BOOK: Karen Liebreich, "Fallen Order"

Karen Liebreich: Fallen Order: Intrigue, Heresy and Scandal in the Rome of Galileo and Caravaggio. London: Atlantic Books, 2004. 1843540746. xxxii + 336 pp.

I haven't got the slightest idea why I bought this book, but then that's hardly surprising since it was more than 15 years ago. Perhaps I was influenced by the blurbs on the covers, which make it sound more sensationalistic than it really was. In actual fact it's a very decently written, very thoroughly researched book (it seems clear from the endnotes that the author spent what must have been an enormous amount of time in archives, poring over the correspondence of the 17th-century protagonists of this book, and describes some of this research in a very interesting introductory chapter), and I enjoyed reading it; the only downside is that it's about a rather out-of-the-way topic. But then that's hardly a big downside.

Fallen Order is the history of a little-known Catholic order, the Piarists (full name: Order of the Clerics Regular of the Pious Schools of the Poor of the Mother of God; p. 13), in the first half or so of the 17th century, from its foundation to the time it was brought down by a combination of political machinations, incompetent leadership, and child abuse on a depressingly large scale. (It was reconstituted a few decades later and still exists, running schools in Spain, Italy and several South American countries, but that is not the subject of the present volume and is only mentioned briefly at the end of the book.)

Its founder, José de Calasanz, was a Spanish priest who came to Rome at the end of the 16th century; after several years of networking and lobbying which failed to advance his career, he started a school where children of the poorest families could get elementary education entirely for free (p. 8), which was rare at the time. He was evidently doing a good job of it, got the support of the Church authorities, his organization was promoted to the status of a congregation and then finally to an order, in 1621 (pp. 12–13).

The organization grew quickly; their schools were popular with local authorities because they provided free education to the poor who would otherwise have to go without, and moreover because they focused on providing the sort of useful knowledge that would help those children get jobs in commerce and the like. Besides, Calasanz's rules of the Order obliged its members to lead poor and ascetic lives (p. 29),* which had the welcome side effect of making the schools cheaper to operate (p. 31).

[*Occasionally this went to ridiculous lengths: once the Order started spreading from Italy into countries with a colder climate, like Poland or Moravia, the members had to ask Calasanz to waive the rule about wearing sandals and no socks even in winter (p. 34)...]

But between the rapid expansion and the strict rules, the Order was having a hard time recruiting enough members to staff all those schools (p. 36–7), and some of the people they did recruit proved to be problematic, ranging from simple incompetents to peculators to full-blown child molesters and everything in between.

For example, we hear a lot about one Father Melchiorre Alachi, whose career seemed to consist of almost nothing but lurching from one scandal to the next, but Calasanz kept on supporting him, seemingly because he was so good at convincing local authorities to allow new Piarist schools to be opened (pp. 41, 49, 52–3, 118). And in general, all too often Calasanz's approach to dealing with allegations of impropriety or abuse was to just transfer or promote the culprit away from the scene of his crimes, in a desperate effort to prevent open scandal (pp. 76–7, 126–7).

Still worse than Alachi was the case of Father Stefano Cherubini, who chafed not only at the vows of chastity but also those of poverty (pp. 58–9, 62, 71), and who moreover was from an influential Roman family that had good contacts at the Papal court, so that Calasanz felt fairly powerless about doing anything against him (pp. 74–5). Eventually he promoted Cherubini to visitor-general, so at least he wouldn't be attached to any specific place for too long (pp. 129–30).

The Order did, however, also accomplish some good things. There is a fine chapter about their school in Florence, where a circle of younger Piarists emerged that had an interest in higher studies, especially mathematics, and some of them worked as assistants to Galileo, the pioneering scientist who worked in Florence with the support of its ruling family, the Medici (pp. 102–9). To Calasanz's credit, he supported these efforts, even if they weren't exactly in the original spirit of his schools (p. 97).

The person who did the most to bring about the downfall of the Piarists was one Father Mario Sozzi. He taught at Florence and didn't get along well with the other Piarists there, but he made friends with the local inquisitor, whom he helped in prosecuting two people who were running an orphanage and “renting out their wards for sex to local noblemen” :))) (pp. 135–6). Sozzi got into the habit of asking the inquisitor for support in his constant quarrels with the other Piarists, and was soon also getting support from Albizzi, a high-ranking inquisition official in Rome, who was ridiculously over-sensitive to anything he perceived as a challenge to the inquisition's authority (pp. 160–5).

Thus, for example, Sozzi was able to prevent Calasanz from transferring him elsewhere (which might have defused the situation otherwise; p. 139). Soon Sozzi even forced Calasanz to appoint him as the provincial (i.e. regional head of the Piarists) for Tuscany, with unusually wide-ranging powers (pp. 158–9). He became the centre of a group of disaffected Piarists (p. 169), including Cherubini. Eventually they managed to get the pope to appoint Sozzi as the “vicar general”, putting him in control of the Order and reducing Calasanz to a purely ceremonial role (pp. 181–2).

Sozzi was now able appoint his disreputable friends to all sorts of influential positions; he also worked on new rules of the Order, planning to greatly reduce the requirements concerning poverty and asceticism (p. 199). However, he didn't enjoy his new position for long; after less than a year, he fell ill with a kind of leprosy and died (p. 203). He was succeeded by none other than Cherubini (p. 207), despite many protests by the Piarists (pp. 212).

A big problem for the Piarists throughout all this was that they simply didn't have any really powerful friends at the papal court. Theoretically they had a “cardinal protector” but he was either ineffective or tired of dealing with their bickering (pp. 168, 176). The new pope, Innocent X, also bore a grudge against them (pp. 218–19), and resented their attempts to get secular rulers such as the king of Poland to intercede on their behalf (pp. 222, 243–5). An apostolic visitor appointed by the previous pope eventually recommended restoring Calasanz as the leader of the Order; to prevent this, in 1646, Albizzi and other enemies of the Piarists got the pope to suppress the Order, reducing it into a mere congregation without a central leadership (p. 232).

Some Piarists left the organization; but many of their schools kept going, with local support (p. 238). Cherubini finally took a step too far when he began molesting students of noble birth rather than mere commoners, for which he was forced to retire not far from Rome (pp. 246–8). He died in 1648, followed a few months later by Calasanz, who was by then 91 years old (pp. 252–4).

The Order was re-established a few decades later, throve in the 18th century, and still exists today (p. 257) — but that, you might say, is another story, and the book ends at that point, adding only some remarks on the scandals involving child abuse in the catholic church in the last few decades. The author points out some parallels: in the 20th and early 21st century, just as in Calasanz's time, the church focused too much on avoiding scandal and sparing the careers of priests accused of child abuse (p. 269).

This book was an interesting read, though I can't help feeling that the whole story is somewhat sordid. How much better it could all have been; if only Calasanz had sacked problematic members of the Order early, or not recruited them in the first place, much of this could have been avoided; if only he had expanded the Order more slowly, and toned down his ridiculous standards of poverty and the like — but then he was by all accounts a grim and cheerless man himself (p. 30). Even so, how could one not feel sorry for him when, at the age of 90 or so, he saw his life's work tumble down around him, ruined by unworthy and unscrupulous people whom he had been unable to control, despite all his micromanagement and thousands of letters.

One thing I particularly liked about the book is that, while telling us the story of the Piarists, it also gives us many glimpses into what 17th-century Rome (and, for that matter, the rest of Italy) was like — glimpses of its society, politics, everyday life and so on. This was mostly all new to me, as I knew little or nothing about 17th-century Italy before. So I don't regret reading this book, but I'm not planning to read anything more about the Piarists any time soon :)