Women and Freemasonry in the Eighteenth Century
information is confirmed by a current researcher of the region , 42 who states that this noble house was destroyed around 1920 , and that the last owner was a lawyer . No name of a lodge is indicated in the correspondence , unless it is hidden in the hermetic writing . However , according to Alain de Bihan ’ s index 43 and Jacques Fénéant ’ s book , 44 there was , at Longué , a lodge by the name of “ Notre Dame de Longué .” The latter figures in a 1774 table of lodges that were not reactivated by the GO , where the following is said of it : “ to be seen as irregular until it has ratified the constitutions emanating from the Grand Lodge .” Was this the Louët lodge ? Quite possibly ! In the 1760s , the Masonic administration of the country is still in limbo . The Grand Lodge seeks to become the Center of the Union , but nothing is yet centralized , and the granting of constitutions is often considered as a title deed , as an immutable charge , by those who have received or bought them . The GO , which will focus on putting things in order , only appears in 1773 .
A Chain of New Lodges A dip into the other documents in the collection , while it does not deliver clear-cut information either on this lodge at Longué or on the Masons , supplies some interesting elements toward an understanding of the successive installations of the lodges in the region , and — what is rarer and more precious — on the initiatory preoccupations of their members , and their desire for a Brotherhood extended to the entire Earth .
In 1765 , on August 12 , the Saint Jean des Arts lodge is born in Beaufort in Anjou thanks to the Longué lodge , as we saw from letter 10 .
We know from Alain Le Bihan ’ s precious index that on September 2 , 1774 , on the request of the GO , which it has just joined , the Saint Jean des Arts Lodge installs the Saint Paul Lodge of Doué in Anjou . 45 Saint Paul had existed since 1753 , but the heirs of one of its members kept the first constitutions and did not pass them on , so the anteriority of the lodge is not recognized . Manuscript A , which evokes ( without giving a date ) an encounter between the Brothers of these two lodges , is very probably the text of the speech pronounced upon the day of this installation . It may therefore be dated September 2 , 1774 . 46 In 1777 , Saint Jean des Arts becomes Saint Jean du Secret . 47 In 1788 , Saint Jean
du Secret is in turn charged by the GO with installing the lodge of Baugé , L ’ Union des Sentiments . The speech of Manuscript E is doubtless pronounced upon this occasion : here we hear of a Knight native to the town of Baugé , and of the lodge ’ s joy in no longer being isolated but , on the contrary , being “ reunited with an Order that embraces in its expansion the four cardinal points of the universe .” 48 This manuscript may therefore , in
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 42 The author of “ Longué au fil du temps .” 43 Le Bihan , Loges et Chapitres de la Grande Loge et du Grand Orient de France , 107 . 44 See note 3 . 45 Le Bihan , Loges et Chapitres de la Grande Loge et du Grand Orient de France , 31 . 46 “ Brothers of the Lodge of Arts that it may be permitted to me to demonstrate to them at
this moment all your gratitude , and to say them in your name , Dear Brothers of Saint Paul , here are our columns , here our temple , here our flaming star — all of this we hold in common with you .” Manuscript A , page 11 . 47 See note 14 . 48 “ Knight de Goutz native of this town of Baugé reports in the memoirs of his voyage to
the Orient … .” “ I finish , Dearest Brothers , with the most tender expressions and the liveliest joy in seeing our most Respectable Lodge , betimes isolated , today reunited with
18 !