Selections of Henri-Roger Gougenot des Mousseaux’s The Jew, Judaism and the Judaization of Christian Peoples

Henri-Roger Gougenot des Mousseaux (1805 – 6 October 1876) was a French Catholic writer, journalist, and gentilhomme de la chambre du roi under Charles X. After the Orleanist usurpation of 1830 he refused to rally to the new dynasty, travelling widely and devoting himself to the study of magic, demonology, esoteric traditions, and the secret societies he believed were subverting Christian civilization. His bibliography includes Dieu et les dieux (1854), La Magie au XIXe siècle (1860), Les Médiateurs et les moyens de la magie (1863), and Les Hauts Phénomènes de la magie (1864). He is chiefly known for his magnum opus, Le Juif, le judaïsme et la judaïsation des peuples chrétiens (Paris: Henri Plon, 1869) — The Jew, Judaism and the Judaization of Christian Peoples — published on the eve of the First Vatican Council with the personal blessing of Pope Pius IX, who awarded des Mousseaux the Cross of the Order of the Holy Sepulchre for it. Des Mousseaux died on 6 October 1876 at Coulommiers, with the Body of Christ still upon him, according to the preface to the posthumous 1886 edition penned by his secretary and friend Chauliac. The book was subsequently cited as a primary source by Édouard Drumont in La France juive (1886) and was translated into German by Alfred Rosenberg (1921).

The passages reproduced below are drawn from the verified text of Le Juif (1869) as preserved at the Bibliothèque nationale de France (Gallica), from the Google Books snippet view of the original 1869 edition, and from the English translation by I. McGillivray (updated November 2023; Internet Archive). Passages translated from the original French are so indicated; all passages drawn directly from the McGillivray translation are reproduced verbatim. They bear on the following themes of the Adversus Judaeos tradition: the definition of “the Jew“ as the sectarian of the Talmud and spiritual heir of the Pharisees; the Talmud as a code of enmity against Christians; the theological opposition between the Judaizing and Christianizing impulses; the deicide and its consequences; the Messianic expectation of earthly domination over the Church of Christ; Freemasonry as the hidden instrument of Judaism; the blood libel; and the impossibility of Zionism leading to any good for Christian nations. No word of any English-language passage has been altered from its source.

I. On the Definition of “the Jew“: The Faithful of the Talmud

Le Juif, Discussion (Causerie), p. XV

(English translation: I. McGillivray, 2023)

“The Jew, however, when a special qualification will not modify our meaning, will be for us not any offspring of the race of Judah, but the man of Pharisaic orthodoxy, the faithful of the savage and unsociable traditions of the Talmud; If, on the contrary, it concerns any other member of the Judaic family, the name Jew will only designate him in our pages when we attach it to his person in express terms; that when we say, for example, the Jew of bastard orthodoxy, the reformist Jew, the Jew of free thought. In a word, our formal intentions are to include under the pure and simple name of the Jew only the pure sectarian of the Talmud.”

II. The Old Pharisee, Father and Type of the Modern Pharisee

Le Juif, Discussion (Causerie), p. XIII

(English translation: I. McGillivray, 2023)

“When our word of the guide cicerone, seizing the ear of the traveler, keeps him back on the theater in which the Judaic traditions circulate and are born, where the Pharisee whom Christ turns away crawls with a studied step, and whose sons are the Orthodox of the current Synagogue …”

Le Juif, Discussion (Causerie), p. XXVII

(English translation: I. McGillivray, 2023)

“So, when we have to deal with one of these various subjects: the Pharisees or the Rabbis, the Talmudists or the reformists, the Talmud, the Cabal; or else when we pronounce words as harsh as these: the hypocrisy of the pure Orthodox, the fanaticism of Judah, we doubt that we are caught on the wrong foot, and without our fulcrum being the very word of the Jew, of the Pharisee, of the Rabbi.”

III. The Talmud: Code of a Hostile Tradition

Le Juif, Chapter IV — Le Talmud, p. 61

(Translated from the French original, Google Books snippet, 1869 edition, p. 61)

“The immense compilation of Ravina and Rav Ashi spread among the Jews with an almost miraculous rapidity; it was accepted, from its appearance, as the true and sincere expression of the traditional law. Numerous schools, in which the Talmud was the object of the most respectful study, sprang up suddenly in the East and in the West; its casuistic decisions were accepted by all the communities, and this triple barrier raised by the Rabbis of Palestine …”

Le Juif, Discussion (Causerie), p. XIX

(English translation: I. McGillivray, 2023)

“Has the Talmud stopped telling them: ‘When an Israelite and a non-Jew have a lawsuit, you will win your case, brother.’ And, if not, if the thing is impossible, ‘it is necessary to exhaust (the non-Jew) by chicanery, until the gain of the cause remains with the Israelite.'”

Le Juif, Chapter IV — Le Talmud

(Translated from the French original; text as quoted with quotation marks in the Amazon seller description of the 2016 Reconquista edition)

“The Talmud, which is ‘the religious code of modern Jews, very different from that of the ancient Jews,’ has made of the Judaizing man of today ‘the spiritual son of the Pharisees of the time of Jesus.'”

(French original: “le Talmud, qui est ‘le code religieux des Juifs modernes, bien différent de celui des anciens Juifs’ a fait du judaïsant d’aujourd’hui ‘le fils spirituel des Pharisiens du temps de Jésus.'”)

Le Juif, Appendix Chapter — Les Deux Cabales

(Des Mousseaux’s own expression, as recorded by bibliographer Albert Caillet in his Manuel bibliographique des sciences psychiques*, 1913, no. 4657, and confirmed by Pierre Dujols, catalogue n°141, June 1913)*

“… the Talmud containing, according to his expression, ‘the Cabalistic doctrine which is the dogma of high magic’ …”

(French original: “le Talmud contenant, selon son expression, ‘la doctrine cabalistique qui est le dogme de la haute magie.'”)

IV. The Theological Enmity: The Active Jew as “Missionary of Evil”

Le Juif, Discussion (Causerie), p. XXI

(English translation: I. McGillivray, 2023)

“Because, if the goal of the Christian living an active life is to Christianize the world, that is to say to sow there the Christian institutions, the only ones which can maintain and spread within human societies the benefits of civilization, and to found the reign of peace on earth, the goal of the Jew, whose conviction runs in the opposite direction to that of the Christian, is to Judaize the world and destroy this Christian civilization there. This is the reason which makes us call the active Jew the missionary of evil, however honorable he may be from the domestic and civil point of view.”

Le Juif, Discussion (Causerie), p. XXI, footnote

(English translation: I. McGillivray, 2023)

“The anti-religious, but above all anti-Christian, efforts which distinguish the present era have a character of concentration and universality which recognizes the seal of the Jew, the supreme patron of the unification of peoples, because he is the cosmopolitan people par excellence; because the Jew prepares, by the licenses of free thought, the times which he calls messianic, that is to say the days of his universal triumph. He attributes its imminent realization to the principles spread by the philosophers of the eighteenth century: those men who are both unbelievers and cabalists whose work prepared the Judaization of this world.”

Le Juif, Discussion (Causerie), p. XXV

(English translation: I. McGillivray, 2023)

“He is the man of the Talmudic faith, the one whom his zeal and whom implacable grudges animate against Christian civilization; the active, sagacious and daring man who devotes himself to disciplining and guiding militant Judaism. This is the one we are fighting, because we fear it; and our pages have said whether or not he is formidable!”

Le Juif, Discussion (Causerie), p. XXIV–XXV

(English translation: I. McGillivray, 2023)

“The Jew never ceases, in the pages of his Reviews, to declare himself the enthusiastic admirer of all the revolutionaries who disturb and upset the world, but especially of those whose unquenchable hatred threatens in the most direct way the existence of the Church. In front of his ardent sympathies, in front of his implacable doctrines, in front of associations of all kinds intended to transform them from theory into action, one would therefore have to be struck with the strangest myopia not to recognize in the Jew the preparer, the schemer, the chief engineer of revolutions. For they alone, by de-Christianizing the world, they alone by Judaizing it, by transforming it for his own benefit, can lead the Jew to his ends.”

V. The Scripture of Enmity: “You Are the Children of the Devil”

Le Juif, Discussion (Causerie), p. XXI, footnote

(English translation: I. McGillivray, 2023)

“Saint John says (Gospel, VIII, 44): Vos ex patre diabolo. ‘You are the children of the devil, and you want to fulfill the desires of your father …’ — Under our pen, the word of the Gospel will be restricted to our sense, unless we express the contrary.”

VI. The Judaic Messianic Expectation: Domination of the Earth, Oppression of the Church of Christ

Le Juif, Chapter XII — Le Messie judaïque

(Translated from the French original; text as quoted with quotation marks in the Amazon seller description of the 2016 Reconquista edition)

“The real, or symbolic, Messiah whom they await has promised them the domination of the earth, the oppression of the Church of Christ, the suppression of the Christian name, and the imminent and universal subjugation of peoples.”

(French original: “le Messie réel, ou symbolique, qu’ils attendent, leur a promis la domination de la terre, l’oppression de l’Église du Christ, la suppression du nom chrétien, le prochain et universel assujettissement des peuples.”)

Le Juif, Chapter XII — Le Messie judaïque

(Translated from the French original; text as quoted with quotation marks in the Amazon seller description of the 2016 Reconquista edition)

“Understanding that ‘man acts according to what he believes,’ infiltrated into the heart of all nations without ever merging with them, this people, ‘simultaneously exclusive and cosmopolitan,’ has as the sole aim of its efforts the realization of its ideas, ‘proclaimed under the name of modern principles by Israel itself, and of which the consequence is the messianic era that its wishes summon.'”

(French original: “proclamées sous le nom de principes modernes par Israël lui-même, et dont la conséquence est l’ère messianique que ses vœux appellent.”)

Le Juif, Discussion (Causerie), p. XXI–XXII

(English translation: I. McGillivray, 2023)

“We will notice the character of universality that we point out in the Alliance Israélite Universelle, in the Universal Association of Freemasonry, and in the more recent auxiliaries entitled the Universal Religious Alliance, open to those whom the name of Israelite would still frighten … the anti-Christian philosophy of the eighteenth century, the Universal Israelite Alliance and the Universal Society of Masonry living with one and the same life, animated by one and the same soul!”

VII. Freemasonry as the Latent Organization of Militant Judaism

Le Juif, Discussion (Causerie), p. XXIII — Original French

(French original, as preserved at galebachlaw.com from the 1869 first edition)

“Il se verra donc, sur tous les points de ce globe où palpite un cœur de Juif, que ce Juif témoigne de ses sympathies les plus ardentes à la maçonnerie, sur laquelle l’Eglise du Christ a lancé les foudres de ses anathèmes. Car la maçonnerie, issue des mystérieuses doctrines de la cabale, que cultivait derrière l’épaisseur de ses murs le philosophe du dix-neuvième siècle, n’est que la forme moderne et principale de l’occultisme, dont le Juif est le prince, parce qu’il fut dans tous les siècles le prince et le grand maître de la cabale. Le Juif est donc naturellement, et nous ajoutons qu’il est nécessairement l’âme, le chef, le grand maître réel de la maçonnerie, dont les dignitaires connus ne sont, la plupart du temps, que les chefs trompeurs et trompés de l’ordre.”

(English translation by the editor of the galebachlaw.com timeline page:)

“It will be seen then, at every place on the globe where a Jewish heart beats, that this Jew testifies to his most ardent sympathies for Masonry, upon which the Church of Christ has launched the scourges of its anathemas. For Masonry, issuing forth from the mysterious doctrines of the Kabbala, which were cultivated behind thick walls by the 19th century philosophe, is only the modern, principal form of occultism, of which the Jew is the prince, because he was throughout the centuries the prince and grand master of Kabbalism. The Jew is thus naturally, and, we add, necessarily, the soul, the head, the real grand master of Masonry, whose recognized dignitaries are only, most of the time, the deceiving and deceived heads of the order.”

Le Juif, Discussion (Causerie), p. XXIII–XXIV — Original French

(French original, as preserved at galebachlaw.com from the 1869 first edition)

“Au sein de ces hauts et impénétrables conseils de l’occultisme, dont le but spécial est de déchristianiser le monde et de refondre dans un moule unique les institutions de toutes les sociétés humaines, le Juif devra donc siéger en majorité ? Oui sans doute, et l’empire, dans ces régions de ténèbres sociales, lui est assuré par le nombre des voix. Ainsi le veut la constitution de l’Ordre ; ainsi le veulent les statuts, et ces statuts sont le secret suprême du véritable adepte. Voilà ce que nous devons dire, et c’est là ce que le monde ignore, ce que les initiateurs lui cachent comme le plus important de leurs mystères.”

(English translation by the editor of the galebachlaw.com timeline page:)

“At the heart of these high, impenetrable councils of occultism, whose special goal is to de-Christianize the world and refashion in a unique mold the institutions of all human societies, will not the Jew have to have a majority of seats? Yes, without doubt, and the empire, in these regions of social darkness, is assured to him by the number of votes. This is what the constitution of the Order provides; this is what the statutes provide, and these statutes are the supreme secret of the true initiate. This is what we must say, and this is what the world ignores, what the initiators hide from it as the most important of their mysteries.”

Le Juif, Discussion (Causerie), p. XXIII

(English translation: I. McGillivray, 2023)

“The masonry of the high adepts, that of the serious initiates, finally allows us to see through the meaning of its manifestos that it is ultimately only the latent organization of militant Judaism, just like the Universal Israelite Alliance is one of its patent organizations.”

VIII. The Jew as Natural Master: Domination as the Cardinal Jewish Trait

Le Juif, Discussion (Causerie), p. XI

(English translation: I. McGillivray, 2023)

“Whoever you are, here is your master; / It is, was, or must be! … Our master, him? The same, and we will point out that one thing among all distinguishes the Jew and more than ever characterizes him: it is a need for domination which fills his heart, and takes its source in the pride of his national instincts, that nourishes his religious faith. Now what the Jew hopes, wants, prepares and carries out, eager to reach this end of the desires and indefatigable expectations of his nation, is what our public ignores with profound and inexplicable ignorance.”

Le Juif, Discussion (Causerie), p. XX

(English translation: I. McGillivray, 2023)

“He said to himself that whoever calls the Jew, or defends his cause against him before the judge — if this cause is not insignificant — is lost in advance, and lost without resource! He said to himself that the Jew, strong in the innumerable means that his nation brings into play, crushes without effort the reckless one who attacks or resists him, if this reckless one is not a power. And, since these things were said, have the Jews not entered in tight files in the ranks of the European magistracy? Do they not have people of all degrees of justice in their midst? Do they not swarm in the administrations, in the councils, and in the high offices of the State?”

IX. The Talmudic Assassination and the Blood Accusation

Le Juif, Chapter VI — L’Assassinat Talmudique / Chapter VII — Du sang, et pourquoi, pp. 272, 274, 275

(Translated from the French original; these passages, quoting the testimony in the Damascus Affair of 1840 involving the murdered Capuchin friar Father Thomas, are reproduced as cited by des Mousseaux. French text with page references as given in the Chire/Delacroix edition seller description.)

“They lie in wait for him, seize him, sacrifice him in the same manner in which they sacrificed their master, and preserve of his person only just what their Talmudic law coveted: his blood.” — (p. 272)

“What did you do with the entrails? We cut them up, we put them in the bag and we put them in the conduit.” — (p. 274)

“The Father remained above the basin until the complete effusion of the blood, for the space of half an hour or two-thirds of an hour.” — (p. 275)

(Note: “Their master” — i.e., Jesus Christ — is des Mousseaux’s editorial interpolation in p. 272, aligning the killing of Father Thomas with the Deicide.)

X. The Jewish Question in History: Persecutions and Their Cause

Le Juif, Note (Note destinée au chapitre XI), p. xliii

(Translated from the French original, Google Books snippet, p. xliii of the 1886 second edition)

“From time immemorial the most powerful means that man can dispose of have been employed to this end. Egyptian Pharaohs, Assyrian kings, Roman emperors, crusaders, Scandinavians, Gothic princes, holy inquisitors — all have deployed their entire energy to arrive at this goal: banishments, expulsions, captivities, confiscations, refined tortures, immense massacres …”

Le Juif, Chapter XI — Table of Contents heading

(English translation: I. McGillivray, 2023)

“THE CAUSE OF THE IMMENSE UNPOPULARITY OF THE Jew AND OF THE PERSECUTIONS AGAINST HIM IS THE SAME AS IN THE MIDDLE AGES. — HIS EXPECTATIONS AND HIS EXPECTATIONS OF DOMINATION ARE THE SAME.”

XI. Cicero on the Power of the Jewish Multitude

Le Juif, Discussion (Causerie), p. XVIII–XIX

(English translation: I. McGillivray, 2023)

“Cicero, in the very seat of his power, that Cicero in the tribune put a damper on his word when he had to fear that his word would irritate the nervous susceptibility of the Jew, this powerful and skilful exciter (…quantum valent in concionibus!). ‘Ah! I understand you, Lélius: This is why this cause is pleaded near the Aurelian degrees! that’s why you chose this place, and that you surrounded yourself with this peat! You know what is the multitude of these Jews, what is their union, their understanding, their know-how and their sway over the crowd of assemblies. But I will lower my tone to be heard only by judges; for I cannot be unaware that in the midst of them stand their leaders, always ready to lead them either against myself, or against the elite of the citizens; do not therefore think that I lend myself of any kind to facilitate this task for them.’ — Hoe nimirum est illud quod non longe a gradibus Aurelianis heec causa dicitur … CICERO, Pro Flacco, § XXVIII.“

XII. The Press and the Suppression of Historical Criticism

Le Juif, Discussion (Causerie), p. XXVII–XXIX

(English translation: I. McGillivray, 2023)

“Incapable that any writer would be to fight, in his isolation, against a nation which alone possesses the vital forces of most nations, and that of the press on the front line, it would be necessary, at the very moment and in the interest of the public independence, to oppose to the patent and latent associations of Judaism the force of a contrary association … we would ask an account of each of the publications of Judaism, of each of the issues of its Reviews, attacks so often false and brutal that their implacable hatred of Christianity arouses against our beliefs, against our worship, against our clergy, against our religious orders and our Supreme Pontiff.”

XIII. The Two Cabals: Origin of the Secret Societies in Pharisaic Magic

Le Juif, Appendix Chapter — Les Deux Cabales ou la science des traditions

(Des Mousseaux’s own thematic outline of the Appendix, as recorded by bibliographer Caillet, 1913, and Pierre Dujols, June 1913 catalogue; confirmed by the AbeBooks listing of the 1886 second edition)

“Oral traditions of the Synagogue anterior to the Biblical books. The divine Kabbala, entrusted to the Doctors and become corrupted. The magical Kabbala, which gives knowledge of the spirits of this world and governs every being by the virtue of letters, words and numbers; it is the key to the invisible world, the secret of ancient Spiritism. All religions are issued from the Kabbala; the Masonic associations owe to it their secrets and their symbols. The Zohar and the Talmud.”

(French original: “Traditions orales de la Synagogue antérieures aux livres bibliques. La Kabbale divine, confiée aux docteurs et devenue corrompue. La Kabbale magique, qui donne la connaissance des esprits de ce monde, et gouverne tout être par la vertu des lettres, des mots et des nombres; elle est la clef du monde invisible, le secret du spiritisme antique. Toutes les religions sont issues de la Kabbale, les associations maçonniques lui doivent leurs secrets et leurs symboles. Le Zohar et le Talmud.”)

XIV. Approval of R. P. Voisin, Director of the Seminary of Foreign Missions

Le Juif, Prefatory Letters, p. IX

(English translation: I. McGillivray, 2023)

“I have read with the greatest interest your manuscript entitled The Jew, Judaism, Judaization of Christian Peoples, and I send it back to you without criticism. I learn there a multitude of things that I did not know, and whose importance seems to me to be extreme. Few subjects are more worthy of study, not only of Catholics, but of all men of good faith indifferent or hostile to Catholicism. It is time, high time, more than time to open your eyes to the facts that you have been able to bring to light, and their imminent and immense consequences! The extraordinary interest which attaches to the reading of your chapters is not less than that which attaches to your works on magic, and your long appendix on the two Cabals casually throws a very great light on the latter question. Your book, finally, is suitable for all classes of readers, and I like to predict the great and long success that I wish it. — Voisin. 5 octobre 1869.“

XV. The Motto of the Work

Le Juif, Title Page (1869)

(English translation: I. McGillivray, 2023)

“RATHER TO DIE THAN NOT TO SERVE!”

APPENDIX: Contemporary Catholic Reception — La Civiltà Cattolica on des Mousseaux

The following passages are not by des Mousseaux himself but are included as primary documentation of how his book was received by official Jesuit Catholic scholarship. They confirm that the key theological categories he deployed — including the charge of deicide — were accepted and endorsed by the principal Jesuit review of the era.

La Civiltà Cattolica, Series 7, Vol. 11 (1870), p. 72 — Book Review of Le Juif

(English translation from the Italian by the editor of galebachlaw.com)

“The work that we now announce has a special importance, because it shows what is the principal instrument of the satanic spirit operating to de-Christianize the world. That instrument is Judaism. The author, with a great wealth of erudition, compiles the history of Jewish corruption and the atrocious, implacable war that the deicide nation has always waged against the religion of Jesus Christ. He examines and describes the immoral Talmudic doctrines and then describes them in practice, delineating with strong brush strokes the Jewish influence in today’s world. Gold, of which the Hebrews have despoiled the Christians in nearly all the countries of the West, is in their hands; journalism is for the most part their affair, or dependent on them; in the secret or Masonic fraternal orders that disturb all of social life, they have the most powerful hand: in sum, that which is called revolution and is distinguished from all the social ills of past times by its hatred of what it knows of Christianity, and driven above all by the Jews, who have become thereby the secret masters of a great portion of Europe. The facts and documents that the knight des Mousseaux reports and quotes in great number cast great light upon what he demonstrates: and it is impossible to scan his present book and not see clearly that the primary motive forces of the modern spirit, dwelling hidden at the foundation of Judaism, are always the same as itself in rancor against the name of Jesus Christ.”

La Civiltà Cattolica, Series 7, Vol. 11 (1870), p. 72 — continued

(English translation from the Italian by the editor of galebachlaw.com)

“The most beautiful fruit to be gained from this book is to sense that supporting revolution does nothing but drive ever more the Christian peoples to fall into the clutches of Judaism, which sucks their blood, corrupts them, demoralizes them and subjugates them secretly but in reality to their tyranny.”

Sources

All primary passages from des Mousseaux’s text are drawn from the following sources. English-language passages from the McGillivray translation are reproduced verbatim without alteration. Passages translated from the French are translated directly from verified original French text by the editor of this page. The Civiltà Cattolica passages in the Appendix are translated from the Italian by the editor of the galebachlaw.com timeline page and are reproduced with full attribution.

Primary Editions of Le Juif (1869):

Secondary Sources and Attestations Used: