For some reason I never got to read a book of Jacobs (1943-). She writes about the Enlightenment and within that subject also about Freemasonry. I picked one of her books about the latter subject.
Jacobs does not present a very common history of Freemasonry. She has more of a social interest it seems. The biggest merrit of this book, is that decades ago Jacobs sought access to archives that at the time were not available to the general public. Many not even to scholars that were not Freemasons themselves. Jacobs travelled all over Europe to see what these different archives contained and took a few subjects that she turned into histories.
Still a novel approach is that Jacobs investigated Masonic almanacs. What were they for? How did they differ from the popular ‘general’ almanacs that were popular in the early 18th century? How they they help forge ‘the world of Freemasonry’?
Jacobs presents Freemasonry as a ‘social reform movement’ in which people met who would otherwise would not have met, where different religions cooperated, where the first experiences with democracy took place.
Another such reform was the involvement of women, perhaps still a controversial subject. Jacobs has gathered a lot of information about Freemasonry of “adoption”, so Freemasonry that included women (a precursor of co-Masonry), which in some ways had much different developements than Freemasonry proper. Jacobs looks at the organisation, how roles are divided, ritual development, differences between areas, etc.
2006 University of Pennsylvania Press, isbn 0812219880
