The Paths of Evil: Conspiracies, Plots, and Secret Societies

Conspiracies and secret societies exist because man, wounded by Original Sin, is inclined to evil and his social nature leads him to unite with other men in carrying out evil plans. With typical precision, historian Roberto de Mattei navigates us through this gloomy labyrinth of evil amid congiure, conspiracies, and plots -- terms often used as synonyms but which, through their semantic and conceptual differences, can each assist us in understanding better the hidden dimension of the history of the past five centuries.

While the Italian term congiure indicates secret agreements limited to a few people and aimed at killing a sovereign or a political leader, often in the context of a power struggle, conspiracies are projects with a much broader scope that seek to overthrow the constituted order. The golden age of congiure and political assassinations runs from the poisons of the Renaissance to the 1700s. Then, with the Enlightenment and the French Revolution, an age opened in which the traditional congiure was bolstered by the development of conspiracies of an ideological and political character.

The plot, on the other hand, is an elusive, hidden agglomerate of which neither the identity of the protagonists nor the concrete operative means are revealed. Professor de Mattei posits that the contemporary plotting spirit we see today -- from the Aquarius conspiracy, to the Great Reset, to the virus pandemic -- has nothing to do with the study of anti-Christian secret societies, which has always been part of historiography and Catholic apologetics but, in fact, plays into the hands of those intent on the psychological, intellectual, and moral destabilization of the West. In these fascinating pages, you will discover:

• Whether socio-psychological criteria are enough to formulate a conspiracy theory
  
• What famous political minds such as Niccolò Machiavelli believed about conspiracies
  
• How fabrications of plots by individuals such as Catherine de' Medici led to bloodshed
  
• The cruelest epoch in history and its aftershocks in the schemes of secret societies
  
• The role of the occult in plots and conspiracies, and its relationship with revolution
  
• Solutions to avoid becoming lost in the matrix of evil and lies in modernity

Ultimately, you will find how to differentiate between true and false plots and to discern how some conspiracies lead to heresy and insidiously attempt to destroy Christianity. By reading this book, you will be equipping yourself to challenge and overcome the dark errors of our times.

Roberto de Mattei is a Catholic historian who has taught in several Italian universities. Between 2003 and 2011, he served as vice president of the National Research Council, the highest Italian scientific institution. He is president of the Lepanto Foundation and editor of the magazine Radici Cristiane and the news agency Corrispondenza Romana. He has authored thirty-five books, including The Second Vatican Council: An Unwritten Story, which was translated into eight languages; Love for the Papacy & Filial Resistance to the Pope in the History of the Church; Saint Pius V; The Meaning of God's Providence in Our Lives; The Paths of Evil; and The Church in Storms. He has received many awards, including membership in the Order of St. Gregory the Great from the Holy See for his service to the Roman Catholic Church. He is married with five children.