The Illuminati: Empire of Money and Power (Chapter 2)

The Illuminati: Empire of Money and Power. Our series continues with Chapter 2: Power Grab.

After his pilgrimage to Jerusalem, Loyola returned to Barcelona, Spain, where he continued with his Spiritual Exercises and hobnobbed with the rich and famous. However, Loyola eschewed personal wealth. Instead of living off the monetary gifts his friends attempted to give him, he begged for food, while living in an attic where his bed was on the floor. Loyola spent six hours every day praying, was present at Mass three times per week, went to confession on Sundays, and performed self-flagellation daily. Chastising his physical and thus evil body, he whipped his body until the blood flowed. Corporal mortification of his flesh gave him a feeling of control over his body.

Loyola’s charisma, along with his seeming piety, shoved him into the spotlight. A personality cult focused on him. As he taught his Spiritual Exercises to more and more people, reports of strange, almost mystical occurrences surfaced. People practicing the Exercises experienced fainting; others underwent a type of fleeting paralysis and what in today’s world would be called “holy roller” behaviour:  ecstatic rolling on the ground.

The reports of ecstatic experiences were frequent and widespread, resulting in gossip, rumour, and innuendos of occultism. Vague reports came to the attention of the Spanish Inquisition, which was suspicious of anything out of the ordinary. The reports smacked of Gnostic illuminism and heretical doctrine that was decidedly not Catholic. The Inquisition hauled Loyola in for questioning. Sitting before the Inquisitor, Loyola defended himself eloquently: he was not teaching ideology of any sort; he was simply speaking of the ways of God. He was released.

However, the rumours persisted. The Inquisition hauled him in again and again. Finally, the Inquisitor informed Loyola that his manner of dress was unacceptable. He was to cease dressing like an indigent pauper and wear normal clothing. In addition, he was no longer allowed to hold seminars, and he was told to stop expressing his opinions on sin. In other words, if the Inquisition couldn’t find enough evidence to torture and kill him for heresy, they sure as hell could shut him down.

Seething with anger and feelings of persecution, Loyola decided it was time to escape the Draconian oppression of the Inquisition. So, at the age of 37, Loyola left Spain and sought religious freedom in Paris, where he enrolled at the University of Paris. In Paris, his money soon ran out. To solve his problem of poverty, he travelled to Belgium, where he solicited money from Juan de Cuellar and Luis Vives, who were members of the Illuminati. De Cuellar and Vives gave him a vast sum of money, and he went back to Paris, where he began calling himself Ignatius Loyola.

Back in Paris, Loyola recruited like-minded fellow students. He exposed them to the Spiritual Exercises, and before long, they were devoted to Loyola. Counting Loyola, there were now seven of them. The small group referred to themselves as La Compana de Iesus, the Company of Jesus. This was the beginning of the Society of Jesus.

The Illuminati: Empire of Money and Power – Burning Execution, image by Lance Marwood via AI

The members of the Company of Jesus took holy vows of poverty and chastity and swore to fight the invasion of Islam with all their might, along with unquestioning obedience to the Pope.

Pope Clement VII died. Cardinal Alessandro Farnese was elected Pope Paul III. Vatican staff members, including priests, Bishops, and other Cardinals, referred to Pope Paul III, behind his back, as “Cardinal Petticoat.” The derogatory nickname was the result of the Pope’s sister’s lustful shenanigans.  Her name was Giulia, and she had been the sexual consort of Pope Alexander VI, which earned her the nickname of the “Bride of Christ.” In short, Giulia was a slut, but a discriminating slut: she only slept with high-ranking, powerful, rich religious men.

In 1539, Loyola presented his grand idea to Pope Paul III. Loyola wanted to create a “minimal society.” The purpose of the society was to “do battle in the Lord God’s service under the banner of the Cross.” The members of the society would be sent into the world to do the Pope’s will. In effect, they would be double agents disguised as doctors, lawyers, businessmen, etc. In reality, they would be striving to advance the interests of the Church.

The head honcho of the society would be called the Superior General. The Superior General was to be “obeyed and reverenced at all times as the one who holds the place of Christ our Lord.” In other words, the Superior General would be the equal of the Pope. Loyola, of course, would be the Superior General, equal to the Pope in authority, and the personal representative of Jesus Christ on earth. A position of unprecedented power.

Pope Paul III went for it. In doing so, he recognized another equal to himself – the Black Pope. In fact, the Pope pronounced the proposal, “Hos est digitus Dei!” (Translated: this is the finger stroke of God!). Paul III issued a papal bull declaring the Society of Jesus “Regimini militantis ecclesiae,” i.e. “the Supremacy of the Church Militant.” In other words, the Church’s Army.

In the beginning, the Society of Jesus, in keeping with its “minimal” description, numbered sixty members. Before long, the Society of Jesus numbered in the thousands.

Two years after officially creating the Society of Jesus, Pope Paul III decided the Society of Jesus would oversee the Roman Inquisition. Once the Roman Inquisition was in place, Pope Paul III determined to make peace with the so-called Protestants. The Pope wanted to bring the dissidents (protestors or Protestants) back into the embrace of the Church.

The Illuminati: Empire of Money and Power – Council of Trent, image by Lance Marwood via AI

The Council of Trent

Prior to 1529, the word “Protestant” didn’t exist. Invented in 1529, the word was used to describe the German states that objected to the Edict of Worms, which chained the people, cities, and states of the Holy Roman Empire to the Roman Catholic Church. In an attempt to find some sort of middle ground, the Protestants pitched the Augsburg Confession, which espoused Lutheran doctrine rather than Catholic doctrine. Everyone took one side or the other, resulting in an impasse. The Protestants wouldn’t give an inch, and the Church certainly wasn’t going to bargain with a bunch of heretics.

The impasse lasted for 15 years, until in 1545, Pope Paul III decided to convene a meeting in Trent to smooth troubled waters. After four months of negotiating, the Council of Trent concluded that the writings, teachings, and doctrines of Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, and LeFevre were “altogether forbidden, allowed to no one, since little advantage, but much danger, generally arises from reading them.”

The Society of Jesus (the Jesuits) was in attendance, of course. Their role was passive-aggressive. They were to appear humble and pious, while simultaneously befriending members of the opposition. Once they wormed their way into the opposition’s confidence, they were to persuade and influence them by means of flattery, cajoling, manipulation, and subterfuge, which included bribes, lots of wine, and beautiful young women.

The Illuminati: Empire of Money and Power – Giulia Farnese, image by Lance Marwood via AI

The Council of Trent dragged on and on – for 18 years. Not literally, of course; the Council took two breaks, totalling 14 years. During the second break, which lasted ten years, Loyola established the Germanicum, an exclusive college in Rome for German-speaking Jesuits. These carefully selected priests received training in clever persuasive techniques, i.e. psychological propaganda and manipulation. The goal was to influence the rulers of the various states to Catholicism because when the Council reconvened, it agreed to what was called the Peace of Augsburg, which in essence stated that the ruler of each state got to choose the religion of the state.

In other words, the German-speaking Jesuits didn’t have to persuade the entire populace to Catholicism, just the rulers. It worked. Most of the Austrian and German rulers chose the Church. In fact, it worked so well that when the Council finally ended, the Protestants did not receive a single concession. Moreover, not only were there no concessions, but anyone who chose to remain Protestant was officially declared “eternally damned” by the Roman Catholic Church.

Then Pope Paul III died.

In 1572, Ugo Boncompagni was elected Pope, choosing the name Pope Gregory XIII. Gregory XIII consolidated and increased the power of the papacy. Part of the program to strengthen his power was to decrease the power of the Cardinals and patronize the Jesuits. To this end, he gave the Jesuits permission to engage in banking and commerce and mandated that each papal legate include a Jesuit consultant.

Because of the Peace of Augsburg and the outcome of the Council of Trent, the Roman Inquisition proceeded with fervent zeal. Most of the Protestants, who were not captured, tortured, and killed in the name of God and the Church, went underground. They formed or joined secret societies, like the Freemasons, the Rosicrucians, and the Teutonic Knights, which, unbeknownst to them, were de facto puppets of the Black Pope.

As the Society of Jesus (the Jesuits) grew in numbers, they also augmented their power in the Church and the world. Everyone, from commoners to royalty, wanted a Jesuit to hear their confession because Loyola had mandated that “a Jesuit should not allow anyone to leave the confessional entirely without comfort.” In other words, absolution was always granted, and the penance was easy. Royal personages of all Europe insisted that only a Jesuit hear their confessions.

During confession, people spilled their guts, leaving out nothing. It was safe because confession was an inviolable sacrament. The priest could not speak of anything said in the confessional. Because of this sacramental aspect, the Jesuits were privy to crucial information. The information thus gleaned enabled the Jesuits to exert a powerful influence on political and economic policies. Absolution required the sinner to expiate the sin. And the Jesuits suggested appropriate courses of action that aligned with the Jesuits’ agenda.

On the secular side, the Jesuits directed their attention toward education, establishing their first school in Coimbra, Portugal, in 1556. About 200 years later (1749), the number of Jesuit schools included 669 colleges, 61 specialized study centers, 24 universities, and 176 seminaries.

The Illuminati: Empire of Money and Power – Ignatius of Loyola, image by Lance Marwood via AI

Up until 1559, the Jesuits were known only as the Society of Jesus. The term “Jesuit” as applied to the Society of Jesus did not exist until 1559 when someone used the term to describe a priest in the Society of Jesus. In the Bible – Numbers 26:44 – the word “Jesuites” – referred to the descendants of Jesui, the great-grandson of the Patriarch Abraham.

The designation caught on and was widely used to describe the Society of Jesus and its members.

It is a little-known fact that before the American Revolution, Roman Catholics residing in the British Colonies were not allowed to hold any public office or even vote. The reason for this persecution was primarily political rather than religious, for Catholics were loyal to, and ruled by, the Pope. The Pope and the Church viewed the Protestant Church and thus the British Empire as blasphemous dissenters – heretics. On the other hand, any Catholic who voted or held public office would not be loyal to the British Empire. Instead, they would be loyal to the Pope, a foreign potentate.

After the American Revolution, things changed dramatically: Catholics were granted all civil rights, including the right to vote and hold public office. The Constitution permitted religious freedom, without “prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” Almost overnight – in less than 100 years – the United States transformed from a Protestant nation to an overwhelmingly Catholic nation.

This radical transformation was the handiwork of Lorenzo Ricci, the Superior General of the Society of Jesus from 1758 to 1775.