Living the Enlightenment: Freemasonry and Politics in Eighteenth-Century Europe

by Margaret C. Jacob

Book Overview

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...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0195070518
• ISBN13: 9780195070514
• Release Date: December 1991
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
• Length: 320 Pages
• Weight: 1.03 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 6.1" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

An Important Scholarly Contribution to Freemasonry

This work is intellectually accessible to the educated, general reader who is willing to spend the time to read her notes and follow her arguments. She directs her scholarly attention to the charges against, or boasts of, some Freemasons, that the Craft was responsible for the French and American Revolutions. She answers both sides of the controversy with a qualified "yes", hastening to show that it was the already long-standing practice (in every sense) of self-government in masonic lodges that provided a blueprint for the rise of our respective constitutional governments, based on utopian ideas about the perfectability of man and society (at least as goals to strive toward). Any educated Freemason could have told Prof. Jacob that, but it is wonderful to have such distinguished academic testimony of this fact. On the other hand, a careful scrutiny of Benjamin Franklin's travels and contacts (even in Catholic Spain!) that led to foreign support of the Revolution might push her argument more in support of the commonly held belief.

I Disagree with the Prior Review

Ms. Jacob has done a wonderful job showing how the essentially non-mystic, scientific and artistic Enlightenment was "translated" into a political movement by the 18th century Masons. It is extremely well done. The Mason's historic opposition to the Catholic Church - and to other authoritarian and non-democratic institutions of all kinds (including "Holy" Russia, as the prior reviewer chooses to call it) - political as well as religious, is well established historic fact and, as such, was critical to the development of modern western governments' tenants of religious toleration. THAT is history and THAT is Ms. Jacob's theme. Whether you approve of the Mason's or not, she clearly presents their critical role in history. After reading and completely enjoying the book's scholarship and perspective, I wanted to let other readers know that, in my opinion, the prior review is simply a strong pro-Catholic and anti-Masonic view of history, and is not a review of the book, which is excellent.