In 1969 the leading Oxford historian, John Morris Roberts, published an essay in The English Historical Review in which he highlighted how Englishspeaking historians had largely ignored the world’s largest fraternal association: ‘In the country which gave Freemasonry to the world’ he wrote, the subject had attracted ‘hardly any interest from the professional historian’. The result of this neglect, he lamented had been essentially twofold. First, ignorance of this important social and cultural phenomenon had resulted in an impoverishment of English historians’ understanding of European history. Secondly, the subject had effectively been abandoned ‘to masonic antiquarians or to cranks’. But in spite of his clarion call to fellow historians to take more notice of this vast interdisciplinary subject, it is only in relatively recent times that the academic world has begun to wake up to its seemingly limitless possibilities, and the recent International Conference on the History of Freemasonry (ICHF) held in Edinburgh from 25-27 May, the first of its kind, illustrated that.
     The event took place in Freemasons’ Hall Edinburgh, the headquarters of the Grand Lodge of Scotland, situated in the city’s elegant George Street, and it was organised by Robert Cooper, Librarian and Curator of the Grand Lodge of Scotland’s Library and Museum, Professor Andrew Prescott, who until the end of February 2007 was Director of the Centre for Research into Freemasonry at Sheffield University, and Jim Daniel, a former Grand Secretary of the United Grand Lodge of England. The conference was also supported by the Centre for Research into Freemasonry at the University of Sheffield, the Centre Interdisciplinaire Bordelaise d’Étude des Lumieres, Université de Bordeaux III, the Centre National de Recherche Scientifique, Paris IV, The Sorbonne, and the Interdisciplinary Research Group into Freemasonry, based at the Free University of Brussels. And over three rewarding days, more than two hundred delegates from all around the world were treated to any one of sixty eight scheduled lectures, spread out over three parallel-running sessions.

RESEARCH INTO FREEMASONRY

The Conference was formally opened by the Grand Master of Scotland, Sir Archibald D. Orr-Ewing, Bt., the Pro Grand Master of the United Grand Lodge of England, Lord Northampton, and the Grand Master of Ireland, George Dunlop. The proceedings proper then commenced with the first of five additional lectures, which was expertly delivered by Prof. Dr. Jan Snoek, a specialist on the history of religion and ritual dynamics based at Heidelberg University, Germany. Dr. Snoek spoke about the evolution of research into Freemasonry and he observed how the subject was not only gradually becoming accepted in academic circles as a legitimate focus for scientific study, but how an immense task lies ahead of scholars, if, one day, we are to read anything like a definitive account of Freemasonry’s influence and interaction with societies all around the world during the last four centuries.
     However, he was confident that this would one day be possible, due to a recent shift in the methodological approach to this subject, and also due to the recent discovery of large amounts of previously unseen documentary evidence, much of which has only come to light since the end of the Cold War.

FREEMASONRY AND THE CATHOLIC CHURCH

Other speakers included the pioneering historian of Freemasonry and early modern science, Professor Margaret Jacob of UCLA California, who spoke on the eighteenth century philosopher, statesman, scientist and Freemason, Benjamin Franklin, who belonged to several lodges including the Paris Lodge Les Neuf Soeurs, which was responsible for initiating the luminary Voltaire when Franklin was its Master. Another speaker, the distinguished Spanish Professor, José Antonio Ferrer Benimeli, gave an enlightening address on a theme that has concerned him for more than forty years – the relationship between Freemasonry and the Roman Catholic Church. Professor Benimeli, the most published historian on the subject alive today, emphasised how the traditional tensions which have so bedevilled the relationship between the association and the Roman Church in the past, have now largely gone, although he acknowledged that problems still arise on occasion regarding the technical status of Catholics who choose to become Freemasons. Indeed, the presentations really encapsulated many of the key issues confronting a historian approaching the history of Freemasonry, as well as its many kindred associations.
     This was especially evident on hearing Dr. David Stevenson, Professor Emeritus at the University of St. Andrew’s, Scotland. Professor Stevenson, who, in 1988, produced two seminal tomes on the history of Freemasonry in seventeenth-century Scotland, took the long view on the sometimes uneasy relationship between the Scottish middle and working classes and how, until relatively recent times, Freemasonry had been viewed with suspicion by some on the Left.
     However, he pointed out that Freemasonry had been hugely popular among both the working classes and some of the Left in Scotland, and that when the occasional move had been made to oust Freemasons from trade unions, in almost all cases such moves had come to nothing. And the quality of these five key-note talks was not diminished with the final presentation, a closing talk which was more than ably delivered by the renowned architectural historian, James Stevens Curl, Professor Emeritus at the University of Leicester, who gave an eloquent address on the relationship between Freemasonry and gardens during the eighteenth century.

FREEMASONRY IN THE BRITISH COLONIES

Many of the themes resonated strongly with each other throughout the entire three-day event, themes such as the masonic press in England and Belgium during the nineteenth century, Freemasonry and fraternalism, women and Freemasonry, Freemasonry in the Americas, Freemasonry and politics, Freemasonry and religion, and Freemasonry in the Middle East, all of which left delegates with plenty of food for thought. But possibly one of the more memorable talks was given by Dr. Jessica Harland-Jacobs, Assistant Professor at the University of Florida, who spoke on the ‘Sons of East and West’: Conceptions of the Brotherhood in Era of Late Empire, which focused on the spread of Freemasonry in the British colonies.
     Mindful that Freemasonry began in the British Isles, and mindful also that this paper finally answered one of central concerns of Professor J. M. Roberts in his withering critique of 1969, it seemed as though Dr. Harland-Jacobs’ presentation was a fitting exemplar of the work which is now being done in this exciting field of study.