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Schism: The Battle That Forged Freemasonry, by Ric Berman
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Schism explores the creation of the Antients Grand Lodge and traces the influence of Ireland, the London Irish and especially Laurence Dermott, the Antients' Grand Secretary, in the development of freemasonry in the second half of the eighteenth century. Ric Berman demonstrates the greater accessibility of Antients Freemasonry and contrasts this with the relative exclusivity of the 'Moderns' - the original Grand Lodge of England. Schism supplements and replaces dated Masonic histories of Irish and Antients Freemasonry; it contributes to a better understanding of the London Irish in the long eighteenth century and perhaps most importantly offers a Masonic prism through which England's calamitous relationship with Ireland can be examined.
- Sales Rank: #1745077 in Books
- Published on: 2013-08-01
- Original language: English
- Dimensions: 9.00" h x 6.00" w x 1.00" l, 1.20 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 272 pages
Review
"Understanding the past and the conditions that existed during the formation of Freemasonry provides a lens by which to view the Craft and understand its relationship with the world today. Schism: The Battle that Forged Freemasonry provides such a lens and is an excellent addition to Bermans The Foundations of Modern Freemasonry." - John R. Bo Cline, The Journal of The Masonic Society, 2014
About the Author
The 2016 Prestonian Lecturer, Ric Berman researches, speaks and writes on eighteenth-century history, focusing on the social and political impact of Freemasonry. He is a Visiting Research Fellow at Oxford Brookes University and holds a Doctorate in History from the University of Exeter and a Masters in Economics from the University of Cambridge. Published by Sussex Academic Press and The Old Stables Press, Ric is the author of some of the most important recently published books on eighteenth-century freemasonry.
Most helpful customer reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful.
'most important books on English Freemasonry in modern times'
By R. N. James
* R Berman, The Foundations of Modern Freemasonry – The Grand Architects, Sussex Academic press, 2012, pp.344, incl Notes, index, biblio.
* R Berman, Schism – the Battle that Forged Freemasonry, Sussex Academic, 2013, ISBN 18451906074, pp.321, incl. five appendices, index & biblio.
Reviewed by Bro Dr Bob James, Newcastle.
Since 2004, many important developments in the history of Freemasonry, including the series of bi-annual International Conferences at Edinburgh and Washington have occurred. At the first of these, a key-note speaker, Professor Snoek argued that:
(We) have now entered a new phase in the historiography of Freemasonry, one in which much of its history needs to be re-written.
He argued for a complete overhaul of ‘Masonic History’ because there was a wide-spread feeling that major problems were blighting the study of Masonic history. Part of what Snoek was arguing was that SF could no longer be considered in isolation:
(We) will have to cover the complete scope of all the fields which influenced or were influenced by Freemasonry...We surely need more and better studies of guilds, confraternities, chivalric and knightly orders...but also of friendly societies, Masonic ‘spin-off’ societies and Trade Unions, many of which we now know, incorporate part of the Masonic heritage.
Within English Freemasonry, rumblings for fundamental change are growing louder, and it’s not a case of barbarians at the gates – non-Masons and academics - attempting to sack and plunder the holy city and that all true Freemasons should rally in its defence. The arguments for change are well-founded.
Earlier, in 1969, JM Roberts had challenged his fellow academics’ obvious neglect, but he argued that they had been right not to study Freemasonry. Their neglect, he said, was ‘proper’, because the assertions published by the popular press were not based on either an ‘official’ or ‘unofficial’ understanding of Freemasonry but on what he called in 1974 ‘the mythology of the secret societies’. This was an understanding based on hysteria and rumour generated by fearful mistrust of secret societies and could not serve as a sound basis for any useful research. A North American academic, Margaret Jacobs, had around the same time, made known her frustration by dismissing the huge piles of publications about Freemasonry, already then in existence, as ‘useless’ for the purposes of serious scholarship.
This is the key to understanding this whole issue. Roberts, in my view, made an unsatisfactory defence of ‘professional historians’, but the neglect certainly existed. Jacobs wasn’t dismissing literature which didn’t exist, she was dismissing the material which did, and this was material which had been generated by ‘insiders’ not ‘outsiders.’ What is important, of course, is not whether an historian is an academic but what rules of evidence are in use and how rigorously they are applied.
Having been written by ‘insiders’ the Masonic material dismissed by Jacobs was uniformly positive about the Order. These Masonic authors perhaps thought they were writing reasonable history but they were being very selective with regard to the evidence and what they included as relevant background. Exactly what non-Masons wanted to know about - the political, economic, social and cultural connections between Masonry and the outside world - was exactly what these authors were leaving out.
Some English Masons, ie brethren affiliated to the United English Grand Lodge, have convinced themselves that this problem was solved way back in 1886 when their first Lodge of Research was established. In the 130 years or so since, the lodge, popularly known as QC, gained the reputation of having successfully moved against fanciful history. Bro Dyer, a member of QC evaluated the achievements of its first century up to 1986:
…By (their stated objectives the founders) established a new style of research into Freemasonry. It ignored baseless conclusions…of earlier authors and…became known as the ‘authentic school’ of Masonic students.'
Clearly, as Snoek said just a decade ago, the problem of ‘authentic Masonic history’ has been on the agenda for a long time but has not yet been satisfactorily resolved. At the same time, lodges as possible places of learning have declined into places for the parroting of ritual to the extent that the obvious public information gap has been filled by fanciful histories of the Dan Brown kind.
English Masons have had the basics drummed into them, until it has become accepted that Masons do not talk or write about any matter which Grand Lodge ordains is ‘off limits’. Though Masonry, precisely because of its history, has both religious and political dimensions, Masons are specifically told that discussions of politics and religion inside a lodge room are prohibited. Three hundred years ago, such discussions might have been prohibited to keep divisive, sectarian issues at bay, although even that’s debateable. Today, some insiders have acknowledged that Freemasonry has been and is a social phenomenon, like any other, and that the organisation’s past must be objectively considered for its current situation to be understood.
To draw a suitable ‘map’ of new evidence in any field, it’s always necessary to clarify what was ‘wrong’ with previous maps. In other words, as Snoek says, Masonic history has to be re-written. With that in mind, I argue that these two books are the most important on English Freemasonry published in recent times.
The first, sub-titled, Political Change and the Scientific Enlightenment, 1714-1740, introduces the crucial networking which produced the first ‘buzz’ of interest in Freemasonry in 1720’s London. The second, set in the second half of the 18th century, describes ‘the battle that shaped Freemasonry’, between London’s established and respectable Grand Lodge, ‘The Moderns’, and the middling sort of brethren, largely Irish refugees, who objected to centralised pronouncements, ‘the Antients.’ The two volumes are best taken together for their full implications to emerge.
For the first volume, Berman located new material showing the predominance of magistrates in Masonry’s most sociable, and therefore most influential lodges, and he has emphasised the bridge these provided between the theory of Newtonian science and its application. The lectures and demonstrations of ‘natural philosophy’, which were Desagulier’s strength and passion, fed directly into the engineering and hydraulic schemes increasingly driving the industrial revolution. This two-way street meant the rapid popularisation of Newton’s ideas enhanced Freemasonry’s image as THE society for the upwardly mobile, and vice versa. The seven chapters in this first volume, briefly and succinctly, locate Desagulier alongside Martin Folkes, George Payne and many of the other, ‘exceptionally well-connected’ players.
In Berman’s view, English Freemasonry was a deliberate creation of a few brethren of the Horn Tavern who were able to convince leading Whig politicians and members of the aristocracy to join. At the time, the group’s relatively tolerant approach to religion and to internal governance was unique, but it was never completely tolerant, nor completely democratic, and was never intended to be. The 1723 ‘Constitutions’ contained a Hanoverian agenda, radically revising the Order’s oaths to ensure that each member swore ‘to conform to and respect the law and the magistracy, be a peaceable subject of the Crown and not to become involved in any Jacobite plots or anti-government conspiracies.’ (Schism, p.2)
These are profoundly political and, by implication, profoundly religious impositions, and, in highlighting and backgrounding them, Berman has already done a great service to Masons and to scholars of Masonry. In showing how the organisation changed soon after it began, was challenged and forced to reform itself further he has ensured that assertions that it was somehow immutable and unchanging, outside and beyond the rules of evidence applied to all social phenomena, can no longer be made.
For the pioneers grew old, the administration passed into other, less committed hands and corruption and stagnation became apparent, and thus, there came a reaction. Where Berman’s first volume was centred on personalities and their unique histories, his second volume is more about the collective experiences of two distinct social groups. In particular, he brings ‘the Antients’ to life. He delves into their occupations, their communities and their grievances against the original Grand Lodge.
He reports that the evidence suggests that Antient Freemasonry was ‘from its earliest years’ an association of friends, neighbours and co-workers, ‘the large majority of whom lived and laboured’ close to one another. Because they were from the middling and lower classes, these men were more concerned with the financial security such fraternalism could offer than the conviviality and status. They formed recognisable ‘mutual benefit funds’ which were much closer to the pre-1717 operative guilds in form and function than ‘the Moderns’, and much closer to the mutual benefit funds, such as the Odd Fellows, Druids and Rechabites, proliferating around them.
These two volumes are extremely well produced and both are credits to their publishers and their printers. But the warmest appreciation must go to the researcher and author, Ric Berman. In providing a precise, social context around the invention of English Freemasonry, he has, hopefully, finally killed off the fanciful speculation which has continued to bedevil it nearly 130 years after the idea of Masonic research was formalised.
J Snoek, ‘Researching Freemasonry: Where Are We?’, 2007, p.9, (Version published by Sheffield’s Centre for Research into Freemasonry and Fraternalism).
‘Quatuor Coronati Lodge No 2076’, Transactions, Vol 121 for 2008, p.v.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful.
The "Schism" is indeed the most innovative I ever read ...
By Pierre Noel
The "Schism" is indeed the most innovative I ever read on the topic.
It should be widely read and I look forward for a French translation.
Pierre Noël
0 of 1 people found the following review helpful.
I was disappointed by the cursory manner in which the author dismissed ...
By Rod Harries
I had hoped to learn about Ancient Freemasonry but the book is largely a sociological study of the Ancient Freemasons. Indeed, the most interesting part, for me, was the section devoted to the Moderns Grand Lodge! I was disappointed by the cursory manner in which the author dismissed the question of whether the Premier Grand Lodge ever, in fact, altered the modes of recognition in the First Degree.
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