Freemasonry, friendship and noblewomen: The role of the secret society in bringing enlightenment thought to pre-revolutionary women elites

Abstract

During the eighteenth century there was a dramatic rise in the number of groups and organisations involving women. This article will use mixed-gender freemasonic lodges of adoption as an example of the new sociability among elites in France and will probe the influence of those secret societies on their women members. It is the position of this article that masonic relationships in these lodges represented a certain kind of intense friendship generally known as Fraternity, that this profound fraternal friendship was the strongest form of Enlightenment thought experienced by these women, and that this sense of friendship can go far to explain the public behavior of certain powerful women masons hitherto characterised as incomprehensible or inconsistent. In particular, the article will focus on Marie-Thtrtse-Louise de Savoie-Carignan, the princesse de Lamballe, Superintendent of the Household of Queen Marie Antoinette. The princess served as a masonic grand mistress during the decade before the Revolution. Having experienced a sense of Fraternity within her masonic lodge, the princesse de Lamballe, like many of her elite lodge sisters, allowed this ideal to influence her public behavior. Like the princess, most of these women elites suffered in exile or died during the Revolution; yet ironically many of them had begun to espouse, through their lodges, reformist ideals compatible with the Revolution. Freemasonry was a secret society that swept through Europe and much of the rest of the world in the eighteenth century. In most countries where the brotherhood became ensconced, women were effectively excluded. The notable exception was France, where women’s interest in the organisation was making the masonic brethren uncomfortable soon after it arrived there from England between 1725 and 1730.’ The first female lodge was probably founded shortly after 1737.2 Although the earliest of such lodges of which there is some record have both men and women members, maconnerie des dames or maconnerie des femmes were the terms used. As the century progressed, female lodges grew in number and popularity among the upper classes and began to take on a distinct character of their own. They were officially recognised in 1774 as masonic organisations by the Grand Orient, the governing body of French freemasonry; and by the 178Os, the women’s lodges had become so popular that a new edition of one adoption ritual book was being published annually. During 1787 six editions were published.