St. Louis Marie De Montfort was born on 31st January 1673 in a small village called Montfort, Brittany in western France. His father was a nobleman and a lawyer, but the large family was poor as France was going through a grave economic and social crisis in the 17th century. The wars among the European countries had depleted the national treasury. Poverty and disease became endemic. According to this, 95% of the population was illiterate. The French revolution which was to come almost a century later, was already brewing.

It was in the atmosphere, charged with tension that St. Louis Marie De Montfort founded the Brother's congregation to impart education to an illiterate France. Not many were willing to follow this stern, austere and maverick saint. When the revolutions brake out in the 1790s Monfortian institutions were only a handful and limited to western France. The French revolution wiped out the royalty and established a secular state, but there was anarchy until Napoleon came to rescue. They decided to launch outside France to Belgium, Switzerland and Italy. In 1886, they crossed the Atlantic and established institutions in Canada.

The Monfortian saga in India begun, when on 11th September 1903, three brothers landed in the French colony, Pondicherry. The first Montfortian institution was started in Tindivanam, now in Tamil Nadu. The first English medium school, namely Montfort school was started on the shivery hills Yercaud.