Robespierre and the Cult of the Supreme Being
Danton was one of the so-called Triumvir, contesting the control of the Republic with two other revolutionary leaders, Robespierre and Marat – the latter a Freemason. It has never been conclusively established that Robespierre was a Freemason too. Nevertheless, his intellectual ideals and obsession with the ‘virtues’, as well as his promotion of the Cult of the Supreme Being, all reek of Masonic influence.
In Freemasonry God is often described as the ‘Grand Architect of the Universe’. His symbol is either a five-pointed star – the ‘Blazing Star’, in which is depicted the letter ‘G’ – or a glowing pyramid or triangle with the all-seeing-eye, (the ‘Eye of Providence’) inscribed within it. This symbol can still be seen on the 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen and appears quite obviously to have been modelled on the ‘Supreme Being’ of the Freemasons – likewise symbolised by the all-seeing-eye in the glowing pyramid.
English Freemasonry in particular has gone to great lengths to assert that belief in a Supreme Being is a precondition of membership.31 Thus in an official statement by the ‘Board of General Purposes’, ratified by the United Grand Lodge of England, it was confirmed that: The Board has given the most earnest consideration to this subject, being convinced that it is of fundamental importance to the reputation and well-being of English Freemasonry that no misunderstanding should exist on either side of the Craft. It cannot be too strongly asserted that Masonry is neither a religion nor a substitute for religion … On the other hand, its basic requirement that every member of the Order shall believe in a Supreme Being and the stress laid upon his duty towards Him should be sufficient evidence to all but the willfully prejudiced that Masonry is an upholder of religion since it requires a man to have some form of religion before he can be admitted as a Mason … 32
The above statement was, in fact, construed from the Constitutions of Freemasons, drafted in 1723, where in the so-called First Charge, which is entitled ‘Concerning God and Religion’, the following statement appears: Let a man's religion or mode of worship be what it may, he is not excluded from the Order, provided he believe in the Glorious Architect of Heaven and Earth …33
The term ‘Supreme Being’ is widely used in the information literature of the United Grand Lodge where, for example, an official leaflet declares that ‘members must believe in a Supreme Being, but there is no separate Masonic God’.34 In other Masonic pamphlets the term ‘Grand Architect of the Universe’ is also extensively used. Clearly no distinctions are made between terms like ‘Glorious Architect of Heaven and Earth’, ‘Grand Architect of the Universe’ and ‘Supreme Being’. All are, quite obviously, considered appropriate and interchangeable epithets for the Masonic idea of ‘God’.
Taking into account that most of the main players of the French Revolution were Freemasons (including fellow Triumvir members Danton and Marat), and giving thought to the terminology used by Robespierre for his republican cult, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that his Supreme Being was one and the same as the Masonic ‘Grand Architect of the Universe’. Indeed, the historian Michel Vovelle, an expert on cults of the French Revolution, quite readily equates the ‘Supreme Being’ of Robespierre with the ‘Grand Architect’ of the Freemasons.35
Rousseau and the Contrat Social
It is well known that Robespierre was much influenced by the work of Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712 – 1778), the writer and philosopher whose Contrat Social (a political tract which extolled the virtues of social equality and the dignity of man), set the foundation for the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, the natural successor to the American Declaration of Independence.
Although Rousseau was not a Freemason, French Masons took many of his philosophical and political ideas as gospel – so much so that one of the most important and influential pre-revolutionary Masonic lodges, La Loge du Contrat Social, was named in his honour. It must be remembered that both Voltaire and Rousseau were – and still are – regarded as having been the intellectual dynamos behind the Revolution. It would be going too far to say that they actually caused it, but it is fair to say that they provided the moral framework upon which the Revolution rested.
Thus it is not at all surprising to find that the two most important Masonic lodges in France in the years immediately preceding the 1789 Revolution were the Nine Sisters and Le Contrat Social, the former linked to Voltaire and his godfather, and the latter to Rousseau's political masterpiece bearing the same name. It was at these lodges that many of the protagonists of both the French and American Revolutions would gather.
Le Loge du Contrat Social was founded in Paris in 1776 at the same time as the Nine Sisters lodge. Originally going under the name of Loge Saint-Lazare, it had taken over the function of an older lodge, La Loge Saint-Jean d’Écosse de la vertu persécutée based at Avignon, the latter acting as the ‘Mother Lodge’ for one of Freemasonry's elite orders, the so-called Scottish Rite, also known as the Supreme Council of the 33rd Degree.36
Almost as popular as the Nine Sisters lodge, Le Contrat Social recruited its members from the very best of the liberal nobility, the intellectuals and the military. Under its warrant other lodges were set up all over France, the most notable being the lodges Saint-Alexandre d’Écosse and l’Olympique de la Parfaite Estime.37 The name of the Contrat Social lodge had, in fact, been chosen by one of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's intimate friends, the Baron d’Astier38 who, like Robespierre and many other intellectuals of the Revolution, practically deified Rousseau. In April 1794 Robespierre even had Rouseau's body exhumed and reburied at the Pantheon in Paris next to other national heroes.39
Designer Cult
Robespierre's Cult of the Supreme Being was officially installed in France on 7 May 1794, a little more than a year after the beheading of Louis XVI. By then the de-Christianisation process had taken its toll, with the clergy abdicating en masse, and many Christian places of worship converted into ‘temples’ for the new revolutionary cult.
Although a staunch anti-clerical, Robespierre was not an atheist. He was to present a report to the Convention on the ‘principles of political morality which must guide the Convention in the administration of the internal affairs of the Republic’ in which he stated: … the idea of the Supreme Being and the immortality of the soul is a perpetual reminder of Justice. It is thus social and republican.40
The Convention agreed, decreeing soon after: The People of France recognise the existence of the Supreme Being and the Immortality of the Soul.41
‘A deist in the mould of Rousseau’,42 Robespierre firmly believed that at the true basis of the new democratic state should be a natural religion, one that was intrinsic to the human condition, one that could root the virtues of the nation onto ‘eternal and sacred foundations’.43 It was proposed that the cult would consist of celebrations and gatherings throughout the year – Robespierre wanted 36 festivals in all44 – devoted notably to the important events of the Revolution (such as 14 July), to various entities and concepts such as the Supreme Being, Nature, Liberty, and Equality, and finally to the ‘virtues most useful to man’ such as Truth, Patriotism and so forth.
As part of Robespierre's cult, the old Gregorian calendar was abandoned in favour of a ‘Republican’ calendar with the months given ‘natural’ names. This new calendar was divided into 36 decadi of 10 days each, producing a year of 360 days to which were added 5 ‘complementary’ days to commemorate ‘virtue, genius, labour, opinion and rewards’.45
It is indeed odd to discover that this Republican calendar appears to have been modelled on the ancient Egyptian solar calendar – which was divided into 36 decans each of 10 days, producing a year of 360 days to which five additional days were added to commemorate the virtues of Osiris, Isis and other divinities.
Lalande and Sirius
The task of developing the Republican calendar was given to Charles-Gilbert Romme, a respected mathematician and president of the Committee
of Public Instruction. According to Masonic historian Charles Sumner Lobingier, Romme was a prominent Freemason of the Nine Sisters lodge.46 Romme was assisted in technical matters by the mathematician Gaspard Monge and the mathematician-astronomer Joseph-Louis Lagrange. Monge, too, was a staunch Freemason and a prominent member of the Nine Sisters lodge which in turn had been founded by the astronomer Jérôme Lalande, who had served as director of the Paris Observatory since 1768.
Lalande, and the astronomer-historian Charles-François Dupuis, sat on the committee established by Romme to create the new Republican calendar. Dupuis was a firm believer that all religious ideas stemmed from ancient Egypt and, more particularly, that the city of Paris was somehow associated with the Egyptian goddess Isis. We shall return to this later. Meanwhile, David Ovason, in his intriguing book The Secret Zodiac of Washington DC, makes this most revealing comment concerning Lalande during the obituary ceremony for Voltaire at the Nine Sisters lodge in November 1778: The French astronomer Joseph [Jérôme] Lalande, so used to standing in the darkness while looking up at the stars, would probably have thought of only one star as he stood in the darkened Parisian room on 28 November 1778. In his capacity as Master of the Lodge of Nine Muses [Sisters], Lalande was mourning with his Brothers [of which one was Benjamin Franklin] the passing of the writer Voltaire … Among the symbols guarded by the 27 Brothers was a pyramid … As he gazed at the Pyramid. Lalande would almost certainly have been drawn to thinking about the star Sirius. An astronomer who had shown great interest in ancient orientations, he could not help realising the importance assigned to this star by the ancients. If the Egyptian Pyramids themselves were not aligned to it, he knew fully well that a large number of Egyptian temples had been, and that an entire Egyptian calendar was regulated by it. In his four-volume study of stellar lore, Lalande had listed six alternative names for Sirius, and gave its position in 1750 with remarkable accuracy. His interest was almost personal: he would have known that in the horoscope of his own birth, the sun and Mercury had bracketed this powerful star.47
Ovason also points out that Lalande's involvement with and deep admiration for Voltaire make it very likely that he would have been familiar with Voltaire's book Micromégas published in 1752. In this curious work of fiction Voltaire set the home of the hero in the star Sirius and prophetically noted that this star also had a satellite – a fact only discovered to be true in 1844 by the Prussian astronomer Friedrich Bessel.48 Sirius, of course, was also the star identified by the ancient Egyptians with the goddess Isis – and again Lalande would have known this.49 Indeed, so interested were Lalande and Dupuis in the goddess Isis that one of their colleagues at the Académie des Sciences could not help commenting: ‘MM. Dupuis et de Lalande voient Isis par-tout!’ [‘Messrs. Dupuis and Lalande see Isis everywhere!’]50
Monge, Isis and Osiris
There is another connection with Egypt and the Republican calendar which needs to be mentioned. The mathematician Gaspard Monge, who worked out the mechanics of the calendar, was a keen student of Egyptology. Through his close friendship with Napoleon Bonaparte, whom he accompanied to Egypt in 1798, he was to found the Institut d’Égypte in Cairo.
Like many Freemasons of his time, Monge believed that Masonic rituals had originated in ancient Egypt and that modern Freemasons had inherited ancient Egypt's secret system of initiation and symbolic language. Even today, confirms a Masonic historian: Many Freemasons consider that the Masonic Order draws much of its mysteries from Pharaonic Egypt. It is thus that they refer themselves to Osiris and Isis, symbols of the supreme being and universal nature …51
Celebrations and iconography
The first official celebrations held in honour of the Supreme Being under France's new Republican calendar took place on 8 June 1794.
At the heart of the proceedings, organised by Robespierre's close friend the artist Jacques-Louis David, was a huge amphitheatre in the Tuilleries Garden in front of the Louvre Palace. There the official congregation gathered to listen to a sermon preached by Robespierre in honour of the Supreme Being. At the close of the sermon, David had arranged for the dramatic burning of a Hessian cloth statue representing ‘Atheism’ – from which emerged, like a phoenix from the flames, a stone statue representing ‘Wisdom’.
Next the choir of the Paris Opera sang: Father of the Universe, Supreme Intelligence, Benefactor unknown to mortals. You will reveal your existence to those who alone raise altars in your name.52
‘Those who raise altars’ were, of course, the Republicans; and the ‘altar’ in this particular case turned out to be a massive artificial mountain (historian Jean Kerisel calls it a ‘pyramid’) in the heart of the Champs de Mars, where today stands the Eiffel Tower.53 Representatives of the 48 districts of Paris as well those of the Convention with Robespierre at the helm, made their way to the pyramid/mountain and ascended its flanks. Robespierre then was raised on the summit next to a symbolic ‘Tree of Liberty’, while patriotic hymns were sung by the Paris Opera choir.
Let us note that in the iconography of the Revolution the all-seeing-eye (or ‘Eye of Providence’) was often shown above the ‘Tree of Liberty’ while at other times it was also seen within a glowing triangle or pyramid hovering above the scene, much like the symbol seen today on the US one-dollar bill. This symbol, in fact, was originally designed for the so-called Great Seal of the United States in 1776 by a committee that included Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson.54 The very same symbol was also to appear in 1789 on the frontispiece of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen drafted by the Marquis de Lafayette, a close friend of both Franklin and Jefferson. The symbol clearly represents the Supreme Being of the Republicans and, by extension, the Masonic ‘Grand Architect of the Universe’ – also depicted as a pyramid with the all-seeing-eye or ‘Eye of Providence’. In one propaganda poster which has survived from the 1789 Revolution, the all-seeing-eye is portrayed above the words ‘Être Suprême’, i.e. ‘Supreme Being’, which confirms the link between the two ideas.55 In this poster the ‘eye’ is not within a pyramid but inside a solar disc from which shoot down golden rays of light on the ‘People’ and the ‘Republic’. There are two figures on the bottom of the poster, the one on the left is the aging Voltaire, and the one on the right is Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the two intellectual heroes of the Revolution.56
This sort of iconography and rhetoric is strongly suggestive of an attempt to push forward some sort of deist-cum-Masonic ‘religion’ as an alternative to Christianity. And as British historian Nigel Aston remarks in his book Religion and Revolution in France, the ‘belief in the Supreme Being permitted enough variations to accommodate many tastes.’57 Aston quotes the patriot Lazare Carnot, a Freemason and also a member of the Convention, who, made a speech in 1794 extolling the many virtues of mankind, and explained: … these are things to be found in the Supreme Being; he is the seal of all thoughts which make for the happiness of man.58
Meanwhile, on the other side of the Atlantic …
This perhaps unpremeditated association of the ‘Supreme Being’ with the idea of a seal brings to mind the Great Seal of the United States, which not only displays the ‘Supreme Being’ with the symbol of the glowing pyramid and the all-seeing-eye, but also is an icon of the individual's constitutional right to the pursuit of happiness.
On 18 September 1793, just a few weeks after the festivities that were staged at the Place de la Bastille by David, another sort of ceremony, this time blatantly Masonic, took place across the Atlantic at the site of the future Capitol in Washington, DC. Wearing a Masonic apron given to him by the Marquis de Lafayette, George Washington laid the cornerstone of the Capitol on Jenkins Heights during a ceremony attended by hundreds of Freemasons. The Masonic apron worn by Washington, which had been embroidered by Mme de Lafayette, contained an assortment of well-known Masonic symbols, but its centrepiece is undoubtedly the all-seeing-eye emblazoned by a radiating sun disc. Interestingly, author David Ovason, a Freemason who has conducted
extensive research into the meaning of this Masonic ceremony, concluded that it was, among other things, primarily intended to consecrate both this building as well as the Federal City to the zodiacal constellation of Virgo: … The idea of Virgo plays an important role in the astrological symbolism which dominates the city. I have also examined two foundation ceremonials in which the Virgoan element was of considerable importance. By taking this approach I might have given the impression that the sole Masonic concern in these early years of the building of the Federal City was with Virgo … The importance of Virgo, and her connection with the goddess Isis, has been recognised in Masonic circles from the very early days of American Masonry. The French astronomer Joseph [Jérôme] Lalande had been an important Mason, and his writings were widely read by Americans of the late 18th century. As early as 1731, Lalande had recognised that: ‘The Virgin is consecrated to Isis, just as Leo is consecrated to her husband Osiris … The sphinx, composed of a Lion and a Virgin, was used as a symbol to designate the overflow of the Nile … they put a wheat-ear in the hand of the Virgin, to express the idea of months’…59
In his book Inside The Brotherhood, Masonic researcher Martin Short has this to tell us about George Washington's affiliation to Freemasonry: His [Washington's] funeral in 1799 had been conducted according to Masonic rites. The coffin had been draped with a Masonic apron given to him by a brother revolutionary and Mason, the Marquis de Lafayette, and the many Masons present each cast a sprig of acacia, to symbolise both Osiris's resurrection and Washington's own imminent resurrection in the realm where Osiris presides.60