Freemasonry in the BAT province

Trani is the city that hosts Loggia Bensalem 1308. Within the Grand Orient of Italy, every city that is home to a lodge is called an “Orient”. “In the Orient of Trani” simply means that Trani is the Lodge’s institutional seat.

The choice of Trani is no accident: the city has historically been home to a lively professional middle class — lawyers, magistrates, merchants — the very ground in which nineteenth-century Freemasonry traditionally took root. Trani’s legal tradition, attested by the twelfth-century Ordinamenta et consuetudo maris, and the Mediterranean outlook of its port are part of a cultural profile historically akin to Masonic values.

The presence of lodges in Trani before Bensalem 1308 would require archival verification with the Grand Orient of Italy.

Barletta was one of the main ports of embarkation for the Crusades. The presence of religious-military orders — Templars, Hospitallers, Teutonic Knights — between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries is documented. Alongside them were lay confraternities and the great mendicant orders, which account for the density of historic churches in the urban fabric.

Frederick II’s Castel del Monte (thirteenth century) is one of the most powerful symbols of the BAT area. Its octagonal plan and symbolic richness have fuelled differing interpretations for centuries. Historians of medieval architecture explain its features through Frederick II’s Islamic influences and the tradition of octagonal palatine chapels.