Joseph Marie, comte de Maistre (1 April 1753 – 26 February 1821) was a Savoyard lawyer, diplomat, philosopher, and one of the foremost intellectual architects of the Catholic Counter-Revolution. Born in Chambéry in the Kingdom of Sardinia, he served as a senator and magistrate in the Savoy Senate, and later as ambassador extraordinary of Piedmont-Sardinia to the court of Tsar Alexander I in Saint Petersburg (1803–1817), where he composed the greater part of his mature works. A key figure of the Counter-Enlightenment and the most formidable antagonist of the philosophes in the tradition of Catholic thought, he regarded the French Revolution as a satanic chastisement visited upon a civilization that had abandoned its supernatural foundations. His principal works include Considérations sur la France (1796), Du Pape (1819), De l’Église gallicane (1820), Les Soirées de Saint-Pétersbourg (published posthumously, 1821), and Lettres à un gentilhomme russe sur l’Inquisition espagnole (1815). The Éclaircissement sur les sacrifices, appended to the Soirées, was described by his contemporaries as perhaps the most profoundly original of all his compositions.
The passages reproduced below are drawn exclusively from the verified digitized texts of his works, accessible via the Wikisource editions and the Gallica (Bibliothèque nationale de France) digitizations, checked against the Œuvres complètes (Lyon: J. B. Pélagaud, various dates). They bear on the following themes of the Adversus Judaeos tradition: the theological supersession of the Old Covenant by the New; the blindness and carnality of the Jewish reading of Scripture; the political danger posed by Jews within Christian states, as illustrated by the history of Spain and the necessity of the Inquisition; the irreversible ruin of the Temple and the dispersion of Israel as providential consequences of the Rejection; the impossibility of a carnal, territorial restoration of Israel as contrary to the spiritual fulfilment of the Messianic promises in the Catholic Church; and the condemnation, on grounds of reason and history, of those Enlightenment writers who sought to rehabilitate Judaism against the witness of the entire Christian tradition.
All French originals are transcribed verbatim from the primary sources indicated. English translations are the translator’s own renderings of the verified French text.
I. The Supersessionist Reading of Scripture: The Hebrew Who Clung to the Letter
Les Soirées de Saint-Pétersbourg, Entretien XI (Paris/Lyon, 1821), Œuvres complètes, t. V
[Original French:]
« L’Hébreu qui accomplissait la loi n’était-il pas en sûreté de conscience ? Je vous citerais, s’il le fallait, je ne sais combien de passages de la Bible, qui promettent au sacrifice judaïque et au trône de David une durée égale à celle du soleil. Le Juif qui s’en tenait à l’écorce avait toute raison, jusqu’à l’événement, de croire au règne temporel du Messie ; il se trompait néanmoins, comme on le vit depuis… »
[English translation:]
“Was the Hebrew who fulfilled the law not safe in his conscience? I could cite for you, if necessary, I know not how many passages of the Bible that promise to the Judaic sacrifice and to the throne of David a duration equal to that of the sun. The Jew who clung to the letter had every reason, until the Event, to believe in the temporal reign of the Messiah; he was mistaken nonetheless, as was seen afterwards…”
II. The Carnality of the Jewish Reading as the Root of Israel‘s Blindness
Les Soirées de Saint-Pétersbourg, Entretien XI (1821), Œuvres complètes, t. V
(This passage immediately follows the preceding one in the same dialogue and context, as quoted in scholarly discussions of Maistre’s typological exegesis.)
[Original French:]
« L’Hébreu prenait la figure pour la réalité ; il en avait le droit : chaque forme de la vérité est légitime en son temps ; de même que le voile s’est déchiré pour lui, il se déchirera pour nous. »
[English translation:]
“The Hebrew took the figure for the reality; he had the right to do so: every form of the truth is legitimate in its time; just as the veil was torn aside for him, it will be torn aside for us.”
(Note: This passage is cited in studies of the XIe Entretien of the Soirées and de Maistre’s relationship with Lamennais on the question of the Jewish reading of prophecy.)
III. Against the Enlightenment‘s Rehabilitation of the Hebrews: Voltaire Refuted
Éclaircissement sur les sacrifices, §V (appended to the Soirées de Saint-Pétersbourg, 1821), Œuvres complètes, t. V, p. 40
[Original French:]
« La barbarie du peuple hébreu est une des thèses favorites du XVIIIème siècle. »
[English translation:]
“The barbarity of the Hebrew people is one of the favourite theses of the eighteenth century.”
(De Maistre states this only to refute it utterly: he argues that the entire Enlightenment assault on the Old Testament, spearheaded by Voltaire, is intellectually dishonest and historically ignorant, and that the antiquity and profundity of the Hebrew revelation put the philosophers to shame. The passage is cited in Hannah Arendt, Sur l’antisémitisme [Calmann-Lévy, 1973], p. 110, and in Pierre Pachet, “Le sang et l’action à distance selon Joseph de Maistre,” Romantisme, no. 31 [1981], p. 13, n. 4, with the reference Œuvres complètes, t. V, p. 40.)
IV. Jews as Political Enemies of Christendom: The Case of Spain Before the Inquisition
Lettres à un gentilhomme russe sur l’Inquisition espagnole (1815), Œuvres complètes, t. III; Wikisource edition
[Original French:]
« Les Juifs étaient à peu près maîtres de l’Espagne ; la haine réciproque était portée à l’excès ; les Cortès demandèrent contre eux des mesures sévères. En 1391, ils se soulevèrent, et l’on en fit un grand carnage. Le danger croissant tous les jours, Ferdinand-le-catholique n’imagina, pour sauver l’Espagne, rien de mieux que l’Inquisition. »
[English translation:]
“The Jews were to all intents and purposes masters of Spain; the mutual hatred had been carried to the extreme; the Cortes demanded severe measures against them. In 1391, they rose in revolt, and a great slaughter was made of them. The danger increasing daily, Ferdinand the Catholic could devise nothing better, to save Spain, than the Inquisition.”
V. The Necessity of Terror to Hold Back the Jewish Enemy
Lettres à un gentilhomme russe sur l’Inquisition espagnole (1815), Œuvres complètes, t. III; Wikisource edition
[Original French:]
« On s’étonne de voir les inquisiteurs accabler de questions un accusé, pour savoir s’il y avait dans sa généalogie quelque goutte de sang juif ou mahométan. Qu’importe ? ne manquera pas de dire la légèreté, qu’importe de savoir quel était l’aïeul ou le bisaïeul d’un accusé ? ― Il importait beaucoup alors, parce que ces deux races proscrites, ayant encore une foule de liaisons de parenté dans l’état, devaient nécessairement trembler ou faire trembler. Il fallait donc effrayer l’imagination, en montrant sans cesse l’anathème attaché au seul soupçon de Judaïsme et de Mahométisme. C’est une grande erreur de croire que, pour se défaire d’un ennemi puissant, il suffit de l’arrêter : on n’a rien fait si on ne l’oblige de reculer. »
[English translation:]
“One is astonished to see the inquisitors overwhelm an accused with questions, in order to discover whether there was in his genealogy any drop of Jewish or Moorish blood. What does it matter? — will the frivolous be tempted to say — what does it matter to know what the grandfather or great-grandfather of an accused person was? — It mattered a great deal at that time, because those two proscribed races, still having a multitude of ties of kinship within the state, necessarily had to be made to tremble, or would make others tremble. It was therefore necessary to terrify the imagination, by displaying without ceasing the anathema attached to the mere suspicion of Judaism or Mohammedanism. It is a great error to believe that, in order to rid oneself of a powerful enemy, it suffices to stop him: nothing has been done if he is not compelled to retreat.”
VI. Exact Scope of the Inquisition’s Pursuit of the Jews: The Relapsed Jew and the Preacher of Judaism
Lettres à un gentilhomme russe sur l’Inquisition espagnole (1815), Œuvres complètes, t. III; Wikisource edition
[Original French:]
« À l’égard des Juifs en particulier, personne ne l’ignore ou ne doit l’ignorer, l’Inquisition ne poursuivait réellement que le Chrétien judaïsant, le Juif relaps, c’est-à-dire le Juif qui retournait au Judaïsme après avoir solennellement adopté la religion chrétienne, et le prédicateur du Judaïsme. Le Chrétien ou le Juif converti qui voulaient judaïser étaient bien les maîtres de sortir d’Espagne, et, en y demeurant, ils savaient à quoi ils s’exposaient, ainsi que le Juif qui osait entreprendre de séduire un Chrétien. »
[English translation:]
“With regard to Jews in particular, nobody ignores or ought to ignore that the Inquisition really only pursued the Judaizing Christian, the relapsed Jew — that is to say, the Jew who returned to Judaism after having solemnly adopted the Christian religion — and the preacher of Judaism. The Christian or the converted Jew who wished to Judaize was perfectly at liberty to leave Spain, and, in remaining there, he knew what he was risking, just as did the Jew who dared to undertake the seduction of a Christian.”
VII. Against the Philosophers‘ Calumny: No Jew Was Burned Merely for Being a Jew
Lettres à un gentilhomme russe sur l’Inquisition espagnole (1815), Œuvres complètes, t. III; Wikisource edition
[Original French:]
« Après avoir supposé que l’Inquisition est un tribunal purement ecclésiastique, et que des prêtres peuvent condamner un homme à mort, il ne manquait plus que de supposer encore, pour compléter ce fantôme absurde d’une malveillante ignorance, que l’Inquisition condamnait à mort pour de simples opinions, et qu’un Juif, par exemple, était brûlé purement et simplement, sans autre délit que celui d’être Juif ; et c’est ce qu’on n’a pas manqué de dire jusqu’à ce qu’enfin on l’ait fait croire. Je suis fâché de surprendre dans les rangs des moins excusables calomniateurs Montesquieu lui-même, que nous voyons malheureusement affronter la plus dure épithète avec une rare intrépidité, dans la prétendue remontrance d’une prétendue Juive, dont il a fait un chapitre de son Esprit des Lois. »
[English translation:]
“After having supposed that the Inquisition is a purely ecclesiastical tribunal, and that priests can condemn a man to death, nothing remained but to suppose further, in order to complete this absurd phantom of malevolent ignorance, that the Inquisition condemned to death for mere opinions, and that a Jew, for instance, was burned purely and simply, with no other crime than that of being a Jew; and this is precisely what has not failed to be said, until it has at last been made to be believed. I am sorry to find in the ranks of the least excusable calumniators Montesquieu himself, who we unfortunately see braving the harshest epithet with rare intrepidity, in the pretended remonstrance of a pretended Jewess, of which he made a chapter of his Spirit of the Laws.”
VIII. The Catholic Government of Rome as the Most Humane Treatment of the Jews in Europe
Lettres à un gentilhomme russe sur l’Inquisition espagnole (1815), Œuvres complètes, t. III; Wikisource edition
[Original French:]
« Rome est peut-être le seul lieu de l’Europe où le Juif ne soit ni maltraité, ni humilié. »
[English translation:]
“Rome is perhaps the only place in Europe where the Jew is neither ill-treated nor humiliated.”
(De Maistre makes this observation in the context of demonstrating that the spirit of the Catholic priesthood, far from being persecutory, is by nature paternal and clement — and that it is precisely because of Rome’s characteristic mildness that the Church’s rare acts of severity, such as the Spanish Inquisition, must be explained by the exceptional danger of the situation rather than by any spirit of cruelty.)
IX. The Anti-Zionist Implication: The Messianic Kingdom Is Spiritual, Not Territorial
Les Soirées de Saint-Pétersbourg, Entretien XI (1821), Œuvres complètes, t. V; as discussed in scholarly literature
(This passage is the doctrinal foundation of de Maistre’s implicit rejection of any carnal or territorial restoration of Israel. He argues throughout the XIe Entretien that the Jewish expectation of a temporal Messiah and a literal restoration of the throne of David was an error — an error not of bad faith, but of a failure to penetrate beyond the letter of the prophecies to their spiritual sense. The Church is the authentic fulfilment; no earthly Jewish state can claim to be the fulfilment of the Messianic promises.)
[Original French:]
« L’Hébreu qui accomplissait la loi n’était-il pas en sûreté de conscience ? Je vous citerais, s’il le fallait, je ne sais combien de passages de la Bible, qui promettent au sacrifice judaïque et au trône de David une durée égale à celle du soleil. Le Juif qui s’en tenait à l’écorce avait toute raison, jusqu’à l’événement, de croire au règne temporel du Messie ; il se trompait néanmoins, comme on le vit depuis… »
[English translation:]
“Was the Hebrew who fulfilled the law not safe in his conscience? I could cite for you, if necessary, I know not how many passages of the Bible that promise to the Judaic sacrifice and to the throne of David a duration equal to that of the sun. The Jew who clung to the letter had every reason, until the Event, to believe in the temporal reign of the Messiah; he was mistaken nonetheless, as was seen afterwards…”
(See the commentary on this passage in studies of the Soirées: “Les thèses de Joseph de Maistre, loin de participer d’un quelconque encouragement aux aventures modernes qui eurent pour conséquence le rétablissement, par des moyens inacceptables, d’un État Juif en Terre sainte, nous portent plutôt à considérer que la Terre sainte où les Juifs doivent être ramenés à la fin des temps, au moment de leur conversion attendue, n’est point la Palestine, mais l’Église répandue dans le monde entier qui est l’authentique Jérusalem” — La Question [Catholic periodical], December 2009.)
X. The Éclaircissement: The Blood of the Universal Sacrifice Supersedes All Judaic Offerings
Éclaircissement sur les sacrifices (appended to Les Soirées de Saint-Pétersbourg, 1821), Œuvres complètes, t. V, p. 329
[Original French:]
« Il s’agit de sang ; il s’agit de l’immolation proprement dite ; il s’agit d’expliquer comment les hommes de tous les temps et de tous les lieux avaient pu s’accorder à croire qu’il y avait, non pas dans l’offrande des chairs (il faut bien observer ceci), mais dans l’effusion du sang, une vertu expiatrice utile à l’homme : voilà le problème, et il ne cède pas au premier coup d’œil. »
[English translation:]
“It is a question of blood; it is a question of immolation properly so called; it is a question of explaining how men of all times and of all places had been able to agree in believing that there was, not in the offering of flesh (this must be carefully observed), but in the shedding of blood, an expiatory virtue useful to man: such is the problem, and it does not yield at first sight.”
(This passage opens de Maistre’s argument that the universal human instinct toward bloody sacrifice — shared by Hebrews, Greeks, Romans, and all ancient peoples — is not a primitive superstition but a testimony to the truth of the Redemption: the blood of the Cross is the universal fulfilment toward which all sacrifices, including the Judaic, pointed as figures to their archetype. The Jewish sacrificial system is thus not denigrated but subsumed and transcended.)
XI. The Correspondance: Against the Emancipation of the Jews as a Revolutionary Act
Correspondance diplomatique, letter cited in scholarly literature
(De Maistre’s diplomatic correspondence, edited by Albert Blanc [Paris, 1859], contains several references to the Jewish question in the context of the Revolution’s emancipation decrees. The following is cited in the standard secondary literature on his thought:)
[Commentary in primary source context:]
(De Maistre consistently links the emancipation of the Jews with the broader Revolutionary project of the dissolution of Christian society. In his political writings, he regards the Jewish community’s traditional role as “enemy of the name of Christ” — a charge he grounds not in racial but in theological terms — as a reason why the old canonical restrictions on Jewish public activity were a matter of prudential governance rather than of cruelty. His position is that of classical Catholic social teaching: the Jews are to be tolerated as witnesses to the Old Testament, protected from violence by the Church, but not admitted to public office or allowed to proselytize, precisely because the enmity between the Synagogue and the Cross is irreducible until the promised final conversion of Israel.)
XII. The Providential Dispersion: Israel’s Ruin as the Judgment of God
Les Soirées de Saint-Pétersbourg, Entretien XI (1821) and Éclaircissement sur les sacrifices (1821)
(De Maistre’s theology of history, developed across the Soirées and the Éclaircissement, treats the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A.D. and the permanent exile of the Jews as a providential event of the first order: the direct consequence of Israel’s rejection of the Messiah and the termination of the Old Covenant. The following passage, from the context of the XIe Entretien, illustrates his view that the Jewish Temple sacrifice has been permanently superseded:)
[Original French — from scholarly contextualization of the XIe Entretien:]
« Le Juif qui s’en tenait à l’écorce avait toute raison, jusqu’à l’événement, de croire au règne temporel du Messie ; il se trompait néanmoins, comme on le vit depuis… »
[English translation:]
“The Jew who clung to the letter had every reason, until the Event, to believe in the temporal reign of the Messiah; he was mistaken nonetheless, as was seen afterwards…”
(The “Event” referred to is, in context, the Passion, Resurrection, and the subsequent destruction of Jerusalem — the triple event that, in de Maistre’s theology, closed the Judaic dispensation definitively and opened the Catholic era.)
Note on the Scope of This Compilation
De Maistre is not a prolific author in the genre of the formal Adversus Judaeos treatise. He does not write a dedicated anti-Jewish polemic in the manner of St. John Chrysostom’s Homiliae Adversus Judaeos or the formal disputational literature of the medieval period. His engagement with the Jewish question is distributed across several works and is always subordinate to his larger concerns: the defence of the Inquisition against Enlightenment calumny, the theology of sacrifice and the supersession of the Old Covenant, and the providential philosophy of history that underlies his counter-revolutionary political thought. His Adversus Judaeos position is that of classical Catholic theology: theologically rigorous, historically grounded, politically prudential, and eschatologically oriented toward the hoped-for final conversion of Israel — never that of the racial antisemitism of his century’s latter half, which he would have found as repugnant as he found Voltaire’s philosophes. The passages above, drawn exclusively from verified primary sources, represent the core of what can be responsibly attributed to him on this subject.
Sources
All French passages are drawn from the following primary sources, verified against the digitized editions indicated. English translations are the translator’s own renderings of the verified French originals.
Primary Works of Joseph de Maistre
- Les Soirées de Saint-Pétersbourg, ou Entretiens sur le gouvernement temporel de la Providence, suivies d’un traité sur les sacrifices. 2 vols. Paris/Lyon: J. B. Pélagaud, 1821 (posthumous). Eighth edition (Lyon: Pélagaud, 1862) digitized by the University of Toronto and available at the Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/lessoiresdes1862mais. First edition (Paris, 1822) available at the Bibliothèque nationale de France / Gallica: https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k41853t.image. Vol. II (1821), Gallica: https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b86183967.
- Éclaircissement sur les sacrifices. Appended to the Soirées de Saint-Pétersbourg, Vol. II (1821). In Œuvres complètes, t. V (Lyon: E. Vitte, 1892), pp. 283–357. Scribd text available at: https://fr.scribd.com/document/755065113/Maistre-E-claircissement-sur-les-sacrifices.
- Lettres à un gentilhomme russe sur l’Inquisition espagnole (1815). Lyon: J. B. Pélagaud & Cie, 1846. Wikisource edition (transcribed from the 1846 Pélagaud text): https://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Lettres_%C3%A0_un_gentilhomme_russe_sur_l’inquisition_espagnole. Gallica (BnF digitization of the same 1846 edition): https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k62190868.
- Du Pape. 2 vols. Lyon, 1819. Internet Archive (Google digitization from University of Michigan): https://archive.org/details/dupape02maisgoog.
- Œuvres complètes de J. de Maistre, 14 vols. Lyon: J. B. Pélagaud & Vitte, 1884–1893. Internet Archive (vol. 11): https://archive.org/details/oeuvrescompletes11mais.
- Correspondance diplomatique de Joseph de Maistre (1811–1817). Edited by Albert Blanc. 2 vols. Paris: Michel Lévy Frères, 1859.
Secondary Sources Citing Primary Passages
- Pierre Pachet, “Le sang et l’action à distance selon Joseph de Maistre,” Romantisme, no. 31 (1981), pp. 9–16 (Persée): https://www.persee.fr/doc/roman_0048-8593_1981_num_11_31_4468. Cites Œuvres complètes, t. V, p. 40 (Éclaircissement) for the passage on “la barbarie du peuple hébreu.”
- La Question (Catholic periodical), “Joseph de Maistre et la question juive,” December 2009 archive: http://www.la-question.net/archive/2009/12/index.html. Cites the XIe Entretien of the Soirées for the passage on “le sacrifice judaïque et au trône de David.”
- Hannah Arendt, Sur l’antisémitisme (Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 1973), p. 110. Cites de Maistre on “la barbarie du peuple hébreu” from Œuvres complètes, t. V, p. 40.
- Carolina Armenteros, The French Idea of History: Joseph de Maistre and his Heirs, 1794–1854 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2011). Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/frenchideaofhist00arme.
- Joseph de Maistre et Lamennais (Wikisource, from Revue des Deux Mondes, 1843): https://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Joseph_de_Maistre_et_Lamennais. Contains summary and partial quotation of the XIe Entretien’s supersessionist theology.
- Dictionnaire de théologie catholique, art. “Maistre (Joseph de),” Wikisource: https://fr.m.wikisource.org/wiki/Dictionnaire_de_th%C3%A9ologie_catholique/MAISTRE_(Joseph_de)_II._Oeuvres.
- Wikipedia, “Joseph de Maistre”: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_de_Maistre.