Foucault's pendulum - Umberto Eco [228]
“That isn’t what impresses me,” Belbo said. “It’s the sense of deja vu. The upshot is that these Elders are planning to conquer the world, and we’ve heard all that before. Take away the references to events and problems of the last century, replace the tunnels of the Metro with the tunnels of Provins, and everywhere it says Jews write Templars, and everywhere it says Elders of Zion write Thirty-six Invisibles divided into six...My friends, this is the Ordonation of Provins!”
94
Voltaire lui-meme est mort jesuite: en avoit-il le moindre soupcon?
—F. N. de Bonneville, Les Jesuites chasses de la Mafonnerie et leur poignard brise par les Masons, Orient de Londres, 1788, 2, p. 74
All along it had been right in front of us, the whole thing, and we had failed to see it. Over six centuries, six groups fight to achieve the Plan of Provins, and each group takes the text of that Plan, simply changes the subject, and attributes it to its adversaries.
After the Rosicrucians turn up in France, the Jesuits reverse the Plan, replace it with its negative: discrediting the Baconians and the emerging English Masonry.
When the Jesuits invent neo-Templarism, the Marquis de Lu-chet attributes the Plan to the neo-Templars. The Jesuits, who by now are jettisoning the neo-Templars, copy Luchet, through Barruel, but they attribute the Plan to all Freemasons in general.
Then the Baconian counteroffensive. Digging into the texts of this liberal and secular polemic, we discovered that from Mi-chelet and Quinet down to Garibaldi and Gioberti, the Ordonation was attributed to the Jesuits (perhaps that idea originated with the Templar Pascal and his friends). The subject was popularized by Le Juif errant of Eugene Sue and by his character, the evil Monsieur Rodin, quintessence of the Jesuit world conspiracy. But as we looked further into Sue, we found far more: a text that seemed copied—but half a century in advance—from the Protocols, almost word for word. This was the final chapter of Les Mysteres du peuple, where the diabolical Jesuit plan is exposed down to the last criminal detail: in a document sent by the general of the Society, Father Roothaan (historical figure) to Monsieur Rodin (who appears in the earlier Juif errant). Ru-dolphe de Gerolstein (previously the hero of the Mysteres de Paris) comes into possession of this document and reveals it to the other democracy-loving characters: “You see, my dear Le-brenn, how cunningly this infernal plot is ordered, and what frightful sorrows, what horrendous enslavement, what terrible despotism it would spell for Europe and the world, were it to succeed...”
It seemed Nilus’s preface to the Protocols. Sue also attributed to the Jesuits the motto (which will be found in the Protocols, attributed to the Jews), “The end justifies the means.”
95
There is no need to multiply the evidence to prove that this degree of Rosy Cross was skillfully introduced by the leaders of Masonry...The doctrine, its hatred, and its sacrilegious practices, exactly those of the Cabala, of the Gnostics, and of the Manicheans, reveals to us the identity of the authors, namely the Jewish Cabalists.
—Mons. Leon Meurin, S.J., La Franc-Mafonnerie, Synagogue de Satan, Paris, Retaux, 1893, p. 182
When Les Mysteres du peuple appears and the Jesuits see that the Ordonation is attributed to them, they quickly adopt the one tactic not yet used by anyone. Exploiting Simonini’s letter, they attribute the Ordonation to the Jews.
In 1869, Henri Gougenot de Mousseaux, famous for two books on magic, publishes Les Juifs, le judaisme et la judaisation des peuples chretiens, which says that the Jews use the cabala and are worshipers of Satan, since a secret line of descent links Cain directly to the Gnostics, the Templars, and the Masons. Gou-genot receives a special benediction from Pius IX.
But the Plan, novelized by Sue, is rehashed by others, who are not Jesuits. There’s a nice story, almost a thriller, that takes place a bit later. In 1921—after the appearance of the