DOROTHY DAY-CATHOLIC WORKER COLLECTION
PETER MAURIN PAPERS, ca. 1909-

 

Biographical Note

Peter Maurin (1877-1949), whom Dorothy Day considered the true founder of the Catholic Worker movement, was born to peasant stock in the village of Oultet in the Languedoc region of southern France. As a youth and young man, he was a member of the Christian Brothers teaching order and the Sillon movement. He emigrated to Canada in 1909; after a homesteading venture failed, he entered the United States several years later. He traveled around the country, hopping freights and engaging in various types of manual labor, before finding more remunerative employment as a French teacher in Chicago. He spoke little about those years but admitted to Dorothy Day that he “was not living as a Catholic should.”

In the early 1920s, Maurin moved to upstate New York and underwent a religious conversion, He led a life of voluntary poverty, being especially influenced by St. Francis of Assisi, read widely, and formulated the three-point program of action (roundtable discussions, houses of hospitality, and farming communes) he would present to Dorothy Day in December 1932. To get his “points” across, he also began to compose the prose poems that became known as “Easy Essays.” After his successful “indoctrination” of Day, she agreed to start a newspaper, which she named The Catholic Worker. (Maurin would have preferred that it be called The Catholic Radical). He was so disappointed with the first issue’s lack of emphasis on his program that he absented himself for several months. He returned as a “contributor” rather than a staff member. Peter Maurin remained with the New York Catholic Worker community for the remainder of his life, dividing his time between the house of hospitality and the farm in Easton, Pennsylvania. He became much in demand as a speaker, though hosts sometimes mistook their guest lecturer for a tramp. The advent of dementia forced Maurin’s withdrawal from public activities after about ten years.

For more information on Peter Maurin’s life and writings see:

   Day, Dorothy, with Francis J. Sicius. Peter Maurin: Apostle to the World. Maryknoll, NY:  Orbis Books, 2004. 

   Ellis, Marc H. Peter Maurin: Prophet in the Twentieth Century. New York: Paulist Press, 1981.

   Maurin, Peter. The Forgotten Radical Peter Maurin: Easy Essays from the Catholic Worker, edited by Lincoln Rice. New York: Fordham University Press, 2020.  

  Sheehan, Arthur. Peter Maurin: Gay Believer. Garden City, NY: Hanover House, 1959.
 

Scope and Content

This series includes Maurin’s surviving correspondence and manuscripts, along with writings about him and documents that have come to light in recent years, such as his death certificate. Most of the manuscripts are Maurin’s "arrangements" of others’ thoughts (notably the writings of Eric Gill, rather than his original "Easy Essays." (There are several folders of these). Arrangement is by type of material and alphabetical or chronological thereunder.

DD-CW

Series W-10

Series
Box
Folder
Folder Title
W-10
1
-
Correspondence
W-10
1
1
Letters from Peter Maurin to Dorothy Day, 1933-1942
W-10
1
2
Letters from Lillian M. Weis to Peter Maurin, 1936-1948
W-10
1
3
General (Incoming), 1934-1948
W-10
1
4
Letters concerning Peter Maurin, 1933-1990
W-10
1
5
Death Certificate, 16 May 1949
W-10
1
6
Draft Registration Cards, 12 September 1918, 1942 (photocopies of digitized images)
W-10
1
7
Funeral and Burial, 1949, 1960
W-10
1
-
Manuscripts
W-10
1
8-9
"Easy Essays," 1933-1935, 1942, undated
W-10
1
-
"Arrangements"
W-10
1
10
Bailey, Liberty H. - Ferree, Fr. William, undated

DD-CW
Series W-10

Series
Box
Folder
Folder Title
W-10
1
11-12
Gill, Eric, undated
W-10
2
1-4
Gill, Eric, undated
W-10
2
5
Husslein - Zundel, Maurice, undated
W-10
2
6
Compilation: Religion, undated
W-10
2
7
Compilation: Sociology, undated
W-10
2
8-9
Compilations, 1940-1941, undated
W-10
3
1-4
"Cult, Culture, Cultivation" Quotations (by George Boyle, Fr. Walter Farrell, Eric Gill, Sr. Emiliana Loehr, Fr. Pius Parsch, and Ehrenfried Pfeiffer), 1942, undated
W-10
3
5
Varia, undated.
W-10
3
6
Handwritten Notes, 1937, undated
W-10
-
ER-1
Military service record (from the Archives Départementales de La Lozère), ca. 1909 
W-10
3
7
Monthly Symposium on Personalist Democracy (first and third sessions), 1938

DD-CW
Series W-10

Series
Box
Folder
Folder Title
W-10
3
-
Publications
W-10
3
5
"Easy Essays" in Book Form (correspondence and reviews), 1934-1980
W-10
3
6
Leaflets and Pamphlets, 1934, 1937, undated
W-10
4
1
Varia, 1940, 1949-1950, ca. 1960, 1997, undated
W-10
4
-
Writings on Peter Maurin
W-10
4
-
Manuscripts and Theses
W-10
4
2
Craig, Kevin, "Easy Essays" Concordance, ca. 1997
W-10
4
3
Gneuhs, Geoffrey B., "Peter Maurin: The Life and Thought of the Founder of the Catholic Worker Movement." M.A. thesis, Yale Divinity School, Yale University, 1978.
W-10
4
4
Novitsky, Anthony W., "The Theology of Christian Anarchism: The Example of the Catholic Worker." Paper presented at the meeting of the American Academy of Religion-College Theology Society, Syracuse, NY, 24 March 1973.
W-10
4
5
Novitsky, Anthony W., "Peter Maurin’s Green Revolution: The Radical Implications of Reactionary Social Catholicism." Paper presented at the Conference on the Reinterpretation of American Catholic History, University of Notre Dame, 4 October 1974. Published in Review of Politics 37 (January 1975): 83-103.

DD-CW
Series W-10

Series
Box
Folder
Folder Title
W-10
4
6
Stocking, Luke. "When the Irish Were Irish: Peter Maurin and the Green Revolution." M.A. thesis, University of St. Michael's College, 2006.
W-10
4
7
Turner, Edward, Typescript of Unpublished Study of Maurin’s Thought (incomplete), undated
W-10
4
-
Notes
W-10
4
8
Thomas Barry’s Notes on Maurin’s Life, ca. 1936
W-10
4
9
Biographical and Genealogical Notes, undated
W-10
5
1-2
Pamphlets, Press Clippings, and Scholarly Articles, 1936- , undated