LA CHEVALERIE MAÇONNIQUE Pierre Mollier, Éditions Dervy, Paris, 2005. Paperback, 230 pages, £16.00. ISBN 2-84454-398-7. Available from Publishers 204 boulevard Raspail, Paris 75014. Email: isabelle.laurand@dervy.fr

In 2000 a large collection of documents originally taken from the library of the Grand Orient of France was returned from Russia where they had been held in KGB archives. Pierre Mollier, Curator and Librarian of the Grand Orient, has been studying many of these documents, in particular those pertaining to the development of chivalric Freemasonry during the eighteenth century.
    Speculative Freemasonry first came to France in the 1720s and was soon very successful but it developed in different ways to that of England, in particular it promulgated masonic ‘high grades.’ These high grades not only had considerable esoteric content but they were also chivalric. Indeed, masonic systems transformed themselves into Orders of Chivalry and this became an important factor in the history of French Freemasonry.
    But early reports of chivalric grades in Freemasonry are thin on the ground: the earliest being 1742 with mention of a ‘Chevalier de Saint-André’; in 1748 there is a note of a ‘Chevalier d’Orient’ and in 1749, a ‘Chevalier Kadosh.’ In addition the records of the Grand Lodge of France for 11 December 1743 reported ‘several brothers who presented themselves under the title of Scottish master’ which was clearly considered to be one of the higher grades of Freemasonry.
    Then, incredibly, within the archives from Russia, a document was found which was entitled (in French), ‘The Very Respectable Society of Scottish masters…since its foundation on the thirtieth of November 1742.’ The document itself is 140 pages long and contains the laws, statutes and ordinances together with the minutes of 141 meetings of this ‘loge écossaise’ which was founded in Berlin, together with the signatures of over eighty Freemasons who had joined it. The ritual of the Lodge describes how, at the installation, the new Master was created a Brother Knight of the ‘Ordre Écossais’ by three strokes of a sword on his back. The records also make it clear that this Scottish Order of Chivalry is also called the ‘Ordre de Saint-André’. By 1743 this lodge had begun warranting daughter lodges in other cities in Germany, Denmark, and Hungary.
    All this makes for a fascinating and compelling story which, together with the wealth of other information skilfully presented in Mollier’s book, must now form the basic reading for anyone interested in chivalric Freemasonry.
    Michael Baigent