Mackey – Encyclopedia Of Freemasonry Vol. 1

8 8 SECRET SOCIETIEScovered with love-knots, whereupon the iron chains weretaken off, and garlands of flowers, called "chains of love,"substituted . The candidates' were then conducted to thealtar, where they took the oath of secrecy ; and thence tothe mysterious groves in the neighbourhood of the Templeof Love, where incense was offered up to Venus and her son .If it was a knight who had been initiated, he exchanged hiscrown of myrtle for the rose of the last initiated nymph ;and if a nymph, she exchanged her rose for the myrtle crownof Brother Sentiment . The horrors of the Revolution scatteredthese knights and nymphs, who, like thoughtless children,were playing on a volcano .474 . German Order of the Rose .-Another order of theRose was founded in Germany in 1784 by one FrancisMatthaus Grossinger, who ennobled himself by assumingthe title of Francis Rudolph von Grossing. He was bornin 1752 at Komorn, in Hungary ; his father was a butcher,his mother the daughter of a tanner. Grossing was a Jesuit,but on the suppression of the Order he led a wandering life,and eventually reached Vienna, where he obtained the protectionof the father confessor of the empress, who in 1777granted him a pension of six hundred florins, which, however,he lost by her death . He then lived by all kinds of swindling,and finally founded a philanthropic order, which, after thename of the supposititious grand mistress, the Lady of Rosenwald,he called the "Order of the Rose . He was verysuccessful at Halle, where he lived, in initiating dupes, onwhose contributions he lived in great style . When he becametoo notorious at Halle he transmigrated to Berlin,where he continued his expensive style of living, got intodebt, was arrested, but made his escape, after having swindledthe Berliners out of twenty thousand dollars .475 . Pretended Objects of the Order.-The Order professedto pursue the loftiest philosophic and educational objects .None but men and women endowed with noble souls wereto be admitted, and no member was to reveal the name ofany other member, nor what was discussed in the lodges,to outsiders . Masonry was the model for the Order of theRose, the latter adopting all the good, and rejecting all thebad of the former . The ribbon of the Order consisted ofpink silk, both ends terminating in three points ; it wasmarked with a rose, and the name of the member, with thedate of his or her reception . Under this was a large seal,displaying a rose, surrounded by a wreath of the sameflowers ; the ribbon was further adorned with a kind of