MARTINISTS. - They are the followers of the Masonic sect whose principal exponents are Martinez de Pasqually (b. at Grenoble in 1727, d. at Santo Domingo on 20 Sept. 1774, author of the Traité de la réintégration des êtres [Paris 1819]), Louis-Claude de St-Martin (b. at Amboise on 18 Jan. 1743, d. at Annay on 13 Oct. 1803, author of numerous writings among them Ecce homo [1792]) and Jean-Baptiste Willermoz (b. at Lyon on 10 July 1730, d. there on 20 May 1824).

This sect is of notable importance for the study of the passage from rationalistic Enlightenment to Romantic mysticism; always within the ambit of Freemasonry, it was a notable reaction against the humanitarianism and deism of the rationalistic Freemasonry of the eighteenth century; it attempted this by strangely mingling theism, Neoplatonic mysticism, cabalism, magic, and by affirming that exorcisms themselves tend toward the definitive liberation of humanity. The principal way of perceiving this is of a mystical nature, because, say the Martinists, the striving toward and the drawing near to the Absolute is not of an intellectual nature. God, moreover, cannot be known, yet there nevertheless exists a sympathy in the universe, and between God and matter there exist mediating spirits. In the theory of this sect St-Martin sought to bring to the fore the voie intérieure, insisting not only on the divine dignity of primitive man, but also on the attempt to return to the divinity of primitive man, because for St-Martin man before original sin had special supernatural powers. St-Martin felt the problem of expiation and fought against the concept of tolerance of the philosophes; he hoped that from the French Revolution (permitted by God for human expiation) a new spiritual Christianity would arise, along with a religious society on the ruins of lay society.

Martinism had considerable diffusion at the beginning of the 19th century; and even in far-off St. 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 background. Martinist Freemasonry still survives in France.

Bibliography8 works

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

Massimo Petrocchi

@incollection{ec8_martinisti, author = {Petrocchi, Massimo}, title = {Martinisti}, booktitle = {Enciclopedia Cattolica}, volume = {VIII}, pages = {218--219}, note = {Cited by column}, publisher = {Ente per l’Enciclopedia Cattolica e per il Libro Cattolico}, address = {Città del Vaticano}, year = {1952}, url = {https://azioneromana.com/article/martinisti} }

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