La Compañía de María (Marianistas) en el surgir del movimiento congregacional

Abstract

The historian of the XIX Century French Congregational Movement, Claude Langlois, thinks that a newly founded women’s congregation should acquire a «Social Identity» as soon as it reaches 100 sisters in membership. This work studied a religious congregation of men, the Society of Mary (Marianists), from its foundation in 1818 in Bordeaux (France) until the year in wich it surpassed the benchmark number of 100 members around the years 1827-1828. The new institute responded well to the new form of congregational religious life wich spread across France in the years following the French Revolution. The present  study explains the process of forming the new Congregation, the Marianreligious motives behing its creation, its internal structure: civil, canonical and administrative, as well as the educational mission adopted by its first members. Its contextual framework is that of political, religious and socio-cultural France in the year of the post-Revolution Restoration.