Arthur Lenti – “Don Bosco educator, spiritual master, writer and founder of the salesian society” in “Don Bosco: history and spirit, vol. 3”

The topics dealt with in this third volume of the series, Don Bosco: History and Spirit, are large and comprehensive. Basically they present a Don Bosco active in a triple capacity–in his roles as educator and spiritual master, as writer, publisher and controversialist, and as founder of the Salesian Society. Each of these activities was of extreme importance in its own right, and fundamental for the future development of the Salesian work.As educator and spiritual master in the community of students at the Home Attached to the Oratory he set forth an educative method and a way of holiness that has been proved valid to this day. As founder of the Salesian Society he gathered the force that would transmit the method and the way from one generation to the next. As writer and publisher he committed his
Salesians to a ministry that would gain decisive momentum in defense of the Catholic faith and the Christian ethos, though Don Bosco the controversialist drew inspiration from a nineteenth-century apologetic style that is no longer regarded as valid. Don Bosco’s activity through this decade (roughly 1849-1861) is set against a background of social change and political evolution–leading to the unification of Italy.

CONTENTS

• Chapter 1
  • Don Bosco’s Regulations for the Boys Oratory and early Educational and
    Devotional Writings (1844-1849)
• Chapter 2
  • The Decade 1850-1861 and Its Importance
• Chapter 3
  • Developments at the “Home Attached” to the Oratory (1852-1862)
• Chapter 4
  • Don Bosco Educator and Spiritual Master
• Chapter 5
  • Don Bosco Spiritual Master in the Education of the Young
• Chapter 6
  • Don Bosco’s Writing Activity in the 1850s Counteracting the Liberal Anticlerical Press
• Chapter 7
  • Don Bosco’s Apologetic and Polemical Writings against the Waldenses
• Chapter 9
  • The Founding of the Salesian Society (1859)

Reference time period: 1845 – 1870