Religious Development in the Sixteenth Century

Religious Development in the Sixteenth Century
Thomas Allen

AlombradosThe Alombrados, the Illuminati of Spain, was an illuministic sect founded about 1520 in Salamanca, Spain. By a supernatural or “illuminated” union of minds, initiates concentrated on the will of the master. They taught a form of Gnosticism. Man’s spirit could attain direct knowledge of God—thus, rendering trappings of formal religion unnecessary for those who found the light. In 1623 the Grand Inquisition condemned and suppressed the Alombrados. Out of the Alombrados came Ignatius Loyola.

Jesuits
Loyola, a Spanish nobleman and soldier and a member of the Alombrados, founded the Order of the Jesuits (Society of Jesus) in 1541. It was ostensibly founded to defend the Catholic faith and the pope. The doctrines of the Society of Jesus are similar to those of the Jewish Mishnah.[1] Like the Assassins, Jesuits had unquestionable, unhesitating obedience to the Order’s cause and its leaders. It was divided into six grades. Its initiate rituals and ceremonies resembled those used by the Assassins and Freemasons.

According to Chaitkin, “The Venetian house of Contarini detained Ignatius Loyola, and obliged him to head up a new worldwide secret intelligence service to serve the Venetian interests, the Jesuits.”[2] The Jesuits became the pope’s intelligence agencies, the Vatican’s CIA. The Order’s primary goal was to destroy Protestantism. In carrying out its objective, it used indoctrination, blackmail, and coercion. The Jesuits are credited with, among other great historical events, the Gunpowder Plot of 1605, fomentation of the Thirty Years War, and the revocation of the Edict of Nantes by Louis XIV in 1685.

Knights of Malta
When Rhodes failed to the Turks in 1522, the Hospitalers who were on the island fled to Malta. Here they reorganized as the Sovereign and Military Order of Malta or the Knights of Malta. Some recent members of the Knights of Malta are William F. Buckley (“conservative” writer), William Casey (CIA director), J. Peter Grace (chairman of W. R. Grace Co.), Alexander Haig (Reagan’s Secretary of State), Joseph P. Kennedy, Lee Iacocca (chairman of Chrysler), Clare Boothe Luce (American dramatist and diplomat), John McCone (CIA director), William Simon (Nixon’s Secretary of the Treasury), and William Wilson (ambassador to the Vatican). Today, the Knights of Malta serves as the principal channel of communication between the Central Intelligence Agency and the Vatican.[3]

Peasant’s War
In 1517 Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses on the door of the castle church in Wittenberg, and the Reformation was underway. The disturbance caused by the Reformation gave Illuminists many opportunities to work their mischief. They began by stirring up the peasants in Germany. They moved on to remove the Church condemnation of usury, a la Calvin, and to attack the divine nature of a resurrected Jesus, a la Socinus.

The year 1520 is often cited as the starting point of the leftist revolutionary movement:[4] unrestrained sensual pleasure; destruction of the family; collective ownership of property; subversion of science, literature, and arts; democratic despotic government; mass slaughter; and animosity toward God, i.e., the God of the Christians, and Christianity. The leader of this revolution was Thomas Munzer, a disciple of Nicholas Storck. Munzer claimed that inspiration came not from the Bible but from divine illumination or inner light. He devised a communistic doctrine of unrestricted equality. He advocated abolishing all temporal authority. His goal was to establish a theocratic communistic state. His preaching led to the Peasants’ War in 1524.

The Peasants’ War was an uprising of German peasants and of poor classes of the towns. Once the revolt broke out, Munzer took control when he came to the aid of Heinrich Pfeiffer. The revolt was crushed in 1525, and Munzer was beheaded.

A similar revolt occurred in Munster between 1533 and 1535. Like the Peasants’ War, this revolt sought equality and communion of goods. Lasciviousness was popular among the rebels.

Calvinism
According to Mullins, Calvinism was one of those movements organized by Illuminists that sweep across Europe periodically creating revolutions or turmoil.[5] Unlike previous Christian sects, Calvinism was compatible with the money interest. Instead of emphasizing austerity and vows of poverty, it approved of charging interest and acquiring wealth.

John Calvin of Noyons, France was the founder of Calvinism. His “religious movement was based on a literal Jewish interpretation of the Ten Commandments, Old Testament philosophy, and the prohibition of graven images.”[6] With the rise of Calvinism came the expansion of Jews into commercial activities besides banking, which they had historically dominated.

Calvinism revealed its kinship with Oriental despotism of Nimrod by its coercive nature. With his Ecclesiastical Ordinance, Calvin imposed absolute discipline on the inhabitants of Geneva. The penalty for objecting to Calvinism was death.

SocinusIn 1547, Laelius Socinus met with like-minded people in Vicenza. They laid plans to overturn orthodox Christianity and to replace it with their doctrines. They proposed executing their plans through a secret society. Upon learning of this conspiracy, the Republic of Venice captured and executed two members, Julian Trevisano and Francis de Rugo. The others fled and became involved in forming or capturing other secret societies across Europe. The secret society of Vicenza is among the ancestors of modern-day Freemasonry.[7]

Faustus Socinus, a Rosicrucian and nephew of Laelius Socinus, got his uncle’s papers after his uncle’s death. Using the doctrines in his uncle’s papers, he founded Socinianism from which came Unitarianism.

Socinianism rejected the teachings that Jesus had a divine nature. He was merely the human instrument of divine mercy. The Holy Spirit was nothing more than the activity of God. Although the Scriptures were considered authoritative, they were interpreted from the perspective of rationalism.

HuguenotsAnother reformation movement was the Huguenots. Huguenots were the Calvinist Protestants (Presbyterians) of France. They founded their church in 1559. The Huguenot massacres began in France soon after Catherine de Medici became Regent on the accession of her son, Charles IX. In 1568, she issued an edict that outlawed the Huguenots. As Huguenots had acquired great wealth, placing them outside the law invited their plunder. Hoping to prevent the impending slaughter of a tenth of his population, Charles began negotiating with the Huguenot leaders. While Charles negotiated, Catherine plotted their extermination. When Huguenot leaders assembled in negotiation, Catherine’s forces attacked and killed them. She had killed all the important Huguenot leaders. This massacre occurred on August 24, 1572, and became known as St. Bartholomew’s Massacre. This massacre lead to others until most Huguenots had been killed or driven from France. King Charles died soon after his mother betrayed his trust. His son Henry II died at the hands of an assassin because he seemed unwilling to slaughter the Huguenots.

The Huguenots received an uneasy peace between the issuance of the Edit of Nantes by Henry IV in 1598 and it revocation in 1685 by Louis XIV. Its revocation resulted in most of the remaining Huguenots fleeing France for the American colonies. (France’s unnecessary loss became America’s fortunate gain. France’s decline can be dated from the St. Bartholomew’s Massacre.)


Endnotes
1. Eustace Mullins, The Curse of Canaan: A Demonology of History (Staunton, Virginia: Revelation Book, 1987), p. 91.

2. Anton Chaitkin, Treason in America From Aaron Burr to Averell Harriman (New York, New York: New Benjamin Franklin House, 1984), p. 141.

3. Jim Marrs, Rule by Secrecy: The Hidden History That Connects the Trilateral Commission, the Freemasons, and the Great Pyramids (New York, New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 2000), pp. 312-313.

4. Clarence Kelly, Conspiracy Against God and Man: A Study of the Beginnings and Early History of the Great Conspiracy (Belmont, Massachusetts: Western Islands, 1974), p. 29.

5. Mullins, pp. 81-83.

6. Ibid., p. 81.

7. Denis Fahey, Grand Orient: Freemasonry Unmasked as the Secret Power behind Communism through Discovery of Lost Lectures Delivered by Monsignor George F. Dillon, D.D. at Edinburgh, in October 1884 (New and Revised Edition. Metairie, Louisiana: Sons of Liberty, 1950), pp. 12-13.

ReferenceChaitkin, Anton. Treason in America From Aaron Burr to Averell Harriman. New York, New York: New Benjamin Franklin House, 1984.

Daraul, Arkon. A History of Secret Societies. New York, New York: The Citadel Press, 1961.

Fahey, Denis. Grand Orient: Freemasonry Unmasked as the Secret Power behind Communism through Discovery of Lost Lectures Delivered by Monsignor George F. Dillon, D.D. at Edinburgh, in October 1884. New and Revised Edition. Metairie, Louisiana: Sons of Liberty, 1950.

Kah, Gary H. The New World Religion. Noblesville, Indiana: Hope International Publishing, Inc., 1998.

Kelly, Clarence. Conspiracy Against God and Man: A Study of the Beginnings and Early History of the Great Conspiracy. Belmont, Massachusetts: Western Islands, 1974.

Marrs, Jim. Rule by Secrecy: The Hidden History That Connects the Trilateral Commission, the Freemasons, and the Great Pyramids. New York, New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 2000.

Monteith, Stanley. Brotherhood of Darkness. Oklahoma City, Oklahoma: Hearthstone, 2000.

Mullins, Eustace. The Curse of Canaan: A Demonology of History. Staunton, Virginia: Revelation Book, 1987.

Preuss, Arthur. A Dictionary of Secret and Other Societies. St. Louis, Missouri: B. Herder Book Co., 1924.

Queenborough, Lady (Edith Starr Miller). Occult Theocracy. Two Volumes. Hawthorne, California: The Christian Book Club of America, 1933.

Copyright © 2009 by Thomas Coley Allen.

 More articles on history.