Learned Societies, Freemasonry, Sciences and Literature in 18th-Century Hungary

Learned Societies, Freemasonry, Sciences and Literature in 18th-Century Hungary PDF Author: Réka Lengyel
Publisher: Lengyel Réka
ISBN: 9634160905
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 248

Book Description
The present collection of primary sources, comprised of printed and manuscript materials, offers a new approach to the history of learned societies and Freemasonry in Hungary in the 18th century. Materials include academic proposals, regulations of learned societies and reading circles, letters, pamphlets as well as Masonic constitutions, rituals, orations, essays, and a sentimental novel. In addition to the Latin- and German-language documents, some Hungarian-language sources of special importance are published in English translation. The sources in the first part of the collection illustrate the growing desire and ambition among Hungarian intellectuals for establishing national literature and science, and for raising the level of general literacy among the population. Starting from the diagnosis that, compared to other European countries, Hungary was quite backward in terms of cultivating the sciences, several people emphasized the need to raise the standards of public education, while others thought that establishing learned societies or scientific academies could change the situation. The examination of the history of learned and secret societies shows that in 18th-century Hungary social culture could develop within the framework of Freemasonry. The functioning learned societies and reading circles were established at the initiative of lodge members, and a large number of the authors of the proposals were also Freemasons. The establishment of learned societies was motivated by the ideas which were also the guiding principles of the Freemasons: spreading enlightenment, promoting the well-being of the people, and supporting the sciences and the arts. The editors intended to bring to an international audience the selected materials which warrant further research and examination.

The State of Nature: Histories of an Idea

The State of Nature: Histories of an Idea PDF Author:
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004499628
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 440

Book Description
Combining intellectual history with current concerns, this volume brings together fourteen essays on the past, present and possible future applications of the legal fiction known as the state of nature.

Maximilian Hell (1720–92) and the Ends of Jesuit Science in Enlightenment Europe

Maximilian Hell (1720–92) and the Ends of Jesuit Science in Enlightenment Europe PDF Author: Per Pippin Aspaas
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004416838
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 489

Book Description
The Viennese Jesuit court astronomer Maximilian Hell was a key figure in the eighteenth-century circulation of knowledge. He was already famous by the time of his celebrated 1769 expedition for the observation of the transit of Venus in northern Scandinavia. However, the 1773 suppression of his order forced Hell to develop ingenious strategies of accommodation to changing international and domestic circumstances. Through a study of his career in local, regional, imperial, and global contexts, this book sheds new light on the complex relationship between the Enlightenment, Catholicism, administrative and academic reform in the Habsburg monarchy, and the practices and ends of cultivating science in the Republic of Letters around the end of the first era of the Society of Jesus.

Culture and Society in Eighteenth-century Hungary

Culture and Society in Eighteenth-century Hungary PDF Author: Domokos G. Kosáry
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Enlightenment
Languages : en
Pages : 282

Book Description


Speculative Freemasonry and the Enlightenment

Speculative Freemasonry and the Enlightenment PDF Author: R. William Weisberger
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 1476629692
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 240

Book Description
Freemasonry began with stonemasons in the Middle Ages experiencing the decline of cathedral building. Some guilds invited honorary memberships to boost their numbers. These usually highly educated new members practiced symbolic or “speculative Freemasonry.” The new Masonic lodges and learned societies offered their growing numbers of Protestant, Catholic and Jewish members an understanding of deism, Newtonian science and representative government, and of literature and the fine arts. This work describes how Masons on both sides of the Atlantic were mostly either enlighteners, political reformers or moderate revolutionaries. They offered minimal support to radical revolutionary ideas and leaders.

A Rosicrucian Utopia in Eighteenth-Century Russia

A Rosicrucian Utopia in Eighteenth-Century Russia PDF Author: Raffaella Faggionato
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9781402034862
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 336

Book Description
The author undertakes an investigation into the history of Russian Freemasonry that has not been attempted previously. Her premise is that the Russian Enlightenment shows peculiar features, which prevent the application of the interpretative framework commonly used for the history of western thought. The author deals with the development of early Russian masonry, the formation of the Novikov circle in Moscow, the ‘programme’ of Rosicrucianism and the character of its Russian variant and, finally, the clash between the Rosicrucians and the State. The author concludes that the defenders of the Ancien Régime were not wrong. In fact the democratic behaviour, the critical attitude, the practice of participation, the freedom of thought, the tolerance for the diversity, the search for a direct communication with the divinity, in short all the attitudes and behaviours first practiced inside the eighteenth century Rosicrucian lodges constituted a cultural experience which spread throughout the entire society. Novikov’s imprisonment in 1792 and the war against the Rosicrucian literature were attempts to thwart a culture, based on the independence of thought that was taking root inside the very establishment, representing a menace to its stability.

Living the Enlightenment

Living the Enlightenment PDF Author: Margaret C. Jacob
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199762791
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 318

Book Description
Long recognized as more than the writings of a dozen or so philosophes, the Enlightenment created a new secular culture populated by the literate and the affluent. Enamoured of British institutions, Continental Europeans turned to the imported masonic lodges and found in them a new forum that was constitutionally constructed and logically egalitarian. Originating in the Middle Ages, when stone-masons joined together to preserve their professional secrets and to protect their wages, the English and Scottish lodges had by the eighteenth century discarded their guild origins and become an international phenomenon that gave men and eventually some women a place to vote, speak, discuss and debate. Margaret Jacob argues that the hundreds of masonic lodges founded in eighteenth-century Europe were among the most important enclaves in which modern civil society was formed. In France, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Britain men and women freemasons sought to create a moral and social order based upon reason and virtue, and dedicated to the principles of liberty and equality. A forum where philosophers met with men of commerce, government, and the professions, the masonic lodge created new forms of self-government in microcosm, complete with constitutions and laws, elections, and representatives. This is the first comprehensive history of Enlightenment freemasonry, from the roots of the society's political philosophy and evolution in seventeenth-century England and Scotland to the French Revolution. Based on never-before-used archival sources, it will appeal to anyone interested in the birth of modernity in Europe or in the cultural milieu of the European Enlightenment.

British Books

British Books PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Bibliography
Languages : en
Pages : 940

Book Description


Freemasonry

Freemasonry PDF Author: Andreas Önnerfors
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198796277
Category : SOCIAL SCIENCE
Languages : en
Pages : 161

Book Description
Annotation Freemasonry is one of the oldest and most widespread voluntary organizations in the world. Andreas Önnerfors sorts the facts from the colourful fictions surrounding this organization and outlines how the organization works, its rituals and symbols, its values, and the work it does in modern society.

Publishers' Circular and Booksellers' Record of British and Foreign Literature

Publishers' Circular and Booksellers' Record of British and Foreign Literature PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Bibliography
Languages : en
Pages : 1960

Book Description