Liber XXV · Secret Societies · Chapter I: Conspiracy Myths
Anti-Masonry: Papal Bans, the Morgan Affair and Persecution
The history of anti-Masonry: papal condemnations from 1738, the Morgan affair and Anti-Masonic Party, totalitarian persecution and modern suspicion.
Anti-Masonry is opposition to Freemasonry, ranging from religious condemnation and political campaigns to conspiracy theories and outright persecution. It is almost as old as organised Freemasonry itself: the papacy condemned the lodges in 1738, a murder scandal in New York produced America's first third party in the late 1820s, and twentieth-century dictatorships of right and left banned Masonry and imprisoned its members. Its history shows how secrecy, oaths and social exclusivity can make a fraternity a lightning rod for wider fears.
Early Suspicion and the Papal Condemnations§
The first Grand Lodge was founded in London in 1717 (see the Premier Grand Lodge of London), and within two decades Freemasonry had spread across Europe. Its novelty alarmed authorities. Men of different ranks and religions met privately, swore oaths of secrecy, and claimed a moral system independent of any church. Exposures such as Samuel Prichard's Masonry Dissected (1730) printed the rituals, and satirists mocked the "mysteries", but governments worried more about unsupervised assembly. The States of Holland banned lodge meetings in 1735, and several Swiss and Italian states followed.
On 28 April 1738 Pope Clement XII issued the bull In eminenti apostolatus specula, forbidding Catholics on pain of excommunication to join or support Masonic societies. The reasons it gave were the oath of secrecy, the mingling of men of every religion, and the suspicion that anything so carefully hidden must be wrong. Benedict XIV renewed the ban in Providas Romanorum (1751). Enforcement varied greatly: in France the bulls were never registered by the Parlement, and Catholic nobles and even priests continued to join lodges throughout the century. In Portugal, by contrast, the Inquisition arrested the Swiss-born jeweller John Coustos in 1743 and tortured him to extract the secrets of the craft; his account, The Sufferings of John Coustos (1746), became a Protestant classic.
The Catholic Church and Freemasonry After the Revolution§
After 1789 Catholic opposition hardened, fed by the claims of Augustin Barruel that the lodges had prepared the Revolution (see Barruel and the Jacobin conspiracy myth). Nineteenth-century popes repeatedly linked Masonry to revolutionary societies such as the Carbonari, and the Risorgimento, in which many Italian Masons fought to end the Papal States, confirmed the hostility. Leo XIII's encyclical Humanum genus (1884) described Freemasonry as part of a kingdom of Satan opposed to the Church and called for its exposure.
The conflict was sharpened in France, where the Grand Orient removed the obligatory belief in a Great Architect of the Universe from its constitution in 1877 and became closely tied to anticlerical republicanism. The United Grand Lodge of England broke relations with it, creating the lasting division between "regular" Masonry, which requires belief in a Supreme Being, and the liberal or "adogmatic" tradition. In 1904 the affaire des fiches revealed that the Grand Orient had compiled files on the religious practice of army officers for the War Ministry, a genuine scandal that seemed to vindicate Catholic suspicion.
Catholic anti-Masonry also produced one of the strangest frauds of the age. From 1885 the French writer Léo Taxil published lurid "revelations" of Luciferian worship in the higher degrees, invented a priestess named Diana Vaughan, and won a papal audience before confessing in 1897 that it had all been a hoax.
Canon law today§
The 1917 Code of Canon Law imposed excommunication on Catholics who joined Masonic societies. The revised Code of 1983 no longer names Freemasonry, but a declaration of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith issued in November 1983 stated that Masonic principles remain irreconcilable with Church doctrine and that Catholics who join are in a state of grave sin and may not receive Communion. The Vatican reaffirmed this position in 2023. Several Protestant bodies, including some Lutheran, Methodist and Baptist churches in the United States and Britain, have issued critical reports, and various Orthodox churches have also condemned membership. For the Masonic side of the question see Freemasonry.
The Morgan Affair and the Anti-Masonic Party§
The most consequential episode of popular anti-Masonry took place in western New York. In 1826 William Morgan, a stonemason of Batavia who had quarrelled with his local lodge, announced that he would publish the secret rituals. In September he was arrested on a petty debt charge, taken from the jail at Canandaigua by a group of men and carried to the disused Fort Niagara. He was never seen again, and it was widely believed, though never proved, that he had been drowned in the Niagara River. His exposé, Illustrations of Masonry, was published by his partner David C. Miller later that year.
The trials that followed ended in light sentences for a handful of Masons, and many people concluded that Masonic sheriffs, jurors and judges had protected their brothers. Outrage became a mass movement. Churches expelled Masonic members, newspapers were founded to campaign against the order, and in 1828 a political party formed around the cause.
The Anti-Masonic Party was the first significant third party in American history. In September 1831 it held the first national nominating convention, at Baltimore, and chose William Wirt as its presidential candidate for 1832; Wirt, himself a former Mason, carried only Vermont. Politicians such as William H. Seward, Thurlow Weed and Thaddeus Stevens made their careers in it, and former president John Quincy Adams wrote public letters against Masonic oaths. By the late 1830s the party had merged into the Whigs, but its effect on Masonry was severe: in New York the number of lodges collapsed from several hundred to a few dozen, and many grand lodges elsewhere lost most of their members for a generation. Historians such as Steven Bullock read the movement as a democratic reaction against a fraternity identified with local elites.
Totalitarian Persecution of Freemasons§
In the twentieth century anti-Masonry became state policy. Mussolini's regime outlawed secret associations in 1925, and the lodges of Italy were closed and their premises seized. In Germany, nationalist writers had long blamed Masons, together with Jews, for the defeat of 1918, drawing on the forged Protocols of the Elders of Zion. After 1933 the Nazi regime pressured the lodges to dissolve, completing the process by 1935, confiscated their archives and libraries, and staged anti-Masonic exhibitions. Masons were barred from party office, and some were sent to concentration camps, though the numbers who died specifically as Masons are hard to establish.
In occupied France the Vichy government dissolved secret societies in August 1940 and published the names of thousands of Masons in the Journal officiel, excluding them from public posts; a dedicated service under Bernard Faÿ exploited the seized archives. Franco's Spain passed a Law for the Repression of Freemasonry and Communism in 1940 and tried thousands of alleged Masons before a special tribunal, and Salazar's Portugal outlawed the lodges in 1935. Communist states were equally hostile: the Comintern in 1922 declared membership incompatible with communism, and Masonry was suppressed throughout the Soviet bloc until 1989.
Modern Anti-Masonry: Scandal, Suspicion and Conspiracy§
After 1945 anti-Masonry took two very different forms. The first concerns accountability. In Italy the discovery in 1981 of the membership list of Propaganda Due (P2), an irregular lodge led by Licio Gelli that included politicians, military officers and financiers, caused the fall of a government and led to a parliamentary inquiry; the Grand Orient of Italy had already suspended the lodge. In Britain, concerns about Masons in the police and judiciary led the government in 1998 to ask new judges to declare membership, a policy dropped in 2009 after legal challenge. Such debates turn on the ordinary question of whether private loyalties can conflict with public office.
The second form is conspiracy theory. Popular books and online material recycle the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century claims that Masons serve Lucifer, control governments, plan a "New World Order" or hide occult symbols in architecture and currency. These ideas usually descend, often unknowingly, from Barruel, Taxil and the Protocols, and they frequently blur into antisemitism (see conspiracy myths). Historians of Freemasonry distinguish carefully between the documented record of the lodges, which is extensive and largely mundane, and the imaginative literature that has grown up around them.
Frequently asked questions§
Why does the Catholic Church oppose Freemasonry?§
The Church objects to Masonic oaths of secrecy, to what it sees as religious indifferentism (treating all religions as equal under a vague Supreme Being), and historically to the anticlerical politics of some Continental lodges. Its 1983 declaration, reaffirmed in 2023, holds that Catholics who join commit grave sin and should not receive Communion.
What happened to William Morgan?§
William Morgan was abducted from Canandaigua jail in September 1826 after announcing an exposé of Masonic rituals, and he disappeared. Most contemporaries believed he was murdered by Masons, but his fate was never legally established and no body was conclusively identified.
What was the Anti-Masonic Party?§
It was an American political party formed after the Morgan affair, active from 1828 to the late 1830s. It held the first national presidential nominating convention in 1831, nominated William Wirt in 1832, and later merged into the Whig Party.
Were Freemasons persecuted by the Nazis?§
Yes. The Nazi regime forced German lodges to dissolve by 1935, seized their property and archives, barred Masons from party positions and promoted anti-Masonic propaganda linked to antisemitic conspiracy theories. Some Masons were imprisoned in concentration camps.
Sources and further reading§
- Masonry Dissected — Samuel Prichard, 1730
- The Sufferings of John Coustos for Free-Masonry — John Coustos, 1746
- Illustrations of Masonry — William Morgan, 1826
- The Antimasonic Party in the United States, 1826–1843 — William Preston Vaughn, 1983
- Revolutionary Brotherhood: Freemasonry and the Transformation of the American Social Order, 1730–1840 — Steven C. Bullock, 1996
- Handbook of Freemasonry — Henrik Bogdan and Jan A. M. Snoek, 2014
- The Craft: How the Freemasons Made the Modern World — John Dickie, 2020