When La vie spirituelle à l'école du bienheureux Louis-Marie Grignion de Montfort appeared in 1901, it was the first book that delved into the dogmatic and ascetic underpinnings of St. Louis-Marie's two well-known works, True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin and The Secret of Mary; the first, that is, 200 years after they were written, and 60 years after they were discovered. This is the first English translation.
In his preface, Fr. Antonin Lhoumeau says that "many have written on the devotion to the Blessed Virgin, called the Holy Slavery of Mary; but none has yet shown with consistency and to a great extent, that it is, according to the teachings of St. Louis-Marie, a system of spirituality, a special form of interior life, and not merely a set of pious practices." Fr. Lhoumeau's aim was to fill the gap in the understanding of the devotion to our Blessed Mother, and he succeeds very well indeed. In remarkably simple, but elegant language, he draws on Holy Scripture, the Fathers, the Saints, and orthodox theologians to sustain his arguments. In his 1902 review, Jean-Baptiste Terrien, the renowned Jesuit professor at the Institut Catholique de Paris, wrote: "There is an abundance of doctrine in Fr. Lhoumeau's work, both on the theoretical and practical aspects. All those who have at heart the glory of their Blessed Mother and the great business of their perfection in Christ, will have the pleasure and will gain edification by reading this book."
