True and False Conspiracies in History. In memory of Father Augustin Barruel (1741-1820)

Another excellent recent lecture from Roberto de Mattei

Among the anniversaries forgotten in 2020, was the bicentenary of the death of Father Augustin Barruel, one of the top Counter-Revolutionary writers of the 19^thcentury.

Barruel was born in Villeneuve-de-Berg, France on October 2, 1741 and at the age of sixteen he joined the Society of Jesus, which however, after being banned in France, was suppressed in 1773 by Pope Clement XIV, under pressure from the illuminist sovereigns. Barruel lived as a secular priest, in Paris, where, between 1788 and 1792, he wroteLe Helviennes ou lettres provinciales philosophiques(1781) against Rousseau and Voltaire’s “philosophical party”, and directed theJournal ecclésiastique, a publication, in which, week after week, he continued ceaselessly to denounce the responsibility of the Illuminists in the French Revolution that had just broken out.

After the 1792 massacres, he was forced to go into hiding and…