La Loge des Neuf Sœurs (; The Nine Sisters), established in

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of ci ...

in 1734, was a prominent French

Masonic Lodge A Masonic lodge (also called Freemasons' lodge, or private lodge or constituent lodge) is the basic organisational unit of Freemasonry. It is also a commonly used term for a building where Freemasons meet and hold their meetings. Every new l ...

of the Grand Orient de France that was influential in organising French support for the

American Revolution The American Revolution (1765–1783) was a colonial rebellion and war of independence in which the Thirteen Colonies broke from British America, British rule to form the United States of America. The revolution culminated in the American ...

. A "Société des Neuf Sœurs," a charitable society that surveyed academic curricula, had been active at the Académie Royale des Sciences since 1769. Its name referred to the nine

Muses In ancient Greek religion and Greek mythology, mythology, the Muses (, ) were the Artistic inspiration, inspirational goddesses of literature, science, and the arts. They were considered the source of the knowledge embodied in the poetry, lyric p ...

, the daughters of Mnemosyne/Memory, patrons of the arts and sciences since antiquity, and long significant in French cultural circles. The Lodge of similar name and purpose was opened in 1776, by Jérôme de Lalande. From the start of the French Revolution in 1789 until 1792, Les Neuf Sœurs became a "Société Nationale". During the French Revolution, while the Académie Royale des Sciences et des Arts was drastically reorganised, two members of the lodge, Antoine Laurent de Jussieu and Gilbert Romme, in collaboration with Henri Grégoire, helped to organise a "Société Libre des Sciences, Belles Lettres et Arts", to subsidise what had become the Institut de France so as to keep the original influence of the "Neuf Soeurs" intact. (Hahn, 1971) The lodge was reconstituted under its original name in 1805, ceased operation from 1829 to 1836, and finally closed in 1848. Its former location is thought to be on the Rue de la Bûcherie on the Left Bank across from Notre-Dame. Its successive "Venerable Masters" of the first decade were

Benjamin Franklin Benjamin Franklin (April 17, 1790) was an American polymath: a writer, scientist, inventor, statesman, diplomat, printer, publisher and Political philosophy, political philosopher.#britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Wood, 2021 Among the m ...

(1779–1781), Marquis de La Salle (1781–1783), Milly (1783–1784), Charles Dupaty (1784), Elie de Beaumont (1784–1785), and Claude Pastoret (1788–1789) (Ligou, 1987).

The Americans

In 1778, the year

Voltaire François-Marie Arouet (; 21 November 169430 May 1778), known by his ''Pen name, nom de plume'' Voltaire (, ; ), was a French Age of Enlightenment, Enlightenment writer, philosopher (''philosophe''), satirist, and historian. Famous for his wit ...

became a member,

and

John Paul Jones John Paul Jones (born John Paul; July 6, 1747 – July 18, 1792) was a Scottish-born naval officer who served in the Continental Navy during the American Revolutionary War. Often referred to as the "Father of the American Navy", Jones is regard ...

also were accepted along with Jean Sylvain Bailly. Benjamin Franklin became Master of the Lodge in 1779, and was re-elected in 1780. When Franklin, after a long and influential stay in Europe, returned to America to participate in the writing of the Constitution, Thomas Jefferson a non-Mason took over as American Envoy. Jean-Antoine Houdon, a member of Les Neuf Sœurs, added Jefferson's marble bust to his corpus of works, which included busts of Franklin and General Lafayette. Jefferson persuaded Houdon to make his famous statue of George Washington, for which Houdon travelled to America in 1785. While Jefferson stayed in Paris, at the Maison des Feuillants, his neighbour was Jean-François Marmontel Secretary-for-Life of the Paris Academy of Sciences and another member of the Lodge. At the same time Jefferson's friend, American Founding Father

John Adams John Adams (October 30, 1735 – July 4, 1826) was a Founding Fathers of the United States, Founding Father and the second president of the United States from 1797 to 1801. Before Presidency of John Adams, his presidency, he was a leader of ...

, was the neighbour, at Auteuil, of Anne-Catherine de Ligniville, Madame Helvétius, who hosted the famous Cercle d'Auteuil where the influence of Les Neuf Sœurs was at its highest. In ''Mémoires pour servir à l'histoire du Jacobinisme'' (4 vol.,1797–1798) Abbé Barruel attributed membership to key figures of the French Revolution like Jacques Pierre Brissot (Barruel claims Brissot was a member of Neuf Soeurs, although Brissot wrote that he was initiated into a German Lodge but was never active) and Georges Danton.The French Revolution and the Bavarian Illuminati
at ''freemasonry.bcy.ca''. Retrieved 2011-10-24.

Members

(1694–1778) — Initiated on April 4, 1778, in Paris; his conductors were Benjamin Franklin and Antoine Court de Gébelin. He died the following month. His membership however was symbolic of the independence of mind Les Neuf Sœurs stood for. *

(1706–1790) *

(1747–1792) * Jean-Nicolas Démeunier (1751–1814) * Claude-Emmanuel de Pastoret (1755–1840) * Antoine Court de Gébelin (1725–1784) * Camille Desmoulins (1760–1794) * Louis-Marcelin de Fontanes (1757–1821) * Nicolas François de Neufchâteau (1750–1828) * Jean-Baptiste Greuze (1725–1805) * Jean-Antoine Houdon (1741–1828) * Nicolas Dalayrac (1753–1809) * Bernard de Lacépède (1756–1825) * Adrien-Nicolas Piédefer, marquis de La Salle (1735–1818) * Carle Vernet (1758–1835) * Jean-François Marmontel (1723–1799) * Pierre-Louis Ginguené (1748–1815) * Jacques Montgolfier (1745–1799) * Niccolò Piccinni (1728–1800) * Emmanuel Joseph Sieyès (1748–1836) * Nicolas Chamfort (1741–1794) * Joseph-Ignace Guillotin (1738–1794) * Dominique Joseph Garat (1749–1833) * Pierre Jean George Cabanis (1757–1808) *

Jérôme Lalande Joseph Jérôme Lefrançois de Lalande (; 11 July 1732 – 4April 1807) was a French astronomer, freemason and writer. He is known for having estimated a precise value of the astronomical unit (the distance from the Earth to the Sun) using measu ...

(1732–1807) * Nicolas Bricaire de la Dixmerie (1731?–1791) * Jean-Michel Moreau le Jeune (1741–1814) * Alexander Sergeyevich Stroganov (1733–1811) * Jean Sylvain Bailly (1736–1793) and

Marquis de Condorcet Marie Jean Antoine Nicolas de Caritat, Marquis of Condorcet (; ; 17 September 1743 – 29 March 1794), known as Nicolas de Condorcet, was a French Philosophy, philosopher, Political economy, political economist, Politics, politician, and m ...

(1743–1794) are often listed as members but no documentation exists as proof. * Eugenio Martin Izquierdo de Rivera y Lazaún (1776–?) * François Lays (1758–1831) Jean Baptiste Moulon de la Chesnaye

References

Notes

Sources

* Louis Amiable, ''Une loge maçonnique d'avant 1789, la loge des Neuf Sœurs'', comméntaire critique – Charles Porset, (Les Editions Maçonnique de France, Paris 1989) * Howard C. Rice Jr., ''Thomas Jefferson's Paris'' (Princeton : Princeton University Press, 1976) * Roger C. Hahn, ''The anatomy of a scientific institution: 1666–1803, the Paris Academy of Sciences'' (Berkeley : University of California Press, 1971) * Roger C. Hahn, "Quelques nouveaux documents sur Jean Silvain Bailly" in ''Revue d'Histoire des Sciences'' 8 (Paris,1955) pp. 338–353 * Daniel Ligou, ed. ''Dictionnaire de la franc-maçonnerie'' (Paris : Presses Universitaires de France, 1987) * De La Valette-Mombrun, ''Maine de Biran (1766–1824)'' (Paris 1914) * J.A.C. Sykes ''France in 1802'' (William Heinemann, London 1906)

External links

Les Neuf Sœurs (French and English)National Archives: To Benjamin Franklin From The Loge Des Neuf Soeurs (January 10th, 1780)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Les Neuf Soeurs Freemasonry in France 1776 establishments in France