260 FROM THE ART OF BUILDING TO THE ART OF THINKING
refers to the Scottish master, the first of the high "Scottish" grades in
the way the term is currently understood. But this could well have been
its seed. It seems its growth took place in France and Germany. Properly
speaking, these high grades did not make their first appearance until
1734 under the names of Scots and Architects. The first knighhood
grade, the Knight of the Orient, did not appear until 1749.
In some of my other books, I have dealt at length with the forma-
tion and development of the high grades that are called "Scottish" and
have found nothing to suggest that the dynastic concerns of the Stuarts
brought them, or any other aspect of modern Freemasonry, into being.^15
Nonetheless, it has often been said that the Stuarts, despite the
decline of their political fortunes, ceaselessly took advantage of the high
grades of Freemasonry to facilitate their undertakings. The Jesuits are
said to have been their most active allies at infiltrating these higher
grades. At the same time, members of this religious order would have
acted in their own interests, especially after 1762 during the Seven
Years' War, at which time the Society of Jesus was dissolved in France
and the order found its principal haven with the chief adversary of the
king of France, Frederic II of Prussia. Later, in 1773, Pope Clement XIV
decreed the complete suppression of the order. It was not restored until
1814 so that all its activity in between those two dates was more or less
clandestine.
While there is a telling lack of any historical certitude about the
Jesuit-Stuart alliance, there are certainly strong arguments supporting
assertions concerning efforts made by the Stuarts and the Jesuits
through Freemasonry. All of this, however, held only an episodic place
in the history of the high masonic grades. What is primary and indu-
bitable in the propagation of these grades and the constitution of the
systems they embodied is their ritual and symbolic contents, which
made them the vehicles of choice for mysticism and all the esoteric and
Hermetic doctrines that were popular during the eighteenth century.
This is clearly where the new focus of the tradition occurred and the
question that arises is how this harmonized with the sources of craft
freemasonry.