The 1764 Santo Domingo Manuscript
its close links to the Francken Manuscript . 3 More recently , Louis Trébuchet has assigned it an important place in the history of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite . 4
It is a nineteen-centimeter-wide by twenty-one-centimeter-high volume , bound in worn , dark-red Morocco leather . It contains seventy-four folios in laid-paper booklets , though it is difficult to tell how many booklets it contains ( there may be four , five , or six of them , of different thicknesses ). The watermark is only partially visible , but it seems to show a four beneath a sort of square , scalloped coat of arms featuring a hunting horn and its strap , the two sections of which cross in a gamma shape . At the end of the volume , there are three plates . An introductory note on the Knight of the Sun ritual allows the book to be dated back to 1764 , and its origins to be traced to Santo Domingo .
The degree of Knight of the Eagle and of the Sun or the Managed Chaos , final key of the renewed Masonry . Called the 21st degree after which the only superior is the Sublime Order * preceded by the Grand Master Elect who covers it under the title of Grand Inspector of the Lodges . This degree was given to me by the Lodge constituted for the Foix Regiment while we were camped by the great river on March 29 , 1764 / and to our Lodge to the East of Saint Marc by Brother Peyrottes / written at the camp of the great river in the headland in Santo Domingo in June 1763 [ for 1764 ?].
We owe the identification of Peyrottes to Alain Bernheim , who tells us what we can glean from Moreau de Saint-Méry ’ s Description topographique , physique , civile , politique et historique de la partie française de l ’ isle Saint-Domingu ( Topographical , Physical , Civil , Political , and Historical Description of the French Part of the Island of Santo Domingo ) ( Paris , 1797 – 1798 ). Peyrottes was a surveyor in Saint-Marc in 1750 ( page 131 ) and was appointed general surveyor of the French part of Santo Domingo on March 6 , 1760 ( page 102 ), then replaced in 1768 . The last page of our manuscript ends with the note “ to the East of Port-au-Prince , May 9 , 1768 .” From all of these elements , we can establish that this source came from a French Mason in Santo Domingo , a soldier who belonged to the Foix Regiment (“ the Lodge constituted for the Foix Regiment while we were camped by the great river ”) but who later left it to remain on the island . The “ Foix Infantry ” was in fact sent to Santo Domingo in 1760 , but returned to France in July 1765 . It also appears that it was written between 1764 and 1768 . A note at the top of the volume , written at the start of the nineteenth century , states that :
This manuscript which is missing four degrees , Apprentice , Fellow , Master , and the 1st elect or the elect of the 9 , was very probably copied by an officer of the Foix regiment , from 1760 to 1770 , who had to do garrison duty with his regiment in Santo Domingo . In particular , it offers the degrees of the Rite of Heredom or Perfection ( in 25 degrees ) as seen in the
3
Pierre Mollier , “ Nouvelles Lumières sur la Patente Morin et le Rite de Perfection ,” Renaissance Traditionnelle 110 – 111 ( 1997 ): 125 – 127 ( second publication in 1804 – 2004 Deux siècles de Rite Écossais Ancien Accepté
en France [ Paris : Dervy , 2004 ]).
4
Louis Trébuchet , De l ’ Écosse à l ’ Écossisme , fondements historiques du Rite Écossais Ancien Accepté , t . 2 , Floraison des grades écossais , 1:148 – 151 and transcription of numerous degrees in vol . 2 , 683 – 931 .
4