The clergy of the circus and the centurion

Bogumił M.Wozniakowski, Free thought ForumApril 2025. Illustration: The tombstone of Jerome Stroynowski in the Vilnius church of St. Johns

Among freelators operating on Polish lands, as well as in abroad lodges, we can find representatives of the Roman Catholic clergy; both high-ranking hierarchs and average priests or monks. This was not a large representation, the most (a fewer twelve people) belonged in the first period, that is, to the liquidation of the masonry in 1821.
Among them were specified prominent figures as the primate and the diocesan bishop.
The clergy of another Christian denominations did not lack, either, but they were incidents and were mainly representatives of Evangelical churches.
As a reminder: the first free-growing organizations appeared in the territory of the Republic of Poland as early as the 18th century, and the emergence of the Red Brotherhood in 1720 or 1721 can be assumed as their beginnings. But we know small about him, for the life of this structure was comparatively short. It is possible that the Brotherhood was related to Jacobic Masonry, or free-mural structures
created by Catholic English and Irish emigrants from the British Isles in any continental European countries. Their main goal was to return to the throne of the Catholic Stuart dynasty.
We have more information about the 3 brothers lodge created in Warsaw in 1729 and so this year is considered the beginning of the Royal Art in Poland. During the reign of King Stanislaw August Poniatowski, in the Duchy of Warsaw and in the first years of functioning of the Kingdom of Poland, the masonry experienced its top flourish.
The hostility of the Catholic Church to freemulation did not happen immediately, and this was due to purely cyclical causes. As I mentioned earlier, emigrants from the Islands who wanted the return of Stuarts played a major function in its development; they established lodges in Catholic countries specified as France, Spain, Poland or in the very centre of the Church State – Rome. For respective decades Papacy had been actively active in actions organized in defence of the challenger to the throne of British James II Stuart and his son, so it was kind to treat the improvement of the Jacobites. The Stuarts received the title of Catholic Kings of England from the pope, and the wife of James III, granddaughter of King John III Sobieski Clementine, title of Catholic Queen of England.
But when...

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