Cécile Bruyère

She was sent to Dom Prosper Guéranger, founder of Solesmes Abbey and the reviver of the French Benedictine tradition, to be prepared for her first communion, and became his spiritual daughter.

This may have been a gesture of thanks towards Dom Guéranger for his great support to the Pope at the First Vatican Council in favour of the recently proclaimed dogma of Papal infallibility.

Of especial note are the re-establishment of the office of abbess with its symbols (the ring, the pectoral cross and the crozier), and of the long-forgotten rite of the consecration of virgins.

Her nuns, in accordance with the thought of Dom Guéranger and the Congregation he established, learned Latin and Gregorian chant, which was altogether exceptional at that time.

The French anti-religious laws of the early 20th century forced the whole community into exile in England, to the forerunner of the present St. Cecilia's Abbey, Ryde, on the Isle of Wight, where on 18 March 1909 Mother Cécile died.