Barruel, Augustin

BARRUEL, AUGUSTIN: French politico-religious writer; b. at Villeneuve-de-Berg (95 m. n.w. of Marseilles), Ardèche, Oct. 2, 1741; d. at Paris Oct. 5, 1820. He was teaching in the Jesuit college in Toulouse when the order was suppressed in France (1764), and thereupon undertook extensive travels in Europe; returned to France in 1774 and wrote against the infidelity of the age as associate editor of the Année littéraire, after 1788 as editor of the Journal ecclésiastique, and in his book, Les Helviennes ou lettres provinciales philosophiques (5 vols., Amsterdam, 1784-88). In August, 1792, he fled from the Revolution to England and remained there till 1800. He published at London an Histoire du clergé pendant la Révolution française (2 vols., 1793); Mémoires pour servir a l’histoire du Jacobinisme (5 vols., Amsterdam, 1796-99; Eng. transl., 4 vols., 1798); L’évangile et le clergé français (1800). After his return to France he published Du pape et de ses droits religieux (2 vols., Paris, 1803), which gave the Ultramontanes occasion to say that he had sold himself to Bonaparte. His work in general is marked by exaggeration and bitterness and he goes to an absurd extreme in opposition to the freemasons and secret societies.

Bibliography: Dussault, Notice sur la vie et les ouvrages de Barruel. Paris, 1825.