Péguy, Charles Pierre

(1873–1914)

   Mystic and Devotional Writer.

   Péguy was born in Orléans, France. For a while he attended the Sorbonne, but he left to manage a bookshop. Initially he was a determined socialist and was appalled by the anti-semitism displayed by the Church in the Dreyfus affair. Although he retained his sense of social justice and his anti-clericalism, he later became a mystical nationalist. He is remembered as the author of Cahiers de la Quinzaine, a highly successful play on joan of arc, Le Mystère des Saints Innocents and Eve, a long religious poem. He exerted an enormous influence on French Catholic young people, although he himself remained estranged from the Church. He was killed in the Battle of the Marne at the start of the First World War.

   M. Villiers, Charles Péguy: A Study in Integrity (1965).