Jean-Baptiste de La Salle

Jean-Baptiste de La Salle was born in 1651 in Reims, in the Kingdom of France, the eldest son of Louis de La Salle, a magistrate of the local présidial court, and Nicolle de Moët de Brouillet. Raised in a prosperous and devout household, he received clerical tonsure in childhood and was installed as a canon of Reims Cathedral while still an adolescent. He studied the humanities at the Collège des Bons-Enfants in Reims and theology at the Seminary of Saint-Sulpice and the Sorbonne in Paris. The successive deaths of his mother and father in the early 1670s obliged him to return home to care for his younger siblings, delaying the completion of his studies. He was ordained a priest in 1678 and took the doctorate in theology in 1680.

His vocation to the Christian education of the poor took shape after the death of his friend Nicolas Roland, a fellow canon who had founded a congregation of sisters for the instruction of girls, and after the arrival in Reims of Adrien Nyel, who sought to open charity schools for boys. De La Salle first assisted Nyel, then assumed direction of the masters, brought them to live in his own house, and eventually sold his property, resigned his canonry, and shared their poverty. From this community developed the Institute of the Brothers of the Christian Schools, a congregation of lay religious bound by vows of association, stability, and obedience, devoted exclusively to teaching. De La Salle organized simultaneous instruction of whole classes in the French vernacular rather than individual lessons in Latin, grouped pupils by ability, established seminaries for the training of teachers, and composed The Conduct of the Christian Schools and other spiritual and pedagogical writings that became foundational for the Institute.

The work encountered persistent hostility from the guild of writing masters, from some members of the clergy who regarded free schools as an intrusion, and from civil courts. Schools were closed, lawsuits were lost, and the founder and the Brothers endured poverty, defamation, and internal crises. In 1691 de La Salle and two Brothers made a vow to continue the Institute even should they have to live on alms. He later made perpetual vows with a group of Brothers and, toward the end of his life, resigned as superior so that a Brother rather than a priest would govern, thereby securing the lay character of the congregation. Houses were founded in Paris, Rouen, and other towns of northern France, together with boarding schools, Sunday academies for working youth, and novitiates.

De La Salle spent his final years at the Brothers' house of Saint-Yon near Rouen, occupied with formation and writing. He died there in 1719. Pope Leo XIII beatified him in 1888 and canonized him in 1900. In 1950 Pope Pius XII named him patron of all teachers of youth. His feast is observed on 7 April. The Institute he founded spread widely after his death and remains a major Catholic teaching congregation; Lasallian schools continue to operate in many countries.