La Loge de Juste revisited
Seven years ago I was reading Snoek/Heidl’s Women’s Agency which contains an essay about the Dutch adoption lodge De Juste and wrote a little something about it. Currently I am reading the recently published Exploring the Vault: Masonic Higher Degrees 1730–1800 by Belton and Dachez in which the lodge is mentioned in a different context. The authors led me to revisit the subject.
Women’s Agecy was published in 2008. The text that I refer to is The Grand Lodge Of Adoption, La Loge De Juste, The Hague, 1751: A Short-Lived Experiment In Mixed Freemasonry Or A Victim Of Elegant Exploitation? by Malcolm Georges Davies (1952-2010). I now see that the same text was earlier published in Dutch in the internal periodical of the Grand Orient of the Netherlands Thoth in 2007 and it was also published by the University of Leiden (where it seems that Max de Haan (1942-2020) was co-author?).
Davies (1952-2010) was professor Freemasonry at the University of Leiden between 2008 and 2010. He was not the first to pick up the subject.
An often quoted source (especially for foreign investigators) is R.S. Lindsay’s book about the Royal Order of Scotland from 1971 who spends some length to the lodge. In 1976 in the same Thoth there is a text of Johannes Hanrath (1900-1983) also about the Royal Order of Scotland. Later we will see what the link is.
As the title of their book suggests, the work of Belton and Dachez is about ‘Masonic higher degrees’, so not about adoption Freemasonry, but the lodge De Juste is shortly dealt with on the pages 101-103.
In the previous chapter, the authors describe how the first lodge in the Netherlands was formed by the British ambassador in 1731 in Den Haag (The Hague / La Haye). Sometimes it is even said that none less than John Desagulier (1683-1744) was also present, but there are also versions without Desagulier. In any case, it was a “occasional lodge” mostly as a British initiative. One of these Brits, Vincent la Chapelle (1690-1745) was French by birth though.
In 1734 the first ‘real’ lodge was founded by the same Le Chapelle. Johan Cornelis Rademacher (1700-1748) was initiated on 4 March 1735. Three month later the lodge declared itself grand lodge and Rademacher was the first grand master.
Another lodge was founded in Amsterdam and then another one in Den Haag. What Belton and Dachez do not mention, is that Rademacher was followed by Joost Gerrit (Juste Gérard) baron of Wassenaer (1716-1753) as grand master.
Some people got the idea to start a lodge of adoption.
The lodge De Juste was formed in January 1751. The grand master of the Grand Lodge of the Seven United Provinces, adopted the adoption lodge and named it after himself. He even raised it to being a grand lodge with himself as grand master. The active but troubled lodge survived for only half a year. Le Loge de Juste and other actions of the baron of Wassenaer led to the demise of the first Dutch grand lodge. When the Grand Orient of the Netherlands was founded in 1756 they didn’t even want to trace themselves back to the earlier grand lodge and took 1756 as their starting year (and probably the reason why they called themselves “grand orient” rather than “grand lodge”).
What concerns Belton and Dachez is that the adoption lodge decided that it did not only want to work in the three adoption degrees, but that they also wanted ‘high degrees’. They sent two members out to arrange a patent to do just that.
Travelling via Paris to London, the party ensured a H.R.D.M. (Harodim/Heredom) patent and they went back to Den Haag. The lodge apparently thought it all took too long and they had started working the Scots Master degrees (“Architect” and “Grand Architect”) in the meantime. As the H.R.D.M. patent was no longer needed, Mitchell took it with him to Edinburgh where he started a lodge that would eventually grow into the Royal Order of Scotland. There you have the reason why La Loge de Juste is mentioned in Royal Order of Scotland histories.
The adventurer is taken to be William Mitchell, a Scot by birth. Hanrath’s story is a bit different. He says that Mitchell’s task was not to get a patent for the adoption lodge to be able to work ‘high degrees’, but simply to form a H.R.D.M. branch in the Netherlands. He does say that Mitchell never used the patent in the Netherlands, but he did do so in Edinburgh. Later he quotes the mentioned history of the Royal Order of Scotland by Robert Strathern Lindsay who does connect the request of Mitchell to the lodge De Juste. Hanrath thinks that Smith was way too young for such an important task, as he was supposedly born around 1727 and passed away around 1792. so he was in his early twenties.
The story of Belton and Dachez raises a few questions. Freemasonry in Den Haag came from London, which makes sense. Adoption Freemasonry came from France, so the idea to create an adoption lodge probably did not come from English Masonic circles, but more likely French Freemasons who must also have become active in Den Haag by the time. Within the same lodge? Was that the influence of chef cook La Chapelle?
Even though in France adoption Freemasonry was ‘shortly ‘recognised’ by the Grand Orient de France, this was only shortly after the foundation of this Grand Orient in 1774, thus over two decades later. The founders of La Loge de Juste must therefor have been French pioneers as they set out to create a form of Freemasonry that even in France was unofficial (but perhaps tolerated).
The biggest question of all -though- is: how did the founders figure they could start not only an unrecognised mixed gender (grand) lodge, but even try to get a patent from a (undoubtedly) men-only order for ‘high degrees’? Were adoptive lodges really so accepted (albeit unrecognised)? Jan Snoek has an interesting theory in that regard.
According to Snoek H.R.D.M. was a kind of Freemasonry, different from “Antient” or “Modern” Freemasonry, a form worked by Jacobite, Catholic, Stuart-supporting Freemasons. This was an early form of “Moderns” Freemasonry. These Freemasons had to flee to France for their political views. Besides the symbolic/craft degrees, some lodges developed ‘high degrees’. When in France exposures started to appear, these contained more elaborate rituals that had developed in England by then and these more elaborate rituals rapidly became more popular than the simpler, catechism-based H.R.D.M. rituals. For that reason some lodges reinvented themselves and became ‘high degrees’ lodges, while other lodges poured their tradition and symbolism in the developing lodges of adoption. Therefor the typical adoption elements such as the Tower of Babel and Adam and Eve, are actually H.R.D.M. remnants. For that reason it is not strange that the (French?) people behind the adoption lodge in Den Haag had to think of Harodim ‘high degrees’. Perhaps they were even H.R.D.M. descendants. But they did send their emissaries to London… If we follow Snoek’s reasoning, the ‘higher degrees’ developed differently in France and England, so the (French inspired) adoption Freemasons wanted the English higher degrees rather than the French?
It seems that the final word has not yet been written on this subject.