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The age of Enlightenment – the so-called age of reason – was also, paradoxically, the age of the Eleusinian mysteries. By attempting to reveal Demeter's secret cult, British, French, and German thinkers and freemasons of the eighteenth century revealed more than they bargained for: the pagan origins of Christian doctrines such as the Trinity and the afterlife, and through the mythical gift of law and agriculture to Eleusis an alternative narrative of the origins of civilisation to that found in the Bible.
Price: $134.00
Pages: 244
Publisher: Brill
Imprint: Brill
Series: Brill's Studies in Intellectual History
Publication Date:
28 March 2024
ISBN: 9789004547544
Format: Hardcover
"[This] compels us to reconsider the simplistic notion of the Enlightenment as reflecting an opposition between religion and reason. In fact, it is often through Freemasonry that a renewed interest in the Greek mysteries and their Christianization is cultivated. The conclusion emphasizes the division, established by the Romantic philosophers, between the two Testaments, and the replacement of Israel by Greece in their reflections on the origins of Christianity [...] For a first attempt, it is a masterpiece."
Guy Stroumsa in Kernos : Revue Internationale et pluridisciplinaire de religion grecque antique, volume 38, pp. 335-336
http://journals.openedition.org/kernos/9257 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/15yqu)
"This book is eye-opening [...] [it] opens the gates to an extremely interesting field of exploration."
Miguel Herrero de Jáuregui, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, in Bryn Mawr Classical Review (BMCR 2025.11.36)
Guy Stroumsa in Kernos : Revue Internationale et pluridisciplinaire de religion grecque antique, volume 38, pp. 335-336
http://journals.openedition.org/kernos/9257 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/15yqu)
"This book is eye-opening [...] [it] opens the gates to an extremely interesting field of exploration."
Miguel Herrero de Jáuregui, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, in Bryn Mawr Classical Review (BMCR 2025.11.36)
Ferdinand Saumarez Smith, PhD (2022), King's College London, is a historian of ideas and religion. As the director of Factum Foundation for Digital Technology in Preservation in the UK he has also curated exhibitions and organised cultural preservation projects worldwide.