314 Book Reviews / ARIES 13 (2013) 289321

Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2013 DOI: 10.1163/15700593-13130212

Jan A.M. Snoek, Initiating Women in Freemasonry: Te Adoption Rite (AriesBook Series 13), Leiden & Boston: Brill 2012. xviii + 518 pp. ISBN 978-90-04-21079-0

Although masonic historiography has soared in the last fy years, the interac-tion with womens studies has only just started. Even if the presence of womenwas acknowledged, thanks to the pioneer work produced by Le Forestier andlater Franoise Jupeau-Requillard and Gisle & Yves Yvert-Messeca, womensagency as such has only become an issue recently, following the seminal studiesby Alexandra Heidle and Jan SnoeksWomens Agency and Rituals in Mixed andFemaleOrders (Leiden: Brill 2008),Mire FedelmaCrosssGender and FraternalOrders in Europe, 13002000 (a collective work, Chippenham and Eastbourne:Palgrave Macmillan 2010) as well as Margaret Jacob and Janet Burkes articles(recently collected in Les Premires fanc-maonnes, Bordeaux: PUB 2010).In 2010 the Bordeaux symposium on the history of women and freemasonry

since the Enlightenment revealed the scope of the eld now open to schol-ars as more than fy papers were devoted to the issue and recently published(Ccile Rvauger and Jacques C. Lemaire, Les Femmes et la fanc-maonnerie desLumires nos jours, La Pense et les Hommes, [Bruxelles, 2011 & 2012, 2 vol.]).Yet in spite of major progress in the historiography of women and freema-

sonry, a gap remained, which Jan Snoeks new book has just bridged: no studyhad been exclusively devoted to the Adoption Rite as such.Te scientic qualityof thework is impeccable.Te authorwanted to test the theory of transfer of rit-ual which he formulated within the research programme on Ritual Dynamicsinitiated at the University of Heidelberg by the German Research Foundation(DFG). He beneted from the recent restitution of the Moscow archives (theFrench Masonic archives seized by the Nazis and recovered by the Soviet armyat the end ofWorldWar II) to the French masonic bodies, the Grand Orient deFrance and the Grande Loge de France. As the French adoption lodges were suc-cessively aliated to the two bodies those archives were essential. Furthermore,Jan Snoek was able to collect data from the Masonic Fund of the BibliothqueNationale de France, from the main European masonic libraries as well as fromprivate archives such as the minutes of the only lodge which still practises theAdoption Rite today, the Cosmos Lodge in Paris. Indeed, contrary to the otherstudies devoted to the adoption lodges, Jan Snoeks work does not examine theeighteenth century onlyalthough thebulkof the adoption lodges belong to theage of the Enlighenmentbut covers the whole range of lodges, some of themextant in the twentieth century and one in the twenty-rst century (Cosmos).As the author argues in favour of the transfer of ritual theory he success-

fully shows the impact of the Adoption Rite in the Netherlands, France, andmore marginally, Germany and Denmark and Sweden. He also endeavours to

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trace inuences in the British tradition, English, Scottish and Irish, Modernand Ancient as well as Harodim, which seems a little more hazardous how-ever. Admittedly the ritual of the French mainstream lodges was largely derivedfromand ofen exactly the sameas the ritual of the lodges belonging to theModern Grand Lodge (the ritual of the Ancient Grand Lodge largely informedthe ritual adopted by the United Grand Lodge but we are talking of post 1813Masonry). Very few French lodges, except the lodge in Saint Germain en Laye(the Jacobite lodge) was specically inuenced by the Harodim tradition.Besides, the French rite of adoptionwas specic andmanifold, as the author verysuccessfully demonstrates.Jan Snoeks book helps discard a certain number of prejudices concerning

Adoption lodges: the fact that they were exclusively French (although Frenchlodges represented the vast majority, some European examples have recentlybeen uncovered), that they came to an end with the French Revolution (YvertMesseca and Jupeau Requillard had proved that a new, allegedly dierent formof Adoption lodges emerged in the nineteenth century in France but Snoekprovides evidence stemming from the rituals themselves), and most of all thatthe sisters were under the absolute control of brothers within the lodges. Noscientic study had so far been devoted to the twentieth-century adoption lodgeswhoworkedunder the aegis of theGrandeLoge deFrance andwere the ancestorsof the currentGrande Loge Fminine de France, namely the two lodges called LeLibre Examen andNouvelle Jrusalem.Jan Snoeks major achievement has been to take stock of all the existing rituals

of adoption and thus show their incredible wealth, not only in terms of num-bers but also in quality. Snoek has successfully highlighted the dynamism andevolution of those rituals and so doing has proved that the women themselvestransformed those rituals and repeatedly enriched them. He carefully indenti-ed all those rituals, to undertake a minute analysis and was the rst to classifythem in dierent families. Te classication rests on the basis of the presenceor absence of a number of distinct features in the questions and answers fromthe catechisms of the rst three degrees (see Appendix F).Tus Snoek has estab-lished distinctions between categories of rituals which he has named as theCler-mont Family, the Guillemain de Saint Victor Sub-Family, Te Grand OrientFamily and mixed families. All in all, he has examined the rituals reproduced inover a hundred and thirty manuscripts.Jan Snoeks work is really a landmark in the history of womens agency in

freemasonry as it will now allow world scholars to rest their case on assertedfacts. Contrary to what generations of historians of masonryFrench for themost parthave repeated, namely that adoption lodges were sub-lodges, meantto compensate frustrated sisters who had failed to enter mens lodges, evidenceof the contrary has now emerged: the men and women who worked in those

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adoption lodgeswhich were both the ancestors of the modern womens lodgesand of the mixed orderswere adamant that women should not belong exclu-sively to the private sphere but should benet from the values of the Enlighten-ment. Te well-known apple ritual, in particular, was a way of exorcizingwomenso to speakfrom the original sin and thus of liberating them fromthe absolute control of theCatholicChurch andof emancipating them in the pri-vate as well as public sphere. Conversely one should avoid another pitfall, whichwould consist in adopting a candid approach to those lodges.Tewomenbelong-ing to the adoption lodges mostly belonged to the aristocracy, thus precludingany democratic interpretation of eighteenth-century masonrymale or femalefor that matter. Besides, several elements of those rituals would be consideredsexist today, such as the impossibility of initiating a woman during her menstru-ation or pregnancy. Jan Snoek provides the facts, as exhaustively as possible, thusopening new tracks of research for future scholarship. As a number of theses onwomensmasonry are underway, Snoeks workwill indeed be an essential startingpoint for them all.Tree indexes, of rituals, names and subjects, are provided, as well as a compre-

hensive bibliography of primary and secondary sources. Forty-two well-chosenillustrations complement the text in a very relevant way, enhancing the scienticand aesthetic quality of the whole.Fortunately a French translation (Le Rite dAdoption et l initiation des femmes

en fanc-maonnerie. Des Lumires nos jours, translation by George Lamoine,Paris:Dervy 2012) is also available for French readers at EditionsDervy, as admit-tedly the Lodges of Adoption were essentially a French phenomenon, largelyindebted to the Enlightenment. Yet the original English version published byBrill gives Snoeks work an international dimension and paves the way for newdiscoveries.Womenhave largely remained invisible in English-speakingmasonryand it is high time for scholars to follow Snoeks steps and uncover their pres-ence where it is least suspected. Of course wishful thinking should be avoided,the presence of women should not be invented where it did not exist and thescope of French masonry cannot be denied, but womens agency in other coun-tries, marginal as it was, should be acknowledged instead of occulted. Snoekswork has already largely contributed to this.

Ccile Rvauger