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History
of Freemasonry
by H. L.
Haywood
TABLE OF CONTENT
Chapter I - Origins and Intimations
Chapter II - Legends and Romance
Chapter III - Primitive Rites and Symbols
CHAPTER
I
ORIGINS
AND INTIMATIONS
From time immemorial
Freemasonry has exercised the right to ask of each of its votaries whence he
came and whither he was traveling. That right is reciprocal and the individual
Mason is equally entitled to demand of the Fraternity in turn that it tell in
what springs of human aspiration it had its origin and to what deeps of human
need it bends its course.
The answer to neither part
of the question can be conclusive. If memory could go back to Masonry’s
beginning, it would be a misuse of words to describe its past as immemorial. The
best account of its remote history is that it had not one origin but many origins.
The best augury to be spoken of its future is that since
heretofore it has never failed to respond to the contemporaneous requirements of
humanity there is no reason to suppose it ever will fail.
Many attempts have been
made to answer the questions more explicitly. These have failed because of
difficulty in perceiving the simple fact that Freemasonry is not a thing which
was created at a given moment but is a growth. Of an ancient palace it is often
possible to say that the foundations were laid in the reign of this monarch or
of that one. But who shall say when the seed of the oldest Sequoia tree of
California was planted, or. who, if he could say, might tell, also when the
parent stem which fathered that seed flourished in its turn of grandeur?
It is apparent from the
most casual study of the records of primitive peoples that their religions,
philosophies, social systems, folk thoughts and folk ways had much in common,
however widely they may have been separated from one another by time or clime.
Comparisons between these and certain superficial phenomena of
Freemasonry disclose resemblances which cannot but arrest the attention of
reflective minds. Even if there had been no pretentious claims of antiquity for
the Craft, intuition would at once be able to bridge the chasms of centuries and
connect it with more than one of the ancient societies that have flourished in
the past, and which, in all essentials save that of chronological continuity,
form with it a part of the common human inheritance.
Numerous ponderous tomes
gathering dust on library shelves prove only too well, however, that there has
been no scarcity of optimistic brethren, eager to support with all the vigor
scholarship or invention could command the most earnest arguments tending to
show that precisely this missing element of chronological continuity can be
supplied. Modern scientific criticism must reject most, if not all, of these
extravagant assertions. It is content with unimpeachable evidence pointing to a
respectable antiquity which the institution may fairly claim. But while it
denies that continuity has been demonstrated for a period longer than has
elapsed since the middle centuries of European history, it is prepared to show
Freemasonry’s spiritual unity with antecedent societies of remote ages and
even with cognate societies existing in the obscurest corners of the earth of
today. It finds unmistakable evidences of a spiritual kinship binding all such
groups together and in this truth it discovers cause for wonder and satisfaction
far greater than the most extravagant romances of Masonic mythology are able to
evoke. It admits that the foundation stones of the Fraternity are almost
unbelievably old, but it does so on different grounds from those in which the
legend makers of other days reposed a native and childlike faith.
There have been many such
legends, but they have been so varied in character and conflicting in
conclusions that an investigator approaching them for the first time might well
be dismayed by even a casual examination of their vast array. That each of them
should find ready acceptance is not surprising when it is remembered that man is
incurably romantic. Make a tale brave enough, uniform it with noble trappings,
embroider it with glamour and utter it in the cadences of minstrelsy, and it is
characteristic of human nature that willing believers will accept it without
troubling to inquire too closely into the substance of their faith. Still, the
faith which is to endure must not be founded on quicksand. There may come a time
when insinuations of doubt are whispered into an overcredulous one’s ear. Once
he becomes persuaded he has been imposed upon, he is likely to find the
transition from unquestioning belief to outright disbelief easily and speedily
made.
Skepticism of that kind
has become rather a commonplace within the brotherhood and has done incalculable
harm. Freemasonry cannot expect to perpetuate itself without an appeal to the
intelligence, nor can it expect to retain the allegiance of intelligent members
by insisting they accept as factual narratives legends which on their surface
bear indisputable relationship to the folk tales of many races and religions.
This sort of thing has worked damage, to the Fraternity on the outside, but has
probably caused even greater damage among its own initiates. Among the profane
it has led to acceptance of Hallam’s bitter jibe, “The curious history of
Freemasonry has unfortunately been treated only by its panegyrists or
calumniators, both equally mendacious.” The charge of mendacity is unfair
since the defects complained of were due not to a desire to I deceive but to an
easy inclination to believe what one wished to believe. Those old, glib tales of
Masonic beginnings back in the mists of primordial time have wrought additional
mischief in giving rise to a suspicion that, since the Fraternity’s
antecedents were not all that has been claimed for them, they therefore must
have been more recent than its eighteenth-century apologists were willing to
admit.
Such reasoning is
fallacious. Happily for the good fame of Freemasonry recent critical methods
have thrown light upon the whole, replacing much that was mythical and
improbable by much that is credible, and giving new and sound reasons for
believing that an antiquity which the eighteenth century could not establish by
fable the twentieth century has established by reason and philosophy and
research. But while the twentieth century denies credence to the elaborate
legends of Anderson, Desaguliers, Preston and others of their school, it is
likewise constrained to reject - or at least to modify - the harsh dictum of the
learned Dr. Mackey, that the
scholar “must accept nothing as history that cannot be demonstrated with
almost mathematical accuracy.”
Masonic historical writing
may be divided roughly into two major schools, one sanguine and credulous, the
other skeptical and iconoclastic. To the one no suggestion is too remote or
preposterous for consideration provided only it tends to substantiate some
theory preconceived; to the other nothing is acceptable which cannot be
authenticated beyond the semblance of a doubt. The one walks dreamily in a
golden haze; the other gropes in stolid patience among rugged foothills of fact,
never raising its eyes to the glorious summits just beyond.
The world has come to
realize, however, that historical truth implies something vastly more important
than mere chronology or a bleak compilation of irrefutable evidence. “The
historian ought not to conclude,” wrote Ernest Renan, “that a fact is false
because he possesses several versions of it, or because credulity has mixed them
with much that is fabulous.” Because it was said that, at one period of the
voyage, the sun was on their right-hand, or northward, side, Herodotus doubted
the tale of certain Phoenician mariners that they had circumnavigated Africa. To
the scientific knowledge which the learned Greek possessed that was an
impossibility, yet it is the one circumstance which persuades modern science
that the tale of the Phoenicians was true, since it is inconceivable that the
Phoenicians could have imagined such a thing. They had simply passed south of
the equator; Herodotus did not know about the equator. And so it often is: what
seems today to be the truth may be proved error by tomorrow, a possibility to
which the historian must remain perpetually alert. Legend may not be proof of a
thing yet May strongly indicate the truth thereof. The story of George
Washington and the cherry tree is legendary, but who shall deny that it reveals
a more perfect insight into the character of the man than does the bald fact
that he spoke profanely to one of his generals on the battlefield?
The modern student of Freemasonry, fortunately, is not compelled to rely
upon legendary lore on the one hand, or, on the other, the documentary
researches of skeptics. The Fraternity’s claim to ancient beginnings rests
upon a surer foundation than either can supply. Its ascertainable age is great,
but its probable age is greater. In
substantially its present form, as a speculative society, it has existed for
more than two centuries. In its earlier operative form it existed through many
other centuries - at least through a great part of that long period when Gothic
builders were dotting Europe with God’s cathedrals. it is significant that at
the earliest moment to which that form can be traced, it already had venerable
legends boasting of beginnings far more remote.
The oldest known Masonic
document is a manuscript poem found in the 1830’s, in the King’s Library of
the British museum and published in 1840 by James O. Halliwell, who was not a
member of the Fraternity. Different scholars have assigned various dates to it,
but it is probably not much older than the year 1390 and not much younger than
the year 1445. It is known as the Halliwell Manuscript and as the Regius Poem,
the two names being interchangeable.
The poem consists of 794
lines of rhymed English verse. It bears the Latin title, Hic incipiunt
constitutiones artis gemetrioe secundum Euclydum, which may be translated as
“Here begin the constitutions of geometry according to Euclid.” This title
probably explains how a paper of such Masonic importance came to be so long
overlooked since it was no doubt cast aside as a treatise in doggerel on the
science of mathematics.
The first eighty-six lines
tell a legend of the foundation of Masonry In Egypt by the mathematician,
Euclid, and its introduction into England in the reign of King Athelstan, an
Anglo-Saxon monarch who ascended the throne in A.D. 924. This is followed by an
account of a great assembly of the Craft - other legends say this convention
took place at York in the year 926 - under the patronage of Prince Edwin.
Certain regulations for the governance of the society, divided into fifteen
articles and fifteen points, are included in this division. Then follows an
ordinance regarding further assemblies; after this come forty-eight lines
recording a legend of the Four Crowned Martyrs. This is followed by another
version of the origin of the Craft, which purports to trace its history from the
Deluge and the Tower of Babel. The whole is finished off with rules for behavior
at church and certain recommendations on etiquette.
The manuscript reveals
internal evidence of various periods and authorships. Notwithstanding its
extravagances and improbabilities it is of importance as showing that at a date
approximately 300 years before the founding of the first Grand Lodge English.
Freemasonry made vast and bold pretensions to antiquity; that it had
legends analogous to those with which modern Masonry is famillar; that already
it had a definite literature and traditions of its own, and that, regardless of
the evidence adduced it boasted that it had been in existence in England for
more than 450 years.
The word “maszun” of
French origin, as applied to an operative craftsman in stone, was established in
popular usage in England before the thirteenth century and appeared in a
glossary compiled about the year 1217. In the seventh century English working
masons are said to have dedicated a church to the Four Crowned Martyrs.
Certainly the remains of a church dedicated to these saints are yet in existence
and are known to have stood since the ninth century’ or before the Norman
conquest. As recently as 481 the Masons Company of London attended Mass on the f
east day of the Four Crowned Martyrs, in accordance with what appears to have
been a custom Well established.
By 1292 English masons
were accustomed to speak of their working place as a “lodge.” The fabric
roll of Exeter Cathedral, compiled in 1396, applied to the members of this
operative guild the name “freemasons.” They were designated as
“freemasons” in a statute of 1495. An earlier statute of the year 1360
prohibited secret agreements among masons and carpenters and pronounced
annulment for all oaths binding them to secrecy which may have been in
existence. In 1425 English masons were forbidden to hold their usual assemblies,
but in 145 a code of laws, said to have been approved by Henry VI, was drawn up
for the government of the Fraternity, thus clearly establishing the fact that at
that time some sort of common bond united the separate units or working lodges.
In 1472 a coat of arms was formally granted to “the Hole Craft and
Felawship of Masons.”
At precisely what period
operative lodges began admitting non- Masons to membership cannot now be
ascertained, but the practice was known in 1646 when the society at Chester and
Warrington was recorded as having admitted Elias Ashmole, the antiquary, and
Colonel Henry Mainwaring. There was nothing in the circumstance to indicate that
this was a new thing. On the contrary, Dr. Plot, in his Natural History of
Staffordshire, written in 1686, speaks of Freemasonry as being of greater
request there than anywhere else, “though I find the custom spread more or
less all over the Nation.”
The four old lodges out of
which, in the years 1717 - 1721, the first Grand Lodge was formed were typical
of others scattered about England, Scotland, and Ireland, although by that time,
because of the decline of Gothic architecture, the Craft had long been
languishing to decay. The formation of the Grand Lodge definitely changed the
character of English Masonry from an operative to what is now called a
speculative basis. This change was regarded at the time as so much of an
innovation that secretaries of some of the operative lodges burned their records
for fear they might fall into the hands of the reformers and the secrets of the
Fraternity thereby revealed. Nevertheless the continuity from operative to
speculative is unbroken, and of the subsequent history of Masonry there is
adequate, uninterrupted record.
This is not the time or
place to inquire into the authenticity of the assertions in the Halliwell
Manuscript or to analyze the chronological data of the Craft in Great Britain.
These subjects will be discussed elsewhere in the present work. They are
mentioned here to attest the truth of often repeated statements that there are
Masonic records running from shortly after the Norman Conquest to the present
day; that there is at least one Masonic document which is more than 500 years
old and which asserts that English Freemasonry has existed since the tenth
century; that the Freemasonry of today has a defensible right to consider itself
the lineal descendant and heir of the ancient operative societies. The antiquity
thus established might be called considerable, without overtaxing the ordinary
meaning of the word, if there were not reasons for believing it even more
ancient.
There are such reasons.
They are to be found in the simple fact that Freemasonry, in its present state,
is the product of an evolutionary development which is part and parcel of the
growth of civilization itself. Even if it could be determined that English
Freemasonry came into existence as a particular social entity at any given date
- whether in the year 926 or the year 1717, earlier or later - there would still
be sufficient reason for thinking that it was not then a wholly fresh creation
but was rather the product of forces resident within itself which had been in
motion at a time long anterior to that specific time.
To assume that this
development has followed a direct line which can be retraced step by step is of
course impossible. That cannot be done with whole races, much less with small
and often casual groups of individuals. Englishmen and many Americans are fond,
for instance, of describing themselves as of Anglo-Saxon stock, and, in a broad,
general sense, the designation may be accepted as descriptively correct. But in
both Great Britain and the United States infusions of other bloods have been so
numerous and frequent that it may be doubted that a single living person can
trace his ancestral blood stream as a pure and undiluted current running
straight from some follower of Horsa and Hengist. The English language has a far
greater number of words of Greek or Latin origin than of Anglo-Saxon. Yet this
does not alter the basic truth that a town meeting in New England, a coroner’s
inquest in Texas, a legislative session in Queensland or Vancouver, a Parliament
in London and a Congress in Washington are all lineal descendants of those
meetings of the wise men, when elders of a North German village gathered in the
shadows of their forest 1,500 and more years ago.
With equal certainty it
may be said that the great brotherhood we call the Ancient and Honorable
Fraternity of Free and Accepted Masons is descendant of and heir to many
primitive forms of human association which may have held their assemblies on
high hills or in deep vales back in the days when the earth was young.
That direct and unbroken connection cannot be established between them is
of minor consequence. Whatever else it may be, Freemasonry bears within itself
certain peculiarities which belong to the general cult history of the world. It
is a manifestation in modern times of a tendency as old as humanity and as
universal as mankind’s instinct for religion. It is well that this is so, for
were it otherwise, the Fraternity would conform to the usual trend of occultism
and would insulate its members from their fellow men in the common task of
making the best of life and of the world which actually is.
In the earliest
communities of which there is record, a few men almost invariably set themselves
apart to study the mysterious and the occult or to preserve some precious and
secret bit of knowledge or magic. Such societies, when they attained to a real
or fancied revelation of truth, sought to perpetuate the lore and to secure to
themselves exclusive enjoyment of the power or dignity it might confer. Nor were
they wholly selfish. Most of their secrets had to do with magic, in the power of
which they placed complete confidence. That power would be extremely dangerous
to a man who did not know how to employ it - a high explosive like the
nitroglycerin or TNT of modern times which might blast the rash intruder. It was
to his advantage as well as to that of the society that he be kept at a distance
from this perilous truth.
That their jealously
safeguarded truth might be transmitted to a worthy posterity it was their
practice to find some concrete object which would represent it or express it and
which could be depended on to remain constant, regardless of mutations in tribal
speech. Chosen because of a real or fancied resemblance to the conception for
which it was intended to stand, it was described by whatever happened to be the
local equivalent of the Greek word “symbol,” meaning “to compare.” By
natural development, the symbol soon came to be regarded as having taken on the
attributes of that which it represented and thus, in time, to become in itself
an object worthy of veneration.
In a slightly more
advanced state of development, these societies began clothing their discoveries
in allegorical language and legends. In still more sophisticated stages, they
employed symbolical dramas. Thus, in the ancient Egyptian mysteries into which
Moses is said to have been initiated, the sun god, Osiris, was represented as
being set upon and slain by the powers of darkness and afterwards, his
dismembered body having been sought out and found by Isis, as being restored to
life. A somewhat similar idea appeared in the Persian Mysteries of Mithra, and
the notion of a restoration to life after death was dramatized in some forms of
the Dionysian and Bacchic Mysteries of ancient Greece, although the Greeks
undoubtedly borrowed the idea from older Oriental races.
To protect themselves from
intrusion, these early cults veiled their ritualistic activities in impenetrable
mystery, binding their members by oaths solemn and awe-inspiring. To insure the
propagation of their work by competent successors, they invented terrifying and
painful ordeals by submission to which candidates for admission might prove
their fortitude and zeal. That long and faithful apprenticeships might be served
and the qualities of the members further tested, initiatory ceremonies were
graduated into successive phases and dragged out over periods which sometimes
ran into many years.
Finally, and in their
highest moral and intellectual development, the cults invested their symbols and
ceremonials with dual meanings, an exoteric or outer significance suitable to
the understanding of less alert brethren, and an esoteric, or inner significance
comprehended only by the most astute. This arrangement effected the additional
service of opening illimitable scope to the speculative mind, so that in
contemplation of the profounder mysteries of his cult, the mystic might immerse
himself utterly in ecstasy and exaltation.
Amongst such highly
civilized peoples as the Egyptians and Greeks of twenty or thirty centuries ago,
this natural process reached its fruition in societies such as that of which
Pythagoras was founder and prophet. Amongst primitive races, as those of modern
New Guinea, it reaches its highest form in the men’s tribal house, ornamented
with the skulls of enemies slain in battle.
Essential kinship between the ancient Pythagoreans and the savages of New
Guinea is obvious, even if it be but little more tangible than the kinship which
unites all sons of Adam. To deny it exists because no continuity between the two
can be established is manifestly absurd.
Analogies which seem to
establish this affinity would relate them with equal intimacy to Freemasonry.
But this kind of reasoning can easily be carried too far. Indeed, it is often
pressed to such ridiculous lengths that uncritical and fanciful authors have
professed to find in every sign and symbol, every ritual and ceremonial, some
sort of proof that all are descendants of a primitive form of Freemasonry which
spread over the whole world before the dawn of history.
The probable truth of the
matter is less than that. It is conceivable that if human life exists on other
planets beside ours, and has persisted through many ages, its social
institutions in the main may have developed in pretty much the same way as have
ours. Their peoples will have experimented with various forms of government,
conducted investigations into the nature and origin of life, sought in planets,
the animal world and in the growing trees, to read the will and purpose of the
Creator, will have aspired to profounder knowledge, developed arts and sciences
and industries.
If this is so, it is
inevitable that these sensible beings will have formed their own cults, in which
they employ allegorical teachings and symbolism. If it could be ascertained that
such cults actually exist, it would merely mean that under given social
environments, humankind might always be expected to react to stimulation in
certain well defined ways. Nor, for all practical purposes, is the chasm which
separates this planet from its nearest neighbor wider than is that which
separates the Pythagorean philosophers from the head hunters of the River Fly.
It is manifest that
Freemasonry has retained heirlooms which in one way or another have come to it
out of the abundance of the past. Traces of the earliest form of sun worship are
to be found in some of the ceremonials of the Lodge room. Its point within a
circle and its five-rayed star were symbols of religious significance in many
ancient faiths. Its two symbolical pillars are reminiscent of those held in
esteem by the most ancient of peoples. Its mystic numbers, 3, 5 and 7, were
regarded as potent charms fully 500 years before the Christian Era and for how
much longer nobody knows. The orientation of the Lodge room may or may not go
back to the first tabernacle erected in the wilderness by the Children of
Israel, but certain it is that the crudest places of worship of our rudest
ancestors were built to face the rising sun. The Legend of the Third Degree is
curiously like other dramatic tales which enlivened the initiatory rites of
pagan societies. The similarities could be enumerated extensively.
How the Fraternity came by
any one of these, to say nothing of them all, no man knows. Some of them
undoubtedly were handed down from generation to generation during the operative
era, but there is no way of learning how the operatives acquired them. For their
preservation it was by no means necessary that the medieval workman should
understand their philosophical meanings. The mistletoe at Christmas continues to
perform its part in the decorative scheme of things in many a household which
never even heard of its ancient mystical significance as a memorial of that
fatal arrow which slew the beautiful Balder, sun god of our Northern
forefathers.
Such evidences of
Masonry’s share in the common stock of the world’s cult phenomena, if
rightly understood, make plain many things which have been obscure. It is true
they do not prove the continuous existence of the Fraternity from before the
Flood to the institution of the first Grand Lodge. They do not establish
connection between it and any particular band, society, group or cult in
existence before the Dark Ages. But they do reveal the essential kinship of
Freemasonry with the religious and philosophical societies of previous ages; nor
is there today any other similar society in the world which can deny Masonry’s
prescriptive right to claim these relics as its own or dispute with it the palm
for honorable age.
Modern Freemasonry is in
the truest sense a reservoir into which the cult lore and social experiences of
countless eons of human experience have poured their treasures. Into this mighty
lake streams have trickled from the remotest mountain tops; it is fed from
innumerable founts. It signifies little how the life-giving waters have found
their way into its bosom, by what channels they have come, across what
continents they have flowed.
Fortunately for the peace
of mind of the modern initiate there are no arbitrary tests of faith in these
matters, so there can be no trials for heresy or danger of sorcerer burning.
There are certain ancient doctrines known as the Landmarks which every duly
obligated Freemason is bound to respect; there are prescriptions of Masonic
conduct which he is bound to obey. But if he chooses to believe that the
Fraternity descended by some mysterious process from the planet Neptune he is as
free to do so as he would be to believe that Neptune itself is the ghost of a
previous planetary incarnation of the world. Conversely, if he prefers to regard
some of the ancient legends as pure allegories, there is none with authority to
deny him that privilege. In either case, the great symbolical teachings of the
Craft will remain unaffected.
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CHAPTER
II
LEGEND AND
ROMANCE
EVERY ancient religion and
every ancient society had its heroic age and its mythology; Freemasonry offers
no exception to the rule. Toward the beginning of the present century and the
end of the cocksure nineteenth, it was a fashion to look back with disdain upon
the childlike fancies of the storied past. Nowadays we are less certain that all
knowledge can be weighed and measured, or that the laboratory alone can resolve
truth into its component elements. We are constantly confronted with the
necessity of revising judgments in every department of science, philosophy and
religion. Occasionally it happens that some tenet, once held and then rejected,
must be revived in the light of more recent information.
In no departments of
learning has this necessity become more apparent or been more frequently
displayed than in those concerned with historical and literary criticism. Thus
it has been found that many a folk tale, trivial in its content, has enwombed
the germ of an important discovery. The skilled eye must therefore scan closely
the lore of numerous almost forgotten peoples for intimations of their true
greatness. When their mythologies are compared one with another,, a scroll not
infrequent consequence is the unrolling of a scroll whereon is written an
indispensable chapter in the annals of mankind.
Each taken alone, a Greek
legend of Apollo, a Persian legend of Mithra, an Egyptian legend of Osiris, or a
Norse legend of Balder might be dismissed lightly as a crude invention of
barbaric minds, touched somehow with that instinctive feeling for beauty which
dignifies and ennobles the human intellect. Taken together, with many another
like them, they afford a clew to man’s unceasing search for the truth about
God, a search which at one time or another invariably leads the seeker’s mind
to “soar aloft and read the wisdom, strength and beauty of the Creator in the
heavens.” Apollo is the sun, Mithra is the sun, Osiris is the sun, Balder is
the sun, and although each of these pagan deities had other attributes, they
belong to a universal solar mythology the existence of which constitutes a set
of facts the historian must ponder well if he is rightly to understand the
unfolding of human faith.
Similarly it comes about
that in considering the tales which have gone into the making of Masonic
mythology, the student ought not to underrate their importance. As testimony to
literal truth many of them are obviously to be disregarded; but as testimony to
what men have believed to be the truth their value is incalculably great.
When Herodotus doubted the tale of the seafaring Phoenicians he gave a
useful measure of his own knowledge of astronomy. He doubted that tale because
by the science of his day the southern limit of the earth was placed at about
where the equator is now known to be. It would not be fair to ridicule his
understanding because he knew nothing of the southern hemisphere; it would be
equally unfair to ridicule the credulity of Masonic writers of the early
eighteenth century because they knew nothing of some commonplace principles of
modern criticism.
The philosophy of the
1700’s had not advanced greatly beyond the limitations imposed by Aristotle;
medicine had made little progress since the days of Hippocrates; physics and
chemistry were but emerging from the penumbra of hermetic mysticism; men were
still gravely debating the dogma of the divine right of kings; deists were
questioning the literal infallibility of the Bible for reasons which would seem
infantile even to agnostics of today; the science of comparative religion had
not yet been born. In claiming antediluvian origins for the Fraternity the wish
among eighteenth- century brethren was father to the thought; but before
censuring them for an easy faith in what they wanted to believe, allowance
should be made for their uncritical times and the nature and character of the
source material with which they had to work.
When modern writers, with far better means of information, fall into
similar and infinitely less excusable errors, it is scarcely astonishing that
Anderson and Preston and Oliver made no valiant struggle against the seductions
of an attractive romanticism.
Mention has been made
heretofore of the Regius Poem, but it is by no means to be supposed that this
was the only early Masonic scripture of the kind. It remains the oldest of them,
in respect of the time which has elapsed since it was put upon paper, but it
bears every evidence of having derived from others still older. Another of
considerable antiquity, known as the Dowland Manuscript and dating from about
the year 1500, may be regarded as typical of the lore from which Anderson and
the others drew their inspiration. Full
as it is of anachronisms and historical absurdities, this document is
nevertheless of great interest and importance.
According to the Dowland
legend, Freemasonry existed before the Flood. It is related that the Israelitish
patriarch, Lamech, had two wives, Adah and Zillah. By Adah he had two sons,
Jabal, the father of tent dwellers and herdsmen, and Jubal, the ancestor of
musicians. By Zillah he had Tubal-cain and a fourth child, a daughter. The four
are said to have founded all the arts and sciences, but it is significant that
the daughter speedily drops out of the narrative, although it is recorded of her
that she instituted the art of weaving. Of the triumvirate of sons - Masonic
observers will quickly catch the significance of the number three in this
association - Jabal is set forth as the founder of geometry, Jubal as founder of
the science of instrumental music, and Tubal - cain as founder of the science of
smithcraft in gold, silver, copper, iron and steel.
Having a premonition of the
impending deluge, the three brothers, it is related, determined to write their
discoveries on two pillars, one of marble which could not be destroyed by fire
and one of brick which would resist moisture. The record is somewhat obscure as
to the postdiluvian fate of these records, with their data of Masonry, but there
are auxiliary traditions that in later centuries one was found by Hermes
Trismegistus, the Egyptian priest and scholar, and that the other was found by
Pythagoras.
The legend next describes
how Masonry flourished after the Flood. Nimrod
is listed among its most influential patrons. Masons are said to have been
employed in building the Tower of Babel;
Abraham and Sarah to have
taught its seven sciences to the Egyptians. In Abraham’s time it became
necessary to find an instructor for the youth of the land and the person to whom
this task was assigned was a “worthy Scollar that height Ewclyde.” Euclid is
represented as having composed for his pupils a charge which in phraseology is
strikingly like charges given in medieval operative lodges. Also he is said to
have taught them geometry, which now “is called throughout all this land
Masonrye.”
Coming down to the times of
Solomon, the legend discusses the building Of the Temple, the traditional three
personages of that enterprise being King Solomon, Hiram, King of Tyre and Aynon,
described as the son of Hiram of Tyre. This name is undoubtedly a variant of
that of Hiram Abiff, although the builder of the Scriptural account was not a
son of Hiram, but the son of a widow of the tribe of Dan; his father had been a
certain goldsmith of Tyre. Engaged
in the work was one Maymus Grecus, a Greek, who afterwards, it is said,
introduced Masonry into France in the time of Charles Martel. The Craft was
carried from France to England, where it received the encouragement of St.
Alban, but died out after his time, being restored in the reign of Athelstan
when Prince Edwin’s great assembly of Masons was convoked at York.
The trifling details of
implausibility involved in making contemporaries of Abraham and Euclid, of
Solomon, Charles Martel and St. Alban, naturally did not trouble the simple
workmen who repeated this and similar tales in their medieval assemblies.
Such a story satisfied the curiosity of those who believed their
fraternal society to be of impressive and continuous antiquity. It carried
Freemasonry back to the early generations after Adam, squared it with the major
incidents of the Old Testament, identified it with architecture and geometry and
accounted for its translation from ancient Palestine to England by way of
France. Passed along from mouth to mouth, the legend underwent modifications.
Sometimes variants would appear and those possessing two or more versions
would attempt to harmonize them; when that task seemed too great, they got
around the difficulty by cheerfully including them all, as in the case of the
Regius Poem. The hearer could take his choice as to what he would accept, if he
could not accept it all.
After the formation of the
first Grand Lodge, and especially after the Duke of Montagu became Grand Master
in 1721, the Craft became immensely popular. There were notable accessions of
members and the newly made brethren, being speculatives almost to a man,
clamored for a historical literature reasonably authoritative. Diligent search
was made for old manuscripts and particularly for constitutions and charges used
in operative lodges. The Reverend
James Anderson, a Scot, minister of a Presbyterian chapel in Piccadilly, was
appointed chairman of a committee authorized by the Grand Master to prepare a
book on the subject. He
overshadowed his associates to such extent that they left the task in his hands
and he prepared the memorable volume published in 1723 with the high-sounding
title, The Constitutions of the Freemasons, Containing the History, Charges,
Regulations, etc.., of that most Ancient and Right Worshipful Fraternity. It was
described as being “for the use of the lodges” and as being printed at
London “In the Year of Masonry 5723; Anno Domini 1723.’
The historical portion of
Anderson’s book begins with a gay assumption that Adam must have had the
liberal sciences, particularly geometry, written on his heart; that he no doubt
taught them to his sons, and that they were handed down until they reached Noah,
whose ark, though of wood, “was certainly fabricated by Geometry and according
to the rules of Masonry.” Noah and his three sons, “all Masons true,”
brought the Art with them across the Flood and handed it on so successfully that
it was able to contribute to the building of the Tower of Babel. After the
dispersion from that work, brethren carried it into all parts of the earth.
Among other celebrities who embraced it was Nimrod. Priests
and magi preserved and propagated it throughout Assyria and the neighboring
lands. It was transported to Egypt by Mizraim, second son of Ham, and was
employed there to control the annual overflow of the Nile.
Other descendants of Ham,
this lively narrative goes on to say, made use of the art to build strongholds
in Palestine, in South Arabia and in West Africa. Indeed, fortifications built
with its aid by the Canaanites were so strong that Jehovah was compelled to
intervene before the Israelites were able to overthrow them.
Meanwhile the posterity of Japhet had been taking Masonry into the
“isles of the Gentiles,” and descendants of Shem were transporting it
eastward from Assyria into Asia. Abraham was an adept and took Masonry with him
to Egypt. Moses, following divine instructions in the erection of the first
tabernacle, became “the General Master Mason, “ and was “divinely inspired
with more sublime knowledge in Masonry.” Thanks to him, Israel became “a
whole kingdom of Masons, well instructed under the conduct of their Grand
Master, Moses.”
Having brought his story
down to the time of Solomon, Dr. Anderson
goes into elaborate description of the building of the Temple under the
supervision of King Solomon, Hiram of Tyre and Hiram Abiff. When the task was
done, the master workmen scattered into all parts of the world, in every known
land teaching their art to the freeborn sons of eminent persons. In this way it
reached the Greeks, although chief credit for its propagation among them is
given to the researches of Pythagoras, through whose influence “Geometry
became the darling study of Greece.” Afterwards Euclid gathered up the
scattered fragments of geometric science and “digested them into a method that
was never yet mended.” Ptolemeus Philadelphus, King of Egypt, became a
proselyte and ultimately reached the exalted rank of “General Master Mason.”
The Romans borrowed Masonry
from their neighbors and in time, Dr. Anderson hopefully observes, it is to be
“rationally believed that the glorious Augustus became Grand Master of the
Lodge at Rome.” He supposes the ancient Britons got the art from Rome but lost
it in the days of the Anglo-Saxons. It was restored to England by craftsmen sent
over by Charles Martel. Encouraged by the later Saxon kings, it maintained a
precarious foothold. Athelstan imported many more Masons from France, who took
over “charges and regulations preserved from the Roman times.” Athelstan’s
son, Prince Edwin, summoned a council of the Craft at York and a general lodge
was constituted, with Edwin as Grand Master. Then Dr. Anderson gives what
purports to be an account of the manner in which the institution was preserved
down to the time of the Grand Lodge over which Montagu was then presiding.
It is easily perceived that
Dr. Anderson had merely taken the old legends, furbished them up, eliminated
their more glaring anachronisms, supplied connecting links wherever these were
wanting and rewritten the whole into an imaginative, spirited and coherent tale.
It probably did riot occur to him that its basic hypotheses were in doubt; it
would not have occurred to him to question the literal and historical accuracy
of the Pentateuch. He was too scholarly to confuse the periods of Abraham and
Euclid or those of Solomon and Charles Martel.. He might attribute those
inconsistencies to the garblings of traditions repeated by generation after
generation of unscholarly men. Assuming the basic facts to be correct, he could
look upon himself as one whose sole function was to reconstruct the story in the
light of ripe scholarship. Surely to the just of mind it is possible to ascribe
at least that much of sincerity to the worthy dominie and to dissent in his
behalf from Hallam’s bitter indictment for mendacity.
More than half a century
later William Preston opened the third section of Book I of his Illustrations of
Masonry - a work destined to long usefulness - with the words, “From the
commencement of the world, we may trace the foundations of Masonry.” Dr.
George Oliver, eager not to be outdone in conferring antiquity upon a society to
which he made truly magnificent contributions, asserted in his Antiquities that
the Craft “existed before the creation of this globe, and was diffused midst
the numerous systems with which the grand empyreum of universal space is
furnished.”
Unfortunately for the good
fame of Masonic scholarship, the credulity of the eighteenth century did not
pass with the eighteenth century. Tradition then sealed with the official
imprimatur of the Fraternity was destined to survive for many years, during
which to question it was to incur an imputation of Masonic heresy. It would be
rash to say that it has passed away even yet, although in recent times it has
moved in a new direction through developments in archeology, criticism and the
science of symbolism.
In 1886 American Freemasonry
was deeply stirred by the appearance of a book which even now continues to cause
mild astonishment among informed brethren. The title itself was sufficient to
make the judicious grieve, for in all its panoplied fulsomeness it read: Sacred
Mysteries Among the Mayas and the Quiches 1500 Years Ago: Their Relation to the
Sacred Mysteries of Egypt, Greece, Chaldea, and India: Freemasonry at a Time
Anterior to the Temple of Solomon. This book was written by Augustus le
Plongeon, who undertook to show that Freemasonry was first brought to America
from Egypt or Atlantis or some other ancient place twelve millenniums ago, at
which time it had already become gray from unimaginable antiquity.
Not to be outdone by the
enthusiastic le Plongeon, Dr. Albert Churchward came next upon the scene with
his Origin and Evolution of Freemasonry, his The Arcana of Freemasonry and his
Signs and Symbols of Primordial Man. It is somewhat hard for a reader to be
sure, from perusal of so many thousand pages of closely packed theories,
precisely how old Dr. Churchward believes Freemasonry to be. On page 11 of Signs
and Symbols of Primordial Man he speaks of “20,000 years ago,” and goes on
to remark that then, as now, it was scattered over the face of the globe.
Elsewhere in the same book he suggests the antiquity as “probably 50,000
years.” But in piecing together numerous other references scattered through
his latest volumes there are reasons to think that in his heart of hearts Dr.
Churchward is inclined to suspect that it must be 600,000 years old - or at any
rate that it began to take form that long ago. He thus imparts to the Craft an
antiquity which ought to satisfy the most covetous of fancies.
Of all the possible fields
of research, symbolism has yielded most readily to the labors of the cultivator.
The reasons of this are obvious. Since cults have existed in all lands and ages
and since symbolism has invariably been enlisted to perpetuate their teachings,
no great exercise of ingenuity is required to see that cults widely scattered in
space and time must have hit upon similar basic doctrines and must have employed
similar, if not identical, signs and symbols with which to record their
teachings. All such cults may be described as a kind of freemasonry, just as
Freemasonry may be described as a kind of cult. It is safe to predict that if a
group of scholarly innovators attempted tomorrow to elaborate a new Masonic
degree and to fashion for it a new system of signs and symbols, they could not
create a comprehensive ritual without unconsciously imitating others known
somewhere in the world of long ago.
The fallacy of all this sort
of thing is that it reasons by analogy alone whereas analogy at best supplies
but contributory evidence. This is
the kind of thinking which the late Woodrow Wilson described by his picturesque
phrase about a “one-track mind.” If a more prosy word may be employed, one
who thinks in that fashion may be said to possess a “lineal” mind, a mind
under compulsion to retrace every given thing to some antecedent point in
history.
Working in any historical
field, such a mind finds chaos, which it hates as Nature abhors a vacuum.
jungles of fact lie all about and it is unhappy if it cannot reduce the
confusion to system. It must lay down charts and diagrams, neatly building
roads, boring tunnels, erecting bridges. It agonizes over breaches and gaps,
reasoning that although such things are they ought not to be. When urged on by
uncontrollable enthusiasm or unchastened by proper self-criticism, it finds the
temptation to re-interpret all facts in the terms of its own obsession too great
to be resisted. Rarely is it inclined to scan closely the authenticity of a bit
of evidence which appears to support its theories.
>From Anderson to
extremists of the modern anthropological school, minds of that type have been
particularly attracted by the speculative possibilities of Freemasonry. However
they may have differed in other respects they have always had one delusion in
common - they have confidently held that there was such a thing as the origin of
Masonry. All attempts which have been made to trace Freemasonry in some unbroken
line to Solomon’s Temple, to the Egyptian mysteries, to the Essenes, to the
Druses, to the Knights Templar, to the Gypsies, to the Comacine Masters, to the
Rosicrucians or to any of a thousand other suggested sources, have been vitiated
by the errors characteristic of the lineally minded historian. He presupposes
the untenable theory that a complex cultural development like Freemasonry began
with one man or a group of men at one time and in one place and that it remained
within the custody of an uninterrupted succession of legitimate heirs.
The historical mind which
works laterally as well as lineally is quick to concede that it is beyond the
capacity of human intelligence to reduce the tangle of all humanity’s past to
a single simple scheme of rational progression. It knows well that at best the
searcher for truth must rest content with a handful of facts here and another
handful there, with gaps, guesses and probabilities in between; that there must
be much groping through the dark by aid of working hypotheses and tentative
theories, which are to be retained as long as they do work and do explain but
must be discarded when new discoveries make them no longer reasonable.
To such a mind the known
facts and plausible guesses about Freemasonry indicate that it has unfolded and
taken form in pretty much the same general fashion as that which marked other
social developments, examples of which are the church and the family.
Or, to return to a form of illustration already used in the present work,
it finds Freemasonry to be a social Gulf of Mexico into which many river
systems, with thousands of tributaries, have emptied themselves. Therefore this
type of mind is not disturbed overmuch if unable to trace so many streams back
to a single fountainhead.
It is wise for the student
to be on guard against the enthusiasms of the single-track mind and against the
ambitions of those who have their own systems to set up or wish to demolish the
systems set up by others. Freemasonry is a world within itself, going on all the
while, busy with countless internal activities, and naturally tending to
subdivide into self-determining groups. Here is one which looks upon the
institution as primarily a religious society serving as a handmaid to the
church. There is one which regards it as a club to further social pleasures.
Yonder is one which sees in it a form of theosophic occultism, in custody of
some Ancient Wisdom which is to be propagated through the lodges. Another finds
in it a form of mysticism, a secret path along which the soul may travel the Way
of Divine Union. Still another interprets it as a school for moral and
intellectual culture. The protagonist of each group observes the whole
institution from the viewpoint of his particular prepossession. He is not to be
charged with dishonesty if in writing of Masonic history he deludes himself into
the belief that all facts fit into the mosaic of his pet theory, yet it should
always be borne in mind that the function of the advocate, of the special
pleader, is necessarily different from that of the historian.
The first notably successful
attempt to make Masonic history conform to the canons of scientific criticism
was made by Robert Freke Gould, originally in his History of Freemasonry, next
in his A Concise History of Freemasonry and then in essays contributed to Ars
Quatuor Coronatorum. This distinguished soldier, lawyer and scholar, born in
Devon, England, in 1836, was made a Mason in Royal Naval Lodge No. 429,
Ramsgate, in 1855. Between 1880 and 1882 he published the various parts of his
History of Freemasonry. In 1903 he published the Concise History, which, without
being an abridgment of the earlier work, reviews and revises some of its
important conclusions. Five years after Gould’s death in 1915 the Concise
History was revised by Fred J. W. Crowe.
These two works together
have had a wider reading, have been more often quoted and have plowed more
deeply into Masonic thought than any other contribution to Masonic literature
since Dr. Oliver’s appeared. The
significance of this lies in the fact that Gould’s fame rests upon his rigid
adherence to the canons of historical writing obeyed by scientific historians in
nonMasonic fields. His work cuts across the Fraternity’s scriptures like a
mountain range, dividing them into two distinct categories of before Gould and
after Gould, making it now impossible for a self- respecting student to follow
the old uncritical habit of accepting every floating rumor as Masonic history.
This man’s influence was
in a sense institutionalized by the founding in London of the Quatuor Coronati
Lodge of Research No. 2076, which, although it was not Gould’s “lengthened
shadow,” and is not in any sense his creation or his creature, nevertheless
has during two score years of uninterrupted industry built solidly and
permanently into Masonic thought the ideals of historical scholarship to which
Gould devoted the latter half of his career. The petition for the warrant of
this lodge was signed by nine brethren the list of their names reads, to those
who have sat at their feet, like a legend from some storied scroll: Sir Charles
Warren, William Harry Rylands, Robert Freke Gould, Adolphus Frederick Alexander
Woodford, Walter Besant, John Paul Rylands, Sisson Cooper Pratt, William James
Hughan and George William Speth.
A warrant was granted by the
Grand Master, under date of November 28, 1884, naming Sir Charles Warren as
first Worshipful Master. Owing to the absence of Sir Charles from the country
the lodge was not constituted until January 12, 1886. Its by-laws contained a
provision that the membership should never exceed forty. Later, at the
suggestion of George William Speth, its first secretary, the lodge organized its
Outer Circle, through which Masons in all parts of the world have opportunity to
procure the published transactions of its deliberations.
In a brief speech at the
time of consecration, Sir Charles set forth the purpose of Quatuor Coronati
Lodge in one succinct sentence. “This
Lodge,” he said, “will be the platform where literary Masons can meet
together to assist each other in developing the history of the Craft.” Seldom
has a plan adopted at the inception of such an enterprise been more faithfully
or more successfully carried out. From
1886 until today Quatuor Coronati Lodge has continued to publish its yearly
volumes under the title Ars Quatuor Coronatorum, now a household word among
studious Masons. It is no exaggeration to say that these volumes constitute the
most important set of Masonic books in existence and that they set up a standard
in the field of Masonic history to which scholarship must conform if it is to
maintain its self-respect.
Honest craftsmanship of this
kind is slow and laborious, but it is the only kind truly worth doing. It has
meant painstaking examination of diffuse and incomplete records. Often it has
encountered formidable resistance of obstinate secrecy, resistance firmly rooted
in the esoteric character of much Masonic doctrine.
Men are naturally persuaded more by their emotions than by reason, and
such historical spade-work is in itself anything but emotional. It has been hard
to convince many skeptics that Freemasonry has everything to gain and nothing to
lose by a scientific appraisal of its records and traditions; that while a few
illusions may be lost in the process, it will establish realities infinitely
more valuable than the illusions.
Yet that is the truth.
Gradually the old mists and fogs are lifting even from the vales; everywhere the
strong sunlight of reality discloses the handiwork of patient and sturdy human
endeavor. Freemasonry has always
been what it is today, a society or societies of men, unequipped with
supernatural faculties, unendowed with mysterious gifts of magic, men living out
their lives in the human world as other men do, acting always upon their
environment and in turn being forever acted upon by it. The Fraternity as it is
came slowly and gradually into existence, drew freely from innumerable other
human cultures and experiences as all human societies have done. To penetrate to
its inward life, and to trace the development of that life from century to
century and from place to place, is a discipline in culture that carries within
itself its own reward. The history of Masonry is one chapter, written at divers
times and often in strange alphabets, of the great history of mankind. It has
its Tintagels and Camelots, shrouded in the golden haze of myth and legend; it
has its own strong and material edifice, built foursquare to all the winds that
blow, the foundations going down to the bedrock of human nature and its soaring
towers pointing upward to God.
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CHAPTER
III
PRIMITIVE
RITES AND SYMBOLS
No more fascinating task is
set for the Masonic student than that of tracing survivals of primitive cult
influence which to this very day remain in our legends and rituals. It is an
employment not without its risks. Like Ulysses, the inquirer needs to be bound
securely to the mast of his ship of exploration, for he must voyage upon seas
populated by sirens pleading in dulcet voices that he jump overboard and lose
himself in uncharted currents of speculation. All around the hardy mariner lie
inviting isles. Their names are legion - the isle of the Ancient Mysteries, the
isle of the Essenes, the isle of the Druses, the isle of the Comacini, the isle
of the Roman Collegia. Perched upon each is a seductive temptation urging the
voyager to step ashore and there end his quest. If he is a skilled geographer
who knows an island from a continent it will pay him to pause here and there for
rest and refreshment, but he must be continually on guard not to mistake some
San Salvador for the mainland.
Almost every important
ancient cult has been suggested as the progenitor of Freemasonry, Most of these
early societies are looked upon as having, at least in some sense, paved the way
for our Fraternity or, as Dr. Joseph Fort Newton aptly phrased it in The
Builders, as having been prophecies of Masonry.
Consideration of these organizations belongs rather to the realm of
philosophical reconstruction than to that of Masonic history. Yet they possess
high value for the historian because they enable him to gain insight into the
nature of secret societies in general, regardless of special objectives and of
their likeness to the Fraternity. When regarded as analogues rather than as
ancestors they occupy a legitimate place in Masonic literature.
They contributed much to the
general stream of Western culture upon which Freemasonry has made large
draughts. It is reasonably certain that vestiges of their ideals, symbols and
rites have found their way, by avenues often impossible to discover, into the
sum total of ideals, symbols and rites which now constitutes Freemasonry. The
study of them is therefore as important to the Masonic historian as the study of
comparative religion is to the theologian. Once the mind is divested of the
notion that because all these societies are alike in many respects they are
therefore one, they mutually support and explain one another. Few things are
more clearly established than that certain rites and symbols now employed by
Masons were practiced and used in times long anterior to the Christian era.
Whether they always had the same significance they now have is of relatively
small importance.
The rite of
circumambulation, as a certain mystical journey about the Lodge room is
technically described, may be mentioned as a conspicuous example.
Circumambulation is very old and well-nigh universal. The Egyptians used it in
their cult practices, carrying images of Isis or Osiris around their temples and
altars. The Jews had similar solemn ceremonies, as when the priests marched in a
circle about the sacrifices. The Israelites under Joshua performed an elaborate
ceremonial of circumambulation when they paraded, according to the story in the
sixth chapter of the Book of Joshua, around the walls of Jericho. The Arabs
practiced circumambulation almost as frequently as did the Jews. To this day it
is used by many sects of Brahmanism. The priest must drive around a sacred tree
or pool during his initiation. On arising he must face the rising sun and then
walk about in a circle, keeping the center to his right. The laws of Manu
prescribe that in the marriage ceremony the bride must circumambulate the
domestic hearth. Ancient Buddhists built stone galleries about shrines to
accommodate pilgrims who came to pay homage by circling an image of their
divinity.
Homer describes how Achilles
led the weeping hosts of Greece thrice about the body of Patroclus, in this
fashion, it is to be supposed, paying divine honors to the dead hero. In Greek
sacred dances circumambulation was often reversed: the movement from right to
left was called the strophe and that from left to right the antistrophe. The
Romans considered this leftwise movement as black magic, certain to bring ill
fortune; their word sinister, meaning left, retains disturbing connotations even
when brought over into English. Certain Roman marriage ceremonies included
circumambulation.
Among Celts of all regions
the rite was practically universal. Celtic physicians made circuits around the
sick to invoke the healing power; mourners followed a body in solemn procession
about the graveyard before laying it in the tomb. In religious exercises there
were processions by priests and people around the church, that practice being
retained in Roman Catholic ritual when a bishop is to be enthroned. J. G. Frazer
in Balder the Beautiful describes a Scottish custom of circumambulation as
observed in the Highlands as recently as 1850.
It is probable that in
Freemasonry the rite has been used from the earliest times. In one of the very
old York rituals the Entered Apprentice, when demonstrating his right to be made
a Fellow, passed from station to station, where Master and Wardens each put his
master’s piece to a different test. North American Indians had a somewhat
similar custom, as in the Pawnee ceremony of “Hako,” and similar practices
have been observed among native tribes of Central America and South America.
What gave rise to this rite
in the first place? A clew is furnished in a saying attributed to the priests of
Apollo at Delos, as preserved in one of the hymns of Callimachus: “We imitate
the example of the sun.” In the northern hemisphere the sun rises in the east
and appears to move to the west by way of the south. Almost all ancient peoples
and almost all peoples living today in a state of primitive culture - although
there are exceptions among the Eskimos - look upon the sun as one of the
principal sources of life and power and therefore worship it. Circumambulation
is thus a product of sun worship.
Why did ancient peoples
believe that imitating the sun)s journey through the skies was an act of
worship? It was because of their simple faith in what anthropologists have come
to call “sympathetic magic.” They believed they could gain power over
natural forces and propitiate demons by imitating them. The modern red man will
beat his drum and scatter dust in the air to compel rain to come, the drum
rattle representing thunder, the dust the falling rain. The man who thus prays
for rain, according to magician’s logic, compels the rain. But if he reverses
his formula, thereby practicing black magic, in contradistinction to favorable
or white magic, he might drive the thunder back into the sky and the rain back
into the cloud.
Circumambulation originally
was just such an imitative magical rite. In their higher forms some of the
Ancient Mysteries employed a central ceremonial in which there was a drama in
imitation of the experiences and perhaps the tragic death and resurrection of
the sun god. The tenacity with which such customs persist, once they are
thoroughly established, is among the marvels of human history.
They may, and often do, change their significance as time goes on.
A striking example of this
is described by Miss Margaret Murray in The Witch-Cult in Central Europe, one of
the most fascinating books in the whole literature of anthropology. The learned
author shows that witchcraft was not a temporary or local delusion, peculiar to
a few individuals, but was a well-established religion, “organized,” as
Cotton Mather grimly observed, “like Congregational churches.” This
religion, which appears to have originated before the Christian era, managed to
survive the most savage opposition until almost the present time. Indeed there
is no assurance it does not still exist in some of the backwashes of
civilization, just as voodooism has persisted among superstitious Negroes in
parts of our own South, and has reasserted itself in parts of Haiti.
Frequently some popular
custom is retained long after its earlier significance has been forgotten.
Christmas and Easter observances in various parts of the world still retain
evidences of pagan origin. It is
not at all difficult to believe that some portions of the Masonic ritual -
seemingly so alien to modern ways of thought - have descended by some such
process from ancient societies, the very names of which have been forgotten.
Curious old emblems and rites have become embedded in the rituals like shards in
a geologic composite, washed there from ancient shores. Circumambulation is one;
another is that custom, observed in another ceremonial, which has reference to
something of a metallic kind.
To primitive peoples the
discovery and subsequent use of metals must have given cause for constant
wonder, and may have proved as subversive of long-accepted notions as was the
elucidation of the Copernican theory of astronomy to the philosophy of medieval
Europe. Men had been accustomed to implements of wood, bone and stone and,
believing in their inherent magic, built them into their religious practices.
Then appeared new and strange substances, endowed with more potent magic. It is
reasonable to suppose that there was long and bitter contention between orthodox
practitioners of stone magic and heretical practitioners of metal magic.
Something of the kind still
exists among savage races. Among the Bangala of the Upper Congo the smith is
supposed to employ witchcraft in the exercise of his calling. In Manipur iron
ore is deemed to be under the protection of a god, and a magical ritual is
practiced in connection with mining. The Malays believe that gold, so long as it
lies in the ground, possesses a soul, but that the soul takes flight after
mining, so they employ magical rites when working with this precious metal.
Instances of the kind might be multiplied almost indefinitely.
Ancient astrologers were
acting in accordance with such accepted notions when they sought to establish
associations between the heavenly bodies and metals. They worked out a scheme in
which each planet had its metallic symbol, allying lead with Saturn, tin with
Venus, bronze with Jupiter, iron with Mercury, alloy with Mars, silver with the
moon and gold with the sun. The planet was supposed to have magical power over
its metal, the metal magical power over its planet. It is far from improbable
that in the old Masonic rites this doctrine was vaguely reflected in the
significance attached at a given moment to something of a metallic kind.
In the period when the
Masonic ritual was evolving into its eighteenth-century form, such ideas were
widely accepted even among the educated classes and were taken for granted among
the trade craftsmen. What more natural than that survivals from primitive
culture should find place in the rites, some of them no doubt being remainders
of magical practices of ancient builders? The
ritual as now employed is but an amplified form of others in use before the
Grand Lodge era of 1717. It is therefore in just such vestiges that relics of
genuine antiquity are to be found, immeasurably more reliable than verbal
tradition and the extravagant fancies of those who have tried to trace direct
descent from any particular ancient society.
The mere fact that an early
association was organized in a manner roughly resembling that of modern
Freemasonry, having lodges, perhaps with tyled doors, governed by officials
similar to the Master and Wardens, or even calling them by those names, and
practicing ceremonies of initiation, proves nothing with regard to the
institution of Masonry, since such methods of organization are natural and
inevitable. Thousands of these societies might have come and gone without having
brought this Fraternity into being. No
doubt thousands did come and go, obeying a tendency as universal as any other
form of social activity.
The importance of this
tendency in the history of social development was given deserved emphasis by
Professor Hutton Webster in his Primitive Secret Societies,, a book now out of
print and almost impossible to obtain. In this work the author collated a vast
amount of material gathered from original sources. The headings of his eleven
chapters deserve repetition, since they give in epitome an outline of the
evolutionary process through which secret societies have apparently gone: I. The
Men’s House; II. The Puberty Institution; III. The Secret Rites; IV. The
Training of the Novice; V. The Power of the Elders; VI. Development of Tribal
Societies; VII. Functions of Tribal Societies; VIII. Decline of Tribal
Societies; IX. The Clan Ceremonies; X. Magical Fraternities; XI. Diffusion of
Initiation Ceremonies.
Professor Webster holds that
whereas in modern civilization sexual solidarity and consciousness of kind help
to explain the various clubs and societies of men and women with which we are so
familiar, in primitive societies there is added to these forces one even more
potent, namely, widespread belief that sexual characteristics can be transmitted
from one individual to another. For
this reason primitive folk make a point of keeping the sexes as separate as
possible. The institution known as the Men’s House is an admirable agency for
that purpose and is to be found wherever there are primitive peoples.
The Men’s House is usually
the largest structure in the settlement. It
is community property, serving as council chamber and town hall, as guest house
for strangers and as sleeping quarters for the men. Elders and other eminent
persons receive assignments of seats in keeping with their dignity. Tribal
treasures and the trophies of war and the chase are placed here for safety.
Women and children, and men
not fully initiated, are rarely or never permitted to enter. The house serves as
a club for bachelors whose residence there until they are married is a
continuation of that seclusion from the society of women which the initiatory
period is intended to secure. Indeed, it is a constant reminder to younger men
that settled family life with a private abode is the privilege of the older men,
who alone have marital rights over the women of the tribe. It is an important
factor in the restraints savage races deem of the utmost importance to prevent
promiscuity between the sexes.
“In Mexico and Central
America,” says Professor Webster, “the Men’s House is found among tribes
living in primitive conditions. The
Hulchol Indians of the Mexican state of Jalisco have the Tokipa, the ‘house of
all.’ The Tejas, an old Mexican tribe, had special houses used solely for
tribal meetings. With many of the interior tribes of Honduras, the village
consists merely of one large building like the long houses of the Borneo
aborigines. The back part of such a structure is partitioned off into small
bedrooms for married couples and unmarried women. A platform immediately under
the roof serves for the boys. Among the Isthmian tribes ‘each village has a
public, town, or council house’ and these are also found among the Guatemala
Indians.
“The secret councils and
assemblies of the Nicaragua Indians were held in a house called Grepon. In every
city and town of ancient Mexico there were large houses situated near the
temples where the young men were taught by the priests. These Telpuchcali, as
they were called, appear to have been used also as the sleeping resorts of the
young men. Very similar were the Calpules found in the provinces now a part of
Guatemala.”
Admittance to the Men’s
House must be preceded in most cases by an initiatory rite during which the
candidate, usually in early adolescence, is required to undergo many ordeals.
The formalities include such ceremonies as painting the body or daubing it with
clay; use of noise-making instruments; dances; imitation of death and
resurrection; bestowal of a new name; circumcision or some other form of
ceremonial mutilation; recitation of tribal traditions; exhibition of sacred or
magical objects.
A somewhat vague similarity
of some of theses rite to certain ceremonies practiced in Masonic lodges has
encouraged not a few Masonic writers in the belief that the origin of
Freemasonry is to be sought among these primitive customs. Perhaps the most
influential of these is J.S.M. Ward, founder of what he has denominated the
“anthropological school” of Masonic thought. In his widely circulated and
somewhat sensational book, Freemasonry and the Ancient Gods, he says: “Our
present system is derived originally from the primitive initiatory rites of our
prehistoric ancestors. I base this contention on the fact that many of our most
venerated signs and symbols, grips and tokens, are used today by savage races
with precisely the same meaning as with us. I cannot agree with those who would
contend that it is either a matter of coincidence or else that they are purely
natural signs which express simple elementary sentiments.”
Up to a certain point it is
possible to accept this argument, but beyond that point a cautious investigator
cannot conscientiously go. There can be little doubt that a few elements in the
ritual are survivals from very old rites, but those survivals are a negligible
part of our “present system.” Nor is it obvious to a reader of Freemasonry
and the Ancient Gods that the author has made out a clear case showing that such
symbols, signs, grips and tokens as are used by savage races have “precisely
the same meaning as with us,” or that many of those same emblematic devices
are not in fact purely natural gestures.
It is an elementary
principle of evidence that where there are opposed interpretations of the same
set of facts the presumption is in favor of that which is easiest, simplest and
most in keeping with ordinary human experience. There is indeed an easy and
simple explanation of the resemblances to be found between Freemasonry and the
secret associations of barbarous tribes. It is that both institutions are the
natural outcome of man’s natural reaction to his social environments. There
are analogies between the primitive secret society and the modern Fraternity,
but the differences separating them are infinitely greater than are the
resemblances uniting them. The prima-facie case is that there is little kinship
between them, other than natural kinship of all mankind, and the burden of proof
must rest upon those who would seek to maintain a contrary view. Analogy itself
is not proof so long as its implications can be controverted by an opposed but
equally probable hypothesis. Most if not all of the analogies suggested in
Freemasonry and the Ancient Gods can be explained by reasonable hypotheses other
than those which the author of that work so firmly defends.
For one thing, all authentic
and indisputable testimony now extant is that our “present system” grew out
of a more primitive system which developed slowly in the Middle Ages. It would
be strange indeed if all the symbols, signs, grips and tokens used by savage
races had “precisely the same meaning as with us,” when there is reason to
doubt that the symbolism of Speculative Freemasonry has “precisely the same
meaning” as the symbolism of Operative Masonry had, say, in the fifteenth
century.
Moreover, nothing can be
more incredible than that primitive races, even if they employed rites identical
in form with our own, should attach the same meanings to them. This must
necessarily be so because of differences in cultural levels and in psychology.
The evolutionary processes of social development are clearly defined.
In his earlier stages man views with wonder the manifestations of nature
and covets for himself the power to control and bend them to his own service.
This ambition he seeks to make potent by taboos and magic. He might, for
instance, draw a circle in the sand and let it stand for the moon, and he might
even put a point in the center of that circle and let it stand for himself or
anything else. In a brief course of time the symbol would come to take on the
attributes of that which it was designed to represent and its creator would
venerate it with superstitious awe.
It is not until he has
reached a far higher stage of spiritual and intellectual development that
man’s wonder at the manifestations of nature results in more reasonable
religious, philosophical and ethical convictions. If he then came upon his
predecessor’s circle in the sand, it is conceivable he might adopt it for a
symbol but of different import. It might occur to him that the circle
represented the all-enveloping mercy of God and that the point represented man
at the center thereof. Thus two individuals standing at opposite poles of
cultural progress might employ the same object, each to represent his highest
conception of the natural or the supernatural. But to say the symbol has
precisely the same meaning to them would be absurd.
Therefore if a member of an
Indian cult should chance to employ a sign or token identical or even similar to
a sign employed by a Freemason, the presumption must be that his understanding
of it and the Freemason’s are radically different. To overcome that
presumption the strongest evidence is necessary; it cannot be done by mere
analogy. It is possible that both have derived the symbol from a common social
progenitor, but it is equally possible that either might have invented it for
himself; or at any rate that lineal ancestors invented it each for his own use.
So long as the possibility of coincidence is not eliminated, the problem cannot
be looked upon as solved, and so the elaborate theories of Freemasonry and the
Ancient Gods must be set down as ingenious and interesting rather than as
convincing.
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CHAPTER IV
THE ANCIENT MYSTERIES
NO theories of the beginnings of Freemasonry have been more
alluring than those which assume they are to be found among the
Ancient Mysteries of Greece and Rome. The study of those
societies is in itself entrancing. It leads the imagination into realms
of enchantment - lands of pagan temples, white and mysterious
upon lordly hills, and of sylvan glades bathed in moonlight and
redolent of incense and flowers. It murmurs of tinkling cymbals,
sensuous music and languorous antiphones, of chanting priests; it
discloses garlanded youths and maidens dancing in mystic
measures, altars alight with sacrificial fires and subterranean crypts
were fear-struck neophytes tremble under solemn and portentous
ordeals. Here the population of an Attic village streams out in
procession, following the kalathos, or sacred basket, and shouting
praises to Demeter, goddess of the harvest. There the adepts of a
Pythagorean cult shroud themselves in secrecy and silence.
The sophisticated student will discover behind most of the
ceremonials the operation of a mechanism which in all ages has
driven occult associations along a well-defined system of
development. If he be familiar with modern Masonic ritual and
know something of the growth of the Fraternity, at almost every
step he will stumble over a movement that is familiar, and
contemplating these he is likely to neglect the concomitant
observation that there are differences almost as important as the
similarities.
It will be well for that student if he keeps always before his mind
that sound Masonic precept which bids a man beware lest he be
misled by resemblance or similitude. There is not one of the
Ancient Mysteries which has not been solemnly nominated for the
honor of being acclaimed the fount and origin of Freemasonry.
Where candidates are so numerous and the vote is so evenly
distributed, election must be difficult. It is simpler to dismiss the
contest with the assumption that each society left its impress upon
the social consciousness of the Graeco-Roman world and that
Freemasonry is indebted to all of them. It must be remembered that
with the coming of modern civilization these cults did not pass
away, as night passes with the coming of day, but that they entered
into new forms and continued, under other names and with other
objects.
The cult influence which flowed into Europe from the Orient and
the Levant came in two major streams. The older - and by older is
meant the one which has ascertainable chronological precedence -
came along the highway that entered the West through Greece.
When Greek civilization gave way to Roman, Hellenic culture
passed along what it had borrowed from the East, enriched by the
embellishments wrought by Grecian genius and learning. Rome
again tapped the Oriental store to add to what she had already
taken from her illustrious neighbor. But when Roman religions and
religious societies made way for new faiths, there was no clearing
away of old cults. Rather there was gradual transformation in
which old and new commingled. Thus that learned student of
Mithraism, Franz Cumont, was able to condense much
philosophical history into a single paragraph when, in The Oriental
Religions in Roman Paganism, he said:
"About the time of the Severi the religion of Europe must have
presented an aspect of surprising variety. Although dethroned, the
old native Italian, Celtic and Iberian divinities were still alive.
Though eclipsed by foreign rivals, they lived on in the devotion of
the lower classes and the traditions of the rural districts. For a long
time the Roman gods had been established in every town and had
received the homage of an official clergy according to pontifical
rites. Beside them, however, were installed the representatives of
all the Asiatic pantheons, and these received the most fervent
adoration from the masses. New powers had arrived from Asia
Minor, Egypt, Syria, and the dazzling Oriental sun outshone the
stars of Italy's temperate sky. All forms of paganism were
simultaneously received and retained, while the exclusive
monotheism of the Jews kept its adherents, and Christianity
strengthened its churches and fortified its orthodoxy, at the same
time giving birth to the baffling vagaries of gnosticism. A hundred
different currents carried away hesitating and undecided minds, a
hundred contrasting sermons made appeals to the conscience of the
people."
An epoch of such seething mental and spiritual unrest was ideal for
the development of cults. Wherever men could seize upon an ideal
and build it into a religious, philosophical, ethical, social or
industrial system, they were certain to do so. Withdrawing
themselves from the profane, securing themselves from intrusion
by secret methods of identifying the true believers, the members
felt themselves free behind the tyled door which shut their own
circle in and shut all others out. But each true leader among them
was possessed of notions of how things should be done which he
had learned in previous associations; he cast his ideas into the
melting pot. Out of this in time emerged the distinguishing
practices of the new society.
A cursory examination of the important traits of the Ancient
Mystery is therefore of considerable importance in any serious
effort to comprehend some of the phenomena of those times which
afterwards were destined to play a part in the evolution of
Freemasonry. It has additional virtue in that it throws light upon
what has been a puzzle to many - the process by which the modern
speculative society grew out of a medieval guild and by which the
medieval guild doubtless grew out of earlier organizations.
The Mysteries, which in Greece and Rome were frequently divided
into two classes of Greater and Lesser, stood to the society of
classical times much as religious denominations stand to that of
our own age. Each had its peculiar set of ethical and religious
dogmas, orders of priesthood, in many cases ranks or grades of
members; they were frequently governed by official hierarchies
and spread their beliefs in all possible places. A degree of secrecy
usually attached to their ceremonies; when such was the case,
admittance was by a ritual Of initiation. Among the most famous
of them were those of Isis, Osiris, Serapis, Magna Mater, Mithra,
the Cabiri, Adonis, Dionysos and the Eleusinia. It should be borne
in mind that the Greeks did not use the word, mystery, in its
modern sense, but rather as indicating a cleansing after pollution.
Of these perhaps the most famous were the Eleusinian Mysteries, a
system of rites celebrated at Eleusis, originally a community apart
from Athens but later a suburb of that city. They were observed in
honor of Demeter, the Greek Ceres, and her daughter, Persephone,
or Proserpina. In the course of centuries they underwent steady
elaboration, so that what at first was a local and relatively simple
rite became in time a complex and national religious institution.
Archeological discoveries indicate that the rites were performed at
Eleusis long before the peoples afterwards known as Greeks came
there from some northern or eastern region. In that prehistoric
period they consisted of primitive magical practices, intended to
increase the fertility of the land. Their magical character is inferred
from the fact that the ceremonies did not at that time seek to
inculcate a set of ideas to be believed, after the fashion of theology,
but were made up of acts to be performed as a means of coercing
the powers of nature into bringing about specific and practical
results. These acts were considered as essential as the rude
mechanics of plowing, sowing and reaping. The secrets of such
rites were deemed to have what nowadays would be considered a
money value, since to use them meant a plentiful yield of grain and
to neglect them meant crop failure. In this early form the rites had
the same general character and were as jealously guarded from
outside knowledge as the secrets of the mason trade guilds came to
be in later centuries.
As time passed, Eleusis was drawn into the environs of Athens,
wheat fields gave way to city lots, the farmer was replaced by
mechanics and tradesmen, deities once local became national gods
and goddesses, and primitive customs of worship were transformed
from their old pragmatic nature into the basis of a religious
fraternity. There were no wheat growers to fight for the old secrets,
but these relics of a simpler day served admirably as symbolical
religious mysteries for the general welfare of the urban soul. In
time the Eleusinia spread their influence beyond the confines of
Athens and became the framework of a brotherhood for admission
into which all Greeks were eligible.
At the stage of their highest development, the rites were divided
into the Greater and the Lesser Mysteries. For the several weeks
during which they were celebrated a general truce was proclaimed
affecting all persons save those under penalty f or conspiracy or
treason. Exiles could return home for the festival and none could
be arrested for debt. Days were set apart for attendant amusements,
such as athletic contests and horse racing, and there was a
prolonged holiday of which the pleasure-loving Greeks took fullest
advantage.
The mysteries proper were invested with such solemnity that any
person not correctly introduced - the cowans and eavesdroppers of
the times - might be punished with death for intruding upon them.
Secrets of a solemn and inviolable character were intrusted to each
initiate. If he revealed them he would be so accursed of the gods
that it would be dangerous to dwell in the same house with him lest
the roof fall. For betrayal of his trust he was liable to public and
ignominious death. No individual could be admitted until after
strict inquiry into his character to ascertain that he had not been
guilty of murder or impiety. Men and women were admitted when
the preliminary requirements had been satisfied.
Initiation began with a nine-day period of purification at Agrae.
During this time the candidates had to keep themselves chaste and
unpolluted. The primary stage - or first degree - concluded with a
ceremony in which, wearing garlands and having under their feet
the skin of some animal which had been slain on an altar of Zeus,
the novices offered prayer and made sacrifices.
A year later the neophytes sacrificed a sow to Demeter and were
then entitled to take higher degrees, thereby becoming known as
Ephoroi and Epoptikoteroi. Wearing wreaths of myrtle, they
repaired to their temple and underwent a symbolical purification
by washing their hands in sacred water. The mystical lore was then
read to them from a sacred book of two stones cemented together.
After a brief catechism by the officiating priest, they were
subjected to certain ordeals, in which terrifying objects were
suddenly presented, the floors seemed to shake, lightning flashed
on every hand and there were thunderous noises. When this
ceremony of autopsia had been completed, the assemblage was
dismissed in liturgical form. What Masons would call the Work of
the evening was directed by a chief hierophant, who was assisted
by three attendants, a torch-bearer, a crier and a person who, since
he officiated at the altar, may be called a chaplain. There were
various additional subordinate officials to look after incidental
duties.
Striking as this evolutionary development of the Eleusinian cult
must be considered, the story of Mithraism is even more
remarkable. In it the historian traces a succession of religious and
ethical theories from before the dawn of history almost to the
present day. It alone Is sufficient to convince the skeptical that a
well-defined cult or social movement is capable of adhering to a
few simple basic ideas throughout innumerable transformations
and to reproduce itself in countless forms and variations.
Mithra was one of the earliest of the gods of Iranian peoples,
originally, it is believed, the god of light before dawn. As his name
is close to the Sanskrit word mitra, for the sun, it is likely that he
soon became identified with that planet and thus, in a fashion, was
the Persian equivalent of Apollo. In Zoroastrianism he was exalted
to the godhead, along with Ormazd. After the transfer of his
worship to Phrygia, however, he was made the central divinity of a
separate cult. The baptism of his followers in the blood of a young
bull was a custom of Phrygian origin.
The image of this deity as venerated in Persia and earlier was
hideous in the extreme, but this handicap was removed by some
unidentified Greek sculptor of extraordinary genius, who devised
the statue or plaque which ultimately became famous. In this the
youthful god, with a Phrygian cap on his head and his garment
thrown back, is shown resting his knee upon a bull prone on the
ground. With one hand the god holds the creature by one horn
while with the other he plunges a knife into its neck. As is usual
with such symbolical representations, there are several
interpretations. One is that Mithra represents the sun while the bull
represents the earth, containing in its body the seeds of all fruitful
things which the sun causes to spring forth. Another is that it
represents the struggle of light with darkness, of good with evil. In
most legendary accounts of the encounter the contest is placed in a
cavern. In time the image became the most sacred object of a
carefully organized cult, offering to its devotees a scheme of
salvation backed by a long tradition, with its own priesthood,
sacred books and ethical code. It appealed powerfully to men,
especially to soldiers. Its place of assembly was called a mithreum.
The cult made its appearance in Italy in the first century before the
Christian era, being carried thither by soldiers and itinerant
merchants. It made rapid headway; in the course of time it attracted
the most powerful and influential men of Rome, so that after
Antoninus Pius most of the emperors became converts, with many
famous philosophers, statesmen and literary men. With such
prestige at the capital of the civilized world and with soldiers as
evangelists, Mithraism soon spread to Northern Africa, made its
way to England, Scotland, Germany and to the lands east of the
Danube.
At the center of Mithraic theology stood a dual godhead similar to
that on which Zoroastrianism was built. Ormazd was the chief
deity on high; over the infernal regions reigned Ahriman, a Spirit
of Evil. A divine trinity was created by the birth of Mithra, son of
Ormazd, who in some versions was said to have been born of a
mortal virgin. Ormazd and Mithra were represented as waging
ceaseless warfare against the Spirit of Evil. The followers of
Mithra were conceived of as a world army, led by the god, and
military virtues were strongly emphasized in the moral teachings
of the cult. A man entered this army by being initiated in a
mithreum, usually a room built partly underground to represent the
famous cave, scene of the god's struggle with the bull. There were
usually seven grades of membership. A symbolical drama was
performed at one stage of advancement and this represented death
and resurrection, together with a baptism in the blood of a bull.
Each local branch had its own officials, its own treasury and
dispensed its own charity.
For a time Mithraism was a formidable opponent of Christianity,
but it was gradually pounded to pieces by the missionary zeal of
the Western Church. Internal discords weakened it still further, and
it went into a decline. It was rescued from oblivion, however, by
the followers of Mani, and underwent reincarnation as the cult of
Manichaeism. Mani, according to Mohammedan tradition, was a
Persian of Ecbatana, born in about the year 215 A.D. His theology
revived the dualism which long had stood at the center of
Mithraism, dividing the universe into light and darkness, good and
evil, with a god of light on one hand and a god of darkness on the
other. The cult, after gaining a foothold in Persia, passed on to
Rome about the fourth century and there became a powerful rival
of the Christian Church. There in due season it was demolished by
Leo the Great, Valentinian III and Justinian.
Once more the scattered fragments of its loyal following were
gathered together to reappear, with elements borrowed from
gnosticism and Christianity, under the name of Paulicianism. This
sect spread over Armenia and Asia Minor from the fifth century
onward, taking its name, according to one of its traditions, from a
certain Paul, a patriarch of the Christian Church at Antioch;
another tradition asserts that a certain Constantine was founder.
The first of its canons, according to F. C. Conybeare, was belief in
the ancient divine dualism of the Iranians. Its adepts anathematized
Mani, yet in substance adopted his dualistic theory, affirming that
there is a heavenly father, who rules not this world but the world to
come; and an evil demiurge, lord and god of this world, who made
all flesh. In spite of violent persecutions - the Byzantine empress,
Theodora, caused 100,000 to be slain - the cult profoundly affected
Catholic theology, specially of the Eastern Church. It survived in
the Balkans, particularly in Bulgaria, down to the thirteenth
century. Five hundred years later it reappeared in Armenia and
traces of it were found there early in the nineteenth century.
Meanwhile this strange compound of Catholicism, Manichxism,
gnosticism and Zoroastrianism had sown the seeds of new
religious cults in Europe. Among these were the Bogomiles, a
Bulgarian sect, the Patarini of Italy and the various branches of the
Cathari, which flourished in France from the eleventh to the
thirteenth centuries. All of these retained a few traces of
Manichaeism and its parent Mithraism, although in some instances
they are not easily discovered. According to Albert Henry
Newman, the Cathari rejected, after the manner of the
Manichaecans, intercourse of the sexes. They asserted they held to
nothing but the Scriptures, repudiated ceremonial marriage and the
veneration of confessors, considered baptism, and especially the
baptism of infants, useless, taught that a private room was as
sacred as a consecrated place of worship and said altars were no
better than other heaps of stones. They practiced austere self-denial
and abounded in charitable deeds.
This heretical movement reached its flower in the sect of the
Albigenses, who flourished to such power that Innocent III, taking
alarm at their prosperity, organized a crusade against them. A large
army under the fanatical papal legate, Arnold, hunted them to the
death, sacking town after town, slaughtering and outraging the
populations. The work of destruction went on for years. Some of
the Albigenses fled to Spain were they were hunted down by the
Inquisition. Others found asylum in the Netherlands.
It is a long and devious journey from nineteenth-century Armenia
back to the Iranian cult of Mithra, or even from the French Cathari
back to the same indistinct beginning. For him who would trace its
course history sometimes offers but the frailest of clews. But it is a
trip worth taking for the light it throws upon the intricate problem
of cult inheritances. If it proves nothing else, it demonstrates that
human societies may retain certain peculiarities through countless
changes, and that these characteristics can be passed from group to
group, although each successive heir may be utterly unconscious of
the source from which they were derived.
Puritanism in England and in New England was in some respects a
modern embodiment of the ancient dualistic theory; and the same
general theory, to cite a cause nearer home, was mixed with all
kinds of gnostic vagaries and built into the secret society known as
the Order of the Illuminati. This system, which was allied with
Freemasonry, was founded in Bavaria in the latter part of the
eighteenth century by Adam Weishaupt. The Illuminati, along with
other Masonic "higher grades" and pseudo-Masonic occultist
societies which came into existence about the same time,
undoubtedly derived their inspiration from a culture stream
flowing from the Graeco-Roman period of a thousand years ago.
Other illustrations of this same tendency could be used. There was
the stream of gnosticism; there was the stream of Jewish
theosophic mysticism which culminated in the Kabbala; there was
that other and better known stream, perpetuated by classic
literature, the rediscovery of which gave rise to Europe's
Renaissance; there was the stream of astrology, one branch of
which took the form of alchemy and its attendant occultism; there
was the subterranean stream of pagan belief which resulted in fairy
cults and witchcraft cults and thoroughly saturated folk beliefs in
England and Europe. Christianity, Catholic and Protestant alike,
has not hesitated to give Christian interpretations to vague notions
which awed the pagans of the past, and has even usurped and taken
into its own service ancient rites and ceremonials, traces of which
survive in the annual festivals of Christmas and Easter. In the
spiritual confusion that was imperial Rome, when the old gods
died and men sought new faiths in which to put their trust, eager
minds were quick to grasp at every promise of hope, and society
after society came into being, flourished and passed away, leaving
always some essence of its philosophy or ritual to enrich or to
complicate the thinking of posterity.
That Ancient Craft Masonry has in fact retained just such
inheritances is clearly apparent from the extraordinary complexity
of its symbolism. To cite a single instance, where many might be
brought to attention, there may be found in its legends and ritual
survivals of the Pythagorean philosophy of numbers and
particularly of the number three, with its relation to the triangle.
Both the equilateral and the right triangle have been venerated by
the Craft from a day beyond which we possess no record. The
oldest traditions mention Euclid and Pythagoras and the
forty-seventh proposition of Euclid has long been regarded as a
Masonic symbol of the first importance. But in spite of the
attribution of Greek origin for this mathematical theorem, there is
evidence to show it may have been known by the Egyptians long
before Pythagoras. The Egyptians considered the base line as
representing Osiris, the male principle; the vertical line as
representing Isis, the female principle, and the hypothenuse as
representing Horus, product of the two. Thus in the earliest times
the problem had definite religious significance. It is not possible to
say precisely how that idea was preserved and transmitted through
many centuries until, in altered form and with its earlier meaning
lost, it reappeared in the practices of medieval operative masons.
The important thing to remember is that however the explanation
of it had changed, it continued to be invested with mystical
connotations. With the strange history of Mithraism in mind, the
assumption must be that it was passed along from cult to cult until
it reached an architectural association which from its calling was
particularly likely to cherish it.
Pythagoras founded a cult in which there was an outer and an inner
teaching, one for ordinary minds and the other for the truly
intelligent. He made numbers into symbols for the divine mind. As
all numbers rise from the number one, so he conceived all nature
as rising from one Deity. Carrying the notion a step further, letting
the Monad represent the active principle in nature, or God, the
Duad represent the passive principle, union of the two produced
the Triad, which represented the soul of the world, and the
Quadrate or Square represented the perfection or completion of
nature. Other combinations and elaborations of the same idea
naturally afforded symbolical dress for the most abstruse
metaphysical reflections.
The effect of such a doctrine upon an intellectual world already
grown too wise to believe in the old gods was profound. It was
based on the best science of the day, was plausible and intelligible.
Best of all, it could be imparted only to minds competent to work
out its subtle implications. Those who penetrated to its innermost
arcana believed they had approached very near to the great
objective of all religious cults, knowledge of the meaning and
nature of God. Those who never quite reached that point had
reason to feel they were on their way. As for less able or less
curious minds, they were content with the belief that they were in
the presence of secrets of incalculable potency, mere proximity to
which gave them a decided advantage over their uninitiated
neighbors.
Practically every one of these Pythagorean theories survives in
some obscure form in modern Freemasonry. This has led
incautious students to the conclusion that the Pythagorean cult was
an early form of Freemasonry. Such an assumption is scarcely
warranted by the facts. It is far more likely that in every important
secret society of the Graeco-Roman world which attracted the
adherence of learned men, Pythagoreanism had repercussions. Its
teachings, often garbled and misunderstood, passed into the
common stock of knowledge, theory and belief, which was worked
over and over again into new legends and rituals.
It is of importance to remember, in this connection, that in the days
of the emperors Rome was not only the military capital of the
world but was also its chief center of intellectual energy. That
section of the early Christian Church which established itself in the
Eternal City rapidly became the most militant and most successful.
Alexandria and Northern Africa, Antioch and Byzantium made
priceless contributions to early Christian philosophy and literature,
but Rome carried the banner of the Cross to the remotest confines
of the known world and to the far-away islands of the seas. But
Christianity, destined to become the greatest of Rome's religious
systems, was not its only one. Indeed for centuries it was not the
most important one from the standpoint of its popularity with the
masses of Roman intellectuals.
With the break-up of the empire came a break-up of its social
organizations. Such of the Ancient Mysteries as had continued to
that time shared the common fate. The general culture they
represented did not pass away with them, but persisted in many
forms and through divers transmutations down into the Middle
Ages and beyond. Somehow and at some undeterminable time
Freemasonry emerged, bearing within itself traces of that culture.
It is not unreasonable to suppose that data will at some future time
be discovered, or other internal evidence will be found, to prove
that certain specific rites in the Masonic system were definitely
practiced at a time coincident with the Mysteries, or else with some
of the private or local cults which in all essentials were at one with
the Mysteries themselves.
If that should come to pass it may even turn out that the Legend of
H.A. in its primitive form was a ceremony in some Ancient
Mystery, perhaps in one of the colleges composed of workers in
the building trades. The facts as now known are far from proving
any such theory; but there may be some use - and certainly there
can be little harm - in holding that possibility as a working
hypothesis. It is impossible to believe that this legend could have
been fabricated or first introduced during the Grand Lodge era in
the early eighteenth century, when innovations of incalculably
smaller moment were bitterly resented by operative Masons and in
fact proved highly disruptive. Moreover it is difficult to believe
that such a mystery - alien in its every aspect from the practical
interests of medieval guilds - could have been fabricated by guild
operative members. It would have been so much more natural for
them to manufacture a legend out of materials nearer home.
In its essentials the Legend of H-A. bears a strange resemblance to
rites of several cults of the greatest antiquity. It may well be that
the guilds inherited it, along with many other ancient matters, from
ancestors which flourished in the Graeco-Roman period and which
in turn borrowed it from their ancestors.
At any rate it is plain that mystery cults of the classical period must
not be regarded as something exceptional in that time, or as
standing apart from general culture as Freemasonry today stands
apart from other modern societies. If this be a true reading of the
case, it explains the difficulties under which all those have labored
who, from William Hutchinson and Dr. Oliver down, have tried to
show that Freemasonry is the particular descendant of some
particular Ancient Mystery. It is a hypothesis more easily
defensible to suppose that in a sense it has descended from all of
them, since all belong to one vast body of social experience.
CHAPTER V
THE ROMAN COLLEGIA
AMERICANS who have not yet advanced far into the twilight of
life are able to recall an epoch in the social history of the country
that has now largely passed away. Children were born into homes
in which their father had been born before them and his father,
perhaps, before him. Grandparents, uncles, aunts and cousins
resided in the same neighborhood, not too far apart for frequent
interchanges of visits. For an established family to remove from
the neighborhood, or a new to enter it, was an incident sufficiently
rare to flutter the dovecote of gossip. If one became ill or suffered
from accident or failed in business or lost a job or encountered
other misadventure, kinsfolk and neighbors were on hand to
perform whatever ministrations of friendship the case seemed to
demand. A cordon of benevolent protection was thrown about the
conduct of each individual, for where his daily doings were so
closely woven into the lives of others, the community necessarily
exercised its influence for moral restraint or direction. The
community might be parochial in outlook and narrow in
limitations, but in return for individual support it accorded to each
member a sense of security and stability that made for prosperity
and peace. A man was strong with the strength of his
neighborhood.
Slowly at first and afterwards at accelerated pace, changes came.
Railways cut through quiet countrysides; life was stirred by the
shrill outcry of the locomotive. Daily newspapers brought the
clamor of the outside world into calm rounds of rural thought. The
telegraph and the telephone were nerve fibers vibrating with
strange sensations singularly disturbing to Village quiet. Highways
with hard surfaces replaced the country roads. Swiftly moving
motor cars annihilated distance. Factories replaced home
industries, destroyed village occupations and lured young men and
women into larger towns, which in turn grew into cities population
began to pyramid in amazing fashion. Inashort time the center of
gravity had shifted from the country to the city.
Social life underwent corresponding changes. Families were forced
to move about, in response to shifting currents of employment. An
influx of immigration tinctured the old rural American culture with
new and sometimes disconcerting colors. The home began to
disintegrate into a mere place to eat and sleep. Children were more
often sent away from home to be educated the head of the house
frequently found work miles away; the family washing was sent to
laundries; homemade preserves, pickles, jellies, salted meats and
even bread succumbed to the products of the cannery, the bakery
and the delicatessen store; clothes were bought ready tailored;
hired nurses were called in to attend the sick. Mounting rent and
incidental inconveniences drove families from individual houses
into apartments, flats and tenements, where neighbor was stranger
to neighbor. In some cases the moral bond of family life became
loosened or relaxed.
Isolated among strangers, the individual found himself bereft of the
old-time supports. Few gave more than perfunctory notice if he
became ill, disabled or bankrupt. Thus thrown largely upon his
own private resources, he began to feel the tension of life as he had
not felt it before. Loneliness beset him, worries increased, his
temper became unsettled. If he had not already incurred the
obligations of family life, he was inclined to shrink from incurring
them, for fear the added strain might prove too great.
To escape from this feeling of helplessness men began organizing
themselves into fraternities, benefit societies, insurance
associations, clubs and innumerable other artificial groups, the
grand purpose of them all being to supply one or many of the
deficiencies left by the passing of the old home community. This
development of fraternal life set a lamp at the heart of the modern
world, revealing its misery and its unfulfilled social longings. Why
this has received so little attention from professional sociologists
remains a mystery, but such is the fact; the sociology of secret
societies calls in vain for its Lester Ward and its Franklin
Giddings.
The curve of the astounding growth of Freemasonry - cause of so
much anxiety to thoughtful Masons - coincides so exactly with this
transference of population from country to town that the relation of
the two becomes apparent. The statistics are eloquent. In 1890
there were in all the United States only 641,410 Master Masons.
By 1910, when the trend of population to the city had become
marked, the number had grown to 1,369,760. In 1915 lodge rolls
contained a total of 1,656,061, and by 1924 it had leaped to
2,971,662, a gain of 1,315,601 in nine years or an average yearly
gain of 146,178. On January 1, 1927, the total had passed beyond
3,000,000. At the same time, and no doubt for the same reason,
other fraternities, the Odd Fellows, Eastern Star, Knights of
Columbus, Knights of Pythias, Woodmen and scores beside,
recorded growths equally astonishing. Nowadays the man or
woman who does not belong to some club, fraternity or other
organized group, is so rare as almost to be considered a social
deviate.
This modern development of fraternalism parallels to a remarkable
degree the rise and growth of a similar movement in the
Graeco-Roman world of twenty centuries ago. The redemptive
rites of the Mysteries, as has already appeared in the course of this
narrative, made an irresistible appeal to men in a state of moral or
religious bankruptcy. Something needs now to be said about
another system which flourished alongside the Mysteries, partly in
response to the same need and to an extent duplicating their
methods. It produced certain associations of workers employed in
skilled crafts, which are commonly known as the Roman collegia.
In the period of the Roman republic, life was stable and secure, for
most classes at least, and family ties were close - closer, perhaps
than were our own a generation or so ago. The imperial regime
brought changes which altered the whole structure of Roman
society. The country man was uprooted from his native soil; an
independent working class was altered into a proletariat or still
further demoted into slavery. The native toiler was exposed to
competition from aliens who arrived in great throngs. Farmsteads
were merged into great estates. Villages were overshadowed by
rapidly growing cities with slums and tenement districts.
This alteration penetrated to the marrow of individual life. A man
came to live among strangers; nervous tension increased and there
was an inevitable search for relief in gaudy shows or in exciting
pastimes. The individual burdened by family responsibilities was
thrown back upon his own unaided resources, with the
consequences that
On that Hard Roman world, disgust
And silent loathing fell;
Deep weariness and sated lust
Made human life a hell.
"In the blank wilderness created by universal despotism," wrote Sir
Samuel Dill, "the craving for sympathy and mutual succor inspired
a great social movement, which legislation was powerless to check
Probably no age, not even our own, ever felt a greater craving for
some form of social life, wider than the family and narrower than
the State."
That craving was satisfied to a large extent by the collegia, social
organizations combining a little of the functions of a modern trade
union with a little of the modern club, but with an element of
religion and charity not found in either. Such clubs had previously
grown up among the Greeks - the Hetaireiai. Usually they revolved
about some local deity, although many of them were doubtless of
political character resembling in this respect later societies which
sprang up in eighteenth-century Europe. Egypt also had its peculiar
type of club, records of which were found among the papyri in the
Fayum, and there were collegia in North Africa and Asia Minor.
The collegia - collegia fabrorum - actually existed long before the
imperial period of Roman history. Numa Pompilius, who ruled
some 650 years before the Christian era, is said in certain legends
not only to have founded them but also to have divided the various
trades into distinct districts, each with its own independent society.
Associations of masons, musicians, goldsmiths, potters, tanners,
shoemakers, braziers and dyers, are mentioned by Plutarch, but
there is an intimation of still others even at that early day. They
were formally recognized by the state, had their own laws and
were ruled by their own officials. From time to time new
associations came into being, but as the centuries passed, official
recognition became more difficult to obtain. Ultimately all
associations of the kind were frowned upon by tyrants of the
imperial period and membership in many of them rendered an
individual liable to severe penalties.
That the collegia derived from still older societies there can be
little doubt. Several learned attempts have been made to connect
them with the Dionysiac Artificers of Asia Minor, but beyond
showing general resemblances these efforts have been far from
successful. It is probable, however, that in their earlier stages a
majority were little more than burial clubs. His pagan theology
taught the ancient Roman that if his memory was neglected after
death his spirit would wander, lonely and homeless. Accordingly it
was natural for men to band together in little groups - each with its
own meeting place, its treasury and its officers - the principal
function of which was to preserve the memory of the departed and
to see that each member received sepulture according to his desire.
Afterwards almost every clique of persons having common
interests organized its own college. Servants in some great house
would have one; garbage collectors had one, and so it was with pig
raisers, merchants, wine growers. Every legion carried with it
collegia of masons, carpenters, road makers, bridge builders and
what not. Subsequently the system crystallized into a regime of
tyranny, with the emperor at its head, so that a man was compelled
to carry on the trade his father had followed before him; in some
cases men were forbidden to leave one community to go into
another in search of work. Among craft organizations were
collegia of men engaged in various branches of the building trade,
but there is little evidence to show that these in any way occupied a
peculiar place or received special attention. Indeed all collegia
were taken so much for granted that literary men of the time did
not give them special notice. Modern knowledge of them is
obtained mainly through archaeology, although the silence of
historians regarding these things now appears as strange as it
would be for American historians to pass over in silence such
important social factors as trade unionism, fraternalism and the
public school system.
Although enthusiastic writers have tried to prove that the collegia
employed a form of organization almost identical with that of the
Masonic lodge, no strong case has been made out for that
contention. Their members, or sodales, had the right of electing
their officers and of balloting for new members. Admission was at
first reserved to freemen, but the Code of Justinian permitted the
admission of slaves with the consent of the masters of such slaves.
Honorary memberships were occasionally created for patrons, as
afterwards was done by operative Freemasons.
The typical college met in a building or hall, seldom owned by
itself, called the schola, sometimes the curia. Presiding officers
were known as proesides or magistri. Next to them in importance
were the decuriones, the designation being held by some
authorities to indicate there may have been one such supervisor or
warden for every ten members. Different collegia appear to have
had different subordinate officers - or at least different names for
them - as factores and quoestores for the management of business
affairs, haruspices or soothsayers, and secretaries of one kind and
another. There was also a general division of the membership,
apparently according to the mechanical proficiency of each
craftsman. There were dues and fees and there was a constitution
or set of by-laws. Being poor, collegia were usually glad to accept
fees and legacies or to obtain the patronage of some person of high
rank who might be depended on to use his influence to throw work
in the way of the membership.
It will be seen at once that the college was little like a modern
Masonic lodge, either in its purposes or in its organization. There
is no closer analogy between its officers and the official staff of a
lodge than there is between the lodge's staff and that of almost any
other organized group. Every society which meets at stated periods
needs a presiding officer, and he will require assistants. If records
are to be kept there will be need for a secretary; if funds are to be
handled there will be need for a treasurer. A good deal more has
been made of such resemblances than the facts appear to justify.
Affording, as they did, unusual opportunities for secret
assemblage, the collegia gradually fell under official suspicion in
the troubled days of the empire. Julius Caesar and Augustus both
issued edicts ordering the suppression of all of them, "except those
which had been anciently instituted." The Justinian Code upheld
this distinction. That even the most ancient and honored societies
did not escape mistrust is apparent from a letter in which Trajan
refused Pliny's request for permission to establish a collegium of
builders at Nicomedia. "Whatever name we may give to them," the
Emperor wrote, "bodies of men, however small in number, who are
drawn together by the same design will become political societies."
Nevertheless, and in spite of the ever-present danger to tyrants
which is inherent in such associations, collegia of the more
intelligent classes of artisans were too useful to be destroyed. This
was particularly true of those whose members practiced building
trades. Roman legions on the march in hostile regions needed
masons and carpenters in whose loyalty they could trust and bridge
builders in whose work they could repose confidence. Workmen of
this kind were to be found in the collegia; indeed, if they were
found at all and thrown together they could be depended upon to
organize their own collegia. This was especially the case among
stone masons, since the nature of their work required them to
journey from place to place and they were forced to make of a
collegium a substitute for the homes from which they were so
frequently compelled to wander.
For Freemasons this naturally raises the important question of what
relationship, if any, existed between Roman collegia of this kind
and the trade guilds of the Middle Ages. If a definite connection
can be established, it also connects Freemasonry with the collegia,
since beyond question Freemasonry emerged from operative
mason guilds of medieval times. On this point there has been
heated and, unfortunately, inconclusive debate. H.C. Coote in The
Romans of Britain - extensively quoted first chapter of Gould's
History - observes that Roman collegia spread throughout Britain
in the Roman occupation; that they continued without molestation
by the later Anglo-Saxon invaders, and survived as medieval
guilds.
Coote makes note of the fact that Germanic conquerors of Gaul
and Italy ruthlessly suppressed collegia in those lands, looking
upon them as seminaries of free Roman thought, but he concludes
that the Anglo-Saxons were lenient in Britain "either out of
ignorance of their tendency or contempt of their effect." But
Freeman in The History of the Norman Conquest and Haverfield in
The Roman Occupation of Great Britain agree that Roman
civilization was utterly destroyed in Britain by its Anglo-Saxon
conquerors. They observe that the followers of Horsa and Hengist,
unlike other Germanic tribes which overran other parts of the
Roman empire, had no desire to acquire the culture of conquered
peoples. Even town life was hateful to them. Whatever vestiges of
Roman social life are to be found in England, these authors appear
to think, are not remains of the civilization stamped out by the
Anglo-Saxons but are survivals taken back to England in the
Norman conquest. Haverfield even goes so far as to declare that no
case is known where Saxons dwelt in a Roman villa.
It is difficult to believe that where all else was so completely
destroyed the collegia alone survived. They depended almost
entirely upon the existence of towns and upon craft activities. Even
if they had escaped the natural suspicions of Anglo-Saxon
overlords, their usefulness must have been destroyed through force
of hostile economic pressure. It is clear that if there was a bridge
between the collegia and the medieval guilds it must be sought
elsewhere.
Gould turned aside for a moment to examine the possibility that
such a bridge could be found at Byzantium, or, as it is now known,
Constantinople. He referred to George F. Fort's The Early History
and Antiquities of Freemasonry, a work published in the period
midway between the older school of thought represented by
Preston and Oliver and the modern school of which Gould himself
was one of the founders. Fort argued that the collegia of builders
did not pass out of existence under the impact of barbarian
invasions but found asylum at Byzantium and remained intact
behind the defenses of that city; that a new culture arose there, in
which Oriental, Roman and Greek elements blended, with the
Greek predominating; that in the building up of Gothic civilization
trained artists and artisans emerged from their Byzantine refuge to
perpetuate the traditions of classical culture.
In support of this theory Fort constructed an elaborate and brilliant
thesis which occupies the most considerable portion of his
ingenious and readable book. He described in some detail the
general history of the collegia, told how Augustus began to look
upon them with distrust, how Trajan crushed them under the
grinding force of governmental power, how Alexander Severus
endeavored to resuscitate them, how Constantine, by imperial
rescript, transplanted the collegia of builders to Byzantium and
there established them on a sound and enduring foundation.
Theodosius in 438 confirmed the grants of Constantine.
Unfortunately for this contention, however, it appears that Fort
confused the arts possessed by the collegia with the collegia
themselves. He assumes that because the trades continued to
flourish in Byzantium the old Roman trades organizations
continued with them and became in time the guilds of the Middle
Ages. On the contrary, there is stronger and better evidence that
Byzantium developed a new culture of its own, preserving, of
course, much that was borrowed from earlier Greece and Rome. If
the collegia did survive in the Eastern city adequate proof thereof
is wanting.
"When Constantine moved his capital to the shores of the
Bosphorus," Arthur Kingsley Porter wrote in Medieval
Architecture: Its Origins and Development, "he exerted every
energy to make the new Rome as splendid in architecture as the
old. The number and size of the buildings which, according to
contemporary authors, he caused to be erected is well-nigh
incredible. Executed with more than the usual Roman haste, these
buildings were probably inferior to the really remarkable structures
erected at this epoch elsewhere in the Empire. At least, the fact that
of all the vast city of Constantine hardly a single monument has
survived to our day, argues ill for the character of the
workmanship. As to the general style of these edifices, we are left
in no doubt, although no examples are extant - they could have
been only Roman. Similarly the earliest churches of
Constantinople must unquestionably have been basilicas of the
usual Latin type.
"The Roman period in Byzantine architecture was doubtless
succeeded by one of transition, during which the individual
character of the Eastern style gradually took form. The monuments
furnish us with actual knowledge of the progress of this
development only after the middle of the V century, a time when
the change had already been almost completed. However, by a
study of the historical conditions of the time, and by comparison of
the later monuments, it is possible to construct in broad outline the
story of this growth."
The author then sketches in colorful phrase the story of how, when
Rome was being pillaged by barbarian hordes, Byzantium was
gradually freeing itself from Latin influence. The Latin tongue
gave way to Greek, and Plato, Aristotle and Homer came once
more into their own. Byzantines looked toward the Parthenon and
discovered that Greek decoration was superior to Roman. From
India, Persia and China came rugs, silks, fabrics and hangings in
colors that were luminous and not harsh like the reds and yellows
and blacks of Rome. Thus Byzantine architecture built upon
Roman foundations, but looked to the old Hellenic monuments for
its models of beauty and to the Orient for its richness of color.
Interesting as this undoubtedly is, it is rather conclusively against
the theory that the Roman collegium passed into the guild of the
later Gothic period by way of Byzantium. In the first place, the
immunity granted by Constantine excusing certain workmen from
obligations of public service extended to persons in other crafts
than those of building and architecture. In the second place there is
no evidence that the collegia could and did survive the general
Hellenization of the Eastern city. In the third place, there is strong
reason for believing that the medieval guild system was an
autochthonous development out of general medieval culture, owing
fully as much to Teutonic influences as to those of Byzantium and
Rome. Indeed, almost any process of reasoning by analogy which
would show essential relationship between the guilds and the
collegia, could be used also to show essential relationship between
the guilds and various ancient Scandinavian and Teutonic
brotherhoods. Herbert Spencer traced the guild system to customs
of paternal inheritance; and Maine, as A. E. Crawley observed in
his treatise contributed to the Encyclopaedia of Religion and
Ethics, traced it to primitive customs of adoption.
In other words, the specialists have not been able to agree among
themselves as to the origin of the guild, and about the best
hypothesis of the matter is that of Crawley that they were a growth
from the crossing of Teutonic and Greco-Roman ideas and
institutions. Fort's attempt to find the bridge at Byzantium must
therefore be set down as having failed of approval in the courts of
critical opinion.
Other bridges have been sought elsewhere, and notably in southern
France and on Lake Como. The possibility that it is to be found
among the Comacine Masters is a subject so large in itself that it
must be discussed in a separate chapter. Moreover, differences
between the collegia and the guilds are quite as marked as are their
similarities.
The collegia were essentially social clubs, affected by religion,
with little or no control over hours, laws, wages or conditions of
labor; the medieval guilds, as will be shown hereafter, were trade
organizations, one of their principal purposes being to direct their
members in the proper conduct of their work. From this it is not to
be understood that the guilds had many things in common with the
modern trades union. On the contrary, as J. S. Reid has sagaciously
observed, there is hardly a single true point of comparison.
Medieval workers as organized into a society might obtain certain
advantages which, scattered as individuals, they could not hope to
get, but these societies did not attempt to control wages or
prescribe the conditions under which alone their members would
consent to work. They were maintained for the technical
betterment of the craftsmen themselves, for social relaxation, for
relief of the distressed, for preserving the operative secrets of their
trade and, no doubt, for the moral improvement of the
membership.
This does not mean, however, that even if the collegia did pass
utterly away without leaving direct heirs they handed nothing
down to the guilds and, by consequence, to Freemasonry. Their
influence was felt in more than one part of Europe long after their
history had been forgotten. It could scarcely be otherwise. The
rude inhabitants of many a barbaric village in Africa, in Gaul, in
Spain and in the far-away regions beyond the Danube must have
marveled at the works and the working methods of these societies
of Roman artisans, must have culled out and preserved whatever
they could understand or use. Roman social organization could be
extirpated root and branch while Roman intrenchments, Roman
walls and Roman viaducts, roads and bridges defied "the unsparing
ravages of barbarous force." Ideas are more indestructible than
viaducts.
When the Dark Ages were at their darkest the germs of the great
revival were lying dormant far under ground, needing but sunnier
skies to spring up again into new and abundant life. There were
numerous towns that had maintained unbroken connections with
the past. In these, if nowhere else, memories and traditions
lingered, handed down from fathers to sons, altered no doubt in the
telling but still basically the same. Nowhere is there positive and
incontrovertible evidence connecting Freemasonry, in a direct line
through the guilds, with the Roman collegia. Neither is there
positive and incontrovertible evidence denying such connection
may actually have existed.
CHAPTER VI
History of Freemasonry - by H.L. Haywood
THE GOTHIC BUILDERS
SOMEWHERE and somehow in the gloom of the Dark Ages,
Operative Craft Masonry was developing the social form in which
it was to emerge as the immediate ancestor of Speculative
Freemasonry. Few periods of history are so obscure and
mysterious as is that which comprehends the centuries of pillage
and bloodshed when "the glory that was Greece and the grandeur
that was Rome" had disappeared from sight, trodden down beneath
the conquering footsteps of barbarian hordes. The Northern
invaders were mighty in destruction but for long seemed impotent
to rebuild where they had razed. Charlemagne indeed erected upon
the ruins of Roman rule in Western Europe an ambitious political
structure, but when the Carolingian empire in turn succumbed to
the disintegrating influences of the times, the fairest lands relapsed
into anarchy and barbarism.
Everywhere religion and superstition were in a death struggle for
supremacy, the advantage going first one way and then the other.
Philosophy was degraded from its once high estate, while
witchcraft and demonology, bigotry and ignorance, vied with one
another for hegemony of the human mind. Art languished, science
perished and the learning of the ancients slumbered in parchments
until a more propitious and a kindlier age should awaken it once
more. The Saracen East alone gave shelter to intellectual
refinements too subtle to attract the coarser genius of Europe. In a
day when light and learning suffused the understanding of Persia
and when Omar the Tentmaker was lifting his voice in song or,
with educated contemporaries of the Near East, was discussing the
complications of algebra, kings who could neither read nor write
reigned in France, England and Germany.
Viewed in retrospect it is as if a malevolent fate had drawn a
curtain of fog across the face of the earth from the Bosphorus and
the strait of Gibraltar to the arctic circle. Now and then a stray
breath of history lifts a corner of the veil to disclose marching
armies and besieged cities. From behind it come the clang of sword
upon shield, the twang of bow, the thud of battle-axe and the shrill
clamor of martial trumpets. Then the mist begins slowly to clear
away, lifting, not upon a scene of desolation, as might be expected,
but upon a new and sturdy civilization which, in some seemin0v
miraculous way, has come into being in the midst turmoil and
confusion.
During that long period when the western mind, like a field that
has lain fallow, had been storing up the energy which was to raise
humanity to novel and unimagined heights, seeds of a new social
and artistic order had germinated. Most striking of all the products
of the Dark Ages was that style of building which is spoken of as
Gothic architecture. Along with it developed the system of
medieval operative guilds, of which that of the stone masons was
at once the most interesting and most complex. Both the
architecture and the guild system contained innumerable vestiges
of earlier ancestry, but each was so distinctive in itself as to defy
exact identification with anything that had gone before. When
Gothic architecture is dispassionately measured by that of the
Byzantine or of the Greco-Roman period, the contrasts appear to
be greater than the resemblances. Similarly when the guild system
is measured by the collegia or the Ancient Mysteries, the
differences appear greater than the similarities. That Gothic
architecture and the medieval guilds were codevelopments due to
common causes appears to be established by an overwhelming
preponderance of the historical evidence.
A list of theories that Freemasonry in approximately its present
form has descended from the days of King Solomon has already
passed in review. Among these was the theory that primitive man
originated the Fraternity; the theory that it came from the Ancient
Mysteries; the theory that it came from the collegia' with attendant
hypotheses of transmission through Britain, Byzantium or
Southern France; the Comacine theory, which will be examined
hereafter in greater detail. Still other theories have been advanced
from time to time, as that it originated among ancient Jewish
theosophists and was transmitted through the Kabbalists; that it
sprang from the Druses of Mount Lebanon; that it came from
antiquity through the Dionysian Artificers; that it was originally a
system of Egyptian mystery cults; that it was founded by the
Druids of ancient Britain; that it was brought from the Orient by
Crusaders; that the Knights of the Temple acquired it from the
Society of the Assassins. It is necessary, however, for the
champion of any such hypothesis to present evidence that
Freemasonry has continued as one big fraternity from the
beginning down to the present. Not only has this not been done,
but the testimony of history is heavily against the supposition.
If, on the other hand, the attempt be only to show that Freemasonry
contains survivals and inheritances of the cultural experiences of
all past times, the undertaking is by no means difficult. Such an
attempt naturally presupposes a hypothesis that the origins of the
Fraternity as a separate institution are to be sought in a period
which would be calculated to give it the peculiar and distinctive
traits it has been known from its earliest provable history to
possess. The nascency of Gothic architecture supplies precisely
such a period. If the guilds of the Gothic builders did not give
origin to Freemasonry, it is at least certain that Freemasonry first
appears in a recognizable form among those guilds. To go behind
the records which prove that, is to abandon the realm of history for
that of speculation and fancy. It is therefore of importance to
examine as carefully as may be the art and practices of the Gothic
builders for what light they may throw upon the Masonic
institution.
Of the men who worked out this style unfortunately little is known.
There have been almost as many conflicting theories of its origin
as there are of the origin of Freemasonry itself. A phenomenon of
the Dark Ages was the rise in all parts of Europe of free and
self-governing cities. These were essentially different in their
political composition from the feudal governments existing all
around them. They were ruled by their own councils of burgesses
and these in turn were frequently composed of representatives of
important subdivisions of the municipality. Craftsmen in the
various mechanical trades were accustomed to gather into their
own societies; when a society had sufficient numerical strength or
prestige in business it demanded and received a voice in the affairs
of the town. Its existence as a separate entity was recognized by
some form of charter prescribing its duties and privileges and
limiting its power of extending or diminishing its own
membership. These societies, or guilds as they came to be known,
exercised local monopoly in the practice of their respective trades
and in return supplied competent workmen for whatever tasks were
to be performed.
A passion for building had begun to sweep over Europe. It came so
close upon the heels of the eleventh century as to lead many
students to consider it a reaction from the gloomy misgivings with
which Christian countries had awaited the coming of the year
1,000. The belief that this would be the end of the millennium after
which the world was to come to an end had been widespread. But
the world did not come to an end and popular thanksgiving was
manifest in an almost universal desire to perform notable works of
piety. Bishops and abbots expended the offerings of the faithful in
erecting cathedrals, churches and monasteries. Feudal lords and
ladies found admirable means of atoning for sundry misdeeds by
setting aside sums for building or adorning temples. A knight hard
pressed in battle might vow a gift of gold to the shrine of a favored
saint; a general might promise a chapel for success in a minor
campaign or a cathedral, if the campaign was to be hard and the
issue doubtful. Occasionally some secular dignitary might desire a
castle or palace befitting his dignity. The Crusades not only
stimulated the movement still further, but they brought additional
treasure and new ideas from the East and profoundly influenced
the architectural science of the builders.
In the beginning there were no architects in the modern sense, but
there were master builders, who designed the structures, supervised
construction and worked with their own hands along with their
operative brethren. The workers went by the generic name of
masons, but in certain instances were called freemasons. The
etymology and original definition of these terms remain, after
many years of debate, undecided.
Of "Mason" The New English Dictionary prepared by the English
Philological Society says, "The ulterior etymology is obscure;
possibly the word is from the root of the Latin maceria (a wall)."
The first quotation given to illustrate use of the word is dated at
1205. Lionel Vibert says: "Mason may not be German or Latin, but
the ulterior origin is obscure. At all events, when we first find it, it
is purely and simply a trade name, and has no esoteric meaning of
a brother, or son of anything or of anybody."
As to the original meaning of "freemason" there have been many
hypotheses. Edward Conder suggested that among masons in
general a few were capable of working without plans, free
handedly like painters, and were called "freemasons" in
consequence. A more popular theory holds that masons were
exempted by papal bulls from certain of the usual feudal restraints.
Stieglitz looked with favor upon this notion in his History of
Architecture. Leader Scott adopted it in behalf of the Comacine
Masters, of whom she said, "They were Freemasons because they
were builders of a privileged class, absolved from taxes and
servitude, and free to travel about in times of feudal bondage."
This theory has its attractions, but it must be laid aside until the
papal bulls in question are discovered.
Early writers inclined strongly to the belief that a freemason was
so designated because he worked in free stone, that is, stone
already hewn from the quarry. Dr. Begemann gave credence to the
notion and so did Chetwode Crawley. Still another belief derives
the word from the idea of release from the restraints of
apprenticeship, when a workman, being out of his indentures, was
at liberty to travel about in search of employment. The New
English Dictionary somewhat favors the supposition that certain
workmen of especial skill were "given their freedom" and ascribes
this to a medieval practice of emancipating the best artisans so that
they might offer their services wherever a great building was in
process of construction.
George W. Speth contributed to Ars Quatuor Coronatorum what he
called a tentative inquiry in which he advanced the suggestion that
there may have been two distinct masonic guilds in the Gothic
period. One was stationary and all its members were bound to
work within their local communities; the other was a society of
traveling workmen, the members of which were free to move
about. He believed that much of the work of cathedral building was
so highly specialized that it required workmen of particular
training and that it was from itinerant, rather than stationary, town
guilds that modern Freemasonry is descended.
In addition to these theories, there is a throng of romantic
hypotheses, such as are to be encountered by the student at almost
every step of his incursions into Masonic lore. Mackey's
Encyclopedia of Freemasonry enumerates some of the more
fantastic ones. A writer in the European Magazine for February,
1792, who described himself as "George Drake, lieutenant of
marines, " attempted to trace Freemasonry to the Druids and
derived the word mason from "May's on," the first part being in
reference to May-day and the second to the French impersonal
pronoun, on. He argued that it originally meant "Men of May," but
that was not original with him, since the same derivation was
suggested in 1766 by Cleland in his essays, The Way to Things by
Words, and The Real Secret of Freemasons. Hutchinson thought
the word may have had a Greek origin, coming from mao soon
meaning "I seek salvation, or from mystes, or is perhaps a
corruption of mesouraneo, meaning "I am in the midst of heaven,
or of Mazourouth, a constellation mentioned by Job, or of
mysterion, a mystery." Lessing argued that masa in Anglo-Saxon
signifies a table, and that Masonry is consequently a "society of the
table." Nicola thought the root word was the low Latin noun
masonia signifying an exclusive society or club. C. W Moore in
the Boston Magazine of May, 1844, derived it from lithotomos, a
stone-cutter, thereby prompting Mackey to the sage observation,
"It surpasses our ingenuity to get Mason etymologically out of
lithotomos."
The late William S. Rockwell, "who was accustomed," Mackey
observes, "to find all his Masonry in the Egyptian mysteries,"
derived the word from mai, signifying to love, and son, which
means a brother. "But all of these fanciful etymologies," the
learned commentator wittily adds, "which would have terrified
Bopp, Grimm or Muller, or any other student of linguistic
relations, forcibly remind us of the French epigrammatist, who
admitted that alphina came from equus, but that, in so coming, it
had very considerably changed its route."
Non-Masonic lexicographers have had no great difficulty with the
word. They trace it back through French into various Latin forms
and in every case its verbal ancestors referred to workers in stone
or mortar. This simple and reasonable explanation ought to suffice
for all practical purposes and does suffice for all except
gratification of the peculiar vanity to which Masonic literature has
been so susceptible, a vanity of finding hidden and mysterious
meanings in things that really are obvious. A mason in the
medieval period was therefore one who worked in stone or mortar
and he became a "free" mason either because he worked in
"free"
stone or because he was free of his guild or was otherwise
emancipated from restrictions which applied to apprentices, serfs
and villeins.
When bishop, abbot, prince or baron of the Gothic age got ready to
put up a notable building, his first and most important care was to
select the master builder. He was - as Arthur Kingsley Porter noted
in Medieval Architecture, a work herein extensively quoted - a
man of profession who often traveled great distances to obtain
important commissions. William of Sens in 1174 journeyed from
France to England to apply for the work of rebuilding the cathedral
of Canterbury, which had been destroyed by fire. Villard de
Honnecourt, a master builder of the last half of the thirteenth
century, went to Hungary to supervise the erection of a church, and
his album of sketches contains drawings made by him upon visits
to Laon, Reims, Chartres and Lausanne. In a note on the margin of
one drawing he remarked he had traveled far and had seen many
towers but none like those of Reims. Window traceries he
examined at Reims so impressed him that he confided in another
note his intention of reproducing them in the cathedral of Cambrai.
"Thus it is evident, Porter remarks "that the master builders moved
about freely from place to place for education as well as for
business, and readily undertook every long journey to obtain
commissions. When a new construction had been determined upon,
the bishop or chapter or abbot, as the case might be, let the fact be
known. Usually several applicants for the position of master
builder would present themselves. From these was selected the one
who made the most favorable impression, either as promising to
carry out the work more economically or as being best qualified by
previous training and experience. Other considerations, such as the
pay demanded, or how much of the old edifice the various
applicants promised to preserve, also influenced the selection.
After the successful candidate had been chosen, he entered into
agreement with the ecclesiastical powers, and for a definite wage
undertook to carry out the stipulated construction. Only in
exceptional cases was there anything approaching a contract; as a
general rule in the XIII century the master builder was paid a
regular salary, just as were the men who worked under him."
His first job was to make the necessary drawings, for, contrary to
an impression long held in later times, the Gothic building was
planned in considerable detail before the first stone was laid. Some
of these drawings have come down to modern times, notably one
of the ground plans of the monastery of St. Gallo, dating from the
ninth century, and the sketches of Villard de Honnecourt. They
were, as Porter observed, plain, straightforward line drawings,
made for use and not for display, sufficiently accurate for practical
service yet not overburdened with detail. It is probable that master
builders also constructed models, since that practice was common
among their predecessors of classical times and their successors of
the Renaissance period. Indeed what appears to have been just
such a model was discovered not long ago in Rouen. Since the
master builder's profession required his personal supervision of
every step of the construction, he took up his abode near the scene
of labor and remained there until his task was finished, or he died
or was dismissed, as sometimes happened when his employers
became dissatisfied with his work. An instance of the fate which
befell an unfaithful master workman is revealed in the Chronicle of
Bec, quoted in Medieval Architecture:
"Therefore, when the foundations had been laid deep," the ancient
recorder wrote, "the abbot himself, surrounded by his monks, laid
the first stone of the foundations on the first day of Lent; and
Ingebram, master builder of Notre Dame of Rouen, directed and
aided in the construction. And to his superintendence the abbot
entrusted the beginning and care of that work, and for the first year
Ingebram worked hard at the building, and constructed it with
great success, altering the facade and increasing the length of the
nave and wonderfully adorning it with two broad towers; but after
a year and a half he commenced to absent himself occasionally,
neglecting the work and not finishing it as he had promised. When
the abbot saw and understood this, he took wise council, and, when
now a year and eight months had passed, he removed Ingebram
from the sacred place, and handed the work over to the master
builder Walter of Melun, who finished it in the third year."
Alas for poor Ingebram! Cathedrals must go on and naves must be
lengthened and towers must continue to mount, and when the
Ingebrams grow slack in their work, there is always a Walter of
Melun waiting just around the corner to be called in to finish the
job. Yet it is apparent from the narrative that the abbot was by no
means rash or testy regarding the misconduct of his master builder.
It was his business to keep an eye on the work, and he had every
right to feel aggrieved when the man he most trusted in this, the
most important work of the abbot's life, began to fail him. It is
more than likely that he and Ingebram had been on excellent
personal terms during that first year. For at least two months after
Ingebram's defection had become too apparent to be overlooked,
his Superior officer hesitated to take action. But when the crisis
came there was no question of which held paramount authority.
"The responsibility of the abbot or bishop did not end when the
master builder was engaged," says Porter. "On the contrary he
watched carefully every detail, saw to providing building materials
and frequently interfered even in purely architectural and artistic
matters. At St. Denis, Suger, the abbot, directed where and how
work should be begun, decided from what quarries stone should be
taken, devised how to procure suitable columns, and hunted in the
forests for timber. He even superintended the details of the design
of the stained-glass windows.
"This strict control exercised by the ecclesiastical authorities
explains the eminently scholastic character of the Gothic church.
The master builder and the clerk walked hand in hand. The
function of the former was not to dictate, to impose his artistic
conception on the priest; he was simply an expert, a man with
practical experience called in to execute the desired work in the
best manner possible, to oversee the workmen, and to undertake
those matters for which the bishop or abbot lacked the requisite
technical knowledge. How close this union of client and master
builder was, the thoroughly ecclesiastic character of the cathedral
itself is the best witness. That disagreements, disputes and
misunderstandings of various kinds should arise was only natural,
but in all such altercations the ecclesiastical authorities always
retained the upper hand. It is amusing to read in Gervase what
infinite tact William of Sens was forced to employ (at Canterbury)
to persuade the reluctant monks that it was necessary to destroy the
charred fragments of the glorious choir of Conrad.
"Also the relationship of the master builder to the men under him
was far closer than that existing between the modern architect and
the laborers. The medieval master builder not only superintended
everything connected with the building - the quarrying of the
stone, the stereotomy, the construction of scaffolds and centerings
- but he seems also to have labored much with his own hands.
William of Sens, called from France to direct the construction of
the cathedral of Canterbury, was seriously injured by falling from
the scaffold; and the entire tone of Gervase's account of the
activities of this master builder gives the impression that he
performed with his own hands much manual labor."
There were, however, and especially in the later centuries, master
builders who merely directed the work performed by others. Porter
mentions a passage in a sermon of Nicolas of Berne in which the
preacher used this illustration of a point he desired to make: "The
master builders, with rule and compass in hand, say to others, 'Cut
this here for me,' and do not work themselves and yet they receive
higher pay, like many modern prelates." Another passage quoted in
the same work, was as follows: "Some work by word alone. For
take notice. In great buildings there is usually a single master
builder who directs the construction by word alone, and seldom or
never does manual labor, but nevertheless he receives higher pay
than the others. So there are many in the Church who possess fat
benefices, but God knows what good they do; they work by their
tongue alone, saying, 'Thus you ought to do, but themselves do not
so at all."
This last illustration was taken from a sermon preached in the
fourteenth century and by that time many changes had taken place
in the office of the master builder, which appears to have increased
in prestige since the day when William of Sens tumbled from his
scaffold. William was evidently looked upon as little more than a
first-rate artisan. In the next century Villard de Honnecourt was an
educated man who could afford the luxury of leisurely travel. By
the fourteenth the master builder was distinctly a professional - an
architect he would be called today.
How wide the gulf was which separated the master from his
workman is not clear, but the indications are that it was narrow in
the beginning and widened toward the latter days. The assumption
has been that most of the skilled and semi-skilled labor came from
guilds. It is known that the masons were organized in such
societies, as were most workers at mechanical trades, but records
of their activities are meager. It is not certain whether or not they
were divided into different grades, beginning with those employed
for the ruder kinds of work and progressing to the most expert of
craftsmen. There is not even satisfactory evidence showing it was a
practice for them to move about from place to place, although the
supposition is that the nature of the work itself must have
necessitated mobility, since especially proficient workmen would
naturally gravitate to places where employment was plentiful and
the pay good.
The formation of artisan guilds in towns proceeded in much the
same manner in all parts of Europe. Men engaged in the same kind
of work would band together, agree upon basic qualifications for
membership, choose one or more chief officers, as occasion
seemed to demand, and establish a code of ethics. In due season
the society would obtain a charter or writ of incorporation from the
local authorities. In many instances additional membership was
limited to the sons of those who already belonged, and not even
these might be admitted until they had served long periods of
apprenticeship. All members of the guild usually resided in the
same quarter of the town or in the same street, and its authority not
infrequently extended to regulation of the public and social
conduct of the fellowship.
Most antiquarians are convinced, however, that the mason guilds
could not have conformed strictly to this plan. Porter expresses the
general idea when he indicates that this guild was known as "free,"
which meant, among other things, that no fee was demanded of
those who entered the trade. "But with the exception of the
legitimate sons of masters," he continues, "each novice had to
serve an apprenticeship of six years, and no master was allowed to
have more than one apprentice. The great number of skilled
workmen required to construct a cathedral could hardly have found
sufficient work to support them in the city when works on the
church were not in progress. It is therefore probable that, like the
master builders, they moved about from place to place, probably
with their wives and families. But did they move in mass, in great
bands? The fact of the corporation seems to imply it, for it is
difficult to see how a guild could exist if the members were
constantly shifting from one city to another. And in what
relationship could the master builder have stood to these
corporations? Was he merely the chief man of the band, elected by
his fellows? What is known of the master builders seems to
contradict such an hypothesis."
This is a frank admission on the part of Mr. Porter that he is but
guessing. Many of the older historians of Freemasonry, and a few
of the present day, have lacked this modesty. They have boldly
jumped to the conclusion that because Gothic buildings
everywhere exhibit certain unities, therefore the builders must have
belonged to some great fraternity, spread over Britain and a large
part of continental Europe; that this fraternity must have had some
center, perhaps at York, from which it was governed much after
the fashion in which modern Freemasonry is governed by Grand
Lodges; that it was in possession of a set of secrets, derived
nobody knows whence, thereby accounting for the knowledge of
Gothic art possessed in widely separated places.
That the builders of Gothic cathedrals may have comprised a class
apart from other builders, enjoying certain privileges and
immunities and free - as members of other guilds were not - to
move about from one community to another, is a reasonable
hypothesis, although as yet it can be regarded only as a hypothesis.
But that these roving bands of workmen were organized into one
big fraternity there is no evidence to prove; such evidence as there
is points to a contrary conclusion.
The one big fraternity would have needed an international
organization and a hierarchy of officers, and the silence of history
is eloquently persuasive that there was no such organization, no
such hierarchy. It would have included in its membership nobles,
prelates and others bearing the most illustrious names of three
centuries. its influence would have been so great as to make it
conspicuous, as the Knights Templar and the Hanseatic League
were conspicuous. It is inconceivable that such an organization,
doing business with both church and state, would have left behind
it no records, no memorials, no documents; or that its existence
would not have been mentioned in at least some of the writings of
contemporary literature; or that it would not have been noticed in
the official records of the countries in which it must have existed.
Such a society must have had millions of members. Gothic art was
not confined to cathedrals and churches; its principals of
construction and its methods of ornamentation were used in
building bridges, fortifications, civic structures, and even in the
making of clothing, pottery and tools. If these principles were the
secrets of one big fraternity, those employing them must have been
members of that fraternity. It is natural to doubt that a society of
such magnitude could have existed for more than 300 years
without leaving definitive records of itself. No such records have
been found.
What, then, is the conclusion to which these considerations
incontrovertibly point? It is that the mason guilds, like Gothic
architecture itself, underwent a gradual course of development,
gaining in strength, form and beauty as they advanced.
The Gothic buildings of each land exhibited altogether too many
local peculiarities to admit of the supposition of outside control by
some central power. Each nation had to make its own experiments
in the development of the peculiarities of its own style, yet surely,
if a body of Gothic "secrets" had been in the possession of a single
international fraternity, this would not have been necessary.
Whence then did Gothic architecture derive its essential unity?
Why did it everywhere possess those general features by which it
is identified? The answer is not far to seek. That unity followed
necessarily upon its technique. A pointed arch is a pointed arch,
whether it exists in Scotland or in Spain; the builder who employed
a flying buttress in France and the one who employed it in England
had to use it in the same general manner. Once a master builder
had triumphantly solved a problem of construction, he had shown
the way to all succeeding builders. A similar tendency is observed
in modern times where men are engaged in similar tasks although
widely separated in geography. The chief difference is that news of
scientific and technical discoveries nowadays is disseminated more
rapidly than it could be in the Gothic period.
CHAPTER VII
THE GOTHIC CATHEDRALS
by H.L. HAYWOOD
IN the Arabian Nights there is a tale of a city in which every living
thing had been changed instantaneously into stone. Generations of
readers have been thrilled by the romantic possibilities latent in
that theme. In such a city a wanderer might pass through street and
market place, through palace and hovel, into hall and chamber,
seeking from each immobile form to reconstruct the history of the
life which once animated it. Caught and unalterably fixed as he
was at the moment of doom, each separate person would have
summed up in one frozen posture all he had been, nay, all he might
hope to be, unless some necromancer with a word of power should
restore to him the vitality which once was his.
Like that fancied wanderer, the archaeologist walks among the
ruins of lost civilizations and reconstructs much of their former
grandeur. Wherever it can find structures built by human hands
archaeology is particularly capable of doing so. The Gothic
builders left few and fragmentary records of themselves, but,
fortunately for posterity, they left in their cathedrals, churches,
monasteries, palaces, aqueducts and bridges memorials more
eloquent than words. As the eye of science scans these remains,
many of them yet retaining their original beauty, it is able to read
therein the old, familiar story with which it has come to associate
all other forms of human progress - the story of development
through evolution.
The best refutation of a once popular belief that Gothic architecture
was the product - and its technique the peculiar possession - of a
single great association or fraternity of architects is to be found in
reading aright the story which the cathedrals have preserved in
their own walls of stone. Examined in a proper serial order, these
buildings rehearse a drama of trial and error, of adventure and
achievement, of disappointment and triumph, of trimming here and
expanding there to meet the exactions of local taste or the
limitations of local skill. They can be divided into species and
classes, speaking French or German or Spanish or English as
unmistakably as if they were capable of human speech.
The origin of the word Gothic, as applied specifically to
architecture, is somewhat in doubt. Artists of the Renaissance
period used the word as a contemptuous epithet which they applied
to all the art of the Middle Ages. De Caumont and his brother
architects in the nineteenth century began using it in its modern
technical sense as referring to a distinct era of architectural
development, placed roughly between the Romanesque and the
Renaissance periods. Romanesque is a broad general term
including all the various phases of the round-arch style of
architecture intervening between the Gothic and the ancient Roman
schools. For convenience it has become a practice to differentiate
between the Roman and the Romanesque by the fact that
Romanesque employed rounded arches to replace the flat lintels of
the preceding period; to discriminate between Romanesque and
Gothic by the fact that Gothic, in turn, supplanted the rounded arch
with a pointed one. That usage is extremely loose, however, and is
by no means to be regarded as a complete, or even measurably
accurate, definition.
The Goths, after whom the medieval style is named, were members
of Teutonic tribes which, in about the first century of the Christian
era, lived in the vast area stretching from the basin of the Vistula
river westward perhaps as far as Scandinavia. They have been
roughly classified in two major divisions, known to history as the
Western Goths and the Eastern Goths. The Eastern Goths, for a
long period of time, stayed north of the Danube, but the Western
Goths crossed the Danube in 376, entering the Roman provinces as
peaceful settlers. This is not the place to recount the story of
subsequent Gothic migrations; it is sufficient to say that in various
streams these Teutonic peoples flowed in upon Europe,
overrunning Italy, Gaul and Spain until, by the year 586, they were
at the peak of their power and influence in European affairs. They
had long passed the height of their affluence before the first of the
buildings now existing and known as Gothic had been erected.
Distinctive features of Gothic architecture are best understood by
contrasting them with styles of construction which went before. In
the ancient Roman scheme of building, a structure, large or small,
consisted of four walls, like the sides of a box, with a roof to cover
it. When it became necessary to enlarge the structure, it was also
necessary to strengthen its walls; the larger and higher it was, the
thicker its walls had to be. Windows, that they might not weaken
it, were made as few and as small as possible. For these reasons
Roman buildings tended to be low and squat, dark and gloomy.
The art of internal decoration naturally languished, since there was
little use lavishing care upon adornments which could not be seen,
or at best could be seen but imperfectly.
In later times the Romans learned how to avoid many of these
difficulties. What must have been a triumph of art for them was the
Basilica Julia, which was erected on the Forum. This was a
rectangular building, with a central hall 255 feet long by 6o feet
wide, surrounded by a double aisle of arches, carried on piers, with
groined vaults. Afterwards, in the Basilica Julia, erected in the time
of Trajan, piers were replaced by monolithic columns ornamented
with Corinthian capitals.
When Constantine transferred the capital of the empire to
Byzantium in the year 330, he took Roman builders with him and
began the erection of buildings in the Roman style. But Roman art
underwent, in the eastern city, marked transitions and
modifications. Arches began more and more to take the places of
lintels; daring and more daring the arch became in itself. By the
year 532, when construction began upon the church of St. Sophia,
the Roman school had given way completely to the Byzantine,
itself an early stage of the Romanesque. The architects of that
famous temple, Anthemius of Tralles and Isidorus of Miletus, laid
out plans for a structure which was to be 260 feet from east to west
and 238 feet from north to south, to carry a dome 107 feet in
diameter, the apex of which should be 175 feet above the ground.
This dome was to be supported upon four round arches.
The completion of St. Sophia was a marvelous accomplishment.
The use of broad, sweeping arches gave to its interior an
appearance of spaciousness such a no Roman basilica could boast.
Although the first dome fell, it was rebuilt and the temple exists
today in substantially its original form to remind the world of the
intellectual splendor and material resourcefulness of an age which
could design and execute a work so vast. The round arch was
destined to distinguish a general type of architecture which in time
became known in Italy as Byzantine and Lombard Romanesque; in
Germany as Rhenish; in France as Romane and Norman; in
England as Saxon and Norman.
By a slow process of experiment, the Gothic builders worked out
many and astonishing changes from this Byzantine superstructure
erected on a Roman foundation. For the pier-like walls of the
original basilica they substituted an organized system of ribs, with
flying buttresses and pointed arches, arranged to constitute a
self-contained organization, so that the framework could stand
without any walls at all, since the weight and outward thrust of the
roof were taken up by the buttresses. In such a building the roof
could be carried to a great height; as many windows could be used
as the areas between pillars and ribs would accommodate. Each
member of the structure could be employed as an element in the
decorative scheme of the whole. Columns, piers and pillars could
be carved in a great variety of shapes, could stand on ornamented
bases and might terminate in graceful capitals.
Each rib could be twisted and fashioned into whatever form fancy
suggested. Each arch could be made to flower into intricate
patterns, like a blossoming shrub; floors and panels could be
overlaid with rich and colorful mosaics, the subtlest shades of
which could be distinguished in the abundance of light streaming
in from numerous windows; the windows themselves could be as
glamorous in coloring as any painting by a master artist. C. H.
Moore, whose book on Gothic architecture has become something
of a classic, summed these characteristics into this definition:
"In fine, then, Gothic architecture may be shortly defined as a
system of construction in which vaulting on an independent system
of ribs is sustained by piers and buttresses whose equilibrium is
maintained by the opposing action of thrust and counter thrust.
This system is adorned by sculptures whose motives are drawn
from organic nature, conventionalized in obedience to architectural
conditions, and governed by the appropriate forms established by
the ancient art, supplemented by color designs on opaque ground
and more largely in glass. It is a popular church architecture - the
product of secular craftsmen working under the stimulus of
national and municipal aspiration and inspired by religious faith."
How the style was perfected and how it originated still remain
something of a mystery, with almost no two historians agreeing
among themselves. That it proceeded to its culmination through a
long series of experiments is plain enough, yet even so its full
accomplishment continues a theme for never ending wonder.
Moore, as is apparent from the quotation, saw the flying buttress as
its chief characteristic. Others have seen it in the pointed arch, or in
the rib vault, or in the use of stained-glass windows or in stone
vaulting; still others have found the secret to lie in the manner in
which all these peculiarities were united into an indivisible whole.
Where and when any of them was originally developed, invented
or discovered remains a riddle to which an astonishing variety of
answers has been proposed. Earlier writers made ingenious guesses
ranging from the ridiculous to the sublime and back again; most
modern historians have taken the ground that each distinctive trait
developed little by little from an earlier form.
English historians of the style have claimed for their own land the
glory of its discovery, urging that its advent was at Durham in the
year 1100. The preponderance of authoritative opinion seems to
incline, however, toward the view of French writers, who place the
emergence of the style at the construction of the abbey church of
St. Denis. Whether it did in fact originate, as enthusiastic
Frenchmen sometimes assert, in the region known as Ile de France
in the second quarter of the twelfth century, is a matter of
conjecture; it certainly flourished there with early luxuriance and
has left in that district some of its finest masterpieces.
Work began on the abbey church of St. Denis in 1137. In rapid
order construction of cathedrals at Noyon, Senlis and Sens
followed. By that time French taste for buildings of slenderer and
more energetic types than those of the earlier churches had become
pronounced. Notre Dame cathedral in Paris was be gun in 1163.
Some few years later construction started on the cathedral of Notre
Dame at Chartres, in which the flying buttress was brought to
triumphant artistic culmination.
By examining one after another these ancient cathedrals it is
possible to trace the working out of important details of
construction. In imperishable stone the hand of medieval
architecture wrote a stirring tale of adventure and achievement.
Between the abbey church of St. Denis and the cathedral at
Chartres stretch almost a hundred years of time, marked by
milestones of progress. The edifice at Chartres was destroyed by
fire almost as soon as it was completed, but clergy and people with
undiminished courage at once set about rebuilding and soon a new
structure had been reared. Its main portion, with the two famous
towers - one of which was not completed, however, until the
sixteenth century - stands today; within recent months this
cathedral was accepted as the model upon which one of the
costliest of American churches should be patterned. Chartres
cathedral and the one at Rouen are usually considered as having
marked the close of the first great period of Gothic architecture.
While the ashes were being cleared away at Chartres, newer and
more daring ideas were taking shape in the plans for building the
cathedral at Reims. This marvelous structure, which is regarded as
having instituted the second great phase of Gothic development,
was started in 1211. Its most striking characteristic, aside from the
perfection of tower which so delighted Villard. de Honnecourt,
was the use of ornamental stonework to form divisions between the
lights of windows which, radiating from a center, suggest the
unfolding petals of a flower.
The great rose window of that cathedral is too famous to require
description here. It has awakened the wonder and admiration of
centuries; it has inspired poets, painters, architects. It gave to the
fine lines of a Gothic interior a crown of glory. The traceries at
Reims gave new inspiration to French architecture. In 1220 a still
larger cathedral was begun at Amiens; in 1247 one still more vast
was begun at Beauvais. A novel perfection in aisle vaulting
marked a still further architectural advance in the building of the
cathedral at Le Mans. With the completion of Sainte Chapelle -
begun at Paris in 1244 - Gothic architecture, as a learned writer has
said, reached complete maturity. Here large tracery windows were
brought to perfection, and moreover the structure was so organized
into a series of wide window spaces, only divided by strong,
far-projecting buttress piers, "that the stained glass ideal found full
expression and the building became a lantern for its display."
In England as in France during all these years Gothic Architecture
also had been undergoing an evolutionary process, the details of
which differed from those in France as their purposes were
modified by climatic and other local requirements. Edmund Sharpe
has divided it into six distinct stages, beginning with the Norman,
which he assigns to the years from 1066 to 1145, and following
with the Transitional, which lasted for about half a century; with
the Lancet, which endured for a similar period; with the
Geometrical, which prevailed from 1245 to 1315; with the
Curvilinear, which lasted until about 1360 and ending with the
Rectilinear, lasting from the middle of the fourteenth century to the
middle of the sixteenth.
That similar processes of development took place in other
countries the facts abundantly testify. Goodyear in Roman and
Medieval Art sums the matter up in a paragraph when, after
commenting upon certain designations of main periods as being
"early," "middle" and "late," he observes:
"It must be understood
that there are no definite limits between these periods. Speaking
generally, the late twelfth century was the time of Gothic
beginnings in France, and it is rarely found in other countries
before the thirteenth century; the thirteenth and fourteenth
centuries are both periods of great perfection, and the fifteenth
century is the time of relative decadence. Both in Germany and in
England the thirteenth century was the time of the introduction of
Gothic. In Italy it was never fully or generally accepted. Within the
field of the Gothic proper (i.e., excluding Italy) England is the
country where local and national modifications are most obvious,
many showing that the style was practiced more or less at second
hand. In picturesque beauty and general attractiveness, the English
cathedrals may be compared with any, but preference must be
given to the French in the study of the evolution of the style."
These statements are somewhat didactic, but while the conclusions
of Goodyear in some respects have been open to challenge, there
must be substantial agreement with his chief contention, which is
that the so-called periods shaded into one another by a natural and
evolutionary process.
If this is so, many fanciful attempts to discover the origin of Gothic
architecture have succeeded no better than have the fanciful
attempts to discover the origin of Freemasonry. Here, as in so
many other fields of investigation, the lineally minded historian
has pursued his old fallacy of believing that every given thing
should be retraced to some antecedent point in space or time.
Lascelles decided that the pointed arch was originally suggested by
the timbering of Noah's ark. Stukely and Warburton fancied that
the Gothic builders were trying to imitate the groves in which
Druidic priests conducted their mystic rites. Sir Christopher Wren
believed they borrowed it from the Saracens. Findel and Fort say
they got it from Germany; Leader Scott says they derived it from
the Germans but learned it through the Masters of Lake Como.
Hayter Lewis concludes it was so united and homogeneous in all
its parts that it must have come from the brain of a single genius.
He nominates Suger, counsellor of Louis le Gros and of Louis VII,
as a plausible candidate for that honor. And of course there is the
tradition of the one big fraternity which has bulked so large in
Masonic thought.
Weighing against all of these theories is the story in stone which is
to be read in the cathedrals themselves. It declares that Gothic
architecture did not come into being full-blown, but evolved
slowly from antecedent styles, accepting here and rejecting there.
It asserts that the flying buttress, so essential in every phase of the
style, was not given to the world as a single donative, but came
into use through experimentation, many of the earliest Gothic
builders having failed to make use of it, either because they did no
know of it or did not approve of it. This tale in imperishable
marble further proclaims the evolution of the pointed arch from the
rounded arch, and says it was adopted in many buildings under the
compulsion of necessity.
Something of this for a long time has been understood. Gilbert
Scott enunciated the theory and Robert Freke Gould quoted Scott's
remarks with strong approval in his History of Freemasonry. Gould
in an exceedingly lucid discussion of the subject remarked that
Gothic buildings of different lands exhibit altogether too many
local peculiarities to admit of the supposition that their architecture
was subject to central control. It cannot be too strongly emphasized
that if the body of "secrets" of Gothic architecture had been in the
possession of a single fraternity, subsequent experiments which
resulted in local modifications would have been unlikely, if not
impossible. "I have shown," wrote Gould in his most positive
manner, "that the idea of a universal body of men working with
one impulse and after one set fashion, at the instigation of a
cosmopolitan body acting under a certain direction . . . is a myth."
In spite of all this, however, the idea survives in certain forms of
Masonic writing. It serves the necessities of those who support the
hypothesis that Freemasonry has been in continuous organized
existence from the days of Adam until now, since they are required
by the nature of their dogma to be able at any given period in
history, to point to some particular set of men and say these
constituted Freemasonry as it was in that day. If they cannot do
that, the chain is broken; a broken chain means that the whole
theory must fall to pieces. Clearly, if the Fraternity was in
existence in the Middle Ages, the logical place to look f or it is
among the builders of Gothic cathedrals. In point of fact, when it
does appear as a distinct body of workers in stone, it appears first
among the guilds which grew up with the Gothic system. But to
suppose on that account that all the guilds and the Gothic architects
themselves were united in a single society, or even in a general
confederation of societies, is merely to believe what one wishes to
believe notwithstanding the preponderance of weighty reasons
against it.
Both the Gothic system and Freemasonry were social evolutions,
and both appear to have been affected by the same major currents
of medieval culture. Evolution presupposes orderly growth from a
lower state to a higher. Biological evolution may begin with a
single living cell, which develops, expands, divides, subdivides,
acts upon its environment and is strongly reacted upon in return.
Social evolutions follow similar processes. They, too, must have
their beginning in at east one vital principle and must contain
within themselves the power of reproduction and expansion. Civil
government begins with the household, passes from household to
clan, from clan to tribe, from tribe to state and from state to
empire. It starts with an imperative need for mutual protection and
with capability for reducing social arrangements to some rude
order. It is modified by its surroundings, by considerations of soil
and climate, shelter, fuel and food, by the forces of nature to be
overcome or to be harnessed to do man's bidding, by the salubrity
or the unhealthfulness of mountain, forest, morass or plain. In a
fertile, well-watered and well-wooded land it possesses assets of
inestimable value with which it may develop more rapidly than it
can in arctic or antarctic regions or in the arid deserts of Arabia
and the Sahara. Whether it does so develop remains a question of
the inner spirit or genius of the people who form it.
To say, therefore, of a highly organized social structure that it has
risen through evolution is to say with equal force that it developed
from something. Whatever else it may be in its present form, it is
at least a growth from previous forms and a development of them,
else it is a new creation. It is moreover a growth which has been
animated by forces resident within it and inherent in its very
nature. From time to time it may gain new forces through the
operation of old ones upon their environment, but always the
primary, elemental force abides and replenishes itself by what it
feeds upon. Sometimes it happens that two separate processes
come into contact for the first time and profoundly affect one
another. Here, for instance, is a plant which has borne nothing but
yellow flowers, as its ancestors have borne them for countless
generations. On the other side of the valley is another with an
ancestral inheritance of blue flowers. One day a chance current of
wind carries pollen from one to the other. From this union, all
other conditions being favorable, may spring up a third plant which
bears flowers of a color scheme different from that of either of its
parents.
Cross pollination is not a miracle of botany alone. It can take place
- indeed, is extremely likely to take place - in all fields of the mind
where ideas bud and burgeon. The Middle Ages, in which Gothic
architecture and Operative Masonry grew up side by side, saw the
common man, after long, bleak centuries of despair, everywhere
standing erect and peering upward through the gloom in search of
light. Everywhere minds were thirsty for illumination. They
eagerly drank from every stream of culture which trickled down to
them out of the past. Men turned instinctively to the promises of
religion and because religion fed this craving of their souls, they
lavished upon their temples the utmost they could conceive of
beauty and of grandeur. Gothic architecture was a splendid
expression of that emotion; one more splendid the world has rarely
known.
How useless it is to label that triumphant art as a new creation,
formed in the brain of a single man or in the collective intelligence
of a particular society! It was nothing of the sort. In response to
creative impulse, peoples began to build, starting with what they
already knew and incessantly trying to find further enlightenment
by means of experiments. They were frequently unsuccessful, but
often they were rewarded beyond their fondest dreams. In England,
in France, in Germany, in Lombardy, in Spain, builders were at
work, and on a thousand winds of thought the pollen of ideas was
carried from one to another. Armies carried it, missionaries carried
it, the Crusaders carried it, traveling artisans carried it, merchants,
mendicants, minstrels, pilgrims, sailors, noble lords and ladies,
journeying for business or pleasure, all bore it with them.
But it was not alone in architecture or in formal religion that cross
pollination took place. The stirrings of medieval unrest took many
forms. The world for so long had been drenched in blood and
deafened by the clangor of war, so long had been conscripted by
tyrannical force and marshaled into footsore armies, that it
experienced insatiable longings for, peace and the pursuits of
peace. For some the halls of monastery or convent offered asylum;
others sought a measure of liberty and security within the stout
walls of free cities or within the enfolding arms of strong secular
brotherhoods. What happened earlier in the waning civilization of
Rome and what, to a certain extent, is happening in the twentieth
century, was taking place all over Europe at that time. Those who
could flocked to the towns, and those who lived in the towns began
uniting themselves into societies of various kinds. Skilled
workmen banded themselves together into guilds, gaining
emancipation from serfdom as time went on. Out of this grew craft
industries. But industries cannot thrive without marketing and the
exchange of commodities, so a new system of merchandising
began to develop. The merchants formed themselves into guilds,
organized fairs and perfected means of transportation, so that
surplus commodities of one town or country might be taken to
another for barter or sale.
The Crusades reopened to Europe commerce with the East.
Returning warriors brought rich and soft fabrics, objects of art and
luxury. The poor Knights of the Temple, whose original function
was to protect travelers to the Holy Land, became common carriers
of treasure; they waxed so wealthy that they drew upon themselves
the covetous eyes of lords temporal and spiritual and ultimately
paid at the stake or on the rack for their presumptuous prosperity.
The feudal system, under which each baron had been a petty king
in his own right, holding over his vassals the high justice, the
middle and the low, and rendering to his king indifferent and
grudging service, had begun to break down under the pressure of a
new spirit of nationalism. The first glimmer of dawn for the
common man had begun to steal over the horizon.
The common man early realized, however, that for everything he
would get he must fight. As an individual he could no more hope
successfully to compete with the social forces arrayed against him
than he could hope, naked and armed with a club, to compete
successfully on the field of battle with a warrior encased in linked
mail and bearing battle-axe, shield and spear. But if he could not
wage successful struggle in open warfare, he could associate
himself with his fellows and in economic strife hope to prosper
through organized weight of numbers. Every guild, whether of
merchants or of laborers, was consciously or unconsciously a
weapon with which that kind of contest could be undertaken.
The guild itself was no more a new creation than Gothic
architecture was; it was simply a new phase of an old process. It,
like that art, simply began to build upon foundations that were
already laid, starting with familiar forms and always experimenting
with new ones. It was inevitable, of course, that societies of men
engaged in the various branches of technical construction should
tend to identify themselves with the buildings they helped to erect.
Here again cross pollination was to take place, until in time it was
practically impossible to differentiate between the worker and his
work. To erect Gothic temples it was essential to employ men
particularly skilled in certain mechanical tasks; in time these men
were compelled to depend upon the building of temples for
employment. As the art of temple-building waxed, their prosperity
waxed with it; as that art waned, their art waned with it.
Of all these architectural guilds, those of the stone masons were
most important. Theirs was an industry which tended to become
highly specialized. In their own eyes this invested them with
peculiar dignity. They were aristocrats of the building trades. Their
organization was precious to them. They cherished its traditions,
preserved its operative secrets, maintained its discipline and
decorum. They watched with anxious eyes the progress of their
novices and apprentices and jealously guarded the approaches to
mastership. Most important of all, they preserved a warm faith in
the antiquity of their institution, which set it apart from all other
societies of the kind even if only half what they believed about it
was true.
Were they mistaken in that belief? It is possible to say that in a
very true sense they were not. If their society was really a product
of evolution, they could not have been altogether mistaken. Their
guild had its ancestors, must have had them, although it is not
feasible, out of the multitude of possible progenitors, to say of this
or that one that it was sire or grandfather. Of all the groups
immediately preceding the medieval emergence of the masonic
guilds, however, there is none for which this honor has been more
persistently and plausibly urged than f or that curious Lombard
band known as the Comacine Masters. Further discussion of that
claim must be reserved f or another chapter.
CHAPTER VIII
THE COMACINE MASTERS
by H.L. HAYWOOD
THE theory that the Comacine Masters of Lombardy
constituted the Freemasonry of their day has been popular
because it appears to explain so many things that want
explaining. If true, it would supply a bridge between
Operative Masonry of the Middle Ages and the Roman
collegia; would throw light upon the ancient belief of
Craftsmen that the institution entered Europe from Palestine
by way of Greece; would provide an ancestral society
analogous in many ways to the modern Fraternity, and
explain that curious blend of metaphysical lore and
architectural practice which in some mysterious way has
come from the past into the present system of ritual and
symbols. It would be invaluable also in establishing Masonic
continuity, since it proclaims the existence, in the midst of
the confusion of the dark centuries, of an asylum in which an
esoteric and philosophical cult was able to maintain itself as
a thing apart, securely and serenely pursuing an
uninterrupted intellectual course and preserving a stream of
culture which otherwise must have been diverted into a
thousand channels.
Small wonder that this hypothesis has been urged so
passionately by certain Masonic writers! Yet, however
fascinating and useful a theory may be, it must be judged
before the bar of history solely on the basis of truth. This one
is still on trial; as yet, notwithstanding that it has received the
benefit of every reasonable doubt and the support of
persuasive argument, the case for it has by no means been
proved. On the contrary, dispassionate examination
discloses serious weaknesses in it - so serious, indeed, that
evidence as yet undiscovered must be presented before it
can be accepted as something of more substance than mere
speculation. To borrow Dr. Newton's phrase, the utmost that
can now be said for it is that the associations of the
Comacine Masters were prophecies of Freemasonry,
although Dr. Newton accepted them as having a more
definite connection with the institution, making that belief an
important part of his argument in The Builders.
These Comacine Masters were united into a guild, or
perhaps several guilds, of stone masons dwelling in the
Lombard State of Northern Italy. The Lombards, or
Longobardi, when Roman writers first made their
acquaintance, were a Germanic race dwelling in the lower
basin of the Elbe. Etymologically their name is taken to
mean Long-beards, and it is commonly supposed they were
so designated by the people of Italy because the men wore
long and heavy beards. One of their own legends, however,
gave another explanation. This was that they got the name
from the god, Wotan, because of an artifice practiced upon
him when women of the tribe passed themselves off as men
by draping their long hair across their faces in imitation of
manly beards.
Before the end of the fifth century they had migrated
southward into what is now Lower Austria. The emperor
Justinian invited them into Noricum and Pannonia to assist
him in his wars with other barbarous peoples. They appear
to have kept their part of the bargain in several important
battles, but when occasion served they were not disinclined
to make terms with the foes of the Byzantine empire. They
engaged in a protracted struggle with the Gepidae, another
Teutonic race, and in a final battle their king, Alboin, crushed
the Gepidae, slew their king, Cunimund, caused a chalice to
be fashioned out of his skull and compelled the slain
monarch's daughter, Rosamund, to drink the conqueror's
health from that gruesome cup. He then forced Rosamund to
become his wife, but this amiable damsel is said to have
obtained full revenge by bringing about the assassination of
Alboin some years later.
Uniting his own followers with the surviving Gepidae, Alboin
in 568 swept down through the mountain passes upon the
Italian plain at the head of the Adriatic. Northern Italy was
then in a condition of political chaos. Once before it had
been overrun by Goths, but the Gothic tribes had become
depleted by wars and famines. These made what resistance
they could, but the newcomers were not to be denied. To
hold the lands they won, the Longobardi adopted a system
which was destined to exert profound influence upon the
later history of Italy. They established, or occupied when
they could find them already established, fortified cities at all
important strategic points. Each became the seat of a local
chieftain or duke, of whom there were about thirty-five. The
capital was at Pavia, although for a long period it was capital
in name only, since each truculent duke was a law to
himself, yielding but a show of fealty to his overlord. In this
manner the invaders settled down into the region about Lake
Como and Lake Maggiori, occupied the fertile upland valleys
and seized some of the choicest lands of Northern Italy.
Surrounded by hostile forces and controlling a subject
population which despised them for their barbaric rudeness,
the Longobardi soon found their ducal system unwieldy.
Accordingly in 584 they chose Authari, grandson of Alboin,
as king. The monarchy thus established lasted almost two
hundred years, or until King Desiderius in 774 was
overthrown by the iron hand of Charlemagne.
As was characteristic of Germanic invaders, the Longobardi
rapidly absorbed the culture of those they had conquered.
They adopted the Latin tongue, embraced the Roman
Catholic religion, took Latin names, imitated Roman and
Greek fashions in dress, amusements and architecture.
They maintained desultory intercourse with Byzantium,
although the Byzantines appear to have had no more
affection for the Longobardi than did their other neighbors.
By the time of King Rothari, who died in 652, the Longobardi
- or Lombards as they may henceforth be called - had made
remarkable progress in the arts of peace. But they were in
constant danger from Frankish tribes to the west of them and
from Slavs and Huns to the east. Although King Liutprand,
who died in 744, promoted many works of piety, including
the erection of a church at Pavia, the Popes were always
hostile to the invaders and continually sought means of
dislodging them, or at least of reducing their power. Finally
Pope Adrian I invited the Frankish monarch, Charlemagne,
to enter Lombardy and possess it. This request
Charlemagne was not unwilling to accept. He smashed the
Lombard power, took King Desiderius prisoner and received
the crown of Lombardy at the hands of Adrian. Thus ended
Lombard reign over Northern Italy, which had endured for
two and a third centuries.
If Lombard political supremacy was speedily swallowed up
by the Carolingian empire, however, Lombard social
influence was destined to survive for many another day. The
city system continued, because the cities themselves
remained. Under the new regime they soon passed into the
control of bishops, but they never found the episcopal yoke
agreeable and always struggled more or less actively for
independence. In due course they actually became free,
self-governing entities, fostering the arts and commerce.
"Islands in a sea of turbulence," Dean R. W. Church has
described them. Later they were to send out missionaries to
bear their own culture over Europe. To quote again from
Dean Church:
"In England, at least, the enterprising traders and bankers
who found their way to the West, from the 13th to the 16th
centuries, though they did not all come from Lombardy, bore
the name of Lombards. In the next place, the Lombards or
the Italian builders whom they employed or followed, the
'Masters of Como,' of whom so much is said in the early
Lombard laws, introduced a manner of building, stately,
solemn and elastic, to which their name has been attached,
and which gave a character of its own to some of the most
interesting churches of Italy."
The earliest of those "early Lombard laws" to which the
Dean refers, and of which there is now record, appeared in
the reign of King Rothari. They are of such Masonic
importance as to deserve repetition, the translation herewith
given being that of Ossian Lang, Grand Historian, in a report
contained in the Proceedings of the Grand Lodge of New
York in 1925:
Section 144. Of the Comacine Master - If a Comacine
Master with his associates (colligantes) shall undertake to
restore or build the house of any person whatsoever, after
an agreement shall have been closed as to payment, and it
chances that someone should be killed, by reason of the
house, through the falling of either material or stone, no
claim shall be lodged against the owner of the house, in
case the Comacine Master or those working with him
(consortibus) shall fall to settle for the death or the damage
done; because who after having contracted to do work f or
his own advantage, must assume, not undeservedly, the
damage done.
Section 145. Of masters called or brought in. - If any person
shall call or bring in Comacine Masters one or several - to
design a work or to daily assist his retainers (servi) at the
building of his house (domun aut casa), and it should
happen that, by reason of this house (casa), one of the
Comacines is killed, the owner of the house (casa) shall not
be held responsible. On the other hand, if falling timber or
stone should kill an outsider or cause injury to anyone, the
fault shall not be imputed to the Masters, but to him who
called them in, and he shall be responsible for the damage.
Later, under King Liutprand, additional legislation confirmed
to the Comacine Masters the privileges of freemen in the
Lombard State, and fixed the prices they were to charge for
various kinds of construction. Manifestly these regulations
concerned a group of persons who designed, built and
repaired buildings, the major part of their work being the
erection of the domun or dwelling house, and the casa or
cabin. Unlike many other workers, they were freemen and
not slaves; they could go about over the country; they could
enter into contracts within certain prescribed limits as to
fees; they could sue and be sued for civil damages rising
from the nature of their work. That they were one
corporation, or society, or fraternity, is not conclusively
shown by these early records. By analogy, however, it is
possible to infer that they probably formed themselves into a
guild, or guilds, as other groups of special workers did in
other cities. Certainly there can be no ground for doubting
they had much to do with the development of what is known
as the Lombard style of architecture as practiced in Italy,
parts of Germany and parts of France.
Their name itself indicates that they were identified either
with the ancient city of Como or Comum, or with Lake Como,
in Italy some thirty odd miles north of Milan. It has been
suggested that they got the name from an island in Lake
Como, a theory to be examined hereafter. The many fine
quarries in that region afforded sufficient reason for the
development there of groups of artisans especially
concerned with stone work. Ricci in his History of Italian
Architecture observes that - their guilds were made free of all
feudal restraints and the members were suffered to go about
at will, but no records substantiating that statement have as
yet been found in papal bulls or in the Carolingian laws,
although search for them has been thoroughly prosecuted.
Gregory II gave to Boniface permission to take with him to
Germany a following of monks skilled in the arts of building,
and lay brethren who were also architects. Italian chroniclers
have been quoted as saying that similar permission was
accorded by Gregory I to Augustine when in 597-8 he went
as a missionary to Britain. If anything is to be inferred from
these facts, it is that workmen were not free to travel at will
outside their own countries, or, at least, that Catholic
missionaries were not at liberty to take them without papal
authorization.
Whatever may have been the nature of their constitution, the
societies of Comacine Masters were lost sight of for many
centuries, although modern historians have glanced at them
with more than passing interest. To Giuseppe Merzario, an
Italian, must go the principal credit for the prominent place
they have come to occupy at the present time, although
Muratori, the Italian historian, called attention to the
important part they played in the development of the
architectural societies, which came to be known by the
generic name of Magistri Comacini, or Comacine Masters.
Merzario pursued the subject through all the manuscripts he
could find, and although he made more of it than his
predecessor had done, he still agreed with Muratori that the
name was a generic one for builders in a large part of
Northern Italy, and quotes with approval an older authority
which held that the name was derived from the bishopric of
Como.
In the early 1890's, however, the Masonic world Was excited
by a book which had recently appeared from the hand of
Mrs. Lucy Baxter, who wrote under the pen name of Leader
Scott. It was entitled The Cathedral Builders: The Story of a
Great Masonic Guild. This astonishing work, as appears
from internal evidence, was based largely on Merzario's
studies of the Comacine Masters and, indeed, first made that
work generally known to the English-speaking public. As it
has since been the principal basis for the Comacine theory
of Freemasonry, the major conclusions of Mrs. Baxter's book
may be summarized as follows:
That after Italy was overrun by barbarians, Roman collegia
were suppressed, but the college of architects at Rome
escaped the general doom and removed to the republic of
Comum;
That this college survived in a medieval Masonic guild
known as the Society of Comacine Masters, educating
young men in the arts and sciences and sending them out to
all parts of the world as missionaries of culture;
That many monks were Masons affiliated with this Society,
thereby qualifying themselves for architectural pursuits;
That Italian chroniclists testify architects and masons
accompanied Augustine to England, and from the Venerable
Bede's account of the settlement of Augustine's mission in
England it seems evident that he took Masonic architects to
that country with him;
That Gregory probably chose these from the Comacine
Order, as likelier to hold fast to the old Roman traditions of
building than would be the case with a Byzantine guild, and
that the works they did in Britain proved he was right in this
surmise;
That early Saxon carvings represented fabulous monsters
an d symbolical creatures which evidently were of Latin
origin;
That words and phrases in the edicts of Rothari and
Liutprand are to be met in the writings of Bede and Richard,
Prior of Hagustald, indicating that these writers were familiar
with terms of art used by the Comacine Masters.
The argument upon which these conclusions is based long
and interesting, recapitulating many of Merzario's theories
besides containing much new material resulting from Leader
Scott's own investigations and those of her brother, the Rev.
W. Miles Barnes, who contributed to The Cathedral Builders
a chapter on "The Origin of Saxon Architecture." But the
author goes further than Merzario did in many respects. For
instance, Merzario thinks their name a generic one, applied
to builders in many parts of Northern Italy, whereas Leader
Scott restricts them within the narrow bonds of a single
esoteric society. She supposes also that when the Roman
college of architects fled to the region of Lake Como they
found refuge on a small but strongly fortified islet known as
Comacina. There, safely locked within stout walls, she
believes they kept alive for centuries the traditions of classic
art, and developed various styles of Italian architecture
which subsequently they scattered through France, Spain,
Germany and England.
The effect of The Cathedral Builders upon Masonic thought
for the next quarter of a century was prodigious. Already
earlier writers had suspected that Freemasonry must look to
the Lombard guilds for its origin, and Leader Scott's work
gave strong confirmation to the notion; confirmation that was
the stronger because Mrs. Baxter was not herself friendly to
modern Freemasonry. Her own conclusions she summed up
in the sentence: "Though there is no certain proof that the
Comacines were the veritable stock from which the
pseudo-Freemasonry of the present day sprang, we may at
least admit that they were a link between the classic collegia
and all other art and trade guilds of the Middle Ages."
Adopting this conclusion in its general form, W. Ravenscroft
went to Italy in 1906 and spent many years investigating and
confirming as best he could its major implications.
Subsequently Dr. Newton took it up and, made much of it in
The Builders. In fact, Ravenscroft's The Comacines and
Newton's Builders remain today among the most widely read
of Masonic books, and justly so, for their almost religious
loyalty to Freemasonry and the excellence of their literary
construction.
Within the last decade or so, however, the Comacine theory
has been seriously attacked until now it is very much on the
defensive. Gould in his Concise History was among the first
to point out that even if the existence of the Comacine guild,
with all that is claimed for it, could be established, there
would still be the necessity of clearing up the mystery
involved in innumerable variations in the different schools of
medieval architecture - variations which could not have been
so extensive if one society had controlled the whole. A.L.
Frothingham, in the Dictionary of Architecture and Building,
went so far as to deny that a Comacine fraternity ever
existed. In justice to Leader Scott it should be noted that she
did not claim for the Comacines that they founded Gothic
architecture, or that all medieval architectural styles could be
traced to them. Conclusions to that extent are to be
attributed in the main to those who have accepted her
doctrines and enlarged upon them.
In a report on the matter to the Grand Lodge of New York,
Ossian Lang made a frontal assault upon he entire position
taken by Mrs. Baxter, Ravenscroft and Dr. Newton. He
attacked it at its weakest point - the alleged connection
between the Comacines and the builders' guilds of England.
Nothing can be clearer than that Speculative Masonry is an
offshoot of English Operative Masonry; hence if the
Comacines cannot be connected with Operative Masonry,
they cannot be connected with Speculative Masonry, and the
whole theory fails of historic dependability.
From the writings of the Venerable Bede the author of
Cathedra Builders and her collaborator endeavored to show
that several early British churches were built of stone and
that, on this account, it was necessary to import masons
skilled in the use of that material. The theory is that the
masons thus imported were partisans of the Comacine cult,
which they carried with them and introduced into England.
But Bede - historian of the English churches of the early
eighth century - expressly states that one of these buildings,
at Lindisfarne, was built of hewn oak and covered with reeds
"after the manner of the Scots."
Nor does Bede substantiate further statements that British
ecclesiastical authorities made frequent demands upon
Rome for skillful workmen. He does speak of passings back
and forth between Britain and Gaul, but the Gaul of that day
was more Frankish than Roman. He reports that Benedict
Biscop, founder of the monasteries at Wearmouth and
Jarrow, crossed into Gaul in 675 and engaged masons to
build for him a church in the Roman style, but to infer that
these masons were Comacines, or even Italians, is pure
guesswork. They may or may not have been, but this thread
is far to slender to support the heavy weight imposed upon it
by the Comacine theory. The next reliable record of
importations of foreign builders into England comes down
into the Norman period, when Gothic architecture was
beginning to take form. Thus it will be seen that so far as
authentic written evidence of connection between the
Comacines and the early English builders is concerned,
there is none.
Ravenscroft has made an earnest effort to supply the
connection through details of sculpture and ornamentation.
He quotes W.S. Calverley as suggesting that scrolls and
interlacings on early scriptured crosses in Carlisle are
decorated with patterns then in vogue in Lombardy. He
remarks that the plan of Canterbury cathedral, as it existed
before 1076, "carried out the Comacine idea, even to the two
apses, one at each end and the campanili flanking the aisles
north and south." There is more of similar purport in his
argument, but what he suggests in regard to the Comacine
theory might be suggested with equal force in support of a
contrary theory - that the peculiarities noticed are only those
which belonged to the general Christian culture of the times,
as based upon and adapted from the general Roman culture
of preceding times. Latin bishops in the West continued for a
long period to prefer churches built in cruciform varieties of
the basilica; it is natural to suppose also that they favored
methods of ornamentation with which they were familiar. It
is, of course, possible that Ravenscroft is right in his
conclusions, although secular historians of architecture
apparently fail to agree with them; but so long as it is also
possible he may be mistaken, the historian can accept them
only as opinions and not as proofs.
At the other end of the chain, connection between the
Comacines and the Roman collegia is likewise weak. The
statement that a Roman college of architects found asylum
on the islet of Comacina appears to be without
corroboration. That it could have maintained itself there is a
romantic guess contrary to what is known about the
Longobardi. Those warlike invaders thoroughly and
mercilessly subdued the part of Northern Italy they made
their own. Lenient to conquered peoples who made full
submission, they crushed resistance and punished it with the
utmost ferocity. It is unlikely that the savage Alboin, who
made a king's daughter drink to him from her father's skull,
would have tolerated at the heart of his realm a stronghold of
local reaction and rebellion from which nothing could
conceivably radiate save hostility to Longobardi rule,
contempt for Longobardi knowledge and conspiracy against
Longobardi security. Elsewhere throughout Italy and Gaul
Germanic conquerors ruthlessly exterminated Roman
collegia, fearing them as seminaries of free Roman thought.
There is nothing to indicate the Longobardi did otherwise.
In such early records of individual Comacine Masters as
have come down, names are not preponderantly Roman but
are Teutonic. If the Masters were a Roman college, that
circumstance would be most strange. Where the conquerors
were so eager to Romanize their names it is scarcely to be
supposed that private citizens with honest titles to. Latin
patronymics would exchange them for new ones which to
Latin ears must have seemed harsh and barbaric.
A preponderance of evidence is to the effect that the
Lombard builders were much more strongly influenced by
Byzantine than by Latin culture. Even in the most important
of their churches, at Milan and Pavia, it is apparent they
were wrestling with the old Byzantine problem of adapting a
basilican groundwork. to the support of spacious vaultings,
and there is marked progress, in a Byzantine way, in the
architectural skill shown in the construction at Pavia over
that shown in the erection of its most recent predecessor at
Milan. Their later schools, both in Lombardy and on the
Rhine, as recently as the beginning of the eleventh century,
were still engaged, as a writer in the Encyclopedia Britannica
puts it, "in the task of covering with vaults large churches of
Basilican plan - the typical problem of the period."
It is not essential to an understanding of the rise of the
Lombard guilds to depend upon a romantic story such as
that of Roman architects marooned on an island in Lake
Como. The explanation is far simpler than that. What
happened in Lombardy in the seventh, eighth and ninth
centuries was precisely what has happened in the
development of all other urban civilizations of the Middle
Ages. The Germanic invaders came upon an old and
decadent civilization which moreover stood at the crossroads
between East and West, North and South. Here they
entrenched their power in strongly fortified cities. The chief
economic asset of their new domain was an abundance of
building stone of all kinds. It was characteristic of their
genius that they should make the best use of what they
found. They had a passion for the culture of all peoples
whose social and ethical advancement they regarded as
better than their own. They welcomed every missionary of
beauty, no matter whence he came.
Into these cities flocked artisans, architects, builders,
sculptors, carvers in wood, workers in gold and silver, dyers
and weavers. They came for the simple and obvious reason
that there was employment for them. The Longobardi were
the newly rich of the hour, hot upon expending the profits of
war and conquest for things of comfort and luxury. When
they became converted to Catholicism they displayed the
usual zeal of the proselyte and sought to express their piety
in the building of handsome churches. A subject population
which in its heart despised them was not disinclined to profit
by opportunities, then so abundant, of catering to whims, for
the gratification of which the barbarians were willing to pay
and to pay well. It should be remembered that the Lombard
State existed in a condition of relative strength and security
for almost a hundred years longer than the United States of
America have existed as a separate political entity, and that,
like Americans of the present times, the Lombards were
virile, energetic, progressive, ambitious and covetous of
spiritual as well as of material gain. Like modern Americans,
also, they did not hesitate to borrow useful ideas wherever
they might find them and, turning them into the hopper of
their own peculiar genius, to grind out of the mixture a
culture which was distinctively their own.
It was inevitable that workers at various trades should
sooner or later form themselves into guilds. It was equally
inevitable, since the quarries about Lake Como gave to that
region its richest material assets, that the mason guilds there
should attain to considerable importance. That these
societies were colored by the culture of their times goes
without saying. It is by no means impossible that when the
Lombards arrived they found vestiges of Roman collegia; it
is even credible that they absorbed these collegia into their
own system just as they absorbed many other things
Roman. It may be considered likely that, along with other
accretions from Byzantine sources, they incorporated
Eastern cult practices into their local societies. But
regardless of whether all or any of these surmises are
correct, the fact is that no positive affirmative evidence
showing them to be correct has as yet been discovered.
As to the exact organization of the Lombard guilds, little is
really known. From the edicts of Rothari and Liutprand,
Ravenscroft, following the ideas of Leader Scott, argues that
the Comacine Masters were at that time a "compact and
powerful guild, capable of asserting their rights, and that the
guild was properly organized, having degrees of different
ranks and Magistri" at their head. That interpretation reads
more into the edicts, however, than dispassionate criticism
can accept. In the first place, the statute of Rothari does not
speak of a guild but of certain Masters, with associates
(colligantes) and co-workers (consortes). That those Masters
belonged to a guild is to be inferred rather from the usual
customs of those days than from the wording of the edict.
Furthermore it is clear that the decree was intended to fix the
responsibilities not of a guild but of individual contractors and
of their employers. The regulation of fees by Liutprand would
seem to indicate that their capability of "asserting their
rights" was in fact sharply limited. Whether the words
magistri, colligantes and consortes refer to successive
grades or degrees comparable to those of a Masonic lodge
is pure speculation. They may mean that or they may mean
only that master workmen, authorized to make contracts for
building and repairing houses, took along their own
employees and assistants; it is clear from Section 145 of
Rothari's edict that the Masters did not refuse to do work
alongside the bondsmen of their employers.
Much has been made of the fact that the Comacines met in
a place which they called a loggia, and that they called their
chiefs magistri or masters. The evidential value of this as
tending to show Masonic connections is inconsiderable. The
word loggia is a derivative from the same Latin word from
which the English word lodge is derived, but a loggia was
simply a covered gallery where workmen placed their
benches, or whatever else they used, so they could be
sheltered from sun and rain. Blacksmiths, carpenters,
shoemakers and men of other crafts also worked in a loggia.
The title magister was a common one, used f or master
musicians, master painters, master professionals of all kinds.
To say that because a Comacine contractor was called
Master he must have been master of a Masonic lodge would
be as sensible as to say that because a man is nowadays
addressed by the title of Doctor he must be a practitioner of
medicine.
Undoubtedly the Comacine builders attained such
proficiency that their services were in demand outside their
own country as well as within it. They were more than
builders, for they were skilled in wood carving, painting,
sculpture and mosaic work. It is not improbable they
cherished literature and music. Rivoira in Lombardic
Architecture asserts that after the fall of the Lombardic
kingdom they re-formed themselves, as did other artisan
guilds, in the days of the free Italian cities. Merzario believes
they maintained their separate identity and were responsible
for the greater part of all works of art between the years 800
and 1000. Agostino Segredio is convinced they were a guild
of Freemasons, the theory held by Mrs. Baxter and
subsequent writers of that school.
Were they indeed Freemasons? In spite of the fact that
connections at both ends are broken, can the Comacine
Masters be regarded as a bridge between Operative
Masonry and some Roman college of artificers binding them
into one continuous society? The answer must depend
largely upon individual predilection. The theory is attractive
to those who desire simplicity and continuity, for it tends to
establish what many would like to believe. But the writers of
the present work have been forced to the reluctant
conclusion that evidence supporting it is fatally defective in
several important particulars. Perhaps the wisdom of future
ages may supply the deficiencies; perhaps in the stone of
some forgotten work the necessary confirmation may yet be
found. Meanwhile the Comacine Masters may safely be
regarded as an important part of the general cult system of
the Dark Ages, a system which had developed from earlier
forms and which in turn gave way to the later development
through which modern Freemasonry came into being.
CHAPTER IX
THE OLD CHARGES (1/2)
by H.L. HAYWOOD
SCIENTIFIC approach to what may be described as the
authentic historical period of Freemasonry must be made by
way of the curious documents which are known variously as
the Old Charges, the Ancient Constitutions, the Ancient
Manuscripts, the Gothic Manuscripts and the Legend of the
Craft. This does not mean that these venerable scriptures,
abounding in quaint conceits and naive legends, are to be
accepted as giving correct and dependable accounts of the
origins of the institution. To assume they did so would be as
absurd as to suppose that the Iliad of Homer gives a reliable
historical narrative of the siege of Troy. But if the modern
reader knew nothing of the ancient Greeks save what that
immortal poem tells of them, he would still have an excellent
idea of their racial characteristics and ideals. In like manner
the Old Charges illuminate the state of the Masonic Craft as
it was in the operative days, revealing what the ancient
brethren believed about their Fraternity, illustrating their
customs and practices and showing forth something of the
purposes which animated them.
To the historian they are of the utmost importance. The
critic's microscope finds in them innumerable hidden
implications. The turn of a phrase or the peculiar use of a
word may prove far more important for fixing a date than
anything related in a manuscript itself. Indeed, there are few
branches of knowledge more interesting than that which
bears upon the use of words. It is almost as difficult for a
man to forge another's finger prints as for an author to
conceal the era in which he writes. Even when he attempts
with the greatest skill and patience to imitate the literary style
of a previous age, he will be certain to make some error that
will betray the deception.
Living languages are forever changing. The same word may
mean one thing in one century and something entirely
different in a later century. The English of the original King
James version of the Holy Bible has undergone so many
alterations that a large part of it would be confusing, if not
actually unintelligible, if presented to an unschooled reader
of the twentieth century. The word conversation, for
instance, was formerly employed to denote conduct or
deportment, whereas it now has a different meaning. If a
modern were attempting to pass his own compositions off as
of the time of James and if he used such words as mob,
dynamite, lynching, self-conscious, egoism and thousands of
others, it would be proof positive, to the critic of discernment,
that the pretension of antiquity was wholly fraudulent. The
Ephraimites, who could not correctly pronounce the word
shibboleth, labored under no greater disadvantage than
does the author of one age who seeks to employ the
phraseology of an antecedent one. Every science, art, trade
and profession contributes to the whole language a jargon of
its own; in time many cant words acquire popular
acceptance and become imbedded in literature as well as in
the vernacular. What fossil remains are to one branch of
science, word forms are to another; they enable the
interpreter to fix with reasonable certainty the approximate
time in which they were commonly employed.
For this reason the ancient Masonic manuscripts have come
to a new importance in recent years. They have been
studied more diligently than ever before; constant search for
additional information has brought to light many that had
been forgotten. It is interesting to observe that, after
exhaustive search, William James Hughan in 1872 was able
to catalogue only thirty-two of them. Seventeen years later,
Gould listed sixty-two and by 1895 Hughan succeeded in
stretching his original list to sixty-six. In 1918 R.H. Baxter
had increased the number to ninety-eight. One of the most
important of all, the Regius poem, as the reader has already
noticed, was discovered in the late 1830's by a non-Masonic
investigator.
These ancient writings supply the basis for what
Freemasons ordinarily term the Landmarks of the Fraternity.
Few words are more often used and less commonly
understood than is this word Landmarks. It greets the
Freemason at every turn. Very early in hi Masonic career he
hears of the Landmarks as something too sacred and
inviolate ever to be subject to modification or change. They
are at the foundation of Masonic jurisprudence, as
unalterable as the laws of the Medes and Persians. Very few
active Masons have more than a vague general notion of
what they are, yet they affect every Mason in his
relationships with the Craft as a whole. Learned writers have
attempted at one time or other to reduce them to some
definite code of rules and practices, but most of the learned
writers do not agree with one another. Various lists give
enumerations of Landmarks running all the way up from
three to fifty.
The truth is that the Landmarks partake somewhat of the
principle of English common law and somewhat of that of the
unwritten British Constitution. They are like the common law
in that they relate to customs used by the Craft at a time to
which the memory of man runneth not to the contrary. They
are like the British Constitution in that although they are the
fundamental law of the Craft they do not constitute a definite
set of formularies which can be divided off into articles,
sections and clauses. It will perhaps serve the present
purpose to describe the Landmarks as a body of Masonic
precedents derived from immemorial usage. To ascertain
whether a given doctrine is a Landmark it is therefore
necessary to ascertain whether it was in accordance with
Masonic practice at the earliest time of which there is record.
The several lists enumerate those customs which the
compilers consider important. It is clear that any article in
any list is invalid if it can be shown to be contrary to
immemorial usage; conversely there is a measure of validity
for every article in every list which cannot be shown to be
contrary to immemorial usage.
By this test, if it can be shown that the ancient brethren
insisted upon belief in a Supreme Being and the immortality
of the soul, then that doctrine must be accepted as a
Landmark; by the same token, if our ancient brethren
refused membership to all who were not freeborn men of
lawful age, hale in body and mind, that also may be
accepted as a Landmark. This background of basic law is
therefore the constitution of the Fraternity, which no Masonic
legislative power can amend or repeal. Provided it does not
infringe upon the provisions of that constitution, a Masonic
legislature - a Grand Lodge, for instance, - can make
whatever laws, rules and edicts may be advisable for the
government of the Craft.
In actual practice, every Grand Lodge does that very thing
and so, to a lesser degree, does every constituent Lodge.
But whenever complaint is raised that legislation has violated
the Landmarks, it becomes a subject or prompt judicial
determination when, if violation can be demonstrated, it
becomes null and void; no regular Mason is bound longer to
observe it, but every regular Mason may be bound to cease
Masonic intercourse with all who continue to observe it. It
may happen, of course, that the courts of different sovereign
Grand Jurisdictions will disagree as to whether there has
been violation; in that case, the individual Mason is obligated
to follow the interpretation of his own governing body. If it
breaks off Masonic intercourse with another Grand
jurisdiction, he is required, under pain of incurring that most
disagreeable of Masonic penalties, the stigma of
clandestinism, to break off Masonic intercourse with the
members yielding allegiance to that Grand jurisdiction.
It should be obvious that the term immemorial usage applies
in the main to usage which antedated the formation of the
first English Grand Lodge in 1717-1723. Few practices which
may have come into use since that time can be called
"immemorial," since they have been either ordered or
sanctioned by legislative or judicial authority, and of this
there is, or ought to be, authentic record. These new
customs therefore do not belong to the Landmarks, although
they may be wholly legal within themselves, since they have
been found to be not inconsistent with the Landmarks. Thus,
it will be readily apparent, that, since the Ancient
Manuscripts furnish almost the sole account of Masonic laws
and customs prior to the organization of the Grand Lodge,
these documents are of vital importance to Masonic
jurisprudence as well as to Masonic history.
It is with their historical import, however, that the present
work is chiefly concerned; although in the last analysis there
is probably no way to separate the purely historical from the
purely legal phase. In their language, in their legends, in
their doctrines and dogmas and above all in their customs,
these ancient records bear weighty attestation to the
medieval influences which held sway over the minds of
operative Craftsmen. Some of them are in the form of
manuscript rolls of parchment or paper, occasionally written
in the calligraphy of Gothic script. Others are written by hand
on sheets stitched together in book form; a few later ones
were printed in books from movable type. The oldest - the
Regius poem - is a copy dating from about the year 1390;
the most recent of them belong to the year 1725, or after the
creation of the first Grand Lodge.
The most striking thing about the older ones is the way in
which they differ from one another in their versions of the
Legend of the Craft. To historians of the lineal mind these
variations have caused no small amount of perplexity. They
indicate that there was not one basic tradition but that there
were several, and that these were in conflict in certain
important particulars. It would be difficult to understand how
this could be so if there had been one continuous, self-
conscious Fraternity, projected into the Middle Ages from the
remotest past. The difficulty disappears, however, when it is
noticed that all these versions can be related to a central
theme. They differ from one another precisely as certain folk
tales differ from one another; that is, they contain the germ
of a common idea which, in different countries, has sprouted
and grown in slightly different ways.
The Regius poem alone contains at least two, and perhaps
three, variations. The central narrative gives what has come
to be regarded as the general English version. But in one
place somebody has interpolated an allusion to the Four
Crowned Martyrs, which does not appear in any other
English version. Now the legend of the Four Crowned
Martyrs, although it is ignored in other English accounts,
played an important part in the lore of the German
Steinmetzen of the Middle Ages. Its appearance in an
English manuscript therefore becomes a theme for legitimate
curiosity.
According to this legend, four sculptors, Claudius, Castorius,
Semphorianus and Nicostratus, were employed among
others by the Roman Emperor Dioclein building a temple to
AEsculapius, god of health. They were devout Christians
and their constant prayers to the Saviour had brought them
remarkable skill at their work. An unskilled competitor,
Simplicius, upon learning the secret of their power,
embraced the Christian religion, whereupon he, too,
immediately became proficient. The fame of this conversion
reached the ears of the pagan authorities, who demanded
that the Christians abjure their faith. Although subjected to
barbarous scourgings, they refused to recant, and in
punishment were placed in leaden coffins which were thrown
into the Tiber. Later the bodies were recovered and placed
at rest in the catacombs.
Some months later four Christian soldiers, who were masons
by trade, were also tortured to death for refusing to do
homage to AEsculapius. All nine bodies ultimately came to
rest under a Christian basilica. The names of the soldiers
were unknown until the ninth century when it was said to
have been learned that they were Severus, Severianus,
Carpoferus and Victorianus. Meanwhile they had been
known as the Four Crowned Martyrs, they having received
the "crown" of martyrdom. There has been dispute whether
the distinction belonged to the soldiers or to the four original
sculptors, but, at any rate, all were regarded as distinguished
masons who had been immortalized by their fidelity. In time
the Four Crowned Ones became patron saints of German
Masons and probably of other medieval guilds.
The allusion to them in the Regius poem, in addition to the
fact that an early English church was dedicated to them, has
been urged as showing direct connection between the
mason guilds of England and Germany. It is rather a slender
circumstance upon which to place so much responsibility. A
more plausible supposition is that the legend had its origin in
the general. Catholic martyrology of the times; that the
compiler of the Regius narrative, coming across a German
legend, incorporated it into the body of his tale. Its non-
appearance in other English manuscripts may be taken as
an indication that their writers were not familiar with it. It was
rejected in the later mythology of the Craft, an almost certain
indication that it had come to be considered apocryphal.
It is not until the Regius poem passes from the realm of
legend and reaches that of practical affairs that it throws real
light upon the state of Masonry in the England of its day. It
contains a set of "articles" and one of "points," which are
of
interest not only as being the oldest extant code of Masonic
laws, but also as indicating the strictly utilitarian character of
teachings in the operative days. The following transcription
from the Regius verse is that of Silas H. Shepherd in The
Landmarks of Freemasonry:
1. The Master Mason must be steadfast, trusty and true and
render perfect justice to both his workmen and his employer.
2. The Master Mason shall be punctual in his attendance at
the general congregation or Assembly.
3. The Master must take no apprentice for less than seven
years.
4. The Master must take no apprentices who are bondsmen
but only such as are free and well born.
5. The Master shall not employ a thief or maimed man for an
apprentice but only those who are physically fit.
6. The Master must not take craftsmen's wages for
apprentices' labor.
7. The Master shall not employ a thief or immoral person.
8. The Master must maintain a standard of efficiency by not
permitting incompetent workmen to be employed.
9. The Master must not undertake to do work which he
cannot complete.
10. No Master shall supplant another in the work
undertaken.
11. The Master shall not require Masons to work at night
except in the pursuit of knowledge.
12. No Mason shall speak evil of his fellows' work.
13. The Master must instruct his apprentices in everything
they are capable of learning.
14. The Master shall take no apprentice for whom he has not
sufficient labor.
15. The Master is not to make false representations nor
compromise any sins of his fellows.
And the following are the "points":
1. Those who would be Masons and practice the Masonic art
are required to love God and his Holy Church, the Master for
whom they labor and their Masonic brethren, for this is the
true spirit of Masonry.
2. The Mason must work diligently in working hours that he
may lawfully refresh himself in the hours of rest.
3. The Mason must keep the secrets of his Master, his
brethren and the Lodge, faithfully.
4. No Mason shall be false to the Craft but maintain all its
rules and regulations.
5. The Mason shall not murmur at fair compensation.
6. The Mason shall not turn a working day into a holiday.
7. The Mason shall restrain his lust.
8. The Mason must be just and true to his brethren in every
way.
9. The Mason shall treat his brethren with equity and in the
spirit of brotherly love.
10. Contention and strife shall not exist among the brethren.
11. The Mason should caution his brother kindly about any
error into which he may be about to fall.
12. The Mason must maintain every ordinance of the
Assembly.
13. The Mason must not steal nor protect one who does.
14. The Mason must be true to the laws of Masonry and to
the laws of his country.
15. The Mason must submit to the lawful penalty for any
offense he may commit.
CHAPTER IX
THE OLD CHARGES (2/2)
by H.L. HAYWOOD
No exercise of the imagination is required to understand that
these "articles" and "points" refer to the everyday
management of the business of a society, the primary
function of which is the performance of work under contract
or for hire. Read in connection with the rest of the
manuscript, they disclose, however, that the author was
laboring under a sense of obligation which even today the
conscientious Masonic instructor must feel - the obligation of
relating the practical affairs of the moment to the legendary
history of an ethical cult. In addition to the legend and this
practical advice, .there is much moralizing upon the duties of
a man to God and the Church, with allusions to the seven
deadly sins, the Virgin Mary and to holy water. Whether at
that early day the operative guild was in the habit of
"accepting" non-working members is in much dispute. On
that point, Gould, in his Commentary on the Regius
Manuscript, says:
"These rules of decorum read very curiously in the present
age, but their inapplicability to the circumstances of the
working Masons of the fourteenth century will be at once
apparent. They were intended for the gentlemen of those
days, and the instruction for behaviour in the presence of a
Lord - at table and in the society of ladies - would have all
been equally out of place in a code of manners drawn up for
the use o a guild or craft of artisans."
A suggestion as ingenious as it is unsusceptible of proof.
Most Masonic scholars are agreed that this version of the
Old Charges was used strictly for the government of an
operative body.
Next to the Regius in point of antiquity is the Cooke
Manuscript, so-called because it was edited for publication in
1861 by Matthew Cooke. From internal evidence this
document, or a copy of it, was in the possession of George
Payne, when in 1720, as Grand Master, he compiled the
"General Regulations," which were later included in
Anderson's Constitutions. Its composition has been ascribed
to the middle of the fifteenth century, or some sixty years
later than that of the Regius. Its traditional account of
Freemasonry follows the usual narrative of a beginning
before the flood and a persistence through the time of
Solomon, with an introduction into England by way of France
in the time of Charles Martel. It is apparently a revision of
older documents, but its version of the Old Charges
mentions nine "articles" and nine "points."
Mackey's History of Freemasonry observes that the author of
the Cooke Manuscript was probably familiar with the Regius
poem but that he revised his details of the legendary
narrative in the light of John of Trevisals translation of
Ranulph Higdon's Universal History, which was published by
Caxton in 1482. It is clear, however, that he made a sort of
carry-all of his story, taking in a little of all the versions then
current in manuscript form. He was in turn followed by the
author of the Dowland Manuscript and he by the writer or
compiler of the still later one, which is commonly described
as York Roll No. 1. Since this last is of especial interest as
showing the development through which the Old Charges
had passed, it is perhaps worth somewhat extensive
attention.
At the time the first Grand Lodge was formed, there were
many old operative lodges in England. Of these one of the
oldest - if not the oldest in fact - was working at York. It will
be recalled that York was the scene of the famous legendary
assembly in King Athelstan's time at which, the old tradition
ran, the Fraternity was constituted under the leadership of
Prince Edwin. Some months after the Grand Lodge was
formed, the "time immemorial" Lodge at York proclaimed
itself the "Grand Lodge of All England." The story of that
venture belongs to another part of this narrative, but it is
sufficient to say that when an inventory of this body was
made in 1779 six copies of the Old Charges were listed. Of
these one, numbered No. 1, was a manuscript on parchment
in the form of a roll which was five inches wide and about
seven feet long. It became misplaced in some manner but
was discovered later at Freemason's Hall in London and
restored to the York brethren in 1877 by W. J. Hughan. It is
believed to have been written in about the year 1600.
The document begins with a few lines of doggerel the first
letters of which spell the word "Masonrie, and which are as
follows:
Much might be said of the o noble Artt
A Craft thats worth estieming in each part
Sundry Nations Noobles & their Kings also
Oh how they sought its worth to know
Nimrod & Solomon the wisest of all men
Reason saw to love this Science then
Ile say no moe lest by my shallow verses I
Endeavouring to praise should blemish Masonrie.
The manuscript proper begins with the pious invocation:
"The might of the Father of heaven with wisdom of the
blessed Son through the grace of God and goodness of the
Holy Ghost that be three persons in one godhead be with us
at our beginning and give us grace so to govern us here in
this life that we may come to His blessing that never shall
have ending." The purpose is declared to be that of telling
"good brethren and fellows" how Masonry was begun and
preserved and adds: "And also to them that be here we will
declare the charges that belong to every Free Mason to
keep the governor of the work, Master, during the time that
they work with him and other moe charges that is too long
here to tell, and to all these charges he made them to swear
a great Oath that men used in that time."
The narrative then proceeds to say that "that worthy Master
Euclid was the first that gave it the name of Geomatrie, the
which is now called Masonrie throughout all this nation."
Then ensues the now familiar story of its transmission, after
the building of Solomon)s Temple, to France, then to
England, and so to the great assembly at York. Prince Edwin
is said to have issued a proclamation, in response to which
all who possessed old "writeings" were called upon to
produce them. Some of these were found to be in French,
some in Greek, some in English and some in other
languages. Edwin caused a digest of these to be made and
gave command that "it should be read or told when that any
Masons should be made & to give them the charge." And
from that day to this, the story runs, that custom has been
followed. The manner of giving the charge is described in
Latin: "Then one of the elders shall take the book and he or
they shall place the hands upon the book and shall give the
law."
"Every man that is a Mason," the Charge continues, "take
right good heed to these Charges & if any man find himself
guilty in any of the charges that he amend himself before
God and particularly ye that are to be charged take good
heed that ye keep these charges right well, for it is sure in
good faith. And therefore take good heed hereto it is well
worthy to be kept well for that the Science is ancient for
there be vii liberall Sciences of the which it is one & the
names of the seven Sciences be these:
"First Grammer which teacheth a man to speak truly & write
truly. And the second is Rhetoricke and teacheth a man to
speak fair and plain in subtile terms & the third is Dielectick
or Lodgick & that teacheth a man to discern truth from
falsehood. And the fourth is Arithmetick & that teacheth a
man to reckon and accompt all manner of numbers. And the
fifth is called Geomatrie & teacheth all measure of grounds &
of all other things, of the which Science is grounded
Masonrie; & the sixth Science is called Musicke & that
teacheth a man the Science of Song & violl of tongue &
organ harp trumpett. And the seventh Science is called
Astronomie and that teacheth a man to know the course of
the Sonne, Moone & Starrs. These be the vii liberall
Sciences the which Seven be all grounded by one that is to
say Geomatrie for by this may a man prove the Essence of
work as founded by Geomatrie so Geomatrie teacheth meat,
measure, ponderation & Weight of all manner of things on
earth for there is no man that worketh any Science but he
worketh by some measure or weight & all this is Geomatrie
& Marchants & all crafts men & all other of the vii Sciences &
especially the plower & tiller of all manner of graines & feeds
planters of vinyeards setters of fruits, for in Grammer retorick
nor astronomie nor in any of all the other liberall Sciences
can any man find meat or measure without Geomatrie, & me
thinks that this Science Geomatrie is most worthy and
foundeth all others."
The manuscript then returns to the tale of Lamech, his sons
and daughter and brings Masonry down to "this worthy Clark
Euclid," who is said to have consented to become a teacher
of the children of the King and his Nobles on condition that
he be granted a commission to rule them "after the manner
the Sciences ought to be ruled." Euclid is said to have taken
to himself the sons of the nobility and taught them "the
Science of Geomatrie & practice to worke in Stones all
manner of worthy work that belongeth to building Churches
Temples Castles Tours mannors & all manner of buildding &
gave them in Charge on this mannor:
"First that they should be true to the King & to the Lord that
they serve & that they should love well one another & that
they should call each other his Fellow or his Brother & not
his Servant or Knave or other foule name & that they should
truly deserve their pay of their Lord or the Master that they
serve & that they should ordaine the wisest of them to be the
Master of the worke & neither to chuse for Love nor efection
nor great nor riches to sett any that hath not suficient
Knowledge and cunning in the worke to be Master of the
worke whereby the Master should be evill served & they
disgraced or ashamed & also that they should call perillous
& great danger for a man to forsweare himself upon the holy
Scripture.
"The First Charge is that he or thou be true man to god & the
holy church & that ye use neither erour nor heresie
according to your own understanding or discreet and wise
mens teaching & also that he shall be true lege man & bear
true Alegiance to the King of England without any treason or
any other falshood & if they know of any treason or treachery
that you amend it privily if ye may or else warne the King or
his counsell of it by declareing it to the Magistrates. And also
you shall be true one to another that is to say every Mason
of the Craft of Magonrie that be allowed Masons you shall
doe to them as you would they should doe to you. And that
you keep truely all the counsell of Lodge & chamber & all
other counsell that ought to be kept by way of Masonrie &
also that you use no theeverie but keep yourselves true."
Then followed the other items of the Charge which in
modern English may be summarized thus:
2. That you shall be true to your Lord or Master and truly see
his profit and advantage furthered;
3. That you shall not call any of your brother Masons by a
foul name;
4. That you shall not wrong your brother's wife, daughter or
servant;
5. That you shall pay honestly for your own meat and drink
and do nothing which may bring shame or discredit on the
Craft.
Here end the "Charges in generall that belongeth every
Mason to keep, both Masters & Fellows." They are followed
by these "certaine of the Charges singularly for Masters and
Fellows":
1. That no Master take any work unless he knows he has the
skill to complete it;
2. That no Master take work at unreasonable charge, but
that he charge a fair price so he can pay his workmen fair
wages;
3. That no Master or fellow be supplanted by another in his
work unless it be apparent he has not the skill to perform it;
4. That no Master take an apprentice for less than seven
years or one that is not sound in body and limb, of good, free
birth, no alien but descended of honest kindred and not a
bondman;
5. That no Mason take an apprentice unless he have
sufficient work to give employment to two or three fellows at
least;
6. That no Master or fellow "put any to take any Lord's work
that was wont to work journey work";
7. That fellows shall be paid according to the work they
actually and honestly perform;
8. That none shall slander another behind his back so as to
cause him loss in goods or esteem and that none shall
reprove another in Lodge or outside of it without cause;
9. That every Mason shall render due honor to his elder
brother;
10. That no Mason shall be a common gamester at dice or
cards, but that every fellow going into an adjoining town shall
be accompanied by another to bear witness he was in
honest place and civil company;
11. That every Mason shall attend assemblies if held within a
mile of him and he have due notice thereof;
12. That Masons shall submit their disputes to the arbitration
of their brethren before going to law;
13. That no Master or fellow "make any mould rule or square
for any Layer nor set any Layer within the Lodge or without
to hew any mould stones";
14. That every Mason shall supply work for visiting
craftsmen from other countries or, if he cannot, will supply
them with means of getting to the next Lodge;
15. That every Mason shall truly perform and finish the work
he has undertaken, whether by contract for the job or by
daily labor, provided the person employing him keeps his
own agreements.
"These Charges," the manuscript concludes, "that we have
now rehearsed to you and to all others here present which
belongeth to Masons you shall well & truly keep to your
power, so help you God & by the contents of that booke -
Amen."
Thus it will be seen that from the Regius Manuscript to York
Roll No. 1, the Old Charges perform a dual function. On the
one hand they preserve the legends and traditions of a
society with moral, mystical, ethical and esoteric doctrines;
on the other they provide for the practical government of a
particular class of mechanics. They differ from one another
in details but they agree in essentials of spirit and purpose.
Neither differences nor resemblances are hard to account for
once the mind of the investigator is disabused of the notion
that Operative Masonry was a single, closely knit fraternity in
the sense that modern Speculative Freemasonry is.
The situation of Operative Masonry is more easily
understood if it is compared to the various bar associations
and ethical medical societies of modern times. The
comparison is necessarily loose, for these modern
associations are strictly professional and not also, as
Operative Masonry obviously was, semi-mystical cults. But
for practical purposes their methods of working may be
regarded as somewhat similar. If a doctor or a lawyer has
been duly licensed and admitted to his association in
Missouri, no difficulty is made in receiving him by the
corresponding association in any other state or country. The
doctor is presumed to have subscribed to some form of the
Hippocratic oath, to have undergone a satisfactory
apprenticeship, to have demonstrated his fitness to be
licensed as a physician. He may be called upon, if there is
question of his probity or good standing, to produce his
credentials. The customs of his own association may vary in
numerous small particulars from those of a similar society,
say, in New York. Fundamentally, however, the purposes
and practices of the two societies are the same.
Studied together, the various writings of the Old Charges
show precisely such variations as might be expected from
the ordinary course of social life at each period. It is possible
to determine of one that it was written at a certain time and
in a given part of England; of another that it was written at
another time and in a different county. They are peculiarly
English; no such documents have been found in Ireland, and
Scottish manuscripts are now believed to have been of
English origin. With the single exceptions of the allusion in
the Regius poem to the Four Crowned Martyrs, they have no
definite points of contact with continental documents of the
same period.
When they first appear, they are in the possess of an
operative body which had developed out of the guild system
of the Middle Ages. How were the Operative Mason guilds of
England related to the other guilds of that system? Surely it
is to that guild system itself that the historian must look for
the only reliable answer.
CHAPTER X
THE GUILD SYSTEM
by H.L. HAYWOOD
IN some form or other the guild, like the poor, has been
always with us - always, at least, since human society
became somewhat more complex than it was when all men
of a tribe were engaged in a single common pursuit, as in
hunting or farming. Stripped to its essentials, a guild is an
association entered into voluntarily by its members for
mutual support and assistance in a particular enterprise or
set of enterprises: In ordinary speech the guild is
distinguished from the cult in that it is formed for utilitarian
purposes, whereas the cult is intended to promote exercises
of religion and worship. Yet there is no sharp line of
cleavage between the two, since their objectives frequently
shade into one another. Medieval Operative Masonry
partook of both characteristics, so intertwined that it would
be a hopeless task to undertake to separate them. This was
not unusual or peculiar to Masonry, but was so frequent in
the Middle Ages as to be regarded as commonplace.
In the simplest forms of society the principal tie between
individuals is the bond of blood relationship. If a man is
prosperous, he shares his prosperity with needy kinsmen; if
he is in distress, they succor him; if he is slain, they avenge
him; if he is subject to fine or pecuniary liability, they ransom
him. But, as clans grow large and their interests multiply,
individuals are necessarily thrown into new alignments.
Some of them become hunters, some farmers, some
soldiers, some fishers, some artisans, some merchants.
Those engaged in a particular calling discover they have
common interests which they alone can promote as against
all the rest of the community. Unless they can unite and
formulate certain principles for the conduct of their business,
they will suffer from ruinous competition among themselves,
to say nothing of that which may be offered by casual
poachers upon premises they would like to regard as their
own.
The economic thrust and pressure which draw them together
in the first place continue afterwards to force them into closer
association. The mere fact of their segregation in an especial
unit serves to divide them further and further from other
units. The bonds of consanguinity become weakened, but
the guild bond becomes stronger and ever stronger until at
last the guild itself has taken over most of the protective
obIigations which once belonged to the clan. Generally
speaking, this process tends to become retarded in rural
communities and accelerated in cities. The reasons .therefor
are not far to seek. The relative simplicity and homogeneity
of agricultural life naturally preserve the sense of family
responsibility, but the complexity of urban and industrial life
tends to break it down, thus forcing the individual to seek
something else in its place. Guilds may be expected to
become more numerous and more important in proportion as
urban development assumes a larger place in the affairs of
nation or people.
A characteristic phenomenon of European civilization in the
Middle Ages was the development of the city. The feudal
system which rose upon the ruins of the Roman empire was
essentially rural. The land was parceled out among military
chieftains, each of which established his castle where
conditions served and then made it as impregnable to
assault as he could. The land and all the people round about
belonged to him. Tenants of the various holdings were his
vassals, obliged to perform prescribed services for their
tenures, to furnish him with fighting men, to enroll
themselves under his banner when he sounded a call to
arms. Over the common people he possessed the absolute
power of life, torture and death. Serfs and villeins had to
swink and sweat that he and his might possess whatever
luxuries their fancies craved; they could be put to death for
leaving their abodes without his permission. He in turn
acknowledged allegiance to his king, performing homage for
his holdings and rendering military service, except when, as
often happened, he felt himself strong enough to resist the
king on the field of battle.
The development of cities gave to this system its death blow.
The basis of prosperity in the city was not tenure of the land
but industry and commerce. Great aggregations of men
became impatient of feudal restraints and constantly
struggled for the right of local self-government. Originally
under the government of dukes or bishops, they fought for
and ultimately obtained their freedom, with government in
the hands of their own Councils and Boards of Aldermen.
Ambitious monarchs found in these free cities means for
resisting the arrogance of rural barons. In return for
successive grants of immunity they submitted to taxation,
and, as they had more resources with which to meet levies
of men and money, it paid the ruler to do business with them
upon reasonably moderate terms. By a natural process of
political evolution this everywhere gave rise to a sense of
nationalism, which had been impossible under the narrow
parochial restraints of the feudal system, and against that
nationalism the feudal system pounded itself into
destruction.
In the upbuilding of those cities, the guild system played a
leading part, and continued to play it until, by its own
arrogance and prosperity, it in turn became a brake upon
progress and had to be cast aside. Its own beginnings were
humble - so humble, in fact, that it is now impossible to trace
them with exactitude. It is not even possible to determine the
exact origin of the word, guild, itself. Blackstone in his
Commentaries said that a gild - the alternative spelling
frequently used and perhaps etymologically more correct
than the modern form - signified among the Anglo-Saxons a
fraternity which derived its name from a verb meaning "to
pay," since every member was expected to pay his share of
the common expense. Others derive it from a Scandinavian
word, gilde, a festival in honor of the god, Odin; others from
the Breton word gouil, meaning a holiday or feast; others
from the Welsh word gmylad, also meaning a festival.
By whatever name it was called, whether guild, company,
corporation or mystery in England, gild in North Germany,
metier in France or arte in Italy, it was an association of
persons engaged in the same art, trade or commercial
pursuit. There are those who believe it first appeared in Italy
as a logical successor to the Roman collegium. This
hypothesis is not implausible, yet it ought not to be trusted
too far, since such societies are a wholly spontaneous
development springing from economic, social or political
necessity. The guild in all human probability arose
simultaneously in more than one country. The Lombard
cities of Northern Italy offered a highly favorable opportunity
and in them guilds undoubtedly did enjoy greater prosperity
than in any other part of the Europe of that day. But they
were common in France at the time of Charlemagne in the
eighth century; they had appeared in England in the seventh,
something of the kind was known in Scandinavia in the sixth
century and by the time of the Norman conquest of Britain
they were scattered over all of Northern and Western
Europe.
The first allusion to them in England is found in the laws of
Ine, a West Saxon monarch who died in the year 726. From
the context it is apparent that they were then developments
of the frith - from an AngloSaxon word meaning peace - guild
previously established by the Vikings as organizations to
suppress piracy. English frith guilds were associations of
neighboring householders who gave security to one another
for the preservation of the peace. That is, they were
voluntary alliances formed by responsible citizens, for mutual
support and protection in a country which was wild and
lawless, much as Vigilance Committees were later formed in
the American Far West. Indeed the famous Texas Rangers
of our own Southwest came into being in much the same
manner and for much the same purpose.
All that has ever been necessary in order to form a society of
this kind has been the existence of a general need and the
presence of a few like-minded persons. For that matter, the
need may be in itself negligible. Human beings are naturally
imitative. In modern times, if a merchant hits upon a novel
means of advertising, his wares, almost instantly a dozen
variants and adaptations of the idea will appear. If a song
writer attains popular success with a ditty about blackbirds,
there will a deluge of songs about redbirds, blue-birds, and
birds of every other hue and description. A secret society like
Freemasonry, once it becomes generally admired, presages
the formation of innumerable societies modeled on the same
general plan.
So it was with the guilds of the medieval period. The only
test required of such a system was that it work. Once
convinced of that, men could be expected form themselves
into all sorts of similar societies land for every conceivable
purpose. Such was in fact the case. There were guilds of
masons, of carpenters, of tailors, of weavers; guilds of
householders, of merchants, of mechanics, of priests; there
were political guilds, professional guilds, religious guilds,
convivial guilds, burial guilds, guilds for social, ethical, moral,
religious, and philosophical instruction.
Most important of all, in their influence upon the history of
their times, were the merchant guilds. These organizations
became in time not only the bulwarks of trade in their
respective communities but also the common carriers, the
bankers, the promoters of industry and commerce for all of
Europe. In a time of general unrest and turbulence, they
exercised a steadying influence, and in their portage of
articles of luxury as well as of necessity they became useful
agents in the development of culture and civilization.
It should be remembered that in the towns sharp social
distinctions were drawn between bondsmen and freemen.
None was admitted to these guilds who was not free. For
convenience, men in the same branch of trade had their
places of business - and usually their homes - in the same
quarter of the city. It was necessary that they have some
voice in the government of that section. They had a common
meeting place, usually called a guildhall, to which they
repaired for social relaxation as well as for business. They
watched strictly over the conduct of their workmen and
apprentices.
The principal merchant guilds developed somewhat after the
fashion of what in modern times is called a "vertical trust."
That is, they enjoyed a monopoly of trade in their local
territories and this carried with it the control of all its
incidental branches, from the production of raw material to
the sale or exchange of the finished product. They could say
how much of a given commodity could be thrown upon the
market, how much must be withheld; they supervised
importations and exportations, not infrequently using their
own ships. They established standards of quality, arbitrarily
fixed prices and wages, and strictly controlled trade
practices. They might even say what kind of clothing it was
suitable for the various grades of employees to wear and, if
necessary, procure legislation to enforce such sumptuary
decrees. The members enjoyed peculiar privileges and
immunities; the societies had their respective coats of arms
and appropriate places
in the official life of the municipality. In time they ceased to
become known as guilds and were called corporations and
companies. It is not unjustifiably extravagant to say that
these associations and their successors, the great trading
companies of England, laid the foundation upon which the
commercial supremacy of the British Empire was erected;
that to their influence more than to any other was due that
zeal in exploration and adventure which ultimately enabled
Britain to boast of being Mistress of the Seas and which
certainly made her mistress of colonies and plantations in
every continent and upon a thousand islands.
In itself, however, the vertical trust arrangement had fatal
weaknesses and was not destined to perpetuation. The
merchant guild, in its quest of monopoly, proceeded upon
the theory that a whole industry should be brought under
single control. Weavers, dyers, tinkers shipwrights smiths in
gold and silver, masons, carpenters, blacksmiths and
workers at numerous other crafts soon found their own
interests seriously compromised by such a scheme. Now
these workmen had their own guilds, some of them older
than those of the merchants; where they did not, they
hastened to create them. The concern of each little society
was not an industry but the immediate sub-division of that
industry which constituted its own industrial province. The
tendency of the merchant guild was toward unification; that
of the craft guild was divisive. The merchant guild might, for
instance, look upon the leather trade as one business, but
the workers became specialists as they increased in skill,
tanners, harness makers, saddle makers, bridle makers,
shoemakers, boot makers, and each of these separate
branches supplied justification for the organization of a
separate society.
Economic conflict between these two organizational systems
was natural and inevitable. No person well read in English
history could have much doubt which of the two would
ultimately triumph. The Briton is naturally jealous for his
personal rights and is remarkably obstinate and persistent in
his defense of them. His home is his castle, his private
affairs are nobody else's concern, and his business is his
own, to be administered by himself or the agents he may
appoint. To this day British industry has resisted that
tendency to centralization which is so distinctive of American
industrial development, and remains divided up among
relatively small manufacturing establishments which in the
United States ordinarily would be amalgamated into unified
concerns.
By uniting themselves into small groups, the workers were
able to preserve craft identity. They exercised the sharpest
supervision over the admission of new members, taking care
that accessions of competent workmen should not be so
numerous as to lessen the chances of remunerative
employment for those already belonging. By limiting the
number of apprentices a master workman could engage,
they not only insured a somewhat fixed membership,
proportionally based upon the available work, but they also
guaranteed to the apprentice himself closer personal
attention than he could hope to receive if there were too
many beginners to share the master's time. His term of
service was a long one - usually running for about seven
years. During that time he was fed, bedded and clothed at
the master's expense and often in the master's household. In
his private conduct he was subject to the master's discipline,
and this sometimes extended even to chastening with the
rod. In return, the master undertook to teach him his trade so
that, at the expiration of his apprenticeship, he would be able
as a journeyman to earn his livelihood. If he then continued
to improve in skill, he might hope to become a master
workman, with the right to take contracts, hire journeymen
and enroll his own apprentices.
This system brought about the closest imaginable relations
among members of the same craft guild. The guild was itself
a kind of family affair - so much so, indeed, that in many
societies only the sons of men engaged in the craft could
become apprentices. Its members dwelt in proximity to one
another; in their social enjoyments they played together and
ate together in a close and exclusive intercourse. They not
infrequently dressed alike, at least to the extent of wearing
some peculiar and distinctive article of apparel by which they
could be identified. They were pledged to assist one another
in sickness or distress an to succor one another in danger.
Some of the guilds maintained schools for the instruction of
the children of the members; remnants of such schools exist
in England to this very day, Corpus Christi at Cambridge
being a conspicuous example. They thus stood separate and
apart from the rest of the community.
In a very real sense, the craft guild came to stand as
custodian of the personal welfare of its members. It is a
mistake not infrequently made to confuse these bodies with
the trade unions of today. For one thing, the trade union is
an organization of employees formed to enable them to
bargain collectively with their employers and to resist
employer encroachments upon employee rights and
privileges. The craft guild included both employers and
employees. It was frequently governed not by the employees
but by the master workmen who were also, and incidentally,
employers. These were known commonly as wardens and
there were usually two and sometimes four of them. In some
cases they were selected at annual assemblies of the craft
to serve for a year. In others they were appointed by the
municipal authorities. It was their business to approve or
reject work turned out by the members, to see that labor was
honestly and satisfactorily performed, that the craftsmen
received their proper pay and that the personal conduct of
the members did not violate that salutary discipline which
was intended to maintain the craft in good repute with the
world at large.
Methods of formal induction into membership varied greatly.
In some cases it was by oath administered in some form of
ceremonial initiation. In others it was merely by placing the
name on the society's rolls. Some of the guilds possessed
secret and semi-religious rites; almost all of them were
religious in so far as they acknowledged allegiance to
Church, adopted particular saints as their patrons, and made
a practice of attending divine services on designated days.
Some of them admitted women and some did not. Although
there were distinctions of apprentices from journeymen, or
fellows of the craft, and distinctions of fellows from masters,
these as a rule applied only to the personal consequence of
each individual among his brethren.
Among the mason guilds there actually were but two classes
- on the one side apprentices and on the other Fellows and
Masters - since a Fellow might at any time become a Master
by the simple process of taking a contract to perform a given
work and hiring other Fellows to help him perform it. He
might take apprentices provided he could furnish sufficient
employment for a required number of enrolled workmen. In
voting at assemblies, the ballot of the Fellow ordinarily
counted for as much as did that of the Master. In general it
may be said that an apprentice might become a Fellow upon
the completion of his indentured term of service and upon
proper evidence of his skill as a workman, presented to the
wardens of the guild and by them accepted as satisfactory.
In trades requiring a high degree of manual dexterity, as in
carving, painting, or engraving, he might be required to
submit a masterpiece. In France and Germany it was often
required of an apprentice that, after his freedom from
indentures, he spend a year or more traveling among the
guilds of communities remote from his home, earning a living
by his art and improving in knowledge and experience.
In addition to the merchant and craft guilds there were
innumerable religious and social guilds of all kinds. Some
were powerful institutions in their own right and some were
mere auxiliary bodies. Nearly every large church of the
Middle Ages had many such auxiliaries, each dedicated to
the service of a particular saint and consecrated to the
performance of some special task. Some of these were
purely mystical and devoted to exercises of meditation and
prayer; others were practical and looked after the
management of parish houses and schools, the support of
indigent priests, the maintenance of church property, the
collection of funds for charitable and missionary purposes.
Some became separate and semi-ecclesiastical entities, with
their own chapels and chaplains, colleges, asylums. A few
became identified with the production of religious dramas
and mystery plays. The mystery play, of course, had nothing
to do with a "mystery" in the modern sense. The word
mystery as thus used was derived from the Middle English
word misterie, meaning a trade or employment, which in turn
was derived through the French from the Latin word
ministerium. A mystery play was therefore a play which
illustrated some practice or doctrine of a given trade. Many
medieval guilds performed them and it is not at all
improbable that the Drama of the Third Degree of modern
Freemasonry is a survival of this custom.
It is evident that with so many societies flourishing thus side
by side the guilds must have been profoundly, influenced by
contact with one another. Although; each might preserve its
separate identity, a considerable cross pollination of ideas
must have taken place. Indeed this is not a matter of mere
inference. There are records of great pageants in England
which were managed much after the fashion of the Mardi
Gras parade in New Orleans, the Veiled Prophet parade in
St. Louis, the Priests of Pallas parade in Kansas City and
kindred affairs in modern America. Places in the line of
march were assigned to various important craft guilds. Each
prepared a tableau which was staged upon a cart or "float"
and which usually represented some episode from Biblical
literature. This arrangement in itself discloses a degree of
common understanding and purpose. Moreover it shows that
the craft guild and the strictly religious guild sometimes
overlapped in their functions, a matter of no little
significance.
In England the guild system reached its peak in the reign of
Edward III, or toward the close of the fourteenth century,
when some 40,000 religious and trade societies were listed.
They ranged in size from a handful of men to the 15,000
members of the Corpus Christi guild at York. But the system
contained within itself the seeds of its own destruction. Trade
and merchant guilds came first into conflict with one another
and then with the economic changes which ushered in the
modern era of trade and commerce. Religious guilds came
into conflict with modern theories of government. But the
principal trouble with the guild system was that it could not
stand prosperity. Originally poor and humble and with ideals
of service, it became rich and arrogant and lustful of power.
Then it awoke one morning to find it had outlived its
usefulness; awoke as the spoiled favorite of an Eastern
potentate sometimes awakes, to find one standing at her
bedside with a bowstring.
How the system and municipal government complemented
each other has already been indicated. The more important
guilds were corporations with definite privileges, prerogatives
and responsibilities. They contained the germ of the
municipal borough of more modern times, but care should be
taken to differentiate between their constitution as private
societies and the public functions which those societies
occasionally performed. Theoretically, at least, the function
of the guild in public affairs was to represent the interests of
its particular trade or set of trades. In return for this privilege
it agreed that the management of its business should be
conducted in the public interest. If the municipality might not
infringe upon the prerogatives of the guild, neither might the
guild or its members use those prerogatives to the
disadvantage of the public at large. Since the society
represented its trade, it had a right to say what individuals
might belong to that trade; individuals who belonged to no
trade therefore had no representation and were likely to find
themselves without citizenship. Not least important of the
guild's privileges was a local monopoly of its peculiar
business; membership in it was obligatory upon all persons
who would practice that business in that community. Since it
had the right of saying who should be admitted, excluding all
others, its power was tremendous. Sometimes it did not
hesitate to admit persons who were not in the trade at all -
honorary members they might be called. This custom of
"accepting" outsiders for their general standing in the
community brought into the guilds some of the outstanding
persons of medieval English history, including King Edward
III, King Henry IV, King Henry VI and King Henry VIII, but it
also introduced an element of discontent, as practical
workers observed the waxing power of these illustrious
patrons. It was probably in accordance with this custom that
the operative masons first began to "accept" non-masons.
As the larger societies gained in wealth and prestige, they
steadily usurped authority. They had helped to break down
the feudal system and strengthen the monarchy, but in time
they resisted and even challenged the authority of the
monarch himself. In so doing they were but bringing their
destruction nearer. Meanwhile their power was being
steadily undermined at home. In their increasing arrogance
they tended to break down the old democratic relationship
which bound all members, from apprentice to master, into
one society of friends and brothers. The masters developed
into an employing class and the fellows into a class of
workers by the day. As the gulf widened, the masters used
the machinery at hand for their own aggrandizement. To
resist them, the journeymen, forced into a new class
consciousness, began organizing guilds of their own. This
was bitterly opposed by the masters, who invoked the civil
law to stop the practice, but without effect. On the one hand
there was constant effort to encroach upon the rights of the
individual worker; on the other determined resistance to the
tyrannical methods of the employer. The struggle endured
for centuries, but the guild system, thus disunited, gradually
broke up and disappeared.
Long before this came to pass, however, a royal sword had
been unsheathed against the great religious guilds of
England. These bodies had become immensely rich and
powerful in the time of the Crusades and they possessed
many of the most desirable holdings. In the long and bitter
struggle between Henry VIII and the papacy, they were
almost unanimously on the side of the Church. Convinced
that he could not carry on his work of reformation until this
opposition had been destroyed, Henry struck with
characteristic vigor and effectiveness. He despoiled the
religious guilds of their temporal property, which he declared
forfeit to the Crown. He forbade other guilds to make gifts of
money to churches and finally, in 1547, the religious
societies were formally suppressed.
A system so extensive could not be wholly eradicated. It was
bound to leave many survivors which, under other names
and in other forms, continued to function. The religious guild
in modified guise has continued to the present day in both
the Roman Catholic and the Anglican churches. The
merchant guild left its influence upon the later trading
companies of England. It is possible that trade unions and
friendly societies of the present owe something to the craft
guilds, although this possibility is more easily exaggerated
than demonstrated. But there is one conspicuous survival
out of the guild system, and that one is the institution of
modern Freemasonry.
CHAPTER XI
THE OPERATIVE MASONS
Part 1of 2
History of Freemasonry
by H.L. HAYWOOD
IF the date assigned by scholarship is correct, the oldest
existing Masonic manuscript, the Regius poem, was penned
in the year 1390. In that year King Richard II was on the
throne of England; the battle of Agincourt had not yet been
fought; the War of the Roses as yet in the future and the first
voyage of Columbus to the New World was not to begin for
more than another century. Almost three-quarters of a
century were to pass before Martin Luther's birth. All over
Europe men were still building cathedrals in the Gothic style,
although that school of architecture had entered upon its
final phases of decline. The guild system was in its heyday in
England and on the continent. It had not yet become
fashionable - in England at least - to burn heretics at the
stake. Legal issues might still be decided in trial by combat.
The Regius manuscript contains a set of rules and
regulations for the government of what was obviously a guild
of craftsmen; in the light of modern research it is possible to
ascertain that the society was organized upon much the
same general plan as were the majority of operative guilds of
that day. But the Regius poem is of far greater importance
than that. It was a patent attempt to account to the English
members of an English institution for an antiquity of that
institution in which they already believed. Presumably it was
to be read to men whose fathers and grandfathers and
probably great grandfathers had belonged. It gave naive
credence to a tradition that the society had been in
continuous existence on English soil since the days of
Athelstan - which was to say since before the Norman
conquest. It is clear from the rhymed narrative itself that its
author had no real sense of the passage of time. What he
did know, however, was that the society was very old - or at
least so old that the traditions and memories of persons then
living did not run back to a time when it did not exist.
In some manner this particular manuscript was lost to sight,
to remain lost for some 450 years. At any rate when the first
Grand Lodge was formed, about 325 years after it was
penned, and diligent search was made for all the writings
having to do with Operative Masonry, this one for the time
escaped attention. There were other and later ones,
however, and these contained substantially the same
material, thus indicating the persistence of the Regius
tradition. At least six of these were in possession of the old
"immemorial" Lodge at York - a lodge which held itself out to
be the direct lineal descendant of the masonry of Athelstan's
day. Not a few such lodges were scattered about England
and Scotland at that time, unmistakable survivors of the guild
system of the Middle Ages. One of the first tasks the new
Grand Lodge set for itself was to gather, digest and publish
in literary form all that could be learned of the operative
guilds and particularly their legends, customs, laws and
regulations. More than a century after that had been done,
the Regius manuscript was rediscovered, to bear eloquent
testimony to the fact that there had been no great alteration
in the practices and beliefs of the operative masons between
the reign of Richard II and the reign of George I, a period of
more than three centuries.
Taking the year 1400 as a point of departure from which to
measure English Masonic history both forward and
backward, it is therefore clear: (1) that before that time, and
probably for a considerable period before it, operative
masonic guilds were in existence in England; that they had a
substantial literary tradition and customs established by
immemorial usage; (2) that they continued to exist for
another 300 years with relatively little change in either
customs or traditions; and (3) that surviving units or "lodges"
of them participated in the eighteenth-century movement
which centered on the formation of the first Grand Lodge,
from which Speculative Freemasonry dates its present form
of existence.
For purposes of discussion it may be assumed that even if
there had been no operative societies coming down from a
remoter antiquity, the guild system itself would have
produced them. When artisans of all other classes and
callings were uniting themselves into such groups, it would
have been strange indeed if the stone masons had not done
so also. If not a single record of their medieval existence
could be found, it still would be safe to infer they did exist. As
a matter of fact there are records of Masonic guilds both in
England and on the continent. The term Freemason occurs
in the fabric rolls of Exeter Cathedral in the year 1396. The
guild at London in 1537 called its members Freemasons; at
Norwich in 1375 masons appear to have been attached to
the guild of carpenters; whether that was a purely local or a
general arrangement at the time there is no way of knowing.
It is interesting to observe, however, that in the year 1350
two separate classes of masons were recognized. A statute
of that period describes a mestre mason de franche pere - a
master mason of free stone - as being different from other
masons and entitled to higher pay. That distinction is
maintained in a statute of 1360 except that in the later one
the preferred workman is called a "chief mestre" of masons.
The common mason appears to have been classified
generally with "carpenters, tilers, thatchers, daubers and all
other labourers." As late as 1604 an incorporation at Oxford
included freemasons, carpenters, joiners and slaters. It is
evident from the records of smaller towns that mason guilds
were not numerous or particularly important, a fact which in
itself is illuminating. It marks one great respect in which
these bodies differed from all other craft organizations, for
they were essentially local institutions, made up of workmen
who remained in one town and usually in one quarter of the
town, whereas the skilled masons who worked in the
building of the Gothic cathedrals had from the nature of their
calling to be more or less itinerant, moving about from place
to place as work was to be found.
In an enumeration of the guilds entitled to representation in
the Common Council of London in 1370, a Company of
Freemasons was listed and a Company of Masons, standing
respectively as No. 17 and No. 34 on a roll of forty-eight. The
Company of Masons appears to have been of greater
numerical strength than the Company of Freemasons, since
it had four representatives as against two for the other.
Whether, as Mackey's History of Freemasonry suggests, this
indicates that the Freemasons formed a smaller and more
select society, is pure speculation, since no proof one way or
the other has been found, but as a guess it is decidedly
plausible. In any event, the list establishes the existence of
two separate guilds. Ultimately they were merged, taking a
coat of arms which displayed three white castles with black
doors and windows on a black field, together with a silver or
scalloped chevron and on it a pair of black compasses.
It is therefore possible to be reasonably sure of the following
facts pertaining to the general situation of Operative
Masonry at the time the Regius manuscript was presumably
written, that is, in the year 1390:
I. That it was occasionally divided into two general classes
respectively mentioned as Freemasons and as Masons;
II. That town guilds of masons were small and relatively
unimportant as compared with town guilds of other kinds;
III. That town mason guilds frequently united with, or formed
parts of, guilds of other workers employed in the building
trades;
IV. That it is probable no wide gulf separated the two classes
of Masons, since separate guilds of them in London found
no insuperable obstacle in the way of union and particularly
since the Old Charges mention their common art as
Masonry, without drawing invidious distinctions between
Masons and Freemasons;
V. That the rules laid down for practical guidance of
members of the Craft corresponded in the main with similar
rules laid down in other craft guilds of that period.
But when the Regius poem was drafted, the active period of
Gothic architecture was already drawing to a close. That
period for centuries had given to the stone masons of
Northern and Western Europe their principal occupation. Its
work required a high degree of skill, which for the most part
could not be acquired except by actual practice in the labor
of building just such edifices as the great churches
themselves. The stonework of successive cathedrals
discloses that as fast as problems of construction were
solved, the solutions were passed along to succeeding
builders. From quarry to the finished task every stone had its
separate purpose, and preparation of every stone involved
conscious and more or less skilled direction at the hands of
every workman through whose hands it must pass.
When the curtain first rises on the stage of organize
Operative Masonry, it discloses a society proudly an
profoundly self-conscious. It is a society of aristocrat among
workmen, boasting of an ancestry of incredible age and
distinction. It has noble traditions, and it has dignity of a high
order to maintain. Moreover, it has secrets which at all costs
must be preserved, and a esoteric philosophy which is
rooted in the lore of the past. True, it is a guild and in many
respects like all the other guilds which then flourished as
such societies had not flourished before and as they have
not flourished since. But it is more than a guild; it is also a
cult, for it practices mystical rites which are now known to
have been survivals of magic rites and religious
observances, coming down from a past which was
indefinitely remote.
The Old Charges bear abundant witness to all these things.
Most of them prescribe the ritualistic manner in which oaths
of secrecy must be administered. One reveals that the
candidate was compelled to swear, "in the presence of
Almighty God and my Fellows and Brethren here present"
that he would not by any act or under any circumstance,
"publish, discover, reveal or make known any of the secrets,
privileges or counseIs of the fraternity or fellowship of Free
Masonry." (Harleian MSS.) Those secrets were indeed well
kept; so well, in fact, that the modern Freemason is much in
doubt as to what many of them were and can only suppose
that they had to do with the mechanical science of the
operative calling. As Operative Masonry fell into disuse,
some of them undoubtedly became imbedded in the
symbolism and allegory of rite and ritual, where they remain
to this day. Of their origin, practical use, and indeed of their
scope, the present day knows almost nothing. It is by no
means unlikely that as cathedral building masons merged
with the guild masons of the towns, they saw no reason to
impart to their less skilled companions more of their own
secret art than was necessary to give it symbolical or
emblematical preservation; and as "accepted," or non-
operative, masons came in time to outnumber them both, the
value of purely mechanical secrets naturally tended diminish
and ultimately to disappear.
The modern student must bear in mind also that from their
very nature it was unlawful for these things to be written,
carved or engraved upon any movable or immovable thing,
in such fashion that they might become legible or intelligible
to a "cowan," or outsider. The Old Charges must therefore
be studied for what they may suggest "between the lines" as
well as for what they openly say. In actual practice Masons
appear always to have been singularly tenacious of their
secret ritualistic "work." Although no particular care appears
to have been taken to keep the Old Manuscripts from public
inspection, secretaries of many immemorial lodges burned
their records rather than have them fall into the hands of
historians appointed by the first Grand Lodge. Even today
conservative brethren, fearing improper disclosures will be
made, look askance upon public discussions of esoteric
matters, and although various Monitors have been published
officially for guidance in the ritualistic labors of the Craft, by
far the greater part of modern ritual may not be lawfully
written even in cipher; Masons who compose ciphers for that
purpose or make use of them are subject to the severest
penalties. The only legal method of passing these secret
things from man to man and from generation to generation is
that of mouth-to-ear communication. It is truly astonishing
how accurate and uniform these oral transmissions have
been, and this accuracy is in itself the best justification of a
jealous zeal which forbids oral alteration or other innovation
upon the fundamentals of Craft Masonry.
CHAPTER XI
THE OPERATIVE MASONS
Part 2of 2
History of Freemasonry
by H.L. HAYWOOD
In the operative days it is clear that mason guilds arose in
towns where there was enough work to support resident
craftsmen. Medieval cities for the most part, however, were
built not of stone but of wood. In such places carpenters
were far more in demand, and it is not surprising to find that
carpenter guilds were more numerous and more important in
local affairs than were those of the workers in stone. Indeed,
the stone worker was likely to be only an auxiliary to the
carpenter, performing incidental tasks in laying foundations
for houses, shoring up banks, lining the walls of excavations,
and here and there constructing a small bridge or culvert.
Sometimes there were not enough of them in a town to
conduct their own mystery plays in connection with great
pageants. At Exeter the masons shared a play with the
goldsmiths; at York with the hatmakers.
But when great churches, monasteries, castles or manor
houses were toward, it was a different story. Here the stone
worker came into his own; the carpenter, tiler, slater, glazier,
sank into subordinate positions. Resident mason guilds were
neither numerous enough nor possessed the necessary skill
to conduct enterprises of such magnitude. From afar off,
perhaps from foreign countries, would come the master
builder to take the work in hand. In many instances he
brought with him a few especially skilled assistants who
possessed his confidence and who knew how to do
important parts of the work as he liked to have them done.
The bishop, abbot or lord might have in mind a few
especially skilled craftsmen of his own and these of course
would be employed. Masons hearing of the undertaking
would begin to drift in from all directions. They came afoot,
making their way from town to town, visiting local lodges by
the way, sure of refreshment and hospitality and even of
financial assistance if they required it.
The gathering of so many strangers in one place would
naturally bring to local authorities unwonted burdens of
housing and policing. In those days, when serfs were tied to
their soil and a considerable proportion of the population of
every country was made up of bondsmen, the masterless
man was everywhere suspect. He might be locked up or
even be put to death if he couldn't give a satisfactory
account of himself. An apprentice not yet free of his
indentures was in most respects a bondsman; only master
workmen and fellows, free of their guild, might travel about in
safety, and it was essential that these have with them the
means of proving their identity. It could be assumed, even if
there were no traditions to support the theory, that these
traveling craftsmen possessed methods of making
themselves known to local craftsmen who would vouch for
them to the civil authorities. As few could either read or write,
and as written certificates, even if they existed, might be lost
or stolen, they would need to know a method of proving
themselves free craftsmen which would be independent of
articles to be concealed in the clothing or carried about the
person. The method would have to be more or less secret to
prevent its use by impostors.
Common laborers and other classes of workmen would be
recruited from the neighborhood and would be under the
direction of their own masters. The masons, on the other
hand, would have to be subject to other arrangements. But
this was an old experience to them; they knew precisely
what ought to be done in such an emergency.
Their first care was to set up a "lodge." Nearly every craft
guild had its building or other place of work, where the men
sometimes slept or gathered for social intercourse as well as
for labor, but the masons appear to have been alone in
applying the term "lodge" to the organization or assemblage
itself as well as to the place of assembly. In town guilds, as
at Aberdeen, where resident brethren were sufficiently
numerous, lodges were housed in permanent structures. On
the site of construction, however, it was usually sheltered in
a temporary shed or lean-to. Here it was a custom for the
craftsmen to take counsel on all matters pertaining to their
general welfare. Here also, apprentices were placed under
strict obligation to preserve the secrets of the logge; to hele,
or conceal, the counsel of their brethren.
Whether initiatory ceremonies were performed in those
rooms is not altogether clear. Survivals in the ritual make it
most certain that at some time lodge meetings were held in
the open air, the roof being nothing lower than the clouded
or star-decked canopy of the heavens. If this was the case,
such congregations must have been in secure places away
from the general body of the work, perhaps on the tops of
hills or in deep valleys where sentinels might observe the
approach of "cowans" - that is, non-organized workers or
"scabs" as they are now termed in labor parlance - and
eavesdroppers. Some arrangement of the kind would at
least seem reasonable, since the working hut was usually
situated at the heart of a busy camp surrounded by those of
other crafts. Some of the ceremonials which have come
down to modern times manifestly had their origin in magical
practices - practices maintained because they were
supposed to bring "good luck," long after their primitive
function of appeasing the divinities of nature had been
forgotten. Such exercises would serve to impress the novice
with the solemnity and inviolability of his undertakings in
addition to providing him with means of identifying himself
should he afterwards become a sojourner among stranger
masons. They naturally would be screened with the greatest
care from the eyes of the profane.
The principal function of a lodge at the scene of labor was to
bring the masons under a central government, responsible to
the general overseer or superintendent of the work, who
might be the master builder, his agents, the ecclesiastical
authorities, the civil authorities or a committee of laymen.
The lodge chose its own presiding officer, sometimes known
as a master, sometimes as a warden, sometimes, and
especially in Scotland, as a deacon. A box master, or
treasurer, was chosen to take care of the common fund.
There were bookkeepers or rolls keepers, whose duty it was
to keep track of the workers and the pay due them or
received by them. In general the officers were as few as
might be. Local conditions sometimes dictated increasing or
diminishing the number. There are no records showing the
employment of tylers at that early day, although it is
apparent that some method must have been employed to
keep the lodge free from intrusion when it was engaged
upon its private business. Some of these officers
disappeared entirely in later days, hen the need for them no
longer existed; other officers were created as circumstance
might decree.
The Old Charges furnish indications of the kind of rules and
regulations to which the members were subject. From
another source, the Fabric Rolls of York Cathedral, comes a
sidelight upon the working conditions of that period. It is a
decree establishing "Orders for the Masons and workmen,"
and reads as follows:
"The first and second Masons, who are called masters of the
same, and the carpenters, shall take oath that they cause
the ancient customs underwritten to be faithfully observed. In
summer they are to begin to work immediately after sunrise
until the ringing of the bell of the Virgin Mary; then to
breakfast in the fabric room (logium fabricae), then one of
the masters shall knock upon the door of the lodge, and
forthwith all are to return to work until noon. Between April
and August, after dinner, they shall sleep in the lodge, then
work until the first bell for vespers; then sit to drink till the
end of the third bell, and return to work so long as they can
see by daylight. In winter they are to begin work at daybreak,
and to continue as before till noon, dine and return to work
till daylight is over. On Vigils and on Saturdays they are to
work until noon."
Masons of the lodge kept themselves strictly apart from
unskilled workers in stone, who were known as rough
setters, wallers, plasterers, layers, cowans and masons
without the word." Apparently there was free intercourse
among members of the cathedral builders' lodges and those
of the local mason guilds, but no master might lay out plans
or display trade sets in the presence of workers of the cowan
class. As certain amount of intercourse between the
craftsmen and the directors of the work was essential, it was
a custom to give the "freedom of the lodge" to the more
notable of these, as a bishop, an architect or a man skilled in
the mechanical sciences. In Scotland persons so
distinguished came to be known as Geomatic Masons and
Gentlemen Masons. This appears to have been one of the
earliest plans for "accepting" non-operatives. There can be
little doubt that these honorary members, coming thus in
contact with the esoteric practices of the society, were vastly
interested by them, and it may be that some of these learned
brethren were able to explain to the less erudite mechanics
certain meanings of their quaint ceremonials which had long
since been forgotten.
Occasions for this must have been numerous. These
working masons were constantly surrounded by symbols
and other reminders of the past. The cathedrals which they
built, from "turret to foundation stone," were full of
symbolism. The arches, the windows, the gargoyles, were
luminous with it. Strange and secret markings were chiseled
into the stones; a master mason himself might employ a
mark which had been used by his father before him, the
original significance of which he had perhaps lost. Stained
glass, mural decorations, altar cloths, priestly vestments,
were employed to teach to an illiterate populace the most
treasured doctrines of Church and Bible. The ceremonial of
the Mass was symbolical in every detail, with every gesture
and intonation carefully prescribed so as to bear its proper
place in this great drama of the Passion of the Blessed
Saviour. To wits skilled in the reading of such things there
was scarcely an object upon which the eye could rest which
did not have its own esoteric significance. Even to-day the
Gothic cathedral is an open book to those who know how to
read it rightly.
Operative lodges did not employ the system of degrees in
use in modern Freemasonry. They recognized three classes
of workmen, apprentices, journeymen or Fellows, and
Masters, but the distinction between the Fellow and the
Master was not that which now differentiates the Fellowcraft
from the Master Mason. Apprentices were precisely what the
name implies. They were learners, bound over for a term of
years to serve their masters, in return for which service they
were to receive food, lodging and clothing and to receive
instruction which would enable them afterwards to earn their
own livelihood at the trade. They began as mere boys of
from twelve to fourteen years of age and usually they served
for seven years. Their relation to the lodge appears to have
varied in different localities; perhaps also as the lodge to
which they were attached was one of cathedral builders or
merely a town guild and therefore stationary. In at least one
instance it is known that apprentices were present at the
making of a master, but whether that means they witnessed
the induction of a master into his new rights or participated in
some investment with the secrets of the lodge is in doubt,
the probabilities strongly favoring the former suggestion.
What ceremonies of initiation apprentices were required to
undergo, beyond taking oath in due form in the presence of
the brethren, the present age has no way of knowing; nor is
it known whether initiatory rites were commonly observed.
Immediately after his Admission the newly made Fellow
could begin work as a journeyman, since in England he was
not expected to undertake a travel tour. On the contrary, this
practice was forbidden by laws passed in the fourteenth
century. Wages as a rule were also fixed by law, the wage
scale sometimes requiring an employer to provide his men
with lodging and board and with aprons, gloves and tunics.
The lodges were self-constituting bodies. In spite of efforts
which have been made to show that Operative Masonry was
one big fraternity, as modern Freemasonry is, the evidence
weighs overwhelmingly against that theory. All that seems to
have been necessary for forming a lodge was the presence
of a number of Masters and Fellows. These no doubt had
satisfactory means of proving one another. In later years
lodges which had existed from time immemorial came to feel
they had exclusive jurisdiction over their respective
communities, and at least one of them, acting upon that
theory, proclaimed itself a Grand Lodge with the power to
issue warrants for constituting subordinate bodies.
The Old Charges make it plain that, from time to time,
general assemblies may have been held, but there is nothing
in this connection to support a belief that these were central
governing bodies in the sense that a Grand Lodge is. They
appear to have been district conventions called by officers of
the Craft and sometimes by sheriffs. There is doubt that
even these were exclusively Masonic and not rather general
meetings of all the crafts, masons among the rest. At most
they were - if exception be made of the legendary assembly
at York, spoken of in the Regius poem - county, provincial or
municipal affairs, called to take counsel on matters
pertaining to the welfare or government of the craftsmen.
There are allusions in the Old Manuscripts to such
gatherings at York and to one or two held elsewhere, but
nowhere, with the exception noticed, is there record of one
for the masons of the entire country.
Each Master was under moral obligation to attend these
assemblies when they were held within a reasonable
distance of his place of abode. Some of the ancient
documents fix the distance at fifty miles, and those of most
recent date put it at five miles. On this matter the Regius
poem says:
That every Mayster that ys a mason
Must ben at the generale congregacyon,
So that he hyt reasonably y-tolde
Where that the semble schal be holde;
And to that semble he most nede gon
But he have a resenabul skwsacyon.
That assemblies were sometimes summoned for disciplinary
purposes is indicated in the Cooke Manuscript, which sets
forth that while lesser excuses might serve for other Masters
unable to attend, "those who have been disobedient at such
congregations, or been false to their employers, or had acted
so as to deserve reproof by the Craft, should be excused
only by extreme sickness, of which notice was to be given to
the Master is principal of the assembly." What power the
assembly may have had to enforce its decrees and to
administer punishment is not revealed. Since these were
district affairs, however, it is reasonable to suppose that the
Masters who did attend were neighbors of those who did not
and that by combining against an intransigent brother or
lodge they could exercise something more than moral
suasion. Moreover, as the, lodges were also guilds, with
certain responsibilities to the civil authorities, it is safe to
assume that the decrees of an assembly might expect
support from the secular arm. It was probably to the interest
of the Masters to rule themselves through their own
congregations, as it is certain that the congregations
themselves might, on some matter of public policy, speak to
greater effect than could the separate lodges.
Dependable accounts of the operative days are
unfortunately too scant to enable the historian to do more
than glance at certain general principles. A good deal of
guesswork must necessarily enter into every attempt to trace
Masonry through this tortuous period, uncertain in its
beginning and extended over almost half of the entire
Christian era. There seems reason to believe, however, that
itinerant, cathedral building guilds of masons came into
frequent contact with stationary local guilds and that these
ultimately became amalgamated. The itinerant guilds appear
to have been ma up of men of superior knowledge and wider
experience moreover they had innumerable points of contact
with the world outside of the British Isles. It is therefore to
them that the present age attributes most of the legends,
symbolism and cult practices which so evidently have
descended from remote antiquity. Even so, this is only a
guess - perhaps an intelligent one, certainly plausible, and at
least more credible than the wild and fanciful romances in
which gullible and not over critical writers have sometimes
put their trust.
CHAPTER XII
TRANSITION
by H.L. HAYWOOD
CENTURIES were required to bring the guild system of the
Middle Ages to the prosperity it enjoyed when it was at the summit
of its opulence, and centuries more were called upon to witness its
decline and decay. As part of that system, Operative Masonry
shared the common doom. It was indeed all but extinct when a
more modern age found its machinery adaptable to new purposes
and rescued it from the oblivion toward which it was drifting. Its
salvation can be attributed in all reasonableness to its possession of
cultural dynamics which in themselves were eternal. If it had relied
alone upon its structure as a society for the promotion of a
handicraft, it must have gone the way of other craft guilds. But it
had more than this; it had an internal quality which was ethical,
moral and spiritual, responsive to indestructible demands of human
nature and so constituted as to be peculiarly fitted to meet them.
Although it is customary to regard the formation of the first Grand
Lodge as marking a revolutionary process by which Speculative
Freemasonry replaced Operative Masonry, this is true only in a
limited sense. The new organization abruptly altered the course of
English Freemasonry, but that alteration long had been
foreshadowed in the course of history. An old institution was not
uprooted to make place for a new one; rather the new one sprouted
from the roots of the old, aided thereto by energetic assistance at
the hands of intelligent gardeners. Speculative Freemasonry is
therefore the result of an operation by which eighteenth century
philosophy was grafted upon the hardy stock of immemorial
Operative Masonry, to the great improvement and advantage of
both.
Yet it would be contrary to reason and information to suppose the
speculative element a novelty of the eighteenth century. Something
of the kind appears to have existed from the earliest times. The old
traditions offer proof of this, since they bear testimony to early
efforts at developing a moral philosophy , which had nothing to do
with the carving and placing of stones. And the fact that each
subsequent version of the Old Charges is an improvement upon its
predecessors is a clear intimation that this philosophy under-went
steady development in its progress through the centuries. The great
change of 1717-1723 did not take place until all things had been
made ready for it.
It is said of a man that as soon as he begins to live, that soon he
begins to die. Of Operative Masonry it may at least be said that
when it was in its prime the germs of impending dissolution were
already planted within it. At the moment when the Regius
manuscript was penned, two causes wholly external to the Craft
and beyond its control were beginning to work for its ultimate
undoing. One was the decline of Gothic architecture; the other was
the decline of the guild system. Gothic architecture supplied it with
nourishment, the guild system with the means of social existence.
Some years before the date assigned to the Regius, Europe had
been swept by an appalling visitation of the Black Death. The
plague was no respecter of persons, but it fell heaviest upon the
working classes. It not only took their lives, but it paralyzed
industry, stopped the plough in the field, kept ships tied to their
wharves, forced the mechanic to lay aside his working tools. When
its first effects had passed, the survivors had natural reason to
expect they might be able to profit by a general shortage of labor
and a resultant increase in pay. Those in England were doomed to
disappointment through enactment of the notorious Statute of
Laborers, which made it unlawful for a worker to ask or receive
more than the most miserly pittance which would serve to keep
body and soul together. As amended in 1350, for instance, the law
fixed the pay of a master mason in free stone at four pence for a
day which began at dawn and lasted until nightfall. Such a scale
was bound to drive many a man out of the trade, if he could find
something else at which to earn a living, or, if he could not, to
reduce him to a state of despair.
Many craft guilds offered violent protest and in this the masons
appear to have joined. In so doing they replaying into the hands of
enemies already alarmed by the growing power of the guilds and
their airs of superiority and arrogance. A new wage scale was
published in 1360 and along with it went a decree dissolving all
associations of masons, carpenters, congregations, chapters and
ordinances and absolving all persons from every oath they had
taken binding them to such associations. To add to the burdens of
the poor, an oppressive poll tax was levied in the year 1380. This
was a signal for that popular uprising of workers and peasants
known in history as Wat Tyler's Rebellion, a disturbance so grave
that for a time it seriously threatened to overturn the government.
What part craft guilds may have played in this affair cannot be
stated with certainty, but the occasion served to provide a pretext
for one of a series of statutes forbidding secret assemblies and
unlawful associations. Each new enactment weighed more heavily
upon the craftsmen until the trend of adverse legislation
culminated in 1425 in a law which, among other things, decreed:
"Whereas by the yearly Congregations and Confederacies made by
the Masons in their general Chapiters assembled the good course
and effect of the Statute of Labourers be openly, violated and
broken in subversion of the law, and to the great damage of all the
Commons: our said Lord the King, willing in this case to provide
Remedy, by the advice an consent aforesaid, and at the special
Request of the said Commons, hath ordained and established that
such Chapiters and Congregations shall not be hereafter holden;
and if any such be made, that they cause such Chapiters and
Congregations to be holden, if they be thereof convict, shall be
judged for felons; and that all the other Masons that come to such
Chapiters and Congregations be punished by Imprisonment of their
Bodies, and make Fine and Ransom at the King's Will."
Thus it became a crime, punishable by death, to summon the Craft
to an annual assembly and a misdemeanor, punishable by
imprisonment, to attend one when so summoned. The obvious
purpose was to prevent working men engaged in the mechanical
trades from meeting in conventions at which grievances might be
aired and steps might be taken to procure a betterment in wages. It
apparently did not interfere with local and independent lodges in
their ordinary concerns, but it effectively acted to hinder
systematic co-operation of the various lodges through their duly
accredited representatives; to hinder it, moreover, at a time when
the need for federation was most imperative. It was a blow aimed
at the whole guild system and the fact that masons were singled out
is fair evidence that the civil authorities regarded the workers in
the mason handicrafts as particularly likely, from the nature of
their work, to be drawn together into a compact and powerful
organization.
Meanwhile other hostile forces were at work. The period at which
the Craft then had arrived was one of economic instability. For
almost half a century Europe had been plunged into the desperate
but desultory series of military adventures which is known as the
Hundred Years' War. Nation after nation was drawn into the
struggle and at one time or other almost every country had been
bled white to provide fighting men for the armies, or had been
plundered, harassed and ravaged by invading bands. When the
countries were not fighting each other, they were fighting among
themselves. The death of a king was usually the pretext for a
dynastic struggle; often ambitious pretenders did not wait for a
royal death before essaying to win a crown by the edge of the
sword. England and Scotland did not escape the dreadful turmoil;
when the re not recruiting soldiers for foreign fields they were
impressing simple artisans and peasants into additional battalions
to carry on the national passion for internecine strife.
The religious ardor which had once set men to building churches
and abbeys had begun to find a new and less gentle outlet. The
inevitable reaction which led to the Protestant Reformation was
already in full swing. Bold individuals everywhere were
questioning the credentials of a Church which pretended to
temporal as well as to spiritual supremacy over the universe; which
had erected upon the simple teachings of the Nazarene an
ecclesiastical system that demanded surrender to its control of the
national will as well of the individual conscience, and assumed
with equal arrogance to grant or withhold Paradise, in the case of a
particular sinner, and to grant or withhold a crown, in the case of a
claimant to a throne. The Church responded to every challenge of
its authority with the arguments of material force, with steel, fire
and fagot with slaughter, persecution and confiscation. Albigenses
in France, Lollards in England, questioners everywhere, were
hunted to the death; it was regarded as a deed of merit to plunge a
sword into the heart of a heretic, though he might be but a babbling
old man, whose offense had been to doubt the infallible truth of
some dogma.
Small wonder that the building of churches languished! By this
time Gothic architecture had entered its final stages, in England
reaching the phase sometimes known as the Perpendicular. The
great time for building private homes of stone and brick had not
yet come. Such ecclesiastical building as was still under way was
in the hands of the principal religious guilds. Although these were
constant employers of operative masons - who, in the earlier
centuries, were stanch Catholics to a man - and worked with them
in the greatest harmony, their own days of affluence were
numbered. When the English orders lined up with the Papacy in its
quarrels with Henry VIII, they signed their own death warrant, so
far as England was concerned.
Henry, with one imperial gesture, closed abbeys and monasteries,
confiscating their wealth and declaring their lands forfeit to the
Crown. This served a double purpose, for it not only removed a
dangerous enemy, but it also replenished a royal treasury sorely in
need of funds. Later all fraternities, brotherhoods and religious
guilds were placed under a ban of outlawry.
The Muse of History may have enjoyed many a sardonic smile in
contemplating the fact that the Reformation gave to Freemasonry a
blow which came near being the death of it. Coming as it did upon
other ills of a period of decline, that great moral revolution
deprived Operative Masonry of its last important source of
material nutriment; although it lingered on, it was condemned to
steady deterioration. Not only were its chief employers
impoverished, but its chief art also fell into disrepute. It had
thrived by building great and beautiful temples and lavishing upon
them all the adornments the ingenuity of man could devise. But
these temples stood in the minds of reforming zealots as
representative of all they most feared and hated. Stained glass,
marble carvings, statues, vaulted arches, choirs, altar decorations
and the vestments of priests and acolytes were anathematized as so
many survivals of Romish "Idolatry."
Artisans are peculiarly susceptible to changes popular tastes. The
fashion of bobbed hair in recent months has meant loss of
employment to numerous makers of hair nets in China; the
discovery of substitute fuels has brought problems of the utmost
gravity to the coal industry of the world. So it was with the
operative masons. With a major field of labor close to them, they
could expect to gain a livelihood on through the requirements of
local communities an these were not extensive enough to support a
considerable number of toilers. In consequence there was a rapid
defection of active workers. To this the growing unpopularity of
the guild system and the danger of associating with a society which
was under the suspicion of the authorities no doubt contributed.
Yet there was still a remnant which did not bow unto Baal. In
many a town and borough and hamlet of England and Scotland the
brethren continued to keep their lodges going; continued to cherish
their ancient customs and to ponder over their ancient manuscripts.
There was something in Masonry which could not die, and
therefore it did not die. To comprehend this phenomenon it is
necessary to recall once more that it was more than a mere guild of
craftsmen; it was also a cult with a mystical background and a
moral program. Both background and program had been conceived
in the spirit and preserved in the language of a mechanic art, but
they were universal none the less. As the practical advantages of
association waned, it was natural to expect the philosophical ones
to increase, fostered as they were by the machinery which the
lodge itself afforded for social intercourse. An important factor in
this development was the practice of admitting non-operatives to
membership, a practice which increased more and more in the later
centuries.
That it began, in the prosperous times of the guilds, by the
admission of clerics, mathematicians and others especially
interested in the craft has already appeared. Its expansion in later
days is disclosed by the few fugitive records and minutes that have
been preserved. Of these the minutes of Scottish lodges are oldest
and it is of importance to notice that the oldest Scottish minutes
record the practice as a matter of course. Murray Lyon in his
History of the Lodge of Edinburgh remarks that in 1598, William
Schaw, who in all probability was a non-operative, was described
as Master of the Work and Warden of the Masons. That lodge was
then made up in the main of operatives, and the Scotch
Constitutions prepared by Schaw were obviously intended for the
government of operatives. Furthermore, it is indicated that Schaw's
own predecessor was a nobleman; the wardenship over Masons in
Aberdeen, Banff and Kincardine was held by another non-
operative, the Laird of Udaught. From these accounts it appears
that distinguished patrons not only were accepted as members of
the Craft but also that they were chosen for administrative posts of
the highest importance.
These outsiders were sometimes known as "Gentlemen Masons,"
sometimes as "Theoretical Masons," sometimes as "Geomatic
Masons," and sometimes by other titles. In July of 1634 the Lodge
of Edinburgh admitted as Fellowcrafts three gentlemen, Lord
Alexander, Viscount Canada, his brother, Sir Anthony Alexander,
and Sir Alexander Strachan. Subsequent records indicate that these
afterwards assisted at the "making" of other Masons. In 1637
David Ramsay, a gentleman of the Privy Chamber, was admitted
and in the following year admission was granted to Henry
Alexander, son of the Earl of Stirling. In 1640 General Alexander
Hamilton was accepted and in 1667 Sir Patrick Hume received the
same honor. In 1670 the Right Honorable William Murray and two
members of the Bar, Walter Pringle and Sir John Harper were
admitted.
In England the same custom was followed by some of the lodges,
if not by all. An obscure note in the records of the Mason's
Company of London suggests that it may have been a practice of
that body for a considerable length of time, although the matter is
by no means certain. That organization was incorporated in the
years 1410-1411 and received a coat of arms in 1472 or 1473, but
records of the city show that as an unincorporated guild it was in
existence as early as the year 1356, when rules were formed for its
guidance. In 1530 its name was changed to "The Company of
Freemasons." Associated with it was an organization known as
"The Accepcon," or "The Acception," which, met in the same
hall
and seems to have been subordinate to the Company. Edward
Conder in his Hole Crafte and Fellowship of Masons remarks that
an account book of The Acception shows that in 1619 payments
made by newly made Masons were paid into the funds of the
Company, and that in case of deficits in banquet expenses of The
Acception, the money to meet them was paid out of the Company's
treasury.
If this is correct it indicates: (1) that The Acception collected
money from newly made Masons; (2) that it gave banquets to
newly made Masons; (3) that its financial affairs were strictly
supervised by the Mason's Company. Now the Mason's Company
was an operative organization, and surely there is nothing far-
fetched in supposing - especially in view of the significant title of
the subordinate body - that The Acception was made up of a group
of non-operative, or honorary, members. Moreover, that hypothesis
is strongly ported by the testimony of the first distinguished non-
operative known to have been accepted by an operative English
lodge.
This was none other than Elias Ashmole, one of the most eminent
of the scientists, philosophers and antiquarians of his day. Ashmole
was a man of prodigious energy and catholic interests. He appears
to have dipped into most of the activities of the strenuous times
which he lived. He was born in 1617 at Lichfield and was educated
for the practice of law. When the Great Rebellion came along, he
took up arms, with the of Captain. He was a student of botany,
chemistry and what passed for physics in those times, with a string
leaning toward occultism and especially the cults of alchemy and
astrology. He was an inveterate collector of curious objects of
antiquarian interest, and his collection is preserved at Oxford
University, where is known as the Ashmolean Museum. He was a
Fellow of the Royal Society, received the degree of Doctor of
Medicine and was made a Windsor Herald. His diary was
published in 1717 and from it certain important extracts relating to
Freemasonry have been culled. The following entry appeared in
the diary for 1646:
Oct. 16th - 4:30 p.m. - I was made a Free Mason a Warrington in
Lancashire, with Coll: Henry Mainwaring of Kanincham in
Cheshire. The names of those that were of the Lodge; Mr. Rich
Penket Warden Jr., James Collier, Mr. Rich Sankey, Henry Littler,
John Ellam, Rich; Ellam and Hugh Brewer."
In the diary for March, 1682, or thirty-six years later, appeared the
following entry:
10th - About 5 p.m. I recd. a Sumons to appe. at a Lodge to be held
the next day at Mason's Hall London.
11th - Accordingly I went, and about Noone were admitted into the
Fellowship of Free Masons.
Sr. William Wilson Knight, Capt. Rich; Borthwick, M Will:
Woodman, Mr. Win. Grey, Mr. Samuel Taylour, and Mr. William
Wise.
I was the Senior Fellow among them (it being 35 years since I was
admitted). There were present beside my se the Fellows after
named.
Mr. Tho: Wise Mr of the Masons Company this present yeare. Mr
Thomas Shorthose, Mr. Thomas Shadbolt Waindsford Esqr., Mr.
Nich: Young, Mr. John Shorthose Mr. William Hamon, Mr. John
Thompson, and Mr. Will Stanton.
Wee all dyned at the halfe moone Taverne in Cheapside at a Noble
Dinner, prepaired at the Charge of the New accepted Masons."
In endeavoring to arrive at a conclusion as to whether the
acceptance of non-operatives was a general practice the operative
bodies, it is important by way of recapitulation to bear certain dates
in mind. It is clear that at the time to which the oldest Scottish
minutes can be traced) a non-operative was a Master of the Work
and Warden of the lodge at Edinburgh and that his predecessor
also had been a non-operative. It is clear also that non-operatives
were made Masons in various Scottish lodges down to the
beginning of the of the first Grand Lodge. It is furthermore clear at
the London Company had a subordinate society known as The
Acception in 1619; and that sixty-three years later, non-operatives
were made Masons in the halI of that Company with its Master in
attendance.
But the custom was not confined to London and Edinburgh.
Ashmole was made a Mason in Lancashire. And there is additional
testimony to the same effect, this time from a non-Mason who was
not friendly to the institution. In his Natural History of a
Staffordshire (1686) Dr. Robert Plot wrote:
To these add the Customs relating to the County, whereof they
have one, of admitting Men into the Society of Freemasons, that in
the moorelands of this County seems to be of greater request, than
anywhere else, though I find the Custom spread more or less all
over the Nation; for here I found persons of the most eminent
quality, that did not disdain to be of this Fellowship. Nor indeed
need they, were it of that Antiquity and honor, that is pretended in
a large parchment volum they have amongst them, containing the
History and Rules of the craft of masonry.
Into which Society when they are admitted, they call a meeting (or
Lodg as they term it in some places), which must consist of at lest
5 or 6 of the Ancients of the Order, when the candidats present
with gloves, and so likewise to their wives, and entertain with a
collation according to the Custom of the place: This ended, they
proceed to the admission of them, which chiefly consists in the
communication of certain secret signes, whereby they are known
to one another all over the Nation, by which means they have
maintenance whither ever they travel: for if any man appear though
altoger unknown that can show any of these signes to a Fellow of
the Society, whom they otherwise call an accepted mason, he is
obliged promptly to come to him, from what company or place
soever he be in, nay, tho' from the top of a Steeple (what hazard or
inconvenience soever he run) to know his pleasure and assist him;
viz., if he want work he is bound to find him some; or if he cannot
doe that, to give him mony or otherwise support him till work can
be had; which is one of their Articles.
The society of which Dr. Plot was writing was undoubtedly an
association of operative masons, but it was one to which "persons
of the most eminent quality" did not disdain to belong. Ashmole
was certainly eminent, as was also his friend and father-in-law, Sir
William Dugdale, who was likewise an antiquarian, and Sir
Christopher Wren, the architect. That Dugdale was a Mason is not
established, but he undoubtedly had intimate knowledge of the
institution and is known to have discussed its practices and origin.
Whether Wren was accepted into the fraternity is a subject of much
debate, Robert Freke Gould having strongly supported the
negative. But John Aubrey, antiquarian and author, left a
memorandum saying Sir Christopher was "adopted a brother" at a
convention of Masons at St. Paul's Church on May 18, 1691. The
Postboy, a London publication, in a contemporaneous account of
his death described him as "that worthy Freemason." F. De P.
Castells in an essay in the Transactions of the Author's Lodge
records an excerpt from the minutes of the Lodge of Antiquity,
dated June 3, 1723, which says: "The set of Mahogany
Candlesticks presented to this Lodge by its worthy old Master, Sir
Christopher Wren, ordered to be carefully deposited in a wooden
case lin'd with cloth to be Immediately purchased for the purpose."
That at the two Bacons, Roger and Sir Francis, were Masons has
long been a legend both believed and disputed, although there is no
reliable evidence either way. A discussion of this question belongs
properly to the obscure and troublesome problem of the
Rosicrucians and kindred occult societies. Much more has been
said about it than can be proved, and in the present work it can be
noticed only in passing.
There can be little doubt that during the Middle Ages more than
one society was devoted to the pursuit of studies which were
forbidden by Church and State. Kabbalism, astrology, alchemy,
and various mystical philosophies were ticklish things to deal with
in an age which believed in witchcraft and sorcery and which, in a
heated moment, was likely to lay hold upon a sorcerer and burn
him to death. Now and then men engaged in these occult concerns
united themselves for the purpose of carrying on correspondence
and transmitting their discoveries. They were the scientists of their
day, and to their labors may be traced the beginnings of modern
chemistry, physics and astronomy. Of all the associations into
which the Alchemistical Philosophers or Hermetic Philosophers, as
they are variously called, formed themselves, the most
considerable appears to have been the Rosicrucian. Whether that
body was more than a shadow organization is far from certain, but,
at any rate, it afforded a cover sufficient for the purpose and many
learned men called themselves Rosicrucians in their books and
other writings.
The supposition that a considerable number of them also became
Freemasons is only supposition. There are survivals in the modem
Masonic ritual which strongly suggest hermetic influence, and not
a few students have believed that it is through this channel some of
the Fraternity's oldest cult survivals ought to be traced. Albert Pike
was inclined to suspect that Ashmole became interested in
Freemasonry because he was particularly concerned with hermetic
philosophy and believed that the secrets of the society would throw
light upon his hobby. Others have hinted that Ashmole's
acceptance in itself forged a connecting link between Freemasonry
and Rosicrucianism.
It is entirely possible that more than one distinguished Englishman
who dabbled in occultism dabbled also in Freemasonry. Indeed, it
would be rather curious if, after making the acquaintance of the
one, they had not investigated the other. Men in an age of mental
tyranny searching for a medium through which they might be able
to find liberty for philosophical thought and the safe interchange of
ideas might well hope to find it behind the tyled door of a Masonic
lodge. It is reasonably certain that many scholars who entered the
Fraternity in the eighteenth century did so for the freedom they
expected to find there. But the whole matter is so befogged in
doubt, uncertainty, hypothesis and speculation that it scarcely
belongs to the realm of Masonic history, strictly so called.
At all events, the structure of Operative Masonry had altered by
imperceptible stages between the days of Richard II and those of
James II. At the time of the Revolution of 1688, the camel which
had got its nose through a flap of the tent in 1390 had managed to
get almost its whole body inside. In other words, the non-
operatives were rapidly driving the operatives into a small corner
of what had once been their own domicile. But the tent itself was
still. a good one, offering refuge to new purposes in need of just
such shelter. The final stage of transition was to take place in the
thirty odd years which intervened between the time when Dr. Plot
wrote the spirited paragraphs recently quoted and the beginning of
the Grand Lodge era in 1717.
By then the operative art itself had become little more than a
memory. The old lodges were collections of individuals who met
occasionally because they had been in the habit of meeting. Their
rosters contained the names of many who had never earned blisters
to their hands by wielding setting maul or chisel. Many had already
closed their doors for the last time. The Old Manuscripts were still
treasured, but they had become too worn and too precious to be
handled except upon occasions of state. Such craftsmanship as was
actually performed was but a shadow of that which had once given
vitality to the brotherhood. Tools and implements of architecture
were still employed, but more as symbols for the inculcation of
moral lessons than as instruments of labor. Now and then, on some
St. John's day, there might be a banquet and assembly of a given
lodge, but as a going concern the institution was moribund. Thus
the curtain of history falls, at the end of an act, upon a scene of
deterioration and decay, only to rise again upon a new scene - this
time of health and prosperity.
CHAPTER XIII
THE FIRST GRAND LODGE
THE movement which culminated in the formation of a Grand
Lodge in London in the year 1717 was part of a revival of
drooping spirits which at that time was bringing a new sense of
security to all England. It was an era of conviviality and gayety,
long overdue. For the first time in a generation the specter of civil
war appeared to have been completely exorcised, and although
Jacobite plotters against the security of the Hanoverian dynasty
were still busy at their conspiracies in Paris, even making use of
Freemasonry to further their ends, the utter futility of their last
military venture was so fresh in the popular mind that none except
the blindest partisans of the House of Stuart believed they would
ever again be able to summon formidable force to the field of
battle.
Many stirring events had taken place since that day when worthy
Elias Ashmole and his trusty brethren had sat at the making of
Masons in London. King James II had been chased from his
throne; sturdy and dour, William of Orange had come, had fought,
had worn the crown and passed to his eternal reward; Queen Anne
had succeeded to him and in turn had passed away in the political
turmoil which assured a Hanoverian succession; the first of the
Georges had become king; union had been brought about between
England and Scotland and, finally, the Jacobite rising of 1715 had
subsided at Preston and Sheriffmuir, an waggish bards were still
singing with gusto of the fight where -
There's some say that we wan,
And some say that they wan,
And some say that none wan at a', man!
But ae thing I'm sure,
That at Sheriffmuir
A battle there was that I saw, man!
And we ran and they ran
And they ran and we ran,
And we ran and they ran awa', man!
Finally, and as a culminating reason for the English sense of
security, old Louis XIV, ablest, subtlest an most ambitious
monarch of his century, had just passe away in France. Continental
Europe was so busy with trouble of its own that France was ready
to form alliance with England for the naval protection of the both
against the ambitions of Spain, an alliance which by the way, was
to mark that ultimate maritime advance by which Britannia was
truly and fully to rule the waves.
Busy days they were, too, as well as stirring, for London was a
cauldron of politics, Whig and Tory striving with every resource
which ingenious and not too scrupulous politicians could devise to
gain or retain supremacy. Pamphleteers, satirists, ballad makers,
literary geniuses and literary hacks waged incessant strife with the
written or printed word. Gossip, scandal and intrigue filled the air.
To pen an effective lampoon, however scurrilous or inaccurate,
was to achieve for an author acclaim as a wit; reputations were
made and unmade by the wagging of a head.
There were no newspapers worthy of the name in its modern sense,
and for a man to be conversant with what was going on it. was
necessary for him to frequent places where the gossip of the hour
would be served to suit his taste. It might be the salon of some lady
of fashion; it might be around the gaming table or at an athletic
field; it most commonly would be at some tavern where birds of a
feather observed their immemorial privilege of flocking together.
Thus it was always possible to combine business and pleasure and
not infrequently the pleasure proved more important than the
business.
A phenomenon of the times was the growth of social clubs. An
astonishing number of them sprang up in London. Almost any
pretext would serve for the organization of a new one. A person
with a long nose would observe others of like facial peculiarities
and they would hunt kindred physiognomies and create a club.
Musicians, actors, scribblers, literary folk, mountebanks, clerks,
individuals of every rank and degree, congregated according to
their respective interests. Some of these organizations were serious
and devoted to the improvement of the members, but a
considerable number appear to have been mere cloaks for the
indulgence of appetite. It was a time of hearty eating and heavy
drinking and many a man's consequence among his fellows was
marked by the number of bottles of wine he could consume before
failing insensible beneath the table.
That the Masonic societies of London were not of this ephemeral
and purely convivial type the evidence conclusively shows.
Possibly it was due to a specific intention to preserve the brethren
from the extravagances of the hour that strict care was taken to see
that steady heads supervised them in their hours of relaxation and
to see that means of refreshment were not perverted to excess and
intemperance. Moreover, the Masonic societies had been in
existence before this new clubdom came into being. It is altogether
likely, however, that they were greatly influenced by the habits of
the period and that they in turn influenced other societies. It is at
least certain that their esoteric character subjected them to the
liveliest curiosity; there was much speculation as to the nature of
their "secrets"; and at least one club was formed for the purpose of
ridiculing and caricaturing them.
How many lodges there were in the metropolis at that time is not
certain; there were certainly four and there may have been others.
These were undoubtedly remnants of old operative lodges, but
apparently much. reduced in circumstances. As was the case with
all such bodies in England and Scotland, they were autonomous,
each existing as from time immemorial, with exclusive right to
determine the qualifications of its members, acknowledging no
superior Masonic authority, yet holding allegiance to the ancient
customs and venerating the Old Charges.
Whatever had been the nature of the assemblies held in earlier
times, they had by then ceased entirely. An individual lodge might
meet for its own purposes, but it was under no compulsion to
assemble at the behest of anybody outside its membership, or that
of a sister lodge. Strictly speaking, there was no such thing even
then as a general fraternity of Freemasons; there were lodges of
Freemasons and they may have interchanged courtesies and
observed relatively identical practices, but each was sovereign and
independent in its own right; some of those which boasted of
immemorial existence exercised the privilege of constituting new
lodges when occasion demanded and opportunity served.
That there were more societies in London than the now famous
"Four Old Lodges" and that they had some kind of connection with
one another is indicated by William Preston in his Illustrations of
Masonry. But Preston's accuracy has been impeached on so many
grounds it is unsafe to accept without further proof his statements
in this regard; it is therefore necessary to record that they have not
as yet been substantiated by dependable corroborative testimony.
According to him several lodges were organized in the city after
the great London fire and Sir Christopher Wren acted as a Grand
Master for them all.
At all events, the brethren of at least the Four Old Lodges decided
in the year 1716 that they needed better co-operation with one
another than they had enjoyed in the past. As was the custom of the
times, these societies were in the habit of meeting at certain taverns
- one at the Goose and Gridiron Alehouse in St. Paul's Churchyard,
one at the Crown Alehouse in Parker's Lane near Drury Lane, one
at the Apple Tree Tavern in Charles Street, Covent Garden, and
one at the Rummer and Grapes Tavern in Channel Row,
Westminster.
Just how the matter started is not known; Dr. Anderson, who gives
the earliest account of it, unfortunately was not gifted with a true
journalistic sense. Otherwise he would have tried to ascertain who
first broached the suggestion, how it was received, how it was
discussed and how the enterprise was set in motion. It appears,
however, that on a day in the year 1716, representatives of the Four
met at the Apple Tree Tavern. Then, having called to the Chair the
oldest Master Mason present who was Master of a lodge they
resolved to constitute themselves into "a Grand Lodge pro
tempore." Anderson says this was done in due form, although what
that due form could have been the worthy doctor does not indicate.
Among other things the assembly voted to hold four quarterly
communications (Anderson says to "revive" them) of the officers
of the lodges, to be known as the Grand Lodge. They also decided
to hold an annual assembly (Anderson says "the" annual assembly)
and feast, thereat to choose a Grand Master from among their own
number, and to continue this practice until they should "have the
honour of a Noble Brother at their head."
This was done, apparently with considerable pomp and ceremony
on the feast day of St. John the Baptist in the following year - June
24, 1717. This epoch-making event in the history of Freemasonry
took place at the Goose and Gridiron Alehouse. As before, the
oldest Master of a Lodge then present was called to the chair. A list
of available candidates was present and from the number the
assemblage, by a show o hands, chose Anthony Sayer, gentleman,
to be the first Grand Master of Masons. Jacob Lamball, a
carpenter, and Captain Joseph Elliot were chosen Grand Wardens.
The Grand Master was then invested with a badge of office,
presented to him with ceremony by the presiding oldest Master,
and was declared duly installed, receiving thereupon the homage
due his exalted station. After that the assemblage went to dinner.
Although various ancient dignitaries are said in the legends to have
been Grand Masters, authentic history must accord to Anthony
Sayer the honor of being the first man to whom that title could be
properly applied, its modern sense at least. Even to him, the
distinction was at the moment a somewhat doubtful one. He was
Grand Master of Masons by suffrage of representatives of four
London lodges. Other lodges in other parts of England and
Scotland had nothing whatever to do with his selection. To most of
them his titles and pretensions must have seemed the fruits of
usurpation and innovation. Such authority as he had was that
which the constituent lodges could confer upon him. Other lodges
and other brethren might, if they chose, hold aloof. Many of them
did so; some of them in fact set up rival institutions and nominated
rival Grand Masters. Nevertheless, the Grand Mastership then
created continued to exist as by prescriptive right against all
deniers and contenders and finally, after years of struggle, hardship
and compromise, became established as the fount and origin from
which all regular Freemasonry has since derived sustenance.
Unless they were endued with prescience of an unaccountably high
order, it is scarcely probable that the brethren who went so gayly to
dinner in the Goose and Gridiron Tavern on that day in 1717 had
more than the vaguest notion of what they had done. It is evident
from subsequent events that the worthy Mr. Sayer had not the
faintest conception of what it meant. A few good-natured and well-
intentioned individuals had simply adopted an expedient which
seemed advisable for their immediate purposes. That expedient
was like a dam thrown across the brook of Operative Masonry - a
tiny stream for all that it trickled through a chasm of centuries -
destined to raise it into a mighty reservoir which should afterwards
send its waters to the remotest corners of the earth. As yet,
however, no man could have foreseen all the consequences which
were to flow from that particular act.
From the imperfect glimpses which history has permitted, it
appears likely that the first Grand Master was chosen because he
was a rather amiable old gentleman of considerable influence
among the operatives of the Four Old Lodges. Apparently he was
not a man of considerable intellectual ability. Either he did not
comprehend to the full what his elevation meant or, if he did, he
was too old-fashioned and conservative in his ways to keep pace
with the energetic men who were rapidly rising to power in the
new institution. In 1718 he was succeeded by George Payne, a
non-operative of marked vigor. In 1719 he was appointed Grand
Warden by T.J. Desagullers, who was chosen Grand Master in that
year. A few years later his personal fortunes had sunk to an ebb so
low that he called upon the Grand Lodge for pecuniary assistance.
At some time in those days of decline he appears to have become
estranged from the new association and to have gone back to the
old operative practice of instituting new lodges without proper
warrant from the Grand Lodge. He was summoned to explain his
conduct before that body in the year 1730. He was acquitted of a
charge of practicing clandestinism, but was told that his course had
been irregular and was solemnly admonished not to offend further
in that regard. Three years later he was tyler of Old King's Arms
Lodge No. 28 and received a charitable donation from it. He died
in 1742 and was buried with Masonic honors, many distinguished
members of the Fraternity attending funeral services.
The second Grand Master was of far different character. George
Payne was a well-to-do man, somewhat interested in antiquities,
and was of a forceful, energetic temperament. Secretary of the Tax
Office and possessed of a wide acquaintance among men in public
life, he had personal connections which were invaluable both to
him and to the budding Fraternity. He had been Master of the
lodge which met at the Rummer and Grapes and no doubt was
identified with the new movement from the beginning. He appears
to have been among the first to realize the possibilities of
speculative development in the old operative system. These he
advanced with both tact and vigor.
He and his associates appear to have understood all along that the
operatives were to be placated as much as possible and to be led to
accept the changes, which by now were inevitable, with a
minimum of dissatisfaction and discontent. The time was soon to
come when the new institution could break completely with the
old, but the correct way had to be found. Accordingly, when Payne
was made Grand Master in 1718, Thomas Morrice, a stone cutter,
and John Cordwell, a carpenter, were made Grand Wardens. One
of the first acts of the new executive was to invite the brethren to
bring in any old writings and records they possessed concerning
Masons and Masonry, "in order to show the usages of ancient
times."
But a figure of even greater Masonic stature than that of Payne had
already arisen. Some four or five years before the institution of the
Grand Lodge, the Rev. John Theophilus Desaguliers had been
made a Mason. Preston says that interesting event took place in the
lodge which met at the Goose and Gridiron. He was a man of
commanding personality, sanguine and romantic disposition, a
naturalist of note and a Fellow of the Royal Society. Historians are
not wholly agreed as to whether he or Payne was the leading spirit
in the happenings of those early years, but there can be little doubt
that the remarkable abilities of Desaguliers have left a more lasting
impression on Masonic thought.
Nor is it necessary to make invidious comparisons between the
two. They seem to have worked together in a manner which was
productive of excellent results. Payne has come to be considered as
the father of Masonic Jurisprudence; Desaguliers as the father of
Masonic ritual. Payne interested influential men of affairs in the
great undertaking; Desaguliers attracted those with a bent for
learning and scholarship. Between them they engineered within the
course of two or three years a complete transformation of English
Freemasonry. When Payne retired from the Grand East at the end
of 1718, Desaguliers succeeded to that station; when Desaguliers
finished his term of office, Payne succeeded to it for a second time.
Between them they filled the highest chair for three of the only
four years in the history of the English Grand Lodge when it was
not occupied by a nobleman. The Duke of Montagu ascended the
Masonic throne in 1721. The Duke of Wharton succeeded him in
1722 and appointed Desaguliers his Deputy. The Duke of Dalkeith
became Grand Master in 1723 and again appointed Desaguliers
Deputy. By that time the craft of Speculative Freemasonry had
been fairly launched, but fifteen years later George Payne and Dr.
Desaguliers were still active and influential, for they took part in
the action approving Anderson's New Book of Constitutions.
it was clearly apparent to Payne, when he assumed authority in
1718, that the operative system was too loose and disjointed to
serve the practical needs of a compact society of the kind he and
his associates had in mind. One of the first things the new Grand
Lodge had done was to seize control of the machinery for creating
new lodges. It had decreed that no Masons might assemble as a
lodge without warrant from the Grand Lodge, although exception
was made in case of the original Four Old Lodges, which were
conceded to exist as of immemorial right. Straightway there arose,
however, a necessity for prescribing the manner in which Masons
should be made and lodges constituted. The Grand Lodge
proclaimed itself a supreme tribunal, but it had no definite body of
laws through which to exercise jurisprudence. Immediate
codification of lawful customs and practices became imperative.
To this task Grand Master Payne set himself with great
earnestness. His appeal for the brethren to bring in "The Old
Gothic Constitutions," was the first step in that direction. This was
followed by a general request for records and minutes of operative
lodges - a request which, by the way, alarmed some of the
conservatives to such extent that in many cases those possessing
these documents burned them rather than see them fall into the
hands of the "innovators."
Payne and his associates were too wise to proceed with
unnecessary precipitation. They extracted from the Old
Constitutions such material as was usable and this was compiled
into a set of regulations which Payne put into effect in his second
term of office. These reiterated the Old Charges to a considerable
extent, but with this significant difference - the language which
once had been used for the guidance of a working craft in the
practice of its mechanical business had taken on a symbolical
meaning for the guidance of a speculative society which had no
concern with a mechanical business.
Meanwhile another change of even greater importance was being
made. However admirable the ritualistic observances of operative
lodges may have been for the peculiar purposes of those guilds,
they were far too crude and simple for the purposes of speculative
lodges into which non-operatives of culture and broad
understanding were being admitted. So far as anything on the
subject is known, it is reasonably certain that the operative system
of initiation was not graduated into a series of three degrees; or at
least not into a series the successive steps of which were so sharply
differentiated as they are in the modern speculative system. There
are reasons for believing that there were at least a "Master's Part"
and an "Apprentice Part" in the early days of Grand Lodge, but
there is no authentic record a third part at that time. Robert Freke
Gould was convinced after exhaustive investigation that it was not
until about 1740 that the Third Degree met with general
acceptance. The oldest record of a lodge working all three was
made in the year 1732.
Mackey's History of Freemasonry inclines to the belief that the
system of three degrees was perfected by Dr. Desaguliers,
probably in the years 1720 and 1721, but that it was not practiced
generally by the lodges before 1730, because those bodies
preferred to cling to the old operative ritual with which they were
more familiar. It is supposed that about this time the Legend of the
Temple began to assume the importance it has since held, for it
was not long afterwards that inquisitive brethren began inquiring
into a probable sequel of that tale. Certainly there is strong ground
for believing that only one initiatory ceremony was in use in the
Middle Ages, since the Schaw Statutes provided that "na maister
or fellow of craft be ressavit or admittit without the number of sex
maisters and twa enterit prenteissis the wardene of that lodge being
one of the said sex."
Regardless of how the initiatory rite may have been divided before
Dr. Desaguliers gave his personal attention to the matter, there can
be no doubt that his labors were followed by a revision and
remodeling of the work which completely changed it to a
speculative character. It is of record that the learned doctor paid a
visit on August 24, 1721, to the Lodge of Edinburgh, for a
conference with the "Deacon, Warden and Master Masons, " who
received him after he had given satisfactory proof of his Masonic
qualifications. Inasmuch as this was at a time when diligent search
was being prosecuted for every scrap of Masonic information, it is
a fair inference that he was seeking what light he could get on the
ancient practices.
The Lodge at Edinburgh was an old one. Moreover, less than ten
years before the Desaguliers, visit had been torn by a controversy
over the question whether the Masters alone were entitled to give
"the Mason Word" and the secrets connected with it and to receive
the fees arising therefrom. The Fellows had disputed this right and
this led to schism and the creation of a new lodge. The issue was
submitted to arbitration and the arbiters decided that the Fellows
might meet by themselves, give "the Mason Word" and receive the
fees. A problem of such importance could not but concern those
who were working out the destinies of Freemasonry in London.
Precisely what Dr. Desaguliers did to the ritual and with it there is
no way of knowing. The likeliest hypothesis is that he took a
somewhat rambling and uncertain operative system, rearranged it,
reduced it to order, supplied certain deficiencies, rephrased parts of
it in sonorous eighteenth-century English and preserved everything
in it which was hallowed by time and associations. Probably his
most important contribution lay in the field of re-interpretation,
thereby investing with moral and ethical meaning many things
which before had held only the practical implications of operative
craftsmanship. That his function was not that of an inventor there
is every reason to believe, especially when the modern ritual is
compared with such survivals of the old one as have come down
through the Old Manuscripts.
Meanwhile the new Grand Lodge was developing with amazing
rapidity. In 1717 there had been but four old lodges to lend their
support; by December of 1721 twenty lodges acknowledged
allegiance. Then it had been necessary to elevate a person of little
importance to its highest office. Now a duke was at the head of it.
Gentlemen of learning and fashion were knocking at lodge doors
for admittance. For its first three years the Grand Lodge had held
its assemblies at a tavern and to these all Master Masons were
invited. Now it was necessary to hold them in Stationers' Hall; they
were no longer mass meetings but were conventions which each
lodge was represented by its Master and Wardens.
At a Communication on September 29, 1721, the Grand Master
ordered Dr. James Anderson to prepare a new digest of the charges
and laws or, as a record expresses it, "His Grace's Worship and the
Lodge finding Fault with all the Copies of the old Gothic
Constitutions, order'd Brother James Anderson, A.M., to digest the
same in a new and better method." The task was prosecuted with
such vigor that on December 27 the Grand Master appointed a
committee of fourteen to examine Anderson's manuscript and
make report. On March 25, 1722, the committee reported it had
read the manuscript, "the History, Charges, Regulations and
Master's Song," and had approved it with certain alterations. This
work, which was revised in 1738 and which is commonly known
as Anderson's Constitutions of 1723, was in every real sense an
official pronouncement of the Grand Lodge, and it remained for a
long time the cornerstone of Masonic literature. Both Desaguliers
and Payne had their hands in it; Desaguliers wrote an introduction
and Payne's Regulations were incorporated in the text.
Following the introduction, the first part of the book is devoted to
the "history" of the Craft, an account of which has been given
heretofore in the present discussion. The second part is given over
to "The Charges of a Free-Mason, extracted from the ancient
records of Lodges beyond the Sea, and of those of England,
Scotland and Ireland, for the use of the Lodges in London: to be
read at the making of New Brethren, or when the Master shall
order it."
The "Charges" are followed by Payne's Regulations, which
composed the constitution and by-laws of the Grand Lodge. There
are thirty-nine articles in all and a postscript prescribing the
manner of constituting a new lodge. To this was attached a decree
of approval, signed by the Grand Master, Deputy Grand Master,
Grand Wardens and the Masters and Wardens of particular lodges.
By way of appendix there was a Master's song, composed by
Anderson - a long, desultory, rhyming narrative of the "history" of
Freemasonry, divided into five parts and twenty-eight stanzas and
a chorus. A Warden's song and an Enter'd 'Prentices' song were
added later.
By approving this work the Grand Lodge burned all its bridges
behind it. As it was doubtless intended to be, Anderson's
Constitutions was the Magna Carta, the Declaration of
Independence and the Riot Act of Speculative Freemasonry. It
served notice on the world that this Grand Lodge was the sole legal
heir of Operative Masonry, and, since an heir rarely comes into his
inheritance before the decease of the person from whom he
inherits, that Operative Masonry had definitely passed from the
scene.
So far as that demise was concerned, the announcement was a trifle
premature. Operative Masonry still had enough life to voice
indignant protest. The book provoked an uproar in Grand Lodge
itself, conservatives strongly opposing it. Some who were not so
conservative objected to the manner in which the author had used
Payne's Regulations. Outside the Craft Anderson's flamboyant
account of Masonic history brought ridicule upon the author, as it
has continued to bring ridicule upon him to this present day. It is
said that he was so deeply pained by its reception that he did not
appear again in Grand Lodge for eight years.
Notwithstanding all this, the Grand Lodge continued to thrive and
to gain accessions. Of the original Four Old Lodges, the one which
met at the Goose and Gridiron moved its headquarters several
times and once or twice changed its name. In 1768 it began calling
itself Antiquity Lodge No. 1. After the reunion of "Moderns" and
"Antients" it was listed as Antiquity Lodge No. 2. The one which
met at the Crown Tavern became extinct in 1736 and was struck
off the Grand Lodge list in 1740. The one which met at the Apple
Tree Tavern received a new charter in 1723. After having shifted
up and down on the list, it changed its name in 1768 to Lodge of
Fortitude. In 1818 it united with Cumberland Lodge, which had
been organized in 1753, under the title Fortitude and Old
Cumberland Lodge No. 12. The fourth Old Lodge had many
vicissitudes of fortune. In the early days it had many distinguished
members, including dukes, earls, counts, barons and knights and
such notable Craftsmen as Payne, Desaguliers and Anderson. Its
membership began to fall off in 1735, and in 1747 it was ordered
erased from the lists. Four years later it was restored, but it
continued to Ianguish until, in 1774, it was merged with Somerset
House Lodge, a healthy and prosperous body which was able to
preserve the old organization's continuity and kept its number.
CHAPTER XIV
History of Freemasonry by H.L. Haywood
THE GREAT DIVISION
IT is a maxim of correct military strategy that no army invading
strange territory is safe when it leaves unreduced in its rear an
enemy stronghold. However sharply invested by besiegers, such a
focal point of opposition forms a constant menace, particularly
threatening if things should go wrong at the front of invasion. If
there are several of them in occupied territory, the slightest
relaxation of vigor or vigilance upon the art of the conqueror may
be the signal for an uprising of formidable proportions. Because it
over-looked this contingency, or at least was unable to provide
against it, the new Grand Lodge was compelled to enter into a
struggle for Masonic supremacy which covered practically the
whole of its first century, and from which it emerged half
victorious and half vanquished.
Speculative Masonry was in a real sense an invasion of territory
which Operative Masonry had occupied from time immemorial. It
was not invited into that field by general suffrage of the operative
bodies. By no stretch of the imagination could the Four Old
Lodges of London claim power of attorney to act for the whole
Craft, to sign away, devise or bequeath the rights of sister lodges.
When the Grand Lodge in 1717 drew up a decree forbidding
Masons to assemble as Lodges without its express license, it
arrogated to itself an empery which it could hope to maintain only
by the law of adverse possession and by the exercise of such moral
and spiritual forces as it could bring to bear against any and every
contender. Conceivably, what it had done others might do, and it
would be required to look to its own defenses whenever its
authority should be challenged.
It began, however, with great advantages. The four, original
constituent lodges were situated at the capita of the nation. They
were united for a common purpose and thus formed the strongest
Masonic unit then in existence. They left the door wide open for
other lodges to enter, whenever they might choose to do so. There
was, to be sure, an admittance fee to be paid at the gate. This was
nothing less than formal surrender of sovereignty to the Grand
Lodge, by the terms of which the petitioning body should
acknowledge itself as forever afterwards existing by means of the
Grand Lodge's warrant. But of far greater importance was the fact
that the Grand Lodge could create at the most considerable center
of population and influence in the Kingdom as many new lodges as
it pleased - create them, too, at a time when the popularity of the
institution was so great that throngs of eager applicants were
forever besieging its portals. By the simple expedient of refusing to
regard "regular" all lodges which refused to conform, and thereby
stamping their members with the stigma of clandestinism, the new
organization clothed itself in armor of steel. Having seized
sovereign power, it invited all Masons to submit thereto, but the
invitation was such as dictators habitually extend, since unpleasant
consequences were in store for all who refused to accept.
The first Grand Lodge was the creature of the Four Old Lodges,
but once created it in turn became creator. All regular Grand
Lodges since that time have come into existence in much the same
way. Stripped to essentials, a Grand Lodge is simply a piece of
machinery whereby the will of its constituent lodges is expressed.
Having brought it into being, those bodies voluntarily accept its
authority and acknowledge its sovereignty. That surrender once
made is irrevocable without the Grand Lodge's consent - a consent
which, by the way, is usually given only for the purpose of
allowing a member lodge to help establish a new Grand Lodge.
Henceforth each constituent lodge, whatever may have been its
previous character or the nature of antecedent allegiances,
continues to exist only by virtue of the charter or dispensation it
has received in return for its surrender. New lodges, of course,
come into existence only by its fiat and are its creatures from the
beginning. This is now a self-perpetuating system which has
worked admirably in practice, but in the first quarter of the
eighteenth century it was a hitherto untried experiment.
The position of the Grand Lodge in the years 1717-23 was
somewhat analogous to that of a revolutionary junta which has
seized the capital of a nation, run up its flag and invited the whole
country to come in or be shot. In this case, a very important section
of the country welcomed the enterprise as giving promise of a
stable and satisfactory government where all before had been
anarchy and confusion. But there were those who preferred the
confusion of the old regime to the orderliness of the new. Some of
these made a grudging, half-hearted submission which permitted
them to enter the new organization and at the same time to
maintain within it a faction of opposition and dissent. Still others
refused to have anything whatever to do with it. A few of both
classes waited in sullen silence until they might have opportunity
to raise under aggressive leadership the standard of counter-
revolution.
It was not possible for the prime movers to iron out all such
difficulties as they went along. The best they could do was to trust
to the counsels of expediency, feeling their way forward almost
from day to day, strengthening themselves as opportunity served.
When they encountered an obstacle they could not remove they
simply went around it. Of all obstacles the chief one was that
innate conservatism, that hostility change, which has always been
one of the most striking characteristics of Freemasonry.
The student who would get a true sense of what the movement
involved must bear that conservatism always in mind and,
furthermore, must remember that Operative Masonry was very
largely in the keeping of Britons of the mechanical trades,
traditionally stubborn and tenacious in respect of old privileges and
rights. The whole trend of the movement itself was toward taking
control of the institution out of their hands and giving it over to an
aristocracy of birth and learning. Moreover, in furtherance of that
tendency it was proposed to make radical alterations in the body of
Masonry itself - such alterations were, in fact necessary if the basis
was to be shifted from its operative to its philosophical phases and
if it was to be converted into a social organization for the
amusement and instruction of persons of culture. Although it was
never intended to do more than rearrange old customs to make
them adaptable to new purposes, a certain amount of innovation
was inescapable. Since every innovation was certain to encounter
resistance, the task the reformers had. set themselves was bound in
the nature of things to be exceedingly difficult.
So it proved in the event . They began by making full allowance
for the tender susceptibilities of the elder operative brethren. It was
perhaps this that led them to the choice of Anthony Sayer for the
first Grand Master, and to the selection of operatives, or at least of
mechanics, for the early Grand Wardens. From the difficulties in
which Sayer ultimately involved himself it is apparent that even he
was but a half-hearted convert. Only a few years after the Grand
Lodge had claimed exclusive authority for constituting new lodges,
Sayer was found disregarding that fundamental law of modern
Masonry to such extent that he was summoned to appear and make
satisfactory amends for contumacy. If Sayer, who had been
honored with the Grand Mastership, was so careless of Grand
Lodge discipline, it may be assumed that others were even more
contemptuous of it.
Maintaining discipline was indeed the hardest task with which the
new body was confronted. How hard was it is shown by the
remarkable course which the Duke of Wharton pursued in
obtaining the Grand Mastership. Montagu had been so successful
in his administration in 1721 that the more influential brethren
wished to keep him in office for the ensuing year. Accordingly the
annual feast at which a new choice was to be made was postponed.
But Wharton, recently made a Mason, although not a Master of a
Lodge, summoned a number of Masons to meet him at Stationers'
Hall on June 24, 1722. No Grand Officers were there, so this group
called upon the oldest Master Mason present to preside. Wharton
was then declared elected Grand Master of Masons.
These proceedings were so grossly irregular that many
distinguished brethren refused to have anything to do with the
pretensions of Wharton. Nevertheless Montagu, wishing to
preserve peace at any price, summoned the Grand Lodge to meet
on January 17, 1723, when Wharton, after he had promised to be
"true and faithful" was "proclaimed" Grand Master in proper
form.
The Earl of Dalkeith was formally elected Grand Master on April
25 and was proclaimed on June 24, 1723.
By this time the Grand Lodge had been strengthened by the
adherence of not fewer than twenty-five lodges, since that number
sent representatives to the January convocation. Others there were,
however, which not only refused to acknowledge its authority but
actually flouted it. At least one of these set itself up in 1725 as a
Grand Lodge in its own right, with full power to license and
constitute new lodges. This was an immemorial body which sat at
York; an account of its action will appear more fully in another
part of the present narrative.
After the election of Montagu, no further attempt to have been
made to curry favor with operative brethren by appointing them to
high office. Indeed the institution was rapidly becoming an
aristocratic one in personnel as well as in ideals, and it felt itself
strong enough to go forward on the new course it had marked out
for itself. That was the year in which Anderson prepared the first
draft of his Constitutions and in which Desaguliers was busiest at
his revision of the ritual. The reception which Anderson's
manuscript met was a stormy one - so stormy, in fact, that after
receiving it the Grand Lodge seems to have been in no great rush
to print and circulate it. When finally it should appear in its 1738
form, it was to precipitate a greater conflict which for long had
been impending.
Whatever it was that Desaguliers, did to the ritual, there can be no
doubt that the changes then proposed were so drastic that a
majority of the lodges was inclined to hold aloof from them.
Although they may have been exemplified in Grand Lodge itself -
especially that part of them which comprised the Third Degree -
they do not seem to have been in common practice in the lodge
rooms for some eight or ten years. Nevertheless they must have
been widely discussed. Freemasonry had become so popular in
London that all sorts of men wished to identify themselves with it.
Those who could not get in by the door were strongly disposed to
slip in, if they could, by the window. Numerous clandestine lodges
were formed; there were "exposures" of the secret work and one
book, called Masonry Dissected, purported to disclose all the
secret work. It has been suggested that the revelations of this
publication were so near the truth that Grand Lodge took alarm and
hastened to change the ritual on that account. How much
plausibility can be attached to that theory it is now impossible to
say. Certainly there were alterations in the method of installing the
Worshipful Master; the Third Degree was rearranged; the
symbolical preparation of candidates was modified, there were
transfers of parts between the First degree and the Second and
operative practices were submitted to a general overhauling and
revision.
No doubt much of this remodeling was necessary, but it led to one
profound disadvantage. It subjected to the charge of innovation
those who had been responsible for it. Innovation is and always has
been an ugly word to Masonic ears. In a world of change
Freemasonry has always been proud of its stability. Its boast is that
it has always remained constant to its own inner light; that its
practices are hallowed by the undeviating course of the Craftsmen
as they have followed one another all down through the centuries.
What might be considered a trivial departure in almost any other
human institution would be regarded in Masonry as shaking the
very foundations upon which it is built. Upon this rock of faithful
adherence to what is tried and approved it has built its house and
woe unto that man or set of men who would try to pull one stone
out of its assigned place in that structure!
It was very well for the new Grand Lodge to say it had not in fact
brought novelty into the institution; that it had merely re-
interpreted what had always been there. The country was full of
elder brethren who would accept no such explanation; who would
be willing to follow any leader who raised the battle cry of "No
Innovation!" even though he might himself be as flagrant in
innovation as those whom he condemned. That cry soon was to be
raised and it was to throw the Craft into a convulsion from which it
would not recover in more than a generation. In the evolution of
Freemasonry changes had to come, but it was inevitable that there
should be trouble in store for those through whom they came.
Scarcely had it been discovered that the symbolism of the Third
Degree must be perfected to round out the complete cycle of
Masonic instruction when it was also discovered that the Third
Degree itself was incomplete. In simple truth, the Drama of the
Third Degree left things in a state of suspension. It had to do with
Something Which Was Lost and with a vague hint this something
at a future time might be red. What was that something? Had it
been recovered? Could it be recovered? Was the story forever to
go without a sequel? Such were the questions speculative brethren
asked themselves. Some of them in a way which is not at all clear
found the answer in the Royal Arch Degree, which began to be
practiced shortly. This practice for a long time the Grand Lodge
styled "irregular," but since lodges used it without imperilling their
Grand Lodge standing, the implied rebuke was not taken seriously.
As for other bodies without the official fold, it is reasonable to
suppose they paid little attention to a charge of "irregularity"
which could only mean they had gone a little further along the road
of innovation the Grand Lodge itself had pointed out to them.
A far more serious cause for dissension soon appeared. Operative
Masonry for as long a period as the Old Charges could indicate had
been fundamentally Christian and Trinitarian. It required of its
devotees not only belief in God but also adherence to orthodox
Christianity. That strict orthodoxy many of the eighteenth-century
liberals who were being drawn into the Fraternity could not wholly
support. Accordingly, the first paragraph of the Charges as drawn
up by Anderson appeared under the caption, "Concerning God and
Religion," and was as follows:
A Mason is oblig'd by his Tenure, to obey the moral Law; and if he
rightly understands the Art, he will never be a Stupid Atheist, nor
an irreligious Libertine. But though in ancient Times Masons were
charg'd in every Country to be of the Religion of that Country or
Nation, whatever it was, yet 'tis now thought more expedient only
to oblige them to that Religion in which all Men agree, leaving
their particular Opinions to themselves; that is, to be good Men and
true, or Men of Honour and Honesty, by whatever Denomination
or Persuasions they might be distinguish'd; whereby Masonry
becomes the Center of Union, and the means of conciliating true
Friendship among Persons that must have remain'd at a Perpetual
Distance.
No greater or more statesmanlike thing was ever written into a
Masonic document; this declaration has been the charter of
Masonic liberty and tolerance whereby it could make good its
claim of universality. Through it the orthodox and the heterodox,
the Christian, the Jew, the Mohammedan, the Buddhist, the
Confucianist, the Deist of the eighteenth century and the
Fundamentalist of the twentieth have been able to unite in human
service and in their common reverence for the Supreme Architect
of the Universe, however various their understandings of Him may
be. Anderson would deserve a place among Masonic immortals for
this one paragraph alone, even if he deserved it for nothing else.
Surely it must be said of him that in penning those words he caught
a truer glimpse of the inner spirit of Freemasonry than he did in all
the high-flown rhetoric of his legendary narrative.
So much of liberalism was nevertheless a bitter draught for the
conservatism of that day to swallow. Some brethren refused it
outright. The furore which arose when the document was first read
in Grand Lodge soon had the whole Craft in a state of excitement.
Historians who have ascribed the Great Division to it have gone
perhaps further than the f acts would warrant. It gave, however, a
crown to the dissent which had long existed and was still growing
and which was only awaiting the right leader to flame into open
defiance of the Grand Lodge. That leader was at hand in the person
of Laurence Dermott.
While Masonry had been developing in England under the ‘gis of
the Grand Lodge, it had been growing with almost equal popularity
in other parts of the British Isles, especially in Ireland and in
Scotland. Of the nature of the constitution of Irish lodges at that
time there is little authentic information. It is supposed, however,
that they were simple developments of the operative system,
somewhat paralleling those in England, differing in minor respects
as all operative lodges appear to have differed in different regions.
There was in London a considerable number of young Irishmen,
many of whom had no doubt been "made" in Irish lodges. It is not
unlikely that these gathered in their own Masonic organizations at
the nation's capital, and some of them no doubt were drawn into
bodies which looked askance at the course being pursued by the
lodges operating under the direction of the Grand Lodge. Among
these Irish refugees was Laurence Dermott, a painter by trade, a
man of ardent and flaming spirit, possessing literary gifts of no
mean order and withal a born organizer and leader of men.
Dermott was born in Ireland in 1720. He was made a Mason in
1740 in Lodge No. 26 of Ireland, and was installed as its Master on
June 24, 1746. Later he went to London, but he found little
fellowship among the leaders of Grand Lodge Masonry, with
whom he was soon to be in open conflict.
Kindred spirits there were in plenty, however, among the dissident
Masons who had long looked with hostility upon the trend of
Grand Lodge affairs. Some of these had already formed themselves
into Masonic groups, for which they no doubt felt they had full
authority under operative precedents. How numerous they were it
is impossible to say, but it is on record that in 1739, the year
following the publication of Anderson's revised Constitutions,
Grand Lodge too cognizance of the fact that "irregular" Masons
were being made, and warned the membership against intercourse
with these "private" lodges.
As Henry Sadler has so convincingly stated in his Masonic Facts
and Fictions, a considerable proportion of the "private" lodges was
undoubtedly made up of Irish Masons, working men for the most
part, painters, tailors, mechanics of various degrees, who were
instinctively drawn to the old operatives and as instinctively hostile
to the aristocratic tendencies then developing in Grand Lodge
circles. The customs of these bodies were closely akin to those of
the Irish lodges. They practiced the Royal Arch as a separate, or
fourth, degree; their colors, Craft warrants, Book of Constitutions,
by-laws and systems of registration differed from those used by
lodges under the English Grand Lodge, and there were numerous
other differences.
For the ten years after 1739 they seem to have grown slowly and
without a defined purpose of setting up organized opposition to the
English governing body as then constituted. They fell into a way of
alluding to themselves as York Masons, probably meaning thereby
to convey the idea that they were descended from that famous
assembly at York in the reign of Athelstan. It is quite likely that
some of the changes which had been introduced into the ritual by
Grand Lodge were designed for the purpose of making it
impossible for them to visit "regular" lodges. If so, this action
merely crystallized their opposition while it gave them the
opportunity to raise the cry, "No Innovation!"
In the year 1751 there were at least seven of these lodges in
London, acknowledging allegiance to a nebulous body which they
termed the Grand Committee. On July 17, 1751, they held an
Assembly at the Turk's Head Tavern in Greek Street, Soho, when
each Master of a subscribing lodge was authorized to grant
dispensations and warrants and act as Grand Master. By this it is
assumed that the Grand Committee exercised, as a collective body
and by majority vote, the principal functions of a Grand Lodge. It
chartered additional lodges and in 1752 Dermott was elected as its
secretary. Finally, on December 5, 1753, it met and proclaimed
itself The Grand Lodge of England According to the Old
Institutions, with Dermott filling the important post of Grand
Secretary. Thus fully organized opposition to the Grand Lodge of
England had come into being.
At the outset the new body possessed advantages which the older
Grand Lodge lacked. It was young, it was vigorous, it had no
internal feuds, and it had a rich field of discontent to exploit. It
worked four degrees instead of three and this was a lure to a degree
thirsty public. It very shrewdly attacked the old Grand Lodge for
its "innovations," although it had perforce to do so in a
Pickwickian sense, since it, too, had made innovations, if not the
same ones or to the same extent. But it cried in stentorian tones
from all the house tops that the brand of Masonry it supplied was
the only genuine Ancient variety; that what its rival offered was of
a Modern cast. It was not the first Grand Lodge in the English
field, but it was the more vociferous and more audacious in its
claims. Hence, by a truly remarkable twist of affairs, adherents of
the new Grand Lodge came to be known as "Antients" and the
supporters of the old one had to be content with being known as
the "Moderns" their opponents called them. In more dignified
Masonic parlance the new Grand Body is usually referred to as the
Atholl Grand Lodge, from the Dukes of Atholl - or Athol or Athole
as the name is variously spelled - who served it long and notably in
the Grand Master's chair.
Into the work of the new association Dermott threw himself with
the zeal of a crusader. One of the early tasks he set for himself was
the preparation of a hand book which should correspond to
Anderson's Constitutions. This he called Ahiman Rezon -meaning
Worthy Brother Secretary - with the long sub-title: or a Help to a
Brother, showing the excellency of Secrecy and the first cause or
motive of Freemasonry; the Principles of the Craft and the Benefits
from a Strict Observance thereof, etc., also the Old and New
Regulations, etc. To which is added the greatest collection of
Masons' Songs, etc. By Laurence Dermott, Secretary. It was first
published in 1756, and there were several later editions. The
Constitutions as set forth were afterwards adopted by many other
Grand Lodges, notably those of Maryland, Pennsylvania and South
Carolina. In the course of his "history," Dermott paid his respects
to the ritual of the rival Grand Lodge in the following sprightly
manner:
"About the year 1717 some joyous companions who had passed
the degree of a craft (though very rusty) resolved to form a lodge
for themselves in order (by conversation) to recollect what had
been formerly dictated to them, or if that should be found
impracticable, to substitute something new, which might for the
future pass for Masonry among themselves. At this meeting the
question was asked whether any person in the assembly knew the
Master's part, and being answered in the negative, it was resolved,
nem. con., that the deficiency should be made up, with a new
composition, and what fragments of the old order found amongst
them should be immediately reformed, and made more pliable to
the humours of the people."
Having been served by Robert Turner and Edward Vaughan as
Grand Masters from 1753 to 1756, the Antient Grand Lodge
elected the Earl of Blesington to that office in 1756. He served
until 1759 when he was succeeded by the Earl of Kelly, who
served until 1766. Thomas Mathew was Grand Master until 1771.
John, third Duke of Atholl, was Grand Master 1771 to 1774, when
he was succeeded by the fourth Duke of Atholl. From 1783 to
1791 the Earl of Antrim was Grand Master. The fourth Duke of
Atholl resumed the Chair in 1791 and served until 1813, when he
was succeeded, for a short space before the merging of the two
Grand lodges, by the Duke of Kent.
The Antients greatly strengthened their position by obtaining
Masonic recognition from the Grand Lodges of Ireland and
Scotland. Their greatest strength, however, lay in their own energy.
In 1753 they had approximately a dozen lodges but they doubled
the number in the next four years. By 1766 sixty-four others had
been enrolled and by the Union of 1813 the Atholl Grand Lodge
listed 359 supporting lodges, although some of these had become
inactive. Through the happy expedient of warranting movable
military lodges, the Antients spread their influence wherever the
British army might go. In this way Freemasonry became much
more widely distributed through the American Colonies than it
might otherwise have been. This practice was so successful that the
Moderns in time were obliged to adopt it in self -defense.
The Antients modeled their Constitutions upon those of Ireland.
The Ahiman Rezon drew heavily upon Irish Masonic literature,
although its historical account paralleled that of Anderson so
closely that no great discrepancies might be observed. The seals of
the Antients and of the Grand Lodge of Ireland were almost
identical. They used blue and gold ribbons for the seals of
warrants, a practice then employed by the Grand Lodge of Ireland
but not by the Moderns. They also employed the Irish system of
numbering loges. A record of the Grand Committee for August
1752, discloses that the by-laws of Dermott's mother lodge No. 26
on the Irish roll, were adopted by the Antients as the correct model
for Antient usage.
In the field of foreign relations, Dermott completely out-generalled
the Moderns. Not only was he instrumental in obtaining Scottish
recognition, but, with the powerful support of the third Duke of
Atholl, he secured exclusive recognition for his own body from the
Scottish Grand Lodge. Atholl was for a brief season Grand Master
of both the Scottish and the Antient Grand Lodges. Then, in 1782,
the Antients chose for their Grand Master the Earl of Antrim who
had been Grand Master of Ireland. By a diplomatic interchange of
notes it was arranged that the Irish Grand Lodge should recognize
as regular only those English Masons who could produce Antient
certificates. Later the English and Irish bodies rescinded these
actions and assumed a neutral attitude toward the contending
English factions, but meanwhile the Antients had profited
immensely by the favor shown them, since it was but reasonable to
expect that prospective Masons in England would prefer to cast
their lot with a body which could insure for them full Masonic
recognition when traveling in the sister Grand Jurisdictions.
Thus, side by side for threescore years, two Grand Lodges
continued to exist in England and to struggle for supremacy in
Scotland, Ireland and the Colonies. The differences between them
were actually not so marked as were the resemblances. On
occasion they cooperated in charitable exercises. But as time went
oil and as the harmful effects of the division became increasingly
apparent, a sentiment looking toward reunion began to grow. How
it operated to heal the breach must be reserved for another chapter.
CHAPTER XV
MASONRY REUNITED
History of Freemasonry by H.L. Haywood
FAMILY feuds are more bitter than other civil wars are
fought with greater passion and stubbornness than are other
wars. So it was with the strife which for the greater part of a
century divided English Freemasonry into two hostile camps.
But time itself is a great assuager of animosities and so it
proved in this case. One generation of belligerents died
away, to pass an inheritance of fratricidal struggle to the
second one. Meanwhile the original issues had become so
confused it was not always possible for the heirs to know just
why and for what they were fighting. Gradually the
senselessness of the controversy began to take hold of the
minds of younger leaders, and thus by imperceptible
degrees a way was opened for peace.
The echoes of that conflict have now, after another hundred
years, died away into an indistinct murmur. As the average
schoolboy remembers in a vague way that in the War of the
Roses the House of York wore a rose of one color and the
House of Lancaster one of another, but is unable to say with
assurance which wore the red and which the white, so now
the average member of a Masonic Lodge is rarely sure
whether it is of Modern or of Antient origin, and cares even
less about the matter. Questions once so violently debated
have for modern times but academic interest. Undoubtedly
there was right and wrong on both sides of that quarrel, and
but little good can be served in trying to measure the
respective shares of merit and of blame. Historians have
lavished a good deal of expensive white paper and printer's
ink defending this side and assaulting that one. Literary
heads have been broken with such hard words as
"Schismatics," "Seceders," "Dissenters,"
"Rebels." But the
treaty of peace which ended the breach was a fair and
honorable one, entered into in good faith by both sides. The
fact that each retained much of what it had contended for
and made reasonable concessions to the other may properly
be taken as evidence that neither bad a monopoly upon the
justice of the causes at issue. The cement of love and
affection has united both branches of Freemasonry into one
band of friends and brethren among whom no further
contention should arise, save that noble emulation who best
can serve the common good of all mankind. In the present
work it has been deemed wise to regard the cleavage as a
division of English Freemasonry. In simple candor it should
be said, however, that it has been ably and learnedly
reasoned that it was in fact a schism, with the Antients as
secessionists from the body of Modern Freemasonry. With
ability and learning also it has been argued that the Antients
were in truth a separate branch, springing from a body of
independents who never at any time accepted the
hegemony of the first Grand Lodge of Moderns. Mackey's
History of Freemasonry strongly supports the one theory.
Henry Sadler in Masonic Facts and Fictions, on the other
hand, so brilliantly made out a case for the hypothesis that
the Antient Grand Lodge was a growth from independent
origins and therefore not illegal that the weight of modern
criticism inclines very largely to that view. It is not a matter
that can be determined with mathematical precision.
Whether they were separate streams or whether one
diverged from the other is of less consequence than the
undeniable fact that in time they became merged into one
majestic current.
The division was attended by inconveniences for both
factions. Friends and neighbors who were Freemasons
nevertheless found themselves estranged from one another,
without always knowing precisely why. Among the rank and
file of members it was not always possible to keep fires of
resentment burning. Now and then brethren of Modern and
Antient persuasions were unable to realize they might be
incurring severe penalties by fraternizing in Masonic
intercourse. Each Grand Lodge had to admonish its
adherents from time to time that such complacency was
unlawful.
As early as 1764 Dermott in the Ahiman Rezon observed
that he cherished no animosity against the Moderns and in
1778 he expressed a wish that he might in his lifetime see a
union of the two. At that time, however, the Antients were on
the crest of prosperity. They were gaining accessions far
more rapidly than were the Moderns, and had
outmaneuvered their rivals so skillfully in the department of
foreign relations that they were recognized in many parts of
the English-speaking world as wielding a dominant influence
in English Masonry. The peculiar genius of Dermott had
done much to put them into that advantageous situation. He
was far and away the best propagandist of his times, and in
a period of intense controversy, his Was an art not to be
despised.
Although they must have been disturbed by the progress
their rivals were making, the Moderns were not as yet ready
to make pacific overtures to the aggressive Antients. In 1777
their Grand Lodge issued a stern edict forbidding its
supporters to have Masonic intercourse with Antients under
pain of expulsion, and decreeing that no Antient should be
admitted to a Modern Lodge until he had been "re-made."
Some twenty years later, however, the rivals were forced to
make common cause to escape the provisions of legislation
intended to drive all secret societies out of the country.
By this time, moreover, the balance of authority had begun
to slip toward the Moderns. Dermott having paid the usual
human score and departed from this life, the Antients soon
began to miss his capable leadership. Meanwhile several
persons of exceptional ability had begun to make their
influence felt among the Moderns, notably the Earl of Moira,
an avowed protagonist of peace and reconciliation. But while
Lord Moira was an ardent advocate of union, he lost no
opportunity to strengthen the position of his own Grand
Lodge and he managed to do this in ways that proved him
capable of statesmanship of the highest order.
In 1801, Preston relates in his Illustrations, several brethren
of the Modernist group were summoned before Grand Lodge
to answer a charge they had served as officers in an Antient
lodge. They were found guilty and were ordered forthwith to
cease a practice which was declared to be highly irregular.
They wished to be at peace with their own grand body, but
they were reluctant to give up their new connections. They
asked that operation of the sentence be suspended for three
months, during which time they promised to do what they
could to bring about an adjustment of the differences
between the Modern and Antient lodges. This was agreed to,
and Lord Moira was made member of a committee to take
the thing in hand and do everything possible to further the
enterprise. In effect this amounted to a rather definite
proposal for union and it was of all the greater significance
because it emanated from the supreme governing power of
the Moderns.
The three months dragged out into two years before the
committee found so many obstacles in the way of a
successful prosecution of its task that it concluded to give it
up for the time being. Thereupon the Modern Grand Lodge
punished its recalcitrant brethren and issued a stiffer decree
than ever against all Moderns who should hold Masonic
intercourse with Antient Masons. Defeated in this direction,
Lord Moira had by no means exhausted his resources.
Indeed, in that same year, 1803, he turned the defeat to
such account that he was able to begin a series of diplomatic
maneuvers which was completely to reverse the existing
situation in regard to foreign relations.
In November of that year, as it is related in Laurie's History
of Freemasonry, Moira visited the Grand Lodge of Scotland
and in a moving and tactful address reviewed the story of the
Modernist - Antient dispute. He said that the Grand Lodge of
England had opened its arms and its heart to the seceding
brethren, but these had obstinately refused to accept
reconciliation. The speech made a profound impression
upon the Scottish brethren, and although at the time it was
delivered the Grand Lodge of Scotland and the Antient
Grand Lodge were in fraternal relations with each other, the
former speedily opened correspondence with the Moderns.
Presently it granted formal recognition to them as
constituting the sovereign Grand Jurisdiction of England.
This action was emphasized in the strongest possible
manner in 1805, when the Scottish Grand Lodge elected the
Prince of Wales as Grand Master and the Earl of Moira as
Acting Grand Master, the positions which those
distinguished Masons were then holding under the Modern
Grand Lodge.
That was turning the tables upon the Antients with a
vengeance, but Moira was still far from the end of his
resources. In 1808 he was largely instrumental in bringing
about a correspondence with the Grand Lodge of Ireland.
These negotiations ended with complete recognition of the
Moderns by the Irish body and thus the last important
diplomatic connection of the Antients with another Grand
Lodge in the British Isles was irrevocably severed. The
Antients found themselves where, only a few years before,
the Moderns had been - cut off from Masonic intercourse
with the great body of British Freemasonry. Their position
was all the more imperilled when, the Prince of Wales having
ascended the throne of England, the Duke of Sussex
became Grand Master of the Moderns. Sussex was a strong
advocate of union and so was his brother the Duke of Kent,
who was Grand Master of the Antient Grand Lodge of
Canada.
Meanwhile Moira had kept patiently at his appointed task. He
and the Duke of Atholl engaged in a series of friendly
conversations in which it was reciprocally agreed that some
way should be found to bring the two bodies together. On
October 26, 1809, Moira issued a warrant constituting a
special lodge which should undertake to bring about a
means of union. This body met on November 21 and
resolved to call itself "The Special Lodge of Promulgation." In
the spring of 1810 Moira was able to report to the Modern
Grand Lodge that he and the Grand Master of the Antients
"were both fully of opinion that it would be an event truly
desirable to consolidate under one head the two Societies of
Masons that existed in this country." This report was
transmitted in due form to the Antient Grand Lodge, where it
was favorably received. After further discussions it was
agreed to try to find a way to reconciliation. Each Grand
Lodge thereupon appointed a special committee on union
and on July 21, 1810, the two committees met in joint
session under the presidency of Lord Moira.
Many and intricate were the problems which had to be
solved, but perhaps the most important was the one which
related to the Royal Arch Degree. The Antients, it will be
remembered, had a system of four degrees, of which the
Royal Arch was the fourth. The Moderns had a system of
three degrees, but the Royal Arch had been worked by many
Modern lodges as a continuation of the Third Degree.
Originally this had been without official sanction of the
Modern Grand Lodge, but it had grown into a sort of
supplementary department, branching out into a Royal Arch
Chapter and ultimately a Grand Chapter.
The Four Degree System had been of inestimable
advantage to the Antients. Naturally, all other things being
equal, the average candidate for Freemasonry would rather
join a lodge which had four degrees than one which had only
three, and no small part of the astonishing growth of the
Antients can be attributed to this understandable human
preference. Each organization for the better part of a century
had been insisting with much heat that its system was the
only true Craft Masonry, and each was still reluctant to give
up its own practice for that of the other.
Then, too, there were numerous other details of procedure,
which had to be adjusted. There were differences in ritual, in
symbols and signs, in methods of listing lodges, in colors. It
was early felt that the only feasible path to union was the
way of compromise and accommodation. The leaders were
wise enough, however, not to insist that all of these
problems be finally solved as a condition precedent to union,
preferring to hasten union as rapidly as possible and trust to
mutual good will to make the necessary adjustments
afterwards.
Before the end of the year 1813 conditions were highly
propitious for the great change. At the head of the Modern
Grand Lodge were Sussex and Moira. At the head of the
Antients was Atholl, good friend of Sussex, and the Duke of
Kent, brother to Sussex as well as Antient Grand Master of
Canada. On November 8, 1813, Atholl resigned his Grand
Mastership in favor of Kent, thereby further simplifying the
situation, since one of the royal brothers was now Grand
Master of the Antients and the other of the Moderns. The
installation took place on December 1. The Modern Grand
Master and his staff attended the ceremonies, giving further
evidence of their zeal for union by consenting to be "made"
Antients in a lodge especially convened for that purpose.
During all this time the Lodge of Promulgation, consisting of
nine Master Masons or Past Masters from each Grand
Lodge had been keeping steadily at its work of drafting a
basis for agreement. It was ready to make its report, which
consisted of the now famous Masonic document known as
the "Articles of Union Between the Two Grand Lodges of
Freemasons in England." It was signed and scaled in
duplicate and at a December meeting of each body it was
formally ratified. December 27 was set as the day when the
union should be completed at a "Grand Assembly of
Freemasons for the Union of the Two Grand Lodges of
England." The important items of the agreement were to the
following effect:
1. That a perpetual and irrevocable union in one
Brotherhood and under one Grand Lodge should exist
forever.
2. That "pure Ancient Masonry consists of three degrees and
no more; viz., those of the Entered Apprentice, the including
the Supreme Fellowcraft and the Master Mason, including
the Supreme Order of the Holy Royal Arch. But this article is
not intended to prevent any lodge or chapter from holding a
meeting in any of the degrees of the Orders of Chivalry,
according to the constitutions of the said Orders."
3. That there should be unity of obligations, discipline
working in lodges, and clothing according to the landmarks,
laws and traditions of the Craft.
4. That for the purpose of establishing uniform work and
practice it "is agreed that the obligations and forms that
have, from time immemorial, been established, used and
practiced in the Craft shall be recognized, accepted and
taken by the members of both Fraternities." For the purpose
of securing uniformity it was agreed to ask the Grand Lodges
of Scotland and Ireland to send accredited delegates to the
forthcoming Assembly to witness the solemn engagement of
the uniting brotherhoods "to abide by the true forms and
obligations," so that it might be "declared, recognized and
known that they all are bound by the same solemn pledge,
and work under the same law."
5. That the two Grand Masters should each appoint nine
Master Masons or Past Masters to meet at some convenient
place where each party should open in a separate apartment
a "just and perfect lodge" according to its own practices.
These were to "give and receive mutually and reciprocally
the obligations of both Fraternities, deciding by lot which
shall take priority in giving and receiving the same." Being
thus duly and equally enlightened they were to be
empowered to hold a Lodge of Reconciliation or visit all
lodges, instructing them fully in the joint work.
6. That as soon as the solemn declaration had been made in
the presence of the witnesses from Scotland and Ireland, the
general assembly should proceed to the election of a Grand
Master, the brother chosen to be installed immediately and
to nominate and appoint the various Grand Officers.
Immediately thereafter "the Grand Incorporated Lodge" was
to be opened "in ample form, under the style and title of THE
UNITED GRAND LODGE OF ANCIENT FREEMASONS OF
ENGLAND." Grand Officers of both bodies were to be
recognized as Past Grand Officers of the United Grand
Lodge; in case existing Grand Secretaries, Pursuivants and
Tylers should not be reappointed, they should receive
lifetime annuities out of the treasury.
7. That the United Grand Lodge should be composed of all
present and past Grand Masters, present and past Deputy
and Provincial Grand Masters, present and past Grand
Wardens, Grand Chaplain, Grand Treasurer, Grand
Secretary, Grand Sword Bearer, twelve Grand Stewards,
actual Masters and Wardens of all warranted lodges, past
Masters who served before the Union. Seniority of past
Grand Lodge officers was to be determined by the time of
their previous appointments; where two were
contemporaries seniority was to be determined by lot.
8. That seniority of lodges on the combined roll be
determined in the following fashion: The No. 1 lodges on
each old list to draw lots, the winner taking No. 1 and the
loser No. 2 on the new list. No. 2 lodge on the winner's list
would then become No. 3 on the new and No. 2 on the
loser's list would become No. 4 and so on, alternating
throughout the rolls.
9. That upon a day appointed for installation of the new
Grand Lodge officers the Articles of Union be formally
ratified by affixing thereto the great seal of the United Grand
Lodge, which seal was to be made out of both seals then in
use and the old seals were then to be broken.
10. That the regalia of Grand Officers should be "in addition
to white gloves and aprons and the respective jewels or
emblems of distinction, garter blue and gold."
11. That Grand Lodge quarterly communications be held on
the first Wednesdays of March, June, September and
December and that stipulated assessments be levied for
support of Grand Lodge.
12. That emergency communications might be summoned at
the discretion of responsible Grand Lodge Officers.
13. That each successive Grand Master be elected at the
September meeting (with power to nominate and appoint his
own Deputy, Wardens and Secretary) and that Grand Lodge
at the same time should nominate three candidates for each
office of Treasurer, Chaplain and Sword Bearer, from among
whom the Grand Master-elect should make appointments at
the December meeting; that installation should take place on
the feast day of St. John the Evangelist, unless the Grand
Master should appoint another day.
14. That there should be an annual Masonic festival.
15. That as soon as the revisions of obligations, forms, had
been worked out, speedy and effectual means should be
taken to familiarize therewith all the members of each lodge;
in London delegations of expert craftsmen in groups of three
were to visit the several lodges in rotation.
16. That United Grand Lodge charters should be given to
lodges and provincial Grand Lodges as soon as these could
prove proficiency in the work.
17. That all property and moneys of the two Fraternities be
pooled in one Grand Fund and that, as soon as it could be
done, the United Grand Lodge should have power to create
a single trusteeship. Freemasons' Hall should continue to be
fraternal headquarters and a full-length portrait of the Duke
of Atholl should be hung there with those of Past Grand
Masters of the Modern Lodge.
18. That no appropriations of Masonic benevolence funds be
made other than for works of charity.
19. That the charitable fund be distributed in London by a
committee or Lodge of Benevolence, to be composed of
twelve Masters of lodges and three Grand Officers and to sit
on the third Wednesday of each month.
20. That a plan, "with rules and regulations, for the solemnity
of the Union" should be prepared before the approaching
festival of St. John.
21. That a revision should be made at once of the rules and
regulations of both Fraternities and that a new Book of
Constitutions should be prepared and published.
It will be seen from the foregoing that the Articles of Union
merely outlined the general terms of agreement without
attempting to go into innumerable details remaining to be
perfected. The original Lodge of Promulgation continued its
work until 1816, harmonizing differences between the two
rituals. The task of preparing a code of regulations was
assigned to a Board of General Purposes. An International
Commission was formed to bring into essential unison
various points of Mystery and Craft. This Commission
drafted a compact consisting of eight resolutions which
ultimately was accepted by the Grand Lodges of England,
Ireland and Scotland and which effectually completed the
consolidation of Anglo-Saxon Freemasonry.
And so the story of trials and tribulations had a pleasant
ending after all. The two Grand Lodges were married and
lived happily ever after. The formal ceremony of wedding
took place with the pomp and circumstance worthy of an
affair so important. Preston's sprightly pen has left an
account from which it appears that on a day previously
determined - December 27, 1813 - Freemasons' Hall had the
honor of receiving both bodies. In adjoining rooms they
opened their respective Grand Lodges according to the
peculiar customs of each. Meanwhile in the principal
assembly room Masters, Wardens and Past Masters of the
various lodges had been seated in such manner that
Moderns and Antients intermingled.
At a signal the Grand Procession marched into the room in
double line, each Modern dignitary being accompanied by
his Antient contemporary, the Grand Masters, Kent and
Sussex, bringing up the rear. As the procession approached
the Grand Master's throne its individuals faced inward and
then opened up a lane down which the royal brothers
marched arm in arm. They took seats on each side of the
throne, being flanked by their respective staffs and
distinguished visitors. In the Grand West and the Grand
South similar arrangements were carried out, the respective
Grand Wardens sitting to right and left of each Warden's
station. After an invocation by the Rev. Dr. Barry, Grand
Chaplain of the Antients, the Act of Union was read by the
Grand Director of Ceremonies, Sir George Naylor. Then the
Rev. Dr. Coghlan, Grand Chaplain of the Moderns,
addressed the assembly in these words:
"Hear ye: This is the Act of Union engrossed in confirmation
of Articles solemnly concluded between the two Grand
Lodges of Free and Accepted Masons of England, signed,
sealed and ratified by the two Grand Lodges respectively: by
which they are hereafter and forever to be known and
acknowledged by the style and title of The United Grand
Lodge of Ancient Freemasons of England. How say you,
Brothers, Representatives of the two Fraternities? Do you
accept of, ratify and confirm the same?"
As with one voice the assemblage replied, "We do accept,
ratify and confirm the same."
"And may the Great Architect of the Universe make the
union perpetual!" cried Dr. Coghlan.
"So mote it be!" the assemblage replied.
Dr. Barry then made formal proclamation that the union had
been ratified, with a second prayer that it might be perpetual,
to which there was another chorus of amens. After a
symphony played by the Grand Organist, Samuel Wesley,
the two Grand Masters arose and, followed by their staffs,
approached an Ark of the Covenant which had been placed
before the throne. The square, level, plumb and gavel were
presented to them in turn. After making symbolic trial of the
ark with these implements, they proclaimed it a symbol of a
union which, they prayed, might endure forever.
"So mote it be! " chanted the brethren in chorus.
The ark was then consecrated by the ancient rite of Corn,
Wine and Oil. When that had been done, a recess was
called, when the Masters and Past Masters composing the
Lodge of Reconciliation retired to another room. There,
under the presidency of Count Lagardje, Past Grand Master
of Masons in Sweden, they ratified the forms and
ceremonies previously agreed upon. This action was
formally reported to the Grand Lodge. The accepted form of
obligation was read to the assembly, and the brethren, with
hands joined, vowed faithfully to keep and perform it.
Officers of the old Grand Lodges then divested themselves
of their insignia of office. The Duke of Kent obtained the floor
and, observing that the task which had induced him to
assume the Antient Grand Mastership had been
accomplished, he nominated the Duke of Sussex for Grand
Master. The election was by unanimous voice and Sussex
was escorted to the throne by his brother and Count
Lagardje. After the transaction of routine business, the
communication was closed in proper form.
A great deal of work remained to be done, but there was a
wholesome desire throughout the united Craft to forget old
grudges and promote peace and harmony. How this
generous spirit operated to smooth away difficulties of ritual
and practice was admirably expressed by W. B. Hextall in
his article in Ars Quatuor Coronatorum (Volume XXIII, page
304) when he said:
"A conclusion to which I personally come is that for many
years after the Union - speaking approximately until about
1825 - a good deal of 'give and take' concerning ritual went
on unofficially, in London as well as in the Provinces, and
that our Craft ceremonies, as practiced from 1830 and
earlier, considerably deviated from those which were
ascertained in the Lodge of Promulgation, 1809 - 11; worked
in the Lodge of Reconciliation, 1813-16; and approved by
Grand Lodge on 5th June, 1816. The material from which we
have to draw inference is slight, but at the same time cogent;
and when (to name a few points only) we find duties
originally assigned to the Senior Deacon transferred to his
junior colleague; the entrusting with the means of
satisfactory proof leading to the second degree otherwise
performed; and the admission of a member or visitor by
proof of his having ascertained the degree in which the
Lodge is opened from an inspection of the three great lights
at the entrance (Lodge of Promulgation minutes, January
5th, 1810) fallen into complete disuse; it is difficult to avoid
recalling that, to a large extent, the subject of Craft working
must have been placed in the melting pot, and that quite
apart from the means of instruction officially provided in
1813."
Several Lodges of Instruction did in fact come into existence
and some of them became permanent. As they differed
slightly from one another they are probably accountable for
certain variations in "workings" which later came into use.
Precisely how strong the old Grand Lodges were at the
moment of union it is impossible to ascertain with a degree
of certainty. A Modern roll of 1812 mentioned 620 lodges
and an Antient record of 1813 listed 354. It is certain,
however, that some on both lists had become extinct or had
passed under the control of foreign or colonial Grand
Lodges. Hughan in Memorials of the Union observes that the
United Grand Lodge started out with 636 lodges, of which
385 were of Modern and 251 of Antient origin.
The union of 1813 completed the evolutionary phase by
which Speculative Masonry had developed from Operative
Masonry in a period of slightly less than a century. It is
impossible to exaggerate the Masonic importance of this
event. Henceforth a strong, solidified, progressive Fraternity
should be able to extend its influence, preserve its discipline
and establish its authority throughout the world. It is still
divided into numerous Grand jurisdictions, each sovereign in
its own sphere, all working harmoniously together and each
giving full faith and credit to the official acts of any other.
Freemasonry in 1927 numbered its adherents by millions
and of these approximately 97 per cent. were under the
control of regular Anglo-Saxon Grand Lodges or of other
Grand Lodges recognized by them as regular. It is possible
that the future may lead to an even more perfect union. Who
can say?
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