Would you join a club that required you to wear a dog collar and scratch at a door like a dog to gain entry to a room?  Would you draw the line at kissing the backside of a dog statue to show unyielding devotion to that club?

Freemasons had no problem with it in 1740.  When Pope Clement XI forbade Roman Catholics from joining the Masons in 1738, the Order of Pugs, or Mops-Orden, was created as a secret society, probably by Clemens August of Bavaria. The group couldn’t be strictly called a fraternity since it was the first masonic order open to women, but only Catholics of either gender could undergo the initiation ritual which is where the kissing-the-dog-statue’s-behind part came in. Well, that and being led blindfolded around a symbol-filled carpet nine times while other members called “Pugs” barked loudly and yelled “Memento mori” (‘Remember you shall die’).  The order’s insignia was a light blue collar with golden bells, and members wore a Pug medallion made of silver, usually hidden under clothes.

The Pug was said to chosen as the mascot for the order which took its name because the dog was regarded as a symbol for trust, reliability, and constancy.  There was a bit more to it, however.  When King William III was brought to England from the Netherlands by Parliament to replace his uncle and ardently Catholic father-in-law, James II, he brought his Pugs with him. The Pug became something of a subversive emblem of the Enlightenment, and England in particular.

The Order of the Pugs was outlawed in 1748, three years after a “traitor’s pamphlet” had been published that “outed” the order and its rituals.  When authorities of the University of Göttingen banned “Lodge Louise,” the student lodge of the Order of the Pug, it proved to be the nail in the coffin for the order.  They cited lodge fees and an unhealthy control over members as an excuse for the closure, and after a government investigation, the lodge’s documents were passed to the University authorities who shut the group down. Interestingly, while German sources maintained that the order was disbanded, the Order was reportedly still active in Lyon as late as 1902. You can read an earlier NPDD post on this order here.

Before the group’s demise, it accounted for many precious secret emblems and fine pieces of Pug art, and one of them (seen here) was a porcelain snuff box created around 1761-70 by the Schrezheim factory, its cover was painted by Johann Andreas Bechdolff.  The box was auctioned by Bonhams in 2011 and fetched $32,034.