Martini, Simone - Catholic Encyclopedia, Vol. VIII, p. 155

Machine translation of the 1948–1954 Italian original. The original text is authoritative.

MARTINI, SIMONE - S. Antonio and s. Francesco. Fresco in the lower church of S. Francesco - Assisi.

primitive man, but also the attempt to return to the divinity of primitive man, because for St-Martin, before original sin, man possessed special supernatural powers. St-Martin perceived the problem of expiation and fought against the concept of the philosophes’ tolerance; he hoped that from the French Revolution (permitted by God for human expiation) there would arise a new spiritual Christianity and a religious society upon the ruins of secular society.

Martinism spread considerably at the beginning of the nineteenth century; and even in distant Petersburg J. De Maistre was a follower of Martinist theories, which helped him conceive the dream of a grandiose religious palingenesis with a unitary-confessional orientation. Martinist Freemasonry still survives in France.

BIBL.: J. Matter, St-Martin, le philosophe inconnu, 2nd ed., Parigi 1864; A. Franck, St-Martin et son maître Martinex Pasqualis, there 1866; J. Claassen, St-Martin, Leben und theosophische Werke, Stoccarda 1891; Papus, L'illuminisme en France, 2 vols., Parigi 1895–1902; A. Viatte, Les sources occultes du romantisme, I, there 1928, pp. 43 ff., 269 ff., II, there, p. 64 ff.; G. van Rijnberk, Un taumaturge du XVIIIe siècle: Martinex de Pasqualis, there 1935; A. Omodeo, Un reazionario. Il Conte J. De Maistre, Bari 1939, pp. 11 ff., 28 ff. (where, moreover, the colours are too heavily applied in portraying a heterodox post-Martinist De Maistre); R. Ambelain, La franc-magonnier occultiste et mystique (1643-1943). Le martinisme. Histoire et doctrine, Parigi 1946 (tendentious, as, moreover, are almost all the writings listed above). Massimo Petrocchi