Soon after its emergence in early Hanoverian London, organized Freemasonry earned the enmity of both religious institutions and governments alike, and by the summer of 1738 the association had been proscribed by the Magistrate in The Hague, the French government of Cardinal Fleury, and by Pope Clement XII, in what was to be the first of many Papal Bulls issued against the order. In the wake of the French revolution of 1789, polemicists such as the Catholic priest, Abbé Barruel, accused the Freemasons of helping to bring about these momentous events, and within a few years a Jewish component had been introduced to this heady tale. It was an elaboration that was to have disastrous consequences. By the close of the nineteenth century, the story that Freemasonry was somehow intertwined with Jewish interests (what American historian had metamorphosed into one of the most outlandish conspiracy tales of all time – The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion. This notorious forgery – an imagined blueprint for Judeo-Masonic world domination – was eagerly embraced by the European Fascist regimes, and it helped prepare the ground for the Holocaust. And while in post-war Europe the appeal of the Protocols started to dwindle, it is still viewed as genuine in many parts of the world today, particularly in the Middle East where it is typically used to justify an over-arching anti-Western rhetoric.  

Under researched in this whole context however is the right and left wing component of conspiracy theories from within masonry itself.

 

The Mother of All Masonic Conspiracy Theories

Fears of conspiracy already haunted the overthrow of the French monarchy and founding of the Republic. But they increased during the period of Jacobin domination of government, from June 1793 to July 1794.

Obsessive fear of conspiracy was a driving force behind the origins of the Terror. In part this was a logistical problem that arose out of the nature of revolution. One of the most problematic characteristics of revolutionary government was the tendency to assume that any opposition to it constituted a plot. Several of the Jacobin leaders had been engaging in this kind of rhetoric since the early years of the Revolution. Marat and Robespierre both forged their reputations as demagogic leaders partly through their contributions to the conspiratorial vision of revolutionary politics, and their dogged persistence in unmasking. Next the so-called ‘foreign plot’ exploded in the spring of 1794 with the arrest and execution of the Hebertists and the Dantonists (or Indulgents). These accusations of conspiracy were directed against men who were, or had been, part of the inner circle of the Jacobins.

Conspiracy theories may date back to the origins of civilization, yet it was during the High Middle Ages that they attained widespread popularity. During this time period the diabolical scenarios involving heretics, witches, and Jews first emerged in Europe, and legitimated the mass persecutions conducted by state and church officials to thwart the Devil's plots. In the late Middle Ages and early modern era, literally hundreds of thousands, perhaps even millions, of people were put to death as alleged conspirators against God and state.

In late Antiquity, following the triumph of Christianity over its rivals, the leaders of the church began proscribing unorthodox opinions as heresies and punishing their adherents. This eventually became an enduring practice legitimated in time, theology, and papal pronouncements. Theologians, witch-hunters, and state officials frequently appealed to the past, whether to holy scriptures, church fathers, or practices, to support their own policies. With the addition of diabolism, all this produced a rather deadly combination in the conspiracy theories about heretics, witches, and Jews. Witches, and one might add heretics, were not physically identifiable, so that the number upon whom guilt and fear could be projected was almost unlimited.

Bearing this in mind, neither the Illuminati theory nor the Crypto-Catholic plot myth seem such an anomaly in western thought. This is important in establishing the historical context of conspiracy theories for it was not just anti-revolutionaries who used conspiracy theories; their opponents did as well. Both groups were attempting to sway public opinion, and conspiracy theories conjure up fearful images of insidious minorities (physical or spiritual) working against the best interests of mankind. In addition, enlighteners, anti-revolutionaries, and revolutionaries all knew how to play upon their readers sensibilities with stories of unjust persecution. At the time each group tried to present itself as the victim of some malevolent cabal or conspiracy.

French conservatives, for instance, came up with various conspiratorial explanations for the revolution. Some blamed Protestants, others the philosophies.

But it was the theory popular in occult circles after the Revolution, that first suggested  that "brothers" (of a competing groups other then their own)  had conspired to bring about the downfall of the monarchy “to avenge the destruction of the Knights Templar.” This latter theory would imply Baron von Hund’s Templarist Masonry, the Strict Observance, but in the end, the Illuminati conspiracy theory triumphed over its conservative rivals and displayed great political longevity.

But how did it develop? The questioning spirit of the enlightenment, which led the upholders of the Copernican system to challenge the sanctity of ancient Greek science, and indirectly the scriptures, became a obsession for the eighteenth-century philosophers. The philosophies challenged the medieval notions of both God and Satan, and thereby undermined the validity of the demonic conspiracy theories. If the deity did not intervene in history, neither could his arch nemesis, the Prince of Darkness.

Even the figure of the Devil underwent a change; in the revived versions of the Faust legend of the eighteenth century, including Goethe's, for instance, one finds an emphasis upon the humanistic qualities of the tale and main character, rather than upon evil and horror. The medieval conspiracy theories thus no longer had much appeal to educated minds in Europe, yet other conspiracy theories, especially those of a secular variety, still continued to find a receptive audience.

Over the course of many generations Europeans had become accustomed to thinking in conspiratorial terms or patterns, and that in the centuries prior to the Enlightenment, the fundamental framework and imagery of the modern conspiracy theory had already been developed.

But almost from its inception, critics also had accused the Jesuit order of a variety of different crimes, including regicide, and more often than not, it was portrayed as a conspiratorial organization ardently dedicated to achieving its aims, regardless of method. The attacks mounted upon the Society of Jesus not only illustrated the potency of inherited myths, which had been updated to fit contemporary events, needs, and circumstances, but also served as a precursor and model for the Illuminati conspiracy legend.

In 1613 a fraudulent tract called “Monita Secreta” appeared  in Cracow , and would go through twenty-two editions in seven different languages by 1700, each of them detailing the secret rubrics by which Jesuits supposedly sought to undermine European civilisation.

Some even suggest that “Monita Secreta” along with “the Testament of Peter the Great” a foud created by Polish Nationalists in Paris, form the idea that spurred the idea for creating the anti-Masonic/Judaic ‘Protocols of the Elders of Zion.”

So in the seventeenth century, accusations of regicide were repeatedly leveled at the Jesuits, and they were held, at least in some minds, responsible for the attempted assassination of the former Protestant, Henry IV of France, and for the Gunpowder Plot in England. 6)

By the end of the eighteenth century, many educated Europeans had been exposed to literature or other cultural artifacts which castigated the papacy, the Jesuits, and the Inquisition for their intolerance. Catholic Europe symbolized intellectual, political, and social backwardness. As critics were only too willing to point out, in these areas the power of the church was far too strong and thus acted as a hindrance to enlightenment and modernization.

More and more, the Jesuits began to lose the valuable support of Catholic monarchs and the Papacy; a factor that eventually helped lead to the suppression of the Society in 1773. In Paraguay, their regime and its policies towards the Indian population upset both the Portuguese and Spanish governments. Rumors quickly circulated that the Jesuits hoarded gold there, and incited the natives to violent resistance against Iberian authority. 7)

In 1759, the Portuguese government, under the driving influence of its leading minister, the Marquis de Pombal turned against the Society, drove those with some power from the royal court, and either imprisoned or expelled its members on charges of conspiring to kill the king, and fomenting war in South America. One Jesuit, the eighty-year old Gabriel de Malagrida, was even brought before the Inquisition, condemned as a heretic, and later executed. 8)

Faced with a potential schism and the loss of valuable political support, the Papacy decided to act. On July 21, 1773, Clement XIV issued the edict of suppression that dissolved the order. Though the Society ceased to formally exist as an officially sanctioned branch of the Catholic church, the suspicions of its continued life and vitality obsessed many individuals in Europe. For many of those who ardently believed in the Jesuit conspiracy theory, they could and would not believe that the former members of the society would just live peaceably with Protestants, Catholic reformers, and the Enlightened. The ex-Jesuits had to be conspiring not only to win their old power back, but to destroy Protestantism. And to some enlightened writers the answer seemed obvious, the Jesuits had infiltrated Freemasonry and were using the cover of the lodges to secretly work their poison in Europe.

That European Freemasons craved all sorts of mysteries and secrets, and were willing to spend great sums of money attempting to satisfy this desire is not all that surprising or uncharacteristic of this age; for it was an transitional era in which men and women not only tried to unravel the riddles of the universe through scientific experimentation, but sought knowledge through occult arcane. Despite several decades of reform and conscious literary activity, Schwaermerei, superstition, and ignorance appeared to be increasing, not decreasing, in strength. But who benefited from all this? To the proponents of the Crypto-Catholic conspiracy thesis, the answer was simple: the Papacy. Such charges, however, were not new; Ritter von Zimmermann learned at the Prussian court that stories of Jesuit machinations within Freemasonry had been circulating in France during the 1770s, but in the 1780s, they found more sympathetic ears in Germany.

The Crypto-Catholic conspiracy thesis appears to have developed in a rather piecemeal fashion; it had no single author, nor was it traceable to a single, unified group. Rather it was the composite product of a number of hands. J.J.C. Bode was one of the foremost propagandists of the Crypto-Catholic plot, and he certainly left his imprint upon this conspiracy theory. He was, as Claus Werner points out, a Masonic reformer, who left the Wilhelmsbad Convention in some disappointment, and embraced the Illuminati Order, albeit only after overcoming his fear that Adolph Freiherr von Knigge was an agent of a secret Jesuit organization ready to ensnare him.

In the first several years of its existence, the Illuminati order founded by Adam Weishaupt was a rather insignificant secret society, composed largely of Weishaupt's students and former students. In 1778, it began to slowly expand throughout Bavaria, and two years later, it further spread to other German-speaking areas. While Weishaupt founded the Illuminati Order, it was the Hannoverian nobleman and novelist, Adolph Freiherr von Knigge, who took it out of the provincial confines of Bavaria and introduced it to many Freemasons, and wrote the higher degrees of the order. Weishaupt considered his society to be a "secret school of wisdom," where members could work collectively towards individual self-improvement and moral betterment. They read and discussed works, such as Plutarch's Lives, Wieland's Agathon, Adam Smith's Theory of the Moral Sentiments, and Helvetius Of the Spirit. In the higher degrees, elements of Hermetism, the Mysteries, and ideas of the seventeenth century Rosicrucians were added.

In its social composition, Weishaupt's secret society had significant numbers of bourgeois and noble numbers. Eberhard Weir examined membership lists, in the Bavarian archives and determined that about 75% of the total were officials, officers, and cleric; while artisans and various related technical professions amounted to 24.7%. But the principles, as articulated by its founder, were decidedly radical. In the address to the newly initiated Illuminatus dirigentes (ruling Illuminat) of 1782, Weishaupt denounced the absolutist state, despotism, and the rule of priests, and at the same time, explained how the order would work to bring about general enlightenment and liberty. Like Rousseau, he believed that originally humans lived in a state of freedom and equality, but as society developed, liberty gave way to despotism religion, and egoism divided people. Morality, he argued, would bring about this new age. But this would not come through a revolution, rather the cosmopolitan world republic which Weishaupt envisioned was to be a product of evolution. Instead of trying to reform the entire world, one had to begin with one's self, then proceed to a second person, a third, and so on until power is attained through strength and numbers. It was Weishaupt's radical notions which later convinced German conservatives and governmental officials that the Illuminati Order was a powerful conspiratorial organization. In hindsight, one might dismiss such fears as exaggerated, since we know that the Illuminati Order was being torn apart by internal squabbles and was hardly a monolithic, well-disciplined organization capable of overthrowing any government. Both Weishaupt and Knigge intentionally exaggerated the power and connections of the order, and did aim to interfere in both church and state affairs. In the instructions for the Ruler's grade [Regentengrad], which a number of the Illuminati conspiracy theorists cited for evidence, the Illuminati leaders outlined some of the tactics which were to be used by those holding the higher grades. To their inferiors, the rulers were to create the ingression: that the Illuminati secretly controlled all the other secret societies and Masonic systems. Certainly much of this appears to have been posturing to convince the rank-and-file membership that the order was truly important, the instructions for this grade conjured up all sorts of images of cloak-and-dagger.

And in assessing responsibility for the Crypto-Catholic scare, one must consider the activities of the Illuminati, for the leaders of this organization consciously propagated anti-Jesuit propaganda. Weishaupt, of course, had personal and political reasons for his antagonism towards the Jesuits. Like many an eighteenth-century philosopher, he had been educated by this religious order, but was raised in an enlightened household. The Crypto-Catholic conspiracy theorists came to believe that the Enlightenment was in grave danger, that it was losing a life-or-death struggle to the forces of Schwaermerei, ignorance, and superstition, and that all would be lost, if they did not direct public opinion against the plot. As they saw it, the tell-tale signs of a Jesuit conspiracy were emblazoned all over recent events; it only took a perceptive mind to put the evidence together.

But who were the members of this Crypto-Catholic conspiracy? Who were the secret missionaries operating in Protestant lands? In 1785-1786, Nicolai, Biester, and others began clearing up this mystery. In the Berlinische Monatschrift, veiled references were made to a certain Protestant theologian, who allegedly had converted to Catholicism and was now a Jesuit of the fourth Class. It was even suggested that he had received the tonsure.

The readers of the journal soon learned his identity: it was Johann August Starck, the Court preacher in Hesse-Darmstadt and the erstwhile leader of the Clerical system. Needless to say, this discovery opened a few eyes and angered Starck, who thereupon petitioned both Frederic II and his successor for redress, and filed legal charges against his accusers. 9)

In trying to convict him before the court of public opinion, the Crypto-Catholic conspiracy theorists also leveled another charge at him; they denounced him as the author of the controversial Masonic novel, Saint Nicaise.

Published in 1785, this fictional work tells the story, in epistolary fashion, of Saint Nicaise, a Frenchman who experiences both personal tragedy (an aborted betrothal and the subsequent death of his beloved Eloyse) and various escapades within Freemasonry until he finds his own personal "salvation" within a monastery. In a testament to his son Gaston, Saint Nicaise describes through a personal narrative the pitfalls, failing, and dangers of Freemasonry and secret societies. He criticizes those who joined the fraternal order, as he did, to seek out new pleasures, and those who are obsessed with secrets, alchemy, and magic, for they become the victims of swindlers, and end up disillusioned and broke. After discussing various systems, Saint Nicaise rejects them all, and expresses great skepticism about the Wilhelmsbad Convention's decisions.

At the same time the Crypto-Catholic scare was blossoming, the Bavarian government was cracking down upon the Illuminati Order. And the official investigation was yielding some information about German Freemasonry and secret societies. By the century's standards, it was the largest, and perhaps most successful, persecution of a clandestine fraternal organization. Three major sources involved in the bringing down of the Illuminati Order: the Bavarian "patriots," the Rosicrucians, and the [ex-]Jesuits. 10)

But it was not just reactionary clerics and Rosicrucians who wanted to expose and destroy the Illuminati Order. As Hans Grassl, Rene LeForestier and others rightly point out, the Bavarian patriotic "party" played a key role in the initial denunciations of the order. This group included four former Illuminati (Renner, Cosandey, Grunberger and Utzschneider) who turned against the secret society during the crisis over Karl Theodor-Joseph II's proposed plan to exchange Bavarian territory for the Austrian Netherlands.

Apparently, the Illuminati leadership took an active interest in these exchange plans and hoped that the scheme would succeed. But this pro-Austrian position did not meet with universal approval within the order.
Utzschneider, a professor at the Marian Academy and archivist for the Duchess Maria Anna, took umbrage with the Illuminati Order after Count Constanzo asked him to purloin the correspondence between the Duchess and Frederic II. 11)

Frightened, he left the secret society, and reported this information to Maria Anna, who then began promoting anti-Illuminati diplomacy. In how far Joseph II really used the Illuminate for the exchange plans is to date not clear, but there is no doubt that he used the Illuminate in propaganda for his reform politics. And Weishaupt wrote about his concern in a letter to Zwack, that the Illuminate would become "Sclav von Oesterreich (slave of Austria) (see van Duelmen Der Geheimbund der Illuminaten 1978 p. 152).

Given the size of the undertaking and the numbers of people involved, the persecution of the Illuminati in Bavaria did not remain a localized affair for long. Monarchs, religious leaders, and enlightened publicists all shared an interest in these events. Frederic II, for instance, asked his ambassador to supply him with information on the Elector's actions. Why were such measures taken? And for what purpose? In response to such questions, the Prussian ambassador replied that the Elector used these persecutions to deflect attention from the exchange plans.
Even the Pope, Pius VI, took an interest in these events. Not surprisingly, he praised the Elector's measures and urged the Bishop of Freising to support these policies and maintain a watchful eye. He also requested that documents on "Freemasons" be collected and sent to Rome, and that means be found to bring the activities of the "enemy" into the open. 12) Weishaupt vehemently denounced the Elector's actions against the order. In his words:

"The persecution of the Illuminati in Bavaria is perhaps in this century that event, which will rouse humanity to indignation, if it becomes known in greater detail. It is the most complete victory of despotism, injustice, stupidity, malice, libel, Jesuitism and clerical intolerance over human reason, [and] the righteousness and security of a private person." 13)

The persecution of the Illuminati coincided with the beginnings of the Crypto-Catholic scare, and seemed to validate the predictions of Nicolai, Bode, and Biester. After all, it was widely accepted that the obscurantism ex-Jesuits and Rosicrucians had played a major role in the persecution of this enlightened secret society. And even Starck admitted that the feuding between these groups was no secret. Both those who propagated the Crypto-Catholic conspiracy thesis and those who felt victimized in this affair came to accept a conspiratorial explanation for events in Germany, though they differed in their choice of conspirators.

To the Berlin Aufklaerer, the events must have been particularly distressing, for if the Rosicrucians could eliminate the Illuminati in Bavaria, what would happen in Prussia when the next king, Frederick William II and his advisors, Wollner and Bischoffwerder, took power. Could Catholic despotism be far off?
Though the Illuminati Order's power clearly had been broken in Bavaria, and it had been dissolved officially by Count von Stolberg-Rossla, 14) (the national leader appointed by Weishaupt at the beginning of the persecutions) Karl Theodor continued to believe in its further existence. No doubt the outbreak of the French Revolution reinforced the Bavarian Elector's fears of political subversion and led to the anti-Illuminati edict of 1790 and to the further persecutions of former members and secret societies.

For Freemasonry, the Crypto-Catholic scare and the persecution of the Illuminati Order were devastating, for they drew unwanted public attention to the fraternal organization and destroyed confidence within. During the 1780s, German Freemasons of all ranks and Systems broke their oaths of silence to take part in polemics. Never before had German Freemasonry been subject to so much public scrutiny. In 1779, a Dominican priest in Aachen, Ludwig Greinemann declared that the Freemasons were "forerunners of the Anti-Christ." Within the semi-underground world of the Masonic lodges, conspiracy myths also played a important role in the relations between secret societies, particularly in areas, like the German-speaking lands, where various rival groups existed and competed side by side.
 

Construction of the Illuminati Conspiracy Theory

In December 1791, Leopold Alois Hoffmann, a professor at the University of Vienna and confident of the Habsburg emperor Leopold II, launched a political journal, the Wiener Zeitschrift (1792-1793), that was to gain him, within a very short time, a great deal of notoriety in the German-speaking world. Like so many of his contemporaries, he earnestly believed that the old order in Europe was in grave danger, but he offered a startling explanation for this - it was the result of a vast conspiracy engineered by the philosophers and secret societies. Over the course of the eighteenth century, the "apostles" of the "false" Enlightenment had poisoned the minds of the populace with irreligious and subversive ideas in order to undermine the foundations of society. Nothing remained safe from their attacks, not even religion or the state. According to Hoffmann's grand scenario, the philosophers and their German confederates provided the intellectual ammunition for the war against the old regime, but it was the Illuminati Order which served as the guiding force behind the conspiracy as well as the organizational cement holding everything in place. As part of their strategy, the Illuminati had infiltrated various governments, educational institutions, and Freemasonry, and with their co-conspirators had established a literary despotism to control public opinion and stifle opposition. And it did not end here, for the Illuminati spawned new groups; the Jacobins, Hoffmann decried, were merely Illuminati with new faces. While Hoffmann clearly exaggerated the power and influence of secret societies, there were other problems that attracted his interest. In particular, the new literary trends in reading, writing, and publishing bothered him greatly. Like his arch-enemy, Nicolai, Hoffmann was an avid critic of the pre-Romantic, movement. He found many aspects of this literary craze not only nonsensical, but also potentially debilitating to the reading public.

Goethe's Sorrows of Young Werther, along with other novels and tales of this genre, created unpleasant side-effects, and left many readers with some sort of nervous disorder.

But it was not merely the Sturm und Drang movement and the affectations of genius, he argued that accounted for the problems of youth. Education, particularly the recent innovations made in pedagogy by Basedow and Campe, was also to blame. The teaching principles promoted in the Philanthropine encouraged a rebellious and corrupt spirit in pupils. Hoffmann tied the Illuminati to the philanthropic movement and even cited the published documents to prove their ambitions in education. As part of its overall plan, the order wanted to infiltrate schools and indoctrinate the pupils, and in this way affect the attitude of the common people. Hoffmann blamed the Illuminati and their principles as well as faulty education for the problems then affecting Germany's youth. Instead of learning science and manners at school, boys and youths behaved with "impudence, obtrusiveness, wild conduct, insolence, and dictatorial loquacity." At home, they acted towards their unknowing parents in a crude and bold fashion. In Hoffmann's mind, this was just another sign indicating the erosion of traditional norms and values.

His demand for state intervention in this area was influenced by several factors. For one, Hoffmann, as mentioned earlier, overvalued the power of ideas and intellectuals in fomenting revolution and immorality. But an equally important factor was his concern for young writers, whom he portrayed generally as victims of the vagaries of the reading public, of unscrupulous publishers, and perhaps even of their own ambitions. While he acknowledged that large sectors of the population had fallen under the influence of romantic literature, young people of both genders seemed especially susceptible to its charms. Immature students eagerly exchanged their schooltexts for copies of Miller's emotional novel Siegwart and Rousseau's New Helois, while young women neglected their traditional duties in order to imbibe the new literary fads. The intense popularity of these new novels only fostered moral corruption. Youths could be transformed into "Sybarites" by all the "effeminate, fantastic, and hot-blooded" ideas contained in these works, and their "mighty manly emotions" could be reduced to "feminine sentimentality." 15)

Prince Friedrich Karl was clearly building upon the edifice laid by Hoffmann and identified certain individuals who were known to be either members of the Illuminati or the Mainz Jacobins to give his case some credence. Just as in France, there was a growing obsession with unmasking hidden subversive agents in the German speaking world, and sometimes it produced some curious results. One secret police memorandum written by Pergen's deputy, Count Franz Joseph Saurau, even name Hoffmann as a Viennese Jacobin.

But Starck, Hoffmann, and other had the ammunition they needed to strike back at their old enemies; the chance for revenge was at hand. Since the Crypto-Catholic plot scare had made them painfully aware of the strengths of conspiracy myths as political weapons, they availed themselves of the opportunity to "unmask" Bode, Nicolai, Knigge, and others as dangerous revolutionaries. In many ways, the Iluminati conspiracy thesis was a refashioned version of the Crypto-Catholic conspiracy theory. Though the Illuminati conspiracy thesis is often portrayed as an irrational explanation for the French Revolution, the German proponents of this myth were far more interested in denouncing some of their own countrymen than in explaining the French events. In this sense, the Revolution was not the cause of the conspiracy theory but rather the occasion for it.

While no one factor explains Hoffmann's difficulties in building up a potent counter-revolutionary network in the German-speaking lands, what he tried to accomplish in the Wiener Zeitschrift was to a certain degree supplemented and largely supplanted by Eudamonia oder Deutsches Volksglueck, ein Journal fuer Freunde von Wahrheit und Recht (1795-1798). Two years after the Wiener Zeitschrift stopped publication, Eudamonia, began to trumpet the Illuminati conspiracy theory. Though they subscribed to many of the same political notions as Hoffmann, Eudamonia's founders succeeded in areas where he seemed to fail; they assembled a contingent of like minded contributors and sponsors from various provinces in the German-speaking world. One could argue with some validity that this journal represented one of the first, and partially successful, attempts to forge a broad, super-confessional, counter-revolutionary coalition of writers in Central Europe. Eudamonia's editors and contributors included some well-known, if controversial, figures, like the "Crypto-Catholic" Johann August Starck and the author of the anti-Illuminati tract, Die Enthuellung des Systems der Weltbuerger-Republik (1786), Johann Karl Philipp Riese (with similarities already to the modern day "Trilateral Commisison" and "new World Order" conspiracy theories). And very importantly, they sent materials relating to the Illuminati to Abbe Augustin de Barruel, an ex-Jesuit who penned a multi-volume exposition of the Illuminati conspiracy thesis, entitled Memoires pour servir a I'Histoire du Jacobinisme, in 1797.

To correct some of his assumptions and spread their myth abroad, Eudamonia's publicists picked up upon Hoffmann's ideas and extended the frontiers of the plot further; they, for instance, devoted far more attention to attacking the German educational institutions, university faculty, and students. Although it influenced both Barruel and Robison, because of its short-lived notoriety, historians virtually ignored this journal.

Again, in trying to ascertain why these individuals would trumpet the Illuminati conspiracy theses, one could ascribe this perhaps to an overwhelming fear of the French Revolution, but this would be rather misleading, for Starck and the others had reasons to hate the Illuminati.

Far from having forgotten, Starck and the others still harbored a great deal of anger at the personal damage caused to them by the Crypto-Catholic plot scare and the attacks of Berlin's enlightened coterie. Not only did rumors of a Jesuit plot continue to circulate in the early 1790s, but Starck still felt compelled to answer his critics. A number of the Eudamonists were motivated by a desire for revenge and used the perfect opportunity offered by the outbreak of the French Revolution to accuse their old enemies of fomenting rebellion. Counter-revolutionary phrases, like Illuminati, Jacobin, and, later, Communist, served as convenient labels, which, laden with all sorts of negative political and religious connotations and imagery, could be easily applied to one's enemies.

Eudamonia's editors, as they freely admitted, were far more concerned with uncovering the hidden plots and treason of German "conspirators" than with the French Revolution itself. They provided, like most conspiracy theorists, a simple explanation for rather complicated events. So too, they misunderstood the true dynamics of social revolution and instead preferred to attribute the causes of unrest to the evil machinations of selected individuals or groups. In keeping with this interpretation, the Eudamonists viewed the lower classes not as the primary agents of revolution, but rather as a generally peaceful, even inert, body that only rose in violence when incited by the upper and middle estates. Thus, the "fortune or misfortune of the masses" hinged upon the actions of their social betters. 16)

To find new "Jacobins," the Eudamonists turned their sights on the German universities. Instead of educating subjects for service to the state and religions, these educational institutions, they claimed, had become a breeding ground for revolution and revolutionaries. One contributor to the journal even compared the then current situation in Germany to that which existed at the time of Catiline's great conspiracy, during which "young people of defiant character began to defame the senate, to incite the common people, --- and in this way to attain authority and power." 17)

In 1799, Adam Weishaupt was so bothered by all the publicity this myth had engendered that he publically announced that he would stand trial for his alleged crimes and let a court decide the issue. It was, he stated, not merely the authors of the Wiener Zeitschrift and Eudamonia who were promoting this legend, but even others in Goettingen were using the same language. This "slander" now had spread outside of Germany to England, France, and America, and at every fair [Leipzig Book Fair] the same old reproachs appeared in a new guise, while the crudest libels from abroad were being published, read, and translated in Germany. 18)

Weishaupt adamently denied that his order was involved in making revolutions, and insisted that his system was based on the evolutionary, generations-long, "improvement of the future world" through education and individual perfection. 19)

The conspiracy theorists linked their enemies with organizations or individuals noted for their intolerance and persecutory zeal. For the Illuminati conspiracy theorists, the Jacobins were a perfect choice, for they were identified with the bloodletting of the Reign of Terror and the deaths of numerous innocent individuals. Liberal and revolutionary writers resurrected spectres from the recent and distant past by linking their enemies to the Jesuits and the hated Inquisition. In the Protestant German states, these were powerful and frightening images, and authors, like Hennings, Rebmmann, and Nicolai, were not above appealing to the anti-Catholic attitudes of their readers. The implication of both strategies was clear: if the "conspirators" triumphed, there would be massive persecutions coupled with the loss of individual freedoms.

To convince their readers that the danger was indeed imminent, the conspiracy theorists also stressed the gains of the "conspiracy." All complained that their enemies either controlled the press or were in the process of establishing their "literary despotism" in the German speaking world. In this way, the "conspirators" aimed to stifle opposition and force compliance with their aims. The conspiracy theorists of the 1790s also argued that the German governments had been or were being infiltrated by the enemy.

In the end, the future turned out quite differently than both groups prophesized. French armies did overun Germany and destroyed much of the old regime, especially in the western territories. The land was remolded in a more modern form, but much of this was accomplished by Napoleon Bonaparte, and he had long abandoned Jacobinism for the glories of monarchical rule.

After his fall, reaction triumphed, but the only return to the medieval era occurred in the minds of romantic writers. The conservatives who refashioned the German-speaking world after 1815 were men, like Metternich and Gentz, not Hoffmann and Starck.

Internationalisation Starck had sent Barruel a manuscript, translated into French, which laid out the Illuminati conspiracy theory and identified the sources from which he could draw further information. 20) Moreover, Starck also sent him relevant texts, and Reichard admitted that he had been engaged in a project to translate the Memoirs into German. 21)

Far more than the German Illuminati conspiracy theorists, Barruel however was an ardent opponent of Freemasonry, who resurrected old papal claims about the order and combined them with new charges of subversion. Barruel was not the only writer residing in Great Britain who was trumpeting the Illuminati conspiracy theory; John Robison was another. Interesting enough Robison even tried to link the Illuminati Order with the Jesuits. He claimed that in 1777 the Ingolstadt professor: "had long been scheming the establishment of an Association or Order, which in time, should govern the world. In his fervour and high expectations, he hinted to several Ex-Jesuits the probability of their recovering, under a new name, the influence which they formerly possessed." It is difficult to know what Robison hoped to gain by bringing up charges of repeated Jesuit machinations within Freemasonry. Was it meant to further enhance suspicions of the fraternal order in Great Britain by playing upon traditional anti-Catholic fears? Certainly, he had little evidence for such claims, and he did not gather these opinions from the other Illuminati conspiracy theorists. Indeed Barruel admitted in his Memoirs that he and Robison differed on the issue of Catholicism and the Jesuits.

As a conspiracy theorist, Barruel clearly showed some skill; because he wrote in a language which many throughout the western europe could read, the Illuminati conspiracy thesis reached a wide audience. And for those who could not read French, his Memoirs were translated into German, English, Italian, Dutch, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Swedish, and Spanish. His text made it to America, though its influence in the United States was probably less than Robison's Proofs. Robison's tract also clearly shows its debt to the German Illuminati conspiracy theorists, and in particular to Koester.

Robison's Proofs of a Conspiracy, like Barruel's Memoirs, was a "bestseller," which was translated into German, French, and Dutch. Starck thus found himself in a somewhat awkward position, for though he had helped Barruel develop his own version of the Illuminati conspiracy thesis, he did not agree with all of the ex-Jesuit's pronouncements on Freemasonry. 22)

By 1800, the Illuminati conspiracy thesis had traveled from the German-speaking world, through Europe, and across the Atlantic Ocean to the United States of America, supplanted other conspiratorial explanations of the French Revolution, and catapulted Adam Weishaupt's relatively obscure secret society into international notoriety. The Illuminati conspiracy thesis became even the first major modern conspiracy theory in America.

Early 1798, Rev. Jec Morse made the same claim already, that "the world was in the grip of a  revolutionary conspiracy". Echoed later during the red scare Morse convinced listeners: "I now have complete and indubitable proof of a society of Illuminati".

But to return briefly to what started it all, the French Revolution, although its results made Europe never been the same again, its beginnings might very well be found in the aftermath to the counterreformation.

Didn’t the anti-philosophes' vocabulary itself in fact   resonated with language that stemmed from the Counter-Reformation's fight against heretical "sects"?

At the time of Louis XVI's Edict of Toleration, many drew explicit connections between Protestants and philosophes, arguing that to grant religious tolerance was to pave the way, to civil turmoil, republicanism, and ultimately the destruction of the faith.

 Such claims took on ever greater force as the Revolution unfolded. At the same time that the Declaration of Rights of Man and the Citizen proclaimed further religious tolerance, the Revolution began its systematic assault on the church, seemingly confirming the anti-philosophes' assertion that the rally cry of tolerance was really a cover for the destruction of religion.

 The presence of Protestant radicals in the National Assembly and the leading roles played by such avowed admirers of the philosophes as jean Paul Rabaut Saint-Etienne and Antoine-Pierre Barnave in the reorganization of the church only further confirmed anti-philosophe suspicions.

In fact at least twenty-four Protestant deputies to the Estates General, the great majority of whom emerged as strong patriots. And by the time of the outbreak of sectarian violence between Catholics and Protestants in the Midi in the summer of 1790, anti-philosophes were charging that the "massacre" of Catholics was the result of joint Protestant and philosophe machinations, a grim reminder of the atrocities of the religious wars and a horrible premonition of the tumult to come.

In conclusion  then it would seem difficult to deny that the vast proliferation of works by Voltaire, Rousseau, and other leading philosophes played at least some role in preparing the way for the final undoing of the Bourbons. Whether this role was merely symbolic, the expression of deeper shifts in French culture, or an immediate cause in its own right is bard to say. However that there was an organizing role  of after all ‘occult-Hermetic’ oriented Freemasonry can safely be discarded.

And where there is probably more cause to see a role  by philosophes played  in connection with the French Revolution of 1830,  the role by at least  a form of ‘Masonry’ was indeed  very minimal.

Where  French Masons prior to the revolution had  not been reformers, nor even discontent," as recently pointed out by James Billington “Fire in the Mind of Men”(1980). See also See also D. Mornet, Les Origines intellectuelles de la révolution française (1715-1787).

And even after the  French Revolution 1789,  Masonry as such remained politically polymorphous, each social element and each political tendency could 'go masonic' as it wished, Masonry in 1839 was deliberately used by revolutionaries as a model and a recruiting ground for their at first, conspiratorial experiments, in political organization.

In fact Buonarroti in opposition to Napoleon, was the first to adopt the names of   Masonic lodges "perfect equality" and "perfect union," for his revolutionary clusters in Geneva.(23)

And since, moreover, Napoleon's opposition included extreme monarchists as well as extreme republicans, concepts of the Right often filtered into the programs of the Left.  The intellectual discussion group that took shape around 1830 thus brought together elements of the two extremes and next gave birth to another relatively small group, the Philadelphians, who mixed royalists and republicans.

\But it was a veteran of the Carbonari who had been imprisoned during the Revolution of 1830, Mazzini, who  his life's mission as an "apostolate" that would provide martyrs as well as teachings for a new type of national society. Thus in exile in 1831, he founded the model for  Young Italy, that became the center of a European movement on April 15, 1834.

Mazzini's alternative to the Buonarrotian centralism of a "universal monarchy controlled from Paris" in contrast now became then a federation of nationalist movements, with 14 each for Young Germany and Young France.
And Garibaldi set off from Genoa on May 6, 1860, with thousand men for the final liberation of Sicily and Naples.

By enlisting the English machinists aboard the Cagliari and alluded to imminent French support. Indeed, "great fear" of social revolution swept through Italy - and was to haunt Garibaldi even in victory. The romantic idea that a nation could be inspired to revolution by a ship of liberation lived on only among the isolated, unreconstructed Irish, who founded their greatest revolutionary organization, the Fenian brotherhood, on St. Patrick's day 1858.

In an improbable series of episodes based in America during the next quarter century, the Fenians chartered the sailing ship Catalpa to rescue political prisoners from western Australia, and then commissioned the first American submarine, the Fenian Ram.

Following the First World War, Nesta H. Webster resurrected these  myths and gave them  a new slant after she underwent a mystical experience that convinced her that she was the reincarnation of a French countess.

Webster played upon a native xenophobia and ethnic stereotypes in order to instill fear and suspicion. And yet she left her readers with hope; it was not too late to thwart the plot, if only they acted. Such tactics, however, have had a long record of success in the Western world, and she was not the last to use them.

Even a figure like Benjamin Disraeli, the Jewish writer and British Prime Minister, unwittingly helped to fuel such controversies by claiming, in one of his novels, that ties between Jews and secret societies existed. But it was Abbe Barruel, living in France who claimed that the Jews had established both Freemasonry and the Illuminati Order, and were pledged to rule the world. As might be expected, Barruel, anxious to implicate yet another group in his grand myth, approached both French government circles and the Papacy with his latest discovery. Pius VII replied positively, suggesting that the information seemed correct. 24)

 

1) Michael Foss, The Founding of the Jesuits, Hamish Hamilton, London, 1969, pp. 237 and 273.

2) Images of Jesuit rule in Paraguay found their way into various enlightened tracts. Even Voltaire found the topic of such interest that he devoted some pages to it. See Candide, Chps. XIV-XV, pp. 52-57; see also Friedrich Schiller's short piece on the Jesuits in Paraguay entitled "Jesuitenregierung in Paraguay," in Schillers Saemtliche Werke, Saekular-Ausgabe, dreizehnter Band: Historische Schriften, erster Teil, J.G. Cotta'sche Buchhandlung Nachfolger, Stuttgart und Berlin, [n.d], pp. 270-273.

3) Van Kley, Dale. The Jansenists and the Expulsion of the Jesuits from France 1757-1765, Yale University Press, 1975. Pp. 80-81

4) See documents contained in Starck, Ueber Krypto-Katholicismus, Theil I., Beylagen zum ersten Theil, pp. 579-603.

5) Grassl, Hans. Aufbruch zur Romantik: Bayerns Beitrag zur deutschen Geistesgeschichte 1765-1785, C.H. Beck'sche Verlagsbuchhandlung, Muenchen, 1968. Grassl, p. 226.

6) On the exchange plans, see Paul Bernard, Joseph II. and Bavaria. Two Eighteenth Century Attempts at German Unification, Nartinus Nijhoff, The Hague, 1965.

7) See letters translated into German in Engel, pp. 13-16; MA 379.

8) Edith Rosenstrauch-Koenigsberg, Freimaurer, Illuminat, Weltbuerger. Friedrich Munters Reisen und Briefe in ihren europaeischen Bezuegen, (Brief und Briefwechsel im 18. und 19. Jahrhundert aus Quellen der Kulturbeziehungsforschung, Bd. 2), Verlag Ulrich Camen, Berlin, 1984, p.101.

9) See Count Johann Martin zu Stolberg-Rossla's circular on the end of the Illuminati Order (April, 1785), printed in Joseph Hansen, hrsg, Ouellen zur Geschichte des Rheinlandes im Zeitalter der Franzoesischen Revolution 1780-1801, erster Band, 1780-1791, Verlag P. Hanstein, Bonn, 1931, pp. 95-96.

10) Hoffmann, Leopold Alois. Hoechst wichtige Erinnerungen zur rechten Zeit, ueber einige der allernsthaftesten Angelegenheiten dieses Zeitalters, Im Verlag bei Christoph Peter Rehm, ien, 1795.

11) Eudamonia, erster Band, pp. Iii-iv.

12) See the article, "Ueber alte und neue Revolutionshelden" in Eudamonia, dritter Band, pp. 1-16, esp. p. 2.

13) See this short announcement in Leopold Engel, Geschichte des Illuminaten-Ordens. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte Bayerns, Hugo Bermuehler, Berlin, 1906, pp. 381-384.

14) Ibid., pp. 381-384.

15) See this document in the appendix of Michel Riquet, Augustin de Barruel. Un Jesuite face aux Jacobins francs-maçons 1741-1820, (Bibliotheque Beauchesne, Religions, Societe, Politique, 16), Beauchesne, Paris, 1989; pp. 151-189.

16) Bieberstein, Die These uon der Verschwoerung p. 112; H.A.O. Reichard, H.A.O. Reichard (1751-1828). Seine Selbstbiographie, Ueberarbeitet und herausgegeben von Hermann Uhde, Verlag der J.G. Cotta'schen Buchhandlung, Stuttgart, 1877, pp. 310-311.

17) Die neuesten Religionsbegebenheiten mit unpartheiischen Anmerkungen fuer das Jahr 1793, fuenftes Stueck, pp. 285-286; siebentes Stueck, 431-440; achtes Stueck, 443-477.

18) See this short announcement in Leopold Engel, Geschichte des Illuminaten-Ordens. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte Bayerns, Hugo Bermuehler, Berlin, 1906, pp. 381-384.

19) Ibid., pp. 381-384.

20) See this document in the appendix of Michel Riquet, Augustin de Barruel. Un Jesuite face aux Jacobins francs-maçons 1741-1820, (Bibliotheque Beauchesne, Religions, Societe, Politique, 16), Beauchesne, Paris, 1989; pp. 151-189.

21) Bieberstein, Die These uon der Verschwoerung p. 112; H.A.O. Reichard, H.A.O. Reichard (1751-1828). Seine Selbstbiographie, Ueberarbeitet und herausgegeben von Hermann Uhde, Verlag der J.G. Cotta'schen Buchhandlung, Stuttgart, 1877, pp. 310-311.

22) Die neuesten Religionsbegebenheiten mit unpartheiischen Anmerkungen fuer das Jahr 1793, fuenftes Stueck, pp. 285-286; siebentes Stueck, 431-440; achtes Stueck, 443-477.

23) Arthur Lehning, "Buonarroti and his international Secret Societies" in International Review of Social History, vol. I, (1956), pp. 43-44.

24) Bieberstein, Johannes Rogalla von. Die These von der Verschwoerung 1776-1945. Philosophen, Freimaurer, Juden, Liberale und Sozilialisten als Verschwoerer gegen die Sozialordnung, (Europaeische Hochschulschriften. Reihe III., Rd. 63), Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main, 1978, p. 162

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