Don Bosco: History and Spirit, Vol. 1: John Bosco's Formative Years in Historical Context (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Don Bosco: History and Spirit, Vol. 1: John Bosco's Formative Years in Historical Context John Dickson Don Bosco: History and Spirit, Vol. 1: John Bosco's Formative Years in Historical Context. By Arthur J. Lenti, edited by Aldo Giraudo. (Rome: Editrice Libreria Ateneo Salesiano. 2007. Pp. xx, 498. €30,00 paperback.) This is the first of a seven-volume series that aims for the first time to offer English readers a comprehensive critical historical survey of the history and spirit of St. John Bosco set firmly in the particular cultural context of ninetheenth-century Italy. What is presented here is not just a critical survey of all the existing historical and spiritual studies of Don Bosco's early life (1815–44) carefully set out in bite-size chunks but also an original contribution to the study of Salesian spirituality. Father Lenti's survey is called "History and Spirit" because it sets the life and work and spirituality of Don Bosco firmly in the rich context of Europe in the Age of Revolutions and the movement for Italian Unification. Lenti offers his readers not just a general historical survey but also a set of specific studies of the political and religious movements and careful pen portraits of the main protagonists that allow the general reader to grasp the context at some depth. At the same time, he offers his readers unique insights into the spiritual development of John Bosco as a young man. This capacity to combine historical critical method with a deep appreciation of spirituality is particularly evident in his study of Don Bosco's biographical [End Page 594] tradition. Lenti's own training as a biblical scholar enables him to explore the various sources and layers of tradition, including Don Bosco's own Memoirs of the Oratory and the various traditions that became the massive nineteen-volume Biographical Memoirs of St John Bosco, which have dominated the traditional Salesian understanding of their founder, and underline the hagiographic presuppositions of its authors. He offers critical reconstructions of such difficult issues as John Bosco's period of "exile" at the Moglia farm and the resulting chronological problems raised for biographers. Lenti's insights offer a truly human understanding of John Bosco as a young man, whose life was marked by the tragic early death of his father, by unresolved family difficulties, compounded by desperate poverty, but in which he was sustained by the deep faith and loving presence of his mother. Her extraordinary wisdom and insight encouraged him to develop his own inner freedom and strength of character with a growing trust in God's goodness. Lenti offers genuinely new insights in his sensitive exposition of John Bosco's crying need for a father figure, his hunger and capacity for deep personal intimacy and friendship. His exposition of the complexities of the processes of priestly formation in the Turin diocese, based on the original regulations, with his wonderful pen portraits of the main characters and the various theological and political movements involved mean that both the general reader and the specialist have an invaluable resource for understanding the model of priesthood that John Bosco both embraced and modified. This exhaustive study offers an encyclopedic resource for any student of Don Bosco in his original context. The care that the author and his editor have taken with the arrangement and organization of the text is commendable. More to be lamented than to be criticized is the quality of the proofreading that has sometimes transposed dates that should clearly be in the nineteenth century into the twentieth century. Overall, the first volume of this master work has whetted the appetite of this reader for the arrival of the next six volumes that will be a real milestone in the international study of Don Bosco and the Salesian phenomenon. John Dickson St. John Bosco House Farnborough, Hampshire Copyright © 2008 The Catholic University of America Press