‘Sommers is 2026 Sankey Lecturer’

    

Click to enlarge.

This just in: Next year’s Charles A. Sankey Lecture at Brock University will bring Dr. Susan Mitchell Sommers back to the lectern.

I won’t bother typing all the information you see in this graphic, but instead will encourage you to attend, whether in person or by streaming.

I assume this lecture will be similar to what Professor Sommers presented this year at the John Skene Masonic Conference in New Jersey. (I’ll tell ya, if ever you want to feel comically redundant on the Masonic lecture circuit, feel free to insinuate yourself, with your average—at best—research and speaking skills, into a program alongside Professor Sommers and Bro. Bob Cooper. That’s what I did four months ago. Mortifying. I’ll recap the Skene Conference before the end of the month in my continuing “What I Did on My Summer Vacation” blogging.) She rendered quite a biography of James Anderson—you think you know a guy!—linking the mortal, fallible man to a dispassionate understanding of his Constitutions. This was excerpted from her upcoming book on Anderson.

From the publicity:

This annual lecture series is named in honor of RW Bro. Charles A. Sankey (1905-2009) and is part of the partnership between the Grand Lodge of Canada in the Province of Ontario and Brock University.

This partnership began with the initiative of Heritage Lodge 730 to support and maintain the Masonic collection in the James A. Gibson Library, and continuing with the posting online of the Proceedings of Grand Lodge from 1855 to 2010.

Dr. Sankey served as Chancellor of Brock University from 1969 to 1974. A renowned Masonic scholar, he was active in all the concordant bodies of Masonry including the Ancient & Accepted Scottish Rite, the Royal Order of Scotland, and Royal Arch Masonry. His extensive collection of rare Masonic books and papers is in the Special Collections of the James Gibson Library at Brock, providing a rich resource for research scholars.

So, we have three months advance notice to set aside a little time on a Sunday afternoon but, if you miss it, catch it on YouTube later.

     

‘Cole’s Constitutions?’

    

Donald-Kern paper

Benjamin Cole’s Constitutions actually was printed in 1729, but was ‘prepared in advance of Lord Kingston’s installation as Grand Master in December 1728,’ according to Ian Donald’s and Marshall Kern’s paper. (Interestingly, Kingston would become Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of Ireland a few years later.)

I learned of something Sunday night during a Zoom meeting of the Masonic Library and Museum Association. It arose from a side comment during a discussion about, of all things, insurance.

My own role during the meeting was to reveal the embryonic flatplan of the newsletter I’ll start producing for the association this month. That took two minutes and then we continued through the agenda. It was during a conversation about having valuables professionally appraised and insured that this unexpected gift materialized.

Bro. Ian Donald, Grand Librarian of the Grand Lodge of Canada in the Province of Ontario, mentioned how his library could not arrange insurance on irreplaceable treasures, such as its copy of Cole’s Constitutions.

My senses heightened—as whenever I suddenly detect the aroma of a Cavendish pipe mixture.

Cole’s Constitutions?

An interrupting question about it would have been untimely, so I jotted the name in my notes to look it up later. One item we find through a simple Google search is the paper “Benjamin Cole’s 1728 Constitutions: a footnote to Masonic history” written by the same Ian Donald and Ontario Grand Historian Marshall Kern (also in the Zoom meeting), with additional material by Ric Berman.

Find that here on Quatuor Coronati 2076’s Inventing the Future website.

Donald-Kern paper

“Benjamin Cole is relatively well known,” say the authors. “He was almost certainly born in Oxford, and lived and worked in Oxford and London. He was the first of three generations of the Cole family to work not only as engravers and printers, but also as official engravers to the Grand Lodge of England.”

“Cole’s 1728/9 Constitutions were reprinted in 1731 but the book failed to achieve widespread acceptance,” they also report. “It is relatively easy to understand why. Cole’s Constitutions harks back to the medieval Old Charges, including a duty ‘to be true to the King and the Lord that they serve,’ and a recital of principally operative obligations. It is in many respects at some distance from the Enlightenment principles and enjoinments expounded by Desaguliers, Payne, and Anderson in the 1723 Constitutions, and almost a regression towards the past rather than a pivot on which Freemasonry turned to the future.”

Donald-Kern paper

I want to see the book if for no other reason than to have ‘The Fairy Elves Song.’

A terrific paper about what sounds like an absorbing oddity. Check it out and maybe win a drink in a bet at the bar after a meeting sometime.

My thanks to Bro. Ian for mentioning it the other night.