Today is Friday, May 1st, 2020.

On this day in 1776, Professor Adam Visehaupt

founded a secret society he called the Order of the Illuminati.

It would go on to become one of the most infamous organizations on planet Earth. Earth.

Welcome to today in True Crime, a parcast original.

Today we're covering the founding of the Bavarian aluminati.

Let's go back to the University of Ingolstadt on May 1st, 1776, the day the world of clandestine societies changed forever. Five individuals gathered near the Bavarian University, Professor Adam Vice

helped and four of his best law students.

Franz Anton von Masenhausen, Max Adler von Merritts,

Andreas Zutor, and a man named Bauhof.

Little is known about this initial meeting. a man named Bauhoof.

Little is known about this initial meeting, only the date and the names of those who attended.

What we do know is that Vice Halped was the canon law professor at the university and he had big plans for his new

organization which he called the covenant of perfectibility or the perfectibilists for short.

Though he taught canon law at a Jesuit university,

the young and ambitious Visehaupt was not himself a Jesuit.

In fact, he was the only professor at the university who wasn't the member of the clergy,

and after three years as a professor, he was starting to realize that this put his intellectual

development at a significant disadvantage.

The Jesuits were not terribly fond of Visehaupt, and the feeling was mutual.

Inspired by the ideals of the Enlightenment era, Vice Houped sought out knowledge that was not bound

by religious doctrines or biases, and since he certainly wouldn't find it amongst his colleagues,

...