Russian Freemasonry 10

Russian Freemasonry 10

Largely due to his ascetic self-discipline of so-called healthy food, cold

showers and so on, Schwartz died in 1784. He was 33 ! So much for the

healthy life style ! !

 

A new grand Master for the Rosicrucians (Baron Schroder) arrived from

Germany to take over Schwartz's role, and numerous young Russians

thronged the opposite way to Berlin hoping to unravel the "secret".

 

Originally, the Fraters of the Blessed Order of the Rosy-Cross were pledged

to the relief of the suffering, to attempt the cure of diseases free of charge

and to found hospices and retreats from the world for like-minded

individuals. They spent their lives in search of truth, the knowledge of man 

and his possibilities and his relationship with other planes of existence

beyond the material world.

 

These noble aims were quickly corrupted and added to so that by the 1680s

members were now "scientific dabblers", chemical philosophers, alchemists

and astrologers. Any educated person could find a place under the

Rosicrucian banner. Primarily they sought the universal solvent (what to

keep it in?) the universal cure or remedy and, of course, the transmutation of

base metals into gold.

 

The movement died out in Europe during the Thirty Years' War but, for the

Russians, science always had an attraction beyond the material gains it

promises. Couple this with a mystical background and you may see what

attraction this had for the budding intelligentsia in Russia.

 

Gradually the so-called "knightly" degrees fell into disuse and the work of

the Russian lodges became centred entirely on the Rosicrucian Order. In

1786 Prince Frederick William, a practising Rosicrucian, became King of

Prussia, and a bewildering profusion of occult fraternities flooded into a

receptive Russia.

 

It was argued that the world was the supreme temple of Masonry.

Rosicrucianism was the final level for which the earlier Masonic degrees

were mere preliminaries. To attain this level, one had to flee the rationalism

of the Enlightenment. The true task was to find the Light of Adam through

inner purification and the dedicated study of the hieroglyphics of nature.

 

This idea that the world is some huge Rosetta Stone awaiting deciphering by

the elite is not new. It goes back to Early Christianity and clearly evident in

the 8th century writings of the Venerable Bede.

 

Schwartz had transformed the casual moralism and philanthropy of the early

Russian Freemasons into a seductive belief that heaven on Earth (remember

the words of the representatives from Prince Vladimir in the Hagia Sophia?)

could be realised through the concentrated efforts of elite thinkers.

 

Novikov became increasingly uneasy about this turn to the occult which had

overtaken Russian Freemasonry. In the late 1780s he proposed the formation

of a purely Christian and philanthropic order. His increasing interest in the

religious traditions of Old Russia permeated his publications with a kind of

quasi-religious appeal and he adopted the Old Believer form of counting

dates from the Creation rather than from the birth of Christ. He antagonised

Catherine by criticising the Jesuits in 1784, accusing them of being a

political order thus betraying the monastic ideal. Novikov had portrayed the

Jesuits as faithless, power-seeking, aiming to set up a state within a state.

His work, in fact was what many 'enlightened' mind considered to be an

objective account of the Jesuits.

 

As the Jesuits' benefactress, Catherine stepped up her attacks on Novikov by

writing three anti-masonic plays in which Freemasons were represented as

charlatans and deceivers who, like Count Cagliostro, promised their victims

philosophic gold, the elixir of life and contact with the world of spirits.

Catherine also closed down the Masonic printing presses and finally had

Novikov arrested in 1792.

 

These attacks were not limited to Novikov but included other Russian

Freemasons such as Alexander Nicolaevich Radischev. Radischev wrote

what is argued to be the first anti-Tsarist book — A Journey from St.

Petersburg to Moscow. He was sentenced to death, but this was later

commuted to exile in Siberia. He was later pardoned by Catherine's son Paul

and died in 1802. These attacks were part of Catherine's general

disillusionment with the French Enlightenment in the wake of the French

Revolution which she took as a personal attack. As an enlightened despot,

Catherine felt that the French had bit the hand that had fed them.

 

Certainly her opinions and distrust of the commoners seemed justified when,

in March 1792, Gustav III, albeit an enemy of Catherine's, had been

assassinated.

 

On 10 August 1792 the French monarchy was overthrown and the royal

family imprisoned. In France in September that year approximately 1 ,200

people were massacred, most of them ordinary citizens of no political

importance. The French armies were starting to successfully sweep through

the Rhineland, annexing territory as they went. In January 1793, the

execution of Louis XVI made Catherine physically ill. As an indication of

the depth to which Catherine now rejected the French, in March 1794 the

sale of French calendars which adopted the new revolutionary neo-classical

chronology were banned. France had become a country of ravening beasts

knowing only how to pillage and kill. The wave of executions and purge

trials of each wave of revolutionary leaders was not to be seen again until

Stalin's trials of the 1930's.

 

 

 

The publication in 1797 of a well-received denunciation of Continental

Freemasonry by John Robinson (1739 — 1805) didn't help the Craft. It was

called Proof of a Conspiracy against all the Religions and Governments of

Europe Carried on in the Secret Meetings of Free Masons, Illuminati and

Reading Societies. This work had gone into 5 editions within one year of its

first publication. It appears Robinson had been initiated into Freemasonry in

1770 before going to Russia as private secretary to Admiral Sir Charles

Knowles. As with the other Masonic "Exposures" such as Three Distinct

Knocks et cetera, Robinson's work contains interesting (albeit coloured)

insights into the activities of eighteenth century Russian Freemasonry —

including what appears to be a Lodge for women!

 

All this simply reinforced Catherine's concept that Freemasonry was

anathema to her continued governing of the country.

 

Catherine's attitude towards religion was based on toleration through

indifference. She had been born a Lutheran, educated by Catholics and

Calvinists and welcomed into the Russian Orthodox Church when she

married the Tsar. While she was deeply suspicious of the Jews and sectarian

extremists, she generally ruled without offending or persecuting other

religious orders. She welcomed the intellectual and teaching abilities of the

Jesuits and the agricultural expertise of the German pietists. The sects were

left alone as long as they recognised her authority.

 

The later years of Catherine's reign were marked by increasing desperation

in the religious communities. Monks fled the monasteries for ascetic

settlements and a tribe of wandering prophets toured the outer edges of the

Empire.

 

An extremist group called the Skoptsky arose. As a religious protest and as a

purification ritual they would castrate themselves in public. Along with the

self-burning Old Believers, and the Flagellants, the Skoptsky should not be

seen as a masochistic curiosity. The acts were seen as a new baptism into the

elect of the world to come and as a sacrificial atonement for the redemption

of a fallen society.

Realising that her rule had aroused popular religious sentiment against the

crown, she saw Freemasonry as having the potential to foster a concealed

political schism in Russian society.

 

There is little direct evidence of the political opinions of the Moscow

Rosicrucians, though by their behaviour one can deduce that they were not

necessarily interested in political change so much as in social reform by

means of philanthropy. The austere and high-minded Freemasons rejected

Catherine's blatant disregard for the rules of Christian marriage, which

contrasted so strikingly with the seeming domestic bliss of the ever-faithful

Grand Duke Paul. Novikov, for instance, displayed portraits of the grand

ducal couple on the walls of his country house, and the Freemasons sang

hymns of greeting to Paul.

 

In you Paul we see

 

A ledge of heavenly lore.

 

In your wonderful union

 

We read the sign of the angel.

 

When you are adorned with the crown

 

You will be our Father.

 

(Madariaga, Russia in the Age., pp.529-530)

 

Was Paul a Freemason? He denied it, but was certainly attracted to some

aspects of mystical religion, possibly even to the occult. There was no

"Pauline" Party per se, but a general trend in society against Catherine

consolidated around her son, Paul. Paul was not adverse to criticising his

mother's politics, but stopped short of real sedition.

 

It seems odd that Catherine should suppress a group supporting loyalty to

the sovereign and teaching morality and a belief in God. But Freemasonry

had involuntarily become associated with personal enemies of the Empress.

 

* First was her late husband, Peter III, who had been favourably disposed

towards the Craft and Catherine was hostile to any favourites of the late-

emperor. * The Russian Freemasons were aligned to Germany and Frederick the Great was the arch enemy of Catherine.