The Temple and the Lodge

Author: Baigent, MichaelNumber Of Pages: 306Publisher: Little Brown & CoDetails: Product description Traces the history of Freemasonry from its roots in the Order of the Temple, a medieval chivalric religious order, to its influence on European political thought and on the formation of the U.S From Publishers Weekly George Washington, Ben Franklin and Edmund Randolph--all framers of the Constitution--were active Freemasons, as was John Marshall, first Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. In this riveting and careful study, Baigent and Leigh (coauthors of The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail ) suggest that Freemasonic lodges served America's Founding Fathers as a working model for our federal system. Freemasonry's doctrine of universal brotherhood and tolerance, they assert, had a liberalizing influence in England and France, in particular on Voltaire, Hume, Rousseau, Montesquieu as well as their disciples in what was to become the United States. Early, largely conjectural chapters link