Abstract: This paper gives an analysis of an anonymous French-language manuscript kept at the Tbilisi National Center of Manuscripts which is indicated in the inventory list under the title “Three Masonic Treatises”. The manuscript appears to have been brought here from the State Museum since the establishment of the institution in 1958. Its early history is unknown. The treatise is prefaced with a “Note on three words below” which belongs to another author and dates: “St. Petersburg, February 9/21, 1810”. None of the authors’ names is indicated but it is not difficult to establish them. The treatises - “The Ways of Wisdom”, “Laws of Divine Justice”, “Treatise on Blessing” belong to Louis Claude de Saint-Martin (1743-1803), the thought leader and mentor of a European and Russian masons and the introduction is written by the diplomat and philosopher Joseph de Maistre (1753-1821), who was sent to Russia as an ambassador (1803-1817) by the king of Sardinia. The treatises were created in the 1870s and disseminated through the records of the Masonic circles. They were first published by Saint-Martin’s sister’s daughter Tournier in 1807, the introductory word was preserved by the descendants of de Maistre and published in 1895, but did not deserve due attention of the researchers. In order to understand the significance of the manuscript, the authors of the paper try to make out its origin, the range of intended addressees and the aim of dissemination; conduct textological analysis, which helps to define the place of this manuscript in Joseph de Maistre’s creative works. The second part of the paper considers the question as to who could have been the supposed owner or owners of this manuscript and how it appeared in Georgia. Several hypotheses have been expressed. Namely: 1. Three diplomats are talking in one of the texts of Joseph de Maistre’s “The Evenings of St. Petersburg”: the count (apparently the author himself), an elderly Martinist senator (Vasilii Stepanovich Tomara) and young chevalier (Chevalier de Brie, a Frenchman being in German diplomatic service, sent to Russia from Bavaria). V. S. Tomara had been in the diplomatic service since 1759, he was a translator in the Caucasus, conducting negotiations between Russia and Georgia to conclude the Treaty of Georgievsk (1783), traveled to Persia; was Russia’s envoy to Constantinople in 1799-1909. In his youth (1754-1759) his mentor was Ukrainian philosopher Grigory Skovoroda (1722-1794), who was closely acquainted with Georgian poet, Prince Davit Guramishvili (1705-1792) when residing in his Ukrainian estate in 1759. Presumably, Joseph de Maistre gave a copy of Saint-Martin’s treatises to V. S.Tomara which fell into the hands of one of his acquaintances, a Georgian-related person. 2. In July 1810, Maistre’s younger brother Xavier de Maistre, a freemason writer and military officer in the rank of colonel, set off to the Caucasian War. In a letter sent from Tiflis on 4 February 1811, Xavier de Maistre at the request of his brother writes about Jesuit missionaries in Ossetia, especially highlights the activities of Belgian Jesuit priest Father Anri. He claims that according to the Italian general being in the Russian service, Ivan Del Pozzo (1739-1821) who spent many years of service in the Caucasus, the Jesuits can do more in conquering the region than hundreds of soldiers do. Xavier de Maistre could have taken his brother’s manuscript in Tbilisi and let him make a copy of it, but there is no document to prove it. However, in principle, the transfer of the manuscript to someone in order to make a copy could be done only by a person who got it from the hands of Maistre himself in St. Petersburg, for example, de Maistre’s close acquaintance, Maid of Honor of Empress Elizabeth, Roksandra’s brother, Aleksandr Strude or Count Ioane Kapodistria, Roksandra’s admirer ... If the number of intermediaries increases, it will become more and more difficult to establish the owner of the manuscript. 3. The owner of the manuscript may have been Mikhail Petrovich Barataev (Baratashvili, 1784-1856), a military man, historian, collector, founder of Georgian numismatics. M. Barataev became “free stonemason” approximately in 1806, and his mentor in masonry was a member of the Russian-French lodge “United Friends” in St. Petersburg, Major-General E. I. Chaplitz whose work was well familiar to Joseph de Maistre. Since 1817, the lodge had an alliance with the Grand Lodge “Astrea”. Barataev joined this Lodge approximately in 1816. In August 1817, he founded the Masonic lodge in Moscow “Alexander three time for salvation” (in alliance with” Astrea “), and in March of 1818 - in Simbirsk (according to other sources, at the end of 1817), where he was a head of the nobility, also by order of the “Astrea” founded the lodge “Key to Virtues” (La clef de la Vertu) and until 1821 he himself was its “great father” or, as the freemasons call “Master of the Chair.” The temple of the lodge was built in the estate of the prince. It was linked with the Decembrist organization “The Order of the Russian Knights”. Mikhail Barataev received an excellent education, wrote poems in Russian and French, enjoyed great respect both among the “free masons” and “professors”. He was familiar with the brothers A. I. and N. I. Turgenev (they had Joseph de Maistre’s manuscripts). In the years 1831-1843, Mikhail Baratashvili was appointed a director of the customs department in Georgia, settled in Tiflis at the Sololaki district, and was very fond of numismatics. In Tiflis, he made friends with the family of Meliton Baratashvili but especially loved Meliton’s son, the poet Nikoloz Baratashvili. Shortly before Mikhail Baratashvili’s arrival to Tbilisi, Nikoloz Baratashvili wrote a verse “Astra” about the hidden, mystical content of which he wrote to his friends. According to scholars, the conversation should have concerned the Grand Lodge “Astrea”. Mikheil Tumanishvili was loved and esteemed by the family of Alexander Chavchavadze himself. Chavchavadze participated in a conspiracy for the reestablishment of Georgia’s independence and conduction of the reforms in the country due to which he was exiled and could return to his homeland only in 1834. Two leaders of this movement, Solomon Dodashvili and Philadelphos Kiknadze, sympathized with the ideas of the Freemasons and used their experience in organizing the conspiracy. When Mikhail Baratashvili left Georgia and came back to his estate in Simbirsk, he took his collection with him, but it is possible that manuscript could be left or presented to his Georgian relatives or friends. The guests and hosts of the salons of Alexander and Nino Chavchavadze as well as that of Manana Orbeliani’s could have been interested in the manuscript. Manana, like the Chavchavadze family was linked with the conspiracy of 1832. Among the permanent guests of Manana Orbeliani’s salon it should be noted a prince Mikhail Simyonovich Vorontsov, field-marshal, the Viceroy to the Tsar in the Caucasus (1844-1854) who had an excellent education and was fluent in French. Vorontsov himself was not a freemason, but many of his friends were the members of this Order. The manuscript kept in Tbilisi, which combines the introduction of Joseph de Maistre and the works of St. Martin, gives us the opportunity to better understand the genesis of Maistre’s works, the use of Masonic texts in political struggle at the court of St. Petersburg in the reign of Alexander I and the dissemination of mystical ideas in Russia and Georgia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
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