ama-deus (4)

Mozart joined the Freemasons in 1784...

and remained an active member until his death.

His choice to enter the lodge "Zur Wohltätigkeit" was influenced by his friendship with the lodge's master, Baron Otto Heinrich von Gemmingen-Hornberg, and his attraction to the lodge's "shared devotion to Catholic tradition."

Nor was Mozart's Masonic commitment the most likely source of his occasional anti-clerical statements, and even less indicative of any essential antipathy to Catholicism.

Such anti-clericalism is much more easily attributed to the fashionable anti-clericalism of Febronian Catholicism, favored by those in power in Mozart's social ambit at this period, which still reflected curiously a very conservative Counter-Reformation aesthetic environment.

Freemasonry was banned by the Catholic Church in a Papal Bull entitled In Eminenti Apostolatus issued by Pope Clement XII on 28 April 1738. The ban, however, "was published and came into force only in the Papal States, Spain, Portugal, and Poland."

It was not promulgated in Austria [where Mozart lived] until 1792 [after Mozart's death]. Hence, although the Catholic Church's opposition to Freemasonry would eventually become known in Austria, during Mozart's lifetime "a good Catholic could perfectly well become a Mason," and it is clear that Mozart saw no conflict between these two allegiances.

~bron~