The history of the High Degrees of Masonry begins with the inventions of the Chevalier Michael Ramsay, who about the year 1728 fabricated three which he called Ecossais, Novice, and Knight Templar. But the inventions of Ramsay had nothing in them of a Rosicrucian character. They were intended by him to support his hypothesis that Freemasonry originated in the Crusades, and that the first Freemasons were Templars. His degrees were therefore not philosophic but chivalric. The rite-manufacturers who succeeded him, followed for the most part in his footsteps, and the degrees that were subsequently invented partook of the chivalric and military character, so that the title of “ Chevalier “ or “ Knight,” unknown to the early Freemasons, became in time so common as to form the designation in connection with another noun of most of the new degrees. Thus we find in old and disused Rites, as well as in those still existing, such titles as “ Knight of the Sword,” “ Knight of the Eagle,” “ Knight of the Brazen Serpent,” and so many more that Ragon, in his Nomenclature, furnishes us with no less than two hundred and ninety-two degrees of Masonic Knighthood, without having exhausted the catalogue.
But it was not until long after the Masonic labors of Ramsay had ceased that the element of Hermetic philosophy began to intrude itself into still newer degrees.
Among the first to whom we are to ascribe the responsibility of this novel infusion is a Frenchman named Antoine Joseph Pernelty, who was born in 1716 and died in 1800, having passed, therefore, the most active and rigorous portion of his life in the midst of that flood of Masonic novelties which about the middle quarters of the 18th century inundated the continent of Europe and more especially the kingdom of France.
Pernelty was at first a Benedictine monk, but, having at
the age of forty-nine obtained a dispensation from his vows, he removed from
Paris to Berlin, where for a short time he served Frederick the Great as his
librarian. Returning to
But Pernelty was not a Swedenborgian only. He was a man of multifarious reading and had devoted his studies, among other branches of learning, to theology, philosophy, and the mathematical sciences. The appetite for a mystical theology, which had led him to the study and the adoption of the views of Swedenborg, would scarcely permit him to escape the still more appetizing study of the Hermetic philosophers.
Accordingly we find him inventing other degrees, and among them one, the “ Knight of the Sun,” which is in its original ritual a mere condensation of Rosicrucian doctrines, especially as developed in the alchemical branch of Rosicrucianism.
There is not in the wide compass of Masonic degrees, one more emphatically Rosicrucian than this. The reference in its ritual to Sylphs, one of the four elementary spirits of the Rosicrucians ; to the seven angels which formed a part of the Rosicrucian hierarchy ; the dialogue between Father Adam and Truth in which the doctrines of Alchemy and the Cabala are discussed in the search of man for theosophic truth, and the adoption as its principal word of recognition of that which in the Rosicrucian system was deemed the primal matter of all things, are all sufficient to prove the Hermetic spirit which governed the founder of the degree in its fabrication.
There have been many other degrees, most of which are now
obsolete, whose very names openly indicate their Hermetic origin. Such are the “ Hermetic Knight,” the “ Adept of the Eagle” (the word
adept being technically used to designate an expert Rosicrucian), the “ Grand
Hermetic Chancellor,” and the “ Philosophic Cabalist.” The list might be
increased by fifty more, at least, were time and space convenient. There have
been whole rites fabricated on the basis of the Rosicrucian or Hermetic
philosophy, such as the “ Rite of Philalethes” the “
Hermetic Rite,” and the “ Rite of Illuminated Theosophists,” invented in 1767
by Benedict Chartanier, who united in it the notions of the Hermetic philosophy
and the reveries of Swedenborg. Gadicke tells us also, in his
Freimaurer-Lexicon, of a so-called Masonic system which was introduced by the
Marquis of Lernais into
But the Hermetic degree which to the present day has exercised the greatest influence upon the higher grades of Masonry is that of the Rose Croix. This name was given to it by the French, and it must be noticed that in the French language no distinction has ever been made between the Rosenkreutzer and Rose Croix; or, rather, the French writers have always translated the Rosenkreutzer of the German and the Rosacrucian of the English by their own words, Rose Croix, and to this philological inaccuracy is to be traced an historical error of some importance, to be soon adverted to.
The first that we hear in history of a Rosicrucian Masonry, under that distinctive name, is about the middle of the 18th century.
The society to which I allude was known as the “ Gold-und-Rosenkreutzer,” or the “Golden Rosicrucians.” We
first find this title in a book published at
The book of Richter describes a society which, if founded on the old Rosicrucians, differed essentially from them in its principles. Findel speaks of these “ Golden Rosicrucians “ as if originally formed on this work of Richter, and in the spirit of the Jesuits, to repress liberty of thought and the healthy development of the intellect. If formed at that early period, in the beginning of the 18th century, it could not possibly have had a connection with Freemasonry.
But the Order, as an appendant to Masonry, was not really perfected until about the middle of the 18th century. Findel says after 1756. The Order consisted of nine degrees, all having Latin names,
viz.: 1, Junior; 2, Theoreticus; 3, Practicus; 4, Philosophus; 5, Minor; 6, Major; 7, Adeptus; 8, Magister; 9, Magus. It based itself on the three primitive degrees of Freemasonry only as giving a right to entrance ; it boasted of being descended from the ancient Rosicrucians, and of possessing all their secrets, and of being the only body that could give a true interpretation of the Masonic symbols, and it claimed, therefore, to be the head of the Order. There is no doubt that this brotherhood was a perfect instance of the influence sought to be cast, about the middle of the 18th century, upon Freemasonry by the doctrines of Rosicrucianism. The effort, however, to make it a Hermetic system failed. The Order of the Golden Rosicrucians, although for nearly half a century popular in Germany, and calling into its ranks many persons of high standing, at length began to decay, and finally died out, about the end of the last century.Since that period we hear no more of Rosicrucian Masonry, except what is preserved in degrees like that of the Knight of the Sun and a few others, which are still retained in the catalogue of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite.
I have said that the translation of the word Rosicrucian by Rose Croix has been the source of an important historical error. This is the confounding of the French degree of “ Rose Croix,” or “ Knight of the Eagle and Pelican,” with Rosicrucianism, to which it has not the slightest affinity. Thus Dr. Oliver, when speaking of this degree, says that the earliest notice that he finds of it is in the Fama Fraternitatis, evidently showing that he deemed it to be of Rosicrucian origin.
The modern Rose Croix, which constitutes the summit of the French Rite, and is the eighteenth of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite, besides being incorporated into several other Masonic systems, has not in its construction the slightest tinge of Rosicrucianism, nor is there in any part of its ritual, rightly interpreted, the faintest allusion to the Hermetic philosophy.
I speak of it, of course, as it appears in its original form. This has been somewhat changed in later days. The French Masons, objecting to its sectarian character, substituted for it a modification which they have called the “ Philosophic Rose Croix.” In this they have given a Hermetic interpretation to the letters on the cross, an example that has elsewhere been more recently followed.
But the original Rose Croix, most probably first
introduced to notice by Prince (Charles Edward, the “ young
pretender,” in the Primordial chapter which he established in 1747, at
The Rose Croix, as we find it in its pure and uncorrupted ritual, was an attempt to apply the rites, symbols, and legends of the primitive degrees of Ancient Craft Masonry to the last and greatest dispensation; to add to the first temple of Solomon, and the second of Zerubbabel, a third, which is the one to which Christ alluded when he said, “ Destroy this temple, and in three days will I raise it up “an expression wholly incomprehensible by the ignorant populace who stood around him at the time, but the meaning of which is perfectly intelligible to the Rose Croix Mason who consults the original ritual of his degree.
In all this there is nothing alchemical, Hermetic, or Rosicrucian and it is a great error to suppose that there is anything but Christian philosophy in the degree as originally invented.
The name of the degree has undoubtedly led to the confusion in its history. But, in fact, the words “ Rosa Crucis,” common both to the ancient Rosicrucian philosophers and to the modern Rose Croix Masons, had in each a different meaning, and some have supposed a different derivation. In the latter the title has by many writers been thought to allude to the ros, or dew, which was deemed by the alchemists to be a powerful solvent of gold, and to crux, the cross, which was the chemical hieroglyphic of light. Mosheim says:
“ The title of Rosicrucians
evidently denotes the chemical philosophers and those who blended the doctrines
of religion with the. secrets of chemistry. The
denomination itself is drawn from the science of chemistry ;
and they only who are acquainted with the peculiar language of the chemists can
understand its true signification and energy. It is not compounded, as many
imagine, of the two words
Notwithstanding that this learned historian has declared
that it all other explications of this term are false and chimerical,” others
more learned perhaps than he, in this especial subject, have differed from him
in opinion, and trace the title to
There is certainly a controversy about the derivation of Rosicrucian as applied to the Hermetic philosophers, but there is none whatever in reference to that of the Masonic.Rose Croix. Everyone admits, because the admission is forced upon him by the ritual and the spirit of the degree, that the title comes from rose and cross, and that rose signifies Christ, and cross the instrument of his passion. In the Masonic degree, Rose Croix signifies Christ on the cross, a meaning that is carried out by the jewel, but one which is never attached to the rose and now of the Rosicrucians, where rose most probably was the symbol of silence and secrecy, and the cross may have had either a Christian or a chemical application, most probably the latter.
Again, we see in the four most important symbols of the Rose Croix degree, as interpreted in the early rituals (at least in their spirit), the same Christian interpretation, entirely free from all taint of Rosicrucianism.
These symbols are the eagle, thelelican, the rose, and the cross, all of which are combined to form the beautiful and expressive jewel of the degree.
Thus the writer of the book of Exodus, in allusion to the belief that the eagle assists its feeble younglings in their first flights by bearing them on its pinions, represents Jehovah as saying, “Ye have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagle’s wings and brought you unto myself.” Hence, appropriating this idea, the Rose Croix Masons selected the eagle as a symbol of Christ in his divine character, bearing the children of his adoption in their upward course, and teaching them with unequaled love and tenderness to poise their fledgling wings, and soar from the dull corruptions of earth to a higher and holier sphere. And hence the eagle in the jewel is represented with expanded wings, as if ready for flight.
The pelican, “vulning herself and in her piety,” as the heralds call it, is, says Mr. Sloane Evans, “ a sacred emblem of great beauty and striking import, and the representation of it occurs not unfrequently among the ornaments of churches. (1)” The allusion to Christ as a Saviour, shedding his blood for the sins of the world, is too evident to need explanation.
Of the rose and the cross I have already spoken. The rose is applied as a figurative appellation of Christ in only one passage of Scripture, where he is prophetically called the “ rose of Sharon,” but the flower was always accepted in the iconography of the church as one of his symbols. But the fact that in the jewel of the Rose Croix the blood-red rose appears attached to the center of the cross, as though crucified upon it, requires no profound knowledge of the science of symbolism to discover its meaning.
The cross was, it is true, a very ancient symbol of eternal life. especially among the “Egyptian, but since the crucifixion it has been adopted by Christians as an emblem of him who suffered upon it. “ The cross,” says Didron, “ is more than a mere figure of Christ ; it is, in iconography, either Christ himself or his symbol.” As such, it is used in the Masonry of the Rose Croix.
It is evident, from these explanations, that the Rose Croix was, in its original conception, a purely Christian degree. There was no intention of its founders to borrow for its construction anything from occult philosophy, but simply to express in its symbolization a purely Christian sentiment.
I have, in what I have said, endeavored to show that while Rosicrucianism had no concern, as has been alleged, with the origination of Freemasonry in the 17th century, yet that in the succeeding century, under various influenced especially, perhaps, the diffusion of the mystical doctrines of Swedenborg, a Hermetic or Rosicrucian element was infused into some of the High Degrees then newly fabricated. But the diffusion of that element went no farther ; it never affected the pure Masonic system ; and, with the few exceptions which I have mentioned, even these degrees have ceased to exist. Especially was it not connected with one of the most important and most popular of those degrees.
From the beginning of the 19th century Rosicrucianism has been dead to Masonry, as its exponent the Hermetic philosophy, has been to literature. It has no life now, and we preserve its relics only as memorials of a past obscuration which the sunbeams of modern learning have dispersed.
The theory which ascribes, if not the actual origin of
Freemasonry to Pythagoras, at least its introduction into Europe by him,
through the school which he established at Crotona, in Italy, which ,was a favorite(oke one among our early writers, may
very properly be placed among the legends of
The notion was most probably derived from what has been called the Leland Manuscript, because it is said to have been found in the Bodleian Library, in the handwriting of that celebrated antiquary. The author of the Life of Leland gives this account of the manuscript :
“The original is said to be the handwriting of King Henry VI. and copied by Leland by order of his highness, King Henry VIII. If the authenticity of this ancient monument of literature remains unquestioned, it demands particular notice in the present publication, on account of the singularity of the subject, and no less from a due regard to the royal writer and our author, his transcriber, indefatigable in every part of literature. It will also be admitted, acknowledgment is due to the learned Mr. Locke, who, amidst the closest studies and the most strict attention to human understanding, could unbend his mind in search of this ancient treatise, which he first brought from obscurity in the year 1796.”’
This production was first brought to the attention of
scholars by being published in the Gentlemen’s Magazine for September, 1753,
where it is stated to have been previously printed at
The title of it, as given in the magazine, is in the following words:
Certeyne Questyons wyth Answeres to the same, concerynge the Mystery of Maconrye ; wrytenne by the hande of Kynge Henrye the Sixthe of the Name, and faythefullye copyed by me Johan Leylande, Antiquarius, by the commaunde of His Highnesse.”
The opinion of Masonic critics of the present day is that the document is a forgery. It was most probably written about the time and in the spirit in which Chatterton composed his imitations of the Monk Rowley, and of Ireland with his impositions of Shakespeare, and was fabricated as an unsuccessful attempt to imitate the archaic language of the 15th century, and as a pious fraud intended to elevate the character and sustain the pretensions of the Masonic Fraternity by furnishing the evidence of its very ancient origin.
Such were not, however, the views of the Masonic writers of the last and beginning of the present century.
They accepted the manuscript, or rather the printed copy
of it -for the original codex has never been seen—with unhesitating, faith as
an authentic document.
Mr. Halliwell was perhaps the first of English scholars to express a doubt of its genuineness. After a long and unsuccessful search in the Bodleian Library for the original, he came, very naturally, to the conclusion that it is a forgery. Hughan and Woodford, both excellent judges, have arrived at the same conclusion, and it is now a settled question that the Leland or Locke Manuscript (for it is known by both titles) is a document of no historic character.
It is not, however, without its value. To its appearance about the middle of the last century, and the unhesitating acceptance of its truth by the Craft at the time, we can, in all probability, assign the establishment of the doctrine that Freemasonry was of a Pythagorean origin, though it had been long before adverted to by Dr. Anderson.
Before proceeding to an examination of the rise and progress of this opinion, it will be proper to cite so much of the manuscript as connects Pythagoras with Masonry. I do not quote the whole document, though it is short, because it has so repeatedly been printed, in even elementary Masonic works, as to be readily accessible to the reader. In making my quotations I shall so far defer to the artifice of the fabricator as to preserve unchanged his poor attempt to imitate the orthography and style of the 15th century, and interpolate in brackets, when necessary, an explanation of the most unintelligible words.
The document purports to be answers by some Mason to questions proposed by King Henry VI., who, it would seem, must have taken some interest in the “ Mystery of Masonry,” and had sought to obtain from competent authority a knowledge of its true character.
The following are among the questions and answers:
Q.Where dyd ytt [Masonry] begynne ?
A.Ytt dyd begynne with the fyrst menne, yn the Este, which were before the fyrste Manne of the Weste, and comyngc westlye, ytt hathe broughte herwyth alle comfortes to the wylde and comfortlesse.
Q. Who dyd brynge ytt Westye ?
A. The Venetians [Phoenicians]
who beynge grate Merchandes comed ffyrst ffrome the Este yn Venctia [
Q. Howe comede ytt yn Englonde?
A. Peter Gower [Pythagoras] a Grecian journeyedde tor kunnynge yn Egypt and in Syria and in everyche Londe whereat the Venetians [Phoenicians] hadde plauntedde Maconrye and wynnynge Entraunce yn all Lodges of Maconnes, he lerned muche, and retournedde and woned [dwelt] yn Cirecia Magna wachsynge [growing] and becommynge a myghtye wyseacre [philosopher] and gratelyche renouned and here he framed a grate Lodge at Groton [Crotona] and maked many Maconnes, some whereoffe dyd journeye yn Fraunce, and maked manye Maconnes wherefromme, yn processe of Tyme, the Arte passed yn Engelonde.” I am convinced that there was a French original of this document, from which language the fabricator translated it into archaic English. The internal proofs of this are to be found in the numerous preservations of French idioms. Thus we meet with Peter Gower, evidently derived from Pythagore, pronounced Petagore, the French for Pythagoras ; Maconrye and Maconnes, for Masonry and Masons, the French c in the word being used instead of the English s,-the phrase wynnynge the Facultye of Abrac, which is a pure Gallic idiom, instead of acquiring the faculty, the word gayner being indifferently used in French as signifying to win or to acquire,- the word Freres for Brethren,-and the statement, in the spirit of French nationality, that Masonry was brought into England out of France.
None of these idiomatic phrases or national peculiarities would have been likely to occur if the manuscript had been originally written by an Englishman and in the English language.
But be this as it may, the document bad no sooner appeared than it seemed to inspire contemporary Masonic writers with the idea that Masonry and the school of Pythagoras, which he established at Crotona, in Italy, about five centuries before Christ, were closely connected-an idea which was very generally adopted by their successors, so that it came at last to be a point of the orthodox Masonic creed.
Thus Preston, in his Illustrations of Masonry, when commenting on the dialogue contained in this document, says that , the records of the fraternity inform us that Pythagoras was regularly initiated into Masonry; and being properly instructed in the mysteries of the Art, he was much improved, and propagated the principles of the Order in other countries into which he afterwards travelled.”
Calcott, in his Candid Disquisition, speaks of the Leland
Manuscript as “ an antique relation, from whence may
be gathered many of the original principles of the ancient society, on which
the institution of Freemasonry was ingrafted “-by the “ ancient society meaning
the
But this theory of the Pythagorean origin of Freemasonry does not owe its existence to the writers of the middle of the 18th century. It had been advanced at an early period, and soon after the Revival in 1717 by Dr. Anderson. In the first edition of the Constitutions, published in 1723, he alludes to Pythagoras as having borrowed great knowledge from the Chaldean Magi and the Babylonish Jews, but he is more explicit in his Defense of Masonry, published in 1730, wherein he says: “ I am fully convinced that Freemasonry is very nearly allied to the old Pythagorean Discipline, from whence, I am persuaded, it may in some circumstances very justly claim a descent.”
Now, how are we to explain the way in which this tradition of the connection of the Philosopher of Samos first acquired a place among the legends of the Craft? The solution of the problem does not appear to be very difficult.
In none of the old manuscript constitutions which contain what has been called the Legend of the Guild, or the Legend of the Craft, is there, with a single exception, any allusion to the name of Pythagoras. That exception is found in the Cooke MS., where the legendist, after relating the story of the two pillars inscribed with all the sciences, which had been erected by Jabal before the Flood, adds, in lines 318-326, this statement :
“ And after this flode many yeres as the cronyclc tellcth these ii were founde and as the polycronicon seyeth that a grete clerke that called putogaras [Pythagoras] fonde that one and hermes the philisophre fonde that other, and thei tought forthe the sciens that thei fonde therein ywritten.”
Now, although the Cooke MS. is the earliest of the old records, after the Halliwell poem, none of the subsequent constitutions have followed it in this allusion to Pythagoras. This was because the writer of the Cooke MS., being in possession of the Polychronicon of the monk Ranulph Higden, an edition of which had been printed during his time by William Caxton, he had liberally borrowed from that historical work and incorporated parts of it into his Legend.
Of these interpolations, the story of the finding of one of the pillars by Pythagoras is one. The writer acknowledges his indebtedness for the statement to Higden’s Polychronicon. But it formed no part of the Legend of the Craft, and hence no notice is taken of it in the subsequent manuscript copies of the Legend, In none of them is Pythagoras even named.
It is evident, then, that in the 14th and following centuries, to the beginning of the 18th, the theory of the Pythagorean origin of Freemasonry, or of the connection of the Grecian philosopher with it, was not recognized by the Craft as any part of the traditional history of the Fraternity. There is no safer rule than that of the old schoolmen, which teaches us that we must reason alike concerning that which does not appear and that which does not exist-“ de non apparentibus et de non existentibus, eadem est ratio.” The old craftsmen who fabricated the Legend were workmen and not scholars ; they were neither acquainted with the scholastic nor the ancient philosophy; they said nothing about Pythagoras because they knew nothing about him.
But about the beginning of the 18th century a change took place, not only in the organization of the Masonic institution, but also in the character and qualifications of the men who were engaged in producing the modification, or we might more properly call it the revolution.
Although in the 17th, and perhaps in the 16th century, many persons were admitted into the Lodges of Operative Masons who were not professional builders, it is, I think, evident that the society did not assume a purely speculative form until the year 1717. The Revival in that year, by the election of Anthony Sayer, “ Gentleman,” as Grand Master; Jacob Lamball, a “ Carpenter,” and Joseph Elliott, a “ Captain,” as Grand Wardens, proves that the control of the society was to be taken out of the hands of the Operative Masons.
Among those who were at about that time engaged in the reconstruction of the Institution were James Anderson and Theophilus
Desaguliers.
Both of these men, as scholars, were thoroughly conversant with the system of Pythagoras, and they were not unwilling to take advantage of his symbolic method of inculcating his doctrine, and to introduce some of his symbols into the symbolism of the Order which they were renovating.
Jamblichus, the biographer of Pythagoras, tells us that
while the sage was on his travels he caused himself to be initiated into all
the mysteries of
The school of philosophy which Pythagoras afterward estalablished at the city of Crotona, in Italy, differed from those of all the other philosophers of Greece, in the austerities of initiation to which his disciples were subject in the degrees of probation into which they were divided, and in the method which lie adopted of veiling his instructions under symbolic forms. In his various travels he had imbibed the mystical notions prevalent among the Egyptians and the Chaldeans, and had borrowed some of their modes of initiation into their religious mysteries, which he adopted in the method by which he communicated his own principles.
Grote, in his History of Greece, has very justly said that
“ Pythagoras represents in part the scientific
tendencies of his age, in part also the spirit of mysticism and of special
fraternities for religious and ascetic observance which became diffused
throughout
Of the character of the philosophy of Pythagoras and of his
method of instruction, which certainly bore a very close resemblance to that
adopted by the founders of the speculative system, such cultivated scholars as
Anderson and Desaguliers certainly were not ignorant. And if, among those who
were engaged with them in the construction of this new and improved school of
speculative Masonry, there were any whose limited scholastic attainments would
not enable them to consult the Greek biographics of Pythagoras by Jamblichus
and by Porphyry, they had at hand and readily accessible an English translation
of M. Dacier’s life of the philosopher, containing also elaborate explication of his symbols, together with a
translation of the Commentaries of Hierodes on the Golden Verses of Pythagoras,
all embraced in one volume and published in
There was abundant material and ready opportunity for the partially unlearned as well as for the more erudite to obtain a familiarity with the philosophy of Pythagoras, his method of initiation, and his system of symbols.
It is not, therefore, surprising that these “ Revivalists,” as they have been called, should have delighted, as Anderson has done in his Defense of Masonry, to compare the two schools of the Pythagoreans and the Freemasons ; that they should have dwelt on their great similarity ; and in the development of their speculative system should have adopted many symbols from the former which do not appear to have been known to or used by the old Operative Masons whom they succeeded.
Among the first Pythagorean symbols which were adopted by the Speculative Masons was the symbolism of the science of numbers, which appears in the earliest rituals extant, and of which Dr. Oliver has justly said, in his posthumous work entitled The Pythagorean Triangle, that “ the Pythagoreans had so high an opinion of it that they considered it to be the origin of all things, and thought a knowledge of it to be equivalent to a knowledge of God.”
This symbolism of numbers, which was adopted into Speculative Masonry at a very early period after the Revival, has been developed and enlarged in successive revisions of the lectures, until at the present day it constitutes one of the most important and curious parts of the system of Freemasonry. But we have no
evidence that the same system of numerical symbolism, having the Pythagorean and modern Masonic interpretation, prevailed among the Craft anterior to the beginning of the 18th century. It was the work of the Revivalists, who, as scholars familiar with the mystical philosophy of Pythagoras, deemed it expedient to introduce it into the equally mystical philosophy of Speculative Masonry
In fact, the Traveling Freemasons, Builders, or Operative Masons of the Middle Ages, who were the real predecessors of the Speculative Masons of the 18th century, did not, so far as we can learn from their remains, practice any of the symbolism of Pythagoras. Their symbol, such as the vesica piscis, the cross, the rose, or certain mathematical figures, were derived either from the legends of the church or from the principles of geometry applied to the art of building. These skillful architects who, in the dark ages, when few men could read or write, erected edifices surpassing the works of ancient Greece or Rome, and which have never been equalled by modern builders, were wonderful in their peculiar skill, but were wholly ignorant of metaphysics or philosophy, and borrowed nothing from Pythagoras.
Between the period of the Revival and the adoption of the Prestonian system, in 1772, the lectures of Freemasonry underwent at least seven revisions. In each of these, the fabricators of which were such cultivated scholars as Dr. Desaguliers, Martin Clare, a President of the Royal Society, Thomas Dunckerley, a man of considerable literary attainments, and others of like character, there was a gradual increment of Pythagorean symbols. Among these, one of the most noted is the forty-seventh proposition of Euclid, which is said to have been discovered by Pythagoras, and which the introducer of it into the Masonic system, in his explanation of the symbol, claims the sage to have been “ an ancient brother.”
For some time after the Revival, the symbols of Pythagoras, growing into gradual use among the Craft, were referred to simply as an evidence of the great similarity which existed between the two systems-a theory which, so far as it respects modern Speculative Masonry, may be accepted with but little hesitation.
The most liberal belief on this subject was that the two
systems were nearly allied, but, except in the modified statement of
In none of the speeches, lectures, or essays of the early part of the last century, which have been preserved, is there any allusion to this as a received theory of the Craft.
Drake, in his speech before the Grand Lodge of York, delivered in 1726 does indeed, speak of Pythagoras, not as the founder of Masonry, but only in connection with Euclid and Archimedes as great proficients in Geometry, whose works have been the basis “ on which the learned have built at different times so many noble superstructures.” And of Geometry, he calls it “that noble and useful science which must have begun and goes hand in hand with Masonry,” an assertion which, to use the old chorus of the Masons, nobody will deny.”
But to say that Geometry is closely connected with
Operative Masonry, and that Pythagoras was a great geometrician, is very
different from saying that he was a Mason and propagated Masonry in
Martin Clare, in his lecture on the Advantages Enjoyed by the Fraternity, whose date is 1735, does not even mention the name of Pythagoras, although, in one passage at least, when referring to
“those great and worthy spirits with whom we are intimately related,” he had a fair opportunity to refer to that illustrious sage.
In a Discourse Upon Masonry, delivered before a Lodge of England in 1742, now lying before me, in which the origin of the Order is fully discussed, there is not one word of reference to Pythagoras. The same silence is preserved in a Lecture on the Connection Between Freemasonry and Religion, by the Rev. C. Brockwell, published in 1747.
But after the middle of the century the frequent references in the lectures to the Pythagorean symbols, and especially to that important one, in its Masonic as well as its geometrical value, the forty-seventh proposition, began to lead the members of tile society to give to Pythagoras the credit of a relationship to the order to which historically he had no claim.
Thus, in A Search After Truth, delivered in the Lodge in 1752, the author says that “ Solon, Plato, and Pythagoras, and from them the Grecian literati in general in a great measure, were obliged for their learning to Masonry and the labors of some of our ancient brethren.”
And then, when this notion of the Pythagorean origin of Freemasonry began to take root in the minds of the Craft, it was more firmly established by the appearance in 1753, in the Gentleman’s Magazine, of that spurious document already quoted, in which, by a “ pious fraud,” the fabricator of it sought to give the form of an historical record to the statement that Pythagoras, learning his Masonry of the Eastern Magi had brought it to Italy and established a Lodge at Crotona, whence the institution was propagated throughout Europe, and from France into England.
As to this statement in the Leland MS., it may be sufficient to say that the sect of Pythagoras did not subsist longer than to the end of the reign of Alexander the Great. So far from disseminating its Lodges or schools after the Christian era, we may cite the authority of the learned Dacier, who says that “ in after ages there were here and there some disciples of Pythagoras, but these were only private persons who never established any society, nor had the Pythagoreans any longer a public school.”
And so the result of this investigation into the theory of the Pythagorean origin of Freemasonry may be briefly epitomized thus:
The mediaeval Freemasons never entertained any such theory, nor in their architectural labors did they adopt any of his symbols.
The writer of the Cooke MS., in 1490, having at hand Higden’s Polychronicon, in Trevisa’s translation, a new edition of which had just been printed by Caxton, incorporated into the Legend of the Craft some of the historical statements (such as they were) of the Monk of (Chester, but they were extraneous to and formed no part of the original Legend. Therefore, in all the subsequent Old Records these interpolations were rejected and the Legend of the Craft, as accepted by the writers of the manuscripts which succeeded that of the Cooke codex, from 1550 to 1701, contained no mention of Pythagoras.
Upon the Revival, in 1717, which was really the beginning of genuine Speculative Masonry, the scholars who fabricated the scheme, finding the symbolic teaching of Pythagoras very apposite, adopted some of its symbols, especially those relating to numbers in the new Speculative system which they were forming.
By the continued additions of subsequent ritualists these symbols were greatly increased, so that the name and the philosophy of Pythagoras became familiar to the Craft, and finally, in 1753, a forged document was published which claimed him as the founder and propagator of Masonry.
In later days this theory has continued to be maintained by a few writers, and the received rituals of the Order require it as a part of the orthodox Masonic creed, that Pythagoras was a Mason and an ancient brother and patron of the Order.
Neither early Masonic tradition nor any historical records exist which support such a belief.
The hypothesis which seeks to trace a connection between Gnosticism and Freemasonry, and perhaps even an origin of the latter from the former, has been repeatedly advanced, and is therefore worthy of consideration.
The latest instance is in a work of Mr. C. W. King, published in 1864 under the title The Gnostics and their.Remains, Ancient and Medieval.
Mr. King is not a Freemason, and, like all the writ
Very justly has Mr. Hughan called this work of King’s, so far as its Masonic theories are concerned, one of an “ unmasonic and unhistoric character.” But King, it must be admitted, was not the first writer who sought to trace Freemasonry to a Gnostic origin.
In a pamphlet published in 1725, a copy of which has been preserved in the Bodleian Library, among the manuscripts of Dn Rawlinson, and which bears the title of Two Letters to a Friend. The First concerning the Society of Free-masons. The second giving an Account of the Most Ancient Order of Gormogons, etc., we find, in the first letter, on the Freemasons, the following passage:
“ But now, Sir, to draw towards a conclusion; and to give my opinion seriously, concerning these prodigious Virtuosi ;-My belief is, that if they fall under any denomination at all, or belong to any sect of men, which has hitherto appeared in the world, they may be ranked among the Gnostics, who took their original from Simon Magus; these were a set of men, which ridiculed not only Christianity, but even rational morality; teaching that they should be saved by their capacious knowledge and understanding of no mortal man could tell what. They babbled of an amazing intelligence they had, from nobody knows whence. They amused and puzzled the hair-brained, unwary crowd with superstitious interpretations of extravagant talismanic characters and abstruse significations of uncommon Cabalistic words; which exactly agrees with the proceedings of our modern Freemasons.”
Although the intrinsic value of this pamphlet was not such as to have preserved it from the literary tomb which would have consigned it to oblivion, had not the zeal of an antiquary preserved a single copy as a relic, yet the notion of some relation of Freemasonry to Gnosticism was not in later years altogether abandoned.
About the time of the fabrication of the High Degrees on
the continent of
Some German and French writers have also maintained the hypothesis of a connection, more or less intimate, between the Gnostics and the Masons.
I do not know that any German writer has positively asserted the existence of this connection. But the doctrine has, at times, been alluded to without any absolute disclaimer of a belief in its truth.
Thus Carl Michaeler, the author of a Treatise on the Pheonician Mysteries, has written some observations on the subject in an article published by him in 1784, in the Vienna Journale fur Freimaurer, on the analogy between the Christianity of the early times and Freemasonry. In this essay he adverts to the theory of the Gnostic origin of Freemasonry. He is, however, very guarded in his deductions, and says conditionally that, if there is any connection between the two, it must be traced to the Gnosticism of Clement of Alexandria, and on which simply as a school of philosophy and history it may have been founded, while the differences between the two now existing must be attributed to changes of human conception in the intervening centuries.
But, in fact, the Gnosticism of Clement was something entirely different from that of Basilides, to whom Hutchinson and King attribute the origin of our symbols, and whom Clement vigorously opposed in his works. It was what he himself calls it, “a true Gnostic or Christian philosophy on the bads of faith.” It was that higher knowledge, or more perfect state of Christian faith, to which St. Paul is supposed to allude when he says, in his First Epistle to the Corinthians, that he made known to those who were perfect a higher wisdom.
Reghellini speaks more positively, and says that the
symbols and doctrines of the Ophites, who were a Gnostic sect, passed over into
Finally, I may refer to the Leland MS., the author of which distinctly brought this doctrine to the public view, by asserting that the Masons were acquainted with the “ facultys of Abrac,” by which expression he alludes to the most prominent and distinctive of the Gnostic symbols. That the fabricator of this spurious document should thus have intimated the existence of a connection between Gnosticism and Freemasonry would lead us to infer that the idea of such a connection was not wholly unfamiliar to the Masonic mind at that period-an inference which will be strengthened by the passage already quoted from the pamphlet in the Rawlinson collection, which was published about a quarter of a century before.
But before we can enter into a proper discussion of this important question, it will be expedient for the sake of the general reader that something should be said of the Gnostics and of the philosophical and religious system which they professed.
I propose, therefore, very briefly to reply to the questions, What is Gnosticism, and Who were the Gnostics ?
Scarcely had the light of Christianity dawned upon the world before a multitude of heresies sprang up to disturb the new religion. Among these Gnosticism holds the most important position. the title of the sect is derived from the Greek word gnosis, “wisdom or knowledge,” and -was adopted in a spirit of ostentation, to intimate that the disciples of the sect were in possession of a higher degree of spiritual wisdom than was attainable by those who had not been initiated into their mysteries.
At so early a period did the heresy of Gnosticism arise in the Christian Church, that we find the Apostle Paul warning the converts to the new faith of the innovations on the pure doctrine of Christ, and telling his disciple Timothy to avoid “profane and vain babblings, and oppositions of science, falsely so called.” The translators of the authorized version have so rendered the passage. But, in view of the greater light that has since their day been thrown upon the religious history and spirit of the apostolic age, and the real nature of the Gnostic element which disturbed it, we may better preserve the true sense of the original Greek by rendering it “oppositions of the false gnosis.”
There were then two kinds of Gnosis, or Gnosticism-the true and the false, a distinction which St. Paul himself makes in a passage in his Epistle to the Corinthians, in which he speaks of the wisdom which he communicated to the perfect, in contradistinction to the wisdom of the world.
Of this true Gnosticism, Clement declared himself to be a follower. With it and Freemasonry there can be no connection, except that rnodified one admitted by Michaeler, which relates only to the investigation of philosophical and historical truth.
The false Gnosis to which the Apostle refers is the Gnosticism which is the subject of our present inquiry.
When John the Baptist was preaching in the Wilderness, and
for some time before, there were many old philosophical and religious systems
which, emanating from the East, all partook of the mystical character peculiar
to the Oriental mind. These various systems were, then, in consequence of the
increased communication of different nations which followed the conquests of
Alexander of Macedon, beginning to approximate each other. The disciples of
Plato were acquiring some of the doctrines of the Eastern Magi, and these in
turn were becoming more or less imbued with the philosophy of
This new system was Gnosticism, which derived its leading
doctrines from Plato, from the Zend-Avesta, the Cabala, the Vedas, and the
hieroglyphs of
One of these aeons, the lowest of all called the Demiurge, created the world out of matter, which, though eternal, was inert and formless.
The Supreme Father, or First Principle of all things, had dwelt from all eternity in a pleroma or fullness of inaccessible light, and hence he was called Bythos, or the Abyss, to denote the unfathomable nature of his perfections. “This Being,” says Dr.
Burton, in his able exposition of the Gnostic system, in the Bam o Lectures ures, by an operation purely mental, or by acting upon himself, produced two other beings of different sexes, from whom by a series of descents, more or less numerous according to different schemes, several pairs of beings were formed, who were called aeons, from the periods of their existance before time was, or emanations from the mode of their production. These successive aeons or emanations appear to have been inferior each to the preceding; and their existence was indispensable to the Gnostic scheme, that they might account for the creation of the world, without making God the author of evil. These aeons lived through countless ages with their first Father. But the system of emanations seems to have resembled that of concentric circles, and they gradually deteriorated as they approached nearer and nearer to the extremity of the pleroma. Beyond this pleroma was matter, inert and powerless, though co-eternal with the Supreme God, and like him without beginning. At length one of the aeons (the Demiurge) passed the limits of the pleroma, and, meeting with matter, created the world after the form and model of an ideal world, which existed in the plemora or the mind of the Supreme God.”
It is not necessary to enter into a minute recapitulation of the other points of doctrine which were evolved out of these three. It is sufficient to say that the old Gnosticism was not an original system, but was really a cosmogony, a religion and a philosophy which was made up of portions of the older Grecian and Oriental systems, including the Platonism of the Greeks, the Parsism of the Persians, and the Cabala of the Jews.
The advent of Christianity found this old Gnosticism
prevailing in Asia and in
Thus it happened that the name of Gnosticism was applied to a great variety of schools, differing from each other in their interpretations of the Christian faith, and yet having one common principle of unity-that they placed themselves in opposition to the conceptions of Christianity as it was generally received by its disciples. And this was because they deemed it insufficient to afford any germs of absolute truth, and therefore they claimed for themselves the possession of an amount of knowledge higher than that of ordinary believers.
“They seldom pretended,” says the Rev. Dr. Wing, “to demonstrate the principles on which their systems were founded by historical evidence or logical reasonings, since they rather boasted that these were discovered by the intuitional powers of more highly endowed minds, and that the materials thus obtained, whether through faith or divine revelation, were then worked up into a scientific form, according to each one’s natural power and culture. Their aim was to construct, not merely a theory of redemption, but of the universe-a cosmogony. No subject was beyond their investigations. Whatever God could reveal to the finite intellect they looked upon as within their range. What to others seemed only speculative ideas, were by. them hypostatized or personified into real beings or historical facts. It was in this way that they constructed systems of speculation on subjects entirely beyond the range of human knowledge, which startle us by their boldness and their apparent consciousness of reality.”
Such was the Gnosticism whose various sects intruded with
their mystical notions and their allegorical interpretations into the Church,
before Christianity had been well established. Although denounced by
The most important of these sects, and the one from which the moderns have derived most of their views of what Christian Gnosticism is, was established in the 2d century by Basilides, the chief of the Egyptian Gnostics.
The doctrine of Basilides and the Basilidians was a further development of the original Gnostic system. It was more particularly distinguished by its adoption from Pythagoras of the doctrine of numbers and its use and interpretation of the word Abraxas-that word the meaning of which, according to the Leland MS., so greatly puzzled the learned Mr. Locke.
In the system of Basilides the Supreme God was incomprehensible, non-existent, and ineffable. Unfolded from his perfection were seven attributes or personified powers, namely, Mind, Reason, Thought, Wisdom, Power, Holiness, and Peace. Seven was a sacred number, and these seven powers referred to the seven days of the week. Basilides also supposed that there were seven similar beings in every stage or region of the spiritual world, and that these regions were three hundred and sixty-five in number, thus corresponding to the days in the solar year. These three hundred and sixty-five regions were so many heavenly mansions between the earth and the empyrean, and be supposed the existence of an equal number of angels. The number three hundred and sixty-five was in the Basilidian system one of sacred import. Hence he fabricated the word A B R A X A S, because the Greek letters of which it is composed have the numerical value, when added together, of exactly three hundred and sixty-five. The learned German theologian, Bellerman thinks that he has found the derivation in the Captu, or old Egyptian language, where the words abrah, signifying “word,” and sadsch, signifying “blessed,” “holy,” or “adorable,” and therefore abrahsadsch Hellenized into Abraxas, would denote “the holy, blessed, or adorable Word,” thus approximating to the spirit of the Jewish Cabalists in their similar use of a Holy Name.
Whether the word was thus derived or was invented by Basilides on account of the numerical value of its letters, is uncertain. lie, however, applied it in his system as the name of the Supreme God.
This word Abraxas, like the Tetragrammaton of the Jews, became one of great importance to the sect of Basilidians. Their reverence for it gave origin to what are called “abraxas gems.”
These are gems, plates, or tablets of metal, which have
been discovered principally in
Montfaucon, who has treated the subject of “ abraxas gems “ elaborately, divides them into seven classes. 1. Those inscribed with the head of a cock as a symbol of the sun. 2. Those having the head of a lion, to denote the heat of the sun, and the word Mithras. 3. Those having the image of the Egyptian god Sera is. 4. Those having the images of sphinxes, apes, and other animals. 5. Those having human figures with the words Iao, Sabaoth, Adonai, etc. 6. Those having inscriptions without figures. 7. Those having monstrous forms.
From these gems we have derived our knowledge of the Gnostic or Basilidian symbols, which are said to have furnished ideas to the builders of the Middle Ages in their decorative art, and which Mr. King and some other writers have supposed to have been transmitted to the Freemasons.
The principal of these Gnostic symbols is that of the Supreme God, Abraxas. This is represented as a human figure with the head of a cock, the legs being two serpents. He brandishes a sword in one hand (sometimes a whip) and a shield in the other.
The serpent is also a very common symbol, having sometimes the head of a cock and sometimes that of a lion or of a hawk.
Other symbols, known to be of a purely Gnostic or rather Basilidian origin, from the accompanying inscription, Abraxas, or Iao, or both, are Horus, or the Sun, seated on a lotus flower, which is supported by a double lamp, composed of two phallic images conjoined at their bases; the dog ; the raven ; the tancross surmounted by a human head; the Egyptian god, Anubis, and Father Nilus, in a bending posture and holding in his hand the double, phallic lamp of Horus. This last symbol is curious because the word Heilos, like Mithras, which is also a Gnostic symbol, and Abraxas, expresses, in the value of the Greek letters of which it is composed, the number three hundred and sixty-five.
All these symbols, it will be seen, make some reference to the sun, ether as the representative of the Supreme God or as the source of light, and it might lead to the supposition that in the later Gnosticism, as in the Mithraic Mysteries, there was an allusion to sunworship, which was one of the earliest and most extensively dill used of the primitive religions. Evidently in both the Gnostic and the Mithraic symbolism the sun plays a very important part.
While the architects or builders of the Middle Ages may have borrowed and probably did borrow, some suggestions from the Gnostics in carrying out the symbolism of their art, it is not probable, from their ecclesiastical organization and their religious character, that they would be more than mere suggestions. Certainly they would not have been accepted by these orthodox Christians with anything of their real Gnostic interpretation.
We may apply to the use of Gnostic symbols by the mediaeval architects the remarks made by Mr. Paley on the subject of the adoption of certain Pagan symbols by the same builders. Their Gnostic origin was a mere accident. They were employed not as the symbolism of any Gnostic doctrine, but in the spirit of Christianity, and “ the Church, in perfecting their development, stamped them with a purer and sublimer character.”
On a comparison of these Gnostic symbols with those of
Ancient Craft or Speculative Masonry, I fail to find any reason to subscribe to
the opinion of
That the Masons at a very early period exhibited a tendency to the doctrine of sacred numbers, which has since been largely developed in the Masonry of the modern High Degrees, is true, but this symbolism was derived directly from the teachings of Pythagoras, with which the founders of the primitive rituals were familiar.
That the sun and the moon are briefly referred to in our rituals and may be deemed in some sort Masonic symbols, is also true, but the use made of this symbolism, and the interpretation of it, very clearly prove that it has not been derived from a Gnostic source.
The doctrine of the metempsychosis, which was. taught by the Basilidians, is another marked point which would widely separate Freemasonry from Gnosticism, the dogma of the resurrection being almost the foundation-stone on which the whole religious philosophy of the former is erected.
Mr. King, in his work on the Gnostics, to which allusion has already been made, seeks to trace the connection between Freemasonry and Gnosticism through a line of argument which only goes to prove his absolute and perhaps his pardonable ignorance of Masonic history. It requires a careful research, which must be stimulated by a connection with the Order, to enable a scholar to avoid the errors into which he has fallen.
“The foregoing considerations,” he says, “ seem to afford
a rational explanation of the manner in which the genuine Gnostic symbols
(whether still retaining any mystic meaning or kept as mere lifeless forms, let
the Order declare) have come down to these times, still paraded as things holy
and of deep significance. Treasured up
amongst the dark sectaries of the
In the line of history which Mr. King has here pursued, he has presented a mere jumble of non-consecutive events which it would be impossible to disentangle. He has evidently confounded the old Rosicrucians with the more modern Rose Croix, while the only connection between the two is to be found in the apparent similarity of name. If he meant the former, he has failed to show a relation between them and the Freemasons; if the latter, he was wholly ignorant that there is not a Gnostic symbol in their system, which is .wholly constructed out of an ecclesiastical symbolism. Such inconsequential assertions need no refutation.
Finally he says that “ Thus those symbols, in their origin, embodying the highest mysteries of Indian theosophy, afterward eagerly embraced by the subtle genius of the Alexandrian Greeks,
and combined by them with the hidden wisdom of Egypt, in whose captivating and profound doctrines the few bright spirits of the Middle Ages sought a refuge from the childish fables then constituting orthodoxy, engendered by monkery upon the primal Buddhistic stock; these sacred symbols exist even now, but serve merely for the insignia of what at best is but a charitable, probably nothing more in its present form than a convivial institution.”
These last lines indicate the precise amount of knowledge that he possesses of the character and the design of Freemasonry. It is to be regretted that he had not sought to explain the singular anomaly that “what at best is but a charitable, and probably nothing more than a convivial institution “ has been made the depository of the symbols of an abstruse theosophy. Benevolent societies and convivial clubs do not, as a rule, meddle with matters of such high import.
But to this uncritical essay there need be no reply. When anyone shall distinctly point out and enumerate the Gnostic symbols that made a part of the pure and simple symbolism of the primitive Speculative Masons, it will be time enough to seek the way in which they came there.
For the present we need not undergo the needless labor of searching for that which we are sure can not be found.
While some of the adversaries of Freemasonry have pretended that its origin is to be found in the efforts of the Jesuit who sought to effect certain religious and political objects through the influence of such a society, one, at least, has endeavored to trace its first rise to the Socinians, who sprang up as a religious sect in Italy about the middle of the 16th century.
This hypothesis is of so unhistorical a character that it merits a passing notice in the legendary history of the Institution.
It was first promulgated (a
In this essay Le Franc, as a loyal Catholic ecclesiastic, hating both the Freemasons and the Socinians, readily seized the idea, or at all events advanced it, that the former was derived from the latter, whose origin he assigns to the year 1546.
He recapitulates, only to deny, all the other theories that have been advanced on the subject, such as that the origin of the Institution is to be sought in the fraternities of Operative Masons of the Middle Ages, or in the assembly held at York underthe auspices of King Athelstane, or in the builders of King Solomon’s Temple, or in the Ancient Mysteries of Egypt. Each of these hypotheses he refuses to admit as true.
On the contrary, he says the order can not be traced beyond the famous meeting of Socinians, which was held at the City of Vicenza, in Italy, in the year 1546, by Loclius Socinus, Ochirius, Gentilis, and others, who there and then established the sect which repudiated the doctrine of the Trinity, and whose successors, with some modification of tenets, still exist under the name of Unitarians, or Liberal Christians.
But it is to Faustus Socinus, the nephew of Loclius, he asserts, that the real foundation of Freemasonry as a secret and symbolical society is to be ascribed. This “ artful and indefatigable sectary,” as he calls him, having beheld the burning of Servetus at Geneva by Calvin, for maintaining only a part of the system that he advocated, and finding that both Catholics and Protestants were equally hostile to his views, is said to have concealed it under symbols and mysterious ceremonies, accompanied by oaths of secrecy, in order that, while it was publicly taught to the people in countries where it was tolerated, it might be gradually and safely insinuated into other states, where an open confession of it would probably lead its preachers to the stake.
The propagation of this system, he further says, was veiled under the enigmatical allegory of building a temple whose extent, in the very words of Freemasonry, was to be “ in length from the east to the west, and in breadth from north to south.” The professors of it were therefore furnished, so as to carry out the allegory, with the various implements used in building, such as the square, the compasses, the level, and the plumb. And here it is that the Abbe Le Franc has found the first form and beginning of the Masonic Institution as it existed at the time of his writing.
I have said that, so far as I have been able to learn, Le Franc is the sole author or inventor of this hypothesis. Reghellini attributes it to three distinct writers, the author of the Voile leve, Le Franc, and the Abbe Barruel. But in fact the first and second of these are identical, and Barruel has not made any allusion to it in his History of Jacobinism. He attributes the origin of Freemasonry to the Manicheans, and makes a very elaborate and learned collation of the usages and ceremonies of the two, to show how much the one has taken from the other.
Reghellini, in commenting on this theory of the Abbe Le
Franc, says that all that is true in it is that there was at the same period,
about the middle of the 16th century, a learned society of
philosophers and literary men at
The members of this celebrated academy, he says, looked upon all these questions and difficulties concerning the mysteries of the Christian religion as points of doctrine which pertained simply to the philosophy of the ancient Egyptians, Greeks and Christians and had no relation whatever to the dogmas of faith.
Considering that out of these meetings of the philosophers
at
The society which met at Vicenza and at Venice, though it
sought to conceal its new and heterodox doctrines under a veil of secrecy, soon
became exposed to the observation of the Papal court, through whose influence
the members were expelled from the Venetian republic, some of them seeking
safety in Germany, but most of them in Poland, where their doctrines were not
only tolerated, but in time became popular. In consequence, flourishing congregations
were established at
Loelius Socinus had, soon after the immigration of his
followers into
Now, authentic history furnishes us with these few simple facts.
In the 16th century secret societies were by no means uncommon in various countries of Europe In Italy especially many were to be found. Some of these coteries were established for the cultivation of philosophical studies, some for the pursuit of alchemy, some for theological discussions, and many were of a mere social character. In all of them, however, there was an exclusiveness which shut out the vulgar, the illiterate, or the profane.
Thus there was founded at
Every city in
but members to participate in their
mystical studies. In
It is a matter of historical record that in 1546 there was a society of this kind, consisting of about forty persons, eminent for their learning, who, in the words of Mosheim “held secret assemblies, at different times, in the territory of Venice, and particularly at Vicenza, in which they deliberated concerning a general reformation of the received systems of religion, and, in a more especial manner, undertook to refute the peculiar doctrines that were afterwards publicly rejected by the Socinians.”
Mosheim, who was rigorous in the application of the canons
of criticism to all historical questions that came under his review, says, in a
note appended to this passage: “ Many circumstances and relations sufficiently prove that
immediately after the reformation had taken place in
Such was the character of the secret society at
The further attempt to connect the doctrines of Socinus with those of Freemasonry, because, when speaking of the new religion which he was laboring to establish, he compared it to the building of a new temple-in which his disciples were to be diligent workers, is futile. The use of such expressions is to be attributed merely to a metaphorical and allegorical spirit by no means uncommon in writers of every ago The same metaphor is repeatedly employed by St. Paul in his various Epistles, and it is not improbable that from him Socinus borrowed the idea.
There is, therefore, as I conceive, no historical evidence whatever to support the theory that Faustus Socinus and the Socinians were the founders of Freemasonry. At the very time when he was establishing the sect whose distinctive feature was its denial of the dogma of the Trinity, the manuscript constitutions of the Masons were beginning their Legend of the Craft, with an in,vocation to “ the Might of the Father, the Wisdom of the Glorious Son, and the Goodness of the Holy Ghost, three Persons and one God.”
The idea of any such connection between two institutions whose doctrines were so antagonistic was the dream-or rather the malicious invention-of Le Franc, and has in subsequent times received the amount of credit to which it is entitled.
Lawrie or I should rather say Brewster - was the first to discover a connection between the Freemasons and the Jewish sect of the Essenes, a doctrine which is announced in his History of Freemsonry. He does not indeed trace the origin of the Masonic Institution to the Essenes, but only makes them the successors of the Masons of the Temple, whose forms and tenets they transmitted to Pythagoras and his school at Crotona, by whom the art was disseminated throughout Europe.
Believing as he did in the theory that Freemasonry was
first organized at the Temple of Solomon by a u
“ To these opinions it may be
objected, that if the Fraternity of Freemasons flourished during the reign of
Solomon, it would have existed in
The peace making quality of “ if “ is here very apparent. “ If it can be shown “ that there is a chronological sequence from the builders of the Temple to the Essenes, and that there is a resemblance of both to the Freemasons in “ the nature, ceremonies, and object of their institution,” the conclusion to which Brewster has arrived will be better sustained than it would be if these premises are denied or not proved.
The course of argument must therefore be directed to these points.
In the first place we must inquire, who were the Essenes and what was their history ? This subject has already been treated to some extent in a previous portion of this work. But the integrity of the present argument will require, and I trust excuse, the necessity of a repetition.
The three sects into which the Jews were divided in the
time of Christ were the Pharisees, the Sadducees, and the Essenes. Of these,
while the Saviour makes repeated mention of the first two, he never alludes in
the remotest manner to the third. This singular silence of Jesus has been
explained by some imaginative Masonic writers, such, for instance, as Clavel,
by asserting that he was probably an initiate of the sect. But scholars have
been divided on this subject, some supposing that it is to be attributed to the
fact (which, however, has not been established) that the Essenes originated in
The Essenes were an association of ascetic celibates whose numbers were therefore recruited from the children of the Jewish community in which they lived. These were carefully trained by proper instructions for admission into the society. The admission into the interior body of the society and to the possession of its mystical doctrine was only attained after a long probation through three stages or degrees, the last of which made the aspirant a participant in the full fellowship of the community.
The history of the Essenes has been so often written by ancient and modern authors, from Philo and Josephus to Ginsburg, that an inquirer can be at no loss for a knowledge of the sect. The Masonic student will find the subject discussed in the author’s Encyclopedia of Freemasonry, and the ordinary reader may be referred to the able article in McClintock and Strong’s Cyclopedia of Biblical, Theological, and Ecclesiastical Literature. I shall content myself, in fairness to the theory, with quoting the brief but compendious description given by the editor of Lawrie’s History. It is in the main correct and sustained by other authorities, except a few deductions which must be attributed to the natural inclination of every theorist to adapt facts to his hypothesis. A few interpolations will be necessary to correct manifest errors.
“ When a candidate was proposed for admission, the strictest scrutiny was made into his character. If his life had been hitherto exemplary, and he appeared capable of curbing his passions and regulating his conduct according to the virtuous though austere maxims of their order, he was presented, at the expiration of his novitiate, with a white garment, as an emblem of the regularity of his conduct and the purity of his heart.”
It was not at the termination, but at the beginning of the novitiate, that the white garment or robe was presented, and it was accompanied by the presentation of an apron and a spade.
“ A solemn oath was then administered to him that he would never divulge the mysteries of the Order that he would make no innovations on the doctrines of the society and that he would continue in that honorable course of piety and virtue which he had begun to pursue.”
This is a mere abstract of the oath, which is given at length by Josephus. It was not, however, administered until the candidate had passed through all the degrees or stages, and was ready to be admitted into full fellowship.
“ Like Freemasons, they instructed the young member in the knowledge which they derived from their ancestors.”
He might have said, like all other sects, in which the instruction of the young member is an imperative duty.
“They admitted no women into their Order.”
Though this is intended by the editor to show a point of identity with Freemasonry, it does no such thing. It is the common rule of all masculine associations. It distinguishes the Essenes from other religious sects, but it by no means essentially likens them to the Freemasons.
“They had particular signs for recognizing each other, which have a strong resemblance to those of Freemasons.”
This is a mere assumption. That they had signs for mutual recognition is probable, because such has been in all ages the custom of secret societies. We have classical authority that they were employed in the ancient Pagan Mysteries. But there is no authority for saying that these signs of the Essenes bore any resemblance to those of the Freemasons. The only allusion to this subject is in the treatise of Philo Judaeus, De Vita Contemplativa, where that author says that - the Essenes meet together in an assembly and the right hand is laid upon the part between the chin and the breast, while the left hand hangs straight by the side.”
But Philo does not say that it was used as a sign of recognition, but rather speaks of it as an attitude or posture assumed in their assemblies. Of the resemblance every Mason can judge for himself
“They had colleges, or places of retirement, where they resorted to practice their rites, and settle the affairs of the society; and after the performance of these duties, they assembled in a large hall, where an entertainment was provided for them by the president, or master, of the college, who allotted a certain quantity of provisions to every individual.”
This was the common meal, not partaken on set occasions and in a particular place, as the writer intimates, but every day, in their usual habitation and at the close of daily labor.
“They abolished all distinctions of rank and if preference was ever given, it was given to piety, liberality, and virtue. Treasurers were appointed in every town to supply the wants of indigent strangers. The Essenes pretended to higher degrees of piety and knowledge than the uneducated vulgar, and though their pretensions were high, they were never questioned by their enemies. Austerity of manners was one of the chief characteristics of the Essenian Fraternity. They frequently assembled, however, in convivial parties, and relieved for awhile the severity of those duties which they were accustomed to perform.”
In concluding this description of an ascetic religious sect, the writer of Lawrie’s History says that “ this remarkable coincidence between the chief features of the Masonic and Essenian Fraternities can be accounted for only by referring them to the same origin.” Another, and, perhaps, a better reason to account for these coincidences will be hereafter presented.
While admitting that there is a resemblance in some points of the two institutions to each other, such as their secrecy, their classification into different degrees, although there is no evidence that the Essenian initiation had any form except that of a mere passage from a lower to a higher grade and their cultivation of fraternal love, which resemblances may be found in many other secret associations, I fail to see the identity “ in the nature, the object, and the external forms of the two institutions “ which Brewster claims.
On the contrary, there is a total dissimilarity in each of these points.
The nature of the Essenian institution was that of an ascetic and a bigoted religious sect, and in so far has certainly no resemblance to Freemasonry.
The object of the Essenes was to preserve in its most rigid requirements the observance of the Mosaic law; that of Freemasonry is to diffuse the tolerant principles of a universal religion, which men of every sect and creed may approve.
As to the external form of the two institutions, what little we know of those of the Essenes certainly does not exhibit any other resemblance than that which is common to all secret associations, whatever may be their nature and objects.
But the most fatal objection to the theory of a connection between them, which is maintained by the author of Lawrie’s History, has been admitted with some candor by himself.
“There is one point, however,” he says, “which may, at first sight, seem to militate against this supposition. The Essenes appear in no respects connected with architecture; nor addicted to those sciences and pursuits which are subsidiary to the art of building.”
The Essenes were not even Speculative Masons. Their symbolism, if they had any, was not founded on nor had any reference to the art of building. The apron which they presented to their novice was intended to be used, according to their practice, in baptism and in bathing; and the spade had no symbolic meaning, but was simply intended for practical purposes.
The defense made by the author of the History, that in modern times there are “ many associations of Freemasons where no architects are members, and which have no connection with the art of building,” hardly needs a reply. There never has been an association of Freemasons, either Operative or Speculative, which did not have a connection with the art of building, in the former case practically, in the latter symbolically.
It is absurd to suppose the interpolation between these two classes of an institution which neither practically nor symbolically cultivated the art on which the very existence of Freemasonry in either condition is based.
But another objection, equally as fatal to the theory
which makes the Essenes the uninterrupted successors of the
The Temple of Solomon was finished about a thousand years before the Christian era, and, according to the Masonic legendary account, the builders who were engaged in its construction immediately dispersed and traveled into foreign countries to propagate the art which they had there acquired. This, though merely a legend, is not at all improbable. It is very likely that the Tyrian workmen, at least (and they constituted the larger number of those employed in the building), returned to their homes after the tasks for which they had been sent to Solomon, by the King of Tyre, had been accomplished. If there were any Jewish Masons at all, who were not mere laborers, it is not unreasonable to suppose that they would seek employment elsewhere, in the art of building which they had acquired from their Tyrian masters. This is a proper deduction from the tradition, considered as such.
Who, then, were left to continue the due succession of the fraternity? Brewster, in Lawrie’s History, and Oliver, in his Antiquities, affirm that it was the Essenes.
But we do not hear of this sect as an organized body until eight centuries afterward. The apocryphal statement of Pliny, that they had been in being for thousands of years-“pler seculorum millia “has met with no reception from scholars. It is something which, as he himself admits, is incredible; and Pliny is no authority in Jewish affairs.
Josephus speaks of them, as existing in the days of Jonathan
the Maccabaean; but this was only 143 years before Christ. They are never
mentioned in any of the books of the Old Testament, written subsequently to the
building of the
But Brewster (1) seeks to connect the Essenes and the
builders of Solomon through the Assideans, whom he also calls “an order of the
Knights of the
(1) The unfairness of the author of Lawrie’s History “History”
is apparent when he quotes the “Histoire des Juifs,” by Basnage, as authority
for the existence of the Essenes three hundred years before the Christian era.
Basnage actually says that they existed in the reign of Antigonus, but this was
only 105 B.C. and
decay.” He adds that “this association was composed of the greatest men of
All this is very ingenious, but it is very untrue. It is, however, the style, now nearly obsolete, it is to be hoped, in which Masonic history has been written.
The fact is that the Assideans were not of older date than the Essenes. They are not mentioned by the canonical writers of the Scriptures, nor by Josephus, but the word first occurs in the book of Maccabees, where it is applied, not, as Brewster calls them, to men of “ peaceful dispositions,” but to a body of devoted and warlike heroes and patriots who, as Kitto says, rose at the signal for armed resistance given by Mattathias, the father of the Maccabees, and who, under him and his successors, upheld with the sword the great doctrine of the unity of God, and stemming the advancing tide of Grecian manners and idolatries.
Hence the era of the Assideans, like that of the Essenes, is removed eight centuries from the time of the building of the Solomonic Temple.
Scaliger, who is cited in Lawrie’s History as authority,
only says that the Assideans were a confraternity of Jews whose principal
devotion consisted in keeping up the edifices belonging to the
But as they are not known to have come into existence until
the wars of the Maccabees, it is evident that the
Prideaux says that the Jews were divided, after the captivity, into two classes-the Zadikim or righteous, who observed only the written law of Moses, and the Chasidim or pious, who superadded the traditions of the elders. These latter, he says, were the Assideans, the change of name resulting from a common alteration of the sounds of the original Hebrew letters.
But if this division took place after the captivity, a
period of nearly five centuries had then elapsed since the building of Solomon’s
After the establishment of the Christian religion we lose
sight of the Essenes. Some of them are said to have gone to
In relation to what has been called the “ remarkable coincidences “ to be met with in the doctrines and usages of this Jewish sect and the Freemasons, giving to them all the weight demanded, the rational explanation appears to be such as I have elsewhere given, and which I may repeat here.
The truth is that the Essenes and the Freemasons derive whatever similarity or resemblance they may have from that spirit of brotherhood which has prevailed in all ages of the civilized world, the inherent principles of which, as the natural results of any fraternization, where all the members are engaged in the same pursuit and governed by one common bond of unity, are brotherly love, charity, and generally that secrecy and exclusiveness which secures to them an isolation, in the practice of their rites, from the rest of the world. And hence, between all fraternities, ancient and modern, these “remarkable coincidences” will be apt to be found.
Before concluding this series of essays, as they night be called, on the legendary history of Freemasonry, it will be necessary, so that a completion may be given to the subject, to refer to a few Legends of a peculiar character, which have not yet been noticed. These Legends form no part of the original Legend of the Craft.
There are, however, brief allusions in that document to them; so brief as almost to attract no especial observation, but which might possibly indicate that some form, perhaps a very mutilated one, of these Legends was familiar to the Mediaeval Masons, or, perhaps, which is more probable, that they have suggested a foundation for the fabrication of these legendary narratives at a later period by the Speculative Freemasons of the 18th century.
Or it may be supposed that both those views are correct, and that while the imperfect and fragmentary Legend was known to the Freemasons of the Middle Ages, its completed form was thereby suggested to the Fraternity at a later period, and after the era of the revival.
Whichever of these views we may accept, it is at least certain that at the present day, and in the present condition of the Order, these Legends form an important part of the ritualism of the Order. They can not be rejected in their symbolic interpretation, unless we are willing with them to reject the whole fabric of Freemasonry, into which they have been closely interwoven.
Of these Legends and of some minor ones of the same class, Dr. Oliver has spoken with great fairness in his Historical Landmarks, in the following words:
“It is admitted that we are in possession of numerous legends which are not found in holy writ, but being of very ancient date, are entitled to consideration, although their authenticity may be questioned and their aid rejected. I shall not, however, in any case, use their evidence as a prima facie means of proving any doubtful proposition, but merely in corroboration of an argument which might probably be complete without their aid. Our system of typical or legendary tradition adds to the dignity of the institution by its general reference to sublime truths, which were considered necessary to its existence or its consistency, although some of the facts, how pure soever at their first promulgation, may have been distorted and perverted by passing through a multitude of hands in their transmission down the stream of time, amidst the fluctuation of the earth and the downfall of mighty states and empires.”
Without discussing the question of their great antiquity, or of their original purity and subsequent distortion and perversion, I propose to present these Legends to the Masonic reader, because they are really not so much traditional narratives of events that are supposed to have at some time occurred, but because they are to be ‘considered really as allegorical attempts to symbolize certain ethical or religious ideas, the expression of which lies at the very foundation of the Masonic system.
So considered, they must be deemed of great value. Their interest will also be much enhanced by a comparison of the facts of history that are interwoven with them, and to certain traditions of the ancient Oriental nations which show the existence of the same Legends among them. These may, indeed, have been the foundation on which the Masonic ones have been built, the “ distortion or perversion “ being simply those variations which were necessary to connect the legendary statements more intimately and consistently with the Masonic symbolic ideas.
The first of these to which our attention will be directed is the Legend of Enoch, the seventh of the Patriarchs, of whom
“him the Most High,
(Rapt in a balmy cloud with winged steeds)
Did, as thou seest, receive to walk with God
High in salvation and the claims of bliss,
Exempt from death.”
I shall first present the reader with the Masonic Legend, and then endeavor to trace out the idea which it was intended to convey. by a comparison of it with historical occurrences, with Oriental traditions of a similar nature, and with the Masonic symbolism which it seems to embody. The legend as accepted by the Craft, from a time hereafter to be referred to, runs to the following effect.
Enoch, being inspired by the Most High, and in obedience
to a vision, constructed underground, in the bosom of
He then caused a triangular plate of gold to be made, each side of which was a cubit long; he enriched it with the most precious stones and engraved upon it the ineffable name of God. He then encrusted the plate upon a stone of agate of the same form, which he placed upon a cubical stone of marble, and deposited the whole within the ninth or innermost vault.
When this subterranean building was completed, Enoch made a slab or door of stone, and, attaching to it a ring of iron, by which it might, if necessary, be raised, he placed it over the aperture of the uppermost arch, and so covered it overwith soil that the opening could not easily be discovered. Enoch himself was not permitted to enter it more than once a year, and on his death or translation all knowledge of this building and of the sacred treasure which it contained was lost until in succeeding ages it was accidentally discovered while Solomon was engaged in building, a temple above the spot, on the same mountain.
The Legend proceeds to inform us that after Enoch had finished the construction of the nine vaults, fearing that the principles of the arts and sciences which he had assiduously cultivated would be lost in that universal deluge of which he bad received a prophetic vision, he erected above-ground two pillars, one of marble, to withstand the destructive influences of foe, and one of brass, to resist the ac6on of water ()n the pillar of brass he engraved the history of the creation, the principles of the arts and sciences, and the doctrines of Speculative Masonry as they were then practiced; and on the pillar of marble he inscribed in hieroglyphic characters the information that near the spot where they stood a precious treasure was deposited in a subterranean vault.
Such is the Legend of Enoch, which forms a very important part of the legendary history of the High Degrees. As a traditional narrative it has not the slightest support of authentic history, and the events that it relates do not recommend themselves by an air of probability. But, accepted as the expression of a symbolic idea, it undoubtedly possesses some value.
That part of the Legend which refers to the two pillars is undoubtedly a perversion of the old Craft Legend of Lamech’s sons, which has already been treated in this work. It will need no further consideration.
The germ of the Legend is the preservation through the efforts of the Patriarch of the Ineffable Name. This is in fact the true symbolism of the Legend, and it is thus connected with the whole system of Freemasonry in its Speculative form.
There is no allusion to this story in the Legend of the Craft. None of the old manuscript Constitutions contain the name of Enoch, nor does he appear to have been deemed by the Mediaeval Masons to be one of the worthies of the Craft. The Enoch spoken of in the Cooke MS. is the son of Cain, and not the seventh Patriarch. We must conclude, therefore, that the Legend was a fabrication of a later day, and in no way suggested by anything contained in the original Craft Legend.
But that there were traditions outside of Masonry, which
prevailed in the Middle Age, in reference to subterranean caves in
There is a tradition also, among the Arabians, of a sacred stone found by Abraham beneath the earth, and made by him the stone of foundation of the temple which Jehovah ordered him to erect a temple the tradition of which is confined to the Mohammedans.
But the most curious story is one told by Nicephorus Callistus, a Greek historian of the 14th century, in his Ecclesiastical Histories.
(1) Lightfoot, “Prospect of the
“When the foundations were being laid, as has been said, one
of the stones attached to the lowest part of the foundation was removed from
its place and showed the mouth of a cavern which had been cut out of the rock.
But as the cave could not be distinctly seen, those who had charge of the work,
wishing to explore it, that they might be better acquainted with the place,
sent one of the workmen down tied to a long rope. When he got to the bottom he
found water up to his legs. Searching the cavern on every side, he found by
touching with his hands that it was of a quadrangular form. When he was
returning to the mouth, he discovered a certain pillar standing up scarcely
above the water. Feeling with his hand, he found a little book placed upon it,
and wrapped up iii very fine and clan linen Taking possession of it, he gave
the signal with the rope that those who had sent him down, should draw him up.
Being received above, as soon as the book was shown all were struck with
astonishment, especially as it appeared untouched and fresh notwithstanding
that it had been found in so dismal and dark a place. But when the book was unfolded,
not only the Jews but the Greeks were astounded. For even at the beginning it
declared in large letters: IN THE BEGINNING WAS THE WORD WITH GOD,
It is true that Enoch has been supposed to have been
identical with Hermes, and Keriher says, in the OEdipus Egyptiacus, Idris among
the Hebrews, has been called Enoch, among the Egyptians Osiris and Hermes, and
he was the first who before the Flood had any knowledge of astronomy and
geometry. But the authors of the Legend of the Craft were hardly likely to be
acquainted with this piece of archeology, and the Hermes to whom, with a very
corrupt spelling, they refer as the son of
Enoch is first introduced to th
“By some vestiges of antiquity we find one of them
(the offspring of Seth) prophesying of the final conflagration at the day of
Judgment, as St Jude tells and likewise of the general deluge for the
punishment of the world. Upon which he erected his two large pillars (though
some ascribe them to Seth), the one of stone and the other of brick, whereon
were engraven the liberal sciences, etc. And that the stone pillar remained in
Fifteen years afterward, when he published the second edition of the Constitutions, he repeated the Legend, with the additional statement that Enoch was “ expert and bright both in the science and the art “ of Geometry and Masonry, an abridgment of which he placed on the pillars which he had erected. He adds that “ the old Masons firmly believed this tradition,” but as there is no appearance of any such tradition in the old records, of which since his date a large number have been recovered (for in them the building of the pillars is ascribed to the sons of Lamech), we shall have to accept this assertion with many grains of allowance, and attribute it to the general inaccuracy of Anderson when citing legendary authority.
But as the first mention of Enoch as a Freemason is made
by
It was not, however, adopted into the English system, since neither Entick nor Northouck, who subsequently edited the Book of Constitutions, say anything more of Enoch than had already been said by Anderson. They, indeed, correct to some extent his statement, by ascribing the pillars either to Seth or to Enoch, leaning, therefore, to the authority of Josephus, but, equally with Anderson, abandoning the real tradition of the old Legend, which gave them to the children of Lamech.
It is, I think, very evident that the Legend of Enoch was of Continental origin, and I am inclined conjecturally to assign its invention to the fertile genius of the Chevalier Ramsay, the first fabricator of high degrees, or to some of his immediate successors in the manufactory of Masonic Rites.
Ramsay was too learned a man to be ignorant of the numerous Oriental traditions, Arabic, Egyptian, and Rabbinical, concerning Enoch, that had been long in existence. Of this we have evidence in a very learned work on The Philosophical Principles of Natural and Revealed Religion, published by him in 1749.
In this work he refers to the tradition extant in all nations, of a great man or legislator who was the first author of sacred symbols and hieroglyphics, and who taught the people their sacred mysteries and religious rites. This man, he says, was, among the Phoenicians, Thaut; the Greeks, Hermes; the Arabians, Edris. But he must have known that Thaut, Hermes, and Edris were all synonymous of Enoch, for he admits that “ all these lived some time before the universal deluge, and they were all the same man, and consequently some antediluvian patriarch.”
And, finally, he adds that “some think that this antediluvian patriarch was Enoch himself” And then he presents, in the following language, those views which most probably supplied the suggestions that were afterward developed by himself, or some of his followers, in the full form of the Masonic legend of Enoch.
“Whatever be in these conjectures,” says Ramsay, “ it is certain, from the principles laid down, that the antediluvian or Noevian patriarches ought to have taken some surer measures for transmitting the knowledge of divine truths to their posterity, than by oral tradition, and, consequently, that they either invented or made use of hieroglyphics or symbols to preserve the memory of these sacred truths.” And these he calls the Enochian symbols.
He does not, indeed, make any allusion to a secret depository of these symbols of Enoch, and supposes that they must have been communicated to the sons of Noah and their descendants, though in time they lost their true meaning. But the change made in the Masonic Legend was necessary to adapt it to a peculiar system of ritualism.
It is singular how Enoch ever became among the ancients a type of the mysteries of religion. The book of Genesis devotes only three short verses to an account of him, and nothing is there said of him, his deeds, or his character, except an allusion to his piety.
The Oriental writers, however, abound in traditionary tales of the learning of the Patriarch. One tradition states that God bestowed upon him the gift of knowledge, and that he received thirty volumes from Heaven, filled with all the secrets of the most mysterious sciences. The Babylonians supposed him to have been intimately acquainted with the nature of the stars, and they attribute to him the invention of astrology.
The Jewish Rabbis maintained that he was taught by Adam how to sacrifice and to worship the Deity aright. The Cabalistic book of Raziel says that he received the divine mysteries through the direct line of the preceding Patriarchs.
Bar Hebraeus, a Jewish writer, asserts that Enoch was the first who invented books and writing; that he taught men the art of building cities-thus evidently confounding him with another Enoch, the son of Cain that he discovered the knowledge of the Zodiac and the course of the stars; and that he inculcated the worship of God by religious rites.
There is a coincidence in the sacred character thus bestowed upon Enoch with his name and the age at which he died, and this may have had something to do with the mystical attributes bestowed upon him by the Orientalists.
The word Enoch signifies, in the Hebrew, initiated or consecrated, and would seem, as all Hebrew names are significant, to have authorized, or, perhaps, rather suggested the idea of his connection with a system of initiation into sacred rites.
He lived, the Scriptures say, three hundred and sixty-five years. This, too, would readily be received as having a mystical meaning, for 365 is the number of the days in a solar year and was, therefore, deemed a sacred number. Thus we have seen that the letters of the mystical word Abraxas, which was the Gnostic name of the Supreme Deity, amounted, according to their numerical value in the Greek alphabet, to 365, which was also the case with Mithras, the god to whom the Mithraic mysteries were dedicated. And this may account for the statement of Bar Hebraeus that Enoch appointed festivals and sacrifices to the sun at the periods when that luminary entered each of the zodiacal signs.
Goldziher, one of the latest of the German ethnologists, has advanced a similar idea in his work on Mythology Among the Hebrews.
He says:
“The solar character of Enoch admits of no doubt. He is brought into connection with the buildingof towns-a solar feature. He lives exactly three hundred and sixty-five years, the number of days of the solar year; which can not be accidental. And even then he did not die, but Enoch walked with Elohim, and was no more (to be seen), for Elohim took him away.’ In the old times when the figure of Enoch was imagined, this was doubtless called Enoch’s Ascension to heaven, as in the late traditional legends Ascensions to heaven are generally acknowledged to be solar features.”’ (1)These statements and speculations have been objected to, be. cause they would tend to make Enoch an idolater and a sun-worshipper. This is a consequence by no means absolutely necessary, but, as the whole is merely traditionary, we need waste no time in defending the orthodox character of the Patriarch’s religious views.
After all, it would appear that the Legend of Enoch, being wholly unknown to the Fraternity in the Middle Ages, unrecognized in the Legend of the Craft, and the name even, not mentioned in any of the old records, was first introduced into the rituals of some of the higher degrees which began to be fabricated toward the middle of the 18th century; that it was invented by the Chevalier Ramsay, or by some of those ritual-mongers who immediately succeeded him, and that in its fabrication very copious suggestions were borrowed from the Rabbinical and Oriental traditions on the same subject.
It is impossible then to assign to this Legend the slightest historical character. It is made up altogether out of traditions which were the inventions of Eastern imagination.
We must view it, therefore, as an allegory; but as one which has a profound symbolic character. It was intended to teach the doctrine of Divine Truth by the symbol of the Holy Name-the Tetragrammaton-the Name most reverently consecrated iii the Jewish system as well as in others, and which has always constituted one of the most important and prominent symbols of Speculative Masonry.
In the Continental system of the High Degrees, this symbol is presented in the form of the Legend of Enoch. From the English system of Ancient Craft Masonry, that Legend is rejected, or rather it never has been admitted into it. In its place, there is another esoteric Legend, which, differing altogether in details, is identical in result and effects the same symbolism. But this will be more appropriately discussed when the symbolism of Freemasonry is treated. in a future part of this work.
In reality, there is no Legend of Noah to be found in any of the Masonic Rituals. There is no myth, like that of Enoch or Euclid, which intimately connects him with the legendary history of the institution. And yet the story of his life has exercised a very important influence in the origin and the development of the principles of Speculative Masonry.
Dr. Oliver has related a few traditions of Noah which, he says, are Masonic, but they never had any general acceptance among the Craft, as they are referred to by no other writer, and, if they ever existed, are now happily obsolete.
The influence of Noah upon Masonic doctrine is to be traced
to the almost universal belief of men in the events of the deluge, and the
consequent establishment in many nations of a sys
The character and the actions of Noah are to be looked upon from a twofold stand-point, the historic and the legendary.
The historic account of Noah is contained in portions of the sixth and seventh chapters in the Book of Genesis, and are readily accessible to every reader, with which, however, they must already be very familiar.
The legendary account is to be found in the almost inexhaustible store of traditions which are scattered among almost all the nations of the world where some more or less dim memory of a cataclysm has been preserved.
If we examine the ancient writers, we shall find ample evidence that among all the pagan peoples there was a tradition of a deluge which, at sonic remote period, had overwhelmed the earth. This tradition was greatly distorted from the biblical source, and the very name of the Patriarch -who was saved was forgotten and replaced by some other, which varied in different countries. Thus, in different places, he had received the names of Xisuthrus, Prometheus, Deucalion, Ogyges, and many others, where the name has been rendered very unlike itself by terminations and other idiomatic changes. But everywhere the name was accompanied by a tradition, which also varied in its details, of a deluge by which mankind had been destroyed, and the race had, through the instrumentality of this personage, been renewed.
It is to be supposed that so important an event as the deluge would have been transmitted by the Patriarch to His posterity, and that in after times, when, by reason of the oral transmission of the history, the particular details of the event would be greatly distorted from the truth, a veneration for this new founder of the race of men would be retained. At length, when various systems of idolatry began to be established, Noah, under whatever name he may have been known, would have been among the first to whom divine honors would be paid. Hence arose that system known to modert? scholars as the “Arkite worship,” in whose rites and mysteries, which were eventually communicated to the other ancient religions, there were always some allusions to the events of the Noachic flood to the ark, as the womb of Nature, to the eight persons saved in it, as the ogdoad or sacred number-and to the renovation of the world, as symbolizing the passage from death to immortal life.
It is not, therefore, surprising that Noah should have become a mystical personage, and that the modern Speculative Masons should have sought to incorporate some reference to him in their symbolic system, though no such idea appears to have been entertained by the Operative Masons who preceded them.
On examining the old records of the Operative Masons it will be found that no place is assigned to Noah, either as a Mason or as one of the founders of the “ science.” He receives only the briefest mention
In the Halliwell Poem his name and the flood are merely
referred to as denoting an era of time in the world’s history. It is only a
statement that the
In the Cooke MS. the record is a little more extended, but still is but an historical narrative of the flood, in accordance with the biblical details.
In the Dowland MS. and in all the other manuscripts of the Legend of the Craft that succeeded it, the reference to Noah is exceedingly meager, his name only being mentioned, and that of his sons, from whom descended Hermes, who found one of the pillars and taught the science thereon described to other men. So far, Noah has had no part in Masonry.
Anderson, who, in the Book of Constitutions modified and enlarged the old Craft Legends at his pleasure, calls Noah and his three sons “all Masons true,” and says that they brought over from the flood the traditions and arts of the antediluvians and communicated them to their growing offspring. And this was perhaps the first time that the Patriarch was presented to the attention of the Fraternity in a Masonic character.
Anderson semms to have cherished this idea, for in the second edition of the Constitutions he still further develops it by saying that the offspring of Noah, “ as they journeyed from the East (the plains of Mount Ararat, where the ark rested) towards the West, they found a plain in the land of Shinar, and dwelt there together as NOACHIDAE, or sons of Noah.” And, he adds, without the slightest historical authority, that this word “ Noachidae “ was “ the first name of Masons, according to some old traditions.” It would have puzzled him to specify any such tradition.
Having thus invented and adopted the name as the distinctive designation of a Mason, he repeats it in his second edition or revision of the “Old Charges” appended to the Book of Constitutions. The first of these charges, in the Constitutions of 1723, contained this passage: “ A Mason is obliged by his tenure to obey the moral law.” In the edition of 1738, Dr. Anderson has, without authority, completed the sentence by adding the words “ as a true Noachida.” This interpolation was reached by Entick, who edited the third and fourth editions in 1756 and 1767, and by Northouck, who published the fifth in 1784, both of whom restored the old reading, which has ever since been preserved in all the Constitutions of the Grand Lodge of England.
Dermott, however, who closely followed the second edition
of
About that time, or a little later, a degree was fabricated on the continent of Europe, bearing the name of “ Patriarch Noachite,” one peculiar feature of which was that it represented the existence of two classes or lines of Masons, the one descending from the Temple of Solomon, and who were called Hiramites, and the other tracing their origin to Noah, who were styled Noachites.
Neither
What does this word really signify, and how came
Noachida, or Noachides, from which we get the English Noachite, is a gentilitial name, or a name designating the member of a family or race, and is legitimately formed according to Greek usage, where Atrides means a descendant of Atreus, or Heraclides a descendant of Heracles. And so Noachides, or its synonyms Noachida or Noachites, means a descendant of Noah.
But why, it may be asked, are the Freemasons called the descendants of Noah ? Why has he been selected alone to represent the headship of the Fraternity ? I have no doubt that Dr. Anderson was led to the adoption of the word by the following reason.
After Noah’s emergence from the ark, he is said to have promulgated seven precepts for the government of the new race of men of whom he was to be the progenitor.
These seven precepts are : 1, to do justice; 2, worship God; 3, abstain from idolatry ; 4, preserve chastity ; 5, do not commit murder; 6, do not steal ; 7, do not eat the blood.
These seven obligations, says the Rev. Dr. Raphall are held binding on all men, inasmuch as all are descendants of Noah, and the Rabbis maintain that he who observes them, though he be not an Israelite, has a share in the future life, and it is the duty of every Jew to enforce their due observance whenever he has the power to do so.
In consequence of this the Jewish religion was not confined
during its existence in
Anderson, who was a theologian, was, of course, acquainted with these facts, but, with a more tolerant spirit than the Jewish law, which gave the converted Gentiles only a qualified reception, he was disposed to admit into the full fellowship of Freemasonry all the descendants of Noah who would observe the precepts of the Patriarch; these being the only moral laws inculcated by Masonry.
In giving the history of the introduction of the word into Masonry, I have not cited among the authorities the document known as the Stonehouse MS., because it was verified by a person of that name, but more usually the Krause MS., because it was first published in a German translation by Dr. Krause in his Three Oldest Documents. It is alleged to be a copy of the York Constitutions, enacted in 926, but is generally admitted by scholars to be spurious. Yet, as it is probable that it was originally written by a contemporary of Anderson, and about the time of the publishing of the Constitutions Of 1738, it may be accepted, so far as it supplies us with a suggestion of the motive that induced Anderson to interpolate the word “ Noachida “ into the “ Old Charges.”
In the Krause MS., under the head of “ The Laws or Obligations laid before his Brother Masons by Prince Edwin,” we find the following article. (I translate from the German of Krause, because the original English document is nowhere to be found.)
“ The first obligation is that you shall sincerely honor God and obey the laws of the Noachites, because they are divine laws, which should be obeyed by all the world. Therefore, you must avoid all heresies and not thereby sin against God.”
The language of this document is more precise than that of
But
Now the object of
And if by the use of the word he means to indicate that Noah was the founder of post-diluvian Freemasonry, he is equally in error; for that theory, it has heretofore been shown, can not be sustained, and his statement that Noah and his three sons were “ all Masons true “ is one for which there is no historical support, and which greatly lacks an clement of probability.
It is better, therefore, when we speak or write historically of Freemasonry, that this word Noachida, or Noachite, should be avoided, since its use leads to a confusion of ideas, and possibly to the promulgation of error.
This is the most important of all the legends of Freemasonry. It will therefore be considered in respect to its origin, its history, and its meaning;
Before, however, proceeding to the discussion of these important subjects, and the investigation of the truly mythical character of Hiram Abif, it will be proper to inquire into the meaning of his name, or rather the meaning of the epithet that accompanies it.
In the places in Scripture in which he is mentioned he is called at one time (in 2 Chronicles ii., 13), by the King of Tyre, in the letter written by him to King Solomon, Churam Abi; in another place (in 2 Chronicles iv., 16), where the writer of the narrative is recording the work done by him for Solomon, Churam Abiv, or, as it might be pronounced according to the sound of the Hebrew letters, Abiu. But Luther, in his German translation of the Bible, adopted the pronunciation Abif, exchanging the flat v for the sharp f. In this he was followed by Anderson, who was the first to present the full name of Hiram Abif to the Craft. This he did in the first edition of the English book of Constitutions.
And since his time at least the appellation of Hiram Abif
has been adopted by and become familiar to the Craft as the name of the cunning
or skillful artist who was sent by Hiram, King of Tyre, to assist King Solomon
in the construction of the
Now, the Abi and Abiv, used by the King of Tyre, in the book of Chronicles form no part of the name, but are simply inflections of the possessive pronouns my and his suffixed to the appellative Ab.
Ab in Hebrew means father, i is my, and in, iv, or if is his. Abi is therefore my father, and so he is called by the King of Tyre when he is describing him to Solomon, “ Hiram my father;” Abif is his father, and he is so spoken of by the historian when he recounts the various kinds of work which were done for King Solomon by “ Hiram his father.”
But the word Ab in Hebrew, though primarily signifying a male parent, has other derivative significations. It is evident that in none of the passages in which he is mentioned is it intended to intimate that he held such relationship to either the King of Tyre or the King of Israel.
The word “ father “ was applied by the Hebrews as a term of honor, or to signify a station of preeminence. Buxtorf says it sometimes signifed Master, and he cites the fourth chapter of Genesis, where Jabal is called the father of cattle and Jubal the father of musicians.
Hiram Abif was most probably selected by the King of Tyre
to be sent to Solomon as a skillful artificer of preeminent skill that he might
execute the principal works in the interior of the
I am well pleased with the suggestion of Dr. McClintock that “Hiram my father seems to mean Hiram my counsellor; that is to say, foreman or master workman”
Applying this meaning to the passages in Chronicles which refer to this artist, we shall see how easily every difficulty is removed and the Craftsman Hiram placed in his true light.
When King Hiram, wishing to aid the King of Israel in his
contemplated building, writes him a letter in which he promises to comply with
the request of Solomon to send him timber from
And when the historian who wrote the Chronicles of the kingdom had recapitulated all the work that Hiram had accomplished, such as the pillars of the porch, the lavers and the candlesticks, and the sacred vessels, he concludes by saying that all these things were made for King Solomon by his master-workman Hiram, in the Hebrew gnasah Huram Abif Lammelech Schelomoh.
Hiram or Huram was his proper name. Ab,
father of his trade or master-workman, his title, and i or if, any or his, the
possessive pronominal suffix, used according to circumstances. The King
of Tyre calls him Hiram Abi, “ my master-workman.”
When the chronicler speaks of him in his relation to King Solomon, he calls him
Hiram Abif “ his master-workman.” And as all his Masonic relations are with Solomon, this latter
designation has been adopted, from
Having thus disposed of the name and title of the personage who constitutes the main point in this Masonic Legend, I proceed to an examination of the origin and progressive growth of the myth.
“The Legend of the Temple-Builder,” as he is commonly but
improperly called, is so intimately connected in the ritual with the symbolic
history of the
The origin of the Legend must be looked for in the
Scriptural account of the building of the
On the death of King David, his son and successor,
Solomon, resolved to carry into execution his father’s long-contemplated design
of erecting a
Hiram complied with his request, and exchanged the skilled
workmen of sterile
Among the artists who were sent by the King of Tyre to the King of Israel, was one whose appearance at Jerusalem seems to have been in response to the following application of Solomon, recorded in the second book of Chronicles, the second chapter, seventh verse :
“Send me now therefore a man cunning to work in gold, and in silver, and in brass, and in iron, and in purple and in crimson, and blue, and that can skill to grave with the cunning men that are with me in Judah, and in Jerusalem, whom David my father did provide.”
In the epistle of King Hiram, responsive to this request, contained in the same book and chapter, in the thirteenth and fourteenth verses, are the following words:
“And now I have sent a cunning man, endued with understanding, of Huram my father’s. The son of a woman of the daughters of Dan, and his father was a man of Tyre, skillful to work in gold and in silver, in brass, in iron, in stone, and in timber, in purple, in blue, and in fine linen, and in crimson; also to grave any manner of graving, and to find out every device which shall be put to him, with thy cunning men, and with the cunning men of my lord David, thy father.”
A further description of him is given in the seventh chapter of the first book of Kings, in the thirteenth and fourteenth verses, and in these words
“And King Solomon sent and fetched Hiram out of
It is very evident that this was the origin of the Legend which was incorporated into the Masonic system, and which, on the institution of Speculative Freemasonry, was adopted as the most prominent portion of the Third Degree.
The mediaeval Masons were acquainted with the fact that
King Solomon had an assistant in the works of the
In the Halliwell MS., the earliest known to us, the Legend is not related. Either the writers of the two poems of which that manuscript is composed were ignorant of it, or in the combination of the two poems there has been a mutilation and the Hiramic Legend has been omitted.
In the Cooke MS., which is a hundred years later, we meet with the first allusion to it and the first error, which is repeated in various forms in all the subsequent manuscript constitutions.
That manuscript says: “And at the makyng of the temple in Salamonis tyme as lit is seyd in the bibull in the iii boke of Regum in tertio Regum capitulo quinto, that Salomoii had iiii score thousand masons at his werke. And the kyngis sone of Tyry was his master mason.”
The reference here made to the third book of Kings is according to the old distribution of the Hebrew canon, where the two books of Samuel are caged the mat and second books of Kings. According to our present canon, the reference would be to the fifth chapter of the first book of Kings. In that chapter nothing is said of Hiram Abif, but it is recorded there that “ Adoniram was over the levy.” Now the literal meaning of Adoniram is the lord Hiram. As the King of Tyre had promised to send his workmen to Lebanon, and as it is stated that Adoniram superintended the men who were there hewing the trees, the old legendist, not taking into account that the levy of thirty thousand, over whom Adoniram presided, were Israelites and not Phoenicians, but supposing that they had been sent to Lebanon by Hiram, King of Tyre, and that he had sent Adoniram with them and viewing the word as meaning the lord Hiram, hastily came to the conclusion that this Lord or Prince Hiram was the son of the King. And hence he made the mistake of saying that the son of the King of Tyre was the person sent to Solomon to be his, master-mason or master-builder.
This error was repeated in nearly all the succeeding manuscripts, for they are really only copies of each other, and the word Adon, as meaning lord or prince, seems to have been always assumed in some one or other corrupted form as the name of the workman sent by King Hiram to King Solomon, and whom the Freemasons of the present day know as Hiram Abif.
Thus in the Doweled MS., conjecturally dated at A.D. 1550, it is said:
“ And furthermore there was a Kinge of another region that men called IRAM, and he loved well Kinge Solomon and he gave him tymber to his worke. And he had a sonn that height (was called) AYNON, and he was a Master of Geometrie and was chief Master of all his Masons, and was Master of all his gravings and carvings and of all manner of Masonrye that longed to the Temple.”
There can be no doubt that Aynon is here a corruption of Adon. In the Landsdowne MS., whose date is A.D. 1560, the language is precisely the same, except that it says King Iram “ had a sonne that was called a man.”
It seems almost certain that the initial letter a in this name has been, by careless writing, dislocated from the remaining letters, man, and that the true reading is Aman, which is itself an error, instead of Amon, and this a manifest corruption of Adon. This is confirmed by the York MS., Number 1 which is about forty years later (A.D.1600), where the name is spelled Amon. This is also the name in the Lodge of Hope MS., dated A.D. 1680.
In the Grand Lodge MS., date of A.D. 1632, he is again called the son of the King of Tyre, but his name is given as Aynone, another corrupted form of Adon. In the Sloane MS., Number 3,848, A.D. 1646, it is Aynon, the final e being omitted. In the Harleian MS., Number 1942, dated A.D. 1670, both the final e and the medial y are omitted, and the name becoming Anon approximates still nearer to the true Adon.
In the Alnwick MS., of A.D. 1701, the name is still
further corrupted into Ajuon. In all of these manuscripts the Legend continues
to call this artist the son of the King of Tyre, whose name is said to be Hiram
or more usually Iram; and hence the corrupted orthography of Amon, Aynon, or
Anon, being restored to the true form of Adon, with which word the old Masons
were acquainted, as signifying Lord or Prince, we get, by prefixing it to his
father’s name, Adon-Iram or Adoniram, the Lord or Prince Hiram. And hence arose the mistake of confounding Hiram Abif with Adoniram,
the chief of the workmen on
The Papworth MS., whose date is A. D. 1714, is too near the time of the Revival and the real establishment of Speculative Masonry to be of much value in this inquiry. It, however, retains the statement from the Old Legend, that the artist was the son of King Hiram. But it changes his name to that of Benaim. This is probably an incorrect inflection of the Hebrew word Boneh, a builder, and shows that the writer, in an attempt to correct the error of the preceding legendists who had corrupted Adon into Anon or Amon, or Ajuon, had in his smattering of Hebrew committed a greater one.
The Krause MS. is utterly worthless as authority. It is a
forgery, written most probably, I think I may say certainly, after the
publication of the first edition of
The name of Hiram Abif is first introduced to public
notice by
In this work he changes the statement made in the Legend of the Craft, and says that the King of Tyre sent to King Solomon his namesake Hiram Abif, the prince of architects.”
Then quoting in the original Hebrew a passage from the second book of Chronicles, where the name of Hiram Abif is to be found, he excels it “by allowing the word Abif to be the surname of Hiram the Mason;” furthermore he adds that in the passage where the King of Tyre calls him “ Huram of my father’s,” the meaning is that Huram was “the chief Master Mason of my father, King Abibalus,” a most uncritical attempt, because he intermixes, as its foundation, the Hebrew original and the English version. He had not discovered the true explication, namely, that Hiram is the name, and Ab the title, denoting, as I have before said, Master Workman, and that in, or iv, or if, is a pronominal suffix, meaning his, so that when speaking of him in his relation to King Solomon, he is called Hiram Abif, that is Hiram, his or Solomon’s Master Workman.
But
In the second or 1738 edition of the Constitutions,
In that second edition, he asserts that the tradition is
that King Hiram had been Grand Master of all Masons, but that when the
From these suggestions of
The substance of the Legend, so far as it is concerned in
the present investigation, is that at the building of the
As what relates to the fate of Hiram Abif is to be explained in an altogether allegorical or symbolical sense, it will more appropriately come finder consideration when we are treating, in a
subsequent part of this work, of the Symbolism of Freemasonry.
Our present study will be the legendary character of Hiram Abif as the chief Master Mason of the Temple, and our investigations will be directed to the origin and meaning of the myth which has now, by universal consent of the Craft, been adopted, whether correctly or not we shall see hereafter.
The question before us, let it be understood, is not as to the historic truth of the Hiramic legend, as set forth in the Third Degree of the Masonic ritual-not as to whether this be the narrative of an actual occurrence or merely an allegory accompanied by a moral signification-not as to the truth or fallacy of the theory which finds the origin of Freemasonry in the Temple of Jerusalem-but how it has been that the Masons of the Middle Ages should have incorporated into their Legend of the Craft the idea that a worker in metal-in plain words, a smith-was the chief builder at the Temple. This thought, and this thought alone, must govern us in the whole course of our inquiry.
Of all the myths that have prevailed among the peoples of
the earth, hardly any has had a greater antiquity or a more extensive existence
than that of the Smith who worked in metals, and fabricated shields and swords
for warriors, or jewelry for queens and noble ladies.
Such a myth is to be found among the traditions of the earliest religions, (1)
and being handed down through ages of popular transmission, it is preserved,
with various i-natural modifications, in the legends of the Middle Age, from
Scandinavia to the most southern limit of the Latin race. Long before this
period it was to be found in the mythology and the folk-lore of Assyria, of
Freemasonry, in its most recent form as well as in its older Legend, while adopting the story of Hiram Abif, once called Adon Hiram, has strangely distorted its true features, as exhibited in the books of Kings and Chronicles; and it has, without any historical authority, transformed the Scriptural idea of a skillful smith into that of an architect and builder. Hence, in the Old Legend he is styled a “Master of Geometry and of all Masonry,” and in the modern ritual of Speculative Masonry he is called “ the Builder,” and to him, in both, is supposed to have been intrusted the super- intendence of the Temple of Solomon, during its construction, and the government and control of those workmen-the stone squarers and masons-who were engaged in the labor of its erection
To divest this Legend of its corrupt form, and to give to Hiram Abif, who was actually an historic personage, his true position among the workmen at the Temple, can not affect, in the slightest degree, the symbolism of which he forms so integral a part, while it will rationally account for the importance that has been attributed to him in the old as well as in the new Masonic system.
Whether we make Hiram Abif the chief Builder and the Operative Grand Master of Solomon’s Temple, or whether we assign that position to Anon, Amon, or Ajuon, as it is in the Old Legend, or to Adoniram, as it is done in some Masonic Rites, the symbolism will remain unaffected, because the symbolic idea rests on the fact of a Chief Builder having existed, and it is immaterial to the development of the symbolism what was his true name. The instruction intended to be conveyed in the legend of the Third Degree must remain unchanged, no matter whom we may identify as its hero; for he truly represents neither Hiram nor Anon nor Adoniram nor any other individual person, but rather the idea of man in an abstract sense,
It is, however, important to the truth of history that the real facts should be eliminated out of the mythical statements which envelop them. We must throw off the husk, that we may get at the germ. And besides, it will add a new attraction to the system of Masonic ritualism if we shall be able to trace in it any remnant of that oldest and most interesting of the myths, the Legend of the Smith, which, as I have said, has universally prevailed in the most ancient forms of religious faith.
Before investigating this Legend of the Smith in its reference to Freemasonry and to this particular Legend of Hiram Abif which we are now considering, it will be proper to inquire into the character of the Legend as it existed in the old religions and in the mediaeval myths. We may then inquire how this Legend, adopted in Freemasonry in its stricter ancient form of the Legend of Tubal Cain, became afterward confounded with another legend of a Temple-Builder.
If we go back to the oldest of all mythologies, that which is taught in the Vedic hymns, we shall find the fire-god Agni, whose flames are described as being luminous, powerful, fearful, and not to be trusted.”
The element of fire thus worshipped by the primeval Aryans, as an instrument of good or of evil, was subsequently personified by the Greeks: the Vedic hymns, referring to the continual renovation of the flame, as it was fed by fuel, called it the fire-god Agni; also Gavishtha, that is, the ever young. From this the Greeks got their Hephaestus, the mighty workman, the immortal smith who forged the weapons of the gods, and, at the prayer of Thetis, fabricated the irresistible armor of Achilles. The Romans were indebted to their Aryan ancestors for the same idea of the potency of fire, and personified it in their Vulcan, a name which is evidently derived from the Sanscrit Ulka, a firebrand, although a similarity of sound has led many etymologists to deduce the Roman Vulcan from the Semitic Tubal Cain. Indeed, until the modern discoveries in comparative philology, this was the universal opinion of the learned.
Among the Babylonians an important god was Bil-can. He was the fire-god, and the name seems to be derived from Baal, or Bel, and Cain, the god of smiths, or the master smith. George Smith, in his Chaldaen Account of Genesis, thinks that there is possibly some connection here with the Biblical Tubal Cain and the classical Vulcan.
From the fragments of Sanchoniathon we learn that the Phoenicians had a hero whom he calls Chrysor. He was worshipped after his death, in consequence of the many inventions that he bestowed on man, under the name of Diamichius; that is, the great inventor. To him was ascribed the invention of all those arts which the Greeks attributed to Hephaestus, and the Romans to Vulcan. Bishop Cumberland derives the name of Chrysor from the Hebrew Charatz, or the Sharbener, an appropriate designation of one who taught the use of iron tools. The authorized version of Genesis, which calls Tubal Cain “ an instructor of every artificer in brass and iron,” is better rendered in the Septuagint and the Vulgate as a sharpener of every instrument in brass and iron.”
Tubal Cain has been derived, in the English lectures of Dr. Hemming, and, of course, by Dr. Oliver, from a generally received etymology that Cain meant worldly possessions, and the true symbolism of the name has been thus perverted. The true derivation is from kin, which, says Gesenius, has the especial meaning to forge iron, whence comes Kain, a spear or lance, an instrument of iron that has been forged. In the cognate Arabic it is Kayin. “ This word,” says Dr. Goldziher in his work on Mythology Among the Hebrews” which with other synonymous names of trades occurs several times on the so-called Nabatean Sinaitic inscriptions, signifies Smith, maker of agricultural implements (1) and has preserved this meaning in the Arabic Kayin and the Aramaic kinaya, whilst in the later Hebrew it was lost altogether, being probably suppressed through the Biblical attempt to derive the proper name Cain etymologically from kana, “ to gain.” Here it is that Hemming and Oliver got their false symbolism of “worldly possessions.”
Goldziher attempts to identify mythologically Cain the fratricide with the son of Lamech. Whether he be correct or not in his theory, it is at least a curious coincidence that Cain, which I have shown to mean a smith, should have been the first builder of a city, and that the same name should have been assigned to the first forger of metals, while the old Masonic Legend makes the master smith, Hiram of Tyre, also the chief builder of Solomon.
It will, I think, be interesting to trace the progress of the myth which has given in every age and every country this prominent position among artisans to the smith.
Hephaestus, or Vulcan, kindling his forges in the isle of Lemnos, and with his Cyclops journeymen beating out and shaping and welding the red-hot iron into the forms of spears and javelins and helmets and coats of mail, was the southern development of the Aryan fire-god Agni. “ Hephaestus, or Vulcan,” says Diodorus Siculus, “ was the first founder in iron, brass, gold, silver, and all fusible metals, and he taught the uses to which fire might be applied by artificers.” Hence he was called by the ancients the god of blacksmiths.
The Scandinavians, or northern descendants of the Aryan
race, brought with them, in their emigration from
Eke the Hephaestus and Vulcan of the Greeks and Romans. They had, indeed, Loki, who derived his name, it is said by some, from the Icelandic logi, or flame.
He confines the expression to “agricultural” to enforce a particular theory then under consideration. He might correctly have been more general and included all other kinds of implements, warlike and mechanical as well as agricultural. But he was an evil principle, and represented rather the destructive than the creative powers of fire.
But the Scandinavians, interpolating, like all the northern nations, their folk-lore into their mythology, invented their legends of a skillful smith, beneath whose mighty blows upon the yielding iron swords of marvelous keenness and strength were forged, or by whose wonderful artistic skill diadems and bracelets and jewels of surpassing beauty were constructed. Hence the myth of a wonderfully cunning artist was found everywhere, and the Legend of the Smith became the common property of all the Scandinavian and Teutonic nations, and was of so impressive a character that it continued to exist down to mediaeval times, and traces of it have ex-tended to the superstitions of the present day. May we not justly look to its influence for the prominence given by the old Masonic legendists to the Master Smith of King Hiram among the workmen of Solomon?
Among the Scandinavians we have the Legend of Volund, whose story is recited in the Volunddarkvitha, or Lay of Volund, contained in the Edda of Saemund. Volund (pronounced as if spelled Wayland) was one of three brothers, sons of an Elf-king ; that is to say, of a supernatural race. The three brothers emigrated to Ulfdal, where they married three Valkyries, or choosers of the slain, maidens of celestial origin, the attendants of Odin, and whose attributes were similar to those of the Greek Parcae, or Fates. After seven years the three wives fled away to pursue their allotted duty of visiting battle-fields. Two of the brothers went in search of their errant wives; but Volund remained in Ulfdal. He was a skillful workman at the forge, and occupied his time in fabricating works in gold and steel, while patiently awaiting the promised return of his beloved spouse.
Niduth, the king of the country, having heard of the wonderful skill of Volund as a forger of metals, visited his home during his absence and surreptitiously got possession of some of the jewels which he had made, and of the beautiful sword which the smith had fabricated for himself
Volund, on his return, was seized by the warriors of Niduth and conducted to the castle. There the queen, terrified at his fierce looks, ordered him to be hamstrung. Thus, maimed and deprived of the power of escape or resistance, he was confined to a small island in the vicinity of the royal residence and compelled to fabricate jewels for the queen and her daughter, and weapons of war for the king.
It were tedious to recount all the adventures of the smith while confined in his island prison. It is sufficient to say that, having constructed a pair of wings by which he was enabled to fly
(by which we are reminded of the Greek fable of Daedalus), he made his escape, having by stratagem first dishonored the princess and slain her two brothers.
This legend of “ a curious and
cunning workman “ at the forge was so popular in
In the Icelandic legend Volund is described as a great artist in the fabrication of iron, gold and silver. It does not, however, connect him with supernatural beings, but attributes to him great skill in his art, in which he is assisted by the power of magic.
The Germans had the same legend at a very early period. In the German Legend the artificer is called Wieland, and he is represented as the son of a giant named Wade. He acquires the art of a smith from Minner, a skillful workman, and is perfected by the Dwarfs in all his operations at the forge as an armorer and gold. smith. He goes of his own accord to the king, who is here called Nidung, where he finds another skillful smith, named Amilias, with whom he contends in battle, and kills him with his sword, Mimung. For this offense he is maimed by the king, and then the rest of the story proceeds very much like that of the Scandinavian legend.
Among the Anglo-Saxons the legend is found not varying much from the original type. The story where the hero receives the name of Weland is contained in an ancient poem, of which fragments, unfortunately, only remain. The legend had become so familiar to the people that in the metrical romance of Beowulf the coat of mail of the hero is described as the work of Weland; and King Alfred in his translation of the Consolation of Philosophy by Boethius, where the author allude,, to the bones of the Consul Fabricius, in the passage “ ubi sunt ossa Fabricie ? “ (where now are the bones of Fabricius ?), thus paraphrases the question: Where now
All these smiths of mythology and folk-lore are represented as being lame, like Hephaestus, who broke his leg in falling from heaven. are the bones of the wise Weland, the goldsmith that was formerly so famed ? “ Geoffrey of Monmouth afterward, in a Latin poem, speaks of the gold, and jewels, and cups that had been sculptured by Weland, which name he Latinizes as Gueilandus.
In the old French chronicles we repeatedly encounter the legend of the skillful smith, though, as might be expected, the name undergoes many changes. Thus, in a poem of the 6th century, entitled Gautier a la main forte, or Walter of the strong hand, it is said that in a combat of Walter de Varkastein he was protected from the lance of Randolf by a cuirass made by Wieland.
Another chronicle, of the 12th century, tells us that a Count of Angouleme, in a battle with the Normans, cut the cuirass and the body of the Norman King in twain at a single stroke, with his sword Durissima, which had been made by the smith Walander. A chronicle of the same period, written by the monk John of Marmontier, describes the magnificent habiliments of Geoffrey Plantagenet, Duke of Normandy, among which, says the author, was “ a sword taken from the royal treasury and long since renowned. Galannus, the most skillful of armorers, had employed much labor and care in making it.” Galans, for Walans (the G being substituted for the W, as a letter unknown in the French alphabet), is the name bestowed in general on this skillful smith, and the romances of the Trouveres and Troubadours of northern and southern France, in the 12th and 13th centuries, abound in references to swords of wondrous keenness and strength that were forged by him for the knights and paladins.
Whether the name was given as Volund, or Wieland, or Weland, or Galans, it found its common origin in the Icelandic Volund, which signifies a smith. It is a generic term, from which the mythical name has been derived. So the Greeks called the skillful workman, the smith of their folk-lore, Daedalus, because there is a verb in their language daidallo, which means to do skillful or ornamental work.
Here it may not be irrelevant to notice the curious fact that concurrently with these legends of a skillful smith there ran in the Middle Ages others, of which King Solomon was the subject. In many of these old romances and metrical tales, a skill was attributed to him which makes him the rival of the subordinate artisan. Indeed, the artistic reputation of Solomon was so proverbial at the very time when these legends of the smith were prevalent, that in the poems of those days we meet with repeated uses of the expression “ l’uevre Salemon,” or “the work of Solomon,” to indicate any production of great artistic beauty.
So fully had the Scandinavian sagas the German chronicles, and the French romances spoken of this mythical smith that the idea became familiar to the common people, and was handed down in the popular superstitions and the folk-lore, to a comparatively modern period. Two of these, one from Germany and one from England, will suffice as examples, and show the general identity of the legends and the probability of their common origin.
Herman Harrys, in his Tales and Legends of Lower Saxony, tells the story of a smith who dwelt in the village of Hagen, on the side of a mountain, about two miles from Osnabruck. He was celebrated for his skill in forging metals ; but, being discontented with his lot, and murmuring against God, he was supernaturally carried into a cavernous cleft of the mountain, where he was condemned to be a metal king, and, resting by day, to labor at night at the forge for the benefit of men, until the mine in the mountain should cease to be productive.
In the coolness of the mine, says the legend, his good disposition returned, and he labored with great assiduity, extracting ore from its veins, and at first forging household and agricultural implements. Afterward he confined himself to the shoeing of horses for the neighboring; farmers. In front of the cavern was a stake fixed iii the ground, to which the countryman fastened the horse which he wished to have shod, and on a stone near by he laid the necessary fee. He then retired. On returning in due time he would find the task completed; but the smith, or, as he was called, the Hiller, i.e., Hider, would never permit himself to be seen.
Similar to this is the English legend, which tells us that
in a vale of
It is very evident, from all that has been here said, that the smith, as the fabricator of weapons for the battle-field and jewels for the bourdoir, as well as implements of agriculture and household use, was a most important personage in the earliest times, deified by the ancients, and invested by the moderns with supernatural gifts. It is equally evident that this respect for the smith as an artificer was prevalent in the Middle Ages. But in the very latest legends, by a customary process of degeneration in all traditions, when the stream becomes muddled as it proceeds onward, he descended in character from a forger of swords, his earliest occupation, to be a shoer of horses, which was his last.
It must be borne in mind, also, that in the -Middle Ages the respect for the smith as a “ curious and cunning “ workman began by the introduction of a new clement, brought by the Crusaders and pilgrims from the East to be shared with King Solomon, who was supposed to be invested with equal skill.
It is not, therefore, strange that the idea should have been incorporated into the rituals of the various secret societies of the Middle ,Ages and adopted by the Freemasonry at first by the Operative branch and afterward, in a more enlarged form, by the Speculative Masons.
In all of the old manuscripts constitutions of the Operative Masons we find the Legendof the Craft, and with it, except in one instance, and that the earliest, a reference to Tubal Cain as the one who “ found [that is, invented] the Smith Craft of gold and silver, iron and copper and steel.”
Nothing but the universal prevalence of the mediaeval legend of the smith, Volund or Weland, can, I think, account for this reference to the Father of Smith Craft in a legend which should have been exclusively appropriated to Stone Craft. There is no connection between the forge and the trowel which authorized on any other ground the honor paid by stone-masons to a forger of metals-an honor so marked that in time the very name of Tubal Cain came to be adopted as a significant and important word in the Masonic ritual, and the highest place in the traditional labors of the Temple was assigned to a worker in gold and brass and iron.
Afterward, when the Operative Art was superseded by the
Speculative Science, the latter supplemented to the simple Legend of the Craft the
more recondite Legend of the
In the beginning of the 18th century, when what
has been called the Revival took place, there was a continuation of the general
idea that he was the chief Mason at the Temple; but the true name of Hiram Abif
is, as we have already said, then first found in a written or printed record.
Now, it will be profitable in the investigation of historic truth to compare these attributes assigned to Hiram Abif I)y the older and more recent legendists with the biblical accounts of the same person which have already been cited.
In the original Hebrew text of the passage in the book of Chronicles, the words which designate the profession of Hiram Abif are Khoresh nekhoshet,- literally, a worker in brass. The Vulgate, which was the popular version in those days and from which the old legendists must have derived their knowledge of biblical history, thus translates the letter of King Hiram to King Solomon: “ Therefore I have sent to thee a wise and most skillful man, Hiram the workman or smith, my father “-Hiram fabrem Patrem meum.
Indeed, in the close of the verse in the Authorized Version he is described as being “ cunning to work all works in brass.” And hence Dr. Adam Clarke, in his,, Commentaries, calls him “ a very intelligent coppersmith.”
The error into which the old legendists and the modern Masonicwriters have fallen, in supposing him to have been a stone-mason oran architect, has arisen from the mistranslation in the Authorized
Version of the passage in Chronicles where he is said to have been “ skillful to work in gold and in silver, in brass, in iron, in stone, and in timber.” The words in the original are Baabanim vebagnelsim, in stones and in woods,- that is, in. Precious stones and in woods of various kinds. That is to say, besides being a coppersmith he was a lapidary and a carver and gilder. The words in the original Hebrew are in the plural, and therefore the translation “ in wood and in timber “ is not correct. Gesenius says-and there is no better authority for a Hebraism-that the word eben is used by way of excellence, to denote a precious stone, and its plural, abanim, means, therefore, precious stones. In the same way gnetz, which in the singular signifies a tree, in the plural denotes materials of wood, for any purpose.
The work that was done by Hiram Abif in the
The same authority leaves us in no doubt as to what that work was to which the skill of Hiram Abif had been devoted. “It was,”says the book of Chronicles, “ the two pillars, and the pommels and the chapiters which were on the top of the pillars ; and four hundred pomegranates on the two wreaths; two rows of pomegranates on each wreath, to cover the two pommels of the chapiters which were upon the pillars. He made also bases, and lavers made he upon the bases; one sea and twelve oxen under it. The pots also, and the shovels and the flesh hooks and all their instruments, did Huram his father (Hiram Abif) make to King Solomon, for the house of the Lord, of bright brass.”
Enough has been said to show that the labors of Hiram Abif
in the
The high honor paid to him is the result of the influence
of that Legend of the Smith, so universally spread in the Middle
Ages, which recounted the wondrous deeds of Volund, or Wieland, or Wayland. The
smith was, in the mediaeval traditions, in the sagas of the north and in the
romances of the south of
But the idea that of all handicrafts smith-craft was the
greatest was unwittingly retained by the Masons when they elevated the skillful
smith of
The spirit of critical iconoclasm, which strips the exterior husk from the historic germ of all myths and legends, has been doing much to divest the history of Freemasonry of all fabulous assumptions. This attempt to give to Hiram Abif his true position, and to define his real profession, is in the spirit of that iconoclasm.
But the doctrine here advanced is not intended to affect in the slightest degree the part assigned to Hiram Abif in the symbolism of the Third Degree. Whatever may have been his profession, he must have stood high in the confidence of the two kings, of him who sent him and him who received him, as “ a master workman; “ and he might well be supposed to be entitled in an allegory to the exalted rank bestowed upon him in the Lege d of the Craft and in the modern ritual.
Allegories are permitted to diverge at will from the facts of history and the teachings of science. Trees may be made to speak, as they do in the most ancient fable extant, and it is no infringement of their character that a worker in brass may be transmuted into a builder in stone to suit a symbolic purpose.
Hence this “ celebrated artist,” as he is fairly called, whether smith or mason, is still the representative, in the symbolism of Freemasonry, of the abstract idea of man laboring in the temple of life, and the symbolic lesson of his tried integrity and his unhappy fate is still the same.
As Freemasons, when we view the whole Legend as a myth intended to give expression to a symbolic idea, we may be content to call him an architect, the first of Masons, and the chief builder of the Temple; but as students of history we can know nothing of him and admit nothing concerning him that is not supported by authentic and undisputed authority.
We must, therefore, look upon him as the ingenious artist,
who worked in metals and in precious stones, who carved in cedar and in
olive-wood, and thus made the ornaments of the
He is only the Volund or Wieland of the olden legend, changed, by a mistaken but a natural process of transmuting traditions, from a worker in brass to a worker in stone.
The Leland Manuscript, so called because it is said to have been discovered by the celebrated antiquary John Leland, and sometimes called the Locke Manuscript in consequence of the suppositous annotations appended to it by that metaphysician, has for more than a century attracted the attention and more recently excited the controversies of Masonic scholars.
After having been cited with approbation by such writers as Preston,It is in fact one of those “pious frauds” intended to strengthen the claim of the Order to a great antiquity and to connect it with the mystical schools of the ancients. But as it proposes a theory concerning the origin of the Institution, which was long accepted as a legend of the Order, it is entitled to a place in the legendary history of Freemasonry.
The story of this manuscript and the way in which it was introduced to the notice of the Craft is a singular one.
In the Gentleman’s Magazine for September, 1753, the so called manuscript was printed for the first time under the title of “ Certayne Questyons with Awnserers to the same, Concernynge the Mystery of Maconrye, wrytenne by the Hande of Kynge Henrye the Sixthe of the Name, and faythfullye copyed by me John Leylande Antiquaries, by the Commaunde of His Highnesse.” That is, King Henry the Eighth, by whom Leland was employed to search for antiquities in the libraries of cathedrals, abbeys, priories, colleges and all places where any ancient records were to be found.
The article in the Gentleman’s Magazine is prefaced with these words:
“The following treatise is said to be printed at
The claim, therefore, is that this document was first
published at
Kloss, it is true, in his Bibliography, gives the title in
German, with the imprint of “
Besides, it is not unusual with Kloss to give the titles
of books that he has never seen, and for whose existence he had no other authority
than the casual remark of some other writer. Thus he gives the titles of the Short
Analysis of the Unchanged.Rites and Ceremonies of Freemasons, said to have been
printed in 1676, and the Short Charge, ascribed to 1698, two books which have
never been found. But he applies to them the epithet of “
doubtful “ as he does to the
But before proceeding to an examination of the external and internal evidence of the true character of this document, it will be expedient to give a sketch of its contents. It has been published in so many popular works of easy access that it is unnecessary to present it here in full.
It is introduced by a letter from Mr. Locke (the celebrated author of the Essay on the Human
Understanding), said to be addressed to the Earl of Pembroke, under date of May 6, 1696, in which he states that by the help of Mr. Cns he had obtained a copy of the MS. in the Bodleian Library, which he therewith had sent to the Earl. It is accompanied by numerous notes which were made the day before by Mr. Locke for the reading of Lady Masham, who had become very fond of Masonry.
Mr. Locke says: “The manuscript of which this is a copy, appears to be about 160 years old. Yet (as your Lordship will observe by the title) it is itself a copy of one yet more ancient by about 100 years. For the original is said to have been the handwriting of K. H. VI. Where the Prince had it is at present an uncertainty, but it seems to me to be an examination (taken perhaps before the king) of some one of the Brotherhood of Masons; among whom he entered himself, as ‘tis said, when he came out of his minority, and thenceforth put a stop to the persecution that had been raised against them.”
The “ examination,” for such it purports to be, as Mr. Locke supposes, consists of twelve questions and answers. The style and orthography is an attempted imitation of the language of the 15th century. How far successful the attempt has been will be discussed hereafter.
Masonry is described to be the skill of Nature, the understanding of the might that is therein and its various operations, besides the skill of numbers, weights and measures, and the true manner of fashioning all things for the use of man, principally dwellings and buildingd of all kinds and all other things that may be useful to man.
Its origin is said to have been with the first men of the
East, who were before the Man of the West, by which Mr. Locke, in his note,
says is meant Pre-Adamites, the “ Man of the West “ being
Adam. The Phoenicians, who first came from the East into
It was brought into
(1) It will be seen that in this and other places I cite
the name of Mr. Locke as if he were really the author of the note, a theory to
which I by no means desire to commit myself. The reference in this way is
merely for convenience. where the Phoenicians had
planted Masonry. Having obtained a knowledge of the art in the Lodges of Masons
into which he gained admission, on his return to Europe he settled in Magna
Grecia (the name given by the ancients to Southern Italy), and established a
Grand Lodge at Crotona, one of its principal cities, where he made many Masons.
Some of there traveled into
Such is the history of the origin and progress of Masonry which is given in the Leland Manuscipt. The remainder of the document is engaged in giving the character and the objects of the Institution.
Thus it is said, in relation to secrecy, that Masons have at all times communicated to mankind such of their secrets as might generally be useful, and have kept back only those that might be harmful in evil hands-those that could be of no use unless accompanied by the teachings of the Lodge, and those which are employed to bind the brethren more strongly together.
The arts taught by Masons to mankind are enumerated as being Agriculture, Architecture, Astronomy, Geometry, Arithmetic ,Music, Poetry, Chemistry, Government, and Religion.
Masons are said to be better teachers than other men, because the first of them received from God the art of finding new arts, and of teaching them, whereas the discoveries of other men have been but few, and acquired only by chance. This art of discovery the Masons conceal for their own profit. They also conceal the art of working miracles, the art of foretelling future events, the art of changes (which Mr. Locke is made in a note to interpret as signifying the transmutation of metals), the method of acquiring the faculty of Abrac, the power of becoming good and perfect without the aid of fear and hope, and the universal language.
And lastly it is admitted that Masons do not know more than other men, but onlyhave a better opportunity of knowing, in which many fail for want of capacity and industry. And as to their virtue, while it is acknowledged that some are not so good as other men, yet it is believed that for the most part they are better than they would be if they were not Masons. And it is claimed that Masons, greatly love each other, because good and true men, knowing each other to be such, always love the more the better they are.
“ And here endethe the Questyonnes and Awnsweres.”
There does not appear to be any great novelty or value in this document The theory of the origin of Masonry had been advanced by others before its appearance in public, and the characteristics of Masonry had been previously defined in better language.
But no sooner is it printed in the Gentleman’s Magazine
for the month of September, and year 1753, than it is seized as a bonne bouche
by printers and writers, so that being first received with surprise, it was
soon accepted as a genuine relic of the early age of English Masonry and
incorporated into its history, a position that it has not yet lost, in the
opinion of some. The forgeries of Chatterton and of
Of the genuine publications of this document, so much as this is known.
It was first printed, as we have seen, in the Gentleman’s
Magazine, in September, 1753. Kloss records a book as published in 1754, with
no place of publication, but probably it was
In Germany it first appeared in 1776, says Krause, in G. L. Meyer’s translation of Preston; in 1780, in a translation of Hutchinson, published at Berlin; in 1805, in the Magazinfiir Freimaurer of Professor Seehass; in 1807, in the collected Masonic works of Fessler; in 1810, by Dr. Krause in his Three Oldest Documents,and in 1824, by Mossdorf in his edition of Lenning’s Encyclopedie.
In
In
In none of these republications, with one or two
exceptions, is there an expression of the slightest doubt of the genuineness of
the document. It has on the contrary been, until recently, almost everywhere
accepted as authentic, and as the detail of an actual examination of a Mason or
a company of Masons, made by King Henry VI., of
Of all who have cited this pretended manuscript, Dr. Carl
Christian Friederich Krausse is perhaps the most learned, and the one who from
the possession of great learning, we should naturally expect would have been
most capable of detecting a literary forgery, speaks of it, in his great work
on The Three Oldest Documents Of the Fraternity of Freemasons, as being a
remarkable and instructive document and as among the oldest that are known to
us. In
And Mossdorf, whose warm and intimate relations with Krause influenced perhaps to some extent his views on this as well as they did on other Masonic subjects, has expressed a like favorable opinion of the Leland Manuscript. In his additions to the Encyclopedie of Lenning, he calls it a remarkable document, which, notwithstanding a singularity about it, and its impression of the
ancient time in which it originated, is instructive, and the oldest catechism which we have on the origin, the nature, and the design of Masonry.
The editor of Lawrie’s History is equally satisfied of the genuine character of this document, to which he confidently refers as conclusive evidence that Dr. Plot was wrong in saying that Henry VI. did not patronize Masonry.
Dr. Oliver is one of the most recent and, as might be expected from his peculiar notions in respect to the early events of Masonry, one of the most ardent defenders of the authenticity of the manuscript, although he candidly admits “ that there is some degree of mystery about it, and doubts have been entertained whether it be not a forgery.”
But, considering its publicity at a time when Freemasonry was beginning- to excite a considerable share of public attention, and that the deception, if there was one, would have been publicly exposed by the opponents of the Order, he thinks that their silence is presumptive proof that the document is genuine.
“Being thus universally diffused,” he says, “ had it been a suspected document, its exposure would have been certainly attempted if a forgery, it would have been unable to have endured the test of a critical examination. But no such attempt was made, and the presumption is that-the document is authentic.”
But, on the ther hand there are some writers who have as carefully investigated the subject as those whom I have referred to, but the result of whose investigations have led them irresistibly to the conclusion that the document never had any existence until the middle of the 18th century, and that the effort to place it in the time of Henry VI. is, as Mounier calls it, “ a Masonic fraud.”
As early as 1787, while the English Masons were receiving
it as a document of approved truth, the French critics had begun to doubt its
genuineness. At a meeting of the Philalethes, a Rite of Hermetic Masonry which
had been instituted at
Lessing was the first of the German critics who attacked
the genuineness of the document. This he did in his Ernst und Falk, the first
edition of which was published in 1778. Others followed, and the German
unfavorable criticisms were closed by Findel, the editor of the Bauhutte, and author
of a History of Freemasonr , first published in 1865,
and which was translated in 1869 by Bro.
In
Sloane, in his New Curiosities of Literature. Sloane was not a Freemason, and his criticism, vigorous as it is, seems to have been inspired rather by a feeling of enmity to the Institution than by an honest desire to seek the truth. His conclusions, however, as to the character of the document are based on the most correct canons of criticism. Bro. A. F. A. Woodford is more cautious in the expression of his judgment, but admits that “ we must give up the actual claim of the document to be a manuscript of the time of King Henry VI., or to have been written by him or copied by Leland.” Yet he thinks “ it not unlikely that we have in it the remains of a Lodge catechism conjoined with a Hermetic one.” But this is a mere supposition, and hardly a plausible one
But a recent writer, unfortunately anonymous, in the
Masonic Magazine, of
Now, amid such conflicting views, an investigation must be conducted with the greatest impartiality. the influence of great names especially among the German writers, has been enlisted on both sides, and the most careful judgment must be exercised in determining which of these sides is right and which is wrong.
In the investigation of the genuineness of any document we must have resort to two kinds of evidence, the external and the internal. The former is usually more clear and precise, as well as more easily handled, because it is superficial and readily comprehended by the most unpracticed judgment. But when there is no doubt about the interpretation, and there is a proper exercise of skill, internal evidence is freer from doubt, and therefore the most conclusive. It is, says a recent writer on the history of our language, the pure reason of the case, speaking to us directly, by which we can not be deceived, if we only rightly apprehend it. But, al-though we must sometimes dispense with external evidence, because it may be unattainable, while the internal evidence is always existent, yet the combination of the two will make the conclusion to which we may arrive more infallible than it could be by the application of either kind alone.
If it should be claimed that a particular document was written in a certain century, the mention of it, or citations from it, by contemporary authors would be the best external evidence of its genuineness. It is thus that the received canon of the New Testament has been strengthened in its authority, by the quotation of numerous passages of the Gospels and the Epistles which are to be found in the authentic writings of the early Fathers of the Church. This is the external evidence.
If the language of the document under consideration, the peculiar style, and the archaic words used in it should be those found in other documents known to have been written in the same century, and if the sentiments are those that we should look for in the author, are in accord with the age in which he lived, this would be internal evidence and would be entitled to great weight.
But this internal evidence is subject to one fatal defect.
The style and language of the period and the sentiments of the pretended author
and of the age in which he lived may be successfully imitated by a skillful
forger, and then the results of internal evidence will be evaded. So the
youthful Chatterton palmed upon the world the supposititious productions of the
monk Rowley and
But when the imitation has not been successful, or when there has been no imitation attempted, the use of words which were unknown at the date claimed for the document in dispute, or the reference to events of which the writer must be ignorant, because they occurred at a subsequent period, or when the sentiments are incongruous to the age in which they are supposed to have been written, then the internal evidence that it is a forgery, or at least a production of a later date, will be almost invincible.
It is by these two classes of evidence that I shall seek to inquire into the true character of the Leland Manuscript
If it can be shown that there is no evidence of the existence of the document before the year 1753, and if it can also be shown that neither the language of the document the sentiments expressed in it, nor the character attributed to the chief actor, King Henry VI. are in conformity with a document of the 15th century, we shall be authorized in rejecting the theory that it belongs to such a period as wholly untenable, and the question will admit of no more discussion.
But in arriving at a fair conclusion, whatever it may be, the rule of Ulpian must be obeyed, and the testimonies must be well considered and not merely counted. It is not the number of the whole but the weight of each that must control our judgment.
Those who defend the genuineness of the Leland Manuscript are required to establish these points:
1. That the document was first printed at
2. That the original manuscript was, by command of King Henry VIII., copied by John Leland from an older document of the age of Henry VI.
3. That this original manuscript of which Leland made a copy, was written by King Henry VI.
4. That the manuscript of Leland was deposited in the Bodleian Library.
5. That a copy of this manuscript of Leland was made by a Mr.C-ns, which is said to mean Collins, and given by him to John Locke, the celebrated metaphysician.
6. That Locke wrote notes or annotations on it in the year
1696, which were published in
The failure to establish by competent proof any one of these six points will seriously affect the credibility of the whole story, for each of them is a link of one continuous chain.
1.Now as to the first point, that
the document was first printed at
German writers, who were the most capable of discovering it,
if it had ever existed. The negative evidence is
strong that the
Kunsturkunden, and, like Kloss, had no personal knowledge of any such publication. In short, there is no positive evidence at all that any such document was printed at Frankfort-on-the-Main, but abundant negative evidence that it was not. The first point must therefore be abandoned.
2. The second point that requires to be proved is that the
Manuscript, was, by command of King Henry VIII.,
copied by John Leland, from an older document of the age of Henry VI. Now,
there is not the slightest evidence that a manuscript copy of the original
document was taken by Leland, except what is afforded by the printed article in
the Gentleman’s Magazine, the authenticity of which is the very question in
dispute, and it is a good maxim of the law that no one ought to be a witness in
his own cause. But even this evidence is very insufficient. For, admitting that
Locke was really the author of the annotations (an assertion which also needs
proof), he does not say that he had seen the Leland copy, but only a copy of
it, which had been made for him by a friend. So that even at that time the
Leland Manuscript had not been brought to sight and up to this has never been
seen. Amid all the laborious and indefatigable researches of Bro. Hughan in the
The hope of ever finding it is very faint, and must be entirely extinguished if other proofs can be adduced of its never having existed.
Huddesford, in his Life of Leland, had, it is true, made the following statement in reference to this manuscript: “ It also appears that an ancient manuscript of Leland’s has long remained in the Bodleian Library, unnoticed in any account of our author yet published. This Tract is entitled Certayne Questyons with Awnsweres to the same concernynge the mystery of Maconrye. The original is said to be the handwriting of K. Henry VI., by order of his highness K. Henry VIII. And he then proceeds to dilate upon the importance of this “ ancient monument of literature, if its authenticity remains unquestioned.”
But it must be remembered that Huddesford wrote in 1772, nineteen years after the appearance of the document in the Gentleman’s Magazine, which he quotes in his Appendix, and from which it is evident that he derived all the knowledge that he had of the pseudomanuscript. But the remarks on this subject of the anonymous writer in the London Masonic Magazine, already referred to, are so apposite and conclusive that they justify a quotation.
“Though Huddesford was keeper of the Ashmolean Library, in the Bodleian, he does not seek to verify even the existence of the manuscript, but contents himself with ‘it also appears’ that it is from the Gentleman’s Magazine of 1753. He surely ought not to have put in here such a statement, that an ancient manuscript of Leland has long remained in the Bodleian, without inquiry or collation. Either he knew the fact to be so, as he stated it, or he did not ; but in either case his carelessness as an editor is to my mind, utterly inexcusable. Nothing would have been easier for him than to verify an alleged manuscript of Leland, being an officer in the very collection in which it was said to exist. Still, if he did not do so, either thebmanuscript did exist, and he knew it, but did not think well, for some reason, to be more explicit about it, or he knew nothing at all about it, and by an inexcusable neglect of his editorial duty, took no pains to ascertain the truth, and simply copied others, by his quasi recognition of a professed manuscript of Leland.
But it is utterly incredible that Huddesford could have known and yet concealed his knowledge of the existence of the manuscript. There is no conceivable motive that could be assigned for such concealment and for the citation at the same time of other authority for the fact. It is therefore a fair inference that his only knowledge of the document was delved from the Gentleman’s Magazine. There is therefore, no proof whatever that Leland ever copied any older manuscript.
Referring to certain obvious mistakes in the printed copy, such as Peter Gower for Pythagoras, it has been said that it is evident that the document was not printed from Leland’s original transcript, but rather from a secondary copy of an unlearned.
Huddesford adopts this view, but if he had ever seen the manuscript of Leland he could have better formed a judgment by a collation of it with the printed copy than by a mere inference that a man of
Leland’s learning could not have made such mistakes. As he did not do so, it follows that he had never seen Leland’s Manuscript. The second point, therefore, falls to the ground.
3. The third point requiring proof is that the original manuscript of which Leland made a copy, was written by King Henry VI. There is a legal rule that when a deed or writing is not produced in court, and the loss of it is not reasonably accounted for, it shall be treated as if it were not existent. This is just the case of the pretended manuscript in the handwriting of Henry VI. No one has ever seen that manuscript, no one has ever had any knowledge of it ; the fact of its ever having existed depends solely on the statement made in the Gentleman’s Magazine that it had been copied by Leland. Of a document “in the clouds” as this is, whose very existence is a mere presumption built on the very slightest foundation, it is absurd to predicate an opinion of the handwriting. Time enough when the manuscript is produced to inquire who wrote it. The third point, therefore, fails to be sustained.
4. The fourth point is that the manuscript of Leland was
deposited in the Bodleian Library. This has already been discussed in the
argument on the first and third point. It is sufficient now to say that no such
manuscript has been found in that library. The writer in the London Masonic
Magazine, whom I have before quoted, says that he had had a communication with
the authorities of the Bodleian Library, and had been informed that nothing is
known of it in that collection. Among the additional manuscripts of the
6. The sixth and last point is that the notes or annotations were written by Mr. Locke in 1696, and fifty-two years afterward printed in Frankfort-on-the-Main. We must add to this, because it is a part of the story, that the English text, with the annotations of Locke, said to have been translated into German, the question-was it translated by the unknown brother in whose desk the document was found after his death ?-and then retranslated into English for the use of the Gentleman’s Magazine.
It is admitted thar if we refuse to accept the document printed in the magazine in 1753 as genuine, it must follow that the notes supposed to have been written by Locke are also spurious. The two questions are not necessarily connected. Locke may have been deceived, and, believing that the manuscript presented to him by C-ns, or Collins, if that was really his name, did take the trouble, for the sake of Lady Masham, to annotate it and to explain its difficulties.
But if we have shown that there is no sufficient proof,
and, in fact, no proof at all, that there ever was such a manuscript, and
therefore that Collins did not transcribe it, then it will necessarily follow
that the pretended notes of Locke are as complete a forgery as the text to
which they are appended. Now if the annotations of Locke were genuine, why is
it that after diligent search this particular one has not been found? It is
known that Locke left several manuscripts behind him, some of which were
published after his death by his executors, King and Collins, and several
unpublished manuscripts went into the possession of Lord King, who in 1829
published the Life and Correspondence of Locke. But nowhere has the notorious Leland
Manuscript appeared. “ If John Locke’s letter were
authentic,” says the writer already repeatedly referred to, a copy of this
manuscript would remain among Mr. Locke’s papers, or at
But there are other circumstances of great suspicion connected with the letter and annotations of Locke, which amount to a condemnation of their authenticity. In concluding his remarks on what he calls “ this old paper,” Locke is made to say: “ It has so raised curiosity as to induce me to enter myself into the fraternity; which I am determined to do (if I may be admitted) the next time I go to London, and that will be shortly.”
Now, because it is known that at the
date of the pseudo-letter, Mr. Locke
was actually residing at Oates, the seat of Sir Francis Masham, forechose lady
he says that the annotations were made, and because it is also known that in
the next year he made a visit to
Now, there is not the slightest proof of this initiation, nor is it important to the question of authenticity whether he was initiated or not, because if he was not it would only prove that be had abandoned the intention he had expressed in the letter. But I cite the unsupported remark of Dr. Oliver to show how Masonic history has hitherto been written-always assumptions, and facts left to take care of themselves.
But it is really most probable that Mr. Locke was not made
a Freemason in 1697 or at any other time, for if he had been, Dr.
It appears, from what is admitted in reference to this
subject, that the Leland Manuscript, having been obtained by Mr. Collins from
the Bodleian Library, was annotated by Mr. Locke, and a letter, stating the
fact, was sent with the manuscript and annotations to a nobleman whose rank and
title are designated by stars (a needless mystery), but who has been
subsequently supposed to be the Earl of Pembroke. All this was in the year
1696. It then appears to have been completely lost to sight until the year
1748, when it is suddenly found hidden away in the desk of a deceased brother
in
He does say, indeed, that according to a record in the reign of Edward IV. “the charges and laws of the Freemasons have been seen and perused by our late Sovereign, King Henry VI., and by the Lords of his most honourable Council, who have allowed them and declared that they he right good, and reasonable to be holden as they have been drawn out and collected from the records of ancient times,” etc.
But it is evident that this is no description of the Leland Manuscript which does not consist of “ charges and laws,” but is simply a history of the origin of Masonry, and a declaration of its character and objects. And yet the fact that there is said to have been something; submitted by the Masons to Henry VI. and his Council was enough to suggest to the ingenious forger the idea of giving to his pseudo-manuscript a date corresponding to the reign of that monarch. But he overleaped the bounds of caution in giving the peculiar form to his forgery. Had he fabricated a document similar to those ancient constitutions, many genuine manuscripts of which are extant, the discovery of the fraud would have been more difficult.
But to continue the narrative: The manuscript, having been
found in the desk of this unknown deceased brother, is forthwith published at
Here again there are sundry questions to be asked, which can not be answered. Had the tale been a true one, and the circumstances such as always accompany the discovery of a lost document, and which are always put upon record, the replies and explanations would have been ready.
Was the letter of Locke, including of course the catechism
of the Leland Manuscript, which was found in the desk of the unknown brother,
the original document, or was it only a copy ? If the latter, had it been
copied in English by the brother, or translated by him into German
? If not translated by trim, by whom was it translated? Was the pamphlet
printed in
The pamphlet next makes its appearance five years
afterward in
Until this silence is dissipated and these questions answered by the acquisition of new knowledge in the premises, which it can hardly now be expected will be obtained, the stain of an imposture must remain upon the character of the document. The discoverer of a genuine manuscript would have been more explicit in his details.
As to internal evidence, there is the most insuperable difficulty in applying here the canons of criticism which would identify the age of the manuscript by its style.
Throwing aside any consideration of the Frankfort pamphlet on account of the impossibility of explaining the question of translation, and admitting, for the time, that Mr. Locke did really annotate a copy of a manuscript then in the Bodleian Library, which copy was made for him by his friend Collins, how, with this admission, will the case stand ?
In Mr. Locke’s letter (accepting, it as such) he says: “The manuscript, of which this is a copy, appears to be about 160 years old.” As the date of Locke’s letter is 1696, this estimate would bring us to 1536,or the thirty-first year of the reign of HenryVIII. Locke could have derived his knowledge of this fact only in two ways: from the date given in the manuscript or from its style and language as belonging, in his opinion, to that period.
But if he derived his knowledge from the date inserted at the head of the manuscript, that knowledge would be of no value, because it is the very question which is at issue. The writer of a forged document would affix to it the date necessary to carry out his imposture, which of course would be no proof of genuineness.
But if Locke judged from the style, then it must be said that, though a great metaphysician and statesman, and no mean theologian, he was not an archaeologist or antiquary, and never had any reputation as an expert in the judgment of old records. Of this we have a proof here, for the language of the Leland Manuscript is not that of the period in which Leland lived. The investigator may easily satisfy himself of this by a collation of Leland’s genuine works, or of the Cranmer Bible, which is of the same date.
But it may be said that Locke judged of the date, not by the style, but by the date of the inanuscript itself. And this is probably true, because he adds: “ Yet (as your Lordship will observe by the title) it is itself a copy of one yet more ancient by about 100 years: For the original is said to have been in the handwriting of K. H. VI.”
Locke then judged only by the title-a very insufficient proof as I have already said, of authenticity. So Locke seems to have thought, for he limits the positiveness of the assertion by the qualifying phrase “ it is said.” If we accept this for what it is worth, the claim will be that the original manuscript was written in the reign of Henry VI., or about the middle of the I5th century. But here again the language is not of that period. The new English, as it is called, was then beginning to take that purer form which a century and a half afterward culminated in the classical and vigorous style of Cowley. We find no such archaisms as those perpetrated in this document in the Repressor of over-much Blaming of the Clergy, written in the same reign, about 1450, by Bishop Pecock, nor in the Earl of Warwick’s petition to Duke Humphrey, written in 1432, nor in any other of the writings of that period. It is not surprising, therefore, that the glossary or list of archaic words used in the document, by which from internal evidence we could be enabled to fix its date, has, according to Mr. Woodford, “ always been looked upon with much suspicion by experts.”
If I may advance an hypotheses upon the subject I should say that the style is a rather clumsy imitation of that of Sir John Mandeville, whose Voiage and Travails was written in 1356, about a century before the pretended date of the Leland Manuscript.
An edition of this book was published at
But the strangest thing in this whole affair is that so many men of learning should have permitted themselves to become the dupes of so bungling an impostor.