Maistre de Sacy. See Sacv.
Maistre, Joseph (count) de, an eminent French Roman Catholic writer, the greatest advocate of LTltra- montanism in the 19th century, was born at Chamber^' April 1, 1753. His father was president of the senate of Savoy, and he became himself a member of that body in 1787. When the French armies invaded Savoy in 1792 he retired to Piedmont, Avhere he wrote his Consid- irations sur la France (1796, 8vo ; three editions in one year). Charles Emanuel IV called De Maistre to Tu- rin, where he remained until the downfall of that prince, Nov. 19, 1798; he then retired to Venice, and lived there one year in great poverty. In 1799 he was created grand chancellor of Sardinia, and in September, 1802, was sent by that country as ambassador to Russia. While there he published (in 1810) his Essai sur le principe regener- ateur des constitutions politiques, a full exposition of his political views, advocating the principle of divine right, and declaring the rights of the people derived from the sovereign — withal a sort of theocratic form of govern- ment more ailapted to the ]\liddle Ages than to the 19th century. "M. de Maistre," in this work, "represents men as connected with God by a chain which binds them to his throne, and holds them without enslaving them. To the I'ull extent of this chain we are at liberty to move; we are slaves indeed, but we are freely slaves [Ubrement esclaves) ; we must necessarily work out the purposes of the Supreme Being, and yet the actions by which we work out these purposes are always free. So far so good ; but here come the peculiarities of our author's system. He does not consider men as individ- ually responsible before God ; he takes them as nations, and the nation, for JI. de Maistre, is made up of the king and the aristocracy. Even considering each order separately, he asserts that all the members of the same order are indissolubly bound together, each bearing a share of the mutual and joint responsibility which weighs on the whole order. Now let us suppose the case of a revolution. In those terrible events which follow the disregard of all the laws of right and wrong, although the persons who fall \-ictims to the fury of the multitude may sometimes be those whose very crimes have called down the divine vengeance, yet very often, nay, in most cases, the individually innocent suffer most. But, then, although individually innocent, they must come in for the share of tlie solidarity which belongs to the whole order. Tliis results from the fact that the doctrine of atonement is the principle on which rests the constitution of society ; the sins of the guilty are visited on the innocent, and the blood of the innocent, in its turn, atones for the guilt}'. Here is to be found
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the key-stone of count De jNIaistre's theon'; the Savoy- ard publicist develops it witli all the resources of logic and erudition." It has been well remarked that a sys- tem such as this is fatalism of the very worst descrip- tion. Not only does it take away the free agency of men considered as individuals, but it effectually pro- claims the validity of the maxim that mvjht is right. '• Wishing to transform all earthly governments into one homogeneous theocracy, he proposed, as a control over absolutism, an absolutism of a much more dangerous character. M. de Maistre's leading idea is a good one : he wishes to appeal from the passions and depraved will of man to the Deity itself as to the eternal source of right and good; but not being, of course, able to receive immediately from God the counsel and the laws he M'ishes to reduce into practice for the good of society, he traces them to the pope, as the vicegerent of Heav- en ! — an error common to all reactionary movements — from the fear of allowing anything like vagueness to exist in the minds of men respecting their connection with the Almighty. He is not satisfied with anything short of what is really tangible, visible, perceptible to the senses, thus forgetting the character of the true Me- diator. Failing to understand that both divinity and humanity have met togetVier only in the man Christ Jesus, he would fain make us believe that the pope is ' (Jod made manifest in the tiesh.' " With such views, he could not but condemn severely the charter of 1814, which introduced new institutions into France, and he turned his face towards Russia with a view of making it his home. By a ukase of December, 1815, Kussia expelled the Jesuits. To them De Maistre and his fam- ily were much attached, and being on this account him- self suspected of proselytism, he quitted the country and returned to Savov in 1817, and became minister of state. He died Feb. 26,' 1821.
Among the principal works of De Maistre, our special consideration is claimed also by his Du Pape (Lyons, 1819, 2 vols. 8vo; second and improved edition, 1821, 2 vols. 8vo), in which he treats of the papacy, 1, in its relation to the Romish Church ; 2, to the temporal powers ; 3, to civilization ; and, 4, to the dissenting churches. It is a daring apology of the spiritual and temporal power of the pope. He starts from the prin- ciple that modern nations need a guarantee against the abuses of sovereign power. Such guarantee, he claims, is not to be found either in written charters, which are always useless, nor in assemblies, which are powerless when they are not anarchic. He can find it only in a sovereignty superior to all others, at once independent and disinterested, and interfering to promote the cause of justice, which has been intrusted to it by God him- self. The Savoyard publicist's beau zV/co/ of government is the constitution of the Middle Ages. He describes it in exulting language, and crowds his margins with quotations from Bellarmine, Baronius, and the Triden- tine fathers, never suspecting that, after all, he has only been painting a tableau defantaisie, a piece of historical inaccuracy which will match the dreamy theories of Boulainvilliers and Dubos. We are invited, seriously, to return to those happy times when royalty, while it retained its full volition, and was endowed with an in- dependent patrimony, was restrained in the exercise of legislative power by the clergy, the nobility, and the commons, each resting on its own foundation, and acting witiiin its allotted sphere, while above was the papacv, which, by its sublime umjnrage, maintained, in cases of collision, the harmonious co-operation of the members of all the body politic. We are told to admire the no- ble, temperate monarchy which had grown up under the shelter of the Christian Church, and which, though never brought to perfection (this is, at least,. a candid acknowledgment), had yet sex-ured to the mediaeval na- tions so long a career of happiness and freedom, pros- perity and glory. It would l)e a task l)oth useless and uiqirotitable to point out all the misstatements which occur in the description just given. The futility of liis