Nicholas Bonneville

Nicolas de Bonneville, born 13 March 1760 at Évreux in Upper Normandy, died on 9 November 1828 in Paris; he was a French bookseller, printer, journalist, and writer. He was also a political figure of some relevance at the time of the French Revolution and into the early years of the next century.

A son of the prosecutor, Jean-Pierre Bonneville, Nicolas de Bonneville was expelled from university during the first year of his philosophy studies after he created a scandal by refusing to support his contention that Jean-Jacques Rousseau was an atheist. Before taking up philosophy, he began, like his compatriot, , as a student of languages with an interest in philology. He was also a follower, though without sharing all of his ideas, of . As a young man, he produced German and English translations of the works of Jean le Rond d'Alembert, which financially supported him until his death. In particular, he was known for reproducing the essay on the origins of freemasonry by Thomas Paine, who became his close friend.

Initiated into freemasonry in 1786 during a stay in England, he wrote two books on the subject, the "Jesuits Expelled from Masonry", and "Dagger Shattered by the Masons", both in 1788, in which he accuses the Jesuits of having introduced into the symbolic degrees of freemasonry, the myths of the Templars and their doctrine of revenge, based on the "crime" of their destruction, and the four vows of the Templars included in their higher degrees. Earlier, in 1787, the leading Bavarian illuminist and freemason, Johann Joachim Christoph Bode, is said to have converted the German-speaking Bonneville to a faith that combined esoteric symbolism with radical ideas of popular sovereignty bordering on direct democracy.

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