2.  THE LEGEND OF THE ORDER AND ITS LITERARY COMMUNICATION TO NEW ENGLAND

Although the Order of the Illuminati was dead, the world had yet to reckon with its specter. So intense and widespread was the fear which the order engendered, so clearly did the traditionalists of the age see in its clientele the welding together into a secret machine of war of the most mischievous and dangerous of those elements which were discontented with the prevailing establishments of religion and civil government, that it was impossible that its shadow should pass immediately.[445]

The emergence of the order had attracted public attention so abruptly and sharply, and its downfall had been so violent and so swift, that public opinion lacked time to adjust itself to the facts in the case. In Bavaria, particularly, the enemies of the order were unable to persuade themselves that the machinations of the Illuminati could safely be regarded as wholly of the past.[446] The documents of the order were appealed to, to supply proof that its leaders had made deliberate calculations against the day of possible opposition and temporary disaster and with satanic cunning had made their preparations to wring victory out of apparent defeat.[447] Besides, the depth of the governments suspicions and hostility was such that additional, though needless measures of state[448] kept very much alive in that country the haunting fear of the continued existence of the order.

Outside of Bavaria numerous factors contributed to create the same general impression in the public mind. Among these were the efforts of the Rosicrucians to play upon the fears that the Illuminati had awakened, the mistaken connections which, in the Protestant world, were commonly made between the members of the Order of the Illuminati and the representatives and promoters of the Aufklärung, and the emergence of the German Union. To each of these in turn a word must be devoted.

Following the suppression of the Jesuits in 1773, members of that order in considerable numbers, attracted by the rapid growth and the pretentious occultism of the Rosicrucians,[449] had united with the latter system.[450] The result was the infusion of a definite strain of clericalism into the order of the Rosicrucians and, in consequence, a renewal of the attack upon the Illuminati. In Prussia, where the Rosicrucians had firmly established themselves in Berlin, King Frederick William II was under the influence of Wöllner, one of his ministers and a leading figure in the Rosicrucian system.[451] Through the latter’s relations with Frank, who at the time stood at the head of the Rosicrucian order in Bavaria, the Prussian monarch was easily persuaded that the operations of the Illuminati had not only been extended to his own territories, but throughout all Germany.[452] Encouraged by Wöllner, Frederick William took it upon himself to warn neighboring monarchs respecting the peril which he believed threatened, a course which bore at least one definite result in the measures taken by the elector of Saxony to investigate the situation at Leipzig where, according to the king of Prussia, a meeting of the chiefs of the Illuminati had been effected.[453] Thus the notion that the order of the Illuminati was still in existence was accorded the sanction of influential monarchs.

The disposition of orthodox Protestants to confuse the advocates of rationalism with the membership of the Illuminati finds its suggestion of plausibility at a glance and stands in little need of specific historical proof. The general effect of the undermining of traditional faiths, for which the dominating influences of the period of the Aufklärung were responsible, was to create the impression among the more simple-minded and credulous elements in the Protestant world that a vast combination of forces was at work, all hostile to the Christian religion and all striving to supplant faith by reason. So vast and significant a movement of thought naturally enough tended to engender various suspicions, and among these is to be numbered the naïve conviction that the order which the Bavarian government had felt compelled to stamp out, on account of its alleged impiety and its immoral and anarchical principles, was but a local expression of the prevailing opposition to the established systems and orthodox doctrines of the age.[454]

The excitement occasioned by the appearance of the German Union (Die Deutsche Union), on account of its definite connections with one of the former leaders[455] of Weishaupt’s system and the unsavory private character and avowed unscrupulous designs of its originator, gave still more specific force to the Illuminati legend. Charles Frederick Bahrdt,[456] a disreputable doctor of theology, in 1787, at Halle, proposed to reap advantage from the ruin of Weishaupt’s system and to recruit among its former members the supporters of a new league, organized to accomplish the enlightenment of the people principally by means of forming in every city secret associations of men[457] who were to keep in correspondence with similar groups of their brethren and who, by the employment of reading-rooms, were to familiarize the people with those writings which were specially calculated to remove popular prejudices and superstitions, and to break the force of appeals to tradition. Further, these associations were to supply financial assistance to writers who enlisted in the Union’s campaign, and to fill the palms of booksellers who for the sake of a bribe showed themselves willing to prevent the sale of the works of authors who withheld their coöperation.[458]

As an organization the German Union scarcely emerged from the stage of inception; but the absurd policy of publicity pursued by its founder gave to the project a wide airing and provoked hostile writings[459] that added immensely to the importance of the matter. The new system was boldly denounced as continuing the operations of the odious order dissolved in Bavaria, with a shrewd change of tactics which substituted “innocent” reading-rooms for the novitiate of Weishaupt’s organization, and thus, it was urged, the way was opened for the exertion of a really powerful influence upon the thought of the German people.[460]

By such means, and in such widely diverse and irrational ways, the popular belief in the survival of the defunct Order of the Illuminati was kept alive and supplied with definite points of attachment; but it remained for the French Revolution, in all the rapidity and vastness of its developments and in the terrifying effects which its more frightful aspects exercised upon its observers, to offer the most exciting suggestions and to stimulate to the freest play the imaginations of those who were already persuaded that the secret associations that plagued Bavaria still lived to trouble the earth.[461]

The supposed points of connection between the Order of the Illuminati and the French Revolution were partly tangible, though decidedly elusive,[462] but much more largely of the nature of theories framed to meet the necessities of a case which in the judgment of dilettante historians positively required the hypothesis of a diabolical conspiracy against thrones and altars (i. e., the civil power and the church), though the labors of Hercules might have to be exceeded in putting the same to paper.

Of the exiguous resources of interpreters of the Revolution who made serious efforts to trace its impious and anarchical principles and its savage enormities to their lair in the lodges of the Illuminati, the following are perhaps the only ones worthy of note.

The public discussion of the affairs and principles of Weishaupt’s organization, to which attention has already been called in various connections, continued with unabated zeal even beyond the close of the eighteenth century. At the very hour when the Revolution was shocking the world by its lapse from its original self-control into its horrible massacres, execution of monarchs, guillotine-lust, and ferocious struggles between parties, new pamphlets and reviews bearing on the demolished order’s constitution and objects found their way into the channels of public communication. Conspicuous among these were the following: Die neuesten Arbeiten des Spartacus und Philo in dem Illuminaten Orden, jetzt zum ersten Mal gedruckt und zur Beherzigung bei gegenwärtigen Zeitläuften herausgegeben,[463] and Illuminatus Dirigens oder Schottischer Ritter,[464] announced as a continuation of the former. These works, published at the instigation of the authorities at Munich, attracted public attention anew to the most extreme religious and social doctrines[465] of the order. Thus the revolutionary character of Illuminism received heavy emphasis[466] synchronously with contemporary events of the utmost significance to the imperilled cause of political and religious conservatism.

In Austria an independent literary assault upon Illuminism developed. At Vienna, Leopold Hoffman,[467] editor of the Wiener Zeitschrift, fully convinced that the Order of the Illuminati had exercised a baneful effect upon Freemasonry, to which he was devoted, abandoned his chair of language and German literature at the University of Vienna to dedicate his talents and his journal to the overthrow of Illuminated Freemasonry.[468] Finding a zealous collaborator in a certain Dr. Zimmerman, a physician of Hannover, a radical turned an extreme conservative by the developments of the French Revolution, the two labored energetically to stigmatize the Illuminati as the secret cause of the political explosion in France.

The discontinuance of the Wiener Zeitschrift in 1793 by no means marked the end of the campaign. A deluge of pamphlets[469] had been precipitated, all based upon the assumption that the order Weishaupt had founded had subsided only in appearance. Declamation did not wait upon evidence. It was alleged that the lower grades of the Illuminati had been dissolved, but the superior grades were still practised. Under cover of correspondence, recruits of the system were now being sought. Freemasonry was being subjugated by Illuminism only that it might be forced to serve the ends of its conqueror. Journalists partial to the interests of the Aufklärung had been enlisted for the same purpose. The German Union was thus only one of the enterprises fostered by the Illuminati to further their designs. The dogmas of the order had been spread secretly in France by means of the clubs of that country, and the effectiveness of the propaganda was being vividly demonstrated in the horrors of the Revolution. Unless German princes should promptly adopt rigorous measures against the various agents and enterprises of the order in their territories, they might confidently expect similar results to follow.[470]

Much more of like character was foisted upon the reading public. As for contemporary historians who searched for specific evidence of an alliance between the Illuminati of Germany and the Revolutionists in France, their energies were chiefly employed in the development of a clue which had as its kernel the supposed introduction of Illuminism into France at the hands of the French revolutionary leader, Mirabeau, and the German savant, Bode.[471] Unfolded, this view of the case may be stated briefly as follows: Mirabeau, during his residence at Berlin, in the years 1786 and 1787, came into touch with the Illuminati of that city and was received as an adept into the order. Upon his return to Paris he made the attempt to introduce Illuminism into that particular branch of Masonry of which he was also a member, the Philalèthes or Amis Réunis.[472] To give force to his purpose, he called upon the Illuminati in Berlin to send to his assistance two talented and influential representatives of the order. The men chosen by the Illuminati-circle in Berlin, Bode and von dem Busche,[473] arrived in Paris in the early summer of 1787. To conceal their purpose from prying eyes, they spread the report that they had come from Germany to investigate the subjects of magnetism and the extent of the influence exerted by the Jesuits upon the secret societies of the age. Meantime, the lodges of the Philalèthes, and through them the French Masonic lodges in general, were inoculated with the principles of Illuminism. French Freemasonry thus became committed to the project of forcing the overthrow of thrones and altars. So transformed, these lodges created secret committees who busied themselves with plans for the precipitation of a great revolutionary movement. To these committees belonged the subsequent leaders and heroes of the French Revolution—de Rochefoucauld, Condorcet, Pétion, the Duke of Orléans (Grand Master of French Masonry), Camille-Desmoulins, Danton, Lafayette, de Leutre, Fauchet, et al. Through these and their associates the connection between the lodges of Illuminated French Freemasonry and the powerful political clubs of the country was effected. Thus Illuminism was able to inspire Jacobinism. Finally, on the 14 of July, 1789, the revolutionary mine was sprung, and the great secret of the Illuminati became the possession of the world.[474]

At every point this fantastic exposition suffered the fatal defect of a lack of historical proof. Even the specific assertions of its inventors which were most necessary to their hypothesis were disproved by the facts brought to light by more cautious and unbiased investigators who followed. E. g., the idea of Mirabeau’s intimate connection with the program of the Order of the Illuminati and his profound faith in it as the best of all instruments for the work of social amelioration is rendered untenable the moment the rash and unrepublican temper of his spirit is called seriously to mind.[475] Again, the real object of Bode’s visit to Paris, a matter of vital importance in the Illuminati-French Revolution hypothesis, was not to communicate Illuminism to French Freemasons, but to attend an assembly of representatives of the Philalèthes, called to consider the results of an inquiry previously undertaken, respecting the occult interests and tendencies of that order. Convinced that that branch of French Masonry was yielding to an inordinate passion for the occult sciences, Bode had been prevailed upon by German Masons, von dem Busche[476] among the number, to make a journey to Paris to warn his French brethren of their mistake. A subsidiary personal interest in the newly-discovered “science” of animal magnetism[477] helped to form his decision to make the trip.[478]

The much more important contention that the Illuminati were instrumental in starting the French Revolution, shows a lack of historical perspective that either leaves out of account or obscures the importance of the economic, social, political, and religious causes, tangible and overt, though complex, that rendered the Revolution inevitable.

Yet the legend of Illuminism as the responsible author of the French Revolution found numerous vindicators and interpreters,[479] to the efforts of two of which, because of their intimate relation to the interests of the investigation in hand, our attention in the remainder of this chapter is to be confined.

In the year 1797 there appeared at Edinburgh, Scotland, a volume bearing the following title: Proofs of a Conspiracy against All the Religions and Governments of Europe, carried on in the Secret Meetings of the Free Masons, Illuminati, and Reading Societies.[480] Its author, John Robison,[481] an English savant and Freemason, whose position in the academic world entitled his statements to respect, had had his curiosity regarding the character and effects of continental Freemasonry greatly stimulated by a stray volume of the German periodical, Religions Begebenheiten,[482] which came under his notice in 1795, and in which he found expositions of Masonic systems and schisms so numerous and so seriously maintained by their advocates as to create deep wonderment in his mind.[483] Bent upon discovering both the occasion and the significance of this tangled mass, Robison obtained possession of other volumes of the periodical mentioned[484] and set himself the task of elucidating the problem presented by Masonry’s luxuriant growth and its power of popular appeal.

The conclusions Robison came to are best stated in his own words:

The “proofs” to which Robison appealed to support these conclusions betrayed the same lack of critical mind[486] with which all the advocates of the Illuminati-French Revolution hypothesis are to be charged. Only the more significant elements are here brought under survey.[487]

That inclination for a multiplication of the degrees and an elaboration of the ceremonies of simple English Freemasonry which Robison found operative among French Freemasons from the beginning of the eighteenth century on,[488] had resulted in making the lodges attractive to those elements in France whose discontent over civil and ecclesiastical oppressions had grown great.[489] Under the pressure imposed upon private and public discussion by the state and by the church, men of letters, avocats au parlement, unbeneficed abbés, impecunious youths, and self-styled philosophers thronged the halls of the lodges, eager to take advantage of the opportunity their secret assemblies afforded to discuss the most intimate concerns of politics and religion.[490] Despite the wide contrariety of minor views thus represented, one general idea and language, that of “cosmopolitanism,” was made familiar to a multitude of minds. Worse still, the popular interest of the period in mysticism, theosophy, cabala, and genuine science was appealed to, in order to provide a more numerous clientele among whom might be disseminated the doctrines of atheism, materialism, and discontent with civil subordination.[491] Thus the Masonic lodges in France were made the “hot-beds, where the seeds were sown, and tenderly reared, of all the pernicious doctrines which soon after choaked every moral or religious cultivation, and have made … Society worse than a waste ….”[492]

The introduction of French Freemasonry into Germany, according to Robison, was followed by similar results.[493] Thither, as to France, simple English Freemasonry had first gone, and because of its exclusive emphasis upon the principle of brotherly love the Germans had welcomed it and treated it with deep seriousness;[494] but the sense of mystery and the taste for ritualistic embellishments which the advent of French Masonry promoted, speedily changed the temper of the German brethren.[495] A reckless tendency to innovation set in. The love of stars and ribbons,[496] and the desire to learn of ghost-raising, exorcism, and alchemy,[497] became the order of the day. Rosicrucianism flourished,[498] rival systems appeared, and questions of precedency split German Freemasonry into numerous fiercely hostile camps.[499]

Meantime, on account of the propaganda carried on by the Enlighteners,[500] a revolution of the public mind took place in Germany, marked by a great increase of scepticism, infidelity, and irreligion, not only among the wealthy and luxurious but among the profligate elements in the lower classes as well.[501] Rationalistic theologians, aided and abetted by booksellers and publishers and by educational theorists,[502] coöperated to make the ideas of orthodox Christianity distasteful to the general public.[503] To give effect to this campaign of seduction, the lodges of Freemasonry were invaded and their secret assemblies employed to spread free-thinking and cosmopolitical ideas.[504] Thus German Freemasonry became impregnated with the impious and revolutionary tendencies of French Freemasonry.[505]

At such an hour, according to Robison, Weishaupt founded his Order of the Illuminati.[506] Employing the opportunities afforded him by his connections with the Masons,[507] he exerted himself to make disciples and to lay the foundations of an “Association … which, in time, should govern the world,”[508] the express aim of which “was to abolish Christianity and overturn all civil government.”[509]

To accomplish this end a most insinuating pedagogy was adopted,[510] the members were trained to spy upon one another,[511] and hypocrisy which did not stop short of positive villainy was practised.[512] As a fitting climax to a program that involved the complete subversion of existing moral standards, women were to be admitted to the lodges.[513]

Following an analysis of the grades of the order,[514] lifted little if any above the general plane of ineptitude upon which the author moved, Robison incorporated into his history of the Bavarian Illuminati a table of the lodges that had been established prior to 1786.[515] Drawing professedly upon the private papers of the order as published by the Bavarian government, he worked out a list which included five lodges in Strassburg; four in Bonn; fourteen in Austria; “many” in each of the following states, Livonia, Courland, Alsace, Hesse, Poland, Switzerland, and Holland; eight in England; two in Scotland; and “several” in America.[516]

The suppression of the Illuminati by the Bavarian government was regarded by Robison as merely “formal” in its nature:[517] the evil genius of the banned order speedily reappeared in the guise of the German Union.[518] Into the discussion of the German Union Robison read the “proofs” of an enterprise truly gigantic both as to its proportions and its baneful influence. The illuminated lodges of Freemasonry were declared to have given way to reading societies wherein the initiated, i. e., the members of the Union, actively employed themselves, apparently to accomplish the noble ends of enlightening mankind and securing the dethronement of superstition and fanaticism,[519] but actually to secure the destruction of every sentiment of religion, morality and loyalty.[520] The higher mysteries of Bahrdt’s silly and abortive project were declared to be identical with those of Weishaupt’s order: natural religion and atheism were to be substituted for Christianity, and political principles equally anarchical with those of the Illuminati were fostered.[521]

Although Robison confessed himself driven to pronounce Bahrdt’s enterprise “coarse, and palpably mean,”[522] and although the archives and officers of the Union were held to be “contemptible,”[523] none the less an elaborate though most disjointed tale was unfolded by him. This involved the organization of the German literati and the control of the book trade, with a view to forming taste and directing public opinion;[524] and the establishment of reading societies to the number of eight hundred or more,[525] among whose members were to be circulated such books as were calculated to fortify the mind against all disposition to be startled on account of the appearance of “doctrines and maxims which are singular, or perhaps opposite to those which are current in ordinary societies.”[526] Thus it would be possible “to work in silence upon all courts, families, and individuals in every quarter, and acquire an influence in the appointment of court-officers, stewards, secretaries, parish-priests, public teachers, or private tutors.”[527]

Robison was unable to present anything beyond the most tenuous “proofs” that a direct relation existed between Weishaupt’s system and Bahrdt’s enterprise;[528] still he did not hesitate to affirm that, on account of the emergence of the latter, it had been made clear that the suppression of the Illuminati had been futile.[529] “Weishaupt and his agents were still busy and successful.”[530]

Arriving finally at the subject of the French Revolution, Robison devoted something more than sixty pages to an effort to connect the system of Weishaupt with the great European debacle. Approaching the matter with unconcealed dubiety,[531] he found his confidence and boldness growing as he proceeded. Relying chiefly upon such uncritical and promiscuous sources as the Religions Begebenheiten, the Wiener Zeitschrift, and the Magazin des Literatur et Kunst (sic), and a work entitled Mémoires Posthumes de Custine, he sought a point of direct contact between the Illuminati and the French revolutionary movement by stressing the enlistment of Mirabeau,[532] the mission of Bode and von Busche,[533] and the instructions which, he alleged, were given by the latter to the Amis Réunis and the Philalèthes through their chief lodges at Paris.[534]

The mission of Bode and von Busche, according to Robison, had been undertaken at the request of Mirabeau and the Abbé Perigord[535] (Talleyrand). When Weishaupt’s plan was thus communicated to the two French lodges mentioned, “they saw at once its importance, in all its branches, such as the use of the Masonic Lodges, to fish for Minervals—the rituals and ranks to entice the young, and to lead them by degrees to opinions and measures which, at first sight, would have shocked them.”[536] By the beginning of 1789 the lodges of the Grand Orient[537] had received the secrets of the Illuminati.[538] The Duke of Orléans, who had been “illuminated” by Mirabeau,[539] and whose personal political ambitions were strongly stressed by Robison,[540] gave hearty support to the enterprise; and thus in a very short time the Masonic lodges of France were converted into a set of secret affiliated societies, all corresponding with the mother lodges of Paris, and ready to rise instantly and overturn the government as soon as the signal should be given.[541] The political committees organized in each of these “illuminated” lodges familiarized not only their brethren but, through them, the country in general, with the secret revolutionary program.[542] Thus it happened that the “stupid Bavarians” became the instructors of the French “in the art of overturning the world”;[543] and thus, also, it happened that “the whole nation changed, and changed again, and again, as if by beat of drum.”[544]

Such in its main outlines and in its “principal links” of evidence is the Proofs of a Conspiracy against all the Religions and Governments of Europe. Yet to obtain a just appraisal of the book it must not be overlooked that its author wrote an additional one hundred and fifty pages, not of “proofs” but of argument, partly to defend errors of judgment he may have committed in his treatment of the subject, but chiefly to persuade his fellow countrymen that the principles of Illuminism were false and to urge them to turn a deaf ear to these doctrines.

We turn now to consider another and much more elaborate exposition of the Illuminati-French Revolution legend. Almost at the moment of the appearance of Robison’s book, there appeared in French, at London and Hamburg, a far more finished production, devoted to the same thesis and bearing the title, Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire du Jacobinisme.[545] Its author, the Abbé Barruel,[546] who had been trained as a Jesuit, enjoying literary talents much superior to those of Robison and relying upon documentary evidence more copious if not more convincing, defined his purpose in the following manner: