St. Louis Marie Grignion De Montfort was born on the 31st of January 1673 in a small village, Montfort, in Britanny in western France. His father was a nobleman and a lawyer, but the large family was poor as 17th century France was passing through a grave crisis, economic as well as social. The wars among European countries had depleted the national treasury, poverty and disease became endemic. Added to this 95% of the population was illiterate. The French Revolution, which was to come almost a century later, was already brewing.
It was in this atmosphere, charged with tension that St. Louis de Montfort founded the ‘Brothers’ to impart education to an illiterate France. Not many were willing to follow this stern, austere and maverick Saint. When he died on the 28th of April 1716 , there were only five brothers. When the revolution broke out in the 1790’s Montfortian institutions were only a handful and limited to western France. The French Revolution wiped out the royalty and established a secular state, but there was anarchy until Napoleon came to rescue France and conquered almost the whole of Europe. In 1821, when the Brothers met, they were only a handful and were discouraged, and they decided to launch outside France to Belgium, Switzerland and Italy. In 1886, they crossed the Atlantic and established an institution in Canada.
The Montfort saga in India began when on the 11 th of September 1903, three French Brothers landed in the French colony of Pondicherry. There was still no Montfortian institution in India. It was in the next year, 1904, that the first Montfortian institution was started at Tindivanam, now in Tamilnadu. This was a technical institution. It is still in existence and flourishing. It was not until the end of the First World War that the first English medium school, Montfort school, was started on the Shevroy Hills in Yercaud.
From 1918 to 2002, Montfortian Institutions grew in India from one to nearly a 150 and are now spread over 18 states and Union Territories, literally from North to South and East to West.
The Montfortian Institutions are spread over thirty-two countries, from Canada to Columbia and Peru to Fiji and the Tonga Islands in the Pacific.
St. Louis De Montfort was an extremely versatile man. He was a philosopher, writer, poet, musician, artist, sculptor, choreographer, builder and social reformer. The Montfortian philosophy is therefore one of totality, globality and universality-terms which are very relevant in today’s world which is in a state of flux. The Montfortian system, therefore aims at “total education” – the development of body, mind and spirit so that every Montfortian student can have “fullness” in life and be a useful citizen to the country, a faithful and loving person to his family and friends and a fulfilled and contented human being.