e-Pedia: Illuminati

This carefully crafted ebook is formatted for your eReader with a functional and detailed table of contents. The Illuminati (plural of Latin illuminatus, "enlightened") is a name given to several groups, both real and fictitious. Historically, the name usually refers to the Bavarian Illuminati, an Enlightenment-era secret society founded on 1 May 1776. The society's goals were to oppose superstition, obscurantism, religious influence over public life, and abuses of state power. "The order of the day," they wrote in their general statutes, "is to put an end to the machinations of the purveyors of injustice, to control them without dominating them". The Illuminati—along with Freemasonry and other secret societies—were outlawed through edict, by the Bavarian ruler, Charles Theodore, with the encouragement of the Roman Catholic Church, in 1784, 1785, 1787 and 1790. In the several years following, the group was vilified by conservative and religious critics who claimed that they continued underground and were responsible for the French Revolution. This book has been derived from Wikipedia: it contains the entire text of the title Wikipedia article + the entire text of all the 272 related (linked) Wikipedia articles to the title article. This book does not contain illustrations. e-Pedia (an imprint of e-artnow) charges for the convenience service of formatting these e-books for your eReader. We donate a part of our net income after taxes to the Wikimedia Foundation from the sales of all books based on Wikipedia content.