Abstract
Jules Isaac was born at Rennes on 18 November 1877 into a judéo-lorraine family, by his own admission “more Lorrainer than Jewish.” He was preceded by two sisters: Laure (1867–1945) and (Lucie) Henriette (1873–1958). Seven years had elapsed since Lorrainers east of the Vosges and Alsatians had lost their French citizenship following Bismarck’s annexation of Alsace and a slice of Lorraine in the aftermath of the Franco-Prussian War. Young Jules arrived into this world in the year that marked the beginning of the end of the conservative Republic of the Dukes. The crisis of 1877 settled the question of the locus of the balance of power under the constitution enacted on 31 December 1875. The president of the Republic was compelled to give way to the sovereign voice of France. This was the France into which Jules Isaac arrived, republican for a third time, a republic still in its infancy, fragile and resentful, if not hostile, to Jews.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Change history
24 April 2019
The original version of this book was revised. Imprecisions have been corrected and the index backfilled with missing page references where relevant
Notes
- 1.
Jules Isaac, Expériences de ma vie. Péguy (Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 1960), 22.
- 2.
The president of the Republic since 1873 had been the Duc de Magenta, Marshall MacMahon. (As a result of the Wallon amendment of 30 January 1875, which passed by a margin of one vote, the term of the president of the “Republic” was seven years.) Three Orleanist Dukes had played a role in government with a view to bringing about a Restoration—the Duc de Broglie who as vice president of the Council was to effectively lead MacMahon’s first ministry, the Duc Decazes, foreign minister from 1873 to 1877, and the Duc d’Audiffret-Pasquier, president of the National Assembly and then of the Senate.
- 3.
Married to Baccarat Violette (1806–87).
- 4.
At the age of 29, Jules himself toyed with the idea of reverting to Marx as a family name; he would sign his first ever published piece, a 1906 review of Georges Sorel’s Réflexions sur la violence in the periodical, Le Mouvement socialiste, “Is. Marx.”
- 5.
On 23 December 1791, in response to a motion presented in the Constituent Assembly by l’abbé Henri Grégoire (1750–1831), a pastor from the village of Emberménil and deputy of the clergy, the Jews of France were granted full citizenship.
- 6.
The Declaration of the Rights of Man was a preamble attached to a constitution that was adopted by the Constituent Assembly in 1791. The constitution in question contemplated not a republic, but a constitutional monarchy.
- 7.
Aron Rodrigue, “Rearticulations of French Jewish Identities after the Dreyfus Affair,” Jewish Social Studies 2, no. 3 (Spring–Summer, 1996): 2.
- 8.
F. Lovsky, “Les Premières années de l’amitié judéo-chrétienne,” Sens, revue de l’Amitié Judéo-Chrétienne de France, no. 6 (1998): 261.
- 9.
In the French school system of the nineteenth century, unlike the North American, one progressed from higher number grades to lower number grades.
- 10.
Isaac, Expériences de ma vie. Péguy, 30–31.
- 11.
Ibid., 24.
- 12.
Ibid., 31.
- 13.
Only 38 declared Boulangists won election, including novelist Maurice Barrès.
- 14.
Marie-Françoise Payré, “Les Idées religieuses de Jules Isaac,” in Actes du Colloque de Rennes (Rennes: Hachette, 1977), 134.
- 15.
Isaac’s Hebrew name, Jacob, son of Abraham, as it appears on his ketubah (Jewish marriage contract).
- 16.
Isaac, Expériences de ma vie. Péguy, 36.
- 17.
(Lucie) Henriette was married to Théodore Picard of Lyon.
- 18.
Isaac, Expériences de ma vie. Péguy, Péguy en Sorbonne. Discours du cinquantenaire (des Cahiers), 365–75 at 370.
- 19.
A cagneux is a lycée graduate enrolled in a structured preparatory program to sit the competitive examinations for admission to the École Normale Supérieure.
- 20.
Isaac, Expériences de ma vie. Péguy, 45.
- 21.
In 1899, Albert Lévy would begin teaching at Strasbourg, then to the midi for health-related reasons, where he became the doyen de la Faculté des Lettres in Aix-en-Provence. At his death in 1929, he was succeeded in the position by Lakanalien classmate, Victor L. Bourrilly. On the night of 24 or 25 June 1943, Mme Lévy-See, widow of Albert Lévy, was arrested by the Germans and transported to Marseilles where she remained under house arrest for 5 months until her deportation in November 1943.
- 22.
Isaac, Expériences de ma vie. Péguy, 46. Unbeknownst to Isaac at the time, he had more in common with Péguy than appeared at first sight, the latter having also lost a parent—his father—in early childhood and both having been steeped in a patriotic, anticlerical republicanism.
- 23.
Ecole Normale Supérieure was founded in 1793 to train the teachers of France’s First Republic. Taking form under the First Empire, its alumni would swell the ranks of lycée and university professors in the course of the Second. See Robert Smith, The Ecole Normale Superieure and the Third Republic (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1982) pp. 5–18.
- 24.
Isaac, Expériences de ma vie. Péguy, 59. Lakanal buddies, who had completed their second year of preparation, such as Albert Levy, Albert Mathiez and Victor Bourrilly, gained admission to the École. Péguy, falling short by one-quarter of a point, ended at the top of the waiting list.
- 25.
In 1863, Crémieux became the president of the Universal Israelite Alliance, founded in 1860 to defend the Jews of France from prejudice and discrimination.
- 26.
Quoted in Pierrard, 40.
- 27.
In academic 1893–94, his third year as a boarder at Lakanal, Jules was en philosophie and Péguy was completing his second year of cagne, but not at Lakanal; rather at lycée Louis-le-Grand, while enrolled on full scholarship at adjacent collège Sainte-Barbe. At the close of the 1893–94 year, Péguy gained admission to Ecole Normale, sixth among the admitted candidates.
- 28.
Lévy and Mattiez had been en cagne with Péguy at Lakanal in the 1891–92 academic year.
- 29.
Isaac, Expériences de ma vie. Péguy, 97–98.
- 30.
Quoted in Carole Fink, Marc Bloch: A Life in History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 256.
- 31.
Erich Fromm, On Being Human (New York: Continuum, 1999), 166.
- 32.
Isaac was close to both Boivin brothers—Henri and Emile—fellow Orleanais of Péguy. The younger, Emile, was only months older than Isaac. The brothers Boivin would marry the sisters Crémieux: Henri to Valentine and Emile to Juliette, the sisters of Albert Crémieux, co-director of Editions Rieder and director of Europe.
- 33.
Isaac, Expériences de ma vie. Péguy, 98–99.
- 34.
Charlotte was the sister of prodigy Marcel Baudouin, fellow cagneux with Péguy at Sainte-Barbe. The friendship that evolved between Péguy and Baudouin “…was unlike any other, a fraternal in addition to mysterious friendship, a tight and semi-mystical union, so deeply rooted that it never manifested itself, never expressed itself like the other of Péguy’s relationships…” (Les Expériences de ma vie I: Péguy, 83). Tragically, Baudouin passed away in 1896, during his year of military service.
- 35.
Two of the four witnesses to this marriage were fellow Lakanaliens Collier and Mattiez.
- 36.
By the close of 1897, it had become evident to E.N.S. librarian Lucien Herr, and therefore to Péguy, that Dreyfus had been the object of a gross miscarriage of justice.
- 37.
Isaac, Expériences de ma vie. Péguy, 237 (Deuxieme cahier, p. 4).
- 38.
Fromm, 132–33.
- 39.
Isaac, Expériences de ma vie. Péguy, 99.
- 40.
Ibid., 237.
- 41.
Ibid., Péguy en Sorbonne, discours du cinquantenaire (des Cahiers), 365–75 at 366.
- 42.
In the nine Cahiers of the fifteenth and last series, five were written by Jews: Edmond Fleg, Joseph Reinach, Julien Benda, André Saurès and Georges Delahache.
- 43.
Géraldi Leroy, “Jules Isaac et Péguy,” Cahiers de l’Association des amis de Jules Isaac, nouvelle serie No 3 (December 2000): 51–2.
- 44.
Quoted in Fink, 256.
- 45.
Aron Rodrigue, “Totems, Taboos, and Jews: Salomon Reinach and the Politics of Scholarship in Fin-de-Siècle France “ Jewish Social Studies, New Series 10, no. 2 (Winter, 2004): 2. With a view to propagating the normative nature of this French–Jewish path to emancipation, a network of French Jewish schools was created around the Mediterranean basin by the Universal Israelite Alliance.
- 46.
Isaac, Expériences de ma vie. Péguy, 101.
- 47.
Ibid., 101–102.
- 48.
Today, agrégatif.
- 49.
The licence d’histoire (et de géographie) was a product of a decree of 25 September 1880; the other two products were the licence de lettres and the licence de philosophie.
- 50.
Isaac, Expériences de ma vie. Péguy, 114.
- 51.
The Assumptionist Fathers was a religious order that was founded in 1845, but little heard of until the national disaster of 1871. For two generations, until its expulsion from France in 1901, this order appealed to the mystical, the emotional, the fanatical, among French Catholics. The growth of its journal, La Croix, to a readership of 500,000 and 100 provincial (rural) editions, was nothing short of spectacular.
- 52.
Isaac, Expériences de ma vie. Péguy, 116–117.
- 53.
Ibid., 121.
- 54.
Picquart had discovered that Esterhazy, the apparent real culprit, had been in the service of the German military attaché, that Esterhazy’s script was identical to that on the bordereau and that there was no smoking gun in the secret dossier delivered to the judges behind the back of the accused and his counsel.
- 55.
At the time the bookstore was established, 1 May 1898, Péguy was still a boursier at the Sorbonne and, as such, was unable to engage in trade in his own name. Georges Bellais was the former sergeant of Albert Lévy, lycée d’Orleans and Lakanal classmate of Péguy.
- 56.
See Pierre Nora, “Lavisse, instituteur national” in Lieux de mémoire, ed. Pierre Nora (Paris: Gallimard, 1984–86), Pierre Nora, “L’histoire de France de Lavisse,” in Lieux de mémoire, ed. Pierre Nora (Paris: Gallimard, 1984–86).
- 57.
These manuels scolaires were published by Armand Colin beginning in 1884. Hachette was the publisher of Lavisse’s Histoire de France.
- 58.
Isaac, Expériences de ma vie. Péguy, 266.
- 59.
Ibid., 148. Two days later, Moderate Emile Loubet was elected by a majority of left-leaning parliamentarians.
- 60.
On 12 July 1906, the Cours de cassation would hand down a judgment declaring that “in the last analysis, of the charges laid against Dreyfus, nothing remains standing and the annulment of the judgement of the court martial (of Rennes) does not leave anything that could be construed as a crime or delit.”
- 61.
Isaac, Expériences de ma vie. Péguy, 199–200.
- 62.
Ibid., 206.
- 63.
Ibid, 210.
- 64.
Isaac, Expériences de ma vie. Péguy, 209.
- 65.
Quoted in ibid., 238.
- 66.
Ibid., 213–14.
- 67.
The first number was published on 5 January 1900. There would be 229 issues, divided into 15 series. The last number would be dated 7 July 1914, two months before frontline soldier Péguy was killed on 5 September 1914 in the Battle of the Marne.
- 68.
Robert Burac, ed., Charles Péguy, Oeuvres en prose complètes I (Paris: Gallimard, 1986), 934.
- 69.
In September of that year, Péguy attended the Congrès national des organisations socialistes françaises, held in Paris, for the purpose of reporting on it in the seizième cahier of the IIe series. Isaac also attended, and would recall in particular the impression that Rosa Luxembourg made on all the delegates. Péguy was still a stockholder of the Société nouvelle—he owned 200 shares, all that remained of the Baudouin funds that had backed his original venture, la librairie Georges Bellais. The conflict between the board of Société nouvelle and Péguy culminated in proceedings of an extraordinary general meeting for the purposes of considering “l’incident Péguy.” The meeting took place on 17 January 1901. Péguy appointed Isaac as his proxy to attend. “It was against me especially that the most hardened of [Péguy’s] adversaries concentrated all of their fire with an implacable hostility: why? Because they saw in me his agent, Péguy’s representative, his collaborator at the Cahiers; also because my insignificance, my timidity seemed only to egg them on. Incredibly timid, I was in effect completely lacking in self-confidence, nonetheless, I was entirely loyal to Péguy, resolved not to retreat, not to concede one inch.” (Expériences de ma vie: Péguy, 224).
- 70.
Isaac was one of the first to receive the diplôme d’études supérieures, which was created in 1886 at the instigation of Ernest Lavisse. From 1894 onward, this diplôme was a prerequisite for the agrégation d’histoire, the latter defined by decree dated 29 July 1885.
- 71.
Isaac, Expériences de ma vie. Péguy, 273.
- 72.
She also spent time in the studio of Jean-Paul Laurens.
- 73.
When Isaac was no longer able to function as secretariat for les Cahiers de la quinzaine, Péguy tapped lycée d’Orléans and Lakanal classmate, André Bourgeois, to replace Isaac.
- 74.
Isaac, Expériences de ma vie. Péguy, 278.
- 75.
William Curt Buthman, The Rise of Integral Nationalism in France (New York: Columbia University Press, 1939), 269. By the date of publication of the first number of daily Action française, 21 March 1908, newspaper and comité had become the alter ego of Charles Maurras.
- 76.
Quoted in Eugen Weber, Action Française: Royalism and Reaction in Twentieth-Century France (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1962), 35.
- 77.
Even the papal ex-communication of Maurras, in effect from 1926–39, and the placement of the daily on the Index, would not shake Maurras’ hold on Catholic conservatives.
- 78.
Weber, 200.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2017 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Tobias, N.C. (2017). The Formative Years: Péguy 1877–1902. In: Jewish Conscience of the Church. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-46925-6_2
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-46925-6_2
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-46924-9
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-46925-6
eBook Packages: Religion and PhilosophyPhilosophy and Religion (R0)