Stuart Freemasonry: Restoring the Temple of Vision? Andrew Prescott

aries_f4-171-183 10/17/2004 11:20 Page 171 STUART FREEMASONRY: RESTORING THE TEMPLE OF VISION? ANDREW PRESCOTT Marsha Keith Schuchard, Restoring the Temple of Vision: Cabalistic Freemasonry and Stuart Culture (Brill’s Studies in Intellectual History 110), Leiden: E.J. Brill 2002). 845 + xiii pp. ISBN 9004124896. In the introduction to his book The Origins of Freemasonry: Scotland’s Century 1590-1710, the Scottish historian David Stevenson recalls his bewil- derment at encountering references to Scottish covenanters becoming Freemasons in the 1640s1. Like many other academic historians, Stevenson had previously assumed that Freemasonry was a much later development. In his book, and an accompanying volume, The First Freemasons, Stevenson describes the early history of Freemasonry in Scotland between 1590 and 1700, emphasising the fundamental contribution of William Schaw, King James VI’s Master of Works and General Warden of Masons in Scotland. In two sets of ordinances issued in 1598 and 1599, Schaw introduced the Masonic lodge in its modern form and the first minute books of Masonic lodges date from this time. But, for Stevenson, the “bombshell” in the 1599 Schaw statutes was the requirement that members of lodges should be tested in ‘the art of memorie and science thairof’2. “The Art of Memory” was of course the subject of a celebrated study by Frances Yates, and Stevenson argues that the references in the Schaw ordinances do indeed relate to those ancient visualisation techniques used to memorise complex information which had been enthusiastically taken up in Hermetic and Rosicrucian circles in the six- teenth century. In Stevenson’s analysis, Schaw was engaged in an extra- ordinary attempt to introduce working stonemasons to cutting-edge Hermetic philosophy. For Marsha Keith Schuchard, Stevenson’s discussion of these clauses in the Schaw statutes opens the door to a revolutionary reinterpretation of British history. Schuchard’s huge book Restoring the Temple of Vision argues that these references reflect the prevalence of Hermetic and Cabalistic ideas in 1 Stevenson, Origins of Freemasonry, xi. 2 Stevenson, Origins of Freemasonry, 44-46, 49. © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2004 Aries Vol. 4, no. 2 aries_f4-171-183 10/17/2004 11:20 Page 172 172 ANDREW PRESCOTT Stuart court culture. She proposes that Jewish building guilds preserved mys- tical ideas dating back to the time of King Solomon, which they transmitted to medieval European stonemasons and the Templars. These traditions accord- ing to Schuchard found a receptive home in Scotland, where they became fused with Scottish national myths and were actively promoted by the Stuart kings. Schuchard argues that after the disaster of 1688, the “Celtic-Catholic- Jewish” values of the Stuarts were preserved abroad in the secret enclaves of Écossais Freemasonry. Schuchard rightly feels that most interpretations of British history are still far too Anglo-centric and rooted in the myth of Protestant progress and toleration promoted by the victors of 1688. She por- trays the Stuart kings, and particularly James VI of Scotland and I of England and Charles I, as tolerant, progressive and cultured: ‘not the monsters of reli- gious intolerance so often painted in academic and popular writing in English’ (p. 6). The present volume forms, in Schuchard’s words, ‘a prolegomena to future works on eighteenth- and nineteenth-century occultist Freemasonry in Britain, Scandanavia and Europe’ (p. xii). Schuchard evidently plans a vast anti-Whig history of the world. Schuchard’s energy and thoroughness must be admired. She has shown great persistence in trawling through a huge range of materials to produce a formidable catalogue of references which she suggests reflect the influence of ‘Cabalistic, Rosicrucian, Templar and Swedenborgian Masonry’. Regard- less of one’s opinion of Schuchard’s thesis, her book is a valuable compen- dium of sources which require examination in considering the intellectual milieu of early Freemasonry. At the end of the day, however, the book is fundamentally flawed, and Schuchard’s argument unpersuasive. At almost every point, Schuchard’s narrative is marred by excessive credulity and a lack of critical rigour. It is impossible without writing another book thoroughly to document these problems, so I will concentrate on one example, which goes to the heart of Schuchard’s argument. If the Stuarts are to be seen as the heirs of an ancient Cabalistic tradition which became fused with Freemasonry, it is essential that they themselves should have been Freemasons. For Schuchard, the pivotal figure was King James VI and I, who was, she asserts, initiated as a Freemason. In view of the importance of this point for Schuchard’s argument, it is surprising that she declares that King James was an initiate of Scottish Freemasonry at least four times (pp. 47, 69, 207, 214) without thoroughly substantiating this claim. It is only after some extended discussion of James as a “Mason King” that the source for the statement that he was a Freemason is finally discussed (p. 237). This reveals that the only seventeenth-century.

Load more