“If they find any to be timorous and fearful, they admit not such a man to the secrets of magick…But such as appear to be of bold and undaunted spirits, they take especial notice of them, and reserve them for serious employments.”
-from the English translation of Johann Cambilhon’s De studiis Jesuitarum abstrusioribus (1608)
Sometime after his second prison stint, William Prynne–the notorious parliamentary propagandist and firebrand–brought out Quakers Unmasked (1655). Like his earlier work, Romes Master-Peece (1643), which promoted the conspiratorial idea that an international Catholic secret society based on Long Acre street in London was plotting to overthrow England, Quakers Unmasked introduced Prynne’s far-fetched assertions that the Quakers were part of a larger Catholic conspiracy.
To Prynne, whose intolerant views were shared by a number of other Protestant clergymen, the Quakers were emissaries from Rome, sent to confuse “the intoxicated giddy-headed English Nation” with drugs and ecstatic activities. In his typical incendiary fashion, Prynne described the new dissenting movement as a stratagem of the Jesuits, whom he characterised as “imps of Satan”. Their goal, Prynne explained, was to use “Diabolicall delusions, sorceries, enchantments, practises, to divide us as much as possible, and extirpate our Ministers and Religion”.
They were specially equipped to carry out this mandate, not just because of their espionage abilities, but also because they were arch-magicians, trained in the “art of Magick”. To support his claims, Prynne cited–among other texts–De studiis Jesuitarum abstrusioribus, an exposé-style pamphlet by the German author Johann Cambilhon.
Like Prynne’s other works, Cambilhon’s text includes outlandish and graphic stories about high-ranking Jesuits and their occult pursuits. It had a real effect on communities in Bohemia; in fact, according to the nineteenth-century historian Johannes Janssen, De studiis Jesutiarum helped to fuel anti-Catholic violence in early seventeenth-century Prague. Cambilhon’s conspiracy tale also provides an example of how sensationalist propaganda was used to dehumanise and bludgeon religious and political rivals in early modern Europe.
In De studiis Jesuitarum, Cambilhon–who described himself as a former Jesuit–tried to persuade his readers that each Jesuit seminary was a magick College. This was not a place of glittering halls, cheery fireplaces, and flying hippogriffs. Rather, the College was a sepulchral palace with countless labyrinthine passages, hidden vaults, torture cambers, and secret armouries. It served as a hell on earth, a “Gulph” into which enemies were sometimes thrown to be “devoured and eaten up”. There were also “rooms underground” specifically kept for orgiastic revels reminiscent of Ancient Rome’s mystery festivals.
Citing personal knowledge, Cambilhon maintained that the Jesuits also kept vast storehouses of ammunition and instruments of war at colleges in Krakow and Prague. He was confident that other colleges were just “as well provided”. The purpose of this secret stockpile was threefold. First, the Jesuits had to anticipate the possibility of a Knights Templar-style purge. Second, in having arms at the ready, they could easily assist Catholic military forces. Third, they would “have munition and stones above-head” to destroy thieves and religious opponents “before they be aware”.
Cambilhon further reported that in the Styrian city of Graz, the Jesuits maintained “a very strange Library, of Cords, Halters, Rackes, Swords, Axes, Iron-pincers, Stockes, Torches, Pillories, and several Instruments of Torture, wherewith and whereunto poore wretches being tyed fast, are joynt by joynt torne a sunder”. This facility, he alleged, was used to murder whistle-blowers.
In one particularly grisly case, Jacobus Clusseus, a boy who threatened to reveal the Jesuit order’s secrets, was shut up in the dungeon, whipped, and scourged. “He was never seene to come out againe alive,” wrote Cambilhon. Judging from his own experiences of hearing nightly screams that “would put a man into a cold sweat all over, and make his hayre stand on end”, Cambilhon assumed that many more women, children, and young men had also suffered the same fate.
In his description of the Jesuits’ purported sorcerous pursuits, Cambilhon wrote that only novices who passed initiation rituals were allowed to proceed in the “Divelish study of Magicke”. At different times, superiors would put on “terrible disguises” and cause “their Novices to be called downe to behold their Tragedy”. They would then rush at them while making a “horrible yelling noyse, to make tryall, (forsooth) of their courage and constancy”. Those who kept their cool were subsequently instructed in the teachings of Pico della Mirandola, Paracelsus, Heinrich Agrippa, and Trithemius.
The aim of this training, however, was not scholarly or mystic contemplation. Elite Jesuits were expected to be very much in the world and of it. As spymasters they moved from place to place, exchanging information and penetrating the “Cabinets of great Potentates”. Their ultimate goal, Cambilhon asserted, was to effect an “Innovation to be made both in the Church and State” throughout the Holy Roman Empire. Specifically they wanted to “bring the tyranny of the Spaniard, and the Primacy of the Pope, into Germany” by promoting religious liberty. In doing so, they would sow discord among the German princes, who would clash over differences in opinion. This would allow the Catholic Church to reassert its dominance and destroy each divided principality.
In the last part of De studiis Jesuitarum, Cambilhon averred that the Jesuits planned to deploy “bold” assassins abroad to carry out other “killing projects”. These special forces, as it were, would “by Poison or by the Pistol” cut off “the principal Doctors of the Reformed Church”. To add credibility to his strange thesis, Cambilhon concluded that he had heard all these things “from the Principals and Heads of the Society of Jesuites” themselves.
Cambilhon’s book caused immediate controversy. In 1609, in an attempt to put the rumours to rest, Jacob Gretser, a prominent Jesuit man of letters, brought out Relatio de studiis iesuitarum abstrusioribus. Describing Cambilhon as a “mountebank” (Agryta) and artful liar, Gretser denied that the Jesuits had interests in magic. He also accused the writer of publishing fictions and promoting the “heresy” of Martin Luther and John Calvin. Nevertheless, despite Gretser’s thorough and measured fact-checking, Cambilhon’s work continued to be influential in Bohemia. It’s also possible that it had an effect on Andreas ab Habernfeld (or Ondrej Habervesel) the Bohemian mystical writer, physician, and political operative whose writings formed the basis for Prynne’s Romes Master-Peece.
As in Cambilhon’s text, Romes Master-Peece includes allegations that the Jesuits intended to assassinate Charles I and some of his advisers with a poisoned nut, fig, or knife. It’s also worth noting that, in addition to Quakers Unmasked, Prynne explicitly referenced Cambilhon’s claims in at least two other works: A New Discovery of Free-State Tyranny (1655) and A True and Perfect Narrative (1659). An English edition of De studiis Jesuitarum also appears in the memoirs of James Wadsworth, a pursuivant (priest-hunter) who acted as one of Prynne’s trusted informants and witnesses against William Laud, the ill-starred Archbishop of Canterbury.
Much like modern conspiracy theories, Cambilhon’s narrative–full of fictions and misrepresentations–had a deep emotional resonance. Using the language of witchcraft and sorcery, it built on visceral and xenophobic fears of a Catholic uprising. This made it, by and large, impervious to reasoned and dispassionate counter-arguments. A literary Proteus, it became the perfect political weapon, one that eventually helped to foment and direct public anger. Effective propagandists like Prynne were keenly aware of this attribute, which is why elements of De studiis Jesuitarum were re-purposed decades after the book’s initial publication.
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