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a study by dott. Luigi Braco
Andrew Michael Ramsay (9 January 1686 – 6 May 1743),
commonly called the Chevalier Ramsay, was a Scottish-born writer who lived most
of his adult life in France. He was a Baronet in the Jacobite Peerage. Ramsay
was born in Ayr, Scotland, the son of a baker. He served with the English auxiliaries in
the Netherlands, and in 1710 visited François Fénelon, who converted him to
Roman Catholicism. He remained in France until 1724 writing politico-theological
treatises. One of these was dedicated to the Jacobite claimant to the English
and Scottish thrones, James Francis Edward Stuart. In January 1724, Ramsay was
sent to Rome as tutor to James' two sons, Charles Edward and Henry. But his
appointment was short-lived; Ramsay was associated with the court party of John
Erskine, Duke of Mar, who fell from favour that year. By November 1724 Ramsay
was back in Paris. Ramsay was in England in 1730, and received an honorary
degree from the University of Oxford. The claim was nominally his discipleship
to Fénelon, but in reality beyond doubt his connection with the Jacobite party.
He died at St Germain-en-Laye (Île-de-France) on 6 May 1743. He was a Christian
universalist, believing that all people would eventually be saved. He wrote "Almighty
power, wisdom and love cannot be eternally frustrated in his absolute and
ultimate designs; therefore God will at last pardon and re-establish in
happiness all lapsed beings."
Albert Cherel (1917, 1926) and G. D. Henderson (1952), from their readings of
the archival sources in France, England and Scotland, have greatly contributed
to the biography of Ramsay.
As a youth Ramsay was attracted to the mysticism of quietism as practised in the
circle of George Garden at Rosehearty, centred on the teachings of Antoinette
Bourignon in a community along the lines of a similar one in Rijnsburg led by Pierre
Poiret, where people from different religious persuasions and social castes
lived together.
In 1710 Ramsay travelled to Rijnsburg to meet Poiret and later met Jeanne Marie
Bouvier de la Motte Guyon known as Mme Guyon; from there he went on to stay with
the elder Fénelon at Cambrai (August 1710). He remained in his household for
several years and became steady friends with the Marquis de Fénelon, a young
relative of the archbishop and an ardent pupil of Mme Guyon. He wrote his Vie de
Fénelon in loyal testimony to that period. From 1714 until 1716, Ramsay acted as
secretary to Mme Guyon and he was present at Blois on 9 June 1717 when she died.
Although Ramsay himself was converted to Catholicism by Fénelon, conversion was
not deemed an option by Mme Guyon, who strongly advised the community around her
to stick to the principles of their proper faith while meditating on Pure Love.
In his Life of Fénelon (London, 1723) Ramsay stated his own insights of how Mme
Guyon's system had affected him. Association with Fénelon, who as preceptor of
the grandsons of Louis XIV had retained huge influence at Court, caused Ramsay
to be remarked by the nobility, in particular by the Comte de Sassenage, whose
son he tutored from 1718 till 1722. In 1722 Ramsay became active in high level
negotiations over a tax on assets of Jacobite exiles proposed by the British
government. By then Ramsay was already well acquainted with Cardinal Fleury, who
after the death of the Regent Philippe II, Duke of Orléans (1723) was to be the
power of state behind Louis XV. In 1723 Ramsay was knighted into the Order of
St. Lazarus of Jerusalem, which had originated as a Crusader military order
based in France for the protection of pilgrims. In 1724 he entered the Jacobite
household in Rome. Court intrigue and the impracticability of his educational
task – Bonnie Prince Charlie was only three-and-a-half years old – caused him to
return to Paris in the same year.
From 1725 till 1728 he stayed as an invited guest at the Hôtel de Sully under
the patronage of Maximilien de Béthune, Duc de Sully, the husband of the widowed
Comtesse de Vaux (daughter of Mme Guyon). During this period he frequented the
Parisian literary club Club de l'Entresol in the company of Rene-Louis Argenson,
Lord Bolingbroke and Montesquieu. Against that background he wrote his Travels
of Cyrus in 1727, which made him a best-selling author in his time, and for the
revised edition of which he travelled to London (1729–30) where he was again in
touch with Montesquieu.
Both were elected Fellows of the Royal Society in December 1729. In 1730 Ramsay
became a member of the Spalding Gentlemen's Society in Lincolnshire, a club in
correspondence with the Society of Antiquaries of London. Prominent members had
included Sir Isaac Newton, John Gay and Alexander Pope. Still another honour was
conferred on Ramsay in 1730: the Honorary Degree of Doctor of Civil Law at
Oxford University.
Prior to the conference of the academical titles (and apart of his Life of
Fénelon and Travels of Cyrus) Ramsey had been remarked in the intellectual
circles of his time. The influential Mémoires de Trévoux published several of
his tracts – in 1732, his introduction to the mathematical work of Edmund Stone
– and remained favourable throughout to his philosophical contributions. In 1719
he had published an Essai de Politique, revised in 1721 as Essai philosophique
sur le gouvernement, où l'on traite de la nécessité, de l'origine, des droits,
des bornes et des differentes formes de souveraineté, selon les principes de feu
M.François de Salignac de la Mothe Fénelon, archvèque-duc de Cambray and
published in English translation in 1722.
Ramsay returned to France in 1730 and, following the death of the Duc de Sully,
passed into the service of the Comte d'Évreux , a prominent member of the family
of la Tour d'Auvergne and Bouillon which had ties of marriage with the Jacobite
Court, through Charlotte, the elder sister of Queen Clementina and bonds of
loyal friendship to the circle around Fénelon, through the Cardinal de Bouillon.
It was the Cardinal de Bouillon who is said to have had the inspiration of
having the family descend from Godfrey of Bouillon, thus making the Crusader
King of Jerusalem the totemrather than the genetic precursor of the family (Henderson,
1952).
Ramsay's task in the Évreux household was to tutor a nephew, Godefroy Géraud,
duc de Chateau-Thierry, son of the elder brother, Emanuel Theodose de la Tour d'Auvergne,
Duc de Bouillon; shifting upon the death of Géraud to the tutorial of the
Count's grand nephew, the Prince of Turenne, Godefroi Charles, son of Charles
Godefroi, Duc de Bouillon, the head of the house.
It was for the Prince's education that Ramsay wrote the Histoire du Vicomte de
Turenne, maréchal général des armées du roy (1735), using as documentary
evidence (authorised by James Francis Edward Stuart) the handwritten Mémoires du
Duc d'York (James II). These were the Memoirs of James II discovered by David
Hume in the Scots College in Paris in 1763 in the company of Michael Ramsay, the
nephew of the Chevalier. The manuscripts were lost in the French Revolution.
In June 1735 Ramsay married Marie Nairne (1701–1761), the daughter of Sir David
Nairne, undersecretary to James III. For the occasion the Chevalier Ramsay was
created a Scottish Knight and Baronet (23 March 1735) with remainder to heirs
male. He had issue, a son and a daughter, but his son (1737–1740) died in
infancy, and his daughter (1739–1758) from smallpox at the age of 19.
Ramsay lived until 1743 under the benevolent protection of the house of Bouillon,
in St. Germain-en Laye, writing and studying, but above all preparing his magnum
opus: Philosophical Principles of Natural and Revealed Religion, edited after
his death (1748–49) by his wife and friends. This was, in Ramsay's words, "a
history of the human mind in all ages, nations and religions concerning the most
divine and important truths". Some "Chinese Letters" written by Ramsay remained
unpublished.
Ramsay was associated with Freemasonry from its introduction in France
(1725–26). Charles Radclyffe, Earl of Derwentwater, who acted as Grand Master
for France beginning in 1736, was present at Ramsay's funeral. It is presumed
that Ramsay's being a Mason facilitated his introduction into the Gentleman's
Club of Spalding, of which the prominent Masonic propagator John Theophilus
Desaguliers was then also a member.
In 1737 Ramsay wrote his: Discourse pronounced at the reception of Freemasons by
Monsieur de Ramsay, Grand Orator of the Order, in which he connected Freemasonry with
the Crusades. His own stature as a Knight of St. Lazarus of Jerusalem may have
inspired him, or perhaps even his zeal to propagate an alleged tradition linked
to the house of Bouillon. In any case Ramsay thought his speech worthy of note
by the prevailing religious authority, and he sent the text to Cardinal Fleury,
asking for a Church blessing of the principles of Freemasonry as he had stated
them: "The obligations imposed upon you by the Order are to protect your
brothers by your authority, to enlighten them by your knowledge, to edify them
by your virtues, to succour them in their necessities, to sacrifice all personal
resentment, and to strive after all that may contribute to peace and unity of
society."
To a Church already in difficulty over the deviating principles of the Society
of Jesus, not perhaps the cited reference, but the concept of Masonic ritual was
entirely preposterous. To Ramsay's letter of 20 March 1737 came Cardinal
Fleury's reply at the end of March interdicting all Masonic reunions.
It is frequently mistakenly repeated that Ramsey mentioned the Knights Templar in
his Discourse, when in fact he did not mention the Order at all - he mentioned
the Knights Hospitaller.
The noble ardour which you, gentlemen, evince to enter into the most noble and very illustrious Order of Freemasons, is a certain proof that you already possess all the qualities necessary to become members, that is, humanity, pure morals, inviolable secrecy and a taste for the fine arts.
Lycurgus, Solon, Numa and all the political legislators have failed to make their institutions lasting. However wise their laws may have been, they have not been able to spread through all countries and ages. As they only kept in view victories and conquests, military violence and the elevation of one people at the expense of another, they have not had the power to become universal, nor to make themselves acceptable to the taste, spirit and interests of all nations. Philanthropy was not their basis. Patriotism badly understood and pushed to excess, often destroyed in these warrior republics love and humanity in general. Mankind is not essentially distinguished by the tongues spoken, the clothes worn, the lands occupied or the dignities with which it is invested. The world is nothing but a huge republic, of which every nation is a family, every individual a child. Our Society was at the outset established to revive and spread these essential maxims borrowed from the nature of man. We desire to reunite all men of enlightened minds, gentle manners and agreeable wit, not only by a love of the fine arts but, much more, by the grand principles of virtue, science and religion, where the interests of the Fraternity shall become those of the whole human race, whence all nations shall be enabled to draw knowledge and where subjects of all kingdoms shall learn to cherish one another without renouncing their own country. Our ancestors, the Crusaders, gathered together from all parts of Christendom in the Holy Land, desired thus to reunite into one sole Fraternity the individuals of all nations. What obligations do we not owe to these superior men who, without gross selfish interests, without even listening to the inborn tendency to dominate, imagined such an institution , the sole aim of which is to unite minds and hearts in order to make them better, to form in the course of ages a spiritual empire where, without derogating from the various duties which different states exact, a new people shall be created, which, composed of many nations, shall in some sort cement them all into one by the tie of virtue and science.
The second requisite of our Society is sound morals. The religious orders were established to make perfect Christians, military orders to inspire a love of true glory and the Order of Freemasons to make lovable men, good citizens, good subjects, inviolable in their promises, faithful adorers of the God of Love, lovers rather of virtue than of reward.
Polliciti servare fidem, sanctumque
vereri
Numen amicitiae, mores, non munera amare.
To
faithfully keep a promise, to honour the holiness of friendship
To
love virtue, not its reward.
Nevertheless, we do not confine ourselves to purely civic virtues. We have amongst us three kinds of brothers: Novices or Apprentices, Fellows or professed Brothers, Masters or Perfected brothers. To the first are explained the moral virtues, to the second the heroic virtues; to the last the Christian virtues; so that our Institution embraces the whole philosophy of sentiment and the complete theology of the heart. This is why one of our brothers [Comte de Tressan] has said:
Freemason, illustrious Grand Master
Receive my first transports,
In my heart the Order has given them birth,
Happy I, if noble efforts
Cause me to merit your esteem
By elevating me to the sublime,
The primeval Truth,
To the Essence pure and divine,
The celestial Origin of the soul
The Source of life and love.
Because a sad, savage and misanthropic philosophy disgusts virtuous men, our ancestors, the Crusaders, wished to render it lovable by the attractions of innocent pleasures, agreeable music, pure joy and moderate gaiety. Our festivals are not what the profane world and the ignorant vulgar imagine. All the vices of heart and soul are banished there and irreligion, libertinage, incredulity and debauch are prescribed. Our banquets resemble those virtuous symposia of Horace, where the conversation only touched what could enlighten the soul, discipline the heart and inspire a taste for the true, the good and the beautiful.
O noctes coenaeque Deum ...
Sermo oritur, non de regnis domibusve alienis
…sed quo magis ad nos
Pertinet, et nescire malum est, agitamus; utrumne
&nbs
Quidve ad amicitias usus rectumve trahat nos,
Et quae sit natura boni, summumque quid ejus.
O nights, o divine repasts!
Without troubling ourselves with things that do not matter
But
to dwell on those which concern us
…and it would be bad to ignore:
If
wealth or virtue give happiness to Man
What use do friendship or virtue bring us
What is the nature of good, and what is the highest good.
Horace, Satire VI Book II
Thus the obligations imposed upon you by the Order, are to protect your brothers by your authority, to enlighten them by your knowledge, to edify them by your virtues, to succour them in their necessities, to sacrifice all personal resentment, to strive after all that may contribute to the peace and unity of society.
We have secrets; they are figurative signs and sacred words, composing a language sometimes mute, sometimes very eloquent, in order to communicate with one another at the greatest distance, to recognize our Brothers of whatsoever tongue. These were words of war which the Crusaders gave each other in order to guarantee them from the surprises of the Saracens, who often crept in amongst them to kill them. These signs and words recall the remembrance either of some part of our science, of some moral virtue or some mystery of the faith. That has happened to us which never befell any former Society. Our Lodges have been established, are spread in all civilized nations and, nevertheless, amongst this numerous multitude of men never has a Brother betrayed our secrets. Those natures most trivial, most indiscreet, least schooled to silence, learn this great art on entering our Society. Such is the power over all natures of the idea of a fraternal bond! This inviolable secret contributes powerfully to unite the subjects of all nations, to render the communication of benefits easy and mutual between us. We have many examples in the annals of our Order. Our Brothers, traveling in diverse lands, have only needed to make themselves known in our Lodges in order to be there immediately overwhelmed by all kinds of succour, even in the time of the most bloody wars, while illustrious prisoners have found brothers where they only expected to meet enemies.
Should any fail in the solemn promises which bind us, you know, gentlemen, that the penalties which we impose upon him are remorse of conscience, shame at his perfidy and exclusion from our Society, according to those beautiful lines of Horace:
Est et fideli tuta silencio
Merces; vetabo qui Cerisis sacrum
Vulgarit Arcanum, sub iisdem
Sit
trabibus, fragilemque mecum
Salvat Phaselum. …
Loyal silence is surely rewarded
But
he who reveals the sacred secret of Ceres
Him
I will not allow to dwell under my roof
Or
to share my shallow skiff
Horace, Odes, Book III
Yes, sirs, the famous festivals of Ceres at Eleusis, of Isis in Egypt, of Minerva at Athens, or Urania amongst the Phoenicians, of Diana in Scythia were connected with ours. In those places mysteries were celebrated which concealed may vestiges of the ancient religion of Noah and the Patriarchs. They concluded with no banquets and libations when neither that intemperance nor excess were known into which the heathen gradually fell. The source of these infamies was the admission to the nocturnal assemblies of persons of both sexes in contravention of the primitive usages. It is in order to prevent similar abuses that women are excluded from our Order. We are not so unjust as to regard the fair sex as incapable of keeping a secret. But their presence might insensibly corrupt the purity of our maxims and manners.
The fourth quality required in our Order is the taste for useful sciences and the liberal arts. Thus, our Order exacts of each of you to contribute, by his protection, liberality or labour, to a vast work for which no academy can suffice, because all these societies being composed of a very small number of men, their work cannot embrace an object so extended. All the Grand Masters in Germany, England, Italy and elsewhere, exhort all the learned men and all the artisans of the Fraternity to unite to furnish the materials for a Universal Dictionary of the liberal arts and useful sciences, excepting only theology and politics.
This work has already been commenced in London and, by means of the union of our Brothers, it may be carried to a conclusion in a few years. Not only are technical words and their etymology explained, but the history of each art and science, its principle and operations, are described. By this means the lights of all nations will be united in one single work, which will be a universal library of all that is beautiful, great, luminous, solid and useful in all the sciences and in all noble arts. This work will augment in each century, according to the increase of knowledge, it will spread everywhere emulation and the taste for things of beauty and utility.
The word Freemason must therefore not be taken in a literal, gross and material sense, as if our founders had been simple workers in stone, or merely curious geniuses who wished to perfect the arts. They were not only skilful architects, desirous of consecrating their talents and good to the construction of material temples; but also religious and warrior princes who designed to enlighten, edify and protect the living temples of the Most High. This I will demonstrate by developing the history or rather the renewal of our Order.
Every family, every republic, every Empire, of which the origin is lost in obscure history, has its fable and its truth, its legend and its history. Some ascribe our institution to Solomon, some to Moses, some to Abraham, some to Noah, some to Enoch, who built the first city, or even to Adam. Without any pretence of denying these origins, I pass on to matters less ancient. This, then, is a part of what I have gathered in the annals of Great Britain, in the Acts of Parliament, which speak often of our privileges and in the living traditions of the English people, which has been the centre of our Society since the eleventh century.
At the time of the Crusades in Palestine many princes, lords and citizens associated themselves and vowed to restore the temple of the Christians in the Holy Land, to employ themselves in bringing back their architecture to its first institution. They agreed upon several ancient signs and symbolic words drawn from the well of religion in order to recognize themselves amongst the heathen and the Saracens. These signs and words were only communicated to those who promised solemnly, even sometimes at the foot of the altar, never to reveal them. This sacred promise was therefore not an execrable oath, as it has been called, but a respectable bond to unite Christians of all nationalities in one confraternity. Some time after our Order formed an intimate union with the Knights of St.John of Jerusalem. From that time our Lodges took the name of Lodges of St.John. This union was made after the example set by the Israelites when they erected the second Temple who, whilst they handled the trowel and mortar with one hand, in the other held the sword and buckler.
Our Order, therefore, must not be considered a revival of the Bacchanals, but as an Order founded in remote antiquity, renewed in the Holy Land by our ancestors in order to recall the memory of the most sublime truths amidst the pleasures of society. The kings , princes and lords returned from Palestine to their own lands and there established divers Lodges. At the time of the last Crusades many Lodges were already erected in Germany, Italy, Spain, France and, from thence, in Scotland, because of the close alliance between the French and the Scotch. James, Lord Steward of Scotland, was master of a Lodge at Kilwinning, in the West of Scotland, MCCLXXXVI, shortly after the death of Alexander III, King of Scotland, and one year before John Balliol mounted the throne. This lord received Freemasons into his Lodge the Earls of Gloucester and Ulster, the one English, the other Irish.
By degrees our Lodges and our Rites were neglected in most places. This is why of so many historians only those of Great Britain speak of our Order. Nevertheless it preserved its splendour amongst those Scotsmen of whom the Kings of France confided during many centuries the safeguard of their royal persons.
After the deplorable mishaps in the Crusades, the perishing of the Christian armies and the triumph of Bendocdar, Sultan of Egypt, during the eighth and last Crusade, that great Prince Edward, son of Henry III, King of England, seeing there was no longer any safety for his Brethren in the Holy Land, whence the Christian troops were retiring, brought them all back and this colony of Brothers was established in England. As this prince was endowed with all the heroic qualities, he loved the fine arts, declared himself protector of our Order, conceded to it new privileges and then the members of this Fraternity took the name of Freemasons after the example set by their ancestors.
Since that time Great Britain became the seat of our Order, the conservator of our laws and the depository of our secrets. The fatal religious discords which embarrassed and tore Europe in the sixteenth century caused or Order to degenerate from the nobility of its origin. Many of our Rites and usages which were contrary to the prejudices of the times were changed, disguised and suppressed. Thus it was that many of our Brothers forgot, like the ancient Jews, the spirit of our laws and retained only the letter and shell. The beginnings of the remedy have already been made. It is necessary only to continue and, at last, to bring everything back to its original institution. This work cannot be difficult in a State where religion and Government can only be favourable to our laws.
From the British Isles the Royal Art is now repassing into France, under
the reign of the most amiable of Kings, whose humanity animates all his virtues
and under the ministry of a Mentor, who has realized all that could be imagined
most fabulous. In this happy age
when love of peace has become the virtue of heroes, this nation one of the most
spiritual in Europe, will become the centre of the Order. She will clothe our work, our statutes, our customs with
grace, delicacy and good taste, essential qualities of the Order, of which the
basis is wisdom, strength and beauty of genius.
It is in future in our Lodges, as it were in public schools, that
Frenchmen shall learn, without traveling, the characters of all nations and that
strangers shall experience that France is the home of all nations.
Patria gentis humanae.
Bibliografy
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