)

Concerning the originality of these maxims, I have already mentioned the judgement of Fr. Talenti, who attributes them to the Holy Fathers and Spiritual Masters.

It was not until the XVIII century that originality of ideas was valued, for everything was considered to have been said and repeated by earlier writers. The originality will not be in the substance but in the form: to give a new and elegant formulation - more elegant if possible - to the creations of the masters of another time.

Here are some examples of maxims of the Holy Fathers reformulated by the author of the sixty-four attributed to Calasanz.

St. Augustine says in Sermon 169 (15,18): “Si autem diceris sufficit peristi”. (“But if you say enough, you perish”). In the maxim N° 3 we read “Semper deficit religiosus qui in sua vocatione non semper proficit” (“The religious who does not advance in his vocation is always deficient.”)

What St. Gregory the Great, in his Regulae pastoralis liber (3,34), formulates as follows: “Dum proposita non perficiunt etiam quae fuerunt caepta convellum (“As long as purposes are not fulfilled, even things begun are wrecked) is expressed as “Si enim quod videtur gerendum sollicita intentione non crescit, etiam quae fuerat bene gestum decrescit” (If what seems to be done does not increase with careful intention, even what is well done diminishes.”)

St. Jerome wrote: “Not wanting to be perfect is a crime (BAC 219, 78), for “Furtum facit qui sine fructu in Religione vivit” (“He who lives without fruit in the Order commits robbery.”) (Maxim N°. 4).

St. Bernard in his De Consideratione, judges in this way: “Illum tantum diem vixisse tu computa quem sine ulla regulae transgressione duxistiti” (“Count that you have lived only the day you have acted without any transgression of the Rule.”). What St. Jerome in his Epistula 58 Ad Paulinum formulates in this way: “Non Jerosolimis fuisse, sed Jerosolimis bene vixisse laudandum” (It should not be praised that you went to Jerusalem, but that you rightly lived there). Calasanz in the maxim No. 7 reformulates it in this way: “Non quamdiu in Religione vixeris sed quam bene in ea vixeris referi” (“It does not matter how long you have lived in the Order, but how well you have lived.”).

The Rule of Saint Benedict (19) prescribes: “Sic stemus at psallendum, ut mens nostra concordet voci nostrae” (“When we are chanting, let our mind be adjusted to our voice.”). St. Jerome in his Epistula ad Nepotiano 527: “Sacerdos Christi mens osque concordem” (“The priest of Christ should adjust the mind to the mouth”); and St. Augustine in his Epistula 701: “Psalmis et Hymnis cum orationis Deum hoc versetur in corde quod profertur in voce” (“When you pray to God with psalms and hymns, keep in your heart what is uttered in your voice.”). What maxim No. 10 of those attributed to Calasanz translates: “Lingua religiosi cordis mentisque tuba” (“The tongue of the religious is the trumpet of his heart and mind.”).

The maxim 55 “Servus Christi studet esse, non cupit videri sanctus”, (“The Servant of Christ seeks to be, not to appear holy”) has a corresponding maxim in Sulpicius Severus, who writes in his Epistula 2 Ad Sororem, 17: “Sancta magis esse quam videri stude quia nihil prodest aestimari quod non sis” (“Try to be saintly rather than to appear so, because you cannot love what you are not.”). It can also be compared with what we read in The Rule of St. Benedict (IV, 62): “Non velli dici sanctum antequam sit sed prius esse ut verius indicatur” (“Do not want to be called a saint first, but first be a saint so that it may be said with more truth.”).

St. Bernard in Sermon I, 2 In festum Annuntiationis B.M.V. attributes to whom it truly belongs: “Merita omnis dona Dei sunt et ita homo magis propter ipsa Deo debitor est quam Deus homini” (“All merit is God’s gift, for which reason man is more indebted to God than God is to man.”). The same is true of maxim no. 58: “Qui magis laborat pro Christo, plus debet Christo quia fructus suus est” (“He who works more for Christ, owes more to Christ because it is his fruit.”). This could have an antecedent in St. Augustine who, in his Epistula 194 Ad Sixtum, writes as addressing to God: “Quid facisti tua dona nostra merita” (“Why have you made your gifts our merits?”).

Two sentences, one from St. Augustine in Sermon 48, 2 - “Quid enim Dominus quaerit a te nisi te? (“What does the Lord ask of you, but you?”) - and another of St. Jerome Ad Paulinum - “Totum Deo debit qui seipsum obtulit”- (“Everything owes to God who offered himself”) could be the antecedent of sentence N° 60: “Nihil Chisto dedisti, si ei totum cor tuum non dedisti”. (“You have given nothing to Christ if you have not given him your whole heart.”).

Two affirmations of the Doctor of Hippo (Prol. in Trad in Ep Joan. and Sermo 351,4), coincide with the “Religiosus tantum habet virtutis quantum habet humilitatis” (“A religious has as much virtue as he has humility.”) of maxim N° 62: “Ubi humilitas ibi charitas” (“Where there is humility there is charity”) and “Humilitas quae pene una disciplina christiana est” (“Almost all humility is a Christian discipline”).

IV

There is no lack of precedents of these maxims in writers, Masters of the Spiritual Life, closer to Calasanz.

St. Francis of Assisi is behind “Ille est vere Religiosus, qui vere dicit: Deus meus, et omnia” (“He is truly religious who says with truth: “My God and all things”).

The Pseudo Dionysius Aeropagita has the authorship of “Inter opera divina, divinissimum est cooperari saluti animarum” (“Among the divine works, to cooperate in the salvation of souls is most divine.”).

In the first chapter of the Schola de Oratione et Contemplatione of V.P. John of Jesus Mary, spiritual director of Calasanz, the “Semper deficit religiosos, qui in sua vocatione non semper proficit” (“The religious is always deficient when he does not always advance in his vocation.”) (3), is formulated in this way: “In via perfectionis non progredi, nec proficere esse velut deficere ac retrogredi” (“On the road to perfection, neither advancing nor taking advantage is like missing and going backwards.”).

“Sine dolore non vivitur in amore” (“Without pain one cannot live in love”): sentence of Thomas of Kempis (Imit Christi III c.7), equivalent to “Nescit lucrari Christum, qui nescit pati pro Christo” (“He who does not know how to suffer for Christ does not know how to win Christ.”).

Kempis himself gives the idea to “Non est humilis religiosus qui dedignatun non optat sperni” (“The religious is not humble, who, scorned, does not choose to be despised”), for he states in his Imitation of Christ: “Non reputes te ali quid profuisse. nisi omnibus te inferiorem esse sentias” (“Do not think that you have improved, if you do not feel that you are inferior to everyone else.”) (II.2).

Perhaps Calasanz recognised in this Latin translation: “Religiosus tantum habet virtutis quantum habet humilitatis” (“The religious has as much virtue as he has humility.”) what he read in Way of Perfection by St. Teresa of Jesus, a book which he recommends to the Piarists: “Each one should look at what humility she has in herself and she will see what she has improved” (Chap. XII, 6).

But the ideological antecedents are to be found further back in time and space. Both the Holy Fathers and the Masters of the Spiritual Life were influenced by Roman and Greek thinkers. For these, as St. Paul writes in his Letter to the Romans: “What can be known about God is clear to their eyes, because God has been revealing it to them, for the invisible things of God, his eternal power and divinity, have been made visible since the creation of the world through the created things” (Rom 1,19-21).

It was necessary to complete this natural revelation of God by Christianising what was perennial in its philosophies and ethics. And this was one of the tasks of the Holy Fathers. And the results of the Christianization of classical thought will reach from generation to generation up to the ascetic and mystical authors more or less close to the time of Calasanz. It is not surprising, then, that some of the maxims attributed to him, especially those that are formulations of natural morality, especially practical morality, have their origin in what right reason gave those classical moralists to understand. Here are a few examples:

One of the fifteen proverbs of Phocylides of Miletus that have come down to us reads as follows: “The industrious man earns his living; the lazy man steals it”, a proverb that is behind “The religious who lives in religion without producing fruit commits theft” (4).

Cicero in De officiis (book III, ch. 1) puts in the mouth of Scipio Africanus referring to himself: “Nec minus solus quam cum solus” (“I am never less lonely than when I am alone”). The full phrase is: “that he was never less idle than when he was idle; nor more in company than when he was alone”. This Christianised thought could be: “The religious who does not talk to God or work for Christ in his room does a bad use of his room” (5).

Suetonius recounts in De vita Ceasarum (VIII,1) (usually translated as Lives of the Twelve Caesars), that the emperor Titus “having once remembered, at dinner, that he had done no favors during the day, uttered these memorable and justly famous words: “Amici diem perdidi” (Friends, I have lost my day). There is no reason not to see in this sentence an antecedent of: “Do not say how long you have lived in religion, but how long you have lived well in it”. (7)

I bring here a sentence of Seneca: “Life is like a legend: it is not important that it be long, but that it be well narrated”. It is like that: “Nulla die sine linea” (“No day without a line”), which Pliny the Elder bequeathed to us in his Natural History.

“Tecum habita” (live with yourself) advises Persius Flaccus in one of his Satires: “lest what happens to the religious who occupies himself with the things of others and forgets himself and his own things” (14).

“The devil chases the idle religious” (29), for idleness is the mother of all vices. Columella was already aware of this in his De re rustica (XI,1,26), when he sentenced: “Nihil agendo homines male altere discunt” (in idleness men learn to act badly). Ovid also knew this when, in his Remedia amoris, he wrote: “Otia si tollis perire Cupidinis arcus” (Take away idleness and Cupid’s bow will be broken), for the arrows of the little god of love are incapable, they are of pure ineffectiveness, for those who flee from idleness, since it is not in a propitious terrain for erotic imaginations and sensations.

Sallust, in De conjuratione Catilinae (LL), sentenced: “In máxima fortuna minima licentia est” (The greater the honour, the lesser the licence). Even small faults disgrace the one to whom God has honoured the religious vocation, therefore: “If venial sins displease God in the laity, will they please him in the religious?

Virgil recounts in Aeneid (I,150) “furor arma ministrat” (anger provides weapons). In turn, someone verified in a couplet attributed to Cato: “Impedit ira animum ne possis cernere verum” (Anger prevents the soul from seeing the truth). All this results in: “The wrathful religious disturbs everything like a bolt of lightning from hell” (40).

The servant of God does not live to eat but eats to live”, says the maxim 54, adopting a saying which, if not invented by Seneca, was already known in his time, for the Cordovan philosopher wrote: “There are some who live to eat, but I eat to live”.

Returning to Sallust in De conjuratione Catilinae (LIV), we find that he already said of Cato: “Esse quam videri bonus malebat” (he preferred to be good, rather than to appear to be good). It is also said of the Piarist in maxim 55: “The servant of God wishes to be holy, not to appear to be so”.

And to conclude this brief repertory and at the same time bring to an end this study, which deserves more attention, preparation and available means, I will quote the famous “labor omnia vincit” (“Work conquers all”), that Virgil says in his Georgics (1,145); for work, with the grace of God, overcomes all the difficulties that stand in the way of the conquest of the Kingdom. It is rightly said in maxim 64: “Venale est regnum coelorum, cujus pretium labor est” (The Kingdom of Heaven is for sale; it is bought with labour).

Index of proper names

The numbering refers to the chapters in which each name is mentioned.

Abezio, Tommasso: 41

Accardo, Fr. Thomas: 69

Achilles: 31

Addison, Joseph, 45

Adorno, Ven. Giovanni Agostino: 3

Aeschylus: 31

Agnesio, J.B.: 23

Agustin, Bishop Antonio: 27

Alacchi, Fr. Melchior: 6, 26, 28, 32, 35, 46, 48, 49, 52, 55, 66, 68

Alacoque, St Margaret Mary: 25,62

Alagona, Fr. Peter: 29, 59, 61

Albert of Jerusalem, St: 22

Albert the Great, St: 48

Alberti, Giovanni e Cherubino: 33

Albrecht, Carl: 1

Alcalá, Jerónimo de: 68

Alcántara, St Peter of: 19, 20, 22

Alcover, Antoni M.: 59

Alcuin of York: 59, 60

Alemán, Mateo: 68

Alexander the Great: 31

Alexander VII, Pope: 7, 48, 53, 64

Alfonso VIII, King of Castilla: 60

Alfonso X, King of Castilla: 28

Alighieri, Dante: 37

Almonacid, Jerome: 32

Alonso Shökel, Luis: 52

Amaltea: 31

Ambrose, St: 32, 52, 59

Ancilli, Ermanno: 60

Andrés, Br Pablo de: 28

Angelini, Filippo: 15, 47

Antoniano, Card. Silvio: 40, 43, 45, 66

Antonio de Jesús, Friar: 22

Antony Abbot, St: 51

Apa, Fr. Giuseppe: 24, 69

Apa, Fr. John Francis: 14, 52, 66

Aquinas, St Thomas: 10, 21, 24, 46, 48, 58, 69

Aranzi, Giulio Cesare: 37

Arcusa, Fr. Manuel: 38

Argensola, Bartolomé Leonardo: 15

Argentaria: 26

Ariés, Philipe: 38, 39

Aristoclea: 26

Aristotle: 17

Armedo, Bishop Diego de: 55

Armini, A. Fr.: 20

Artaxerxes II, Mnemon : 37

Askevis-Leherpeux, Françoise: 37

Aspasias: 26

Athanasius, St: 59

Athena: 31

Attwater, Donald: 55

Augustine, St: 11, 14, 25, 28, 29, 32, 44, 46, 52, 59, 69

Ausenda, Fr. Giovanni: 2, 69

Austria, Ana Margarita de: 27

Austria, John of: 27

Austria, María Ana de: 30

Austria, Marie Therèse de: 46

Avellino, St Andrew: 25, 46, 59

Avicenna: 59

Bacon of Verulam: 12

Bagnacavallo, Giacomo Montanari di: 1, 69

Balaguer, Miguel, Bishop of Malta: 24

Baldovinos: 56

Ballesteros, Juan Manuel: 54

Balmes, Jaime: 12

Bandoni, Fr Giacomo: 20, 55

Baragli, Enrico: 41

Baronio, Cesare, Card.: 22, 32, 66

Barrionuevo de Peralta, Jerónimo: 7

Barrionuevo, Diego: 19

Barthélemy, l’Anglais: 37

Bartlik, Fr Bernard: 48

Bartolomew, St: 20

Basil, St: 32

Basile, Gianbattista: 33

Batlle, Antoni: 18

Bau, Fr. Calasanz: 20, 54, 59

Baylón, Paschal, St: 19

Beauvais, Pierre de: 37

Beauvais, Vincent de: 10

Becher, Udo: 41

Bede the Venerable, St: 46, 53

Bellarmino, Card. Roberto: 10, 24, 48, 66

Bellei, Br. Silvestro: 55

Beltrán, Luis St: 19

Benedict of Jesus, Br: 51

Benedict XII, Pope: 30

Benedict XIV, Pope: 53, 60

Benedict, St: 32, 52, 69

Benicasa, Ursula, Ven.: 51

Benizi, St Philip: 21

Benteviglio, Guido: 30

Berceo, Gonzalo de: 14, 38, 51, 63

Beretta, Fr. Ciriaco: 49

Berliner, Rudolf: 18

Bernard, St: 2, 22. 57. 69

Bernardini, Fr. Antonio: 69

Bernardo, Friar: 57

Bernini, Gian Lorenzo: 33

Berro, Fr. Vincenzo: 1, 2, 8, 11, 13, 16, 20, 23, 28, 31, 39, 44, 45, 48, 49, 50, 51, 55, 61, 63, 64, 69

Bertholin, Thomas: 37

Bianchi, Fr. Gabriel: 63, 64

Biscia, Hortensia wid. of: 55

Blaise, St: 55, 67

Blanes y Palafox, Ana de: 30

Bocaccio, Giovanni: 49, 60

Bolland, Jean: 66

Bomli, P.W.: 26

Bonaventure, St: 4, 21

Boniface IX, Pope: 7, 53

Boniface VIII, Pope: 20, 27

Boom, Adrian: 15

Borja, St Francis of: 19

Borromeo, St Charles: 14, 16, 19, 46

Bosco, St John: 34

Bossuet, Bishop Jacques-Bénigne: 4, 21, 32, 68

Bottini, Prospero, Archbishop of Myra: 20

Bourges, St Philip of: 46

Bridget of Sweden, St: 7

Brocense: vd Sánchez de las Brozas, Francisco

Busdraghi, Fr. Stefano: 21, 62

Butler, Alban: 66

Cabrera: 37

Cadell, Galcerán: 36

Caffarel, Jacques: 9

Calderón de la Barca, Pedro: 51

Calderón, Rodrigo: 67

Caligula, Emperor: 41

Camp, Joan: 18

Campanella, Tommaso: 9, 17, 40, 43, 64

Cananea, Fr. Pietro: 6, 18, 19, 24, 64

Canata, Fr. Andrea: 12, 36

Cano, Julius: 41

Cantero, John: 32

Capilla, Andrew, Bishop: 36

Caputi, Fr. Giancarlo: 11, 20, 31, 39, 51, 57

Carafa, Card. Gian Pietro: 27

Carducci, Giosué: 63

Carlini, Sor Benedetta: 27

Carniti, Cecilia: 52

Caro Baroja, Julio: 64

Caro, Rodrigo: 38, 39, 40

Carrasco, Sansón: 28

Casa Matey de Espés: 30

Casani, Blessed Pietro: 2, 9, 13, 51, 56, 57, 59, 67

Casani, Fr. Carlo: 13, 67

Casas, Friar Bartolomé de las: 17

Cassian of Imola, St: 60

Cassian, John: 29, 32, 52

Cassius, Bishop of Carmesia: 16

Castaldo Pescara, G.B.: 6

Castañega, Friar Martín de: 26

Castellani, Dr John Mary: 61

Castellani, Francesca: 61

Castelli, Fr Francis: 3, 11, 51

Castiglione, Baldasarre: 5

Castilla: vd. García del Castillo, Fr. John

Cato: 29, 38, 69

Cavada, Fr. Luigi: 35

Cervantes, Miguel: 5, 26, 27, 28, 36, 37, 56, 59, 64, 68

Charlemagne: 37

Charles IV, King of Spain: 54

Charles V, Emperor and King of Spain: 17, 59, 64

Checcucci, Fr. Alessandro: 34

Cherubini, Br. Angelo: 68

Cherubini, Fr. Stefano: 9, 14, 19, 29, 43, 51, 52, 53, 55, 65, 69

Chervino, Fr. Giorgio: 10

Chrisologo of Jesus: 22

Christopher, St: 62

Chrysippus of Soli: 17

Cicero: 2, 24, 45, 69

Cisneros, Card Francisco Jiménez de: 39, 53

Clement of Romae, Pope, St: 59

Clement VIII, Pope: 3, 5, 7, 20, 25, 30, 53, 64, 66

Clement IX, Pope: 18

Clement XI, Pope: 57

Clemente Libertino: 36

Colombo, Realdo: 37

Colonna, Card. Marcantonio: 20

Columban, St: 46

Columbus, Christophorus: 5, 65

Columella: 69

Comenius, John Amos: 18, 33

Constantine, Emperor: 24, 55

Contenti, Fr. Domenico: 18

Cordeses, Antonio: 1, 22

Corina: 26

Cornelius Agripa: 9

Covarrubias, Sebastian de: 17, 60

Crisólogo de Jesús: 22

Croce, Fr. Gaspar: 20

Cueva, Fr. Dionisio: 40, 69

Cupid: 31

Cuvier, Georges: 37

D´Ailly, Pierre: 65

D’Aulnoy, Marie-Catherine: 27, 60

De Changy: 53

de Ciney, Br Mutien-Marie: 20

De Cupis, Francesco: 39

de la Colombière, Claude: 25

de La Salle, St John Baptist: 34, 45

de Lellis, St Camillo: 5, 20

de Liguori, St Alfonso Maria: 40, 62

de Melo, Francisco Manuel: 36

de Paul, St Vincent: 57

de Sales, St Francis: 7, 15, 22, 25, 53, 66

Delumeau, Jean: 48

Democritus: 29

Descartes, René: 5, 12 59

Diego de San José: 15, 19

Dietrichstein, Card. Francis de: 5, 30

Díez de Cabrera, Francisco Antonio: 55, 64, 67

Diotima of Mantinea: 26

Dolciotti, Tito: 18

Dominici, Cl. Angel: 55

Domitian, Emperor: 56

Don Qixote: 28, 29, 60

Doyle, William Joseph Gabriel: 20

Dragonetti, Caspar: 18, 33

Drogon de Metz, Bishop: 46

Drolin, Br. Gabriel: 34

Dulcinea: 29, 56

Duns Scotus, John: 48

Durán, Rafael: 36

Durand de Mende, William: 16

Durandus of Saint-Pouçain: 48

Durant, Jean-Étienne de: 16

Durkheim, Emile: 42

Edmund of Abingdon, St: 62

Egiria: vd Etheria

Elia, Friar: 14, 57

Elisabeth I of England, Queen: 37

Empedocles: 8

Epictetus: 6

Erasmus of Rotterdam: 3, 5, 17, 23, 26, 29, 36, 42, 61, 67

Eros: 31

Escalona, Duke of: 30

Escobar del Corro, Juan: 64

Esteban Lorente, Juan Francisco: 19, 33

Esteban, Gaspar: 3

Etheria: 53, 59

Eustoquia: 24

Evagrius Ponticus: 32, 52

Falerio, Rodrigo: 9

Fareolus, Bishop: 42

Faubell, Fr. Vicente: 40

Fedele, Fr. Giuseppe: 4, 26, 58, 69

Fenelon, François: 40

Ferdinand II, Emperor: 19

Ferdinand IV, King of Hungary: 30

Ferrari, Br.: 20, 55

Ferrari, Lawrence: 52

Ferraris, Gian Battista: 21

Ferrer, Vincent, St: 6, 10, 25, 46, 57

Ferrís, Fr. José Ramón: 18

Ficino, Marsilio: 9

Fierro Gasca, Fr. Dionisio: 69

Fisas, Carlos: 56, 61

Flavius Josephus: 7

Folchi, Fr.: 54

Fonseca, Friar Cristóbal de: 25, 60

Font, Fr. Joseph: 24

Font, John: 36

Forcada, Josep: 18

Franchi, Fr. Gian Domenico: 21

Francis of Assisi, St: 11, 14, 21, 33, 57, 59, 60, 69

Francis of St Charles, Fr.: 23

Franzelin, Johann Baptist Card.: 47

Frasquet, Fr. Vicente: 18

Fremiot De Chantal, St Jane Frances: 53

Frescio, Fr. Joseph: 14, 52

Friedland, Valentin: 42

Fuente, Miguel de la: 22

Gabriel of Our Lady of Sorrows, St: 21

Gaius Rabirius: 24

Gaja, Lluís: 18

Galen: 8, 40

Galileo Galilei: 9, 12, 17, 64

Galofré, Fr. Modesto: 18

García del Castillo, Fr. John: 6, 11, 14, 18, 19, 24, 33, 37, 41, 46, 51

García Durán, Fr. Adolfo: 28, 47, 57

Gautier de Coincy: 28

Genesi, Fr. Nicholas: 49

Gersen, John, Abbot: 65

Gerson, Jean le Charlier: 65

Gessi, Card. Berlinghiero: 66

Ghislieri, Michele, Pious V Papa: 55

Gimmelshaussen, Hans Jacob Christoffel: 39

Giner, Fr. Severino: 20, 36, 51, 57. 69

Ginetti, Card. Mario: 55

Giustiniani, Card. Benedict: 28, 53

Glisson, Francis: 45

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang: 51

Gómez, Fr. Pedro: 57

Gonzaga, St Aloysius: 63

González, Angel: 51

Gordon, Noah: 64

Gorgon: 31

Gracia Vicién, Luis: 38

Gracián, Balthasar: 26, 40

Gracián, Jerónimo: 22

Granada, Friar Luis de: 22

Graziani, Fr. Giacomo: 9, 19, 51, 59, 61, 65, 66

Gregory of Tours, St: 53

Gregory the Great, St: 16, 23, 69

Gregory IX, Pope: 66

Gregory XI, Pope: 53

Gregory XIII, Pope: 16

Gregory XIV, Pope: 30

Gregory XV, Pope: 19

Grey, Lady Jane: 45

Greyssing, Fr. Andrew: 19

Grieg, Fr. Peter Paul: 31

Grien, Fr. Paul: 11

Grignion de Monfort, St Louis Marie: 4

Grimm Brothers: 33

Groot, Gerard: 22, 65

Guarino de Verona: 43

Guidiccioni, Alessandro, Bishop of Lucca: 48

Gustav Adolf of Sweden: 36

Gutenberg, Johannes: 15

Gutiérrez, Francisco: 4

Guzmán, Laureano de: 39

Guzmán, St Dominic de: 6, 14, 28, 63

Haendel, George Frideric: 63

Hamlet, prince: 25, 27

Häring, Bernhard: 48

Harun-al-Raschid: 37

Harvey, William: 37

Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa, von Nettescheim: vd Cornelius Agripa

Helen, St: 24

Henry III, King of France: 56

Heraclius, Emperor: 24

Hernández, Tiburcio: 54

Hervás y Panduro, Lorenzo: 54

Herzbruder, Ulrich: 39

Hesiod: 17

Hidalgo, Gaspar Lucas: 25

Hilary, St: 32, 52

Hippocrates: 8, 26

Homer: 31, 40, 58

Honorius III, Pope: 57

Horace: 59

Huarte de San Juan, Juan: 8, 26

Huizinga, Johan: 38

Hurtado de Mendoza, Diego: 27

Hus, John: 61

Iamundo, Bettina: 11

Inghirami, Tommaso: 9

Ingoli, Francesco: 36

Innocent IV, Pope: 22

Innocent VIII, Pope: 9

Innocent X, Pope: 17, 18, 19, 33, 64

Isabella of Spain, Queen: 19

Isidore the farmer, St: 19, 33

Jacobi of Thessalonia: 41

Jacobus a Voragine: 10, 55

James III, King of Scotland: 37

Jericó, Fr. José: 48, 66

Jerome, St: 24, 29, 32, 52, 59, 69

Jerominians: 42

Jiménez Barber, Miguel: 35

John Climacus, St: 23, 50

John of Avila, St: 6, 22, 46

John of God, St: 19

John of Jesus Mary: 4, 21, 45, 47, 69

John of St Stephen: 41

John of the Cross, St: 1, 22, 28

John Paul II, Pope: 4, 11, 55

John XXII, Pope: 60

Jonah, Bishop of Orleans: 46

Jonston, John: 37

Jude Thaddeus, St: 24

Julian the Apostate: 10

Julius II, Pope: 9

Juno Februata: 66

Jupiter: 31, 58

Justus and Pastor, Sts: 19, 33

Kempis, Thomas of: 47, 65, 69

Kepler, Johannes: 9

Ktesias: 37

Labouré, St Catherine: 31

Lactantius: 24

Landriani, Ven. Glycerio: 20, 24, 42, 55, 67

Lante, Marcello, Card.: 22

Lanzas, Fr.: 62

Lara y Girón, Manrique de: 36

Laredo, Bernardino de: 22

Lasalde, Fr. Carlos: 69

Latini, Brunetto: 37

Laura, Fr. Jerome: 21

Laurenti, Fr. Jerome: 40

Lawrence of Brindisi, St: 24, 63

Lawrence, St: 11, 53, 59, 68

Leailth, Fr. Ambrose: 36

Leiva, Virginia María de: 27

Lennon, John: 67

Lenzi, Fr. Ansano: 63

Leo X, Pope: 9, 66

Leo XI, Pope: 35

Leo XIII, Pope: 47

León, Friar Luis de: 26, 30

León, Friar Pablo de: 45

Leopold II, Grand Duke of Tuscany: 54

Leta: 32

Leucci, Fr. Francesco: 69

Libertino, Clemente: 36

Llompart, Gabriel: 55

Llull, Ramon: 24

Lobera de Ávila, Luis: 59

Locke, John: 8

Lodovico, Br.: 51

Lombard, Peter: 48

Lope de Vega, Félix: 60, 64

López de Montoya, Pedro: 44, 45

López Navío, Fr. José: 60

López, Fr. Salvador: 69

Lorenzo, Br.: 55

Loris, Bishop John Dimas: 10

Lortz, Joseph: 32

Lotus, Juan de Dios: 54

Louis the Pious, King of France: 46

Louis IX, King of France, St: 37

Louis XIII, King of France: 19

Louis XIV, King of France: 9, 46

Loyola, St Ignatius de: 19, 22, 24, 33, 46, 47, 61,62, 65, 67, 69

Lucan: 26

Lucena, Juan de: 19

Lucian of Samosata: 44

Ludovico il Moro: 9

Lunardi, Fr. Santino: 18

Luther, Martin: 36, 66

Magellan, Ferdinand: 9

Mañara, Miguel de: 68

Mancera, Marquis of: 27

Mantegna, Andrea: 31

Mantua, Marquis of: 56

Manzoni, Alessandro: 27, 32

Marangoni, Giovanni.: 3

Marañón, Gregorio: 46, 67

Marcelo, don: 26

Marciano, Giovanni: 16, 46, 49, 51

Marcuello, Francis: 33

Marquis of Ariza: 30

Marquise de Villars: 5, 60

Marsilio Ficino: 9

Martha, St: 20

Martín Descalzo, José Luis: 62

Martinice, Jaroslaw Borzita of: 36

Mary Magdalene: 48

Massimi, Fabricio: 62

Mauriac, François: 23

Maurus, St: 14

Maximilian I of Bavaria: 19

Mazzarino, Giulio Raimondo, Card.: 17

Mazzuca, Sixtilio: 48

Medusa: 31

Melanchton, Philip: 42

Mendoza, Iñigo de: 24

Mezonzo, St Peter: 2

Michelini, Fr. Francesco: 12, 36

Migne, Jacques-Paul: 10

Miguel, Celestí: 18

Minerva: 31

Mira de Amescua, Antonio: 51

Mistrangelo, Card Alfonso: 3, 43

Mitjavila, Angel: 18

Mohamed-ben–Yacub: 60

Moigno de Villebeau, François: 26

Moltmann, Jürgen: 21

Mombaer, Jan: 22

Montaigne, Michel de: 9, 17, 38

Montanari di Bagnacavallo, Giacomo: vd Bagnacavallo

Moore, St Thomas: 38

Morelli, Fr. A.: 11, 20

Morelli, Giovanni Alfonso: 45

Mullet, Michael: 62

Mussesti, Fr. Pietro: 52

Nausica: 40

Navarrete, Fr. José: 54

Navarro, Caspar: 26

Nefile: 60

Neri, St Philip: 16, 19, 20, 33, 46, 49, 51, 62, 63

Nicholas of Bari, St: 44, 55, 67

Nicht, Fr. Guido: 69

Nieremberg, Juan Eusebio: 25, 26, 30

Noah: 31

Nolasco, St Peter: 19

Noverano, Br. Francesco: 2

Numa Pompilius: 53

Ofelia: 27

Olivares, Conde-Duque de: 30, 39, 40, 46

Oller, Eusebi: 18

Origen: 37, 59

Osés, Fr. Faustino: 18

Osio, Gianpietro: 27

Osuna, Duke of: 32

Ovid: 40, 69

Ozanam, Blessed Frédéric: 54

Pacatula: 32

Padova, St Antony of: 20

Palafox y Mendoza, John de: 30

Palafox y Rebolledo, Pedro Jaime: 30

Palafox, Francisco: 30

Palamolla, Costantino: 11

Palladas: 59

Palma, Louis de la: 47

Panciroli, Giovanni Giacomo: 17

Panciroli, Ottavio: 20

Pantaleo, St: 55

Paracelsus: 38

Pascal, Blaise: 39

Passier, Mme.: 26

Pastor, Tommaso: 54

Patrick, St: 20

Paul III, Pope: 9

Paul IV, Pope: 27, 32, 64

Paul V, Pope: 3, 5, 13, 32, 35, 60, 64, 66

Paul VI, Pope: 19, 52

Paul the Deacon: 51

Paulo Warnefrido: vd Paul the Deacon

Pedanius Discorides: 38

Pedro II, King of Aragón: 60

Pelbartus of Themeswar: 62

Pelliccia, Guerrino: 16, 43

Péndola, Fr. Tommaso: 54

Penyafort, St Raymond of: 14, 19

Peralva, Antoni: 18

Pérez Altuna, Fr. Alejandro: 18

Pérez de la Herrera, Cristóbal: 68

Pérez de Valdivia, Diego: 6, 46

Peri, Fr. Giovanni Chrisostomo: 27

Pericles: 26

Perrault, Charles: 8, 33

Perret, Pieter: 15

Perseus: 31

Persius Flaccus: 38, 69

Pestalozzi, Johann Heinrich: 12

Peter Chrysologus, St: 52

Philip de Thaun: 37

Philip II, King of Spain: 30, 36, 64, 68

Philip III, King of Spain: 30, 67, 68

Philip IV, King of Spain: 7, 17, 30, 46, 27, 39

Philostratus of Athens: 37

Phocylides of Miletus: 69

Piantanida, Joseph of: 3

Picanyol, Fr. Leodegario: 9, 28, 58, 69

Piccolomìni, Aeneas Silvio: 43

Pineda, Friar John of: 17, 64

Pinelli, Fr. Luca: 22

Pious II, Pope: 43

Pious IV, Pope: 32

Pious V, Pope: 2, 7, 27, 53, 55

Pious VI, Pope: 30

Pious IX, Pope: 7, 31, 34, 53

Pious XI, Pope: 58

Pious XII, Pope: 7, 18, 53

Pirroti, St Pompilio Maria: 20

Plato: 6, 25, 26, 59

Pliny the Elder: 37, 69

Pliny the Younger: 38

Plometa: 36

Pöll, Wilhelm: 1

Porres, St Martín de: 20

Portolés, Fr. Liborio: 34

Provolo, Antonio: 34

Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite: 58, 69

Pythagoras: 26

Quevedo, Francisco de: 27, 68 334

Racconigi, Blessed Catalina of: 58

Rahner, Karl: 21

Ramo, Fr. Jesús: 18

Ranum, Orest: 67

Ravaggi, Br. Eustace: 26

Reale, Fr. Mateo: 41, 66

Recami, Flaminia: 26, 62

Reyna, Martín de: 41

Ribadeneira, Pedro de: 66

Richelieu, Armand Jean du Plessis, Card.: 9

Rinconete: 64

Ripa, Cesare: 19, 33

Ripalda, Jerónimo: 10, 46

Rivera, Princess Giovanna: 26

Rocamora, Friar Tomás: 67

Rodríguez Marín, Francisco: 60

Rodríguez, Ignacio: 8

Rojas y Sandoval, Bernardo de, Card: 30

Rojas, St Simón de: 4

Rolevinck, Werner: 15

Roma, Card Giulio: 6

Rosiani, Fr. Carlo: 18

Rosmini, Antonio: 54

Rostoll, Pere: 36

Rousseau, Jean-Jacques: 12

Rufo, Juan: 40

Ruiz Amado, Fr Ramón: 42

Ruiz, Fr Angel: 58

Russo, Giulio Cesare: 63

Ruzola, Fr. Dominic: 36

Saavedra Fajardo, Diego: 17, 67

Sabuco de Nantes, Oliva: 26

Sabuco, Miguel: 26

Sahagún, St John of: 19

Salazar Maldonado, Fr Francis: 2, 13, 22

Salistri, Fr. Chrisostomo: 21

Sallust: 69

Salvatierra, Count of: 30

San Pedro y Ustarroz, John de (vd. John of Jesus Mary)

Sánchez de las Brozas, Francisco, 21

Sánchez de Vercial, Clemente: 5, 16, 60, 62

Sánchez, Lucía: 27

Sancho Panza: 56, 64

Sancho VII, King of Navarre: 60

Santa Fe, Gregorio: 54

Sántha, Fr. György: 36, 40, 42, 43, 44, 47, 57

Sapor: 2

Sappho: 26

Sarmiento, Periquillo: 68

Scasellati, Fr. Camillo: 11, 20, 23

Schiller, Friedrich: 38

Schökel: vd Alonso Shökel

Scipio Africanus: 69

Sconamiglio, P: 55

Scupoli, Lorenzo: 52

Seneca, Bishop Antonio: 60

Seneca: 6, 40, 41, 68, 69

Sepúlveda, Ginés de: 17

Serge, Pope, St: 53

Servet, Miguel: 37

Settimi, Fr. Clemente: 12

Severano, Giovanni: 20

Sforza, Ludovico: vd Ludovico il Moro

Shakespeare, William: 25

Siena, St Bernardino di: 43

Siena, St Catherine of: 21

Sigismund, Emperor: 62

Signorini, Br. Salvatore: 18

Simancas, Diego de: 64

Simona, Fr. Geronimo: 23

Sixtus IV, Pope: 53

Sixtus V, Pope: 5, 7, 66

Sixtus VI, Pope: 53

Slawata of Chlum, Vilém: 36

Socrates: 26

Sorbino, Br. Arcangelo: 46

Soto, Domingo: 68

Soto, Francesco: 22

Sozzi, Fr. Mario: 10, 13, 36, 55

Standonck, Jan: 42

Stephen St.: 11

Stiso, Br. Eleuterio: 23

Sturm, Johannes: 42

Suárez, Francisco: 47

Suetonius: 69

Sulpicius Severus: 69

Talavera, Friar Hernando de: 25

Talenti, Fr. Vincenzo: 51, 69

Tasi, Fr. Antoni: 58

Teixidor, Fr. Josep: 5

Tencani, Fr. Pellegrino: 8

Tendilla, Countess of: 26

Teresa of Avila, St: 1, 15, 16, 19, 20, 21, 22, 28, 30, 33, 36, 41, 69

Tertullian: 10, 23, 24

Themistoclea: 26

Thibaut de Champagne, King of Navarre: 37

Thiene, St Cajetan of: 16, 46

Thomas of Jesus, Friar: 36

Thurston, Herbert: 55

Tilly, Johann Tserclaes, Count of: 36

Timon-David, Joseph-Marie: 69

Tirso de Molina: 68

Titus, Emperor: 69

Toledo, Juan de: 29

Tonti, Michelangelo, Card.: 5, 6, 46

Torra, Angel: 18

Torres, Card Luis de: 3

Torres, Francisco: 7, 53

Torstensson, Lennart: 36

Tosti, Fr. Osvaldo: 68

Trotzendorf: 42

Tudor, Mary: 45

Turmeda, Friar Anselm of: 49

Urban II, Pope: 60

Urban VI, Pope: 7, 53

Urban VIII, Pope: 5, 9, 18, 19, 64, 66

Valerian, Emperor: 2

Vallejo de Orellana, Fr. Paulo: 23

Varese de Rosate, Antonio: 9

Velázquez, Diego de: 5, 39

Venus: 58

Verelen, Fr. Hugo: 34

Veronese, Paolo: 58

Vianney, St John Mary: 23, 51

Vidal, Fr Diego: 54

Vidriera, Licenciate: 64

Vilá, Fr. Claudio: 57, 69

Villamediana, Count of: 67

Villanueva, St Thomas of: 10, 19

Villars, Marquise of: 5, 60

Villegas, Alonso de: 66

Viñas, Fr. Tomás: 5

Virgil: 18, 38, 69

Vitali, Fr. Antonio Maria: 29, 65

Vittorino di Feltre: 43

Vivarini, Antonio: 11

Vives, Louis: 12, 26, 29, 39, 40, 42, 43, 45, 68

Viviani, Fr. Vincenzo: 12

Von Pastor, Ludwing: 16, 17, 18

Wallenstein, Albrecht von: 9

Wals, Viscount of: 46

Wierix, Johannes: 15

William the Clerk of Normandy: 37

Wimpheling, Jacob: 15

Wiseman, Card. Nicholas: 34

Xavier, St Francis: 19, 33

Yánez y Ribera, Jerónimo de Alcalá: 68

Zabaleta, Juan de: 68

Zampieri, Domenico, Il Domenichino: 37

Zapata, Card. Antonio: 30

Zayas y Sotomayor, María: 26

Zorrilla, José: 68

Zucchi, Giuseppe: 58

Zurbarán, Francisco de: 21

Index of works cited

The numbering refers to the chapters in which each work is cited.

A Memorial of a Christian life, Fray Luis de Granada: 22

A Treatise on the Particular Examen of Conscience, Luis de la Palma: 47

Account of the Voyage to Spain, Comtess D´Aulnoy: 27, 60

Acta Sanctorum, Jean Bolland: 66

Ad Paulinum, St Jerome: 69

Aeneid, Virgil: 69

Ai Prelati della Visita Apostolica, Calasanz: 56

Alcuni Misterii della Vita e Passione di Cristo Signor nostro, Calasanz: 23, 35

Amatista, Hymn: 4

Anales Cervantinos, Journal: 60

Annales Ecclesiastici, Card. Cesare Baronio: 66

Annales, Fr B. Bartlik: 48

Annals, Fr José Jericó: 66

Annotations on the Roman Martyrology, Card. Cesare Baronio: 66

Annotazioni, Fr Vincenzo Berro: 1, 28, 44, 50, 55, 61, 69

Apology, Fr. Castelli: 3

Apology, Francis Ingoli: 36

Apostolicae vitae priscorum aliquot patrum ex Ordine Clericorum Regularium, G.B. Castaldo Pescara: 6

Archivum Scholarum Piarum, Journal: 68

Ars Amandi, Ovid: 40

Ascent of Mount Carmel, St John of the Cross: 1

Ascent of Mount Sion, Bernardino de Laredo: 22

Ascetic Constitutions, St Basil: 32

Audi filia, St John of Avila: 22

Avisos, Jerónimo Barrionuevo: 7

Avviamento chiaro et facile al Sacramento della Confessione et a quello della Comunione per bene et santamente confes sarsi e comunicarsi , Filippo Angelini: 15, 47

Banquete de nobles caballeros, Luis Lobera de Ávila: 59

Bestiaire, Pierre de Bauvais: 37

Bestiaires: 37

Biografía crítica de San José de Calasanz, Fr Calasanz Bau: 59

Book of Foundations, St Teresa of Avila: 22

Book of the Nativity of the Virgin Mary: 7

Book of Virtues of the Indian, Juan Palafox: 30

Book on prayer and meditation, Fray Luis de Granada: 22

Booklet for meditating on the Passion of Christ during the seven hours of the day: 23

Breve Notizia: 20

Breve relazione, Calasanz: 13, 44, 45

Breviarium Romanum: 66

Bula Sabatina, John XXII: 60

Butler’s Lives of the Saints: 55

Calasanz, Spiritual and Pedagogical Message, Fr Dionisio Cueva: 69

Calasanzian Studies 343

Calendar of St Willibard: 53

Carteggio, Galileo Galilei: 9

Casa Giocosa, Vittorino di Feltre: 43

Catechism of Trent: 46

Catechism, Jerónimo Ripalda: 10

Centuria di esempli notabili di alcuni Fanciulli e Giovani, Fr John Francis Apa: 14

Che non si debbono molestare ne dare fastidio alli Hebrei, Clement VIII: 64

Childhood, St Thomas Moore: 38

Chronicles, Bernardini: 69

Circa Pastoralis, Bull Pious V: 27

Città del Sole (Campanella): 40, 43

Climax, St John Climacus: 23, 50

Clocks of the Passion: 23

Colloquia, Erasmus of Rotterdam: 17, 29

Combattimento spirituale, Lorenzo Scupoli: 52

Commentarium in Psalmum 136, St Jerome: 52

Common Rites, Calasanz: 14, 43, 45, 47

Compendio de las solemnes fi estas que se hicieron en la beatificación de la M. Teresa de Jesús, Fray Diego de San José: 15, 19

Confessions, St Augustine: 29

Conquest of the Molucan Islands, Argensola B.L.: 15

Constitutiones, St Dominic of Guzman: 6

Constitutioni della Congregatione de’ Patri della Dottrina Chistiana: 59

Constitutions of 1536, Capuchin: 28

Constitutions of Albacina, Capuchin: 29, 56

Constitutions, Cherubini: 29

Constitutions, St Cajetan of Thiene:16

Costituzioni del Collegio Nazareno, St Joseph Calasanz: 14, 40, 45, 63, 67

De agricultura, Cato: 29

De civitate morum puerilium, Erasmus of Rotterdam: 61

De coelesti hierarchia, Pseudo Dionisius Areopagita: 58

De conjuratione Catilinae, Sallust: 69

De Consideratione, St Bernard: 69

De genitu columbae sive de bono lacrymarum, St Roberto Bellarmino: 48

De institutione Feminae Christianae, Luis Vives: 43

De Institutis Coenobiorum, Casiano: 52

De la oración mental, Jerónimo Gracián: 22

De ludo scacchorum in legali methodo tractatus, Tommaso Abezio: 41

De moribus hominum et de officiis nobilium super ludo scaccorum, Jacobi of Thessalonia: 41

De motu animalium, Giovanni Alfonso Morelli: 45

De occulta Philosophia, Cornelius Agripa: 9

De Oficiis, Cicero: 45, 69

De parvae pilae exercitatione, Galen: 40

De parvulis ad Christum tradendis, Jean Le Charlier Gerson: 65

De poenitentia. St Ambrose: 52

De praeparatione ad mortem, Erasmus of Rotterdam: 23

De re rustica, Columella: 69

De ritibus Ecclesiae Catholicae, John Stephen Durant: 16

De subventione pauperum, Luis Vives: 68

De temporum ratione, St Bede: 53

De tradendis disciplinis, Luis Vives: 40, 45

De tranquilitate animi ad Serenum, Seneca: 41

De vita Ceasarum, Suetonius: 69

Decameron, Bocaccio: 49

Dechado de la vida humana moralmente sacado del juego de ajedrez, Martín de Reyna: 41

Declamatio de pueris statim ac liberaliter instituendis, Erasmus of Rotterdam: 17

Decretals, Pope Gregory IX: 66

Defentio statuti toletani a sede apostolica saepe confi rmati, pro his, qui bonno et incontaminato genere nati sunt, Diego de Simancas: 64

Del modo come debbono essere le Scuole Pie, Calasanz: 60

Dell’Educazione Cristiana e Politica de´ Figliouoli, Card. Silvio Antoniano: 40, 43, 45

Dell’Educazione dei sordomuti, Journal: 54

Día de fiesta por la tarde, Juan de Zabaleta: 68

Diálogos de apacible entretenimiento, Gaspar Lucas Hidalgo: 25

Diálogos familiares de la agricultura cristiana, Fray Juan de Pineda: 64

Dialogues, Luis Vives: 29, 39

Días geniales o lúdricos, Rodrigo Caro: 38, 40

Diccionario de Antigüedades: 60

Dichiarazion circa le nostre Costituzioni, Regole e Riti Comuni, Calasanz: 29, 41, 42, 60

Dictionary of Literary Authors, Bompiani: 8

Didache: 59

Directorio de Preces de los Clérigos Regulares Pobres de la Madre de Dios de las Escuelas Pías: 22

Directory for Masses with children: 2

Discernimiento filosófico de ingenios, Ignacio Rodríguez: 8

Discours on the Method, Descartes: 12

Discours sur l’Agonie de Jesu-Christ, Bossuet: 21

Discurso del amparo de los legítimos pobres y reducción de los fingidos, Cristóbal Pérez de la Herrera: 68

Divina Commedia, Dante: 15

Doctrina pro pueris ecclesiae parisiensis, Jean Le Charlier Gerson: 65

Documenta Spiritualia ex epistolis S. Josephi Calasantii a Matre Dei, Guido Nicht: 69

Don Juan Palafox y Mendoza’s Interior Life, Juan Palafox: 30

Don Juan Tenorio, José Zorrilla: 68

Don Qixote, Cervantes: 36, 56, 59, 64

Ecclesia Sanctae: 41

Eco dei nostri centenari: 58

Edict on cloistered nuns, Bishop Antonio Agustín: 27

El burlador de Sevilla, Tirso de Molina: 68

El buscapié, Cervantes: 26

El coloquio de los perros, Cervantes: 27

El criticón, Baltasar Gracián: 26

El Donado hablador, Jerónimo de Alcalá Yánez: 68

El esclavo del demonio, Antonio Mira de Amescua: 51

El Espíritu de San José de Calasanz, Carlos Lasalde: 69

El lazarillo de Tormes: 68

El Licenciado Vidriera, Miguel de Cervantes: 5

El mágico prodigioso, Pedro Calderón de la Barca: 51

El proceso de beatificación de San José de Calasanz, Severino Giner: 57

Emile, Jean Jaques Rousseau: 12

Enarrationes in Psalmos, San Agustín: 52

Enchiridion sodalis Calasanziani, Leodegario Picanyol: 69

Epistle 2 Ad Sororem, Sulpicius Severus: 69

Epistolario, Picanyol: 28

Epistula 194 Ad Sixtum, St Augustine: 69

Epistula 701, St Augustine: 69

Epistula ad Furiam, St Jerome: 59

Epistula ad Nepotianum, St Jerome: 69

Epistulae ad S. Iosephum Calasanctium ex Europa Centrali, G. Sántha: 36

Epistulae saturnales, Lucian of Samosata: 44

Epistulae, Seneca: 41

Escuela Española de Sordomudos, Tiburcio Hernández: 54

Esercitij spirituali che si pratticano dalli Chierici Regolari Poveri della Madre di Dio: 22, 35

Espíritu de San José de Calasanz, Fr Carlos Lasalde: 69

Essais, Montaigne: 38

Essortazione... alla Republica di Venezia, Card. Cesare Baronio: 66

Etymologies, St Isidorus: 37

Examen de ingenios para las ciencias, Juan Huarte de San Juan: 8, 26

Excellencies of St Peter, Prince of the Apostles, Juan de Palafox: 30

Exercise to make a Crown of 12 stars to the Virgin Mary in honor of her most holy Asumption, John of Jesus Mary: 4

Exercises on mental prayer collected from various authors, Miguel de la Fuente: 22

Exorcisms against the infernal spirits, earthquakes, thunderstorms, storms and all evil infections, Pedro Casani: 51

Faust, Goethe: 51

Flos Sanctorum, Alonso de Villegas: 66

Flos Sanctorum, Pedro de Ribadeneira: 66

Gelasian Sacramentary: 53

Georgics, Virgil: 69

Golden Legend, Jacobus a Voragine: 10, 55

Graves et diuturnae, Clement III: 3

Gregorian Sacramentary: 53

Guide to Heaven, Friar Paul de León: 45

Guzmán de Alfarache, Mateo Alemán: 68

Histoire naturelle des cétacés, Cuvier: 37

Historia de los movimientos, separación y guerra de Cataluña, Clemente Libertino: 36

Historia natural y moral de las aves, Francis Marcuello: 33

History of the Conquest of China by Tartari, Juan Palafox: 30

Homo ludens, Huizinga: 38

I due compagni e il blasfemo, Baldasarre Castiglione: 5

I promesi sposi, Manzoni: 27, 32

I tesori nascoti dell’alma città di Roma, Ottavio Panciroli: 20

Iconologia, ovvero descrittione dell’Imagini universali cavate dell’Antichitá et da altri luoghi, Cesare Ripa: 19, 33

Idea of a Christian political Prince, Saavedra Fajardo: 17

Il Decamerone, Bocaccio: 49, 60

Iliad, Homer: 31, 58

Imago Mundi, Pierre d’Ailly: 65

Imitation of Christ, Thomas de Kempis: 21, 28, 47, 65, 66, 69

In IVm Sententiarum, St Thomas Aquinas: 48

Indika, Ktesias: 37

Indulgentiarum doctrina, Paul VI: 19

Ineffabilis Deus, Pious IX: 7, 53

Institutiones Cenobiticae, Cassian: 29, 52

Instructio Magistri Novitiorum, John of Jesus Mary: 21

Instructio Novitiorum (Instruction of novices), John of Jesus Mary: 21

Instruction for Bachilleres de Pupilos, 39

Instruction of the Christian woman, Luis Vives: 26

Introducción a la vida devota, St Francis de Sales: 22

Itinerario espiritual de San José de Calasanz de 1592 a 1622, Adolfo García-Durán: 57

Itinerarium Aetheriae, Eteria: 59

Itinerary of Christian Perfection, Antonio Cordeses: 1

Juegos Aragoneses. Historia y Tradiciones, Luis Gracia Vicién: 38

Juicio político de los daños y reparos de cualquier monarquía, Juan Palafox: 30

Kempis: vd Immitation of Christ

L’évolution pedagogique de France, Emile Durkheim: 42

La città del Sole, Campanella: 40

La disputa del asno contra Fray Anselmo de Turmeda, Anselm of Turmeda: 49

La femme dans l’Espagne du siècle d’or, P.W. Bomli: 26

La fuerza del amor, María Zayas y Sotomayor: 26

La ilustre fregona, Miguel de Cervantes: 27, 68

La Manna di San Nicola, Scognamilio: 55

La perfecta casada, Friar Luis de León: 30

La superstition, Françoise Askevis-Leherpeux: 37

Ladder of Divine Ascent, St John Climacus: 23, 50

Las formas complejas de la vida religiosa (Siglo XVI y XVII), Julio Caro Baroja: 64

Lauretan Liturgy, Erasmus of Rotterdam: 5

Letter to the Mayors and Aldermen of all the Cities of Germany in Behalf of Christian Schools., Luther: 36

Libellus de vera compunctione cordis, Thomas de Kempis: 47

Liber consuetudinum, St Dominic de Guzmán: 28

Liber de pia educatione, John of Jesus Mary: 45, 47

Liber de proprietatibus rerum, Barthélemy l’Anglais: 37

Libro de la buena educación y enseñanza de los Nobles, Pedro López de Montoya: 44, 45

Libro de los Exemplos por A.B.C., Clemente Sánchez de Vercial: 5, 16, 60, 62

Life of Apollonius of Tyana, Philostratus of Athens: 37

Life of the Buscón Don Pablos, Quevedo: 27

Life of the Glorious Father and Patriarch St. Philip Neri, Giovanni Marciano: 49

Lo cunto de li cunti, Giambattista Basile: 33

Los alcaldes de Daganzo, Cervantes: 26

Los melindres de Belisa, Lope de Vega: 60

Los novios de Hornachuelos, Lope de Vega: 64

Manual Oracle, Baltasar Gracián: 40

Martirologio Romano, Cesare Baronio: 66

Martyrologium Hieronymianum: 7, 53

Maundy Thursday, François Mauriac: 23

Meditazioni sopra i principali misteri della Vita, Pasione e Resur rezione di Cristo, Luca Pinelli: 22

Memorandum to Card Giulio Roma, Calasanz: 6

Memorandum to Card. Tonti, Calasanz: 6

Memorial de los arcabuces que se han prestado a los señores canónigos, Calasanz: 36

Memorie sacre delle sette chiese di Roma e di altri luoghi che si tro vano per le strade, Giovanni Severano: 20

Minerva de la Juventud Española, Journal: 54

Miracles of Our Lady, Gonzalo de Berceo: 14, 51, 63

Missale: 66

Moralia, St Gregory the Great: 23

Munificentissimus Deus, Pious XII: 53

Mystical Life in a Dominican convent of the Middle Ages: 23

Natural History, Jonston: 37

Natural History, Pliny the Elder: 37, 69

Notizie historiche, Giancarlo Caputi: 57

Novelas ejemplares, Cervantes: 64

Ode 16, Horace: 59

Odyssey, Homer: 40

On Regimen, Hipócrates: 26

On Regimen, Hippocrates: 26

On virginity, St Athanasius: 59

Opera Omnia, Jean Gerson: 65

Orbis sensualium pictus, Comenius: 33

Ordine per i maestri, Calasanz: 45

Ordini da osservarsi dali maestri Poveri della Madre di Dio delle Scuole Pie: 42

Paraenesis ad Rempublicam Venetam, Card. Cesare Baronio: 32, 66

Parallèle des Anciens et des Modernes, Charles Perrault: 8

Partidas, Alfonso X: 28

Patrologia Latina, Jacques Paul Migne: 10

Pensées, Pascal: 39

Pentamerone, Giambattista Basile: 33

Periculoso, Boniface VIII: 27

Periquillo Sarmiento, José Joaquín Fernández de Lizardi: 68

Perpetual Almanac: 9

Phaedrus, Plato: 25

Physiologus Graecus: 37

Piae meditationes de SS.Sacr. Eucharistiae, Luca Pinelli: 22

Piae Sententiae, Calasanz: 40, 51, 52

Pilgrimage of Philotea to the Holy Temple of the Cross, Juan Palafox: 30

Plan de enseñanza a los sordo-mudos el idioma español, Tiburcio Hernández: 54

Poor Robin Almanack: 39

Popular culture and popular protest in late medieval and early modern Europe, Michael Mullett: 62

Positio, Claudio Vilà: 57

Presbiterorum Ordinis: 41

Pro Reformatione Monialium, Paul IV: 27

Processus ne probationes perirent: 58

Processus ob furtum: 44

Prol. in Trad in Ep Joan, St Augustine: 69

Protoevangelium of St James: 7, 53

Pusilli Gregis Idea, Pietro Casani: 56, 57

Quae conducere posse videntur ad institutum nostrum firmandum et perficiendum, Casani: 57

Quod animi mores corporis temperaturam insequantur, Galen: 8

Ratio Studiorum, Giacomo Montanari di Bagnacavallo: 69

Ratio Studiorum, Jesuits: 42, 44

Rationale divinorum officiorum, William Durando of Mende: 16

Regimen sanitatis salernitanum: 29

Règles de Biénseance, St John Baptist de la Salle: 45

Regole Communi de’ Poveri delle Madre di Dio, Pietro Casani: 57, 59

Regole del Maestro, Calasanz: 42

Regula S. Salvatoris, St Bridget of Sweden: 7, 53

Regulae circa bonos mores scholasticis externis servandos, Jesuits: 42

Regulae pastoralis liber, St Gregory the Great: 69

Regulae Praefecti Studiorum Inferiorum, Jesuits: 44

Regulations for pupils of Collegio Nazareno, St Joseph Calasanz: 43

Regulations for the school of Narni, St Joseph Calasanz: 43

Relox de las horas canónicas para eclesiásticos, Paulo Vallejo de Orellana: 23

Remedia amoris, Ovid: 69

Ricordi autographi, Galileo Galilei: 9

Roman Breviary: 29

Roman Cathechism: 48

Roman Ritual: 48, 58

Rosetum Exercitiorum Spiritualium, John Mombaer: 22

Rule of St Albert: 22

Rule of St. Columban: 46

Rule of the Tertiaries or Brothers of Penance, St Francis of Assisi: 59

Rule of the Third Order, St Francis of Assisi: 60

Rule, St Benedict: 52, 69

Rules for the novices of the Pious Schools, Calasanz: 25, 26, 29, 46, 47, 49, 50, 51, 52, 56, 57

Rules of Novices of the Pious Schools, 1906: 69

Rules of Novices, 1898: 57

Sacramental, Sanchez de Vercial: 60

San José de Calasanz Maestro y Fundador, Severino Giner: 36, 57, 69

Satires, Persius Flacus: 69

Schola de Oratione et Contemplatione, John of Jesus Mary: 69

Second Rule, St Francis of Assisi: 57

Sententiae ad coenobium, Evagrius Ponticus: 52

Sermo 351,4, St Augustine: 69

Sermon 169, St Augustine: 69

Sermon 215, St Augustine: 44

Sermon 26, St John Climacus: 23, 50

Sermon 48, 2, St Augustine: 69

Sermon I, 2 In festum Annuntiationis B.M.V., St Bernard: 69

Sermon on the eminent dignity of the poor in the Church, Bossuet: 68

Sermon on the need to send children to school, Luther: 36

Seven against Thebes: 31

Seven hours of prayer to the Heart of Christ covering the principal acts of the passion of the Lord, J.B. Agnesio: 23

Sitio y socorro de Fuenterravía y sucesos del año 1638, Juan de Palafox: 30

Sixtus-Clementine Vulgata: 32

Sollicitudo omnium ecclesiarum, Alexander VII: 7, 53

Some Thoughts concerning Education, John Locke: 8

Speculum historiale, Vincent de Beauvais: 10

Spiritual Exercises, St Ignatius de Loyola: 22, 47, 61, 67, 69

Spiritual Year, Juan de Palafox: 30

Stanzas to Veronica, Iñigo de Mendoza: 24

Statuta pro domibus recollectionis Hispaniae, Capuchins: 56

Studiorum ducem, Pious XI: 58

Summa Theologica, St Thomas Aquinas: 46

Summary of the Institute of the Pauline Congregation of the Poor of the Mother of God of the Pious Schools, published by Fr. Adolfo García-Durán: 28, 56

Tesoretto, Brunetto Latini: 37

Tesoro de la lengua castellana, Covarrubias: 60

Testament and protestation, Juan de Palafox: 30

The Adventurer Simplicissimus, H.J.Ch. Gimmelshaussen: 39

The Book of her Life, St Teresa of Avila: 1, 22

The Catholic educator according to the spirit of St Joseph Calasanz, Andrea Canata: 12

The Child and the Family in the Ancien Régime, Ariés: 38

The Frontier of God, José Luis Martin Descalzo: 62

The Glories of Mary, St Alphonsus M. de Liguori: 62

The Holy nun, St Alfonso Maria de Liguori: 40

The interior Castle, St Teresa of Avila: 1

The ladder of Divine Ascent, St John Climacus: 23, 50

The last Jew, Noah Gordon: 64

The Mansions, St Teresa of Avila: 1, 21

The Shepherd of Noche-Buena, Juan Palafox: 30

The Spectator, Addison: 45

Tractatum in Psalmum 136, St Hilary: 52

Tractatus bipartitus de puritate et nobilitate probanda, Escobar del Corro: 64

Tratado de Iconografía, J.F. Esteban Lorente: 19

Trattato dell´altra vita, Luca Pinelli: 22

Trattato della direzione di fiumi, Francesco Michelini: 12

Treatise on Diplomacy, Francisco Antonio Díez de Cabrera: 55, 67

Treatise on Mental Prayer, Antonio Cordeses: 1

Treatise on prayer and meditation, St Peter of Alcántara: 22

Treatise on purgative life, Antonio Cordeses: 22

Treatise on Spiritual life, St Vincent Ferrer: 6, 57

Treatise on the love of God, Fray Cristóbal de Fonseca: 60

Treatise on the particular examen of conscience, Palma: 47

Tribunal de la superstición ladina, Gaspar Navarro: 26

True devotion to Mary, St Louis Marie Grignion de Monfort: 4

Two friends of Calasanz: Frs. Bagnacavallo and Larino, Claudio Vilà: 69

Ut in privilegio similitudinem, St John Climacus: 50

Varón de deseos, Juan de Palafox: 30

Varones insignes en santidad de vida del Instituto y religión de Clérigos Regulares Pobres de la Madre de Dios de las Escuelas Pías, José Jericó: 48

Very subtle and well-founded Treatise of Superstitions and Sorceries, Castañega M.de: 26

Vita del Beato Giuseppe Calasanzio della Madre di Dio, Vincenzo Talenti: 51, 69

Vita di Giovanni Bta. de la Salle: 34

Way of Perfection, St Teresa of Avila: 41, 69

Table of Contents

Introduction

1. An attempt to analize a Mystical Moment of Calasanz

2. Calasanz and the antiphon “We fly to your patronage”

3. The continuous prayer according to Calasanz

4. The crown of the Twelve Stars

5. The Litany of Loreto

6. Calasanz and the apostolic poverty

7. Calasanz and seven marian feasts

8. The psychodiagnostics of Calasanz

9. Did Calasanz believe in astrology?

10. Stoning a crucifix

11. The apparition of Our Lady of Monti to St. Joseph Calasanz

12. Calasanz and the modern science

13. Religious pictures, rosaries and agnusdei for prizes

14. The educational efficacy of example

15. Calasanz and the Graphic Arts

16. The daily celebration of the Holy Mass

17. 400 years of school for all

18. Calasanz and the christmas cribs

19. The medal of the five saints

20. The gift of agility and the visit to the seven basilicas

21. The book of Calasanz

22. Meditation on the Passion of the Lord

23. The clock of the Passion

24. The sign of the Cross and the Crucifix

25. Calasanz and the women

26. Calasanz and the education of women

27. Calasanz and the nuns

28. The habit of the most Holy Virgin

29. A sacralization of the meals?

30. Calasanz and the father of Juan Palafox, Bishop of Puebla

31. Origins of the emblem of the Pious Schools

32. Calasanz and the Bible

33. Calasanz and the intuitive method

34. Calasanz in La Salle and in Don Bosco

35. Calasanz’s devotion to the Holy Trinity

36. Saint Joseph Calasanz and the protestants

37. The horn of the unicorn

38. In his childhood, Calasanz played

39. Did Calasanz play in his youth?

40. The games of Calasanz’ pupils

41. Calazanz and the recreations of his religious

42. Decurions

43. The pedagogy of the game

44. The emperor of the students

45. Very modest games

46. Daily confession

47. The act of contrition

48. Atrition and contrition

49. Paying for confession

50. Death, judgement, gall and vinegar

51. Calasanz and the devil

52. To crash temptations on the rock which is Christ

53. The seven feasts of our Lady

54. Calasanz and the mute and deaf

55. The manna of Saint Nicholas, the heart of Landriani and the Gospel of Saint John

56. On napkins and long tablecloths

57. Who was the author of the Rules of Novices?

58. The belt of chastity

59. The moderate rigor of fasting

60. “Duelos y quebrantos” on saturdays

61. Bread as much as you like

62. From sudden death, deliver us, oh God

63. The child preacher

64. Calasanz and the jews

65. Calasanz and John Gerson

66. Small pieces of paper with names of saints

67. Relics of saints and non-saints

68. Alms in exchange for prayers

69. The sixty spiritual maxims

Index of proper names

Index of works cited