FREEMASONRY. - A secret society of a cosmopolitan and initiatory character, which arose with the aim of uniting men of all nations in brotherhood and of organizing society on exclusively humanitarian and lay foundations.
I. OPERATIVE FREEMASONRY
Its origin is linked to the ancient guilds of master masons, which reached their greatest expansion and importance especially from the 11th to the 13th century. In the feverish building activity of that age it is understandable how good architects and good masons, master builders, stonecutters, etc., were sought after everywhere and enticed with privileges, immunities and franchises, and how the mason's craft acquired a kind of international character and a primacy over all the other arts. The popes proved no less generous than secular princes: Boniface IV (1110), Nicholas III (1277), Benedict XII (1331) recognized their right to govern themselves according to their own statutes, with exemptions from local burdens and obligations, to be able to move freely from country to country, to enjoy a kind of monopoly for the construction of the more important religious buildings. Hence the appellation of free, franc, frei, free, and the attribute that the masonic guilds with legitimate pride gave themselves of royal art. To preserve and increase this prestige there contributed not a little the rigid observance of the rules laid down in the guild statutes concerning the initiation of new recruits and the promotion from the grade of apprentice, by which they were enrolled in the craft, to those of fellow and master, the solemnity of the ceremonies and rites with which they were in-vested with the symbols of the craft, square, compass, apron, etc., the solemn oaths, the inviolable observance of professional secrecy and of the civil, religious and moral duties imposed by the statutes. By such investiture, the brother (for so the members called one another) was made a sharer in a password, in recognition signs, etc., with which he was received wherever he went and welcomed fraternally by fellow craftsmen, provided for and helped in his needs.
The guild statutes were very demanding as to the requirements not only professional but also personal of the members, nor did they permit admission except to persons who had proper birth and a religious and moral conduct entirely beyond reproach. A French document of the end of the 14th century, the Poème maçonnique, in which there is a kind of civil and religious etiquette of the good freemason, insists in particular on the devotion that he must have toward God, toward the saints and toward the Church. The same precepts are inculcated in all the ancient guild statutes that survive, down to the Constitutions of Masonry of 1704, which are the last known in England before the transformation of the lodges from operative into speculative. The attachment of the freemasons to the Catholic Church is demonstrated in France by the prominent part taken by them in the movement of the Ligue, in England by the tenacious resistance made to the efforts of Henry VIII and Queen Elizabeth to introduce the Reformation into the lodges, in Italy by the frequency of altars and chapels erected by the guilds of the « Lombards », wherever they were found in greater number. Alongside the trade guilds there very often existed confraternities, which Protestantism (says Le Forestière) reformed, but which still survive, observing the cult of brotherhood, respect for the official religion and traditional customs.
The abandonment of religious architecture in the countries invaded by the Protestant Reformation, as well as the internal dissensions that soon began to appear between masters and craftsmen (the latter joined in secret leagues of resistance [compagnonnage], with strange names, and rites and jargon no less bizarre: a ruling of 14 March 1655 of the theological Faculty of the Sorbonne declares their practices and rites impious, sacrilegious and superstitious), brought about, along with the professional crisis, the decline of the guilds. To raise their prestige these adopted the system of admitting influential honorary members belonging to the classes of high society. From the beginning of the 17th century in England not a few nobles are counted among the members of the guilds, and it was a fashion, a gesture of exquisite elegance, to have oneself enrolled in them. Little by little the intellectual and aristocratic element constituted the true directing element, so as to prepare imperceptibly the transformation of M. from operative into speculative. « Everything leads one to believe — says Bertolot — that from the beginning of the 17th century the speculative elements prevailed over the operative ones, so that the substitution was already from the beginning of the 18th century in effect in all the great countries of Europe ». By now serious historians, even masons, have definitively repudiated as unfounded certain wondrous accounts, which would derive M. from Lamech, architect of the temple of Jerusalem, from Zoroaster, from Confucius, from Pythagoras, from the mysteries of Egypt and Greece, from the Templars and even from Noah and Adam.
II. FREEMASONRY POLITICS
To have an idea of the great evolution that took place within operative Freemasonry, one must take into account what happened in political and social life in England from the end of the 17th century to the beginning of the following one, and the alternating fortunes to which the two great contending parties were subject: the Tories, partisans of the Stuarts and faithful to Catholic traditions, and the Whigs, supporters of parliamentarianism and of the Reformation. The Masonic lodges, both because of the secrecy with which they surrounded themselves and because of their very nature, which did not inspire suspicion, offered quite favorable ground for conspiracies, for the one party as for the other. When, upon the death of Anne Stuart (1 Aug. 1714), the Tories, and with them the Scottish or Jacobite lodges, decided to attempt a supreme effort in favor of James III, the last card was played notonly of the dynasty, but also of Freemasonry. The triumph of George I of Hanover (1714) and the upper hand of the Whigs marked the end of Jacobitism and of the Catholic Church and the first great success of English and Protestant Freemasonry.
III. ORIGINS OF SPECULATIVE FREEMASONRY
During these events four dissident operative lodges, existing in various quarters of London, at the inspiration of a French immigrant Protestant, Theophilus Désaguliers, a member of the Royal Society, united into a single grand lodge; this happened on 24 June 1717, the feast of St. John the Baptist. Thus the Grand Lodge of England had its origin, destined to become the world mother Grand Lodge: and thus the true speculative Freemasonry also had its beginning. The Jacobite lodges then suffered invasions, their archives were scattered and burned. The principal source of information remains the few remarks left by Anderson in the preface to the Constitutions of 1738, but blind faith cannot be given to them. One of the first founders of the Grand Lodge, Stuckey, attests that the mystery with which it surrounded itself contributed much to the vogue of the new institution, as did the evocative reputation that occult sciences were cultivated there. Of the true character that Freemasonry was assuming, it does not appear that those first members yet had a very clear perception.Anderson's Constitutions. — The task of compiling new constitutions was immediately entrusted to James Anderson, a Protestant pastor; on 27 Dec. 1721 he presented the work, which was officially approved on 17 Jan. 1723. In it Freemasonry is conceived as a « center of union and a means of establishing a sincere friendship among persons who, otherwise, would have found themselves always separated from one another ». In the first chapter (Concerning God and Religion) the concept was expressed: a Freemason who « understands the art well » will never become either a « stupid atheist » or an « irreligious libertine ». Whereas in ancient times the Freemason was obliged to « practice everywhere the religion of the country », now it was recognized as more appropriate not to impose « any other religion than that in which all are in agreement », leaving « each one fully free in his personal opinions ».
Through the work of the same Anderson the Constitutions were reformed in 1738, and in the chapter relating to religious duties a notable variation was introduced, according to which the Freemason must undertake to « observe the moral law as a true Noachite », and to « recognize the three great articles of Noah as sufficient to preserve the cement of the law ». In both redactions of the Constitutions there appears manifest the concern to remedy in some way the fateful effects of the Protestant Reformation, by establishing peaceful coexistence on the basis of non-confessionalism and in a spirit of tolerance; but, above all, as Lantoine thinks, to detach Freemasonry definitively from Catholicism in order to insert it into Anglicanism. The first step is constituted by the Constitutions of 1723, the second by those of 1738, where appeal is made to the Bible as the doctrinal and moral norm, but in a form so vague and indeterminate that persons of every sect and religious opinion could be received into it.
IV. EXPANSION OF FREEMASONRY
The rapid spread of Freemasonry throughout the world can be explained only by relating it to the power and prestige attained by England in those years. The ancient lodges of Wales, like those of Ireland and Scotland, were the first to submit to the Grand Lodge of London and each constituted a Provincial Grand Lodge. By the middle of the century Freemasonry had penetrated into all the principal countries of Europe: France (1721), Holland (1725), Spain (1726), Russia (1732), Italy (1733), Sweden (1735), Switzerland (1736), Poland (1739), Austria (1742), Denmark (1743), Norway (1745), and furthermore Calcutta (1728), Gambia and Cape Coast Castle (1735), Massachusetts (1735).1. Anglo-Saxon Freemasonry
In England, because of the spiritual harm produced by materialistic and irreligious doctrinarianism in the lodges, toward the middle of the 18th century there was a movement of reaction. The English Grand Lodge had a new edition of the Constitutions prepared by the Anglican pastor Entech and established as fundamental dogmas faith in God, the Great Architect of the Universe, and respect for the Bible. Anglo-Saxon Freemasonry, faithful to these principles, has as a rule abstained from meddling in political and confessional questions and has preferred to deploy its activity in the humanitarian field. In the sphere dominated by it (England, Ireland, Scotland, Germany, the United States, etc.) that spiteful anti-clericalism peculiar to the Freemasonry of the Latin countries has not so far taken root, and the Catholic Church encounters no obstacles in its religious and civil mission.2. Orientations of Freemasonry in France and in England
Political Freemasonry had the opportunity to take root in France from the end of the 17th century, when James II Stuart, having lost the throne of England, went to France with the troops that had remained loyal to him. Numerous Jacobite lodges then arose which served to keep the exiles united among themselves and with their political friends in Scotland and England. In opposition to the Stuart lodges, whose first Grand Master would have been the heroic and then Charles Rathcliff, Orange lodges flourished no less numerously, until, once the political rivalries between France and England had ceased, a reconciliation was sought also between the two Freemasonries. The Chevalier de Ramsay (1685-1743) made himself its authoritative patron, a faithful friend, then biographer and editor, of Fénelon, by whom he had been reconciled with the Catholic Church. To Ramsay is owed a celebrated Discourse printed for the first time in 1738 together with Anderson's reformed Constitutions, which exercised upon Freemasonry an influence no less vast and profound than these. An idealistic and mystical temperament, he strove to free Freemasonry from the shackles of politics and to place it at the service of a spiritual, humanitarian and moral ideal.The complex circumstances in which Masonic activity unfolded in France did not permit Ramsay's generous purposes to reach maturity. Under the long government of the Grand Master Count of Clermont (1743-79), and under that of his successor, Duke Louis Philippe d'Orléans (Philippe Égalité), French Freemasonry increasingly departed from the Christian ideal. The Masonic lodges, under the Count of Clermont, were the scene of unworthy spectacles; Freemasonry became discredited thereby and split into innumerable obediences with the most heterogeneous and bizarre names. The Duke d'Orléans strove to reorganize Freemasonry into a more solid and compact body, and in part saw his efforts crowned with success. Supported by high and powerful protectors, Freemasonry could count in its ranks many of the principal representatives of the magistracy, of science and of the army. Among the many lodges of the capital, the Loge des neuf Sœurs was reserved for the greatest champions of the Enlightenment, of the Encyclopedism and of the Revolution: Lalande, Helvétius, Franklin, Condorcet, La Fayette and Voltaire were members of it. From the lodges emanated the propaganda of doctrines destructive of all authority, which corroded the vital nerves of contemporary social life; and, if historians do not agree as to the efficacy that Freemasonry exercised upon the French Revolution, all nevertheless recognize that the lodges were the most active channels for the diffusion of those ideas that formed its ideal substratum. A strange but characteristic sign of the times is to find among those enrolled in Freemasonry Louis XVI and his brothers, and the dalliance with it of not a few ecclesiastics tainted with Gallicanism and hostile to the Roman Curia. "On the eve of the Revolution — says Berteloot — one encounters in almost all the lodges priests belonging to all the religious Orders..., priors and superiors of convents, not to mention the parish priests and vicars." The same occurred in Belgium: at Liège in 1774 all the canons of the Cathedral were Masons; at Mons there existed a lodge reserved for ecclesiastics alone; in general, from 1745 onward a precept was in force that prescribed for Belgian Masons the perfect observance of the religion in which they had been baptized.
From the beginning of the French Revolution (1792) French Freemasonry officially slept, Philippe Égalité resigned as Grand Master, and the office remained vacant for several years. Only in 1799 did the Grand Lodge of France arise to claim the right, which it pretended belonged to it, of being the sole legitimate organ of French Freemasonry. But the Directory employed Freemasonry extensively in the service of its diplomatic organs; several of its generals, such as Masséna, Cambacérès etc., were active Masons. Napoleon, having become emperor, made even more extensive use of Freemasonry as a means of domination, revived in all the subjected countries a Freemasonry after his own fashion, placing at its head one of his brothers or favorites. Joseph Bonaparte was Grand Master in Paris, then in Naples, where he had Murat as his successor; Louis Bonaparte in Holland, Eugène de Beauharnais of the Grand Orient of Italy, created in 1805 at Milan, confederated with that of Paris.
3. Freemasonry in Italy
Once the Stuarts had settled in Rome, some Scottish lodge sprang up there. The protocols of one such lodge that operated in the time of Clement XII have been published (W. J. Hughan, The Jacobite Lodge at Rome 1735-37, Leicester 1910). In Florence a lodge was opened in 1733 through the work of the English archaeologist Stosch and of the Tuscan poet Tomaso Crudeli, his teacher of Italian, on account of which the latter underwent a trial in 1739 by the Inquisition (F. Sbigoli, Tomaso Crudeli e i primi framassoni in Firenze, Milan 1884). From 1736 onward the Holy Inquisition had to concern itself with Freemasonry also at Bologna (Battistella, Il S. Officio e la Riforma in Bologna, ibid. 1905, p. 150). At Naples Queen Maria Carolina, sister of Joseph II, used Freemasonry as a means of government.In the territories subject to Austria, Francis Stephen of Lorraine, Maria Theresa and Joseph II protected Freemasonry. The latter, by an ordinance of 21 Jan. 1786, placed it outright under the "tutelage of the State": and in truth his reign was the golden age of Freemasonry. Alfieri, in the Impertura, bitterly brands the sect and its adherents as too accommodating and always in pursuit of their own advantage.
4. Freemasonry after the Restoration
Once the organization of Freemasonry had been destroyed in Italy and weakened in the other Latin countries, it flourished in the Anglo-Saxon countries, with the favor of sovereigns and ruling classes; and this especially in the United States, where Freemasonry has remained even more than in England attached to traditional principles. One could not follow the fortunes of Freemasonry in the various countries without losing oneself in a labyrinth. A brief mention of the fortunes of French Freemasonry will suffice, because of the close connection it has had and still has with Italian Freemasonry. Louis XVIII (1815-24), initiated in his youth, took no repressive measures against Freemasonry; one of his ministers, Decazes, was Supreme Grand Commander. The July days were celebrated by Freemasonry as a triumph of its own. Louis Philippe (1830-48), although he had already held the office of Grand Master, did not show himself a friend of Freemasonry, nor would he allow the Duke of Orléans to accept the title of Grand Master. The coup d'état of February 1848 was claimed by Freemasonry as the result of a Masonic congress held in Strasbourg in 1847, with the participation of all the principal figures of the revolutionary government. Lamartine himself declared that the explosion had emanated du fond des loges. Napoleon III, imitating Napoleon I in this too, used Freemasonry as an instrumentum regni, and placed at its head trusted men, such as Lucien Murat his cousin, Marshal Magnan, and General Mellinet, maneuvering it according to the religious or political expediency of the moment and restraining its excesses.Under the Republic Freemasonry regained full autonomy and little by little acquired such ascendancy as to make the public powers its own instrument, subjecting the country to a veritable sectarian tyranny. On April 26, 1871, a Masonic procession of fully ten thousand individuals, with emblems and insignia, went in triumph to the Hôtel de Ville to pay homage to the government of the Commune, regarding the two as allied powers. There is no need to dwell on particulars regarding the program of laicization carried out by Freemasonry in France and on the methods put into action to enslave the ecclesiastical hierarchy and to uproot the religious Orders and Congregations (v. FRANCIA). Suffice it to say that the Grand Orient of France resolved in 1878 to abolish from its Constitutions the paragraph that laid down as fundamental the belief in the existence of God and in the immortality of the soul, and ordered the elimination also from the rituals of everything that alluded to it; wherefore British and German Freemasonry broke off relations with it.
V. FREEMASONRY IN THE RESURGENCE AND IN ITALIAN PUBLIC LIFE
Once the lodges had been closed and the two Grand Orients of Naples and Milan suppressed by the restored governments, Italian Freemasonry fell into disarray: the survivors took refuge under the protection of the Grand Orient of France and sought to carry out their activity through the Carboneria, often succeeding in seizing positions of command. Domenico Angherà testifies that in 1848 he attempted to reconstitute a Grand Orient at Palermo, but the initiative was short-lived. Italian Freemasonry came back to life at Turin in 1859 through the work of persons very close to Cavour. The Turin lodge "Ausonia," in union with the "Trionfo ligure" of Genoa and the "Amici veri vittoriosi" of Livorno, reconstituted the Grand Orient of Italy. Livio Zambecari was elected first Grand Master, replaced after a very brief tenure by Costantino Nigra, Cavour's man of confidence, with the evident intention of not casting a shadow on the government and of interesting French Freemasonry in the Italian cause, Nigra being ambassador in Paris. Lenzi testifies that it emerges from documents published by him in "L'acacia" that the person designated for the high office was Cavour himself, but that this design was cut short by his premature death. Almost contemporaneously with the Grand Orient of Turin, one arose at Palermo, of republican tendencies, which proclaimed Garibaldi Grand Master, and one at Naples, on the initiative of the aforementioned Angherà. But, with Cavour gone and Nigra withdrawn, struggles and schisms began at once, in which the activity of those rival Masonic nuclei was largely exhausted.Once the capital of Italy was transferred to Florence, a Masonic constituent assembly, held in that city in 1865, confirmed G. Garibaldi in the rank of Grand Master and gave him Antonio Mordini as Deputy Grand Master. Garibaldi's not inconsiderable efforts for an agreement between the rival bodies of Palermo and Turin led in 1876 to the creation of a Supreme Council of Rome; then in 1879, with the intervention of certain foreign Supreme Councils, to a Supreme Council of Italy, appointing Giorgio Tamajo first Sovereign Grand Commander.
Under the Grand Mastership of Giuseppe Mazzoni (1878-80), of Giuseppe Petroni (1882-85), and above all of Adriano Lemmi (1885-95), Italian Freemasonry made notable progress, given also the abstention of Catholics from political life. However, although for several decades great Masonic dignitaries held power in their hands, such as Lanza, Cairoli, Depretis, Di Rudini, Crispi, Zanardelli, Fortis, only partially did it succeed in carrying out its program of laicization, in which Freemasonry had engaged with the greatest obstinacy: the total separation of the two powers, the abolition of guarantees, divorce, etc., clashed with the profound Christian sense of the nation. It did succeed, on the other hand, in preventing the reconciliation of Italy with the papacy, which it defined as a "monstrous conciliation," a "stupid conciliation," and deplored as the greatest danger that the fatherland and liberty could run (Rivista massonica, 1883, p. 88; 1884, p. 103; 1886, p. 32). The interference of Freemasonry to thwart the soundings made by Leo XIII in 1887 with Crispi, through Fr. Tosti, is well known; so are the declamations of Bovio, with the replies of Zanardelli and Crispi; the solemn praise given to the latter by Adriano Lemmi, for having "invigorated with civil wisdom the struggle against the pretender of the Vatican" (25 June 1888). Thanks to its intransigence an autonomous Grand Council and a National Grand Lodge of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite (1908), recognized by the Supreme Councils assembled at Washington in 1912. The Freemasonry of Palazzo Giustiniani was reproached with having given itself wholly to politics, with having become an atheistic sect, with interfering in the activities proper to Parliament and the government, that is, with having given Italy a bad copy of French Freemasonry. Fera was confirmed as Supreme Grand Commander and Grand Master of the new Freemasonry, and had as his successors Ricciardi, William Burgess, and then Raoul Palermi (1919). At Palazzo Giustiniani, Ballori was succeeded in the office of Grand Master by Ettore Ferrari (1904-17), Ernesto Nathan (1917-21), a fierce anticlerical, famous for the vulgar insults hurled against the Vatican, and Domizio Torrigiani. The two obediences were tied to the two major Masonic currents of the world, the one to Anglo-Saxon Freemasonry, the other to the French.
VI. FREEMASONRY AND FASCISM
For many years the press and Catholic Action remained almost alone in the struggle against the Masonic invasion that little by little was taking possession of the vital ganglia of the Latin nations. In 1895 an anti-Masonic association was founded in Rome, and in 1897 a first international congress was held at Trent, followed by others. Unfortunately they lacked preparation and adequate means, and naive apologists fell victim to the hoax played on them by a vulgar impostor, Gabriel Antoine Jogand-Pagès (1854-1907), under the false name of Leo Taxil, who passed himself off as a defector from Freemasonry and simulated the most staggering revelations.
(phot. Enc. Cott.)
As for the First World War, the Freemasonry of Palazzo Giustiniani boasted of having influenced the final outcome decisively, but it was precisely at this moment that those spiritual currents gained strength, not only in Italy but in almost all the countries of Europe, which sharpened the anti-Masonic crisis, the deepest that Freemasonry has ever passed through. With regard to Italian Freemasonry, a first offensive came in the wake of the international Masonic congress of Paris in 1917, where it seems that the interests of the nation had been very poorly safeguarded in the face of the other Allied powers. Grand Master Ferrari found himself compelled to resign. Following the "March on Rome" and the advent of Fascism to power (Oct. 1922), Freemasonry was second to none in its adherence and applause. If in this the Freemasonry of Piazza del Gesù knew no measure, I believe that not even Palazzo Giustiniani neglected any means to win the sympathies of the new Party, declaring in the public press that "to give life and nourishment to that movement in its beginning there were also nuclei of very authoritative brothers," and that Freemasonry had "a Fascist soul." In a general assembly held at Palazzo Giustiniani on 28 Jan. 1923 concerning the policy of Fascism, if there was any reservation, it consisted in the eventual relations with the Vatican, reaffirming the principle of the "secularity (of the State) in the strictest conception." A conciliation with the Pope, Torrigiani went so far as to declare, "would in fact have restored to the Pope the position of temporal sovereign." The government replied, through the Volta agency, that these declarations had aroused "a distinctly negative impression." The Fascist Grand Council, on the one hand, and the Nationalist Association, on the other, invited their members to choose between Freemasonry and the Party (Febr. 1923), and Il Popolo d'Italia, highlighting these facts, affirmed that the agreement between Italy and the Church ought to be the hoped-for crowning of them. On 18 May 1925 Parliament unanimously resolved the abolition of secret societies, and already from Aug. 1926 those approaches with the Vatican began which concluded with the Lateran Treaty of 11 Febr. 1929.
The Freemasonry of Piazza del Gesù dissolved itself spontaneously with lively protests of Fascist faith. That of Palazzo Giustiniani, in the act of dissolving (6 Sept. 1925), constituted a clandestine organizing Committee with full powers, to keep the order alive in the face of the necessities of the moment. It continued to carry out its activity under the protection of French Freemasonry. Torrigiani, held jointly responsible for the attempt by Hon. Zaniboni and Gen. Capello on Mussolini's life, was arrested and sentenced to five years of confinement on an island, but released after some time, he died in Florence on 31 Aug. 1932.
VII. EFFORTS AT WORLDWIDE CONCENTRATION. FOR RECONCILIATION WITH THE CATHOLIC CHURCH. — At an international congress of Masonic bodies of different rites held in Geneva in 1902, an attempt was made to bring together the various powers scattered throughout the world, in order to give them a basis of greater solidarity and unity. The religious principle, still held valid by the Anglo-Saxon powers (England, Prussia, Scandinavia, North America), was instead repudiated by the Latin ones (France, Italy, Portugal, Spain, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Belgium, Holland, Hungary, Egypt, Latin America); a Bureau international des relations maçonniques was established, with its seat in Geneva, directed by Ed. Quartier-La-Tente, formerly Grand Master of the Swiss Grand Lodge "Alpina". From it emanated in 1921 an Association maçonnique internationale (AMI) with the principal task of bringing together, now that the war was over, victors and vanquished, through the conciliatory action of American Masonry, which had become, as English Masonry once was, the strongest and most authoritative Masonic power, the center of gravity of worldwide Scottish Rite Masonry. But it did not achieve its aim; nor did French Masonry wish to retreat from its own Voltairian doctrinarianism, nor German Masonry to bend its wounded national pride. And so American Masonry withdrew from the A.M.I., imitated by the other allied powers, and the Geneva Association lost a great part of its authority.
At the same time Ossian Lang, Grand Chancellor of the Grand Lodge of New York, while traveling through the principal centers of Europe, founded in Vienna, with the support of the leading exponents of Austrian Masonry, the historian Eugen Lennhoff and Dr. Kurth Reichl, an association akin to the previous one, the Freimaurerliga, which professed to respect any religious confession, with markedly conciliatory tendencies toward the Catholic Church, as demonstrated by certain articles by Dr. Reichl in the Liga's organ, the Wiener Freimaurer Zeitung. In September 1930 it held a convention in Geneva, where representatives of many nations gathered.
Already in the English periodical The Freemason of 13 Nov. 1909 one could read expressions such as the following: "With the liberal spirit dominant in the United States and in England we are sure that the Church will in time be persuaded that we are not its enemies, but its allies in the struggle against the atheistic monstrosities that usurp our name for the profit of their base maneuvers." Now Lang, from the inspection tour mentioned above, took the occasion to make some soundings. He, together with Lennhoff and Reichl, had a meeting at Aachen on 21 May 1928 with the Jesuit Father Hermann Gruber, one of the most esteemed scholars of Masonic matters of the time, to discuss a possible understanding. The matter, having leaked into the secular press, gave rise to the most varied and strange comments. In public declarations Reichl and Gruber acknowledged the fundamental opposition of principles that made a true conciliation impossible. The only possible understanding could consist solely in a better mutual comprehension and in greater loyalty and polemical fairness, with the aim of joining forces to resist effectively against blatant atheism and communism.
A few years later Albert Lantoine, the most authoritative modern historian of Masonry, who died in 1949, a member of the Supreme Council of the 33rd Degree of France, addressed a public, moving appeal to Pius XI, in a small printed volume entitled: Lettre au Souverain Pontife (Paris 1936). He too invoked an armistice and a truce, always with the aim of better understanding in order to unite against the common enemy: atheistic communism, pagan national socialism, fascism. The official organ of the Grand Lodge of France disavowed Lantoine's gesture, but it had a wide echo both in the Masonic and in the secular press. Father J. Berteloot, as an expert connoisseur, set forth in the Revue de Paris (15 Sept. 1938) the Catholic aspect of the question, which was afterward widely debated by both sides. A characteristic document of it remains in the 2 vols. of Father Berteloot (v. BIBLICA).
VIII. RESURRECTION OF FREEMASONRY IN ITALY
After the fall of the Fascist government in Italy, Freemasonry immediately returned to the positions it had lost; but so many and such were the Masonic bodies claiming to be the legitimate heirs of those that had disappeared that an indescribable confusion resulted. Dr. Melwin Johnson, Sovereign Grand Commander of the Northern Jurisdiction of the United States, in a speech on April 18, 1950 at Palazzo Brancaccio revealed that "some twenty Supreme Councils and Grand Lodges" had been formed (Mondo massonico, 5 [1950], p. 34).It should be premised that art. 13 of the Constitution of the Italian Republic, approved on April 11, 1947 by the Constituent Assembly, establishes: "Secret associations are prohibited." The juridical situation in which the Constitution places secret societies will have to be regulated by a specific law. In the meantime, it does not prevent Freemasonry from carrying on its activity in secret; rather, it is required, like other societies, to report its statutes, its headquarters and its responsible leaders to the public authorities. Four principal obediences currently command special attention:
1. Symbolic Scottish Freemasonry of Palazzo Giustiniani. This one, having preserved a succession of continuity through the provisional governing committees, reconstituted its organs on November 12, 1945, creating in G. Guastalla the Sovereign Grand Commander and in G. Lay the Grand Master, with headquarters in a modest quarter of Palazzo Giustiniani, formerly the property of Freemasonry and now in the hands of the State. Lay was succeeded by the lawyer Ugo Lenzi, who along with the office of Grand Master holds that of Supreme Grand Commander. The latter, in various speeches given at regional conferences in Milan, Naples and Turin, insists on the point of laicization, for which reason he maintains a position of vigilant expectation toward the Christian Democratic government. In other respects he professes to be in politics above parties; in religion, opposed to every dogmatic confession and in favor of "freedom of thought and conscience in the free search for Truth without apriorisms, without mythological fables, but with the sole guidance of good sense, of reason, of the discoveries of the natural sciences and with the aid of philosophy." It adopts a declaration of principles voted by the Swiss Grand Lodge "Alpina" on May 21, 1949, according to which the Great Architect of the Universe is recognized and invoked and the ancient rite of the Bible on the altar is restored. It considers the Lateran Pacts as an "abdication of civil conquests already acquired by the State before the Vatican," and "a chain that must be broken."
2. Freemasonry of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite
This branch regained an organic homogeneity only after long and troubled proceedings, also because of the complete disintegration in which the last Sovereign Grand Commander Palermi had left it, now by abdicating, now by reclaiming the offices he had already held. It is especially to this branch that the observation of Dr. Johnson referred to above applies. Finally, in October 1948, a congress was convened in Naples, from which issued a Provisional Governing Junta with headquarters in Rome (via Sistina 48), intended to prepare a national constituent assembly which took place in Rome, at Palazzo Brancaccio, on April 24-25, 1949. This assembly, having obtained the merger of certain of the Grand Lodges that had sprung up after Fascism, reconstituted a Supreme Grand Council, of which Senator Arturo Labriola was elected Supreme Grand Commander (resigning in September 1950); and a Grand Lodge, of which Senator Giuseppe Fusco was made Grand Master, then, upon Fusco's resignation, Colonel Raffaele Ridolfi.The Freemasonry of Palazzo Brancaccio, except for the rite, does not appear to differ much in program from that of Palazzo Giustiniani. The circulars issued by Labriola echo principles and purposes more or less identical: "to re-establish the lay sovereignty of the country," to react against the "new clerical usurpation of public powers," "a clear separation of State from Church," to oppose the Christian Democratic Party "which has devoted itself entirely to the clericalization of Italy," enslaved to the ambitious power aims of the "ecclesiastical hierarchies and the Vatican" (circulars of June 25 and September 20, 1949).
3. Freemasonry of the autonomous and pseudo-Catholic Scottish rite
This group resides at the ancient seat of Piazza del Gesù and results from the merger of a certain number of lodges that answered to Baron Furio Romano Avezzana, who died in Rome on June 15, 1949, with other lodges dependent on G. C. Terzani and on Manfredi de Franchi, the former with headquarters in via della Mercede, the latter in Piazza del Gesù. L'Eva Nuova, the organ of the group, in its September 1947 issue made the following profession of faith: "In a Catholic nation like Italy, the Christianity of Italian Freemasons can only be the one, true, Catholic ethic." The intention was, that is, to inaugurate a Catholic Freemasonry. In the secular press there was talk of agreements between the Vatican and a certain Freemasonry, and an intense propaganda was noted in Catholic circles to attract adherents. The Archbishop of Trento, concerned about such maneuvers, asked- 15 -
our mysteries, it is necessary that you swear, by the affection and memory of your dearest ones, to preserve the secret inviolably; are you ready?
Profane: — Most ready.
(The Venerable strikes a blow with the gavel and says:)
Ven.: — Brethren, to order.
(All the Brethren who already hold their swords gripped come to order. The 4th Expert, with the Master of Ceremonies, leads the Profane to the Altar where he has him place his right knee on the ground, and rest his right hand on the Masonic Emblems. He places in his left hand a compass with the point turned toward his heart).
Ven.: — Profane, repeat with me the oath of the initiates:
"Freely, spontaneously, with full and deep conviction of the soul, with absolute and unwavering will, by the venerated symbol of the Great Architect of the Universe and by those of liberty, brotherhood and human equality, by the affection and memory of my dearest ones, upon my honor and my conscience I solemnly swear: not to reveal, for any reason whatsoever, the secrets of universal Freemasonry: to hold sacred the honor and life of all: to succor, comfort and defend my Brethren in the Order: not to profess principles that oppose those championed by Freemasonry, and from now on, should I have the misfortune or the shame of failing in my oath, I submit myself to all the penalties that the Statutes of the Order threaten against the perjured, to the ceaseless remorse of my conscience, to the contempt and execration of all humanity."
(The Venerable orders the Profane to rise, and has him led between the columns).
(phot. Enc. C. 1st.)
FREEMASONRY - Oath of the initiates from the Catechism of the First Degree, Naples 1874 - Rome, copy in the National Library.
to the Holy Office what was to be thought of it; and the cardinal, secretary of this Holy Tribunal, on 20 April 1949, replied: "nothing has happened that could change in this matter the decision of the Holy See, therefore the provisions of canon law remain always in force, for any form of M."
Since these artful machinations did not cease, however, L'Osservatore Romano of 19 March 1950 published an article by Fr. Cordovani, Master of the Sacred Palaces, in which it was denied that M., at least of a certain rite, was no longer in conflict with the Church, that on the contrary, by a kind of concluded agreement, it was lawful for Catholics to enroll in it; it reaffirmed "that nothing has changed in the legislation of the Church regarding M.," adding: "the bishops know that can. 684, and especially can. 2335, which inflicts excommunication on all who give their name to M., without distinction of rites, are in full force, today as yesterday; and all Catholics must know it and remember it so as not to fall into deception."
4. Scottish grouping of Bari
Having arisen near a Mother Lodge "Onore e Giustizia" of Bari, which had as its venerable a certain Liborio Granone, on 24 May 1945 it erected an Orthodox Supreme Council for southern Italy and the islands, and then, having moved to Rome, a Grand Lodge, of which the aforementioned Granone became Supreme Grand Commander and Grand Master.IX. STATISTICAL DATA
It is difficult to give statistical data on Italian Freemasonry, which is still in the process of reconstruction. On the basis of data provided by an official source, it is calculated that, between regular and irregular families, there may be about a thousand lodges in Italy, with a total of 50,000 members. The Grand Orient of Palazzo Giustiniani has more than 400 lodges with 25,000 members.Freemasonry in Germany, which in the pre-Hitler period is calculated to have numbered about 70,000 members, after its abolition by the Nazi decrees of 1933, was dissolved and its property confiscated. It began to rise again in 1945 and soon gathered 6,700 Freemasons from all the occupation zones, including those subject to the USSR, where Freemasonry is still banned. A Grand Lodge was reconstituted, with its seat in Frankfurt, with 146 local sections, having as Grand Master Dr. Theodor Vogel of Bayreuth (Bavaria).
Freemasonry in North America, already considered the strongest and most powerful in the world, has in recent decades achieved new and very notable progress. It is divided into three distinct branches.
Symbolic Freemasonry (Master Mason), which takes its origin from the first Grand Lodge of London and confers only the first three symbolic degrees, divided into regional Grand Lodges and a national Grand Lodge, and numbers about 3,000,000 members.
Scottish Rite Freemasonry, which confers the degrees from the 4th to the 32nd, divided into two jurisdictions: Supreme Council of the Southern Jurisdiction, founded in 1801, with its seat in Washington, whose Sovereign Grand Commander is John Cowley, and which numbers 250,000 members; and Supreme Council of the Northern Jurisdiction, founded in 1813, with its seat in Boston, whose Sovereign Grand Commander is Melvin M. Johnson, and which numbers about 300,000 members.
York Rite Freemasonry. In addition to the bodies recognized as regular, and others not recognized as such, such as Black Freemasonry (The Negro Masons), which is believed to number about a million members, there exist in America countless fraternities of a humanitarian or recreational character (Friendly Societies), considered as Masonic ramifications, and they number from six to seven million members. Given that the statistics of 1910 count 1,321,530 members in all three jurisdictions into which the American states were then divided, one can judge the great progress made in less than forty years. No less significant is the increase of world Freemasonry, which in 1910 was calculated at about 1,744,878 members, whereas today it must be considered at least tripled.
X. DOCTRINES AND RITES
The religious philosophy of Freemasonry, following the tracks marked out by Lessing, Herder and Fichte, places all religions on the same level, considering in them nothing other than the product of that given degree of civilization and culture reached by the people who profess them; a stage in the evolutionary process of humanity, toward that supreme goal in which all men will have attained possession of the "true light." The Christian and Catholic faith, to which the old operative corporations always remained tenaciously attached, has been gradually dissolving, toward a perfect religious agnosticism in Latin Freemasonry, which has dethroned God and placed the Divine Redeemer on a par with so many other heroes of humanity. According to Findel, what for some would be the true philosophy of Freemasonry is in reality nothing but a late superimposition of the age of philosophism upon the genuine Masonic doctrine, which would consist in the "eternal and immutable principles common to all religions," principles that everyone has the right to sift and make his own with "full freedom of opinion." Since the human mind must not bow to any truths other than those it can itself investigate and comprehend, it follows that the Catholic religion, with its positive and dogmatic revealed truths, must be eliminated like everything that does not submit to the control of reason and science, and relegated among myths and superstitions. The very formula of the Great Architect of the Universe that enthrones itself upon the altar of the Masonic temple, and the volume of the Bible, for most represent nothing but residues and traditions inherited from the old guilds and do not imply positive belief in a personal God and in Revelation, but only a certain evanescent religiosity that each one can understand in his own way. The goal that Freemasonry proposes to attain is the emancipation of humanity from every kind of slavery, civil, religious and moral. In this consists the supreme degree of perfection to which the Mason can and must aspire, through the symbolism and the mysterious rites of the "royal art." The three degrees of apprentice, fellow craft and master, in which the whole great pyramid of the high degrees is concretely summed up, correspond to the different stages of this journey toward the "true light." The first degree represents the passage from the profane worldto the threshold of the new world; the second, which is symbolized by the passage between the columns of Boaz and Jachin, introduces one into the temple of pure humanity; the third, whose symbol consists in tracing signs upon a board, makes of the Mason the stone now fit for the edifice of perfect humanity. To such conceptions, suffused with a vague and vaporous mysticism, there are often joined other esoteric, gnostic, theosophical, spiritualistic and cabalistic practices.
In the multiplicity of rites adopted in the innumerable Masonic sects, there also exists a great variety of degrees. The notorious Giacomo Cagliostro founded in several cities lodges of the rite of Memphis, which had 90 degrees, and of the rite of Misraim, which had 96. But even in the Scottish rite itself, which is the oldest and the most commonly adopted, there is no lack of divergences as regards the pyramid of degrees. Thus the Philosophical Scottish Rite admits 18 degrees, the Primitive Scottish Rite 25, and the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite 33, resulting from the combination of French Scottishism with a new rite introduced in 1801 at Charleston, in the Carolinas, which today is the most widespread of all. These 33 degrees are divided into four classes: the first three, called symbolic, comprise the traditional degrees of apprentice, fellow craft and master; the following fifteen are called capitular; the further twelve philosophical; and the last three administrative and sublime. To the different categories of degrees correspond the different hierarchical bodies of the Order, that is, Lodges, Chapters, Councils, Grand Orient and Supreme Council. The latter, which has at its head the Sovereign Grand Commander, assisted by a Prince of the Royal Secret, a Grand Inspector and a certain number of 33rds, must as a rule be unique for each nation and holds the supreme legislative and judicial powers of the Order. Many of the appellations attributed to the individual degrees derive from medieval legends relating to the erection of the temple of Jerusalem by Hiram Abif and to the mason's craft. From the 30th degree upward the symbolism ceases and there supervenes what in Masonic language is called the "royal secret" or "royal art," it being supposed that at that point the light has manifested itself without veil or mystery. It will be opportune to note that the high degrees are not a recent invention. Already in operative Freemasonry and in political Freemasonry this method began to be adopted from the 17th century onward, both to check individual initiatives that could degenerate into anarchy and for reasons of a purely administrative or political order. But the great vogue of the high degrees begins at the start of the 19th century.
XI. CONDEMNATIONS ISSUED BY THE HOLY SEE
The Holy See was not slow to perceive in Freemasonry an institution hostile to religion and subversive of the civil order itself: Clement XII, by the apostolic letter In eminenti of 28 April 1738, struck its adherents with excommunication reserved to the Pontiff, and ordered bishops to proceed against Masons as against persons vehementer suspected of heresy, declaring that, in public opinion, giving one's name to Freemasonry was equivalent to incurring a pravitatis et perversionis notam. Benedict XIV renewed the condemnation with the constitution Providas, of 17 May 1751, as did Pius VII, Leo XII and others. Of particular importance, and therefore to be remembered, are the constitution Apostolicae Sedis of Pius IX, the encyclical Humanum genus of Leo XIII, and the consistorial allocation of 20 November 1911 of Pius X. The Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office on 27 June 1838 declared that the general condemnation also includes Scottish Freemasonry of Ireland and North America; and on 20 June 1894 it included certain American humanitarian associations of Masonic origin. The Sacred Congregation of Propaganda Fide has issued instructions for mission territories. The discipline currently in force is contained in cann. 684, 2335 and 2336 of the CIC; the first gravely admonishes the faithful to beware of giving their name to secret associations that are condemned, seditious or suspect, or that in any case withdraw themselves from ecclesiastical vigilance; the second inflicts the excommunication ipso facto incurrenda reserved to the Holy See upon anyone who gives his name to Freemasonry; the third inflicts special penalties upon clerics. - See table XXV.BIBL.: sources
The entries marked with * are of Masonic source and profession. Pietro Pirri