Our editors will review what you’ve submitted and determine whether to revise the article.Join Britannica's Publishing Partner Program and our community of experts to gain a global audience for your work!
Ernest Psichari, (born September 27, 1883, Paris, France—died August 22, 1914, Rossignol, Belgium), French writer and soldier whose works combine militaristic sentiments with a semimystical religious devotion.
The grandson of the historian of ideas Ernest Renan and the son of a Greek philologist, Ioánnes Psicharís (Jean Psichari), Psichari grew up in an atmosphere of liberal intellectualism. After a period of acute emotional and mental stress, he started on the long journey toward an acceptance of religious faith, encouraged by the French Catholic intellectuals Maurice Barrès, Charles Péguy, and Jacques Maritain. As a common soldier in Africa (1906–12), he first found the satisfaction of a rigid moral commitment. L’Appel des armes (1913; “The Call to Arms”), a military novel, which became a guide for nationalist youth before World War I, recorded his experiences. He became a Roman Catholic in 1913 and prepared himself for the priesthood, but the outbreak of World War I intervened, and he was killed at the front in an early engagement.
His autobiographical novel, Le Voyage du centurion (1916; “The Voyage of the Centurion”), dealing with his conversion while in Africa, retraces his pilgrimage from skepticism to an ardent faith and a total abandonment to God.
Learn More in these related Britannica articles:
Maurice Barrès, French writer and politician, influential through his individualism and fervent nationalism. After completing his secondary studies at the Nancy lycée, Barrès went to Paris to study law but instead turned to literature. Then he embarked…
Charles Péguy, French poet and philosopher who combined Christianity, socialism, and patriotism into a deeply personal faith that he carried into action. Péguy was born to poverty. His mother, widowed when he was an infant, mended chairs for a living.…
Jacques Maritain, Roman Catholic philosopher, respected both for his interpretation of the thought of St. Thomas Aquinas and for his own Thomist philosophy. Reared a Protestant, Maritain attended the Sorbonne in Paris, where he was attracted by teachers who claimed that…