Charles Maurras Totally Explained

Everything about Charles Maurras totally explained

Charles Maurras (April 20, 1868 Martigues Bouches-du-Rhône France – November 16, 1952) was a French author, poet, and critic. He was a leader and principal thinker of the reactionary Action Française, a political movement that was monarchist, anti-parliamentarist, and counter-revolutionary, and is the main intellectual influence of National Catholicism and integral nationalism.

Biography

Before World War I

Maurras was issued from an old Provençal family, and brought up by his mother and grand-mother in a Catholic and monarchist environment. In his early teens he became profoundly deaf. As many other French politicians, he was heavily affected by the defeat during the 1870 Franco-Prussian War. At this time, Maurras was influenced by Orleanism, as well as German philosophy reviewed by Léon Ollé-Laprune, an influence of Bergson, or by the philosopher Maurice Blondel, one of the inspirations of Christian "modernists" who would later become his most bitter opponents
   In 1890, Maurras approved Cardinal Lavigerie's call for the Rallying of Catholics to the Republic, marking his opposition not to the Republic in itself but to "sectarian Republicanism." It found a wide readership during the implementation of the 1905 law on the separation of Church and State. In 1899 he wrote a short notice in favour of monarchy, Dictateur et roi ("Dictator and King"), and then in 1900 his Enquête sur la monarchie ("Investigations on Monarchy), published in the Legitimist mouthpiece La Gazette de France, which made him famous. Maurras also published thirteen articles in Le Figaro between 1901 and 1902, as well as six articles between November 1902 and January 1903 in Edouard Drumont's anti-Semitic newspaper, La Libre Parole. During 1930s — especially after the 6 February 1934 crisis—many of Action française members turned to fascism, such as Robert Brasillach, Lucien Rebatet, Abel Bonnard, Paul Chack, Claude Jeantet, etc. Most of them belonged to the staff of the fascist newspaper Je suis partout.
   Influencing António de Oliveira Salazar's Estado Novo regime in Portugal, Maurras also supported Francisco Franco and, until spring 1939, Benito Mussolini's Fascist regime. Opposing Adolf Hitler because of his germanophobia, Maurras himself criticized the racist policies of Nazism in 1936, and requested an integral translation of Mein Kampf — some of its passages had been censored in the French edition.
   After his failure against Charles Jonnart in 1924 to be elected to the French Academy, he succeeded in entering the ranks of the "Immortals" on 9 June 1938, replacing Henri-Robert, winning by 20 votes against 12 to Fernand Gregh. He was received in the Academy on 8 June 1939 by Henry Bordeaux.

Vichy regime, arrest and death

Maurras acclaimed the fall of the Third Republic in 1940, replaced by Marshall Philippe Pétain's "French state", as a "divine surprise". Vichy's reactionary program of a Révolution nationale (National Revolution) was fully approved of by the leader of the Action française, who inspired large parts of it. While criticizing in La France Seule (1941) the 1940 Statute on Jews for being too moderate, and opposed both the "dissidents" in London and the collaborators in Paris (such as Lucien Rebatet, Robert Brasillach, Pierre Laval, or Marcel Déat.). In 1943, Germans planned to arrest Charles Maurras.
   An admirer (before the war) of Charles de Gaulle, who himself had been influenced by Maurras' integralism, he then harshly criticized the General in exile. He later claimed he believed that Pétain was playing a "double game", working for an Allied victory in secret.
   Maurras was arrested in September 1944 with Maurice Pujo, and indicted by High Court of Lyon for "complicity with the enemy" on the basis of articles published by Maurras since the war. At the issue of the trial, during which there were many irregularities in the proceedings (such as false dating or truncated quotations. Maurras was sentenced to life imprisonment, deprivation of civil liberties. He was automatically expelled from the Académie française (a measure included in the 26 December 1944 ordinance. but admired the Catholic Church for having allegedly concealed much of the Bible's "dangerous teachings." Maurras' interpretation of the Gospels, as well as his integralist teachings, were fiercely criticised by many Catholic clergy.
   Notwithstanding his religious unorthodoxy, Maurras gained a large following among French monarchists and Catholics, including the Assumptionists and the Orleanist pretender to the French throne, the count of Paris. Nonetheless, his agnosticism worried parts of the Catholic hierarchy and in 1926, Pope Pius XI placed some of Maurras's writings on the Index of Forbidden Books and condemned the Action Française movement as a whole. This papal condemnation was a great shock to many of his followers, who included a not inconsiderable number of French clergy, and caused great damage to the Action française. It was lifted however in 1939, a year after that Maurras was elected to the Académie française.
   Maurras was evidently a leading exponent of what Allan Bloom called (in his The Closing of the American Mind) the "conservatism of Throne and Altar," and an intellectual descendant of Joseph de Maistre, one of the prime thinkers of the Counter-Revolution.

The legacy of Maurras

Maurras is the main intellectual influence of National Catholicism, Latin Conservatism, and integral nationalism . He and the Action française have influenced, in Mexico, Jesús Guiza y Acevedo, nicknamed "the little Maurras," as well as the historian Carlos Pereyra or the Venezuelan author Vanenilla Lanz, who wrote a book titled Cesarismo democratico (Democratic Cesarism). Others influenced figures count the Brazilian Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira. Maurras' thought has also influenced Catholic fundamentalist supports of the Brazilian dictatorship (1964-85) as well as the Cursillos de la Cristiandad (Christian Courses), similar to the Cité catholique group, which were found in 1950 by the bishop of Ciudad Real, Mgr. Hervé. The Argentine militaries Juan Carlos Onganía, who toppled in a military putsch Arturo Illia in 1969, as well as Alejandro Agustín Lanusse, who succeeded Onganía after another coup, had participated to the Cursillos de la Cristiandad, as did also the Dominican militaries Antonio Imbert Barrera and Elías Wessin y Wessin, chief of staff of the military and opposed to the restoration of the 1963 Constitution after Rafael Trujillo's overthrow. Furthermore, Maurrassism also influenced many writings from members of the Organisation de l'armée secrète who theorized "counter-revolutionary warfare". The Christian Democrat Jacques Maritain was also close to Maurras before the papal condemnation of the AF in 1927, and criticized democracy in one of his early writing, Une opinion sur Charles Maurras ou le devoir des catholiques.Further Information

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