Speculative Freemasonry and the Enlightenment PDF Download
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Author: R. William Weisberger
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 1476629692
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 240
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Book Description
Freemasonry began with stonemasons in the Middle Ages experiencing the decline of cathedral building. Some guilds invited honorary memberships to boost their numbers. These usually highly educated new members practiced symbolic or "speculative Freemasonry." The new Masonic lodges and learned societies offered their growing numbers of Protestant, Catholic and Jewish members an understanding of deism, Newtonian science and representative government, and of literature and the fine arts. This work describes how Masons on both sides of the Atlantic were mostly either enlighteners, political reformers or moderate revolutionaries. They offered minimal support to radical revolutionary ideas and leaders.
Author: R. William Weisberger
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 1476629692
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 240
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Book Description
Freemasonry began with stonemasons in the Middle Ages experiencing the decline of cathedral building. Some guilds invited honorary memberships to boost their numbers. These usually highly educated new members practiced symbolic or "speculative Freemasonry." The new Masonic lodges and learned societies offered their growing numbers of Protestant, Catholic and Jewish members an understanding of deism, Newtonian science and representative government, and of literature and the fine arts. This work describes how Masons on both sides of the Atlantic were mostly either enlighteners, political reformers or moderate revolutionaries. They offered minimal support to radical revolutionary ideas and leaders.
Author: James Stevens Curl
Publisher: Anchor Books
ISBN: 9781905286454
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 356
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Book Description
Author: Kenneth B. Loiselle
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 0801454867
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 249
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Book Description
Friendship, an acquired relationship primarily based on choice rather than birth, lay at the heart of Enlightenment preoccupations with sociability and the formation of the private sphere. In Brotherly Love, Kenneth Loiselle argues that Freemasonry is an ideal arena in which to explore the changing nature of male friendship in Enlightenment France. Freemasonry was the largest and most diverse voluntary organization in the decades before the French Revolution. At least fifty thousand Frenchmen joined lodges, the memberships of which ranged across the social spectrum from skilled artisans to the highest ranks of the nobility. Loiselle argues that men were attracted to Freemasonry because it enabled them to cultivate enduring friendships that were egalitarian and grounded in emotion.Drawing on scores of archives, including private letters, rituals, the minutes of lodge meetings, and the speeches of many Freemasons, Loiselle reveals the thought processes of the visionaries who founded this movement, the ways in which its members maintained friendships both within and beyond the lodge, and the seemingly paradoxical place women occupied within this friendship community. Masonic friendship endured into the tumultuous revolutionary era, although the revolutionary leadership suppressed most of the lodges by 1794. Loiselle not only examines the place of friendship in eighteenth-century society and culture but also contributes to the history of emotions and masculinity, and the essential debate over the relationship between the Enlightenment and the French Revolution.
Author: Margaret C. Jacob
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199762791
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 318
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Book Description
Long recognized as more than the writings of a dozen or so philosophes, the Enlightenment created a new secular culture populated by the literate and the affluent. Enamoured of British institutions, Continental Europeans turned to the imported masonic lodges and found in them a new forum that was constitutionally constructed and logically egalitarian. Originating in the Middle Ages, when stone-masons joined together to preserve their professional secrets and to protect their wages, the English and Scottish lodges had by the eighteenth century discarded their guild origins and become an international phenomenon that gave men and eventually some women a place to vote, speak, discuss and debate. Margaret Jacob argues that the hundreds of masonic lodges founded in eighteenth-century Europe were among the most important enclaves in which modern civil society was formed. In France, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Britain men and women freemasons sought to create a moral and social order based upon reason and virtue, and dedicated to the principles of liberty and equality. A forum where philosophers met with men of commerce, government, and the professions, the masonic lodge created new forms of self-government in microcosm, complete with constitutions and laws, elections, and representatives. This is the first comprehensive history of Enlightenment freemasonry, from the roots of the society's political philosophy and evolution in seventeenth-century England and Scotland to the French Revolution. Based on never-before-used archival sources, it will appeal to anyone interested in the birth of modernity in Europe or in the cultural milieu of the European Enlightenment.
Author: Stefan-Ludwig Hoffmann
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
ISBN: 9780472115730
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 436
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Book Description
The first cultural and political history of German Freemasonry in the 19th and early 20th centuries
Author: Lilith Mahmud
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022609605X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 262
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Book Description
This “stupendous ethnography of female Freemasonry in Italy” reveals the fascinating paradox of elitism and exclusion experienced by “female brothers” (Michael Herzfeld, author of Evicted from Eternity). From its cryptic images on the dollar bill to Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol, the Freemasons have long been one of the most romanticized secret societies in the world. But a simple fact escapes most depictions of this elite brotherhood: there are also female members. In this groundbreaking ethnography, Lilith Mahmud takes readers inside Masonic lodges of contemporary Italy, where she observes the ritualistic and fraternal bonds forged among Freemason women. Offering a tantalizing look behind lodge doors, The Brotherhood of Freemason Sisters unveils a complex culture of discretion in which Freemasons reveal some truths and hide others. Female initiates—one of Freemasonry’s best-kept secrets—are often upper class and highly educated, yet avowedly antifeminist. Their self-cultivation through the Masonic path is an effort to embrace the deeply gendered ideals of fraternity. In this lively investigation, Mahmud unravels the contradictions at the heart of Freemasonry: an organization responsible for many of the egalitarian concepts of the Enlightenment and yet one that has always been, and in Italy still remains, extremely exclusive. The result is not only a thrilling look at a surprisingly influential world, but a reevaluation of the modern values we now take for granted
Author: Alexander Piatigorsky
Publisher: Harvill Secker
ISBN: 9781846555596
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 204
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Book Description
This study considers the institution of Freemasonry from the point of view of both masons and their critics, as well as from the author's own. In the first section, it gives an outline of masonic history, from the foundation of the Grand Lodge in Covent Garden in 1717 through its major role in Enlightenment Europe and the American War of Independence, its many tribulations and schisms in the 19th century to the present day. The book looks at one of the main sources of masonic history, Anderson's "Constitutions", which documents masonic practice and the masons' mythical history back to Hiram Abiff, the first Master Mason in the reign of King Solomon.
Author: Mark Stavish
Publisher: Llewellyn Worldwide
ISBN: 0738711489
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 265
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Book Description
An exploration of Freemasonry and its history, philosophy, symbols and practices.
Author: Jessica L. Harland-Jacobs
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 1469606658
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 401
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Book Description
They built some of the first communal structures on the empire's frontiers. The empire's most powerful proconsuls sought entrance into their lodges. Their public rituals drew dense crowds from Montreal to Madras. The Ancient Free and Accepted Masons were quintessential builders of empire, argues Jessica Harland-Jacobs. In this first study of the relationship between Freemasonry and British imperialism, Harland-Jacobs takes readers on a journey across two centuries and five continents, demonstrating that from the moment it left Britain's shores, Freemasonry proved central to the building and cohesion of the British Empire. The organization formally emerged in 1717 as a fraternity identified with the ideals of Enlightenment cosmopolitanism, such as universal brotherhood, sociability, tolerance, and benevolence. As Freemasonry spread to Europe, the Americas, Asia, Australasia, and Africa, the group's claims of cosmopolitan brotherhood were put to the test. Harland-Jacobs examines the brotherhood's role in diverse colonial settings and the impact of the empire on the brotherhood; in the process, she addresses issues of globalization, supranational identities, imperial power, fraternalism, and masculinity. By tracking an important, identifiable institution across the wide chronological and geographical expanse of the British Empire, Builders of Empire makes a significant contribution to transnational history as well as the history of the Freemasons and imperial Britain.
Author: Dr. Róbert Péter
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 9781848933774
Category : Freemasonry
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
Freemasonry was a major component of British cultural, social and intellectual life during the Enlightenment era. It was also a successful British export, becoming popular around the globe and evolving into one of the social forces that bound the countries of the Empire together. In contrast to the secrecy that surrounds the movement today, the eighteenth-century press was able to report on the feasts, processions and concerts that were held and to even list some of the members by name. Despite rules against discussing religion or politics inside the lodge, freemasonry nonetheless both influenced and reflected the religious and political turmoil of the day, with almost all lodges condemning the French Revolution and claiming allegiance to the monarchy. This primary resource collection begins at the point when organized freemasonry was established with the unification of four lodges into the Grand Lodge of England, and ends with the two rival Grand Lodges - the Antients and Moderns - combined to form the United Grand Lodge of England. The five themed volumes cover Institutions, Rituals (two volumes), Debates and Representations.0Documents include minutes of meetings, rituals (some written in code), funeral services, sermons, membership lists, letters, pamphlets, theatrical prologues and epilogues, and articles from newspapers and periodicals. Material is rare and much of it comes from unpublished manuscript sources held in Masonic archives. The edition will be of interest to scholars of freemasonry, the Enlightenment, religious history, gender, and eighteenth-century studies more widely. Full scholarly apparatus is provided, including a substantial general introduction which discusses the movement in Scotland and Ireland as well as England.
