Romanian Freemasonry
Brief history of Freemasonry in Romania
Masonry as we know it today, has arrived in Romania at the beginning of 17th century, coming from Istanbul along with the ships used for transporting wheat, honey and rams to the capital of Ottoman Empire. On the land, it has come from Germanic countries.
Masonry is attested in documents from 1734, the First Grand Master being the ruler of Moldavia, Nicolae Mavrocordat, which has foreseen and started Masonic papers. Due to this, he has been forced to move to Principality of Muntenia. The officers of the first lodge are known to be the nobles.
The First Grand Lodge, has been installed in 1880, in Bucharest, today's capital of Romania.
In our Masonic history there still are white stains. Consequently, tsarist armies have brought lodges on Romanian territory, even the great poet Puskin being a member of one of these lodges.
It is relevant the fact that Romanian people, the nation is a religious one. We have two kinds of holidays, some Christian, others pre-Christian. The nation, as we mentioned before, is profoundly traditionalist. Through here, to the gates of Orient, as Poancare has once said, many nations have passed.
We quote only the Celts that reveal that two hundred years before the Christian era, the Celtic language has been the diplomatic language of our ancestors.
In the Ritualistic and Masonic Research Lodge, which is part of the National Grand Lodge of Romania, we make great efforts to enlighten the white stains, which we have mentioned before.
The Romanian nation has always thought of itself as the little sister of the glorious France. Bucharest and all the big cities, all our intellectuality are all francophone.
Our great painters have been educated in the spirit of the Barbizon school.
Brancusi, which has renewed the sculptural concept has become the artist he was, inside the French artistic environment.
In the same way, Enescu recognized in the world as the most complete musician of the last century has been educated in France, country rich in geniuses as well as in revolutions, which have changed the very way of thinking of the world.
The contribution of French revolution has been immense. It is the germ of democracy.
There is no way of perceiving a mason but as a person, which is perfectible, which carries on his work in name of freedom, equality and fraternity.
These cardinal values of our contemporary world, we Romanians, we Romanian masons, have embraced them from France, the generous, eternal France.
During their restless history, the masons from Romania have always been sympathetic with the Romanian nation, with its destiny.
In the past century we have been, successively, through four dictatorships, come across Nazism and forty-five years of red night-years of spiked wire - preserving on our territory the masonic life, the verticalness of the very columns.
Modern Romania, contemporary Romania, has been created by Freemasons.
The union of Romanian Principalities have been conceived by masons, realized by brothers and proclaimed on January 24th, 1859 through the election of Ruler Alexandru Ioan Cuza, ruler over Moldavia and Muntenia.
Due to his wisdom and his loyal adviser Mihail Kogalniceanu, the Romanian Government had set free the monastery slaves, even before the United States set free the black people from slavery.
The ideas of freedom, equality, fraternity, the idea of Light born from Truth, the idea that man can become better, that is perfectible, has guided us through time.
The brothers in the territory are hungry for knowledge. We want masonry from Europe, which brings together so many cultures, to be a single block, to bring its contribution to the world, through polishing the raw diamond from all over Europe.
"Mare Nostrum" Mediterranean has been to us, through the Mediterranean civilization and culture, a target and an urge.
Facing Constantinople, elected to sit on the throne of the new Rome, the initiated emperor Constantine the Great has been to us a new model.
The exchanges have been permanent-the exchanges of goods and ideas-and the emperor has built two bridges across the Danube, which proves the importance he has shown to the territory today called Romania.
The National Grand Lodge of Romania is part of the Accepted Antique Scottish Rite. We have a deep respect for the religion, the faith in a single God, which we call the Grand Architect of the Universe.
We are, now, in front of a dramatic threshold of history. We have neither stepped from one century to another, nor from a millennium to another but into a new era.
The ontological mutations, the emotional mutations and even the supreme mutation itself, human-sacred mutation, raise for us the question of calling for a Convent on a global scale, in order to discuss the new situation, to increase the fighting against the "Evil" in the world, all these adding up to our intangible landmarks.
After the Extraordinary Convent, which took place in Brasov on April 13th and 14th, 2002, the National Grand Lodge of Romania wishes to carry on the work begun in 1880, work which, as we shown before, believing in the values of the Order and sacred nature of our mission, has maintained during the communist occupation the masonic life and the verticalness of columns in the territory.
We, the masons from Romania working under the Obedience of the National Grand Lodge of Romania, add to this high, opportune and useful goal, our whole effort, our belief, that humankind deserve to unite the efforts for a better future.
To create on a global level more safety for the individual, more understanding between nations, so that somewhere far in the tunnel of time to be able to see what now represents a hope: "Pax Masonica".
