Charles-Marie-Photius Maurras was a French author, politician, poet, and critic.
44 Facts About Charles Maurras
2.
Charles Maurras was an organizer and principal philosopher of Action Francaise, a political movement that is monarchist, anti-parliamentarist, and counter-revolutionary.
3.
In 1936, after voicing death threats against Leon Blum, Charles Maurras was sentenced to eight months in La Sante.
4.
Charles Maurras wrote many anti-Semitic articles during its regime, but was opposed to Vichy's deportation of Jews.
5.
Charles Maurras was born into a Provencal family, brought up by his mother and grandmother in a Catholic and monarchist environment.
6.
Charles Maurras published his first article, at the age of 17 years, in the review Annales de philosophie chretienne.
7.
Charles Maurras then collaborated on various reviews, including L'Evenement, La Revue bleue, La Gazette de France and La Revue encyclopedique, in which he praised Classicism and attacked Romanticism.
8.
At some point during his youth, Charles Maurras lost his Catholic faith and became an agnostic.
9.
Charles Maurras became acquainted with the Provencal poet Frederic Mistral in 1888 and shared the federalist thesis of Mistral's Felibrige movement.
10.
In 1890, Charles Maurras approved Cardinal Lavigerie's call for the rallying of Catholics to the Republic, thus making his opposition not to the Republic in itself, but to "sectarian Republicanism".
11.
Beside this Orleanist affiliation, Charles Maurras shared some traits with Bonapartism.
12.
Charles Maurras became involved in politics at the time of the Dreyfus affair, becoming an Anti-Dreyfusard.
13.
Charles Maurras endorsed Colonel Henry's forgery blaming Dreyfus, as he considered that defending Dreyfus weakened the Army and the justice system.
14.
In 1899, Charles Maurras founded the review Action Francaise, an offshoot of the newspaper created by Maurice Pujo and Henri Vaugeois the year preceding.
15.
Charles Maurras quickly became influential in the movement, and converted Pujo and Vaugeois to monarchism, which became the movement's principal cause.
16.
Charles Maurras published thirteen articles in the newspaper Le Figaro during 1901 and 1902, as well as six articles between November 1902 and January 1903 in Edouard Drumont's anti-Semitic newspaper, La Libre Parole.
17.
Between 1905 and 1908, when the Camelots du Roi monarchist league was initiated, Charles Maurras introduced the concept of political activism through extra-parliamentary leagues, theorizing the possibility of a coup d'etat.
18.
Charles Maurras founded the Ligue d'Action Francaise in 1905, whose mission was to recruit members for the Action Francaise.
19.
Charles Maurras then endorsed France's entry into World War I against the German Empire.
20.
Charles Maurras then criticized the Treaty of Versailles for not being harsh enough on the Germans and condemned Aristide Briand's policy of cooperation with Germany.
21.
Berton had planned to assassinate Leon Daudet and Charles Maurras but was unsuccessful.
22.
Charles Maurras voiced death threats against the President of the Council Leon Blum, organizer of the Popular Front, in the Action Francaise of 15 May 1936, emphasizing his Jewish origins.
23.
Charles Maurras was received in the Academy on 8 June 1939 by Catholic writer Henry Bordeaux.
24.
In La Seule France Charles Maurras argued for a policy of France d'abord, whereby France would restore itself politically and morally under Petain, resolving the causes in his eyes of France's defeat in 1940, before dealing with the issue of the foreign occupation.
25.
Charles Maurras savaged the pre-war French governments for taking an increasingly bellicose position vis-a-vis Germany at precisely the same time that these governments were weakening France, militarily, socially and politically, thereby making France's defeat during 1940 all but inevitable.
26.
Charles Maurras criticized the 1940 Law on the status of Jews for being too moderate.
27.
Charles Maurras later claimed he believed that Petain was playing a "double game", working for an Allied victory in secret.
28.
Charles Maurras was automatically dismissed from the Academie francaise.
29.
Weber writes that the jurors who were chosen for Charles Maurras' case were taken from a list drawn up by his political enemies.
30.
Charles Maurras was supported by Henry Bordeaux, who repeatedly asked the President of the Republic, Vincent Auriol, to pardon Maurras.
31.
Charles Maurras was transferred to a clinic in Tours, where he died soon afterwards.
32.
Charles Maurras formulated an aggressive political strategy, which contrasted with the Legitimists' apathy for political action.
33.
Charles Maurras managed to combine the paradox of a reactionary thought which would actively change history, a form of Counter-revolution opposed to simple conservatism.
34.
Charles Maurras traced this decline further back, to the Enlightenment and the Reformation; he described the source of the evil as "Swiss ideas", a reference to the adopted nation of Calvin and the birth nation of Rousseau.
35.
Charles Maurras further blamed France's decline on "Anti-France", which he defined as the "four confederate states of Protestants, Jews, Freemasons and foreigners".
36.
Charles Maurras believed that the Reformation, the Enlightenment, and the eventual outcome of the French Revolution had all contributed to individuals valuing themselves more than the nation, with consequent negative effects on the latter, and that democracy and liberalism were only making matters worse.
37.
Charles Maurras was twice convicted of inciting violence against Jewish politicians, and Leon Blum, the first Jewish French prime minister, nearly died from the injuries inflicted by associates of Charles Maurras.
38.
Charles Maurras supported the political Catholic Church both because it was intimately involved with French history and because its hierarchical structure and clerical elite mirrored his image of an ideal society.
39.
Charles Maurras considered the Church to be the mortar which held France together, and the association linking all Frenchmen together.
40.
However, towards the end of his life Charles Maurras eventually converted from agnosticism to Catholicism.
41.
Notwithstanding his religious unorthodoxy, Charles Maurras gained a large following among French monarchists and Catholics, including the Assumptionists and the Orleanist pretender to the French throne, the comte de Paris, Philippe.
42.
The papal ban was later ended by Pope Pius XII in 1939, a year after Charles Maurras was elected to the Academie francaise.
43.
Charles Maurras was a major intellectual influence of national Catholicism, far-right movements, Latin conservatism, and integral nationalism.
44.
Charles Maurras' thought influenced Catholic fundamentalist supporters of the Brazilian dictatorship as well as the Cursillos de la Cristiandad, similar to the Cite Catholique group, which were initiated during 1950 by the bishop of Ciudad Real, Mgr.