preference for historical and apologetic studies. It was to be these latter studies, which would give Don Bosco his impetus to popularise whatever had to do with history and Catechesis. 485

Don Bosco received a scientific and university type of formation at Chieri. The culture he warmed to was not so pretentious; it was free of speculation and theological dogmatic disputations. Together with the emphasis given to moral and applied theology, especially at the Convitto Ecclesiastico in Turin, this kind of culture would not fail to give Don Bosco his fundamental orientation towards the creation of a pedagogy which would be religious and moral, essential and practical. On the other hand, the religious and pastoral spirituality of two Saints, St Philip Neri and St Francis de Sales were to have a deep influence on his preventive educative style. In this way the cleric Bosco, probably at the seminary, rounded up his own theological formation.

We will deal with these two saints later when we write about the years which followed Don Bosco's three-year stay at the Convitto Ecclesiastico in Turin and we will also add Don Bosco's encounter with another Saint, St. Vincent de Paul, whose life he may have glimpsed in his seminary days.

Don Bosco's culture was not only nurtured by what was on offer in the seminary regime. He owed much to his own taste in reading; books on sacred and church history, on apologetics, and certain formative authors.486 It is probably true to say that Don Bosco made no distinction between the authors and books he read in later years and those read during his days at the Convitto Ecclesiastico, and during the period when he wrote on religious history, on apologetics and on the type of piety suited for young people.

However, it is evident that Don Bosco preferred authors, like Bossuet, who interpreted history in a theological, providential, hagiographical and moralistic way and were loyal to the Church. Don Bosco would never depart from the road followed by Berault-Bercastel:

This is my intention, to make people recognize the unfailing protection of God over his

people, the sanctity as well as the infallibility of the church, its beauty and its splendour

even during the times of the greatest darkness.487

This intention resounds throughout Don Bosco’s education system. He himself stresses this very point in The Memoirs of the Oratory when the features of the preventive system which he put into practice during a thirty year period, were already defined. The seminary education system had been evidently modelled on the institutiones ad universum seminarii regimen pertinentes (The educational system to be used by seminaries) issued by Charles Borromeo, and with objectives and methods definitely leaning towards austerity.488 On the whole it was a repressive system.

The Rector and the other superiors came to see us when we got back from our vacation and

when we were leaving for our vacation. No one ever went to speak with them, except in

cases when someone had to be reprimanded. The superiors took turns, each week in

supervising us in the dining room and during the walks. And that was all.

How often I would have liked to talk to them, to ask them for their advice or for the solution of some problem, and I could not. Besides, whenever a superior happened to pass by through the seminary, without knowing why everyone would hurry away as if to avoid a

485 MO (1991), 91-93, 106-108.

486 MO (1991), 107.

487 A. H. Bérault-Bercastel, Storia del cristianesimo dell’anate Bérault.Bercastel translated in Italian with notes and essays

by Abbot Giambattisa Zugno, vol 1, (Turin: tip. Cassone, Marzorati and Vercellone, 1831), 30.

488 Cf. institutiones ad universum seminarii regimen pertinentes , in Acta Ecclesiae Mediolensis, ed. A. Ratti, (Milan:

1982), vol 3, col. 93-146.