Note 299 — Chapter III

Forestier, Les Illuminés de Bavière et la Franc-Maçonnerie allemande, p. 103. This author, upon whose recent painstaking researches much reliance is placed in this chapter, relates that one traveler who was in Bavaria at this time, found 28,000 churches and chapels, with pious foundations representing a total value of 60,000,000 florins. Munich, a city of 40,000 inhabitants, had no less than 17 convents. When a papal bull, issued in 1798, authorized the elector to dispose of the seventh part of the goods of the clergy, the Bavarian government, in executing the pope’s directions, deducted 25,000,000 florins, and it was remarked that this amount did not equal the sum which had been agreed upon. Cf. ibid., pp. 103 et seq.