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 Modern freemasonry is an institution which will soon be 300 years old.
It descends directly , or in a symbolic way, from the medieval stone masons who, for several centuries, travelled throughout the whole of Europe putting up religious or non religious buildings, most of which are still in existence today.
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They used to gather together on the evening to prepare their work for the following day and teach their apprentices their art, the art of building, in a communal house they called lodge. In England, in 1717, when the great period of buildings of this type was over and the masonic builders grew scarcer, people who had been in contact with them although they themselves were not builders by trade and who called Accepted Masons, particularly members of the Royal Society, a learned society of the time, took up the tradition and created the Great Lodge in London.
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After the Freemasonry of the cathedral builders, Accepted Freemasonry where the builders had accepted into their lodge people who where not of their trade, the period which today we call that of Speculative Freemasonry began , a period when it is no longer building materials but ideas which are used for building.
Through seafarers and traders, Freemasonry which quickly established itself in England spread to the continent and the first Masonic Lodges were set up in France between 1726 and 1730, particularly in ports such as Bordeaux and Dunkerque.
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But in this period when the new ideas of Liberty, and Equality were to be born, which would lead to the French Revolution and the Republic, France entered the age of enlightenment. From being a sort of " Club " as in England, the Masonic Lodges which very quickly spread in our country became a sounding board for these great new ideas and turned into places where debates about the emancipation of Man and Society took place.
The Grand Orient de France which was set uo in 1733 and was, until the end of the 19th century, the only Masonic Order in France, is still fighting for these ideals.
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