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RESEARCHING FREEMASONRY: WHERE ARE WE?

J.A.M. Snoek jan.snoek@zegk.uni-heidelberg.de

CRFF Working Paper Series No. 2

Professor Doctor Jan A.M. Snoek is professor at the University of Heidelberg and attached to the Institute for the Scholarly Study of Religions. He presented his paper at the opening of the first International Conference of the History of Freemasonry in May 2008 in Edinburgh.

CENTRE FOR RESEARCH INTO FREEMASONRY AND FRATERNALISM University of Sheffield, United Kingdom 34, Gell Street Sheffield S3 7QY Phone: +44-(0)114- 222 98 90 Fax: +44-(0)114- 222 98 94 Email: crf@sheffield.ac.uk URL: www.freemasonry.dept.shef.ac.uk CRFF Working Paper Series is published by Centre for Research into Freemasonry and Fraternalism at the University of Sheffield. Jan A.M. Snoek, and CRFF Editor: Andreas nnerfors Layout: Dorothe Sommer ISSN: 1756-7645

CRFF Working Paper Series No. 2

Jan A.M. Snoek

RESEARCHING FREEMASONRY: WHERE ARE WE?Over the last ten years or so, the number of scholarly conferences on Freemasonry has increased dramatically. Almost all of them were cautious enough to limit themselves to a particular aspect of this huge phenomenon. The current conference is probably the first one not to do so. The word History in its title seems to have had no other constraining intention than to communicate the wish of the organisers to restrict contributions to scholarly ones. My current presentation is surely not the only one on the program to relate but superficially to history. In other words, this is probably the largest, most daring, and most encompassing scholarly conference on the phenomenon of Freemasonry organised in the UK1 so far. It therefore seemed to me only proper to start it with some reflections on where we stand in theindeed historicaldevelopment of this phenomenon. I dont mean: Freemasonry, but its scholarly research. I shall [I] start with a short overview of its development, then [II] elaborate on the current situation and [III] finish with an attempted inventory of what still needs to be done. From this, I hope, it will become clear that we are standing only at the beginning of an immense task, one which no one living now can hope to see completed in his or her lifetime. In that respect, we are in a way comparable to those who left us the most impressive witnesses of stonemasons work, I mean the medieval cathedrals.

IA. Freemasons Researching FreemasonryThe First Attempts: The Manuscript Constitutions The oldest documents generally considered to have a certain relationship with Freemasonry are the so-called manuscript constitutions.1

Outside the UK, such large scale scholarly conferences on Freemasonry were probably organised so far only in Spain by the Centro de Estudios Histricos de la Masonera Espaola of the university of Zaragoza, where in 2003 the 10th such conference took place.1

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These usually comprise several parts of a radically different character, such as prayers, the texts of an oath, and above all, the so-called Old Charges. But they always start with the so-called legendary or traditional history of the Craft. None of us today would be tempted to take this traditional history as history in the modern sense of the wordit is a legendary history, no doubt. Indeed, I would regard it as rather unlikely that even their authors would have taken these histories as history per se. What must be clear to anyone studying Freemasonry is that the legendary history of the Craft has quite a different function within Freemasonry than a pure factual history might have. This function is much closer to that which Greek mythology had in ancient Greece, or the Biblical stories in medieval Christianity. And yet, we should not forget that Heinrich Schliemann found ancient Troy by taking Homers poems as containing at least a modicum of historical fact. Likewise, scholars of the Old and New Testament spend much time identifying the historical facts behind the Biblical stories. They dont do this as a nice, leisurely pastime, but out of pure necessity: given the often extremely low number of more factual historical records, we need to analyse these legendary stories for their historical content in order to be able to devise an acceptable reconstruction of the past events in which we are interested. Therefore, these traditional histories of the Craft are, despite their legendary character, the first histories of Freemasonry that we have. James Anderson: Constitutions, 1723, 1738 When the masonic Constitutions of 1723 were prepared for publication, the character of the traditional history was clearly altered, and when this work was subsequently revised for the second edition published in 1738, it was altered once again. Lets refer to the author or authors of these two versions as Anderson, although it remains unclear to what extent James Anderson was personally involved in their writing. Evidently Anderson approached these histories in a new way. On the one hand, it is indisputable that the Constitutions were still to be read at the admission of a new Brother2 and hence retained their function in masonic ritual, which required the continuation of their legendary character. On the other hand, in 1722 Anderson did not2

Anderson 1723, 1; Anderson 1738, 1. Cf. also 1723, 49.2

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just copy one existing example, but compiled a new version after having compared a number of different examples, and in the process added many, mainly theological, footnotes as well as chronological indications in the margin, all of which reflect the prevailing scholarship of the day. Also, as his history got closer to his own time, legend gradually gave way to true history. However, it is only in the second edition that Anderson introduces a much more detailed description of what had happened to the Craft in more recent times. Thus, whereas in the first edition, the period of 118 years from 1603 (the year in which King James VI of Scotland succeeded to the Crown of England as James I) until 17213 is covered in only 8 pages (38-45), the second edition uses twice as many pages to describe the same era (97-112), while the remaining period of only 17 years until the then present 1738 takes no less then 28 pages (112-139). Indeed, from 1716 onwards, he in fact gives a kind of summary minutes of most Quarterly Communications (109-139). From these facts alone, it should be clear that Anderson in 1738 not only had access to the minutes books of the Grand Lodge, which recorded the events of the meetings from 1723 onwards, but that he had also evidently studied the archives of the Order, which in 1722 had not yet been so abundantly available to him. It is, of course, regrettable that we no longer possess all the documents Anderson had access to, as many seem to have been lost. We should also realise, that Anderson had personally witnessed many of the events he described of the later years and had had the opportunity to question older members about events which had happened before he joined the London Grand Lodge. Therefore, part of what he tells us may never have been documented before he recorded it. It is all the more astonishing, then, that later generations of scholars have tended to regard Andersons reports as unreliable, just because they are presented as part of the legendary history of the Craft, and therefore should be discarded, although, somewhat ironically, these same scholars, have all accepted that the so-called Premier Grand Lodge was created in 1717, solely on Andersons assertion.3

In this edition, the last recorded event is the laying of the foundation stone of the church of St. Martins in the Fields on March 19th, 1721.3

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The second half of the eighteenth and first half of the nineteenth century During the second half of the eighteenth and the first half of the nineteenth century, a number of masons wrote works in which they attempted to describe the history and development of Freemasonry, if not in its entirety, then at least for the country they lived in or for the masonic Rite they practised. Among the best known are: - William Prestons Illustrations of Masonry of 1772, - William Hutchinsons The Spirit of Masonry of 1775,4 - George Smiths The Use and Abuse of Freemasonry of 1783, - Claude-Antoine Thorys three books: Histoire de la fondation du Grand Orient de France of 1812; Acta Latomorum, ou Chronologie de lhistoire de la franc-maonnerie franaise et trangre of 1815; and Prcis historique de lordre de la franc-maonnerie of 1829, and - George Olivers three books The Antiquities of Freemasonry of 1823; The History of Initiation of 1840; and Revelations of a Square of 1855. Although, of course, none of these conform to the standards of modern historiography, they are immensely valuable as sources of information, since these authors often had access to sources which are now lost to us, or had witnessed the events which they describe. Besides, without the efforts of these authors, no progress would have been possible. The Authentic School The indication Authentic School may have been emphasised by Quatuor Coronati Lodge members like Colin Dyer and John Hamill in 1986, the year of the centennial of that lodge of Research,5 but the stressing of the need for an authentic representation of masonic history is at least as old as the preface in John Yarkers book Arcane Schools published in 1909,6 and what it refers to, began even significantly earlier. Already in the middle of the nineteenth century a number of German books were written, based on the research of large collections of original, authentic documents. These include such standard works as:4 5

On Hutchinson and Smith see Stokes 1967. Dyer 1986, 5; Hamill 1986, 15, 17. 6 Yarker 1909. I thank Matthew Scanlan for pointing this out to me.4