French Masonic Lodge
La Loge des Neuf Sœurs
(
French pronunciation:
[la
l??
de
nœf
sœ?]
;
The Nine Sisters
), established in
Paris
in 1734, was a prominent French
Masonic Lodge
of the
Grand Orient de France
that was influential in organising French support for the
American Revolution
. A "Societe des Neuf Sœurs," a charitable society that surveyed academic curricula, had been active at the
Academie Royale des Sciences
since 1769. Its name referred to the nine
Muses
, the daughters of
Mnemosyne
/Memory, patrons of the arts and sciences since antiquity, and long significant in French cultural circles. The Lodge of similar name and purpose was opened in 1776, by
Jerome de Lalande
. From the start of the French Revolution in 1789 until 1792, Les Neuf Sœurs became a "Societe Nationale".
During the
French Revolution
, while the Academie Royale des Sciences et des Arts was drastically reorganised, two members of the lodge,
Antoine Laurent de Jussieu
and
Gilbert Romme
, in collaboration with
Henri Gregoire
, helped to organise a "Societe Libre des Sciences, Belles Lettres et Arts", to subsidise what had become the
Institut de France
so as to keep the original influence of the "Neuf Soeurs" intact. (Hahn, 1971) The lodge was reconstituted under its original name in 1805, ceased operation from 1829?1836, and finally closed in 1848. Its former location is thought to be on the
Rue de la Bucherie
on the Left Bank across from Notre-Dame.
[1]
Its successive "Venerable Masters" of the first decade were
Benjamin Franklin
(1779?1781), Marquis de La Salle (1781?1783), Milly (1783?1784), Charles Dupaty (1784), Elie de Beaumont (1784?1785), and Claude Pastoret (1788?1789) (Ligou, 1987).
The Americans
[
edit
]
In 1778, the year
Voltaire
became a member,
Benjamin Franklin
and
John Paul Jones
also were accepted along with
Jean Sylvain Bailly
. Benjamin Franklin became Master of the Lodge in 1779, and was re-elected in 1780. When Franklin, after a long and influential stay in Europe, returned to America to participate in the writing of the Constitution, Thomas Jefferson a non-Mason took over as American Envoy.
Jean-Antoine Houdon
, a member of Les Neuf Sœurs, added Jefferson's marble bust to his corpus of works, which included busts of Franklin and
General Lafayette
. Jefferson persuaded Houdon to make his famous
statue of George Washington
, for which Houdon travelled to America in 1785.
While Jefferson stayed in Paris, at the Maison des Feuillants, his neighbour was
Jean-Francois Marmontel
Secretary-for-Life of the Paris Academy of Sciences and another member of the Lodge. At the same time Jefferson's friend, American Founding Father
John Adams
, was the neighbour, at Auteuil, of
Anne-Catherine de Ligniville, Madame Helvetius
, who hosted the famous Cercle d'Auteuil where the influence of Les Neuf Sœurs was at its highest.
[
citation needed
]
In
Memoires pour servir a l'histoire du Jacobinisme
(4 vol.,1797?1798)
Abbe Barruel
attributed membership to key figures of the French Revolution like
Jacques Pierre Brissot
(Barruel claims Brissot was a member of Neuf Soeurs, although Brissot wrote that he was initiated into a German Lodge but was never active) and
Georges Danton
.
[2]
Members
[
edit
]
Jean Baptiste Moulon de la Chesnaye
References
[
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]
Notes
[
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]
Sources
[
edit
]
- Louis Amiable,
Une loge maconnique d'avant 1789, la loge des Neuf Sœurs
, commentaire critique ?
Charles Porset
, (Les Editions Maconnique de France, Paris 1989)
- Howard C. Rice, Jr.,
Thomas Jefferson's Paris
(Princeton : Princeton University Press, 1976)
- Roger C. Hahn,
The anatomy of a scientific institution: 1666?1803, the Paris Academy of Sciences
(Berkeley : University of California Press, 1971)
- Roger C. Hahn, "Quelques nouveaux documents sur Jean Silvain Bailly" in
Revue d'Histoire des Sciences
8
(Paris,1955) pp. 338?353
- Daniel Ligou, ed.
Dictionnaire de la franc-maconnerie
(Paris : Presses Universitaires de France, 1987)
- De La Valette-Mombrun,
Maine de Biran (1766?1824)
(Paris 1914)
- J.A.C. Sykes
France in 1802
(William Heinemann, London 1906)
External links
[
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]
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