CALASANZ, Joseph, Saint. - Born at Peralta de la Sal, in Aragon, in 1556 or 1557, of a modest family but perhaps of ancient nobility; died in Rome on 25 Aug. 1648. In religion, G. of the Mother of God.
Having completed his early studies in his homeland and at Estadilla, he assiduously followed courses in philosophy, law and theology at the Universities of Lerida, Valencia and Alcalá, leaving them with a doctorate. He became a priest in 1583. After nine years of zealous ecclesiastical ministry in several dioceses of his Spain, he moved in 1592 to Rome, where, in his anxiety to know what precisely Providence willed of him, he devoted himself at first to a many-sided apostolate that brought him into contact with the profound misery of the people.
One day, passing along a street in Rome, the very sad spectacle of a herd of children abandoned to themselves and shameless in words and gestures struck him extraordinarily. From then on the mission assigned to him by God took shape in him: the school. Having sought in vain to induce others to undertake that most noble work, in the late autumn of 1597, in two poor rooms adjoining the sacristy of S. Dorotea in the very populous quarter of Trastevere, he opened his schools, calling them from those very beginnings the Pious Schools. He wanted them absolutely free and open to all: to poor children and not poor, with special regard for the former.
And his were truly schools, because literary and scientific instruction was not absorbed and sacrificed there by religious instruction, but was wisely placed alongside it with well-defined teaching programs, with careful division of classes, with punctuality of schedule, with seriousness of periodic examinations, with aims of practical preparation for life. He was not a pedagogue, but he had the talent and natural genius of an educator, also because he admired and loved science as few did, so much as to show himself and be fearlessly benevolent and beneficent to Galileo Galilei and Tommaso Campanella. Because of the ever greater influx of boys he had very soon to transfer the schools to a more suitable site on this side of the Tiber, first near S. Andrea della Valle and then near S. Pantaleo, where the definitive residence was. And since he was persuaded of the necessity of a religious congregation to be instituted as a guarantee of the continuity and perpetuity of his schools, he began for this purpose by keeping his teachers with him in common life.
The Pope, assured of the goodness of the Calasanzian institution by two most learned cardinals, Cesare Baronio and Silvio Antoniano, encouraged and supported him, despite the opposition of envious and self-interested or uncomprehending people. Paul V in 1617 elevated the Scolopi to the rank of a true and proper religious Congregation of simple vows. Gregory XV in 1621 raised the Institute to the dignity of a religious Order of solemn vows.
After Rome and Lazio, the Calasanzian schools were requested and obtained by Liguria and then by the Neapolitan region, Tuscany, Sicily, Sardinia, Moravia, Bohemia and Poland, while the founder was still alive. Thus there arose in the Order what might be called a crisis of growth, and this against the desire and will of the one who had instituted it, who resisted such an excess of development as long as he could, foreseeing its grave dangers.
Among the less worthy Scolopi there was in fact no lack of those who took advantage of the internal situation and of internal oppositions to fish in troubled waters; the entire Order was subjected to an apostolic visitor, while the founder, for a short time even made a prisoner by the Holy Office, was deposed by Urban VIII on 12 Aug. 1642 from the office of superior general, although it had been conferred on him for life by the same Pontiff several years earlier. And in 1646 Innocent X even decreed the suppression of the Order. Heroic was the patience of C., then in his ninetieth year, but lively and firm his hope in the resurrection of his work.
Respectively Alexander VII in 1656 and Clement IX in 1669 restored to the Calasanzian Order the rank and dignity of a religious Congregation of simple vows and of a religious Order with solemn vows. C. was canonized in 1767 by Clement XIII. His feast falls on 27 Aug.
Bibliography9 works
Pasquale Vannucci