Saint John Baptist de La Salle

John Baptist de La Salle was born in Reims on April 30, 1651, the first child of his parents. He entered the Collège des Bons-Enfants of Reims at ten and received the tonsure at eleven. On July 9, 1666, at fifteen, he was named a canon of the cathedral of Reims, and he took possession of the canonry on January 7, 1667, still fifteen. In October 1670 he entered the seminary of Saint-Sulpice in Paris, but his mother died in July 1671 and his father in April 1672, and he returned to Reims as guardian of his brothers and sisters. He was ordained a priest on Holy Saturday, April 9, 1678, and received his doctorate in theology in 1680.

Early in March 1679 he met Adrien Nyel, a layman who had come to Reims to open schools for poor boys. La Salle helped him, rented a house for the schoolmasters at Christmas 1679, had them take their meals at his house from 1680 and lodged them in his own home on June 24, 1681. Most of the first masters soon left, and those who stayed formed a community. Seeing that his duties as a canon stood in the way of this work, he resigned his canonry, and Archbishop Le Tellier consented on August 16, 1683. During the famine of the winter of 1684 he gave his patrimony to the poor, keeping only a modest income.

In 1686 twelve Brothers made a vow of obedience for a time, and in February 1688 La Salle left Reims to take over the school of the parish of Saint-Sulpice in Paris. On November 21, 1691, he made a perpetual vow with two Brothers, Drolin and Vuyart, and on June 6, 1694, he and twelve Brothers made perpetual vows of association, stability and obedience. The Brothers of the Christian Schools were the first Catholic congregation of lay religious men devoted entirely to schools and teaching, and no priest could belong to it. In 1685 La Salle had also opened at Reims what is generally counted as the first school for training teachers.

Lawsuits brought by the Paris schoolmasters and conflicts with church authorities marked his later years. In 1705 he moved the novitiate to Saint-Yon, near Rouen, and in 1713 and 1714 he withdrew to Parménie, in the Dauphiné, until a letter from the principal Brothers called him back to Paris. The first General Chapter elected Brother Barthélemy superior in 1717. La Salle died at Saint-Yon on Good Friday, April 7, 1719, at sixty-seven, when the Institute counted 27 houses, 274 Brothers and about 9,000 pupils in France. His Conduct of the Christian Schools was printed in 1720.

Further reading: Reims: A Pilgrim’s Guide to the Cathedral of the Coronations.

Pope Leo XIII beatified him on February 19, 1888, and canonized him on May 24, 1900. Pope Pius XII proclaimed him patron of teachers on May 15, 1950. His feast, placed in the General Roman Calendar in 1904 on May 15, has been kept on April 7 since 1969.

He was buried on April 8, 1719, in the chapel of Saint Suzanne in the parish church of Saint-Sever in Rouen. His bones were moved to the chapel of Saint-Yon in 1734, hidden in a cellar during the Revolution and rediscovered in 1835. After the Brothers were expelled from France in 1904, the reliquary was taken to Lembecq-lez-Hal in Belgium, and on January 26, 1937, it reached Rome, where his relics are venerated in the church of the Generalate of the Brothers. The Brothers keep that date each year as the anniversary of the translation.

He is shown in the habit of the Brothers he founded, with a book as his usual attribute. A founder’s statue of him stands in Saint Peter’s Basilica in Rome. In Reims, a nineteenth-century statue of the saint and a plaque for the tricentennial of his birth stand on the facade of his birthplace, the Hôtel de La Salle, which the Brothers describe as the only example of a Renaissance house in the city; its courtyard, with a famous staircase, holds other images of him.

Patron of teachers, proclaimed by Pope Pius XII on May 15, 1950.

• Reims, Hôtel de La SalleHis birthplace, a Renaissance house where a community of Brothers lives and a museum presents his life and the Lasallian works on five continents; the Brothers offer guided visits.
• Reims, Cathedral of Notre-DameThe cathedral whose chapter he joined as a canon in 1667 and left in 1683 to give himself to the schools.

On our ways: Reims.

• Via CaritatisThe Way of Charity, seven daysDay III, Paris to Reims