To Touch Hearts: The Pedagogical Spirituality of St. John Baptist de La Salle

This book is a slightly updated version of the Ph.D. dissertation by George Van Grieken, FSC, in 1995 for Boston College. It is the first published version of the work. It provides both a biography of St. John Baptist de La Salle and a detailed overview of the pedagogical spirituality that he developed for the "Christian Schools" that he and his Brothers founded and operated. As an innovator with both deeply spiritual and eminently practical interests, De La Salle was a transformative influence for many educational orders of the 18th and 19th century, shaping Catholic education for future centuries. The book is based on a careful reading of two of his seminal works, the Meditations and the Conduct of Schools. The shape and substance of his unique pedagogical spirituality emerges from these writings.