However popular at Milan, where they were held in high honour, even in the day of their greatest prosperity the Ambrosiani had never been more than a purely local Congregation, and when their numbers sensibly diminished and several of their houses fell vacant it is not surprising to find that the question of suppressing the Order was more than once debated. Eventually, on 1 April, 1645, by the bull “Quoniam,” Innocent X dissolved the surviving monasteries, including that of Parabiago, which remained, directing that they should be assigned to secular priests. The details of these arrangements were entrusted to two Cardinals, Odescalchi and Monti, who acted on behalf of the Holy See. It must not be supposed that the dissolution was in any way intended as a censure or refection upon the Ambrosiani. At that time certain reforms were being essayed in various directions, and of these one was the diminution of the very many provincial Congregations and obscurer local Orders, whose continuance involved a vast complexity of business and affairs, whose members were few and dwindling, whose purpose had been served, in most cases admirably and devotedly served throughout the years, but whose day was gone. Even as one of our own poets has said:
God fulfils Himself in many ways,
Lest one good custom should corrupt the world.
The Ambrosiani were not without their holy names. There were Beati in the calendar of the Order; Blessed Alberto Besozzo; Blessed Antonio Gonzaga of Mantua, Blessed Filippo of Fermo, Blessed Gerardo of Monza, Blessed Guardate, Blessed Giovanni, Blessed Placido, and many more, a noble roll of sanctity. They boasted too eminent scholars and writers of renown; the pious and strictly orthodox Paolo Fabulotti whose authoritative “De potestate Papae super Concilium,” first published at Venice in 1613, ran into several editions; Ascanio Tasca, who left the Society of Jesus to follow the more cloistered Ambrosian life, and who rose to be Master-general; Michele Mulazzani, a Piedmontese, who in his day had also governed the Order; Zaccaria Visconti; and Francesco-Maria Guazzo.
Even the recent and particular researches of Monsignor Professore Giovanni Galbiati, the distinguished Prefect of the Ambrosian Library, have failed to discover any details of the life of Guazzo. Perhaps this is because there is really little to know of the contemplative and monastic life, little to know of Guazzo save what we may gather from his own printed works. The archives and cartularies of the Ambrosiani whence
