Louis-Charles Couturier

After teaching history at Combrée from 1836 to 1854, he entered the Benedictine Monastery of Saint-Pierre at Solesmes, then newly restored by Prosper Guéranger.

Pope Pius IX appointed him consultor of the Sacred Congregation of the Index, and granted him and his successors the privilege of wearing the cappa magna.

Couturier and his monks were forcibly expelled from their monastery by the government, on 6 November 1880, under the anti-clerical laws of the French Third Republic.

Couturier encouraged writers among his monks, and restored old and deserted monasteries, as well as fostering the foundations made by Guéranger.

On 28 March 1876, he raised the Priory of St. Mary Magdalene at Marseilles to the dignity of an abbey; in 1880 he restored and repeopled the Abbey of Santo Domingo de Silos in Spain; in July, 1889, he established the Priory of Saint-Paul at Wisques, in the Diocese of Arras; and on 15 September 1890, shortly before his death, he reopened the ancient Abbey of Glanfeuil in the Diocese of Angers, deserted since the French Revolution.