SMALL BROTHERS OF MARY (MARIST BROTHERS OF THE SCHOOLS)
A male lay institute whose purpose is the instruction and education of youth in colleges and schools, founded by the Venerable Marcellino Champagnat (q.v.) in 1817.
Under the reign of Louis XVIII first and then of Charles X, the Brothers, whom the people called *Bleus* from the color of their first habit, and later Marists because of the special devotion the new Institute professed to the Blessed Virgin Mary, became increasingly established. After the school at La Valla, those of Marilès, St-Saveur, Bourg-Argental, and others were founded in the Loire region, and the training center was transferred from La Valla to l'Hermitage, about 3 km from St-Chamond. During the anticlerical and revolutionary disturbances of 1830, when religious were abandoning their clerical garb and hiding, Champagnat instead clothed postulants and ordered that every morning the *Salve Regina* be sung, a custom that remains to this day as the opening of the day for the Marist Brothers. Yet by 1831 the Institute had already crossed the boundaries of the Loire and established itself in the Dauphiné; in 1836 in Burgundy, in 1838 in northern France and in other departments. In June 1840, at Champagnat’s death, the P. F. of M. numbered 280 in 47 houses with 7,000 pupils.
Under his immediate successor Brother François (1840–60), the Institute achieved such growth that it absorbed similar institutions, such as the Brothers of Christian Instruction (1842) and the Brothers of Viviers (1844). After the Falloux Law of 1850, official recognition of the Institute was deemed indispensable and was obtained the same year by decree of the President of the Republic. In 1858 the general administration was transferred from l'Hermitage to the new seat at St-Genis-Laval on the outskirts of Lyon. Brother François also deserves credit for collecting and publishing in 1853 the *Guide des écoles*, the pedagogical and didactic code outlined by Champagnat. Rome granted a decree of praise on 9 December 1859 and definitive approval on 9 January 1863. Thereafter the Institute continued its expansion throughout the world despite persecutions in Mexico and the Spanish Revolution of 1936, in which 172 P. F. of M. lost their lives.
Such vigorous growth is due to the methods introduced by Champagnat, namely: a) a spiritual didactic method instilling in children the thought of God’s presence and the motherly love of Mary; b) a pedagogical method that quickened both teachers and pupils, making the school a large family from which punitive chastisements were absolutely banished from the outset. The blending of existing methods into the simultaneous-mutual system, the adoption of the phonetic system for reading instead of the syllabic (1828), the introduction of singing as a teaching subject, and the preventive and activistic methods of formation-by-action used in training Brothers for their educational mission were all genuine innovations due to Champagnat. Another characteristic feature of the Marist Brothers is the development among them of a missionary spirit. It may be said that this impulse initially united both Marist Fathers and Brothers, so much so that they set out together for Oceania as early as 1836. Brother Hyacinthe was the first martyr of the Institute (1847). Following the Oceania missions came those in the Cape Colony (1867), the foundation at Sydney (1873), New Caledonia and New Zealand (1876), Samoa and Fiji (1888), and especially China (1891), where four Marist Brothers were killed in Peking in 1900, five in Nanchang in 1906, and the last shot by communists on 21 April 1951. Flourishing too are the missions in the Belgian Congo, Madagascar, Ceylon, Rhodesia, Nyasaland, and more recently the Philippines, Malaya, Mozambique, and Japan. Today the Institute is divided into 31 provinces, with 719 schools or colleges and 12,728 members, including those in formation, serving 220,000 pupils.