This is volume No. 7 of the letters (Roma, LAS 2016, lett. 3121-3561) that in 555 pages collects over four hundred letters written by Don Bosco in the biennium 1880-1881. The text of each letter was verified on the manuscripts and on originals available in Italian and non-Italian archives, and is enriched with all scientific instruments which are useful and sometimes even necessary for a better understanding of the correspondence. A large introduction shows their value and draws a synthesis of the more significant contents.
Such a high number of letters, for an average of four per week, allows us to identify the daily worries and concerns of Don Bosco, who was the Superior of a Salesian Society in strong geographical expansion and increase of personnel, with all the related problems of formative, pedagogical, economical and even political character.
The numerous final indexes offer immediate information on the hundreds of persons involved, the numerous themes dealt with, the places visited during his trips in Italy and France… For Don Bosco, also the biennium 1880-1881, like the two previous ones (1876-1877, 1878-1879), was a very intense one, rich of events, some painful, such as the risk of expulsion of Salesians from France in 1880 and the tough “final clash” with Msgr. Gastaldi towards the end of 1881, and some joyful, such as the foundation of the first Salesian house in Patagonia (1880) and in Rome (1881).
“If the holy educator of Turin left and indelible trace in history – Fr. Motto writes – this is not so much for the well known events of his childhood and youth, and of the first oratory of Valdocco (of which Don Bosco himself wrote the memoirs, but left no correspondence) but rather for his untiring action as founder in the second half of the 19th century, for which, instead, the 4500 letters preserved are the essential, even if not the only source; and, paradoxically, they are little known.”
