Les Jésuites chassés de la Maçonnerie et leur poignard brisé par les Maçons

In-8º, bound in half vellum à la Bradel, smooth spine. 148 pp, 4 ff.n.ch, 136 pp, 54pp, 1 ff.n.ch.

Rare work on Scottish Masonry also containing the polemical Maçonnerie disséquée by Samuel Prichard. 

Bonneville's work, divided into two parts, openly denounces the infiltration of the Jesuits into the Masonic order. The author attempts to show that the Templar Secret of the 14th century is nothing more than a Jesuit conspiracy to manipulate and seize the power of the Lodges in Europe. 

By analyzing the codes, rituals and symbols of the Freemasons, with a great deal of numerological and cryptographic evidence, the author tries to show that the Jesuits are the famous Unknown Superiors at the head of all Masonic ranks.  This work was published in a period of internal crises and social transformations, which marked the decline of Old Regime Masonry in France and the path for the succession of a revolutionary Masonry.

Bonneville includes in his work an engraving (The Dagger of the Jesuits found in the darkness) representing a new Masonic order whose rich symbology allegorizes Jesuit elements such as SRI: Royal Society of Jesuits, BI (Beatus Ignatius) referring to the creator of Jesuits, Ignatius of Loyola, and the eagle of Mohilev, symbol of the Jesuit renaissance for the reconquest of Europe. Bonneville's text is followed by the very rare and polemical work in English by Samuel Prichard, Masonry Dissected, which was refused by the London Lodge in 1783 and burned by the Scottish Mother Lodge in 1788 to disseminate the oldest ritual of Masonic Lodges in England.

Provenance: two wet stamps of the Library "Bibliotheca [Congr. SS. Redemp.] Pulchri Jugi", and a third stamp "Nouvelle revue téologique [225. Avenue de Jette] Jette-st-Pierre"

Damp-staining to the first five leaves and to pages 61 to 76, some foxing.