The Petrine Instauration by Robert Collis

It begins with the Marquis de Luchet’s infamous account of mixed Masonry in the Egyptian Rite on the eve of the French Revolution of 1789, an account reprised by the Abbé Augustin Barruel’s more extensive study of the Illuminati as the forerunners of the revolutionary Jacobins. Allen’s talk traces the cultural origins of the role of women in the Judeo-Masonic conspiracy theory in France. Her most recent book, The Siblys of London: A Family on the Esoteric Fringes of Georgian England(Oxford University Press, 2018), was published as part of Oxford Studies in Western Esotericism.ĭr. Sommers is the author of Parliamentary Politics of a County and its Town: General Elections in Suffolk and Ipswich in the Eighteenth Century (Greenwood Press, 2002) and Thomas Dunckerley and English Freemasonry (Pickering & Chatto, 2012). In addition to numerous articles and conference presentations, Dr. Sommers has been a fellow of the Royal Historical Society since 2014 and has been involved in editing the Journal for Research into Freemasonry and Fraternalism as well as Zeitschrift für Internationale Freimaurer-Forschung. The result is a new understanding of the vital role played by the so-called Union within the wider millenarian and illuministic milieu at the close of the eighteenth century and beginning of the nineteenth century.After earning a Ph.D in British history at Washington University, Susan Mitchell Sommers joined the faculty at Saint Vincent College in Latrobe, Penn., where she is a professor of history. They also examine the way in which the group reacted to and was impacted by the tumultuous events that rocked Europe during its twenty-eight years of existence.

Using a chronological approach, the authors chart the machinations of the leading figures of the society (most notably the Polish gentleman Tadeusz Grabianka). Collis and Bayer demonstrate that the doctrine of premillennialism-belief in the imminent advent of Christ's reign on Earth-soon came to constitute the raison d'etre of the society. The founding members of this society forged a unique group that incorporated distinct strands of Western esotericism (particularly alchemy and arithmancy) within an all-pervading millenarian worldview.

Based on hitherto neglected archival material, this study provides a wealth of fresh insights into a group that included members of various Christian confessions from countries spanning the length and breadth of the Continent. In Initiating the Millennium, Robert Collis and Natalie Bayer fill a substantial lacuna in the study of an initiatic society-known variously as the Illumines d'Avignon, the Avignon Society, the New Israel Society, and the Union-that flourished across Europe between 17.

The Petrine Instauration by Robert Collis