FALLEN ORDER: Intrigue, Heresy, and Scandal in the Rome of Galileo and Caravaggio

Liebreich, a Cambridge-trained historian, recounts the riveting early decades of the Piarist Order. Founded in the 17th century, this teaching order of the Catholic Church had as its raison d'être the education of poor boys, and Piarist priests were known for their strict religious rule. But in the 1640s, sexual scandal began to mar the Piarists' name. The scandal turned on one Stefano Cherubini, a priest from a prominent family. While serving as headmaster of a Piarist school in Naples, Cherubini not only flouted the Order's rule (eating food more sumptuous than was allowed and so forth), but also sexually abused students. Buckling under political pressure, the founder of the Order, José de Calasanz, more or less looked the other way. According to Liebreich, this gainsaying of sexual abuse planted the seeds of the Order's downfall, though it was eventually reinstated and went on to educate luminaries like Victor Hugo and Gregor Mendel. Although this book may be controversial and is certainly timely—a concluding chapter explicitly connects the 17th-century scandals with the recent pedophilia crisis in the Church—it is not sensationalistic. Liebreich's lucid, even-handed prose is marred only by her grating habit of ending chapters with self-conscious cliffhangers ("[T]hey swallowed their feelings and kept silent. For the time being"). Scholars and armchair history buffs alike will find this fast-paced history engrossing and informative. (Sept.)