FRIARS OF THE CHRISTIAN INSTRUCTION OF PLOËRMEL. — Institute founded in 1817 at Saint-Brice (France) for the education of children of the common people by the ven. Fr. Jean Marie Robert de La Mennais, who in 1824 transferred the mother-house of the Institute to Ploërmel, where it soon spread through the departments of Brittany. From 1873, the Brothers of Ploërmel began their work in various French colonies: Martinique (1837), Guadeloupe (1838), Senegal (1841), St. Pierre and Miquelon (1842), French Guiana (1843), Tahiti (1859).
In the Antilles, the Brothers, once government schoolmasters and catechists, after school hours gathered Negroes of all ages, or rode through the sugar plantations on horseback to evangelize the natives. In 1848, when the emancipation of the slaves was proclaimed, the colonial authorities called upon the Brothers to calm the disturbances and prevent the massacre of the whites. At the death of the founder (1860), the Institute numbered more than a thousand religious; at present it comprises 2,044 professed, 615 postulants, 260 elementary, secondary, agricultural and technical schools attended by 57,000 pupils. The successors of the ven. de La Mennais have encountered enormous difficulties in extending the work to many countries: Haiti (1864), Canada (1886), the United States, Spain, Egypt, England (1903), Italy (1921), Uganda (1926), Argentina (1933). On March 13, 1891, the Brothers of Ploërmel were canonically recognized by the Holy See, and on March 1, 1910, their constitutions were definitively approved by Pius X.