History of the Foundation of the Grand Orient of France

First published in Paris in 1812, Claude-Antoine Thory's Annales Originis Magni Galliarum Orientis is the foundational history of the Grand Orient of France - and one of the rarest books in Masonic literature. Written by a librarian to the Mother Lodge of the Philosophic Scottish Rite with unparalleled access to the archives and documents of his age, it chronicles the schism of 1772 that produced the Grand Orient, the decades of rivalry and revolutionary turbulence that followed, and the hard-won consolidation that shaped French Freemasonry into the nineteenth century.

But Thory's scope extends far beyond institutional history. The Annales surveys the full landscape of eighteenth-century esoteric Freemasonry: the Élus-Coëns of Martinès de Pasqually, the Illuminati of Weishaupt, the Egyptian Masonry of Cagliostro, the Philalèthes, the Modern Templars, the adoption lodges, the hermetic societies, and the initiation of Voltaire. Papal condemnations, royal edicts, statistical tables of lodges, and original documents appear alongside the narrative, making this as much a primary source collection as a history. History of the Foundation of the Grand Orient of France is the first English translation of this essential work.