Joseph de Maistre was one of the most powerful, and by far the ablest, of the leaders of the neo-Catholic and anti-revolutionary movement. The most remarkable thing about his standpoint is that, layman as he was, it was entirely ecclesiastical. Unlike his contemporary Bonald, Joseph de Maistre regarded the temporal monarchy as an institution of altogether inferior importance to the spiritual primacy of the pope. He was by no means a political absolutist, except in so far as he regarded obedience as the first of political virtues, and he seldom loses an opportunity of stipulating for a tempered monarchy. But the pope’s power is not to be tempered at all, either by councils or by the temporal power or by national churches, least of all by private judgment. The peculiarity of Joseph de Maistre is that he supports his conclusions, or if it be preferred his paradoxes, by the hardest and heaviest argument. Although a great master of rhetoric, he never makes rhetoric do duty for logic. Every now and then it is possible to detect fallacies in him, but for the most part he has succeeded in carrying matters back to those fundamental differences of opinion which hardly admit of argument, and on which men take sides in consequence chiefly of natural bent, and of predilection for one state of things rather than for another. The absolute necessity of order may be said to have been the first principle of this thinker, who, in more ways than one, will invite comparison with Hobbes. He could not conceive such order without a single visible authority, reference to which should settle all dispute. He saw that there could be no such temporal head, and in the pope he thought that he saw a spiritual substitute. The anarchic tendencies of the Revolution in politics and religion were what offended him. It ought to be added that he was profoundly and accurately learned in history and philosophy, and that the superficial blunders of the 18th-century philosophes irritated him as much as their doctrines. To Voltaire in particular he shows no mercy.
Of the two works named as his masterpieces, Du Pape and the Soirées de St Pétersbourg, editions are extremely numerous. No complete edition of his works appeared till 1884-1887, when one was published at Lyons in 14 volumes. This had been preceded, and has been followed, by numerous biographies and discussions: C. Barthélemy, L’Esprit de Joseph de Maistre (1859); R. de Sézeval, Joseph de Maistre (1865), and J. C. Glaser, Graf Joseph Maistre (same year); L. I. Moreau, Joseph de Maistre (1879); F. Paulhan, Joseph de Maistre et sa philosophie (1893); L. Cogordan, “Joseph de Maistre” in the Grands écrivains français (1894); F. Descostes, Joseph de Maistre avant la révolution (1896), and other works by the same writer; J. Mandoul, Un Homme d’état italien: Joseph de Maistre et la politique de la maison de Savoie (1900); and E. Grasset, Joseph de Maistre (1901).
(G. Sa.)
MAISTRE, XAVIER DE (1763-1852), younger brother of Joseph de Maistre, was born at Chambéry in October 1763. He served when young in the Piedmontese army, and wrote his delightful fantasy, Voyage autour de ma chambre (published 1794) when he was under arrest at Turin in consequence of a duel. Xavier shared the politics and the loyalty of his brother, and on the annexation of Savoy to France, he left the service, and took a commission in the Russian army. He served under Suvarov in his victorious Austro-Russian campaign and accompanied the marshal to Russia. He shared the disgrace of his general, and supported himself for some time in St Petersburg by miniature painting. But on his brother’s arrival in St Petersburg he was introduced to the minister of marine. He was appointed to several posts in the capital, but also saw active service, was wounded in the Caucasus, and attained the rank of major-general. He married a Russian lady and established himself in his adopted country, even after the overthrow of Napoleon, and the consequent restoration of the Piedmontese dynasty. For a time, however, he lived at Naples, but he returned to St Petersburg and died there on the 12th of June 1852. He was only once in Paris (in 1839), when Sainte-Beuve, who has left some pleasant reminiscences of him, met him. Besides the Voyage already mentioned, Xavier de Maistre’s works (all of which are of very modest dimensions) are Le Lépreux de la cité d’Aoste (1811), a touching little story of human misfortune; Les Prisonniers du Caucase, a powerful sketch of Russian character, La Jeune Sibérienne, and the Expédition nocturne, a sequel to the Voyage autour de ma chambre (1825). His style is of remarkable ease and purity.
His works, with the exception of some brief chemical tractates, are included in the collections of Charpentier, Garnier, &c. See Sainte-Beuve’s Portraits contemporains, vol. iii.
MAITLAND, EDWARD (1824-1897), English humanitarian writer, was born at Ipswich on the 27th of October 1824, and was educated at Caius College, Cambridge. The son of Charles David Maitland, perpetual curate of St James’s Chapel, Brighton, he was intended for the Church, but his religious views did not permit him to take holy orders. For some years he lived abroad, first in California and then as a commissioner of Crownlands in Australia. After his return to England in 1857 he took up an advanced humanitarian position, and claimed to have acquired a new sense by which he was able to discern the spiritual condition of other people. He was associated with Mrs Anna Kingsford (1846-1888), the lady-doctor and supporter of vegetarianism and anti-vivisectionism, who, besides being one of the pioneers of higher education for women, had become a devotee of mystical theosophy; with her he brought out Keys of the Creeds (1875), The Perfect Way: or the Finding of Christ (1882), and founded the Hermetic Society in 1884. After her death he founded the Esoteric Christian Union in 1891, and wrote her Life and Letters (1896). He died on the 2nd of October 1897.
MAITLAND, FREDERIC WILLIAM (1850-1906), English jurist and historian, son of John Gorham Maitland, was born on the 28th of May 1850, and educated at Eton and Trinity, Cambridge, being bracketed at the head of the moral sciences tripos of 1872, and winning a Whewell scholarship for international law. He was called to the bar (Lincoln’s Inn) in 1876, and made himself a thoroughly competent equity lawyer and conveyancer, but finally devoted himself to comparative jurisprudence and especially the history of English law. In 1884 he was appointed reader in English law at Cambridge, and in 1888 became Downing professor of the laws of England. Though handicapped in his later years by delicate health, his intellectual grasp and wide knowledge and research gradually made him famous as a jurist and historian. He edited numerous volumes for the Selden Society, including Select Pleas for the Crown, 1200-1225, Select Pleas in Manorial Courts and The Court Baron; and among his principal works were Gloucester Pleas (1884), Justice and Police (1885), Bracton’s Note-Book (1887), History of English Law (with Sir F. Pollock, 1895; new ed. 1898; see also his article [English Law] in this encyclopaedia), Domesday Book and Beyond (1897), Township and Borough (1898), Canon Law in England (1898), English Law and the Renaissance (1901), the Life of Leslie Stephen (1906), besides important contributions to the Cambridge Modern History, the English Historical Review, the Law Quarterly Review, Harvard Law Review and other publications. His writings are marked by vigour and vitality of style, as well as by the highest qualities of the historian who recreates the past from the original sources; he had no sympathy with either legal or historical pedantry; and his death at Grand Canary on the 19th of December 1906 deprived English law and letters of one of their most scholarly and most inspiring representatives, notable alike for sweetness of character, acuteness in criticism, and wisdom in counsel.