JOSEPH CALASANZ TOPICS on EDUCATION Edited by Joan Florensa Parés
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
JOSEPH CALASANZ TOPICS ON EDUCATION Edited by Joan Florensa Parés JOSEPH CALASANZ TOPICS ON EDUCATION Edited by Joan Florensa Parés Calasantian Editions - Madrid/Rome 2017 MATERIALES 51 Joseph Calasanz. Topics on Education Edited by Joan Florensa Parés Publicaciones ICCE (Instituto Calasanz de Ciencias de la Educación) José Picón, 7 - 28028 Madrid www.icceciberaula.es ISBN: 978-84-7278-502-1 Depósito Legal: M-15016-2017 Imprime: Villena Artes Gráfi cas Translation for the Communications Offi ce of the General Curia of Rome. Email: [email protected] 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.icceciberaula.es ÍNDICE Introducción ...................................................................................................................................................... 7 1. Years of formation and priestly experiences ............................................... 7 2. In search of new horizons ................................................................................................... 10 3. He found and bought the precious pearl ........................................................ 11 4. He created a school for every one ............................................................................. 12 5. Contents of the instruction .............................................................................................. 14 6. In search of continuity ............................................................................................................ 18 7. From congregation to order ............................................................................................ 22 8. The formation of the teachers ....................................................................................... 24 9. geographic expansion of the pious schools .................................................. 27 10. Calasanz advocates the inclusive school .......................................................... 30 11. Rehabilitation of Calassanç and of his work ............................................... 36 12. The Pious Schools after the founder .................................................................... 37 13. The documents that we transcribe ......................................................................... 39 Chronology .......................................................................................................................................................... 41 Bibliography ....................................................................................................................................................... 45 Texts on education ..................................................................................................................................... 49 1. Brief report on the Method used by the Piarist Fathers (c. 1610) .................................................................................. 49 2. Regulations and schedule of workers (1603) ............................................. 55 3. Rules for the addition of three, four or fi ve fractional numbers ....................................................................................................................... 56 4. Organization of a school with two classrooms (1621) .................. 56 5. Report on the Pious Schools (1622) ...................................................................... 58 6. Labour contract of Professor Ventura Sarafellini (1618) ........... 61 7. Some Mysteries of the life and passion of Christ, Our Lord, to be taught to students of the lower class of the Pious Schools ................................................................................................................... 62 8. To cardinal Montalto (A. Peretti) (c. 1620-1624) .................................. 68 9. To cardinals Giustiniani, Lancelloti and Soana (1615) ................ 69 10. To cardinal Michelangelo Tonti (1621) .............................................................. 71 11. First memorial to the Commission of Cardinals: the Institute is not to be changed (1645) ..................................................... 78 12. Second Memorial to the Commission of Cardinals: by Fr. Pietro Casani (1645) ................................................................................................ 85 13. Memorial to the Conservative Lords of Rome (1645) .................... 87 14. To cardinal Julio Roma(1645) ........................................................................................ 89 15. Constitutions of the order of the Pious Schools (1622) .............. 90 16. Declarations on the Constitutions, Rules and Common Rites (1637) ................................................................................................. 98 17. Regulations of Campi Salentina College (1630) .................................... 104 18. Selection of extracts of letters ....................................................................................... 106 19. Apologetic book against opponents of the Pious Schools, by Tommaso Campanella (1631) ................................................................................ 123 INTRODUCTION Joseph Calassanç Gastó was a teacher and a school organizer. He wanted education for every child. He dedicated more than fi fty years of his long life to schools, education and children. He left no treatise on education, nor a presentation of his educational thought. His writ- ings are due to different reasons, such as to defend his ideas, to estab- lish rules required for the organization of the work he was creating, or to communicate with his religious as superior general. All these are writings that his followers must study in order to have an idea of his educational thinking. This volume aims at the specifi c work of studying these writings. Those provided here are of an educational nature, to which we add a booklet written by Friar Tommaso Campanella in defense of the Pious Schools, because totally in agreement agreement with the ideas of Calassanç. Forgotten for centuries, this booklet doesn’t even appear in his complete works. 1. YEARS OF FORMATION AND PRIESTLY EXPERIENCES Joseph Calassanç was born in 1557 in Peralta de la Sal, the youngest of eight children, fi ve of them girls. His father, don Pere, was a minor nobelman and town mayor, who managed a blacksmith’s trade. His home occupied part of what today is the shrine, and was a comfortable house. He learned fi rst letters in the town school and catechism in the parish on sunday mornings. At home they used to say the rosary and other prayers. Among his friends he was a leader, both playing in the street and studying at school, due to his intelligence. 8 Joan Florensa Parés At eleven years old, surely under the advice of his teacher, he was taken to learn Latin with the Trinitarians in Estadilla, where he stayed with a family in Can Sardi. When he fi nished Latin he expressed his will to become a priest so it was decided that he had to complete his studies at the University of Lleida, where he studied philosophy and law. From there he went to Valencia where he began a course of theology; at the end of the year he went to Alcalá de Henares for the second year of theology. His brothers and sisters were getting married, so the house was remaining empty. His mother died, as well as a brother. Don Pere, his father, asked Joseph to abandon the idea of becoming a priest, to marry and carry on the family. Joseph didn’t want to leave the priest- hood but neither he wanted to contradict his father, who was suffer- ing for the death of his wife. This inner battle took him to the brink of the grave. He then proposed his father to allow him to undertake the promise of becoming a priest if he recovered. His father thought that to have him as a priest was better than have him dead and accepted his proposal. Joseph improved, and after some months he fi nished theology in the University of Lleida. On December 17, 1583 he was ordained in the chapel of the episcopal palace of Sanaüja by the bishop of la Seu de Urgell, Hug Ambrós de Montcada. The fi rst experiences as newly ordained were near two bishops. First, as familiar of the prelate of Barbastro, Friar Felipe de Urríes, a Dominican. Calassanç stayed in this city from February 10, 1584 till June 18, 1585, when the prelate died. It was a new bishopric, with great problems associated with the need of incomes for living and developing apostolic activities, as well as with the lack of a residence. Calassanç accompanied the bishop in his apostolic visitation to the Monastery of the hospitaller nuns of Saint John in Alguaire, where there was a serious issue between the abbess and the community. When Urríes passed away, Joseph moved to Monzón where the holding of the Courts of the States of the Crown of Aragon —Aragon, Catalonia and Valencia— were starting under the presidence of King Philip II. He lodged in the same house with the bishop of Albarracín, Gaspar Juan de la Figuera, who had ordained Joseph as a deacon. The holding of the Courts was an occasion for establishing relationships, Joseph Calasanz. Topics on Education 9 obtaining benefi ts, solving problems. The whole power was concen- trated there. Friar Francisco Aguilar, an Augustinian, was working in the reform of his order in Aragon. In Monzón he visited the monarch seeking his support