Please enjoy this free audio podcast of Pierre Mollier's paper. He is the retire Director of Library, Museum and Archives of the Grand Orient of France.

From its introduction co Paris around 1725 until the end of the 1760s, French Freemasonry would repeatedly endeavor to organize itself It first recognized the authority of a Grand Master for France in 1728, thereby freeing itself from English tutelage. In 1735, it endowed itself with statutes, establishing a Grand Lodge for the first time. However, this First Grand Lodge did not seem to hold much authority over the lodges of the Kingdom. At regular intervals June 24, 1745; July 4, 1755; May 19, 1760; and April 17, 1763- it would try to establish its supremacy by promulgating statutes. Each of these texts insists on the authority it claims to have over the lodges of the kingdom, but to little effect. Until the 1760s, the lodges existed in semi-independence. Older lodges established newer ones and each corresponded with various others, depending on the circumstances. The unity of French Freemasonry could only be found in the fact that all recognized the Grand Master. From 1743 to 1771, he would be a prominent figure in Louis XV's France, namely, the Count of Clermont, a prince du sang. However, the rule of Louis de Bourbon-Conde was only a symbolic patronage and relatively distant, as was the custom during the Ancien Regime; the Grand Master never intervened in the management of the Order. It was, however, in his name that, in 1761, the first real attempt was made to establish a central authority over the lodges.

Pierre Mollier is a French historian and freemason, born in Lyon in 1961. A graduate of Sciences Po (Institut d'Études Politiques de Paris), he holds a master's degree in Religious Studies (École pratique des hautes études, section V, La Sorbonne).