THE universal sentiment of the Masons of the present day is to confer upon Solomon, King of Israel, the honor of being their “first Grand Master.” But the Legend of the Craft had long before, though there was a tradition of the temple extant, bestowed, at least by implication, that title upon Nimrod, the King of Babylonia and Assyria. It had attributed the first organization of a fraternity of craftsmen to him, in saying that he gave a charge to the workmen whom he sent to asist the King of Nineveh in building his cities. That is to say, he framed for them a Constitution, and, in the words of the Legend, “this was the first tyme that ever Masons had any charge of his science.” It was the first time that the Craft were organized into a fraternity working under a Constitution or body of laws; and as Nimrod was the autocratic maker of these laws, it results as a necessary consequence, that their first legislator, legislating with dictatorial and unrestricted sovereign power, was also their first Grand Master.
This view of the early history of Masonry, presented to us by the Legend of the Craft, which differs so much from the modern opinion, although it has almost become obsolete, is worthy of at least a passing consideration.
Who was this Nimrod, who held so exalted a position in the eyes of the old legendists, and why had they assigned to him a rank and power which modern Craftsmen have thought to belong more justly to the King of Israel?
The answers to these questions will be an appropriate commentary on that part of the Legend of the Craft which contains the story of this old Assyrian monarch.
The estimation of the character of Nimrod which has been almost universally entertained by the ancients as well as the moderns, obtains no support from the brief account of him contained in the Book of Genesis.
Josephus portrays him as a tyrant in his government of his people, vainglorious of his great power, a despiser and hater of God, and instigated by this feeling, the builder of a tower through which he would avenge himself on God for having destroyed the world.
For this view of the character of Nimrod, Josephus was in an probability indebted to the legends of the orientalists, which had clustered around the name of Nimrod, just as in ancient times legends always did cluster around great and mighty men.
Thus in the ancient chronicles he was represented as of
gigantic stature, ten or twelve cubits in height. To him was attributed the
invention of idolatry, and he is said to have returned to Chaldea after the
destruction of the
The Scriptural account of Nimrod is a very brief and unsatisfactory one. It is merely that:
“
The most learned commentators have differed as regards the
translation of the 11th verse. The Septuagint, the
Vulgate, Luther’s and our own recognized version say-“Out of that land went
forth Ashur, and builded
him with workmen. Such was the legend until the beginning of the 18th century.
But the best modern Hebrew scholars, such as Borhart, Le
Clerc, Gesenius, and a great many others, insist that Ashur is not the name of
a person, but of a country, and that the passage should be rendered: “Out of
that land he (Nimrod) went forth to Assyria and builded Nineveh, and the city
Rehoboth, and Calah, and Resen, between Nineveh and Calah.” This is the form of
the legend that was adopted by Dr. Anderson and by the author of the Krause
document, and after the publication of
The Craft have in both forms of the legend recognized Nimrod as a great Mason, nor have the vituperations of Josephus and the scandalous legends of the orientalists had the slightest effect on their apparent estimation of that mighty monarch, the founder of nations and the builder of cities.
And now, in the latter part of the 19th century, comes a learned scholar, (1) well acquainted with the language of the ancient Babylonians and Assyrians, and with the complicated cuneiform alphabet in which it is clothed, and visiting the remains of the ruined cities which Nimrod had built, finds the fragments of twelve tablets which contain the history of a Babylonian monarch to whom he gave the provisional name of Izdubar and whom he identified with Nimrod. If this identification be correct, and there is certainly strong internal evidence in favor of it, we have in these tablets a somewhat connected narrative of the exploits of the proto-monarch of Babylon, which places his character in a more favorable light than that which had hitherto been received as the popular belief founded on the statement of Josephus and the oriental traditions.
The Izdubar legends, as Mr. Smith has called the inscriptions on these tablets, represent Nimrod as a mighty leader, a man of great prowess in war and in hunting, and who by his ability and valor had united many of the petty kingdoms into which the whole of the valley of the Euphrates was at that time divided, and thus established the first empire in Asia. He was, in fact, the hero of the ancient Babylonians, and therefore it was only natural that they should consecrate the memory of him who as a powerful and beneficent king had first given them that unity which secured their prosperity as a nation.
If we now refer to the Legend of the Craft, we shall find that the old Masonic legendist, although of course he had never seen nor heard of the discoveries contained in the cuneiform inscriptions, had rejected the traditional estimate of Nimrod’s character, as well as the supposed results of the destruction of the Tower of Babel, and had wisely selected Babylon as the first seat and Nimrod (whoever may have been meant by that name) as the founder of the sciences, and especially of architecture.
In this there is a conformity of the legendary account with the facts of history, not usual with legendists.
“We must give,” says Canon Rawlinson, “the Babylonians credit for a genius and a grandeur of conception rarely surpassed, which led them to employ the labor whereof they had the command, in works of so imposing a character. With only ‘brick for stone,’ and at first only ‘slime for mortar,’ they constructed edifices of so vast a size that they still remain, at the present day, among the most enormous ruins in the world, impressing the beholder at once with awe and admiration.”
The Legend of the Craft continually confounds Masonry,
Geometry, and Architecture, or rather uses them as synonymous and convertible
terms. It is not, therefore, surprising that it should have selected
HAING disposed of the establishment of Masonry in
It forms the opening feature of the Halliwell poem, being in that document the beginning of the history of Masonry; it is told with circumstantial minuteness in the Cooke MS., and is apparently copied from that into all the later manuscripts, where the important details are essentially the same, although we find a few circumstances related in some which are omitted in others.
Divesting the narrative of the archaic language of the manuscripts, the legend may be given as follows:
Once on a time, to use the story-teller’s style, Abraham
and his wife went to
In this strait they held a council and made proclamation that if any one could suggest a remedy, he should lay his plans before them, when he should be suitably rewarded.
Upon this
To this proposition the Egyptian nobles gladly consented,
and granted
Thus did
I have said that while all the manuscripts agree in the prominent circumstances of this legend, there are in some of them a few discrepancies as to some of the minor details.
Thus the Halliwell poem makes no allusion to Abraham, but
imputes the founding of Masonry to
The Cooke MS. is far more full in
details than either the Halliwell poem or the manuscripts that succeeded it. It
says that Abraham taught Geometry to the Egyptians, and that
The needles repetitions and confusion of details in the Cooke MS. show that the author had derived the information on which he constructed his legend from various sources -partly from the authority of St. Isidore, as he is quoted in Higden’s Polychronicon, and partly from the tradition of the Craft.
The later manuscripts have copied the details of the Legend as contained in the Cooke codex, but with many omissions, so as to give it the form in which it was known to the Craft in the 16th and 17th centuries.
Thus the Dowland MS., whose date is supposed to be about 1550, gives the story almost exactly as it is in the Halliwell poem, except that it adds Abraham and Sarah as dramatis persona, making it in this respect coincide with the Cooke MS., and probably with the form of the original Legend.
In this it is followed by the York, No. 1 (1600), the Grand Lodge (1632), the Sloane (1646), the Lodge of Hope (1680), the Alnwick (1701), and even the Papworth MS., as late as 1714.
The Landsdowne MS. (1560), and the Antiquity (1686), have the Legend in a very imperfect form, and either did not copy or greatly curtailed the Dowland MS., as they but slightly refer to Egypt and to Euclid, and not at all to Abraham.
As to the reputation for great learning which the legendists have given to Abraham, although the Bible dwells only on his piety, they found their authority in Josephus, as well as in Isidore.
Josephus says that among the Egyptians he was esteemed as a very wise man, and that besides reforming their customs, he taught them arithmetic and astronomy.
It is evident, as has been already noticed, that the Legend of the Craft has been indebted for much of its materials to the Antiquities of Josephus, and the Etymologies of St. Isidore, and the Polychronicon of Ranulph Higden - the first two at second hand, in all probability through the citations of those works which are mdde in the third.
The Krause MS., which is said to have been translated from the English into the Latin, and afterward into German, and published by Dr. Krause, gives the Legend in an entirely different form.
Notwithstanding that I have declared my belief that this document is spurious with a date of not earlier than the second decade, or more probably toward the middle of the 18th century, yet, as an indication of the growth and the change of the Legend at that period, it will be worth while to compare its form with that in the older manuscripts, at least so far as relates to the Egyptian episode, which is in the following words:
“Abraham was skilled in all the sciences and continued to
teach them to the sons of the freeborn, whence afterwards came the many learned
priests and mathematicians who were known by the name of the Chaldean Magi.
Afterwards, Abraham continued to propagate these sciences and arts when he came
to Egypt, and found there, especially in Hermes, so apt a scholar, that the
latter was at length called the Trismegistus of the sciences, for he was at the
same time priest and natural philosopher in Egypt; and through him and a
scholar of his the Egyptians received the first good laws and all the sciences
in which Abraham had instructed him. Afterwards
“But in consequence of the confusion of languages, the laws
and arts and sciences could not formerly be propagated until the people had
learned to make comprehensible by signs that which they could not understand by
words. Wherefore, Mizraim, the son of Cham, brought the custom of making
himself understood by signs with him into
“In
If the reader compares this legend of the Krause
manuscript with that which is given by Dr. Anderson in the first edition of his
Constitutions, he will be constrained to admit that both documents are derived
from the same source, or that one of them is an abridged or an expository copy
of the other. It is evident that the statement in
If the Krause MS. was written before Anderson compiled his history, it could not have been long anterior, and must have been composed between 1714, the date of the Papworth MS., which contains the Legend in its mediaeval form, and 1723, when Anderson published his work. Within this period the Masons sought to modify the old Legend of the Craft, so as to deprive it of its apparent absurdities, and to omit its anachronisms so as to give it the appearance of an authentic historical narrative.
Instead, therefore, of having the date of 926, which has been ascribed to it by Dr. Krause, his manuscript is, as Bro. Hughan thinks it, “a compilation of the early part of the last century.” It is, however, important, as I have said, because it shows how the old Legend was improved and divested of its anachronisms.
It is certainly a very absurd anachronism to make
Considered, then, as an historical narrative, the Legend of Euclid is a failure. And yet it has its value as the symbolical development of certain historical facts.
The prominent points in this Legend being, of course, those on which the old believers of it most strenuously dwelt, are:
1. That Geometry is the groundwork of Masonry;
2. That
3. That the esoteric method of teaching this as well as all the other sciences which was pursued by the priests of Egypt, was very analogous to that which was adopted by the Operative Masons of the Middle Ages, in imparting to their disciples the geometric and architectural secrets, which constituted what they called the Mystery of the Craft.
The Legend, in fact, symbolizes the well-recognized fact, that in Egypt, in early times -of which there is no historical objection to make Abraham the contemporary - there was a very intimate connection between the science of Geometry and the religious system of the Egyptians; that this religious system embraced also all scientific instruction; that this instruction was secret, and communicated only after an initiation, (1) and that in that way there was a striking analogy between the Egyptian system and that of the mediaeval Masons. And this fact of an analogy, the latter sought to embody in the apparent form of an historical narrative, but really in the spirit of a symbolic picture.
Thus considered, the Legend of the Craft, in its episode
of
FROM this account of the exploits of Abraham and his scholar Euclid, and of the invention of Geometry, or Masonry in Egypt, the Legend of the Craft proceeds, by a rapid stride, to the narrative of the introduction of the art into Judea, or as it is called in all of them, “the land of behest,” or the land of promise.
Here it is said to have been principally used by King
Solomon, in the construction of the temple at
The assumption that Freemasonry, as it now exists, was organized at the Temple of Solomon, although almost universally accepted by Masons who have not made Masonry, a historical study but who derive their ideas of the Institution from the mythical teachings of the ritual, has been utterly rejected by the greater part of the recent school of iconoclasts, who investigate the history of Freemasonry by the same methods which they would pursue in the examination of any other historical subject.
The fact, however, remains, that in the Legend of the
Craft the
Hence we find the
But there is a difference in the aspect in which this
subject of the
Originally referred to by the legendists as a purely historical fact, whose details were derived from Scripture, and connected by a sort of esprit du corps, with the progress of their own association, it was retained during and after the development of the Order into a Speculative character, because it seemed to be the very best foundation on which the religious symbolism of that Order could be erected.
But notwithstanding that the masses of the Institution, learned as well as unlearned, continue to accept the historical character of this part of the Legend, the Temple is chiefly to be considered in a symbolic point of view. It is in this aspect that we must regard it, and in so doing we shall relieve the Legend of another charge of absurdity. It is true that we are unable now to determine how much of true history and how much of symbolism were contemplated by the authors of the Legend, when they introduced the Temple of Jerusalem into that document as a part of their traditional narrative. But there is a doubt, and we can not now positively assert that the mediaeval Freemasons had not some impression of a symbolic idea when they incorporated it into their history.
The
Seeing, then, the importance of this symbol, it is proper and will be interesting to trace it back through the various exemplars of the Legend of the Craft contained in the Old Constitutions, because it is to that Legend that modern Freemasonry owes the suggestion at least, if not the present arrangement and formulae of this important symbol.
In the oldest Constitution that we have, the one known as the Halliwell MS., whose date is supposed not to be later than the end of the 14th century, there is not the least allusion to the Temple of Solomon, which is another reason why I ascribe to that document, as I have before said, an origin different from that of the other and later manuscripts.
The word temple occurs but once in the entire poem, and then it is used to designate a Christian church or place of worship. But in the Cooke MS., written, as it is estimated, about a century afterward, there are ample references to the Solomonic Temple, and the statement made in the Legend of the Craft is for the first time enunciated.
After this, there is not a Constitution written in which the same narrative is not repeated. There does not appear in any of them, from the Landsdowne MS. in 1560 to the Papworth in 1701, any enlargement of the narrative or any development of new occurrences. Each of them dilates, in almost the same words, upon the Temple of Solomon as connected with Masonry in many words, and gives elaborate details of the construction of the edifice, of the number of Masons employed, how they were occupied in performing other works of Masonry, and, finally, how one of them left Jerusalem and extended the art into other countries. We thus see that up to the end of the 17th century the Legend of the Craft in all its essential details continued to be accepted as traditionary history.
In the beginning of the 18th century the Legend began to assume a nearer resemblance to its present form. The document already referred to as the Krause MS., and which Dr. Krause too hastily supposed was a copy of the original York Constitutions of 926, is really, as I have heretofore shown, a production of the early part of the 18th century. In this document the Legend is given in the following words:
“Although, by architecture great and excellent buildings had already been everywhere constructed, they all remained far behind the holy Temple, which the wise King Solomon caused to be erected in Jerusalem, to the honor of the true God, where he employed an uncommonly large number of workmen, as we find in the Holy Scriptures; and King Hiram of Tyre also added a number to them.
Among these assistants who were sent was King Hiram’s most skilful architect, a widow’s son, whose name was Hiram Abif, and who afterwards made the most exquisite arrangements and furnished the most costly works, all of which are described in the Holy Scriptures. The whole of these workmen were, with King Solomon’s approval, divided into certain classes, and thus at this great building was first founded a worthy Society of Architects.”
Whether the author of the Krause MS. had copied from Anderson, or Anderson from him, or both from some other
document which is no longer extant, is a question that has already been
discussed. But the description of the
Therefore, notwithstanding that Dr. Krause asserts, that “the Temple of Solomon is no symbol, certainly not a prominent one of the English system,” I am constrained to believe that it was one of the prominent symbols alluded to in the Mediaeval Legend, and that the symbol of the Temple upon which so much of the symbolism of Modern Speculative Masonry depends, was, in fact, suggested to the revivalists by the narrative contained in the Legend of the Craft.
Whether the Operative Masons of the Middle Ages, who seem to have accepted this Legend as authentic history, had also, underlying the narrative, a symbolic interpretation of the Temple and of certain incidents that are said to have occurred in the course of its erection, as referring to this life and the resurrection to a future one, or whether that interpretation was in existence at the time when the Legend of the Craft was invented, and was subsequently lost sight of, only to be recovered in the beginning of the 18th century, are questions that will be more appropriately discussed in succeeding pages of this work, when the subject of the myths and symbols of Freemasonry is under consideration.
But it is evident that between the narrative in the Legend
concerning the
Hence, again, we find that the Legend of the Craft is of value in reference to the light which it throws on the progress of Masonic science and symbolism, which otherwise it would not possess, if it were to be considered as a mere mythical narrative without any influence on history.
Before concluding this subject, it will be necessary to refer to the name of the chief builder of the Temple, and whose name has undergone that corruption in all the manuscripts to which all proper names have been subjected in those documents.
Of course, it is known, from the testimony of Scripture, that the real name and title of this person, as used in reference to King Solomon and himself, was Hiram Abif, that is, “his father Hiram.”
The Cooke MS. does not give any name, but only says, that “the
King’s son of
The idea was thus established that this man was of royal dignity, the son of a King, and that he was also a ruler of the Craft.
Now, the Hebrew word Adon denotes a lord, a prince, a
ruler or master. It is, in short, a
title of dignity. In the Book of Kings we meet with Adoniram, who was one of
the principal officers of King Solomon, and who during the construction of the
The old Masons may have confounded this person with Hiram from the similarity of the terminational syllables. The modern Continental Masons committed the same error when they established the Rite of Adonhiram or Adoniram, and gave to Hiram Abif the title of Adon Hiram, or the Lord or Master Hiram. If the Old Masons did this, then it is evident that they abbreviated the full namc and called him Adon.
But I am more inclined to believe that the author of the first or original old manuscript, of which all the rest are copies, called the chief builder of Solomon Adon, Lord and Master, in allusion to his supposed princely rank and his high position as the chief builder or Master of the Works at the Temple.
The Papworth
MS., whose supposed date is 1714, rejects all these words and calls him Benaim,
which is a misspelling of Bonaim, builders, and that a grammatical error for
Boneh, the Builder. The writer had evidently got an inkling of the new form which
the Legend was beginning to assume.
The corruption from Adon to Aynon, or Amon, or even Ajuon, is not greater than what occurs in other names in these manuscripts, as where Hermes is transmuted into Hermarines, and Euclid into Englet. Indeed the copyists of these mediaeval documents appear to have had a Gallic facility in corrupting the orthography of all foreign names, very often almost totally destroying their identity.
As to the real meaning of Hiram Abif, either as a historic or symbolic character, that topic will be thoroughly considered in another part of this work, when the subject of Masonic Symbols comes to be considered. The topic of the corruption of the name in the old manuscripts, and its true signification, will again be treated when I come to investigate the “ Legend of Hiram Abif.”
The Legend of the
The popularity of King Solomon among the Eastern nations is a familiar fact, known not only to Oriental scholars, but even to those whose knowledge on the subject is confined to what they have learned from their youthful reading of the Arabian Nights’ Entertainments. Among the Arabians and the Persians, the King of Israel was esteemed as a great magician, whose power over the genii and other supernatural beings was derived from his possession of the Omnific Name, by the use of which he accomplished all his wonderful works, the said name being inscribed on his signet ring.
It is not singular seeing the communication which took place before and after the Crusades between the East and the West, that the wise son of David should have enjoyed an equal popularity among the poets and romancers of the Middle Ages.
“But among them the character that he sustains is not that of a great magician, so much as that of a learned philosopher. Whenever a Norman romancer or a Provencal minstrel composed a religious morality, a pious declamation, or a popular proverb, it was the name of Solomon that was often selected to “point the moral or adorn the tale.”
Unlike the Orientalists, whose tendencies were always toward the mystical, the mediaeval writers most probably derived their opinion of the King of Israel, from the account of him and of his writings in the Bible. Now, there he is peculiarly distinguished as a proverbialist.
Proverbs are the earliest outspoken thought of the people, and they precede, in every nation, all other forms of literature. It was therefore to be expected, that at the awakening of learning in the Middle Ages, the romancers would be fascinated by the proverbial philosophy of King Solomon, rather than by his magical science, on which the Eastern fabulists had more fondly dwelt.
Legrand D’Aussy, in his valuable work On the Fables and Romances of the 12th and 13th Centuries, gives two interesting specimens from old manuscripts, of the use made by their writers of the traditional reputation of King Solomon.
The first of these is a romance called “The Judgment of Solomon.” It is something like the Jewish story of the two mothers. But here the persons upon whom the judgment is to be passed are two sons of the Prince of Soissons. The claim advanced was for a partition of the property. To determine who was better entitled to be the heir, by the reverence he might exhibit for the memory of his father, Solomon required each to prove his knightly dexterity by transfixing a mark with his lance, and that mark was to be the body of his dead father. The elder readily complied with the odious condition. The younger indignantly refused. To him Solomon decreed the heritage.
We see here how ready these romancers of the Middle Ages
were to invent a narrative and fit it into the life of their favorite Solomon.
The makers of the Masonic Legend of the Craft, who were their contemporaries, promptly followed
their example. There is in that Legend, as we have seen, some anachronisms, but
none more absurd than that which makes a Prince of Soissons, who could not have
been earlier than the time of
But it shows us the spirit of the age and how Legends were fabricated.
We are thus prepared to form a judgment of the Masonic myths.
The Middle Ages also attributed to King Solomon a very familiar acquaintance with the science of astrology. In so doing they by no means borrowed the Oriental idea that he was a great magician; for astrology formed no part of Eastern occult magic. The mediaeval astrologer was deemed a man of learning, just as at this day is the astronomer. Astrology was, in fact, the astronomy of the Middle Ages. Solomon’s astrological knowledge was therefore only a part of that great learning for which he had the reputation.
In the collection of unpublished Fabliaux et Contes, edited by M. Meon, is a poem entitled, “Le Lunaire que Salemon fist”; that is, “The Lunary which Solomon made.”
The lunary or lunarium was a table made by astrologers to indicate the influence exerted by the moon on human affairs.
The poem, which consists of 910 lines, written in the old French or Norman language, contains directions for the conduct of life, telling what is to be done or what omitted on every day of the month. The concluding lines assign, without hesitation, the authorship to Solomon, while it pays the mediaeval tribute to his character:
“Here is ended the lesson
Made by the good King Solomon,
To whom in his life God gave
Riches and honor and learning,
More than to any other born
Or begotten of woman.”
The canonical book of Proverbs gave the writers of the Middle Ages occasion to have an exalted opinion of Solomon as a maker of those pithy sayings -a characteristic of his genius of which the Orientals seem to have been unmindful.
One of the most remarkable works of mediaeval literature is a poem by the Comte de Bretagne, entitled “Proverbs of Marcol and Solomon.”
This Marcol is represented as a commentator, or rather, perhaps, a rival of King Solomon. The work is a poem divided into stanzas of six lines each. The first three lines contain a proverb of Solomon; the next three another proverb on the same subject, and in response, by Marcol.
There is another mediaeval poem in the collection of M. Meon, entitled “Of Marco and Solomon.” The responsive style is the same as that of the Comte de Bretagne, but the one hundred and thirty-seven proverbs which it contains are all new.
But still more apposite to the present inquiry is the fact that among themedioeval writers Solomon bore the reputation of an artisan ofconsummate skill. He was like the Volund or Wieland of the
Scandinavian and Teutonic myths -the traditional smith who fabricatedthe decorations of chambers, the caparison of war-horses, and theswords and lances of cavaliers. In the poems of the Middle Ages whenever it becomes necessary to speak of any of these things as having been made with exquisite and surpassing skill, it is said to be “the work of Solomon” -l’uevre Salemon.
But enough has been said to show that King Solomon was as
familiar to the romancers of the Middle Ages as he was
to the Jews of Palestine or to the Orientalists of Arabia and
Now, about the same time that these fable-makers and
song-writers of the 12th, 13th, and 14th
centuries were composing these stories about King Solomon, the makers of the
Masonic Legend of the Craft were inventing their myths about the same monarch
and the
This is a concurrence of time which suggests that possibly the popularity of King Solomon with the romancers of the Middle Ages made the incorporation of his name in the Masonic Legend less difficult to those who framed that mythical story.
We might, indeed, be led to suspect that the use of
Solomon in their Legends and traditions was first suggested to the Stonemasons
and to the cognate associations, such as the “Compagnons de la Tour” of
But the subsequent myths connected with Solomon as the head of the association of Masons at the Temple were, at a much later period, borrowed, in great part, from the Talmudists, and have no place among the song-writers and fabulists of the Middle Ages.
THE Legend of The Craft next proceeds to narrate how Masonry was extended “into divers countryes,” some of the Masons traveling to increase their knowledge of their art, and others to extend that which they already possessed.
This subject is very briefly treated in the different
manuscripts. The Halliwell poem says nothing of the progressive march of
Masonry except that it details almost as an episode the persecution of the “Four
Crowned Martyrs” as Christian Masons, in the reign of the Roman Emperor
Diocletian, and we should almost be led to infer from the tenor of the poem
that Masonry was introduced directly into
The Cooke MS. simply says that from Egypt Masonry “went
from land to land and from kingdom to kingdom,” until it got to
The later manuscripts are a little more definite, although still brief. They merely tell us that skillful craftsmen largely traveled into various countries, some that they might acquire more knowledge and skill, and others to teach those who had but little skill.
There is certainly nothing that is mythical or fabulous in
this statement. Every authentic history
of architecture concurs in the statement that at an early period the various
counties of
Indeed, as Mr. George Godwin says, “There are few points in the Middle Ages more pleasing, to look back upon than the existence of the associated Masons; they I are the bright spot in the general darkness of that period, the patch of verdure when all around is barren.”
But this interesting subject will be more fully discussed in another part of this work, when we come to treat of the authentic history of Masonry. This portion of the Legend can not be said to belong to the prehistoric period.
It is sufficient, for the present, to have shown that in
this part, as elsewhere, the Legend of the Craft is not a merely fictitious
narrative, but that the general statement of the extension of Freemasonry
throughout
On examining the Legend of the Craft, it will be found to
trace the extension of Masonry through its successive stages of progress from
THE Legend, now approaching the domain of authentic
history, but still retaining its traditional character, proceeds to narrate,
but in a very few words, the entrance of Masonry into
This account is given in the following language in the Dowland manuscript.
“And soe it befell that there was one curious Mason that
height MAYMUS GRECUS, that had been at the making of Solomon’s
temple, and he came into
And there was one of the Regal lyne of Fraunce, that height CHARLES MARTELL; and he was a man that loved well such a science, and drew to this MAYMUS GRECUS that is above said, and learned of him the science, and tooke upon him the charges and manners; and afterwards, by the grace of God, he was elect to be Kinge of France. And whan he was in his estate, he tooke Masons and did helpe to make men Masons that were none; and he set them to worke, and gave them both the charge and the manners and good pale, as he had learned of other Masons; and confirmed them a Charter from yeare to yeare, to holde their semble wher they would; and cherished them right much; and thus came the science into France.”
This Legend is repeated, almost word for word, in all the later manuscripts up to the year 1714.
It is not even alluded to in the earliest of all the manuscripts - the Halliwell poem - which is another proof that that document is of German origin.
The Cooke MS. has the Legend in the following words:
“Sumtyme ther was a worthye kyng in Frauns, that was clepyd Carolus secundus that ys to sey Charlys the secunde. And this Charlys was elyte [elected] kyng of Frauns by the grace of God and by lynage [lineage] also. And sume men sey that he was elite [elected] by fortune the whiche is fals as by cronycle he was of the kynges blode Royal. And this same kyng Charlys was a mason bifor that he was kyng. And after that he was kyng he lovyd masons and cherschid them and gaf them chargys and mannerys at his devise the whiche sum ben yet used in fraunce and he ordeynyd that they scholde have a semly [assembly] onys in the yere and come and speke togedyr and for to be rculed by masters and felows of thynges amysse.”
The absence of all allusion to Namus Grecus (a personage who will directly occupy our attention) in the Cooke document is worthy of notice.
When Dr. Anderson was putting the Legend of the Craft into a modern shape, he also omitted any reference to Namus Grecus but he preserved the spirit of the Legend, so far as to say, that according to the old records of Masons, Charles Martel “sent over several expert craftsmen and learned architects into England at the desire of the Saxon kings.”
I think it will be proved, when in the course of this work
the authentic history of Masonry comes to be treated, that the statement in the
Legend of the Craft in relation to the condition of the art in
The introduction of the name of Namus Grecus, an unknown Mason, who is described as being the contemporary of both Solomon and of Charles Martel, is certainly an apparent anachronism that requires explanation.
This Namus Grecus has been a veritable sphinx to Masonic antiquaries, and no CEdipus has yet appeared who could resolve the riddle. Without assuming the sagacity of the ancient expounder of enigmas, I can only offer a suggestion for what it may be considered worth.
I suppose Grecuis to be merely an appellative indicating the
fact that this personage was a Greek. Now, the knowledge of his existence at the court of Charles
Martel was most probably derived by the English legendist from a German or
French source, because the Legend of the Craft is candid in admitting that the
English Masons had collected the writings and charges from other countries.
Prince Edwin is said to have made a proclamation that any Masons who “had any
writing or understanding of the charges and the manners that were made before
in this land [
Now, if the account and the name of this Greek architect
had been taken from the German, the text would most probably have been “ein
Maurer Namens Grecus”; or, if from the French, it would have been “un
It can not be scd that it is not probable that any
legendist would have fallen into such an error when we remember how many others
as great, if not greater, have been perpetrated in these Old Records. See, for
instance, in these manuscripts such orthographical mistakes as Hermarines for
Hermes, and Englet for
The original Legend, in all probability meant to say
merely that in the time of Charles Martel, a Greek artist, who had been to
Now, history attests that in the 8th century
there was an influx of Grecian architects and artificers into Southern and
It is also a historical fact that Charles the Great of France was a liberal encourager of the arts and sciences, and that he especially promoted the cultivation of architecture on the Byzantine or Greek model in his dominions.
Dr. Oliver, in the second edition of the Constitutions, repeats the Legend with a slight variation. He says that “Ethelbert, King of Mercia, and general monarch, sent to Charles Martel, the Right Worshipful Grand Master of France (father of King Pippin), who had been educated by Brother Nimus Graecus, he sent over from France (about A.D. 710) some expert Masons to teach the Saxons those laws and usages of the ancient fraternity, that had been happily preserved from the havock of the Goths.”
Pritchard, in his Masonry Dissected, gives, upon what authority I know not, the Legend in the following form:
Euclid “communicated the art and mystery of Masonry to Hiram, the Master Mason concerned in the building of Solomon’s Temple in Jerusalem, where was an excellent and curious Mason, whose name was Mannon Grecus, who taught the art of Masonry to one Carolus Marcil in France, who was afterwards elected King of Flance.”
Upon this change of the name to Mannon Grecus, Krause
suggests a derivation as follows: In using this name he thinks that Pritchard
intended to refer to the celebrated scholastic philosopher Mannon, or Nannon, who
was probably celebrated in his time for his proficiency in the language and
literature of
I think the derivation of the name offered by Dr. Krause is wholly untenable though ingenious, for it depends upon a name not found in any of the old manuscripts, and besides, the philosopher did not live in the time of Charles Martel, but long afterward.
Between his derivation and mine, the reader may select, and probably will be inclined to reject both.
As far as the Legend regards Charles Martel as the patron
of architecture or Masonry in
If there has been an error of the legendists in attributing
to Charles Martel the honor that really belonged to his successor, Charles the
Great, it is not surprising when we consider how great was the ignorance of the
science of chronology that prevaded in those days. However, it must be remarked, that at the
present day the French Masonic writers speak of Charles Martel as the founder
of Masonry in
The error of making the Greek architect a contemporary both of Solomon and of Charles Martel is one which may be explained, either as the expression of a symbolic idea, alluding to the close connection that had existed between Oriental and Byzantine architecture, or may be excused as an instance of blundering chronology for which the spirit of the age, more than the writer of the Legend, is to be blamed. This objection will not, however, lie if we assume that Namus Grecus meant simply a Greek architect.
But this whole subject is so closely connected with the authentic history of Masonry, having really passed out of the prehistoric period, that it claims a future and more elaborate consideration in its proper place.
THE Legend of the Craft now proceeds to narrate the history
of the introduction of Masonry into
The Legend referring to the protomartyr of
“And sone after that come seynt Adhabell into Englond, and he convertyd seynt Albon to cristendome. And seynt Albon lovyd well masons, and he gaf hem fyrst her charges and maners fyrst in Englond. And he ordeyned convenyent to pay for their travayle.”
The later manuscripts say nothing of St. Adhabell, and it is not until we get to the Krause MS. in the beginning of the 18th century, that we find any mention of St. Amphibalus, who is described in that document as having been the teacher of St. Alban. But St. Amphibalus, of which the Adhabell of the Cooke MS. is undoubtedly a corruption, is so apocryphal a personage, that I am rejoiced that the later legendists have not thought proper to follow the Cooke document and give him a place in the Legend.
In fact, amphibalum was the ecclesiastical name of a cloak,
worn by priests of the Romish Church over their other vestments. It was a
vestment ecclesiastically transmuted into a saint, as the handkerchief on which Christ left the image of His face when, as
it is said, it was handed to Him on His way to
Of St. Alban, ecclesiastical history furnishes only the following meager details, and even of these some are apocryphal, or at least lack the stamp of authenticity.
He was born (so runs the tradition) in the 3d century,
in
When the Christian religion became predominant in
The Masonic Legend contains details which are not
furnished by the religious one. According to it, St. Alban was the steward of
the household of Carausius, he who had revolted from the Emperor Maximilian,
and usurped the sovereignty of
Now, there is sufficient historical evidence to show that architecture was introduced into England by the Roman artificers, who followed, as was their usage, the Roman legions, habilitated themselves in the conquered colonies, and engaged in the construction not only of camps and fortifications, but also when peace was restored in the building of temples and even private edifices. Architectural ruins and Latin inscriptions, which still remain in many parts of Britain, attest the labors and the skill of these Roman artists, and sustain the statement of the Legend, that Masonry, which, it must be remembered, is, in the Old Records, only a synonym of architecture, was introduced into England during the period of its Roman colonization.
As to the specific statement that St. Alban was the patron of Masons, that he exercised the government of a chief over the Craft, and improved their condition by augmenting their wages, we may explain this as the expression of a symbolical idea, in which history is not altogether falsified, but only its dates and personages confused.
Carausius, the Legend does not mention by name. It simply refers to some King of England, of whose household St. Alban was the steward. Carausius assumed the imperial purple in the year in which St. Alban suffered martyrdom. The error of making him the patron of St. Alban is not, therefore, to be attributed to the legendist, but to Dr. Anderson, who first perpetrated this chronological blunder in the second edition of his Constitutions. And though he states that “this is asserted by all the old copies of the Constitutions,” we fail to find it in any that are now extant.
This “Legend of St. Alban,” as it has been called, is worthy of a farther consideration.
The foundation of this symbolical narrative was first laid
by the writer of the Cooke MS., or, rather, copied by him from the tradition
existing among the Craft at that time. Its form was subsequently modified and
the details extended in the Dowland MS., for tradition always grows in the
progress of time. This form and these details were preserved in all the
succeeding manuscript Constitutions, until they were still further altered and
enlarged by Anderson,
With the gratuitous accretions of these later writers we have no concern in any attempted explanation of the actual signification of the Legend.
Its true form and spirit are to be found only in the Dowland MS. of the middle of the 16th century, and in those which were copied from it, up to the Papworth, at the beginning of the 18th. To these, and not to anything written after the period of the Revival, we must direct our attention.
Admitting that on the conquest of England by the Roman
power, the architects who had accompanied the victorious legions introduced
into the conquered colony their architectural skill, it is very likely that
some master workmen among them had been more celebrated than others for their
skill, and, indeed, it is naturally to be supposed that to such skillful
builders the control of the Craft must have been confided. Whether there were
one or more of these chief architects, St. Alban, if not actually one of them, was, by the lapse of time and the not unusual process by
which legendary or oral accretions are superimposed on a plain historical fact,
adopted by the legendists as their representative. Who was the principal patron
of the Architects or Masons during the time of the colonization of
This is an historical fact, and in this point the Legend of the Craft agrees with authentic history.
But it is also an historical fact that when, by the
pressure of the Northern hordes of barbarians upon Rome, it was found necessary
to withdraw all the legions from the various colonies which they protected from
exterior enemies and restrained from interior insurrection, the arts and
sciences, and among them architecture, began to decline in England. The
natives, with the few Roman colonists who had permanently settled among them,
were left to defend themselves from the incursions of the Picts on the north,
and the Danish and Saxon pirates in the east and south. The arts of
civilization suffered a depression in the tumult of war. Science can not
flourish amid the clang and clash of arms. This depression and suspension of
all architectural progress in
“Right soone after the decease of Saint Albone, there came
divers wars into the realme of
There is far more of history than of fiction in this part of the Legend.
The next point of the Legend of the Craft
to which our attention is to be directed, is that which relates to the
organization of Masonry at the city of
THE suppression of all architectural art and enterprise having lasted for so long a period in Britain, the Legend of the Craft next proceeds to account for its revival in the 10th century and in the reign of Athelstan, whose son Edwin called a meeting, or General Assembly, of the Masons at York in the year 926, and there revived the Institution, giving to the Craft a new code of laws.
Now, it is impossible to attach to this portion of the
Legend, absolutely and without any reservation, the taint of fiction. The
convocation of the Craft of England at the city of
The Halliwell poem, whose conjectural date is about 1390, contains the account in the following words. I will first give it, relieved of its archaisms, for the convenience of the reader inexpert in early English, and then follow with a quotation of the original language:
“This craft came into
(1) The original is as follows:
“Thys craft com ynto
Yn tyme of good kynge Athelston’s day;
He made the both
And hye templus of gret honoure,
To sportyn hym yn bothe day and nyghth,
And to worschepe his God with alle hys myghth.
Thys goode lorde loved thys craft ful wel,
And purposud to strenthyn hyt ever
For dyvers defautys that yn the craft he fonde;
He sende aboute ynto the londe
After alle the masonus of the crafte
To come to hym ful evene strayfte,
For to amende these defaultys alle
By good counsel gef hyt mygth falle.
A semble thenne he cowthe let make
Of dyvers lordis in here state
Dukys, erlys and barnes also,
Knygthys, sqwyers and mony mo,
And the grete burges of that syte,
They were ther alle yn here degre;
These were there uchon algate,
To ordeyne for these masonus estate,
Ther they sowgton ly here wytte
How they mygthyn governe hytte
Fyftene artyculus they there sowgton,
And fyftene poyntys ther they wrogton.”
One hundred years afterward we find the Legend, in the Cooke MS., as follows:
Athelstone, and his yongest sone lovyd well the sciens of Gemetry, and he vont well that handcraft had the practyke of Gemetry so well as masons, wherefore he drew him to consell and lernyd [the] practyke of that sciens to his speculatyfe. For of speculatyfe he was a master, and he lovyd well masonry and masons. And he bicome a mason hymselfe. And he gaf hem [gave them] charges and names as it is now usyd in Englond and in other countries. And he ordeyned that they schulde have resonabull pay. And purchesed [obtained] a fre patent of the kyng that they schulde make a sembly when they saw resonably tyme a [to] cume togedir to her [their] counsell of the whiche charges, manors & semble as is write and taught in the boke of our charges wherefor I leve it at this tyme.”
In a subsequent part of the manuscript, which appears to have been taken from the aforesaid “boke of charges,” with some additional details, are the following words:
“After that, many yeris, in the tyme of Kyng Adhelstane, wiche was sum tyme kynge of Englonde, bi his counsell and other gret loritys of the lond by comyn [common] assent for grete defaut y-fennde [found] among masons thei ordeyend a certayne reule amongys hem [them]. On [one] tyme of the yere or in iii yere as nede were to the kyng and gret loritys of the londe and all the comente [community], fro provynce to provynce and fro countre to countre congregacions schulde be made by maisters, of all maisters masons and felaus in the forsayd art. And so at such congregacions, they that be made masters schold be examined of the articuls after written & be ransacked [examined] whether they be abull and kunnyng to the profyte of the loritys hem to serve [to serve them] and to the honour of the forsayd art.”
Sixty years afterward we find this Legend repeated in the Dowland MS., but with some important variations. This Legend has already been given in the Legend of the Craft, but for the convenience of immediate comparison with the preceding documents it will be well to repeat it here. It is in the following words:
“Right soone after the decease of Saint Albone there came divers
warrs into the realme of
“And when the Assemble was gathered he made a cry that all old Masons and young, that had any writeings or understanding of the charges and the manners that were made before in this land, or in any other, that they should shew them forth. And when it was proved there was founden some in Frenche and some in Greek and some in English and some in other languages; and the intent of them all was founden all one. And he did make a booke thereof, and how the science was founded. And he himselfe bad and commanded that it should be readd or tould, when that any Mason should be made, for to give him his Charge. And fro that day into this tyme manners of Masons have beene kept in that forme as well as men might governe it. And furthermore divers Assembles have beene put and ordayned certain charges by the best advice of Masters and Fellowes.”
It will be remarked that in neither of the two oldest manuscripts,
(1) The next MS. in
date, the Landsdowne, names the place where he was made as
We see, then, that all the old Legends assert expressly, or
by implication, that
The next point in which all the later manuscripts, except the Harleian, agree is, that the Assembly was called by Prince Edwin, the King’s son.
The Legend does not here most certainly agree with history, for there is no record that Athelstan had any son. He had, however, a brother of that name, who died two years before him.
Edward the Elder, the son of Alfred the Great, died in the year 925, leaving several legitimate sons and one natural one, Athelstan. The latter, who was the eldest of the sons of Edward, obtained the throne, notwithstanding the stain on his birth, in consequence of his age, which better fitted him to govern at a time when the kingdom was engaged in foreign and domestic wars.
All historians concur in attributing to Athelstan the
character of a just and wise sovereign, and of a sagacious statesman. It has
been said of him that he was the most able and active of the ancient princes of
Although engaged duhng his whole reign in numerous wars, he did not neglect a cultivation of the employments of peace, and encouraged by a liberal patronage the arts and especially architecture.
Of Edwin, the Saxon historians make no mention, except when they speak of his untimely death. If we may judge of his character from this silence, we must believe that he was not endued with any brilliant qualities of mind, nor distinguished by the performance of any important act.
Of all the half-brothers of Athelstan, the legitimate children of Edward the Elder, Edmund seems to have been his favorite. He kept him by his side on battle-fields, lived single for his sake, and when he died in 941, left to him the succession to the throne.
But there is another Edwin of prominent character in the annals of Saxon England, to whom attention has been directed in connection with this Legend, as having the best claim to be called the founder or reviver of English Masonry.
Of Edwin, King of Northumbria, it may be said, that in his narrow sphere, as the monarch of a kingdom of narrow dimensions, he was but little inferior in abilities or virtues to Athelstan.
At the time of his birth, in 590,
Ella died in 593, and was succeeded by Edwin an infant of three years of age.
Soon after, Ethelfrith invaded the possessions of Edwin, and attached them by usurpation to his own domains.
Edwin was sent to
But as soon as he was baptized, he built, says Bede, under the direction of Paulinus, his religious instructor and bishop, in the same place, a much larger and nobler church of stone.
During the reign of Edwin, and of his successors in the same century, ecclesiastical architecture greatly flourished, and many large churches were built. Edwin was slain in battle in 633, having reigned for seventeen years.
The Venerable Bede gives us the best testimony we could desire as to the character of Edwin as ruler, when he tells us that in all of his dominions there was such perfect peace that a woman with a newborn babe might walk from sea to sea without receiving any harm. Another incident that he relates is significant of Edwin’s care and consideration for the comforts of his people. Where there were springs of water near the highways, he caused posts to be fixed with drinking vessels attached to them for the convenience of travelers. By such acts, and others of a higher character, by his encouragement of the arts, and his strict administration of justice, he secured the love of his subjects.
So much of history was necessary that the reader might understand the argument in reference to the true meaning of the York Legend, now to be discussed.
In the versions of the Legend given by
But in the Roberts Constitutions, printed in 1722, and which was claimed to have been copied from a manuscript about five hundred years old, but without any proof (as the original has never been recovered), the name of Edwin is altogether omitted, and Athelstan himself is said to have been the reviver of the institution. The language of this manuscript, as published by J. Roberts, is as follows
“He [Athelstan] began to build many Abbies, Monasteries, and other religious houses, as also Castles and divers Fortresses for defence of his realm. He loved Masons more than his father; he greatly study’d Geometry, and sent into many lands for men expert in the science. He gave them a very large charter to hold a yearly assembly, and power to correct offenders in the said science; and the king himself caused a General Assembly of all Masons in his realm, at York, and there were made many Masons, and gave them a deep charge for observation of all such articles as belonged unto Masonry and delivered them the said Charter to keep.”
In the omission of all reference to Prince Edwin, the Harleian and Roberts manuscripts agree with that of Halliwell.
There is a passage in the Harleian and Roberts
Now, of the two statements, that of the Harleian and Roberts
that Prince Edwin exhibited any such attachment to Masonry or Architecture as is attributed to him in the old records, certainly not an attachment equal to that of Athelstan. On the contrary, Edward, the son of Alfred and the father of Athelstan, was not distinguished during his reign for any marked patronage the arts, and especially of architecture; and it is, therefore, certain that his son Athelstan exhibited a greater love to Masons or Architects than he did.
Hence there arises a suspicion that the Legend was
originally framed in the form presented to us by the Halliwell poem, and copied
apparently by the writers of the Harleian and Roberts
It may also be added that the son of Athelstan is not called Edwin in all of the recent manuscripts. In one Sloane MS. he is called Ladrian, in another Hegme, and in the Lodge of Hope MS. Hoderine. This fact might indicate that there was some confusion and disagreement in putting the name of Prince Edwin into the Legend. But I will not press this point, because I am rather inclined to attribute these discrepancies to the proverbial carelessness of the transcribers of these manuscripts.
How, then, are we to account for this introduction of an apparently mythical personage into the narrative, by which the plausibility of the Legend is seriously affected ?
I prefer another explanation, although it involves the charge of anachronism.
The annals of English history record a royal Edwin, whose devotion to the arts and sciences, whose wise statesmanship,
and whose patronage of architecture, must have entitled him to the respect and
the affection of the early English Masons. Edwin, King of Northumbria, one of
the seven kingdoms into which England was divided during the Anglo-Saxon
heptarchy, died in 633, after a reign of sixteen years, which was distinguished
for the reforms which he accomplished, for the wise laws which he enacted and
enforced, for the introduction of Christianity into his kingdom, and for the
improvement which he emeacd in the moral, social, and intellectual condition of
his subjects. When be ascended the throne the northern metropolis of the
Anglican Church had been placed at
Yet this opinion is not altogether a new one. More than a
century and a half ago it seems to have prevailed as a tradition among the
Masons of the northern part of
“You know we can boast that the first Grand Lodge ever held
in
Bro. A.F.A. Woodford, a profound Masonic archaeologist,
accepts this explanation, and finds a
confirmation in the facts that the town of Derventio, now Auldby, six miles from
I think that with these proofs, the inquirer will have little or no hesitation in accepting this
version of the Legend, and will recognize the fact that the writers of the
later manuscripts fell into an error in substituting Edwin, the son (as they
called him, but really the brother) of Athelstan, for Edwin, the King of
Northumbria.
It is true that the difference of dates presents a difficulty, there being about three hundred years between the reigns of Edwin of Northumbria, and Athelstan of England. But that difficulty, I think, may be overcome by the following theory which I advance on the subject:
The earlier series of manuscripts, of which the Halliwell
poem is an exemplar, and, perhaps, also the Harleian and the Roberts
The more recent manuscripts, of which the Dowland is the
earliest, introduce Prince Edwin into the Legend and ascribe to him the honor
of having obtained from Athelstan a charter, and of having held an Assembly at
There are, then, two forms of the Legend, which, for the
sake of distinction, may be designated as the older and the later. The older
Legend makes Athelstan the reviver of Masonry in
The part about Edwin is, then, an addition to the older legend, and was interpolated into it by the later legendists, as will be evidently seen if the following extract from the Dowland MS. be read, and all the words there printed in italics be omitted. So read, the passage will conform very substantially with the corresponding one in the Roberts MS., which was undoubtedly a copy from some older manuscript which contained the legend in its primitive form, wherein there is no mention of Prince Edwin.
Here is the extract to be amended by the omission of words in italics:
“The good rule of Masonry was destroyed unto the tyme of Kinge Athelstone dayes that was a worthy Kinge of England, and brought this land into good rest and peace; and builded many great works of Abbyes and Towres, and other many divers buildings and loved well Masons.
And he had a sonn that height Edwinne, and
(1) The fact that the Legend in the Roberts “Constitutions” agrees in this respect with the older legend, and differs from that in all the recent manuscripts, gives some color to the claim that it was copied from a manuscript five hundred years old. he loved Masons much more than his father did. And he was a great practiser in Geometry; and he drew him much to talke and to commune with Masons, and to learne of them science; and afterward for love that he had to Masons and to the science he was made a Mason and he gatt
(1) [ie., he gave] of the Kinge his father a Charter and commission to hold every year once an Assemble, wher that ever they would, within the realme of England; and to correct within themselves defaults and trespasses that were done within the science. And he held himselfe an Assemble at Yorke, and there he made Masons, and gave them charges, and taught them the manners, and commanded that rule to be kept ever after, and tooke then the Chartour and Commission to keepe, and made ordinance that it should be renewed from Kinge to Kinge.” The elimination of only thirteen words relieves us at once of all difficulty, and brings the Legend into precise accord with the tradition of the older manuscripts.
Thus eliminated it asserts:
1. That King Athelstan was a great patron of the arts of civilization- “he brought the land into rest and peace.” This statement is sustained by the facts of history.
2. He paid especial attention to architecture and the art of building, and adorned his country with abbeys, towns (towers is a clerical error), and many other edifices. History confirms this also.
3. He was more interested in, and gave a greater patronage to, architecture than his father and predecessor, Edward - another historical fact.
4. He gave to the
Masons or Architects a charter as a guild, and called an assembly of the Craft
at
(1) This word
is used in the sense of given or granted, in an undoubted historical document,
Athelstan’s charter to the town of
“Yat I, the Kynge Adelston,
Has gaten and given to
Of Beverlae, etc.”
solely on a tradition, which has, however, until recently, been accepted by the whole Masonic world as an undoubted truth.
But that the city of
In 925 Athelstan ascended the throne. At that time Sigtryg
was the reigning King of Northumbria, which formed no part of the dominions of
Athelstan. To Sigtryg, who had but very recently been converted from Paganism
to Christianity, Athelstan gave his sister in marriage. But the Northumbrian
king having apostatized, his brother-in-law resolved to dethrone him, and
prepared to invade his kingdom. Sigtryg having died in the meantime, his sons
fled, one into
This occurred in the year 926, and it is not likely that while pursuing the sons of Sigtryg, one of whom had escaped from his captors and taken refuge in the city of York, whose citizens he vainly sought to enlist in his favor, Athelstan would have selected that period of conflict, and a city within his newly-acquired territory, instead of his own capital, for the time and place of holding an assembly of Masons.
It is highly improbable that he did, but yet it is not
absolutely impossible. The tradition may
be correct as to
But the important question is, whether this tradition is mythical or historical, whether it is a fiction or a truth. Conjectural criticism applied to the theory of probabilities alone can aid us in solving this problem.
I say, therefore, that there is nothing in the personal character of Athelstan, nothing in the recorded history of his reign, nothing in the well-known manner in which he exercised his royal authority and governed his realm, that forbids the probability that the actions attributed to him in the Legend of the Craft actually took place.
Taking his grandfather, the great Alfred, as his pattern,
he was liberal in all his ideas, patronized learning, erected many churches,
monasteries, and other edifices of importance throughout his dominions,
encouraged the translation of the Scriptures into Anglo-Saxon, and, what is of
great value to the present question, gave charters to many guilds or operative
companies as well as to several municipalities. Especially is it known from historical records
that in the reign of Athelstan the frith-gildan, free guilds or sodalities,
were incorporated by law. From these subsequently
arose the craft-guilds or associations for the establishment of fraternal
relations and mutual aid, into which, at the present day, the trade companies
of
There would be nothing improbable in any narrative which should assert that he extended his protection to the operative Masons, of whose art we know that he availed himself in the construction of the numerous public and religious edifices which he was engaged in erecting. It is even more than plausible to suppose that the Masons were among the sodalities to whom he granted charters or acts of incorporation.
Like the Rev. Bro. Woodford, whose opinion as a Masonic archaeologist is of great value, I am disposed to accept a tradition venerable for its antiquity and for so long a period believed in by the craft as an historical record in so far as relates to the obtaining of a charter from Athelstan and the holding of an assembly. “I see no reason, therefore,” he says, “to reject so old a tradition that under Athelstan the operative Masons obtained his patronage and met in General Assembly.”
Admitting the fact of Athelstan’s patronage and of the Assembly at some place, we next encounter the difficulty of explaining the interpolation of what may be called the episode of Prince Edwin.
I have already shown that there can be no doubt that the
framers of the later legend had confounded the brother, whom they, by a
mistake, had called the son of Athelstan, with a preceding king of the same
name, that is, with Edwin, King of Northumbria, who, in the 7th
century, did what the pseudo-Edwin is supposed to have done in the 10th.
That is to say, he patronized the Masons of his time, introduced the art of
building into his kingdom, and probably held an Assembly at
Now, I suppose that the earlier Masons of the south of
But in time these southern Masons became, in consequence
of increased intercourse, cognizant of the tradition that King Edwin of
This reluctance, added to the confusion to which all oral tradition is obnoxious, coupled with the fact that there was an Edwin, who was a near relation of Athelson, resulted in the substitution of this later Edwin for the true one.
It took years to do this - the reluctance continuing, the confusion of the traditions increasing, until at last the southern Masons, altogether losing sight of the Northumbrian tradition as distinct from that of Athelstan, combined the two traditions into one, and, with the carelessness or ignorance of chronology so common in that age, and especially among uncultured craftsmen, substituted Edwin, the brother of Athelstan, for Edwin, the King of Northumbria, and thus formed a new Legend of the Craft such as it was perpetuated by Anderson, and after him by Preston, and which has lasted to the present day.
Therefore, eliminating from the narrative the story of
Edwin, as it is told in the recent Legend, and accepting it as referring to
Edwin of Northumbria, and as told in the tradition peculiar to the Masons of
the northern part of England, we reach the conclusion that there were
originally two traditions, one extant in the northern part of
We arrive, then, at the conclusion, that if there was an Assembly at York it was convened by Edwin, King of Northumbria, who revived Masonry in the northern part of England in the 7th century; and that its decayed prosperity was restored by Athelstan in the 10th century, not by the holding of an Assembly at the city of York, but by his general patronage of the arts, and especially architecture, and by the charters of incorporation which he freely granted to various guilds or sodalities of workmen.
With these explanations, we are now prepared to review and to summarize the Legend of the Craft, not in the light of a series of absurd fictions, as too many have been inclined to consider it, but as an historical narrative, related in quaint language, not always grammatical, and containing several errors of chronology, misspelling of names, and confusion of persons, such as were common and might be expected in manuscripts written in that uncultured age, and by the uneducated craftsmen to whom we owe these old manuscripts.
THE Legend of ihe Craft, as it is presented to us in what I have called the later manuscripts, that is to say, the Dowland and those that follow it up to the Papworth, begins with a descant on the seven liberal arts and sciences.
I have already shown that among the schoolmen contemporary with the legendists these seven arts and sciences were considered, in the curriculum of education, not so much as the foundation, but as the finished edifice of all human learning. The Legend naturally partook of the spirit of the age in which it was invented. But especially did the Masons refer to these sciences, and make a description of them, the preface, as it were, to the story that they were about to relate, because the principal of these sciences was geometry, and this they held to be synonymous with Masonry.
Now, the intimate connection between geometry and architecture, as practiced by the Operative Freemasons of the Middle Ages, is well known, since the secrets, of which these Freemasons were supposed to be in possession, consisted almost solely in an application of the principles of the science of geometry to the art of building.
The Legend next procccds to narrate certain circumstances
connected with the children of Lamech. These details are said in the Legend to
have been derived from the Book of Genesis but were probably taken at
second-hand from the Polychronicon, or universal history of the monk Higden, of
We are next told that Hermes discovered one of these
pillars and was, from the information that it contained, enabled to restore the
knomiedge of the sciences, and especially of Masonry, to the post-diluvian
world. This was a tribute of the
legendists to the universally accepted opinion of the ancients, who venerated
the “thrice great Hermes” as the mythical founder of all science and
philosophy. We are next told that Nimrod, “the mighty hunter before the Lord,”
availed himself of the wisdom that had been recovered by Hermes. He was
distinguished for his architectural works and first gave importance to the art
of Masonry at the building of the
The monastic legends had made Abraham a contemporary of
Nimrod, and the Book of Genesis had described the visit of the patriarch and
his wife to the
Thus it is stated that
Accepting the allusion to
As to the error committed in the name and designation of him who is now familiarly known to Freemasons as Hiram Abif, a sufficient explanation has been given in a preceding chapter.
We next have an account of the travels of these Masons or
architects who built the
The Legend next recounts the introduction of architecture
into France, and the influence exerted upon it by Grecian architects, who
brought with them into that kingdom the principles of Byzantine art. These are
facts which are sustained by history. The prominence given to
The account of the condition of Masonry or architecture among the Britains in the time of St. Alban, or the 4th century, is simply a legendary version of the history of the introduction of the art of building into England during the Roman domination by the “Collegia Artificum” or Roman Colleges of Artificers, who accompanied the victorious legions when they vanquished Hesperia, Gaul, and Britain, and colonized as they vanquished them.
The decay of architecture in Britain after the Roman armies had abandoned that country to protect the Empire from the incursions of the northern hordes of barbarians, in consequence of which Britain was left in an unprotected state, and was speedily involved in wars with the Picts, the Danes, and other enemies, is next narrated in the Legend, and is its version of an historical fact.
It is also historically true that in the 7th
century peace was restored to the northern parts of the island, and that Edwin,
King of Northumbria, of which the city of
The second decay of architecture in England, in consequence of the invasions of the Danes, and the intestine as well as foreign wars which desolated the kingdom until the reign of Athelstan, in the early part of the 10th century, when entire peace was restored, is briefly alluded to in the Legend, therein conforming to the history of that troublous period.
As a consequence of the restoration of peace, the Legend
records the revival of Masonry or architecture in the 10th century,
under the reign of Athelstan, who called the Craft together and gave them a
charter. I have already discussed this point and shown that the narrative of
the Legend presents nothing improbable or incredible but that it is easily to
be reconciled with the facts of contemporary history. We have only to reconcile
the two forms of the Legend by asserting that Edwin of Northumbria revived
Masonry in an Assembly convened by him at
Passing, in this summary method over the principal occuuences related in this Legend of the Craft, we relieve it from the charge of gross puerility, which has been urged against it, even by some Masonic writers who have viewed it in a spirit of immature criticism. We find that its statements are not the offspring of a fertile imagination or the crude inventions of sheer ignorance, but that, on the contrary, they really have a support in what was at the time accepted as authentic history, and whose authenticity can not, even now, be disproved or denied.
Dissected as it has here been by the canons of philosophical criticism, the Legend of the Craft is no longer to be deemed a fable or myth, but an historical narrative related in the quaint language and in the quainter spirit of the age in which it was written.
But after the revival of Freemasonry in the beginning of the 18th century, this Legend, for the most part misunderstood, served as a fundamental basis on which were erected, first by Anderson and then by other writers who followed him, expanded narratives of the rise and progress of Masonry, in which the symbolic ideas or the mythical suggestions of the ancient “Legend” were often developed and enlarged into statements for the most part entirely fabulous.
In this way, these writers, who were educated and even learned men, have introduced not so much any new legends, but rather theories founded on a legend, by which they have traced the origin and the progress of the institution in narratives without historic authenticity and sometimes contradictory to historic truth.
The mode in which these theories have been attempted to be supported by the citation of assumed facts have caused them to take, to some extent, the form of legends. But to distinguish them from the pure Legends which existed before the 18th century, I have preferred to call them theories.
Their chief tendency has been, by the use of unauthenticated statements, to confuse the true history of the Order. And yet they have secured so prominent a place in its literature and have exerted so much influence on modern Masonic ideas, that they must be reviewed and analyzed at length, in order that the reader may have a complete understanding of the legendary history of the institution. For of that legendary, history these theories, founded as they are on assumed traditions, constitute a part.
As having priority in date, the theory of Dr. Anderson will be the first to claim our attention.
THE Legend or theory of Dr. Anderson is detailed first in the edition of the Book of Constitutions which was edited by him and published in the year 1723, and was then more extensively developed in the subsequent edition of the same work published in 1738.
He does not appear to have met with any of the earlier manuscripts, such as those of Halliwell and Roberts, which contain the Legend in its older form, for he makes no use of the Legend of Euclid, passing over the services of that geometrician lightly, as the later manuscripts do, and not ascribing to him the origin of the Order in Egypt, which theory is the peculiar characteristic of the older Legend.
But out of the later Legend and from whatever manuscripts
containing it to which he had access,
Anderson’s Legend, or theory, of the rise and progress of Masonry, as it is contained in the first edition of the Book of Constitutions, was for a long time accepted by the Craft as a true history of the Order, and it has exercised a very remarkable influence in the framing of other theories on this subject which from time to time have been produced by subsequent writers.
These arts he taught to his sons, and Cain especially
practiced them by building a city. Seth also was equally acquainted with them
and taught them to his offspring. Hence the antediluvian world was well
acquainted with Masonry, and erected many curious works until the time of
Noah, who built the
Noah and his three sons, who were all Masons, brought with
them to the new world the traditions and arts of the antediluvians. Noah is
therefore deemed the founder of Masonry in the post-diluvian world, and hence
The descendants of Noah exercised their skill in Masonry in
the attempted erection of the
In those parts afterward flourished many priests and
mathematicians under the name of Chaldees and Magi, who preserved the science of
Geometry or Masonry, and thence the science and the art were transmitted
to later ages and distant climes. Mitzraim, the second son of Ham, carried
Masonry into
Masonry was introduced into the
The posterity of Shem also cultivated the art of Masonry,
and Abraham, the head of one branch of that family, having thus obtained his
knowledge of Geometry and the kindred sciences, communicated that knowledge to
the Egyptians and transmitted it to his descendants, the Israelites. When,
therefore, they made their exodus from
On taking possession of Canaan, the Israelites found the
old inhabitants were versed in Masonry, which, however, their conquerors
greatly improved, for the splendor of the finest structures in
After the construction of the Temple, the Masons who had been engaged in it dispersed into Syria, Mesopotamia, Assyria, Chaldea, Babylonia, Media, Persia, Arabia, Africa, Lesser Asia, Greece, and other parts of Europe, where they taught the art to many eminent persons, and kings, princes, and potentates became Grand Masters, each in his own territory.
The Legend then passes on to Nebuchadnezzar, whom it calls
a Grand Master, and asserts that he received much improvement in Masonry from
the Jewish captives whom he brought to
Afterward Cyrus constituted Zerubbabel the leader of the
Jews, who, being released from their captivity,
returned to
From Palestine, and after the erection of the Temple, Masonry was carried into Greece, and arrived at its height during the Jewish captivity, and in the time of Thales Milesius, the philosopher, and his pupil, Pythagoras, who was the author of the 47th Proposition of Euclid, which “is the foundation of all Masonry,” Pythagoras traveled into Egypt and Babylon, and acquired much knowledge from the priests and the Magi, which he dispensed in Greece and Italy on his return.
The Legend now speaks, parenthetically as it were, of the progress of Masonry in
Asia Minor, and of the labors of
It next dwells upon the great improvement of Masonry in
From
The Emperor Augustus became the Grand Master of the Lodge at
But upon the declension of the empire, when the Roman garrisons were drawn away from Britain, the Angles and lower Saxons, who had been invited by the ancient Britons to come over and help them against the Scots and Picts, at length subdued the southern part of England, where Masonry had been introduced by the Romans, and the art then fell into decay.
When the Anglo-Saxons recovered their freedom in the 8th century Masonry was revived, and at the desire of the Saxon kings, Charles Martel, King of France, sent over several expert craftsmen, so that Gothic, architecture was again encouraged during the Heptarchy.
The many invasions of the Danes caused the destruction of numerous records, but did not, to any great extent, interrupt the work, although the methods introduced by the Roman builders were lost.
But when war ceased and peace was proclaimed by the Norman
conquest, Gothic Masonry was restored and encouraged
by William the Conqueror and his son William Rufus, who built Westminster Hall.
And notwithstanding the wars that subsequently occurred, and the contentions of
the Barons, Masonry never ceased to maintain its position in
The Kings of Scotland also encouraged Masonry from the earliest times down to the union of the crowns, and granted to the Scottish Masons the prerogative of having a fixed Grand Master and Grand Warden.
Queen Elizabeth discouraged Masonry, and neglected it
during her whole reign. She sent a commission to
Her successor, James I., was, however, a patron of Masonry, and greatly revived the art and restored the Roman architecture, employing Inigo Jones as his architect, under whom was Nicholas Stone as his Master Mason.
Charles I. was also a Mason, and patronized the art whose successful progress was unhappily diverted by the civil wars and the death of the king.
In the reign of James II., Masonry not being duly cultivated, the London Lodges “much dwindled into ignorance.”
But on the accession of William, that monarch “who by most is reckoned as a Freemason,” greatly revived the art, and showed himself a patron of Masonry.
His good example was followed by Queen Anne, who ordered
fifty new churches to be erected in
With an allusion to the opinion that the religious and military Orders of knighthood in the Middle Ages had borrowed many of their solemn usages from the Freemasons, (1) the Legend here ends.
Upon a perusal of this Legend, it will be found that it is in fact, except in the latter portions, which are semi-historical, only a running commentary on the later Legend of the Craft, embracing all that is said therein and adding other statements, partly derived from history and partly, perhaps, from the author’s invention.
The second edition of the Constitutions goes more fully over the same ground, but is written in the form rather of a history than of a legend, and a review of it is not, therefore, necessary or appropriate in this part of the present work which is solely devoted to the Legends of the Order.
In this second edition of
THE Legend given by Preston in his Illustrations of Masonry, which details the origin and early progress of the Institution, is more valuable and more interesting than that of Anderson, because it is more succinct, and although founded like it on the Legend of the Craft, it treats each detail with an appearance of historical accuracy that almost removes from the narrative the legendary character which, after all, really attaches to it.
In accepting the Legend of the Craft as the basis of his
story, Preston rejects, or at least omits to mention, all the earlier part of
it, and begins his story with the supposed introduction of Masonry into
Commencing with a reference to the Druids, who, he says, it has been suggested, derived their system of government from Pythagoras he thinks that there is no doubt that the science of Masonry was not unknown to them. Yet he does not say that there was an affinity between their rites and those of the Freemasons, which, as an open question, he leaves everyone to determine for himself.
Masonry, according to this theory, was certainly first introduced into England at the time of its conquest by Julius Caesar, who, with several of the Roman generals that succeeded him, were patrons and protectors of the Craft.
The fraternity were engaged in the creation of walls, forts, bridges, cities, temples, and other stately edifices, and their Lodges or Conventions were regularly held.
Obstructed by the wars which broke out between the Romans and the natives, Masonry was at length revived in the time of the Emperor Carausius. He, having shaken off the Roman yoke, sought to improve his country in the civil arts, and brought into his dominions the best workmen and artificers from all parts. Among the first class of his favourites he enroled the Masons, for whose tenets he professed the highest veneration, and appointed his steward, Albanus, the superintendent of their Assemblies. He gave them a charter, and commanded Albanus to preside over them in person as Grand Master. He assisted in the initiation of many persons into the mysteries of the Order.
In 680 some expert brethren arrived from
Masonry was in a low state during the Heptarchy, but in 856 it was revived under St. Swithin, who was employed by Ethelwolf, the Saxon king, to repair some pious houses; and it gradually improved until the reign of Alfred, who was its zealous protector and who maintained a number of workmen in repairing the desolations of the Danes.
In the reign of Edward, his successor, the Masons continued to hold their Lodges under the sanction of Ethred, his sister’s husband, and Ethelward, his brother.
Athelstan succeeded his father in 924 and appointed his
brother Edwin, patron of Masons. The latter procured a charter from Athelstan
for the Masons to meet annually in communication at
On the death of Edwin, Athelstan undertook in person the direction of the Lodges, and under his sanction the art of Masonry was propagated in peace and security.
On the death of Athelstan, the Masons dispersed and continued in a very unsettled state until the reign of Edgar, in 960, when they were again collected by St. Dunstan, but did not meet with permanent encouragement.
For fifty years after Edgar’s death Masonry remained in a low condition,but was revived in 1041 under the patronage of Edward the Confessor, who appointed Leofric, Earl of Coventry, to superintend the Craft,
William the Conqueror, who acquired the crown in 1066, appointed Gundulph, Bishop of Rochester, and Roger de Montgomery, Earl of Shrewsbury, joint patrons of the Masons. The labours of the fraternity were employed, during the reign of William Rufus, in the construction of various edifices.
The Lodges continued to assemble under Henry I. and Stephen. In the reign of the latter, Gilbert de Clare, Marquis of Pembroke, presided over the Lodges.
In the reign of Henry II., the Grand Master of the Knights
Templars employed the Craft in 1135 in building their
The rest of his work assumes a purely historical form, although many of his statements need for authenticity the support of other authorities. These will be subjects of consideration when we come to the next part of this work.
At present, before dismissing the theory
of
As to the Legend of Carausius, to whom
From
The advent of French Masons into England toward the end of
the 7th century, brought thither by the Abbot Bennet or Benedict,
which is recorded by Preston, is undoubtedly an historical fact. Lacroix says
that
The Venerable Bede, who was contemporary with that period,
says that the famous Abbot Benedictus Biscopius (the Bennet of Preston) went
over to
Of the Legend of the “weeping St. Swithin,” to whom
Roger of Wendover, who is followed by Matthew of Westminster, records his custom of personally superintending the workmen when engaged in the construction of any building, “that his presence might stimulate them to diligence in their labours.”
But the consideration of the condition of Masonry at that
period, in
On the whole, it may be said of Preston that he has made a
considerable improvement on
THE theory advanced by Bro. William Hutchinson as to the origin and the progress of Freemasonry, in his treatise, first published in the year 1775 and entitled The Spirit of Masonry, is so complicated and sometimes apparently so contradictory in its statements, as to require, for a due comprehension of his views, not only a careful perusal, but even an exhaustive study of the work alluded to. After such a study I think that I am able to present to the reader a collect summary of the opinions on the rise and progress of the Order which were entertained by this learned scholar.
Let it be said, by way of preface to this review, that
however we may dissent from the conclusions of
Of all the opinions entertained by
In another place, while admitting that there were in former times builders of cities, towers, temples, and fortifications, he doubts “that the artificers were formed into bodies ruled by their own proper laws and knowing mysteries and secrets which were kept from the world.”
Since he admits, as we will see hereafter, that Masonry
existed at the Temple of Solomon, that it was there organized in what he calls
the second stage of its progress, and that the builders of the edifice were
Masons, one would naturally imagine that Hutchinson would here encounter an
insuperable objection to his theory, which entirely disconnects Masonry and
architecture. But he attempts to obviate this difficulty by supposing that the
principles of Freemasonry had, before the commencement of the undertaking, been
communicated by King Solomon to “the sages and religious men amongst his
people,” and that these “chosen ones of Solomon, as a pious and holy duty
conducted the work.” Their labours as builders were simply incidental and they
were no more to be regarded by reason of this duty as architects by profession,
than were Abel, Noah, Abraham, Jacob, Moses, and David by reason of the
building of their altars, which were, like the
This theory, in which all connection between operative and
speculative Masonry is completely dissevered, and in which, in fact, the former
is entirely ignored, is peculiar to
But besides these opinions concerning the non-operative
character of the Institution,
The Hutchinsonian theory may indeed be regarded as especially and exclusively his own. It is therefore worthy of consideration and review, rather in reference to the novelty of his ideas than in respect to anything of great value in the pseudo-historical statements that he has advanced.
The prominent thought of
He does not give a very lucid or satisfactory explanation of the reasons which induced him to connect each of these “stages of progress” with one of the symbolical degrees, and indeed the connection appears to be based upon a rather fanciful hypothesis.
The three stages into which he divides the progress of Masonry from its birth onwards to modern times are distinguished from each other, and distinctively marked by the code of religious ethics professed and taught by each. The first stage, which is represented by the Entered Apprentice degree, commences with Adam and the Garden of Eden and extends to the time of Moses.
The religious code taught in this first stage of Masonry was confined to a “knowledge of the God of Nature and that acceptable service wherewith He was well pleased.”
To Adam, while in a state of innocence, this knowledge was imparted, as well as that of all the science and learning which existed in the earliest ages of the world.
When our first parent fell, although he lost his innocence, he still retained the memory of all that he had been taught while in the Garden of Eden. This very retention was, indeed, a portion of the punishment incurred for his disobedience.
It, however, enabled him to communicate to his children
the sciences which he had comprehended in
All of the descendants of Adam did not, however, retain
this purity and simplicity of dogma. After the deluge, when mankind became
separated, the lessons which had been taught by the antediluvians fell into
confusion and oblivion and were corrupted by many peoples, so that the service
of the true God, which had been taught in the pure Masonry of the first men,
was defiled by idolatry. These seceders from the pure Adamic Masonry formed
institutions of their own, and degenerated, as the first deviation from the
simple worship of the God of Nature, into the errors of Sabaism, or the
adoration of the Sun, Moon, and Stars. They adopted symbols and allegories with
which to teach esoterically their false doctrines. The earliest of these
seceders were the Egyptians, whose priests secreted the mysteries of their
religion from the multitude by symbols and hieroglyphics that were comprehensible
to the members of their own order only. A similar system was adopted by the
priests of
From this we naturally make the deduction, although Hutchinson does not expressly say so, that, according to his theory, Masonry was at that early period merely a religious profession “ whose principles, maxims, language, learning, and religion were derived from Eden, from the patriarchs, and from the sages of the East,” and that the symbolism which now forms so essential an element of the system was not an original characteristic of it, but was borrowed, at a later period, from the mystical and religious associations of the pagans.
Such, according to the theory of
The second stage in the progress of Masonry, which
But in another respect Masonry in its second stage assumed a different form from that which had marked its primitive state. Moses, from his peculiar education, was well acquainted with the rites, the ceremonies, the hieroglyphs, and the symbols used by the Egyptian priesthood. Many of these he introduced into Masonry, and thus began that system which, coming originally from the Egyptians and subsequently augmented by derivations from the Druids, the Essenes, the Pythagoreans, and other mystical associations, at last was developed into that science of symbolism which now constitutes so important and essential a characteristic of modern Freemasonry.
A third change in the form of Masonry, which took place in
its Mosaic or Judaic stage, was the introduction of the operative art of building
among its disciples. Instances of this occurred in the days of Moses, when
Aholiab, Bezaleel, and other Masons were engaged in the construction of the
Tabernacle, and subsequently in the time of Solomon, when that monarch occupied
his Masons in the erection of the
But, as has already been shown in a preceding part of this
chapter,
But it may be as well to give, at this point, in his own words, his explanation of the manner in which the Masons became, on certain occasions, builders, and, whence arose in modern times the erroneous idea that the Masonic profession consisted of architects.
“I presume,” he says, “that the name of Mason in this society doth not denote that the rise or origin of such society was solely from builders, architects, or mechanics; at the times in which Moses ordained the setting up of the sanctuary, and when Solomon was about to build the Temple at Jerusalem, they selected from out of the people those men who were enlightened with the true faith, and, being full of wisdom and religious fervour, were found proper to conduct these works of piety. It was on those occasions that our predecessors appeared to the world as architects and were formed into a body, under salutary rules, for the government of those who were employed in these great works, since which period builders have adopted the name of Masons, as an honourary distinction and title to their profession. I am induced to believe the name of Mason has its derivation front a language in which it implies some indication or distinction of the nature of the society, and that it has not its relation to architects.”
Masonry was not organized at the
The language of
Still more explicit is the following statement, made in a subsequent part of the work: “Solomon was truly the executor of that plan which was revealed to him from above; he called forth the sages and religious men amongst his people to perform the work; he classed them according to their rank in their religious profession, as the priests of the Temple were stationed in the solemn rites and ceremonies instituted there.... The chosen ones of Solomon, as a pious and holy duty, conducted the work.”
Solomon did not, therefore, organize, as has very commonly been believed, a system of Masonry by the aid of his Tyrian workmen, and especially Hiram Abif, who has always been designated by the Craft as his “Chief Builder,” but he practiced and transmitted to his descendants the primitive Masonry derived from Adam and modified into its sectarian Jewish form by Moses. The Masonry of Solomon, like that of the great lawgiver of the Israelites, was essentially Judaic in its religious ethics. It was but a continuation of that second stage of Masonry which, as I have already said, lasted, according to the Hutchinsonian theory, until the era of Christianity.
But the wisdom and power of Solomon had attracted to him
the attention of the neighbouring nations, and the splendour of the edifice
which he had erected extended his fame and won the admiration of the most
distant parts of the world, so that his name and his artificers became the
wonder of mankind, and the works of the latter excited their emulation. Hence
the Masons of Solomon were dispersed from
However mythical the statements therein contained may be deemed by the iconoclasts, there can be no doubt that they were accepted by the learned author as undeniably historical.
Hence we see that, according to the theory of Hutchinson,
King Solomon, although not the founder of Masonry at the
The next or third stage of the progress of Masonry, represented by the Master’s degree, commenced at the advent of Christianity. As Hutchinson in his description of the two preceding progressive classes of Masons had assigned to the first, as represented by the Apprentices, only the knowledge of the God of Nature as it prevailed in the earliest ages of the world, and to the second, as represented by the Fellow Crafts, the further knowledge of God as revealed in the Mosaic Legation, so to this third stage, as represented by Master Masons, he had assigned the complete and perfect knowledge of God as revealed in the Christian dispensation.
Masonry is thus made by him to assume in this third stage of its progressive growth a purely Christian character.
The introduction of rites and ceremonies under the Jewish law, which had been derived from the neighbouring heathen nations, had clouded and obscured the service of God, and consequently corrupted the second stage of Masonry as established by Moses and followed by Solomon. God, perceiving the ruin which was overwhelming mankind by this pollution of His ordinances and laws, devised a new scheme for redeeming His creatures from the errors into which they had fallen. And this scheme was typified in the Third or Master’s stage in the progressive course of Masonry.
Hence the Master’s degree is, in this theory, exclusively a Christian invention; the legend receives a purely Christian interpretation, and the allegory of Hiram Abif is made to refer to the death or abolition of the Jewish law and the establishment of the new dispensation under Jesus Christ.
A few citations from the language of
The death and burial of the Master Builder, and the
consequent loss of the true Word, are thus applied to the Christian
dispensation. “Piety, which had planned the
The reverence and adoration due to the Divinity was buried in the filth and rubbish of the world. Persecution had dispersed the few who retained their obedience, and the name of the true God was almost lost and forgotten among men.
“In this situation it might well be said That the guide to Heaven was lost and the Master of the works of righteousness was smitten.’” (4)Again, “True religion was fled. ‘Those who sought her through the wisdom of the ancients were not able to raise her; she eluded the grasp, and their polluted hands were stretched forth in vain for her restoration.’”
Finally he explains the allegory of the Third degree as directly referring to Christ, in the following words: “The great Father of All, commiserating the miseries of the world, sent His only Son, who was innocence itself, to teach the doctrine of salvation, by whom man was raised from the death of sin unto the life of righteousness; from the tomb of corruption unto the chambers of hope; from the darkness of despair to the celestial beams of faith.” And finally, that there may be no doubt of his theory that the third degree was altogether Christian in its origin and design, he explicitly says: “Thus the Master Mason represents a man under the Christian doctrine saved from the grave of iniquity and raised to the faith of salvation. As the great testimonial that we are risen from the state of corruption, we bear the emblem of the Holy Trinity as the insignia of our vows and of the origin of the Master’s order.”
The christianization of the Third or Master’s degree, that
is, the interpretation of its symbols as referring to Christ and to Christian dogmas, is not peculiar to nor
original with
Notwithstanding that the Grand Lodge of England had authoritatively declared, in the year 1723, that Masonry required a belief only in that religion in which all men agree, the tendency among all our early writers after the revival of 1717 was to Christianize the institution.
The interpretation of the symbols of Freemasonry from a
Christian point of view was, therefore, at the period when
The peculiarity and novelty of his doctrine consisted not in its Christian interpretation of the symbols, but in the view that he has taken of the origin and historical value of the legend of the Third degree.
At least from the time of Anderson and Desaguliers, the legend of Hiram Abif had been accepted by the Craft as an historical statement of an event that had actually occurred. Even the most skeptical writers of the present day receive it as a myth which possibly has been founded upon events that have been distorted in their passage down the stream of tradition.
Now, neither of these views appears to have been entertained
by
There is nowhere to be found in the work of
If he believed in the truth of his own theory - and we are bound to suppose that he did - then he could not but have looked upon the details of the Master’s legend as absolutely false, for the legend and the theory can in no way be reconciled.
If I rightly understand the language of
That edifice was built, according to his theory, within the period of the second stage of the progress of Masonry. Now, that stage, which was inaugurated by Moses, was represented by the Fellow Craft’s degree. It was not until the coming of Christ that the Master’s degree with its rites and ceremonies came into existence, in the third stage of the progress of Masonry, which was represented by that degree. Indeed, in the following passage he explicitly makes that statement.
“The ceremonies now known to Masons prove that the testimonials and insignia of the Master’s order, in the present state of Masonry, were devised within the ages of Christianity; and we are confident there are not any records in being, in any nation or in any language, which can show them to be pertinent to any other system or give them greater antiquity.”
We can not explain this language with any respect for
consistency and for the meaning of the words except by adopting the following
explanation of the Hutchinsonian theory. At the building of the
The myth or legend thus fabricated was to be used as a symbol of the change which took place in the religious system of Masonry when the third stage of its progress was inaugurated by the invention of the Master’s degree.
Here again
No words of
Such is the Hutchinsonian theory of the origin and progress of Masonry.
It is sui generis -peculiar to
1. Masonry was first taught by Adam, after the fall, to his descendants, and continued through the patriarchal age. It consisted of a simple code of ethics, teaching only a belief in the God of Nature. It was the Masonry of the Entered Apprentice.
2. It was enlarged by Moses and confirmed by Solomon, and thus lasted until the era of Christ. To its expanded code of ethics was added a number of symbols derived from the Egyptian priesthood. Its religion consisted in a belief in God as he had been revealed to the Jewish nation. It was the Masonry of the Fellow Craft.
3. The Masonry of this second stage becoming valueless in consequence of the corruption of the Jewish law, it was therefore abolished and the third stage was established in its place. This third stage was formed by the teachings of Christ, and the religion it inculcates is that which was revealed by Him. It is the Masonry of the Master Mason.
4. Hence the three
stages of Masonry present three forms of religion: first, the Patriarchal;
second, the Jewish; third, the Christian. Masonry, having thus reached its ultimate
stage of progress, has continued in this last form to the present day. And now
While
After Christianity had become the popular religion of
But he professes his ignorance whether their initiation was attended with peculiar ceremonies or by what laws they were regulated. That they had any connection with the Speculative Order whose origin from Adam he had been tracing, is denied.
Finally, he attributes the moral precepts of the Masonry
of the present day to the
Such is the theory of
It is, indeed, a mere body of myths, which are not clad with the slightest garment of probability.
And yet there are here and there some glimmerings of truth, such as the appropriation of his real character to Hiram Abif, and the allusions to the “holy werk folk,” as showing a connection between Operative and Speculative Masonry, which, though not pushed far enough by Hutchinson, may afford valuable suggestions, if extended, to the searcher after historic truth in Freemasonry.
In commendation of the Rev. Dr. Oliver as a learned and prolific writer on Freemasonry, too much can not be said. His name must ever be clarum et venerabile among the Craft. To the study of the history and the philosophy of the Institution he brought a store of scholarly acquirements, and a familiarity with ancient and modern literature which had been possessed by no Masonic author who had preceded him. Even Hutchinson, who certainly occupied the central and most elevated point in the circle of Masonic students and investigators who flourished in the 18th century must yield the palm for erudition to him whose knowledge of books was encyclopedical.
In his numerous works on Freemasonry, of which it is difficult to specify the most important, the most learned, or the most interesting, Dr. Oliver has raised the Institution of Masonry to a point of elevation which it had never before reached, and to which its most ardent admirers had never aspired to promote it.
He loved it for its social tendencies, for he was genial in his inclination and in his habits, and he cherished its principles of brotherly love, for his heart was as expanded as his mind. But he taught that within its chain of union there was a fund of ethics and philosophy, and a beautiful science of symbolism by which its ethics was developed to the initiated, which awakened scholars to the contemplation of the fact never before so completely demonstrated, that Speculative Masonry claimed and was entitled to a prominent place among the systems of human philosophy.
No longer could men say that Freemasonry was merely a club of good fellows. Oliver had proved that it was a school of inquirers after truth. No longer could they charge that its only design was the cultivation of kindly feelings and the enjoyment of good cheer. He had shown that it was engaged in the communication to its disciples of abstruse doctrines of religion and philosophy in a method by which it surpassed every other human scheme for imparting such knowledge.
But, notwithstanding this eulogium, every word of which is merited by its subject, and not one word of which would I erase, it must be confessed that there were two defects in his character that materially affect the value of his authority as an historian.
One was, that as a clergyman of the Church of England he was controlled by that clerical espirit du corps which sought to make every opinion subservient to his peculiar sectarian views. Thus, he gave to every symbol, every myth, and every allegory the interpretation of a theologian rather than of a philosopher.
The other defect, a far more important one, was the indulgence in an excessive credulity, which led him to accept the errors of tradition as the truths of history. In reading one of his narratives, it is often difficult to separate the two elements. He so glosses the sober facts of history with the fanciful coloring of legendary lore, that the reader finds himself involved in an inextricable web of authentic history intermixed with unsupported tradition, where he finds it impossible to discern the true from the fabulous.
The canon of criticism laid by Voltaire, that all historic certainty that does not amount to a mathematical demonstration is merely extreme probability, is far too rigorous. There are many facts that depend only on contemporaneous testimony to which no more precise demonstration is applied, and which yet leave the strong impression of certainty on the mind.
But here, as in all other things, there is a medium -a measure of moderation - and it would have been well if Dr. Oliver had observed it. But not having done so, his theory is founded not simply on the Legend of the Craft, of which he takes but little account, but on obscure legends and traditions derived by him, in the course of his multifarious reading, sometimes from rabbinical and sometimes from unknown sources.
The theoretical views of Oliver as to the origin and
progress of Masonry from a legendary point of view are so scattered in his
various works that it is difficult to follow them in a chronological order.
This is especially the case with the legends that relate to the periods
subsequent to the building of the
But as he supposes that the globes constituting the universe were inhabited long before the earth was peopled, and that these inhabitants must have repossessed a system of ethics founded on the belief in God, which he says is nothing else but Speculative Masonry, we may regard this opinion as merely tantamount to the expression that truth is eternal.
Passing by this empyreal notion as a mere metaphysical idea, let us begin with Oliver’s theory of the mundane origin of the science of Masonry.
While in the Garden of Eden, Adam was taught that science which is now termed Masonry. After his fall, he forfeited the gift of inspiration, but certainly retained a recollection of those degrees of knowledge which are within the compass of human capacity, and among them that speculative science now known as Freemasonry. (1)
These, in the course of time, he communicated to his children. Of these children, Seth and his descendants preserved and cultivated the principles of Masonry which had been received from Adam, but Cain and his progeny perverted and finally abandoned it. However, before his complete secession, the latter, with some of his descendants, reduced the knowledge he had received from Adam to practice, and built a city which he called Hanoch. The children of Lamech, the sixth in descent from Cain, also retained some faint remains of Masonry, which they exerted for the benefit of mankind.
It is in this way that Dr. Oliver attempts to reconcile the story of the children of Lamech, as detailed in the Legend of the Craft, with his theory, which really ousts Cain and all his descendants from the pale of Masonry. The sons of Lamech were Masons, but their Masonry had been greatly corrupted.
Dr. Oliver makes the usual division of Masonry into
Operative and Speculative. The former continued to be used by the Cainites
after they had lost all pretensions to the latter, and the first practical
application of the art was by them in the building of the city of
Thus Masonry was divided, as to its history, into two distinct streams, that of the Operative and that of the Speculative; the former cultivated by the descendants of Cain, the latter by those of Seth. It does not, however, appear that the Operative branch was altogether neglected by the Sethites, but was only made subordinate to their Speculative science, while the latter was entirely neglected by the Cainites, who devoted themselves exclusively to the Operative art. Finally they abandoned it and were lost in the corruptions of their race, which led to their destruction in the flood.
The Speculative stream, however, flowed on uninterruptedly to the time of Noah. Oliver does not hesitate to say that Seth, “associating himself with the most virtuous men of his age, they formed lodges and discussed the great principles of Masonry,” and were called by their contemporaries the “Sons of Light.”
Seth continued to preside over the Craft until the time of Enoch, when he appointed that patriarch as his successor and Grand Superintendent.
Enoch, as Grand Master, practiced Masonry with such effect that God vouchsafed to reveal to him some peculiar mysteries, among which was the sacred WORD, which continues to this day to form an important portion of Masonic speculation, and for the preservation of which from the impending destruction of the world he constructed a subterranean edifice in which he concealed the sacred treasure. He also erected two pillars, one of brass and one of stone, on which he engraved the elements of the liberal sciences, including Masonry. Enoch then resigned the government of the Craft to Lamech, who afterward surrendered it to Noah, in whose hands it remained until the occurrence of the flood.
Such is Oliver’s legendary narrative of the progress of Masonry from the creation to the flood. The Craft were organized into lodges and were governed during that long period by only five Grand Masters -Adam, Seth, Enoch, Lamech, and Noah.
To the Institution existing at that time he gives the appropriate title of “Antediluvian Masonry,” and also that of “Primitive Masonry.”
Of its character he says that it had but few symbols or ceremonies, and was indeed nothing else but a system of morals or pure religion. Its great object was to preserve and cherish the promise of a Messiah.
On the renewal of the world by the subsidence of the waters of the deluge, it was found that though Enoch’s pillar of brass had given way before the torrent of destruction, the pillar of stone had been preserved, and by this means the knowledge of the state of Masonry before the flood was transmitted to posterity.
Of the sons of Noah, all of whom had been taught the pure system of Masonry by their father, Shem and his descendants alone preserved it.
Harn and Japhet leaving; dispersed into Airica and
This secession of the children of Japhet from the true system which their ancestor had received from Noah, has been called by Dr. Oliver “Spurious Freemasonry,” while that practiced by the descendants of Shem he styles “Pure Freemasonry.”
Of these two divisions the Spurious Freemasons were more distinguished for their cultivation of the Operative art, while the Pure Freemasons, although not entirely neglectful of Operative Masonry, particularly devoted themselves to the preservation of the truths of the Speculative science.
Shem communicated the secrets of Pure Freemasonry to Abraham, through whose descendants they were transmitted to Moses, who had, however, been previously initiated into the Spurious Masonry of the Egyptians.
Masonry, which had suffered a decay
during the captivity of the Israelites in
From this time Masonry was almost exclusively confined to the Jewish nation, and was propagated through its judges, priests, and kings to the time of Solomon.
When Solomon was about to erect the
By this association of the Tyrian Masons of the spurious order with the Jewish workmen who practiced the pure system, the two classes were united, and King Solomon reorganized the system of Freemasonry as it now exists.
For the subsequent extension of Masonry throughout the
world and its establishment in
Receiving the narrative of the General Assembly which was
called at
On the subject of the religious character of Freemasonry,
Dr. Oliver in the main agrees with
But his views will be best expressed in his own language, in a passage contained in the concluding pages of his Historical Landmarks: “The conclusion is therefore obvious. If the lectures of Freemasonry refer only to events which preceded the advent of Christ, and if those events consist exclusively of admitted types of the Great Deliverer, who was preordained to become a voluntary sacitce for the salvation of mankind, it will clearly follow that the Order was originally instituted in accordance with the true principles of the Christian religion; and in all its consecutive steps bears an unerring testimony to the truth of the facts and of their typical reference to the founder of our faith.”
He has said, still more emphatically, in a preceding part of the same work, that “Freemasonry contains scarcely a single ceremony, symbol, or historical narration which does not apply to this glorious consummation of the divine economy of the Creator towards his erring creatures”; by which economy he, of course, means the Christian dispensation and the Christian scheme of redemption.
If in the multifarious essays in which he has treated the subject Dr. Oliver meant to announce the proposition that in the very earliest ages of the world there prevailed certain religious truths of vast importance to the welfare and happiness of mankind, which had been communicated either by direct inspiration or in some other mode, and which have been traditionally transmitted to the present day, which truths principally consisted in an assertion of a belief in God and in a future life, such a proposition will hardly meet with a denial.
But if he also meant to contend that the transmission of these truths to posterity and to the present age was committed to and preserved by an order of men, an association, or a society whose form and features have been retained in the Freemasonry of the present day, it will, I imagine, be admitted that such a proposition is wholly untenable. And yet this appears to be the theory that was entertained by this learned but too credulous scholar.
THE
This is the legend that is now almost universally accepted by the great niass of the Masonic fraternity. Perhaps nine out of ten of the Freemasons of the present day - that is to say, all those who receive tradition with the undoubting faith that should be given to history only - conscientiously believe that Freemasonry, as we now see it, organized into lodges and degrees, with Grand Masters, Masters, and Wardens, with the same ritual observances, was first devised by Solomon, King of Israel, and assumed its position as a secret society during the period when that monarch was engaged in the construction of the Temple on Mount Moriah.
This theory is not a new one. It was probably at first
suggested by the passage in the Legend of the Craft which briefly describes the
building of the
There can be no doubt from this passage in the Legend that
the
As the traditions of this society in reference to the Temple of Solomon are calculated to throw much light on the ideas which prevailed among the Masons in respect to the same subject, and as the Temple legends of the “Compagnons” are better known to us than those of the mediaeval operative Masons, and finally, as it is not at all unlikely that the ideas of the former were derived from those of the latter, it will not be inexpedient to take a brief view of the Temple legend of the Compagnonage.
The Compagnons de la Tour have three different legends, each of which traces the association back to the Temple of Solomon, through three different founders, which causes the Compagnonage to be divided into three distinct and, unfortunately, hostile associations. These are the Children of Solomon, the Children of Maitre Jacques, and the Children of Pere Soubise.
The Children of Solomon assert that they were associated into
a brotherhood by King Solomon himself at the building of the
The Children of Maitre Jacques and those of Pere Soubise
declare that both of these workmen were employed at the
completion went together to Gaul,
where they taught the arts which they had learned at
The tradition of Maitre
Jacques is particularly interesting. He is said to have been the son of a
celebrated architect named Jacquain, who was one of the chief Masters of
Solomon and a colleague of Hiram Abif. From
the age of fifteen he was employed as a stone-cutter. He traveled through
Now, as these traveling journeymen (for thus may we translate their French title) are known to have separated themselves in the 12th century from the corporations of Master Workmen in consequence of the narrow and oppressive policy of these bodies, making what in modern times would be called a “ strike,” it is reasonable to suppose that they carted Nvkh them into their new and independent organization many of the customs, ceremonies, and traditions which they had learned from the main body or Master’s guilds of which they were an offshoot. Therefore, although we have not been able to find any legend or tradition of the medioeval operative Masons which traced their origin to the Temple of Solomon, yet as we find such a tradition prevailing among an association of workmen who, as we know, were at one time identified with the Operative Masons and seceded from them on a question of policy, we have a reasonable right to believe that the legend of the Compagnons de la Tour, or Traveling journeymen, which traced their origin to the Temple of Solomon, was derived by them from the Corporations of Masters or Guilds of Operative Masons, among whom it was an accepted tradition.
And therefore we have in this way the foundation for a
reasonable belief that the Legend of the
The absence of the Legend in any formal detail from all
the old manuscripts does not prove that there was no such Legend, for being of
an esoteric character, it may, from conscientious motives, or in obedience to
some regulation, never have been committed to writing. This is, however, a mere supposition and can
not in any way interfere with deductions drawn from positive data in reference
to the Legend of the Third Degree. There may have been a
The first reference in the old records to the
“What tyme that the children of isrl dwellid in Egypte
they lernyd the craft of masonry. And afterward they were driven, out of Egypte
they come into the lond of bihest (promise) and is now callyd Jerl’m (
The Dowland MS., whose supposed date is some fifty or sixty years later than the Cooke, gives substantially the same Legend, but with the additional circumstances, that David learned the charges that he gave, from Egypt, where they had been made by Euclid; that he added other charges to these; that Solomon sent into various countries for Masons, whom he gathered together; that the name of the King of Tyre was Iram, and that of his son, who was Solomon’s chief Master, was Aynon; and finally that he was a Master of Geometry and of carving and graving.
In this brief narrative, the first edition of which dates back as far as the close of the 15th century, we see the germs of the fuller Legend which prevails among the Craft at the present day. That there was an organization of Masons with “Charges and Manners,” that is, laws and customs at the building of the Temple of Jerusalem, and that King Solomon was assisted in the work by the King of Tyre and by a skillful artist who had been sent to him by Hiram, are the two most important points in the theory of the Temple origin of Masonry, and both are explicitly stated in these early legends. We next find the Legend repeated, but with more elaborate details, most of which, however, are taken from the Book of Kings as referred to in the Legend of the Craft by Anderson, in the first edition of the Constitutions, and with a few additional particulars in the second edition of the same work.
Preston, the next important Masonic writer after Anderson, does not indeed relate or refer to the Legend in any part of his Illustrations of Masonry, but the theory that Masonry found its origin at the Temple is to be deduced from the historical traditions contained in the third lecture of the Prestonian system, from which Webb derived it, and has perpetuated it among American Masons to the present day.
Hutchinson, who followed Preston, although, as has been
seen, he inclined to a remoter origin of the Order, repeatedly refers in his
spirit of Masonry, and especially in his Sixth Lecture, to the Temple of Solomon
as the place where “the true craftsmen were proved in their work,” and where
Solomon distinguished them into different ranks, giving to each appropriate
signs and secret tokens, and organized them for the first time into an
association of builders, the predecessors of the Masons being previous to that
time sages who, though acquainted with the principles of geometry and
architecture, were engaged solely in philosophical speculations. In this way
Dr. Oliver, one of the latest and the most prolific of the legendary writers, although in his own theory he seeks to trace the origin of Freemasonry to a much more remote antiquity, yet speaks so much in detail in most of his works, but principally in his Antiquities and in his Historical Landmarks, of the system which was for the first time organized at the building of the Solomonic Temple, that most readers who do not closely peruse his writings and carefully scan his views are under the impression that he had fully adopted the Legend of the Temple origin, and hence his authority has been lent to the popular belief.
Existing, as may be supposed from the analogy of a similar legend of the Compagnons de la Tour, among the craftsmen of the Middle Ages; transmitted to the Revival era of the beginning of the 18th century, and since then taught in all the rituals and sustained by the best Masonic writers up to a recent period, this Legend of the Temple origin of Freemasonry, or, in plainer words, the theory that Freemasonry received at the time of the building of the Temple of Jerusalem that form and organization which it holds at the present day, has been and continues to be a dogma of faith implicitly believed by the masses of the fraternity.
It is well, therefore, that we should now see what precisely is the form and substance of this popular Legend. As received at the present day by the body of the Craft, it may be stated as follows:
When Solomon was about to commence the building of his Temple, his own people not being expert or experienced architects, he applied to his friend Hiram, the monarch of the neighboring kingdom of Tyre, for assistance. Hiram, in complying with his request, sent to him a numerous body of workmen, and at their head a distinguished artist called, as a mark of distinction, Hiram Abif, equivalent to the title, “Hiram his father,” who is described as “a cunning man endued with understanding.”
King Solomon then proceeded to organize the institution
into a form, which has been adopted as the model of that which exists at the
present day in every country where Freemasonry exists. The Legend that contains
the classification of the workmen at the
There are two accounts, slightly conflicting, in the Scriptural narrative. In the Second Book of Chronicles, chapter ii., verses 17 and 18, are the following words:
“And Solomon numbered all the strangers that were in the
“And he set three score and ten thousand of them to be
bearers of burdens and four score thousand to be hewers in the mountains and
three thousand six hundred overseers to set the people at work.”
“And King Solomon raised a levy out of all
“And he sent them to
In the Legend of the Craft this enumeration was not strictly adhered to. The Cooke MS. says that there were “four score thousand masons at work,” out of whom three thousand were chosen as Masters of the work. The Landsdowne MS. says that the number of Masons was twenty-four thousand. But this number must have been a clerical error of the copyist in which he is followed only by the Antiquity MS. All the other manuscripts agree with the Dowland and make the number of Masons eighty thousand, including the three thousand overseers or Masters of the Work.
This statement does not accord with that which is in the Book of Kings nor with that in Chronicles, and yet it is all that the Legend of the Craft furnishes.
Dr. Anderson, who was the first author after the Revival
who made an enumeration and classification of the workmen at the
Anderson’s account is that there were employed on the
building three thousand six hundred Master Masons, to conduct the work
according to Solomon’s directions; eighty thousand hewers of stone in the
mountains who he says were Fellow Craftsmen, and seventy thousand laborers who
were not Masons, besides the levy of thirty thousand who worked under the
superintendence of Adoniram, making in all one hundred and eighty-three
thousand six hundred. For this great number,
Over this immense number of builders and laborers,
Fifteen years afterward,
“Solomon partitioned the Fellow Crafts into certain Lodges with a Master and Wardens in each; that they might receive commands in a regular manner, might take care of their tools and jewels, might be paid every week, and be duly fed and clothed, etc., and the Fellow Crafts took care of their succession by educating Entered Apprentices.”
If such a tradition ever existed, it is now lost, for it can not be found in any of the old manuscripts which are the record of the Masonic traditions. It is admitted that similar usages were practiced by the Operative Masons of the Middle Ages, but we have no historical authority, nor even legendary, outside of Anderson’s work, for tracing them to the Temple of Jerusalem.
Out of these materials the ritualists have manufactured a
Legend; which exists in all the Masonic rituals and which must have been
constructed in
Three Grand Masters presided over the large number of
workmen, namely, Solomon, King of Israel; Hiram, King of
The statement in the ritual is that the workmen were divided into Lodges. The Lodge of Master Masons, for there could be only one of that degree, consisted of three members; the Lodges of Fellow Crafts, of which there must have been sixteen thousand, was composed of five members each; and the Lodges of Entered Apprentices, of which there must have been ten thousand, was composed of seven each.
But as this statement has neither historical authority nor logical possibility to support it, it must be considered, as it undoubtedly was originally intended to be considered, merely as a reference to the symbolic character of those sacred numbers in Masonry - three, five, and seven. In the same spirit of symbolic reference the steps of the winding stairs leading to the middle chamber were divided into a series of three, five, and seven, with the addition in the English ritual of nine and eleven. All of this is, therefore, to be rejected from the class of legends and referred to that of symbols.
Viewing then this Legend or theory of the origin of Masonry at the Temple, tracing it from the almost nude state in which it is presented in the Legend of the Craft through the extraneous clothing which was added by Anderson and I suppose by Desaguliers, to the state of tinsel ornamentation in which it appears in the modern ritual, we will come to the following conclusion:
In the Legend of ihe Craft we find only the following statement: That King Solomon was assisted in the building of the Temple by the King of Tyre, who sent him materials for the edifice and a skillful artist, on whose name scarcely any two of them agree, and whom Solomon appointed as his Master of the Work; that Solomon invited Masons from all lands and having collected them together at Jerusalem, organized them into a body by giving them a system of laws and customs for their government. Now, most of these facts are sustained by the historical authority of the Books of Kings and Chronicles, and those that are not have the support of extreme probability.
That Solomon, King of Israel, built a
But the measure of the moral and mental stature of Carlile has long been taken, and even among the most skeptical critics he remains alone in his irrational incredulity.
Doubtless there are Oriental exaggerations in respect to the amount of money expended and the number of workmen employed on the building, which have been overestimated. But the simple, naked fact that King Solomon built a temple remains uncontradicted, and is as historically true and undoubted as that of the construction of any other public edifice in antiquity.
It is equally historical that the King of Tyre gave assistance to Solomon in carrying out his design. However fiercely the skeptics may have attacked certain portions of the Bible, the Books of Kings and Chronicles have been placed upon the footing of other ancient historical records and subjeated to the same canons of criticism.
Now we are distinctly told that Hiram, King of Tyre, “sent
masons and carpenters to David to build him a house; “ (2) we learn
subsequently that the same Hiram (some say his son) was equally friendly with
Solomon, and although there is no distinct mention either in Kings or
Chronicles that he sent workmen to Jerusalem, (3) except his namesake, the
artificer, yet we may infer that he did so, from the friendship of the two kings,
from the need of Solomon for expert workmen, and from the fact which we learn
from the First Book of Kings, that the stones for the edifice were hewn by “
Solomon’s builders and Hiram’s builders and the Giblim.” The authorized
version, on what authority I know not, translates this word “Giblim” as “stone-squarers.”
They were, however, the inhabitants
that Hiram sent his workmen to
Thus we see that there were, according to the Scriptural
account, three classes of Masons engaged at the building of the
Secondly, there were the workmen of Hiram, King of Tyre. These I have already said were probably, and indeed necessarily, included in the number of four score thousand strangers or foreigners. The words in the original are amoshim gherim, men who are foreigners, for Gesenius defines the word gherim, to be “sojourners, strangers, foreigners, men living out of their country.”
Thirdly, we have the Giblim, the inhabitants of the city
of
Thus the Legend of the Craft is justified in saying; that Solomon “sent after Masons into divers countries and of divers landes,” and that he had “four score workers of stone and were all named Masons.” For these were the foreigners or sojourners, whom he found in Jerusalem, many of whom had probably come there on his invitation, and the Tyrians who had been sent to him by King Hiram, and the Phoenicians, whom he had called out of Gebal on account of their well-known skill in stone-cutting. And all of these amounted to eighty thousand, the number stated in the Books of Kings and Chronicles, and just the number mentioned in the Legend of the Craft.
It will be seen that the Legend of the Craft takes no notice
of the levy of thirty thousand who worked under Adoniram on
In all this, the Legend of the Craft differs entirely from the modern rituals, which have included all these classes, and therefore reckon that at the building of the Temple there were one hundred and fifty-three thousand three hundred Masons, instead of eighty-thousand. The Legend is certainly more in accord with the authority of the Bible than are the rituals.
The Legend of the Craft is also justified in saying that Solomon organized these Masons into what might be called a guild, that is, a society or corporation, (1) by giving them “charges and manners” - in other words, a code of laws and regulations. On this question the Bible account is silent, but it amounts to an extreme probability, the nearest approximation to historical evidence, that there must bave been some regulations enacted for the government of so large a number of workmen. It is also equally probable that to avoid confusion these workmen must have been divided into sections, or what, in modern parlance, would be called “gangs,” engaged in various parts of the building and in different employments. There must have been a higher and more skillful class occupied in directing the works of these several sections; there must have been others less skillful and yet competent to discharge the duties of stone-cutters and layers, and there must have been another and still inferior class who were only acquiring the rudiments of the profession.
Founded on these enident propositions,
The modern ritual may, however, be considered as having adopted the Temple of Jerusalem as a type of that abstruse symbol of a spiritual temple, which forms, as will be hereafter seen, one of the most important and most interesting symbolic lessons on which the philosophy of Speculative Masonry depends. But viewing it as an historical statement, it is devoid of all claims to credence. The facts stated in the ritual are an outgrowth of those contained in the Legend of the Craft which it has greatly altered by unauthorized additions, and it is in entire contradiction to those given in the Books of Kings and Chronicles.
The claim that Freemasonry took its origin at the building of the
I am not unwilling to believe, for reasons that have been
already assigned, that the Operative or Stone Masons of the Middle
Ages had some tradition or Legend of the origin of the Institution at the
The mediaeval Masons were, as an association of builders, most intimately connected with the ecclesiastics of that age. Their principal home at one time was in the monasteries, they worked under the immediate patronage and supervision of bishops and abbots, and were chiefly engaged in the construction of cathedrals and other religious edifices. Private houses at that early period were mostly built of wood, and the building of them was the business of carpenters. The treow-wyr-hta, literally the tree-workman, in modern phrase the carpenter, was one of the most important handicrafts of the early Anglo-Saxons. He was the builder of their ships as well as of their houses, and the trade is frequently spoken of in ancient Saxon documents. He was constantly employed in the construction of vessels for the carrying on of trade, or the erection of dwellings for the residences of the people.
To the stone-masons was exclusively entrusted the nobler vocation of building religious edifices.
Imbued, from their connection with the priests as well as from their peculiar employment, with religious sentiments, they naturally looked for the type of the great cathedrals which they were erecting, not to Pagan temples, however splendid might be their architecture, but rather to that Jewish cathedral which had been consecrated on Mount Moriah to the worship of the true God. Hence the brief notice of that building in the Legend of the Craft was either the suggestion of that esoteric Legend of the Temple which has not, from its necessarily oral character, been handed down to us, or if the written Legend was posterior in time to the oral one, then it was a brief record of it.
But I do not believe that this lost Legend of the
stone-masons was ever intended to be historical. It was simply a symbol to
illustrate the idea that the
This symbolic Legend, which I suppose to have existed
among the stone-masons of the Middle Ages, was
probably lost before the revival of Masonry in the year 1717.
Upon this Andersonian Legend, simple in the first edition
of the Constitutions, but considerably expanded in the second, the modern
ritualists have framed another Legend, which in many important details differs
from
This is the Legend now accepted and believed by the great body of the Craft to be historically true. That it has no claim to historical credence is evident from the fact that it is, in its most important details, unauthorized, and in fact contradicted by the Scriptural account, which is the only authentic memorial that we have of the transactions that took place at the building of the Solomonic Temple.
And moreover, the long period that elapsed between the building of the Temple, a thousand years before the Christian era, and the time, not earlier than the 3d century after Christ, during which we have no traces of the existence of such an architectural association connected with Jewish Masons and transmitted from them to the Christian architects, presents an extensive lacuna which must be filled by authentic records, before we can be enabled, as scholars investigating truth, to consent to the theory that the Freemasons of the present day are, by uninterrupted successions, the representatives of the Masons who wrought at King Solomon’s Temple.
The Legend of the ritual is, in fact, a symbol - but a very important and a very interesting one, and as such will be fully discussed when the subject of Masonic symbols comes to be treated in a subsequent part of this work.
WE now approach a very interesting topic in the legendary
history of Masonry. The reader has already seen in the last chapter that the
Masons of the
This Legend was entirely unknown to the old Masons of the Middle Ages. There is no reference to it in any of the manuscripts, The brief allusion to the Dionysiacs of Asia Minor in Robison’s anti-Masonic work does not necessarily connect them with the Masons of King Solomon.
The first writer who appears to have started the theory that the Masons sent by King Hiram to the King of Israel were members of the Dionysiac fraternity, is Sir David Brewster, who presented the Legend under the guise of an historic statement in the History of Freemasonry, published in the beginning of this century, and the authorship of which, although it was actually written by him, has been falsely attributed to Alexander Lawrie, the bookseller of Edinburgh and at the time the Grand Secretary of the Grand Lodge of Scotland. Brewster may therefore, I think, be fairly considered as the original framer of the Legend.
Between 1055 and 1044 years before Christ, or something
more than half a century anterior to the building of the Temple, the
inhabitants of Attica, complaining of the narrowness of their territory and the
unfruitfulness of the soil, went in quest of more extensive and fertile
settlements. Being joined by a number of the inhabitants of the surrounding
provinces of
Prior to this emigration the Greeks had made considerable progress in the arts and sciences, which the adventurers carried with them into their new territory, and they introduced into Ionia the Mysteries of Pallas and Dionysus, before they had become corrupted by the licentiousness of the Athenians.
Especially popular, not only in Ioca but throughout
In the Dionysiac Mysteries the legend of initiation recounted or represented the death of the demigod Dionysus, the search for and discovery of his body, and his subsequent restoration to life.
In the initiations the candidate was made to represent in his own person, the events connected with the slaying of the hero-god. After a variety of preparatory ceremonies, intended to call forth all his fortitude and courage, the aphanism or mystical death of Dionysus -torn to pieces by the Titans -was presented in a dramatic form and followed by the confinement or burial of the candidate, as the representative of Dionysus in the pastos, couch, or coffin, all of which constituted the first part of the ceremony of initiation. Then began the search for the remains of Dionysus, which was continued amid scenes of the greatest confusion and tumult, until at last, the search having been successful, the morning was turned to joy, light succeeded to darkness, and the candidate was invested with the knowledge of the secret doctrine of the Mysteries - the belief in the existence of one God and a future and immortal state.
Now these Mysteries of Dionysus were very intimately connected with a society of architects. As this association, according to the Legend which we are now considering, had much to do with the organization of Masonry at the Solomonic Temple, it is necessary to take a brief notice of its origin and character.
It is an historical fact that at the time of the building of
the
It has been already stated that the priests of Dionysus had devoted themselves to the study and the practice of architecture, and about one thousand years before the Christian era, or at the time that King Solomon began the construction of the Temple at Jerusalem, had emigrated from Greece and established themselves as a society or fraternity of builders in Asia Minor, and devoted themselves to the construction of temples and other public edifices. (2)
Hiram, who then reigned over the
The internal government and the usages of this association were very similar to those exhibited by the Masonic society in the present day, and which the legendary theory supposes to have prevailed among the builders of the Solomonic Temple.
The fraternity was divided into communities called
synoeciae, (3) having houses or dwellings in common, which might well be compared to the Masonic
Lodges of the present day. Their plans of meeting were also called in Greek
koina, which signifies communities, and each received a distinctive name, just
as our Lodges do. Thus Chishull speaks in his account of the prechristian
antiquities of
There was an annual festival, like the General Assembly or Grand Lodge of the Masons, which was held with great pomp and ceremony. Chandler says (but he speaks of a later period, when they were settled at Teos) that it was the custom of their synod to bold yearly a General Assembly, at which they sacrificed to the gods and poured out libations to their deceased benefactors. They likewise celebrated games in honor of Bacchus, when the crowns which had been bestowed by any of the communities as rewards of merit were announced by heralds, and the wearers of them were applauded by the other members. These meetings, he adds, were solemnized with great pomp and festivity.
The same traveler mentions a long decree made by one of the communities in honor of its magistrates, which he found inscribed on a slab in a Turkish burying-ground. The thanks of the community with a crown of olives are given as a recompense to these officers for their great liberality and trouble while in office; and to perpetuate their memory and to excite an emulation of their merit, it is besides enacted that the decrees be engraved, but at their expense, “so desirable,” says Chandler, “was the testimony to the individuals and so frugal the usage in bestowing it.”
Of course as an architectural association the Dionysiacs used many of the implements employed by Operative Masons, and as a secret brotherhood they had a system of signs and tokens by which any one of the members could make himself known to the others. Professor Robison, who may be accepted on this point as authority, admits that they were “distinguished from the uninitiated or profane inhabitants by the science which they possessed and by many private signs and tokens by which they recognized each other.
Each of the koina or separate communities into which they were divided was under the direction of officers corresponding to a Master and Wardens.
The Masonic principle of charity was practiced among them and the opulent members were bound to provide for the wants and necessities of their poorer brethren.
The Legend which connects these architects with the
building of the
The Legend, now connecting itself in part with history, proceeds to state that when Solomon was about to build a temple to Jehovah, he made his intention known to his friend and ally, Hiram, King of Tyre, and because he was well aware of the architectural skill of the Tyrian Dionysiacs, he besought that monarch’s assistance to enable him to carry his pious design into execution. Hiram complied with his request and sent him the necessary workmen, who by their skill and expeience might supply the mechanical deficiencies and ignorance of the Israelites.
With the body of builders he sent this Hiram Abif, who as “a curious and cunning workman,” highly recommended by his patron, was entrusted by King Solomon with the superintendence of the construction and placed at the head of both the Tyrian and Jewish craftsmen as the chief builder and principal conductor of the work.
To this distinguished artist, on account of the large influence which his position gave him and the exalted personal virtues which are traditionally supposed to have characterized him, is to be attributed, according to the Legend, the intimate union of two peoples so dissimilar in manners and so antagonized in religion as the Jews and the Tyrians, which resulted in the organization of the Institution of Freemasonry.
Supposing Hiram Abif, as the Legend does, to have been connected with the Dionysiac fraternity, we may also suppose that he could not have been a very humble or inconspicuous member, if we may judge of his rank in the society, from the amount of talent which he is said to have possessed, and from the elevated position that he held in the alleabns and at the court of the King of Tyre.He must therefore have been very familiar with all the
ceremonial usages of the Dionysiac artificers and must have enjoyed a long
expeience of the advantages derived from the government and discipline which
they practiced in the erection of the many sacred edifices which they had
constructed. A portion of these ceremonial usages and of this discipline he
would naturally be inclined to introduce among the workmen at
The most prominent symbol of Speculative Masonry, that, indeed, on which the whole of the ethical instructions is founded, is contained in the lesson of resurrection to a future life as developed in the allegorical Legend of the Master’s Degree.
In the Pagan Mysteries, of which the Dionysia were a part, this doctrine was also illustrated by an allegorical legend. In the Mysteries of Dionysus which were practiced by the Tyrian architects the legend related to the death and subsequent resuscitation of Bacchus or Dionysus.
But it would have been utterly impossible to have introduced such a legend as the basis of any instructions to be communicated to Jewish initiates. Any allusion to the mythological fables of their Gentile neighbors would have been equally offensive to the taste and repugnant to the religious prejudices of a nation educated from generation to generation in the worship of a Divine Being, who, they had been taught, was jealous of his prerogatives, and who had made himself known to their ancestors as the JEHOVAH, the only God of time present, past, and future.
The difficulty of obtaining a legend on which the dogma of the Third Degree might be founded was obviated by substituting Hiram Abif, after his death (at which time only the system could have been perfected), in the place of Dionysus. The lesson taught in the Mysteries practiced by the Dionysiac artificers was thus translated into the Masonic initiation, the form of the symbolism remaining the same, but the circumstances of the legend necessarily varying.
By this union of the Dionysiacs with the Jewish workmen and the introduction of their mystical organization, the Masonic Order assumed at the building of the Temple that purely speculative form connected with the operative which it has ever since retained.
From its Jewish element it derived its religious character as a pure theism.
From its Tyrian element it borrowed its peculiar mystical character and its system of symbolism, which so much assimilated it to the ancient Pagan Mysteries, that a Legend has been framed (to be hereafter considered) which traces its origin directly to those secret associations of antiquity.
Upon the completion of the
Such is the Legend which seeks to attribute the present
form of Freemasonry to the connection of the Dionysiac artisans of
It is equally certain that those who deny the
But laying the subject of Freemasonry altogether aside, and considering the connection of the Tyrians and the Jews at the Temple as a mere historical question, it would present a very interesting study of history to determine what were the results of that connection, if there were any way of solving it except by mere conjecture.
The subsequent history of the association of Dionysiac
Architects forms no part of the Legend which has just been recited; but it may
be interesting to trace their progress. About seven hundred years after the
building of the
But proving turbulent and seditious they were at length
expelled from Teos and removed to the city of
In the 5th century of the Christian era the
Emperor Theodosius abolished all mystical associations, but the Dionysiacs are
said to have continued their existence until the time of the Crusades, when
they passed over into
THE theory which ascribes the origin of Freemasonry as a secret society to the Pagan Mysteries of the ancient world, and which derives the most important part of its ritual and the legend of its Third Degree from the initiation practiced in these religious organizations, necessarily connects itself with the Legend of the Temple origin of the Institution, because we can only link the initiation in the Mysteries with that of Freemasonry by supposing that the one was in some way engrafted on the other, at the time of the building of the Temple and the union of the Jewish and Tyrian workmen.
But before we can properly appreciate the theory which associates Freemasonry with the Pagan Mysteries, we must make ourselves acquainted with the nature and the design as well as with something of the history of those mystical societies.
Among all the nations of antiquity in which refinement and culture had given an elevated tone to the religious sentiment, there existed two systerns of worship, a public and a private one. “Each of the pagan Gods,” says Warburton, “had (besides the public and open) a secret worship paid unto him, to which none were admitted but those who had been selected by preparatory ceremonies, called INITIATION. This secret worship was called the MYSTERIES.”
The public worship was founded on the superstitious polytheism whose numerous gods and goddesses were debased in character and vicious in conduct. Incentive to virtue could not be derived from their example, which furnished rather excuses for vice. In the Eunuchus of Terenie, when Choerea is meditating the seduction of the virgin Pamphila, he refers to the similar act of Jupiter, who in a shower of gold had corrupted Danae, and he exclaims, “If a god, who by his thunders shakes the whole universe, could commit this crime, shall not I, a mere mortal, do so also?” Plautus, Euripides and other Greek and Roman dramatists and poets repeatedly used the same argument in defense of the views of their heroes, so that it became a settled principle of the ancient religion. The vicious example of the gods thus became an insuperable obstacle to a life of purity and holiness.
The assurance of a future life of compensation constituted no part of the popular theology. The poets, it is true, indulged in romantic descriptions of an Elysium and a Tartarus, but their views were uncertain and unsatisfactory, as to any specific doctrine of immortality, and were embodied in the saying of Ovid (3) that of the four elements which constituted the human organization, “the earth covers the flesh; the shade flits around the tomb; the spirit seeks the stars.”
Thus did the poet express the prevalent idea that the composite man returned after death to the various primordial elements of which he had been originally composed. In such a dim and shadowy hypothesis there was no incentive for life, no consolation in death. And hence Alger, to whom the world has been indebted for a most exhaustive treatise on the popular beliefs of all nations, ancient and modern, on the subject of the future life, has after a full and critical examination of the question, come to the following conclusion:
“To the ancient Greek in general, death was a sad doom. When he lost a friend, he sighed a melancholy farewell after him to the faded shore of ghosts. Summoned himself, he departed with a lingering look at the sun and a tearful adieu to the bright day and the green earth. To the Roman death was a grim reality. To meet it himself he girded up his loins with artificial firmness. But at its ravages among his friends, he wailed in anguished abandonment. To his dying vision there was indeed a future, but shapes of distrust and shadow stood upon its disconsolate borders; and when the prospect had no horror, he still shrank from the poppied gloom.”
Yet as each nation advanced in refinement and intellectual culture the priests, the poets, and the philosophers aspired to a higher thought and cherished the longing for and inculcated the consoling doctrine of an immortality, not to be spent in shadowy and inert forms of existence, but in perpetual enjoyment, as a compensation for the ills of life. The necessary result of the growth of such pure and elevated notions must have been a contempt and condemnation of the absurditics of polytheism. But as this was the popular religion it was readily perceived that any open attempt to overthrow it and to advance, publicly, opinions so antagonistic to it would be highly impolitic and dangerous. Whenever any religion, whether true or false, becomes the religion of a people, whoever opposes it, or ridicules it, or seeks to subvert it, is sure to be denounced by popular fanaticism and to be punished by popular intolerance.
Socrates was doomed to drink the poisoned bowl on the charge that he taught the Athenian youth not to worship the gods who are worshipped by the state, but new and unknown deities. Jesus was suspended from the cross because he inculcated doctrines which, however pure, were novel and obnoxious to the old religion of his Jewish countrymen.
The new religious truths among the Pagan peoples were therefore concealed from common inspection and taught only in secret societies, admission to which was obtained only through the ordeal of a painful initiation, and the doctrines were further concealed under the veil of symbols whose true meaning the initiated only could understand. “The truth,” says Clemens of Alexandria, “was taught involved in enigmas, symbols, allegories, metaphors, and tropes and figures.”
The secret associations in which the principles of a new and purer theology were taught have received in history the name of the MYSTERIES.
Each country had its own Mysteries peculiar to itself. In Egypt were those of Osiris and Isis; in Samothrace those of the Cabiri; in Greece they celebrated at Eleusis, near Athens, the Mysteries of Demeter; in Syria of Adonis; in Phoenicia of Dionysus; and in Persia those of Mithras, which were the last to perish after the advent of Christianity and the overthrow of polytheism.
These Mysteries, although they differed in name and in some of the details of initiation, were essentially alike in general form and design. “Their end as well as nature,” says Warburton, “was the same in all: to teach the doctrine of a future state.” (1) Alger says: “The implications of the indirect evidence, the leanings and guidings of all the incidental clews now left us as to the real aim and purport of the Mysteries, combine to assure us that their chief teaching was a doctrine of a future life in which there should be rewards and punishments.”
Thomas Taylor, the Platonist, than whom no better modern authority on this subject could be cited, says that “the initiated were instructed in the doctrine of a state of future rewards and punishments,” and that the greater Mysteries “obscurely intimated, by mystic and splendid visions, the felicity of the soul both here and hereafter, when purified from the defilements of a material nature and constantly elevated to the realities of intellectual vision.”
All the ancient writers who were contemporary with these associations, and must have been familiar with their character, concur in the opinion that their design was to teach the doctrine of a future life of compensation.
Pindar says, “Happy the man who descends beneath the hollow earth having beheld these Mysteries. He knows the end, he knows the divine origin of life.”
Sophocles says that “they are thrice happy who descend to the shades below, after having beheld these rites; for they alone have life in Hades, while all others suffer there every kind of evil.”
And lastly, Isocrates dcclares that “those who have been initiated in the Mysteries of Ceres entertain better hopes both as to the end of life and the whole of futurity.”
It is then evident from all authorities that the great end and design of the initiation into these Mysteries was to teach the aspirant the doctrine of a future life -not that aimless, uncertain, and shadowy one portrayed by the poas and doubtfully consented to by the people, but that pure and rational state of immortal existence in which the soul is purified from the dross of the body and elevated to eternal life. It was, in short, much the same in its spirit as the Christian and Masonic doctrine of the resurrection.
But this lesson was communicated in the Mysteries in a peculiar form, which has in fact given rise to the theory we are now considering that they were the antetype and original source of Speculative Masonry. They were all dramatic in their ceremonies; each one exhibited in a series of scenic representations the adventures of some god or hero; the attacks upon him by his enemies; his death at their hands; his descent into Hades or the grave, and his final resurrection to renewed life as a mortal, or his apotheosis as a god.
The only important difference between these various
Mysteries was, that there was to each one a diffcrent
and peculiar god or hero, whose death and resurrection or apotheosis
constituted the subject of the drama, and gave to its scenes the changes which
were dependent on the adventures of him who was its main subject. Thus, in Samothrace,
where the Mysteries of the Cabiri were celebrated, it was Atys, the lover of
Cybele, who was slain and restored; in
But in all of these the material points of the plot and the religious design of the sacred drama were identical. The dramatic form and the scenic representation of the allegory were everywhere preserved.
This dramatic form of the initiatory rites in the Mysteries - this acted allegory in which the doctrine of the resurrection was shadowed forth by the visible representation of some fictitious event - was, as the learned Dr. Dollinger has justly observed, “eminently calculated to take a powerful hold on the imagination and the heart, and to excite in the spectators alternately conflicting sentiments of terror and calmness, of sorrow and fear and hope.”
As the Mysteries were a secret society, whose members were separated from the rest of the people by a ceremony of initiation, there resulted from this form of organization, as a necessary means of defense and of isolation, a solemn obligation of secrecy, with severe penalties for its violation, and certain modes of recognition known only to those who had been instructed in them.
There was what might be called a progressive order of degrees, for the neophyte was not at once upon his initiation invested with a knowledge of the deepest arcana of the religious system.
Thus the Mysteries were divided into two classes called the Lesser and the Greater Mysteries, and in addition there was a preliminary ceremony, which was only preparatory to the Mysteries proper. So that there was in the process of reception a system of three steps, which those who are fond of tracing analogies between the ancient and the modern initiations are prone to call degrees.
A brief review of these three steps of progress in the Mysteries will give the reader a very definite idea of the nature of this ancient system in which so many writers have thought that they had found the incunabulum of modern Freemasonry, and will enable him to appreciate at their just value the analogies which these writers have found, as they suppose, between the two systems. The first step was called the Lusiration, or purification by water. When the neophyte was ready to be received into any of the ancient Mysteries, he was carried into the temple or other place appropriated to the ceremony of initiation, and there underwent a thorough cleansing of the body by water. This was the preparation for reception into the Lesser Mysteries and was symbolic of that purification of the heart that was absolutely necessary to prepare the aspirant for admission to a knowledge of and participation in the sacred lessons which were to be subsequently communicated to him. It has been sought to find in this preparatory ceremony an analogy to the first degree of Masonry. Such an analogy certainly exists, as will here after be shown, but the theory that the Apprentice’s degree was derived from and suggested by the ceremony of Lustration in the Mysteries is wholly untenable, because this ceremony was not peculiar to the Mysteries.
An ablution, lustration, or cleansing by water, as a religious rite was practiced among all the ancient nations. More especially was it observed among the Hebrews, Greeks, and Romans. With the Hebrews the lustration was a preliminary ceremony to every act of expiation or sin-offering. Hence the Jewish prophets continually refer to the ablution of the body with water as a symbol of the purification of the heart. Among the Greeks lustration was always connected with their sacrifices. It consisted in the sprinkling of water by means of an olive or a laurel branch. Among the Romans, the ceremony was more common than among the Greeks. It was used not only to expiate crime, but also to secure the blessing of the Gods. Thus, fields were lustrated before the corn was put into the ground; colonies when they were first established, and armies before they proceeded to battle. At the end of every fifth year, the whole people were thus purified by a general lustration. Everywhere the rite was connected with the performance of sacrifice and with the idea of a moral purification.
The next step in the ceremonies of the ancient Mysteries was called the Initiation. It was here that the dramatic allegory was performed and the myth or fictitious history on which the peculiar Mystery was founded was developed. The neophyte personated the supposed events of the life, the sufferings, and the death of the god or hero to whom the Mystery was dedicated, or he had them brought in vivid representation before him. These ceremonies constituted a symbolic instruction in the initia the beginnings -of the religious system which it was the object of the Mysteries to teach.
The ceremonies of initiation were performed partly in the Lesser, but more especially and more fully in the Greater Mysteries, of which they were the first part, and where only the allegory of death was enacted. The Lesser Mysteries, which were introductory to the Greater, have been supposed by the theorists who maintain the connection between the Mysteries and Freemasonry to be analogous to the Fellow Craft’s degree of the latter Institution.
There may be some ground for this comparison in a rather inexact way, for although the Lesser Mysteries were to some extent public, yet as they were, as Clemens of Alexandria says, a certain groundwork of instruction and preparation for the things that were to follow, they might perhaps be considered as analogous to the Fellow Craft’s degree.
The third and last of the progressive steps or grades in the Mysteries was Perfection. It was the ultimate object of the system. It was also called the autopsy, from a Greek word which signifies seeing with one’s own eyes. It was the complete and finished communication to the neophyte of the great secret of the Mysteries; the secret for the preservation of which the system of initiation had been invented, and which, during the whole course of that initiation, had been symbolically shadowed forth.
The communication of this secret, which was in fact the explanation of the secret doctrine, for the inculcation of which the Mysteries in every country had been instituted, was made in the most sacred and private place of the temple or place of initiation.
As the autopsy or Perfection of the Mysteries concluded the whole system, the maintainers of the doctrine that Freemasonry finds its origin in the Mysteries have compared this last step in the ancient initiation to the Master’s degree. But the analogy between the two as a consummation of the secret doctrine is less patent in the third degree, as it now exists, than it was before the disseverance from it of the Royal Arch, accepting, however, the Master’s degree as it was constituted in the earlier part of the 18th century, the analogies between that and the last stage of the Mysteries are certainly very interesting, although not sufficient to prove the origin of the modern from the ancient systems. But of this more hereafter.
This view of the organization of the Pagan Mysteries would not be complete without some reference to the dramatized allegory which constituted so important a part of the ceremony of initiation, and in connection with which their relation to Freemasonry has been most carnestly urged.
It has been already said that the Mysteries were originally invented for the purpose of teaching two great religious truths, which were unknown to, or at least not recognized, in the popular faith. These were the unity of God and the immortality of the soul in a future life. The former, although illustrated at every point by expressed symbols, such, for instance, as the all-seeing eye, the eye of the universe, and the image of the Deity, was not allegorized, but taught as an abstract doctrine at the time of the autopsy or the close of the grade of Perfection. The other truth, the dogma of a future life, and of a resurrection from death to immortality, was communicated by an allegory which was dramatized in much the same way in each of the Mysteries, although, of course, in each nation the person and the events which made up the allegory were different. The interpretation was, however, always the same.
As
All the writers of antiquity, such as Plutarch, Diodorus
Siculus, and Herodotus, state that the Egyptian Mysteries of Osiris, Isis, and
Horus were the model of all the other systems of initiation which were
subsequently established among the different peoples of the
The place of Osiris in Egyptian history is unknown to us. The fragments of Sanchoniathon speak of Isiris, the brother of Chna or Canaan; in the lists of Manetho, he is made the fifth king under the dynasty of the demigods, being conjoined with Isis; but as the four preceding kings are named as Hephoestus, Helios, Agathodomon and Kronos, the whole is evidently a mere mythological fable, and we have as far to seek as ever.
Herodotus is not more satisfactory, for he says that Osiris and Isis were two great deities of the Egyptians. Banier, however, in his Mythology
thinks that he was the same as
Mizraim, the son of Clam, and grandson of Noah. Bishop Cumberland concurs in
this and adds that Cham was the first king of
The ubiquitous character of Osiris as a personality among the ancients is best shown in an epigram of Ausonius, wherein it is said that in Greece, at Eleusis, he was called Bacchus; the Egyptians thought that he was Osiris, the Mysians of Asia Minor named him Phanceus or Apollo; the Indians supposed that he was Dionysus; the sacred rites of the Romans called him Liber; and the Arabians, Adonis.
But the only thing that is of any interest to us in this connection is that Osiris was the hero of the earliest of the Mysteries, and that his death and apotheosis - his change from a mortal king to an immortal God symbolized the doctrine of a future life.
His historical character was that of a mild and beneficent sovereign, who had introduced the arts of civilization among his subjects, and had then traveled for three years for the purpose of extending them into other nations, leaving the government of his kingdom, during his absence, to his wife Isis. According to the legend, his brother Typhon had been a rival claimant for the throne, and his defeat had engendered a feeling of ill-will. During the absence of Osiris, he, therefore, formed a secret conspiracy with some of his adherents to usurp the throne.
On the return of Osiris from his travels he was invited by Typhon to a banquet, ostensibly given in his honor, at which all the conspirators were present. During the feast Typhon produced a chest, inlaid with gold, and promised to present it to that person of the company, whose body, upon trial, would be found most exactly to fit it. Osiris tried the experiment, but as soon as he had laid himself in the chest, Typhon closed and nailed down the lid.
The chest was then thrown into the river Nile, whence it
floated into the sea, and, after being for some time tossed upon the waves, it
was finally cast ashore at the town of
After many adventures Isis arrived on the shores of
In this way it is supposed that the principles and general
form of the Mysteries were conveyed into other countries, although they
everywhere varied in the details. The most important of the Mysteries besides
the Egyptian were those of Mithras in
But wherever they existed we find in them a remarkable unity of design and a similarity of ceremonies from which we are compelled to deduce a common origin, while the purity of the doctrines which they taught evidently show that this common origin was not to be sought in the popular theology.
In all of the Mysteries the ceremonies of initiation were of a funereal character. They allegorized in a dramatic form the sufferings, the death, and the resurrection of some god or hero. There was a death, most generally by violence, to symbolize, as certain interpreters of the Mysteries have supposed, the strife of certain antagonistic powers in nature, such as life and death, virtue and vice, light and darkness, or summer and winter.
The person thus slain was represented in the allegorical drama by the candidate. After the death followed the disappearance of the body, called by the Greeks the aphanism, and the consequent search for it. This search for the body, in which all the initiates joined, constituted what Faber calls “the doleful part,” and was succeeded by its discovery, which was known as the heuresis. This was accompanied by the greatest demonstrations of joy. The candidate was afterward instructed in the apporheta, or secret dogmas of the Mysteries.
In all of the Pagan Mysteries this dramatic form of an allegory was preserved, and we may readily see in the groans and lamentations on the death of the god or hero and the disappearance of the body a symbol of the death of man, and in the subsequent rejoicings at his discovery and restoration, a symbol of the restoration of the spirit to eternal life.
In view of the purity of the lessons taught in the Mysteries and their inculcation of the elevated dogmas of the unity of God and the immortality of the soul, it is not surprising to read the encomiums passed upon them by the philosophers of antiquity.
The reader, if he has carefully considercd the allegorical drama which was represented in the ancient Mysteries, and compared it with the drama which constitutes the principal portion of the initiation in Freemasonry, will be at no loss to account for the reasons which have led so many writers to attribute the origin of the Masonic system to these mystical associations of antiquity.
It has been a favorite theory with several German, French, and British scholars to trace the origin of Freemasonry to the Mysteries of Paganism, while others, repudiating the idea that the modern association should have sprung from them, still find analogies so remarkable between the two systems as to lead them to suppose that the Mysteries were an offshoot from the pure Freemasonry of the Patriarchs.
In my opinion there is not the slightest foundation in historical evidence to support either theory, although I admit the existence of many analogies between the two systems, which can, however, be easily explained without admitting any connection in the way of origin and descent between them.Of the theory that the Mysteries were an offshoot or imitation of the pure patriarchal Freemasonry, Hutchinson and Oliver are the most distinguished supporters.
While
Thus he unhesitatingly says, that “there is no doubt that our ceremonies and Mysteries were derived from the rites, ceremonies, and institutions of the ancients, and some of them from the remotest ages.”
But lest the purity of the genuine patriarchal Masonry should be polluted by borrowing its ceremonies from such an impure source, he subsequently describes, in that indefinite manner which was the peculiarity of his style, the separation of a purer class from the debasement of the popular religion, wherein he evidently alludes to the Mysteries. Thus he says :
“In the corruption and ignorance of after ages, those hallowed places were polluted with idolatry; the unenlightened mind mistook the type for the original, and could not discern the light from darkness; the sacred groves and hills became the objects of enthusiastic bigotry and superstition; the devotees bowed down to the oaken log and the graven image as being divine. Some preserved themselves from the corruptions of the times, and we find those sages and select men to whom were committed, and who retained, the light of understanding and truth, unpolluted with the sins of the world, under the denomination of Magi among the Persians; wise men, soothsayers, and astrologers among the Chaldeans; philosophers among the Greeks and Romans;
Brahmins among the Indians; Druids and bards among the Britons; and with the people of God, Solomon shone forth in the fullness of human wisdom.”
Dr. Oliver expresses almost the same views, but more explicitly. He was, I think, the first to advance the theory that two systems of Masonry had come down the course of time, both derived from a common source, which he called the Pure and the Spurious
Freemasonry of antiquity - the former descending without interruption from the Patriarchs, and especially from Noah, and which system was the progenitor of that which is now practiced, and the latter, being a schism, as it were, from the former, and impure and corrupted in its principles, and preserved in the Pagan Mysteries. He admits, however, that there were certain analogies between the two in their symbols and allegories. His own language on this subject, which is as follows, leaves no doubt of the nature of his views. In a note to his History of Initiation, an elaborate and learned work on certain of these Mysteries, he says:
“I have denominated the surreptitious initiations earth-born, in contradistinction to the purity of Freemasonry, which was certainly derived from above; and to those who contend that Masonry is nothing more than a miserable relic of the idolatrous Mysteries (vide. Fab. Pag. Idol., vol. iii., p. 190), I would reply, in the words of an inspired apostle, ‘Doth a fountain send forth at the same place sweet water and bitter? Can the fig tree bear olive berries or a vine figs? So can no fountain both yield salt water and fresh. The wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, full of mercy and good fruits’ (James iii. 11, 12, 17). I wish to be distinct and intelligible on this point, as some misapprehensions are afloat respecting the immediate object of my former volume of Signs and Symbols; and I have been told that the arguments there used afford an indirect sanction to the opinion that Masonry is derived from the Mysteries. In answer to this charge, if it requires one, I only need reply to the general tenor of that volume, and to declare explicitly my firm opinion, founded on intense study and abstruse research, that the science which we now denominate Speculative Masonry, was coeval, at least, with the creation of our globe, and the far-famed Mysteries of idolatry were a subsequent institution founded on similar principles, with the design of conveying unity and permanence to the false worship, which it otherwise could never have acquired.”
I do not know of any other prominent Masonic writer who entertains the theory of the common origin but diverse descent of the Mysteries and Freemasonry, although there are many who, subscribing with implicit faith to the teachings of Dr. Oliver as a Masonic historian, necessarily give their assent to his opinion on this subject.
There is another class of Masonic scholars who have advanced the theory that the Speculative Freemasonry of the present day is derived directly from and is a legitimate successor of the Mysteries of antiquity. They found this theory on the very many and striking analogies that are to be found in the organization, the design, and the symbols of the two systems, and which they claim can only be explained on the theory that the one is an offshoot from the other.
The Abbe Robin was, perhaps, the first writer who advanced
this idea in a distinct form. In a work on the Ancient and Modern Initiations,
(1) published in 1780, he traces the origin of the ancient systems of
initiation to that early period when wicked men, urged by the terror of guilt,
sought among the virtuous for intercessors with the Deity. The latter, he says,
retired into solitary places to avoid the contagion of the growing corruption,
and devoted themselves to a life of contemplation and to the cultivation of the
arts and sciences. In order to associate with them in their labors and
functions only such as had sufficient merit and capacity, they appointed strict
courses of trial and examination. This, he thinks, must have been the source of
the initiations which distinguished the celebrated Mysteries of antiquity. The
Magi of Chaldea, the Brahmins and Gymnosophists of India, the Priests of Egypt,
and the Druids of Gaul and
It was in these schools, says the abbe, that the first sages and legislators of antiquity were formed, where the doctrines taught were the unity of God and the immortality of the soul, and it was from these
Mysteries that the exuberant fancy of the Greeks drew much of their mythology. From these ancient initiations he deduces the orders of Chivalry which sprang into existence in the Middle Ages, and certain branches of these, he thinks, produced the institution of Freemasonry.
The theory of the Abbe Robin therefore traces the institution of Masonry to the ancient Mysteries, but in an indirect way, through the orders of Chivalry. He might therefore more correctly be classed among those who maintain the doctrine of the Templar origin of Freemasonry.
But it is Alexander Lenoir, the French archaeologist, who
has attempted in the most explicit and comprehensive manner to establish the
doctrine of the direct descent of Freemasonry from the ancient Mysteries, and
especially from the Egyptian. In the year 1814 he published an elaborate work on
this subject. In this he begins by affirming that we cannot expect to find
in the Egyptian and Greek initiations those modes of recognition which are used
by the Freemasons of the present day, because these methods, which are only
conventional and had been orally communicated under the obligation of secrecy,
can not be known to us, for they could not have been transmitted through the
lapse of ages. Omitting, therefore, all reference to these as matters of no
real importance, he confines himself to a comparison of the Masonic with the
ancient rites of initiation. In this view he comes to the conclusion that
Freemasonry in all the points that it essentially comprehends is in direct
relation with the Mysteries of the ancient world, and that hence, abstracting
certain particular usages practiced by the modern Freemasons, it is evident
that Freemasonry in no respect differs from the ancient initiations of the
Egyptians and the Greeks. This theory
has been embraced by nearly all the French Masonic writers except Rebold, who
traces Masonry to the
Unfortunately for the general acceptance of this theory, M.
Lenoir has in the first place drawn his comparisons from the system of
ceremonies of initiation which are practiced in the lodges of
from the “proofs and trials” of the
Entered Apprentice’s degree. But the tedious ceremonies and painful trials of
the candidate as they are practiced in the French Rite constitute no part of
the original English Masonry whence the French Masonry derives its existence,
and were adopted as a pure innovation long after the establishment of
the Order in
And agan, the Egyptian initiations, with which they have been compared by Lenoir, were not those which were actually practiced by the priests of Egypt, or at least we have no authentic proof of that fact, but were most probably suggested by the imaginative details given by the Abbe Terrasson in his romance entitled Sethas, in which he pretends to portray the initiation of an Egyptian prince.
The truth is that Lenoir and those writers who have followed him and adopted his theopt have not instituted a comparison between the original ceremonies of Masonic initiation and those of the ancient Mysteries, but merely a comparison between a recent system of ceremonies, certainly not earlier than the middle of the last century, and a fictitious system indebted for its birth to the inventive genius of a French abbe, and first promulgated in a work published by him in the year 1731.
As well might Mr. Turner or any other writer on Anglo-Saxon history have cited, as authentic materials for his description of the customs of the Anglo-Saxon, the romantic incidents given by Sir Walter Scott in his novel of Ivanhoe.
Hence all the references of the voyages of an Entered Apprentice in a French Lodge to the similar voyages of an Aspirant in the Mysteries of Osiris or Isis become nothing more than “the baseless fabric of a vision,” which must fade and dissolve like an “insubstantial pageant” when submitted to the crucial test of authentic historical investigation.
The Rev. Mr. King, the author of a very interesting treatise on the Gnostics, has advanced a theory much more plausible than either of those to which I have adverted. He maintains that some of the Pagan Mysteries, especially those of Mithras, which had been instituted in Persia, extended beyond the period of the advent of Christianity, and that their doctrines and usages were adopted by the secret societies which existed at an early period in Europe and which finally assumed the form of Freemasonry. I have said that this theory is a plausible one. It is so because its salient points are sustained by historical evidence.
It is, for instance, a fact that some of the Mysteries of
Paganism were practiced in
They afforded a constant topic of denunciation to the fathers of the church, who feared and attacked what they supposed to be their idolatrous tendencies. It was not until the middle of the 5th century that they were proscribed by an edict of the Emperor Theodosius. But an edict of proscription is not necessarily nor always followed by an immediate abolition of the thing proscribed.
The public celebration of the Mysteries must, of course, have ceased at once when such celebration had been declared unlawful. But a private and secret observance of them may have continued, and probably did continue, for an indefinite time, perhaps even to as late a period as the end of the 5th or the beginning of the 6th century.
Mosheim tells us that in the 4th century, notwithstanding the zeal and severity of the Christian emperors, there still remained in several places, and especially in the remoter provinces, temples and religious rites consecrated to the Pagan deities; that rites instituted in honor of them were, in the 5th century, celebrated with the utmost freedom and impunity in the western empire; and that even in the 6th century remains of the Pagan worship were to be found among the learned and the officers of state.
During all this time it is known that secret associations, such as the Roman Colleges of Artificers, existed in Europe, and that from them ultimately sprang up the organizations of Builders, which, with Como in Lombardy as their center, spread over Europe in the Middle Ages, and whose members, under the recognized name of Traveling Freemasons, were the founders of Gothic architecture.
There is no forced or unnatural succession from them to the Guilds of Operative Masons, who undoubtedly gave rise, about the end of the 17th or the beginning of the 18th century, to the Speculative Order or the Free and Accepted Masons, which is the organization that exists at the present day.
There is, therefore, nothing absolutely untenable in the theory that the Mithraic Mysteries which prevailed in Europe until the 5th or perhaps the 6th century may have impressed some influence on the ritual, form, and character of the association of early Builders, and that this influence may have extended to the Traveling Freemasons, the Operative Guilds, and finally to the Free and Accepted Masons, since it can not be proved that there was not an uninterrupted chain of succession between these various organizations.
The theory of Mr. King can not, therefore, be summarily rejected. It may not be altogether true, but it has so many elements of truth about it that it claims our serious consideration.
But, after all, we may find a sufficient explanation of the analogy which undoubtedly exists between the rites of the ancient Mysteries and those of the modern Freemasons in the natural tendency of the human mind to develop its ideas in the same way when these ideas are suggested by the same or similar circumstances. The fact that both institutions have taught the same lessons by the same method of instruction may be attributed not to a direct and uninterrupted succession of organizations, each one a link of a long chain leading consequentially to another but rather to a natural and usual coincidence of human thought.
The believers in the lineal and direct descent of Freemasonry from the ancient Mysteries have of course discovered, or thought that they had discovered, the most striking and wonderful analogies between the internal organizations of the two institutions. Hence the most credulous of these theorists have not hesitated to compare the Hierophant, or the Explainer of the sacred rites in the Mysteries, with the Worshipful Master in a Masonic Lodge, nor to style the Dadouchos, or Torch-Bearer, and the Hieroceryx, or Herald of the Mysteries, Wardens, nor to assign to the Epibomos, or Altar-Server, the title and duties of a Deacon.
That there are analogies, and that many of them are very curious can not be denied, but I shall attempt, before leaving; this subject, to explain the reason of their existence in a more rational way than by tracing the modern as a succession from the ancient system.
The analogies existing between the ancient Mysteries and Freemasonry, upon which the theory of the descent of the one from the other has been based, consist in the facts that both were secret societies, that both taught the same doctrine of a future life, and that both made use of symbols and allegories and a dramatic form of instruction. But these analogies do not necessarily support the doctrine of descent, but may be otherwise satisfactorily explained.
Whether the belief in a personal immortality was communicated to the first man by a divine revelation, and subsequently lost as the intellectual state of future generations declined into a degraded state of religious conceptions; or whether the prehistoric man, created but little superior to the wild beast with whom he daily contended for dominion with insufficient weapons, was at first without any conception of his future, until it had by chance dawned upon some more elevated intellect and by him been communicated to his fellows as a consoling doctrine, afterward to be lost, and then in the course of time to be again recovered, but not to be universally accepted by grosser minds, are questions into which we need not enter here.
It is sufficient to know that there has been no period in the world’s history, however dark, in which some rays of this doctrine have not been thrown upon the general gloom. The belief in a future life and an immortal destiny has always been so inseparably connected with elevated notions of God that the deep and reverent thinkers in all ages have necessarily subscribed to its truth. It has inspired the verses of poets and tempered and directed the discussions of philosophers.
As both the Mysteries of the ancients and the Freemasonry of the moderns were religious institutions, the conceptions of the true nature of God which they taught to their disciples must of course have involved the ideas of a future life, for the one doctrine is a necessary consequence of the other. To seek, therefore, in this analogy the proof of a descent of the modern from the ancient institution is to advance an utterly fallacious argument.
As to the secret character of the two institutions, the argument is equally untenable. Under the benighted rule of Pagan idolatry the doctrine of a future life was not the popular belief. Yet there were also some who aspired to a higher thought - philosophers like Socrates and Plato, who nourished with earnest longing the hope of immortality. Now, it was by such men that the Mysteries were originally organized, and it was for instruction in such a doctrine that they were instituted. But opposed as this doctrine was to the general current of popular thought, it became, necessarily and defensively, esoteric and exclusive. And hence we derive the reason for the secret character of the Mysteries. “They were kept secret,” says Warburton, “from a necessity of teaching the initiated some things improper to be communicated to all.” The learned bishop assigns another reason, which he sustains with the authority of ancient writers, for this secrecy. “Nothing,” he says, “excites our curiosity like that which retires from our observation, and seems to forbid our search.”
Synesius, who lived in the 4th century, before the Mysteries were wholly abolished, says that they owed the veneration in which they were held to a popular ignorance of their nature.
And Clemens of Alexandria, referring to the secrecy of the Mysteries, accounts for it, among other reasons, because the truth seen through a veil appears greater and more venerable.
Freemasonry also teaches the doctrine of a future life. But although there was no necessity, as in the Pagan Mysteries, to conceal this doctrine from the populace; yet there is, for the reasons that have just been assigned, a proneness in the human heart, which has always existed, to clothe the most sacred subjects with the veil of mystery. It was this spirit that caused Jesus to speak to the Jewish multitudes in parables whose meaning his disciples, like initiates, were to comprehend, but which would be unintelligible to the people, so that “seeing they might not see, and hearing they might not understand.”
The Mysteries and Freemasonry were both secret societies, not necessarily because the one was the legitimate successor of the other, but because both were human institutions and because both partook of the same human tendency to conceal what was sacred from the unhallowed eyes and cars of the profane. In this way may be explained the andogy between the two institutions which arises from their secret character and their esoteric method of instruction.
The symbolic form of imparting the doctrines is another analogy, which may be readily explained. For when once the esoteric or secret system was determined on, or involuntarily adopted by the force of those tendencies to which I have referred, it was but natural that the secret instruction should be communicated by a method of symbolism, because in all ages symbols have been the cipher by which secret associations of every character have restricted the knowledge which they imparted to their initiates only.
Again, in the Mysteries, the essential doctrine of a resurrection from death to eternal life was always taught in a dramatic form. There was a drama in which the aspirant or candidate for initiation represented, or there was visibly pictured to him, the death by violence and then the resuscitation or apotheosis - the resurrection to life and immortality of some god or hero, in whose honor the peculiar mystery was founded. Hence in all the Mysteries there were the thanatos, the death or slaying of the victim; the aphanism, the concealment or burial of the body by the slayers; and the heuresis, the finding of the body by the initiates. This drama, from the character of the plot, began with mourning and ended with joy.
The traditional “heureka,” sometimes attributed to Pythagoras when he discovered the forty-seventh problem, and sometimes to Archimedes when he accidentally learned the principle of specific gravity, was nightly repeated to the initiates when, at the termination of the drama of the Mysteries, they had found the hidden body of the Master.
Now, the recognized fact that this mode of inculcating a religious or a philosophical idea by a dramatic representation was constantly practiced in the ancient world, for the purpose of more permanently impressing the conception, would naturally lead to its adoption by all associations wbere the same lesson was to be taught as that which was the subject of the Mysteries. The tendency to dramatize an allegory is universal, because the method of dramatization is the most expedient and has been proved to be the most successful. The drama of the third or Master’s degree of Freemasonry is, as respects the subject and the development of the plot and the conduct of the scenes, the same as the drama of the apcient Mysteries. There is the same thanalos, or death; the same aphanism, or concealment of the body, and the same heuresis, or discovery of it. The drama of the Master’s degree begins in sorrow and ends in joy. Everything is so similar that we at once recognize an analogy between Freemasonry and the ancient Mysteries; but it has already been explained that this analogy is the result of natural causes, and by no means infers a descent of the modern from the ancient institution.
Another analogy between the Mysteries and Freemasonry is the division of both into steps, classes, or degrees -call them what you may -which is to be found in both. The arrangement of the Masonic system into three degrees certainly bears a resemblance to the distribution of the Mysteries into the three steps of Preparation, Initiation, and Perfection which have been heretofore described.
But this analogy, remarkable as it may at first view appear, is really an accidental one, which in no way shows an historical connection between the two institutions.
In every system of instruction, whether open or secret, there must be a gradual and not an immediate attainment of that which is intended to be imparted. The ancient adage that “no one suddenly becomes wicked” might with equal truth be read that “no one suddenly becomes learned.” There must be a series of gradual approaches to the ultimate point in every pursuit of knowledge, like the advancing parallels of a besieging army in its efforts to attain possession of a beleaguered city. Hence the ladder, with its various steps, has from the earliest times been accepted as a symbol of moral or intellectual progress from an inferior to a superior sphere.
The fact that there existed in both institutions secret modes of recognition presents another analogy. It is known that in the Mysteries, as in Freemasonry, there was a solemn obligation of secrecy, with penalties for its violation, which referred to certain methods of recognition known only to the initiates. But this may safely be attributed to the fact that such peculiarities are and always will be the necessary adjuncts of any secret organization, whether religious, social, or political. In every secret society isolated from the rest of mankind, we must find, as a natural outgrowth of its secrecy and as a necessary means of defense and isolation, an obligation of secrecy and methods of recognition. On such analogies it is, therefore, scarcely worth while to dilate.
Thus, then, I have traced the analogies between the ancient Mysteries and modern Freemasonry in the following points of resemblance.
1. The Preparation, which in the Mysteries was called the Lustration. It was the first step in the Mysteries, and is the Entered Apprentice’s degree in Freemasonry. In both systems the candidate was purified for the reception of truth by washing. In one it was a physical abultion; in the other a moral cleansing; but in both the symbolic idea was the same.
2. The Iniliation, which in the ancient system was partly in the Lesser Mysteries, but more especially in the Greater. In Masonry it is partly in the Fellow Craft’s, but more especially in the Master’s degree.
3. The Perfection, which
in the Mysteries was the communication to the aspirant of the true dogma - the
great secret symbolized by the fnitialion. In Freemasonry it is the same. The dogma
communicated in both is, in fact, identical. This Perfection came in the Mysteries
at the end of the Greater Mysteries. In Masonry it is communicated at the close
of the Master’s degree. In the Mysteries the communication was made in the
saceeum or holiest place. In Masonry it is made in the Master’s Lodge, which is
said to represent the holy of holies of the
4. The secret character of both institutions.
5. The use of symbols.
6. The dramatic form of the initiation.
7. The division of both systems into degrees or steps.
8. And the adoption by both of secret methods of recognition.
These analogies, it must be admitted, are very striking, and, if considered merely as coincidences, must be acknowledged to be very singular.
It is not, therefore, surprising that scholars have found it difficult to resolve the following problem:
Is modern Freemasonry a lineal and uninterrupted successor of the ancient Mysteries, the succession being transmitted through the Mithraic initiations which existed in the 5th and 6th centuries; or is the fact of the analogies between the two systems to be attributed to the coincidence of a natural process of human thought, common to all minds and showing its development in symbolic forms?
For myself, I can only arrive at what I think is a logical conclusion; that if both the Mysteries and Freemasonry have taught the same lessons by the same method of instruction, this has arisen not from a succession of organizations, each one a link of a long chain of historical sequences leading directly to another, until Hiram is simply substituted for Osiris, but rather from those usual and natural coincidences of human thought which are to be found in every age and among all peoples.
It is, however, hardly to be denied that the founders of the Speculative system of Masonry, in forming their ritual, especially of the third degree, derived many suggestions as to the form and character of their funereal legend from the rites of the ancient initiations.
But how long after Freemasonry had an organized existence this funereal legend was devised, is a question that must hereafter be entitled to mature consideration.