Princesses of the Blood and Sisters in Masonry
within a few years , she had risen from childless widow in a foreign land to a position of enormous power and prestige in France . Continuing along her seemingly volatile course through life , however , two years later the Princess de Lamballe ’ s status was greatly diminished when the Queen found a new favorite , the Countess Jules Polignac . The political rivalry between the countess and the princess was most bitter , the princess ’ s health became precarious , and , although she continued in her role as Superintendent of the Queen ’ s Household , her lustrous position at court became decidedly tarnished . These were the years during which she became a freemason .
In addition , the princess almost surely had an interest in freemasonry as an arm of the Enlightenment . Her personal library was filled with books of Enlightenment thought . After her violent death during the Revolution , the government made an inventory of her possessions which listed , among other works , the thirty-five-volume Encyclopédie and books by Voltaire , Rousseau , Mme . de Sévigné , Restif de la Bretonne , Helvétius , Hume and Fénélon . In her Last Will and Testament , she had left her copy of the Encyclopédie to the Chevalier de Durfort . 22 The major concepts developed in the rituals of the four primary degrees of the lodges of adoption were , significantly , the Enlightenment concepts of liberty , equality and fraternity , linked through charity , which might well have appealed to the princess . Although from this distance in time we cannot ourselves feel or even gauge the impact of the symbolic words and instruments used by the leaders to induct the women into the various levels of masonry , we do know that these rituals followed a pattern recognized by anthropologists as having consciousness-raising elements for candidates open to reaching higher levels of gnosis . 23 A primary period of seclusion where the candidate focused on the death of her former self was followed by the ritualistic but dramatic imparting of new knowledge and secrets by a leader of the lodge . The third part of each ceremony was the candidate ’ s formal acceptance into the larger group . Each aspiring member of a lodge of adoption began by moving through the four primary degrees , apprentie , compagnonne , maîtresse , and maitresse parfaite mastering the knowledge of each before moving to the next . These basic degrees taught them , first , fraternity , then liberty , then equality .
As with the Duchess de Bourbon , the Princess de Lamballe was also quite certainly attracted to the charitable orientation of the lodges of adoption . She was well known for her devotion to charity . Mme . Guérard , whose reminiscences of the princess were published in 1801 , wrote that the princess “ lived in extraordinary simplicity , consecrating a large part of her revenues to the assistance of the unfortunate , or to repay acts of virtue .” An attorney named Morizot wrote in his work that the princess ’ s “ charity is her element .” The heart of the masonic body was its charitable work . The charitable activities of the masons represented the interaction among the desperate need of the poor in eighteenth-century France , the natural inclination of the women in the lodges toward charity and the strength of the humanitarian teaching in their lodge rituals . At each lodge meeting , a collection was taken up for the poor and in addition
22
“ Testament de madame la princesse de Lamballe ” ( 15 Octobre 1791 ), 300 API 475 , Collection of the House of Orléans , A . N .
23
Sissela Bok , Secrets ( New York : Pantheon , 1982 ); Victor turner , Celebration , Studies in Festivity and Ritual ( Washington , DC : Smithsonian , 1982 ); Arnold van Gennep , Les Rites de Passage ( Paris , Picard , 1981 ).
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