Pilgrim Lodge: No. 238

Meeting Location:

Lodge History:

A (very) short history of a very old Lodge. Pilgrim Lodge (originally Pilger Loge and then Pilger Lodge) is unique among all lodges under the jurisdiction of the United Grand Lodge of England. Consecrated in 1779, it is the only lodge, first under the 'Moderns' and now under United Grand Lodge, to have the privilege to work in German with a German ritual.

From the beginning it has been a strong link between English and Continental Freemasonry, and by the nature of its choice of members it has been a refuge for men who fled from revolutions, dictatorships and racial persecution. Originally the Lodge worked a ritual derived from the Swedish system then in use. Modifications to the system were made by a life-long friend of the Lodge founder Johannes Leonardi.

The name of the friend, Johannes von Zinnendorf, was used to designate the ritual used by The Pilgrim Lodge for the first seventy plus years of its history. However, the Zinnendorf ritual was very much a Christian ritual and was no longer appropriate to the teachings of Freemasonry by the 1840's so, in 1852 the Lodge adopted the Schroeder ritual which was, by then, being used in parts of Germany. Much of this ritual had been written, using some of the old English ritual then in use in England, by a member of the Pilgrim Lodge named Friedrich Schroeder. Schroeder also used ideas from the poet Goethe, amongst others, to produce a highly humanitarian ritual. This is the ritual we still work today. It is much older than any of the many and varied rituals used by todays English masons and for this reason many English masons, even though they do not understand the German language, come and visit our Lodge.