Freemasonry in Italy
Its success largely depended on the lack of enthusiasm with which Papal bans on the order were enforced in the various states.
Giuseppe Garibaldi, a leader of Italian unification, was an active Mason and a keen supporter of the craft.
Into the 21st century, Italy contains a wide variety of Masonic observances, regular, liberal, male, female and mixed.
The early history of Freemasonry in the Italian peninsula precedes the unification of the country in 1859–60, and must be dealt with as it occurs in separate states.
[1] Sometime before August 1732, Lord Charles Sackville, then Earl of Middlesex, later the second Duke of Dorset, founded a lodge in Florence which later attracted Italian noblemen and intellectuals.
It also attracted the interest of the Inquisition, and its Italian secretary, Tommaso Crudeli, was imprisoned and tortured, later dying as a result.
Foreign masons, however, continued to meet in secret, issuing a medal honouring Martin Folkes in 1742.
Although the Grand Orient of Turin managed to establish a lodge in 1861, it was not until 1870 and the incorporation of the Papal States into the Kingdom of Italy that Freemasonry was again permitted.
In 1750, a Neapolitan lodge was established by a Greek, but after the publication, on 28 May 1751, of the Bull Providas Romanorum Pontificum issued by Pope Benedict XIV to reiterate the papal condemnation of 1738, Charles VII of Bourbon (who later became King Charles III of Spain) issued an edict (10 July 1751) that prohibited Freemasonry in the Kingdom of Naples.
Queen Caroline then intervened on the mason's behalf, convincing her husband to revoke the edict and dismiss Tannuci.
[1][3] Two Masonic lodges were founded in Sicily: in 1762 the "San Giovanni di Scozia" in Palermo and in 1764 the "Saint Jean d'Ecosse du Secret et de l'Harmonie" in Malta.
[1][3] The lodge founded in Milan in 1756 was quickly discovered by the Austrian authorities, which led to an edict (6 May 1757), whereby the governor, Francesco III d'Este, Duke of Modena, banned Masonic meetings throughout Lombardy.
The following year Earl Wilczeck, minister plenipotentiary imperial Milan, assumed the office of Provincial Grand Master for the Austrian Lombardy.
However, four other bodies had already arisen claiming to govern the Ancient and Accepted Scottish rite (of 33 degrees) for their part of Italy.
A disagreement over secularism in elementary schools led in 1908 to the secession of the Supreme Council of Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite.
However, in 1923 Freemasonry was declared incompatible with Fascism, and in spite of protestations of loyalty from the Grand Lodge, was banned outright in 1925.
General Luigi Capello was expelled from the party in 1923 for refusing to leave his lodge, and the next year was accused of plotting to assassinate Mussolini.
A major scandal affecting the Grand Orient arose in the 1980s from the exposure of illegal activity in a lodge called Propaganda Due (P2).
After Gelli's appointment as master in 1975, he was able to gather together in secret at least a thousand prominent individuals, mainly politicians and State administrators, and the publication of his subversive program of socio-political and institutional structure caused one of the worst political scandals in the history of the Italian Republic.
On 31 October 1981, seven months after the discovery of the lists of affiliates of P2, the central court of the Grand Orient of Italy, presided over by the new grandmaster Armando Corona, expelled Gelli to avoid further scandals.
A Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry, chaired by Tina Anselmi, concluded that the lodge was subversive, and a "criminal organization".
The feast of Italian Freemasonry is celebrated on 20 September each year,[13][14] on occasion of the anniversary of the breach of Porta Pia.
