‎BIANCHI, ISIDORE.‎
‎Dell' instituto dei veri Liberi Muratori. - [A SEMINAL WORK IN ITALIAN FREEMASONRY]‎

‎Ravenna (but Cremona), Pietro Mart. Neri, 1786. 8vo. Uncut in the original printed wrappers. Wrappers with wear, spine with loss of paper. Front hinge weak. Internally very nice and clean. Printed on heavy paper. 137, (22) pp. + frontispiece. ‎

Reference : 63014

‎Exceedingly rare first edition of this early Italian Masonic tract - a seminal work of late 18th-century Italian Freemasonry, embodying the effort to reconcile Masonic sociability with Enlightenment ideals of equality, natural religion and universal brotherhood while simultaneously countering fears of political conspiracy. Following the crisis of the the American Revolution and the exposure of the Bavarian Illuminati, the work is a part of a broader attempt to redefine the cultural and political identity of the Order: ”In 1786, further confirmation of these ongoing changes appeared anonymously in a treatise (probably published by the Masonic editor Lorenzo Manini of Cremona) which was extremely indicative of the Masonic world’s growing need to find, as quickly as possible, a concrete and, above all, operative cultural and political identity with which to substitute the traditional and, more often than not, generic and inoffensive references to universal morality, to civic virtues, and to philanthropy. It was written by the Camaldolese priest Isidoro Bianchi in express response to the grave crisis of European Masonry in the wake of the conflict between radicals and moderates triggered by the American Revolution and the uncovering of the conspiracy of the Bavarian Illuminati, which had taken place two years earlier, and the consequent alarm it raised in governments everywhere. The text was to confront the grave accusation, which had been levied against the brotherhood, of making secrecy an ever new, terrible, and efficient political weapon, fuelling subversion and general protest. The little volume’s emblematic title, ”Dell’Instituto dei veri liberi muratori”, clarified the author’s precise will to furnish public opinion with yet another reassuring interpretation among the many which continued to appear in those years, particularly in Germany (it is enough to think of Lessing’s 1778 Ernst und Falk. Gespräche für Freimaurer), regarding the substantially apolitical nature and specifically moral tasks of Freemasonry. It was a kind of Enlightenment interpretation of the phenomenon, which sought to justify the sudden alliance established between worlds so different as that of the Enlightenment and that of the lodges, in light of a common search for a civil religion founded on a generic, primitive, and church-less Gnostic Christianity capable of profoundly reforming the Old Regime. An outcome of the ‘laws of sociability animating men,’ Bianchi argued that Masonry was born primarily to ‘bring man back to his original goodness’ and respect for his natural rights. Confronted with the historical development of Western society, ruled by ‘false and corrupt education, the excessive inequality of ranks and of fortune’s goods, the collision of so many different interests, the pride of power and the ambition of authority,’ the goal of the ‘Order of Freemasons’ was to rekindle ‘the providential and consoling laws of nature’ in the hearts of men. Apart from rendering him ‘humane, reasonable, and virtuous,’ Masonry’s task was to teach him the truth, and make him ‘better’ by educating him to attain the ‘most perfect morality.’ ‘The members of this respectable society,’ Bianchi explained, relaunching cosmopolitanism, are all brothers who do not distinguish themselves by the language that they speak, the clothes that they wear, the opinions that they have, their social roles, the goods that they possess. Equality is their first law, and they therefore consider the entire world a republic in which every nation forms a family, and every individual a son.” (Ferrone, Vincenzo: The Politics of Enlightenment: Constitutionalism, Republicanism, and the Rights of Man in Gaetano Filangieri ) OCLC list two copies, both in Italy.‎