The Grand Orient de France (, abbr. GODF) is the oldest and largest of several Freemasonic organizations based in France and is the oldest in Continental Europe (as it was formed out of an older Grand Lodge of France in 1773, and briefly absorbed the rump of the older body in 1799, allowing it to date its foundation to 1728 or 1733). The Grand Orient de France is generally regarded as the "mother lodge" of Continental Freemasonry.
History
Foundation In 1777, the Grand Orient de France recognised the antiquity of the Lodge of Perfect Equality, said to have been formed in 1688. This, if it actually existed at that time, was a military lodge attached to the Earl of Granard's Royal Irish Regiment, formed by Charles II of England in Saint-Germain in 1661, just before his return to England. The regiment remained loyal to the Stuarts, and did not return to France until after the fall of Limerick in 1689. They returned to barracks in Saint-Germain in 1698, surviving to become the 92nd Infantry Regiment after the revolution. With these dates in mind, modern scholars usually regard the 1688 lodge as a folk tale.Hauts Grades Les loges militaires : Walsh La parfaite égalité, retrieved 30 October 2012
An English Lodge is also said to have been founded at Dunkirk in 1721. Since that year, the English lodges were ruled by nobles belonging to the English Freemasonry nobles, who kept the contacts with the Royal House of the United Kingdom. Another "first Lodge" was organised by exiled Jacobites under the Earl of Derwentwater in Paris about 1725. A lodge was documented at the Louis d'Argent in the Rue des Boucheries, Paris, in 1732. These lodges were then independent of each other, each body recognizing no other authority than their owner.Pietre Stones H. L. Haywood, Various Grand Lodges, part XIII, France, The Builder, June 1924, vol X, No 6, retrieved 18 October 2013 There was also a French lodge listed in the 1723 minutes of the Premier Grand Lodge of England. Meeting at Solomon's Temple, in Hemmings Row (then off St. Martin's Lane in London) the Master was Jean Theophile Desaguliers, then Deputy Grand Master and effective governor of the craft in England. In a list of members, mostly having French names, James Anderson, who compiled the first printed constitutions, is listed as "Jaques Anderson maitre et arts".(ed.) William John Songhurst, The Minutes of the Grand Lodge of Freemasons of England, Quatuor Coronatorum Antigrapha, Vol 10, 1913, p 42
The first "deputisations" of lodges in France by the London Grand Lodge occurred in 1732, and the Grand Orient now dates its foundation from 1733, when there started to be a recognisable Grand Lodge of France. It was in 1743 that the English Grand Lodge of France became a French phenomenon, with Louis, Count of Clermont becoming Grand Master until his death in 1771.Douglas Knoop, "The Genesis of Freemasonry", Manchester University Press, 1947Grand Orient de France Histoire, retrieved 9 July 2012 Shortly after his death, a schism occurred, with the larger party becoming what Louis-Philippe d'Orléans, Duke of Chartres, renamed the Grand Orient de France in 1773.Franc-Maçonnerie Française Le Grand Orient de France, retrieved 8 July 2012 The ritual of the new Grand Lodge followed that of the Premier Grand Lodge of England.Grand Masonic Orient of Ireland, archived on Wayback Machine Ritual, retrieved 15 February 2016
By the time of the French Revolution, there were some 1250 Masonic Lodges in the country., New Catholic Encyclopedia
French Revolution The Lodge Les Neuf Sœurs was a prominent lodge attached to the Grand Orient de France that was particularly influential in organising French support for the American Revolution (1765–1783) and later in the intellectual ferment that preceded the French Revolution (1789). Benjamin Franklin was a member of this Lodge when he was serving as liaison in Paris.http://www.fm-fr.org/francais/obediences/les-obediences-liberales/le-grand-orient-de-france "Le Grand Orient de France (GODF)."
Some notable French revolutionaries were Freemasons, including Marquis de Lafayette, "Where was LaFayette Made A Mason?" MasonicWorld.com Marquis de Condorcet,"And it is a fact that most of the authors of that epoch-making Encyclopedia – Diderot, D'Alembert, Condorcet, the famous Swiss philosopher Helvetius, etc. — were Freemasons." History of Freemasonry hosted by Arcadia Lodge#249 , Ames, Iowa Mirabeau,"En France, dans les dernières années de l'Ancien Régime, Mirabeau (qui était Maçon, affilié à la loge parisienne "Les Neuf Sœurs") et l'abbé Henri Grégoire (qui était peut-être Maçon)" Transl. "In France, during the final years of the Ancien Régime, Mirabeau (who was a Mason, belonging to the Parisian lodge "The Nine Sisters") and the Abbe Henri Gregoire (who may have been a Mason)" Le Prince de Ligne Franc-Maçon by Paul Delsemme, Volume 10, Bon-A-Tirer Georges Danton,From Denslow, 10,000 Famous Freemasons the Duke of Orléans,"Louis Philippe Joseph, Duke of Orleans, better known in history by his revolutionary name of Egalite, meaning Equality, was the fifth Grand Master of the Masonic Order in France." ORLEANS, DUKE OF, Letter O , ENCYCLOPEDIA OF FREEMASONRY AND ITS KINDRED SCIENCES, by ALBERT C. MACKEY M. D. and Hébert.Hebert, Andre Chenier, Camille Desmoulins and many other "Girondins" of the French Revolution were Freemasons. The American Mercury Newspaper, 1941 , Sven Lunden
Louis Philippe II, Duke of Orléans, a leader of the Liberal Aristocracy, was the Grand Master of the Grand Orient at the time of the French Revolution. In some parts of France, the Jacobin Clubs were continuances of Masonic lodges from the Ancien Régime, and according to historian Alan Forrest "some early clubs, indeed, took over both the premises and much of the membership of masonic lodges, before rebadging themselves in the new idiom of the revolution."Paris, the Provinces and the French Revolution, by Alan Forrest, 2004, Oxford University Press, page 108 In 1804 it merged with the rival Grand Lodge, the Rite Ecossais.Page 153, The Freemasons: A History of the World's Most Powerful Secret Society, by Jasper Ridley, 2002
In 1910, the Catholic Encyclopedia wrote that the Masonic book La Franc-Maçonnerie, écrasée in 1746 predicted the program of the French Revolution,"Already in 1746 in the book La Franc-Maçonnerie, écrasée, an experienced ex-Mason, who, when a Mason, had visited many lodges in France and England, and consulted high Masons in official positions, described as the true Masonic programme one which, according to Boos, the historian of Freemasonry (p. 192), in an astonishing degree coincides with the programme of the great French Revolution of 1789." From Masonry (Freemasonry) in the Catholic Encyclopedia and quoted documents of the Grand Orient of France where Freemasonry claims credit for the French Revolution."Masonry, which prepared the Revolution of 1789, has the duty to continue its work", Circular of the Grand Orient of France,2 April 1889, Cited as Footnote 163 in the article Masonry (Freemasonry) in the Catholic Encyclopedia. The most recent edition (2002) does not contain any article on Freemasonry. The New Catholic Encyclopedia of 1967 (written after the Second Vatican Council) says that modern historians see Freemasonry's role in the French Revolution as exaggerated. The most recent edition (2002) does not contain any article on Freemasonry."Modern historians agree that the role of Masonry in the French Revolution has usually been exaggerated." New Catholic Encyclopedia, 1967 ed, Volume 6, p. 135, McGraw-Hill, New York.
Napoleon III In France Napoleon III established a dictatorship over official French Freemasonry, appointing first Prince Lucien Murat and later Marshal Magnan to maintain close supervision over Freemasonry and suppress any hints of opposition to the regime."Emperor Napoleon III nominated him as Grand Master of the Grand Orient of France, and even though not a Mason, he was installed on February 8, 1862, serving until May 29, 1865." Entry for Bernard Pierre Magnan, Volume III, K - P 10,000 Famous Freemasons, William Denslow
The Paris Commune According to the Marxist author Ernest Belfort Bax, Freemasons had a considerable involvement in the Paris Commune after a couple of unsuccessful attempts at reconciling the Commune with the French Government.E. Belfort Bax, The Paris Commune, "IX. The Freemasons, the Committee of Public Safety, and Rossel", (1894) www.marxists.org. Retrieved 26 May 2014.
Schism with the United Grand Lodge of England In 1877, at the instigation of the Protestant pastor Frédéric Desmons, it allowed those who had no belief in a supreme being to be admitted.The Grand Orient of France and the three great lights The United Grand Lodge of England (UGLE) and related Lodges regarded belief in the Supreme Being as a Masonic Landmark.
It was this decision that has been the root cause of the schism between the Grand Orient (and those lodges that followed it), and the rest of Freemasonry. It is a schism in Freemasonry which continues to this day. It is argued that the definition is ambiguous, that Anderson's Landmarks are his own collection and interpretation of the historical landmarks, and that changes in both interpretation and practice have occurred before and since.
The decision was not universally approved in France. By 1894 many lodges had split off in protest and formed the Grande Loge de France (GLdF)Grande Loge de France website retrieved 12 January 2012 In 1910, a few members of the Grand Orient, wishing to re-introduce the concept of God the Great Architect, brought back the Rectified Scottish Rite from Switzerland. In the resulting friction with the national body, they amalgamated with the English lodge of Bordeaux to produce, in 1913, a third grand lodge, la Grande Loge Nationale Indépendante et Régulière pour la France et les Colonies françaises, now the Grande Loge Nationale Française.GLNF website Histoire de la GLNF, retrieved 12 January 2013
Third Republic
The Grand Orient was instrumental in the founding of the left wing Republican Party.page 79, The Search for Social Peace: Reform Legislation in France, 1890-1914, Judith F. Stone, 1985, SUNY PressAdhésion du Grand-Orient a La République from Revue Maçonnique, Tome XI (Lyon: 1848). Available from Google Books Article, "Freemasonry" by M. L. McIsaac in Patrick H. Hutton (editor), Historical Dictionary of the Third French Republic, 1870-1940, pages 401-402 (London: Aldwych Press, 1986). . "The commitments of the Freemasons in the Third Republic are revealed in the causes they chose to support. The League of Instruction, designed to promote lay education, was one of the most important of these. They championed a number of political reforms, notably a progressive income tax, child labor laws, and social welfare legislation (particularly measures to aid the orphaned, the infirm, and the elderly), although they were not organized politically and advanced no official political creed, In practice, Freemasons tended to join the Radical party and, after the turn of the twentieth century, the Socialist party. In comparison with its revolutionary origins in the Enlightenment, the Freemasonry of the Third Republic was thoroughly domesticated, but so too was the republican ideal itself. For this reason, the Freemasons' commitment to building an economically prosperous, socially advanced, politically democratic nation reinforced the basic commitmrents of the political leaders of the Third Republic. Without being an official arm of the Republic the Freemasons contributed powerfully to its self-conception."A. Hamon, H. Hamon, The Political Situation in France, pages 107-128 (The American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 11, No. 1 July 1905)