Quatuor Coronati Lodge: Our Next Meeting
Quatuor Coronati Lodge meets five times a year on the second Thursday in November (Installation); third Thursday in February; second Thursday in May; fourth Thursday in June; and second Thursday in September. Lodge meetings are usually held at Freemasons’ Hall, Great Queen Street, London, and open at 4.00pm.
The United Grand Lodge of England requires those attending QC Lodge meetings, whether members of QCCC or otherwise, to be a member of a lodge under UGLE’s jurisdiction or members of lodges in Masonic jurisdictions recognised by UGLE. We wear undress regalia (Craft), dark suit and tie. Where we host non-masonic speakers or open the lodge to non-Masons, we close or call the Lodge off for the lecture and at that point welcome everyone to attend. There is no formal dress code for visitors on such occasions.
Thursday, 11 September 2025
‘Freemasonry and the Enlightenment: Insights from the Debate on the Eleusinian Mysteries’
The Meeting will be at 4.00pm at Freemasons’ Hall, Great Queen Street, London
How did we get from a late seventeenth-century European world in which pagan gods were explained as corrupted versions of various biblical narratives to a late eighteenth-century one in which the opposite could be claimed: that Christianity was pagan in its deepest origins? This paper will argue that it was through the reception of the Eleusinian mysteries in eighteenth-century British, French and German thought that the history of religion came to be written in this new way.
For the antiquarian freemasons William Stukeley and Andrew Michael Ramsay, in particular, they contained traces of a prior revelation of Christianity to Adam and the biblical patriarchs, the remnants of which they believed were contained in Masonic ritual. In Masonic thought of the second half of the eighteenth century they played a dual role; for the French physiocrat Antoine Court de Gébelin they were evidence of primitive deism, a view he shared with Voltaire, and the ultimately social purpose of religion; and for the German philologist Johann August Starck, these ‘deist’ origins contained a seed which was essentially ‘Christian’ and which had evolved into Christianity over time.
These debates revise our understanding of the process of Enlightenment and the influence of Freemasonry upon it, foregrounding attempts to reconcile the rise of modern paganism with ideals of ancient Christianity within the broader transformation of historical consciousness.
The Lecture is open to non-Masons, who will be admitted at around 4.30pm.
The Speaker
Dr Ferdinand Saumarez Smith
Ferdinand Saumarez Smith, PhD (2022), King’s College London, is a historian of ideas and religion and the director of Factum Foundation for Digital Technology in Preservation in the UK. He has curated exhibitions and organised cultural preservation projects worldwide.
The Summons is available here: QCL Summons-September 2025-Final
Please notify the Lodge Secretary if you will be attending: secretary@quatuorcoronati.com. It is sufficient to give your name, rank and Lodge. Everyone is entitled to attend, from EA onwards.
The paper will be available here before the meeting.
Delivery papers (with the exception of the Installation paper), are available to members of QCCC prior to each meeting. Papers are copyright and may not be reproduced.
Comments and questions on delivery papers should be sent via email to editor@quatuorcoronati.com for publication in AQC.
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We look forward to welcoming members of QCCC to all our meetings and members and visitors are invited to stay afterwards and chat informally with the speaker and members of the Lodge. Click Here to Book.
