On the Order of the Illuminati

Voltaire had previously expressed a wish that those conspiring against Christianity The author uses "conspirators" to reflect a common 18th-century counter-revolutionary view that Enlightenment thinkers were part of a deliberate plot to dismantle the Church. might establish a secret society, modeled after that of the Freemasons Freemasonry: A fraternal organization known for its secret rituals. In the late 1700s, it was frequently suspected of harboring political radicals.. His aim in this was twofold: to ensure the execution of his planned designs by shielding them behind a veil of secrecy, and to bind the members of the conspiracy more closely to one another.

This wish was fulfilled—though Voltaire was neither aware of it nor able to contribute to it—when the Order of the Illuminati Illuminati: A secret society founded on Enlightenment principles like rationalism. Its critics, including the author here, viewed it as a dangerous and subversive group. was established in 1776, an organization so profoundly harmful to both religion and humanity. The architect and founder of this order was a professor at the University of Ingolstadt in Bavaria named Adam Weishaupt. Until then, he had shown himself to be neither a scholar of merit nor a man of talent, and he failed to prove himself as such in the years that followed, despite the role,