An Original Manuscript on the Illuminati!

by Brandon Eichelberg

For this assignment, I decided to dive deeper into the ominous world of the Illuminati. I remember being very intrigued by this topic in middle school and staying up late watching cheesy YouTube videos on it, so I am pretty surprised that I have been given the opportunity to rekindle this interest and do some research for a real grade in a college class. 

To start my research, I decided to go to the Digital Public Library of America. I simply searched “illuminati” and narrowed my results down so that they would fit this prompt. I discovered a copy of an old English translation of a French book called On the Influence Attributed to Philosophers, Free-Masons, and to the Illuminati, on the French Revolution. Real hefty name.

This particular copy, which is scanned/photo-copied by Princeton University, was created in 1801. The original French was written by Jean-Joseph Mounier, and the English translation was done by a man named J. Walker. 

Based on the brief introduction, the whole piece is arguing against the negative accusations that were placed against such groups as philosophers, Free-Masons, and the Illuminati. Many Europeans during the French Revolution believed that such groups were implementing chaos within the order of the French government, and therefore supporting the revolution. This whole piece seems as though it could have been written, or at least owned, by Ludloe from Memoirs of Carwin the Biloquist (ignoring the fact that Memoirs takes place before the French Revolution).

Mounier claims that such groups were not responsible for the French Revolution “directly or indirectly.” He also says that arguments against groups such as the Illuminati are by “superficial minds.” I found this interesting because it shows the contrast between the rational Enlightenment thinkers and the religious Christians that we have noticed in the Early Republic of America. 

Something else that I found interesting from Mounier, is his insistence on liberty and human reason. His whole argument – again, only based on the small bits that I did read – seems to support the French Revolution and Illuminati-like groups, yet he is denying that they are interrelated at all. 

Looking at this old document was also interesting in other ways unrelated to its subject matter. Something that really hindered my reading, was the use of the letter S. As can be seen in the image of the first page of the “Introduction,” the letter “s”, when lower-case and in the beginning or middle of a word, looks a lot like an ‘f’. However, I noticed that when a lower-case ‘s’ is at the end of the word, it looks normal. Furthermore, an upper-case ‘S’ looks normal as well. Maybe this has to do with the bleeding of ink? I am not 100% sure, considering I have not looked too much into it yet. My other thought was that it could relate to the Greek use of a lower-case sigma, which is different based on if it is at the end of a word or in the beginning/middle of a word. I’m sure Dr. Peeples knows, so I would love an explanation, especially if I cannot find one online.

Overall, I found the fruits of this labor interesting and fun. Diving into the Illuminati in the context of this class was a treat and seeing photo-copied versions of old manuscripts was very cool as well. 

One thought on “An Original Manuscript on the Illuminati!

  1. The s that looks like an f is called a “long s.” There’s no logical explanation for it, but it was a quirk of manuscript and print for centuries. There long s isn’t crossed, so it is slightly different from an f (technically). But obviously it doesn’t look like a capital S either. One of the conventions was to use a small s at the end of a word, as you note. Eventually people just stopped doing it in the nineteenth century, probably realizing that it looks stupid.

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