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, Lie ge, 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, Lie ge, 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 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

already in full force against Freemasonry. One of its members was the Vicar-General of the diocese.

Another lodge, Les Amis Inse parables, later revived after a long sleep, was working in the same city towards 1765. Its true origin remains unknown, but its officers were annually elected on the day of St. Andrew, and on the roll of its members are two Scottish names, Alexander Gordon and John Cunningham.

The latter was a Captain in the Dutch forces which at that period garrisoned some of the Belgian fortified towns. He must have been a zealous Mason, as, two years later, he petitioned the Grand Lodge of Scotland to obtain a patent for the creation of a lodge at Namur, where he had apparently been transferred. This was granted, and there sprang into existence in 1769 the lodge which, in point of antiquity, has precedence, with one exception, over all other Belgian lodges.

This lodge, La Bonne Amitie , fell into inactivity shortly afterwards, and on being revived in 1777, severed its connection with the Grand Lodge of Scotland and became affiliated with the Provincial Grand Lodge of Austrian Netherlands. Amongst the members of the lodge at this time were H.R.H. the Prince of Sohms-Baruth, a French duke, the Burgomaster of Namur, a Canon of St. Martin at Lie ge, several officers including a Colonel, and finally a score of noblemen, lawyers and merchants. When Freemasonry revived in Belgium under Napoleonic rule in 1808, the lodge reopened with the assistance of its surviving members who had religiously preserved the old records and swore allegiance to the Grand orient of France. After the fall of the French Empire in 1815 (Waterloo) it placed itself under the jurisdiction of the Grand Orient of Holland.

After the revolution of 1830, which parted Belgium from Holland, La Bonne Amitie passed under the jurisdiction of the Grand Orient of Belgium, which it had helped create in 1832, and where it headed the list as the oldest Belgian lodge, till, in 1898, some documents were discovered which assigned a still greater antiquity to the Parfaite Union at Mons. Bro. Count Goblet d’Alviella, P. G. M. Belgium, writes. ‘It was specially the time when Belgian lodges meddled with politics, perhaps more than was good for them, and certainly more than would have seemed fit to our Anglo-Saxon brethren. But account must be taken of the difficulties with which Belgian Freemasonry has to contend, especially in country towns, on account of the bigotry and intolerance of the Catholic Church, which, nearly every Sunday in the year, from every pulpit in the land, hurls thunderbolts at the heads of Freemasons, their families and their supporters.