St. Dominic Savio, eleven, takes a public rebuke for another boy's offence

MONDONIO, Piedmont, 1853 AD — A schoolmaster in this district stood one of his pupils up in front of the whole class this year and told him he had done something that deserved to have him put out of the school. He would be spared this once, the master said, because it was a first offence. The boy took it without a word. He had not done it: the offence was real, and the boys who had done it had worked out a plan to fasten it on him instead. A day later they were found out.

The pupil is Saint Dominic Savio, eleven years old, the son of a village blacksmith, and first in his class from his first day at school. In these small country schools, one master to a room and boys of mixed ages, expulsion is the ordinary end of repeated misconduct, and his place in the room was what stood or fell that morning. The boy who had really done it was already under threat of expulsion for other things and needed the charge to land somewhere else. The master wanted whoever was guilty, and had been handed a story that fitted. The one thing that would have cleared St. Dominic Savio was a sentence from him.

St. Dominic Savio was born at Riva di Chieri on April 2, 1842 AD, to Charles Savio, a blacksmith, and his wife Brigid. He was admitted to his First Communion in 1849 AD, at seven, when children were not usually allowed it before eleven or twelve. He wrote four resolutions on the fly-leaf of his prayer book and headed them: “Resolutions made by me, Dominic Savio, in the year 1849, on the day of my First Communion, at the age of seven.” The fourth was, “Death rather than sin.”

In June 1852 AD, on the feast of Saint Aloysius, he started at the higher school in Castelnuovo. He was ten, and walked there and back. He had wanted the place badly enough to say so at home: “If I were a bird I should like to fly every morning to Castelnuovo d’Asti so as to go on with my studies.”

During that school year his health began to fail, and in November 1852 AD the family moved to Mondonio, a hamlet less than two miles east of Castelnuovo, where his master at the village school was Father Giuseppe Cugliero.

Some of his pupils had done something serious, he said, and whoever was found guilty was to be expelled. The culprits tried several ways of escaping the punishment and settled at last on accusing St. Dominic Savio. Father Cugliero did not believe it: “I very naturally refused entirely to believe that Dominic would be capable of any such thing, but the story and accusation were so skilfully put together, that it had all the semblance of truth and conviction.”

The next morning Father Cugliero came into the school angry. He spoke to the class in general terms, and then turned to St. Dominic Savio and spoke to him very severely. The boy deserved to be expelled, the master told him, and would be spared this once because it was a first offence. If it happened again he would be sent away.

St. Dominic Savio could have shown in one sentence that he was entirely innocent. He made no reply. He hung his head like a boy who had been justly told off, and made no attempt to clear his character. The other boys watched him stand there silent with his head bent, as though he were admitting it, and when the school was dismissed they went out thinking him guilty. He bore no grudge against the boys who had accused him, and went on with his work in the same good humour as before.

The next day the real culprits were found. Father Cugliero, sorry now for the harshness of what he had said, sent for the boy and asked him: “Why did you not tell me that you had had nothing to do with it?”

St. Dominic Savio answered him: “I knew that the guilty boy was already under threat of expulsion for other things, but I hoped to be forgiven, since it was the first act of misconduct ever imputed to me at school. I also remembered that Our Lord had been unjustly accused.”

Among the boys St. Dominic Savio’s standing came back higher than it had been before the rebuke: he had not informed on the pupil who wronged him, and his teachers set him down as a boy who would not bend.

Father Cugliero ended his account of the matter this way: “At this reply I was silent; I somehow felt that there was nothing more to be said; not only the masters, but the whole school admired this act of generous resignation to suffering and insult on behalf of others, especially at the risk of being humiliated and disgraced.”