One individual whose reputation lies far from that of the archetypal Huguenot is John Jean Misaubin (1673-1734). It has been estimated that there were some 470 Huguenot refugee who practised the profession of medicine in England, from the beginning of the Reformation until the Huguenots ceased to seek refuge under the reign of George III. Dr John Misaubin was a fashionable ‘quack’ known to posterity thanks largely to the famous image of him by William Hogarth (1697-1764). He has been identified since contemporary times as ‘the thinner of the two doctors in Plate V of ‘A Harlot’s Progress’ published in 1732‘.
Here they are arguing the merits of their respective pills and potions whilst their patient Moll Hackabout, the Harlot, is dying of venereal disease, the reward of their calling.
Unsurprisingly, in the light of Hogarth’s striking and damning portrayal of medical incompetence, veniality and lack of humanity, all succeeding commentators over the years have repeated a pejorative refrain and called Misaubin a “notorious quack”.
Misabubin has a presence in another of Hogarth’s great modern moral subjects’ series, his ‘Marriage a la mode’ of 1743-45.
The meaning of this scene, the third in the series, has always been particularly obscure. The impoverished Count with his young girl friend is visiting a quack who has been said to be Misaubin with his ‘Irish wife’. But not only the image is not a physical representation of Misaubin, his wife Martha (Marthe) Angibaud, was too a French Huguenot. Hogarth’s reference to Misaubin lies in the setting, thought by some commentators to represent Misaubin’s museum at 96, St Martin’s Lane. Here are shown two machines; one for pulling corks and the other for reducing dislocated shoulders! The open folio on the machines reads: ‘Explication de deux machines superbes l’un pour remettre l’épaules l’autre pour servir de tire bouchon inventés par Mons de la Pillule… — vues at approuvées par l’academie des Sciences a Paris’. The other specific reference to Misaubin is the dummy with the long wig in the cabinet indicated by the Count’s cane. Misaubin lived at this address only from 1732 until his death there in 1734.
Comte de Cagliostro, an enigmatic figure of the Age of Enlightenment, whose identity and motives are still up for deliberation, inspired both Alexander Dumas to write the novel The Memoirs of a Physician and Goethe’s five-act play Deer Gros-Cophta.
The world is divided over whether he was an adventurer, a compassionate individual who used his profound knowledge of alternative medicine to help the sick, a teacher of the occult, or a charlatan who preyed on gullible rich people. Some identify the Comte de Cagliostro with the Jesuit raised fraudster Giuseppe Balsamo from Palermo, Sicily; others think he was the Comte de Saint-Germain, an alchemist who had discovered the secret for ubiquosity–being in more places at the same time – and eternal life.
Whatever you may believe, there is little doubt, however, that Cagliostro’s power to seduce has lasted the test of time. He said: “The truth about me will never be written because nobody knows it”.
As for whence he came, he declared: “I am not of any time or any place; beyond time and space my spiritual being lives an eternal existence (…) my country is wherever my feet stand at that moment.”
On December 27, 1789, the self-styled Comte de Cagliostro was arrested in Rome and taken toCastel Sant’Angelo, where he was held until his trial before the Holy Inquisition Tribunal. He received the death penalty, which was later commuted to life imprisonment at the Forte San Leo, where he passed away on August 26, 2006, six years later. However, neither his grave nor body has ever been found.
The Holy Inquisition and Comte de Cagliostro
The self-styled Count was the founder of a new Masonic Order he called Egyptian under whose roof he attempted to bring both the Masonic movement and Christianity.
He founded the Mother Lodge of Egyptian Masonry in Lyons in 1784/86.
Cagliostro, the Grand Priest (Copt) of the Order, promised that he could lead his disciples to perfection and heal their bodies and souls. The philosopher’s stone would give his adepts immortality, the sacred talisman of the Pentagon promised them the obtain that innocence of spirit and perfection that belonged to Adam, the primal man.
THE TWO PROPHETS
According to legend, Comte de Cagliostro’s Egyptian Rite was inspired by the belief of immortality held by the prophets Enoch and Elias. Enoch, the seventh descendant of Adam (Jude 1:14), is said to have been “translated (by God) (so) that he should not experience death and he was never been found” (Heb. 11:5).
The term translated implies that Enoch was taken somewhere other than Heaven, which is a place where God dwells and where only a soul of the highest purity, such as Jesus Christ’s, can be allowed access.
London was the 18th century wonder capital of Europe. It had been rebuilt following the Great Fire of 1666 and had an extremely new look. The merchants had withdrawn from the City and moved into fashionable terrace houses in the parishes of Soho, Mayfair, and in St. James, which had broad streets and paved squares.
And yet, London continued to be surrounded by miasma and be a city broadly tarnished by horse-dung. In the absence of an adequate sewerage structure, many servants still discharged their master’s chamber pot upon the heads of passersby and because of the coal burning in the fireplaces, layers upon layers of black soot coated the buildings and made the air not healthy to inhale. Violence and street crime were rampant.
THE WORLD OF THE OPERA IN LONDON
It was in this almost surreal habitat that deep connections were established between Freemasonry and the world of music, and they have never been stronger than during those years.
With the upper social classes having so much available time in hand and a strong love for entertainment, London turned into a Mecca for foreign artists. Since 1708, the Italian Opera had been constantly performing, with varying fortunes, at the Queen’s Theater in Haymarket, London, which is now called Her Majesty’s Theater. Built in 1705 and renamed the King’s Theater in 1714 upon the ascension to the throne of Great Britain of the German born George I (1626-1727), the theater also became identified for a period as The Italian Opera House.
The ceaseless comings and goings of French, German and Italian musicians, singers and impresarios continued strongly into the following century and the King’s Theater audience was never entertained with as many comic operas as it was in the season 1768-69.
The international artists all detested the English climate, which brought them colds and fevers, but they never regarded this poor factor as a reason for not coming back if awarded a contract. Aliens had also learned to put up stoically with the infamously atrocious English food and an Italian representative of the 1763 King’s Theater recounted his experience of it in these terms:
“In this expensive metropolis, we poor Christians are reduced during Lent to the melancholy alternative of either fasting like our founder, or living on rotten eggs, stinking fish, train-oil, and frost-bitten roots and herbage’’.
The old King’s Theater
The current Her Majesty’s Theater
HOSTILITY TOWARDS FOREIGNERS
The Italian literatus Giuseppe Baretti (1719-1789), compiler of the first English-to-Italian vocabulary, devoted most of his life in London and denounced the poverty that existed among Italian singers in London, which was created by inadequate earnings and exceedingly costly existence. He did so in a letter printed in The Public Ledger of 16 September 1760, which received this response:
“We can now see into the penury and meanness of those who have gained thousands by our folly and extravagance – we know, while in England. how miserably they live, because they will save all they can to spend in their own country; (…) such is their hatred of the nation that caresses them, that if it were possible to live upon the dirt or filth of the streets, they would rather do it than the least farthing should come back again into an Englishman’s pocket“.
The London society, had always harbored animosity towards aliens–the 1666 Great Fire of London was attributed on a French catholic, after all – and accused the Italians of avarice for their meager spending, neglecting that the aristocrats kept artists waiting around without work or payment for days or even weeks at a time. They did not understand the struggles the touring musicians suffered and would not have cared less even if they did.
Samuel Johnson declared that in London one discovered the “full tide of human existence,” and that although the Capital of England was “a place with a diversity of greed and evil (…) slight vexations do not fix upon the heart” of its residents. In my opinion, he never asked them.
THE NINE MUSES LODGE
Networking was an important chore for all the foreigners who visited England, whether they were artists, merchants, aristocrats, or rich gentlemen. At best, it assured admittance into affluent and patrician circles, at worst it guaranteed contracts and even a profitable office.
And what better way to network than by joining a Masonic Lodge?
On January 14, 1777, these individuals convened in the Thatched House Tavern on St. James’s Street, Westminster–which at the time was regarded as being part of the County of Middlesex – and on the 23rd, after securing a warrant, formed the Lodge of the Nine Muses No. 502.
Sir Bernard Henry Spilsbury was the most distinguished medical detective in England and a Freemason, like some of his colleagues and the criminals he helped bring to jail. Only the imaginary character of Sherlock Holmes exceeds him in popularity.
Spilsbury was responsible, with Scotland Yard, for the introduction of the “Murder Bag” following the “Crumbles murder” case in 1924. Patrick Mahon had killed Emily Kaye, his lover, and then dismembered her body and when Spilsbury arrived on the murder scene, he was surprised to find investigators picking up body parts with their bare hands. As a result, he devised a kit consisting of a collection of instruments – tweezers, evidence bags, and other items -which forensic detectives presently still use.
Spilsbury was also responsible for establishing the character of the “legal expert” by integrating pathology and cause-of-death examinations into the legal criminal context.
— *** —
Bernard Henry Spilsbury was born on January 16, 1877, in Leamington Spa, Warwickshire, England and was one of four offspring from the union between Marion Elizabeth Joy and James Spilsbury, a chemist. Bernard adopted his father’s passion for science but – according to the crime author Michael J Buchanan-Dunne – he also absorbed his coldness, arrogance and lack of empathy. After receiving home education, at the age of nine Bernard was sent to boarding school for three years and at the age of 15, with his parents living in Crouch End in London, he went to study chemistry, physics and biology at the Owen’s College in Manchester.
In 1895 Bernard Spilsbury enrolled at the Magdalen College, Oxford and earned his BA in natural science in 1899. He subsequently attended St. Mary’s Hospital Medical School in Paddington’s Praed Street, London, where he meant to qualify as a general practitioner. Instead, he went on to study pathology and never repented.
Julia Apraxin was initiated into a Masonic lodge called “Fraternidad Iberica” (Brotherhood of Iberia) in Madrid in 1880. Although born in Vienna, she felt also Hungarian, owing to her upbringing in that country and the possibility that his Hungarian foster father was, in fact, her biological parent. “Doña Julia de Rubio y Guillén, Condesa de Apratxin” was admitted into the lodge Fraternidad Ibérica (Brotherhood of Iberia) of the Grande Oriente Nacional de España (National Grand Orient of Spain) in Madrid on June 14, 1880, in accordance with contemporary Spanish Masonic protocol. The letter “t” in the countess’ surname appears to have been a slip of the pen.
Seoane, the Grand Master of the National Grand Orient of Spain, gave his authorization to initiate her by citing the lady’s gallant services for the French army as official chronicles evince. The lodge minutes show a considerable participation of Freemasons to the function and that Countess “Apratxin” adopted for herself the name “Buda.”[1] Julia Buda was merely one of the many aliases that the Countess used in her life; she had been inspired to it by the name of the former Capital city of Hungary, Buda[2], one of her places of residence and activities.
Julia’s mother had met Count József Esterházy in 1828, and after her first husband had divorced her, the two wed in 1841. Count Esterházy – we know from his diary – regarded Julia to be his own daughter.
Julia Apraxin was born on October 16, 1830, in Vienna, the registered offspring of Count Alexandre Petrovich Apraxin, a Russian noble and diplomat, and Countess Hélène (Ielena) Bezobrazova, a Polish-Russian aristocratic. Julia spent her childhood and adolescence in Vienna and at the Esterhazy Castle in Cseklész, near Pozsony (today Pressburg, Bratislava), with her parents and brother Demeter .
On October 15, 1849, she married CountArthur (Artúr) Batthyány. The couple had five children and for about ten years settled in Vienna, where they lived the glamorous life of high society, attending balls, dances, masquerades, and enjoying drives in their private carriage.
The British philosopher, essayist, social critic and Freemason Bertrand Russell, who is best known for his work in mathematical logic and analytic philosophy wrote in “the Scientific Outlook” in 1931:
Lord B. Russell
On those rare occasions, when a boy or girl who has passed the age at which it is usual to determine social status shows such marked ability as to seem the intellectual equal of the rulers, a difficult situation will arise, requiring serious consideration. If the youth is content to abandon his previous associates and to throw [himself] whole-heartedly with the rulers, he may, after suitable tests, be promoted. But if he shows any regrettable solidarity with his previous associates, the rulers will reluctantly conclude that there is nothing to be done with him except to send him to the lethal chamber before his ill-disciplined intelligence has had time to spread revolt.
George Weifert – Djordje Vaifert (1850-1937) – is arguably the most distinguished promoter of Serbian Freemasonry. His Masonic career, spanning some forty-seven years (1890-1937), is the story of the beginnings of Serbian and Yugoslavian Freemasonry, of its growth and of the turbulent times in which it existed.
Weifert was the first Master of one of the original Lodges in Serbia[1], Sovereign Grand Commander of the Supreme Council of Serbia[2], Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of Serbs, Croats and Slovenians-Yugoslavia (Velika Loza Srba, Hrvata/Slovenaca-Jugoslavija)[3], from its founding in 1919 till 1933, and a Sovereign Grand Commander of the Supreme Council of Yugoslavia Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite from 1919 till 1937[4].
During Weifert’s time, the Balkan Peninsula was a hotbed of religious, ethnic, and political conflict, as indeed it still is today, and in which everybody seemed to be involved. Many members of the Craft held eminent positions in political, economical and cultural life. Many of them often failed to distinguish between their professional obligations, patriotic duty and Masonic activity. This made Freemasonry in Serbia an easy target for anti-Masonic propaganda. George Weifert recognized this problem early on. As a leader in Serbian Freemasonry, he always insisted on keeping religion and politics separate from the Craft and out of the lodge, despite the fact that this was to prove an almost impossible task.
Let us but examine Weifert’s history and we will see that he was a true builder, a man of vision, an example of a freemason who lived what he taught, and a true ‘pillar’ of Freemasonry.
HIS EARLY YEARS
Weifert was born in Pancevo on 15 June 1850. His father and mother – Ignjat and Ana Weifert – were both German, Catholic and citizens of Hungary, which was at that time a part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire[5]. Pancevo was a small Hungarian border town on the banks of the river Danube, populated with a mix of German, Hungarian and Serbian merchants and artisans. On the opposite bank of the Danube stood Belgrade the commercial centre and capital of the newly emerging kingdom of Serbia, at that time still formally a part of the dying Ottoman Empire[6].
Weifert’s grandfather moved to Pancevo in the beginning of the 19th century, trying his luck first as a wheat merchant and then as a brewer of beer. In order to improve his business he sent his son Ignjat to Munich, where he spent time working and studying beer production in the famous Spatenbrau Brewery. Upon his return home, Ignjat Weifert and his father built the largest brewery in Pancevo, still in existence today[7]. In 1865 they rented an existing brewery [8] in Belgrade, and started production there in order to avoid the cost of transporting the beer from Pancevo to Belgrade.
Djordje Vaifert (George Weifert)
Young Weifert attended the German Elementary School and the Hungarian High School in Pancevo, after which his father sent him to Budapest, where in 1869 he graduated from the Merchants Academy. In accordance with the family business needs, he then attended the Agricultural School in Weihenstofen, near Munich, where he concentrated his studies on beer production technology. After graduation in 1872 he returned to Belgrade, in order to help with his father’s rapidly growing business.
The second half of the 19th and early part of the 20th century was a period characterized by the coming into this world of many brilliant individuals who shone in the liberal arts. Bram Stoker was a writer and a Freemason who earned his stand by leaving us the immortal legacy of the successful gothic novel Count Dracula.
Stoker was born in Dublin in 1847 and attended Trinity College, where he received a bachelor’s degree in science in 1870 and a Master in mathematics later. He confessed that until he was seven years of age he could not properly stand up and yet he recovered and turned into a strong, hearty, athletic man, with an immense appetite for work and a remarkable appearance.
Stoker begun his career in the Irish civil service , working as a clerk in the Registrar Office of Petty Sessions in Dublin Castle. But his passionate interest in the dramatic art lead him to do unpaid work as a theatre critic for the Dublin Evening Mail.
Bram Stoker
In Dec 1876, following a performance of the Hamlet that he attended and brilliantly reviewed, Stoker was invited to meet the lead actor. The event marked the beginning of a 28 years association of Stoker with the most dominant, in every sense of the word, personality of his life, the legendary English actor John Henry Broadribb , better known with the stage name of Henry Irving.
John Henry Broadribb alas John Irving
When in 1879 Irving invited Stoker to manage both his performing career and the running of the Lyceum Theatre in Covent Garden, London, Stoker dropped everything in Dublin and run to assist – literally and in everything – the man he worshipped and who in turn exploited the situation to his advantage.
Samuel Johnson, regarded as one of the greatest English figures of 18th-century life and letters, once said of the celebrated poet and author Geoffrey Chaucer , defined by some as the father of English literature, that he “took much from the Italians”. He was of course referring to Chaucer’s “Canterbury Tales”, a set of twenty four stories very much inspired by the “Decameron”, an original work by the Italian writer and poet Giovanni Boccaccio.
Petruccio Ubaldini was an Italian exile who arrived in England from Florence in 1545 and was known for his account in Italian, of the English victory over the Spanish Armada. The Tudor Queen , Elizabeth I, liked Petruccio so much as to give him a pension.
The English writer Daniel Defoe–creator of the novel Robinson Crusoe and of A Journal of the Plague Year in London in 1665 – championed not just the Italians but all newcomers to England. In 1709 he wrote:
opening the nation’s doors to foreigners, has been the most direct and immediate reason of our wealth and… has brought us from a nation of slaves and mere soldiers to a rich, opulent, free and mighty people
But sadly the mood against the foreigners was hardening and the conservative Parliamentary members of the day– history constantly repeats itself! – soon began denouncing the presence of the aliens as a threat and a drain on the resources of the Nation.
Italian literature was barely known in England before the first half of the 18th century, when Giuseppe Baretti, a friend of Dr Johnson, began championing the Italian literary cause during his exile here. The first Italian-into-English dictionary was the creature of his labour.
Dr Johnson and Giuseppe Baretti
Other Italians – and they can be counted in the hundreds – who achieved success and fame in England were:
Giovanni Battista Cipriani ; founder member of the Royal Academy and a Freemason.
Antonio Canal from Venice (better known as Canaletto) , who devoted a decade in Soho in 1746 to painting the Grand Canal from memory.
Giacomo Casanova, a famous philosopher, philanderer and Freemason who came to London in 1763 with the intention of establishing a Lottery and repeat the success he had had in France with it .
In Georgian England, Italian actors, dancers and singers performed in theatres as part of the Opera Buffa and Italian jesters were always present at local Fairs. The most celebrated comic entertainer of the time was Giuseppe Grimaldi.
In conclusion, aside from representatives of the performing arts, Italy also exported to England bankers, theatre impresarios, music virtuoso [1] and from the medical field , the Chevalier Ruspini, a surgeon-dentist who won the confidence of a King and the love and respect of the population of this island for his skill, medical care and sincere benevolence.
BARTOLOMEO RUSPINI
Bartolomeo Ruspini was born in 1728/1730 at Romacoto (Bergamo), a village about 40 miles north-east of Milan, Italy. His father Andrea came from the village of Grumello (Bergamo) and was a minor member of a patrician family that originated from the ancient Italian region of Como. He was ‘the eldest of the eight children of Giovanni Andrea Ruspini (1707–1769) and his wife, Bartolomea (1708–1788.)
Bartolomeo claimed to have qualified as a surgeon in Bergamo in 1758, and to have trained under Pierre Fauchard (January 2, 1679–March 21, 1761) who was a French physician, credited as being the “father of modern dentistry” and the Court dentist of Louis XV of France who suffered with dental abscesses. Ruspini self-styled himself as a specialist “surgeon-dentist” and commenced practicing in England around 1750, initially in Bath and Bristol and later in London.
The limited and expensive medical relief that doctors provided before Nations set up free healthcare systems for their people, cleared the way for opportunistic shady individuals to take over the “poor man” territory. Fear and pain made people turn to quackery and its fake remedies.
In her autobiographical work Herzens-Geschichten, Elisa von der Recke lavishes praise on the formative influence of her stepmother, Agnes Elisabeth von Medem, who took charge of her upbringing and education in her eleventh year. According to von der Recke, it was at this time that her stepmother was shocked to discover that she could barely read or write, as a result of living with her grandmother. [1] Consequently, Agnes ensured that Elisa lived with her father and stepmother. Thenceforth, an extremely close bond developed between Agnes and Elisa, with the latter describing how ‘my stepmother was the dearest to me on earth’ and how her words ‘were like gospel to me”[2]. This intimate emotional relationship was reinforced by Agnes’s astute tutelage of her stepdaughter. As Elisa records, her stepmother had a famed talent for composing poetry in Courland, and was keen to impart her knowledge of literature and plays to her protégé. Indeed, Agnes asked Elisa to learn verse by heart and the pair would read novels and plays together. [3] At the time of her initiation as a Scottish Mistress Mason in May 1779, Agnes von Medem was in her early sixties. Once again the writings of Elisa von der Recke furnish us with valuable information about her stepmother’s involvement in Cagliostro’s adoptive lodge at this time.
Thus, we learn from von der Recke that Cagliostro allowed Agnes to attend his lectures and to participate in magical experiments in the adoptive lodge prior to her initiation into the order. Indeed, in her memoirs von der Recke writes that she asked Cagliostro why he had made an exception to the rule in allowing her stepmother to attend lodge meetings. In reply Cagliostro is said to have argued that every member must be treated according to their character.[4] In other words, it would seem that Cagliostro recognized the intellectual prowess of Agnes von Medem and wanted to encourage her participation.
Elisabeth von der Recke
Consequently, after Agnes had attended numerous lectures and magical experiments during lodge meetings, von der Recke notes that ‘after three weeks we travelled again to Alt-Auz [the Medem country estate at Wilzen] because Cagliostro himself, prior to his journey to St. Petersburg, wanted to initiate my stepmother (now deceased) and other members who had a capacity for magic into the Lodge of Adoption’.[5] His apparent aim was to ‘gradually initiate them into the sacred mysteries’, which was seemingly not such a slow process, as von der Recke describes how the new members were “given the third degree” at this meeting.[6] The initiation ceremony was then followed by a lecture on the dangers and beneficial influences of magic and a séance involving Elisa’s nephew in the guise of a spirit conduit.
Did Agnes Elisabeth von Medem’s intellectual curiosity, combined with her venerable age, lead to her being initiated into the higher degree of Scottish Mistress Mason?
Unfortunately, von der Recke’s memoir does not enlighten us on this matter. However, what is apparent from von der Recke’s autobiography and memoir, regarding her stepmother, is that Agnes von Medem possessed a dynamic thirst for knowledge, which she shared with her stepdaughter and that did not go unnoticed by Cagliostro. This intellectual prowess may well account for the honour bestowed upon Agnes Elisabeth by Cagliostro in initiating her as a Scottish Mistress Mason.
To provide the best experiences, we use technologies like cookies to store and/or access device information. Consenting to these technologies will allow us to process data such as browsing behaviour or unique IDs on this site. Not consenting or withdrawing consent, may adversely affect certain features and functions.
Functional
Always active
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
Preferences
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
Statistics
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes.The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
Marketing
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.
