Research publication
How the Illuminati Myth Was Made
From Barruel and Robison in 1797 to the internet: how a society that lasted a decade became a permanent conspiracy theory.
By 1787 the Bavarian Illuminati had been banned, its papers published and its founder exiled. Ten years later it was being blamed for the French Revolution. How did that happen?
1797: two books
In 1797 two authors, working independently, published long works blaming the Revolution on a conspiracy. In London the exiled French Jesuit Augustin Barruel began his Mémoires pour servir à l'histoire du Jacobinisme, tracing a plot from the philosophers through the Freemasons to the Illuminati. In Edinburgh the physicist John Robison published Proofs of a Conspiracy, with a similar argument.
Both drew on the papers the Bavarian government had published in 1787 — but used them to argue for something the papers do not show: that the order had survived and spread its influence into France. Historians have found no evidence for this. The books are documents of the 1790s' fear of revolution, and sources for the myth rather than for the order. Read Robison · Read Barruel
1798: the American scare
Robison's book reached New England within months. On 9 May 1798 the Rev. Jedidiah Morse warned his congregation of Illuminati influence, and other ministers and writers followed. The charges became entangled in the bitter politics between Federalists and Republicans before fading by 1800. Vernon Stauffer told the story in detail in 1918. Read Stauffer
The twentieth century
Writers of the early twentieth century revived Barruel and Robison and folded the Illuminati into broader conspiracy theories. Later in the century the Illuminati became a staple of popular culture — sometimes satirically, as in Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson's Illuminatus! trilogy (1975). It was also in the twentieth century that the eye and pyramid of the US Great Seal became attached to the Illuminati — a link with no historical basis.
Why the myth endures
A secret society that really existed, was really suppressed and left real documents gives a conspiracy theory an appearance of substance. The best answer is the evidence itself: what the documents say, when they were written and by whom. Our archive and bibliography are a place to start.
Sources
- Augustin Barruel, Mémoires pour servir à l'histoire du Jacobinisme, 4 vols. (London, 1797–1798). English translation, digitised at the Internet Archive
- John Robison, Proofs of a Conspiracy (Edinburgh, 1797). Free full text at Project Gutenberg
- Vernon Stauffer, New England and the Bavarian Illuminati (New York: Columbia University Press, 1918). Free full text at Project Gutenberg
- Richard S. Patterson and Richardson Dougall, The Eagle and the Shield: A History of the Great Seal of the United States (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of State, 1978). Digitised at the Internet Archive
- René Le Forestier, Les Illuminés de Bavière et la franc-maçonnerie allemande (Paris: Hachette, 1914).