Humble Origins

Were we to look up Bosco in Webster's New Biographical Dictionary, we would find the following entry:

This is bare bones information. A larger biographical dictionary would certainly record much more data for Bosco--for example, that he broadened the field of his educational work from Turin, to the whole of Italy, then to other nations of Europe and South America; that he founded a worldwide association, the Salesian Cooperators, to help in the work; that he was a pioneering and prolific author and publisher; that he developed a distinctive educational method rich in human and Christian insights. Those of us who are familiar or even merely acquainted with the saint's life and work could certainly say more.

When considering Don Bosco's achievement, and its importance for Church and society, a question persistently rises in our minds: How could such a mighty work develop from beginnings that were in fact insignificant. For Don Bosco's origins were humble indeed, and nobody could have predicted such an outcome. A quick look at the family's situation before and after his father's death will throw some light on the sobering reality.

Don Bosco's earliest ancestor on record, John Bosco by name, is known to have been married in the city of Chieri in 1627. Chieri was an ancient town of some 9,000 inhabitants, located about 10 miles southeast of Turin. Turin was and is the capital of the region of Piedmont, in the extreme northwestern part of Italy, within the semicircle of the Alps.

This ancestor and his descendants were, generally speaking, living and working on local farms as tenant farmers or sharecroppers. Of special interest for our story is Don Bosco's grandfather, Philip Anthony Bosco (1735-1802). He was an orphan, his father having died before he was born, and his mother having abandoned him when she remarried. The lot of widows in those days was precarious at best. It often happened that a widow, given the choice of keeping her children and destitution, or surrendering them and beginning life anew, did not ponder the situation at length. In Philip Anthony's case abandonment did not mean leaving him in a doorway. The child's uncle, John Francis Bosco, took him into his care; and when in 1751 he moved to the town of Castelnuovo to become a small independent farmer, he took him along as one of his own.

Castelnuovo, a medieval town of less than 3,000 inhabitants at the time, is situated some 7.5 miles east of Chieri. It was the administrative center, municipality, and parish of the district, with four small villages under it.

At Castelnuovo, Don Bosco's grandfather, Philip Anthony Bosco, married and then remarried after his first wife died. The fourth child of this second marriage, named Francis Louis, was to be Don Bosco's father.

Meanwhile things went badly for the Boscos at Castelnuovo. Their attempt at independent farming failed, and they were forced to seek new situations, again as tenant farmers. In 1793 Don Bosco's grandfather and his family migrated some 3 miles south to the hamlet of Becchi. There The little farm house where Johnny Bosco grew up. they found employment as sharecropper on the lands of Mr. Giacinto Biglione, an attorney. This is how this branch of the Bosco family was established in the Becchi area.

Becchi was a hamlet of Morialdo, which was one of the four villages of the municipal town and parish of Castelnuovo. The hamlet of Becchi consisted of perhaps ten peasant dwellings huddled at the base of the northern slope of a hillock on top of which stood the larger farmhouse of Mr. Biglione.

In 1804 at Biglione's farm, by a conjunction of circumstances, Francis Louis Bosco (Don Bosco's father) found himself the manager at the age of 20. The following year he married his first wife, and from this first marriage was born Anthony Joseph (1808). Francis Louis' first wife died in 1811, leaving him a widower at the age of 27. He soon became acquainted with the virtuous Margaret Occhiena from the nearby town and parish of Capriglio, and they were married in 1812. From this marriage were born Joseph Louis (1813) and John Melchior (our Don Bosco) on August 16, 1815. He was baptized the next day in St. Andrew's parish church of Castelnuovo. (Don Bosco apparently believed he was born on August 15, the feast of the Assumption of Mary.)

The end of Napoleonic Era in 1815 led to the Restoration of royal families to the thrones the Emperor had usurped. This, in turn, led to the conflict between a return to the status quo before Napoleon and the growth of democracy and socialism arising from the French Revolution that led to one of the most turbulent and revolutionary periods in European history and also one of general economic distress.

In spite of hard times, with the help of a couple of hired hands, Francis Bosco held his own at the farm and even improved his economic position. However, due to Mr. Biglione's demands and other circumstances, his relation with the owners deteriorated, and he began to look to his family's interests. Yearning for his own independence, he bought a little house from a neighboring farmer on February 17, 1817. It was actually a shed or lean-to composed of a lower dwelling and attached stable, with a small hayloft above it. It was described in the deed as "a shed and stable with a tile roof, and in disrepair." A couple of pieces of arable land went with it. Later in 1817, the local notary public inventoried Francis Bosco's property. He owned 8 small pieces of land in or near the Becchi district amounting to about 2.5 acres, of which 4 pieces were vineyard, and 4 for cereal or pasture cultivation. He also owned several animals, which indicates without a doubt that Francis aimed at maintaining some status even as a sharecropper and, eventually, at becoming independent. Reckoning also the value of various agricultural tools, furniture, household implements and clothes, his total worth was respectable. Sharecroppers had no home of their own; their children were born in other people's houses; they migrated from place to place as tenancies became available. They were poor with the respectable poverty of peasants working for others. But it should be clearly understood that Francis Bosco, like most of his ancestors, was well above being a mere day laborer, who might earn a scanty livelihood for himself and his family by hiring out as a farmhand.

The "Temple" of Don Bosco, built on the site of his birth. To the right is the Bernardi Semaria Institute, a technical school. This is the focal point for continuous pilgrimages of youth from all over Europe and the world.

Much less was he dependent on "certificates of poverty" such as were issued by parish priests for the municipality to dole out help to the indigent poor.

Just as things seemed to be improving, Francis Bosco died on May 11, 1817, at the age of 33, seven days after contracting pneumonia. Francis' death was a veritable disaster for Margaret and the family. Their financial situation deteriorated very quickly. First, she had to settle all debts outstanding, and they amounted to one-third of Francis Bosco's total worth. Second, and obviously, Margaret had to move out of Biglione's farm. After fulfilling as well as she could the terms of the contract for the rest of the season, she left the farm and moved to the "little house" which her husband had purchased some months before. She spent part of the family's savings to prepare the little house for occupancy, for it was "in disrepair." The ground level room was made into an all-purpose room and kitchen, with a hearth. The attached tiny stable, barely large enough for a cow and her calf, remained unchanged. The hayloft above was turned into two little bedrooms accessible from external stairs and, inside, from a trap door in the ceiling. On the stable's side there remained a space which could be used for storage.

In the Memoirs of the Oratory, Don Bosco speaks of his father's death as "his earliest memory." (He was less than 2 years old at the time!) He describes his own uncomprehending bewilderment when his mother led him from the room with the words, "Poor child, come with me; you no longer have a father." The first pages of the Memoirs of the Oratory (Don Bosco's autobiographical account of his early years and of the beginnings of his work in Turin, written in the mid-1870s) are mostly a tale of poverty and hardship. He gives quite a bit of space to the great drought and famine that gripped the area in the years 1816-1818. Such calamities were periodically recurring events in that part of the country, but this particular one is known to have been especially severe. People were found dead along country tracks with grass in their mouths. Don Bosco writes:

My mother often used to tell us that she fed the family until she exhausted all her food. She then gave money to a neighbor to go looking for food to buy. That friend went round the various markets but was unable to buy anything even at exorbitant prices. After two days he came in the evening bringing back nothing but the money he had been given. We were all in a panic. We had eaten practically nothing the whole day.

He adds that, after getting the family down on their knees for a brief prayer, his mother said: "Drastic circumstances demand drastic means." Then she and that neighbor went to the stable and killed the calf -- a desperate act, for the calf was the family's insurance.

Don Bosco tells us also that at this time his mother received a very advantageous proposal of marriage from an unnamed gentleman -- a proposal, however, which did not include the children. "On being told that her sons could be entrusted to a good guardian, she firmly declined the offer: "All the gold in the world could never make me abandon these sons of mine." This was a courageous decision on Margaret's part. Widows, like orphans, in the nineteenth century were still, as in greater antiquity, the most fragile part of society. Many a widow would have snatched at the offer. Her decision was heroic, and the Bosco children were lucky. In the same situation, three generations earlier, Philip Anthony Bosco, the grandfather mentioned above, was not so lucky.

Margaret knew what lay ahead for her: in circumstances of real poverty, she must now be the breadwinner. The family consisted, besides Margaret, of her 9-year-old stepson Anthony, her sons Joseph and John (4 and 2 years old, respectively), and her near invalid mother-in-law. It was only by dint of the hardest kind of labor and at the cost of immense personal sacrifice that Margaret would succeed in making ends meet and in feeding single-handedly a family of five. For at least 6 years Anthony could not be expected to be of any significant help. Joseph would need 10 more years, and John an even dozen.

The strips of land they owned were probably just barely sufficient to keep them fed. Even in good years the yield of the land was never high. The soil was depleted, and the methods of cultivation were medieval. The market price of cereals and wine was kept low by a protectionist agricultural policy designed to keep produce from other Mediterranean countries and from Russia off the market. Thus if there was any surplus wheat, corn and rye to sell, it would fetch only insignificant sums. No real savings could be effected.

Perhaps the surest gauge of the family's real poverty is the fact that Margaret could contribute practically nothing to John's education. He was forced to beg, obtain help from charitable persons in the parish, compete for awards and gratuities, and rely on his own resourcefulness in order to survive as a student.

In 1883 Albert Du Boys, one of Don Bosco's first biographers, submitted the proofs of his Life of Don Bosco for him to review before publication. Don Bosco felt bound to make a number of corrections, and one in particular, namely the statement that the Bosco family lived in fairly comfortable circumstances. Don Bosco struck the phrase and wrote, "in really poor circumstances." This he did out of regard for the truth rather than out of humility.

It is reasonable to think that such personal experience of poverty became a factor as well in his spirituality and in his vocational commitment to the poor. (To be continued.)