I.
Introduction
The history of Freemasonry as a
Symbolic Fraternity[2] that
practises Rites of Initiation is closely related to the expansion of the ideas
of the Enlightenment. Freemasonry
emphasizes that Reason is a major driving force for Human improvement and for
the enhancement of Human society. The Enlightenment
was a philosophical movement of key importance in Europe during the 18th
Century. It praised the influence of Science and knowledge as vital elements in
overcoming the insidious influence of obscurity, ignorance and prejudgment in
Human society, whilst also promoting Human pursuit of happiness.
That movement has been perceived
as an historic reaction to the Christian Doctrine of natural unity between the
spiritual and temporal dominions, which Saint Augustine and other fathers of
the Church extolled as the core of Christian faith. The Doctrine was a landmark
of the “eternal” alliance between the temporal power (the Emperor) and the
spiritual power (the Pope and the Catholic Church), a dogma of the
subordination of all Christians by divine predestination.
The Enlightenment took shape as an intellectual movement of
philosophers, scientists, writers and free thinker that expanded across Europe
in the 18th Century, using the cultural expressions of art,
literature, poetry and fiction to widen its ideas. The project of the Enlightenment, as Rousseau would call
it, was reflected in different institutions and organizations where ideas like
freedom, equality, solidarity and tolerance were discussed as the mainstream ideas of modernity (Leo
Strauss). Thus the Enlightenment opposed the
predominant view held in Middle Ages, which was that Knowledge and Science had
a restricted role that was reserved for the patrimony of the higher classes and
thereby was an attribute of the powerful. Some free thinking institutions like
Masonic lodges, academies and other erudite societies represented specific
interests and consequently admission to them usually was restricted[3]. Other
functions, like public Conferences, cafés,
itinerant libraries, art Exhibitions and popular and theatrical
representations, were more or less commercial events that were open to any of
the public who could afford the fee for admission. They were important
initiatives that helped unlock European culture and knowledge, releasing them
from the cage of obscurity and secrecy in which the Catholic Church had closed
them. The Enlightenment sought to
free minds and release knowledge, as illustrated
by the French project of writing an Encyclopaedia,
which intended to summarize all the relevant branches of Human knowledge
and science in a suitable form to be read by the public.
This paper is an attempt to
describe the path of Portuguese freemasonry in its more then two hundred years
of existence. It comprised an assemblage of men who had (and still have) a
central role in society, speaking for and acting as the frontrunners of the
more progressive and ethical human values that mankind must develop to secure
our future.
2.
The rise of Portuguese Freemasonry
It is
generally acknowledged that the first organized expression of speculative
freemasonry as a movement was the formation of four Masonic lodges in London,
early in the 17th century, by accepted
masons. This qualification distinguished them from the fraternity of
builders - the operative masons – who
held the secrets of building the awe-inspiring cathedrals of Christianity. In
figurative terms they were examples of the dialogue between Man, the Creator
and the Transcendent. The political and religious struggles and attendant
fratricide, which pervaded British history during the 17th and 18th
centuries, frustrated those with more open and educated minds. The spirit of
faction and dissent crossed the boundaries of all political parties,
encouraging the more enlightened to seek relief in Masonry and its Lodges,
where the speculative practice of its rituals and doctrine provided a symbolic
path for the pursuit of human fulfilment. That pursuit was always associated
with the modern dimension of Man as the Enlightenment visualised him, an
anchor of Reason and Wisdom.
In February 1717 four English
lodges meeting at the Goose and Gridiron Alehouse, the Crown Alehouse, the Apple Tree
Tavern and the Rummer and Grapes Tavern, took the
decision to unite as a Grand Lodge. On 24th July 1717 – the summer
solstice and the feast of St. John – they met and elected Anthony Sayer, the
oldest of the Masters, as their first Grand Master[4].
By this act of unification they reaffirmed the ancient duties and privileges of
the operative masons, which they consecrated to the common men who, from
then, would be allowed to join their Brotherhood. Thus the admission of Free Born Men of Good Report as speculative
Freemasons was established, receiving them into the Brotherhood as their peers.
They practised the old rituals and traditions of the temple builders and also
adopted their modes of recognition by signs, tokens and secret words, seeking
the hidden truth through the interpretation of the symbolic and the study of antient
rituals. In 1723 the Grand Lodge of England published its Constitutions written by Dr James Anderson, a Protestant priest.
The Constitutions are its legal charter and have become the mater Constitution of Universal
Freemasonry. When writing the Constitutions James Anderson was inspired
by those of the Old Charges available
to him, especially the Cooke MS. He condensed the early traditions of
the Craft of operative masons into a system of rules and defined the
duties that freemasons owed to themselves, to the Brotherhood and to the
world.
From London, Freemasonry spread
across the world to France, Netherlands, Russia, Sweden, Denmark, Spain, Italy,
Switzerland and Turkey. It probably arrived in Portugal between 1735 and 1743,
but the exact date is not known[5].
Oliveira Marques, a Portuguese
historian of high repute, mentions that British merchants living in Lisbon
founded a Masonic lodge, probably in 1727. It was registered during the Inquisition
under the name of Lodge of the Heretical
Merchants, suggesting that its members probably were Protestants[6].
This Lodge sought regularization in 1735, when it formally petitioned admission
to the Grand Lodge of England. It was accepted and registered as number 135,
which later was changed to 120. In 1733, a second lodge was founded by George
Gordon, an individual sent by the Grand Lodge of England to act as a
facilitator for the emergence of new lodges, which could also act as offices
for Masonic information and as centres of British influence. This lodge was
named Casa Real dos Pedreiros Livres da
Lusitânia (Royal House of Freemasons of Lusitania). Its membership
consisted mainly of Irish merchants and foreign mercenaries with the Portuguese
Army, but also included sailors, physicians, a Dominican priest and an
innkeeper[7].
In 1738, when Pope Clement XII
issued a Papal Bull, In Eminenti Apostolatur
Speculatae, the lodge
was dissolved and some of the masons transferred to the first lodge. This Papal
Bull forbade the Catholics from participating in any Masonic activity, under
the penalty of excommunication. It also instructed the clerics and members of
the Catholic Inquisition to persecute masons and
punish the infringers, if necessary with help of secular and local authorities.
A diamond lapidary, John Coustos,
created a third lodge in 1741. He was a Swiss born citizen who later was
naturalized as British. Two years after
the lodge raised its columns, the number of its affiliates increased to thirty,
mostly foreigners living in Portugal. It would be realistic to presume that the
lodge initiated several Portuguese nobles in the Art of the Craft, perhaps sympathizers of the ideas of the Aufklärung. John Coustos played a
central role in establishing Portuguese freemasonry. Grainha and Oliveira
Marques allege that Coustos was under the close surveillance of the Inquisition
because Maria Theresa, the Austrian Empress, exerted pressure to persecute and
banish all Masonic activities in European Catholic states, because she
considered them to be the backyards of protestant and British espionage.
Whatever the reason, Coustos was detained on 14th March 1743,
together with several other brethren, Mouton, Bruelé, Richard and Boulanger,
all of whom were committed to trial by the Holy
Officium.
Coustos was not an ordinary mason.
He was born in 1703 to a protestant family in Bern, Switzerland, later
emigrating to France and then to England where he married a British woman. He
was initiated in 1730 in
a London lodge. During his stay in Paris he became Worshipful Master of one of its lodges, in which capacity he
presided at the initiation of a famous gentleman, the Duke of Villeroy. Being determined to emigrate to Brazil, he
first moved to Lisbon, later deciding to remain there. According to some
allegations his lucrative activities as a lapidary made Madame Leruitte, the
wife of another lapidary in the same district, jealous of his success and so
she denounce him to the Inquisition as a freemason and conspirator.
In that era such an accusation was
a passport for immediate detention and prosecution. Under cruel interrogation
over a protracted period of time, questioned incessantly about the rites and
procedures of his lodge, Coustos was subjected to ruthless torture. There are
contradictory allegations. Some suggest that Coustos revealed the rituals and
Masonic secrets to save his life, but others suggest that he would squabble and
that he never broke his Masonic vows, as Hiram Abif never did[8].
He was tried on 21st July 1744, in the Church of Saint Domingos Convent,
accused of being a protestant and a heretic, also of offending the Portuguese
Catholics by founding a Masonic lodge. He was found guilty, but invited to
disavow his actions under the promise of being relieved from the death penalty.
He was condemned to five years of forced labour in the galleys and signed a
declaration obliging him not to reveal what really happened during
imprisonment.
The British Ambassador in Lisbon
during the reign of King George II, Lord Charles
Compton, acted firmly seeking Coustos’s liberation. He transmitted to the King
of Portugal, D. João V, George II’s personal request for Coustos to be
liberated. Coustos was liberated in October 1744, and sent back to England on
board of the ship The Diamond. In
London, he broke his imposed promise of silence and in 1748 published a book, The Unparalleled Sufferings of John Coustos,
in which he denounced, with
the aid of several illustrations, the abuses inflicted to him during his
imprisonment. Coustos’s book had a major impact in England, helping to increase
the British scorn and condemnation of the methods used by the Portuguese
Inquisition and raising public sympathy for freemasonry[9].
As a result of Coustos’s arrest
and the torture and condemnation of him and his companions, the Heretic Merchants Lodge was
disbanded in 1755[10].
In 1751 a new Pope, Benedict XIV,
promulgated another Papal Bull against the freemasons, Providas Romanorum, which reaffirmed
the injunctions of Pope Clement XII’s Papal Bull issued in 1738. It has been
asserted that this Papal Bull was issued at the request of the kings of Spain
and Naples. In any event the Papal Bull was supported by royal decrees of both
monarchs, suppressing freemasonry in both countries and urging the Holly Officium to boost vigilance and
persecution.
Portuguese freemasonry was free
from persecution during the decade 1760-1770, under the government of the
Marquis of Pombal. Borges Grainha recalls that during the Pombal government
freemasons were no longer persecuted and that no reference to them can be found
in the relevant Inquisition lists and police reports.
Freemasonry acquired strength and vigour and expanded its
membership within the Army, the aristocracy and the erudite classes. It seems
likely that Sebastião Jose de Carvalho e Melo, the Marquis, during the period
he served as Portuguese ambassador in London and before he become a minister of
the King, D. José I, frequented aristocratic circles very close to the Grand
Lodge of England. However no documental proof is available to show whether he
became a member there[11].
However there can be no doubt
that, by his recruitment of high-ranking officials, nobles and important people
from protestant countries to assist the army, industry and other economic sectors,
he contributed indirectly to the increase of lodges and brethren in Portugal.
The conditions for a masonic revival in Portugal gained impetus with the
arrival in Lisbon of the Count Schaumburg de Lippe, a German noble and
Mason, to command and reorganize the Portuguese army. Pombal had recruited the
Count on the basis of his experience in England. By 1763 the Count had helped
to create two military lodges in Elvas and Valença. In 1768 Barthélemy Andrieu
do Boulay created a new lodge in Funchal, Madeira, by gathering together
French, British and Portuguese local nobles[12].
The impressive growth of
freemasonry under Marquis of Pombal , coincided with the expulsion of the Order of Jesus
from Portugal, a religious order that then had the
monopoly of education and also had immense wealth.
The confiscation of the Order’s
real estate, by order of Pombal would be used later by the clerical authorities
of Portugal, in an endeavour to prove Masonic involvement in the persecution of
the Jesuits led by the Marquis. In this regard there is nothing to implicate
the Portuguese Brotherhood in any involvement in the installation of the
absolute monarchy in Portugal. Masons reputedly were members of different
political parties. This embryonic organization of Portuguese freemasonry did
not contest the legitimacy of the political power: In fact it applauded
submission to the appointed king, which since 1717 has always been the official
position of the Grand Lodge of England concerning the relationship that should
exist between freemasonry and the authorities. This issue has become a
legendary landmark of the Order.
The common claim that Pombal was a
bloodthirsty persecutor of Portuguese Catholics, as Church authorities and
historians claim, cannot be accepted as accurate. One of the leading experts on
Pombal’s life, Maria da Graça Silva Dias, considers that Pombal, together with
D. Luis da Cunha, Ribeiro Sanches and António Verney are the main exponents of
what could be regarded as the Portuguese Catholic
Enlightenment[13]. However,
Pombal was prejudiced against the Church as a competitive power, which he
considered obstructed both the state’s and the monarchy’s interests.
When D. José I died on 24th
February 1777 his daughter, D. Maria I, succeed him as Queen. With her
accession to power the religious prejudice and persecution of freemasonry
returned and freemasonry again became the declared enemy of the Church. The
Marquis of Pombal was removed from office and intellectuals like Filinto
Elisio, Ribeiro Sanches or Avelar Brotero were forced into exile. Other masons
like Jose Anastacio da Cunha, João Manuel d’ Abreu and Manuel do Espírito Santo
Limpo were imprisoned. The Police Chief, Pina Manique, was a privileged
instrument in the oppression being inflicted on the Brotherhood. Pina Manique
was profoundly opposed to the Enlightenment and rejected the ideas of
the French Revolution that began to spread around Europe. He considered those
ideas to be a threat to the Portuguese Crown and to Catholic monarchies in
general. Pina Manique believed that if he could prevent those ideas from
spreading, if freemasons could be brought to instant justice and if the free
circulation of books and newspapers was censored, the enlightenment could be defeated[14].
During the 25 years that he headed the police, a systematic persecution was
conducted against Masonic lodges in Lisbon, Coimbra, Valença, Funchal and
Oporto. Distinguished people like José Anastácio da Cunha and Manuel Espirito
Santo Limpo were incarcerated at once and without trial. The years 1791-2 were
the toughest period of repression, leading to the detention of the secretary of
Navy, Martinho de Melo e Castro, the second Marquis of Pombal and the Judge on
India and Mina, José de Noronha.
These dreadful years helped to
break up many of the lodges. Masons were forced to disguise their activities
and conceal them from the close surveillance of the police. It is reported for
instance that in 1797 a masonic meeting held on board the frigate Fenix, afloat on the Tagus River, was
attended by Portuguese, British and French masons. This Fenix lodge would give birth later to several other lodges,
including for example The Fortress,
of which José Liberato Freire de Carvalho was a member, who became one of the
first Portuguese Grand Masters.
The disembarking of an
expeditionary contingent of the British Army in July 1797, in support of the
Portuguese resistance against an attempted French occupation, played a decisive
role in a fresh rebirth of Freemasonry in Portugal. This rebirth was initiated
by the creation of four British lodges in Lisbon (three of them linked to
British regiments and the fourth comprising British and Portuguese officials).
These lodges, recalls Oliveira Marques, were registered under the Grand Lodge
of England with the numbers 94, 112, 179 and 315. This last one was to have a
symbolic meaning, because when Portuguese freemasonry became independent it
became Lodge number 1 with the name Union.
It is also
believed that several irregular lodges functioned in various other locations in
Portugal, with German, British and other foreigners as members.
After the return of the Portuguese
nobles and intellectuals who had been exiled in France, Portuguese Freemasonry
concentrated its efforts around the French rite of the Grand Orient of France. Near the end of the 19th
Century, the GOF repudiated the Masonic requirement that lodges should work to
the glory of the Great Architect of the Universe (GAOTU), which is a
fundamental element in Anglo-American freemasonry. The GOF also removed the
Bible as one of the three obligatory great lights in every lodge. This led, as
I will mention later, to the expulsion of the Portuguese Obedience from Regular
freemasonry, when the United Grand Lodge of England cancelled its recognition,
a situation that continues in the 20th Century.
Until 1804 other lodges were
created by gatherings of Army officials, merchants, industrialists, clerics and
leading intellectuals like Ribeiro Sanches, Avelar Brotero, Abbey Correia da
Serra[15],
Filinto Elísio and Domingos Vandelli.
3.
On the road to an autonomous Obedience
The transition of freemasonry from
the 18th to the 19th Century made it imperative to
convert the Craft from a collection of widely dispersed individual lodges into
a more integrated organization. In 1801 a Masonic meeting was held at a place
called Calvario, in Lisbon, in the palace of General Gomes Freire de Andrade, a
freemason born and initiated abroad. As the General was overseas at the time,
Father José Joaquim Monteiro de Carvalho, a Scottish Knight, 11th
Degree of the hierarchy of freemasonry, chaired the meeting of 200 masons
representing the different lodges.
During the discussions a complete
consensus was achieved for the urgent creation of a Grand Lodge or a Grand
Orient that could be recognized by international freemasonry. A Commission of masons
was formed, comprising Hipólito Furtado de Mendonça, José Monteiro de Carvalho
e Oliveira and José Ferrão de Mendonça e Soares. They met with Rodrigo Sousa
Coutinho, the secretary of the Treasury, from whom they obtained a promise that
Portuguese freemasonry would not be persecuted if constituted as a national
body.
With this intention Hipólito José
da Costa[16]
travelled to London, where he successfully negotiated and obtained the
recognition of Portuguese freemasonry as a Grand Lodge in its own right, called
Grande Oriente Lusitano. Historians
praise the influence of the Duke of Sussex in this process, through his
connections with the Grand Lodge of England[17].
British texts refer to this episode and also record the existence of four
lodges in Portugal that assembled in May 1802 as a Grand Lodge (of Lisbon or
Portugal)[18].
The Grand Lodge of England
(Ancient) approved the Portuguese petition and both parties signed a treaty of
recognition. In essence the treaty stated that the Portuguese lodges would
conform to the old constitutions and traditions of the Order as recognised by
the Grand Lodge of England. It also provided that a legal representative of the
Mother-Lodge would be nominated to Lisbon and that a representative of the
Portuguese Grand Lodge would be nominated to the Grand Lodge of England.
Finally it provided that the brethren of both Grand Lodges would retain
identical Masonic privileges. The treaty was signed on 9th May 1802.
Similar initiatives were then
taken tentatively with the Grand Orient
of France. According to Oliveira Marques[19],
after Hipólito José da Costa returned to Portugal he visited the Grand Orient
of France with the same intentions. On 25th April 1804 a treaty of
friendship was signed between the two Grand Orients, but the French
ratification was delayed sine die, the reasons for which are still
unclear. The treaty with France therefore had no real effect.
When the emissary of Portuguese
freemasonry returned to Portugal, he was surprisingly detained and the
documents he carried were confiscated. In the summer of 1804 a Diet or formal Masonic assembly took
place in Lisbon, when the Grand Lodge of Portugal was installed with the title
of the Grand Oriente Lusitano, under the regular patent of 1802
from the Grand Lodge of England)[20] .
The judge of the Court of Appeal,
Sebastião José de São Paio de Melo e Castro Lusignam, was elected as the first
Grand Master. He was a grandson of the Marquis of Pombal, with the symbolic
name of Egas Moniz. The members of
the Grand Orient included Father Liberato Freire de Carvalho as the Grand Spokesman, General Gomes Freire de
Andrade and also the attaché of
Marquis of Niza, Rodrigo Pinto Guedes.
Two years later, in July 1806, the
first Portuguese Masonic Constitution was finalized, comprising 199 articles
grouped in fourteen chapters[21].
The 1806 Constitution created a legislative system formed by two chambers, a Chamber of Worshipful Masters and a Chamber of Representatives. The Chamber of Representatives assumed the
other two powers, the executive and the judiciary. The delegates of eight
Lodges voted favourably on the Constitution: União No 1, Regeneração No 2, Virtude No 3, Amizade No 5, Concórdia No 6, Fidelidade, Amor da República and Benificência.
The Masonic Constitution of 1806
introduced a bi-cameral system of legislation that was also adopted by
succeeding Portuguese Constitutions, including the Constitutional Charter of
1826 and the Constitutions of 1838, 1911 and 1933. However the Democratic Constitution
of 1976, which completed the re-establishment of the Portuguese democracy that
followed the Carnation Revolution of
1974, reinstituted the traditional single chamber of legislative power that had
been pursued briefly by the Constitution of 1822.
The Portuguese Masonic
Constitution of 1806 adopted the French
Rite as the official and exclusive rite of the Grande Oriente Lusitano. The Scottish rite in its complete
formulation of 33 Degrees was introduced three years later, in 1809, at the
suggestion of Silva Carvalho, Worshipful
Master of Lodge Fortaleza. The
Grand Lodge of Dublin is credited with introducing the Ancient and Accepted
Scottish Rite into Portugal in 1873, in a simplified system of three degrees,
in which form it was practiced by Lodge Regeneração
No 1.
The main Portuguese Obedience, the
Grande Oriente Lusitano,
was renamed the Grande Oriente de
Portugal during the tenure of Costa Cabral and from 1869 to 1914 it changed
its name to the Grand Oriente Lusitano
Unido, integrating and unifying other Portuguese Grand Lodges[22].
Summarizing what has been said,
the first seventy years of Portuguese freemasonry was characterized by the
subordination of the Portuguese masonry to the Grand Lodge of England, in the
form of an independent district.
This can be explained by the
limited number of Master masons exalted and also for reasons of legitimacy
in the transmission of Masonic regularity[23].
During a substantial part of this period Masonic activities were severely
persecuted and freemasons could only fulfil their Masonic duties under the
strictest clandestine conditions. Freemasonry in Portugal, as in other places
in Europe, was under suspicion from absolute monarchies and from the Catholic
Church, because these authorities both considered Freemasonry to be a focus of
conspiracy against them. In Portugal, Freemasonry played an important role as a
focus of liberal ideas and later of revolutionary uprising.
The three French invasions
significantly encouraged the widening of liberal ideas among the aristocracy,
the clergy and the bourgeoisie. The support that freemasonry received from the
Marquis of Pombal, which cannot be denied, was later to be used against
freemasonry as an argument that supposedly proved the complicity of the
Brotherhood in the anti-Catholic activities attributed to the Marquis and in
the expulsion of Jesuits of the Order of
the Jesus. Portuguese freemasonry, as were all the Southern European
fraternities, came to be positively connected with the separation of the Church
from the State in matters concerned with education, bureaucracy and state
affairs in general. This division, which is a legacy of the Roman Empire – to Caesar what belongs to Caesar, to God
what is to God - signals the end of the Middle Ages and the beginning of
Modernity in current human history, proclaiming the role of Reason and
Knowledge, but not belief, as the main tools for Human improvement founded in
scientific experiment.
4.
The influence of Jacobinism in
Portuguese Freemasonry
In the historical struggle of the
Catholic Church and Catholic Monarchs with the partisans of the French
Revolution, there was a symbolic episode with the uprising in 1791 of the
farmers of Vendée, in the west of France, against the Jacobins, the confessed enemies of the Catholic Church and
Robespierre followers. Until 1794 and the revival of the Grand Terror, the
Catholic Church and freemasonry were banned by the leaders of the French
Revolution as threats to the state. During the Terror, the Grand Master of the Grand Orient of France, Philippe Egalité the Duke of Orléans,
was guillotined by order of
Robespierre[24].
Freemasonry went into darkness, waiting for better days. Its activities only
gained renewed strength under Directory rule of 1795-9. When Napoleon Bonaparte
took the power on 11th November 1799, by the famous 18th Brumaire, he immediately installed himself as the 1s t
Consul of the Directory with absolute power. When Napoleon considered the
tremendous influence of the Church over the French people, he soon realised
that normal relations with the Pope and the Catholic Church had to be
re-established swiftly. The Church had been offended by the savagery of the
Terror. The underlying rationale was that the Catholic Church had an
institutional role in French society, which established a form of natural
hierarchy and hence the subordination of the several classes, a situation that
needed to be restored. However, at the same time the Church and its dignitaries
should be prevented from exerting too much power.
So, in an endeavour to counterbalance
the resurging power of the Catholic Church, Napoleon tolerated and favoured the
re-emergence of Freemasonry, encouraging some of the closest members of his
family to join the Brotherhood[25].
Napoleon designated Jean Jacques Régis de Cambacères, a lawyer and a fervent
mason, as his 2nd Consul. Cambacères counselled him to use the
Fraternity to his own benefit instead of suppressing it, as also was the key
recommendation of the secret police.
Napoleon’s father, Charles
Bonaparte, as well as four of his brothers, Jose who became the King of Naples,
Luis the King of the Netherlands, Lucien the Prince of Canino and Jerome the
King of Westphalia, were all well-known masons. Joaquim Murat, Napoleon’s
brother-in-law, and Eugène de Beauharnais also were masons[26].
Cambacères used his influence in
the Freemasonry to unite the autonomous Scottish Lodges with those under the
jurisdiction of the Grand Orient of
France, federating them
through him and thus affiliating them to the service of the Emperor and the
Empire.
It is problematic whether Napoleon
himself was a mason. There is a tale that says he was initiated in Malta in
1798, when the Mediterranean island was under French occupation. Another source
suggests that he was been initiated in a military lodge in Egypt. What is
accepted is that after 1805 all French lodges worked with a strict veneration
of Napoleon, which was expressed by a bust of the Emperor presiding over all of
the ceremonies, occupying a similar position to the traditional three great
lights of Freemasonry.
Portugal stood in Napoleon’s way,
because of Portugal’s traditional alliance with England. Napoleon planned to
reduce Britain’s control of the seas by closing major European ports to British
ships. As England’s old ally Portugal refuse to close its ports, but under
pressure entered in negotiations with Napoleon’s Directory. Napoleon sent some
divisions of his army to Portugal to enforce control of the ports. On 30th
November 1807 General Junot arrived to Lisbon as the commander of French troops,
the day after the Portuguese Court left for Brazil. Authority over Portugal was
empowered in a Commission of Regency formed by seven members.
The Portuguese authorities
received General Junot respectfully. A Masonic delegation, comprising Luis de
Sampaio Melo e Castro, brother of the Grand Master, Diogo José Victor de Abreu,
Azambuja Governor and Francisco Velloso a judge in the Court of Appeal, visited
General Junot’s headquarters and welcomed him. It seems that General Junot
received them cordially, planning to use the Portuguese masons in his own
interests[27].
Some time later Junot managed to
convince the masons of a lodge to hang a portrait of Napoleon in it, instead of
a portrait of the Prince Regent exiled in Brazil. Most of the masons considered
this suggestion outrageous increased their antagonism to French arrogance. Things became even worse when Junot
suggested, through a Portuguese mason, that he should be nominated as Grand
Master of Portuguese Freemasonry in consideration of his “high status” . This proposal fell like a bomb amongst the
Brotherhood and was unanimously defeated by the Council of the Grand Orient[28].
This incident acted like a fuse to appeals among Portuguese liberals and
nationalists for a revolt against the French occupiers, as a result of which
Junot gave orders to the Chief of Police to persecute the freemasons and
dissolve their lodges.
However, although Junot was pushed
to the Portuguese border by an allied Luso-British army, a new invasion took
place in 1809 under the command of General Soult, another Bonaparte
General. Between 1809 and 1810 a new
wave of persecutions and arrests assailed freemasonry. In September 1810 thirty
masons were detained by the Regent’s order, first being taken to Belém Tower
and afterwards, without trial, deported to the Azores. The false accusation
leading to their imprisonment was that they were partisans of the French
occupation and that their revolutionary ideals had made the entry of the
Massena army into Portugal much easier.
The Duke of Sussex, a son of
George III, who had been living in Lisbon since 1801, helped to organize the
resistance against the French occupation force and interceded for the release
of detained masons, involving the Grand Lodge of England in his efforts.
England expressed its disfavour
for the arbitrariness of the masons’ detentions, which were based on unproven
allegations, exerting all possible pressure on the Portuguese government. At
the end of December the English freemasons organized a Masonic parade in support
of the Portuguese brethren.
5.
From British protectorate to the triumph of liberal ideals: Freemasons as revolutionaries
When the French occupants had been
expelled from Portugal, Marshal Beresford, the commander-in-chief of the
Luso-British army remained as the head of Portugal’s transitional government.
From the beginning he tolerated Masonic activities and allowed lodges to
multiply, which favoured the intake of new brethren. Thirteen lodges were
located in Lisbon in 1812, the most active being Regeneração and Virtude.
In this last one, According to Borges Grainha, José Andrade Corvo de Camões,
captain of infantry, was initiated in Virtude and was responsible for
the recruitment of new brethren. A new lodge was created in Santarém, named Filantropia, formed by Army
officials from infantry and cavalry, as was another in Torres Novas. Two other
lodges were established in Coimbra and Oporto.
In Brazil, a great Masonic
activity was unrolled during the exile of Portuguese monarchs. In 1813 a
Brazilian Grand Orient was installed restricted to four lodges: three in Bahia
(Virtude and Razão, União and Razão Restaurada) and one in Rio (Beneficência). José Bonifácio de Andrade
e Silva, the great patriarch of the Brazilian independence, was elected as
Grand Master. The creation of the Grand Lodge of Brazil represented the
independence of the Brazilian freemasonry from the superintendence of the Grande Oriente Lusitano, reivindicated,
for a long time, by the Brazilian freemasons. According with Oliveira Marques[29],
although this ‘'self-determination’' the GOL is not to give up of keeping,
under its jurisdiction, lodges in Brazil. Thus, two lodges were maintained in
Rio de Janeiro (Lodges Emancipação
and Comércio e Artes) for this
purpose. Prince D. Pedro, son of King D. João VI, was submitted to initiation
in Lodge Comércio e Artes, in August 2, 1822, adopting the
symbolic name of Guatimozin, the name
of the last Aztec emperor of Mexico, tortured and killed by the Spanish
conquerors. With this gesture, D. Pedro assumed, symbolically, the quality and
the sufferings of the Brazilians, oppressed by the Portuguese. Three days
later, he was exalted to Master Mason[30].
Brazilian freemasonry has acquired its independence and was in its way to help
his people to gain independence.
On his return to Portugal, General
Gomes Freire de Andrade, a sympathizer of French liberal ideals, found that the
political environment was affected by a great hostility towards the British
‘'party’' in power, personified by Marshal Beresford. The General was born in
Vienna in 1757 and was member of the same lodge that initiated Amadeus Mozart,
which according to José Manuel Anes belonged to the German rite of the Strict Observation[31].
He first joined the ‘'British party’' against the French in 1801-05, but from
1808 he changed sides, becoming partisan to French ideas and participating
actively in Napoleon’s Russian campaign. In 1815, after returning from Russia,
he was elected as the Grand Master of Portuguese Freemasonry (1815-16) and
became the driving force of the liberal and nationalistic conspiracy against
the autocratic rule of Beresford. The insurrection against Beresford was in an
advanced state of preparation when, on 25th May 1817, three masons (José
Andrade Corvo de Camões, Morais Sarmento and João de Sequeira Ferreira Soares)
denounced Freire de Andrade, who was captured with 11 other conspirators[32].
Gomes Freire de Andrade was detained and found guilty of conspiracy. By order
of Marshal Beresford he was hanged on the scaffold in the Tower of St. Julião
da Barra. The other 11 conspirators suffered a similar fate in Campo de Santana, Santana Field, a
location in the centre of Lisbon that has become a memorial to the liberal
uprisings.
Borges Grainha mentions that the
day before the execution, Robert Haddock, an English colonel and a mason,
visited the Grand Master and offered him an opportunity to escape, but he
refused it. In 1853, a monument was erected on the precise spot where the Grand
Master was hanged. Since then Gomes Freire de Andrade has been revered as one
of the liberal heroes of Portugal’s modern history and a foremost figure in the
fight for Portugal’s Constitutional Monarchy. He also is remembered as the most
eminent martyr in Portuguese freemasonry and his name is accredited to one of
the most distinguished orders of Regular Portuguese freemasonry (GLRP-L).
The repression of 1817 was
followed in 1818 by a warrant from King D. João VI in Brazil, where he
continued in exile. The warrant stated that it would be considered a heinous
crime to be a member of a secret society, which consequently was forbidden and
would be subject to the application of the severest penalties, including the
confiscation of personal goods and the death penalty[33].
As a consequence Portuguese
freemasonry entered a new period of operations that was absolutely clandestine,
when most of the lodges suspended their activities. The Grand Lodge created a
unique lodge, Segurança Regeneradora, with
the role of uniting all clandestine lodges.
As mentioned earlier, freemasonry
was directly involved in the liberal struggles of that epoch, with the active
support of its most distinguished officials and dignitaries. All open-minded
Portuguese citizens and freemasons enthusiastically supported the thought of
freedom that was cherished by the liberals, which contributed substantially to
the spread of the ideas of liberalism, a constitutional monarchy and the
limitation of absolute power.
In 1817 in the northern city of
Oporto, a group of conspirators including Manuel Fernandes Tomás, a Judge of
the Court of Appeal in Oporto, José da Silva Carvalho, a lawyer, João Ferreira
Viana, Duarte Lessa, José Maria Lopes Carneiro, José Gonçalves dos Santos, and
João da Cunha Souto Maior, founded a liberal group named Sinédrio. Even though it was not a Masonic organization some of
their members were masons, including Cunha Sotto Maior and Silva Carvalho who
later became Grand Masters of Portuguese freemasonry, in 1821 and 1823[34].
In Oporto on 24th
August 1820, the liberal revolution exploded triumphantly. A direct outcome was
the creation of a Provisional Committee
of the Supreme Government of the Realm. Its mission was to govern Portugal
during the absence of the legitimate King, who continued in exile in Brazil.
The Committee had the task of assembling the Cortes, the
Constitutional Assembly comprising all branches of the legislature, to discuss
and approve a new liberal Constitution that would eliminate dictatorship. The
revolution spread across the country until the rebels successfully entered
Lisbon on 15th September 1820, easing the transfer of power from a
dictatorship to liberalism[35].
The King, D. João VI, felt obliged
to return from Brazil and arrived in Lisbon on 24th June 1821. He
swore in the Assembly and signed the new Constitution promulgated on 23rd
September 1822. After the rebellion, Agostinho José Freire, the Abbey Correia
da Serra, Francisco António da Silva, the cleric João Maria Soares Castelo
Branco and others integrated the Grand Orient. The Masonic Diet that elected
Cunha Souto Maior as Grand Master used the opportunity to modify and review the
Masonic Constitution of 1806, bringing it into accord with more liberal ideals.
In spite of its success, the
Constitutional regime installed in 1820 did not remain for long. The supporters
of absolutism continued to oppose the limitation of the king’s powers
introduced by the liberals. The effervescent struggle between the main
political factions and the chaos that spilled over political divides within the
liberal camp together brought about the fall of the fragile liberal monarchy.
However, thanks to the helpful efforts of some of the important supporters of
absolutism, including Infant D. Miguel and Queen Carlota Joaquina, the effects
of the fall were diminished. On 5th June 1823, after several of Miguel’s
military uprisings had successfully defeated the liberal camp, the absolute
monarchy was reinstated and its “indispensable rights” were restored.
After the counter-revolution of
1823, King D. João VI published an edict on 20th June, condemning
the activities of freemasonry and imposing a penalty of 5 years exile in Africa
and a fine of one hundred thousand reis
for the cofres das obras pias,
or religious beneficence.
On 30th April the Infant D. Miguel besieged the King in Paço de Bemposta, saying that his action was justified because the
freemasons wanted to assassinate the King. This was a pretext to secure power
and achieve the plans of the absolutist party. Having assumed power the usurper
proclaimed himself as the legitimate heir to the crown, promising to free any
member of a secret society who renounced his membership before 20th
June 1823, threatening to impose severe penalties on any who refused to comply.
At the peak of the repression of
freemasonry that followed the coup d’ État, the Grand Master ordered all lodges
to close their doors. During that period Masonic activities were only continued
in Terceira Island in the Azores, which retained allegiance to the liberal
Constitution and to the King. Freemasons were forced into exile in England and
France. Only those who could not escape from the claws of the police and
Miguel’s courts remained in Portugal. Meanwhile the
Catholic clerics were content to carry on the despicable role of provoking
hatred against freemasonry.
D. Pedro IV, who was a son of D.
João VI and the legitimate heir of Portuguese throne and also the Brazil Perpetual Defensor, was elected
Grand Master of Brazilian freemasonry on 4th October 1822. His
nomination was an act of political pragmatism, providing a way for liberals and
Brazilians to legitimise the Brazilian struggle for independence. In the Azores
liberal troops and supporters of liberalism assembled and organised a liberal
army with the goal of freeing Portugal from absolutism and deposing D. Miguel who
had usurped the throne. The liberal army sailed from Terceira Island to
Portugal and disembarked in Mindelo, near Oporto. Although quickly surrounded
by Miguel’s supporters, part of the liberal army successfully escaped the siege
and again embarked, sailing to Algarve on the southern coast of Portugal. After
disembarking liberal army marched to the capital, Lisbon, seizing it from
Miguel’s supporters on 24th August 1833. The Duke of Saldanha, who
also was a mason, led the liberal army. Some days later the legitimate heir, D.
Pedro IV, returned from Brazil and entered Lisbon, where he was cheered as the
lawful successor of the Portuguese realm.
One of the first actions of this
liberal and masonic King was to expel the Jesuits and punish the priests and
clerics who had supported of the usurper Miguel and were his accomplices in the
King’s detention. At the Convention of Evora Monte in 1844, the King decreed
all religious orders existing in Portugal to be suspended and approved the
reestablishment of the liberal Constitutional Charter that D. Miguel had
suspended. Portuguese freemasonry thus found a quiet new environment in which
its elected King was a distinguished liberal and one of its foremost figures.
The triumph of liberalism and the
establishment of a constitutional monarchy in Portugal coincided with the
resumption of liberty, but it also was a period of organizational dissent in
the government of Portuguese freemasonry. The Portuguese emigrants, when in
exile, had elected two Grand Masters as their leaders, José da Silva Carvalho
and the Duke of Saldanha, the hero of liberation, the latter having been
acclaimed by those exiled in France. On their return to Portugal the two groups
of freemasons retained their individual Grand Orients with their respective
Grand Masters. However, a third Grand Orient was also to be created in Oporto,
headed by Passos Manuel.
The profusion of Orients and the
confusion between their differing secular and symbolic aspects led to
freemasonry’s involvement in the political struggles and civil revolutions that
followed the restoration of constitutionalism. Borges Grainha argues and I
quote: “in the subsequent ministries that D. Maria I called to form government,
one of the Grand Masters usually held office and the others become leaders of
the opposition. The result of this situation is that there were Orient and
lodges within ministries and Orients and lodges in the opposition”[36].
It is difficult to gain an
accurate picture of the activities supported by the different Orients under
which Portuguese freemasonry was segregated until 1869, because much of the
credible historical sources are missing. A contributing factor is that
divisions within each Orient changed frequently, whilst some lodges even passed
from one Orient to another over the course of time[37].
The most relevant Obedience was
the Grande Oriente Lusitano working
in the French rite. It is well documented in the Manifesto of José J.A. Moura Coutinho, Grand Master of the Grand
Orient of Portugal, a judge in the Court of Appeal and in the Supreme Court of
Lisbon. Borges Grainha mentions that, in a Masonic Diet in 1840, Moura Coutinho
approved a new Constitution as a substitute for the previous one. However Costa
Cabral, while Grand Master during his term in the Ministry of Justice and with
the support of the military lodges he controlled, managed to restore the
Charter agreed to by D. Pedro IV and proclaimed in Oporto on 27th
January. Viscount of Oliveira succeeded Costa Cabral as Grand Master of the Grand Orient of Portugal on 28th
July 1840.
According to Oliveira Marques[38],
after the Grande Oriente Lusitano was created in 1804, several disagreements occurred, after which several Grand
Lodges were created. Worthy of mention are the Grande Loja da Maçonaria Portuguesa do Norte (1832-50), Grande Loja de Portugal (1882-85 and
1893-94), Grande Loja Portuguesa (1849-51),
Grande Loja Provincial do Oriente
Irlandês (1854-72), Grande Oriente
Lisbonense (1821-23), Grande Oriente
Português (1867-9), Grande Oriente do
Rito Escocês (1840-69) and Maçonaria
Eclética (1853-60).
After Viscount of Oliveira’s death
the Grand Orient of Portugal had José
Alves de Moura Coutinho as Grand Master and later the Count of Peniche. The Grand Portuguese Lodge merged in 1867
with the Grande Oriente Lusitano in the form of a Masonic Confederation or Masonic entity
that arose from the fusion of the Orients of Saldanha and Passos Manuel and
also with the Masonic Federation of
José Elias Garcia[39]. From 1869
onwards the Obedience resulting from this confederation was designated Grande Oriente Lusitano Unido, that is the United Grand Orient
Lusitano.
The profusion of Orients arose as
a result of the piecemeal multiplication and expansion of Masonic activities
all over the country. In 1843 there were 80 masonic lodges in full activity in
Portugal. The Grand Orient Lusitano
had 34 lodges, the Passos Manuel’ Orient 17 lodges, the Silva Carvalho’s Orient
15 lodges, the Saldanha’s Orient 11 lodges. There also was a Provincial Lodge
under the Grand Lodge of Ireland and 3 or 4 lodges working under the Ancient
and Accepted Scottish Rite[40].
The uniting of the Orients was
achieved on 30th October 1869, when the Count of Parati was elected
as Grand Master, according to a suggestion of the writer and then Minister of
Navy, Mendes Leal. Three years later, the Grand
Provincial Lodge of the Scottish Orient became fully integrated in the Grand Oriente Lusitano Unido. For half a century Masonic unity was
possible. These decades were a magnificent period of rebuilding in Portuguese freemasonry,
when intellectuals came into prominence on the Portuguese scene[41],
all largely attributable to the human qualities of those appointed as Grand
Masters. Membership in freemasonry increased substantially during that time.
During those years the activities
of freemasonry highlighted both the fundamental and the general goals for
progress and human development, which were attributed to the Enlightenment
from its beginning. It is to this philosophical doctrine that freemasonry owes
its visibility and has credibility within the intellectual environment and educated European
classes.
The following have been identified
as the main developments in which freemasonry participated, both individually
and as a group: the struggle for abolition of the death penalty and slavery;
the creation of primary and secondary levels of education; the growth of
education in Portuguese colonies; the diffusion of civic participation in
education, separating the State from Church; the compulsory registration of
births by State authorities; and drafting of the principal codes of law. Some
of these policies were the result of the collective work of Masonic lodges, but
in all honesty the fundamental contribution should be attributed to
individuals. By their positions, sound Masonic education and integrity,
individuals implanted into these activities the universal patterns of progress
and Human improvement that are always linked with unity and Masonic fraternity.
Despite from these great
achievements, freemasonry as a whole could not always resist the temptation to
lead and become involved in the main liberal movements that characterise the
transition from the 18th Century to the 19th. Freemasons
helped to defeat the “monarchies of divine right” and the ideals of absolute
monarchy that followed more or less all over Europe as a reaction the French
Revolution. When liberalism seemed triumphant, leading members of the
Brotherhood did not refrain from becoming involved, with the Orients and lodges
under their jurisdiction, in partisanship and the rise and fall of governments.
It is difficult to give a direct
answer to the question whether Freemasonry should or should not be considered
as the driving force behind revolutionary liberalism in Portugal, in the sense
that it is reputed to be the cradle of jacobinism[42].
In broad terms, I would agree with
Maria da Graça Silva Dias[43]
that Portuguese freemasonry has not followed a single line of development. Born
under the protection of regular British freemasonry, first with the andersonian orientation of the “Moderns”,
then with the traditional orientation of the “Antients”, neither of which allowed political involvement by
lodges, Portuguese freemasonry became
frenchionized or jacobinized
later in the 19th century. Although this involvement contravenes one
of the mandates of our Obedience, which forbids any political or religious
discussion between freemasons in lodge, one should not minimize the
contribution that freemasonry made in presenting its face to the world. In
other words we should seek to minimise the chasm of misunderstanding that still
exists between speculative freemasonry and the common citizens, which makes
them suspicious of the intentions that activate masons and freemasonry in the
profane world. This aspect is very evident in the history of Portuguese
freemasonry, because of the traditional Portuguese conservatism and
close-mindedness. It explains the influence of the French ideals in philosophy,
history, literature and art reflected in the more progressive Portuguese ideals
during the 18th and 19th centuries.
In this sense one should not
frivolously reject the projection of revolutionary ideals in the political
movements that took shape during the 19th Century and transformed
the ideals of society such as monarchism and socialism. If socialism is the
heir of French jacobinism, then
scientism, culture and philosophical romanticism are the outcomes of the Enlightenment’s
example that Man always looks towards and tends to emulate what is truly
progressive, innovative and modern in cultural terms. Most freemasons find it
difficult to separate the purely human dimensions of these ideals and examples
from the Masonic dimensions.
We should not play down the
reasons for the contemporary schism between regular and irregular freemasonry,
any more than we should understate the importance of the landmark that forbids
freemasons discussing politics inside lodges. The situation can best be
understood and accepted as a guarantee of the survival of the Order, as
distinct from a simplistic vision of subordination to this rule without
question which, as I mention elsewhere[44],
is a special characteristic of the participation of southern freemasonry in the
community. That particular aspect distinguishes this southern “school” of
freemasonry from its northern and Western-Atlantic peers. Throughout history
freemasonry has been important as a leader in the advancement of European
societies, at the forefront of the combat for a representative government and
in the self-determination of the people and nationalities from the common
people of Empires. Freemasons led in these combats, guarding the ordinary
people against the reactionary and pro-absolute forces that were incapable of
facing the innovations of the new era. This explains why Latin freemasonry played
such an extended role engaged in the political and social struggles that took
place through the 18th and 19th centuries. That is
something not fully understood by our brethren of England and the United States
of America, where the ideas of a constitutional and limited government, the
safeguard of civil rights and the equilibrium of powers were enshrined in the
Constitution and in the British political culture from early years, being the
cement of citizenship and republicanism in the sense that George Washington and
John Adams foresaw it.
6.
The transition to the 20th Century
A close association and later
complicity between freemasonry and republican ideals marks the transition from
the 19th to the 20th century. This was for reasons that
can be attributed to the progressive
orientation of the republican political program, with idea of freedom that enlightened the
republican struggle against absolute monarchies and the ruthless emperors who
subjugated European nationalities and peoples. The people saw the hand of the
empire as oppressive and sought to revoke its dominance so that they could
achieve freedom and self-determination.
Unfortunately there was a similar
confusion between the distinctive plans of freemasonry and the profane, which
was swiftly aggravated. Freemasonry tended to form a group, an elite, or
branches of some parties, or even to coerce lodges into becoming extensions of
party organizations, thus getting them directly involved in political strife
and sometimes in civil war.
On 17th May 1848, a
unit of republican propaganda was formed by António de Oliveira Marreca,
António Rodrigues Sampaio, José Estevão de Magalhâes, which adopted taking the
name of Revolutionary Commission of
Lisbon and could be seen as the embryos of the Republican Party[45].
Rodrigues Sampaio and Estevão de Magalhâes were masons and Grand Masters of
Grand Lodges. Casal Ribeiro, Henrique Nogueira, Anselmo Braamcamp, Luis
Palmarim, Lobo d’Ávila and others, mostly masons, were adherents of this
Republican Party. In 1807 the Patriotic
Union was founded in Oporto with republican aspirations and in
1817 the Democratic Center as founded
in Lisbon.
Several newspapers of democratic
and republican orientation were created: in 1858 Futuro; in 1860 Liberal
Politics; and
in 1870 República, which was founded by the writers
Antero de Quental and Eça de Queiroz, Rebate,
Vanguarda and Bandeira,
in which such famous masons as Teófilo Barga, Teixeira Bastos and Alves
Correia wrote. In 1876 the Partido
Republicano Português directory of
33 members was elected. In 1886 in Lisbon alone
there were more than thirty Republican clubs[46].
Some freemasons involved the Order
even more deeply in the political and revolutionary activities. Some supported
and participated in the constitution of the Carbonária,
a secret organization that was decisively involved in the Republican revolution
of 5th October 1910[47].
Carbonária was a political and
conspiratorial society that played a significant role in the anti-clerical
agitation that took place in Italy and led to Italy’s unification. In line with
its conspiratorial spirit, the society foresaw that the monarchies could be
overthrown through its operational units: vendas,
choças and barracas, all of which received military and revolutionary training. The Carbonária also anticipated that whilst
it was achieving its goals Pope Pius XII would promulgate the bull Ecclesiam that established a direct link
between carbonários and freemasons
and excommunicates both activities[48].
Borges Grainha argues that this
secret society was established in Portugal in 1822, when two emissaries visited
Portugal: General Pepe and Colonel Pizza. A few years later, in 1848, Carbonária had reached an important
level of organization and was pursuing relevant activities in Coimbra,
Figueira, Soure, Anadia, Cantahede, Pombal, Ílhavo and Braga, although it
seemed to disappear after 1864. In 1896 it emerged again through another secret
association, the Maçonaria Académica or
Academic Freemasonry, formed by university students and led by a Luz Almeida.
This revolutionary and anti-clerical association became and important
instrument for the diffusion of republican propaganda in cafés, schools,
workshops, seminaries and in popular places of academic lampoonery. Gradually Carbonária established its connections
within freemasonry through the lodge Montanha
founded by the aforementioned Luz Almeida and participated in the political
indoctrination of freemasons. Borges Grainha stresses that this contributed
directly to the election of Sebastião Magalhães de Lima as Grand Master of the Grande Oriente Lusitano. This
relationship was responsible for the expansion of Portuguese Carbonária. In October 1910, the time of
the Portuguese Republican revolution, the Carbonária
had about 40,000 members
across the country[49].
The revolution of 1910 was the
epilogue of several attempts to depose the Portuguese monarchy that had existed
at least from 31st January 1891. Its most deplorable episode was the
assassination of the King, D. Carlos I, in February 1908 and the Prince Regent,
D. Luis Filipe. With the support of freemasonry, the Republican Party had
perpetrated the assassination of both royal figures using its army branch, the Carbonária. Machado Santos comments
that one of the heads of Carbonária and
a top official of the young officers that led the uprising was a freemason,
saying: “the work of the
Portuguese revolution was due to freemasonry, uniquely and exclusively”[50].
The republican revolution would account for the
spontaneous union of large parts of the community and the weak resistance of
the monarchic troops. Its rapid success can be explained as follow. First, the
national unrest that resulted from the monarchic “rotation” in the legislative
chamber created an alternation in power with little impact on the policies.
Second, the national shame that emerged from the episodes of the Pink Map and British Ultimatum, when
Portugal’s pride as independent state was seriously disrupted, both attributed
to the incompetence of the monarchic government. Also, the governance of the
monarchic executive was economically disastrous, which cultivated civil turmoil
as a reaction to increasing inflation and the miserable conditions of the
majority of the population.
With the proclamation of the
Republic and the instalment of the first provisional government, which was led
by Teófilo Barga with António José de Almeida as Interior Minister and Afonso
Costa as Minister of Justice, all of whom were freemasons, freemasonry was
acknowledged as a useful institution. Thus freemasonry became a useful
attribute for those who pursued a political or bureaucratic career. During the
1st Republic, its membership doubled from 2000 to 4000, with a
consequent increase in lodges and groups. In the Parliament more than half of
the MPs were masons. In the Government of 1910-11, fifty per cent of the
ministers were masons and this percentage was sustained in subsequent
executives until 1926. Three Presidents of the Republic of Portugal were
masons: Bernardino Machado, Sidónio Pais and António José de Almeida.
However the close
interrelationship between freemasonry and the Republican Party steadily
increased during the 1st Republic, so that the disagreements and
rivalries that occurred within the Obedience were echoed within the government.
Magalhães Lima, the Grand Master and a friend and political supporter of Afonso
Costa, who headed the left wing of the Republican Party, provided Costa with
the support of the Grande Oriente
Lusitano. When the Republican Party split in 1911, with Afonso Costa on one
side, against António José de Almeida and Brito Camacho on the other[51],
the lodges of the Grande Oriente aligned themselves with the Costa
side.
If the divisions between the
republican groups become so serious that they put at risk the survival of the
Republican regime, it is not difficult to anticipate that freemasonry would
suffer the same fate sooner or later.
This happened in 1914, although it
was not directly attributed to political reasons, but found refuge in aspects
of jurisdiction and the rites. Some disputes arose between the executive and
legislative branches of the Grand Orient (the Grand Master, the Deputy Grand
Master, General Counsel and Grand Diet) and the Supreme Council of the 33º,
relating to the conformity of the revised Masonic Constitution of 1914 with the
agreements of 1869 that allowed several Grand Orients and major rites to be
unified. The problem that arose was the sharing of the power among the major
groups. The Supreme Council of the 33º maintained its view that it was entitled
to corporate independence and split from the Grande Oriente Lusitano Unido.
The Supreme Council of the 33º,
with the support of several foreign supreme councils, created the Grémio Luso-Escocês, with its main office in S. Pedro de Alcântara Street. It elected
General Augusto Ferreira de Castro as its Sovereign Grand Commander. Several
dozen lodges and groups moved and found their place under the new jurisdiction,
representing one third of the Masonic membership. According to Oliveira
Marques, this group and Obedience installed Sidónio Pais as a personal dictator
at the head of a new government (1917-18), following the overthrow of the
Democratic Party’s government headed by Afonso Costa as Prime Minister and
Bernardino Machado as President of the Republic. The coup d’État of 14th
May 1915, against Pimenta de Castro’s dictatorship, had in its ranks the Grand
Master, Magalhaes de Limas and the Deputy Grand Master, José de Castro, as well
as other high ranking masons including Sá Cardoso, Freitas Ribeiro and António
Maria da Silva. During the 1920’s the new Grand Master, António Maria da Silva,
was also head of the Democratic Party and held office for the longest period,
forming the executive six times.
According to Oliveira Marques,
this confusion between freemasonry and partisanship caused many masons to leave
the Order [Grande Oriente Lusitano][52].
By 1919 the membership had decreased to 1,807 in 88 lodges. The other
obedience, Grémio Luso-Escocês, suffered a similar destiny when the
number of its lodges decreased to 30.
On the eve of the coup d’État that
overthrew the Republican regime and installed a military dictatorship, an
amalgamation of the Grande Oriente
with the Grémio (1926) was achieved, although some important
masons like General Ferreira de Castro remained outside. On that date there were about 3,000 masons
in Portugal, in 115 lodges and groups. This was in the proportion of about one
mason for every 2,000 citizens. In comparative terms the ratio of masons to
citizens in Portugal was meaningful, as large countries like Spain and Italy
were similar
.
7.
Freemasonry under the Estado Novo and
Salazar autocracy
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