History
The French Rite is intimately linked to the birth of Freemasonry in France and was founded in France in 1786. British exiles brought the Modern rite to France and this was little by little passed onto the French Rite. Though this hybrid form is no longer known as the French Rite, it sometimes takes that name to distinguish it from the Scottish Rites from which it was initially formed. In order to guarantee that French Freemasonry would have a national dimension, the Grand Orient de France organised the standardisation of "Modern" hexagonal rites from 1782 onwards, and in 1785 the model was fixed for the first three degrees in a "blue lodge", which showed a strong English influence in contrast to the Scottish Rites. However, it was only in 1801 that the Grand Orient de France printed the rules of this rite under the title Régulateur du Maçon, containing several additions and amendments to the former version, which had circulated from lodge to lodge in discrete manuscript form. The Rite underwent several further reforms, and in 1858 the "Murat French Rite" (returning to the foundations of the Constitutions of Anderson without making lasting change to the rite) imposed itself.
As well as the sub-rites already mentioned, there is also a "French Rite of 1801".
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