Jaume Collell i Bancells (1846–1932) was ordained a priest in 1873 and became a canon in 1880. As a young man he wrote poetry and was given the prestigious title of Mestre en Gai Saber at the Barcelona Floral Games of 1871. Among his poetry collections are Cançons de Montserrat (1880), Floralia: versos (1894) and Jovenívoles (1926). He was particularly active in the field of journalism; having contributed to La Renaixensa, Calendari Català, La ilustració Catalana, Lo gay saber, La tradició Catalana and other periodicals, he founded and directed the weekly journal La veu del Montserrat (based in Vic, with the motto pro aris et foci) between 1878 and 1893; in 1893 he was one of the founders, in Barcelona, of La veu de Catalunya.

His various political and religious campaigns (like the Montserrat millennium in 1880, the defence of Catalan law between 1881 and 1889, and the restoration of Ripoll between 1886 and 1893) were in the mode of Catholic Catalanism (witness his Catalanisme: lo que és i lo que deuria ser, 1879, and Viatge a Roma, 1896). His sporadic translations into Catalan were mainly of a devotional nature.

A leading member of the Academy of the Catalan Language, he was strongly opposed to the orthographic rules proposed in 1913 by the Institute of Catalan Studies. He published his memoirs in three volumes from 1908 on, and also edited his correspondence with Josep Torras i Bages (1926) and Jacint Verdaguer (1929).