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Les Neuf Sœurs

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Les Neuf Sœurs was a prominent French Masonic Lodge that was particularly influential in organising French support for the American Revolution.

The Lodge was opened in 1776, by Jérôme de Lalande, with the support of Helvétius' widow. A "Société des Neuf Sœurs" had been active at the Paris Academy of Sciences since 1769, as a charitable society "inspired by the Muses"— the nine sisters, daughters of Mnemosyne/Memory— to survey academic curricula. The traditional role of the Muses as patrons of the arts and sciences dates back to antiquity, and always had been significant in French cultural circles (see:Muse, Ronsard).

During the French Revolution the Académie Royale des Sciences at Paris was reorganised and "cleansed" of the influence of "nobility" (see:Reign of Terror, Antoine Lavoisier). Two members of the lodge, Antoine Laurent de Jussieu and Gilbert Romme, in collaboration with Henri Grégoire, helped to organise a "Société Libre des Sciences, Belles Lettres et Arts", to subsidize what had become the "Institut de France" and to keep the original influence of the "Neuf Sœurs" intact (Hahn, 1971).

At the start of the French Revolution "Les Neuf Sœurs" became a "Société Nationale" till 1792. The lodge was reconstituted in 1805 and continued till 1848, with an interruption from 1829 till 1836, but never again with the same brilliance as in the first decade of its existence.

The successive "Venerable Masters" of the first decade were: Benjamin Franklin (1779-1781), Marquis de La Salle (1781-1783), Milly (1783-1784), Charles Dupaty (1784), Elie de Beaumont (1784-1785), Claude Pastoret (1788-1789) (Ligou, 1987).

The Americans

In 1778, the year Voltaire became an Honorary Member of "Les Neuf Sœurs", Benjamin Franklin and John Paul Jones also were accepted. Benjamin Franklin became Master of the Lodge in 1779, and was re-elected in 1780. When Franklin, after a long and influential stay in Europe, returned to America— to participate in the writing of the Constitution— his place as American Envoy was taken by Thomas Jefferson, the author of the United States Declaration of Independence, accompanied by his friend John Adams.

Jean-Antoine Houdon, a notable member of "Les Neuf Sœurs", added Jefferson's marble bust to a long list of famous "Houdon" sculptures, including those of Franklin and Marquis de La Fayette. Jefferson persuaded Houdon to make his famous statue of George Washington, for which Houdon travelled to America in 1785.

While Jefferson stayed in Paris, at the Maison des Feuillants, his neighbour was Jean-François Marmontel "Secretary-for-Life" of the Paris Academy of Sciences and another member of the Lodge. At the same time Jefferson's friend John Adams was neighbour, at Auteuil, of the widow of Helvétius who hosted the famous Cercle d'Auteuil, where the influence of "Les Neuf Sœurs" was at its highest.

Of particular interest to the propagation of the American cause in Europe was Thomas Jefferson's correspondence with Jean-Nicolas Démeunier.

Cercle d'Auteuil

Indeed, it was at the salon of Mme. Helvétius, Anne Catherine de Ligniville d'Autricourt (1719-1800), that many of the brightest names of the Enlightenment at that time engaged one another in debate. In addition to the American guests— Benjamin Franklin appears to have had a crush on Anne Catherine— her guests included: d'Alembert, Diderot, d'Holbach, Chamfort, Honoré Mirabeau, Etienne Bonnot de Condillac, Volney, Dominique Joseph Garat, the Marquis de Condorcet -- also Jacques Turgot, who in 1778 introduced to the household the twenty-year-old Pierre Jean George Cabanis, a notable member of "Les Neuf Sœurs".

Mme. Helvétius welcomed Cabanis as a son, and so it was Cabanis who remained at Auteuil after her death in 1800, to keep the spirit of the "Cercle" alive (Rice, 1976). It was to this later version of the "Cercle" that Cabanis introduced the philosopher Maine de Biran.

Not all the members of the "Cercle d'Auteuil" were members of "Les Neuf Sœurs": for example, it never has been established that the Marquis de Condorcet was a member, yet his intellectual input in the "Cercle" was perhaps the single most important influence. His Essay on the Application of Analysis to the Probability of Majority Decisions (see: Condorcet's paradox) is considered the foundation of scientific sociology.

It was Condorcet who promoted abolitionism, universal suffrage, and women's suffrage, in the French Assemblée. (see also: Condorcet method) His major project of reform, towards modern and generally-accessible education (the foremost "raison d'être" of "Les Neuf Sœurs"), was not introduced on his model until 1881 under Jules Ferry.

Les Idéologues

"Les Neuf Sœurs" and the "Cercle d'Auteuil" lost many valued friends to the Reign of Terror. Of those who survived and were freed from prison— Destutt de Tracy, virtually on the stairs of the Guillotine—some were to have great influence: Volney, Pierre Daunou, Pierre-Louis Ginguené.

Dominique Joseph Garat, Volney, Pierre-Jean-Georges Cabanis, Pierre-Louis Ginguené and Destutt de Tracy formed the Class of Moral and Political Sciences at the Institut.Pierre-Louis Ginguené edited his journal "La Décade philosophique". Destutt de Tracy coined the word "les idéologues" to refer to the modern philosophy they proposed.

Napoleon Bonaparte was not so happy with the intellectual independence of the "idéologues". In 1803 he closed the Class of Moral and Political Sciences. "This is open war declared on our beloved science..." Cabanis wrote to Maine de Biran. Napoleon would later recognize the hand of the "Cercle d'Auteuil" in Maine de Biran's opposition to his policy in 1813 (La Valette Mombrun, 1914).

Members

Notes on members:

Voltaire died a few months after his reception in the lodge. His membership however was highly symbolic for the independence of mind "Les Neuf Sœurs" intended to stand for.
Jean Sylvain Bailly (1736-1793) and Marquis de Condorcet (1743-1794) are often listed as members but their effective membership is presently undocumented.
The "Forster" included by Daniel Ligou (1987) without other specification of name could refer to either father or son. It was the son Georg Forster (1754-1794) who spend the longer time in Paris where among other he collaborated with Anquetil Duperron in editing the work of William Jones (philologist) and the Asiatic Society of Bengal in French.
In 1814 the body of Jean-Nicolas Démeunier (1751-1814) was placed in the Panthéon, Paris where it now rests with Voltaire and Cabanis, fellow members of "Les Neuf Sœurs". It was Claude-Emmanuel de Pastoret (1755-1840) -Venerable Master (1788-1789)- who, in his capacity of procureur géneral syndic du departement de la Seine, had been responsible for the conversion of the église Sainte-Geneviève into the famous mausoleum. (see: Daniel Ligou, 1987)
In Mémoires pour servir à l'histoire du Jacobinisme(4 vol.,1797-1798) Abbé Barruel attributed membership to key figures of the French Revolution on doubtful grounds. For a discussion see [1]

References

  • Louis Amiable, "Une loge maçonnique d'avant 1789, la loge des Neuf Sœurs" (Les Editions Maçonnique de France, Paris 1989)
  • Howard C. Rice, Jr., "Thomas Jefferson's Paris" (Princeton : Princeton University Press, 1976)
  • Roger C. Hahn, "The anatomy of a scientific institution: 1666-1803, the Paris Academy of Sciences" (Berkeley : University of California Press, 1971)
  • Roger C. Hahn, "Quelques nouveaux documents sur Jean Silvain Bailly" in Revue d'Histoire des Sciences VIII pp.338-353 (Paris,1955)
  • Daniel Ligou, ed. "Dictionnaire de la franc-maçonnerie" (Paris : Presses universitaires de France, 1987)
  • De La Valette-Mombrun, "Maine de Biran (1766-1824)" (Paris,1914)
  • J.A.C. Sykes "France in 1802" (William Heinemann, London 1906)

note: The author of this article is not a Mason.

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