By BSOL Editor 
Reading time: 2 min.
We continue with the fifth instalment on the main texts of Don Bosco’s preventive system.
Previous article: The preventive system (4/7). The letter to the Minister of the Interior Francis Crispi
To the European public: the invitation to read Albert Du Boys’ book
Albert Du Boys, a French Catholic magistrate and historian, and a friend of Montalembert, published Dom Bosco et la pieuse société des Salésiens in 1884, which was immediately translated into Italian. Don Bosco accompanied its distribution with an invitation to read it.
The genre is unusual and therefore precious. By presenting someone else’s book, Don Bosco indicates what he wishes to be understood about himself and his method by a vast, educated, largely lay and international public. These are the years when his fame in France is at its peak, the Cooperators are multiplying, and the construction site of the Sacred Heart in Rome absorbs his energies. It is the preventive system delivered to notoriety – with all the risks of amplification that this entails, and which Don Bosco governs by choosing his words carefully.
1884 is also the year of the letter from Rome of 10 May. The series does not include it, because it belongs to another family of texts, but the reader would do well to keep it close at hand. They are two voices from the same year, one addressed to the world, the other to his own home.
(1884; MB XVII, 596-597)
Don Bosco:
“[…] Du Boys makes our system known and has guessed the spirit of our Society. (Don Bosco at first felt a reluctance to let things concerning him be printed; but now that the die is cast, we must go forward.) Du Boys [Alberto DU BOYS, “Don Bosco and the Pious Salesian Society”, 1884] must be spread as much as possible, sold, given away as a gift, if necessary, because it makes us known in our true light.”
The book “Don Bosco and the Pious Salesian Society” by Alberto DU BOYS can be downloaded freely from these links of the Central Salesian Archive:
https://db.archiviosalesiano.net/s/asc/media/546161
https://db.archiviosalesiano.net/s/asc/item/545909