Part 14

There are several societies of French craftsmen (compagnonnages), but they are not distinguished according to locality, but according to the supposed manner of their first institution and the branch of the craft which they represent. They are divided, first, into two great sections, the Compagnons du Devoir (companions of duty), and the Compagnons de la Liberte (companions of liberty). The former are again divided into the Enfants de Maitre Jacques (Master James’s children), and the Enfants de Maitre Soubise (Master Soubise’s children), but the latter commonly called themselves Enfants de Salomon. Between the Compagnons du Devoir and the Compagnons de la Liberte, as well as between the children of James and those of Soubise, there exists the bitterest enmity which is mirrored in their myths and traditions. According to the story of the Devoir comrades, at the building of Solomon’s temple, Hiram, master-builder, to maintain discipline and order among the workmen, instituted societies with special passwords and secret ritual. But that act was the occasion of his death, for some workmen slew him because he refused to give them the countersign of the masters: those evildoers were the founders of the Compagnonnage de la Liberte! Now among the faithful workmen were two Gaulish masters, James, stonemason, and Soubise, carpenter: these, after the completion of the temple, returned home, and landing, one at Marseilles, the other at Bordeaux, founded societies after the pattern of those instituted by Hiram; and these societies, little by little, admitted craftsmen other than builders, but the two bodies lived in perpetual hatred of each other, each claiming priority. Each of them refers its own institution (on what grounds is unknown) to the years 558 B. C. and 550 B. C., respectively, and each possesses authentic documents in proof, though none has ever seen them. The Liberte tradition is the same as that of the Devoir, only the respective parts of the chief actors are reversed. In the bosom of La Liberte are gathered four crafts—stonemasons, carpenters, joiners, locksmiths. The Devoir includes 28 crafts, and of these the children of Soubise comprise the carpenters, roofers and plasterers; to the children of James belong the stonemasons, joiners, locksmiths, and 22 other trades, introduced in later times, but all connected with housebuilding, except hatmakers. All other craftsmen whose work is the production of clothing and foodstuffs are excluded from the compagnonnages, and form separate societies of their own. The shoemakers and the bakers, in particular, are held in contempt, and persecuted in every way by the compagnons; while among James’s children even the members of the building crafts despise their juniors (trades of less ancient lineage), and in their ignorance derive the word compagnon from “compas” (a pair of compasses), the symbol of the art of building; hence in their eyes the other trades are quite destitute of art or skill.

Even craftsmen of the same trade, but belonging to different leagues, whether Devoir or Liberte, oppose each other in every way. The carpenters of Paris have made an end of this strife by dividing the cosmopolitan city between themselves, the compagnons du Devoir taking the left and those of La Liberte the right bank of the Seine. With the other trades and in the provinces the case is worse, the hostile leagues often engaging in street fights and pitched battles. Even in the same trade and in the same league hostilities often break out.

Of the French corporations of craftsmen, those of the building trades, especially the stonemasons, probably arose about the same time as the German masons’ lodges: at least there existed in the Middle Age in southern France, a society of bridge-builders, who, for the behoof of pilgrims to the Holy Land and wayfarers in general, maintained bridges, roads and inns. The earliest known charter was granted in 1189, by Pope Clement III., who, like his third predecessor, Lucius III., took them under his protection. As emblem they wore on the breast a pointed hammer. The other compagnonnages can show no authentic records of earlier date than the 14th century. The most ancient of them is the society of the Dyers, dating from 1330. Admission to these societies involves many ceremonies derived from the ritual of the Catholic Church; hence, the Tailors and Shoemakers were in 1645 denounced to the ecclesiastical tribunals, and their meetings forbidden by the theological faculty of Paris.

4. THE ENGLISH STONEMASONS.

While the German societies of handicraftsmen were oppressed by the imperial power, and the French societies lived in obscurity, the English masons’ lodges, on the contrary, attained high importance. Tradition traces English (operative) masonry back to King Alfred the Great (871–901), and his successor, Athelstan, whose younger son, Edwin, is said to have called meetings of masons, and to have given laws to their lodges. However that may be, it is certain that in England, as in Germany, important edifices were erected by the clergy, and that Dunstan, archbishop of Canterbury, was an accomplished architect; but after the rise of Gothic architecture the builders were laymen, and in all probability many of them Germans. In the early English societies of masons we find rules and usages that clearly follow German precedent, and the lists of master masons contain many decidedly German names. Nevertheless, English masonry showed some peculiar features, e. g., the station of the master in the east, the holding of the lodge meetings in open air in fair weather, the posting of guards around the lodge, the drenching of peepers with the drip from the roof “till the water ran out of their shoes,” etc.

The English Freemasons may have got their name from the fact that the original founders of lodges were workers in freestone—freestone masons, as distinguished from workers in rough stone; freestone mason, it is supposed, was afterward contracted to the form “freemason.” In an act of parliament of the year 1350 the word freemason is found for the first time. By that act congregations and chapters of masons were forbidden. But the masons survived this persecution. Among themselves all masons were equals, comrades or fellows; in the lodges no distinction was made of master and fellow, though, of course, the actual master of a lodge presided over the meetings. The members studied mutual improvement in technical knowledge, and aided one another in misfortune. In the reign of Edward III. the laws prohibiting assemblage of masons was relaxed so as to permit meetings when held in presence of the sheriff of a county or the mayor of a city. Out of these societies of operative masons arose the modern institution of “speculative” freemasonry.

_Astrologers and Alchemists._

The epoch of the Reformation closed with the recovery to the Catholic Church of a large proportion of its lost territory through the labors of the Jesuits. Long before the Thirty Years’ War the zeal for religious creeds had died out; people had grown weary of theological strifes, though they had little taste for other serious matters; and thus it came about that in the transition from the 16th to the 17th century such pseudo-sciences as Alchemy and Astrology had great vogue. The study of Astrology had for its aim only fame and glory, and, therefore, was pursued openly; while Alchemy being inspired mainly by avarice, had its laboratories in dark cellars, and made a strict secret of its processes.

Hence, it was natural that Alchemy, or the pretended art of producing gold and silver, should give rise to secret associations, especially as it employed sundry mystic, theosophic, and kabbalistic means for attaining its ends, such as were used by the pupils and followers of the famous Theophrastus Bombastus Paracelsus, reformer of the medical art, and one of the most zealous of astronomers and alchemists. That was the era of a Jacob Boehme, shoemaker and philosopher, who, though he had none of the “accurst hunger” for the precious metals, gave an impetus to fatuous investigations of divine things.

At the beginning of the 17th century a multitude of writings about this mystic and superstitious business appeared, pro and contra. In this battle of goosequills the Lutheran theologian, John Valentine Andraea of Tuebingen (b. 1586, d. 1654), took a very prominent part. Andreae in 1614 conceived the thought of playing a trick on these mystics by publishing two satirical pieces, in which was given an account of an alleged secret society designed to promote studies of that kind; to this society he gave a name suggested by the design of his own family seal (a Saint Andrew’s cross, with roses at the ends of its four arms)—Rosicrucians. These writings, “Fama Fraternitatis Roseae Crucis” (Fame of the Brotherhood of the Rosy Cross) and “Confessio Fraternitatis” (Confession of Faith of the Brotherhood) traced the pretended society back to a monk named Christian Rosenkreuz, who, in the 14th and 15th centuries, visited the holy land, was instructed in the occult sciences in the East, founded among his fellow-monks the brotherhood called by his name, and died at the age of 106 years. After a lapse of 120 years, in his tomb, which, in accordance with the rule of the order, was kept secret, but which was a magnificent structure in a vault, was found resting on his incorrupt body a parchment book containing the constitution and the secrets of the order. A later document “Chymische Hochzeit Christiani Rosenkreuz” (alchymic nuptials of Christian Rosenkreuz), which appeared in 1616, span the story out to greater length. Now, so great was the alchemistic furore of that time that the tale passed for solemn truth, and a swarm of writings followed, championing or battling against the Society of the Rosicrucians. To the opponents of the Rosy Cross belonged the theologians, who sniffed heretical tenets in the “documents,” and the medical men who scented danger to their close gild; while the alchemists, and particularly the followers of Paracelsus, inquired diligently after the Rosicrucians, and maintained the authenticity of their Constitution. Nor was there lack of attempts at interpreting in a mystical sense the symbol of the Rosy Cross: it signified Holiness joined with Silentiousness; it typified the rose-colored Blood of Christ poured out on the cross. Astounded by the war of no-wits against little-wits occasioned unintentionally by himself, Andreae tried to undo the mischief by putting forth two pieces, “Mythologia Christiana,” and “Turris Babel,” to prove that the whole thing was a joke, that the Brotherhood was a fiction and non-existent. But as he neglected to name himself as author of the first two writings, in vain did he pour out on the Rosicrucianistic partisans all the vitriol of his contempt. In vain, with a view to lead men’s fancy in other directions, did he found a “Christian Brotherhood” for the purpose of purging religion of abuses and planting true piety. The insanity persisted. Alchemy, barely alluded to in Andreae’s writings, became the subject of a multitude of new books, whose authors gave out that they were members of the alleged society. The incident was also turned to account by adventurers and by factions of every sort; the thing went so far that in the Rhineland and the Low Countries secret alchemistic societies were founded under the name of Rosicrucians, which also took the style Fraternitas Roris Cocti (Brotherhood of Boiled Dew), that is, of the Philosophers’ Stone; but these societies had no general organization among themselves. Many a wight was choused out of his money by these schemers. There were branch societies in Germany and Italy. In England Dr. Robert Fludd, an ardent mystic and alchemist, propagated the singular order by publishing a number of writings. With regard to the usages of the societies, we are told that the members roamed about meanly clad, with hair cropped close near the forehead, wearing as a token a black silken cord in the top buttonhole, carrying, when several went together, a small green banner. They claimed that their society was an offshoot of the great knightly order of St. John (Hospitalers). At their lodge meetings they wore a blue ribbon, on which was a gold cross inscribed with a rose, and their president (styled Imperator, emperor) was dressed in priestly togs. They observed strict secrecy as toward outsiders. They disappeared little by little in the 18th century, and there is no means of determining the relation between them and the masonic Rosicrucians, of whom more anon.

_PART NINTH._ _Rise and Constitution of Freemasonry._

1. RISE OF FREEMASONRY.

The Reformation and the events connected with it had given people much matter of meditation. But the intolerance shown by the authorities and by the members of both creeds, in maltreating and persecuting their opponents, so alienated all humane minded men that secretly people began to care neither for the interest of Protestantism nor for that of Catholicism, and in the common brotherhood of mankind to disregard all differences of creed. Illuminism, which had been “good form” though in a frivolous sense among the Templars, and in a satiric sense among the Stonemasons, took a more dignified shape, not of incredulity but of earnest desire to build up, and to this consummation the English masons contributed materially. In England people had had enough of strife over creeds, enough of persecution of Protestants under “Bloody Mary” and of Catholics under the inflexible Elizabeth, and they longed for tolerance. They derived the principles of tolerance from renascent literature and art, which made such impression that as in an earlier age the Romanic architecture, so now the Gothic, as the expression of a definite phase of belief, lost its following, and the so-called Augustan or “Renaissance” style—an imitation of the ancient Grecian and Roman styles—won the day with all who knew anything of art. The Renaissance style was brought to England by the painter Inigo Jones, who had learned his art in Italy, and who, under James I., became in 1607 superintendent general of royal constructions, and at the same time president of the Freemasons, whose lodges he reformed. Instead of the yearly general meetings he instituted quarterly meetings: such masons as adhered to the manual craft and cared nothing for intellectual aims were permitted to go back into the trade gilds; while, on the other hand, men of talent not belonging to the mason’s trade, but who were interested in architecture and in the aspirations of the time, were taken into the lodges under the name of “accepted brethren.” Under the altered circumstances a new, bold spirit awoke among the Freemasons, and it found support in the sentiment of brotherliness, irrespective of creeds, then everywhere prevalent. This disposition of minds was promoted in an incalculable degree by the pictures drawn by Sir Thomas More in his “Utopia,” and by Sir Francis Bacon in his “New Atlantis,” of countries existing, indeed, only in their imagination, but which presented ideal conditions, such as enlightened minds might desire to realize upon this earth; also by the writings of the Bohemian preacher, Amos Komensky (latinized Comenius), who, during the Thirty Years’ War was expelled from his country by the partisans of the Emperor, and came to England in 1641—writings that condemned all churchly bigotry and pleaded for cosmopolitanism. As men of the most diverse views, political and religious, were in the lodges, the order suffered severely during the civil commotions of the first and second revolution, but on the return of peace it more than recovered lost prestige. The rebuilding of London, and in particular St. Paul’s Cathedral (1662), added greatly to the fame of English masonry: Sir Christopher Wren, builder of Saint Paul’s, was of the brotherhood. But about the time of the death of William III. (1702), owing to slackness of occupation in the building trades, the Freemason lodges became conscious of a serious defect in their organization. The members who were practically connected with the operative craft of masonry were steadily declining in number, and the “accepted” masons had become the majority. The lodges, therefore, had come to be a sort of clubs, and this transformation spread rapidly in London.

Another influence that came in to affect the development of English freemasonry was the diffusion of deistical opinions by Locke’s school in philosophy. Though the lodges then, as now, made loud protestations of orthodoxy, they could not withdraw themselves out of the deistical atmosphere of the period.

The resultant of these different influences gained the upper hand in the clubs or lodges of the quondam masons, now Freemasons. They now aimed at a more thorough betterment of morals on a conservatively deistical basis. But the necessity of a closer organization was recognized. Two theologians, Theophilus Desaguliers (who was both a naturalist and a mathematician) and James Anderson, together with George Payne, antiquary, were the foremost men of those who, in the year 1717, effected the union of the four lodges of masons in London in one Grand Lodge, and procured the election of a Grand Master and two Grand Wardens, thus instituting the Freemasons’ Union as it exists at this day. What Jerusalem is to Jews and Mecca to Mohammedans, and Rome to Catholics, that London is to Freemasons.

Henceforth the masons of England were no longer a society of handicraftsmen, but an association of men of all orders and every vocation, as also of every creed, who met together on the broad basis of humanity, and recognized no standard of human worth other than morality, kindliness and love of truth. The new Freemasons retained the symbolism of the operative masons, their language and their ritual. No longer did they build houses and churches, but the spiritual temple of humanity; they used the square no more to measure right angles of blocks of stone, but for evening the inequalities of human character, nor the compass any more to describe circles on stone, but to trace a ring of brother-love around all mankind. It was, perhaps, a picture of the young league of the Freemasons that Toland drew in his “Socratic Society” (1720), which, however, he clothed in a vesture the reverse of Grecian. The symposia or brotherly feasts of this society, their give-and-take of questions and answers, their aversion to the rule of mere physical force, to compulsory religious belief, and to creed hatred, as well as their mild and tolerant disposition and their brotherly regard for one another, remind us strongly of the ways of the Freemasons.

Though differences of creed played no part in the new masonry, nevertheless the brethren held religion in high esteem, and were steadfast upholders of the only two articles of belief that never were invented by man, but which are borne in on the mind and heart of every man, the existence of God, to wit, and the soul’s immortality. Accordingly every lodge was opened and closed with prayer to the “Almighty Architect of the universe”; and in the lodge of mourning in memory of a deceased brother, this formula was used: “He has passed over into the eternal East”—to that region whence light proceeds. Political parties, also, were not regarded among Freemasons: one principle alone was common to them all—love of country, respect for law and order, desire for the common welfare.

Inasmuch as the league must prize unity, one of the first decrees of the Grand Lodge was one declaring illegitimate all lodges created without its sanction. Hence to this day no lodges are recognized as such which are not founded originally and mediately from London. Despite this restriction there sprung up even in the first years after the institution of the Grand Lodge a multitude of new lodges, which received authorization from the Grand Lodge. With these numerous accessions the need of general laws became pressing, and at request of the Grand Lodge, Anderson, one of the founders, undertook to compare the existing statutes of the order with the ancient records and usages of the Stonemasons, and to compile them in one body of law. The result was the “Book of Constitutions,” which is still the groundwork of Freemasonry. It has been printed repeatedly, and is accessible to every one. Another foundation stone of Freemasonry was laid by the Grand Lodge in 1724, when it instituted the “committee for beneficence,” thus giving play to one of the most admirable features of the order—that of giving help to the needy and unfortunate, whether within the order or without.

The inner organization of the order, finally, was completed by the introduction of the Degrees. Brothers who had filled the post of Masters, on retiring from office, did not return to the grade of Fellows, but constituted a new degree, that of Masters: on the other hand, newly admitted members were no longer forthwith Fellows, but only apprentices: these degrees were instituted probably in 1720; at that time no other higher degrees were known. The right to promote apprentices to the degree of Fellow, and Fellows to that of Master, previously a function of the Grand Lodge, was accorded to the subordinate lodges in 1725.

Soon Freemasonry spread abroad. Lodges arose in all civilized countries, founded by English masons or by foreigners who had received masonic initiation in England; these lodges, when sufficiently numerous, united under Grand Lodges. The Grand Lodge of Ireland was created in 1730, those of Scotland and of France in 1736, a provincial lodge of England at Hamburg in 1740, the Unity Lodge of Frankfort-on-the-Main in 1742, and in the same year a lodge at Vienna, the Grand Mother Lodge of the Three World-spheres at Berlin in 1744, etc. A lodge was instituted at Boston, Mass., in 1733, and from Boston the order spread to Philadelphia. Thus in the space of thirty years from its origin freemasonry existed in all civilized lands, and so did not lag behind its opposite pole, Jesuitism, in respect of rapidity of propagation. Opposite poles these two societies are, for each possesses precisely those qualities which the other lacks. The Jesuits are strongly centralized, the freemasons only confederated. Jesuits are controlled by one man’s will, Freemasons are under majority rule. Jesuits bottom morality in expediency, Freemasons in regard for the wellbeing of mankind. Jesuits recognize only one creed, Freemasons hold in respect all honest convictions. Jesuits seek to break down personal independence, Freemasons to build it up.

2. CONSTITUTION OF THE ORDER.

The Society of Freemasons, because of its historic propagation, through sets from the English stock and through further budding and branching of these, forms no unitary organic whole. It has no central or supreme authority, no common head, whether acknowledged or unacknowledged. Its sole unity consists in a common name and a common end, in the common recognition signs, in agreement as to the general internal polity, and in a general uniformity of usages, though these show marked differences also. But very different between one country and another are the methods employed for attaining the ends of Freemasonry; different also is the organization of the lodge and the arrangement of the work.

Regarding the common end and aim of Freemasonry there is lack of perfect definiteness. In this regard Freemasonry presents a strong contrast to its rival, Jesuitism, which has only too clear perception of its aim. But so much is absolutely indisputable, that the end of Freemasonry is neither religious nor political, but purely moral. “Freemasonry labors to promote the wellbeing of mankind”: here all Freemasons are at one, though some of them may lay more stress on material wellbeing, some on purely moral, some on spiritual welfare, while again others will consider the wellbeing of the whole, and still others, the wellbeing of individuals as the object of the society. But as these several views are by no means mutually exclusive, but, in fact, complementary of one another, this lack of definition in the end of the society cannot be any hindrance to the society’s beneficent labors. And as matter of fact the society has wrought much good. Not only does it help its own members in need; no worthy person in need ever appeals to the order for relief in vain.