Inventing the Future: The 1723 Constitutions

2023 marks the tercentenary of the publication in London of The Constitutions of the
Freemasons – the ‘1723 Constitutions’ – a book whose Enlightenment principles provide the
philosophical foundations of Modern Freemasonry.
Many Masonic histories have been concerned with ‘when’ and ‘what’. Inventing the Future
examines the context, the contents and the consequences of the 1723 Constitutions, and seeks
to explain ‘why’.

The 1723 Constitutions is constructed on Enlightenment values that lie at the core of modern
Freemasonry both in England and internationally. But the 1723 Constitutions and modern
Freemasonry were not simply a product of the Enlightenment. They also impacted upon it,
acting as a vector for the transmission of Freemasonry’s philosophical principles nationally
and internationally.

This book sets out those principles, considers the people involved and explores the framework
within which their ideas were formed. And it discusses how the Constitutions evolved. In
1730 it was taken by the Grand Lodge of Ireland as the model for the Irish Constitutions; the
book was re-printed virtually verbatim by Benjamin Franklin in 1734 for use in America; it
was translated and circulated widely throughout Europe in the 1730s and 1740s; and in the
1750s it was indirectly the basis for Ahiman Rezon, the Constitutions of the Antients Grand
Lodge and, after the War of Independence, of the State Grand Lodges in the United States of
America.

Understanding the context and content of the 1723 Constitutions explains the origins of
modern Freemasonry and the relationship between Freemasonry and Society today.

Paperback : 159 pages