Draft:Pro Aris et Focis (secret society)

Pro Aris et Focis (Latin: "For Altar and Hearth", sometimes rendered as "For God and Country") was a secret society in Brussels (then part of the Austrian Netherlands) in 1789, which prepared for the Brabantine Revolution against Emperor Joseph II. It was led by the lawyers Jan-Baptist Verlooy and Jan Frans Vonck.

The society would ally themselves with the more conservative Statist faction to form a united block against the Habsburg monarchy.

During the Brabant Revolution, the society formed the core of the revolution's progressive Vonckist faction, which would later be purged by the Statist faction following the proclamation of the United Belgian States.

Ideology
The society and its Vonckist succesors advocated for the independence of the Southern Netherlands (now Belgium) from Habsburg rule, and held similar principles as those of the contemporary French Revolution. Advocating for popular sovereignty, democracy, the reduction or total abolition of the privileges of the first and second estates, as well as other broadly Enlightenment beliefs.

Most did not want to change anything about the status of the Catholic Church, though anti-clerical factions did exist. The most prominent being led by the Vonckist lawyer Charles Lambert d'Outrepont.