THE COMPASSES AND THE CROSS, A HISTORY OF THE MASONIC KNIGHTS TEMPLAR Stephen Dafoe. Lewis Masonic, Horsham, Surrey, 2008. Hardback, 160 pages. £19.99. ISBN: 9780853182986

At first glance, this work looks like a reliable and concise overview of a hugely complicated subject, one that has been, for nigh on two-and-a-half centuries, the happy hunting ground of many a speculative author. The book covers everything from the origin of the medieval Knights Templar, to masonic Templarism in the United Kingdom and the United States; it also provides the reader with some interesting appendices, including an excerpt from the Abbé Barruel’s notorious conspiracy thesis written in the wake of the French Revolution of 1789, in which he claimed to have unearthed the spectre-like outlines of a dastardly complot. But when one delves beneath the slick and wellillustrated exterior, several problems become immediately apparent.
     For instance, in a chapter dedicated to Chevalier Andrew Michael Ramsay – the Scotsman who, in a celebrated oration, famously claimed that Freemasonry had begun during the crusades – the author makes a series of erroneous claims. He questions the common assertion that Ramsay was grand orator in France in 1736/7, because ‘there was no formal Grand Lodge structure in France until 1743’ (p. 69). However, a grand lodge is known to have been operating in France at this time and two extant official masonic manuscripts issued by this body dating from December 1735 and November 1737, both explicitly refer to the ‘Grand Lodge of France’. Moreover, this association is also mentioned in a series of contemporary manuscripts and publications, including, rather notably, Anderson’s New Book of Constitutions published in 1738 (p. 196). Dafoe also mistakenly asserts that an important version of Ramsay’s oration, the so-called Epernay manuscript, was not known of until 1967 (p. 70), despite the fact that this manuscript was discovered by a French Freemason in the late 1920s and published pseudonymously in a specialist revue in January 1930. He also asserts that it is not clear whether the first antimasonic Papal Bull published in 1738, was ‘issued as a direct or indirect result of Ramsay’s Oration’ (p. 72), even though there is absolutely no known evidence linking these two documents.
     In sum, Dafoe seems to ignore, in many instances, the best historians in a particular field, and therefore I feel honour bound to say, reader beware.

Matthew Scanlan