LA MENNAIS, Jean-Marie-Robert de, Venerable. - A meritorious educator and a feared opponent of Gallicanism, b. at St-Malo (France) on 8 Sept. 1780, d. at Ploërmel in the odour of sanctity on 26 Dec. 1860. During the Revolution he helped the proscribed priests, and by one of them, secretly sheltered in his father's house, he was set on the path of theological studies. Ordained in 1804, he carried out the duties of assistant parish priest and of professor. Having retired through illness to the country house known as La Chesnaie, he directed his brother Félicité to the study of ecclesiastical sciences.
Notable works arose from the collaboration of the two brothers: Réflexions sur l'état de l'Église en France au XVIIIᵉ siècle (1808), Guide spirituel (1809), Tradition de l'Église sur l'institution des évêques (1814). Broadly speaking, the research must be attributed to Jean-Marie, the arrangement of the material and the drafting to Félicité.
In 1814 he became secretary of Msgr. Caffarelli, bishop of St-Brieuc, and, after the latter's death, capitular vicar. In 1816 he founded the Daughters of Providence and in 1817 the Brothers of Christian Instruction, whom he united, in the same year, with those established at Auray by Gabriel Deshayes (v.). Forced to leave St-Brieuc shortly after the arrival of Msgr. de la Romagère, in 1822 he was called to Paris as vicar general of the Grande Aumônerie. In that high position, he contributed to the appointment or transfer of some forty bishops, repeatedly refusing the episcopate for himself. Having returned to Brittany in 1824, he made Ploërmel the centre of his vast activity. He founded a new institute, the Priests of St-Méen (1825), shortly afterwards transformed into the Congregation of St. Peter, whose leadership he left to his brother in 1828, while retaining the high direction of the novitiate of Malestroit. Re-elected superior general after the resignation of Félicité (1833), he censured, as soon as it was published, the libel Paroles d'un croyant, in a confidential letter imprudently published by Msgr. de Lesquen. Then began for him the martyrdom of the heart. The first condemnation of Félicité (1832) had shaken the Congregation of St. Peter; the second (1834) ended by throwing it into confusion and discord. The Superior was condemned and expelled without convocation or deliberation of the Curia of that society, over which he presided as its regularly elected head. Meanwhile Félicité turned his back on him, plunging into apostasy. Humiliated, broken, but not disheartened, Jean-Marie continued to devote himself with all his soul to the work of education.
He endowed Brittany with schools and boarding schools; the Brothers, invited by the Minister of the Navy, crossed the seas, evangelized the negroes in various French colonies, contributing notably to the peaceful abolition of slavery in the Antilles. The cause of beatification and canonization of L. M. was introduced on 22 May 1911.
Bibliography3 works
Ippolito Vittorio