Ernest Psichari

Ernest Psichari (born September 27, 1883, Paris, France—died August 22, 1914, Rossignol, Belgium) was a 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.