Secret culture, public culture and a secular moral order: Masonry and antimasonry in Massachusetts (1826-1832), the Third French Republic (1884-1911), and the Russian Empire (1906-1910)

Modern Freemasonry emerged in the early eighteenth-century as part of European Enlightenment culture and gradually spread to the American continent. Masonry immediately aroused suspicion and continues to evoke controversy today. This study documents the development and maturation of lodge principles during the eighteenth century and then moves to specific periods of conflict between masons and antimasons in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It is a comparative history of Freemasonry and antimasonry in the Russian Empire just after the Revolution of 1905, in France during the early decades of the Third French Republic, and in Massachusetts, 1826-1832. During each of these periods, in each area, antimasons coalesced to close lodge doors. Antimasons achieved temporary successes in two of the three cases. This study explains why antimasonry emerged as a political phenomena common to early constitutional states in the context of expanding male, suffrage rights, and an emerging market economy. It frames a dialogue between masons and antimasons concerning politics, religion, science, economics and morality, through an analysis of masonic and masonic presses and published works. Debate between masons and antimasons centered around new definitions of the public sphere, the separation of Church and state, the role of the press, and proper public morality in an elective order