Freemasonry in France
French Freemasonry 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.
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.
[3] 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)[citation needed] which followed James II of England into exile, under the name "La Parfaite Égalité" of Saint-Germain-en-Laye.
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.
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).
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".
Other investigations occurred from 1740 to 1745, giving rise to highly detailed police reports that now constitute a precious source for historians of Freemasonry.
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.
In the 1740s an original and mixed-sex form of Freemasonry, known as "Masonry of Adoption" arose among the high French aristocracy, of which the duchess of Bourbon-Condé, sister of the duke of Chartres,[clarification needed] 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".
[16] 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.
One legend states that Napoleon himself had been a Mason, but comments he made on Saint Helena seem clear proof of the opposite: [Freemasonry is] a pile of imbeciles who assemble for good cheer and for the execution of many ridiculous follies.
[17]During the First Empire, the Grand Orient de France was under strict control from the political authorities[18] and little by little gathered almost all of French Freemasonry (which had newly developed and quickly reached 1,200 lodges, mainly military ones) under its aegis.
[18] 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.
[21] Lodges also became more and more anticlerical as Catholics left them in the wake of repeated papal excommunications (these had come into force in France through Napoleon's 1801 concordat).
In 1862 they gained permission to elect a different representative and Napoleon III decided to name his successor himself - this was Maréchal Magnan, who was not already a Mason and so had to go through all 33 ranks of Scottish Rite Freemasonry in rapid succession to take up the post.
Thirifocq, a militant socialist and member of the "le libre Examen" lodge of the Supreme Council of France, demanded that Masonic banners be set up on Paris's ramparts and that they should be "avenged" should they be torn by the bullets of the anti-Commune forces.
On 8 July 1875, Jules Ferry (future minister of public education of the republic) and Émile Littré (author of the eponymous dictionary) were initiated in the "la Clémente Amitié" lodge.
It was in this context that the Grand Orient, which at this time made its support for the Republic official, decided in 1877 to abolish its requirement that its members believe in the existence of God and the immortality of the soul and for its lodges to work "for the Glory of the Great Architect of the Universe".
French Freemasonry began the 20th century with the Affaire Des Fiches, a scandal that left lasting traces and which bore witness to its implication in the politics of the era.
It launched an appeal for the creation of the League of Nations, and a similar conference in June that same year representatives from 16 Allied or neutral obediences at the Grand Orient de France had the same objectives.
[26] In the inter-war period, French Freemasonry occupied a major place in the political appearance of the Republic and was strongly implicated in its struggles.
The Vichy regime and the German occupying forces united in October 1940 to organise an important anti-Masonic exhibition which toured throughout France.
Its general theme affirmed the existence of a plot against France which had led to the country's fall and which according to the theses of the Action française had been organised by "the Jew, the Protestant, the Mason and the Foreigner".
A secret-societies service was set up in 1941, which studied articles confiscated from such societies and published "Les documents maçonniques", a review which saw in Freemasonry one of the principal causes of France's defeat.
[citation needed] In October 2002, this collection of obediences created the Masonic Institute of France (Institut maçonnique de France, or IMF), with the aim of "promoting the cultural image of French Freemasonry across the historic, literary and artistic inheritance and its diversity" and of "rediscovering, deepening and making better-known to all interested members of the public the cultural and ethical values of Freemasonry".
