HISTORY
Masonery as we know it today, has arrived in Romania at the beginning of 17th century, coming from Istanbul along with the ships used for transporting wheat, honey and rams to the capital of Ottoman Empire. On the land, it has come from Germanic countries.
Masonry is attested in documents from 1734, the First Grand Master being the ruler of Moldavia, Nicolae Mavrocordat, which has foreseen and started Masonic papers. Due to this, he has been forced to move to Principality of Muntenia. The officers of the first lodge are known to be the nobles.
The First Grand Lodge, with capitulary characteristics, has been installed in 1880, in Bucharest, today’s capital of Romania.
In our Masonic history there still are white stains. Consequently, tsarist armies have brought itinerate lodges on Romania’s territory, even the great poet Puskin being a member of one of these lodges.
It is relevant the fact that Romanian people, the nation is a religious one. We have two kinds of holidays, some Christian, others pre-Christian. The nation, as we mentioned before, is profoundly traditionalist. Through here, to the gates of Orient, as Poancare has once said, many nations have passed.
We quote only the Celts that reveal that two hundred years before the Christian era, the Celtic language has been the diplomatic language of our ancestors.
In the Ritualistic and Masonic Research Lodge, which is part of the National Grand Lodge of Romania, we make great efforts to enlighten the white stains, which we have mentioned before.
The Romanian nation has always thought of itself as the little sister of the glorious France. Bucharest and all the big cities, all our intellectuality are all francophone.
Our great painters have been educated in the spirit of the Barbizon school.
Brancusi, which has renewed the sculptural concept has become the artist he was, inside the french artistic environment.
In the same way, Enescu recognized in the world as the most complete musician of the last century has been educated in France, country rich in geniuses as well as in revolutions, which have changed the very way of thinking of the world.
The contribution of french revolution has been immense. It is the germ of democracy.
There is no way of perceiving a mason but as a person, which is perfectible, which carries on his work in name of freedom, equality and fraternity.
These cardinal values of our contemporary world, we romanians, we romanian masons, have embraced them from France, the generous, eternal France.
During their restless history, the masons from Romania have always been sympathetic with the romanian nation, with its destiny.
In the past century we have been, successively, through four dictatorships, come across Nazism and forty-five years of red night-years of spiked wire – preserving on our territory the masonic life, the verticality of the very columns.
Modern Romania, contemporary Romania, has been created by freemasons.
The union of Romanian Principalities have been conceived by masons, realized by brothers and proclaimed on January 24th, 1859 through the election of Ruler Alexandru Ioan Cuza, ruler over Moldavia and Muntenia.
Due to his wisdom and his loyal adviser Mihail Kogalniceanu, the Romanian Government had set free the monastery slaves, even before the United States set free the black people from slavery.
The ideas of freedom, equality, fraternity, the idea of Light born from Truth, the idea that man can become better, that is perfectible, has guided us through time.
The brothers in the territory are hungry for knowledge. We want masonry from Europe, which brings together so many cultures, to be a single block, to bring its contribution to the world, through polishing the raw diamond from all over Europe.
Mare Nostrum Mediterranean has been to us, through the mediteranean civilization and culture, a target and an urge.
Facing Constantinople, elected to sit on the throne of the new Rome, the initiated emperor Constantine the Great has been to us a new model.
The exchanges have been permanent-the exchanges of goods and ideas-and the emperor has built two bridges across the Danube, which proves the importance he has shown to the territory today called Romania.
The National Grand Lodge of Romania is part of the Accepted Antique Scottish Rite. We have a deep respect for the religion, the faith in a single God, which we call the Grand Architect of the Universe.
We are, now, in front of a dramatic threshold of history. We have neither stepped from one century to another, nor from a millennium to another but into a new era.
The ontological mutations, the emotional mutations and even the supreme mutation itself, human-sacred mutation, raise for us the question of calling for a Convent on a global scale, in order to discuss the new situation, to increase the fighting against the “Evil” in the world, all these adding up to our intangible landmarks.
After the Extraordinary Convent, which took place in Brasov on April 13th and 14th, 2002, the National Grand Lodge of Romania, noticing that there is corruption inside the great family, corruption that generates terrorism, stating in the Convent that this state has socio-political connotations with harmful effects across the society, wishes to carry on the work begun in 1880, work which, as we shown before, believing in the values of the Order and sacred nature of our mission, has maintained during the communist occupation the masonic life and the verticality of columns in the territory. 
We, the masons from Romania working under the Obedience of the National Grand Lodge of Romania, add to this high, opportune and useful goal, our whole effort, our belief, that humankind deserve to unite the efforts for a better future.
To create on a global level more safety for the individual, more understanding between nations, so that somewhere far in the tunnel of time to be able to see what now represents a hope: “Pax Masonica”.
Viorel Danacu
Grand Master
HISTORY
During 1911-1916, the romanian masonry had been into unofficial sleepiness, the workshops activity was limited, and many brothers have had huge concerns in 1916, Romania entered the First World War, and until 1918 it had been into sleepiness.
The grand master, Constantin Moroiu, being old, had several actions like: the war help that has been offered, the help for the widows, etc.
For certain, it exists funeral monuments, different objects, photographs, many from personal collections, other were lost, and most of them are to find in the Romanian state archives.
That’s why we have opened The Regional Center For Franc Masonic Studies Paris-Bucharest, exactly for us to apply for discovering and intercepting all that could have been left behind, after possible Masonic activities during that rough period of time.
1912-1913. the essay of United States of Europe is debate concomitant (especially after the beginning of the Balkan war) with the one of nationalities. This debate about nationalities takes to ample discussions into Unio Lodge and sometimes the opinions were contradictory. Without an unanimous decision, the point of view which say that the problem should be discussed -in the spirit of co-operation and understanding- on the path of “Europeanism” idea, had the advantage. The First World War stopped the discussions.
7 May 1913. The foundation of the Lodge “Progresul” from Bucharest, under the obedience of the Grand Orient Of France
21 May 1913. Under the Obedience of the Grand Orient Of France, the Lodge “La Travail” was found.
25 Aug. 1913. The sixth International Masonic Manifestation from Haga (Holland).
1/14 Sep. 1913. The foundation of the Supreme Lodge of Free Masons by Ancient Rite (by other source: The Romanian Reformed Grand Lodge). The note from which we’ve extract this information, also contains details about -the introduction- of the Free Masonry in Romania in 1912. The council of the Grand Lodge “Romania” (other name), which was chosen on a five years period of time, in the general meeting had the following components: Cezar Mateescu – Grand Master, N. Athanasiu – Deputy Grand Master, Al. Ionescu – adjustant, Constantin Petrescu – General Secretary, N. Georgescu si G. Dumitrescu – guards, G. Alexandrescu – orator.
From this Grand Lodge could have taken part the two workshops from Bucharest, one from Craiova, Pitesti, Ploiesti and other cities.
9 Sep. 1913. With an open letter, C.M. Moroianu, Grand Master of the Grand National Lodge of Romania – by that time the only National Suzerain Masonic Authority – shows that he was inform by the foundation of the Grand Lodge in the same evening when the Lodge was going to be found, and he declined their invitation to accept the degree of honorary grand master title, because he didn’t even know them. Then their gol (objective) was to successfully destroy (annihilate) the foreign lodges (around the country). Later, they would join the flag of the Grand Lodge of Romania. From the letter of C.M. Moroianu we discover, indirectly, the national character of the Grand Lodge. The Grand Master of the Grand National Lodge of Romania declares: “to that Grand Lodge compound only with romanian fellows, I will not try to stop them and neither the lodges from the Grand National Lodge of Romania, and I will refrain from any manifestations”.
1913. The Lodges “Amicitia” and “Memphis” got off from the obedience of the Grand National Lodge of Romania and change their name into “Le Travail” and “Le Progres” and pass into the obedience of the Grand Orient of France.
A medal attest the lodge “Die Arbeit” from Bucharest Orient. From the information that we have the lodge has been founded by Transylvanian romanians. That is why we do not think this lodge is the same with the lodge “Le Travail”. Both of them, in different languages, mean The Work. But now, usually the seal language is the Orient language from the obedience from where the lodge is, therefore we do not see why the lodge “Le Travail” would have wrote its name in german.
1913-1914. G. Bogdan-Duica (1866-1934), literary historian and dr. Nicolae Paulesc (1869-1931) – physiologist, the discoverer of insulin, both of the university teachers, fist one in Cluj, and the second in Bucharest, wrote in their notes about the Jews problem and they virulent attack the franc masonry, reporting it to the zionism.
THE OLD MASONIC CHARGES
THE LANDMARKS
VARIANT I
(Extract from the Constitution of The National Grand Lodge of Romania)
1. The existence of recognition modes;
2. The division of the Symbolic Freemasonry into three degrees;
3. The third degree legend;
4. The rule of an elected Grand Master;
5-8. The Grand Master’s prerogatives: to rule the assemblies, to grant exceptions, to open and to rule meetings in the Lodges, to make Freemasons “with the eyes” or “under sword”.
9. The obligation of the Freemasons to meet in Lodge;
10. The rule of the Lodge by the Worshipful Master and the two Wardens;
11. The obligation of the Lodge to work in secret;
12-14. The rights of the Freemasons: to be represented in all the general assemblies (others than those of the own Lodge), to appeal to the Grand Lodge against a decision made by its own Lodge, the right to visit other Lodges;
15. The obligation of verifying the Masonic Quality of a visitor;
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French
Romana