Free-Masonry in France () has been influential on the worldwide Masonic movement due to its founding of Continental Freemasonry.Grand Orient de France
There are many and varied Masonic rites and obediences in France. The main male-only masonic organisations are the Grande Loge de France and the Grande Loge Nationale Française, the main female-only organisation is the Women's Grand Lodge Of France, and the main mixed organisations are now the Grand Orient de France and Le Droit Humain. In addition, organisations like the SRIA also operate in France, with colleges across the country.
Historiography
In the 18th century, Paris and Lyon were the two major centers of French Free-Masonry. Each of them hosted more than 20 lodges.
Until the mid-20th century, the history of Free-Masonry was excluded from classic-style history syllabi in universities. Particularly in France, Masonic historiography was thus almost entirely divided between authors who were vehemently pro- or anti-Free-Masonry (with the former often being masons themselves). Since then, Free-Masonry's political influence has diminished, and its historical conflict with France's Roman Catholic church (also now less politically powerful) has been if not resolved then at least appeased. This climate has been more favourable to the application of classic historical principles and methods to Masonic historiography, allowing it to develop and form a discipline of its own, "Masonology", devoted to a wider and more neutral study of the highly varied cultural and intellectual universe formed by European Free-Masonry in general and French Free-Masonry in particular.
French Free-Masonry offers the historian several documents (manuscripts, diplomas, engravings, caricatures, journal articles and other printed material) as well as a large number of objects relating to both ritual (Masonic aprons, tablets, vessels, medals) and everyday life (pipes, clocks, tobacco boxes and faience decorative art) that have been put on show in many museums and permanent exhibitions. However, the main sources in this area remain the manuscripts, especially the manuscripts cabinet at the Bibliothèque nationale de France and the municipal library of Lyon. In 2001, the Russian government repatriated (among other things) all the Masonic archives which had been confiscated by the Nazis during their occupation of Europe - these had been held at Moscow since 1945.
Course
Ancien Régime
Origins According to a tradition dating to 1777, the first Masonic lodge in France was founded in 1688 by the Royal Irish Regiment of Foot Guards, (later known as the Regiment of Walsh of the famed Irish Brigade of France) which followed James II of England into exile, under the name "La Parfaite Égalité" of Saint-Germain-en-Laye. Historians believe this to be probable, but it has never been proven conclusively. The same can be said of the first lodge of English origin, "Amitié et Fraternité", founded in 1721 at Dunkirk. The first lodge whose existence is historically certainMémoire historique sur la maçonnerie, supplement to the Encyclopédie, 1773 was founded by some Englishmen in Paris "around the year 1725". It met at the house of the traiteur Huré on rue des Boucheries, "in the manner of English societies", and mainly brought together Irishmen and Jacobite exiles. It is quite probable that it was this lodge that in 1732 received official patents from the Grand Lodge of London under the lodge-name "Saint Thomas", meeting at the sign of the "Louis d'Argent", still on the rue des Boucheries.
In 1728, the Freemasons decided to recognise Philip Wharton, 1st Duke of Wharton (1698–1731) as "Grand Master of the Freemasons in France". Wharton lived in Paris and Lyon from 1728 to 1729, and had already been Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of London in 1723. His appointment as French Grand Master, which was before the transformation of the "Grand Lodge of London" into the "Grand Lodge of England in 1738", is considered by some historians to be the point of departure for French Free-Masonry and a declaration of its independence from British Free-Masonry. Wharton was succeeded as Grand Master of the French Freemasons by the Jacobites James Hector MacLean (1703–1750) and then Charles Radcliffe, Earl of Derwentwater (1693–1746).
While the existence of a Grand Master in France was attested to as early as 1728, it took another ten years for a true assembly of representatives from all the "English" and "Scottish" lodges - however, the existence of this gathering is not confirmed by more recent authors (see Talk:Grand Lodge of France). to form the first Grande Loge de France on 24 June 1738 and establish Louis de Pardaillan de Gondrin (1707–1743), second Duke of Antin, as "general and perpetual Grand Master in the kingdom of France". It was this Grand Lodge that gave birth to the French Masonic jurisdictions that still exist today.
1730s In December 1736, the chevalier de Ramsay pronounced a discourse in which he propounded the idea of a chivalric origin for Free-Masonry. Full text of the discourse. This idea later had a definite influence on the instigation in French Free-Masonry from 1740 to 1770 of a large number of Masonic Upper Degrees, which later regrouped around different Masonic rites.
The first revelation of Masonic secrets to the French public dates to 1737, and the following year these were published in the La Gazette de Hollande under the title La réception d'un frey-maçon ("The reception of a Freemason"), drawing on investigations by René Hérault, lieutenant of police, and the testimony of a Miss Carton, a dancer at the Opéra, to whom a Mason had told the secrets. The police interest reflects the absolute monarchy's fears of the dangers it could incur from a "society admitting people of all estates, conditions, religions, and in which may be found a large number of foreigners". It therefore forbade "all traiteurs, cabaretiers, aubergistes and others from receiving the aforesaid assemblies of freys-maçons". However, this did not stop them from meeting, under the protection of figures from the high nobility, such as the duke of Antin. Other investigations occurred from 1740 to 1745, giving rise to highly detailed police reports that now constitute a precious source for historians of Free-Masonry. These investigations were also accompanied by arrests and light sentences, until Free-Masonry definitively became part of French social life, with condemnations and sentences emanating from the monarchy ending around the end of the 18th century.
The year 1738 also saw the condemnation of Free-Masonry in the papal bull In eminenti apostolatus of Pope Clement XII. This was the signal for a wave of anti-Masonic persecutions across European countries more loyal to the see of Rome, but not in France, where the bull was refused registration by the Parlement of Paris for political reasons. French Free-Masonry was mainly Catholic in composition, including several priests, and remained so until the French Revolution.
1740 to 1788 In the 1740s, an original and mixed-sex form of Free-Masonry, known as "Masonry of Adoption" arose among the high French aristocracy, of which the duchess of Bourbon-Condé, sister of the duke of Chartres, was Grand Mistress. In 1743, after the death of the duke of Antin, Louis de Bourbon-Condé (1709-1771), count of Clermont, prince of the blood and future member of the Académie française, succeeded him as "Grand Master of all regular lodges in France". He remained in office until he died in 1771. Around 1744, there were around 20 lodges in Paris and 20 in the provinces.(Mitterrand 1992) counts "a dozen in Paris and fifteen in the provinces", "around 1740" Lodges in the provinces were most often founded by Masons out of Paris on business or via the intermediary of military lodges in regiments passing through a region - where a regiment with a military lodge left its winter quarters, it was common for it to leave behind the embryo of a new civil lodge there. The many expressions of military origin still used in Masonic banquets of today date to this time, such as the famous "canon" (cannon, meaning a glass) or "poudre forte" (strong gunpowder, meaning the wine).
In 1771, Louis Philippe d'Orléans (1747-1793) succeeded the comte de Clermont as grandmaster. Under his authority and with the support of the provincial lodges for action against the hegemony of the lodges in Paris, the Grande Loge de France was reorganised and in 1773 changed its name to the Grand Orient de France, which accounted for 600 lodges. Only some "Vénérables", mainly Parisians, refused to give up being president-for-life of their lodges, resisting this reform by forming a "Grand Lodge of Clermont" which lasted until May 1799.
1789 to 1815
Revolution
After the French Revolution, the Jesuit Augustin Barruel wrote that Freemasons had actively prepared the 1789 revolution, which has been used to back theories of a Masonic plot. This thesis was often reprised later, notably during the French Third Republic, by Catholic authors (using it to oppose both the Republic and Free-Masonry) and by Freemasons (to reinforce their pro-Republican stance and their positive image with the Republican government). In reality, there were Freemasons in both the Republican and monarchical camps. The Duke of Luxembourg, right-hand man to the Grand Master and moving-force behind the creation of the Grand Orient de France, emigrated in July 1789 and an aristocratic lodge known as "La Concorde" fled from Dijon as early as August 1789. Having become "Philippe-Égalité", the Grand Master of the Grand Orient himself publicly renounced Free-Masonry in 1793 shortly before being executed by guillotine.
Even though the Grand Orient proclaimed its attachment to the democratic form of government from January 1789 onwards, it was forced to cease its activities by the Terror between 1793 and 1796, and of the nearly 1000 lodges active on the eve of the Revolution only 75 were in a fit state to resume their activities in 1800. Nevertheless, by their functioning in the years before the Revolution, these lodges had assumed a certain independence from the State and the Church, probably giving rise to new aspirations. Among active Freemasons in the Revolutionary period were Mirabeau, Choderlos de Laclos, and Rouget de l'Isle, writer of the national anthem "La Marseillaise". In the French Egyptomania which followed their invasion of Egypt in 1799, around 1810 the Rite of Misraïm and "Egyptian" Free-Masonry appeared among French troops based in Italy, later spreading to France in 1814.
First Empire The plebiscite of 6 November 1804 legitimized the First French Empire of Napoleon I. In the following days, Masons learned that his brother Joseph Bonaparte had been named Grand Master of the Grand Orient de France, with its administration effectively placed in the hands of Jean-Jacques-Régis de Cambacérès. One legend states that Napoleon himself had been a Mason, but comments he made on Saint Helena seem clear proof of the opposite:
During the First Empire, the Grand Orient de France was under strict control from the political authorities and little by little gathered almost all of French Free-Masonry (which had newly developed and quickly reached 1,200 lodges, mainly military ones) under its aegis. Nevertheless, in 1804 count Alexandre de Grasse-Tilly (1765–1845) came to France from his birthplace in the Antilles with powers assigned him by the Supreme Council of Charleston, founded in 1802. He established a Supreme Council of France and contributed to the creation of a "General Scottish Grand Lodge of France", under the protection of Kellerman. State centralism demanded the merger of these two institutions, which happened some years later.
1815 to 1850