Freemasonry

In medieval Britain, masons who built churches and castles travelled from site to site and organised themselves in lodges with rules, legends and ways of recognising one another. In Scotland around 1600, William Schaw, master of works to King James VI, issued statutes regulating these lodges, and some of them began keeping minutes. Over the seventeenth century such lodges increasingly admitted men who were not working masons, known as accepted or speculative masons. The antiquary Elias Ashmole recorded his own admission in 1646.

On 24 June 1717 four London lodges met at the Goose and Gridiron tavern and formed a Grand Lodge, choosing a Grand Master to preside over them. Its Constitutions, compiled by the Presbyterian minister James Anderson and published in 1723, asked members to follow the moral law and avoid religious and political quarrels inside the lodge. A rival Grand Lodge, the so-called Ancients, formed in 1751, and the two united in 1813 as the United Grand Lodge of England.

Freemasonry spread with trade, armies and empire. Lodges appeared in France, the Netherlands, the German states, the American colonies, India and beyond, and many new ritual degrees were developed, especially in France. In many countries lodges also became places where new ideas about citizenship, merit and fraternity were tried out in practice. Famous members included Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, Mozart and Voltaire, although the vast majority of Freemasons were ordinary professionals, tradesmen and officers whose names appear only in lodge registers.

Because lodges kept minute books, membership registers and printed constitutions, Freemasonry is one of the best documented voluntary societies of early modern Europe. These records show members meeting to perform initiation rituals, dine, discuss ideas and raise money for charity. Historians such as Margaret Jacob have shown how lodges brought together merchants, aristocrats, professionals and clergy in a setting where they practised elections, constitutions and debate.

Freemasons are required to believe in a Supreme Being, often called the Great Architect of the Universe, but the fraternity does not present itself as a religion and admits men of different faiths. In practice early lodges were largely Protestant, but Jewish members were accepted in many places from the eighteenth century. The Catholic Church condemned Freemasonry in 1738, objecting to its secrecy and oaths and to its religious indifference, and in some Catholic countries lodges later became associated with liberal and anticlerical politics.

Individual Freemasons have certainly been involved in politics, revolutions and scandals. The records do not, however, support the claim that Freemasonry as a whole has directed world events. Its lodges have usually been local, varied, and often divided among themselves. Today there are several million Freemasons worldwide, organised in independent national and regional Grand Lodges with differing rules.

Masonic ritual tells a story of Hiram Abiff, master builder of Solomon’s Temple, who was murdered for refusing to reveal the master mason’s secret. Freemasons generally understand this as an allegory of integrity rather than as history. In the eighteenth century some lodges also adopted legends linking their origins to the Knights Templar, a claim for which historians have found no evidence.

The same secrecy that gave members a sense of belonging encouraged outsiders to imagine sinister purposes. After the French Revolution, writers such as Augustin Barruel blamed Freemasons and the Bavarian Illuminati for the upheaval. In the United States, the disappearance of William Morgan in 1826, after he threatened to publish Masonic rituals, led to a political Anti-Masonic movement. In the twentieth century Nazi Germany and other authoritarian regimes persecuted Freemasons, often linking them with antisemitic conspiracy myths.

Today Freemasonry is largely open about its existence, buildings and charitable work, and its rituals have long been published. Yet the image of the all-powerful secret brotherhood persists in novels, films and online conspiracy culture, often far removed from the lodge meetings and charity dinners that the records describe. Many lodges now hold open days, publish their histories and welcome researchers into their libraries and archives.