CRUCEFIX, ROBERT T.
An English Freemason, distinguished for his services to the Craft. Robert Thomas Crucefix, M.D., I·.D., was born in Holborn, England, in the year 1797, and received his education at Merchant Tailors' School. After leaving school, he became the pupil of Doctor Chamberlayne, a general and celebrated practitioner of his day, at Clerkenwell ; he afterward became a student at Saint Bartholomew's Hospital and was a pupil of the celebrated Abernethy.
On receiving his diploma as a member of the Royal College of Surgeons, in 1810, he went out to India, where he remained but a short time ; upon his return he settled in London, and he continued to reside there till the year 1845, when he removed to Milton-on-Thames, where he spent the rest of his life till within a few weeks before his decease, when he removed, for the benefit of his declining health, to Bath, where he expired February 25, 1850.
Doctor Crucefix was initiated into Freemasonry in 1829, and during the greater part of his life discharged the duties of important offices in the Grand Lodge of England, of which he was a Junior Grand Deacon in 1836, and in several subordinate Lodges, Chapters, and Encampments. He was an earnest promoter of all the Masonic charities of England, of one of which, the Asylum for Aged and Decrepit Freemasons, he was the founder. In 1834 he established the Freemasons Quarterly Review, and continued to edit it for six years, during which period he contributed many valuable articles to its pages.
Brother Mackey says that in 1840, through the machinations of his enemies, for he was too great a man not to have had some, he incurred the displeasure of the ruling powers; and on charges which, undoubtedly, were not sustained by suficient evidence, he was suspended by the Grand Lodge for six months, and retired from active Masonic life. But he never lost the respect of the Craft, nor the affection of the leading Freemasons who were his contemporaries. On his restoration, he again began to labor in behalf of the Institution, and spent his last days in advancing its interests.
The belief of Brother Mackey was founded upon evidence that however satisfactory to him is not wholly in agreement with that given by Brother Hawkins, whose account in his Concise Cyclopedia of Freemasonry (page 60), is as follows:
Brother Crucefix set on foot a movement in favour of a charity for Aged Freemasons;'he advocated the erection of an asylum, while others urged that a system of annuities was a preferable scheme. The matter was keenly discussed for several years, and at a meeting on November 13, 1839, at which Doctor Crucefix was presiding some intemperate language was employed, as to which a complaint was made to the Board of General Purposes, and Crucefix was suspended for six months for not having checked the speakers; his suspension was confirmed at a Grand Lodge in June, 1840, and he then wrote a vehement letter to the Grand Master and puhlished it in the Freemasons' Quarterly Review with many improper editorial observations; the letter was laid before the Board of General Purposes, and he was summoned to show cause at a Special Grand Lodge why he should not be expelled from the Craft; accordingly, on October 30, he attended and made a very. humble apology, which was accepted. Doctor Crucefix died in 1550, in which year also the Asylum and Annuity Funds for Aged Freemasons and their Widows were amalgamated.
To his character, his long-tried friend, the venerable Oliver, pays this tribute:
Doctor. Crucefix did not pretend to infallibility, and , like all other public men he might. be sometimes wrong ; but his errors were not from the heart, and always leaned to the side of virtue and beneficence. He toiled incessantly for the benefit of his Brethren, and was anxious that all inestimable blessings should be conveyed by Freemasonry on mankind. In sickness or in health he was ever found at his post, and his sympathy was the most active in behalf of the destitute brother, the widow, and the orphan. His perseverance never flagged for a moment; and he acted as though he had made up his mind to live and die in obedience to the calls of duty.
CRUCIFIX.
A cross with the image of the Savior suspended on it. A part of the furniture of a Commandery of Knights Templar and of a Chapter of Princes of Rose Croix.
CRUDELI, DOCTOR.
Master of the Lodge at Florence, Italy, victim of the Inquisition, arrested in 1739, in Florence, on the charge of having held a Masonic Lodge in his house in spite of the Roman Catholic edict against Freemasons. He was tortured ans sentenced to a long imprisonment. The Grand Lodge of England transmitted to him twenty pounds to provide the neccisities of life, and exerted every effort toward securing his liberation, which they succeeded in doing in December of that year (see Roman Catholicism and Freemasonry, Dudley Wright, London, 1922, page 27).
CRUSADES.
There was between Freemasonry and the Crusades a much more intimate relation than has generally been supposed. In the first place, the communications frequently established by the Crusaders, and especially the Knights Templar, with the Saracens, led to the acquisition, by the former, of many of the dogmas of the secret societies of the East, such as the Essenes, the Assassins, and the Druses.
These were brought. by. the knights to Europe, and subsequently, as was believed by Brother Mackey, on the establishment by Ramsay and his contemporaries and immediate successors of Templar Freemasonry, were incorporated into the high degrees, and still exhibit their influence. Indeed, it is scarcely to be doubted that many of these degrees were invented with a special reference to the events which occurred in Syria and Palestine. Thus, for instance, the Scottish Degree of Knights of the East and West must have originally alluded, as its name imports, to the legend which teaches a division of the Freemasons after the Temple was finished, when the Craft dispersed-a part remaining in Palestine, as the Assideans, whom Lawrie, citing Scaliger, calls the Knights of the Temple of Jerusalem, and another part passing over into Europe, whence they returned on the breaking out of the Crusades.
This, of course, is but a legend, yet the influence is felt in the invention of the advanced Degrees rituals.
But the influence of the Crusades on the Freemasons and the architecture of the Middle Ages is of a more historical character. In 1836, Westmacott, in a course of lectures on art before the Royal Academy, remarked that the two principal causes which materially tended to assist the restoration of literature and the arts in Europe were Freemasonry and the Crusades.
The adventurers, he said, who retumed from the Holy Land brought back some ideas of various improvements, particularly in architecture, and, along with these, a strong desire to erect castellated, ecclesiastical and palatial edifices, to display the taste they had acquired; and in less than a century from the first crusade about six hundred buildings of the above description had been erected in Southern and Western Europe. This taste was spread into almost all countries by the establishment of the Fraternity of Freemasons, who, it appears, had, under some peculiar form of brotherhood, existed for an immemorial period in Syria and other parts of the East, from whence some bands of them migrated to Europe, and after a time a great efflux of these ingenious men-Italian, German, French, Spanish, etc.-had spread themselves in communities through all civilized Europe; and in all countries where they settled we find the same style of architecture from that period, but differing in some points of treatment, as suited the climate.
CRUX ANSATA.
This signifies, in Latin, the cross with a handle. It is formed by a Tau cross surmounted by a circle or, more properly, an oval. It was one of the most significant of the symbols of the ancient Egyptians, and is depieted repeatedly on their monuments borne in the hands of their deities, and especially Phtha. Among them it was the symbol of life, and with that meaning it has been introduced into some of the advanced Degrees of Freemasonry.
The Crux Ansata, surrounded by a serpent in a circle, is the symbol of immortality, because the cross was the symbol of life, and the serpent of eternity.
CRYPT.
From the Greek, Kp®w meaning to hide. A concealed place, or subterranean vault. The caves, or cells underground, in which the primitive Christians celebrated their secret worship, were called cryptae; and the vaults beneath our modern churches receive the name of crypts. The existence of crypts or vaults under the Temple of Solomon is testified to by the earliest as well as by the most recent topographers of jerusalem. Their connection with the legendary history of Freemasonry is more fully noticed under the head of Vault, Secret.
CRYPTIC DEGREES.
The degrees of Royal and Select Master. Some modern ritualists have added to the list the Degree of Super-excellent Master ; but this, although now often conferred in a Cryptic Council, is not really a Cryptic Degree, since its legend has no connection with the crypt or secret vault.
CRYPTIC FREEMASONRY.
That division of the Masonic system which is directed to the investigation and cultivation of the Cryptic Degrees. It is, literally, the Freemasonry of the Secret Vault.
CTEIS.
Greek, Ke". The female personification of the productive principle. It generally accompanied the phallus, as the Indian yoni did the lingam ; and as a symbol of the prolific powers of nature, was extensively venerated by the nations of antiquity (see Phallic Worship).
CUBA.
The Historia de la Masoneria Cubana by Ricards A. Byrne, quoted freely in Symbolisme, November, 1925, and translated by us for the Builder, April, 1926, page 115, indicated that an irish military Lodge was working at Havana from 1762. The 1798 insurrection drove some French Brethren to Santiago de Cuba from Santo Domingo where Lodges existed since 1748. These immigrants erected Lodges, Perseverance and Concord, Friendship and Benevolent Concord, in 1802 and 1803. Next year the Lodge Le Temple des Virtus Theologales was instituted at Havana by the Grand Lodge of Pennsylvania but the Franco-Spanish War in 1809 forced the French to leave for Louisiana.
On March 27, I8I8, a Grand Lodge was organized, and April 2, General Louis de Clonet, a Frenchman, founded at Havana a Grand Consistory, Princes of the Royal Secret. But Masonic progress was hindered in 1823 by the arrest and exceution of many Brethren, victims of the bloody persecutions ordered by Ferdinand VII. Masonic meetings were forbidden and only allowed after many years, in 1859. Again the War of Independence exposed Freemasonry once more to the attacks of the authorities and it survived in secret to resume open freedom on March 26, 1899, through intervention by the United States. Lodges resumed labor, others were organized, and the Gran Logia de la Isla de Cuba, founded in 1859, of which Brother Byme has been Grand Master, thrived accordingly. There is also recorded by the Annual an Oriental Grand Lodge, dating from I92I, with headquarters at Santiago de Cuba but this is not mentioned in the data credited to Brother Byrne.
CUBICAL STONE.
This symbol is called by the French Freemasons pierre cubique, and by the German, cubik stein. It is the Perfect Ashlar of the English and American systems (see Ashlar).
CUBIT.
A measure of length, originally denoting the distance from the elbow to the extremity of the middle finger, or the fourth part of a well-proportioned man's stature. The Hebrew cubit, according to Bishop Cumberland, was twenty-one inches ; but only eighteen according to other authorities. There were two kinds of cubits, the sacred and profane---the former equal to thirty-six, and the latter to eighteen inches. It is by the common cubit that the dimension of the various parts of the Temple are to be computed.
Hastings Dictionary of the Bible (page 967) declares that ''we have at present no means of ascertaining the exact dimensions of the Hebrews ordinary and royal cubits. The balance of evidence is certainly in favor of a fairly close approximation to the Egyptian system." This being the case, we may take the common cubit as 17.52 inches and the royal cubit as 20.67 inches as in the Egyptian system of measurements, these dimensions being taken from actual measuring rods. Hastings points out a curious result of the Rabbinical tradition being subjected to scientific experiment, the traditional dimension being that a cubit equalled so many grains of barley.
This number, 144 of grains of barley of medium size were laid side by side carefully and measured as accurately as possible, the result being 17.77 inches long or equal in length substantially to the Egyptian common cubit.
Another suggestion that has been offered is that Josephus when giving Jewish measures, which differ from the Greek or Roman, is usually careful to explain that fact to his readers, but this he does not do in the case of the cubit, thus arousing a conviction that he regarded the Roman and the Hebrew as the same, the Roman Attic cubit being 17.57 inches according to Hastings.
But it is well to remember that we are dealing with a period in which handbreadths and finger spans were probably the common units of length, and the decimal parts of inches and perhaps the inches themselves mentioned in the above comments need to be deemed mere approximations, an average sort of survey of a situation not likely to have had in the ancient times any close acouracy about it.
CULDEES.
When Saint Augustine came over, about the beginning of the sixth century, to Britain, for the purpose of converting the natives to Christianity, he found the country already occupied by a Body of priests and their disciples, who were distinguished for the pure and simple apostolic religion which they professed. These were the Culdees, a name said by some to be derived from Cultores Dei, or worshipers of God ; but by others, with perhaps more plausibility, from the Gaelic, Cuildich, which means a secluded corner, and evidently alludes to their recluse mode of life. The Culdees are said to have come over into Britain with the Roman legions; and thus it has been conjectured that these primitive Christians were in some way connected with the Roman Colleges of Architects, brancces of which Body, it is well known, everywhere accompanied the legionary armies of the empire.
The chief seat of the Culdees was in the island of Iona, where Saint Culumba, coming out of Ireland, with twelve Brethren, in the year 563 A.D., established their principal monastery. At Avernethy, the capital of the kingdom of the Picts, they founded another in the year 600 A.D., and subsequently other principal seats at Dunkeld, St. Andrew's, Brechin, Dunblane, Dunfermline, Kirkaldy, Melrose, and many other places in Scotland.
A writer in the London Freemasons Quarterly Review (1842, page 36) says they were little solicitous to raise architectural structures, but sought chiefly to civilize and socialize mankind by imparting to them the knowledge of those pure principles which they taught in their Lodges. Lenning and Gädieke, however, both state that the Culdees had organized within themselves, and as a part of their social system, Corporations of Builders; and that they exercised the architectural art in the construction of many sacred edifices in Scotland, Ireland, and Wales, and even in other countries of Northern. Europe. Gädicke also claims that the York Constitutions of the tenth century were derived from them. But neither of these German lexicographers has furnished us With authorities upon which these statements are founded. It is, however, undeniable, that Masonic writers have always claimed that there was a connection---it might be only a mythical one---between these apostolic Christians and the early Freemasonry of Ireland and Scotland. The Culdees were opposed and persecuted by the adherents ofi Saint Augustine, and were eventually extinguished in Scotland. But their complete suppression did not take place until about the fourteenth century.
CUMBERLAND, HENRY F., DUKE OF.
Grand Master of England, 1782-90, being initiated in 1767. He was own brother of King George III.
CUMULATION OF RITES.
The practise by a Lodge of two or more Rites, as the American or York and the Ancient Accepted Scottish, or the Scottish and French Modern Rites. This accumulation of Rites haS been practised to a considerable extent in France, and in Louisiana in the United States. The word comes from the Latin comulus, a heap.
CUNNING.
Used by old English writers in the sense of skilful. Thus, in First Kings (vii, 14), it is said of the architect who was sent by the King of Tyre to assist King Solomon in the construction of his Temple, that he was "cunning to work all works in brass.''
CUP OF BITTERNESS.
The French expression is Calice d'Amertume. A ceremony in the First Degree of the French Rite. It is a symbol of the misfortunes and sorrows that assail us in the voyage of life, and which we are taught to support with calmness and resignation.
CURETES.
Priests of ancient Crete, whose mysteries were celebrated in honor of the Mother of the Gods, and bore, therefore, some resemblance to the Eleusinian Rites. The neophyte was initiated in a cave, where he remained closely confined for thrice nine days. Porphyry tells us that Pythagoras repaired to Crete to receive initiation into their rites.
CURIOSITY.
It is a very general opinion among Freemasons that a candidate should not be actuated by curiosity in seeking admission into the Order. But, in fact, there is no regulation nor landmark on the subject, An idle curiosity is, it is true, the characteristic of a weak rnind. But to be influenced by a laudable curiosity to penetrate the mysteries of an Institution venerable for its antiquity and its universality, is to be controlled by a motive which is not reprehensible, an impulse to be esteemed and welcomed. There are, indeed, in legends of the advanced degrees, some instances where curiosity is condemned; but the curiosity, in these instances, led to an intrusion into forbidden places, and is very different from the curiosity or desire for knowledge which leads a profane to seek fairly and openly an acquaintance with mysteries which he has already leamed to respect.
CURIOUS.
The Latin word is curiosus, from cura, meaning care. An archaic expression for careful. Thus in Masonic language, which abounds in archaisms, an evidence, indeed, of its antiquity, Hiram Abif is described as a curious and cunning workman, that is to say, careful and skilful.
CUSTOMS, ANCIENT.
See Usages.
CYNOCEPHALUS.
The figure of a man with the head of a dog. A very general and important hieroglyphic among the ancient Egyptians. It was with them a symbol of the sun and moon; and in their mysteries they taught that it had indicated to Isis the place where the Body of Osiris lay concealed.
The possessor of the advanced Degrees of Freemasonry will be familiar with the symbol of a dog, which is used in those Degrees because that animal is said to have pointed out on a certain occasion an important secret.
Hence the figure of a dog is sometimes found engraved among the symbols on old Masonic diplomas.
CYRUS.
Cyrus, King of Persia, was a great conqueror, and after having reduced nearly all Asia, he crossed the Euphrates, and laid siege to Babylon, which he took by diverting the course of the river which ran through it. The Jews, who had been carried away by Nebuchadnezzar on the destruction of the Temple, were then remaining as captives in Babylon. These Cyrus released 3466 AM., or 538 B.c., and sent back to Jerusalem to rebuild the house of God, under the care of Joshua, Zerubbabel, and Haggai.
Hence, from this connection of Cyrus with the history of Freemasonry, he plays an important part in the rituals of many of the advanced Degrees.
But from late discoveries of inscriptions pertaining to Cyrus as mentioned in the excellent little London work called Fresh Light from the Ancient Monuments (pages 166-86), A. H. Sayce, M.A., it would appear that this king was a polytheist, and that he was not a king of Persia, although he acquired that country after his Conquest of Asiyages, 559 B.C., between the sixth and ninth years of Nabonidos. Cyrus was king of Elam. The empire he founded was not a Persian one; Darius, the son of Hystaspes, at a subsequent period, was the real founder of that kingdom. Professor Sayce continues : ''It was only as the predecessor of Darius, and for the sake of intelligibility. to the readers of a later day, that Cyrus could be called a king of Persia" (see Ezra1, 2).
The original words of his proclamation ''King of Elam,'' have been changed into the more familiar and intelligible "King of Persia." Elsewhere in the Bible (Isaiah xxi, 1-10),
when the invasion of Babylon is described, there is no mention of Persia, only of Elam and Media, the ancestral dominions of Cyrus. This is in strict accordance with the revelations of the monuments, and testifies to the accuracy of the Old Testament records.
Cyrus Dever besieged Babylon, a city fifteen miles square. It opened its gates to his general without battle, 538 B.C. The description by Herodotus belongs to the reign of Darius. Bosanquet asserts that the Darius of the Book of Daniel is Darius the son of Hystaspes.
Cyrus had learned that a disaffected conquere people imported into a kingdom was a constanly menace and danger, and he retumed the Jewish exiles to Jerusalem to rebuild their city and be a fortrest and check upon Egypt. The nations which had been brought from East and West were restored to their lands along with their gods. So it was with the captives of Judah. His dominions extended from the Hellespont almost to India.
Cyrus was a worshiper of Merodach, originally the Sun-god, who is mentioned and intended by the name Bel, and Nebo, his prophet (see Isaiah xlvi, 1). His first act after acquiring Babylonia was to restore the Babylonian gods to their shrines, from which they has been removed by Nabonidos, and further asks for their intercession. The theory that Cyrus believed in but one supreme god---Ormudz-must be abandoned. God consecrated Cyrus to be His instrument in restoring His chosen people to their land, not because the King of Elam was a monotheist, but because the period of prophecy, "ten weeks of years,'' was closing. These statements are made upon the authority of the three inscriptions among the clay documents lately discovered in Babylonia by Rassam, and translated by Sir Henry Rawlinson and Pinches. The first of these is a cylinder, inscribed by order of Cyrus ; the second a tablet, which describes the conquest of Babylonia by Cyrus; while the third is an account given by Nabonidos of his restoration of the temple of the Moon-god at Haran, and of the temples of the sun-god and of Anunit at Sepharvaim.
Cyrus ascended the throne 559 B,c., and was slain in battle against the Massagetae, 529 B.c. He was followed by Cambyses, his son, until 521 B,c., when he was succeeded by Smerdis, a Magian usurper, who reigned sev
CZECHO-SLOVAKIA. en months. Darius I, son of Hystaspes, a nobleman, conspired with six others and murdered Smerdis, when, by device, Darius obtained the throne over his companions, 521 B,c. The celebrated siege of Babylon lasted two years; the city finally succumbed to the strategy of General Zopyrus, in the year 516.
Darius reigned 36 years, died 485 B,c. This article is mainly due to the industrious researches of Brother Charles T. McClenachan to whom the subject made an especial appeal (see also Zendavesta).
See Austria Hungary and Czecho-Slovakia.
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