Andrei Towianski
Towianski . . . was born in Lithuania, and studied at the University of Wilno. Early in life he became involved in Polish mystical [?] circles, and in 1832 abandoned his profession of the law to travel to Russia. Here he sat at the feet of the Martinist painter Joseph Olesciewicz and returned through Poland on his way to France. En route to Paris he made a pilgrimage to the field of Waterloo, and his musings on the defeat of Napoleon formed the first text of his cult, in which the figure of a Napoleon-Messiah plays a great part. In the French capital Towianski secured the permanent allegiance of the Polish national poet, Adam Mickiewicz, and was introduced by him to the Polish emigrés assembled in Nôtre Dame. Towianski's preaching was
thought so inflammatory that the Archbishop of Paris organized his expulsion in 1842.
Towianski had already formed the circle of the 'Work of God', which he directed through Mickiewicz from Switzerland. This group formed an alliance with the heretical church of the Norman prophet VINTRAS, and created a stir by organized demonstrations of its support for the mission of Towianski during Adam Mickiewicz's tenure of the chair of Slavonic Literature at the Collège de France. Towianski re-entered France only once more, during the revolution of 1848, and was sentenced to be deported to Cayenne.
The influence of Mickiewicz saved him ; but . . . the 'Work of God' faded from sight. Its influence continued to be felt in the underground of mysticism and idealistic Socialism inhabited by the magician Eliphas LÉVI and the Abbé Lammenais, which found continuing inspiration in the idea of social Messianism which the Poles had first adopted. J. W.
[Further readin : James Webb, The Flight from Reason, Macdonald, London, 1971 ; as The Occult Revival, Library Press, New York, 1973 ]