The Illuminati is a name that has been applied to several groups since the 1400s. The most prominent of these organizations is generally referred to as the Bavarian Illuminati, a secret society of Enlightenment thinkers founded by Adam Weishaupt in 1776. Weishaupt was a defrocked Jesuit and the Bavarian Illuminati adopted a structure that was similar to the hierarchy of the Jesuit order. Weishaupt and one of his early recruits, Adolf, Freiherr Knigge, also introduced the Masonic trappings that have come to characterize many secret societies. Although the Bavarian Illuminati became something of a fad for academics and minor nobles, the Bavarian government grew tired of its libertine antics and suppressed it in 1785.
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