Regalia for the Inner Order of the Rectified Scottish Rite (RER, from the French Régime Écossais Rectifié; also written RSR) calls for particular care, symbolically as much as ritually. Whether for Écuyers Novices (Squire Novices) or for Chevaliers Bienfaisants de la Cité Sainte (Knights Beneficent of the Holy City, CBCS), every item offered here keeps to the Christian and chivalric spirit of the RER, with the restraint and the exactness that mark this rite.
The RER is a Masonic rite Christian in substance, in the esoteric sense of that word. It grew out of an earlier Masonic system, the Strict Observance (Stricte Observance Templière), founded in Germany around 1755 by Baron von Hund, which claimed to restore the Order of the Temple. It reached France through Strasbourg, and in 1774 the Lodges of Lyon, led by Jean-Baptiste Willermoz, joined it. Willermoz, a disciple and friend of Martinès de Pasqually and a convinced follower of his theosophy, soon judged the symbolic and spiritual content of the system too thin, and disputed the claim of a Templar restoration. He rewrote the rituals and the statutes, creating the Order of the Beneficent Knights of the Holy City, adopted by the Convent des Gaules in 1778 and brought into force in the French branches of the Strict Observance. It was this Lyon reform that the general convent held at Wilhelmsbad adopted in 1782, and from which the Rectified Scottish Rite comes.
The three symbolic degrees of the RER, and the Maître Écossais de Saint-André (Scottish Master of Saint Andrew) that follows them, are Masonic proper. The Inner Order is no longer Masonic but chivalric: it works the grades of Écuyer Novice and of Chevalier Bienfaisant de la Cité Sainte. Its regalia therefore borrows nothing from the Craft and everything from chivalry — capes, chlamydes (mantles) and belts.
In this collection of Nos Colonnes you will find the regalia worn by members of the RER Inner Order: capes and mantles, sashes, belts, gloves and collar jewels.