René Cardaliaguet

René‐Claude‐Marie Cardaliaguet (5 September 1875 – 13 October 1950) was a French Roman Catholic priest, writer and journalist.

Biography

René Cardaliaguet was born in Quimper. It was at the Minor Seminary of Sainte-Anne-d'Auray (1887–1893) that he did his secondary studies, under Jérôme Buléon and Adolphe Duparc, among other teachers. Ordained a priest in 1899, he moved to Ploudalmézeau where he became tutor to the children of the industrialist Auguste Carof.

He tried his hand at young adult literature. Cardaliaguet evoked a dystopian occupation of France in the novel The Three Against Moscow (1931), in which three young Frenchmen, living in the year 2000 — after Bolshevism has conquered the world and exiled the Pope —, defeat the enemy with strange scientific weapons. The following year, he wrote Yann Seitek, President of the Republic (1933), a thoroughly Catholic Breton counterpart, with twentieth-century modifications, of Dick Whittington's rise to mayoralty in London.

He also published several other works, including Le régicide brestois Claude Blad (1937), awarded the Montyon Prize and La Révolution à Brest. La vie religieuse (1941), awarded the Prix d'Académie by the French Academy.

Cardaliaguet was the diocesan director of the press and editor-in-chief of the Courrier du Finistère; he was a visceral anti-communist. In 1942, he published a book entitled Tragic Quimper, which presented a very negative image of the policies, particularly religious, pursued in Brittany during the French Revolution. This publication was criticised at the time of the Liberation, particularly by Adolphe Le Goaziou, who became chairman of the Finistère purge commission: "Le Courrier du Finistère was soon the subject of a judicial investigation, "for having published or printed [...] articles in favour of the enemy, collaboration with the enemy, racism or totalitarian doctrines, with the intention of favouring the enemy's undertakings of any kind", according to the order of 5 May 1945. Three charges emerged: Petainism, anti-Bolshevism and anti-Masonry. But in the end, the case was dismissed. "There is every reason to believe, in fact, that it was the resolute opposition of the editor-in-chief of the Courrier du Finistère to the separatist activities of part of the Breton movement that helped to relativise the extent of his proven Petainism."

René Cardaliaguet died in Bohars at the age of 75.

Works

• Mon curé chez lui (1926)
• Mon curé vingtième siècle (1928)
• Les trois contre Moscou (1931; novel)
• Yann Seitek président de la République (1932; novel)
• Le régicide Brestois Claude Blad (1937)
• Cléder: prêtres et paysans sous la Révolution (1939)
• La Révolution à Brest (1941)
• Quimper tragique (1942)
• Saint‐Jean Discalcéat (1942)

References

• Le Gat, Yan (2010). "Un chanoine sur la scène apostolique", Eglise en Finistère, No. 113, pp. 19–21.
• Louvière, A. (2006). "Les catholiques et la question bretonne (1940-1944)." In: Catholiques en Bretagne au XXe siècle. Rennes: Presses universitaires de Rennes, pp. 53–70.
• Tranvouez, Yvon (1998). "Une histoire catholique de la Révolution française. A propos de René Cardaliaguet, Cléder. Prêtres et paysans sous la Révolution (Brest, 1939)." In: Chrétienté de Basse‐Bretagne et d'ailleurs, mélanges offerts au chanoine Le Floc'h. Quimper: Société archéologique du Finistère, pp. 403–08.
• Tranvouez, Yvon (2006). "Un prêtre d'influence: René Cardaliaguet (1875‐1950)." In: Catholiques en Bretagne au XXe siècle. Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, pp. 23–33.

External links

• Cardaliaguet, René
• Works by René Cardaliaguet at Gallica