Charles Péguy

Charles Péguy (born Jan. 7, 1873, Orléans, Fr.—died Sept. 5, 1914, near Villeroy) was a French poet and philosopher who combined Christianity, socialism, and patriotism into a deeply personal faith that he carried into action. (Read George Bernard Shaw’s 1926 Britannica essay on socialism.) Péguy was born to poverty. His mother, widowed when he was an infant, mended chairs for a living. He attended the lycée at Orléans on a scholarship and in 1894 entered the...