St. Louis de Montfort and Modern Mariology

Today’s guest post is by Brandon Rappuhn, a Logos marketing copywriter.

In many ways, St. Louis de Montfort was the St. Dominic of the seventeenth century. He was a zealous traveling preacher, lived in poverty to meet the needs of those in poverty, and had a voracious approach to prayer and devotion. His work in spreading devotion through the rosary met with momentous success, and he founded three religious orders that imitated his practices of poverty, prayer, and charity: the Daughters of Wisdom, the Missionaries of the Company of Mary, and the Brothers of St. Gabriel. The feast of the rosary was introduced on the year of his death, and shortly thereafter, the Angelus was revitalized by Pope Benedict XIII. His three famous books, The True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin, The Secret of the Rosary, and The Secret of Mary, have all been gathered in the recent St. Louis de Montfort Collection.

St. Louis de Montfort came along during a period of advancement in the discussion of Mariology. Saints Bellarmine and Lawrence, along with Pope Alexander VII, advanced Thomas Aquinas’ twelfth-century investigations of Mariology, while Jesuits and Baroque artists produced more literature and artwork focused on the Virgin Mary than had ever previously existed.

Despite this advancement in Mariology, the Enlightenment era of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries marked a notable decline in Marian writings. The elevation of rationalism and empiricism challenged everything from Marian intercession to the Virgin Birth. The rosary was seldom prayed, the writings on Mary scaled back, and feast days for Mary were all but removed from the calendar. The persecution of the Catholic Church in France and Spain during this period also contributed to a decline in Marian studies (though St. Alphonsus Ligouri developed a few noteworthy texts on Mary, most notably The Glories of Mary.)

The rediscovery of St. Louis de Montfort’s famous works in the middle of the nineteenth century contributed to a spark in the revival of devotion to Mary and prayer through the rosary. Pope Alexander VII’s discussions of the Immaculate Conception were renewed by Pope Pius IX and the First Vatican Council, and the nineteenth century closed with the reign of the famous “Rosary Pope,” Leo XIII, who wrote a record number of encyclicals on the Virgin Mary.

Whether for your own personal devotions or for your investigation of Roman Catholic Mariology, we’ve compiled St. Louis-Marie Grignion de Montfort’s famous writings on Community Pricing for you. Bid whatever price you think it’s worth—with the rest of the Verbum community, you can determine the price you’ll pay for the collection when it ships, often saving you hundreds of dollars in the long run. New to Community Pricing? Check out the video on the landing page and see how it works!