MISSIONARI DI NOSTRA SIGNORA DELLA SANTA GUARDIA. – Congregation of secular tertiary Minim priests, founded in 1700 by the priest Aless. Martin (1630–1703), parish priest of S. Desiderio, in the diocese of Carpentras, in Provence, in collaboration with the priest Domenico Bertet (1671–1739), who was its first superior, and with Fr. G. d'Etienne, Minim (1637–1712), a strong supporter of the Institute, author of its first regulations, and the first to direct its spiritual life.
The purpose of the Congregation was the formation of pious and zealous priests, with a model seminary, courses of missions in the cities and countryside, and spiritual exercises for the laity and clergy. Approved by the archbishop of Avignon on 6 January 1719, Benedict XIV approved its new rules with the bull Universalis of 11 March 1743. The Congregation spread rapidly and gave France learned and distinguished prelates, as well as several archbishops and cardinals. The French Revolution swept it away in its turmoil, but no member of the Institute took the oath to the Civil Constitution of the Clergy. At that time it moved to Italy, with the help of Cardinal Maury, formerly a member of the Congregation itself and later bishop of Montefiascone. Various attempts to reconstitute it in France proved fruitless, and the beginning of the twentieth century witnessed the definitive decline of this institution, which had fought strenuously against the rampant heresies and for the religious revival of France.