A Teaching Brotherhood Finds Its Identity: The ‘Secularisation’ Period of 1904-1920

The Dreyfus Affair in France, which began in 1894 and was not resolved until 1906, prompted a close scrutiny of anti-Semitism in the Catholic Church. In July 1904, a law proposed banning teaching by religious congregations, which took the St. John the Baptist de La Salle Brothers by surprise. Having contributed so much to the development of education in France, they had never thought they would be included in such draconian legislation. The unexpected crisis affected 11,500 Brothers in France, and it was poorly handled by the Brother Superior Gabriel-Marie and his council. Many French Brothers left to teach elsewhere while others dressed as ordinary citizens to maintain Christian education in France. Find out how the Brothers abroad and the ones who stayed in France’s twenty-four provinces confronted the unexpected challenge in this final volume of a monumental work written by Georges Rigault, which has been translated into English.