Beginnings of Renewal

The renewal called for by the Liturgy by the Second Vatican Council was rooted in over a century of work, particularly in Europe and the United States.

Dom Prosper Guéranger, OSB, (1805-1875) is credited as the founder of the modern liturgical movement. He was ordained a diocesan priest in France. However, in 1831, when the old priory at Solesmes was announced for sale, he seized the opportunity to realize his desire to reestablish the Benedictine way of life in France, which had been destroyed in the French Revolution.

He purchased the monastery, and five priests joined him at the monastery, and in 1837, Guéranger was named abbot of the monastery head of the French Congregation of the Order of Saint Benedict.

The liturgical reforms of Trent had not been implemented in France where the liturgy was mainly under diocesan regulation. Through his influence and constant urging, Guéranger succeeded in restoring the Roman liturgy to the French dioceses.

In a time when the spirituality of people was essentially individual, nourished by devotions, he set out to encourage intelligent participation on the part of the faithful in the liturgical life of the Church. To this end, he engaged in a serious study of the liturgy and its history. He authored The Liturgical Year, which covered every day of the Church's Liturgical Cycle in 15 volumes. He also wrote a three volume work on the history of liturgical traditions, describing the development of Western liturgical practice.

He was the first to use the term, liturgical movement, and the first modern author to use the term, paschal mystery. “His teaching upon the church as the Mystical Body, the centrality of the paschal mystery, the doctrinal character of the liturgy, and his insistence upon the need to study the text of the liturgy, all these ideas were absolutely original in the nineteenth century.” (Robert Taft)