Catholic Historical Review, 100, Spring 2014

Catholic Historical Review • 100, Spring 2014 • pagg. 366-367 Le smanie per l’educazione: Gli scolopi a Venezia tra Sei e Settecento. By Maurizio Sangalli. [I libri di Viella, 137.] (Rome: Viella Libreria Editrice. 2012. Pp. 425. €38,00. ISBN 978-88-8334-910-2.) by Christopher Carlsmith This book traces the history of the Piarist order directives from Rome and to ally themselves with the inside the Venetian Republic during the seventeenth Venetian state, when the occasion demanded it. It is and eighteenth centuries. In five extended chapters, difficult to avoid frequent comparisons between the Sangalli offers an overview of the order (chapter 1), a Jesuits and the Piarists, owing to the important simi- detailed look at the Piarist schools in Murano and larities, but also differences, between the two orders; Capodistria (chapters 2–3), an analysis of those fortunately, Sangalli has worked quite a bit on Jesuit schools’ finances (chapter 4), and a consideration of history and thus makes a number of enlightening the Piarist attempts to expand west into the Venetian comparisons. mainland empire and east to Ragusa and nearby Sangalli is intimately familiar with the requisite ar- towns (chapter 5). The book includes four appendi- chives for this type of project, including the order’s ces, listing the dates/locations of attempted founda- archives near Piazza Navona, the State and tions, faculty members serving from 1677 to 1805 Patriarchal Archives in Venice, and the Vatican and their areas of expertise, students resident in the Archives. He has written extensively about the histo- Venetian schools in 1754 and 1765, and sample ry of education in the early-modern Venetian world, budgets of 1756 and 1805. The bibliography is very including several monographs and dozens of articles thorough; it consists overwhelmingly of Italian- since the late 1990s. Unlike many who have penned language scholarship. Four maps and three graphs earlier accounts of the Piarists (and of other religious help to break up the dense but very informative text. orders), Sangalli is a professionally trained, lay histo- Sangalli acknowledges previous scholarship on the rian; nevertheless, it is clear that he is sympathetic to Piarists in Naples, Poland, and elsewhere but argues the Piarists. He skips lightly over the multiple accusa- that Venice constitutes a special case where intro- tions of child abuse that plagued the order in the sev- ducing a new religious order, especially one with a enteenth century and ultimately led to the pope’s Spanish founder, was particularly “delicate.” suspension of the Piarists (see Karen Liebreich’s ex- The Piarists – also known as the Scolopians or cellent Fallen Order: Intrigue, Heresy, and Scandal in Scuole Pie and formally as the Poor Regular Clerics the Rome of Caravaggio and Galileo [New York, of the Mother of God of the Pious Schools – were 2004]). founded by the Aragonese Josè Calasanz in 1597. The strength of this work is its careful reconstruc- Similar to the Jesuits, the Somaschans, the tion of the Piarist attempts, both successful and not, Barnabites, and the Theatines, the Piarists were in- at penetrating the Venetian Empire during these two spired by the Catholic reform in the second half of the centuries. Sangalli explains how a botched attempt in sixteenth century. Calasanz’s order shared with its the early 1630s, when Venice was devastated by brethren a desire to provide education to those who plague, set back the order’s attempts by half a cen- otherwise would not have been able to receive it. tury. Drawing upon the voluminous archival records, Initially Calasanz focused on primary education – es- Sangalli documents the details of the seminarium no- pecially religious education. Like the Jesuits, howev- bilium at Capodistria on the Adriatic coast, and the er, the content of classes shifted over time to include later college on the island of Murano near Venice, the more scientific and mathematical instruction, even only two of twenty attempts that successfully en- when such instruction sometimes disagreed with or- dured. thodox views from Rome. Sangalli asserts that the University of Massachusetts Lowell Piarists (unlike the Jesuits) were willing to break with Christopher Carlsmith.

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