After Pope Clement XIV's suppression of the Society of Jesus in 1773, Weishaupt became a professor of canon law,[14] a position that was held exclusively by the Jesuits until that time.

I wished to do what the heads of the ecclesiastical and secular authorities ought to have done by virtue of their offices ...[18]On 1 May 1776 Johann Adam Weishaupt founded the "Illuminati" in the Electorate of Bavaria.

His project of "illumination, enlightening the understanding by the sun of reason, which will dispel the clouds of superstition and of prejudice" was an unwelcome reform.

Writings that were intercepted in 1784 were interpreted as seditious, and the Society was banned by the government of Karl Theodor, Elector of Bavaria, in 1784.

[1][2][3][4] He was survived by his second wife, Anna Maria (née Sausenhofer), and his children Nanette, Charlotte, Ernst, Karl, Eduard, and Alfred.

[2] His body was buried next to that of his son Wilhelm, who preceded him in death (in 1802), at Friedhof II der Sophiengemeinde Berlin, a Protestant cemetery.

Others took a more positive view, including Thomas Jefferson, who wrote in a letter to James Madison that "Barruel’s own parts of the book are perfectly the ravings of a Bedlamite[26] and considered Weishaupt to be an "enthusiastic Philanthropist" who believed in the indefinite perfectibility of man, and believed that the intention of Jesus Christ was simply to "reinstate natural religion, and by diffusing the light of his morality, to teach us to govern ourselves".