Eco: Foucalt's Pendulum by eco foucault (ebook smartphone .txt) 📕

"At least you still havea head."

91

Oh, how well you haveunmasked those infernal sects that are preparing the way for theAntichrist...But there is still one sect that you have touched onlylightly.

¡XLetter from CaptainSimonini to Barruel, published in Lacivilta cattolica, October 21,1882

Napoleon's rapprochementwith the Jews caused the Jesuits to alter their course. Barruel'sMemoires had contained no reference to the Jews. But in 1806 hereceived a letter from a certain Captain Simonini, who reminded himthat Mani and the Old Man of the Mountain were also Jews, thatMasonry had been founded by the Jews, and that the Jews hadinfiltrated all the existing secret societies.

Simonini's letter,shrewdly circulated in Paris, was an embarrassment for Napoleon,who had just got in touch with the Grand Sanhedrin. This moveobviously alarmed the Paulicians too, because the Holy Synod of theRussian Orthodox Church declared: "Napoleon now proposes to uniteall the Jews, whom the wrath of God has scattered over the face ofthe earth, so that they will overturn the church of Christ andproclaim Napoleon the true Messiah."

The good Barruelaccepted the idea that the plot was not only Masonic but alsoJudeo-Masonic. Further, this satanic element allowed him to attacka new enemy: the Alta Vendita Carbonara, and later the anticlericalfathers of the Risorgimento, from Maz-zini to Garibaldi.

"But this all happens inthe middle of the nineteenth century," Diotallevi said, "whereasthe big anti-Semitic campaign gets under way at the end of thecentury, with the publication of the Protocols of the LearnedElders ofZion. And the Protocols appear in Russia. So they are aninitiative of the Paulicians."

"Naturally," Belbo said."It's clear now that the Jerusalemite group had broken up intothree branches. The first branch, through the Spanish and Provencalcabalists, went on to inspire the neo-Templar camp; the second wastaken over by the Baconian wing, and they all became scientists andbankers. They're the ones the Jesuits oppose so fiercely. But thereis a third branch, and it established itself in Russia. The RussianJews are generally small tradesmen and moneylenders, and for thatreason are hated by the impoverished peasants; but since Jewishculture is a culture of the Book, and all Jews know how to read andwrite, they eventually swell the ranks of the liberal andrevolutionary intelligentsia. The Paulicians, in contrast, aremystics, reactionaries, hand in glove with the landowners, and theyhave also infiltrated the court. Obviously, between them and theJerusa-lemites there can be no traffic. So they are bent ondiscrediting the Jews, and through the Jews¡Xthis they learned fromthe Jesuits¡Xthey cause trouble for their adversaries abroad, boththe neo-Templars and the Baconians."

92

There can no longer beany doubt. With all the power and the terror of Satan, the reign ofthe triumphant King of Israel is approaching our unregenerateworld; the King born from the blood of Zion, the Antichrist,approaches the throne of universal power.

¡XSergei Nilus, Epilogueto the Protocols

The idea was acceptable.We had only to consider who had introduced the Protocols inRussia.

One of the mostinfluential Martinists at the end of the century, Papus, dazzledNicholas II during his visit to Paris, then went to Moscow, takingwith him one Philippe Nizier Anselme Vachot. Possessed by the Devilat the age of six, healer at thirteen, magnetizer in Lyon, Philippefascinated both Nicholas II and his hysterical wife. He was invitedto court, named physician of the military academy of St.Petersburg, made a general and a councilor of state.

His enemies decided todiminish his influence by setting against him an equallycharismatic figure. And Nilus was found.

Nilus was an itinerantmonk who, in priestly habit, wandered in the forests (what else?)displaying a prophet's great beard, two wives, a little daughter,an assistant (or lover, perhaps), all hanging on his every word.Half guru, the kind that runs off with the collection plate, andhalf hermit, the kind that yells that the end is near, he was infact obsessed by the Antichrist.

The plan of Nilus'ssupporters was to have him ordained, and then, after he married(what was another wife, more or less?) Elena Alexandrovna Ozerova,the tsarina's maid of honor, to have him become the confessor ofthe sovereigns.

"I'm anything but abloodthirsty man," Belbo said, "but I begin to feel that themassacre of Tsarskoye Selo was perhaps a justifiable exterminationof vermin."

Anyway, Philippe'ssupporters accused Nilus of leading a lewd life, and God knows theywere right. Nilus had to leave the court, but at this point someonecame to his aid, handing him the text of the Protocols. Sinceeverybody got the Martinists (who derived from Saint Martin) mixedup with the Martinezists (followers of Martfnez Pasqualis, whomAglie so dislikes), and since Pasqualis, according to a widespreadrumor, was Jewish, by discrediting the Jews the Protocols alsodiscredited the Martinists, and with the discrediting of theMartinists, Philippe was booted out.

Actually, a first,incomplete, version of the Protocols had already appeared in 1903,in Znamia, a St. Petersburg paper edited by a rabid anti-Semitenamed Kruscevan. In 1905, with the approval of the governmentcensors, a complete text anonymously appeared, under the tide TheSource of Our Evils, edited by one Boutmi, who with Kruscevan hadfounded the Union of the Russian People, later known as the BlackHundreds, which enlisted common criminals to carry out pogroms andextremist right-wing acts of violence. Boutmi later published,under his own name, further editions of the work, with the titleThe Enemies of the Human Race: Protocols from the Secret Archivesof the Central Chancellery ofZion.

But these were cheapbooklets. An expanded version of the Protocols, the one that was tobe translated all over the world, came out in 1905, in the thirdedition of Nilus's book, The Great in the Small: The Antichrist Isan Imminent Political Possibility, Tsarskoye Selo, under the aegisof a local chapter of the Red Cross. The scope was broader, theframework that of mystical reflection, and the book ended up in thehands of the tsar. The metropolitan of Moscow ordered it read aloudin all the churches of the city.

"But what," I asked, "isthe connection between the Protocols and our Plan? We keep talkingabout these Protocols. Should we read them?"

"Nothing could besimpler," Diotallevi said. "There's always someone who reprintsthem. Publishers used to do it with a great show of indignation,purely out of a sense of duty to make available a historicaldocument, then little by little they stopped apologizing andreprinted it