Focus: Casanova and Freemasonry

Antonio Trampus, full professor of Modern History at Ca' Foscari University in Venice, gave a lecture titled "Casanova and Freemasonry" on Tuesday, February 20th, at Caffè San Marco. This event marked the third appointment of a series of meetings organized by the "Manlio Cecovini Study Society".

Before an audience of attentive and engaged enthusiasts, Trampus depicted the landscape of 18th-century Masonic lodges, which were prominent places of socialization and debate, grounded in values of solidarity, philanthropy, and hospitality. Anyone who entered these lodges, regardless of social status, embraced a new and, for the time, unprecedented identity characterized by equality, fraternity, and freedom.

Giacomo Casanova lived during what is known as the golden age of Freemasonry, a period marked by a rapid growth of Masonic lodges and their members.

Trampus retraced the main stages of the Venetian adventurer's Masonic experience, from his initiation in Lyon in 1750 to his trial and imprisonment in the Piombi, then focusing on his visits to Dutch lodges and his later Masonic experiences in Bohemia in the 1780s, as a guest of Count Waldstein.

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