LOUIS-HENRI LESTRANGE, AUGUSTIN de. Trappist, b. at Colombier-le-Vieux (Ardèche) on 19 Feb. 1754, d. at Lyons on 16 July 1827. Having abandoned a military career, he studied at Saint-Sulpice and was ordained priest in 1778. Vicar general of the archbishop of Vienne (1780), he entered monastic life at La Trappe (Soligny).
When the National Assembly suppressed religious orders on 10 Feb. 1790, L. with twenty-four companions moved to the former Carthusian monastery of Val-Sainte (Switzerland) on 1 June 1791 and made it the seat of a branch of his Order, which soon spread to England, Piedmont, Spain, Canada, and Germany. On 30 Sept. 1794 Pius VI erected Val-Sainte into an abbey, naming L. its superior and head of all foundations, including the new Third Order of La Trappe for both sexes, intended for the education of youth. In 1796 L. also founded a women’s monastery in the canton of Valais. Forced in 1798 by French armies to leave Val-Sainte, he took refuge with many fellow monks and nuns in Bavaria and then in Russia, where Emperor Paul I assigned them monasteries in White Russia and Lithuania; but shortly afterward, expelled again, the Trappists moved on to Danzig (1800). Finally back at Val-Sainte, in 1811 L. incurred Napoleon’s wrath for publicly deploring his treatment of the Pope. He then went to England, thence to America, and after the Restoration returned to France, where he restored the Trappe at Soligny and founded other monasteries. When disputes arose in 1825 over the reform he had introduced, he was summoned to Rome to justify himself and remained there until nearly the eve of his death. Besides various works of piety, he published the Règlements de la Maison-Dieu de Notre Dame de la Trappe (2 vols., Fribourg 1794) and a Traité abrégé de la sainte volonté de Dieu (3rd ed., Lyons 1827).