Prosper Guéranger

Prosper Louis Pascal Guéranger(pronounced[pʁɔspeɡeʁɑ̃ʒe];4 April 1805, inSablé-sur-Sarthe,France – 30 January 1875, inSolesmes,France) was a French priest andBenedictinemonk, who served for nearly 40 years as theabbotofthe monastery of Solesmes(which he founded among the ruins of a former priory at Solesmes). Through the newAbbey of Solesmes,he became the founder of the French Benedictine Congregation (now theSolesmes Congregation), which re-establishedBenedictinemonastic life in France after it had been wiped out by theFrench Revolution.Guéranger was the author ofThe Liturgical Year,a popular commentary which covers every day of theCatholic Church'sliturgicalcycles in 15 volumes. He was well regarded byPope Pius IX,and was a proponent of thedogmasof theImmaculate Conceptionand ofpapal infallibility.

Servant of God Prosper Guéranger OSB
Abbot of Solesmes Abbey
A painting of Guéranger byClaude-Ferdinand Gaillard(1874)
Appointed	14 July 1837
Term ended	30 January 1875
Successor	Louis-Charles Couturier,OSB
Orders
Ordination	7 October 1827
Personal details
Born	(1805-04-04)4 April 1805 Sablé-sur-Sarthe,Sarthe,France
Died	30 January 1875(1875-01-30)(aged 69) Solesmes, Sarthe,France
Denomination	Roman Catholic
Coat of arms

Guéranger is credited with reviving theBenedictine Orderin France, and with promoting the adoption of the liturgical books of theRoman Ritethroughout France, an important element in theLiturgical Movement,which led to further development of aspects of the Mass of the Roman Rite beyond the form practised in his day. The cause for hiscanonizationis currently being studied by theHoly See,which has accorded him the title ofServant of God.

Life

Guéranger was born in Sablé on 4 April 1805 into a working-class family.As a young boy, he frequently readThe Genius of Christianity,a work written byFrançois-René de Chateaubriandwhich defended the Catholic faith against the claims of theEnlightenment,and which had been published shortly before his birth.

As a teenager, Guéranger felt called to serve as aCatholic priestand in 1822 entered theminor seminaryatTours.During this time, he read and embraced theultramontanistviews then held byHugues Felicité Robert de Lamennais.He also came to study the writings of theDesert Fathersand began to develop a strong interest in the history of the Church and of monastic life.

Ordained adiocesan prieston 7 October 1827,Guéranger was quickly named acanon,a member of thecathedral chapterof Tours. During this period, he was appointed to serve as the administrator of the parish of theForeign Missionsuntil near the close of 1830. At this point he demonstrated his interest in theliturgywhen he began to use theRoman Missaland texts for theDivine Office,unlike many of his colleagues, who still made use of the diocesan editions commonly in use in pre-Revolutionary France.

Guéranger then left Tours and moved toLe Mans,where he began to publish various historical works on the liturgy, such asDe la prière pour le Roi(October 1830) andDe l'élection et de la nomination des évêques(1831), their subject being inspired by the political and religious situation of the day.Denouncing what he saw as anti-liturgical tendencies in the French Church of his day, his writings drew the praise of the clergy but also the opposition of a vocal faction among the French bishops.

Solesmes abbey

In 1831 the derelictPriory of Solesmes,which was about an hour's journey fromSablé,was put up for sale and Guéranger now saw a means of realizing his desire to re-establish, in this monastery, monastic life under theRule of St. Benedict.His decision was made in June 1831, and in December 1832, thanks to private donations, the monastery became his property.TheBishop of Le Mansnow sanctioned the Constitutions by which the new society was to be organized and fitted subsequently to enter theBenedictine Order.

On 11 July 1833, five priests came together in the restored priory at Solesmes, and on 15 August 1836 publicly declared their intention of consecrating their lives to the re-establishment of the Order of St. Benedict. In a brief issued on 1 September 1837,Pope Gregory XVI,himself a Benedictine, raised the rank of the former Priory of Solesmes to that of anabbey,and constituted it the head of the FrenchCongregationof the Order of St. Benedict. Guéranger was appointed the Abbot of Solesmes (on 31 October) andSuperior Generalof the congregation. Those members of the little community he had formed who had received themonastic habiton 15 August 1836, made theirsolemn professionunder the direction of the new abbot, who had pronounced his own vows at Rome on 26 July 1837.

Guéranger in 1840

From then on, Guéranger's life was given up to developing the young monastic community, to procuring for it the necessary material and resources, and to inspiring it with an absolute devotion to the Church and thePope.Amongst those who came to Solesmes, either to follow the monastic life or to seek self-improvement by means of retreats, Guéranger found many collaborators and valuable steadfast friends.Pitra,afterwardsCardinal,renewed the great literary traditions of the Benedictines of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; Bishops Pie of Poitiers and Berthaud of Tulle,Jean-Baptiste Henri Lacordaire,Charles Forbes René de MontalembertandLouis Veuillot,were all interested in the abbot's projects and even shared his labours.

The controversy occasioned by several of Guéranger's writings had the effect of drawing his attention to secondary questions and turning it away from the great enterprises of ecclesiastical science, in which he always manifested a lively concern. The result was a work in whichpolemicsfigured prominently, and which now evokes only mediocre interest, and Guéranger's historical and liturgical pursuits suffered in consequence. He devoted himself too largely to personal impressions and neglected detailed and persevering investigation. His quickness of perception and his classical training permitted him to enjoy and to set forth, treat in an interesting way, historical and liturgical subjects which, by nature, were somewhat unattractive. Genuine enthusiasm, a lively imagination, and a style tinged withromanticismhave sometimes led him, as he himself realized, to express himself and to judge too vigorously.

Guéranger wished to re-establish more respectful and more filial relations between France and theHoly See,and his entire life was spent in endeavouring to effect a closer union between the two. With this end in view he set himself to combat, wherever he thought he found its traces, the separatist spirit that had, of old, allied itself withGallicanismandJansenism.With a strategic skill which deserves special recognition, Dom Guéranger worked on the principle that to suppress what is wrong, the thing must be replaced, and he laboured hard to supplant everywhere whatever reflected the opinion he was fighting. He successfully fought to have the Romanliturgysubstituted for the diocesan liturgies. On philosophical ground, he struggled with unwavering hope againstNaturalismand Liberalism, which he considered a fatal impediment to the constitution of an unreservedly Christian society. He helped, in a measure, to prepare men's minds for the definition of thepapal infallibility,a dogma which reversed the struggle against papal authority fought a century previously by manyGallicanandJosephitebishops. On both the occasion of the definition of the Immaculate Conception (1854) and on that of Papal Infallibility (1870), Guéranger contributed written works that served to uphold the Holy See in making these ex cathedra pronouncements.

In 1841 Guéranger began to publish a mystical work by which he hoped to arouse the faithful from their spiritual torpor and to supplant what he deemed the lifeless or erroneous literature that had been produced by the French spiritual writers of the 17th and 18th centuries.L'Année liturgique,of which the author was not to finish the long series of fifteen volumes, is probably the one of all his works that best fulfilled the purpose he had in view. Accommodating himself to the development of the liturgical periods of theyear,the author laboured to familiarize the faithful with the official prayer of the Catholic Church by lavishly introducing fragments of theEasternandWesternliturgies,with interpretations and commentaries.

Amid his many labours, Guéranger had the satisfaction of witnessing the spreading of the restoredBenedictine Order.Two unsuccessful attempts at foundations in Paris and the formerAcey Abbeydid not deter him from new efforts in the same line, and, thanks to his zealous perseverance,monasterieswere established atLigugéandMarseilles.Moreover, in his last years, he oversaw, in collaboration with the first abbess,Cécile Bruyère,the establishment of a community of women under theRule of St. BenedictatSt. Cecilia's Abbey, Solesmes.This life, fraught with so many trials and filled with such great achievements, drew to a peaceful close at Solesmes.

Cause for beatification

The cause forServant of GodGuéranger'sbeatificationwas opened by the Holy See in 2005.

Sources

• FAITH Magazine online: Dom Gueranger, Prophet of Ecclesial Renewal
• Dom Prosper GuérangerBiography on Catholicism.org

Attribution

This article incorporates text from a publication now in thepublic domain:Leclercq, Henri (1910). "Prosper Louis Pascal Guéranger".In Herbermann, Charles (ed.).Catholic Encyclopedia.Vol. 7. New York: Robert Appleton Company.