Augustin Barruel

Augustin Barruel was born in 1741 in a small town in southern France. He entered the Society of Jesus, commonly known as the Jesuits, in 1756, and taught grammar at Toulouse from 1762. The storm against the Jesuits in France drove him from his country and he was occupied in college work in Moravia and Bohemia until the suppression of the order in 1773. He then returned to France and his first literary work appeared in 1774: Ode sur le glorieux avenement de Louis Auguste au trone (Ode to the glorious advent to the throne of Louis Auguste). That same year he became a collaborator of the Année littéraire, edited by Fréron. His first important work was Les Helveiennes, ou Lettres Provinciales philosophiques (The Helveiennes or philosophical Provincial Letters) published in 1781. In this work, he defended the Catholic faith against the attacks of the philosophes, especially Voltaire. He also wrote a number of pamphlets against the civil oath demanded from ecclesiastics and against the new civil constitution during 1790 and 1791. He afterward gathered into one Collection Ecclésiastique all of the works relative to the clergy and civil constitution. The French Revolution and the conspiracy theory In 1792, he fled to England, where he wrote his most famous work: Memoirs Illustrating the History of Jacobinism, published in 1797-98. In this book, he claimed that the French Revolution was planned and executed by a secret conspiracy of philosophes, Freemasons and the Order of the Illuminati. The conspirators created a system that was inherited by the Jacobins who operated it to its greatest potential. The Memoirs purports to expose the Revolution as the culmination of a long history of subversion. Barruel was not the first to make these charges but he was the first to present them in a fully developed historical context and his evidence was on a quite unprecedented scale. Barruel wrote each of the first three volumes of the book as separate discussions of those who contributed to the conspiracy. The fourth volume is an attempt to unite them all in a description of the Jacobins in the French Revolution. Memoirs Illustrating the History of Jacobinism is representative of the criticism of the Enlightenment that spread throughout Europe during the Revolutionary period. Barruel's Memoirs are considered to be one of the founding documents of the right-wing interpretation of the French Revolution. They became popular immediately after they were published and were read and commented on by most of the important literary and political journals of the day. They remained in print well into the 20th century and contributed to the historical interpretation of the late 18th century in France. The success of Barruel's work is testimony to the anti-philosophical discourse that spread in the aftermath of the revolution. Barruel left behind a construction of the Enlightenment that was destined to influence subsequent interpretations. He wound accusations tightly around his foes and tied them into positions from which they could not escape. Barruel's work also influenced many antisemitic conspiracy theories, as he claimed that Jews were behind some of the secret societies that plotted against Christianity and monarchy. He also accused some prominent Jews, such as Moses Mendelssohn, of being Illuminati agents. Barruel's work was later used by some Nazi propagandists to justify their persecution of Jews. Barruel died in Paris in 1820 at the age of 79.¹