Ritual, Secrecy, and Civil Society - Volume 1 - Number 2 - Winter 2013-2014

Ritual, Secrecy, and Civil Society

Volume 1, Number 2 • Winter 2013
©2013 Policy Studies Organization

Table of Contents

Princesses of the Blood and Sisters in Masonry: The Duchesse de Chartres, the
Duchesse de Bourbon and the Princesse de Lamballe 3
Janet Burke

The Masonic Degree of Rose-Croix and Christianity: The Complex Links between
Religion and Freemasonry during the Enlightenment 15
Pierre Mollier

“Livella” Conquers the Mediterranean Region: History of Italian Freemasonry in

Egypt 25
Emanuela Locci

Juan Gris, from the Studio to the Lodge: Art and Freemasonry in Paris’ 1920 32
Pascal Bajou

Anti-Masonry and Anti-Semitism in 1930s France 42

André Combes

Research Note: Address to the 2002 California Masonic Symposium 52

Alain Bauer
 Ritual, Secrecy, and Civil Society - Volume 1 - Number 2 - Winter 2013-2014

Ritual, Secrecy, and Civil Society:

Issue No. 2, Winter 2013–2014

Freemasonry: Religious and Political Issues

Foreword by Pierre Mollier

Janet Burke has been a pioneer in the study of eighteenth-century female Masonry, and we
are delighted to publish her remarkable article on three exceptional “sisters.” This is the first
time that there has been a truly scientific study on this somewhat mythical subject. Aside
from rather extraordinary individual fates, the Masonic archives tell of issues related not
only to the question of elites, but also that of women’s status.

The relationships between Freemasonry and the religious domain have often been com-
plicated. Today, the Rosicrucian Grade system is one of the most widely used in the world.
It was therefore of interest to identify the religious sources of this unusual Masonic ritual,
which was born in a Catholic land, but was highly influential on the Reformation.

From the eighteenth century, Freemasonry sought to be cosmopolitan. Emanuela Locci

describes an example in which Freemasonry was both an ideological and a practical tool
in uniting communities and encouraging them to live together despite their differences.
Moreover, as with all Latin Masonries, its lodges helped to spread new liberal and progres-
sive ideas during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Masons often cite the names of great artists, such as Mozart and Goethe, who belonged to
the Order. However, there were also illustrious brothers in the world of modern art. With
Picasso and Braque, Juan Gris was one of the founders of cubism. Pascal Bajou describes
his devotion to Freemasonry and offers intriguing lines of inquiry about the links between
Freemasonry and the world of modern art in 1920s Paris.

The support that Masonic lodges gave to new ideas in Latin countries often created hostility
against Freemasonry from reactionary and ultraconservative elements. André Combes ex-
plains the strong relationships between anti-Semitism and anti-Masonry in 1930s Europe,
where Masonry made a great and noble commitment to fighting anti-Semitism. Finally, we
are pleased to publish an important paper on today's Franco-American Masonic relations
with the speech by Alain Bauer, then Grand Master of the Grand Orient of France, at the
symposium of the Grand Lodge of California in 2002.

All this makes for yet another enlightening issue, which I hope will allow our readers to
discover more of the many faces of Masonry.

Pierre Mollier
Editor-in-Chief

2
 Ritual, Secrecy, and Civil Society - Volume 1 - Number 2 - Winter 2013-2014
Princesses of the Blood and Sisters in Masonry:
The Duchesse de Chartres, the Duchesse de Bourbon and
the Princesse de Lamballe.
Janet Burke
O
ne critical issue in the study of
women in freemasonry, within
the broader context of the mason-
ic movement, concerns the matter of mo-
tivation. For centuries, historians of ma-
sonry looked on the mixed-gender lodges
of adoption as institutions not relevant to
the masonic world. They often classified
the women who joined as empty-headed
and profligate, indulging themselves with
meaningless pseudo-masonic ceremonies
to alleviate their boredom; they saw the
men who created and joined these lodges of
adoption and sponsored women for mem-
bership as doing so primarily to mollify de-
manding women. But the question these
historians of masonry were not asking, the
essential question within the context of the
social and intellectual history of women,
is what meaning the organization had for
the women who became members. Why
did they join? How did the existence of the
organization change their sense of them-
selves and their aspirations? Given the se-
crecy of the organization and the paucity of
first-person accounts, formulating the an-
swer to that question is vexing. The exist-
ing documents do provide hints and win-
dows, however. This paper will propose an
answer to the question by looking briefly at
membership patterns and motivations for
affiliation as well as some of the rituals. It
will touch upon small town and provincial
1
Margaret Jacob, reviewing archives recently returned to the Grand Orient de France from Russia, dis-
covered that members of the Masonic lodge at Bordeaux were showing signs of skepticism about lodges
of adoption as early as the 1740s. Before, the earliest known lodge with women members was in the early
1750s.
3
lodges, lodges in cities with a parlement,
military lodges, and the glittering lodges
of Paris; but it will focus primarily on the
three princesses of the blood, the Duchess
de Bourbon, the Princess de Lamballe and
the Duchess de Chartres, taking into ac-
count what their contemporaries said about
them, what they said about themselves, and
the features of their personalities and per-
sonal histories that seem most to explain
their reasons for becoming active in lodges
of adoption, even taking the highest leader-
ship positions within the organization.
Women freemasons were clearly of
the elite. For the most part they were noble-
women, with a few coming from the ranks
of the wealthy bourgeoisie. Although the
actual circumstances surrounding the for-
mation of the earliest lodges of adoption,
probably in the 1740s, are sketchy, by the
late 1770s, women’s masonry had clearly
taken on its own life and significance.1 The
critical interpretive points here are that the
lodges and ceremonies were meaningful to
the women who were members, the lodg-
es of adoption were of importance to the
men who sponsored and joined them, and
the lodges provided a space where, behind
closed doors, women could and did devel-
op an incipient feminism. This must be the
framework within which scholars approach
these organizations, not the framework
within which one simply and solely com-
 Ritual, Secrecy, and Civil Society

pares them with traditional male lodges. adoption for these people was the emphasis
The lodges of adoption seemed to serve a on Enlightenment ideals and the opportu-
variety of social and political purposes, the nity to gather under that banner in an ex-
extent of which one can only guess given clusive society.
the secret nature of the lodges; the clues are For the high society in other lodges
in the membership rosters and rituals. of adoption, the attraction is not immedi-
Masonry reflected the variety in the ately obvious. On the roster of the Loge de
nobility itself; the lodges of adoption man- la Candeur appear all the names of people
ifested that same variety. Some male lodges who ranked high in Court circles. In the
were composed of a relatively new nobili- Esquisse des travaux d’adoption of 1778, the
ty very jealous of its prerogatives; in cities brothers listed were virtually all military
with a parlement, certain lodges tended to officers of very high rank. Among the fif-
serve as congregation points for govern- ty-one regular members were twenty-three
ment officials, and these were the institu- counts, thirteen marquises, one duke, two
tions that generally sponsored lodges of viscounts, two barons and seven knights.
adoption. Many military lodges had lodges The sisters were even more illustrious; only
of adoption. These military lodges were of- one on the list of thirty-one did not have a
ten closely allied with the Parisian lodges; title.2 The next year, the number of members
their members were established nobles sta- had dropped slightly, but the ranks repre-
tioned in various parts of France, trying to sented were as high as in 1778.3 The lodge
set up a pleasant society in their outposts had its most important moment of recog-
and ward off their boredom. Other lodges nition in 1777 when the Grand Master, the
of adoption existed in small towns with a Duke de Chartres, his wife the Duchess de
mixed membership serving a primarily so- Chartres, his sister the Duchess de Bour-
cial function. In Paris the lodges reflected bon, and the Princess de Lamballe visited
the interest in freemasonry of the Court the lodge. The Viscount le Veneur fairly
nobility and also the desire for men and overflowed with joy in his written remi-
women of letters to assemble under the niscences of the occasion: “What a sight to
masonic banner. These latter were the most behold! What a majestic spectacle!”4 The
illustrious lodges of adoption. In them were Duke de Chartres initiated his wife and his
felt, within masonry, the full force of both sister.5 Shortly thereafter the Duchess de
the Enlightenment and the life at Court. Bourbon became the Grand Mistress of the
The Loge des Neufs-Soeurs, to which Vol- Lodges of Adoption in France. It is these
taire belonged, was a philosophical lodge; highborn women in the Loge de la Candeur
its lodge of adoption was presided over for who, perhaps more than any other women
a few years by Mme. Helvétius, herself an masons, caused masonic historians to con-
Enlightenment spirit. One may reasonably sider lodges of adoption frivolous. Devoted
assume that the attraction to the lodges of masonic writers questioned the sincerity
2
Esquisse des travaux d’adoption (n.c.: n.p., 1778) pp. 43-46.
3
Seconde esquisse des travaux d’adoption (n.c.:n.p., 1779), pp. 40-43.
4
Ibid., p. 14
5
Jan Snoek posits an earlier initiation date for the duchesses based on the date of the installation of the
Duke of Chartres as Grand Master (October 1773) and the date the Duchess de Bourbon took over as Grand
Mistress of the Lodges of Adoption in France (May 1775) in a ceremony in the adoption lodge “Saint An-
toine.” He has no positive documentation for this as-yet-unidentified date.

4
 Princesses of the Blood and Sisters in Masonry
of such august personages in following the
ideals and lessons of masonry. The ques-
tion continually arose whether freemason-
ry was not just a superficial pastime for
these people, breaking up the monotonous
routine of Court balls, card games and idle
conversation. The most enlightening exer-
cise in the face of these reservations about
the women’s sincerity is a close look at the
three princesses of the blood who chose to
link their names prominently with an or-
ganization that was technically illegal in
France.
The Duchess de Bourbon was born
Louise-Marie-Thérèse Batilde d’Orléans
July 9, 1750, at the Palace of St. Cloud, the
daughter of Prince Louis-Philippe d’Orléans,
Duke d’Orléans, and Louise-Henriette de
Bourbon-Conti. Few families in the coun-
try were more illustrious. In 1770 she was
married to her cousin, a young man with as
illustrious a background as her own. Louis
Henri Joseph de Bourbon was the son of the
Prince de Condé, prince of the blood, Peer
and Grand Master of France, Duke d’En-
ghien and de Guise, Count de Clermont in
Argonne, Governor and Lieutenant General
for the King in his Provinces of Bourgogne
and Bresse. The two cousins renewed their
childhood acquaintance at Court, where
the Duchess spent more and more time
as she completed her education. The duke
was totally enraptured with his cousin, who
was nearing age twenty. He was fourteen.
No one seemed to object to this age differ-
ence. The parents on both sides gave their
blessing; King Louis XV registered no ap-
prehension; and Pope Clement XIV granted
a dispensation from the prohibition against
marrying close relatives.6
6
Comte Ducos, La mere du duc d’Enghien (1750-1822) (Paris: Nourrit, 1900), p.75.
7
Baronne d’Oberkirch, Mémoires sur la cour de Louis XVI et la société française, avant 1789, 2 vols. (Paris:
Gratiot, 1853) 2:19.
8
Ibid., 2:23-24
5
Shortly after the marriage, the fairy-
tale dissipated. The Baroness d’Oberkirch
of Strasbourg, who knew the family well
and took many long confidence-shar-
ing walks with the duchess, related in her
memoirs that “the passion of the Duke de
Bourbon was too fiery to last for a long
time; it died out like a sudden short blaze.”7
The duke began to find other women with
whom to share his time. Shortly after the
marriage, his child was born to a perform-
er at the Opera, and the duke not only had
the child baptized with the Bourbon name
but, by order of the King, chose as the god-
parents the illustrious Mlle de Condé and
the Prince de Soubise.8 Perhaps even more
devastating to the duchess were his numer-
ous affairs with Court women, two from
her own personal entourage. The duchess
was driven to a jealous misery, and the two
were legally separated by 1780. Her only
child, the Duke d’Enghien, born in 1772 af-
ter a painful and dangerous labor, was tak-
en from her to be educated elsewhere and
she saw him only at infrequent intervals.
Although this experience of motherhood
was common among elites of the period, it
could still be, and often was, a psychologi-
cally painful one. It was during this trying
time of her life that the Duchess de Bour-
bon became a freemason.
In analyzing the attraction this se-
cret organization held for the duchess, we
must consider several aspects of her life
and character. The first was her unhappy
marriage, the misery, frustration and lone-
liness she felt in her palaces. She described
her feelings to the Baroness d’Oberkirch on
one of their long walks: “I loved my hus-
band; sometimes it seems that I still love
 Ritual, Secrecy, and Civil Society
him; I loved him with an unbridled, unrea-
soned passion; he has paid me back with a
contempt that is unreasoned and perhaps
also unbridled, like my love.”9
The friendship of other women is
an important characteristic of masonry
that may well have appealed to the duch-
ess. Like many grande dames of the day, the
Duchess de Bourbon often sought the close
friendship of another woman, a confidente.
She also seemed to talk very openly to the
Baroness d’Oberkirch. It may well be that
the close friendships formed in the mason-
ic lodges served as palliatives for this wom-
an, who had to endure not only the unhap-
piness of a husband openly flaunting his
infidelities with members of her entourage
and the inaccessibility of her only child,
but also the lack of compassion of many
of her peers who expected her to bear her
plight with dignity and stoic indifference.
The eighteenth-century Court was rife with
adultery and stunted mother-child rela-
tions, and women were expected to adjust
accordingly. There was little sympathy for
those who could not.
Another feature of the duchess’s in-
terest in freemasonry could well have been
her fascination with mysticism, which was
also a part of the freemasonic experience.
Her problems with the infidelities of the
duke reached a climax with one particular
incident that, according to the Baroness
d’Oberkirch, led the Duchess to her “highly
exalted” mystical ideas.10 The incident took
place at the Mardi Gras Ball in 1778. The
blatantly unfaithful Duke de Bourbon had
recently tired of his well-known affair with
Mme. de Canilhac. Mme. de Canilhac had
once been the Duchess de Bourbon’s trav-
9
Ibid., 2:22.
10
Ibid., 2:21
11
Ibid., 2:24-5.
12
Robert Darnton, Mesmerism (New York: Schocken, 1968), pp. 3-4.
6
eling companion but had been dismissed
when her affair with the duke became com-
mon Court gossip. The Duchess de Bour-
bon entered the ball on the arm of Mme.
de Canilhac’s brother-in-law. They met the
Count d’Artois, brother of the King, with
Mme. de Canilhac herself. The details of
what occurred then vary, for the story be-
came quite well known and changed as it
spread around the Court. For some reason,
the Count d’Artois said something offensive
to the duchess, who snatched the mask off
the count’s face. The count in turn crushed
the duchess’s mask while it was still on
her face. The incident was reported by the
duchess to her friends, and the count took
the story to his friends and to his brother
the King. As the Baroness d’Oberkirch said,
“It was a shocking scandal.”11
The criticism at Court and the dis-
pleasure of the King appear to have been
the catalysts for the Duchess’s withdrawal
into her flights of mysticism. She became
fascinated by Franz Anton Mesmer, who
arrived in Paris in 1778 with his theory
of animal magnetism. All bodies, Mesmer
claimed, were filled with a fluid individu-
als could control and reinforce by “mes-
merizing.” Because sickness was caused
by a blockage to the flow of fluid through
the body, mesmerizing or massaging the
body’s poles could restore health.12 Mesmer
backed his theories with practical appli-
cation: he helped patients make dramatic
recoveries in public performances that in-
cluded fainting, convulsions, communal
self-help sessions, and magnetic baths.
Occasionally Mesmer treated his followers
to a demonstration of somnambulism, the
deep sleep wherein one could communi-
 Princesses of the Blood and Sisters in Masonry
cate with distant or dead spirits. He was the
toast of Paris. The Duchess de Bourbon was
so taken with Mesmer’s theories of magne-
tism and somnambulism that she held a
perpetual open house for mystics.13
In her quest for mystical perfection,
the Duchess de Bourbon also followed the
teaching of the pseudo-masonic Illuminists
Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin, the Philos-
ophe Inconnu, and Martinez de Pasqualis,
his teacher. Preaching a mysterious science
combining the mystical Judaism of the
Kabbalah, Gnostic teachings and masonic
rites, these two claimed they could commu-
nicate with God and receive certain special
gifts that allowed them to perform mira-
cles. The Duchess de Bourbon, according
to the Baroness d’Oberkirch, “spoke often
of Martinez Pasqualis, this theosophe, this
leader of the illuminists, who established a
sect and who was in Paris in 1778. She has
seen a great deal, heard a great deal; she is
a Martinist, or something close to that.”14
Because masonry was a base for the rituals
and creeds of the two, and because mason-
ry included a strong mystical element, the
organization would seem have a natural
attraction for a woman of the Duchess de
Bourbon’s temperament and interests.
The Duchess de Bourbon may also
have found an allure in the charitable side
of masonic activity. Charity was a major
preoccupation of both men’s and women’s
lodges, and the Duchess de Bourbon had
been highly motivated toward charitable
works well before finding her masonic out-
let. The attraction of joining an organiza-
tion with a mission matching her own must
have been very strong. She had long divided
13
Ibid., p. 70.
14
Ibid, 2- 102-3
15
Ducos, p. 192.
16
Ibid
17
Oberkirch, 2:21
7
her days among the administration of her
estates, study, pleasure and charity.15 Each
morning, the duchess went out on foot or
in a carriage with one of her ladies-in-wait-
ing to bring aid to the indigent. She com-
plained that she could never quite find
enough poor people to help, even though
she asked the clergy of her parish, her rela-
tives and her servants to tell her of any suf-
fering they discovered. She founded a hos-
pice and personally cared for the poor souls
in the beds when she visited. This devotion
to charitable works lasted through the Rev-
olution and almost to her death in 1822.16
If charity, mysticism and need for
friends in a trying time were three reasons
why the Duchess de Bourbon might have
been so strongly attracted to masonry in
the late 1770’s, certain other personality
traits and preferences may also have played
a role. The duchess was “politically dem-
ocratic,” which the Baroness d’Oberkirch
noted was “very unusual in a princess of
her blood.”17 The masonic emphasis on
equality would have appealed to this side of
her thinking.
One can readily suppose that the
rituals would also have fascinated the duch-
ess. By the late 1770’s, the rituals of mason-
ry were amateur dramatic productions, and
the duchess was well known for her love of
all aspects of theatre, especially comedy.
She even wrote several plays herself and
staged them at her palace. Similarly, the
banquets that followed each formal meet-
ing would probably have been as attractive
to the duchess as the balls and pageants she
loved to attend. There was also a bit of the
misfit in the Duchess de Bourbon, a love
 Ritual, Secrecy, and Civil Society

of the outrageous and a desire to know ev-
erything that made her a prime candidate
for freemasonry. Although she was lovely
and wealthy, she was also somewhat unbri-
dled in temperament and of a brilliance that
probably set her apart from many of her
contemporaries. She had, in the words of
the Baroness d’Oberkirch, “a troubled and
searching mind.”18
The second princess of the blood at-
tracted to masonry and arriving at the lodge
of La Candeur with the Grand Master, the
Duke de Chartres, on that celebrated occa-
sion in 1777 was Marie-Thérèse-Louise de
Savoie-Carignan, the Princess de Lambal-
le.19 As the Superintendent of the Queen’s
Household, she was in a position of great
power in the Court, which made her the
target of such critical writers as Mme. de
Genlis, who accused her of faking her many
fainting spells, failing to understand seri-
ous discussions, and having no mind of her
own.20 She was constantly a focus of Court
gossip and speculation, especially when she
fell from favor; and she died a violent death
during the Revolution. In general she has
been portrayed as a kind but passive and
not-too-bright puppet of the Queen.21 With
respect to her involvement in freemason-
ry, her various biographers have generally
regarded this part of her life as anomalous,
something into which she must have fallen
by accident or as a result of someone else’s
persuasion. Given this perspective, they
have never been able to reconcile all aspects
of her personality. Only when takes into
account the Princess de Lamballe’s involve-
ment with masonry do her personality and
actions appear fully integrated.
The Princess de Lamballe affiliated
with the lodge La Candeur in 1777 and was
elected Grand Mistress of the Mère Loge
Écossaise (Saint-Jean d’Écosse du Con-
trat Social) in 1781. As with the Duchess
de Bourbon, the dates of the princess’s in-
volvement are significant, for those days
mark a particularly trying time of her life.
Like the Duchess de Bourbon, the Princess
de Lamballe had an unhappy marital life.
The fourth daughter of Louis-Victor de
Savoie-Carignan and Christine-Henriette
of Hesse-Rhinfelds-Rothembourg, she had
come to Paris from Savoy to become the
wife of Louis-Alexandre-Joseph-Stanislas
de Bourbon, the Prince de Lamballe, only
son of the Duke de Penthièvre, a prince of
the blood. They were married in 1767, but
after a year of marriage, filled with infideli-
ties on the part of the Prince de Lamballe, he
died at age twenty. She was eighteen. Rather
than return to her native Savoy, she chose to
enter a convent, the Abbey of Saint-Antoine
des Champs. Two years later, she left the
convent to live with her father-in-law, the
Duke de Penthièvre, who was alone himself
after the death of his son and the marriage
of his daughter. With this new life and the
financial security afforded by her wealthy
father-in-law, she became active at Court
and, soon, a favorite of the Queen, which
led to her controversial appointment as Su-
perintendent of the Queen’s Household. So

18
Ibid., 2:19
19
A richer account of the views I express here is in “Freemasonry, Friendship and Noblewomen: the Role of
the Secret Society in Bringing Enlightenment Thought to Pre-Revolutionary Women Elites,” The History of
European Ideas, vol. 10, No. 33,1989, pp. 283-293.
20
Mme. La comtesse de Genlis, Mémoires Inédites (Paris: Ladvocat, 1825), pp. 283-286.
21
See, for example, Michel de Decker, La Princesse de Lamballe (Paris: Perrin, 1979); M. de Lescure, La
Princesse de Lamballe (Paris: Plon, 1864); Georges Bertin, Mme. de Lamballe (Paris: n.p., 1888); and Al-
bert-Emile Sorel, La Princesse de Lamballe (Paris: Hachette, 1933).

8
 Princesses of the Blood and Sisters in Masonry
within a few years, she had risen from child-
less widow in a foreign land to a position
of enormous power and prestige in France.
Continuing along her seemingly volatile
course through life, however, two years later
the Princess de Lamballe’s status was greatly
diminished when the Queen found a new
favorite, the Countess Jules Polignac. The
political rivalry between the countess and
the princess was most bitter, the princess’s
health became precarious, and, although
she continued in her role as Superintendent
of the Queen’s Household, her lustrous po-
sition at court became decidedly tarnished.
These were the years during which she be-
came a freemason.
In addition, the princess almost
surely had an interest in freemasonry as an
arm of the Enlightenment. Her personal
library was filled with books of Enlighten-
ment thought. After her violent death during
the Revolution, the government made an
inventory of her possessions which listed,
among other works, the thirty-five-volume
Encyclopédie and books by Voltaire, Rous-
seau, Mme. de Sévigné, Restif de la Bret-
onne, Helvétius, Hume and Fénélon. In her
Last Will and Testament, she had left her
copy of the Encyclopédie to the Chevalier
de Durfort.22 The major concepts developed
in the rituals of the four primary degrees
of the lodges of adoption were, significant-
ly, the Enlightenment concepts of liber-
ty, equality and fraternity, linked through
charity, which might well have appealed to
the princess. Although from this distance in
time we cannot ourselves feel or even gauge
the impact of the symbolic words and in-
struments used by the leaders to induct the
women into the various levels of mason-
22
“Testament de madame la princesse de Lamballe” (15 Octobre 1791), 300 API 475, Collection of the
House of Orléans, A.N.
23
Sissela Bok, Secrets (New York: Pantheon, 1982); Victor turner, Celebration, Studies in Festivity and Ritual
(Washington, DC: Smithsonian, 1982); Arnold van Gennep, Les Rites de Passage (Paris, Picard, 1981).
9
ry, we do know that these rituals followed
a pattern recognized by anthropologists as
having consciousness-raising elements for
candidates open to reaching higher levels
of gnosis.23 A primary period of seclusion
where the candidate focused on the death of
her former self was followed by the ritualis-
tic but dramatic imparting of new knowl-
edge and secrets by a leader of the lodge.
The third part of each ceremony was the
candidate’s formal acceptance into the larger
group. Each aspiring member of a lodge of
adoption began by moving through the four
primary degrees, apprentie, compagnonne,
maîtresse, and maitresse parfaite mastering
the knowledge of each before moving to the
next. These basic degrees taught them, first,
fraternity, then liberty, then equality.
As with the Duchess de Bourbon,
the Princess de Lamballe was also quite
certainly attracted to the charitable orienta-
tion of the lodges of adoption. She was well
known for her devotion to charity. Mme.
Guérard, whose reminiscences of the prin-
cess were published in 1801, wrote that the
princess “lived in extraordinary simplicity,
consecrating a large part of her revenues to
the assistance of the unfortunate, or to repay
acts of virtue.” An attorney named Morizot
wrote in his work that the princess’s “char-
ity is her element.” The heart of the mason-
ic body was its charitable work. The char-
itable activities of the masons represented
the interaction among the desperate need
of the poor in eighteenth-century France,
the natural inclination of the women in the
lodges toward charity and the strength of
the humanitarian teaching in their lodge
rituals. At each lodge meeting, a collection
was taken up for the poor and in addition
 Ritual, Secrecy, and Civil Society
to the regular lodge festivities, the women
had special benefit collections for the poor,
contests to find the best ideas for alleviat-
ing suffering, and rewards for people who
had made a difference in the lives of the
unfortunate. Significantly, one of the most
effective and active lodges in carrying out
charitable activities was the lodge La Can-
deur, with which the Princess de Lamballe
was affiliated.
The friendship of other women and
the role of women in society were also con-
cerns of the Princess de Lamballe. Her li-
brary included books touching on the sta-
tus of women and women’s friendship, such
works as Clarisse Harlow, a five-volume
Histoire des femmes françaises and a Bib-
liotheque des dames. Further, in her life at
Court, she sometimes showed herself to be
more interested in the company of women
than in mixed company, even to the point
that she once put herself into the bad graces
of the Queen by giving a pre-ball dinner for
women only.24
It is precisely this attitude of the
Princess de Lamballe toward the Queen
that has baffled her biographers, that has
left them struggling with what seems like
the contradictions in her persona. On the
one hand, contemporaries widely portrayed
her as the Queen’s lackey with no mind of
her own. On the other hand, as exemplified
by that pre-ball party where she invited only
women as well as her refusal to hold grand
balls even though her friends reminded her
that giving a large ball was a certain way to
please the Queen, she appears not to have
been tyrannized by the expectations of the
Court and the Queen. The Count de Mer-
24
Sorel, p. 113
25
Correspondance sécrète entre Marie-Thérèse et le Cte de Mercy-Argenteau, 3 vols (Paris: Didot, 1874), 2:215.
26
Mme. Campan, Mémoires sur la vie privée de Marie Antoinette (Paris: Baudouin, 1822) 1:286.
27
M. Morizot, avocat. Tableau abrégé des espiégleries de la cour, pendant les six premiers mois de 1792, pour
server de suite aux onze memoires précédens (Paris: Labour, 1792), p. 7.
10
cy-Argenteau, Austrian ambassador to
France, wrote regularly to the Empress Ma-
ria Theresa of Austria, the Queen’s mother,
about the failure of the Princess de Lambal-
le to give dinners or parties for the Queen
and the way she wasted precious personal
time with the Queen pleading for appoint-
ments for her friends. Further, he com-
mented that “people were shocked” when
the princess was away from her job, trav-
eling in Holland, during the Queen’s early
pregnancy.25
Like the Duchess de Bourbon,
then, the Princess de Lamballe was a sort
of misfit at Court; she had an intriguingly
strong and independent personality. This
strength of character manifested itself in a
number of ways besides her stubborn un-
willingness to adhere to Court pressures.
One example was her attitude toward the
superintendency. She pushed very hard to
have her pay raised and her duties elevat-
ed, arousing the anger of many members
of the court as well as the Count de Mer-
cy-Argenteau, who complained regularly to
the Empress Maria Theresa about her de-
mands. Another was her approach to the
superintendency once she had settled into
it. She was, by many reports, hard-working
and serious about her position. According
to Mme. Campan, lectrice de Mesdames et
première femme de Chambre de la reine,
the princess “usually stayed at Versailles in
the beginning of her appointment and put
great importance on the faithful execution
of all the duties of her office.”26 The memoirs
of lawyer M. Morizot portray the princess
as “gifted with an excellent judgment. She
is marvelous at attending to details.”27 Her
 Princesses of the Blood and Sisters in Masonry
courage during a raging fire that broke out
in the middle of the night at the Hôtel de
Toulouse, where she lived with the Duke de
Penthièvre, so struck people that at least
two of them mentioned it in prominently
in their memoires.28 They were impressed
with the way she stayed in the center of the
disorder, ordering people out of the house
and refusing to leave herself until everyone
was out and the fire brigade had arrived.
The deep sense of friendship and
loyalty that the masonic rituals taught so
effectively combined with the princess’s in-
dividuality, courage and refusal to bow to
Court pressures help clarify her relation-
ship to the Queen, which has for so long
baffled her biographers. The devotion she
showed to the Queen during the most vi-
olent years of the Revolution only makes
sense with that combination and in the
context of her commitment to masonic ide-
als. She insisted on staying with the Queen
when everyone else had deserted the royal
family despite warnings from many people,
including the Queen, that she was putting
her life in danger by staying in France, de-
spite the fact that she had fallen from favor
many years before, despite the fact that she
had refused to give grand balls and suc-
cumb to other Court pressures. She was not
the Queen’s lackey nor a willing irritant to
the Queen; she was, rather, a strong indi-
vidual who called on her independent na-
ture, her courage, and her sense of loyalty
and friendship in the fateful decision she
made to stay and face the terrible death she
did, in fact, suffer.
The Duchess de Chartres was the
third princess of the blood to link her
name prominently with freemasonry. Lou-
28
Fortaire, p. 159, and Mme. Guénard, Mémoires historiques de Marie-Thérèse-Louise de Carignan, Princesse
de Lamballe, 4 vols. (Paris: Lerouge, 1801) 3:26.
29
E. Delille, Journal de la vie de SAS Madame la D.sse d’Orleans, Douairière (Paris: Blaise, 1822), p. 17.
30
Ibid., pp. 20 and 35-6
11
ise-Marie-Adelaide de Bourbon Penthièvre
was the daughter of the Duke de Penthièvre
and Marie-Thérèse-Félicité d’Est, and sis-
ter of the Prince de Lamballe. She mar-
ried the Duke de Chartres in April 1769 at
the age of sixteen and became the Duch-
ess d’Orléans in 1785 after the death of
the Duke d’Orléans, father of the Duke de
Chartres. The Duchess de Chartres became
a freemason in 1777. In certain areas, spe-
cifically her desire for close friendship with
other women and her devotion to charity,
she had much in common with her sisters-
in-law, the Duchess de Bourbon and the
Princess de Lamballe; and in those two ar-
eas she most certainly derived great benefit
from her masonic association.
If the Duchess de Bourbon and
the Princess de Lamballe were dedicated
to charitable works, the Duchess de Char-
tres could be described as obsessed with
helping the less fortunate. She charged her
hairdresser, M. Regnol, with looking ev-
erywhere for indigent families. While he
arranged her hair every day he reported on
the poor he had found the night before and
took appropriate sums from her to them.29
She went herself on trips both around her
city residence and into the country to seek
out the old, the orphaned, and large, poor
families. If she happened to travel farther
from home, to other cities or provinces,
even to foreign countries, she followed the
same practice.30 She was particularly sensi-
tive to the needs of poor women. When a
drunk once asked her for charity as she de-
scended from her carriage, she ignored him
but had her servants find out the condition
of the man’s wife and children. When they
reported to her that the family was in great
 Ritual, Secrecy, and Civil Society
need, she sent money to the drunk’s wife
directly.31
In times of great hunger, she could
be a salvation society of one: during four
months of the agriculturally disastrous
winter of 1788, the duchess distributed
more than 250 loads of wood, 6,500 pounds
of meat, and 36,000 pounds of bread.32 The
desire to alleviate human suffering of all
kinds was fundamental to her character.
Even the Revolution did not dampen her
charitable enthusiasm; the generosity con-
tinued. When she was placed under house
arrest in 1793 and the wealth of the Bour-
bons was sequestered, she consoled her-
self with the thought that she had enough
wealth left to share with the poor.33 After
the levee en masse that year, the requisi-
tioned soldiers passed near the residence of
the duchess one hot day and stopped by a
fountain to drink some water. The duchess
was concerned that the young men would
become ill drinking such cold water on
a very hot day, so she sent wine to them,
enough for each man to have a bottle of his
own.34 In the last years of her life, the duch-
ess was still dispensing prodigious amounts
of charity. One of the residents of Eu wrote
in 1818 that during a visit by the duchess,
“Each moment was marked by innumera-
ble kindnesses: the most abundant charity
poured into the heart of all the indigent
families.”35
The love of close friends was an-
other lifelong feature of the character of
the Duchess de Chartres. Her personal
secretary, E. Delille, wrote a touching sto-
31
Vie secrete de Louise-Marie-Adelaide de Bourbon Penthièvre, Duchesse d’Orléans, avec ses correspon-
dances politiques (London: Werland, 1790), p. 82.
32
DeLille, p. 48-9.
33
Ibid., p. 61
34
Ibid.35 Ibid., p.180
36
Ibid., p. 37-8
37
“1er Testament de Son Altesse Sérénissime Madame la Duchesse Douairière d’Orléans” (6 Juin 1821),
Collection of the House of Orléans 300 AP I 800, A.N.
12
ry about a childhood friend of the Duch-
ess< Mlle de Montigny, who remained her
soul-mate through their lives. When the
Duchess de Chartres gave birth to a baby
girl she asked permission of the King to
name her daughter Eugene after her child-
hood friend, a promise she had made to
Mlle. De Montigny during their school
years.36 Many years after that, at the end of
their lives, Mlle.de Montigny, then Mme.
la Baronne de Talleyrand, was generously
remembered in the will of the duchess. “In
consideration of the inviolable attachment
which has existed between her and me since
our childhood,” the duchess wrote. She left
her friend a home in Ivry, a diamond worth
twenty-thousand francs, a lifetime income
of twelve-thousand francs, a six-thousand
franc income for her eldest son, three thou-
sand francs for her second son and another
three thousand francs for her third son.37
The Queen of Naples, the Count-
ess d’Ecquevilly and the Countess du Nord
were women whose friendship became
important to the duchess at various times
in her life. The first two were active free-
masons. The Duchess de Chartres was also
close to her sisters-in-law, the Duchess de
Bourbon and the Princess de Lamballe. She
enjoyed their company. The three would
sometimes take trips together, dispensing
charity all along the route. When one had
a problem, the other two would often trav-
el any distance to console her. The Duchess
de Chartres seemed to crave such compan-
ionship, and friendship was in theory also
of interest to her. She must have thought
 Princesses of the Blood and Sisters in Masonry
about the subject quite frequently, for on
the inside back cover of a journal the duch-
ess kept during the 1790s were pasted small
booklets, one of which was on friendship.
It was carefully hand copied and had marks
for passages of particular meaning to her.38
Charity and friendship were, then,
the two pillars of women’s freemasonry
that the Duchess de Chartres would have
found attractive. She was not a mystic like
the Duchess de Bourbon or a fan of the
Enlightenment like the Princess de Lam-
balle. She was intensely religious, a devout
Catholic all her life. She was familiar with
the philosophes and with the mystic lead-
ers, but her guidance came from priests,
bishops and archbishops. She was not a
political democrat nor a misfit at Court.
The Duchess de Chartres had in her life,
however, a variable that her sisters-in-law
did not enjoy, a relatively happy marriage
during the 1770’s and 1780’s, and her at-
traction to freemasonry came primarily
from this direction. In the anonymous Vie
secrete de Louise-Marie-Adelaide de Bour-
bon Penthièvre, Duchesse d’Orléans, the
author wrote that “her husband was a God
for her. When he was gone, her soul, bur-
dened by a painful melancholy, was closed
to feelings of joy and pleasure.”39 She had
loved the duke the first time she met him,
according to the accounts of the day. The
Baron de Besenval described their meeting:
She had seen him only once at the home
of Mme. de Modène, I believe, where the
Duke of Chartres had given her his arm
to lead her to her carriage. Returning to
her convent, she said that she would never
marry another, and she never ceased since
then saying the same thing.40
38
Collection of the House of Orléans, 300 AP III 3, A.N.
39
Vie secrete, p. 2940 M. le Baron de Besenval, Mémoires (Paris: Buisson, 1805), p. 351.
41
Oberkirch, 1:259
13
For years after they married, the
duchess was blind to the faults of her hus-
band, so obvious to others at Court. Even
the King had warned her father, the Duke
de Penthièvre, of the Duke de Chartres’s
bad reputation.41 Like many other men of
the Court, the Duke de Chartres had nu-
merous affairs, only two of which came to
the attention of his wife. These two hurt
her very deeply, however. One was with
Mme. de Genlis, the governess of her chil-
dren, the other with Mme. de Buffon, wife
of Georges-Louis-Marie Leclerc de Buffon.
In part these infidelities led eventually to
the separation of the Duke and Duchess
de Chartres, then d’Orléans, in 1791. Be-
fore the Duchess de Chartres discovered
her husband’s infidelities, however, she was
the perfect wife and mother and apparent-
ly blissfully happy in her married life. Her
entrance into masonry was, as was proba-
bly the case with many women in France,
because her husband wished it. He had
been Grand Master of French freemasonry
for several years and the lodges of adoption
had become an important part of the ma-
sonic structure. His insistence that his wife
become a mason is significant. If masonic
historians had long portrayed the lodges of
adoption as institutions formed to mollify
angry women, toys thrown to the women
by the harassed brethren, and if in the early
years there might have been some truth to
that claim, it was never the entire story. By
the 1770’s and 1780’s, the lodges of adop-
tion had evolved into significant political
and social organizations, illustrated by the
fact that the most powerful man in French
freemasonry, the Duke de Chartres, insist-
ed that his wife join the organization. The
private secretary of the Duchess de Char-
 Ritual, Secrecy, and Civil Society

tres wrote that “The Duke de Chartres… animals, they forced him to add it back in.
wished the princess to be received into The example of the three princess-
freemasonry. Although this ceremony was es and the rosters of the lodges of adoption
not to her taste, the princess, always eager show that no single membership pattern
to obey and please her husband, readily re- prevailed. The women who joined, as the
solved to consent to it.”42 Once she joined, men who sponsored them, were individuals
one can infer that the duchess found attrac- with their own reasons for affiliating. Their
tive the friendship and charitable concerns particular noble status, their personal life
so much a part of masonry, but in the first stories, their desire to be part of an attrac-
instance, it was the will of her husband that tive secret society were all factors entering
had brought her into the organization. into their decisions to join. The pull of the
Whatever their individual motiva- organization was strong enough to attract
tion, the women who joined masonic lodg- provincial residents and military wives in
es of adoption began to develop, behind the need of a center for socialization, members
closed doors, a sense of their own agency. of the noblesse de robe looking for a source
A study of the evolution of degree rituals of increased power, and a court nobility at-
shows a slow but steady change in emphasis, tracted by the charitable activities, Enlight-
symbols and power of the women. Where enment philosophy and the excitement of
once women had “assisted” the males who the secret society. Once they were part of
presided over the ceremony, they began to the new organization, however, their expe-
play a much greater part with the ritual of rience was similar. They were molded by a
1775. By 1779, the ritual was actually con- powerful series of rituals into a community
ducted by the Sisters Inspectress, Treasur- of friends; and within the strength of that
er and Introductress; the brothers “assist- community, they acquired increasing pow-
ed” them. The higher degrees added to the er and a budding sense of feminism.
original four degrees over time manifested
this growth most dramatically. In the de-
grees of Sublime Ecossaise and Amazon-
nerie Anglaise, the ritual centered on the
women themselves; women were the cen-
tral figures and their vows were decidedly
feminist. One also finds evidence that the
women, if they did not actually write the
rituals in the first four degrees, began to in-
fluence the symbolism and language. They
forced the brothers of the Loge des Neuf-
Soeurs to retract a new ritual the brothers
had written for their lodge of adoption ini-
tiation; and the likelihood is that when the
publisher of the standard lodge of adoption
ritual book changed the symbolic descrip-
tion of Noah’s ark from having four floors to
three, dropping the floor for the domestic

42
DeLille, p. 24

14
 Ritual, Secrecy, and Civil Society - Volume 1 - Number 2 - Winter 2013-2014
The Masonic Degree of Rose-Croix and Christianity:
The Complex Links between Religion and Freemasonry
during the Enlightenment
Pierre Mollier
T I. A Masonic Christian Degree
aking shape starting in 1717, specu-
lative, modern Freemasonry orig-
inally practiced the two degrees
inherited from operative masonry: “en-
I
tered apprentice” and “fellow craft”; add-
ed to these, in the 1730s, was a third de-
gree called “master.” Between then and the
1760s, Freemasons would discover and go
about practicing “other degrees.” As cus-
tomary usage has had it, the “other degrees”
go by names that are inexact in a literal
sense, but now established: “high degrees”
or “Scottish degrees.” These other degrees
were the means by which Freemasonry was
to incorporate parts of the the symbolic
Western corpus, and would be one of the
privileged forms of expression of the eso-
teric and Illuminist currents of the century
of the Enlightenment. In the second part of
the 18th century, the degree of the Knight
Rose-Croix would become one of the most
esteemed and most practiced of these up-
per degrees. So, this Masonic ritual raises
particularly interesting questions for the
historian of ideas about the complex links
between Freemasonry and religion.
1
Gustave Bord, La Franc-Maçonnerie en France des origines à 1815, Paris, 1908, reprint Slatkine, Gene-
va-Paris, 1985, p. 538.
2
Transcribed in: Steel-Maret, Archives Secrètes de la Franc-Maçonnerie, reprint Slatkine, Geneva-Paris, 1985,
72-78.
15
during the Century of the Enlight-
enment
f the transcription of a document updat-
ed by Gustave Bord is to be believed—
though it seems to be missing now—
the first attestation of the existence of the
degree of the “Chevalier Rose-Croix” goes
back to the year 1757 and takes place in
France. There is a Masonic diploma deliv-
ered to Brother Targe by the lodge Enfants
de la Sagesse et Concorde [Children of Wis-
dom and Concord] on April 9, 1757. One
of the signatories, Brother Itéguiemme,
follows his paraph with his Masonic attri-
butes: “ex-maître, substitut A.S.P. Chev. de
l’Orient et de Rose-Croix.”1 The second old-
est evidence of this degree’s existence is the
renowned letter that the Masons of Metz
(France) wrote to those in Lyon (France) in
June 1761. The object of this valuable mes-
sage2 was to exchange information between
the order’s dignitaries about the degrees
known or practiced in the two cities. There
it was discovered that the last of the 25 de-
grees of the Lyon brothers was the “Cheva-
lier de l’Aigle, du Pélican, Cher de St André
ou maçon d’Heredon” [“Knight of the Ea-
gle, of the Pelican, Knt of Saint Andrew or
Mason of Heredon”] another classic name
for the Knight Rose-Croix. It must be not-
 Ritual, Secrecy, and Civil Society

ed that the Masons of Metz knew nothing Then the Wise Master (this is the presi-
whatsoever about this degree. dent's title) makes the following invitation:
Masonic rituals from the 18th centu- “My brothers, since Masonry is feeling such
ry with dates are extremely rare. By chance, disgrace, let us give our full attention to
for the degree of Rose-Croix we have two new endeavors in order to rediscover the
manuscripts at our disposal bearing dates, word.” 5
1763 and 1765, which we have no reason to The candidate to the degree of Rose-
cast doubt upon. The rituals that they offer Croix does not have marvelous new secrets
are moreover widely similar, as is the set of offered to him right away. He is simply in-
Rose-Croix rituals that can be attributed to vited to take part in the efforts of disabled
the years 1760—1770. Upon reading these knights. The latter group indeed set off
texts, the deeply Christian nature of the de- seeking “through one new law to rediscover
gree is clearly apparent. The ceremony of that word”6 that will reestablish order and
the Sovereign Chapter of Rose-Croix suc- harmony in the world. At first, the candi-
cessively unfolds in several symbolic places: date is invited to travel, symbolically, for 33
“The first apartment represents Mount Cal- years. During these peregrinations, he will
vary. It will be covered in black and illumi- discover 3 virtues: Faith, Hope, and Char-
nated by 33 stars” 3
ity, which are presented to him as the new
foundations of the Order; he is invited to
“The 2nd represents the tomb and the mo- “notice the beauties of this new law.”7
ment of the Resurrection of J.C. It must With serenity restored by these first
be decorated as grandly as possible. The
encouraging discoveries, the candidate is
wall-covering must be striking, without any
prompted to undertake his quest. He is next
human figure [...] on the altar, which is well
decorated. Jesus C. is represented there leav- led “into the darkest place where the word
ing the tomb, triumphant.” 4 must emerge triumphant. [Then] the fruit of
his search secures the lost word [for him].”8
The Chapter’s undertakings open out to- This word is revealed to be “I.N.R.I. or Je-
ward: sus of Nazareth King of the Jews,”9 “the pass-
“The instant when the Temple veil ripped, word is Emmanuel.”10 Once the reception is
when Shadows and dismay spread over brought to an end, the works of the chapter
the Earth, when the light grew dark, when are closed at the
the tools of Masonry broke, when the blaz- “…moment when the word is rediscovered;
ing star disappeared, when the cubic stone when the cubic stone is changed into mystic
sweat blood and water, and when the word rose, when the blazing star reappears with
was lost.”
3
Document : un rituel du degré de Rose-Croix daté de 1765, in Renaissance Traditionnelle, année 1971 (n°5,
6 et 7) 73. It is a transcription of manuscript MS 23191, preserved in the archives of the Historical Library
[Bibliothèque Historique] of the City of Paris.
4
Transcript. cit. , R.T. 1971, 75-76.
5
Transcript. cit. , R.T. 1971, 156.
6
Transcript. cit. , R.T. 1971, 158.
7
Transcript. cit. , R.T. 1971, 159.
8
Transcript. cit. , R.T. 1971, 162.
9
Transcript. cit. , R.T. 1971, 164.
10
Transcript. cit. , R.T. 1971, 165.

16
 The Masonic Degree of Rose-Croix and Chrstianity

more splendor; when our tools have regained
their forms, when the light is returned with
greater radiance, when the darkness is dis-
persed and when the new law must reign
among us and in the labors of perfect ma-
sonry.”11
And then, after this is an agape rit-
ual called “Communion Supper” [Cène].12
Around a table covered with a white cloth,
the brethren share bread and wine; there
are at times along with this, a roasted lamb
whose remains will be burned. There must
be nothing there but one bread that will
be broken; and the brothers must all drink
wine from the same cup. For no doubt to
remain about the nature of this ceremony,
the ritual specifies that it is
“…a commemoration of Easter and the
appearance of J.C. to his disciples in Em-
maus.”13
The set of ceremonies and ritu-
al mechanism of the degree of Sovereign
Prince Rose-Croix are therefore performed
“…to render allegorically what took place
upon the death and upon the resurrection of
J.C.”14
So therefore:
“The Perfect Mason [...] is the allegory of the
redeemer; this is why it is demanded that all
subjects be Christian. The other [degrees]
can be given to People who know the old
Temple; but the latter can only be given to
[those] who are subjected to the new law.[...]
The principal feast is Holy Thursday.”15
11
Transcript. cit. , R.T. 1971, 240.
12
Transcript. cit. , R.T. 1971, 247.
13
Transcript. cit. , R.T. 1971, 241.
14
Transcript. cit. , R.T. 1971, 75.
15
Transcript. cit. , R.T. 1971, 68.
16
BN FM4 79, f°101 verso.
17
F. Clément, Contribution à l’Etude des Hauts-Degrees de la Francs-Maçonnerie et particulièrement à l’His-
toire du Rite Ecossais Ancien et Accepté en Belgique, Edition du Sup. Cons. de Belgique, Brussels, 1937. Chap.
III, the letters from Grand-Master Clermont are 34-42.
18
[Théodore de Tschoudy], L'Etoile Flamboyante ou la société des Francs-Maçons considérée sous tous les
aspects, à l'Orient, Chez le silence [1766], 149.
So it is no surprise to learn that the
Rose-Croix ritual of the Marquis de Gages
specifies that “he takes the title of Christian
Knight.”16
The profoundly Christian character
of the Rose-Croix is all the more important
because the degree is presented as the last
of the Order, the culmination, the Nec plus
Ultra of Masonry. This was the case in Lyon
in 1761. This is what emerges both from the
manuscript of the Marquis de Gages in 1763
as well as from some letters in 1766 from
the Comte de Clermont. They are signed
“Your brother Clermont, Rose Croix parfait
Maçon.”17 The Grand Master of French Free-
masonry, moreover, shows his great interest
in this eminent degree. Here he congratu-
lates the Senior Warden of the lodge of the
Marquis de Gages, his correspondent, who
“…humiliated a very respectable visitor,
from the Lodge of the House of the King [la
Loge de la Maison du Roy], about all the de-
grees that he possessed, and refused him the
title of Rose-Croix.”
The Christian nature of the Rose-
Croix degree was emphasized from the 18th
century onwards.
Thus, in 1766, in his book “L'Etoile
Flamboyante” [“The Blazing Star”] the Bar-
on de Tschoudy writes:
“The Rose-Croix properly speaking, or
Maçon d'Heredon, although, all things con-
sidered, this is only a renewed Masonry, or
Catholicism put into degrees.” 18

17
 Ritual, Secrecy, and Civil Society
Tschoudy returns to this point with
several additional details in the secret in-
struction that he composed for Les Maîtres
Ecossais de Saint-André d'Ecosse:
“The Rose-Croix, in other words Masonry
renewed, is nothing other than the Catholic
Religion put into degrees. In that respect, it
is nevertheless more august in that it de-
picts objects that are more real, more sacred,
more precious; and by combining in one and
the same group the consoling mysteries of
the Faith & the axioms necessary for salva-
tion, it seems to consecrate the era of those
times of grace when our ancestors, sons or
nephews of the first Masons, Workers of the
first Temple, opened their eyes to the truth,
and renounced the prestige of the ancient
law to follow the rites of the new, by embrac-
ing Christianity during the First Crusade.”19
In the early 1780s, the Grand Orient
of France entrusted a “Chamber of Degrees”
with the task of studying high degrees. On
August 20, 1782, the brothers came together
to examine the degree of Chevalier Rose-
Croix.
“The Rf. Dejunquières read the degree enti-
tled Chevalier de l'Aigle - Rose Croix. The
chamber judged this degree to have too
many Ceremonies in line with ecclesiastical
ceremonies and judged that it could not be
preserved. It was consequently rejected.”20
In the final third of the 18th centu-
ry, the Rose-Croix would become accepted
as the terminal degree of Masonry. After
hesitation, the team constituting the Grand
Chapter General of France would make it
the culmination of the four orders, and the
19
[Théodore de Tschoudy], Ecossois de Saint-André d'Ecosse contenant le développement de l'Art Royal de la
Franc-Maçonnerie, & le but direct, essentiel & primitif de son institution... , in Paris, chez le frère La Vérité, au
Grand Globe Français, 1780, 67.
In question are manuscripts from Tschoudy published by Labady close to 15 years after the death of the
Baron.
20
Registre de la Chambre des Degrees, BN FM1 56, f°27.
18
rallying of the majority of the chapters to
the system adopted by the Grand Orient
would therefore contribute to reinforcing
the Rose-Croix' eminent position. During
the Enlightenment, the Christian nature of
the Rose-Croix seems universally admitted.
But what Christianity is it a part of? How
do we determine, in the vast continent of
Judeo-Christian tradition, the Christian
current in which this Masonic degree has
its roots?
II. What Christianity for the
Chevalier Rose-Croix?
T
o try to respond to these questions,
it is appropriate to examine the rit-
ual's principal sequences in view
of the theological conceptions of different
schools whose positions have been deter-
mined by the controversies that have oc-
cupied such a major place in the history of
Western Christianity. We are indeed aware
of the difficulty of such an undertaking, of
the limits and of the necessarily elementary
character of the analyses that we are offer-
ing, but, as a first step, it means sketching
out some hypotheses and opening some
workable avenues. Upon ending this jour-
ney through the Chevaliers Rose-Croix'
abundantly rich ritual, one fact will become
obvious: in a century exhausted by theo-
logical quarrels—first between Protestants
and Catholics, then between “Romans” and
Jansenists—the Rose-Croix chapter is the
locus of an unheard-of undertaking: re-
storing primitive worship.
 The Masonic Degree of Rose-Croix and Chrstianity
A. The Theological Virtues
T
he reception ceremony for the de-
gree of Rose-Croix opens with per-
egrinations that lead the recipient
to discover faith, hope, and charity, or the
three theological virtues of the Christian
tradition. He is invited to meditate on these
virtues that are—he is told—the three pillars
of a new law. Etymologically—Theo and Lo-
gos— the theological virtues are those that
derive from the divine word. In the 18th
century each person of course had in mind
the classical theology by which everyone
was sustained. Even if the force of Thomism
had weakened over the course of the centu-
ries, it remained one of the principal struc-
tures of Christian dogmatics. Moreover, this
conception of the “virtues” had been in part
forged by the medieval theology of the “an-
gelic doctor.” For Thomas Aquinas, a virtue
was a habit that leads to the good. “Habit”
must be read not in the everyday and ba-
nal sense that the word might have acquired
today but in the sense, inherited from Ar-
istotle of “disposition” or “tendency” such
as, for example, in the expression “tenden-
cy of the spirit.” Well within the systematic
spirit of the philosophy of the Middle Ages,
Thomas Aquinas distinguishes four car-
dinal or moral virtues: prudence, justice,
temperance, and fortitude as well as three
theological virtues: “ Faith, hope, and chari-
ty are virtues directing us to God [...]I. II. 62
Beyond the virtues that help man to reach his
natural end, there are other infused virtues
21
Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, Ia IIae, qu. 62, art. 1. [(Translator's Version : tr. Fathers of the En-
glish Dominican Province, The Summa Theologica of St. Thomas Aquinas, the Second and Revised Edition,
1920. …]
22
Idem, art. 3.
23
Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, IIa IIae, qu. 23, conclusion.
24
Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, Ia, IIae, qu. 63, art. 1.
25
Idem, art. 3.
26
Idem, art. 4. [see 21 for translator notes]
19
that raise him to his supernatural end: these
are theological virtues21 [... They] place the
intelligence and will of man in relation with
supernatural happiness.”22 Thus “Charity is a
virtue, because it reaches God by uniting us
with him.”23 If it is by will that man can ac-
quire the moral virtues, on the other hand,
his nature is powerless to obtain for him the
theological virtues, nature being unable to
lead to the supernatural that surpasses it:
“The moral virtues are given by nature [...]
the theological virtues, on the contrary, do
not come from nature, but from an external
principle.”24 And so “God gives the theolog-
ical virtues by supernatural infusion.”25 It is
therefore only by divine grace that man can
acquire them; reprising Augustine, these
are, Thomas Aquinas explains, “[virtues]
which God works in us without us.”26 At the
end of their route, since this degree is the Nec
plus Ultra, despite all their efforts—”confu-
sion slipped into our works”—“the works”
of the Masonic Knights are powerless to en-
able them to rediscover this lost word that
will dissipate the Shadows. The new law that
will set them on the way, the three virtues
that unite with the divine logos, are infused
in them by “grace.” Analyzed by way of the
religious ideas of the 18th century, through
that primacy of grace, the ritual of the Rose-
Croix clearly leans toward the Reformation
(and Jansenism). The Rose-Croix chapter
is therefore the locus where is represented
“allegorically what happened upon the death
and the resurrection of J.C.”—an event that,
in the Christian tradition, surpasses histor-
 Ritual, Secrecy, and Civil Society
ic time— and where, under the gaze and by
the “grace” of Christ on the cross, the recip-
ient receives “by divine infusion” the three
virtues by which he “reaches God by unit-
ing us to him.” The one who obtains a true
knowledge of the three virtues therefore
establishes a bridge between the Earth and
Heaven...which is the exact definition of the
priesthood.
B. The Imitation of Jesus Christ
O
nce perfected by the three theo-
logical virtues, the recipient must
resume the quest for the lost word.
For that, he is led “into the darkest place
where the word must emerge triumphant.”
In question is the third level, “destined to
be the image of hell where there will be sev-
en chandeliers bearing large, blazing flames
and all the candle holders are heads of the
dead and cross-bones. The walls must be cov-
ered with a painting of flames and human
figures condemned to Hell, which inspires
horror and hatred, with chains and people
in chains.”27 As the ritual specifies, the sym-
bolic passage of the candidate to the deepest
abode of the dead is made “in memory of the
nocturnal and mystical journeys that J.[esus]
C[hrist] made in the shadows, which lasted
three days.”28 “The descent of Christ into
Hell”29 between his death on the cross and
his resurrection the third day is an essential
figure of the doctrine of Christian salvation.
It is by confronting the forces of Darkness
in their kingdom that Jesus triumphs over
them and thus delivers man from the an-
guish of death. This “nocturnal and mysti-
27
Description of the third apartment. Document: a ritual from the degree of Rose-Croix dated 1765, op. cit.,
77.
28
Document: a ritual from the degree of Rose-Croix dated 1765, op. cit., 162.
29
See for example the commentaries of Thomas Aquinas, “The Descent of Christ into the Underworld”
Summa Theologica, IIIa, qu. 52.
30
Jérôme Rousse-Lacordaire, op. cit., 207.
20
cal” visit of Christ to the Underworld may
be shown to be particularly welcoming to
esotericizing glosses. The Chevalier Rose-
Croix is therefore invited to follow the Sav-
ior into the Underworld and through this
“imitation of Jesus Christ” to also triumph
over the horrors of death. It is as an af-
ter-result of this supreme test that the lost
word will be revealed to him, the word that
wrenches him out of the Underworld, dis-
perses the darkness, and brings back the
Light even brighter. This word is the name
of Jesus, I.N.R.I., Jesus of Nazareth, King of
the Jews.
It is difficult to connect this se-
quence of the ritual to one doctrinal ten-
dency or the other since “The Descent of
Christ into the Underworld” is one of the
fundamentals of Christianity. The theme
appears to be more present in the Churches
of the East where it has been the object of a
bountiful iconography and numerous com-
mentaries. Less commonly addressed in the
Latin tradition, which is moreover peculiar,
it nevertheless occupies a definite spot if
only because of its position in the Creed. In
any case, “through their identification with
Christ in his passion, they [the Chevaliers
Rose-Croix] attain a priestly status.”30
Paradoxically—but the paradox is of
course only apparent—this episode of “The
Descent of Christ into the Underworld” is
both a central figure of Christianity and, in
the image of Orpheus, the very archetype of
universal initiation that brings life back to a
symbolic death in order to then ensure a re-
birth leading to another quality of presence
in the world. It is certainly one of the figures
 The Masonic Degree of Rose-Croix and Chrstianity

of Christianity that has the strongest initia- rose and the cross are the main features of
tory dimension. It has, besides that, indubi- Luther's coat of arms. Granted, like all the
table links with the mysteries of Antiquity. currents of the Reformation, Lutheranism
criticizes the priesthood's clerical monopo-
C. The Communion Supper ly and emphasizes the universal priesthood

Q
to which all men are called. However, on
uite obviously, the agape of the many points, the ambience that seems to
Rose-Croix that follows the cere- emerge from the Supper of the Chevaliers
mony emerges as one of the ritual Rose-Croix seems closer to Calvinism or
sequences to be analyzed in order to attri- to certain currents of the radical Reforma-
bute inspiration of the degree to one cur- tion than to Lutheran positions. It is proba-
rent or another of Christianity and reflect bly necessary moreover not to focus on the
on its priestly dimension. One can say right qualifier “Lutheran” used by the Philalethes.
away that it would display in the context of Luther being German and therefore foreign,
Roman Catholicism a thoroughly blasphe- we should probably see it, in the context of
mous character. The eucharistic ceremony, 18th century Paris, as simply a pejorative
or the holy sacrament since this is what is in term in origin, which later came through
question, can only be conducted by a priest use to refer to all Protestants.
within the framework of mass. Moreover, at The description of the Supper of the
the simple level of vocabulary, in a French Chevaliers Rose-Croix is rather short. Can
context, the word Supper [“Cène” versus one, however, push the “theological” analy-
“Communion” for Roman Catholics] that is sis of the ceremony further? Its very sobriety
applied to it belongs unambiguously to the and the simplicity of its forms seem to ex-
Protestant domain.31 The sharing of bread clude every idea of real presence. Moreover,
and wine among all the Chevaliers Rose- no allusion is made to this. The Communion
Croix can also be compared with the Prot- Supper is, the ritual specifies, “a commemo-
estant Communion Supper, whereas in that ration of Easter and the appearance of J.C. to
era, in Catholic “communion”, consuming his disciples in Emmaus.”33 There again, the
the flesh and blood person of Christ was re- words have their importance. Even beyond
served for the priest alone. In their passion- the debates—famous, if not known—on the
ate debates, the Freemasons, gathered in real presence, on transubstantiation… situ-
Paris in 1785 in the Convent des Philalèthes ating the Communion Supper of the Rose-
had moreover stressed this: “The Rose- Croix in the realm of commemoration
Croix, above all, is remarkable for [...] its re- places it definitively in the wake of the Ref-
lation with an essential ceremony of Luther- ormation and more particularly of Calvin-
an liturgy.”32 Connecting the Rose-Croix ism or the radical Reformation. One of the
degree with Lutheranism this way presents major controversies between Catholics and
several difficulties, however. Of course, the Calvinists in 16th- and 17th-century France

31
For this “theological analysis of the Rose-Croix ritual, we extensively used André Gounelle’s book, La
Cène, sacrement de la division, Paris, Les Bergers et les Mages, 1996. The author manages the tour de force of
presenting these, to say the least, austere controversies, in a clear, didactic, and interesting way!
32
Charles Porset, Les Philalèthes et les Convents de Paris, une politique de la folie, Honoré Champion, Paris,
1996, Quatrième circulaire, début 1786, 478
33
Document: a ritual from the degree of Rose-Croix dated 1765, op. cit., 241.

21
 Ritual, Secrecy, and Civil Society
is the truly sacrificial dimension of the rite
of sacrificing bread and wine. In the Cath-
olic holy sacrament, the sacrifice of Jesus is
renewed each time for the salvation of the
world. For their part, Calvinists want to see
it exclusively as commemoration—a very
important one, granted—but fortunate-
ly only a memorial. In his beautiful work
Une sainte horreur [A Holy Terror], Franck
Lestringant studies the numerous cases of
French Protestants who during the religious
wars were to choose martyrdom rather than
participate in a Catholic mass where God is
once again put to death.34
In certain respects, the Supper of the
Chevaliers Rose-Croix therefore appears
quite inspired by Calvinist, or even radical,
theology. Other aspects differentiate it nev-
ertheless and forbid us from only seeing it as
“Calvinism put into degrees,” to paraphrase
Tschoudy. First of all, if all Knights partici-
pate equally in the Supper, what is in ques-
tion, nevertheless, is a secret ceremony. But
the Calvinist Supper foregrounds the nature
of community and the pedagogical testa-
ment that the ceremony must have. How-
ever, above all, the Supper of the Chevalier
Rose-Croix is a silent ceremony whereas the
Calvinist Communion Supper only has val-
ue as the Word’s ritual support, that is to say
as reading of and meditation on the Gospel.
Practicing a rite without the Word is a heresy.
Taken by the priestly ambience of
the ceremony, some Rose-Croix rituals
leave silent allegory behind to clearly enter
the realm of worship. Thus, in the rituals
recently attributed to the Duke of Char-
tres, perhaps emerging from the leadership
circles of the Grand Orient, one discovers,
34
Frank Lestringant, Une sainte horreur ou le voyage en Eucharistie XVIe – XVIIIe siècle, Paris, Presses Uni-
versitaires de France, 1996.
35
Les rituels du duc de Chartres (1784), s.l., Editions du Prieuré, 1997, 326.
36
[L’Abbé] Fleury, Histoire ecclésiastique, Paris, chez Jean Mariette, 1691, particularly in the first two vol-
umes.
22
with surprise, an ostensibly liturgical for-
mula: “The Wise Master takes the bread,
breaks off a piece, eats it saying: He took the
bread, blessed it, broke it, ate some, and gave
it to his disciples”!35
But if the Rose-Croix ceremony dis-
plays so many similarities with the Calvin-
ist approach, might it not simply be because
both are marked by a will to return to the
practices of Ancient Christianity? Anoth-
er sign of this will to archaism is the act
of throwing the leftovers from agape into
the fire: this is a direct borrowing from the
practices of Jewish Passover.
D. The Utopia of Original Christianity.
T
he utopia of a return to the sim-
ple and authentic forms of original
Christianity appears finally to be the
project that has underpinned the setting-in-
place and regulation of the degree of Rose-
Croix. For lack of properly political debates
in the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries, public
space was enlivened, to say nothing of being
torn apart, by religious controversies, first
between Catholics and Protestants, then
between Roman and Jansenist Catholics.
To support their positions and show their
traditional orthodoxy, Protestants, then
Jansenists, those contesting Roman author-
ity, would constantly refer to the Original
Church. The reference to ancient Christi-
anity and to the original church was one
of the major themes to haunt the religious
consciousness of Enlightenment man. The
beautiful Histoire Ecclésiastique by l’Abbé
Fleury,36 the great classic on the history of
Christianity that was found in all good li-
 The Masonic Degree of Rose-Croix and Chrstianity

braries, presents the first years of the young celebrated their mysteries at night, which
Christian community in idyllic terms; sin- they would end like ours, with Agapes [...]
cerity and simplicity are its principal traits. it results from this opinion that Masonic
In a totally different register, Voltaire him- science is the science of the true Christian
self was a good witness to the sentiments religion, such as was observed by pious
of the upstanding man of the 18th century Gnostics.”41 And Brother de Paul adds: “To
with regard to the first years of Christian- return man to the original religion, to the
ity. At the complete opposite of his attacks purity and simplicity of his worship, such
against the pomp of the Roman hierarchy is the essential nature of Mas.[onic] sci-
as well as against fanaticism and supersti- ence.”42 In the same vein, Brother de Rai-
tion, the patriarch of Fernet describes with mond declares that: “Mas.[onic] science is
emotion, in a style marked by sympathy for the symbol of the true, original religion.”43
the “Original Church,” how “the Christians, This insistence on true religion leaves it of
in early times, took no name other than that course understood that what one has before
of brothers. They assembled and awaited one's eyes is false or in any case quite cor-
the spirit.”37 As for worship, “the mass was rupted. In the aftermath of the Convent's
very different [...] in the original church [...] work, the Philalèthes would stress that
from the time of the apostles, people would “Several educated M.[asons] find almost
assemble in the evening to eat communion, identical relations between the generally
the Lord’s supper… (Paul to the Corinthi- adopted customs of the interior economy
ans.38) [...] People abided in the breaking of the M.[asonic] Society, and those whose
of bread…” (Acts, ii: 39) [...] The disciples trace we find in the original Church.”44 The
[had come] together to break bread (Acts, degree of Rose-Croix is certainly one of the
xx 2039)".40 most successful attempts to restore original
This analytical framework appears worship and its priesthood.
all the more credible to us because the Ma- What is often questioned is the
sons of the Enlightenment seem to have name of Rose-Croix given to this degree.
been greatly interested in the Primitive Indeed, the alchemy mobilized by the Fama
Church. During the Convent des Philalèthes, Fraternitatis and the Confessio seems quite
brother Baron of Gleichen shows all the absent from the original rituals of the Ma-
similarities between Masonic works and sonic degree of Rose-Croix. But Roland
the customs of the “first Christians [who] Edighoffer45 showed that for the author of
37
Voltaire, Œuvres complètes, Tome XVIII, Dictionnaire philosophique, De la primitive Eglise et de ceux qui
ont cru la rétablir, 536.
38
Ist letter to the Corinthians, XI, 20, 33.
39
Verse 7. [c.f. footnote 38]
40
Voltaire, Œuvres complètes, Tome XIX, Fragment sur l’histoire générale (1773), Mélanges VIII, 270.
41
Charles Porset, op. cit., Quatrième Circulaire, proponenda IV, mars 1785, 325.
42
Idem.
43
Charles Porset, op. cit., 328.
44
Charles Porset, op. cit., 478
45
On this question, we will refer to his overview, Les Rose-Croix, Collection Que-sais-je?, Paris, Press-
es Universitaires de France, 1986. More widely, on the links between the imagination of Rose-Croix and
Freemasonry, we will also consult the chapter Les Rose-Croix en quête du christianisme primitif in Jérôme
Rousse-Lacordaire, op. cit..

23
 Ritual, Secrecy, and Civil Society

the manifestos, the young pastor Johann

Valentin, it was ultimately only a language
and a symbol for defending a theological
thesis: reticence before the constitution of
a Lutheran orthodoxy and the defense of
the spirit of the early Reformation. But un-
der the veil of alchemical allegory, used to
avoid the fulmination of the new Lutheran
dignitaries, the ludibrium of the Rose-Croix
would be first of all a plea for a return to the
sources of Christianity. Also, not at the sur-
face of things, but in their very substance,
Masonic ritual is really inscribed in the true
tradition of the Rose-Croix such as it ap-
pears at the beginning of the 17th century.
In the middle of the 1780s, in the course of
the debates of the Convents of Philalethes,
the B. of Gleichen had it noted, on the topic
of the customs of the first Christians, that
“sacramental words were secrets: did not
real sacramental words experience the fate
of the master-word?”46 True Masonic sci-
ence therefore overlaps with the priestly art
and thus aims to reestablish the true secrets
of primitive worship. In the midst of the
century of the Enlightenment, the shadow
of Melchisedech hovers behind the closed
doors of lodges.

46
Charles Porset, op. cit., 322.

24
 Ritual, Secrecy, and Civil Society - Volume 1 - Number 2 - Winter 2013-2014

"Livella" Conquers the Mediterranean Region:

History of Italian Freemasonry in Egypt
Emanuela Locci1

The Italian Community The same thing happened during

the revolutionary movements of 1830-31.

I
t is proved that Italian people coming The emigrants for political reasons faced
from maritime cities such as Naples, a difficult situation during the first Italian
Amalfi, Genoa, Pisa and Ancona settled War of Independence (1848-49). Some of
in Egypt ever since the Middle Ages. It was them went to Egypt, where they found a
not a proper community because their pres- different economic and social context com-
ence was seasonal until the moment when pared to thirty years earlier.3
Mehmet Alì2 came to the throne. His mod- This large community lived in the
ernizing policy caused an increase in the main cities, such as Alexandria, Cairo and
Italian presence and the Italian colony be- Port Said. Between 1897 and 1907 migra-
came more structured. After 1820 the Egyp- tion increased significantly, while in the fol-
tian government limited Italian emigration. lowing ten years it experienced a decrease
In fact, Egypt did not need foreign labour because of the drafting of young people
because Egyptian people were able to work who took part in the First World War.4
efficiently. The invasion of the country by Brit-
This period saw the development of ish troops, in 1882, and the following En-
the Carbonari movement in Italy (1820-21). glish political supremacy did not limit the
By the end of 1821 Egypt registered anoth- Italian presence in Egypt. By that time,
er emigration peak. This time most of the Egypt was the natural solution for Italian
immigrants were soldiers, at the service of migration, after Tunisia, which had always
Egyptian army, looking forward to coming been the first Mediterranean destination for
back home and carrying on the fight against Italian migrants.5
Austrians. After the end of the Second World
War, there was another migratory move-
1
Faculty of Political Science, University of Cagliari. Ph.D. in History, Institutions and International Rela-
tionship of Asia and Africa in Modern and Contemporary History, with a doctorate thesis entitled: "The
story of Hiram. Freemasonry from Europe to the Ottoman Empire."
2
Mehmet Ali Pașa (Kavala, 1769 – Alexandria, 1849) was an Albanian politician and military leader. He is
considered the founding father of modern Egypt, because he contributed to the overthrow of Mamluk Rule.
He was the first Viceroy of Egypt (khedivè) although this qualification was given by the Ottoman Sultan to
his nephew Ismā'īl Pasha only in 1867. He ruled from 1805 to 1848. His dynasty governed the country until
1952 with the last King of Egypt, Fuad II.
3
Under Mehmet Alì Europeans could easily find a job, but when the economic circumstance changed, the
government limited this possibility, because of the large wave of emigrants for political reasons that were
going to the territory.
4
See Paolo Branca, (by), Tradizione e modernizzazione in Egitto 1798-1998, (Milano, Franco Angeli, 2007) p.
83.
5
See Angelo Iacovella, La presenza italiana in Egitto: problemi storici e demografici, AltreItalie 12, (1994),
p. 65.
25
 Ritual, Secrecy, and Civil Society
ment to Italy. Thousands of people returned
home, in part because of the appropriation
of goods by British authorities as a conse-
quence of Italian declaration of war to the
allied powers. The Egyptian government,
under the pressure of London government,
internalised many Italians in several con-
centration camps located in the desert, and
treated them as war prisoners. This situa-
tion lasted about three years. The decrease
caused by repatriation downsized the Ital-
ian community, decreasing its members.6
Introduction to Italian Freemasonry in
Egypt
F
reemasonry was one of the most im-
portant expressions of the Italian
presence in Egypt. The introduction
of Italian Freemasonry into the Mediter-
ranean basin began before the Unification
of Italy. The first Constituent Assembly of
the Grand Orient of Italy, which took place
in 1861 in Turin saw the participation of
members belonging to three lodges locat-
ed in Egypt: Iside, Pompeia and Eliopolis.
Two years later, during the Masonic As-
sembly of Florence, the number increased
thanks to the presence of members belong-
ing to the Caio Gracco lodge (Alexandria)
and the Alleanza dei Popoli lodge (Cairo).7
Between 1868-1870 the Italian Consul de-
scribed the situation of the Italian colony
highlighting the condition of Freemason-
ry, described as an evil society, made up of
subversive and wretch people. He stressed
6
See Angelo Iacovella, La presenza… p. 66.
7
See Fulvio Conti, Entre orient et occident. Les loges maçonnique du Grande oriente d’Italie en Méditer-
ranée entre les XIX et XX siècle, in (by Marta Petricioli) L’Europe méditerranéenne, (2008), Bruxelles, p. 113.
8
See Jacob M.Landau, Prolegomena to a Study of Secret Societies in Modern Egypt, Middle Eastern Studies
(1965) vol. 1 n.2, , p. 163.
9
Historical Archive of Grand Orient of Italy (from now on ASGOI), Verbale Goi n. 349, 5 July 1862.
10
ASGOI, Registro riunione Goi, 19 May 1863.
11
See Fulvio Conti, Entre orient et occident… p. 115.
26
the links between Freemasonry and the ri-
oters who were still active in Italy,8 but he
stated that the “criminals” that belonged
to Freemasonry were actually a minority
group. The first known lodges were Caio
Gracco and Fratelli Repetti, together with
Alleanza dei Popoli.9 We have little evi-
dence about the first, while it is certain that,
from 1862 to 1863, Arturo Piazza was the
Worshipful Master.10 As for the second, in
1863 it was able, by its own means, to open
and manage a small hospital centre. More-
over, its members created an international
boarding school. Its Worshipful Master, E.
Rossi, who was the personal doctor of the
Prince of Egypt, was decorated with the title
of Bey.11 This Worshipful Master, in a letter
of April 1863, illustrated the conditions of
Freemasonry in Egypt, namely the pros-
elytism that Italian Freemasons were car-
rying out within the Egyptian society. The
opening of the lodges towards the outside,
toward their hosting society, was a specific
feature of the presence of Italian Freema-
sonry in this area. In fact, at first the lodg-
es welcomed only Italian citizens, but then
they opened the doors of their Temples to
other ethnic groups that were part of the lo-
cal population. This cosmopolitan attitude
was a feature of Freemasonry that was very
marked at the origins of the development of
Freemasonry, but that had softened during
the following centuries. The Italian Freema-
sonry in Egypt, nevertheless, readopted this
prerogative, whose consequences could be
seen later on. During a Masonic meeting,
 "Livella" Conquers the Mediterranean Region

the Master of the Lodge El Aziz n.166 un- The Fascist Era

D
derlined the contribution of Italian lodges
towards making indigenous people aware uring the Fascist Era Freemasons
of Freemasonry. He stated that “the positive and the Lodges faced a very tough
action of Masonic penetration contributed time. Italian security force in Egypt
to the civilization of this country”.12 did their best to unearth Freemasons and
In the framework of this initiatives, the head of the Italian police, Antonio Se-
on the 22nd of May, 1875 a new lodge was chi, carried out a going-over research on
created. It was made up only of Arabs and Freemasonry, which had been banished by
it was called Luce d’Oriente. It followed the the law in 1925. According to his inqui-
Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite and it ry, two lodges, Piramide and Cincinnato,
wanted to widespread Freemasonry and had organised in 1927 a General Assembly
its principles among the local population. of Alexandria Freemasonry where people
David Fernandez was in charge with inau- agreed to oppose Fascism by any means. It
gurating this lodge, while the new Master, was difficult to identify Italian Freemasons,
Habib Naggar,13 welcomed the work carried namely after its dissolution in Italy because
out by the Grand Orient of Italy. of the secrecy of Freemasonry. Nevertheless,
In January 1901, Ettore Ferrari14 Sechi had discovered that, in 1927, the Ital-
visited the Egyptian lodges. In 1900 he had ian Umberto Lombardi Boccia and Giovan-
visited the lodges of Salonicco and Istanbul. ni d’Esposito were respectively Master and
His visit, due at first glance to artistic rea- Secretary of Giuseppe Mazzini Lodge, while
sons, had actually been organised by Er- another Italian man, Carmelo Russo, had
nesto Nathan15 who had charged him with been Master of Cesare Battisti lodge. In
visiting Italian lodges located in the East in Alexandria there were eight Italian lodges
order to urge them to resume masonic ac- with about eight hundred members on the
tivities, that were languishing during that whole. Italian diplomatic offices put them
period. out of business by command of the Italian
government. Some Freemasons continued
to gather secretly, while most of them joined
Egyptian Freemasonry. On the 7th of No-
vember, 1937 the lodges called Giordano
Bruno, Cincinnato I and Cincinnato II gath-
12
ASGOI, Istallazione dei dignitari, Rivista Massonica, 6, (1918) year LXIX, p. 135.
13
ASGOI, Osservazioni della rispettabile loggia Nuova Pompeja, Rivista Massonica Italiana 12 (1875) year 6,
p. 9.
14
Ettore Ferrari, sculptor, writer and painter, was born in Rome on the 25th of March, 1845. In 1881 he was
initiated into the Rienzi lodge in Rome and he became Worshipful Master of this lodge in 1892. In 1896 he
became Grand Secretary of G.O.I. He was appointed member of Parliament in three legislature, in 1882,
1886 and 1890. In 1923 he founded the Review of the Scottish Rite Lux. Meanwhile in Italy Fascism had
conquered the power and Ferrari became a strong opponent. Fascists tried to intimidate him, destroying his
studio in 1926. He died three years later, on the 19th of August, 1929.
15
Ernesto Nathan was born in London in 1845. His mother was English and his father was Italian. In 1887
he was initiated into Freemasonry and nine years later he became Grand Master of G.O.I., after Adriano
Lemmi. His office lasted until 1903. After several appointments as a council member, in 1907 he became
Mayor of Rome, until 1913. From 1917 to 1919 he was appointed Grand Master again, after the resignation
of Ettore Ferrari. He died in Rome in 1921.

27
 Ritual, Secrecy, and Civil Society

ered “in the shade of the Egyptian indepen-
dence, after the end of Capitulations”, based
on the information reported on the official
invitation. There were about three hundred
Freemasons belonging to various nationali-
ties. In the following days, the leaders of Ital-
ian lodges gathered in order to re-organise
the Italian lodges that had previously been
dissoluted.16
where this Institution, even though with a
limited activity, continued to survive.18
Freemasonry faced a harsh period,
but other difficulties loomed ahead: in 1956
it was declared illegal by Nasser government.
As a result, the lodges existing on the Egyp-
tian territory moved to their motherland or
closed down.
Nuova Pompeia lodge, shining example of

P
End of the masonic experience in Egypt Italian Freemasonry in Egypt

T
he presence of Italian Freemasonry
had always been quite solid, but it ex-
perienced a fall after the First World
War. After 1925 it totally disappeared.
Briefly, between the first half of the
19th century and the First World War, thir-
ty-two lodges were founded: nineteen in
Alexandria, nine in Cairo and four in other
minor localities. Between 1920 and 1925 the
number of the lodges shrinked. There were
twenty-six lodges: twelve in Alexandria,
eight in Cairo and six in the area adjacent to
the Suez Canal.
Before the Fascist Era, Italian Free-
masonry was very active in Egypt. During
King Fuad reign (1922-1936) there were
several lodges working under the protec-
tion of the king, who was a Freemason him-
self.17 During the Second World War, when
the most important representatives of Free-
masonry were forced to seek refuge abroad
in exile, Egypt was one of the few realities
ompeia was the lodge that more than
other ones, within the heterogeneous
Egyptian masonic overview, stood out
in terms of longevity and value of its activ-
ities. It was founded in Alexandria before
1861. The date is uncertain but we know that
it was founded under the aegis of the Grand
Orient of Italy, headquartered in Turin. It
worked following the Ancient and Accepted
Scottish Rite.19
The Italian Obedience was constant-
ly in contact with overseas lodges. In 1862
Pompeia received the news that the Grand
Orient of Italy, which by the time had not
been regularly recognised within the ma-
sonic world yet, had had the honor of re-
ceiving the visit of the person who is con-
sidered the “first Italian mason”: Giuseppe
Garibaldi. He had praised and encouraged
it. After this visit, an international recog-
nition was expected and the Grand Mas-
ter, who was already Minister of Grace and
Justice, Costantino Nigra,20 was striving to

16
Curiosa conseguenza dell’abolizione delle Capitolazioni: ricostituzione di logge massoniche italiane, Oriente
Moderno, XVII, 11 (1937November), pp.584-585.
17
ASGOI, N.n. appunti sulla massoneria italiana in Egitto, Rivista Massonica Italiana, 8 (1978) p. 510.
18
In 1940 Davide Augusto Albarin was elected Grand Master of the Grand Orient of Italy because of the
peculiar Egyptian situation. He led Freemasonry until 1944.
19
ASGOI, Alessandria d’Egitto, Rivista Massonica Italiana, 23 (1873) year 4, p. 8.
20
Costantino Nigra (1828-1907), philologist and politician, in 1851 began to serve the Minister for Foreign
Affairs. He was a loyal collaborator of Cavour, after his sudden death played a central role in Italian foreign
policy for the unification process. After the Unification of Italy he was sent, as am Ambassador, to several
headquarters, such as Paris and Saint Petersburg (1860).

28
 "Livella" Conquers the Mediterranean Region

obtain it.21 In the same year the lodge sent speech underlining the affinity between Ital-
a demand for clarification about the univer- ian and Greek people, both in a masonic and
sality of Freemasonry and about the oath in a profane sense.
that Freemasons had to pronounce before Two years later, the Mother Lodge
being accepted into the lodge. The question was in full activity. It was present during
was faced in a very simple way: the Grand the consecration of the Temple of another
Orient of Italy firmly declared that Freema- Italian lodge, called Mazzini,26 while Attil-
sonry was universal: it had to accept every io Froli was appointed by the Loggia Madre
man, without discriminations. This decla- Capitolare Nuova Pompeia to make a speech
ration was fundamental for the inclusion of about the consecration of the New Temple.
Muslim Freemasons. As for the oath, it had Inside the lodge the masons discussed about
to be the same for everybody and it had to possible reforms to be carried out within
be uttered before the final acceptance into Freemasonry, in order to make it more ac-
the lodge.22 cessible to those who wanted to approach
In 1864 the lodge experienced a it.27
crisis which caused the expulsion of eight In 1875, on the occasion of the as-
Freemasons that had voted in favour of the signment of new charges, an important
separation of the Grand Orient of Italy.23 The speech was pronounced inside the lodge. It
lodge was immediately refounded and hon- put into the foreground the possibilities of
oured by the Grand Orient of Italy with the Freemasonry to become a sole organisation
rank of Loggia Madre Capitolare, under the made up of various national Grand Lodges.
name of Nuova Pompeia. In 1872 the Loggia According to most of the defendants this
Madre Capitolare regained its original flour- new condition was favorable to Freemason-
ishing state, after a period of internal strug- ry, strengthening internal links and making
gles that had undermined its stability and its the Institution known to profane people.28
activity.24 The dynamism of this lodge mate- The lodge was close to its Orient and to its vi-
rialised in various activities such as the ed- cissitudes, even when different masonic Ital-
ucation of Freemasons and the people who ian trends were unified into a unique Obedi-
were approaching Freemasonry.25 ence. For this reason, the Worshipful Master
The Italian lodge had a good rela- of the lodge, F. Camini and the Secretary
tionship with several foreign lodges, namely Francesco Fera wrote a letter of congratu-
a lodge called Socrate, whose Worshipful lations to the Master of Italian Freemasonry,
Master was sent to attend the works for the underlining the importance of the adopted
creation of new charges. The Worshipful measure and the principles on which Free-
Master of the Hellenic lodge pronounced a masonry was founded. In this context the
21
ASGOI, Lettera del Goi inviata alla loggia Pompeia, Alessandria, 17 March 1862.
22
ASGOI, Lettera del Goi per il fratelloAron Corcos, loggia Pompeia, Alessandria, 24 March 1862.
23
ASGOI, Lettera dell’ 11 marzo 1864, del Goi per la loggia Pompeia, signed by Gallinati.
24
ASGOI, Alessandria d’Egitto, Rivista Massonica Italiana 7, (1872) year 3, p. 15.
25
ASGOI, Alessandria d’Egitto, Rivista Massonica Italiana, 7, (1872) year 3, p. 6.
26
In 1908 this lodge was irregular, so the GOI abolished it by the decree n.135 of August 1908, and then
readmitted it in September 1908, by the decree n. 146.
27
ASGOI, Ricerche sulla massoneria e riforme utili, discorso, Rivista Massonica Italiana 15 (1874) year 5, p.
9.
28
ASGOI, Due idee, discorso, Rivista Massonica Italiana, 7 (1875) year 6, p. 4.
29
 Ritual, Secrecy, and Civil Society

masons of Egypt strongly attacked the ac-
tion of the Church that, according to them,
nutrured ignorance, leaving the people into
a limbo of unawareness.
During that period, the Egyptian
government supported the initiative of Nuo-
va Pompeia lodge. In 1882, when Lunel Bey
was Worshipful Master, it obtained the free
concession of a land and the authorization
to build a masonic cemetery.29
As already mentioned, Pompeia was
an anciently built workshop which carried
on the tradition of Italian Freemasonry in
Egypt,30 but during its long activity it was
dissolved and refounded several times. It
was refounded the fifteen of July, 189031 af-
ter being demolished because of the strong
conflicts among its members.32 As a result,
the lodge was dissolved and some masons
from the Cincinnato lodge were charged
with reconstructing the ancient workshop.
The Grand Orient of Italy wished for the re-
turn of the masons who had abandoned the
lodge because of its internal crisis, hoping
that these masons would work under the
Nuova Pompeia.33 As wished by the Italian
Obedience, it was reconstructed with the
help of nine masons and of the Worshipful
Master Arturo Piazza.34 On this occasion
a new Friendship Guarantor between the
Grand Orient of Italy and the Grand Orient
of Egypt was elected. Glymenopoulo was
called to replace the dead brother, Iconomo-
pulo, while Giacomo Sani replaced Sisca.35
In 1891 the lodge was dissolved again
and then reconstructed.36 Five years later the
lodge was hosted in a new Temple and the
Freemason Tito Figari,37 from Cairo, chaired
the inauguration.38 The lodge was dissolved
again in 1898: in spite of the efforts of Alber-
to Alby39 who was the Worshipful Master,
the lodge faced insurmountable difficuties.
It was impossible to carry out the masonic
work,40 for this reason the Worshipful Mas-
ter presented his resignation.
In spite of its glorious past, in 1899
the lodge faced the same situation and was
dissolved again because of its inactivity. Fol-
lowing the custom, the lodge was dissolved,
but meanwhile some Freemasons41 of the

29
ASGOI, Notizie dalla comunione, Rivista Massonica Italiana, 1(1882) year 13, p. 46.
30
ASGOI, La loggia Nuova Pompeia, Rivista Massonica Italiana 6-8 (1899) year 30, p. 118.
31
ASGOI, La loggia Nuova Pompeia, Rivista Massonica Italiana 9-10 (1890) year 21, p. 154.
32
ASGOI, Decreto Goi del 18 giugno 1890. The same decree by the Grand Master reports that Felice Restag-
no was in charge with the archives of the lodge, the seals, as well as the refounding of the lodge.
33
ASGOI, La loggia Nuova Pompeia, Rivista Massonica Italiana 7-8 (1890) year 21, p. 120.
34
ASGOI, La loggia Nuova Pompeia, Rivista Massonica Italiana, 9-10 ( 1890) year 21, p. 154.
35
ASGOI, La loggia Nuova Pompeia , Rivista Massonica Italiana 7-8 (1890) year 21, p. 121.
36
ASGOI, Decreto Goi n. 69 20 January 1891.
37
The lawyer Tito Figari was one of the most outstanding figures of the Italian community in Cairo. He or-
ganised the celebrations of 20 September 1885. He was often in charge of Italian associations such as Italian
Charity, Italian school, led by Ferdinando Oddi, another important figure of Italian Freemasonry.
38
ASGOI, Inaugurazione del nuovo tempio della R.L. Nuova Pompeia Rivista Massonica Italiana, 1-3 (1896)
year 27, p. 14.
39
The Freemason Alberto Alby, identification number 11807, clerk as a profession, became Master on the
30th of May, 1898.
40
ASGOI, Decreto Goi n. 120, October 1898.
41
The Freemasons in question were the following: Vittorio de Semo, Antonio Thorn, Cesare Lusena, Luigi
Calù, Luigi Nardi, Augusto Thasdà, Ercole Galletti, Simone Woivodich, Pietro Navero, Vito Nuzzodese,
Guglielmo Trone, Alfredo Lusena, Gennaro Cafagna, Pietro Agresta, Gaetano Electa.
30
 "Livella" Conquers the Mediterranean Region

Cincinnato lodge (which was still opera-

tive), strived to rebuild it.42 In 1903 the lodge
was closed43 and then refounded.44 The same
thing happened between May45 and July
1909.46 The Freemasons who refounded it
were: Vittorio de Samo, Francesco Fera, An-
gelo Valle, Carlo Masceni Virgilio Panella,
Artiodoro Zanobetti, Luciano Valle, Edgar-
do Pinto, Camillo Canoveri and Arnoldo
Rietti.47
The lodge was still active in 191848
when there was a solemn meeting for the
assignment of the charges of its dignitaries.
The ceremony was attended by some Free-
masons of the Italian lodges called Cincin-
nato I and Cincinnato II. On this occasion
the Freemason Ubaldo Borghi, belonging
to the Capitolo Rosa Croce, made a speech
underlining the aims of Freemasonry: social
justice, equality among men and enhance-
ment of man.
Even if there is no evidence in sup-
port of this theory, considering the general
situation of Freemasonry we tend to state
that the lodge closed its activities during the
Fascist Era.

42
ASGOI, La loggia Nuova Pompeia , Rivista Massonica Italiana, 6-8, (1899) year 30, p. 118.
43
The lodge was dissolved and erased from the lists of the lodges belonging to the Grand Orient of Italy.
This was officialised by the decree n. 156 of 9 December 1903.
44
The Freemasons who refounded it were: Cesare Lusena, Simon Woividich, Lorenzo Poggetti, Ubaldo
Borghi, Artidoro Zanobetti, Edoardo Croccolo, Alfredo Lusena, Carlo Mieli, Leopoldo Levi, Giorgio Di-
acono, as the Goi Decree n. 157 of 9 December 1903 shows.
45
ASGOI, Decreto Goi n.184 of 31 May 1909.
46
ASGOI, Decreto Goi n.197 of 30 July 1909.
47
ASGOI, Decreto Goi n.197 of 30 July 1909.
48
ASGOI, Istallazione dei dignitari, Rivista Massonica, 6 (1918) year LXIX p. 132.

31
 Ritual, Secrecy, and Civil Society - Volume 1 - Number 2 - Winter 2013-2014
Juan Gris, from the Studio to the Lodge: Art and
Freemasonry in Paris’ 1920
by Pascal Bajou
E
arly one morning in 1906, at Orsay
station, a young Spaniard got off the
train from Madrid, which he would
never see again. He was nineteen, had six-
teen francs in his pocket, and did not speak
French. His parents were wealthy mer-
chants, and he had thirteen brothers and
sisters. He disliked speaking of his child-
hood in Madrid. This young man was called
José Victoriano Gonzales. His family name
was so common in Spain that he mockingly
chose the pseudonym Juan Gris (“gray” for
“dull”).
Not long before, he had still been
studying at the Academy of Painting and
selling drawings to art journals. Then he
was called up for national service, but he
detested everything military as much as his
oppressive Catholic environment. Worse,
he had no money to find someone to stand
in for him, as was common practice at the
time. Without hesitation, he evaded service.
He was exiled to Paris, which at the time
was the arts capital of the world.
Juan Gris was welcomed by his
friend, the young painter Vasquez Diaz, who
found him a place to stay in a very modest
hotel in Montmartre for a few months. He
then found him a studio that had been va-
cated by the painter Kees Van Dongen, at
13 Place Ravignan. The dilapidated build-
ing was known as the Bateau-Lavoir (wash-
boat) – a nickname given to it by the neigh-
bor at number 7: poet Max Jacob.
32
At the Bateau-Lavoir, Gris meets Blaise
Cendrars, Apollinaire, Braque, Vlaminck,
and Modigliani: all the bohemians of
Montmartre
Picasso had been living there since
1904. It was the center of a group of more
or less starving artists and writers. This
avant-garde circle cared little for comfort
and preconceived ideas. This place, which
today seems picturesque, at the time housed
not only poets and painters, but also trav-
eling street salesman and washerwomen.
The air stank of poverty, of cold ashes from
ash pans, and of cigarette butts. This was
the world in which Gris lived for 15 years.
He and Picasso liked each oth-
er from the start, virtually living together.
However, their personalities were radically
different. Picasso was a force of nature. He
exuded life; nothing seemed impossible to
him. He was sure of his genius, not to say
full of himself, and considered himself a
leader. Gris was reserved, respectful, mod-
est, and rational, he wrote: “I have too pre-
cise a mind to dirty a blue or bend a straight
line.” It is hard to imagine Picasso writing
such a thing. All his life, Gris had a complex
relationship with Picasso, characterized by
shared drives and differences, attractions
and rejections, and sometimes jealousy.
1906 also saw the death of Cézanne,
who was so greatly admired by this young
generation. Picasso ended his rose period
and began an important canvas for mod-
ern painting. Art historians recognize it as
the work that founded cubism: Les Dem-
oiselles d’Avignon. It was at this moment of
great artistic and intellectual effervescence
 Juan Gris, from the Studio to the Lodge
that Gris arrived. He was the youngest in
a group of which almost all the members
would become famous in their lifetime. A
little suffocated by such a context, he nev-
ertheless rapidly asserted himself and pro-
duced highly important work.
In 1908, Daniel Henry Kahnweiler
(Picasso’s and Braque’s dealer) offered Gris
his first contract, despite his lack of expe-
rience. Kahnweiler became his mentor and
his friend. Gris, with his heavy accent, pro-
nounced Kahnweiler’s name “Cavélère.” The
two became inseparable, in a friendship that
survived even death. However, Gris did not
have enough money for him and his partner
to live on. He neglected painting to focus on
his talent for newspaper cartoons.
Gris was not only a great painter, but also
a first-rate newspaper cartoonist.
In the early twentieth century, high
numbers of illustrated newspapers were
printed, including mass-press and satirical
periodicals. Renowned artists such as Tou-
louse Lautrec and Félix Vallotton contribut-
ed to these publications. The work brought
Gris money to live on, but above all it pro-
vided him with a very large audience. The
best-known publication that he worked for
was L’Assiette au Beurre, but from 1907 he
also contributed to Le Rire, Frou-Frou, Le
Témoin, and L’Indiscret. In total, almost five
hundred of his cartoons were published. He
had a perfect mastery of composition and
drawing, and was as skilled at caricature as
he was at Jugendstil (art nouveau). The fame
of his paintings overshadows his brilliant
and original newspaper cartoons, which
deserve to be studied in their own right.
He was twenty-two when his part-
ner Lucie Belin gave birth to a son, Georg-
es. Two years later, though, Lucie left them.
Without regular income, and living in ter-
rible sanitary conditions, Gris had to give
33
up the child and send him to Madrid. He
entrusted Georges to the care of his sister,
Antonieta (who had given him the money
to travel to Paris). He would not see him
again for fifteen years.
The emerging cubism built its fame
around a group of enthusiasts: critics such
as Maurice Raynal, Apollinaire, or André
Salmon, gallery owners like Kahnweiler,
and rich admirers like Gertrude Stein and
couturier Paul Poiret. The term “cubism,”
which was coined by a journalist, stuck be-
cause it was convenient. However, it was not
a school or a new “ism.” The movement was
a natural part of modernity, of a changing
society in which pictorial representation
was both a feature and a principle. The de-
composition of objects followed upon the
decomposition of movement and was ini-
tiated by photography, the works of Ead-
weard Muybridge, and the emergence of
motion-picture projectors.
For Braque and Picasso, the “histor-
ic inventors” of cubism, the painting was an
autonomous object that did not necessarily
imitate reality. Paintings were no longer vi-
sual representations of a supposedly unique
and fixed reality. The wider public’s incom-
prehension and rejection arose from the un-
usual outlook of this art: visual habits were
not accustomed to art that did not repre-
sent what people saw in the real world. This
made cubism a significant cultural break. It
completely changed figurative representa-
tion as it had existed since the Quattrocento.
There was initially great hostility
to cubism. At the 1912 autumn show, Gris
contributed to “the cubist house,” a restored
house, furnished, papered, and decorated
with the works on show. Gris paid hom-
age to Picasso. It was bad timing, at a point
when Charles Maurras’ influence was grow-
ing. The reaction, expressed by Jules Louis
Breton, who took a stand against all inno-
vative artistic projects, was unsurprising.
 Ritual, Secrecy, and Civil Society

This representative of Cher (MP) in central torial adventures. However, this analysis is
France launched an appeal in the Journal best left to the words of poet, Paul Eluard:
Officiel of December 3: Table guitar and empty glass
I ask the State Undersecretary for On an acre of full earth
Fine Arts... to demand obligatory guaran- Of white canvas and night air
tees concerning the composition of the se- Table had to support itself
lection panel and to warn them that if this Lamp to remain pip of the shadow
year’s scandal is repeated in the future, it Newspaper forsook half of itself
will be obliged to refuse them the right to Twice the day, twice the night
Of two objects one double object
use the Grand Palais... . It is absolutely un-
A single whole for evermore
acceptable that our national palaces be used
for such clearly anti-artistic and anti-na- At Marcel Duchamp’s initiative,
tional displays. helped by Picabia and Apollinaire, the Salon
de la Section d’Or (Golden Section) was set
At the Assembly, Brother Marcel Sembat up. Duchamp wanted to create an exhibition
argued that, “When you think a painting is without constraints, but paradoxically, it
bad... you do not call the police.” was cubist artists that participated: Gleizes,
Kupka, Metzinger, Léger, Marie Laurencin,
Not everyone agreed with this Marcoussis, Lipchitz: thirty-one painters
sweeping judgment. In the Chamber itself, and sculptors in total. They all thought that
Marcel Sembat, Freemason and representa- the canvas was not subject to chance. Most
tive (MP) for the North of Paris, ended his of them had read Leonardo da Vinci’s Trea-
speech by saying: “When you think a paint- tise on Painting, Pacioli’s Divine Proportion,
ing is bad, you have an incontestable right: and even Villard de Honnecourt. For these
the right not to look at it, and to go and look geometry enthusiasts, the Golden Section
at others, but you do not call the police.” was crucial. Witnesses tell of Gris starting
At this point, Picasso and Braque paintings with a compass and a set square,
were fragmenting objects to such an extent and of Braque lecturing him on geometric
that there was almost no trace of the origi- inconsistencies. Juan used the terms “pic-
nal. The canvas became an abstract analy- torial architecture,” “geometric mixtures,”
sis requiring explanation. Gris, who wrote “algebraic equation,” and “pictorial mathe-
that: “An analytical art is the very negation matics” when speaking about his painting
of art,” produced more readable works. He method. It was thus natural that, as an or-
used color, perspective, diagonals, and light, thodox cubist, he should participate in the
which made his lines and shapes more co- exhibition. Conferences were organized
herent. Gris, despite later moving towards around this event, and the catalogue was
less strict and more fluid forms, found his written by Maurice Raynal.
inner equilibrium in this strict organization
of relationships between objects, based on Gris started paintings with a compass and
geometrical figures. Apollinaire described a set square.
him as “a man who has meditated on all
that is modern, an artist who wants to in- In 1912, Gris also joined the Soci-
vent only new combinations, who wants to ety of Independent Artists (Salon des In-
draw and paint only materially pure forms.” dépendants), and met Josette (Fernande
Braque and Picasso moved on to new pic- Herpin), who would become his attentive

34
 Juan Gris, from the Studio to the Lodge
life partner. His works began to sell, and
“Cavélère” offered him an exclusive con-
tract. This came at just the right time: sales
of illustrated newspapers were dwindling,
with some stopping their presses and their
publications. Press photography was taking
over, and humorous cartoons were becom-
ing marginalized. This already unreliable
source of income became virtually inexis-
tent. For Gris, the contract was a way out
of poverty. It would give him the stability
he needed to work, and work was what he
wanted most. He integrated material and
paper collages in his canvases. But he was
increasingly troubled by lung problems. Ac-
cording to Kahnweiler, failing kidneys were
slowly but inevitably poisoning his body.
Nevertheless, he painted (in Paris or Céret)
until the cataclysm that neither he nor his
friends saw coming.
He was in Collioure with Matisse
when war broke out. His friends were called
up. Kahnweiler, a German citizen, spent the
war in Switzerland, but his possessions were
impounded, leaving Gris without income.
His status prevented him from obtaining a
passport, and he could not leave the coun-
try. France was no longer his choice: it had
become his fate. Paradoxically, this free
man who moved in cosmopolitan circles
found himself a prisoner in France, a coun-
try which he loved, and to whose culture
he claimed to belong. He asked his friends
to call him Jean, but many did not under-
stand his attitude to the war. Michel Leiris
described “the profound liberalism of Juan
Gris, who one day announced, ‘I claim the
right to cowardice’ – his pacifism regarding
the war 1914–1918.”
Despite extreme material difficul-
ties, deprivation, and a lack of heating and
future perspectives, Gris and Josette sur-
vived. He was weak and ill, but this did
not stem his frenzied creativity. He occa-
sionally gave drawing lessons, particular-
35
ly to a young and very assiduous woman,
Colette Nel-Dumonchel. He still had a few
friends in Paris, including Max Jacob, the
faithful Maurice Raynal, and his friend and
“disciple,” the Lithuanian sculptor Jacques
Liptchitz, with whom he turned his hand to
sculpture.
It was also at this time that, impor-
tantly, he met Belgian poet Paul Dermée.
Dermée founded the journal Nord–Sud with
the demobilized Reverdy, who returned to
his studio opposite Juan’s own. Paul Der-
mée contributed to the journal L’Esprit nou-
veau, along with the young painter Charles
Edouard Jeanneret, better known as Le
Corbusier. He would become a close friend
of Gris’. Juan illustrated Reverdy’s and Paul
Dermée’s books. He was always working: it
was his most productive period. At the end
of the war, Kahnweiler wrote: “I had left be-
hind a young painter whose works I liked. I
returned to find a master.”
One April 1, at Voltaire Lodge ...
With the conflict barely over, Juan Gris want-
ed to enter “a second workshop”: a theoret-
ical one, at 16 rue Cadet: the headquarters
of the Masonic organization Grand Orient
de France (GODF). His request to become a
Freemason went to Voltaire Lodge, founded
in 1890 by Paul Doumer. On April 1, 1921,
the agenda included “the reading of reports
on the profane [i.e., uninitiated] José Gon-
zales, known as Juan Gris, painter, and the
vote on his admission.” He was deferred: a
rejection. This was reported in a notifice to
the GODF on May 18, 1921. On this defer-
ment, art historian Emmanuel Bréon, who
offers a concise analysis of Gris’ relations
with Freemasonry, writes: “Rejected ... for
evading service.”
Unfortunately, this document, like
most of those signed by Gris, is in a “pri-
vate collection” (to use a euphemism) and
 Ritual, Secrecy, and Civil Society

is therefore inaccessible. Nevertheless, this Lodge. This lodge was an offshoot of Athe-
statement is well-founded for two reasons. na Lodge. It had been set up as a provisional
First, Emmanuel Bréon co-wrote the pam- lodge on February 28, 1920, then properly
phlet published by the GODF on the com- founded on November 26, 1920, by a Coun-
memoration of the centenary of Jean Gris’ cilor of the Order (none other than Marcel
birth, held at the Hôtel Cadet, in 1987: we Sembat) and by the vice-president of the
may suppose he will have done his research. Council of the Order, A. Lanquine. Agni
The second reason is based on Lodge was founded by top names:
logic: Voltaire Lodge had been bled dry:
twenty-eight of its Brothers had gone to - Albert Bernet (1883–1962), Councilor of
the “Grand Lodge above” during “the the Order of the GODF from 1922 to 1925.
great massacre,” killed by war or illness. He was an architect and president of the So-
The Brothers were still in shock and were ciety of Architects, a Fellowship historian,
slowly (and barely) returning to normality. and a conference speaker. He moved in the
Many had been demobilized only in 1919 highest political, institutional, and artistic
and the wounds were still fresh. For Gris, circles. He was close to Marcel Déat, and
this was an aggravating circumstance: this later followed him in becoming a collabo-
Lodge was primarily made up of service- rator.
men or similar, and the Worshipful Master
was Constant Melet, a police captain. Gris’ - Jean-Maurice Lahy (1872–1943), Coun-
non-participation in the war could only cilor of the Order from 1913 to 1920, then
work against him, and he was inevitably from 1921 to 1924, and Agni Worshipful
criticized for his refusal to wear his coun- Master from its creation until 1939. He cre-
try’s uniform. The list of the Lodge’s works ated the chair of applied work psychology at
in 1921 demonstrates this frame of mind: the Ecole des Hautes Etudes (Paris School of
The Ministry of National Defense and the Higher Learning). He placed great hope in
Coming Military Reform, Military Chap- the Bolshevik Revolution: it was under his
laincy in Peace Times, Production of a Dec- leadership that the Lodge came to be con-
orative Panel for the Brothers of the Lodge sidered communist. He regularly contribut-
Who Died in the War, and even Against the ed to L’Humanité, and was a professor at the
Madness of Preparing for War, by Retired Université ouvrière (Workers’ University).
Colonel, F. C. On July 12, following the last
Holding of the Committee, the fraternal - Camille Jansen, a publicist who used the
meal took place in the restaurant of ... the
pseudonym Paul Dermée. This brings us
National Guard. onto familiar ground. Dermée probably re-
vealed himself to Gris, who wanted to fol-
Why Voltaire and not Agni, a young lodge low him in becoming a Mason. He resigned
to which he had every chance of being ad- from Athena Lodge on April 5, 1921, and
mitted? was therefore still there on April 1: he must
have been the first sponsor.
The document prepared by Voltaire
Lodge and sent to the Grand Orient indi- So who was Lemaire, the second
cated that Gris was sponsored by Lemaire sponsor? On April 1, 1921, there was no
and Dermet or Bermet (the writing is un- Lemaire in Agni, but there was a Charles
clear), both of whom were members of Agni Lemaire (a brigadier) in Voltaire. Charles

36
 Juan Gris, from the Studio to the Lodge
Maxime Lemaire, Athena secretary, joined
Agni Lodge on May 20, 1921. He was a young
teacher aged twenty-six, who had been
initiated seven years before. Lahy had put
him forward and took him under his wing.
The founders of the Agni Lodge,
in addition to being brilliant minds, were
tireless workers. They were entirely devoted
to Masonry and the city. It therefore seems
that Gris belonged among them. Moreover,
Gris was republican, anti-religious (which
counted for a great deal in many French
Masonic circles at the time), pacifist like
the majority of Freemasons, and passion-
ate about geometry like Bernet. Gris was
persistent, willful, and radiated a childish
naivety: qualities indispensable to any Ma-
sonic commitment.
So why did his sponsors propose
him for Voltaire Lodge, from which it was
predictable that he would be evicted, while
the emerging Agni Lodge still had few
members? Given the lack of available doc-
uments, intelligent guesswork is required.
Perhaps the answer is to be found in the
events of April 1: the weekly lodge news-
letter announced the reading of reports on
the profanes Gris and Demême. Marcel
Demême’s military career provides a clue.
He finished his three years’ military
service when the Great War broke out. Af-
ter being injured in 1917, he spent many
years in the hospital. On April 1, 1921, he
was international secretary of the Former
Soldiers’ FOP (Fédération Ouvrière Pay-
sanne, Workers’ and Farmers’ Federation)
and worked as a car mechanic ... at the War
Ministry. In nine years, he had had the time
to meet soldiers who were Freemasons,
and his sponsor was none other than the
Worshipful Master Constant Melet, police
captain. The friendship between Gris and
Demême was almost instantaneous. Marcel
was seven years younger than Juan. Both
were profoundly pacifist, and, for Marcel,
37
experience strengthened this conviction. It
is therefore a reasonable assumption that
Marcel Demême brought Juan into Voltaire
Lodge, where he himself was at home as a
military man in dress uniform, and where
he thought that his friend would be wel-
comed easily.
Yet whereas Marcel Demême was
initiated on May 6, 1921, Juan Gris was de-
ferred. However, this was not the end of his
encounter with Freemasonry. This supposed
disappointment was not the last of 1921. A
sale by Kahnweiler at the Drouot auction
house showed that Gris was little esteemed
as a painter. He was overcome by a peri-
od of doubt and lost inspiration. He drew
self-portraits, as beautiful as Ingres’ draw-
ings. He was exhausted by asthma attacks.
However, 1921 also brought happiness.
The Kahnweilers, with their daugh-
ter Louise, her future husband Michel Lei-
ris and a few other members of the family,
moved into 12 rue de la Mairie in Boulogne.
At the time, Boulogne was a rapidly grow-
ing town near Paris, enlivened by the banks
of the Seine. Lodgings were available in 8
rue de la Mairie, and Kahnweiler’s spouse
took charge, arranging for Gris (then stay-
ing in Céret) to rent them. Once again, Juan
did not choose his home, but he and his
partner finally left the insalubrious Mont-
martre hill, hoping for some improvement
in the painter’s health. He was entering a
third stage of his life.
Shortly after their arrival, Demême
and his wife moved to 18 boulevard Jean
Jaurès, also in Boulogne. Almost neighbors,
Demême and Gris became inseparable.
Marcel Demême was committed socialist
activist and a member of the League of Hu-
man Rights. He would become a municipal
councilor for Boulogne. Yvonne Demême
was a social worker, and an activist in the
SFIO (Section Française de l’Internationale
Ouvrière, the French Socialist Party).
 Ritual, Secrecy, and Civil Society

Marcel took Juan to political meet- and Lemaire (who were still his devoted
ings, which he did not much like, because sponsors), he had other allies in the Lodge.
they often ended in fights. Gris hated all Marcel Demême had become a Fellow on
forms of violence, whatever the form it took.March 30, 1922 and had had time to explain
That does not mean, however, that he was Gris’ personality better. Gris’ other faithful
always timid: his hot Spanish blood some- friend, sculptor Jacques Liptchitz, had been
times took over. One morning, when he initiated on May 5, 1922 and had also been
made coffee for Josette and brought it to hersponsored by Dermée (spelled Dhermet)
in bed, she refused to drink it. He dumped and Lemaire.
the bowl and its contents over her head. The Voltaire Lodge agenda for Jan-
The Kahnweiler clan set up what uary 5, 1923, states that after the reading
would quickly become an institution. They of reports on “the profane Gonzales,” there
invited intellectuals and top artists into would, “if necessary,” be a hearing. Were the
their home. Some discussed art, philoso- reports more favorable? Did Gris’ friends
phy, or politics, others enjoyed the sun in argue his case convincingly? There was a
the garden, and others danced the foxtrot hearing. Gris spoke, showing his personali-
and the Charleston. Juan loved dancing ty. It was a busy meeting: aside from hearing
and even won first prize in competitions. two other profanes, one of whom was de-
After all, what is dance, if not a geometry ferred, Brother Jean Bon, Councilor of the
of movement? Artaud would show off his Order, was affiliated the same evening, and
latest impressions and acts. In the evening, the Worshipful Master Melet was “promot-
they would make music around Erik Sa- ed into the order of the Legion of Honor.”
tie, experiment with hypnosis with Robert Voltaire Lodge did not make the
Desnos and the doctor René Allendy, or same mistake twice. Despite the theoreti-
even use Ouija boards. The regulars in- cal presence of seventeen uniformed men,
cluded painters Fernand Léger, André Mas- it was decided that Gris would be initiated
son, and Picasso, writers André Malraux, on February 2, 1923. The Worshipful Mas-
Charles-Albert Cingria, Ford Maddox Ford, ter Melet carefully integrated Gris into the
Armand Salacrou, and Raymond Radiguet, Lodge, immediately nominating him for
poets Max Jacob and Pierre Reverdy, pho- the Benevolence and Festivals Committee,
tographer Man Ray, art critics Dermée and alongside his two fellows, Demême and
Maurice Raynal, the Dadaist Tristan Tzara... Liptchitz.
The full list is almost unbelievable, not to Gris found a hard-working Lodge,
forget the neighbors: the Demêmes, or eth- work starting at 8:00 p.m. and ending be-
nologist Marcel Griaule… tween 11:30 p.m. and midnight. Despite
this, the rate of absenteeism was extremely
Twenty-three months later, Juan Gris re- low. The Lodge did all kinds of good work:
turned to Voltaire Lodge charitable work, various social good deeds,
help funding the erection of statues, and
Encouraged by this intellectual and even (an excellent idea) subscriptions to
artistic emulation, Juan Gris was still very Masonic journals (Brother Demême was
eager to become a Freemason. Twenty-three responsible for reporting on these). More-
months after he was rejected, he returned to over, a child called Krentfer was a pupil at
Voltaire Lodge, but this time, the situation the Workshop, and his mother also received
was entirely different. Aside from Dermée financial help. The Brothers were very at-

38
 Juan Gris, from the Studio to the Lodge

tentive to the running of the orphanage and Lodge, especially as Brother Frey-Walter
constantly sought to improve it. For exam- was attached to the embassy in Germany
ple, in 1923, five hundred eighty francs were and regularly reported on the situation.
collected for the Widow’s Fund and dona- Gris, who was aware of this problem, helped
tions for works totaled two thousand francs. by Demême and Lipchitz, tackled the
Gris was passed to Fellowcraft de- “matter under consideration by the lodg-
gree on January 18, 1924. He presented a es” in 1924, which particularly concerned
lecture not on what would seem an obvious the Franco-German rapprochement. On
choice of subject at this degree and corre- November 5, 1926, Juan Gris was elected
spond to a field of interest closer to geom- Master of Ceremonies of Voltaire Lodge.
etry… but on the addition of the right to Unfortunately, illness prevented him from
work to the Declaration of Human Rights. remaining in office for very long.
His friend and Brother, Marcel Demême, At this point in Gris’ life, it is strik-
the political activist, presented a paper… on ing how many Freemasons there were in his
the symbolism of the Acacia, on February close circle of friends:
1, 1924. Juan Gris was raised Master Mason
on February 27, 1925. - Yvonne Demême belonged to Louise Mi-
The archives of the GODF show that chel Lodge (of the Co-Masonic Order Le
“Bro. Gris” participated in activities and Droit Humain). She would become Wor-
spoke out. The Secretary records two in- shipful Master from 1938 to 1939;
stances: at a talk on the Bible and ancient
religions, then at a debate on taxing for- - Jacques Lipchitz belonged to Voltaire
eigners to stay in France: “Gris and Lipchitz Lodge. Initiated on May 5, 1922, he was
contribute to the controversy,” he wrote. passed Fellowcraft on March 30, 1923, then
Voltaire Lodge’s proceeding book a Master on February 29, 1924;
gives precious indications as to Juan Gris’
faithful attendance of lodge meetings. In - Marcel Demême, as stated above, also be-
three whole years, from 1923 to 1925, he longed to Voltaire Lodge. Initiated on May
was excused four times, absent nine times 6, 1921, he became a Fellow on March 30,
(including six in a row), and present forty 1922, then a Master on January 5, 1923;
times. His long absence can be explained
by a trip to Monte Carlo, during which he - Paul Dermée, born in 1886 in Liège, was
attempted to work with Diaghilev and the initiated into Intelligence and Etoile Lodg-
Russian ballets. According to our research,es, united under the Orient de Liège on
the other absences were due to exhibitions,May 15, 1909. He reached the thirty-sec-
trips, or illness. ond degree. He published a report on the
suppression of the Great Architect of the
On November 5, 1926, Juan Gris was elect- Universe symbol in the GODF Bulletin des
ed Master of Ceremonies of the Voltaire Hauts Grades (Bulletin of the high degrees)
Lodge, but his end draws near. and an article in L’Acacia (issue 51) entitled
Esquisse d’une philosophie de la fraternité
Between the two wars, the GODF was con- (Draft for a philosophy of fraternity).
stantly concerned about Franco-German There is uncertainty regarding the
rapprochement. Understandably, this mat- Masonic allegiances of Maurice Raynal (art
ter was of particular interest to Voltaire critic and supporter of Gris from the start,

39
 Ritual, Secrecy, and Civil Society
whom Gris truly admired), Céline Arnaud
(poetess and wife of Paul Dermée), and a
few others. Many Masonic records were de-
stroyed during the Second World War. Dan-
iel Henry Kahnweiler had friends who were
Masons, but they were not as close to Gris,
and Kahnweiler never wrote about Freema-
sonry. Nevertheless, at the time, Juan Gris
moved in Masonic circles, whose basic val-
ues he had always shared.
Another Mason who was influential
in Gris’ life was Doctor René Allendy. The
young woman to whom Gris gave drawing
lessons during the war, Colette Nel-Du-
moncel, was Allendy’s sister in law. She her-
self was the daughter of a painter, who was
a Freemason in Etoile Polaire Lodge. Allen-
dy was initiated into this same lodge at the
GODF, on February 19, 1914. He resigned
from it on October 20, 1920, to join Le Droit
Humain, “where his wife was an apprentice,
and where he could devote himself to his
beloved study of hermeticism.” Allendy and
Gris often met in Boulogne.
The doctor was yet an extraordinary
character (even in the life of Juan Gris). He
was born in 1889. He was a medical grad-
uate (he wrote his thesis on alchemy and
medicine) and also had a Slavic languages
degree. He was a homeopath and presi-
dent of the Homeopathy Society, as well as
co-founder of the Paris Psychoanalysis So-
ciety. It was he who examined René Crevel
and Antonin Artaud (though not for long
enough, judging by Artaud’s mental health
problems and the fact that Crevel committed
suicide). He left behind numerous literary
and medical works. His book The Symbol-
ism of Numbers, published in 1921, remains
authoritative and is still studied by Masons.
Even a brief summary of the career of this
powerful and inquiring mind would require
several pages. He was also known in the lit-
erary world, since Anaïs Nin’s diary told
of her sexual antics with him on the sofa.
40
Juan Gris’ artistic testament is kept at the
GODF Museum
His involvement in Gris’ life, how-
ever, was of a different sort: as president of
the Philosophy and Science Study Group, he
invited Gris to give a conference in the Sor-
bonne’s Michelet Amphitheatre, on May 15,
1924. This conference, entitled On the Possi-
bilities of Painting, was an artistic testament
covering his entire pictorial experience.
Juan Gris had three years left to live, and he
had long ago reached maturity. He spoke
on the nature of objects, on composition,
on color, and on the architecture of paint-
ing. His contribution was extremely clear, if
slow to get going. It is an important text in
the history of painting: a doctrinal summa-
ry of the works of a key modern artist. The
original was written in two squared-paper
exercise books, page-numbered 1 to 35 and
36 to 42. There are no mistakes, but no ac-
cents. Today, this document is on display
in the Grand Orient de France Museum, in
Paris.
The conference was a success. The
text was published in various French jour-
nals, as well as in England, Germany, and
Spain (despite the country’s refusal to rec-
ognize Gris). Encouraged by this expe-
rience, he published around ten articles
before he died. The reputation he had so ar-
dently wished for began to materialize. His
works were shown at numerous exhibitions
in France and abroad, and people began
buying his paintings.
Gris’ friend and Brother, Jacques
Lipchitz, moved into the house built by Le
Corbusier in Boulogne. Gris could not have
bought it, despite his wish to give Josette a
life without want.
After poorly treated bouts of bron-
chitis, asthma, and uremia, he began cough-
ing up blood in 1926. Nevertheless, he con-
tinued working determinedly. One happy
 Juan Gris, from the Studio to the Lodge
event brought joy to his life: the return of
his son, Georges. They immediately took to
one another, despite fifteen years apart. Jo-
sette adored him, and the Kahnweiler clan
adopted him: a few last moments of happi-
ness in a reunion cruelly cut short. Georg-
es stayed in France, to be near his father,
whom he called Jean, and then to be near
his memory.
Towards the end of his life, Juan Gris
turned to occultism, which he had discov-
ered during the war, as well as to philoso-
phy and astrology. Bedridden, he continued
to paint and smoke. His health declined. “I
slept a little with the help of morphine,” he
wrote on January 18, 1927. He did not feel
his death coming: he made projects, and
his friends were always around. “Cavélère”
called the best doctors, and a nurse helped
Josette. “Soon, he began to suffer horribly.
We could hear Jean’s cries from our garden,”
wrote “Cavélère.”
He died aged forty, almost peace-
fully, on the evening of May 11. The Ray-
nals, the Picassos, and all the Kahnweilers
kept vigil. “Thus died the purest of men,
the most faithful and tender friend I have
ever known, and one of the noblest artists
the world ever saw,” wrote Cavélère. Georg-
es led the funeral procession, followed by
Kahnweiler, Liptchitz, Picasso, and Ray-
nal. A large wreath on the hearse bore the
words, “To Jean Gris, from his comrades in
struggle.” It was from the Brothers of Vol-
taire Lodge.
Kahnweiler made George an offer:
to buy his father’s paintings for what he
thought they would be worth twenty years
later. Ironically, Georges, like his father, was
blackballed by Voltaire Lodge in 1931, aged
20. He was “deferred because of his youth
and inexperience.”
41
References
Apollinaire, Guillaume. Les Peintres cub-
istes. Paris: Hermann, 1980.
Bréon, Emmanuel. Juan Gris à Boulogne.
Paris: Herscher, 1992.
Dorival, Bernard, ed. Histoire de l’art. Vol. 4,
Du Réalisme à nos jours. Encyclopédie de la
Pléiade 28. Paris: Gallimard, 1969.
Frémont, Marguerite. La Vie du Dr. René Al-
lendy, 1889-1942. Castelnau-le-Lez, France:
Editions Climats, 1994.
Gaya Nuno, Juan Antonio. Juan Gris, un
peintre cubiste. Barcelona: Ediciones Poli-
grafa, 1984.
Grand Orient de France. Hommage à Juan
Gris (1887-1927), centenaire de sa naissance,
Paris, 1987.
Habasque, Guy. Le Cubisme. Geneva: Skira,
1959.
Kahnweiler, Daniel Henry. Juan Gris: sa vie,
son œuvre, ses écrits. Folio Essais 153. Paris:
Gallimard, 1990.
Leiris, Michel. Journal 1922-1989. Paris:
Gallimard, 1992.
Ozenfant, Amédée, and Charles Edouard
Jeanneret (a.k.a. Le Corbusier). La Peinture
moderne. Paris: Crès, 1936.
Agni and Voltaire Lodges’ archives, Library
of the Grand Orient de France.
 Ritual, Secrecy, and Civil Society - Volume 1 - Number 2 - Winter 2013-2014

Anti-Masonry and Anti-Semitism in 1930s France

André Combes

T
he association of Jew and Mason,
initially seen during the White Ter-
ror with the first allusions to the
Synagogue of Satan, only really developed
at the end of the Second French Empire
and under the Third Republic, particularly
following the Dreyfus Affair. In some cas-
es, anti-Semitism was an annex of anti-Ma-
sonry, but in other cases, for example in
Drumont’s La Libre Parole, anti-Masonry
was only the result of anti-Semitism.1 Fol-
lowing a lull during World War I, it gained
a second wind with the anticlerical poli-
cies of the left wing cartel, then with the
Stavisky Affair. This anti-Jewish and an-
ti-Masonic propaganda was so successful
in influencing public opinion that moder-
ate right-wing figures such as Paul Reynaud
and René Coty voted, in the Chamber [of
Deputies], in favor of banning Masonry,
in response to a demand made in 1935 by
four far-right parliamentarians, including
Xavier Vallat and Philippe Henriot.
The success of the Popular Front
resurrected this association (if any resur-
rection were needed). For example, Hen-
ry Coston’s post-electoral pamphlet, pub-
lished by the Center of Documentation
and Propaganda (CDP, or Centre de Doc-
umentation et de Propagande), entitled
“Judeo-Masonry in Parliament: Its Actors
and Accomplices.”2 He gave a list by geo-
graphical department of MPs who were
Jews and Masons, Jews or Masons, Juda-
izers (those with Jews in their families),
“masonizers” (particularly those who had
attended “White Meetings”3), and elected
officials who were members of the Inter-
national League Against Anti-Semitism
(Ligue internationale contre l’antisémitisme,
or LICA), the Human Rights League (Li-
gue des droits de l’homme, or LDH), Action
laïque (Secular Action), or Libre Pensée.
(Freethought). All, or almost all, were from
left-wing parties. However, on the right,
the journal castigated the “Pontius Pilates”
(those who did not vote to ban Masonry in
1935).
Anti Judeo-Masonic propaganda
during the 1930s drew upon the high pro-
portion of Jews in certain Parisian Lodges,
and also supposedly in provincial Lodges,
and on the references to Judaism in Mason-
ic ritual. It asserted that Jews and Masons
shared a desire to dechristianize and cor-
rupt France, using international capitalism
and preparing for the rise of Bolshevism. It
accused them of aspiring to world domina-
tion. Its writings inevitably included sever-
al passages on the “crimes” of the Revolu-
tion and the Paris Commune, the Dreyfus
affair, the Affaire des Fiches (the “Affair of
the cards of denunciation” was a political
scandal in France in 1904-1905), the Good
Friday banquets, and the protocols of the
Elders of Zion. They depicted Masonry as
being in the service of stateless and inter-
national Judaism.

1
The expression “Judeo-Masonry” is thought to have been coined by Monseigneur Jouin in 1912.
2
This document is available for consultation at France’s Center of Contemporary Jewish Documentation
(Centre de Documentation Juive Contemporaine, or CDJC), or at the library of the Grand Orient de France
(GODF).
3
In French Masonry "white meetings" are meetings organized by the lodges but without ritual. The reason
why is to allow to receive and work with non-Masons friends of order.
42
 Anti-Masonry and Anti-Semitism in 1930s France
This double hostility was not only
widespread in clerical or nationalist cir-
cles, but also well received in popular cir-
cles: public opinion accepted the repressive
measures of 1940 without a trace of indig-
nation. The hostility was even the reason
for which certain groups existed. Thus, in
December 1938, the anti-Masonic, anti-Se-
mitic Grand Occident de France, resurrect-
ed by Lucien Pemjean, invited Jews to give
up their French nationality to “avoid the
explosion of the hatred and anger that are
brewing in the souls of my compatriots.” He
told them, “Pack your bags, or there will be
pogroms. To get back on its feet and save it-
self, France needs the money that it lost be-
cause of you. Pay it back, and let the ground
swallow you up.” He accused them of hav-
ing funded the Bolshevik Revolution, then
added, “If not, believe me, the recent events
in Germany that make you cry like circum-
cised polecats will be nothing compared to
the blood and fire that awaits you here.” He
railed against the Chautemps government,
which he called a “plague of Lodges and
ghettos.”4
Ten or so movements used language
like this in many works and journals, such
as Gringoire or Darquier de Pellepoix’s La
France Enchaînée. At the time, Pellepoix
was president of the Rassemblement antijuif
de France (French Anti-Jewish Union). It is
worth singling out the Revue Internationale
des Sociétés Secrètes, for its Catholic origins
and readership. This publication was not
only anti-Masonic, but it also denounced
Judeo-Bolshevism. More or less accurate
lists of Masons were circulated, as in the
Belle Epoque, in order to hinder their pro-
fessional activities and undermine their
family lives.
4
LICA records at the CDJC.
5
In 1934, he gave a conference on “Hitler, Former French Agent in Austria."
43
These groups, stimulated by the de-
feat of democracy in Italy and then in Ger-
many, experienced renewal and growth,
even though (with the exception of Action
Française, the Jeunesses Patriotes, and the
Croix de Feu) they were no more than mod-
est phalanxes, led by obsessive people who
hated each other.
At the time, however, Masonry was
rather quiet. It was recruiting less than be-
fore, but with fewer resignations, at least
until the Stavisky Affair. This stability made
it less sensitive to the climate at the time,
and therefore to background anti-Semi-
tism. Nevertheless, subsequent investiga-
tions by the Rapp Square police services
show that this anti-Semitism was far from
absent. One ex-Mason states that he moved
Lodge, because his contained 80% Jews. Al-
ready, at the time of the Dreyfus affair, the
Grand Orient had to exclude certain Ma-
sons, including the MP Morinaud. In 1934,
it excluded (among others) Albert Vigneau,
for belonging to Action Française. He got
revenge in his work La Loge maçonnique,
by ironically commenting on the Yiddish
accent of the Lodge’s Worshipful Master,
the Jew René Valfort. He wrote that Val-
fort was really called Vladimir Grünwald,
and that he fought for conscientious objec-
tion (which he claimed aimed to weaken
France's military power)5 with another Jew,
Raymond Offner.
Masons did little to respond to
this onslaught. This was not the first time
that they had experienced such offensives,
and the Lodges first began denouncing
anti-Semitism in 1897, before the Drey-
fus Affair even became political. However,
Masons in the 1920s to 1930s were often
former soldiers, and fanatical about prog-
ress. They expressed great confidence in the
 Ritual, Secrecy, and Civil Society
League of Nations and the disarmament
plans. Already, the consecutive reactions to
the victory of fascism in Italy were weak and
lacked continuity. In 1924, when a Lodge in
Marseilles suggested creating a vigilance
committee to combat the emergence of fas-
cist groups in France (the Civic Unions),
the Grand Orient responded that Masonry
itself was this vigilance committee. Howev-
er, it fought no particular fight, and merely
attached all the reports and motions that
it received to the “to the documentary re-
cord,” or sent them to the Ministry of the
Interior.
French Masons could not rely on
the International Masonic Association.
Wanting to “please” London, the associa-
tion refused to admit the exiled Grand Ori-
ent of Italy and would not adopt a political
stance, even in favor of Human Rights (as
it was asked to do in 1932 by the Grand
Lodge of Austria, which felt increasingly
threatened).
French Lodges only really addressed
the issue of anti-Semitism after Hitler took
power. At this point, the Grand Orient was
only in contact with two minor German
Grand Lodges: the Symbolic Grand Lodge
of Germany (founded in 1930), and the
Rising Sun Grand Lodge, which supported
the principles of the Weimar Republic and
was considered irregular by other German-
ic Grand Lodges. The Rising Sun partici-
pated in shared meetings with the Brothers
of the Grand Orient.
Some Masons had mobilized in fa-
vor of the Franco-German rapprochement,
particularly, following the war, within
the Universal League of Freemasons and
the Masonic group, Fraternité-Réconcilia-
tion (which belonged to the Internation-
al Union of Associations for the League
of Nations). Several of its leaders, mostly
6
GODF library, Council of Order Meeting of April 5.
44
of Jewish origin, belonged to the Parisian,
German-speaking Lodge, Goethe. This
Lodge invited German conference speakers
such as Von Gerlach, Hans Adalbert von
Maltzahn, and Doctor Granthoff. It also or-
ganized student and youth exchanges.
The GODF (Grand Orient de France)
and the GLF (Grande Loge de France) did
not see the threat against the Weimar Re-
public coming. On 22 January 1933, French
Masons still attended the opening of the
Spinoza Lodge in Frankfurt, which was
dependent on the Grand Symbolic Lodge
of Germany. A Franco-German Masonic
meeting was scheduled for June 4 in Paris.
However, before then, on March 24, Hitler
came to power.
The Grand Orient’s “Council of
the Order” (Board) responded on April 5,
sending the following motion to the press:
“The GODF is deeply and painfully moved
by the sufferings caused by atrocious and
brazenly denied persecutions. Faithful to
our principles of mutual tolerance, respect
for others and ourselves, and absolute free-
dom of religion, we support the indignant
protests of all civilized peoples against the
barbaric excesses of Hitlerism.”6
Emotions ran high. On April 21,
1933, the still “profane” Bernard Lecache
participated in a White Meeting on the
theme, “Freemasonry’s Response to Hitle-
rian Antisemitism.” The other speakers in-
cluded Gaston Bergery, and (speaking for
LICA), Brothers Henri Levin and Lazare
Rachline.
On April 30, Charles Bernardin,
who had supported the Franco-German
rapprochement, updated the Grand Ori-
ent’s Council of the Order on the Mason-
ic situation in Germany. He indicated that
the three Prussian Grand Lodges had not
been dissolved, but had transformed, and
 Anti-Masonry and Anti-Semitism in 1930s France

had made this known to Doctor Goebbels, against Hitlerism. The MPs Georges Mon-
Minister of the Interior, as well as to the net (a Mason) and Georges Cogniot (repre-
management of the National Socialist Par- sentative of the French Communist Party:
ty. He said that they had broken all ties with Parti communiste français, or PCF), the for-
other Masonic associations, demanded that mer radical minister De Tessan (who died
all members be of German race, repudi- in deportation), and two German writ-
ated the words Freemason and Lodge, and ers, oversaw the evening. On June 20, the
changed their names. Zélés Philanthropes Lodge invited Lecache
On May 2, the Council of the Order, to speak on “The Truth about Hitlerism:
addressing the issue of peace, confessed The Dangers it Presents for Democracy
that “faced with the dictatorship’s demands, and Peace.” On July 3, Thérèse Blanchon,
we must admit that this noble pacifism has a refugee from Germany, spoke on Hitler-
failed.” The first exiles spoke before the ism at the Clarté Lodge. Bernard Lecache,
French Lodges. Brother Bessenich, Grand at a White Meeting in July, explained “The
Master of the Rising Sun, was invited by the Truth about Hitlerism” to the Zélés Philan-
Châlons-sur-Marne and Epinal Lodges. On thropes. On November 7, Brother Veinstein,
June 25 in Sarrebruck, another Rising Sun doctor in law and member of the Vrais Ex-
leader, Brother Schoettke, spoke of the dra- perts, spoke on the confusion concerning
matic situation of Masons in Germany. The races and languages. He ironically asked the
Droits de l’Homme Lodge asked the GODF Bon Vouloir Lodge whether Jews were of the
to sign in favor of refugees, and the Jean Aryan race, and whether Germains were of
Jaurès Lodge organized the first Masonic the Semitic race. He too died in deporta-
demonstration for refugees on June 1. At tion. Antonio Coen and René Levy-Lorrain
this demonstration, Bernard Lecache an- (Worshipful Master of the Goethe Lodge)
nounced that the Masons were the first to spoke at the Emile Zola Lodge on the col-
help the persecuted Jews. lapse of German Masonry. On November
This seems to be true, at least as 12, 1933, Brother Statera, director of “L’Ex-
concerns the help given through Fraterni- ilio,” compared fascism in Italy and in Ger-
té Réconciliation.7 Some Jews were suppos- many. On November 14, 1933, the Locarno
edly offered shelter in Fontenay-sous-Bois. Lodge held a White Meeting at the GODF
Moreover, on June 1, the writer Pierre events hall on rue Cadet, with the support of
Créange8 gave a conference at the Shake- the Front commun and LICA, on the theme,
speare Lodge, on anti-Semitism and Zion- “The Truth about the Reichstag Fire.” There
ism, and the Russian anarchist Brother Vol- were contributions from Brother Marceau
ski (Baumagarten) spoke at the Bon Vouloir Pivert, Brother Henri Lévin, Sister Eliane
Lodge on “the National Socialist program Brault (Radical Party secretary), as well
in Germany.” The White Meeting on June as from the profanes De Moro-Giafferi, (a
10, on rue Cadet, attended by 48 Lodges of London counter-trial lawyer) and Gaston
three Orders, aimed to mobilize Masons Bergery.9
7
The dates and themes of the meetings are taken from the Bulletin des Loges de la Région Parisienne (avail-
able at the GODF library).
8
Créange was initiated to the Amis de la Vérité in Metz, on February 6, 1927.
9
Bergery was President of the Common Front (at the time connected to LICA), but his article in La Flèche
on September 2, 1938, stating that Jews were not like other French people, led to a break with LICA. It
should be remembered that Bergery later became a Pétainist.
45
 Ritual, Secrecy, and Civil Society
On December 10, under Broth-
er Séverin Kutner, president of Fraterni-
té-Réconciliation, a White Meeting took
place on rue Puteaux, in favour of German
refugees. Participants included E. J. Gumbel
(a professor dismissed from the University
of Heidelberg and member of the Central
Committee of the German Human Rights
League), and Antonio Coen, a GLDF lead-
er. The meeting addressed German racism
and racisms in general. Other German ref-
ugees participated in the artistic element of
the meeting: singer Else Peppler, orchestra
conductor Adolf Dauss, and violinist Edgar
Ortenberg.
On December 11, 1933, at 8 rue
Puteaux, Lodges of both GODF and GLDF
organized a White Meeting at the Italia
Lodge, to hear Mario Corsi, secretary of
the “Claudio Treves” Federation of the Ital-
ian Socialist Party, explaining the events
in Germany, their consequences, and what
democracy could learn from them. On De-
cember 13, on rue Cadet, lawyer Mario An-
geloni (who died in 1936, fighting for the
Spanish republicans), debated the issue of
Italian democracy in the face of fascism.
Brother Labriola, former mayor of Naples
and former minister, spoke at a meeting
of the Général Peigné Lodge, on January
19, 1934. He told French Masons, “You are
as vulnerable as us. [...] I do not have the
right to say a word that might be taken as
a condemnation of the German Demo-
crats. However, these men had seen what
happened in Italy. They should have acted
more bravely and faced up to the enemy.”
In his capactity as a psychiatrist,
Doctor Legrain analyzed Hitlerism on Jan-
uary 10. On February 11, at a White Meet-
ing, Marcel Déat spoke about fascism, its
causes, and how to prevent it. It should be
remembered that in 1939, he did not want
to “die for Dantzig,” and founded a collabo-
rationist party: the Rassemblement National
46
Populaire (National Popular Union), which
attracted former non-Jewish LICA leaders
who were also Masons: Jean-Marc Renai-
tour and Paul Perrin, founder of the Comité
d’action contre le fascisme (Action Commit-
tee Against Fascism).
During the congress of Septem-
ber 1933, the Grand Orient was invited
by delegates to assemble all the forces of
democracy in an organization to combat
fascism and defend the Republican institu-
tions. One speaker thought it was already
too late, and that an “army of the unem-
ployed, supported by the Cross of Fire, is
ready to march as winter arrives, and will
ask the Brothers if they are ready to take
to the streets.” Another proposed that each
Lodge should create a vigilance committee,
to be linked to a national committee at the
Grand Orient. A third, although he did not
expect a fascist or Nazi regime in France,
was nevertheless worried about changes in
public opinion, which the press was turn-
ing against parliamentarians. He predicted
that there would one day be a revolution,
either by the right or left wing. With this in
mind, he invited the Lodges to help unite
the Left against fascism.
However, debates became even
more passionate when the question of
disarmament and international security
(asked of the Lodges, and debated in them
before and after Hitler took power) came
onto the agenda. In his conclusions, the re-
porter took the traditional pacifist point of
view, concluding that France should be the
first to progressively disarm, in order to set
the example.
MPs from Alsace and Lorraine
seized the chance to explain what Nazism
really meant, telling of its scorn for a ra-
cially mixed France. They argued that “a
tamer should show no weakness when en-
tering the wild animal cage.” One said that
Hitler’s doctrine was simply a “reprise” of
 Anti-Masonry and Anti-Semitism in 1930s France
the old pan-Germanist doctrine, with very
few changes. The Nazis, he said, suspected
France of opposing German expansion in
the East, and wanted to defeat and destroy
the country “in the interests of the Aryan
race and in order to bring about the rule
of a blond aristocracy.” A German refugee
had told him that a partial French disar-
mament would be “a form of suicide.” He
said that instead, France should strengthen
its defenses. To those who argued that be-
ing invaded was better than going to war,
he pointed out that they should expect no
mercy from Hitler’s men, who would send
“the French who refuse to defend their land
to die somewhere in the East, in order to
realize the great Germanic dream.”
Another speaker emphasized that
Mein Kampf was not aimed at an internal
audience, but that its author, “a man who is
fanatical, but sincere in his fanaticism,” truly
believed everything he wrote. He concluded
that war was unavoidable and that by giving
up, “we would dishonor ourselves and sign
the death warrant for Western civilization.”
A third contributor suggested that
the trade treaty with Germany should be
revoked, and that a European mutual assis-
tance pact should be signed. He said that
powers not wishing to sign this pact should
be boycotted, that a status of Polish and
Jewish minorities in Germany (similar to
that seen in Poland for German and Jew-
ish minorities) should be created, and that
Italian privileges in Tunisia should be sup-
pressed.
However, the president of the com-
mission, Brother Brenier, also president
of the Ligue de l’Enseignement (Teach-
ing League) and future Grand Master, re-
proached the MPs of Alsace and Lorraine
for being too subjective in their analyses.
He thought that the extracts they had read
10
GODF library, 1933 congress report.
47
from Mein Kampf were merely “puerile
boasts that Hitler has used to galvanize pub-
lic opinion.” He was a defeatist, and thought
that France alone could not fight an indus-
trial country with 70 million inhabitants
and a high birth rate, and that no coun-
try would commit to guarantee its safety.
Other Brothers thought that Hitler
would be overthrown, that anything was
better than a war, and that Germany, having
no army, would be tempted to build one if
France rearmed. One even expressed his in-
dignation that the Grand Orient de France
was the only left-wing organization that
had not yet officially advised disarmament.
One Alsace MP retorted: “Disarming does
not mean that Hitler's Germany would not
attack us. It bears a grudge not only against
our military, but against our race itself, be-
cause according to Hitler, we poison the
blood of the white race with Negro blood,
along the banks of the Rhine itself. This is
his doctrine, and this is why he would de-
stroy us. If you do not fight back, you stand
no chance. You can only escape this peril if
you inspire fear.”
The majority, rendered complacent
by years of pacifist propaganda did not heed
this lucid warning, and voted for further re-
treats, leading to the Munich Conference.
The Grand Orient announced that
“it is necessary to ask the French govern-
ment to make a solemn and rapid propos-
al to the League of Nations that all nations
fully disarm. We believe that if this propos-
al is rejected, our country should never-
theless begin progressive disarmament, as
far as is compatible with national defense
requirements in case of attack (an ‘attack-
ing’ government being one that refuses ar-
bitration or initiates hostility).”10 Lodges in
Alsace lost several dozen disgusted or terri-
fied members.
 Ritual, Secrecy, and Civil Society
When a new anti Judeo-Masonic
wave swept across France with the Stavisky
Affair, the Orders expelled several com-
promised Masons, several of whom were
cleared by the courts and reintegrated by
the Radical Party.11 Insults flew, for example
in this Francist movement (French fascists)
tract: “It was on the orders of two minions
of the occult Jewish and Masonic powers,
Brother Frot, Minister of the Interior, and
Brother Bonnefoy-Sibour, Chief of Police,
that the mobile guards and the police shot
at the people. Judeo-Masonry should suf-
fer for the sacrifice of French citizens to the
Grand Architect of the Universe and to Je-
hovah.”
The Grande Loge de France waited
for the storm to pass, and only the Grand
Orient launched a poster campaign to defend
the Institution’s honor. This affair caused
Masonry to lose hundreds of members.
After a pause because of the French
elections, Lodges resumed the fight against
Hitlerian racism. Bernard Lecache, who be-
came a Mason in January 1937, at the Paris
Lodge, examined the issue of anti-Jewish
racism in North Africa. Jean-Pierre Bloch,
also of Algerian origin, spoke on the same
subject on November 26, 1937, before the
Paix-Travail-Solidarité Lodge. Lazare Rach-
line, returning from a tour of North Africa
on behalf of LICA, and who was initiated
to the Libre Pensée Lodge in February 1931,
spoke before the Paris and Locarno Lodg-
es on May 10 and May 24, 1938. He gave
a speech entitled “Tunisia, Algeria, Oran.”
A request was made at the 1938 Congress
that the Grand Orient “influence the pub-
lic authorities in order to stop the harm-
ful actions of certain civil servants and the
press—a campaign conducted by racist or-
ganizations mostly made up of French citi-
11
See our article in Humanisme 267 (2004).
12
See our article, “La Ligue des Droits de l’Homme et la Franc-Maçonnerie,” Humanisme 243 (1998).
48
zens in France, North Africa, and the colo-
nies of certain Muslim countries.”
In 1938, in the name of respecting
the right to asylum and helping political ref-
ugees, the Grand Orient paid 10,000 francs
to the International Bureau, so that it would
assist Czech citizens expelled from the “Su-
dentenland.” It again denounced the anti-Se-
mitic persecutions in Italy and Germany.
However, other refugee Masons had
arrived (or were arriving) on French terri-
tory: these included Portuguese refugees (in
1935), as well as Poles and Austrians, who
opened the Mozart Lodge at the Grande
Loge de France in 1939. One of these was
Vladimir Misar, the former Grand Secre-
tary of the Grand Lodge of Austria, who
gave a presentation at the Jean Jaurès Lodge
on May 27, entitled “A Proud Nation has
Disappeared.” During the same meeting,
a doctor named only by his initials SW (a
precautionary measure) asked the ques-
tion, “What is happening in Germany?”
The Spanish war also encouraged
action. The lawyer Henri Levin set up an
aid network for republicans, using the in-
tervention of the France-Navigation Com-
pany (for which he was legal advisor). He
denounced France’s non-intervention in
several Lodges. The LICA leaders conduct-
ed an explanation campaign in Masonry:
Pierre Créange spoke before the Maurice
Berteaux Lodge (GLDF) about the shame-
fulness of anti-Semitism, and Bernard Le-
cache, spoke at the Locarno Lodge on June
27, 1939, on the subject of “Freemasonry
and Racism.”
Masonic, antiracist action was
particularly present in the Human Rights
League (Ligue des Droits de l’Homme, or
LDH)12 and LICA. In December 1925,
Brother Ubaldo Triaca drew the LDH Cen-
 Anti-Masonry and Anti-Semitism in 1930s France

tral Committee’s attention to the presence Federation of Leagues against Anti-Sem-

of organizations remotely controlled by the
Italian Embassy, and the threat they rep-
resented for exiles. A socialist MP tabled
a bill for the protection of these refugees
who were deprived of Italian nationality. In
1934, the LDH campaigned for the libera-
tion of political prisoners held in the first
concentration camps.
At the origins of LICA13 lies the
strong character of Bernard Lecache. He
was the former secretary of Henry Torrès,
a jurist who in 1926 had defended Samuel
Schwartzbad, the murderer of the Ukrainian
nationalist leader Simon Petlioura (accused
of having encouraged pogroms during the
Civil War). Lecache, who at the time was a
member of the Communist Party, found-
ed “The Friends of Jewish Colonization in
the USSR.” Then, on April 18, 1928, with
Lazare Rachline and Simon Goldenberg,
he created the International League against
Pogroms. The following year, this became
the International League against Anti-Sem-
itism, fighting for the right to existence and
peace for Jews, for peace between races,
and for equality between men.14 Regional
divisions sprang up, particularly in North
Africa, where anti-Semitism was virulent.
The organization also worked at interna-
tional level in the form of an International
itism. In Europe, this included Belgium,
Czech, and Hungarian groups. Outside of
Europe, there were Egyptian and South
American groups. The movement's journal,
Le Droit de Vivre (“The Right to Live”), ap-
peared in February 1932 with an article by
Pierre Brossolette, It was directed by Mar-
cel Feder15 of the Jacobins Lodge. Several
of the publication’s editors were Masons,
for example freethinker Raymond Offner16
(who chaired the LICA Congress in 1931),
Marcelle Capy (of Droit Humain), Lucien
Le Foyer, the Italian refugee Francesco Nitti
(of Italy’s exiled Grand Orient), and Pierre
Bloch.17
There were many new members af-
ter Hitler came to power, and following the
events of February 1934. Many members of
the movement were also Masons. The two
associations shared the same ideals, had the
same enemies, and recruited from the same
progressive circles.
The members of the Central
Committee included anarchist publicist
Charles-Auguste Bontemps, member of
the GODF, the vice-president Gaston Mon-
nerville, MP for Guyana, Marius Dubois,
MP for Oran, the radical socialist Isidore
Krzikowski (Garibaldi Lodge), lawyer Hen-
ri Levin, Paul Perrin, Secretary of the GODF

13
On the origins of LICA, see Emmanuel Debono’s memoir (available for consultation at the CDJC). We
wish to thank him for his help.
14
In 1933, LICA joined forces with André Weil-Curiel’s League for Republican and Socialist University
Action (Ligue d'Action Universitaire Republicaine et Socialiste, or LAURS), and with Georges Pioch’s Inter-
national League of Fighters for Peace (Ligue internationale des combattants de la paix, or LICP), to form the
Freedom Cartel (Cartel de la Liberté). This was a great success.
15
Marcel Feder was born in Lodz and had been a French citizen since 1927. He was a manufacturer and a
freethinker.
16
Raymond Offner, publicist and author of De Jésus-Christ à Karl Marx, editor-in-chief of L’Alliance littérai-
re, president of the Seine Federation of Freethinkers, initiated to the Equité Lodge (GODF) in 1925, and
affiliated to the Libre Pensée Lodge in 1934.
17
Pierre Bloch, initiated to the Liberté Lodge of Droit Humain on February 10, 1929, member of the 1793
Lodge (GODF), Worshipful Master of Spartacus (Droit Humain), National Councilor of Droit Humain, and
MP for the Aisne.
49
 Ritual, Secrecy, and Civil Society
Council of the Order, Jean-Pierre Bloch,
MP for the Aisne, the industrialist Lazare
Rachline (Paris and Libre Pensée Lodges),
Algiers MP Marcel Régis, member of Soleil
Levant (GODF), Raymond Offner (Gener-
al Secretary in 1932), Jean Danglade, Droit
de Vivre editorial secretary (L’internationale
Lodge), André Salambier (La Lumière du
Nord), Marcel Bloch (Le Mont Sinaï), Emile
Pinaud (Le Delta, in Algiers), Sternlicht
(L’Heureuse Rencontre), Marcel Dupuich
(Union et Travail), doctor Maurice Uzan
(Veritas), and Naegelen (Tolérance et Fra-
ternité). The members of the Committee of
Honor included Brother Raoul Aubaud, the
airman Lucien Bossoutrot, Lucien Le Foy-
er (ex-Grand Master of the GLDF), Marc
Rucart (who chaired the 1937 Congress),
Jean-Marc Renaitour, Francesco Nitti, and
Maurice Viollette.
These LICA leaders and activists
were heavily involved in Masonic life. They
were spread across the Lodges, but some
Lodges attracted more attention than oth-
ers. Let us take the example of the Grand
Orient: Paix-Travail-Solidarité, L’Hom-
me Libre, and La Franche Amitié (Pierre
Créange’s Lodge) of which five to seven
members were deported, as well as the Par-
is Lodge. It had a bourgeois membership,
with a few bankers, but also several airmen.
Only one Lodge roster, dated January 1937,
is available. It lists the names of Pierre
Mendès-France,18 writer Maxime Bloch,
and airman Pierre Cahuzac, who fought
in the Spanish war then in the Resistance.
The Lodge appealed for the three Orders to
hold a common meeting at the Trocadéro
meeting room, against the atrocities and
persecutions targeting republicans, pac-
ifists, and German democrats, and the
18
Initiated on April 13, 1928, and sponsored “by his brother in race, Jean Cahen” (in the words of Georges
Ollivier in Les Documents maçonniques).
19
Records available for consultation in the GLDF archives.
50
measures that practically outlawed Jews. It
later denounced the Munich compromise,
following other denials and abandonments
“which under the hypocritical pretext of
avoiding war, actually [made] it almost in-
evitable, unless a new Munich compromise
were to be reached.” Bernard Lecache was
initiated in January 1937 .
On the side of the Grande Loge de
France, the Goethe Lodge is noteworthy:
like its Orator Doctor Friedel Eisenstein,
it acted to help German refugees. Similar-
ly, the Abbé Grégoire Lodge19 played an im-
portant role. It was born of the will of anti-
racist Masons to work together in inciting
Brothers to be more active in the combat,
to denounce all forms of anti-Semitism in
the Institution, and above all to be a Ma-
sonic Center leading the fight against rac-
ism and anti-Semitism in the country. The
founding decision was taken in December
1938, and the fires were lit on March 27,
1939. The initiator and the first Worshipful
Master, writer Pierre Créange, died during
deportation to Auschwitz. Working along-
side him were Lecache and Rachline, the
diamond broker Albert Stora, Isidore and
Henri Krzikowski, Henri Levin, and Mar-
cel Feder. The Lodge aimed to study the
development of racism and anti-Semitism
in France and in the world, to unite Ma-
sons worried by racism, to seek the bases
for a more humane legislation for political
refugees and foreigners living honorably
in France, and to combat racial prejudice.
The Lodge was accompanied by a (profane)
Society of Friends of the Abbot Grégoire.
This initiative was favorably received, and
there were numerous affiliation requests
from brothers of the two Orders. The Lodge
brought together around sixty members,
 Anti-Masonry and Anti-Semitism in 1930s France

mostly Jews, including founding members Regis asked Daladier to remove racist offi-
and those affiliated after its installation in cers from the North African armies.
1938. It had not long been created when Many Jewish Brothers fell victim to
most of its members, including Bernard Le- Nazism: around 90 from the Grand Ori-
cache and Lazare Rachline, were called up. ent, including two former Councilors of
In December 1935, the LICA cre- the Order,22 and an even higher percent-
ated a “Committee liaison center for the age (around 70 Brothers) for the Grande
status of immigrants,” which opened a per- Loge. The two most heavily affected Lodges
manent reception obtaining 80% favorable were Paix-Travail-Solidarité (rue Cadet, 7
responses. However, the main success of dead) and the Goethe Lodge (rue Puteaux),
the combined action of the Masons and with the deaths of Edouard Plantagenet,
LICA was the legislative decree of April Lévy-Lorrain, Doctor Eisenstein, Séverin
25, 1939, signed by Brother Marchandeau, Kutner, and Pierre Créange (who, like Kut-
mayor of Reims. It banned “defamation ner, had double membership and therefore
against groups of people of a certain racial never saw his Brothers from L’Abbé Grégoire
origin or particular religion.”20 This mea- again). Lazare Rachline played an import-
sure resulted in raids at the headquarters of ant role in the Resistance. Unable to cap-
anti-Semitic newspapers,21 in Darquier de ture him, the Nazis shot his brother. Le-
Pellepoix being sentenced to three months cache, held prisoner in North Africa, was
in prison for anti-Semitic actions, and to freed after the Anglo-American landings.
the confiscation of Coston’s papers.
The other combat conducted during
these years concerned the right to asylum
and the status of foreigners in France. In
1937, speaking before the Brothers of the
Action Lodge, a concerned Henri Levin
asked, “Will France remain the country of
the right to asylum?” He called “for the ju-
risdiction of the High International Com-
missariat to be extended to all these refu-
gees, for no repressive measure to be taken
without seeking the opinion of a consulta-
tive committee of delegates from national
organizations that deal with political ref-
ugees, and for sufficient transit times.” A
belated campaign was launched to mobilize
the Lodges. The 1938 Congress denounced
the attitude of the authorities towards po-
litical refugees. In September 1939, Marcel
20
On January 23, 1939, Marchandeau, Minister of Justice, received Lecache and Rachline, to discuss natural-
izations and the bill against racism.
21
La France enchaînée, Jean Boissel’s Le Réveil du Peuple, Le Grand Occident, La Bataille antimaçonnique, the
R.I.S.S., and La Libre Parole.
22
André Haarbleicher, president of the Positivist Society, and Georges Voronoff, who on May 24, 1939 at
France-Arménie, gave a conference entitled, “Thoughts on the Issue of Race.”
51
 Ritual, Secrecy, and Civil Society - Volume 1 - Number 2 - Winter 2013-2014
Address to the 2002 California Masonic Symposium
Alain Bauer, Grand Master of the Grand Orient of France Sacramento,
California, July 27th, 2002
I
t is a great honor to be your guest at this
2002 California Masonic Symposium. I
want, first of all, to thank the Most Wor-
shipful C. Ray Whitaker, Grand Master of
Masons in California, for his very fraternal
invitation.
In prior communications the lead-
ership of the Grand Lodge of California
asked me to speak about "The Great Divide:
The Grand Orient of France and Dogmatic
Freemasonry." Let me say here to you that
this was a very great... surprise! After all, we
do not think that such freemasonry exists.
James Anderson was very clear about this
at the beginning. We respect and welcome
in the Lodges of the Grand Orient of France
those who believe or do not believe. Nei-
ther Atheist, nor extremist, there is nothing
in the Grand Orient that gives us as Masons
the right to determine a definitive approach
to advancement, or a specific stream, that
leads to our individual accomplishments
and personal growth through the Craft.
First, I want to acknowledge that
critical parts of my speech have been pre-
pared in collaboration with my very close
friend and brother, Grand Commander
of the Ancient Accepted Scottish Rite of
France, Alain de Keghel.
The time now has come to engage
fraternally in a deep and sustained analysis
of the Masonic landscape, as it is, not as we
imagine it to be. All Brethren of good will
are now looking toward a more open-mind-
ed, more tolerant, and more Masonic ap-
proach to our Brotherhood.
To that end, increasing numbers of
Masons from around the world are making
the necessary efforts to build a bridge of
52
Light which does not end at national bor-
ders or within the limits of individual Ma-
sonic bodies. It is time to open eyes, minds,
and hearts, to the inherited legacies of our
diverse and rich traditions.
It is indeed a great privilege to have
the opportunity to open more widely the
doors of understanding. So let us attempt
in our time together to overcome the fric-
tion of difference that far too often marks
the realities of the profane world, and tar-
nishes our Masonic world.
The Masonic Order has endured
through the vicissitudes of time, culture,
civilizations and society. However, it has
survived through the centuries not by fol-
lowing passively the movements of society;
rather it often has been at the forefront of
important change within society. In those
moments of leadership it has been at its
strongest.
Simply being here in the United
States of America brings to mind the major
role American Masons, and some of their
French Brethren, played in establishing a
modern democratic society.
We can all give our deepest thanks
to George Washington, Benjamin Franklin
(Who I can tell you with great pride was
the Worshipful Master of a Grand Orient of
France Lodge in Paris), to the Marquis de
Lafayette, and to many others who worked
so strenuously for freedom that time will
not permit us to list all of their names to-
day.
In point of fact, there have been
important and fruitful moments of deep
contact between French and American
Masons going back even before the time
 Address to the 2002 California Masonic Symposium
of the American Revolution. Nevertheless,
we know from history and personal expe-
rience, that there are different traditions in
America and France. Because French Ma-
sons realize fairly well how difficult it is for
some of our Brethren on this side of the
Atlantic to understand how it came to pass
in France that there is such a great variety
of Masonic bodies and Masonic streams, or
traditions, it would be of value to discuss
France to some degree.
With your permission, let us con-
sider together some historical facts but also
some issues that may be regarded as prema-
ture in the emerging transatlantic dialogue,
or even hazardous. In order to do this to
full mutual benefit, it is obvious that we
first need to know each other much better
than we do.
To be direct and to the point, I will
first offer a few words concerning the Grand
Orient of France: It has not relinquished
the dedication to The Great Architect of the
Universe and it has never initiated women.
It is the oldest traditional Masonic body in
France. This fact was just confirmed a few
weeks ago by the United Grand Lodge of
England to the Minnesota Grand Lodge
here in America. And as I briefly men-
tioned earlier, the fact that there was a very
strong commitment by the Grand Orient of
France to the establishment of Freemason-
ry in the early years of the United States of
America is well documented.
The Grand Orient of France is a fed-
eration of Lodges using different workings,
where every single Lodge has the freedom
to choose a Ritual belonging either to the
French Rite (a legacy of the old English
Rite), the Ancient Accepted Scottish Rite,
the Rectified Scottish Rite, as well as to the
Royal Arch, Mark Masonry, Memphis-Mis-
raim, and the Emulation Working. Our
lodges, which are free to choose their work-
ing are also free to work to the G.A.O.T.U.
53
The Grand Orient with more than
44,000 Brethren is the largest French Ma-
sonic organization in a country that counts
a total of roughly 130,000 members work-
ing in a Lodge. This is a number that may
sound ridiculous by comparison with some
2 million Freemasons in America, but you
must consider the size of the French nation,
which totals sixty million people (compared
to 288 million Americans).
Of course this number is approach-
ing less than half of the amount of
Freemasons in the United Kingdom. How-
ever, like the USA (of course, we do not
ignore the dark times of the Morgan affair
in your country), Great Britain is the only
country in Europe where Freemasons were
never persecuted and where our Masonic
Order had a chance to develop without the
negative interference of the churches, and
politics. This situation, by the way, is chang-
ing in the U.K. with a Catholic Prime Minis-
ter strongly challenging the role of Freema-
sonry in British society.
This history explains why continen-
tal Europe does not total today much more
than some 250,000 Freemasons. Out of this
number, nearly half are French. To be more
complete in this presentation, it should be
added that France has benefited from an
additional important feminine Masonic and
mixed-gender Masonry development since
the early 20th century.
It can be noted with interest that the
first recorded Masonic Lodge was created
in France in 1688. The first Masonic Order
in 1728 was named "Grande Loge" before
changing its name into the "Grand Orient
de France" in 1771-1773. That same year a
new "Grande Loge de France" was created
by dissident members, who then in 1799
joined yet once again the "Grand Orient
de France." Finally, a new "Grande Loge de
France," our friend and sister obedience,
was created in 1894. The Grande Loge de
 Ritual, Secrecy, and Civil Society
France still exists today with more than
20,000 members and is an outgrowth of the
same Masonic roots.
In overall percentages, French
Lodges can be broken down into the fol-
lowing numbers: 69% male, 20% belong
to mixed-gender masonry and 11% are for
women only. One may consider also that
75% of French Masons are men, but that
over the last 30 years, the relative percent-
age of women has more than doubled, ris-
ing from 10% to nearly 25%.
As many of you will know, a great
turmoil began in 1877 as the Delegates of
the Lodges of the Grand Orient of France,
while attending the annual General Assem-
bly, and after fierce debate, made a decision
and voted to lift the mandatory obligation
to refer to T.G.A.O.T.U. in Lodge rituals.
It is interesting to note that the motion to
introduce this dramatic change was intro-
duced by a Protestant Minister and Brother,
Frederic Desmons. One must today realize
that this happened in the context of French
post-revolutionary society, which had
fought successfully for a separation of the
State from the Catholic Church. I can bear
witness today to the liberty given earlier by
the French Lodges for those non Roman
Catholics that were persecuted in subse-
quent years, and decades after the Revoca-
tion of the Edict of Nantes in 1685. Lodges
of the Grand Orient were the places of ref-
uge of free thought and liberty against the
great darkness of this period.
In earlier times under the Kingdom
there was no desire to accept any level of
ecumenism by established religion. There
simply was no tolerance of different beliefs
in established religion. After the French
Revolution of 1789, the Catholic Church
as an institution tried desperately to regain
the temporal power it had lost. It was in
this context that the signature of the Con-
cordat of 1801 had as its first consequence
54
for French Freemasons their effective ex-
communication. This occurred as a result of
the Encyclical "In Eminenti Apostolatus Spec-
ulae." The immediate effect of this was to
produce a radicalization of the relationships
between the conservative Catholic Church
and the Grand Orient. Remember that the
Grand Orient was at this time deist in its
majority, but still supportive of the gains of
the Revolution; freedom of speech, freedom
of conscience, freedom of religion, were,
and still are, our motto. We also wanted to
become free from English Masonic coloni-
zation. Does this not ring a bell?
The Masons in 1877 believed their
decision expressed in a democratic vote was
a way to return to the original and very liber-
al spirit of the Constitution of James Ander-
son. That was the heart of the matter. That
is what was in their thinking. The focus was
on Anderson's Constitution as it had been
written in 1723, before the changes made in
1738. In fact, Masons before 1717 were offi-
cially "Catholics," they became "Christians"
and then "Noachites." The Grand Orient of
France merely climbed an additional step,
asking them to refer to the "Universal Moral
Law," as specified by the 1723 Constitutions.
This would mean, as well, a focus on
Anderson's Constitution existed well before
the extensive changes undertaken in 1813,
and before the 1929 modifications with the
so-called "eight fundamental obligations."
These are the later obligations necessary in
order to attain recognition from the United
Grand Lodge of England.
It is not the purpose here to place
too much emphasis on this most sensitive
and controversial issue, which all too easily
pollute Masonic relations and discussion.
Unfortunately, there is not much substan-
tive reasoning at all on the topic today. For
example, there is very little examination
of the historical facts as a necessary back-
ground to the discussion.
 Address to the 2002 California Masonic Symposium
The matter has sadly poisoned
the relations between different Masonic
streams. It has produced a Masonic reac-
tion that many Masons around the world
still do not understand: a kind of Masonic
equivalent to the Pope has emerged with
established rules of excommunication and
a kind of "new grand Inquisitor."
In France, most Brethren simply did
not care about this break in the Masonic
family. They regarded this evolution in the
breakdown of relations with regret and sad-
ness. Nevertheless, they lived their lives as
Free Masons and they went their own way.
This is how it was in the past, and it is still
so today.
However, in the course of affairs,
one Masonic body did decide in 1913 to
work the "regular" way. This was the ori-
gin of the Grand Loge Nationale Française
(GLNF), which today claims more than
20,000 members.
You must realize that despite dif-
ferences this Grand Lodge often shares the
same Temples with other Masons outside of
Paris. This occurs even though
Brethren belonging to other streams
do not work together with the GLNF in
closed tiled Lodges. Nevertheless, substan-
tive relations do exist. In very recent times,
the respective Grand Masters of GLNF and
GODF have worked to establish a new kind
of relationship and signed agreements on
the recognized quality of the initiation pro-
cess, on disciplinary issues and on diplo-
matic relations.
We meet regularly, we accept trans-
fers from one Body to another, and we re-
spect our mutual differences. This offers
some hope for a brighter Masonic future, at
least in France.
One has to realize that Freemason-
ry developed in a different way in France as
well as in several other continental Europe-
an, Latin American and African countries.
55
It is something we have to deal with. It is
an issue we would be wise to address and
not ignore. There is no need to lock our-
selves into unnecessary compartments and
singular ways of thinking. We need to be
concerned about the weakness that results
from unnecessary divisions. We would be
much wiser to prefer a universal perspec-
tive.
After all, our way of thinking is in
part a legacy of the great philosophers and
writers of the time of the Enlightenment:
Voltaire, Rousseau, Montesquieu, Diderot,
and so many others.
Part of the task at the moment is to
now pass on the rich heritage of our hu-
manist and Enlightenment values to future
generations. In the cause of freedom, and
more, this tradition was fought and died
for in France and America in the Eigh-
teenth-Century. This must not be lost.
The essential point is that our Ma-
sonic message is still of considerable value.
The great, generous and original ideal of
Freemasonry to "unite people who other-
wise would have remained at perpetual dis-
tance" is also a modern and vital message
to our contemporary society endangered
by egoism, ethnocentrism and crude mate-
rialism. At this time, everyone is speaking
of globalization. But where are we as Free-
masons in the contemporary world? Are
we not at risk in our current situation? Is it
not possible that the world will pass us by
in the new millennium if we do not actively
engage with humanity once again and give
the message that is expected from us?
Of course, in your great country, in
the USA, you have been fortunate to have a
series of prestigious heads of state as mem-
bers of our Brotherhood. But even here,
does this not belong to the past?
Do we not have to stop and ask
ourselves why the winding down is devel-
oping in this fashion? What can we do to
 Ritual, Secrecy, and Civil Society
return to a greater effectiveness, relevance,
and visibility in our respective societies?
Social meetings and charities are good, but
they cannot be our main and only goal. In
a modern society where every person is so-
licited for something, we have to become
more attractive to those people who have
something to contribute to society. We all
agree that Lodges do not have to interfere
in politics. But does it mean that we, as
Brethren, as individuals, need to stay silent
as mere spectators in the profane world?
Always working in reference to
our ethical values as Masons, we should
be more sensitive to the important issues
confronting modern society: education,
discrimination, the preservation of individ-
ual rights in a computerized society, rules
of ethics in biotechnology, the proper and
careful management of genetic modified
organisms and of modern medicine, envi-
ronmental problems, aging populations,
youth violence, and other challenges like
drugs, tobacco and alcohol abuse. Young
people will expect this from each one of us
before they join our Lodges. They will not
join if we neglect the vital issues of our re-
spective nations, or of the world as a whole.
If Freemasons do not engage the
world in front of them, they will, without
doubt, lose the best and brightest of our
youth. Fraternal relations as you and I have
practiced them are not enough. The youth
of our respective societies have many op-
portunities for socializing elsewhere, more
in keeping with the social and cultural inter-
ests of modern times and their own expecta-
tions. Nevertheless, how can there be Free-
masonry without the most talented of our
youth petitioning to join with us in service?
Furthermore, is it really necessary,
because of revisiting the very fluid idea of
Landmarks in this century, to destroy rela-
tions between each other, between the dif-
ferent Masonic traditions?
56
Are we to act like churches, which
knowingly defend dogmas, which represent
both temporal and spiritual powers, and
thus could be imagined to be less tolerant as
a result? On this matter, we are not perform-
ing very well at all as Masons. Churches in
fact, are much more successful in the prac-
tice of basic human tolerance as they work to
improve their inter-confessional relations.
Let us take the example of the Ro-
man Catholic Church, which today ex-
tends the metaphorical hands of the Pope
all around the world even to non-Christian
churches and communities. Each day the
Roman Catholic Church reaches out to oth-
er denominations, including Islam, Bud-
dhism and Hinduism. How does it come to
pass that Freemasons remain at the turn of
this century unable to conduct, or even be-
gin, some kind of similar Masonic dialogue
on a large scale? This would by no means
necessarily require of any Mason that they
change anything about their Masonry. It
simply means they could speak respectful-
ly to each other about Masonry, about the
joys of being alive, and about the serious
issues of modern times.
It could mean they sit and discuss
how best to get rid of self-imposed rules of
recognition, exclusive jurisdiction, regular-
ity, and so forth, none of which are in the
slightest bit relevant anymore.
It is precisely these Rules and Reg-
ulations, which make a universal dialogue
among all Freemasons virtually impossible.
Is it not a kind of a paradox that today the
Roman Catholic Church has almost lifted
the excommunication of Freemasons that I
spoke about earlier but that Freemasons of
different disciplines in fact excommunicate
each other? Is it a sane and normal situa-
tion where Masonic representatives may, in
most cases, meet easier with a clergyman
than with a fellow Mason belonging to a
so-called "irregular" Grand Lodge?
 Address to the 2002 California Masonic Symposium
In the United States, Grand Lodg-
es did not, in fact, break relations with the
Grand Orient de France in 1877, which is
the popular but historically unfounded
myth. Most of them did continue relations
for a long time after 1877. During World
War I, for example, we received in our
lodges numerous American Masons. And
we did the same after our Liberation by the
Allies, mostly by courageous American sol-
diers, in World War II.
I quote an American Mason and
scholar, Paul Bessel, on the general topic:
"it will probably surprise most American
masons to find out that during the 1900s
the Grande Loge of France was recognized,
or mutual visitations by members were ap-
proved, by twenty-three – almost half – of
all United States grand lodges. Since the
Grand Orient of France is said to be totally
outside the pale of freemasonry and "fla-
grantly irregular" since the 1870s, it is even
more surprising to find that twelve – more
than a quarter – of United States grand
lodges recognized or approved mutual visi-
tations by members with the Grand Orient
of France during the twentieth century.
Both the Grande Loge of France and
the Grand Orient of France were fully rec-
ognized by eight grand lodges starting at
the time of World War I. This could have
been the result of the War and the desire to
support strong allies in the war, as is men-
tioned in a July 20, 1917, letter from four
Grande Loge of France officials to United
States grand lodges. The letter states its pur-
pose was "to extend to your Grand Lodge
an invitation to enter into official relations
with us and to cement those relations by
an exchange of representatives." However,
many American grand lodges considered
and rejected recognition, and many that
granted recognition did so only after de-
tailed study and careful consideration. It is
clear that grand lodges in the United States
57
made thoughtful and serious decisions on
this subject.
Appropriately, in the early twenti-
eth century, Louisiana led American grand
lodges in recognizing the Grande Loge of
France and re-recognizing the Grand Ori-
ent of France. Louisiana had caused the
other American grand lodges to break their
ties with the Grand Orient of France fifty
years earlier.
In brief, Grand lodges in the Unit-
ed States began to withdraw their recogni-
tions of the Grand Orient after 1868, when
the Grand Orient recognized a Masonic
group called the "Supreme Council of the
Accepted and Ancient Scottish Rite of the
State of Louisiana," which was not recog-
nized by the Grand Lodge of Louisiana. The
Louisiana Grand Master called this act a
"strange perversion" by the Grand Orient.
The Grand Lodge of Louisiana considered
this an invasion of its territory, withdrew its
recognition of the Grand Orient, and called
on other grand lodges in America to do
the same. It is very significant, when we re-
member the historical period in which this
action took place (And, I have to add, con-
sidering the very special relations between
France and Louisiana).
The Grand Orient decree and re-
port, as printed in the Louisiana Proceed-
ings, states that one of the reasons the Grand
Orient recognized this "Supreme Council
of Louisiana" is because that group allowed
the initiation of men "without regard to na-
tionality, race, or color."
The Grand Orient report mentioned
the significance of "civil and political equal-
ity between the white and colored races,"
opposition to slavery, and the necessity of
its abolition. The split of French Masonry
with that of America actually came in
1869 when the Grand Orient passed
a resolution that "neither color, race, nor reli-
gion should disqualify a man for initiation."
 Ritual, Secrecy, and Civil Society

US Grand Lodges that recognized or approved intervisitations with the Grande Loge
of France and/or the Grand Orient de France during the 1900's were:

Action Date
Alabama Recognized GLDF and GODF Dec. 4, 1918.
Arkansas Recognized GLDF and GODF Nov. 19, 1919
California Recognized GLDF Oct. 9, 1918
Colorado Intervisitations GLDF & GODF May 1, 1918
Dist. Col. Recognized GLDF Dec. 19, 1917
Florida Intervisitations with GLDF Jan. 15, 1918
Georgia Intervisitations with GLDF May 1, 1918
Indiana Intervisitations with GLDF May 29, 1918
Iowa Recognized GLDF and GODF June 12, 1918
Kentucky Intervisitations GLDF & GODF Oct. 17, 1917
Louisiana Recognized GLDF and GODF Feb. 5, 1918
Minnesota Recognized GLDF Jan. 21-22, 1919
Nevada Recognized GLDF and GODF June 12, 1918 & 1919
New Jersey Recognized GLDF and GODF Apr. 17, 1918
New York Intervisitations GLDF & GODF Sep. 10, 1917
N. Dakota Recognized GLDF and GODF June 17, 1919
Oregon Recognized GLDF June 14, 1918
Rhode Isl. Recognized GLDF and GODF May 20, 1918
S. Dakota Recognized GLDF June 11, 1918
Texas Recognized GLDF Dec. 4, 1917
Utah Recognized GLDF Jan. 22, 1919
Wisconsin Recognized GLDF June 9, 1958
Wyoming Intervisitations GLDF & GODF Sep. 11, 1918

58
 Address to the 2002 California Masonic Symposium
Since Louisiana had caused other
United States grand lodges to sever their
relations with the Grand Orient of France
in 1868, it was especially significant that the
Grand Lodge of Louisiana enthusiastically
recognized the GLDF and re- recognized
the GODF on February 5, 1918.
The adoption of the resolutions re-
storing fraternal relations with the Grand
Orient of France and recognizing the Grand
Lodge of France was followed by an out-
burst of applause, the national colors of the
United States and France being displayed,
one on each side of the station of the Grand
Master, and national airs of each of the
countries pealed forth from the Cathedral
organ.
Nevertheless, it must be clear here
today that the Grand Orient of France is
not seeking recognition by the rules of the
United Grand Lodge of England. We had
good relations with the United States Grand
Lodges before 1877 and after 1877. We can
all remember with interest the breaking be-
tween Grand Orient of France and English
Masonic Bodies in 1776, just 10 years after a
1766 agreement among Masons. You see, as
a matter of historical fact, one of the reasons
for the real "Great Divide" between Mason-
ry in France and England was our support
of the American Revolution and the financ-
ing of it by French Freemasons, like Brother
Lafayette. This is an important part of the
real history of Freemasonry. It is an import-
ant part of what actually happened.
We respect your independence be-
cause we were a part of it and because you
were, twice in our history, the forceful
weapon and working tool of our own free-
dom. Allies forever, do we really care about
the English Masonic bureaucracy? It may be
time for a Masonic Tea Party.
Being supportive of constructive
change, I notice in this regard that some
significant changes are beginning to occur.
59
Even in London, pragmatism and common
sense seems to be slowly gaining ground.
We see a greater reaching out than in the
past to Masons from different traditions.
Step by step, we shall make progress. We
are patient. Let's hope that society may be
as patient as us. Clearly, Freemasonry is not
yet Mister Rodger's neighborhood.
Of course, none of us today has a
miraculous "ready-made" solution to sug-
gest. We can only work to find a solution
step by step. That is how we can all be prag-
matic and helpful. The first step is simply to
take into consideration the simple truth that
there are different Masonic streams. This is
the way we might want to work, freely, and
very respectful of living traditions. If you
are for sure the mainstream, let us hope that
we are the gulf stream.
Your American Constitution says
"congress shall make no law respecting an
establishment of religion, or prohibiting the
free exercise thereof, or abridging the free-
dom of speech, or of the press." Let us all
hear the stunning, eloquent, and clear voice
from the founding fathers. Since then you
have gone on to construct the most power-
ful Nation in the world, and you have always
relied on these earlier foundational values
in doing so. These are the same values we
share in my own country, in France.
There are a little more than 3.2 mil-
lion freemasons in the world at this time.
The world we all share is dangerous, com-
plex, and often savage. It needs the values
and principles that we share together as Ma-
sons to protect and develop real democracy
and genuine freedom.
Let us quote an anonymous writ-
er at this time: "listen to the words of the
ritual. The true secret of Freemasonry is
that its ideas are revolutionary, radical, and
dangerous to those who would deny human
dignity and promote injustice. As an insti-
tution we are non-political, and rightly so.
 Ritual, Secrecy, and Civil Society

But as individuals, we can take action to

apply the ideas of Freemasonry in everyday
life. Listen to the words of the ritual and go
forth and resolve to practice them everyday.
Only then can we each improve ourselves in
Freemasonry, and in so doing improve the
world." Welcome to the Grand Orient, Joel
Springer, Philalethes Society President.
As Freemasons of different lineages,
why could we not act together? It is time in-
deed. Don't you think it is time, again, as it
was in 1776, for independence?

60