ILLUMINATI, a name which has at different periods been borne by four different societies—that of the Alombradoe in Spain, in the end of time 16th c.; that the Guerinets in France, about the year 1684, enthusiasts and visionaries; an association of mystics in Belgium, in the latter half of the 18th c.; and the Order of the Illuminati, which was founded at Ingolstadt on May 1, 1776, and soon spread over almost all the Roman Catholic parts of Germany. It is this which is now commonly meant when the name illuminati is employed. Its founder at first called it the order of the perfectibilists. It owed its existence to Adam Weishaupt, professor of canon law at Ingolstadt, a man of superior abilities and much benevolence, but deficient in practical knowledge of man kind. Filled with detestation of Jesuitism, and impatient of the restraints which were at that time imposed on the human mind in Roman Catholic Germany, and in no part of it more than in Bavaria, under the bigoted administration of the elector Charles Theodore, he conceived the idea of forming an association., which„should extend its ramifications everyWhere, and should consist of the ChoidAriiiiiitS, labor for time establishment of the dominion of reason, and promote religious and political enlighten, meat and emancipation. Religious dogmas and forms of worship were to be rejected, a system of deism was to be propagated, and republican opinions. The accession of the Baron von Knigge to the new order, and the support which it received from the Free masons, led to its rapid extension, so that, at one time, more than 2,000 of the most accomplished men in Germany were members of it. Weishaupes knowledge of the
order of the Jesuits led hint to borrow sonic of their methods for the accomplishmen• of what he regarded as the most opposite ends; and the illuminati were soon involved in a system of mutual espionage, confession, and the like, essentially inconsistent with true freedom, but calculated to place the threads all in one hand, by which the holy legion was to be led on, as it was imagined, to the benefaction of mankind. But from this cause, the dissolution of the order soon ensued. Weishaupt and Kuigge, its two leaders, quarreled with one another. The order began to be openly denounced as dangerous, and, on June 22, 1784, an edict was issued by the elector of Bavaria for its suppression, which was followed by another March 2, 1785. Weishaupt was degraded and banished. He retired to Halle, where he died in 1830, at the age of 83. Various other members were severely punished, and the form of justice was not strictly observed in the proceedings against them.—Great importance was atone time attached to the order of the illuminati, whose secret influence was regarded ns a principal cause of many of the political events of the time of the French revolution, and the works of abbe liarruel and of prof. Robison of Edinburgh upon this subject were eagerly read, but the highly exaggerated character of their views is now generally acknowledged.