Early Freemasonry in Belgium This paper was written 3 months before the start of WW1 by Bro. Frederick Fleeman and delivered to Howe & Charnwood Lodge of Instruction, Leicestershire & Rutland No. 1007(EC) and concludes the series. Gould says, ‘The history of Freemasonry in Belgium may briefly be divided into four welldefined periods, every political change of status producing a transfer of Masonic jurisdiction. From the Peace of Utrecht (1714) to the French revolution (1795) we have to deal with the Austrian Netherlands, from thence to 1814 with a French province under the Masonic control of the Grand Orient, from 1814 to 1830 Belgium was merged in the Kingdom of Holland, and from 1830 Belgium must be treated as a separate and independent kingdom, under its own Grand Orient.’ In 1786 the Emperor of Austria & Hungary issued an edict restricting the Craft to three lodges in each provincial capital of his empire and wholly forbidding it in cities where no provincial government existed. In consequence of this, eleven lodges in Belgium had to close, although it is asserted that one lodge each in Maastricht, Liege, Tournai and Spa continued to meet secretly. The edict was in no way intended to be oppressive, but, in May 1786, the Emperor became alarmed at the national sentiment of the Craft in Belgium and closed all the lodges except three in Brussels. In 1787, anticipating the outbreak of the Revolution in France, he resolved to close even these last lodges. This brings us to the end of the first period. Of the sixteen former lodges only six, one each at Namur, Tournai, Liege, Brussels, Ostend and Mons lived through 1793. With 1795 and French supremacy, the Belgian Fraternity came under the jurisdiction of the Grand Orient of France and between 1799 and 1813 the Grand Orient warranted no less than 28 lodges. It is noteworthy that in 1811 the Provincial Grand Lodge of Heredom in France (Royal Order of Scotland) constituted a Chapter at Brussels and that many of the French higher degrees were introduced. In all respects
Cross Keys December 2022
the Masonry of this period my be considered identical with that of France. In 1830 the Netherlands separated, and Belgium acquired its independence and the Brotherhood followed in 1832 and 1833 by detaching itself from the Grand Lodge of the Netherlands and forming the present Grand Orient of Belgium which has supreme authority and jurisdiction over the Craft Degrees. There are eighteen subordinate lodges, but the total membership is not recorded or at any rate not available. The clothing is said to be ‘of the simplest description.’ The early history of Speculative Freemasonry in Belgium clearly establishes the fact that it was an offshoot like much other present day Masonry of the First Grand Lodge of Scotland. For just as the Mithraic mysteries were spread in the Roman Empire through travellers, merchants, and especially military men, who opened Mithraea (complex system of seven grades of Initiation and communal ritual meals. Initiates called themselves ‘syndexioi’, those "united by the handshake") wherever they stayed, so Speculative Freemasonry was propagated abroad by British travellers, residents and officers who founded the first continental lodges. This was essentially the case in Belgium, where between 1721 and 1788 many lodges were opened under English and Scottish warrants. The lodge at Mons, ‘La Parfaite Union’, still in full prosperity (and today) claims to have been instituted in 1721 by the Grand Lodge of London under Lord Montagu, and there is proof, at any rate, that this claim was endorsed in the Lodge as early as 1749. Among the lodges which went back to their origin to the Grand Lodge of Edinburgh there was one lodge at Brussels and two at Tournai. The new ‘statutes’ adopted in 1769 by the Lodge L’unanimite at Tournai state that in March 1765 it had been constituted under the auspices of H.R.H. Prince Charles de Lorraine, Governor General of Austrian Netherlands, by some Masons belonging to La Grande Loge de Sainte Andre a Edinbourgh (sic). Although thus of Protestant origin, the Tournai lodge was much frequented by Roman Catholic Ecclesiastics in spite of the Papal anathema Page 9