INTRODUCTION TO THE ENGLISH EDITION        

by Michael Mendl, SDB

Before one begins reading Don Bosco's autobiography, it is helpful to know something about the circumstances of its composition, and it is essential to know why and for whom he was writing it. In his foreword, Father Egidio Vigano has explained why familiarity with the Memoirs of the Oratory is important for the men and women of Don Bosco's Salesian Family. This introduction suggests the value of the Memoirs to educators, scholars, and general readers. Finally, one cannot fully understand Don Bosco's activity and thought without understanding his world; so there is an extensive description of the historical and social background of the Memoirs.

I. Origins of the Text¹

In the Memoirs of the Oratory of Saint Francis de Sales we have a precious and unique document. It is not so much the story of an institution as it is the story of a man and his vocation.

Yet it is not a story that has come to us easily. It is true that Father John Bosco often spoke to his first disciples about his origins and the origins of his works. When they wrote his biography for the same period (1815-1855), they filled four volumes (2516 pages).

What is unique about the Memoirs is that in these few pages the man himself speaks to us. In some instances, they are the only source from which we know particular episodes of his life or how he understood certain events. What is precious about them is not only their uniqueness but our good fortune in having them at all. Don Bosco wrote 148 textbooks, biographies, rule books, position papers, and devotional books, as well as thousands of letters. But he never meant to write an autobiography. He did so only under obedience, and even so never completed it. And he tried to prevent wide distribution of what he did complete.

When Pope Pius IX met Don Bosco for the first time, in 1858, he already knew a great deal about the boys' priest of Turin. But he wanted to hear Don Bosco's story directly, especially any part of his story that might be considered supernatural. After Don Bosco had told him everything, the Pope urged him to record his experiences, especially his dreams. Such an account, the Pope thought, would be a perpetual family heirloom and inspiration for the congrega­tion which Don Boseo hoped to found.²

Don Bosco was both busy and modest. He ignored Pope Pius's recommendation. When they met again in 1867, the Pope asked whether he had obeyed. Realizing the insuffi­ciency of his recommendation, the Pope commanded.

Well, then, I not only advise you, but order you to do it. This task must have priority over everything else. Put aside the rest and fate care of this. You cannot now fully grasp how very beneficial curtain things will be to your sons when they shall know them.³

Even so, Don Bosco did not obey at once: he had so many journeys to make, so many problems to handle; and a grave illness in 1871-1872 nearly killed him.

The only external evidence as to just when he composed this mini-autobiography comes from a conference which he gave to the superiors of all the Salesian communities in 1876. He insisted that they should all keep chronicles con­cerning their communities. He had already set the example: "I have already summarily jotted down various items con­cerning the Oratory from its beginnings until now; in fact, I have detailed many things up to i854."⁴ This seems to mean that the Memoirs was finished in 1876.

External evidence points to revision of the text between and 1881, with his secretary Father Joachim Berto recopying most of it at that time. In January 1879 Father John Bonetti (1838-1891) began publishing his History of the Oratory in the Salesian Bulletin, one chapter a month. (He later revised this history into the book published in English as St. John Bosco's Early Apostolate.) In the January 1882 issue of the Bulletin, he used material taken substan­tially from the last twenty-two pages of Don Bosco's manu­script; so those last few chapters were certainly completed no later than November 1881.⁵

The internal evidence leads us to believe that he wrote it between 1873 and 1875 and revised most of it after 1878. In Don Bosco's manuscript are two pointers to the 1873 starting date. In chapter 10 of this English edition, he re­ferred in the first draft to Father Joseph Gazzano as "still living in Upper Moltado in this year (1873)." When he re­vised the text, he eliminated the reference to the year and inserted a variant without a date. In chapter 43, Don Bosco speaks of his recovery from a near-fatal illness in 1846 and remarks, "For the next 27 years I had no need of either doctors or medicine."

There are likewise two indications as to when Don Bosco finished the first draft. Chapter 45 alludes to the cur­rent episcopal dignity of two prelates; in the original manu­script he puts "1875" in parentheses there. In chapter 56, but this time in Father Berto's copy of the manuscript, "1875" was added next to the reference to the Oratory's chapter of the Saint Vincent de Paul Society.

Since there is at least one reference to an event in 1878 in a note added later (in chapter 47 on the Church of Saint John the Evangelist), Don Bosco did at least some of the revision after that year.

Internal evidence also indicates that Don Bosco intended to continue the Memoirs of the Oratory by writing a history of the Salesian Society. He says so in chapter 48 when speaking of the first spiritual retreat offered at the Oratory.

Did Don Bosco himself mean to write such a history? In the above-mentioned 1876 conference, after asking the direc­tors to keep community chronicles, he outlined the advantages of doing so and laid down guidelines. Such records, he said, would be invaluable sources for later historians of the Salesian Society. He referred to what he had written about the beginnings of the Oratory, and continued:

From [1854] on we concentrate on the Congregation, and the subject matter becomes considerably vaster and more complex. I see this work as very useful to those who will follow after us and as redounding to God's greater glory. Hence, I shall strive to continue writing.⁶

Unfortunately, he failed to carry out his resolution. The relentless pressure of expanding and financing his work and the infirmities of age made it impossible. He was satis­fied that he had done the minimum that Pius IX had or­dered him to do.

The original autograph manuscript, preserved in the Salesian Central Archives in Rome, fills 180 pages in three large exercise books (29.5 x 20.4 cm).⁷ These pages are closely written but have a generous left-hand margin which is sometimes filled with additions and corrections. The manuscript, except four passages, is entirely in Don Bosco's handwriting, and so are the additions and corrections. The last pages of this manuscript contain some additions and changes in another hand, but these were copied exactly from those made by Don Bosco in Father Berto's copy.

Father Berto made a second copy of the manuscript.⁸ (He was skilled at deciphering Don Bosco's "terrible, awful, miserable" script, as the saint himself described it.⁹) The copy, most likely, was for Father Bonetti to use in pre­paring his series of Salesian Bulletin articles.¹⁰ Father Berto accurately incorporated all of Don Bosco's marginal notes, filling six more 29.5 x 20.4 cm exercise books. Since he left every other page blank, Don Bosco had ample room to make further revisions and add fresh material — which he did in abundance through the first 143 pages of the text, i.e. as far as chapter 50. He did not revise the last thirty-seven pages of the copy because Father Berto did not com­plete them until 1913, ¹¹ long after Don Bosco's death.

The Italian text which Father Eugenio Ceria (1870-1957) published for the first time in 1946 is based on Father Berto's copy as revised by Don Bosco, after a meticulous comparison with Don Bosco's original manuscript.  

2. Contents of the Memoirs

As important as the Memoirs is as a spiritual and historical document, it is not a polished, carefully written essay. Nor is it in any sense the kind of soul-baring autobiography to be found in writers like Saint Teresa of Avila or Saint Therese of Lisieux. It is a down-to-earth, matter-of-fact account of events, inner moods, hopes, and frustrations,¹²

Dun Bosco, here as much as anywhere in his correspon­dence, speaks as a spiritual father to his sons. He has spent a lifetime establishing the Salesian Society. Now an old man nearing sixty, he has experience to puss on to them, the family story of ups and downs, heartache and triumph, fa­tigue and. above till, the mystery of God's grace. These are memories for his beloved sons to treasure and learn from.

To his children a father speaks freely and informally, from the heart. So does Don Bosco In these recollections. Even if he had wanted to speak more formally, to refine his style, he simply did not have the time. He seems to have written his 180 pages in fits and starts, whenever be could snatch a free moment at his desk. His thoughts flowed easily and he wrote hurriedly, without pausing to wait for just the right word to come. As in his letters. Piedmontese words and expressions fell readily from his pen — something he avoided when writing for publication.

Don Bosco never kept a diary. To recall his youth, his education, and his early apostolic efforts he had only his own memory, a few notebook pages (e.g. retreat resolutions), plus an occasional document that Father Berto located for him (a chancery rescript or an earlier publication).

So we are not surprised to find frequent errors of dates and first names, misspellings, omissions of words, and similar slips in details of lesser importance, even in the revised copy. These will be noted in the commentary, not to ques­tion the chronicler's authority or reliability but to aid his memory, as it were.

The mood which runs through this story does not dazzle and excite the reader; rather, it gives limpid clarity and calmness, The writer makes the events unfold undramatically, just as they did when they were happening. The lan­guage is plain, frank, and unadorned. For this reason, some who have used the Memoirs have tried to serve Don Bosco by polishing his words. The only trouble with that is that the words are no longer his.

Don Bosco's aim was to record the events concerning the beginning of the work of the festive oratories, from which sprang the Salesian Society. Following two chapters on his boyhood (1815-1825), he presented his efforts in three periods: his early education (1825-1835), seminary training and the wandering Oratory (1835-1845), and plant­ing firm roots in Valdocco (1846-1856). He wanted to show how each decade saw a striking development in his career and his apostolic work.

Intimately related to the Oratory's development and the birth of the Salesians are details of the founder's lowly ori­gins, his family, his schooling, his vocational growth, and his priestly training. These are the main thrust of the first part of the Memoirs. The providential work which Don Bosco initiated is the focus of the second and third parts. God encouraged him, but one obstacle after another was raised in his path. Against the odds of poverty, misun­derstanding, and political turmoil he not only persevered but finally succeeded in anchoring his work in a secure place, by God's grace. He is already beginning to gather permanent helpers about him — the young future first mem­bers of his religious family — when the narrative breaks off.

His broad aim of recording the significant events of the Oratory's beginnings had two more immediate ends. First, it was to be instructive, to provide examples whereby his sons might see the marvelous hand of God at work and from which they might learn: "It will serve to make known how God himself has always been our guide.... it is always to be Hoped that the sons will draw from these adventures ... some spiritual and temporal advantages." Second, it was to be entertaining, to tell a good yarn with many a touch of humor: "It will give my sons some entertainment to be able to read about their father's adventures. ... A father delights in speaking of his exploits to his dear children. " ¹³

Don Bosco certainly has not told us everything about himself, his experiences, or his accomplishments.

In some cases he seems simply to have forgotten something. For example, his title to chapter 3 includes "Bird nesting," but he gives that topic just a few phrases in the text. The diaries of Fathers Dominic Ruffino (1840-1865] and John Bonetti show that he spoke of it in much greater detail.¹⁴ In other cases, omissions appear to be deliberate, e.g. the two and a half years that he spent at the Moglia farm.¹⁵

Even after all the research of Fathers Giovanni Battista Lemoyne, Michele Molineris, and Pietro Stella, among many others, much about him remains unknown, especially from his boyhood, youth, and early manhood. What Don Bosco has given us here is what he considered to be the most significant persons and happenings in his life, to­gether with some individual occurrences illustrative of a number of' events or a period of time, His biographers have fleshed these out tenfold. But in these Memoirs Don Bosco supplies what no biographer ever could: a look into his own heart.

3. Publication History

The first publication of the Memoirs of the Oratory was con­troversial. Don Bosco said expressly in his preface, "I am writing for my beloved Salesian sons; I forbid that these things be made public during my lifetime or after my death." To reinforce this prohibition, at the beginning of each of the three parts he wrote, "For Salesians Only."

This ban had several causes. First, Don Bosco was mod­est in speaking about himself. Second, the Memoirs lacked that literary polish which Don Bosco liked to give to his publications. It was his habit to submit his work to others for editing and always to revise, revise, revise. Third, some people still living might have been embarrassed by publication.

The constraint of the founder's ban was enough to dis­courage the early publication of the Memoirs. On the other hand, so many authors drew on the manuscript or quoted from it, often without any acknowledgment, that a stage was reached when, in one form or another, the whole text had been published piecemeal. That alone seemed not only to justify publication but even to demand it, entire and authentic.

By 1946, more arguments in favor of publication had been brought forward. The lack of polish in the Memoirs, far from detracting from it, leads the reader to appreciate the author's spontaneity. The Salesians had become a world­wide congregation, and few members could go to Turin to see the manuscript.

Father Ceria (and the Salesian superiors of 1946) also felt that they had to justify publication in the eyes of the beloved author. Don Bosco's words, taken at face value, meant clearly that the contents of the manuscript were not to be revealed to any but the Salesian Family. Don Bosco wrote about himself and his adventures for a very limited readership, his own Salesians, a prohibition emphasized by repetition. Those who had known him, like Ceria, like the rector major Father Peter Ricaldone (1870-1951), would not lightly violate his wishes.

Father Ceria turned Don Bosco's own words against his ban. At the directors' meeting in 1876, Don Bosco had recalled the events that marked the birth of the Salesian Society. When he spoke of the need to prepare material concerning its history, he said:

Many things must be heralded unto God's greater glory, the salvation of souls, and our Congregation's broader expan­sion. ... We may say that nothing has happened which was not known in advance. Our Congregation took no step that had not been suggested by some supernatural occurrence, and approved no change, improvement or expansion that was not prompted by God…. We could have recorded everything that has happened even before it occurred, in every detail and with preciseness.¹⁶

  He foresaw the objection that nobody could retell these events in detail without involving him:

  This matter brooks no opposition from Don Bosco or anything else. Since Don Bosco's life is bound up with that of the Con­gregation, let us speak of him…. Don Bosco does not matter in this regard. What do I care if people talk well or ill of these things? What does it matter to me if people judge me one way or another? Let them say what they will.... It matters little to me, and I shall be not one whit more or less than what I am now before God. But God's interventions must be made manifest. ¹⁷

  Thus one can say that as early as 1876 Don Bosco him­self indirectly approved the publication of his Memoirs. Two years later he was revising it and making it available to Father Bonetti; so, indirectly, Don Bosco himself super­vised its publication, almost from beginning to end, in the Salesian Bulletin.

  Publication of the Memoirs in 1946 marked two signifi­cant centennials, as well. One was the permanent founda­tion of the Oratory of-Saint Francis de Sales in the beat-up building belonging to Francis Pinardi. The other was the election of Pius IX as Pope. Salesians are ever grateful to that venerable Pontiff as to a cofounder of their family — and to one wise enough to command that these memoirs be recorded. It was to him that the Salesians dedicated that 1946 edition.

  The basic text for this first English translation is Father Ceria's 1946 annotated edition, which is not, in the techni­cal sense, a critical edition.'⁸ But it is a reliable and careful one. We have also consulted the French version translated by Father Andre Barucq and annotated by Father Francis Desramaut, and the modern Italian version by Father Teresio Bosco, both of which follow Father Ceria but are helpful with certain obscure words and with their notes.

  Clearly an English edition, by the very fact of being a translation, removes the reader one step from Don Bosco's own written word. The translator and his editors have tried to be faithful to that word, as well as to his flavor, without sacrificing fidelity to idiomatic English.

4. The Text and the Commentary

  As we said, Don Bosco introduces his Memoirs with two chapters on his boyhood and then divides the rest into three parts, or decades. Each decade was divided into chapters, which Don Bosco titled and numbered, except the last six. He numbered them starting from i in each part. Father Ceria followed that system.

  This edition has kept the threefold division and Don Bosco's titles as being integral to the text. But we have made two changes. First, we have followed the modern style of providing a unifying chapter title for most chapters, turning Don Bosco's titles into subtitles. Those chapters lacking subtitles have Don Bosco's original title. Second, we have numbered all the chapters consecutively. Appendix III offers chapter equivalencies for the benefit of anyone who may consult a different edition.

  We have left Don Bosco's original text in its human simplicity; we have not corrected even his obvious mis­takes, e.g. the spelling of proper names. Wherever possible, we have retained his italics, numbering, abbreviations, per­sonal titles, etc. We have likewise tried to preserve Don Bosco's ability to play on words, as well as certain usages, such as his almost random use of giovani ("boys, youths, young men), giovenetti (youngsters), fanciulli (children), and occasionally, ragazzi (boys, kids). Where either Father Ceria or the translator has had to insert a word or phrase, this has been put in brackets.

  A particular difficulty in translating for an international readership is English usage. The general principle in this edition has been to follow a "British" style in the translation, since that is Father Lyons's style. The commentary, on the other hand, follows an "American" style.

To run a commentary alongside Don Bosco's text might seem to detract from the simplicity of his style, or worse, from what he has to say. He is not a lofty theologian like Saint Thomas Aquinas, nor is he far away from our time and culture like the scriptures. The extensive commentary offered here corrects errors of fact; clarifies the now-distant memories of our Salesian beginnings and makes them more intelligible to new generations who did not live with Don Bosco; explains various points of Italian history, geography, or culture; familiarizes the general public with matters of Saint John Bosco's and the Salesians' history, spirituality, and methodology that the Salesians themselves take for granted; and identifies Catholic practices for readers who may not be familiar with them.

5. Importance of the Text

  A document like the Memoirs is valuable for more than one reason. Besides everything else, it presents us with precious autobiographical and psychological documentation concern­ing a major figure in the history of the Catholic Church, Church-State relations, and education in the nineteenth century. Pope John Paul II has said:

  Don Bosco is a landmark in Church history. In fact, he has left behind him a concept, a teaching, an experience and method which have become part of our heritage. In the words of my venerated predecessor Paul VI, he was "a renowned genius of modern pedagogy and catechesis but, above all, a genius of holiness…." ¹⁹

  His memoirs are an indispensable primary source for what he did, why he did it, how he did it.

Who might be interested in them? First and most obvi­ous are the members of Don Bosco's Salesian Family. Sec­ond are educators at all levels and in all types of schools. Third are scholars interested in nineteenth-century Europe, Church history, or the development of religious congrega­tions. This edition has been prepared with these audiences in mind. The more general reader may certainly profit from the text.

  John Bosco was a doer, the founder of the Salesian Fam­ily, one of the largest in the Church. It includes the Society of Saint Francis de Sales (Salesian Congregation), the Daughters of Mary Help of Christians {Salesian Sisters), the Salesian Cooperators, the Don Bosco Volunteers, and (as of 1989) eight congregations of sisters inspired by his charism. He sent missionaries to the far corners of the world to preach the Gospel and to educate the young as he had done in Turin.

The Catholic Church ranks Don Bosco as a "hero," a model for imitation, a canonized saint. His memoirs reveal his humanity; his struggles with himself, with others, with his environment; his human and his spiritual development. They reveal his mother's role as his first and best earthly teacher.

  In his simplicity, the saint confesses some of the defects of his youth. He condemns rather severely some of the out­bursts of his as yet uncontrolled, generous energy. He speaks of his surrender to vanity and his occasional incon­stancy. Such faults are like sparks or flashes here and there showing that he is still on the pilgrim road of obedience to divine grace.

  What   is   the   best lesson   to  be   learned   from   these memoirs? Don Bosco himself tells us that his chronicle "will be a record to help people overcome problems that may conic- in the future- by learning from the past." It is true that he had the Salesians in mind, hut the statement itself is more wide-ranging. His life story tells of the difficulties that impeded the journey of a great saint but did not stop him from reaching the goal set for him by Divine Providence. His example is a lesson to all who must over­come hardships to reach an appointed or a chosen goal.

  The Memoirs of the Oratory bears witness not only to a Saint's spirituality and to the beginnings of a great apostolic enterprise hut also to an exciting, formative period of Euro­pean history. Scattered throughout the Memoirs are reflections the political and religious personalities and questions that marked a challenging period of Italian history. In these pages we witness the beginnings of the urbanization and industrialization of Italy, and the currents of nationalism and anticlericalism that produced a united Italy in Don Bosco's lifetime.

  Don Bosco does not focus on these events as such. But the social changes were the reason for his work, and the political changes could not help affecting it. His few candid '.observations on statesmen and the Church-State conflicts of  his time are the more telling because of the dispassionate mood of his writing. That very dispassion helps to explain why he could, on at least four different occasions, have been called upon as a reliable intermediary between the Sardinian-Italian government and the Vatican. (He proved so discreet and trustworthy a channel that it is nearly im­possible to trace his steps.)

  The Memoirs is the autobiography of a great modern educator who is hardly known in the English-speaking World. He is not a theoretician but a practitioner. His few directly pedagogical writings —the little treatise on the Preventive System, an essay on punishment, confidential advice to directors, and a circular letter on the spirit that animated the Oratory in its pristine days —are more prac­tical than theoretical, based not on some philosophical or psychological premise but on his years of experience.

  The Memoirs of the Oratory recounts that experience. It is not purely anecdotal, for it tells us why Don Bosco did what he did and attempts some analysis of the success or failure that resulted. The first part, especially, abounds with material about guidance, peer pressure, moral forma­tion, and methodology. The Memoirs describes, and in a sense embodies, the essential groundwork of an educational project that, one hundred years after their author's death, involves 17,650 Salesian priests and brothers working in 1572 youth centers, schools, parishes, mission stations, and publishing houses in 99 countries; 17,144 Salesians Sisters in 1508 centers; and countless Salesian Cooperators and alumni.

  Don Bosco's educational ideas and method —his Preven­tive System —are proven by more than their anecdotal suc­cess or the huge family that is his most apparent legacy. His ideas and his method produce saints. One may point, if one is so inclined, to the number of his priests, religious, and Cooperators whose causes of canonization are under study: besides himself, one saint, three blesseds, six venerables,²⁰ and ninety-eight "servants of God." One could point to those who came under his influence: Saint Leonard Murialdo, Blessed Louis Orione, and Blessed Louis Guanella.

  But the greatest proof of the efficacy of Don Bosco's educational method comes from its pupils. Many have led edifying lives —and the Church herself has said so by recognizing the sanctity of three of them. She has canonized Dominic Savio, beatified Laura Vicuna, and declared vener­able Zeferino Namuncura, all of them students no more than nineteen years old when they died.

  The founder of so vast and so successful a project has something to say to educators everywhere: Christian or non-Christian, in public or private schools, in kindergarten or university. The method of reason, religion (or, at least, fundamental moral values), and loving kindness transcends boundaries, cultures, and age.

6. Historical Background to the Memoirs

A. The French Revolution

At the end of the eighteenth century the political, social, and economic order of Western Europe was ready to explode. Unrest in Paris in 1789 became a revolution, and the revolution became the spark that changed the world forever.

Italy in 1789 was a political, social, and economic back­water that Metternich would later dismiss as "just a geo­graphical expression." But it too was ripe for change. The Church and a few wealthy and noble families controlled the peninsula, as they had since the Middle Ages. There was no middle class of any significance; an aristocracy ruled, though Genoa and Venice were nominal republics.

It was the small middle class of Paris that touched off the French Revolution. At its start it was not a democratic movement; it was an attempt by the middle clash to get a share of the power and prestige enjoyed by the nobility and the clergy. The Declaration of the Rights of Man stressed the rights of property as much as it did liberty.

But the middle class did not control the streets of Paris. The lower class, the great mass of the people, began its own revolution alongside the middle class's, and it was far more radical. For the masses, all of the upper classes, the Church included, were the oppressors and became the targets of the revolution. The middle class provided the leadership, but the people provided the power that radi­calized the French Revolution and brought on the Republic, the Reign of Terror, and the executions of the king, the queen, and thousands of nobles, clergy, and private citi­zens. Christianity itself (apart from such abuses as individ­ual churchmen committed) was rated as an enemy of the people —of "liberty, equality, and fraternity," The goddess Reason replaced Christ. A new calendar, dating 1792 as Year I, replaced the Christian calendar. A new political order, the republic of all the citizens, replaced the ancien regime of king, Church, and nobility.

The monarchs of Europe took note and were alarmed for themselves and their own nations. They declared war on the French Revolution. Europe was to he at war from 1793 till 1815, one side trying to export the Revolution (or later, Napoleon's tyranny), the other side trying to stomp it out.

It was the threat to the Revolution that propelled Na­poleon to power. Before he was thirty, he was a general with a proven ability to defeat France's enemies and a charismatic ability to inspire the troops. His first victories were won in northern Italy at the expense of the Austrians and their Piedmontese allies. From 1796 until 1814 the French controlled northern Italy. They proved to be hard masters, depleting the country of money, art, livestock, pro­duce, and able-bodied men. At least forty-five thousand Ita­lians died in Napoleon's Russian and Spanish campaigns. But the French also brought something for Italy: change.

Napoleon linked the city-states of northern Italy into the form of a republic. The form was artificial and temporary, but the ideas of unity and of shared political power were planted. Later, when France took over the government of the whole peninsula, the traditional bureaucratic govern­ment was shaken up. Aristocracy was tossed out, and merit was led in; an efficient government administered justice, built roads and bridges, and supported education. The in­ternal customs barriers came down, diverse legal systems were codified, the remnants of feudalism were abolished, and so were aristocratic and ecclesiastical privileges. Vast estates belonging to the Church were confiscated, broken into parcels, and sold. Therefore, wrote Sir J.A.R. Marriott, "among the makers of modern Italy, Napoleon holds a fore­most place."²¹

The French Revolutionary and Napoleonic influences on Italy, northern and central Italy particularly, produced a movement that embodied nationalism and economic and social reform. It also included anti-Christian elements; but initially these did not dominate it, nor was the movement's eventual anticlericalism inevitable. This complex movement took the name Risorgimento ("Resurgence"), and it lasted from the Congress of Vienna until the capture of Rome by Italian forces in 1870. One could even say that it lasted until 1918, when the postwar settlement awarded the Trentino and Istria to Italy at the expense of the defunct Austro-Hungarian Empire, or until 1929, when the Lateral] Treaty at last resolved the relationship between the new Italian State and the Papacy.

The Risorgimento stood for a unified national .state for all Italians; the elimination of foreign domination, whether by the French or the Austrians; the modernization of the economy; universal education; a broadening of the base of political power by enfranchising the educated middle class of merchants and industrialists, professors, writers, minor clergy and military officers, and civil servants, if not all classes of the people; recognition of fundamental civil rights such as freedom of speech, of the press, and of reli­gion; and a reduction of the economic, social, and political power of the Catholic Church.

The British, Prussian, Austrian, and Russian alliance brought Napoleon down in 1814 and then assembled its diplomats in Vienna to try to put Europe back together. The Congress of Vienna met from November 1814 until June 1815. In March, Napoleon fled Elba, returned to power in France, and was finally crushed at Waterloo in June.

B. The Restoration of the Old Order

The Congress of Vienna was dominated by its host, Aus­trian foreign minister Prince Metternich (1773-1859). Metternich, in turn, was dominated by two ideas: restoring the pre-1789 European order, and maintaining the balance of power among the European states, i.e. the four victorious allies and France. Lesser states such as Piedmont, Spain, and the Papal States would have to respect the wishes of the major powers. No power should grow either too power­ful or too weak. The Revolution and all its fruits must be obliterated. Republicanism meant mob rule, terror, and war; the Old Regime meant order, peace, and prosperity.

And so the statesmen of Vienna decreed that the genie should return to its bottle. Royal dynasties and old borders should be restored, with due compensations being made to the victors, of course.

The Austrians reclaimed their former province of Lombardy; the better to secure it —and to obliterate a reminder of 1789 —they also grabbed the ancient republic of Venice and incorporated it into their empire. These two provinces were the economic and strategic prizes of all Italy. From them the Austrians could ensure that the rest of the Ital­ians behaved. In the next forty years, the two provinces would provide the Austrian Empire with about one-third of its revenues, though they were only about an eighth of its territory. Austrian puppets were established in the duchies of Parma, Modena, and Tuscany.

The papal government of Pius VII (reigned 1800-1823) was restored in the States of the Church, but the Austrians kept garrisons in Ferrara and Bologna. The Bourbons re­turned to the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies (Sicily and southern Italy, with Naples as capital]- And the house of Savoy, under King Victor Emmanuel I (reigned 1802-1821), returned to the Kingdom of Sardinia, which included Savoy, Piedmont, Sardinia, and Nice, with Turin ps the capital. To complete, nearly, the abolition of any trace of republicanism, Liguria was also granted to Sardinia, and Genoa's centuries-old independence came to an end. (The insignificant republic of San Marino survived the massacre, as it later survived the Risorgimento; for that, stamp collec­tors are ever grateful.)

Into this world John Bosco was born eight weeks after Waterloo. He grew up in the religious and social world of the Restoration. The first twenty-nine years of his priestly ministry in the Sardinian capital were spent in the feverish world of the Risorgimento, and the last eighteen coped with its effects in Church and State (as well as with the tensions of French politics in the Third Republic).

Victor Emmanuel resolved on a thorough restoration. If powdered wigs and tricorn hats were worn in 1789, so they would in 1815. If the French had reformed the laws, their laws would be annulled. If the French had built bridges, their bridges would be blown up. (One bridge over the Po was spared; the queen used it to drive to the royal summer house.) If the Church had been robbed of its rights and its lands, the rights at least would be given back (not much land was). Competent civil servants under the French, such as Michele Cavour (see chapters 37 and 41), had to go, and the king's men had to come, regardless of their incompe­tence. The nobility required royal permission to read for­eign newspapers. Protective tariffs went up again.

Some of the more liberal Piedmontese intellectuals chose exile over such a stifling environment. Massimo d'Azeglio and Silvio Pellico, for instance, found even Austrian-ruled Milan preferable. Others like Cesare Balbo, Luigi Provana, and Santorre di Santarosa laid low until better times should conic. Younger army officers were alienated by royal inter­ference and the preference given royal favorites.

But the Piedmontese were generally tolerant of the royal nonsense. Indeed, in Piedmont as elsewhere in Europe, people were ready for peace, order, respect for religion, and an end to French taxation and conscription. But Metternich was not fooled into complacency. "Of all the Italian governments," he wrote to his emperor in 1817, "the Piedmontese is indisputably the one which calls for the most anxious attention. This country unites in itself all the dif­ferent elements of discontent."" It was only a mutter of time before the educated men of the middle class realized that the Restoration meant economic and social stagnation and their own exclusion from political power.

The Church, having been restored to its traditional pow­ers and privileges, fully supported the restored monarchs and the ancient order. The Church had its own legal sys­tem for trying clerics {regardless of the alleged crimes) and for handling various matters such as marriage. The Church controlled education. Both Church and Stale censored the press and the stage. The State used its political power to support the Church, and the Church used its morn! force to support the State,

Besides this wedding of throne and altar, the Church enjoyed a privileged social position. Tn 1854 Sardinia had a population of five million. There were forty-one dioceses, five hundred religious houses, fourteen hundred canonries, and eighteen thousand monks And nuns. All in all, one per­son in every 214 was an ecclesiastic.²³ The Napoleonic era notwithstanding, the Church held vast lands, from which it drew an annual income of about 9,000,000 lire; to that the State added generous subsidies totalling 11,000,000 lire more. All that wealth, however, was not enough to lift the average parish priest out of misery; the government felt compelled to supplement his salary of about 500 lire per year with 250 more just so he could survive.

Between political conservatism and economic feudalism, there was plenty of fuel for anticlericalism in Italy even if the Papal States had not existed as a stumbling block to nationalism.

C. The Revolutions 1820-1821

  By 1820 popular unrest was evident throughout southern Europe, particularly in the army, among students, and in die small merchant class. Secret societies were formed to advocate political reform and/or national unification. The Freemasons were the chief of these; in Italy there were also the Carbonari.

  Revolution broke out first in Spain. In March 1820 Fer­dinand VII was compelled to accept a constitution he had earlier rejected. Written constitutions limited monarchs, established representative government, and specified civil rights. Similar situations (with local variations) followed in Portugal, Naples, and Piedmont. Metternich convened the powers, and after a great deal of discussion an intervention by the Austrians was permitted. They smashed the Nea­politan revolution early in 1821.

  In March 1821 the army garrison at Alessandria in Pied­mont rose in rebellion, hauled down the blue flag of Savoy, and raised the green, white, and red tricolor of Italy. A regiment marched on Turin, hoping to get Victor Em­manuel to grant a constitution and lead a war to drive the Austrians out of Italy. The soldiers had solid middle-class support; both they and the businessmen wanted the power that until then only the nobility enjoyed.

  But the soldiers failed to stir popular support. Two smaller Piedmontese garrisons joined their Alessandrian com­rades, and there was an anti-Austrian rising in Milan;²⁴ but otherwise the Alessandria garrison was isolated. The old king, for his pan, lacked the nerve to face the situation and abdicated in favor of his brother, Charles Felix. Charles Felix was in Modena; his twenty-three-year-old nephew Charles Albert became regent.

  Charles Albert displayed the tendency to "waffle" that would be his downfall also in 1848-1849. He was caught between his uncle's rights, public pressure, and personal inclination. After some hesitation, he granted a constitution based on Spain's.

  Charles Felix was not pleased. He repudiated his nephew's act, exiled him, and invited the Austrians to help him quell the uprising. They were more than willing. The new king swiftly and ferociously suppressed liberalism wherever he found it. He wrote to his brother the former king, "All those who have studied at the University are corrupt. The bad are the educated; the good are the igno­rant."²⁵ For ten years he was a model of the absolute monarch.

  Next it was Spain's turn. This time a French army supplied the muscle. By April 1823 "legitimate government" had been restored to all of Europe once more, except Greece, where a rebellion continued against Turkish over­lords. That national revolution would eventually involve the great powers but would drag on into the 1830s.

  Charles Felix issued new education regulations in 1822. Under these rules, which were in force when John Bosco was a student, every commune was to establish and support an elementary school. The clergy was to do the teaching and approve all the books. Prayer, catechism, and religious services were as mandatory as instruction in reading, writing, and arithmetic.

  The king also returned the Jews to the ghettos from which Napoleon had liberated them. Criminal and military punishments were stiffened and the use of capital punish­ment and of torture broadened.²⁷

D. The Revolutions of 1831

Charles Felix died in April 1831. He had wished to disin­herit his nephew as unreliable; but Charles Albert was the legitimate heir, and Metternich required that legitimacy be honored. So unlucky Charles Albert became king. In the meantime revolution had burst across Europe again. This time, as in 1789, it began in Paris. King Charles X was overthrown in July 1830 because of his absolutist tenden­cies, and a monarchy under King Louis Philippe, more responsive to the middle class, installed. Rebellions ensued in Belgium (for independence from the Netherlands) and Po-| land (for independence from Russia), and in the central Italian duchies and the Papal States (for better government).

  Britain and France would not allow Austria, Prussia, and Russia to intervene in Belgium though the Dutch re-quested it; and so Belgian independence was recognized in 1831. The Poles and the Italians were not so fortunate. Russian troops in the first case, and Austrians in the sec­ond, quickly restored their versions of order. Meanwhile, the Greeks had successfully established their independence from the Ottoman Empire (1830). which Austria and Russia found acceptable because it weakened a powerful neighbor.

  If the new king of Sardinia had been genuinely liberal as a youth, he was no longer so in 1831. He made sure every­one understood that in 1833 by imprisoning a crowd of Mazzinian conspirators and having fourteen of them shot.

E. Economic Development in Piedmont

  Economic liberalism was another matter for Charles Albert, though. The Sardinian economy was a shambles. Based on Subsistence agriculture, it could not feed its own small population and had to rely upon imported grain. There were painful famines in 1817, 1827, and {over most of Europe) 1842-1847. Besides hunger, pauperism resulted.

  The middle class was growing in economic power and therefore in social and political influence. Charles Albert abolished the remaining feudal customs and reformed the post office. He encouraged the arts, sciences, and works of public charity. He even extended unofficial toleration to non-Catholics. Canals were dug, marshes drained, new land brought under cultivation, mines opened (still on a small scale), roads built, the first miles of rail tracks laid, and banks (nonexistent before 1844) organized. Stone quarrying, more extensive than mining, was essential to construction, which boomed as a result of these other activities. Serious industry began in ceramics, tanning, leatherworking, and textiles (silk, wool, and cotton). Most of this industry was still of the cottage variety rather than in factories. Italy has practically no coal, severely limiting industrial possibilities; there was, additionally, an inherent prejudice against the evils of the factory system. In 1844 about 114,000 Piedmontese worked at various industrial occupations. ²⁸

  In Turin the city government, controlled by wealthy landowners, began to see a need for rational planning. The first zoning laws were passed in an attempt to keep indus­try out of the city center. Building aides, public health, the water supply, fire protection, the paving and lighting of the streets began to receive attention.²⁹

F. Political Development in the 1830 and 1840s

Economic liberalism necessarily led to more pressure for political liberalism. Conservative men like Camillo Cavour (see chapter 45) wanted a more liberal government so that they and their economic interests could run it, but not so liberal that the masses would take control. At the radical extreme was Giuseppe Mazzini (1805-1872), who in 1831 founded Young Italy to press for one republican national state, proud of its cultural and religious heritage, free of all foreign domination. Mazzini stood for God (but not Chris­tianity), humanity, and progress. He wrote a great deal, and he also fomented rebellion, requiring his followers to be armed and a number of times trying to stage uprisings. His pen was far more powerful than his sword, as it turned out.

Truly formidable obstacles faced Italian patriots, Italians did not think of themselves as such but as Sicilians, Neapolitans, Genoese, Florentines, etc. When Don Bosco spoke of his patria, he meant Castelnuovo, not Italy or even Piedmont. The Italians were of mixed ancestral stock: largely Teutonic in the north, Etruscan and Latin in the center, predominantly Greek in the south, and Arabic, Roman, Spanish, and Norman in Sicily. Each region had its own dialect, with only about 2.5 percent of the population speaking Italian. Fewer than a quarter of them could read or write. Barriers — rugged mountains, lack of roads, and tariffs — hindered commerce from one region to another and even within provinces.

The republican Mazzini was not always a practical man. But he showed a practical wisdom in 1831 by appealing to Charles Albert as the only man who could call the people to arms and expel the Austrians, and who should then reign over a united nation as a constitutional monarch. Whether Mazzini saw this as just the first step toward a republic or not, the king wanted no part of it and, as was said, crushed Mazzini's first try at organizing a nationalist uprising. Nevertheless, most nationalists remained con­vinced that anti-Austrian leadership would have to come from the top. Without independent Piedmont in the lead, national unity just was not going to happen. Cesare Balbo and Massimo d'Azeglio said as much in their influential patriotic writings.

One other option was put forward by Vincenzo Gioberti in The Moral and Civil Supremacy of the Italians, published in 1843: a national federation under the presidency of the Pope. This idea "was adopted by a large section of the mid­dle class and the nobility, which thought in national terms, but which dreaded any sort of revolutionary upheaval and saw the Papacy as a guarantee of the stability of political and social institutions."³" This was not realistic in view of the Austrian position in northern and central Italy, for the Pope could not force them out,

The Popes had their own problems. In the nineteenth century, the Papal States were probably the most wretch­edly governed area of Western Europe. The Papacy was an absolute monarchy; its secular government over a third of the Italian peninsula was one hundred percent clerical and generally incompetent. Lay advisors were all appointees. Finances were chaotic. Discontent was widespread, and after the Austrian intervention of 1831, the Austrians and the French occupied parts of the Papal States for several years to maintain order. Gregory XVI (reigned 1831-1846) was a well-meaning and serious man; but he was a monk and not an administrator, and he utterly distrusted liberal­ism. Typical of his attitude were his opposition to building railroads in the Church's territory (for with them would come trade and then subversive ideas) and his opposition to any and all revolutions (even those of Catholic Belgium and Poland against their Protestant and Orthodox masters, and to Irish emancipation).³¹

Early in his pontificate Pope Gregory made it under­stood that there was no compromising with the spirit of the French Revolution. Some Catholic¹ thinkers maintained, nonetheless, that the Church that had baptized Greco-Roman culture, Aristotle, and the Renaissance could also baptize the Revolution, Chief among these was the French priest Felicite de Lamennais (1782-1854). Finding that the union of throne and altar was, in the long run, harmful to the Church, they advocated popular sovereignty, separation of Church and State, and liberty of conscience, press, associ­ation, and education — principles- which had been proving their advantages to the Church in the United States since 1789. They even urged the Pope to abandon his temporal sovereignty and rely solely upon his spiritual authority, which had been wondrously revivified by Pius VII's heroic opposition to Napoleon.

Such liberal views were unacceptable to most of the French bishops, to the Austrian government, and to the Pope, hi 1832 Gregory issued the encyclical Mirari vos condemning them as promoting rebellion and religious and moral indifferentism.¹⁴

G. PiusIX's Reforms

  Enough of the cardinals were concerned about the state of the Church's secular domain when Pope Gregory died to elect as his successor a relatively young moderate who took the name Pius IX (reigned 1846-1878), The new Pope promptly startled the world with a vigorous program of administrative and political reform in the States of the Church: amnesty for political prisoners and exiles, prison inspection, freedom of the press, toleration of the Jews, improvements in education, an agricultural institute, a rail­road, a telegraph system, street lighting, and the establishment of a civic guard and an indirectly elected consultative assembly of laymen. In a move that appeared to be nation­alistic, when the Austrian archbishop of Milan died, Pius appointed an Italian.³⁵

Reaction   to   the   papal   reforms   varied.   They   were applauded in Great Britain and the United States. Piedmontese liberals saw in them the first steps toward the fulfill­ment of Gioberti's program. Pius's reforms were imitated in Tuscany, and they inspired increasing excitement in Lombardy and the Two Sicilies, regions oppressed by a foreign and a tyrannical government, respectively.

  Metternich was confounded: "A liberal Pope is a contra­diction in terms."³⁴ He responded in July 1847 by doubling the Austrian army in Lombardy and Venetia and ordering the Austrian garrison in papal Ferrara to occupy the entire city. That brought a strung protest from Pius, reinforcing his stature in patriot eyes. Charles Albert's stature rose too when he offered his army to the Pope. From South America the exile Giuseppe Garibaldi (1807-1882) offered his gener­alship. Universal condemnation compelled Metternich to withdraw the soldiers in December.

  A myth developed around Pius IX, that of the liberal and nationalist Pope. He was a reformer, he was a patriot, and he was a man of genuine charity, deeply loved by ordinary people. In the uprisings of 1831 he had earned the trust of the rebels. He may have been somewhat naive, as Metter­nich thought. But Pius did not see himself able to go much further; specifically, he could not conceive of separating the secular government of the Church's States from their spiritual government, and therefore he could not yield genuine power to laymen. Nor could he conceive of a Pope retaining his spiritual freedom, and therefore the Church's, unless the Pope remained a temporal sovereign.³⁵

  In the Kingdom of Sardinia, Charles Albert had estab­lished his freedom from Austrian control early in his reign, but in the process he had alienated the other European powers. His internal concerns were economic reform, re­building the army that his uncle had neglected, the repres­sion of dissent, deep personal piety, and an upright life. But popular protests in Genoa and Turin, stimulated by events in Rome, had their slow effect on Charles Albert, nicknamed "the Wavering King," By the end of 1847 the king had shuffled his cabinet in favor of moderate poli­ticians, lifted most press censorship, and received a petition for the recognition of the civil rights of Jews and Protes­tants, which he granted a few months later (see chapter 48). Sardinia negotiated a customs union with Tuscany and the Papal States, which Modena and Naples were invited to join.

H. The Revolutions of 1848-1849

  Elsewhere in Italy, progress was too slow or nonexistent. The lid blew off on January 12, 1848, not in Rome or Turin but in Palermo. Ferdinand II responded savagely, but foreign pressure and the spread of the rioting to Messina and Naples obliged him not only to back off but to grant a constitution by the end of the month. The Sicilians were not satisfied, however, and declared their independence.

  Metternich asked the Pope to allow an Austrian army to cross his territory. ;is one had in 1821, to restore "order" in the Two Sicilies. Mindful of the recent Austrian insult at Ferrara, Pius refused.

  Popular pressure, the example of Naples, and Pius's stance led in February to the promises of constitutions in Tuscany and Piedmont. At this critical juncture, Pius IX attracted notice in a motu proprio by asking God to bless Italy — a phrase he would shortly rue, for the radical nationalists seized it out of context and turned it into a blessing on the war of liberation.

  On February 22 Paris rose against King Louis Philippe, and the Second Republic was established. Two weeks later the revolution struck Germany, and in another week Aus­tria. On March 15 Metternich fled. Pius IX had to concede a constitution for the States of the Church, also on March 15. The Chartist demonstrations were shaking England. By the end of the year revolution had affected Prussia and Hungary and forced an imperial abdication in Vienna.

Charles Albert, meanwhile, promulgated a conservative constitution on March 4 (see

chapters 48 and 51). Pressure for a war of liberation against Austria was incessant. Metternich's flight was the signal for Venice and Milan to de­clare their liberation from Austria and the establishment of republics. The uprising in Milan (March 18—22) forced Marshal Radetzky's garrison to withdraw. The rulers of Parma and Modena abandoned their duchies.

  The Milanese had immediately called upon the Sar­dinians to join them in driving the Austrians out of Italy. This was the critical moment, and the Wavering King did not seize it in time. Charles Albert had serious problems: inexperienced generals, lack of equipment, and lack of maps. He was concerned about the attitude of Britain and the new republic in France. On the other hand, if he did not act, republican governments would be set tip in Milan and Venice, and that was intolerable. On the 23rd he declared war.

  More weaknesses became evident: the generals bickered with one another; the regulars did not accept the volun­teers; and the king insisted on directing the war —he had personal courage in this regard, but no skill. Still, with vigor the Piedmontese might have caught the Austrians quickly and in the open. Instead, they moved their small army of twenty-three thousand men too slowly to cut off Radetzky's retreat to the safety of four major forts strad­dling the Lombard-Venetian frontier. Reinforcements from Tuscany were nut substantial enough for the Piedmontese to risk an assault on the strong Austrian lines. The two armies sat facing each other. Token armies from Rome and Naples moved northward as if to join the great national cause, but in fact the Pope had clearly instructed his gen­eral not to cross the frontier.

  Plans were laid for the formation of a Kingdom of Upper Italy, uniting Venice, Lombardy, and the duchies to Pied­mont under a constitutional monarchy. Military plans received less attention, as though the Austrian defeat were taken for granted.

  On April 25 the Pope's general —who just happened to be a Piedmontese —disobeyed orders and led his army into Lombardy to join his countrymen. Since public opinion al­ready generally saw the Pope taking the Italian side, and some wanted him as the president of a federated nation, Pius took a decisive step on April 29. In an address to his cardinals, he made it clear that he was not the leader of the Risorgimento; that as a spiritual leader he could not declare war; and that he would not be president of a united Italy, but everyone should be loyal to his own prince. If his own subjects wished to volunteer as individuals, as Italians from all over were doing, they were free to do so.

  As Pope he really could do little else; the Austrians, too, were his Catholic children. It was a great turning point, forever separating Pius IX from the tidal wave of nationalism. He could not liberate and then rule a united Italy. Nor could he conceive of a Pope merely reigning over his own State, much less the whole nation. Nor could lit conceive of a Pope yielding his temporal sovereignty. The Papacy had become an obstacle to national unity. Pius effectively turned the leadership of the Risorgimento over to either Piedmont or Mazzini, the house of Savoy or the forces of republicanism, whichever could take the lead and keep it.³⁶

  On the diplomatic front, the British were pressuring the Austrians to withdraw from Italy entirely. The French re­public was friendly to Italy, but that was more discomfort to Charles Albert than consolation. Ho was trying to keep an eye on the political situation in Turin and in Milan, lest the republicans out maneuver him.

  The Piedmontese army, its Tuscan allies, and various volunteers grew to nearly sixty thousand men. They probed the Austrian defenses and won a couple of skirmishes, on April 30 and May 6; the first offered a solid opportunity to catch the defenders off guard, but the king called off the pursuit. In mid-May Ferdinand II staged a counter-revolution in Naples and recalled his army. His general and half the soldiers ignored the order and joined the Venetians defending their republic, but others felt which way the wind was blowing and drifted home. At the end of May the Piedmontese captured the major fort of Peschiera. On June 15 Emperor Ferdinand offered to cede Lombardy to Sardinia. Quite honorably but not very wisely, Charles Albert declined; he would not abandon the Venetians.

  Kadetzky was not inclined to yield; when he received thirty-five thousand reinforcements he engaged the ren­egade papal army and forced it to surrender. Then he turned on the Sardinians, still poorly supplied and poorly led, no match for a well-trained army that now outnum­bered them. In a five-day battle at Custoza (July 22-27), the Austrians broke Charles Albert's army and drove it back through Milan and home to Piedmont, reduced now to twenty-five thousand num. On August 9 an armistice was agreed to. Eighty-one-year-old Kadetzky's brilliant generalship saved the Hapsburg Empire by stemming the tide of revolution in Italy, which in turn had its effect throughout Europe.

But revolution was not quite finished. After Pins IX re­nounced the Risorgimento, tension built up in Rome. The radicals won control of the civic guard and of the streets of Rome. The liberal and capable prime minister Count Pellegrino Rossi was assassinated on November 15. The mob demanded war with Austria, the convocation of a con­stituent assembly, and the appointment of the most radical leaders to the government. On the night of the 24th the Pope fled to Gaeta in the Kingdom of Naples, whence he appealed to the Catholic powers for help in recovering the Church's lands (see chapters 50 and 59).

  The vacuum left at Rome suited Mazzini, who moved in and helped establish a Roman Republic in February 1849. The idealistic rulers expected the rest of Italy to rally to them. Garibaldi joined them; he had been fighting a guer­rilla war in the north with some volunteers up till then. But outside the Papal States there was little response.

  The Piedmontese were not quite finished either. They were loath to abandon the Lombards and Tuscans who had chosen union under the flag of Savoy. The new prime minister, Vincenzo Gioberti, tried to arrange an alliance with Tuscany (which now wavered between union with republican Rome and retention of the grand duke) and with Rome (where he hoped to restore the Pope without foreign intervention). None of his stratagems worked.

  The Austrians consolidated their position at home, re­jected French and British diplomacy, and announced that they would not yield a foot of their territory. Popular pres­sure urged on Charles Albert a renewal of the war. On March 12, 1849, the armistice expired and Sardinia declared war on the 2oth. Two days later Radetzky crushed the king's army of eighty thousand men at Novara and dictated harsh terms of surrender. The king accepted responsibility for the debacle, though his generals had again performed poorly. Charles Albert abdicated in favor of his son, Victor Emmanuel II (d. 1878), and left at once for Portugal, where he died in July.

  The new king appointed Massimo d'Azeglio, a writer of sterling character and no political experience, as prime minister. Then he negotiated with the Austrians, who of­fered generous terms provided that the year-old constitu­tion be abolished. Victor Emmanuel earned himself a nickname, "the Gallant King," by refusing absolutely:

  Marshal, sooner than subscribe to such conditions I would lose a hundred Crowns. What my father has sworn I will maintain. If you want war to the death, be it so. I will call my people once more to arms. If I fail, it shall be without shame. My house knows the road of exile but not of dishonour.^!7

  Radetzky relented on the point but imposed an indemnity and partial occupation of Piedmont until peace was con­cluded. The war had been a complete disaster militarily and financially. But two important lessons were learned: Italian unity would need outside help, which France would supply in 1859 and Prussia in r866 and 1870; and the States of the Church would pose a major problem for na­tional unification. Furthermore, a courageous, conscientious, and able leader had been found in Victor Emmanuel.

  The Austrians proceeded to the mop-up work of restor­ing their puppets in Florence, Parma, and Modena and sub­duing the Venetians, which was completed on August 23. Ferdinand of Naples set about reconquering Sicily.

  There was a great deal of diplomatic maneuvering in response to the Pope's appeal for restoration by the Catho­lic powers. At first the French and British hoped for an Italian solution. The French were now a republican state, but their leader, Louis Napoleon Bonaparte (the future Napoleon III), was eager to win clerical support by restor­ing Pius IX, who was as adamant against any compromise with the republicans in Rome as they were against any with him,

A French army of eight or nine thousand soldiers landed near Rome on April 25 and was stunned by the heroicdefense of Garibaldi's recruits. It took until July 3 for French artillery and numbers, reinforced to somewhere be­tween twenty and thirty thousand, to overwhelm the ten thousand enthusiastic hut mostly untrained republicans and open the city for the return of the Pontiff.

So Mazzini's republican way to unification had also failed. In 1859-1860 other ways would succeed. Victor Em­manuel's constitutional monarchy would provide a moderate center to which most Italians could rally. Cavour's moder­ate conservatism would ensure middle class support, and his careful diplomacy would win critical international sup­port for the unification of northern Italy. And Garibaldi's bold generalship would secure the south.

Notes

1. Much of the material in the first four sections of this intro­duction is taken from Eugenio Ceria's Introduction to the Italian edition, pp. r-12.

2. BM V, 577.

3. BM VIII, 256.

4. BM XII, 52.

5. Desramaut, Les Memorie ,. pp. 117-118.

6. BM XII, 52.

7. Salesian Central Archives (ASC) 132- Autograft-Oratorio, Mi­crofiche FDB Micro 57 A1-60 A2 Ms. autogr.Bosco.

8. ASC 132: Autografi-Oratorio. FDB Micro 60 A3~63 E12 Ms. Autogr. Berto corr.e add. Bosco.

9. BM XV, 80. 99, 359,

10. Desramaut, p. 119.

11. Desramaut, pp. 116-117.

12. Stella, LW, p. xx.

13. Preface.

14. Desramaut, p. 123; cf, BM I, 86-91.

15. See chapter 5, note 4 and comment; BM I, 142-152.

16. BM XII. 52.

17. Ibid.

18. Work on a critical edition is underway at the Istituto Storico Salesiano in Rome, but it will be at least five years before it is completed (letter from Pietro Stella, March 16, 1989).

19. Address to the Rector Major and General Council of the Salesian Society, February 4, 1989, in Atti del Consiglio Generale LXX (1989), no, 329, pp. 24-27 at 25; cf. Acts of the General Council, no, 329, p. 26.

20. These are Saint Mary Domenica Mazzarello (1837-1881), cofoundress of the Daughters of Mary Help of Christians; Blessed Michael Rua [1837-1910), priest; Blessed Louis Versiglia (1873-1930), bishop and martyr; Blessed Callistus Caravario (1903-1930), priest and martyr; and the Venerables Dorothy Chopitea (1816-1891), a cooperator; Madeline Morano, FMA (1847-1908); Philip Rinaldi (1856-1931), priest; August Czartoryski (1858-1893), priest; Andrew Beltrami (1870-1897), priest; and Teresa Valse Pantellini, FMA (1878-1907).

21. Marriott, p. 33; cf. pp. 16-36.

22. Memoirs of Prince Metternich, 1815-1829, III, 97; cf. Marriott, p. 41.

23. Marriott, p. 90.

24. One of those implicated in the Milan uprising was the jour­nalist Silvio Pellico (1789-1854): he and a number of other patriots were imprisoned for up to eight years. Upon his release he published My Prisons, an indictment of Austrian repression and a profound Christian testimony that was very influential over the next three decades. He became secretary to Marchioness Barolo and a generous friend of Don Bosco.

25. See F, Leintni, Carlo Felice (1755-1831'] (Turin, 1931), p. 182.

26. When France, Spain, Austria, and Russia contemplated simi­lar action against Spain's former colonies in America, again in the name of restoring legitimate government, Great Brit­ain and the United States opposed them. This was the genesis of the Monroe Doctrine of December 1823.

27. In 1827 at Milan, Alessandro Manzoni (1785-1873) pub­lished his novel The Betrothed, which has been acclaimed as Italy's greatest literary masterpiece. Its love story is set in seventeenth-century Lombardy against a background of Spanish oppression. Readers everywhere applied it to the current situation.

28. Hearder, pp. 61-63; Woolf, p. 326.

29. Woolf, p. 285.

30. Jacques Droz. Europe Between Revolutions, 1815-1848 (New York: Harper, 1967), p. 168. Cf, E.E.Y. Hales, Pio Nono, pp. 39-42.

31. See E.E.Y. Hales, Revolution and Papacy, 1769-1846 (Notre Dame, 1966), pp. 245-279; Hearder, pp. 121, 181, 284-286; Droz, pp. 34, 193-794; Woolf, pp. 317-318; Frederick B. Artz, Reaction and Revolution, 1814-1832 [New York: Harper, 1934). Pp. 144-145, 245~246.

32. Roger Aubertt. The Church in the Secularized Society (New York: Paulist, 1978). pp. 34-37; Alec R. Vidler. The Church in an Age of Revolution, 1789 to the Present Day (Baltimore: Pen­guin, 1971), pp. 68-72; Hales, Revolution and Papacy, pp. 171, 218, 259-260, 279-295; NCE, VIII, 347-348.

33. Hales, Pio Nono, pp. 60-66.

34. Quoted by Marriott, p. 61.

35. After two centuries of Gallicanism in France and Josephism in Austria, and after the experience of the Church in En­gland under William Rufus, Henry II, and Henry VIII, it must have been hard for Pius IX to think otherwise, though the Western Church, at least, had managed quite well before Charlemagne, and the United States was showing the viabil­ity of what Cavour would call "a free Church in a free State."

36. Hales, Pio Nono. pp. 82-83.

37. Quoted by Marriott, p. 78.