The Villa Duchesca, Calasanzio,
the Pious Schools
& Scandal
North
I started out to find a
villa —an estate— I hadn't heard of before and found a
religious order and a scandal of the kind I wish I would
stop hearing about.
There is in Naples an
area still called la
Duchesca, named after the Villa Duchesca (The
Villa of the Duchess). It was one of those glorious
pieces of royal property with gardens, fountains, trees
and footpaths. It was a project of the Aragonese rulers
of Naples in the 1490s, similar to another one, Poggioreale, built more or
less at the same time; both underwent identical trips to
oblivion as the years passed. The Villa Duchesca was in
the lower right-hand quadrant of this map from 1566,
that is, between the Capuano
Castle (#47 on the map), which still exists, and
the western end of modern Piazza Garibaldi (just off the
extreme lower right-hand corner of this map). By the
date of this map, however, only a few buildings and a
bit of empty space just inside the city walls remained
of the old villa. We know from sources*1 that the villa was
planned to be an adjunct of the Capuano Castle and place
for the royals to stroll. It was built quickly in the
area just within the newly expanded city walls (the
section below #5 on the map) and deteriorated just as
quickly as the Aragonese
dynasty came to an end. The French
invaded Naples in 1500, enjoyed the villa, praised it
and just as quickly sacked it when they were forced to
leave as the new Spanish empire moved in. (If that
confuses you, it confused them, too! See the above link
to the "Aragonese Dynasty" for some clarification.)
During the chaos of the violent change of dynasties,
further assaults on the villa came from street mobs and
those interested in salvaging building materials for
their own projects. Such maps as the one above from a
mere 50 years later, after the great wave of Spanish
expansion of the city, show that the Spanish had largely
succeeded in their effort to rid the city within the
walls of frivolous things such as gardens as they shored
up the walled defences of the city. The buildings on the
original premises of the Villa Duchesca were what was
left of original structures on the estate or later
add-ons by the Spanish.
It is all gone now,
fallen victim to a number of things: Spanish neglect of
—and scavenging of— earlier structures, more of the same
by later Bourbon rulers in the 1700s, the later urban
renewal of the Risanamentoin
the late 1800s, and, finally, the air-raids of WWII.
All that is left of the Duchesca are some names such as a
street, via Duchesca,
and the fact that the entire quarter is still called "la Duchesca". It
is now a squalid hive of black-marketeers and
pickpockets and you'd better stay out of it if you know
what's good for you.
Aparallel street
(alley, really) to via
Duchesca is via
Giuseppe Calasanzio, and so the story
continues. Giuseppe Calasanzio (José Calasanz in the original Spanish
and Calasanctius in
the Latin version) (1556-1648) was the founder of the
Catholic education order known as the "Piarists" (from Ordo Clericorum Regularium
pauperum Matris Dei Scholarum Piarum, or Order
of Poor Clerics Regular of the Mother of God of the
Pious Schools). They are generally called scolopi in Italian
(from scuole pie—pious
schools). It was an order dedicated to free education
for poor children and actually served as a model for
later Catholic societies and even secular state-run
educational systems. Calasanctius was born in Spain and
moved to Rome in 1592 to set up his order and engage
other clerics who wanted to work with him towards the
goal of free education for the poor. He opened his
school in Rome in 1597. In 1626 he opened his first
school in Naples; it was on the premises of the old
Villa Duchesca, which is why there is still a street
there that bears his name. Other schools followed
quickly, both in Naples and elsewhere. All in all,
between 1626 and 1752, 21 Pious Schools schools were
opened in the Kingdom of Naples.
The schools were important
both for what they did and for the influence they had.
Indeed, they comprised the first system of free
education in Europe; they were run by Piarist clerics
dedicated to the ideal that the poor should be able to
read, write and do arithmetic. Calasanzio was a
supporter of Galileo, and if that were not revolutionary
enough, his schools took all comers, including Jewish
children without attempting to convert them. The Piarist
schools have enjoyed and still enjoy a reputation for
quality education; as well, they also had early success
in the education of the physically or mentally disabled.
A list of names educated at Piarist schools includes
Mozart, Gregor Mendel and Victor Hugo. The Piarist order
is currently present in 32 countries.*2
That is the good news. The bad
news is that the origins of the order were shrouded in a
pedophilia scandal that apparently began in Naples.*3 Calasanctius' problems
started when he learned that the headmaster of the
original school in Naples, Father Stefano Cherubini, was
sexually abusing children. Cherubini was from a family
of papal lawyers whom Calasanctius was more or less
powerless to fight. Knowing that his schools were done
if allegations were made public, Calasanctius tried to
"kick Cherubini upstairs" to an administrative position
physically away from the children. That did not work
since similar rumors started to circulate about those
who replaced Cherubini in Naples. Cherubini, himself,
moved up in the hierarchy of the order and in 1643
replaced the aging Calasanctius as the head of the
entire order. At that point, Calasanctius went public
with Cherubini's history of child molestation.
Calasanctius was then threatened both legally and
physically by Cherubini. The entire affair so embroiled
the order of the Pious Schools in church politics that
Pope Innocent X disbanded the order in 1646 under the
guise that there was internal dissent within the order.
Shuffling pedophiles from one place to another instead
of dealing with the problem of this most evil of vices
has a modern ring to it, unfortunately.
In any event, no one, as far
as I know (certainly not the author of Fallen Order, note 3, below) has accused Calasanzio of sexually
abusing children. They do accuse him of not dealing with
it properly. That is a fair accusation, in my view. In
any event, Calasanzio died just two years after his
order was disbanded. His reputation was intact, however,
and the order was restored in 1656 and has survived ever
since in some form or another throughout Europe.
Calasanctius was proclaimed a saint by the Roman
Catholic church in 1767. In Naples, the order and
schools went through some difficult times with the
suppression of religious orders under Murat in the early 1800s and
again after the unification of Italy in 1861. Education in the new, united Italy
was totally secularized by the Casati law of 1859 and
the Piarist schools (and schools of other religious
orders) throughout Italy were disbanded.*4
With the unification of Italy,
the Vatican States
disappeared and the tiny new Vatican state refused to
recognize the modern state of Italy; thus, the
possibility of schools run by Catholic religious orders
in Italy could not be dealt with until that situation
changed. It did so in the 1920s when the Gentile Reform
(1923) encouraged Catholic education and when the Concordato (The
Lateran Treaty of 1929) normalized relations between the
Italian State and the Vatican. The Piarist order and the
Pious Schools reemerged. The Pious School in Naples
opened again in Naples in 1954 and is currently housed
in a marvelous and large complex in the Fuorigrotta
section of town. The school covers early elementary
grades through the last year of high school as a
"scientific lyceum." The sports facilities and modern
science and computer labs are impressive, and the
school, itself, is adjacent to the modern church of San
Giuseppe Calasanzio.
notes & sources:
*1. Colombo, Antonio. "Il Palazzo e il
Giardino della Duchesca" in Napoli Nobilissima,
vol 1, n. 6. (1892) p. 81. The article is an
abridgment of his earlier "Il Palazzo e il
Giardino della Duchesca dal 1487 al 1760"
in the Archivio
Storico per le Province Napoletane,
1884, vol. IX. Both are cited in La Città nella Storia
d'Italia: Napoli, (first edition 1981)
by Cesare De Seta, publisher Laterza, Rome/Bari. p.
85.^ 2. Taturri,
Alberto. "I collegi
delle scuole pie nel Mezzogiorno" [The Pious
Schools in Southern Italy] in Le Forze del Principe,
vol II, University of Murcia (Spain), 2004, pp.
823-872. This is the best short source I have found on
the history of these schools.^ 3. The scandal
is detailed in, Fallen
Order: Intrigue, Heresy, and Scandal in the Rome of
Galileo and Caravaggio by Karen Liebreich.
Atlantic Books, London, 2005. ISBN-10: 1843540746.
There is a detailed summary of the book in the Annotated Bibliography
of Clergy Sexual Abuse, by J.S. Evinger, J.S.
FaithTrust Institute (2010). p. 159. It is on-line
here. I have read the book and it is not an
anti-Catholic diatribe or "hatchet job" in any sense.
The book is meticulously documented. ^ 4. Scarangello, Anthony. "Church
and State in Italian Education" in Comparative Education
Review, Vol. 5, No. 3 (Feb., 1962), pp.
199-207. Published by The University of Chicago Press
on behalf of the Comparative and International
Education Society. The Casati Law was passed in 1859
and applied to the then pre-Unity northern part of
Italy, that is, the Kingdom of Sardinia and Piedmont.
After unifcation, the law was extended to the former
Kingdom of Naples. The Casati Law did allow for
religious instruction in the new state schools, but
the process was secularized in that the clerics who
taught in state schools did so at the pleasure of the
government. Also, parents could elect not to have
their children participate in religious instruction.^