Marcellin Joseph Benedict Champagnat, FMS (20 May 1789 – 6 June 1840) was a French Catholic religious born in Le Rosey, village of Marlhes, near St. Etienne (Loire), France.

The religious, political, economic, and social unrest of the times he lived influenced his priorities and life path.

As a consequence, he was eventually regarded as a member of a group known as the “Happy Gang,” made up of seminarians who were a familiar sight in the taverns of the town during their free time.

He was ordained on 22 July 1816, at the age of twenty-seven, and the next day, travelled to the shrine of Our Lady of Fourviéres above Lyons with others interested in establishing a Society of Mary.

[7] From the start, he announced the Society should include teaching Brothers to work with children deprived of Christian education in remote rural areas because others were not going to them.

At the end of October 1816, after attending Jean-Baptist Montagne, a dying sixteen-year-old completely ignorant of basic Catholic teaching, Champagnat acted upon his conviction of the need for religious Brothers.

[3] After witnessing the poor treatment of a student by a teacher on his first day at school, Champagnat's thoughts on education had been shaken.

[6] On 2 January 1817, Champagnat encouraged two young men Jean-Marie Granjon and Jean-Baptiste Audras, to join him in forming the nucleus of the Marist Brothers.

[11] In 1824, when the new French king, Charles X, transferred the oversight of elementary education to the Catholic Church, Champagnat won support to build a new and larger novitiate, which became the Notre Dame Hermitage, and the brothers began to spread more widely.

[12] In the early years of the new society, Champagnat personally supervised the training of the Brothers, visiting all of their schools and taking part in their teaching.

[13] They were required to be literate and numerate and received instruction in doctrine and the religious life as they trained to become teachers, living by a regular timetable of prayer, study, and manual work.

In March 1822, eight applicants came from Haute-Loire, giving a new impetus to the institution, and allows the creation of new houses in Vanosc 1823, Saint-Symphorien-le-Chateau 1823, and Chavanay Charlieu 1824.

[16][17] After a long-term illness, Champagnat died of cancer on 6 June 1840,[3] aged 51, at Our Lady of the Hermitage in the Gier River valley about 30 kilometres from where he had commenced his work.

The Marist Brothers Institute was formally approved in 1863 by Pope Pius IX,[20] and were given the name Institutum Fratrum Maristarum a Scholis.