GUÉRANGER, PROSPER-LOUIS-PASCAL. - Restorer of the Benedictine Order in France, b. at Sablé-sur-Sarthe (France) on 4 Apr. 1805, d. at Solesmes on 30 Jan. 1877. Ordained priest in 1827, he redeemed in 1833 the ancient priory of Solesmes, made his profession at the abbey of St. Paul Outside the Walls on 26 July 1837. On 10 Sept. following, having obtained the canonical erection of the “Congregatio gallica” of Benedictines, he was elected abbot of Solesmes on 30 Oct. of the same year.
To understand fully and appreciate the scope of his fruitful activity and publications, it must be borne in mind that French Catholics were then divided by deep dissensions: those loyal to the doctrine and tradition of the Church, entirely subject to the Roman Pontiff, were designated by the title “ultramontane” by those who remained more or less infected by the pernicious currents of the great errors of preceding centuries, namely, Jansenism, Gallicanism, naturalism, and liberalism. These errors, in the realm of morals and piety, diminished the redemptive action of grace and dried up devotion, while in ecclesiastical discipline they lessened the prerogatives of the Roman Pontiff; in philosophy they exalted reason as the determinant of faith, and in history they diminished the supernatural, minimizing the intervention of Providence; finally, in politics, taking their cue from the caesaropapism of the ancien régime, they not only accentuated the usurping tendencies of the State with regard to the Church but recognized in liberty an absolute good and the principal, if not the sole, remedy for all the ills of society.
The lively faith of Dom G., his profound knowledge of the history of the Church, of its institutions, and of canon law, led him to intervene in the religious disputes of his time, bringing to them the sure solutions of Catholic doctrine suggested by his clear and certain discernment. This absolute fidelity to the Catholic Church and its teachings was the entire reason for his life and explains his exceptional fruitfulness, entirely inspired by the defense of the Church and 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 18th and 19th centuries, had followed particular liturgies not always free from Gallican or Jansenist influences; he gave a strong impulse to liturgical science and laid the foundations for the reform of Gregorian chant, of which Solesmes became the leading center. To liturgy Dom G. devoted his first essays: *Considerations sur la liturgie catholique* (3 articles in *Le Mémorial catholique* [1830], republished in *Mélanges de liturgie, d’histoire et de théologie*, Solesmes 1887); *De la prière pour le roi*, 2 articles in *L’Avenir* (Oct. 1830, republished in *Mélanges*, ibid.); *Les Institutions liturgiques* (3 vols., Paris 1840-42, 51); *L’Année liturgique* (9 vols., Le Mans 1841-66; from Advent to Pentecost, Dom G. alone wrote 168 pp., the work was completed in 15 vols. by his disciple Dom L. Fromage). The work has had a very wide diffusion and has been translated into all the principal modern languages. His first work on 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’Église romaine* (ibid. 1837); *Histoire de Ste Cécile* (ibid. 1849), completely revised and enlarged in the third edition: *Ste Cécile et la société romaine aux deux premiers siècles de l’Église* (ibid. 1874). A work now outdated but which faithfully reflects the state of ecclesiastical historiography in the last century. Three articles in *L’Univers* (1868-69) on *Roma sotterranea* by G. B. De Rossi, with whom Dom G. was connected 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 Catholic faith. Among his polemical writings against 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 María de Agreda and her *Mística ciudad de Dios*, in *L’Univers* (6 articles, ibid. 1858-59).
Finally, his victorious responses to the attempts of those in France who sought to hinder the definition of the dogma of papal infallibility at the Vatican Council: *De la monarchie pontificale à propos du livre de mgr de Sura* (Paris 1870) and *Défense de l’Église romaine, contre les accusations du p. Gratry* (ibid. 1870), which had two editions during the Council itself; the author received the *elogium* from Pope Pius IX in the brief *Dolendum profecto est* of 12 Mar. 1870.
Immediately after the death of Dom G., Pope Pius IX expressed his regret, praising the deceased who had spent all the years of his long life courageously defending, through publications of great value, the doctrine of the Church and the prerogatives of the Roman Pontiff (brief *Ecclesiasticis viris*, of 19 Mar. 1875).