Inventing the future

Book of Enlightenment

Freemasons throughout the world are celebrating the tercentenary of a very important book next year, The Constitutions of the Free-Masons. Museum of Freemasonry Librarian Martin Cherry explains more

Published in 1723, The Constitutions of the Free-Masons took Freemasonry to the world and will feature in a major exhibition hosted by the Museum of Freemasonry for Grand Lodge. ‘Inventing the Future’ will showcase how the growth of Freemasonry in the 18th century spread Enlightenment ideas of equality, democracy and scientific reason.

The Constitutions was the work of Presbyterian priest James Anderson and scientific publishers Senex and Hooke. Essentially a rule book for the new Grand Lodge of England, it was actually much more. The book includes a lengthy history of Freemasonry derived from the legends of ancient stonemasons, and a set of charges forming Freemasonry’s moral framework. A collection of bawdy songs, appropriate for Lodges that largely met in taverns and coffee houses, rounds it off.

Reprints and translations of Anderson’s book soon appeared across the rest of Europe and further afield,

From left: Benjamin Franklin, publisher of the first American edition of Anderson’s Constitutions; title page of Franklin’s version, published in 1734; the frontispiece of the Dublin edition, published in 1730; the Grand Lodge of England’s sword pictured in a 1763 German version; an edition published in Prague in 1785

helping to make Freemasonry the global phenomenon it is today.

A Dublin edition of the Constitutions appeared in 1730, five years after the Grand Lodge of Ireland was founded. It included an almost identical frontispiece to John Pine’s work for Anderson.

The first foreign language edition is an undated Dutch translation by Johan Kuenen. It was probably published around 1736, just after the creation of the Grand Lodge of the Netherlands, based in liberal publishing hotspot The Hague. Deputy Grand Master Kuenen also released the first French and German versions (in 1736 and 1741 respectively).

French and German editions appear throughout the 18th century. French protestant Marquis Louis-François de la Tierce promised Anderson a French edition after his initiation in England. He completed the translation by 1733 and, from 1742, published several French versions in Frankfurt, where he had started a Lodge. He was unsatisfied by Anderson’s history, especially in the 1738 second edition, and so had rewritten it in a style more palatable to European audiences. One of his additions was an oration written by a Jacobite exile, the Chevalier Michael Ramsay. This linked Freemasonry to medieval chivalric orders and led to the formation of some of the additional degrees in Freemasonry.

In North America, English Freemasonry was established by the 1730s. Lodges met predominately in New England and Pennsylvania, where Benjamin Franklin was elected Provincial Grand Master in 1734. At this point, Franklin – a founding father of the United States – was a successful publisher and printer. In this capacity, he published America’s first Masonic book, a reprint of Anderson’s Constitutions. He sold 127 copies, of which only 17 survive. Of the two volumes in the collection of the Museum of Freemasonry, one can be traced back to Luke Vardy, keeper of the Royal Exchange Tavern, Boston, who purchased it from Franklin in 1734. Vardy later gave it to Henry Price, who was four times Provincial Grand Master of New England. Franklin’s Constitutions is a word-for-word reprint of Anderson, but includes an additional song, which he may have written.

Franklin became one of the most influential figures in American history. He represented the colonies in Paris during the War of Independence, drafted the Declaration of Independence and was a delegate at debates to ratify the Constitution of the United States.

By the early 19th century, editions of The Constitutions were published in Europe, the Americas and Asia. Even the rival Antients’ Grand Lodge of England based its rule book on Anderson’s work: Ahiman Rezon, published in 1756, was drafted around a pirated Irish edition.

The only exception was in Scotland – where the Grand Lodge was created in 1736. It was not until 1836 that a first Scottish Constitutions appeared – a very dry affair with no history and no songs.