You pape

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Joseph de Maistre

The book Du Pape ( About the Pope / Vom Pope, etc.) is the main political-theoretical work of the Savoyard writer , political philosopher and diplomat Joseph de Maistre . The book first appeared in Lyon in 1819 in two volumes .

classification

Despite his close ties with France , de Maistre was a subject of the King of Piedmont-Sardinia , to whom he was a member of the Senate of Savoy (1787-1792), ambassador to Russia (1803-1817) and minister of state at the court of Turin (1817 –1821) served.

Educated by Jesuits, de Maistre was a major exponent of counter-revolutionary royalism and political clericalism , a chief ideologist of the Restoration . In his attempt to justify absolutism and the feudal social order, he saw Catholicism and papal primacy as the basis of state and social life.

De Maistre's essai sur le principe generateur des constitutions politiques et des autres institutions humaines on the emergence of political constitutions and other institutions from 1809 had already caused a sensation.

In this work he defends the foundations of the Ancien Régime - absolutism and the feudal social order - against the ideas of the Enlightenment and their consequences during the French Revolution .

content

The work is divided into four parts. In the first, de Maistre argues that the Pope is sovereign in the Church and that it is an essential characteristic of all sovereign power that its decisions should not be subject to contestation.

According to de Maistre, the Pope is infallible in his teaching, since he exercises his sovereignty through his teaching. Maistre's argument in favor of papal infallibility stands out in the history of theology because he was one of the earliest Catholic writers to openly discuss doctrine that was not dogmatic until the late 19th century .

Maistre mostly writes from the point of view of the infallibility character possessing ordinary teaching office , while the First Vatican Council (1868–1869) defines a dogma of the infallibility of the extraordinary papal teaching office .

In the remaining parts, the author examines the Pope's relations with secular powers, with culture and for the good of nations, and with the "schismatic churches".

He argues that above all nations need protection against abuse of power by a higher sovereign and that this sovereign should be the Pope as the savior and creator of European civilization.

Regarding the "schismatic churches", de Maistre believed that they would ultimately fall into philosophical indifference, since Catholicism was the only religion that was fully compatible with science .

effect

The work was translated into German early on by Moritz Lieber ( Vom Pabst , 1822) and by Aeneas McD. Dawson in English ( The Pope , 1850).

In 1821 de Maistre published De l'Église gallicane dans son rapport avec le souverain pontife, pour servir de suite à l'ouvrage intitule Du Pape, par l'auteur des Considerations sur la France (A German translation was published in 1823 in Frankfurt am Main in the Andreean bookstore under the title: From the Gallican Church in its relationship to the head of the church. A continuation of the work Vom Pabst ). There he tried to prove that the French Church "always walked in the true spirit and meaning of the Roman See".

The liberal Isaiah Berlin counted de Maistre in 1952 together with Helvetius , Rousseau , Fichte , Hegel and Saint-Simon to the Six Enemies of Human Liberty (six enemies of human freedom).

expenditure

French

Several French editions are digitized.

English translation

  • The Pope . Translated by Aeneas McD. Dawson, 1851 ( online )

German translation

  • Joseph von Maistre: From the Pope. Translated from the French by Moriz Lieber . 2 volumes. Frankfurt a. M., Andreean Buchhandlung 1822, 2 volumes ( digitized I , II )

literature

  • From the Pope. Selected texts . Semele Verlag, Berlin 2007 (Contrary to what the book title suggests, this is not a translation of the work, but a selection volume with thematically relevant excerpts from various of his works, such as the Soirées de Saint-Pétersbourg ( Die Abende von St. Petersburg ) and others)
  • "Joseph-Marie, Comte de Maistre". Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company. 1913 ( online ).
  • Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve , in the portraits littéraires

Web links

References and footnotes

  1. ↑ In Leuven in 1821 Vanlinthout et Vandenzande published an edition of the Société Catholique (Catholic Society), which is now a Catholic university.
  2. ^ Joseph-Marie, Comte de Maistre (Catholic Encyclopaedia)
  3. ↑ Online (gallica.bnf.fr)
  4. ↑ cf. newadvent.org: Moriz Lieber (Catholic Encyclopedia)
  5. ↑ Freedom and its Betrayal: Six Enemies of Human Liberty (recorded 1952), Chatto & Windus, 2002. Pimlico. ISBN 0-7126-6842-X .
  6. ↑ cf. archive.org
  7. ↑ This German translation appeared in later editions (e.g. Munich 1923) under the title Vom Papste .