GUÉRANGER, PROSPER-LOUIS-PASCAL. - Restorer of the Benedictine Order in France, b. at Sablé-sur-Sarthe (France) on 4 April 1805, d. at Solesmes on 30 Jan. 1877. A priest in 1827, in 1833 he repurchased the ancient priory of Solesmes, and made his profession at the abbey of St. Paul Outside the Walls on 26 July 1837. On the following 1 September, having obtained the canonical erection of the Benedictine "Congregatio gallica," he was elected abbot of Solesmes on 30 Oct. of the same year.
In order to understand fully and to place at its proper value his fruitful activity and his publications, it must be borne in mind that French Catholics were at that time divided by deep dissensions: the faithful to the doctrine and tradition of the Church, wholly submissive to the Roman Pontiff, were designated by the title of "ultramontanes" by those who remained more or less infected by the pernicious current of the great errors of the preceding centuries, that is, Jansenism, Gallicanism, naturalism and liberalism. These errors, in the field of morals and piety, reduced the redemptive action of Grace and dried up devotion, while in the sphere of ecclesiastical discipline they diminished the prerogatives of the Roman Pontiff; in philosophy they exalted reason to the detriment of faith and, in the field of history, they diminished the supernatural, minimizing the intervention of Providence; finally, in politics, taking their start from the caesaropapism of the ancien régime, besides accentuating the usurping tendencies of the State toward the Church, they recognized in liberty an absolute good and the principal, if not the only, remedy for all the ills of society.
Dom G.'s lively faith, his profound knowledge of the history of the Church, of its institutions, of canon law, made him intervene in the religious dissensions of his time, bringing to them those sure solutions of Catholic doctrine suggested to him by his limpid and sure discernment. This absolute fidelity to the Catholic Church and to its teachings was the whole reason of his life and explains its exceptional fruitfulness, wholly inspired by the defense of the Church and of its doctrines.
Dom G.'s activity was particularly important in the liturgical field. He was at the head of the movement for the restoration of the Roman liturgy in all the French dioceses which since the 17th and 18th centuries followed particular liturgies not always immune from Gallican or Jansenist influences; he gave a strong impulse to liturgical science and laid
GUÉRANGER, PROSPER-LOUIS-PASCAL. Portrait.
Mans 1841-66; from Advent to Pentecost, vol. X contains only 168 pp. by G., the work was completed in 15 vols. by his disciple dom L. Fromage. The work had a very wide diffusion and was translated into all the principal modern languages). His first work of canon law was De l'élection et de la nomination des évêques (Paris 1831). In the field of history and sacred archaeology: Origines de l'Eglise romaine (ibid. 1837); Histoire de ste Cécile (ibid. 1849) completely redone and enlarged in the third edition: Ste Cécile et la société romaine aux deux premiers siècles de l'Eglise (ibid. 1874). A work by now outdated but which faithfully reflects the state of ecclesiastical historiography in the last century. Of interest are three articles in l'Univers (1868-69) on the Roma sotterranea of G. B. De Rossi, with whom dom G. was linked by the closest friendship, and the Mémoire sur l'Immaculée Conception de la Ste Vierge (ibid. 1850), which Pope Pius IX himself pointed out as the most genuine expression of the Catholic faith. Among the polemical writings against the liberal and naturalistic tendencies in philosophy (8 articles in l'Univers, 1857-58) and in history (14 articles, ibid. 1858-59). To the same doctrinal inspiration are connected the articles on the great Spanish mystic Maria d'Agreda and her mystical city of God, in l'Univers (6 articles, ibid. 1858-59).
Finally the victorious replies to the attempts of those who sought in France to prevent the definition of the dogma of pontifical infallibility at the Vatican Council: De la monarchie pontificale à propos du livre de mgr de Sura (Paris 1870) and Défense de l'Eglise romaine, contre les accusations du p. Gratry (ibid. 1870), which had two editions during the Council itself; the author received praise from Pope Pius IX in the brief Dolendum profecto est of 12 March 1870.
Immediately after dom G.'s death Pope Pius IX expressed his regret, praising the deceased who "had spent all the years of his long life in courageously defending, with publications of great value, the doctrine of the Church and the prerogatives of the Roman Pontiff" (brief Ecclesiasticis viris, of 19 March 1875).
Bibliography4 works
Agostino Genestout