Mollier, Pierre

Pierre Mollier is a French historian and freemason, born in Lyon in 1961. A graduate of Sciences Po (Institut d'Études Politiques de Paris), he holds a master's degree in Religious Studies (École pratique des hautes études, section V, La Sorbonne), and is the director of the library, archives, and museum for the Grand Orient de France (Musée de la Franc-Maçonnerie). He is a specialist in the history of Freemasonry, covering both social and political fields, as well as philosophical and spiritual topics. He has researched the links between Freemasonry and the power in France under Napoleon (1800–1815) and during the Third Republic (1870–1940). As an expert in the history of Masonic rites, he has also researched the various aspects of the symbolic imagery (guild marks, heraldry, emblems). Editor-in-chief of the symbolic and Masonic review, Renaissance Traditionnelle, of the on-line Journal Ritual, Secrecy, and Civil Society he co-directs the Chroniques d’Histoire Maçonnique. He also contributes to several other reviews, including Politica Hermetica and La Phalère. Furthermore, he is an expert on and biographer of French painter François-Jean Garneray (1755–1837), one of Jacques-Louis David’s first students. He was named officer in the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Ministry of Culture.