National audienceAccording to some critics, Joseph de Maistre was a pagan because he did not worship Jesus-Christ enough. Others considered Maistre was a real catholic who just did not care about the ancients. I did a lot of research on Maistre's readings and believe there is a lot of original and erudite paganism in his books, which is not expressed as prayers to Jupiter but rather as a rhetorical, philosophical, religious and poetical language.Informés par une recherche sur les lectures antiques de Joseph de Maistre, nous étudions ici les usages du paganisme dans son oeuvre. Ce paganisme est paradoxal chez un écrivain considéré comme parfaitement catholique, mais il lui sert à la fois de polémique contre les modernes, de philosophie de la nature, de foi dans la pluralité des manifestations du divin et de poétique
