Andrew Michael Ramsay

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Andrew Michael Ramsay

Andrew Michael Ramsay (born January 9, 1686 in Ayr , † May 6, 1743 in Saint-Germain-en-Laye ), usually called "Knight Ramsay", was a Scottish writer who lived mainly in France .

Live and act

Ramsay was born in 1686 in Ayr, Scotland, the son of a butcher. He came to Flanders at the beginning of the 18th century as part of the War of the Spanish Succession as a member of the English auxiliary troops . In 1709, Ramsay, who came from a Protestant family, was attracted to quietism and converted to Roman Catholicism .

In 1710 he left the English army, obtained French nationality and went to Cambrai , where he met Archbishop François Fénelon , with whom he was in close contact until his death in 1715.

Around 1713 he became secretary to Madame Guyon , an important exponent of quietism, in Blois . In 1716 he went to Paris, where he worked as tutor to the Count of Chateau-Thierry and was appointed Knight of the Order of Lazarus by the Duke of Orléans .

In 1723, Ramsay in Paris published the Histoire de la vie et des ouvrages de Messire Francois de Salignac de la Mothe Fénelon , a work on the life of Archbishop Fénelon. In 1724 he traveled to Rome for a year as a teacher to the exiled Prince Charles Edward Stuart and was banished from England because of his ties to the Stuart family. Regardless of this, he received an honorary doctorate from Oxford University in the course of a trip to England carried out with the king's approval in 1729 and became a Freemason and a member of the Royal Society in London in 1730 , before returning to Paris in 1730.

In the 1730s Ramsay married in Paris, fathered a daughter and was court master to the Prince of Turenne.

Ramsay wrote political-theological treatises and was a Christian universalist who believed that all people would be saved. His travels of Cyrus. A moral story and its treatise on mythology and ancient theology were translated from French into German by Matthias Claudius .

In 1741 Ramsay fell ill with a breast ailment, of which he died in Saint-Germain-en-Laye in 1743.

Ramsay's importance to Freemasonry

In his speech Discours d´un Gr. Maître dans la Gr. Loge assemblée solennement à Paris en 1740 , Ramsay, presumably motivated by his simultaneous membership of the Lazarus Order , established an abstract relationship between the knightly orders of the Crusades and the later Masonic lodges . The emergence of high-grade Masonic systems with knightly stamping, which began in the same period, is generally attributed to these statements by Ramsay. Whether this was intended by Ramsay or just an unwanted side effect of his statements is still controversial today.

Works

  • Histoire de la vie et des ouvrages de Messire Francois de Salignac de la Mothe Fénelon , 1723
  • The Travels of Cyrus - A Moral Story , 1730
  • Histoire Du Vicomte De Turenne, Marechal-General Des Armées du Roi , 1735
  • Discours d´un Gr. Maître dans la Gr. Lodge assemblée solennement à Paris en 1740 , 1740
  • Treatise on Mythology and Ancient Theology

In addition to the listed writings, some authors ascribe Ramsay the authorship of the Relation apologetique et historie des la Société des Franc-Macons par JGDMFM , Dublin 1738, but this attribution is disputed.

literature

  • Georg Eckert: True, noble, Christian freethinking. Life and work of Michael Ramsay (1686–1743) , Aschendorff, Münster 2009, ISBN 978-3-402-12799-5 .
  • Alec Mellor: The Chevalier de Ramsay; in: Logen - Rituale - Hochgrade , Styria, Graz 1985
  • Gustav Adolf Schiffmann: Andreas Michael Ramsay - A Study on the History of Freemasonry , Bruno Zechel Verlag, Leipzig 1878

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Andrew Michael Ramsay | Biography. Retrieved April 12, 2019 .
  2. ^ Chevalier Andrew Michael Ramsay. Retrieved April 12, 2019 .
  3. ^ Gustav Adolf Schiffmann: Andreas Michael Ramsay - A Study on the History of Freemasonry , Verlag Bruno Zechel, Leipzig 1878, p. 25ff.
  4. ↑ Alec Mellor: Logen - Rituale - Hochgrade , Styria, Graz 1985, p. 245
  5. ^ Gustav Adolf Schiffmann: Andreas Michael Ramsay - A Study on the History of Freemasonry , Verlag Bruno Zechel, Leipzig 1878, p. 37
  6. ^ Gustav Adolf Schiffmann: Andreas Michael Ramsay - A Study on the History of Freemasonry , Verlag Bruno Zechel, Leipzig 1878, p. 31
  7. ^ Gustav Adolf Schiffmann: Andreas Michael Ramsay - A Study on the History of Freemasonry , Verlag Bruno Zechel, Leipzig 1878, p. 52ff.
  8. ↑ Alec Mellor: Logen - Rituale - Hochgrade , Styria, Graz 1985, p. 252
  9. ^ Gustav Adolf Schiffmann: Andreas Michael Ramsay - A Study on the History of Freemasonry , Verlag Bruno Zechel, Leipzig 1878, p. 11ff.
personal data
SURNAME Ramsay, Andrew Michael
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Scottish writer
DATE OF BIRTH January 9, 1686
PLACE OF BIRTH Ayr
DATE OF DEATH May 6, 1743
Place of death St. Germain-en-Laye