Joseph de Maistre

Joseph de Maistre , 1753-1821, French writer and diplomat. Born in Savoy, he was Sardinian ambassador at St. Petersburg from 1803 to 1817. A passionate Roman Catholic and royalist, he was master of a rigidly logical doctrine and the possessor of a great store of knowledge. These qualities, combined with a fine ability in writing French prose, made him perhaps the most powerful literary enemy of 18th-century rationalism, in which he delighted to detect logical weakness and shallowness. His principal works were Du pape [on the pope] (1819) and Les Soirées de Saint-Pétersbourg [discussions in St. Petersburg] (1821). They develop his idea that the world should be one, ruled absolutely by the pope as the spiritual ruler, with no temporal ruler having an independent authority.

de Maistre, Joseph (1753–1821), French Ultramontane writer. He was influenced by 18th-cent. rationalism, but after the 1789 Revolution he became a reactionary, who saw in the Church the safeguard of political stability. In his main work, Du pape (1819), he argued that the only true basis of society lay in authority, which took the double form of spiritual authority vested in the Papacy and temporal authority in human kings. His ideas contributed to the overthrow of Gallicanism.

Maistre, Joseph de. See DE MAISTRE, JOSEPH.