Born during the French Enlightenment – A Foundation of the Feminist Movement

In France, in the first decades of the 1700s, women inspired by the Values of the Enlightenment, dare, create, envision the female presence and contribution to the emerging Freemasonry and its humanitarian work.

In France of the Enlightenment period, women, initially mainly intellectuals, with the help of enlightened male masons founded the first female Masonic Lodges. This is in stark contrast to the way women’s efforts to participate in the establishment of modern Freemasonry have been treated in England.

Burke and Jacob report that already in the early 1730s there were Lodges in France in which there were also women, (Burke and Jacod, 1996 ).

Research relevant to that era states that the early feminist thoughts and humanistic values of the Enlightenment were the motivations for women’s desire to participate in Freemasonry. Mackey in his encyclopedia agrees with this view and stresses that the participation of women in the Lodges was a product of the French intelligentsia.

In the year 2000, 750 large boxes containing masonic documents and files stolen by the Nazis from the Greater East of France returned to Paris from Moscow in June 1940.

In these archives there was evidence confirming that the women’s Lodge “L’Anglaise” existed in Bordeaux earlier than 1746, (Huffmire, 2004).

In these documents it is also mentioned that four women were initiated into the ” Saint Julien ” Lodge of Brioude in 1747. It is noted that these Lodges are referred to as ” Adoption Sisters”.

This participation of women in the Masonic “Adoption Lodges” was a great step for the development of women regarding the Right to Freedom and Choice as well as for their contribution to the development of the Enlightenment.

This was a historic moment for Western Civilization. The first female masons were of a high intellectual social status and participated on an equal footing with men in the French salons of philosophy and intellect.

It is noted that these first “Adoption Lodges” were far from the complete Freedom and Equality of women, but they provided those experiences and knowledge that led, around 1780 in both France and England, to the creation of the purely female Lodges.

At the same time, the “Adoption Lodges” were developing rapidly, which were much more common in France than in England (Huffmire, 2004).

In France, before 1740, progressive Masons eliminated any sexist differences that existed and argued that women should participate equally in the evolution of Freemasonry, which in England was accepted after 1760.

It is reported that it was not until the early twentieth century in England that the perception of women’s participation in Masonic activities fundamentally changed. This change had slowly begun to take shape since 1780, when women began to no longer just be passive observers of the male conservative Enlightenment, but their perseverance and active role contributed to the formation of a society friendly to the female presence in public.

Following the female Masonic activity in France and the first female Masons in England brought to their Lodges the ideas of the Enlightenment, Freedom and Equality.

This was the first step for the feminist movement, which at the time had no social existence, especially in the English conservative environment.

The archives of the first French “Adoption Lodges” show the desire of women to highlight the equal presence of women in society, women’s rights to education and social and political action.

From the very first moment, the Masonic Values of Friendship, Love and Fraternity attracted the spiritually enlightened women of the upper class. This led to the first French Masonic Lodges being consisted of people of high intellectual level and the Masonic labor aiming at the development and dissemination of these Masonic Values as well as the ideas of the Enlightenment, namely Freedom and Equality.

In the records of an “Adoption Lodge” in Dijon it is recorded :“O my Sisters! How noble it is for me to call you by that name! How valuable it is for me to form new sisterly ties with you and to strengthen existing ones”, (Burke, Freemasonry 284).

This desire for unity and at the same time independence gave these women a deep sense of Fraternity and Devotion.

Burke states that pride in these Values combined with the strong bonding friendships developed within the women’s Lodges created a form of 18th-century feminism.

In the “Adoption Lodges” they were taught to perceive their rights as women and to demand them from the male-dominated world, (Burke, 1996).

The first feminist claims.

It is argued that in the “Adoption Lodge”, the “Order of the Amazons”, there was a high rank of “Amazonnerie Anglaise”. The award of this rank was made only by a woman – “the Queen of the Amazons”- in contrast to the procedure that prevailed in the “Adoption Lodges” where always a venerable man led the ceremonies.

The “Queen of Amazons” initiated the men and women into the Lodge.

Women, among the subjects they discussed, were called upon to recognize the injustice of men against women, to shake off the male yoke, to dominate marriage, and to claim equal wealth with men.

The initial course of Female Freemasonry, around the end of the 18th century, is clearly determined by the emergence and strengthening of the first feminist ideals and claims.

Scholars of Female Freemasonry (here we refer to French Female Freemasonry, given that it is the main shaper of modern Female Freemasonry), report that its course is divided into two periods, which are related to the French Revolution.

The pre-revolutionary and post-revolutionary period.

The pre-revolutionary period is characterized on the one hand by the effort of female masons to strengthen themselves as a Fraternity, based on the Masonic Values and Ideas of the Enlightenment, as already mentioned, and on the other hand by the development of Philanthropy.

In the post-revolutionary period there is a shift in the actions of the female Masonic Lodges. During this period, women, having gained enough masonic experience, develop initiatives on how masonic Labor evolves as well as on the content of their Rites. While preserving the sanctity of the old rituals, they added their own, extremely important ritual elements.

These changes could be a “search for avant-garde” or, in some of the cases, an attempt to change the perceptions of the Lodges, (Huffmire, 2004).

An example of a change was the interpretation of “what happened in the Garden of Eden.”

Freemasonry has always been inextricably linked with religious sentiment, especially with the Judeo-Christian tradition. For both male and female Masons, returning to the purity of the Garden of Eden has been a symbolic expectation. With the development of Adoptive Freemasonry in the early 18th century, Lodges practically show a powerful impetus towards overturning Eve’s view of being responsible for the earth’s calamities.

Burke called the beginning of post-revolutionary women’s Freemasonry “an incipient type of feminism,” citing the advent of women into Freemasonry as creating a better hope for them (Burke, 2000).

At the same time, female Masons develop dominant roles in the organization of charitable works inside and outside the Lodges.

The involvement of female masons in charity could be a sign of feminist expression.

The Minutes of the Lodges during this period show that philanthropy is combined with the spirit of independence of female masons. Works of charity were as common in the early stages of the “Adoption Lodges” as they were in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, but the motive was different.

In the pre-revolutionary “Adoptive” Freemasonry, the perception of philanthropy was based on the fact that humanitarian interest was the basis of the Enlightenment. The Enlightenment values such as Equality, Freedom and Fraternity were linked to charity work and were done in collaboration with male and female masons.

In the post-revolutionary period, female Masonic works of charity were no longer carried out together with male Masons but were carried out by women alone and for reasons seemingly unconnected with the ideals of the Enlightenment(Burke, 2000). At the same time, individual sensitivity, as a result of “Romanticism”, strengthened the tendency towards charity.

Immediately after the Revolution a large crowd of worthy citizens became poor and lived in miserable conditions.

Charity was now the Female Masons’ main mission.

 The prevailing political-social system did not have effective infrastructures to support these people.

 With a dynamic of independence, female Masons voluntarily undertook the mission of helping people in need. They felt that they had responsibility for those who fell into difficult living conditions.

At the same time, leading female role models during the Revolution and afterwards urged women to find their place in the world of work on behalf of the deserving poor in order to offer help and support to them.

Their philanthropic concerns took center stage and even began to replace the symbolic rituals that were once their field of interest.

The great social problem of poverty and the support for the weak were embedded in the growing feminist culture.

The actions of female Masons during both the pre-revolutionary period and the post-revolutionary period caused an increasing popularity of female Freemasonry in France. Hundreds of women entered the “Adoption Lodges” and the purely female Masonic Lodges.

Women from all walks of life became Sisters.

A new form of society began to take shape. Elitism and the higher social class are replaced by a universal meeting of the French female population, a Sisterhood, a new microcosm, which examines the new status of women in society within the Lodges themselves. (Burke, 2000).

Within the “Adoption Lodges” and then in the purely female ones, in accordance with the spirit of the Enlightenment, an emerging Feminism is observed.

A platform for women’s expression. A space of female unity.

There was great respect among the women and men who participated in those “Adoption Lodges”. In most cases women and men respected the other gender equally and treated each other equally and maintained admiration and fraternal relationship.

Female Freemasonry, at the end of the 18th and the beginning of the 19th century, creates a new female perspective with its appearance.

Women were taking on a new role in the social sphere.

The French initiative for the creation and development of Female Freemasonry soon spread to Germany, Belgium and other European countries.

Female Freemasonry is now part of human society.

SOURCES

Burke, Janet, and Margaret Jacob,(1996), “French Freemasonry, Women, and Feminist Scholarship.” Journal of Modern History

2. Burke, Janet, (1989); “Freemasonry, Friendship and Noblewomen: The Role of the Secret Society in Bringing Enlightenment .Thought to Pre-Revolutionary Women Elites.” History of European Ideas 10.3

3. Burke, Janet., (2000), “Leaving the Enlightenment: Women Freemasons after the Revolution.” Eighteenth-Century Studies 33.2

4. Huffmire R. Casey ,(2004), “ Women and Freemasonry in France and Germany”, Sophie Journal, Volume 1,

5. Mackey, Albert,(1992), “Origin.” An Encyclopedia of Freemasonry and Its Kindred Sciences: Comprising the Whole Range of Arts, Sciences and Literature as Connected with the Institution. 1921 ed. Kila, MT: Kissinger.