Abstract

The author, a merited bibliographer and librarian, literary historian and critic, writer, translator and Polish émigré community activist, offers – in what was probably the first internationally published account on the topic – a fascinating portrait of one of the most mysterious and intriguing figures in the history of eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century freemasonry, alchemy, illuminism, and Polish messianism. Co-founder and leader of the esoteric, Christian mystical group called the Illuminés of Avignon, Count Grabianka was a Polish nobleman of wealthy descent who got entangled in esoteric and masonic activities and adventures of his time. Danilewicz Zielińska describes in a spirited way his relationship with, notably, Dom Pernety, the society’s cofounder (and, incidentally, translator of two important Swedenborg’s works into French), and how the two and their followers were advised and influenced by the ‘Sainte Parole’ oracle. Another important figure in the story is Robert Hindmarsh, a London-based cofounder of Swedenborgianism, author of Rise and Progress of the New Jerusalem Church, who reported in detail on Grabianka’s visit to his London community. Described is Grabianka’s adventurous life, from his education at the court of Stanislas Leszczynski (ex-King of Poland) in Lorraine, his contacts and travels across France, Berlin, and eastern Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (Podolia). Grabianka met a miserable end: though he voluntarily travelled to St Petersburg, where he earned high popularity among the local aristocrat elite, winning many its members for a new masonic lodge he established there, he was eventually accused of espionage for France and plotting of a coup d’état. Imprisoned by the tsarist authorities and jailed at St Petersburg’s Peter and Paul Fortress, he soon died before standing trial.