Letter Writing and Masonic Sociability in 18th-Century France

Freemasonry was the largest voluntary organization in eighteenth-century France, attracting at least 50,000 men into hundreds of lodges over the course of the century. Although lodge life constituted an important part of masonic sociability in the Old Regime, the letter also functioned as a critical means to communicate and forge a distinctive masonic identity in the absence of face-to-face interaction. In this paper, I will examine how epistolary commerce facilitated the transmission of esoteric knowledge about ritual and how brethren relied on the letter as a means to maintain and cultivate male friendship from the 1730s and into the French Revolution. The central thrust of this paper is that correspondence played an important role in extending masonic sociability well beyond the walls of the lodge and even beyond the lifespan of formal masonic activity.