A. I have declared the truth, and if any witnesses have deposed to the contrary, they have mistaken the meaning of my words; for I have never spoken on this subject to any but the workmen in my manufactory, and then only in the same sense conveyed by my replies.
Q. Not content with being a freemason, you have persuaded other persons to be received into the order, and to embrace the heretical superstitions and pagan errors into which you have fallen.
A. It is true that I have requested these persons to become freemasons, because I thought it would be useful to them if they travelled into foreign countries, where they might meet brothers of their order, who could assist them in any difficulty; but it is not true that I engaged them to adopt any errors contrary to the Catholic faith, since no such errors are to be found in freemasonry, which does not concern any points of doctrine.
Q. It has been already proved that these errors are not chimerical; therefore let M. Tournon consider that he has been a dogmatizing heretic, and that it is necessary that he should acknowledge it with humility, and ask pardon and absolution for the censures which he has incurred; since, if he persists in his obstinacy he will destroy both his body and soul; and as this is the first audience of monition, he is advised to reflect on his condition, and prepare for the two other audiences which are granted by the compassion and mercy which the holy tribunal always feels for the accused.
M. Tournon was taken back to the prison; he persisted in giving the same answers in the first and second audiences. The fiscal presented his act of accusation, which, according to custom, was divided into the articles similar to the charges of the witnesses. The accused confessed the facts, but explained them as he had done before. He was desired to choose an advocate, but he declined this, alleging that the Spanish lawyers were not acquainted with the masonic lodges, and were as much prejudiced against them as the public. He therefore thought it better for him to acknowledge that he was wrong, and might have been deceived from being ignorant of particular doctrines; he demanded absolution, and offered to perform any penance imposed on him, adding, that he hoped the punishment would be moderate, on account of the good faith which he had shown, and which he had always preserved, seeing nothing but beneficence practised and recommended in the masonic lodges, without denying or combating any article of the Catholic faith.
The fiscal consented to this arrangement, and M. Tournon was condemned to be imprisoned for one year, after which he was to be conducted under an escort to the frontiers of France; he was banished from Spain for ever, unless he obtained permission to return from the king or the holy office. During the first month of his imprisonment, he was directed to perform spiritual exercises, and a general confession; to spend half an hour every morning in reading the meditations on the book of spiritual exercises of St. Ignatius de Loyola, and half an hour in the evening in reading the considerations of Father John Eusebius Nieremberg, in his work on the difference between temporal and eternal; to recite every day part of the Rosary of Our Lady, and often to repeat the acts of faith, hope, charity, and contrition; to learn by heart the catechism of Father Astete, and to prepare himself to receive absolution, at Christmas, Easter, and Pentecost.
A private auto-da-fé was celebrated in the hall of the tribunal, in which M. Tournon appeared without the san-benito, and signed his abjuration, with a promise never again to attend the assemblies of the freemasons.
M. Tournon went to France, and it does not appear that he ever returned to Spain.
The society of freemasons has occupied the learned men, since the middle of the seventeenth century, and the number of fables which have been published concerning it have confused the subject, and done much injury to it. The mysterious initiations of this order first began to attract observation in England, during the reign of Charles I., who perished on the scaffold in 1649. The enemies of Cromwell and the republican system then established the dignity of grand master of the English lodges, to prepare the minds of the freemasons for the re-establishment of the monarchy. William III. was a freemason, and though the dynasty was changed by the accession of George I., it does not appear that freemasonry was suspected in England. It was introduced into France in 1723, and Ramsay, a Scotchman, established a lodge in London in 1728, giving out that the society had been founded in 1099, by Godfrey de Bouillon, King of Jerusalem; preserved by the Knights Templars, and brought to Edinburgh, where it was established by King Robert Bruce in 1314. In 1729 the order was introduced into Ireland. Holland received it in 1731, and the first lodges were opened in Russia in the same year: it appeared in Boston in America in 1733, and in several other towns of the New World, subject to England. It was also established in Italy in that year, and two years after freemasons were found at Lisbon.
I believe the first severe measure against the freemasons in Europe, was that which was decreed on the 14th of December, 1733, by the chamber of Police of the Chatelet at Paris: it prohibited freemasons from assembling, and condemned M. Chapelot to a penalty of six thousand livres, for having suffered them to assemble in his house. Louis XV. commanded that those Peers of France, and other gentlemen who had the privilege of the entry, should be deprived of that honour, if they were members of a masonic lodge. The grand-master of the Parisian lodges, being obliged to quit France, convoked an assembly of Freemasons to appoint his successor. Louis XV., on being informed of it, declared that if a Frenchman was elected, he would send him to the Bastile. However, the Duke d'Antin was chosen, and after his death, Louis de Bourbon, prince of Conti, succeeded him. Louis de Bourbon, duke de Chartres, another prince of the blood, became grand-master.