The grey dog was the topic of many conversations and various conjectures.1
Many of you have seen him and even petted him. Now, laying aside the fantastic
stories which are told of this dog, I will tell you plainly only what is pure
truth.2
The frequent attacks which had been made against me made it inadvisable for
me to walk to or from the city of Turin alone. In those days, the asylum was the
last building on the way to the Oratory. The rest of the way was land covered
with hawthorn and acacia trees.3
One dark evening, rather late, I was making my way home with some
trepidation when a huge dog appeared beside me, which at first sight gave me a
start. But he seemed friendly and even nuzzled me as if I were his master. We
quickly became friends, and he accompanied me as far as the Oratory. Many other
times that evening's experience was repeated. Indeed, I may say that Grigio4
did me valuable service. Here are a few examples.
On a wet, foggy night at the end of November 1854, I was coming from the
city. So as not to have a long way to go alone, I took the street connecting Our
Lady of Consolation and the Cottolengo.5 At one point along the
street I noticed two men walking a little in front of me. They matched their
pace to mine, quickening or slowing down as I did. When I crossed the road to
dodge them, they crossed right over in front of me. I attempted to turn back but
was not in time. For they suddenly jumped me from behind, keeping an ominous
silence, and threw a cloak over my head. I fought to keep from getting tangled
up but it was no use. Then one also tried to stuff a rag into my mouth. I was
trying to shout but could no longer do so. At that moment Grigio appeared, and
growling like a bear he leapt into the face of one man while snapping viciously
at the other. They plainly would have to tangle with the dog before finishing
with me.
"Call off your dog," they began to cry, trembling with fear.
"I'll call him off," I said, "when you agree to leave
passers-by alone."
"Call him off quick," they exclaimed.
Grigio continued growling like an enraged wolf or bear. The two men took to
their heels, and Grigio stayed by my side, accompanying me until I went into the
Cottolengo Institute. After recovering from my scare, and refreshed by a drink
which that charitable institute always seems to come up with at the right
moment, I went on home with a good escort.6
Every evening when I had no other company, as I passed the [last] buildings
I would see Grigio bound out of nowhere along the way. Many times the Oratory
boys saw him. Once he was the centre of an amusing incident. The boys saw him
coming into the courtyard. Some wanted to strike him, and others wanted to throw
stones at him.
"Don't tease him," Joseph Buzzetti ordered. "That's Don
Bosco's dog." They turned to patting and stroking him then as they brought
him along to me. I was in the refectory having supper with some seminarians and
priests and with my mother. They were alarmed at the unexpected sight of the
dog.
"There's no need to be afraid," I said. "It's my Grigio. Let
him come in."
In fact he made a wide tour round the table and came joyfully up to me. I
patted him too and offered him soup, tread, and meat, but he refused all of it.
He would not even sniff at what I offered.
"Well, what do you want?" I asked. He only cocked his ears and
wagged his tail.
"Either eat or drink or otherwise entertain me," I concluded.
He continued to evidence contentment,
resting his head on my
napkin as if he wanted to speak to me and
tell me "Good night." Then the boys,
wondering a greut deal and quite happy, led him outside. I remember
that I had come home late, and a friend had brought me in his carriage/
The last time that I .saw Grigio was in i8668 while
I was going from Murialdo to Moticucco to see
my friend Louis Muglia/'
The parish priest of Buttigliera wanted to accompany me part of the way. and
as a consequence I was surprised by nigh tt all only halfway on my journey.
"Oh, if only I had my Grigio," I thought to myself, "how
fortunate I would be!" Having said that,
I started across a field to take
advantage of the last
rays of light. Just then Grigio came hounding up
to me, full of affection.
He accompanied me for the stretch
of road that I still had to travel, which was
two miles.
When I got to my friend's house, where
I was expected, they asked me to go
round another way, fearing there would
be a fight between my Grigio and
the family's two mastiffs. "If they got into a Tight," said Moglia, "they would tear cac-h
other to pieces."
I talked a lot with the whole
famih before we sat down to supper.
My companion uas left to rest in
a corner of the room. When we had finished our meal, my
friend said, "We must also
give Grigio his supper."
He took a little food to bring
to the dog; he looked in every corner
of the room and of the house, but
Grigio was not to be found. We all wondered, since neither door
nor window was open, nor had the
family dogs given any sign of his departure. We
renewed our search upstairs, but no one could find him.
That in the
last news I had of the grey dog that
was the subject of so much enquiry and discussion. I never
was able to find out who was his owner, I only know that the animal was truly
providential for me on many
occasions when I found myself in danger.10
Notes
1. Because of the dog's gray fur Don Bosco named him "Grigio."
Art teacher Charles Tomatis, who was a student at the Oratory and saw Grigio,
described the mysterious animal to Lemoyne:
It had a truly frightening appearance. Every rime she
saw it, Mama Margaret would unfailingly
exclaim: "Oh, what an ugly beast!" It looked like a wolf, with a long snout, erect pointed ears, and
gray fur. It was over three feet tall. (BM IV, 497)
2. The story of Grigio does,
indeed, sound fantastic. We should note two things right away:
1. Don Bosco has just said that there are some ''fantastic stories"
being told about the dug, but he will tell only what actually happened.
2. He was not writing for publication but for the private readership of the
Salesians; he had no need to impress anyone. Several Salesians had been
eyewitnesses to these events; among those who saw and petted Grigio were Joseph
Buzzetti, Michael Rua, John Cagliero, and John Baptist Francesia (BM IV,
496-502; Francesia, Vita breve e popolare, p. 179).
3. The distance is about a quarter mile. Don Bosco uses the Italian word bossoli
[boxwood), which is almost identical to the Piedmontese bóssol (hawthorn),
and tbat is what he meant.
4. Don Bosco, aside from the first words of the chapter, calls the dog
simply il grigio, without either the noun cane or capitalization
of the name which he bestowed on the beast.
5. One block along via della Consolata, across corso San Massimo, and one
block along via Ariosto.
6. From the front door of the Cottolengo to the Oratory was a block and a
half along via Cottolengo and another block along via della Giardiniera.
7. Buzzetti recalled "that Marquis Dominic Fassati had taken Don Bosco
home late that night in his coach. Having missed him. Grigio seemed to have come
to assure Don Bosco that he had waited for
him with his customary fidelity" (BM IV, 500).
In 1920 an old Turinese priest, Father
Philip Durando, recounted to a Salesian missionary, Father John Aliberti,
how the dog appeared another time in the Salesian dining room
while Father Durando was having supper with Don Bpsco.
(MB XVIIl, 869-870)
8. Bonetti (pp. 263-264) and Lemoyne (BM IV, 496-502; VIII,
222) tell of several other incidents in which Grigio saved Don Bosco from
assailants in the early 18505 or kept him company on lonely walks in the dark.
This 1866 appearance was the last as of the time when Don Bosco was writing
his memoirs (but cf. BM X, 177). In 1883, however, he saw the mysterious dog
again while returning to Vallecrosia from Ventimiglia (in western Liguria!)
late one evening (MB XVIII, 8). He spoke of this appearance several times in
different places. One of those who heard him tell the story was his French
biographer Doctor Charles D'Espiney (MB XVI, 36; XVIII, 10); another was Father
Se-condo Gay, pastor of Saint Silvester's Church in Asti, who testified to it on
October 17, 1908, during the gathering of evidence for Don Bosco's
beatification.
9. As seminarian and as priest Don Bosco cherished the Moglias and visited
them frequently; he is being quite reserved here when he speaks of them.
10. Don Bosco often thought about trying to learn where the dog came from.
In the end he just said, "Well, let him belong to whomever he likes, as
long as he's my good friend." Henri Gheon wrote:
Providence can use a dog. An angel could quite well take the form of a dog.
At the very least we can assert that the animal — if animal it was —had a nose for sanctity, and would
fight for it. If it was a miracle, God worked so many other miracles for Don
Bosco that this one need not surprise us. (Secrets of the Saints [New
York: Sheed & Ward, 1951], p. 358)
It is not inappropriate that the Lord should provide a special guardian for
the priest who was the special guardian of so many poor and abandoned
youngsters.
If Don Bosco has not told us all that he knew or suspected about Grigio
(besides keeping silent about the other divine interventions to be mentioned in
a moment), it is at least partly because he never proposed to write a complete
autobiography or a complete history of the Oratory. There are, moreover, things
that modesty does not permit one to write, regardless of commands.
But Grigio appeals to our curiosity in a unique way and makes us ask about
his origins. In answer to a query in 1870, Don Bosco remarked, "It sounds
ridiculous to call him an angel, yet he is no ordinary dog ..." (BM X,
177)-Another time, in 1883, Don Bosco was visiting the Olive family, generous
benefactors from Marseilles. He told them how he had recently met his old and
faithful gray friend on the road from Ventimiglia. The astonished lady of the
house observed that Grigio would have to be two or three times older than dogs
normally live. Don Bosco smiled mischievously. "Then it must have been
Grigio's son or grandson," he suggested, evading the issue she was driving
at. (MB XVI, 36)
The Salesian Sisters also claim to have experienced Grigio's protection on
three occasions between 1893 and 1930 (MB XVI, 36-37)!
The Salesians feel safe in believing that Grigio sired no pups.
This seems to be an opportune place to raise a larger question, at least
for those who know something more of Don Bosco than he tells us in these pages.
How believable are the supernatural events connected with him? How reliable
are the various sources for his biographies?
Pietro Stella has investigated some of the extraordinary charisms
attributed to Don Bosco (ReCa, pp. 475-500). We referred at some length
to Don Bosco's dreams in a comment at the end of chapter 2; he relates or
mentions several of them in his memoirs, and others have turned up in the
commentary.
Perhaps the most challenged instance of the supernatural in Don Bosco's
life, if it actually occurred, is the reported raising to life, or
resuscitation, of a deceased boy called "Charles." Stella made a
forty-seven-page study of the case as a way of illustrating his historical
method: Don Bosco and the Death of Charles, trans. John Drury (New
Rochelle: Don Bosco Publications, 1985).
One may be skeptical about "Charles" or not, as one judges the
skimpy evidence. Some have tried to discount all or most of the extraordinary
events, as well as others (such as Don Bosco's dealings with certain great men
and an occasion when he took some three hundred inmates of the Generala Prison
on a day's outing without a single guard, and returned all of them in the
evening). Some have discounted most of the Biographical Memoirs because
they are barely documented and for other reasons. Ceria responded to such
critics in a long letter addressed to the director of the Salesian theological
school at Bollengo, outside Turin, on March 9, 1953. A translation of this
letter is available in photocopy from Don Bosco Publications.
Others have said that in Don Bosco the
extraordinary became ordinary. On at least one occasion each he multiplied
chestnuts (BM III, 404-406) and breakfast rolls (BM VI, 453-455); he multiplied
the Holy Eucharist several times (BM III, 311-312; VI, 580-581; VII, 388-389; MB
XVII, 520-521). There are well-documented instances of bilocation (BM VII,
290-29!; XIV, 552-555; MB XVIII, 34-39}. The exam-pies of his predictions of
deaths and other future events, his healings of the sick (at least sixty cases
have been counted), his knowledge of consciences and of events happening miles
away are countless and are abundantly witnessed (see MB XX under the headings Predizioni,
Gnarigione, Scrutazione dei cuori, Coscienze, Cuari, Leggere in frontc, and Loniana).