Malta, the Knights, and Freemasonry1
Ritual, Secrecy, and Civil Society - Volume 2 - Issue 1 - Spring 2014 Malta, the Knights, and Freemasonry1 Pierre Mollier2 ormed in London in 1717, over sub- and medium towns in the kingdoms, the sequent decades modern Freemason- Lodges exchanged “assurances of friend- ry spread throughout the whole of ship,” welcomed travelling Brothers, cor- Feighteenth-century Europe, so quickly and responded, and cultivated invisible but successfully that it still astonishes histori- very real connections throughout Europe. ans. Its integration and dynamism in Malta, Many young knights were therefore initiat- a hub of cultural exchange at the heart of ed during their period of training in Malta the Mediterranean, is therefore not really (their “caravans”). Once they returned to surprising, especially given that the young the continent, they practiced Masonry, thus aristocrats who dominated the Order of contributing to the “Universal Republic of Saint John (which had many French mem- Freemasons,” in the words of Pierre-Yves bers) were open to the spirit of their time Beaurepaire. and particularly to Enlightenment thought. Despite Lodges being condemned by the I. Freemasonry in Malta Pope in 1738, they had many ecclesiastical members in all Catholic countries. The in- A/ The First Stones (1730–circa 1750) terest of research attempting to improve our understanding of the relationships between alta appears as one of the first ter- Masonry and the Knights of Malta lies not ritories in which modern Free- in an apparent paradox (which actually ex- masonry established itself, after isted not in the eighteenth century), but in MGreat Britain, the Netherlands, and France. the study of the superposition of two net- In fact, the first account of the existence of works of sociability, each of which, in its a Lodge on the island dates back to 1730.
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