This book makes available Volume 1 and Volume 2 of a planned five-volume condensed summary of the history of the Institute of the Brothers of the Christian Schools. Note that Volume 2 starts on page 164 and includes different pagination after that, according to its own Table of Contents.
The whole series was never finished due to the illness and death of the editor, Br. Hubert Gerard (Edward Schmitz). However, these two volumes cover the history from 1651, when St. John Baptist de La Salle was born, through the initial years and the subsequent century, and ending at about 1810. As such, it gives a brief overview of the first 130 years of the existence of the Institute.
According to the preface in Volume 1, the books are “a revision of the translation by Brother Bernard Adrian, FSC, District of New Orleans-Santa Fe, from the French Summary by Brother M. Cyrille, FSC, Montreal, Canada, of M. Georges Rigault’s Monumental (nine volumes) Histoire Generate de L’lnstitut des Freres des Ecoles Chretiennes.”
This present book was compiled and published by the Lasallian Resource Center (www.lasallianresource.org) as part of an effort to make available certain out-of-print Lasallian works that are based on solid scholarship and deserve wider exposure.
