Louis was born in 1673 in Montfort-sur-Meu (Ille-et-Vilaine, Brittany). He received his early education in Rennes, where the boy showed a reserved and deeply personal nature. Even as a teenager, he displayed a clear inclination to serve the poor.
His father guided him toward an ecclesiastical career, which Louis pursued at the Seminary of Saint-Sulpice in Paris. He exercised his first priestly ministries in various places and for brief periods; for example, he cared for the poor hospitalized in Poitiers. With his fellow priests, he was often critical and sometimes even aggressive.
Around the age of thirty, he founded the congregation of the Daughters of Wisdom, taking the concept of Divine Wisdom as an expression of the impulse with which God inspires people to work for the needy. A few years later, he created a society of priests, now known as the Company of Mary. During a visit to Rome, Pope Clement XI entrusted him with the task of working to increase the submission of priests to their bishops.
Louis-Marie’s entire apostolate was dominated by an intense devotion to the Virgin Mary. The deep affection he felt for his own mother undoubtedly predisposed him in this direction. He said that Divine Wisdom reaches humanity only through Mary. In the last times, Mary would play a decisive, apocalyptic role in the struggle between Christians and non-Christians. In his Treatise on True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin, the most widely circulated of his many writings, Louis-Marie recommended the practice of consecrating oneself as a «slave» to Mary, a consecration to be expressed in writing. This approach of going to Christ through Mary was considered exaggerated by some, and the form of Marian devotion expressed by Father Grignion was criticized.
Louis-Marie also promoted other religious practices in reaction to Jansenism: he emphasized Eucharistic adoration, the solemn celebration of First Communion, the recitation of the Rosary, and more.
He was only forty-three years old when he died on April 28, 1716, in Saint-Laurent-sur-Sèvre (Vendée), at the motherhouse of the Daughters of Wisdom. The Company of Mary experienced significant growth when Father Gabriel Deshayes, who served as superior general from 1821 to 1841, gave new impetus to the institution. He obtained full ecclesiastical recognition from Rome. By the end of the 19th century, the Company of Mary had expanded into the Americas. It became even more international following the beatification of Louis-Marie in 1888. In 1947, the Montfortian religious had the joy of seeing their founder canonized.
