Masonic Lodges Research Articles

When Emmanuel Carasso Turned Italian: A Biography of Extraterritoriality and Questions of Nationality in the Ottoman Empire

Emmanuel Carasso (Turkified as Emanuel Karasu) (1863-1934) was a lawyer who hailed from a Sephardic Jewish family in Salonica, where he became instrumental after the turn of the century in the establishment of Macedonia Risorta, the local branch of the Italian masonic lodge Grande Oriente. The Salonica lodge quickly became an important center of Young Turk revolutionary activity in the following years, as privileges offered by capitulations enabled secrecy for lodge members. After the Constitutional Revolution of 1908, Karasu applied for Ottoman nationality and then became a member of the parliament representing Salonica and later Istanbul. During the course of his political career, he is best known for being a member of a delegation of four who went to Abdulhamid II to relay to him the news of his dethronement in the aftermath of the Counterrevolution (April 1909). Using his strong positions within the Committee of Union and Progress, Karasu managed to amass considerable wealth during the First World War, when his name also got popularly involved with corruption. Unlike other Unionists who left the imperial capital as the war came to an end, Karasu remained in Istanbul, where a number of court cases were brought against him. This is when he applied for Italian nationality, a request that started a lengthy bureaucratic paper trail that sheds light on an interesting nexus of political influence, capital, and extraterritorial privileges. This paper seeks to trace available Ottoman records in a bid to reconstruct the post-WWI odyssey of Karasu and trace the ways in which litigations were worked out in occupied Istanbul, how Al- lied Powers interacted with Ottoman authorities when it came to questions of nationality, and what these episodes imply in the transition to a post-Ottoman Middle East.

Religious Dissociation and Liberal Separation: Inside a Christian Brotherhood and a Masonic Lodge

AbstractRecent years have seen a flourishing of everyday experimentations with the category of religion: the “spiritual but not religious,” “religionless” Christians, and many more. Why is there such proliferation of popular experimentation with—and often distancing from—the category of religion? This article explores two such cases of experimentation, a religion-disavowing evangelical Christian brotherhood in Mexico and a Masonic lodge in Switzerland, and shows how, in these two cases, disavowing religion is in part a response to problems associated with a founding principle of liberalism, the separation of private conscience from public citizenship. Subjects of liberal separation are vulnerable to feelings of cloistered conscience and hollow citizenship, problems that are inherent to liberal separation, as evidenced by Freemasonry’s age-old experimentations. These problems are also, however, exacerbated by dwindling popular faith in the institutions of religion and liberal democracy, as evidenced by contemporary evangelical trends of which the Christian brotherhood is exemplary. Such experimentations can be distinguished between those that collapse conscience and citizenship and those that defend the separation while still looking for indirect connections. This contrast is also highlighted by the comparison of religion-disavowing evangelical Christians and Freemasonry.

S.N. Maksudi and Russian Masons at the beginning of the XX century

The article investigates little-known facts in the life of the famous Tatar and Turkish public figure S.N. Maksudi – a turkologist, an educator, a deputy of the State Duma of the Russian Empire and the Majlis of the Turkish Republic at different periods of his life. At the beginning of the XX century a graduate of the Sorbonne University, a young lawyer, Sadri Maksudi, found himself at the center of the political life of the Turkic-Muslim world of Russia. He lived in St. Petersburg and was actively engaged in political activities. Just then he met Russian Freemasons and became a participant in the Masonic movement.The attitude towards Masonry in the Russian history is characterized by different assessments, for example, they were credited with participation in conspiracies, possession of secret knowledge, etc. In fact, most Masons were liberals who advocated the introduction of a wide range of democratic freedoms in Russia, including expanding the rights of national minorities. This attracted one of the leaders of Russian Islam, who actively defended the ideas of equality and enlightenment of his people.The article presents the analysis of the history of the opening of Masonic lodges in St. Petersburg after the revolution of 1905-1907 and their activities during the inter-revolutionary period, in which S.N. Maksudi took part.The purpose of the study was to analyze the views of the Tatar politician S.N. Maksudi through the prism of his participation in Masonic organizations of the early XX century. For this purpose the author used biographical, historical-genetic and historical-comparative research methods, as well as general scientific and dialectical methods of analysis. As a result, we came to the conclusion that despite all the objective differences between the social movement of Muslims in Russia and the teachings of the Freemasons, there were common ideological ideas between them, which attracted the Tatar-Muslim leader Sadri Maksudi to the ranks of the masons, which was reflected in his political life.

The First Hebrew Detective, David Tidhar, as a Freemason

This article is about David Tidhar. He is an important character in Israeli History, the Hebrew first private detective who had become the first hero of Hebrew detective fiction and historian who was also an important Mason and a historian of Masonry in the land of Israel. The main points in the article are: Introduction. David Tidhar as the first Hebrew private detective; David Tidhar as the first Hebrew detective in the British Mandatory Palestine Police; His character in Hebrew Detective fiction at the beginning of the 20th century; The villain from Corfu; David Tidhar as a member of a secret fraternities; Barkai Lodge of Freemasons in Israel; David Tidhar as a member of Barkai Masonic Lodge; Conclusion.

Unannounced Politics as Part of the Political Reality of the West

The article examines the phenomenon of undisclosed structures that may have influenced political processes in certain Western states. The article deals with such organizations as the Masonic lodge “Propaganda Due” (P2) and “Gladio”. For a long time, the activities of these structures remained a secret, and only a relatively narrow circle of people had information concerning them. However, at a certain point in time, some information on this subject became available to the public and caused considerable resonance in the media sphere. This is the reason why the author considers it appropriate to take into account unspoken factors when studying political reality.

Known in Europe, Unknown in Bulgaria (To the 150th Anniversary of the Birth of Christian Rakovsky)

The article is dedicated to the 150th anniversary of the birth of Christian Rakovsky (1873-1941) – a prominent figure in the international socialist movement, politician, statesman, diplomat, Chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars of Ukraine (1919-1923), Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the USSR in London (1923-1925) and Paris (1925-1927), one of the leaders of the Trotskyite bloc, and an opponent of Stalin. While Rakovsky’s life has been the subject of some research, many of its aspects remain unexplored. Drawing on a wealth of new documents discovered in the archives of Bulgaria, Great Britain, France, Ukraine, and Russia, the author sheds new light on little-known episodes of Rakovsky’s life – particularly the years of his youth, when he joined the international student socialist movement and spoke at international congresses. The article considers Rakovsky’s contacts with Plekhanov’s Emancipation of Labor group in Geneva, where Rakovsky studied medicine and achieved some prominence among Russian social democrats. His connections with famous Western European revolutionaries are discussed – including Rosa Luxemburg, Karl Liebknecht, Jules Guesde, Karl Kautsky, and other figures of the Second International. It is noted that Rakovsky was the only member of the Bolshevik government who was also a member of the Bureau of the Second International. The article touches on a subject that has long been neglected by historians – Rakovsky’s efforts to solve the problem of Russian-Romanian relations in 1918, the resulting bilateral treaty, and his special position regarding the annexation of Bessarabia to Romania. Considerable attention is given to the question of Rakovsky’s so-called ‘Jewish’ origin and his alleged membership in the worldwide Masonic lodge, disproven on the basis of Rakovsky’s papers in the Bulgarian Historical Archive. The author also dwells on the problem of the so-called ‘Rakovsky protocols’, published by Iosif Landovsky in the book “Red Symphony: Confessions of the Trotskyist Rakovsky.” The author draws on Rakovsky’s NKVD case file and interrogation records, which he has published in full in his book “The Bloody Farce,” to demonstrate that no such protocols exist. Finally, the author addresses the rumor that Rakovsky was not executed, but spent the last years of his life in the Soviet Union. This rumor is proven false based on the analysis of extensive archival materials and memoirs of Rakovsky’s comrades; most notably, Rakovsky’s case file in the Central Archives of the KGB of the USSR contains a certificate of his execution on 11 September 1941 in the Oryol Central Prison.

A circulação dos primeiros ritos maçônicos manuscritos e impressos no Brasil (1810-1836)

Abstract: This article offers an analysis of the production and circulation of the first masonic rites in Brazil. Initially, by means of heavily copied manuscripts or clandestinely printed pamphets brought into Portuguese America, Masonic rites circulated among freemasons, starting in the northern captaincies, especially in Bahia and Pernambuco, at the time when the first Masonic lodges established political influence (1810- 1820). With the introduction of printing presses in Brazil, these rites began to be printed in the Rio de Janeiro, maintaining their production and circulation restricted during the Primeiro Reinado (1822), but becoming more accessible to the public with the expansion of printing propelled by a new generation of printers in the Regency period (1831-1840).

A Deserving Brother: George Washington and Freemasonry by Mark A. Tabbert

Reviewed by: A Deserving Brother: George Washington and Freemasonry by Mark A. Tabbert Andrew M. Schocket A Deserving Brother: George Washington and Freemasonry. By Mark A. Tabbert. (Charlottesville and London: University of Virginia Press, 2022. Pp. xxviii, 271. $34.95, ISBN 978-0-8139-4721-1.) Mark A. Tabbert, the author and compiler of this volume, and longtime George Washington scholar Edward G. Lengel, who contributed its introduction, define eighteenth-century Freemasonry and George Washington’s engagement with it as much by what they were not as by what they were. In this respect, while swatting the swirling popular myths concerning its subject, A Deserving Brother: George Washington and Freemasonry falls squarely within mainstream scholarship. Freemasonry emerged from artisanal guild rites in seventeenth-century Scotland, which shaped its terminology and iconography. But by the 1800s, the organization was no longer particularly [End Page 344] Scottish, and it appealed to members of the gentry rather than to craftsmen. Freemasonry did entail a few secret rituals, and a pamphlet or two appeared during the 1700s warning of masonic conspiracy. But despite the fervid imaginings of more recent novels and movies, including the National Treasure film franchise, Freemasonry operated more as a benign, fairly passive, and loose network of men’s social clubs. Freemasonry was aligned with a vaguely non-sectarian Christianity but did not promote deism. Notwithstanding the bizarre Anti-Masonic conspiracy theories of the 1820s and 1830s, Freemasonry seems not to have taken up much mental bandwidth among Revolutionary-era Americans. Similarly, while George Washington was an early member of a masonic lodge in Fredericksburg, Virginia, he was probably not among its founders. He reached the highest of the society’s three levels—“Master Mason”—but never led a chapter (p. 4). Though he supported the establishment of masonic lodges in the Continental army, Washington did not join one, nor did he join—or, it seems, attend—the many lodges across the new nation that invited him. He was neither officially asked to head a national association of freemasons, nor did he decline such an office. Washington appeared to value his Freemasonry brotherhood, but no evidence indicates that he gave fellow masons a leg up when considering appointments or promotions. He included freemasons in the ceremonial laying of the Capitol’s cornerstone, but he did not push for masonic imagery to be included in the Great Seal of the United States and other official insignia. Echoing this analysis, Tabbert describes this handsomely published book, which includes dozens of glossy, full-color photographs of images and artifacts, as much by what it is not as by what it is. Unfolding in five chronologically arranged chapters corresponding with stages of Washington’s life and a fascinating epilogue on freemasons’ commemoration of Washington to the present, A Deserving Brother makes no explicit attempt to biographize. Instead, Tabbert aims to “present all known physical evidence” associated with Washington’s Freemasonry (p. xviii). Each chapter begins with a succinct, clear narrative covering Freemasonry and Washington’s involvement during the period under examination. With considerable authority (Tabbert has long served as the George Washington Masonic National Memorial’s director of archives and exhibits), the volume claims to include the transcribed text of every written source and the image of every artifact that has a strong provenance directly associating Washington with Freemasonry. Most of these are lightly contextualized, usually with enough explanation for readers to understand the logic of the sources, but not extending to broader analysis of their meanings for Washington, Freemasonry, or eighteenth-century Anglo-American society. A Deserving Brother is not an edited papers project along the lines of the many heavily footnoted volumes presenting the archives of prominent early Americans. That is not to say that this book should be ignored by scholars. For historians considering Washington’s life, Freemasonry, the history of voluntary associations, or the material culture of the memory of the Founders, there is much here of potential research value, surprise, and occasional delight. [End Page 345] Andrew M. Schocket Bowling Green State University Copyright © 2023 Southern Historical Association

A Study on the Conception and Production of Architecture in the 18th Century Masonic Lodges as a Form of Urban Organization

18. yüzyıl Aydınlanma dönemi, insanın kendini ve kendisi dışındakileri anlama ve yeniden tarifleme girişimi olarak bütün alanlarda kendini gösterir. Bu fikirsel keşif kaçınılmaz olarak mimarlıkta da gerçekleşir. Mimarlığın tarihselliğinin farkına varılması ile mimarlığı bir disiplin rejimi içinde tanımlamayan aktörler bütünsel bir dil oluşturma gayreti içine girerler. Bu sebeple Antikiteden alınan birçok kavram yeniden tanımlanarak mimarlık epistemolojisinin inşasında kullanılır. Böylece klasik mimarlık, 18. yüzyıl mimarlık düşüncesinin inşa edilebilmesinin temel argümanlarından birini oluşturur. Geçmişe yapılan bu yolculuktaki her karşılaşma bir taraftan mimarlık disiplinini inşa etmeye yararken öte taraftan yıkıcı olabilecek karşılaşmaları da içerir. Bu karşılaşmalar ya akla uygun hale getirilerek rasyonel düzlemde ele alınır veyahut görmezden gelinerek sınırdışı edilir. Bu türden durumlar mimarlığın birçok farklı biçimlerde de kavranabileceğinin işaretleridir. Bir çevre oluşturmanın farklı formları olan yeme-içme birliktelikleri, kahvehaneler, salonlar ve benzeri oluşumlar, Aydınlanma döneminin önemli paradigmalarıdır. Sosyalleşme kültürü içinde, mimarlık söylemleri ile inşa edilen mason locaları, kendine özgü yapılanması ile kurumsal olmayan biçimlerde şekillenerek, 18. yüzyılda Avrupa’nın birçok yerine yayılmış önemli bir yere sahiptir. Bu sebeple çalışmada, masonluğun ilk kez nasıl ortaya çıktığına odaklanmak yerine, Aydınlanma döneminin dikkate değer oluşumlarından biri haline nasıl geldiği ve mimarlıktan beslenerek kentsel bir örgütlenme biçimine nasıl dönüştüğü irdelenecektir. Çalışma bu bağlamda mimarlığın totaliteryan inşasını da eleştirmektedir.

FREEMASONRY IN THE LIFE AND WORK OF APOLLON GRIGORIEV

The article touches upon a set of questions about the role of Freemasonry in the writer’s life and how Masonic teaching was expressed in his texts. Grigoriev considered himself a hereditary mason and, according to his confession, “believed in some mysterious connection” of his soul with the soul of his late grand-father, the mason Ivan Grigoriev. A friend of Grigoriev’s youth and his comrade at Moscow University, the poet Afanasy Fet recalled that Grigoriev had repeatedly told him “about his admission to the Masonic lodge”. Freemasonry and Hermeticism also inspired (directly or indirectly) the literary pseudonym of the poet: “A. Trismegistov”. Grigoriev’s Masonic Hymns (1845) are considered in the context of the hymns of the Russian Masons of the late 18th — fi rst quarter of the 19th centuries. Th e “Masonic plot” of the play Two Egoisms (1845) and the Masonic subtext of the novels One of Many (1846) and Th e Other of Many (1847) are also analyzed. In his later works, Ap. Grigoriev acted as a bold innovator, portraying Masonic heroes at a time when Freemasonry was offi cially banned in Russia, and depicted them not retrospectively, but as his contemporaries, i.e. people of the forties.

Freemasonry and the Visual Arts from the Eighteenth Century Forward: Historical and Global Perspectives ed. by Reva Wolf and Alisa Luxenberg

Reviewed by: Freemasonry and the Visual Arts from the Eighteenth Century Forward: Historical and Global Perspectives ed. by Reva Wolf and Alisa Luxenberg Denise Amy Baxter Reva Wolf and Alisa Luxenberg, eds., Freemasonry and the Visual Arts from the Eighteenth Century Forward: Historical and Global Perspectives (New York: Bloomsbury Visual Arts, 2020). Pp. 286; 16 color and 106 b/w illus. $150.00 cloth; $35.95 paper. Despite a wonderful collection of essays on the subject by scholars such as Margaret C. Jacob, Janet M. Burke, and Robert Beachy published in the Winter 2000 issue of this journal, Freemasonry does still mystify, if not historians, then art historians, or, at least many of them, or maybe just me.1 Yet, I contend that this is not surprising. Freemasonry is chronologically, geographically, and organizationally diffuse, with individual orders and rites and lodges, and it is, explicitly, secretive. Nonetheless, Freemasonry surrounds us on a daily basis. Even if with our increasingly cashless society I less frequently encounter the all-seeing eye of the national seal on the one-dollar bill, I pass both a Masonic Lodge and a billboard for Scottish Rite for Children Orthopedic Hospital on my daily commute. And it is exactly these historical though contemporary, completely encompassing visual and material aspects of Freemasonry that is the topic of Freemasonry and the Visual Arts from the Eighteenth Century Forward: Historical and Global Perspectives. The scope of this fascinating volume, ably brought together by art historians Reva Wolf and Alisa Luxenberg, is simply the "centrality of the arts to the history of Freemasonry, and conversely, Freemasonry's significance for the history of art from the 1720s forward" (1). After reading the volume's essays you may well also experience the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon, or frequency bias, and see Masonic imagery and influence everywhere you look. But, in this case, it really was already there. The introductory chapter, co-authored by Wolf and Luxenberg, points to the volume's overarching goal of the "Mystery of Masonry Brought to Light," whetting the reader's suspicions that indeed we are, and have been, surrounded by Masonic imagery in media ranging from architecture to porcelain, city planning to paintings, and in sites starting in the early eighteenth century, such as the Grand Lodge of England, to contemporary Haitian Vodou visual and material culture. In addition to the case studies, the editors have generously provided the reader with an extended bibliography of the kind so frequently missing in anthologies. The [End Page 327] volume's essays were sourced from a College Art Association session chaired by Reva Wolf in 2016 and a set of three sessions on Freemasonry and the Visual Arts at the Second World Conference on Fraternalism, Freemasonry, and History in 2017 at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France. It would appear that the combination of sources contributed to the disciplinary and geographic range of the authors. The scope of the volume is ambitious, especially its additional claim of not only a historical but a global perspective. That said, it is important to note that the contributions are explicitly the particular interests of the authors; they are selected case studies. The volume does not comprise chapters commissioned to cover the entire scope of the relationship between Freemasonry and the visual arts, nor, as these selections indicate, could any single volume contain that totality. Organized chronologically, five of the eleven case studies are situated in the long (and broad) eighteenth century, and it is these on which I focus. In the first of these, art historian David Martín López asks the question of what would change if we were to posit that noted Portuguese Enlightenment politician, Sebastião José de Carvalho e Melo, Marquis of Pombal and Count of Oeiras, was a Freemason? How would this alter our interpretations of the Marquis of Pombal and, more discretely, how would his architectural projects in Lisbon following the devastation of the 1755 earthquake be alternatively understood through this lens, and, conversely, how might an analysis of the architecture and urban planning spearheaded by the Marquis of Pombal provide evidence for his affiliation with Freemasonry? Biographical evidence, including the Marquis of Pombal's friendship with known...

Narrative potential of the June issue of A.Sumarokov’s journal “Hardworking Bee” (1759)

Most of the studies of Sumarokov’s work as a journalist regard the writer as a satirist. In contrast, this article suggests a different perspective on the problem of Sumarokov’s literary legacy. Based on the analysis of the narrative potential of the June issue of “Hardworking Bee”, the study proposes to look at the public activity of Sumarokov the publisher as a special communicative strategy. The journal began to claim the formation of a public sphere, offering its conception of personal and social identity. Sumarokov’s journal became an entirely new institution with its audience, along with literary and scientific societies, secular salons, public theatres, and Masonic lodges. The article contains historical commentary and interpretation of the historical-literary and personal contexts of June 1759. The aim of the article is to study the journal metatext of the June issue of “Hardworking Bee”, to examine the problematics and poetics of the texts published in it. The article uses methods of literary studies: historical-typological, cultural-historical, biographical and comparative-historical. The study demonstrates that Sumarokov’s metatextual narrative realized a new model of cyclization for Russian literature. At the lowest, ordinary level, the reader could remain a profane, and at the highest level the reader the reader is turned into a hermetic wise man. We can conclude that Sumarokov’s journal “Hardworking Bee” stimulated the creation of most monthly editions not only in the Russian 18th century. The article emphasizes the importance of Sumarokov’s experience as a publisher and editor for the evaluation of his creativity in general.

Lists of members of Masonic lodges in the collections of the University Library in Poznań as a source for research on the teaching staff of the Royal and Municipal Gymnasiums and Mariacki Gymnasium in Szczecin in the years 1805–1935

Lists of members of Masonic lodges in the collections of the University Library in Poznań as a source for research on the teaching staff of the Royal and Municipal Gymnasiums and Mariacki Gymnasium in Szczecin in the years 1805–1935

Масонство у Кам’янці-Подільському: персоналії, ідеї, символи

The purpose of the study is to examine the problem of the penetration of Masonic ideas into Kamianets-Podilskyi at the end of the 18th and the beginning of the 19th centuries, based on the analysis of sources and historical literature, to fi nd out the identity of the creators of the Masonic lodges, their composition, and symbolism. Th e methodology of the research is based on two fundamental principles – historicism and objectivity. Th e principle of historicism involves the realization of the desire to consider phenomena that have a beginning and an end, perceived as a certain process of formation in specifi c conditions or circumstances. Th e principle of objectivity requires the reproduction of the past impartially, without conjunctival distortions, and without “corrections” of past events to prove one’s subjective scientifi c positions. Th e scien- tifi c novelty lies in the formation of a comprehensive vision of the transformational processes that took place on the city’s territory within the studied period. At the same time, the spread of Masonic ideas in Kamianets-Podilskyi relates to deep changes of a social, ethical, and moral nature caused by the search for new ways of development of society and the state, as well as the presence in the city of signifi cant intellectual potential, people who tried to look into the future, changing it for the better. Conclusions. Masonic ideas penetrated Kamianets-Podilskyi during the period of systemic transformations, which led to profound changes in administrative, social, ethical, and moral character and became an echo of cultural ties between the East and the West. Freemasonry everywhere considered its main task to create a worldwide, supranational bro- therhood, neglected the specifi cs of the national development of those countries where it found its refuge, and openly sought universalism. Th e path of European Freemasonry to Kamianets laid through Istanbul and later became closely connected with Warsaw and St. Petersburg. Th e bearers of Masonic ideas in the city were Józef Mikoša and Stanislav Pilštyn, who, for several decades, had determined the ways of development of the organization, its ideas, and symbols.

Мистические видения и их оценка в русском масонстве конца XVIII – начала XIX века

In the richest manuscript heritage of Russian freemasons, who lived two centuries ago, there are numerous descriptions of various mystical experiences. These are visions and mystical dreams in which beings from the other world appeared, as well as deliberately evoked mystical states by which an adept attempts to penetrate into the other world. For censorship reasons, this aspect of the activities of Russian brothers practically did not go beyond the narrow circle of initiates. The article will attempt to present the main types of mystical experience reflected in the manuscripts of Russian freemasons – mostly diaries and correspondence. The most valuable information of this kind is contained in so-called “Masonic dreams”. These stories constitute a special genre of Masonic literature and preserved in a significant number of manuscripts. They were based on the idea of a special inner, spiritual vision, which has an adept and which allows him to achieve clairvoyance. Masonic dreams contain a significant amount of details related both to the Masonic ritual and symbolic decoration of the premises of Masonic lodges, and to those practices of moral self-improvement that are important for the Masonic path. Russian freemasons paid considerable attention to the problem of evaluating such experience – is it a gift from the divine essences or a temptation sent by demonic forces? The question of the significance of such an experience was also important: is it an accidental consequence of Masonic work, a hindrance on the way, or, on the contrary, a kind of confirmation of progress in following the Masonic path? The Orthodox Church, to which the Russian freemasons belonged, is extremely negative about such forms of mysticism. Therefore, they were forced to seek explanations for such phenomena in Catholic and Protestant mysticism, as well as in the European esoteric tradition. The article attempts to answer these questions, based on the analysis of a wide range of Masonic manuscripts of the 18th - early 19th centuries, preserved in the families of Russian Masons and today located in the Moscow archives.

MASONRY AND MODERN TIMES: REBIRTH OF THE MOVEMENT IN ARMENIA (ANALYSIS OF REPUBLICAN PRESS)

The paper is dedicated to the topic of Masonry given day-to-day realities. The publications in the Armenian periodicals related to the rebirth of Masonry movements on post-Soviet territory, in particular in Armenia, are analyzed. The study draws parallels between century-long Masonry and newly made Masonic lodges. Historical realities, as a rule, condition today’s perception of Masonic movement in Armenia which is why very often this phenomenon is interpreted ambiguously, at times being covered in a veil of mystery or, even worse, negativity. There is every indication of unreliability and lack of verification of information, various defamations and hypotheses which confuse the uneducated minds resulting in quite a natural misunderstanding.

The Secular Enlightenment by Margaret C. Jacob

Reviewed by: The Secular Enlightenment by Margaret C. Jacob Anna Tomaszewska The Secular Enlightenment. By Margaret C. Jacob. (Princeton: Princeton University Press. 2019. Pp. xi, 339. $29.95. ISBN 9780691161327.) The author of the seminal Radical Enlightenment (1981) has proposed another category encapsulating intellectual, social, and political metamorphoses spurred by [End Page 214] the "Age of Enlightenment." In eight chapters that take the reader through Western European and trans-Atlantic spaces and times spanning from the late seventeenth century until the 1790s, Margaret Jacob pictures the emergence of "the secular world" in which human life would increasingly center on the here and now without "a necessary reference to a transcendent order" (pp. 1–2). For Jacob, secularization does not imply a complete repudiation of religion, but redefining its meaning as a cultural practice, an approach traceable to The Religious Ceremonies and Customs (1723–43) by Jean Frederick Bernard and Bernard Picart. The secular Enlightenment turned toward science under Newton's auspices, witnessed budding sensitivity to social injustice and inequalities, criticized the alliance between church and state, and brought the development of the university culture. Clandestine literature and new forms of sociability, practiced in masonic lodges, city clubs, and cafés, created a global space of shared ideas and ideals: equality, cosmopolitanism, universal brotherhood. Inventions, such as that of the pendulum clock, prompted changes in the perception of time dedicated more and more to this-worldly activities. The secular ways became manifest in the lives of countless travelers, publishers, industrialists, academics, scientists, and poets—both minor figures, some of them female, and the leading protagonists of the epoch. France prepared the ground for the outbreak of its 1789 revolution: the deism, materialism, and atheism of the philosophes provided a setting in which the absolute monarchy and priestly privilege could be challenged. The Scottish enlighteners favored pragmatic topics: taxes, commerce, and how to counteract poverty, which would set the background for the development of capitalism and the conception of historical progress. Germany staged the advocacy of secular ethics and politics, the publication of subversive writings attacking organized religion, conflicts between rationalist philosophers and state authorities, and finally the resurgence of Spinozism that constituted the naturalist underpinnings for "a universal humanism" (p. 197). The Italians, overcoming tensions between the Catholic Church and the enlightened values, contributed to political economy with theories of money and trade, and to political theory by laying the foundations for a constitutional republic that would later serve as a model for the Americans. The way was also paved for abolishing torture, slavery, and eventually death penalty. Social and political unrest accompanied the demise of the Enlightenment, which set in motion the "creation of the democratic citizen," necessitating a "personal transformation … often transgressive of customs and mores" (p. 236), particularly those related to family life. The Enlightenment, which persisted in the writings of the Romantics, brought along "the secular" that "had become all pervasive" (p. 264). Jacob's fascinatingly many-layered and multifaceted account of the Enlightenment unfolds the extent to which its ideas have shaped our times, yet occasionally her usage of '"enlightened" slips from merely descriptive into normative. Jacob does not side with the proponents of the "religious Enlightenment"—the claim that religious controversies could have triggered the secularizing impulse (Jeffrey D. Burson) or that the "Age of Reason" made possible new forms of belief (David Sorkin). Her allegiance stays with those who, like Peter Gay, link the Enlightenment with the [End Page 215] secular. However, although Jacob's account expresses attachment to the secular values which have come to be associated with liberal democratic culture that some believe to prevail nowadays, it also perpetuates the view of those critics of the Enlightenment who would see in it a movement of dissent from Christianity. Anna Tomaszewska Jagellonian University in Krakow Copyright © 2022 The Catholic University of America Press

Vokiečių masonų karinės ložės Lietuvoje 1916–1918 metais

ANNOTATION. The article offers a brief overview of German military Masonic lodges, their origin, evolution, and the attitude towards the war, which were known to foster humanistic principles. Two military lodges, the German Guard on the River Nemunas (Deutsche Wacht an der Memel), and Vilnius for the Flaming Sword (Wilna zum Flammenden Schwert), which operated in present-day Lithuania from 1916 to 1918, are subjected to a detailed analysis. The aim of the study is to offer some information about the two specific and little-known branches of the German Freemasonry on the foreign soil. KEYWORDS: First World War, Vilnius, Kaunas, Freemasons, military lodges.

Fraternal Networks Of Victorian Norfolk

The social and economic dislocation experienced in Victorian Norfolk during the later nineteenth-century derived from the fall in land and grain prices, declining rental incomes, the spread of cattle disease, imports of cheap grain and its transportation by rail, and tensions between labourers and farmers. In this context, an assessment of one Masonic lodge indicates that Freemasonry provided a space where men might meet to develop trusting strong ties to one another and resolve their conflicts. However, lodge members were increasing isolated from the working-class brethren who were members of other fraternal associations. They found refuge in the Conservative Club, the Masonic lodge and the Church, while poorer men supported the Chapel, friendly societies and Liberalism. The development of weak ties to friendly societies helped to shape those bodies and to provide the Freemasons with an inexpensive and pragmatic means to improve the flow of useful knowledge and promote social harmony.

Masonic Ritual and the Display of Empire in 19th-Century India and Beyond

This article aims at exploring the role played by Freemasonry in displaying, promoting and celebrating the British Empire. It argues that Masonic lodges held centre stage in the Indian colonial public sphere. They organized processions, cornerstone laying ceremonies, and banquets on an unequalled scale, which all became an integral part of imperial display. Masonic ritual, therefore, held centre stage in the dramaturgy of colonial power in India, and also played a leading role in fostering the cult of Empire, which emerged in the last decades of the 19th century. In that respect, Freemasonry offers a stimulating venue for articulating the local and the global, the material and the cultural, formal and informal Empire. It also offers an interesting insight into imperial circulations.