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The History Of Freemasonry
By
Albert G. Mackey 33°
VOLUME ONE
PART I. - PREHISTORIC MASONRY
CHAPTER PAGE
[Original Volumes / This Copy]
Dr. Mackey's Preface ..................................... iv. to xi. / 12
Introduction ………………………………………….. ?? / 17
1. - Tradition and History in Masonry.......................... 1 / 21
2. - The Legendary History of Freemasonry. .................... 10 / 28
3. - The Old Manuscripts ..................................... 13 / 30
4. - The Legend of the Craft.................................. 18 / 37
5. - The Halliwell Poem and the Legend........................ 25 / 43
6. - The Origin of the Halliwell Poem.......................... 33 / 53
7. - The Legend, the Germ of History........................... 36 / 52
8. - The Origin of Geometry................................... 40 / 55
9. - The Legend of Lamech's Sons and the Pillars................ 44 / 58
10. - The Legend of Hermes.................................... 50 / 63
11. - The Tower of Babel....................................... 53 / 66
I2. - The Legend of Nimrod.................................... 63 / 74
13. - The Legend of Euclid..................................... 67 / 79
14. - The Legend of the Temple................................. 73 / 84
15. - The Extension of the Art into Other Countries............... 83 / 93
16. - The Legend of Charles Martel and Namus Grecus........... 85 / 95
17. - The Legend of St. Alban.................................. 90 / 99
18. - The York Legend......................................... 95 / 103
19. - Summary of the Legend of the Craft........................ 111 / 118
20. - The Andersonian Theory .................................. 117 / 123
21. - The Prestonian Theory.................................... 124 / 129
22. - The Hutchinsonian Theory................................ 128 / 133
23. - The Oliverian Theory..................................... 143 / 147
24. - The Temple Legend....................................... 151 / 151
25. - The Legend of the Dionysiac Artificers...................... 166 / 165
26. - Freemasonry and the Ancient Mysteries..................... 174 / 174
27. - Druidism and Freemasonry ................................ 99 / 201
28. - Freemasonry and the Crusades............................. 217 / 220
29. - The Story of the Scottish Templars......................... 255 / 257
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
VOLUME ONE
PAGE
Dr. Albert Gallatin Mackey................................ Frontispiece
The Inner Chamber..................................... Vignette Title
Fellow Craft before King Solomon.............................. 28 / 35
Operative Masons of the Tenth Century......................... 60 / 79
Anthony Sayer ............................................... 108 / 105
The Passes of the Jordan....................................... 140 / 134
Monument of the Third Degree................................. 172 / 162
Daniel Coxe ................................................. 204 / 194
The Meeting on the Coast of Joppa............................. 236 / 228
Strasburg Cathedral .......................................... 252 / 259
THE HISTORY OF FREEMASONRY
ITS LEGENDS AND TRADITIONS
ITS CHRONOLOGICAL HISTORY
BY ALBERT GALLATIN MACKEY, M.D., 33°
THE HISTORY OF THE
SYMBOLISM OF FREEMASONRY
THE
ANCIENT AND ACCEPTED SCOTTISH RITE
AND THE
ROYAL ORDER OF SCOTLAND
BY WILLIAM R. SINGLETON, 33°
WITH AN
ADDENDA
BY WILLIAM JAMES HUGHAN
P\S\G\ D\ OF G\ L\OF ENGLAND - P\S\G\W\ OF EGYPT, ETC.
VOLUME ONE
PUBLISHED BY
THE MASONIC HISTORY COMPANY
NEW YORK AND LONDON
PREFACE
SO comprehensive a title as the one selected for the present work would be a vain assumption if the author's object was not really to embrace in a series of studies the whole cycle of Masonic history and science. Anything short of this would not entitle the work to be called THE HISTORY OF FREEMASONRY.
Freemasonry as a society of long standing, has of course its history, and the age of the institution has necessarily led to the mixing in this history of authentic facts and of mere traditions or legends.
We are thus led in the very beginning of our labors to divide our historical studies into two classes. The one embraces the Legendary History of Freemasonry, and the other its authentic annals.
The Legendary History of Freemasonry will constitute the subject of the first of the five parts into which this work is divided. It embraces all that narrative of the rise and progress of the institution, which beginning with the connection with it of the antediluvian patriarchs, ends in ascribing its modern condition to the patronage of Prince Edwin and the assembly at York.
This narrative, which in the I5th and up to the end of the I7th century, claimed and received the implicit faith of the Craft, which in the I8th century was repeated and emendated by the leading writers of the institution, and which even in the 19th century has had its advocates among the learned and its credence among the unlearned of the Craft, has only recently and by a new school been placed in its true position of an apocryphal story.
And yet though apocryphal, this traditionary story of Freemasonry which has been called the Legend of the Craft, or by some the Legend of the Guild, is not to be rejected as an idle fable. On the contrary, the object of the present work has been to show that these Masonic legends contain the germs of an historical, mingled often with a symbolic, idea, and that divested of certain evanescences in the shape of anachronisms, or of unauthenticated statements, these Masonic legends often, nay almost always, present in their simple form a true philosophic spirit.
To establish this principle in the literature of Freemasonry, to divest the legends of the Craft of the false value given to them as portions of authentic history by blind credulity, and to protect them from the equally false estimate that has been bestowed upon them by the excessive incredulity of unphilosophic sceptics, who view them only as idle fables without more meaning than what they attach to monkish legends-in one word, to place the Legendary History of Freemasonry in the just position which it should occupy but has never yet occupied, is the object of the labors expended in the composition of the first part of this work.
The second part of the work will pass out of the field of myth and legend and be devoted to the authentic or recorded history of Freemasonry.
Rejecting as wholly untenable and unsupported by historical evidence, the various hypotheses of the origin of the institution in the Pagan mysteries, in the Temple of Solomon, or in the Crusades, an attempt has been made to trace its birth to the Roman Colleges of Artificers, which present us with an almost identical organization of builders and architects. Following the progress of the Roman Masons of the Colleges, through their visits to the different provinces of the Empire, where they went, accompanying the legions in their victorious excursions, we will find that the art of building was communicated by them to the Italians, the Spaniards, the Gauls, and the Britons.
In this way the knowledge of Operative Masonry and its practice in guilds, sodalities, and confraternities was preserved by these peoples after the extinction of the Roman Empire.
We next find this sodality emerging in the 10th century from Lombardy, and under the name of "Traveling Freemasons,” perambulating all Europe and re-establishing confraternities of Stonemasons in Germany, France, England, Scotland, and other countries.
The narrative of the progress of this fraternity of builders from Como, which was evidently an outshoot from the ancient Roman Colleges, is treated with great particularity, because without the aid of any mythical or legendary instrumentality we are thus enabled to connect it continuously with the modern system of Operative Masonry.
The merging of Operative into Speculative Masonry in the beginning of the 18th century is an historical incident based on the most authentic records. Its details, derived from records of whose genuineness there never has been a doubt, will complete and perfect the history of Freemasonry from its rise to its present condition.
Thus we may imagine the growth of that magnificent tree, beneath whose wide-spreading branches the fraternity now recline. In the far remote reign of Numa, the philosophic and religious king of Rome (or if his personality be doubted by the disciples of Niebuhr), in the times represented by his name, we find the germ of the institution in those organized confraternities of craftsmen, whom history records as flourishing with varying success and popularity through the times of the Kingdom, the Republic, and the Empire of Rome.
The seeds of a co-operative association of builders, based on the principles of fraternity, were carried with the legions of Rome into the various provinces that had been conquered by the soldiers of the Empire, and as colonies of Romans were there established, the Latin language, the manners and customs of the Roman people and their skill in the arts were introduced among the natives.
Of these arts, the most important was that of architecture, and by means of monuments still remaining, as well as other historical evidences, we are enabled to follow the gradual growth of the operative societies out of the Roman guilds and then that of the speculative institution out of the operative societies.
The hypothesis sought to be sustained in investigating the history of Freemasonry, in the present work, may be succinctly stated as follows:
Operative Masonry is the basis on which Speculative Freemasonry is founded-that is to say, the lodges of Freemasons of the present day are the successors of the lodges of Operative Masons which existed all over Europe during the Middle Ages and up to the beginning of the 18th century.
But the Operative Masonry that gave birth to the modern speculative order was not the mere craft or trade or art of building. The men who practiced it were not mere cutters and layers of stone. There were large numbers of workmen who belonged to a lower class of the trade or profession, who were never looked upon with any respect, with whom companionship was denied, and who were employed only in subordinate positions. These men were called cowans, rough layers, foreigners or similar titles intimating degradation of class and inferiority of skill.
No relation can be traced between the Operative Masons of this class and the Speculative Masons, who have represented Freemasonry since the beginning of the 18th century. The Operative Masons, between whom and the modern Freemasons there is a relation of succession, were a higher class of artists. They were possessed of secrets connected with peculiar skill in their craft. But above all, they were distinguished for the adoption of what might, in our modern phrase, be called the co-operative principle in the practice of their Craft. Perhaps it may more properly be called, a principle of sodality. It was shown in the formation of a company, a society, a guild, a corporation, or a confraternity, call it by what name you please, in which there was an association of skill, of labor, and of interests. This principle has been called the guild spirit, and it is this spirit which constitutes the essential characteristic of the Masonic institution.
If we propose to establish a chain of historical continuity, which shall extend from the first appearance of any association in which the origin of modern Freemasonry is sought to be found, to the present day, when the institution has assumed its well-recognized form, there are two elements which must be well marked in every link of the chain.
In the first place, there must be an operative element. Freemasonry can be traced only to an association of builders or architects. Every ceremony in the ritual, every symbol in the philosophy of Speculative Freemasonry, indicates-nay, positively proves - that it has been derived from and is closely connected with the art of building. The first Freemasons were builders, they could have been nothing else. To seek for them in a mystical, religious association as the ancient pagan Mysteries, or in an institution of chivalry as in the Knights of the Crusades would be a vain and unprofitable task. As well might one look for the birthplace of the eagle in the egg of the crow as to attempt to trace the origin of Freemasonry to anything other than an association of builders.
In the second place there must be a guild spirit. The builders who have come together must not have associated temporarily for the mere purpose of accomplishing a certain task, each man wholly independent of the others, and arbitrarily exercising only his own skill. There must be a permanent organization, a community of interest, a division of labor, a spirit of fraternity, an organization looking beyond the present moment. A certain number of Masons, brought together to construct an edifice, who after its construction would be ready to disperse, each Mason on his own footing to seek fresh employment under new masters and with new companions, could never, under such circumstances, be concentrated into such organizations as would, in the lapse of time, give rise to the lodges of modern Speculative Freemasons.
The hypothesis, then, which is advanced in the present work and on which its authentic historical part is constructed, is that there was from the earliest days of Rome an organization of workmen under the name of the Collegium Arlificum, or Collegium Fabrorum, that is, the College of Artificers, or the College of Workmen. That this college consisted of builders and architects, that it was regularly organized into an association, which was marked with all the peculiarities that afterward distinguished the guilds or incorporations of the Middle Ages. That this college, flourishing greatly under the later empire, sent its members, imbued with the skill in architecture and the spirit of confraternity which they had acquired in the home organization, into the various provinces which the Roman legions penetrated and conquered. And, finally, that in all these provinces, but principally in Northern Italy, in Gaul, and in Britain, they established similar colleges or associations, in which they imparted to the natives their knowledge of the art of building and impressed them with their spirit of fraternal co-operation in labor.
From these colleges of workmen sprang in the course of time, and after the fall of the empire and the transition of the provinces into independent and sovereign states, organizations of builders, of masons and architects, who in Italy assumed the name and title of Traveling Freemasons, in Gaul that of the Mestrice des Masons, in Germany that of the Steinmetzen, in England that of the Guilds and Companies, and in Scotland that of the Lodges and Incorporations. All these were associations of builders and architects, who were bound together by regulations which were very similar to and evidently derived from those by which the Roman Colleges had been governed, with others suggested by change of conditions and circumstances.
The associations, though mainly made up of professional work men, sometimes admitted, as the Roman Colleges had done, nonprofessionals, men of wealth, distinction, or learning into their ranks as honorary members.
About the close of the 17th century the number of these nonprofessional members was greatly increased, which fact must have produced a gradual and growing influence on the organizations.
Finally, during the second decade of the 18th century, these non-professional members completely changed the character of the Masonic organizations known at that time under the name of Lodges. The operative element was entirely eliminated from them, and the Lodges became no longer companies of builders, but fraternities of speculative philosophers.
The new institution of Speculative Freemasonry retained no other connection with or relation to the operative organization, than the memory of its descent, and the preservation of the technical language and the tools of the art, all of which were, however, subjected to new and symbolic interpretations.
This transition of the operative into the speculative organizations occurred in London in the year 1717, at which time the Grand Lodge of Free and Accepted Masons was established.
From England the change passed over into other countries and Lodges were everywhere instituted under the authority of the Grand Lodge of London. The history of Freemasonry from that time is to be found in the recorded annals of the various Lodges and Grand Lodges which sprung up in the course of time from the parent stem, the common mother of all the speculative Lodges of the world.
Scotland might seem at first to be an exception to this cosmopolitan maternity, but though the growth of the speculative out of the operative element was there apparently an independent act of transition, yet it cannot be denied that the influence of the English society was deeply felt in the sister kingdom and exhibited especially in the adoption of the three degrees, in the organization of the Grand Lodge on a similar model, and in the establishment of the office of Grand Master, a title of entirely modern and English origin.
Such is the plan of the history that has been pursued in the present work, a plan which materially and essentially differs from that of any preceding writer. Iconoclasts have composed monographs in which they have attacked particular fallacies and denounced special forgeries, but the history of Masonry as a whole has not before been written with the same spirit of candor that has been or should always be exercised in the composition of history.
Doubtless the well-settled and carefully nourished prejudices of some will be shocked by any attempt to expose the fallacies and falsehoods which have too long tarnished the annals of Freemasonry. But such an attempt cannot, if it be successfully pursued, but command the approval of all who believe with Cicero that history is "the witness of time, the light of truth, and the life of memory."
ALBERT G. MACKEY, M.D.
INTRODUCTION
Of all the institutions which have been established for the purpose of improving the condition of mankind, Freemasonry stands preeminent in usefulness as it is in age. Its origin is lost in the abyss of unexplored antiquity. No historical records, no traditionary accounts, can with certainty point out the precise time, the place, or the particular manner of its commencement. While some have endeavored to discover its footsteps amongst the master builders and artists engaged in the construction of the first Jewish temple, others have attempted to trace it to the Eleusinian mysteries, which are said to have taught the immortality of the soul and the other sublime truths of natural religion. Some again have ascribed its rise to the sainted heroes of the Crusades; while others have endeavored to penetrate the mysteries of the Druids, and to discover its origin amongst the wise men of that institution.
-De Witt Clinton
THE fraternal order of Free and Accepted Masons, or the Freemasons, is a secret society, yet its influence and effect on Western society have been great. Many of the Founding Fathers of the United States-George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Hancock, Benjamin Franklin, and Paul Revere-were Masons. Simon Bolivar, the great freedom fighter of South America, and Giuseppe Garibaldi, Italy's distinguished patriot, were also members, as were the great writers Voltaire and Goethe, and the composers Franz Joseph Haydn and Amadeus Mozart. However, the order's ultimate purpose has always been shrouded in the self-imposed mystery that surrounds the organization as well as the wild conjecture about it that arose from the fear of the ignorant. Accusations that the Freemasons have cultivated the occult sciences-particularly alchemy, astrology, and ceremonial magic-have pursued the order throughout its history. While, without a doubt, some branches of the organization have endeavored to explore the realms of esotericism, it was merely a means to an end, not an end in itself.
Order out of chaos is the famous motto of the Freemasons. It means the occasion of rising beyond one's aimless animal nature and attaining a higher plane of existence. To learn the way to that plane, to follow the proper paths, and to continue the journey and complete the wondrous voyage to a higher self and the unity of the whole, are the ultimate goals of a Freemason.
The mythology and symbolism of Freemasonry is very rich and complex. As the age of the society is unknown, its history blends facts with traditions and legends. Until the end of the seventeenth century, these apocryphal stories of Freemasonry-called the Legend of the Craft, or the Legend of the Guild-were believed with implicit faith by its members. The object of this book, Albert Gallatin Mackey's The History of Freemasonry: Its Legendary Origins, is to present a complete survey of the mythical and allegorical narratives of Freemasonry and to show that these Masonic legends contain the germs of historical truth often mingled with a symbolic idea, and almost always reflect in their unadorned form the true philosophic spirit of the Order.
Most scholars today believe the origins of modern Freemasonry can be traced to ancient Rome, where an organization of workmen formed under the name of the Collegium Artificum, or Collegium Fabrorum-the College of Artificers, or the College of Workmen. This brotherhood consisted of builders and architects and was the prototype of the guilds and incorporations of the Middle Ages. The college flourished under the Roman empire, which sent its members, endowed with skill in architecture and the spirit of confraternity, to the various provinces that the Romans had conquered. In all these provinces, but principally in Northern Italy, Gaul, and Britain, they established similar colleges or associations, in which they transmitted to the native inhabitants their knowledge of the art of building and impressed them with their spirit of fraternal cooperation in labor.
After the fall of the empire and the transition of the provinces into independent and sovereign states, these colleges of workmen evolved into organizations of builders-masons and architects-who in Italy assumed the name of Traveling Freemasons, in Gaul that of the Mestrice des Marons, in Germany that of the Steinmetzen, in England that of the Guilds and Companies, and in Scotland that of the Lodges and Incorporations. These associations of builders and architects were bound together by regulations very similar to and evidently derived from those that governed the Roman Colleges, with other rules suggested by change of conditions and circumstances.
The associations, though mainly made up of professional workmen, sometimes admitted nonprofessionals-men of wealth, distinction, or learning-into their ranks as honorary members. At the end of the seventeenth century the number of these nonprofessional members greatly increased, and by the early eighteenth century they had completely changed the character of the Masonic organizations, known at that time as Lodges. The operative element-the practical application of the rules of architecture to the construction of public and private edifices-was entirely eliminated, and the Lodges were no longer companies of builders, but fraternities of speculative philosophers. The new institution of Speculative Freemasonry retained no relation to the practical purposes of operative Freemasonry other than the memory of its descent and the retention of its technical language and the tools of the art. These, however, were subjected to new and symbolic interpretations, adapted to the worship of God as the Grand Architect of the universe.
This transition from the operative to the speculative form of Masonry was complete by the year 1717, when the Grand Lodge of Free and Accepted Masons was established in London. From England the change passed over to other Lodges as Freemasonry spread to the United States, South America, and throughout the rest of the world. In The History of Freemasonry: Its Legendary Origins you will find the lore and mythology that is the philosophical and ritual foundation upon which Freemasonry is built and from which its three great principles-brotherly love, charity, and truth-have evolved. Albert Gallatin Mackey is an excellent guide through this compelling exploration of the Masonic tradition. Included are excerpts from many rare and hard-to-find original manuscripts sacred to the Masons-including the Halliwell Poem, the oldest Masonic document in existence, dating from the late fourteenth to the middle fifteenth century-and a learned discussion of the origin, significance, and meaning of these works. Mackey recounts the various stories that explore Freemasonry's origins, ranging from its beginnings with Abraham, the Old Testament patriarch, to the builders of the Tower of Babel, to King Solomon and the builders of the Temple of Jerusalem. He also explores the possible associations of the Freemasons with the Knights Templars of the Crusades, the Druids, the Rosicrucians, and the Assassins-a secret Muslim sect. Throughout, this erudite and illuminating book investigates the subject with detail and completeness.
Albert Gallatin Mackey was born on March 12, 1807, in Charleston, South Carolina. He was the youngest son of Dr. John Mackey, a physician, editor, and teacher, who also published the periodical The Investigator from 1812 to 1817. After teaching for a time, Albert Mackey followed in his father's footsteps and attended the South Carolina Medical College, Charleston, from which he graduated in 1832. He practiced medicine in Charleston and became a teacher at the Medical College, but in 1854 his growing interest in Freemasonry impelled him to give up his practice and devote his energies to his Masonic activities.
Mackey eventually became the grand secretary of the Grand Lodge, grand high priest of the Grand Chapter, grand master of the Grand Council, and general grand high priest of the General Grand Chapter of the United States. The last decade of his life was spent in Washington, D.C., where he devoted himself to the continuance of his work as secretary general of the Supreme Council of the 33rd Degree. He died on June 20, 1881, at Old Point Comfort, Virginia.
While Mackey attained high official positions in the Masonic order, he is remembered today for his writings on Freemasonry. In 1849 he established The Southern and Western Masonic Miscellany, a weekly magazine, and in 1858-60 he published "Quarterly," which he dedicated to the same interests. He was also the author of many books on Freemasonry. His first book was A Lexicon of Freemasonry (1845), followed by The Mystic Tie (1849), The Ahiman Rezon, or Book of Constitutions of the Grand Lodge of South Carolina (1852), Principles of Masonic Law (1856), The Book of the Chapter (1858), A Text Book of Masonic Jurisprudence (1859), History of Freemasonry in South Carolina (1861), Manual of the Lodge (1862), Cryptic Masonry (1867), Mackey's Masonic Ritualist (1869), The Symbolism of Freemasonry (1869), Encyclopedia of Freemasonry (1874), and Masonic Parliamentary Law ( 1875). He was working on the present volume, The History of Freemasonry, when he died. Many of Mackey's books, particularly the Encyclopedia of Freemasonry, are considered among the most authoritative and definitive works on the subject.
PART ONE
PREHISTORIC MASONRY
PREHISTORIC MASONRY
CHAPTER I
TRADITION AND HISTORY IN MASONRY
IN the study of Freemasonry there are two kinds of statements which are presented to the mind of the inquiring scholar, which are sometimes concurrent, but much oftener conflicting, in their character.
These are the historical and the traditional, each of which appertains to Freemasonry as we may consider it in a different aspect.
The historical statement relates to the Institution as we look at it from an exoteric or public point of view; the traditional refers only to its esoteric or secret character.
So long as its traditional legends are confined to the ritual of the Order, they are not appropriate subjects of historical inquiry. They have been invented by the makers of the rituals for symbolic purposes connected with the forms of initiation. Out of these myths of Speculative Masonry its philosophy has been developed; and, as they are really to be considered as merely the expansion of a philosophic or speculative idea, they can not properly be posited in the category of historical narratives.
But in the published works of those who have written on the origin and progress of Masonry, from its beginning to the present time, the legendary or traditional has too much been mingled with the historical element. The effect of this course has been, on adversely prejudiced minds, to weaken all claims of the Institution to an historical existence. The doctrine of "false in one thing, false in all," has been rigidly applied, and those statements of the Masonic historian which are really authentic have been doubted or rejected, because in other portions of his narrative he has been too credulous.
Borrowing the technical language of archoeology, I should say that the history of Masonry (1) may be divided into two periods ‑ prehistoric and the historic. The former is traditional, the latter documentary. Each of these divisions must, in any historical inquiry, be clearly defined. There is also another division, into esoteric and exoteric history. The first is exclusively within the arcana of the Order, and can not, as I have said, be the subject of historical investigation. The second properly comes within the sphere of historical study, and is subjected to all the laws of historical criticism.
When we are treating of Freemasonry as one of the social organizations of the world ‑ as one of those institutions which are the results of civilization, and which have sprung up in the progress of society; and, finally, when we are considering what are the influences that the varying conditions of that society have produced upon it, and what influences it has reciprocally produced upon these varying conditions ‑ we are then engaged in the solution of a historical problem, and we must pursue the inquiry in a historical method and not otherwise. We must discard all speculation, because history deals only with facts.
If we were treating the history of a nation, we should assert nothing of it as historical that could not be traced to and be verified by its written records. All that is conjectured of the events that may have occurred in the earlier period of such a nation, of which there is no record in contemporaneous or immediately subsequent times, is properly thrown into the dim era of the prehistoric ago It forms no part of the authentic history of the nation, and can be dignified, at its highest value, with the title of historical speculation only, which claims no other credence than that which its plausibility or its probability commands.
Now, the possibility or the probability that a certain event may have occurred in the early days of a nation's existence, but of which event there is no record, will be great or little, as dependent on certain other events which bear upon it, and which come within the era of its records. The event may have been possible, but not probable, and then but very little or no importance would be im‑
(1) in the progress of this work I shall use the terms Masonry and Freemasonry without discrimination, except on special, and at the time specified, occasions.
puted to it, and it would at once be relegated to the category of myths. Or it may have been both possible and highly probable, and we may be then permitted to speculate upon it as something that had exerted an influence upon the primitive character or the subsequent progress of the nation. But, even then, it would not altogether lose its mythical character. Whatever we might predicate of it would only be a plausible speculation. It would not be history, for that deals not in what may have been, but only in that which actually has been.
The progress in these latter days of what are called the exact sciences has led, by the force of example and analogy, to a more critical examination of the facts, or, rather, the so‑called facts, of history.
Voltaire said, in his Life of Charles XII of Sweden that "incredulity is the foundation of history." Years passed before the axiom in all its force was accepted by the learned. But at length it has been adopted as the rule of all historical criticism. To be credulous is now to be unphilosophical, and scholars accept nothing as history that can not be demonstrated with almost mathematical certainty.
Niebuhr began by shattering all faith in the story of Rhea Sylvia, of Romulus and Remus, and of the maternal wolf, which, with many other incidents of the early Roman annals, were consigned by him to the region of the mythical.
In later times, the patriotic heart of Switzerland has been made to mourn by the discovery that the story of William Tell, and of the apple which he shot from the head of his son, is nothing but a medioeval fable which was to be found in a great many other countries, and the circumstances of which, everywhere varying in details, still point to a common origin in some early symbolic myth.
It is thus that many narratives, once accepted as veracious, have been, by careful criticism, eliminated from the domain of history; and such works as Goldsmith's Histories of Greece ana Rome are no longer deemed fitting text‑books for schools, where nothing but truth should be taught.
The same rules of critical analysis which are pursued in the separation of what is true from what is false in the history of a nation should be applied to the determination of the character of all statements in Masonic history. This course, however, has, unhappily, not been generally pursued. Many of its legends are unquestionably founded, as I shall endeavor hereafter to show, on a historical basis; but quite as many, if not more, are made up out of a mixture of truth and fiction, the distinctive boundaries of which it is difficult to define; while a still greater number are altogether mythical, with no appreciable element of truth in their composition. And yet for nearly two centuries, all of these three classes of Masonic legendary lore have been accepted by the great body of the Fraternity, without any discrimination, as faithful narratives of undoubted truthfulness.
It is this liberal acceptation of the false for the true, and this ready recognition of fables as authentic nauatives whereby imaginative writers have been encouraged to plunge into the realms of absurdity instead of confining themselves to the domain of legitimate history, that have cast an air of romance over all that has hitherto been written about Freemasonry. Unjustly, but very naturally, scholars have been inclined to reject all our legends in every part as fabulous, because they found in some the elements of fiction.
But, on the other hand, the absurdities of legend‑makers, and the credulity of legend‑readers, have, by a healthy reaction, given rise to a school of iconoclasts (to whom there will soon be occasion to refer), which sprang up from a laudable desire to conform the principles of criticism which are to govern all investigations into Masonic history to the rules which control profane writers in the examination of the history of nations.
As examples of the legends of Masonry which have tempted the credulity of many and excited the skepticism of others, those almost universally accepted legends may be cited which attribute the organization of Freemasonry in its present form to the era of King Solomon's temple ‑ the story of Prince Edwin and the Grand Lodge congregated by him at the city of York in the 10th century ‑ and the theory that the three symbolic degrees were instituted as Masonic grades at a period very long anterior to the beginning of the 18th century.
These statements, still believed in by all Masons who have not made the history of the Order an especial study, were, until recently, received by prominent scholars as veracious narratives. Even Dr. Oliver, one of the most learned as well as the most prolific of Masonic authors, has, in his numerous works, recognized them as historic truths without a word of protest or a sign of doubt, except, perhaps, with reference to the third legend above mentioned, of which he says, with a cautious qualification, that he has "some doubts whether the Master's degree, as now given, can be traced three centuries backwards." (1)
But now comes a new school of Masonic students, to whom, borrowing a word formerly used in the history of religious strifes, has been given the name of "iconoclasts." The word is a good one. The old iconoclasts, or image‑breakers of the 8th century, demolished the images and defaced the pictures which they found in the churches, induced by erroneous but conscientious views, because they thought that the people were mistaking the shadow for the substance, and were worshipping the image or the picture instead of the Divine Being whom it represented.
And so these Masonic iconoclasts, with better views, are proceeding to destroy, by hard, incisive criticism, the intellectual images which the old, unlettered Masons had constructed for their veneration. They are pulling to pieces the myths and legends, whose fallacies and absurdities had so long cast a cloud upon what ought to be the clear sky of Masonic history. But they have tempered their zeal with a knowledge and a moderation that were unknown to the iconoclasts of religion. These shattered the images and scattered the fragments to the four winds of heaven, or they burnt the picture so that not even a remnant of the canvas was left. Whatever there was of beauty in the work of the sculptor or painter was forever destroyed. Every sentiment of zesthetic art was overcome by the virulence of religious fanaticism. Had the destructive labors of these iconoclasts been universal and long continued, no foundation would have been left for building that science of Christian symbolism, which in this day has been so interesting and so instructive to the archoeologist. (2)
Not so have the Masonic iconoclasts performed their task of critical reformation. They have shattered nothing; they have destroyed nothing. When in the course of their investigations into true Masonic history, they encounter a myth or a legend, replete, ap‑
(1) "Dissertation on the State of Masonry in the Eighteenth Century." (2) Thus the Emperor Leo, the Isaurian, caused all images and pictures to be removed from the churches and publicly burnt ‑ an act of vandalism not surpassed by that Saracen despot who (if the story be true) ruthlessly committed the books of the Alexandrian library to the flames as fuel for the public baths.
parently, with absurdities or contradictions, they do not consign it to oblivion as something unworthy of consideration, but they dissect it into its various parts; they analyze it with critical acumen; they separate the chaff from the wheat; they accept the portion that is confirmed by other and collateral testimony as a legitimate contribution to history; what is undoubtedly fictitious they receive as a myth, and either reject it altogether as an unmeaning addition to a legend, or give it an interpretation as the expression of some symbolic idea which is itself of value in a historical point of view.
That lamented archaeologist, Mr. George Smith, late of the British Museum, in speaking of the cuneiform inscriptions excavated in Mesopotamia, and the legends which they have preserved of the old Babylonian empire, said: (1) "With regard to the supernatural element introduced into the story, it is similar in nature to many such additions to historical narratives, especially in the East; but I would not reject those events which may have happened, because, in order to illustrate a current belief, or add to the romance of the story, the writer has introduced the supernatural."
It is on this very principle that the iconoclastic Masonic writers, such as Hughan and Woodford, are pursuing their researches into the early history of Freemasonry. They do not reject those events related in the old legends, which have certainly happened, because in them they find also mythical narratives. They do not yield to the tendency which George Smith says is now too general, "to repudiate the earlier part of history, because of its evident inaccuracies and the marvelous element generally combined with it." (2) It is in this way, and in this way only, that early Masonic history can be rightly written. Made up, as it has been for centuries past, of a commingled tissue of historical narrative and legendary invention, it has been heretofore read without judicious discrimination. Either the traditional account has been wholly accepted as historical, or it has been wholly rejected as fabulous, and thus, in either case, numerous errors have been the consequence.
As an example of the error which inevitably results from pursuing either of these methods of interpretation, one of which may be distinguished as the school of gross credulity, and the other as that of great skepticism, let us take the legend of the Temple origin of
(1) Chaldean Account of Genesis," p. 302. (2) Ibidem.
Masonry ‑ that is to say, the legend which places the organization of the Institution at the time of the building of the temple at Jerusalem.
Now, the former of these schools implicitly receives the whole legend as true in all its details, and recognizes King Solomon as the first Grand Master, with Hiram of Tyre and Hiram as his Wardens, who, with him, presided over the Craft, divided into three degrees, the initiation into which was the same as that practiced in the lodges of the present day, or at least not very unlike it.
Thus Dr. Anderson, who was the first to publicly promulgate this legend and the theory founded on it, says, in the second edition of his "Constitutions," that Hiram Abif, "in Solomon's absence, filled the chair as Deputy Grand Master, and, in his presence, was the Senior Grand Warden"; (1) and, again, that "Solomon partitioned the Fellow Crafts into certain lodges, with a Master and Wardens in each"; (2) and, lastly, that "Solomon was Grand Master of all Masons at Jerusalem. King Hiram was Grand Master at Tyre, and Hiram Abif had been Master of Work." (3) The modern rituals have made some change in these details, but we evidently see here the original source of the legend as it is now generally believed by the Fraternity.
Indeed, so firmly convinced of its truth are the believers in this legend, that the brand of heterodoxy is placed by them on all who deny or doubt it.
On the contrary, the disciples of the latter school, whose skepticism is as excessive as is the credulity of the former, reject as fabulous everything that tends to connect Freemasonry with the Solomonic temple. To the King of Israel they refuse all honor, and they contemptuously repudiate the theory that he was a Masonic dignitary, or even a Freemason at all. One of these Pyrrhonists has gone so far as to defile the memory of the Jewish monarch with unnecessary and unmerited abuse.
Between these two parties, each of which is misdirected by an intemperate zeal, come the iconoclasts ‑ impartial inquirers, who calmly and dispassionately seek for truth only. These disavow, it is true, the authenticity of the Temple legend in its present form. They deny that there is any proof which a historian could, by applying the just canons of criticism, admit as competent evidence, that Freemasonry was organized at the building of the temple of Solomon,
(1) Anderson, "Constitutions," 2d ed., chap. iii., p. 12. (2) Ibid., p. 13 (3) Ibid., p. 15
and hence they look for its origin at some other period and under different circumstances.
But they do not reject the myth connected with the temple as being wholly unworthy of consideration. On the contrary, they respect this legend as having a symbolic significance, whose value can not be overestimated. They trace its rise in the Old Constitutions; they find it plainly alluded to in the Legend of the Craft; and they follow it in its full development in the modern rituals. They thus recognize the influence that the story of the temple and its builders has exerted on the internal construction of the Order, and hence they feel no disposition to treat it, notwithstanding its historical inaccuracy, with contumely.
Knowing what an important part the legends and symbols of Freemasonry have performed in the progress of the Institution, and how much its philosophic system is indebted to them for all that is peculiar to itself, they devote their literary energies, not to the expurgation of this or any other myth or legend, but to the investigation of the questions how and when it arose, and what is its real significance as a symbol, or what foundation as a narrative it may have in history. And thus they are enabled to add important items to the mass of true Masonic history which they have been accumulating.
In short, the theory of the iconoclastic school is that truth and authenticity must always, and in the first place, be sought; that nothing must be accepted as historical which has not the internal and external evidences of historical verity, and that in treating the legends of Masonry ‑ of almost every one of which it may be said, "Se non vero, e ben trovato" ‑ if it is not true, it is well invented ‑ we are not to reject them as altogether fabulous, but as having some hidden and occult meaning, which, as in the case of all other symbols, we must diligently seek to discover. But if it be found that the legend has no symbolic significance, but is simply the distortion of a historical fact, we must carefully eliminate the fabulous increment, and leave the body of truth to which it had been added, to have its just value.
Such was the method pursued by the philosophers of antiquity; and Plato, Anaxagoras, and Cicero explained the absurdities of the ancient mythologists by an allegorical mode of interpretation.
To this school I have for years been strongly attached, and in the composition of this work I shall adopt its principles. I do not fear that the claims of Freemasonry to a time‑honored existence will be injured by any historical criticism, although the era in which it had its birth may not be admitted to be as remote as that assigned to it by Anderson or Oliver.
Iconoclastic criticism can not depreciate, but will rather elevate, the character of the Institution. It will relieve it of absurdities, will often explain the cause of anachronisms, will purify the fabulous element, and confine it within the strict domain of history.
It was a common reproach against the great Niebuhr that he had overthrown the whole fabric of early Roman history, and yet Dr. Arnold, the most competent of critics, has said of him that he had built up much more than he had destroyed, and fixed much that modern skepticism had rejected as fabulous on firmer historic grounds.
Following such a method as that pursued by the most learned of modern historians, it will be necessary, for a faithful and comprehensible investigation of the history of Masonry, to discriminate between the two periods into which it is naturally divided,
The PREHISTORIC
and
The HISTORIC.
The HISTORIC embraces the period within which we have authentic documents in reference to the existence of the Order, and will be considered in the second part of this book.
The PREHISTORIC embraces the period within which we have no authentic memorials, and when we have to depend wholly on legends and traditions.
The legendary history of Masonry will, therefore, be commenced in the next chapter.
P. 9
CHAPTER II
THE LEGENDARY HISTORY OF FREEMASONRY
IN the history of every ancient nation there is a prehistoric and a historic period.
The prehistoric period is that which has no records to prove the truth of the events that have been attributed to it. It is made up of myths and legends, founded ‑ some of them, in all probability ‑ on a distortion of historical facts, and some of them indebted entirely to imagination for their invention.
The historic period is that which begins with the narration of events which are supported by documents, either contemporary with the events or so recently posterior to them as to have nearly all the validity of contemporary evidence. Just such a division of periods as this we find in the history of Freemasonry.
The prehistoric period, more commonly styled the legendary history, embraces the supposed history of the rise and progress of the Institution in remote times, and details events said to have occurred, but which have no proof of their occurrence other than that of oral tradition, unsupported by that sort of documentary evidence which is essentially necessary to give a reliable character to an historical statement.
The historic period of Freemasonry commences with the time when written or printed records furnish the necessary testimony that the events narrated did actually occur.
In treating of the history of nations, scholars have found great difficulty in precisely defining the point of separation between the prehistoric and the historic periods. As in natural history, it is almost impossible to define the exact line of demarkation between any two consecutive classes of the kingdoms of nature so as to distinguish the highest species of a vegetable from the lowest of an animal organization, so in political history it is difficult to tell when the prehistoric period ends and the historic begins.
In Freemasonry we meet with the same embarrassment, and this embarrassment is increased according; to the different standpoints from which we view the institution.
If we adopt the theory (as has been done by a few writers too iconoclastic in their views) that Speculative Masonry never was anything but that which its present organization presents, with Grand Lodges, Grand Masters, and a ritual of distinct degrees, then we are compelled to place the commencement of the historic era at that period which has been called the Revival in the second decade of the 18th century.
If, with more liberal views, we entertain the opinion that Speculative Masonry was founded on, and is the offspring of, the Operative system of the Stonemasons, then we must extend our researches to at least the Middle Ages, where we shall find abundant documentary evidence of the existence and character of the Operative parent to which the Freemasonry of the present day, by a well‑marked transition, has succeeded.
Connecting the written history of the Operative Masons with that of its speculative offshoot, we have an authentic and continuous history that will carry us back to a period many centuries anterior to the time of the so‑called Revival in the year 1717.
If I were writing a history of Speculative Masonry merely, I should find myself restricted to an era, somewhere in the 17th century, when there is documentary evidence to show that the transition period began, and when the speculative obtruded into the Operative system.
But as I am really writing a history of Freemasonry, of which the Operative and the Speculative systems are divisions, intimately connected, I am constrained to go farther, and to investigate the rise and the progress of the Operative art as the precursor and the founder of the Speculative science.
The authentic details of the condition of Operative Masonry in the Middle Ages, of its connection, if it had any, with other organizations, and its transmutation at a later period into Speculative Masonry, will constitute the historic narrative of Freemasonry.
Its prehistoric narrative will be found in the myths and legends which were, unfortunately, for a long time accepted by the great body of the Craft as a true history, but which, though still credited by many, are yet placed by most modern Masonic scholars in their proper category.
These legends, some of which are preserved in the rituals, and some are becoming almost obsolete, have a common foundation in that traditional narrative which is known as the Legend of the Craft, (1) and which must first be understood before we can with satisfaction attempt to study the legendary history of the Institution.
But this legend is of such length and of so much importance that it demands for its consideration a separate and distinct chapter.
I, by no means, intend to advance the proposition that all the myths and legends now taught in the Lodges, or preserved in the works of Masonic writers, are to be found in the Legend of the Craft, but only the most important ‑ those that are still recognized by the more credulous portion of the Fraternity as genuine and authentic narratives ‑ receive their first notice in the Legend of the Craft, although they are indebted for their present, fuller form, to a development or enlargement, subsequently made in the course of the construction of the modern ritual.
(1) The Rev. Bro. Woodford calls it the "Legend of the Guild." But I prefer the title here used, because it does not lead to embarrassing questions as to the relation of the mediaeval Guilds to Freemasonry.
P. 12
CHAPTER III
THE OLD MANUSCRIPTS
ANDERSON tells us, in the second edition of the Book of Constitutions, that in the year 1719, "at some private Lodges several very valuable manuscripts concerning the Fraternity, their Lodges, Regulations, Charges, Secrets, and Usages, were too hastily burnt by some scrupulous Brothers, that these papers might not fall into strange hands." (1)
Fortunately, this destruction was not universal. The manuscripts to which Anderson alludes were undoubtedly those Old Constitutions of the Operative Masons, several copies of which, that had escaped the holocaust described by him, have since been discovered in the British Museum, in old libraries, or in the archives of Lodges, and have been published by those who have discovered them. (2)
These are the documents which have received the title of "Old Records," "Old Charges," or "Old Constitutions." Their general character is the same. Indeed, there is so much similarity, and almost identity, in their contents as to warrant the presumption that they are copies of some earlier document not yet recovered.
The earliest of these documents is a manuscript poem, entitled the Constitutiones artis geometriae, secundum Eucleydem, which is preserved in the British Museum, and which was published in 1840 by Mr. Halliwell, in his Early History of Freemasonry in England. The date of this manuscript is supposed to be about the year 1390. A second and enlarged edition was published in 1844.
The next of the English manuscripts is that which was published
(1) Anderson's " Constitutions," 1738, P. 111 (2) Among these writers we must not omit to mention Bro. William James Hughan, facile princeps of all Masonic antiquarians, who made, in 1872, a valuable contribution to this literature, under the title of "The Old Charges of the British Freemasons," the value of which is enhanced by the learned Preface of Bro. A.F.A. Woodford.
in 1861 by Bro. Matthew Cooke from the original in the British Museum, and which was once the property of Mrs. Caroline Baker, from whom it was purchased in 1859 by the Curators of the Museum. The date of this manuscript is supposed to be about 1490.
All the English Masonic antiquarians concur in the opinion that this manuscript is next in antiquity to the Halliwell poem, though there is a difference of about one hundred years in their respective dates. It is, however, mere guesswork to say that there were not other manuscripts in the intervening period. But as none have been discovered, they must be considered as non‑existent, and it is impossible even to conjecture, from any groundwork on which we can stand, whether, if such manuscripts did ever exist, they partook more of the features of the Halliwell or of the Cooke document, or whether they presented the form of a gradual transmission from the one to the other.
The Cooke MS. is far more elaborate in its arrangement and its details than the Halliwell, and contains the Legend of the Craft in a more extended form.
In the absence of any other earlier document of the same kind, it must be considered as the matrix, as it were, in which that Legend, in the form in which it appears in all the later manuscripts, was moulded.
In the year 1815, Mr. James Dowland published, in the Gentleman's Magazine, (1) the copy of an old manuscript which had lately come into his possession, and which he described as being "written on a long roll of parchment, in a very clear hand, apparently early in the 17th century, and very probably is copied from a manuscript of an earlier date." Although not as old as the Halliwell and Cooke MSS., it is deemed of very great value, because it comes next to them in date, and is apparently the first of that series of later manuscripts, so many of which have, within the past few years, been recovered. It is evidently based on the Cooke MS., though not an exact copy of it. But the later manuscripts comprising that series, at the head of which it stands, so much resemble it in details, and even in phraseology, that they must either have been copies made from it, or, what is far more probable, copies of some older and common original, of which it also is a copy.
(1) Gentleman's Magazine, vol. 85, P. 489, May, 1815.
The original manuscript which was used by Dowland for the publication in the Gentleman's Magazine is lost, or can not now be found. But Mr. Woodford and other competent authorities ascribe the year 1550 as being about its date.
Several other manuscript Constitutions, whose dates vary from the middle of the 16th to the beginning of the 18th century, have since been discovered and published, principally by the industrious labors of Brothers Hughan and Woodford in England, and Brother Lyon in Scotland.
The following list gives the titles and conjectural dates of the most important of these manuscripts: (1)
Halliwell MS............. supposed, 1390.
Cooke MS................. " 1490.
Dowland MS. ............. " 1500.
Landsdowne MS........ ” 1560.
York MS., No. 1..........
"
1600. Harleian MS., NO. 2054...
"
1625. Grand Lodge MS...........
"
1632. Sloane MS., NO. 3848.....
certain, 1646. Sloane MS., NO. 3323.....
"
1659. Harleian MS., No. 1942...
supposed, 1660. Aitcheson‑Haven MS. .....
certain, 1666. Edinburgh‑Kilwinning MS.. supposed, 1670. York MS., No. 5 .........
"
1670. York MS., No. 6..........
"
1680. Lodge of Antiquity MS....
certain, 1686. York MS., No. 2..........
"
1693. Alnwick MS...............
"
1701. York MS., No. 4..........
"
1704. Papworth MS..............
supposed, 1714.
All of these manuscripts begin, except the Halliwell poem, with an invocation to the Trinity. Then follows a descant on the seven liberal arts and sciences, of which the fifth, or Geometry, is said to be Masonry. This is succeeded by a traditional history of Masonry, from the days of Lamech to the reign of King Athelstan of England. The manuscripts conclude with a series of "charges," or regulations, for the government of the Craft while they were of a purely operative character. (1) I have relied on the excellent authority of Rev. A.F.A. Woodford for the dates. See Hoghan's "Old Charges of the British Freemasons," p. xii.
The traditional history which constitutes the first part of these "Old Records" is replete with historical inaccuracies, with anachronisms, and even with absurdities. And yet it is valuable, because it forms the germ of that system of Masonic history which was afterward developed by such writers as Anderson, Preston, and Oliver, and from whose errors the iconoclasts of the present day are successfully striving to free the Institution, so as to give its history a more rational and methodic form.
This traditional history is presented to us in all the manuscripts, in an identity of form, or, at least, with very slight verbal differences. These differences are, indeed, so slight that they suggest the strong probability of a common source for all these documents, either in the oral teaching of the older Masons, or in some earlier record that has not yet been recovered. The tradition seems always to have secured the unhesitating belief of the Fraternity as a true relation of the origin and the progress of Masonry, and hence it has received the title of the Legend of the Craft.
From the zealous care with which many manuscripts containing this legend were destroyed in 1719 by "scrupulous brothers" who were opposed to its publication, we might believe that it formed a part of the esoteric instructions of the Guild of Operative Masons. If so, it lost this secret character by the publication of Roberts's edition of the "Constitutions" in 1722.
In the earlier German and French Masonic records, such as the Ordenung dey Steinmetzen at Strasburg in 1462, and the Reglements sur les Arts et Metiers at Paris in the 12th century, there is no appearance of this legend. But it does not follow from this that no such legend existed among the French and German Masons. Indeed, as it is well known that early English Operative Masonry was derived from the continent, it is natural to suppose that the continental Masons brought the legend into England.
There is, besides, internal evidence in the English manuscripts of both French and German interpolations. The reference in the Legend to Charles Martel connects it with the French Masonry of the 12th century, and the invocation to the "Four Crowned Martyrs" (1) in the Halliwell MS. is undoubtedly of German origin. (2)
(1) Die heiligen Vier gekronten, "Ordenung der Steinmetz, zu Strasburg, 1459," and in all the other German Constitutions, (2) Findel thinks that this invocation to the Four Crowned Martyrs " must be regarded as a most decided proof of the identity of the German and English Stonemasons, and of their having one common parentage." ("Geschichte der Frei Maurerei." Lyon's translation, p. 31.) Woodford does not concur with this view, but I think without good reason.
The importance of this Legend in the influence that it exerted for a long period on the Craft as the accredited history of the Institution makes it indispensably necessary that it should form a part of any work that professes to treat of the history of Masonry.
For this purpose I have selected the Dowland MS., because it is admitted to be the oldest of those that assumed that general form which was followed in all the subsequent manuscripts, between which and it there is no substantial difference.
17
CHAPTER IV
THE LEGEND OF THE CRAFT
THE might of the Father of Kings, (1) with the wisdome of his glorious Son, through the grace of the goodness of the Holy Ghost, there bene three persons in one Godheade, be with us at our beginninge, and give us grace so to governe us here in this mortall life liveinge, that we may come to his kingdome that never shall have endinje. Amen.
"Good Bretheren and Followes: Our purpose is to tell you how and in what manner this worthy science of Masonrye was begunne, and afterwards how it was favoured by worthy Kings and Princes, and by many other worshippfull men. And also to those that be willings, wee will declare the charge that belongeth to any true Mason to keepe for in good faith. And yee have good heede thereto; it is well worthy to be well kept for a worthy craft and a curious science.
"For there be Seaven liberall Sciences, of the which seaven it is one of them. And the names of the Seaven Seyences bene these: First is Grammere, and it teacheth man to speake truly and write truly. And the second is Rhethoricke; and teacheth a man to speake faire in subtill termes. And the third is Dialectyke; and teacheth a man for to discern or know truth from false. And the fourth is Arithmeticke; and that teacheth a man for to recken and to accompte all manner of numbers. And the fifth is called Geometrie; and that teacheth mett and measure of earth and of all other things; of the which science is called Masonrye. And the sixth science is called Musicke; and that teacheth a man of songe and voice, of tongue and orgaine, harpe and trompe. And the seaventh science is called Ashonomye; and that teacheth a man the course of
(1) In the Landsdowne, and most of the other MSS., the formula is "the Father of the Heavens," or "of Heaven."
the sunn, moone and starts. These be the Seaven liberall Sciences, the which bene all founded by one Science, that is to say Geometric. And this may a man prove, that the science of the work is founded by Geometric, for Geometrie teacheth a man mett and measure, ponderation and weight, of all manner of things on earth, for there is no man that worketh any science, but he worketh by some mett or measure, nor no man that buyeth or selleth, but he buyeth or selleth by some measure or by some weight, and all these is Geometric. And these use merchants and all craftsmen, and all other of the Seaven Sciences, and in especiall the plowman and tillers of all manner of grounds, graynes, vynes, flowers and setters of other fruits; for Grammere or Retricke, neither Astronomie nor none of all the other Seaven Sciences can no manner find mett nor measure without Geometric. Wherefore methinketh that the science of Geometrie is most worthy, and that findeth (1) all other.
"How that these worthy Sciences were first begunne, I shall you tell. Before Noye's flood, there was a man called Lameche, as it is written in the Byble in the iiijth chapter of Genesis; and this Lameche had two wives, and the one height Ada, and that other height Sella; by his first wife Ada he gott two sons, and that one Jabell and thother Tuball, and by that other wife Sella he got a son and a daughter. And these four children founden the beginning of all sciences in the world. And this elder son Jabell found the science of Geometric, and he departed flocks of sheep and lambs in the field, and first wrought house of stone and tree, (2) as is noted in the chapter above said. And his brother Tuball found the science of musicke, songe of tonge, harp and orgaine. And the third brother, Tuball Cain, found smithcraft of gold, silver, copper, iron and steele; and the daughter found the craft of Weavinge. And these children knew well that God would take vengeance for synn, either by fire or by water; wherefore they writt their science that they had found in two pillars of stone, that they might be found after Noye's flood. And that one stone was marble, for that would not burn with fire; and
(1) Used in its primitive Anglo‑Saxon meaning of "to invent, to devise." Geometry invented or devised all the other sciences. (2) This is an instance of the inaccuracy of these old records in historical lore. So far from Jabal being the first who "wrought house of stone and tree," he was the originator of the nomadic life, in which such buildings are never used. He invented tents, made most probably of skins, to be the temporary residence of a pastoral people, led by the exigency of a want of food to remove their flocks from time to time to new pastures.
that other stone was clepped laterns, (1) and would not drown in noe water.
"Our intent is to tell you trulie how and in what manner these stones were found that these sciences were written in. The great Hermarynes, that was Cuby's son, the which Cub was Sem's son, that was Noy's son. This Hermarynes afterwards was called Harmes, the father of wise men; he found one of the two pillars of stone, and found the science written there, and he taught it to other men. And at the making of the Tower of Babylon there was Masonrye first made much of. And the Kinge of Babylon that height Nemrothe, (2) was a mason himself; and loved well the science, and it is said with masters of histories. And when the City of Nyneve and other cities of the East should be made, Nemrothe, the King of Babylon, sent thither three score Masons at the rogation of the King of Nyneve, his cosen. And when he sent them forth, he gave them a charge on this manner. That they should be true each of them to other, and that they should love truly together, and that they should serve their lord truly for their pay; soe that the master may have worshipp and all that long to him. And other moe charges he gave them. And this was the first time that ever Masons had any charge of his science.
"Moreover when Abraham and Sara his wife went into Egipt, there he taught the Seaven Sciences to the Egiptians; and he had a worthy scoller that height Ewclyde, (3) and he learned right well and was a master of all the vij Sciences liberall. And in his days it befell that the lord and the estates of the realme had soe many sonns that they had gotten, some by their wives and some by other ladyes of the realme; for that land is a hott land and a plentious of generacion. And they had not competent livelode to find with their children, wherefor they made much care, and then the king of the land made a great Counsell and a Parliament, to witt, how they might find their children honestly as gentlemen; and they could find no manner of good way. And then they did crye through all the realme, if there were any man that informe them, that he should come to them, and he should be soe rewarded for his travail, that he should hold him pleased.
(1) This word is a corruption of the Latin "later," brick. (2) Nimrod. (3) Bro. Matthew Cooke, in his Notes to the MS. which he was the first to publish, and which thence bears his name, protests against being held responsible for the chronology which makes Abraham and Euclid contemporaries. It will hereafter be seen that this legend of Euclid is merely a symbol.
"After that this crye was made, then came this worthy clarke Ewclyde and said to the king and all his great lords, 'If yee will take me your children to governe, and to teach them one of the Seaven Scyences, wherewith they may live honestly as gentlemen should, under a condition, that yee will grant me and them a commission that I may have power to rule them after the manner that the science ought to be ruled.' And that the kinge and all his Counsell granted to him anone and sealed their commission. And then this worthy Doctor tooke to him these lord's sonns, and taught theat the scyence of Geometrie in practice, for to work in stones all manner of worthy worke that belongeth to buildinge churches, temples, castells, towres, and mannors, and all other manner of buildings; and he gave them a charge in this manner.
"The first was that they should be true to the Kynge, and to the Lord that they owe. And that they should love well together and be true each one to other. And that they should call each other his fellowe or else brother and not by servant nor his knave, nor none other foul name. And that they should deserve their pale of the lord or of the master that they serve. And that they should ordaine the wisest of them to be master of the worke and nether for love nor great lynneage, ne riches ne for no favour to lett another that hath little conning for to be master of the lord's worke, wherethrough the lord should be evill served and they ashamed. And also that they should call their governors of the worke, Master, in the time that they worke with him. And other many moe charges that longe to tell. And to all these charges he made them to sweare a great oath that men used in that time; and ordayned them for reasonable wages, that they might live honestly by. And also that they should come and semble together every yeare once, how they might worke best to serve the lord for his profitt and to their own worshipp; and to correct within themselves him that had trespassed against the science. And thus was the seyence grounded there; and that worthy Mr. Ewclyde gave it the name of Geometrie. And now it is called through all this land, Masonrys.
"Sythen longe after, (1) when the children of Israell were coming into the land of Beheast, (2) that is now called amongst us, the country of
(1) Since then long after‑long after that time. (2) The Land of Promise, or the Promised Land. "Beheste Promissio," says the Promptorium Parvulorum.
Jhrlm. Kinge David began the Temple that they called Templum D'ni, and it is named with us the Temple of Jerusalem. And the same Kinge David loved Masons well and cherished them much, and gave them good pale. And he gave the charges and the manners as he had learned of Egipt given by Ewclyde, and other charges moe that ye shall heare afterward. And after the decease of Kinge David, Solomon, that was David's sonn, performed out the Temple that his father begonne; and sent after Masons into divers countries and of divers lands; and gathered them together, so that he had fourscore thousand workers of stone, and were all named Masons. And he chose out of them three thousand that were ordayned to be masters and governors of his worke. And furthermore there was a Kinge of another region that men called Iram, (1) and he loved well Kinge Solomon and he gave him tymber to his worke. And he had a sonn that height Aynon, (2) and he was a Master of Geometric, and was chief Master of all his Masons, and was Master of all his gravings and carvinge, and of all manner of Masonrye that longed to the Temple; and this is witnessed by the Bible, in libro Regum, the third chapter. And this Solomon confirmed both charges and the manners that his father had given to Masons. And thus was that worthy Science of Masonrye confirmed in the country of Jerusalem, and in many other kingdoms.
"Curious craftsmen walked about full wide into divers countryes, some because of learning more craft and cunning, and some to teach them that had but little cunnynge. And soe it befell that there was one curious Mason that height Maymus Grecus,' that had been at the making of Solomon's Temple, and he came into France, and there he taught the science of Masonrye to men of France. And there was one of the Regal line of France that height Charles Martell; (4) and he was a man that loved well such a science, and drew to this Maymus Grecus that is above‑said, and learned of him the science, and tooke upon him the charges and manners; and afterwards by the
(1) It is scarcely necessary to explain that this is meant for Hiram. (2) The true origin and meaning of this name, for which some of the modern Speculative Masons have substituted Hiram, Abiff, and others Adoniram, will be hereafter discussed. (3) This name has been a Sphinxian enigma which many a Masonic CEdipos has failed to solve. I shall recur to it in a subsequent page. (4) The introduction of this monarch into the Legend leads us to an inquiry into an interesting period of French Masonic history that will be hereafter discussed.
grace of God, he was elect to be Kinge of Fraunce. And when he was in his estate, he tooke Masons, and did helpe to make men Masons that were none; and set them to worke, and gave them both the charge and the manners and good pale, as he had learned of other Masons; and confirmed them a charter from yeare to yeare, to hold their semble when they would; and cherished them right much; and thus came this science into Fraunce.
"England in all this season stood voyd, as for any charge of Masonrye unto St Adbones (1) tyme. And in his days the King of England that was a Pagan, he did wall the towne about, that is called Sainct Albones. And Sainct Albones was a worthy Knight and stewart with the Kinge of his household, and had governance of the realme, and also of the makinge of the town walls; and loved well Masons and cheished them much. And he made their paie right good, standing as the realme did; for he gave them ij.s. vjd. a weeke and iij.d. to their nonesynches. (2) And before that time, through all this land, a Mason tooke but a penny a day and his meate, till Sainct Albones amended it, and gave them a chartour of the Kinge and his Counsell for to hold a general councell, and gave it the name of Assemble; and thereat he was himselfe, and helped to make Masons and gave them charges as you shall heare afterward.
"Right soon after the decease of Sainct Albone, there came divers wars into the realme of England of divers Nations soe that the good rule of Masonrye was destroyed unto the tyme of Kinge Athelstone's days that was a worthy Kinge of England and brought this land into good rest and peace; and builded many great works of Abbyes and Toures, and other many divers buildings; and loved well Masons. And he had a sonne that height Edwinne, and he loved Masons much more than his father did. And he was a great practiser in Geometric; and he drew him much to talke and to commune with Masons, and to learn of them science; and afterwards for love that he had to Masons, and to the science, he was made Mason, and he gatt of the Kinge his father, a Chartour and Commission to hold every yeare (1) St. Alban, the protomartyr of England. Of his connection with the Legend, more hereafter. (2) A corruption of the old English word noonshun, from which comes our modern luncheon. It meant the refreshment taken at noon, when laborers desist from work to shun the heat. It may here mean food or subsistence in general. St. Alban gave his Masons two shillings a week and three pence for their daily food. (See Nonesynches in ,Mackey's " Encyclopzedia of Freemasonry.")
once an Assemble, wher that ever they would, within the realme of England; and to correct within themselves defaults and trespasses that were done within the science. And he held himselfs an Assemble at Yorke, (1) and these he made Masons, and gave them charges, and taught them the manners, and commanded that rule to be kept ever after, and tooke then the chartour and commission to keepe, and made ordinance that it should be renewed from kinge to kinge.
"And when the Assemble was gathered he made a cry that all old Masons and young that had any writeinge or understanding of the charges and the manners that were made before in this land, or in any other, that they should show them forth. And when it was proved, there were founden some in French, and some in Greek, and some in English and some in other languages; and the intent of them all was founden all one. And he did make a booke thereof, and how the science was founded. And he himselfe bad and commanded that it should be readd or tould, when that any Mason should be made for to give him his charge. And fro that day into this tyme manners of Masons have been kept in that form as well as men might governe it. And furthermore divers Assembles have beene put and ordayned certain charges by the best advice of Masters and fellows."
Then follow the charges that are thus said to have been enacted at York and at other General Assemblies, but which properly constitute no part of the Legend, at least no part connected with the legendary details of the rise and progress of the Institution. The Legend ends with the account of the holding of an Assembly at York, and other subsequent ones, for the purpose of enacting laws for the government of the Order.
(1) This part of the Legend which refers to Prince Edwin and the Assembly at York is so important that it demands and will receive a future comprehensive examination.
P. 24
CHAPTER V
THE HALLIWELL POEM AND THE LEGEND
THERE is one manuscript which differs so much from all the others in its form and in its contents as to afford the strongest internal evidence that it is derived from a source entirely different from that which gave origin to the other and later documents.
I allude to what is known to Masonic anti‑quaries as the Halliwell MS. As this is admitted to be the oldest Masonic document extant, and as some very important conclusions in respect to the early history of the Craft are about to be deduced from it, a detailed account of it will not be deemed unnecessary.
This work was first published in 1840 by Mr. James Orchard Halliwell, under the title of "A Poem on the Constitutions of Masonry," (1) from the original manuscript in the King's Library of the British Museum. Mr. Halliwell, who subsequently adopted the name of Phillips, is not a member of the Brotherhood, and Woodford appropriately remarks that "it is somewhat curious that to Grandidier and Halliwell, both non‑Masons, Freemasonry owes the impetus given at separate epochs to the study of its archaeology and history." (2)
Halliwell says that the manuscipt formerly belonged to Charles Theyer, a well‑known collector of the 17th century. It is undoubtedly the oldest Masonic MS. extant. Messrs. Bond and Egerton of the British Museum consider its date to be about the middle of the 15th century. Kloss (3) thinks that it was written between the years 1427 and 1445. Dr. Oliver (4) maintains that it is a transcript of the Book of Constitutions adopted by the General Assembly, held
(1) In a brochure entitled "The Early History of Freemasonry in England." A later improved edition was published in 1844. (2) In Kenning's "Encyclopeadia," voc. Halliwell. (3) "Die Freimaur in ihrer wahren Bedentung." S. 12. (4) American Quart. Rev. of Freemasonry, vol. i., p. 547.
in the year 926, at the City of York. Halliwell himself places the date of the MS. at 1390. Woodford (1) concurs in this opinion. I am inclined to think that this is the true date of its transcription.
The manuscript is in rhymed verse, and consists of 794 lines. At the head of the poem is the inscription: "Hic incipiunt constitluciones artis gemetria, secundum Euclydem." The language is more archaic than that of Wicliffe's version of the Bible, which was written toward the end of the 14th century, but approaches very nearly to that of the Chronicles of Robert of Gloucester, the date of which was at the beginning of the same century. Therefore, if we admit that the date of 1390, attributed by Halliwell and Woodford to the transcription in the British Museum, is correct, we may, I think, judging by the language, safely assign to the original the date of about 1300. Further back than this, philology will not permit us to go.
Lines 1‑86 of this MS. contain the history of the origin of geometry, or Masonry, and the story of Euclid is given at length, much like that which is in the Legend of the Craft. But no other parts of that Legend are referred to, except the portion which records the introduction of Masonry into England. From the narrative of the establishment of Masonry in Egypt by Euclid, the poem passes immediately to the time when the "craft com unto Englond." Here the legendary story of King Athelstan and the Assembly called by him is given, with this variation from the common Legend, that there is no mention of the city of York, where the Assembly is said to have been held, nor of Prince Edwin, who summoned it.
Lines 87 ‑ 470 contain the regulations which were adopted at that Assembly, divided into fifteen articles and the same number of points. There is a very great resemblance, substantially, between these regulations and the charges contained in the subsequent or second set of Manuscript Constitutions. But the regulations in the Halliwell poem are given at greater length, with more particularity and generally accompanied with an explanation or reason for the law.
After an interpolation, to be referred to hereafter, the poem proceeds under the title of "Ars quatuor coronatorum," The Art of
(1) Preface to Hughan's "Old Charges," p. vii.
the Four Crowned Ones, a title never applied to Masonry in the later and purely English manuscripts. We have first an invocation to God and the Virgin, and then the Legend of the Four Crowned Martyrs, which ends on line 534.
Now this Legend of the Four Crowned Martyrs (1) ‑ die Vier Gekronten ‑ is found in none of the purely English manuscripts, but is of German origin, and peculiar to the German Steinmetzen or Stone Masons of the Middle Ages. Its introduction in this manuscript is an evidence of the German origin of the document, and, as Findel (2) says, "must be regarded as a most decided proof of the identity of the German and English Stone Masons, and of their having one common parentage."
The details of this Legend close at the 534th line, and the poem then proceeds to give a small and imperfect portion of what is known in our later manuscripts as the Legend of the Craft.
I am persuaded that all this part of the poem has been dislocated from its proper place, and that in the original the lines from 535 to 576 formed a portion of the Legend of the Craft, as it must have been inserted in the introductory part of the second manuscript. I think so, first, because in all other manuscripts the Legend forms the exordium and precedes the charges; secondly, because it has no proper connection with or sequence to the Legend of the Four Crowned Martyrs which precedes it, and which terminates on the 354th line; and lastly, because it is evidently an interruption of the religious instructions which are taken up on line 577, and which naturally follow line 534. The writer having extolled the Christian steadfastness and piety of the four martyrs whose feast he tells us is on the eighth day after Allhalloween, proceeds on line 576 to admonish his readers to avoid pride and covetousness and to practice virtue. There is here a regular and natural connection, which, however, would be interrupted by the insertion between the two clauses of an imperfect portion of a legend which has reference to the very beginning of the history of Masonry. Hence I conclude that all that part of the Legend which described the events that were connected with Noah's Flood and the Tower of Babel is an interpolation, and belongs to another manuscript and to another place.
(1) See the full details of this Legend in Mackey's "Encyclopeadia of Freemasonry," art. Four Crowned Martyrs. (2) "History of Freemasonry," Lyon's Trans., p. 31.
In fact, the copyist had two manuscripts before him, and he transcribed sometimes from one and sometimes from the other, apparently with but little judgment, or, rather, he copied the whole of one and then interpolated it with extracts from the other without respect to any congruity of subjects.
The rest of the poem is occupied with instructions as to behavior when in church, when in the company of one's superiors, and when present at the celebration of the mass. The whole ends with what we find in no other manuscript, the now familiar Masonic formula, "Amen, so mote it be."
Line 471 furnishes, I think, internal evidence that the poem was originally composed of two distinct works, written, in all probability, by two different persons, but in the copy which we now have, combined in one by the compiler or copyist. Mr. Woodford also is of the opinion that there are two distinct poems, although the fact had not attracted the attention of Halliwell. The former gentleman says that "it seems to be in truth two legends, and not only one." This is evident, from the fact that this second part is prefaced by the title, "Alia ordinacio artis gemetriae," that is, "Another Constitution of the art of geometry." This title would indicate that what followed was a different Ordinacio or Constitution and taken from a different manuscript. Besides, line 471, which is the beginning of the other or second Constitution, does not fall into its proper place in following line 470, but is appropriately a continuation of line 74. To make this evident, I copy lines 70‑74 from the poem, and follow them by lines 471‑474, whence it will be seen that the latter lines are an appropriate and natural continuation of the former.
Line 70. He sende about ynto the londe
71. After alle the masonus of the crafte,
72. To come to hym ful evene stragfte
73. For to amende these defaultys alle
74. By good counsel gef it hyt mytgh falle.
............
471. They ordent ther a semble to be y‑holde
472. Every yer, whersever they wolde
473. To amende the defautes, gef any where fonde
474. Amonge the craft withynne the londe.
The second manuscipt seems to have been copied from line 471, as far as line 496. There, I suppose, the charges or regulations to have followed, which having been given from the first manuscript the copyist omitted, as a needless repetition, but went on immediately with the "ars quatuor coronatorum." This ended at line 534. It is now evident that he went back to a preceding part of the second manuscript and copied the early account of Masonry from line 535 to 576. The bare reading of these lines will convince the reader that they are not in their proper place, and must have formed a part of the beginning of the second poem.
Line 577 appropriately follows line 534, when the interpolation is left out, and then the transcription is correctly made to the end of the poem. The first manuscript was apparently copied correctly, with the exception of the two interpolations from the second MS. There is a doubt whether the Legend of the Crowned Martyrs belonged to the first or to the second poem. If to the first, then we have the whole of the first poem, and of the second only the interpolations. This is, however, a mere conjecture without positive proof. Yet it is very probable.
On the whole, the view I am inclined to take of this manuscript is as follows:
1. There were two original manuscripts, out of which the copyist made a careless admixture.
2. The first MS. began with line 1 and went on to the end at line 794. But this is only conjectural. It may have ended, or rather the copying ceased, at line 470.
3. If the conjecture just advanced be correct, then from a second MS. the copyist made interpolations, in the following way.
4. The beginning of the second MS. is lost. But from very near the commencement, which probably described the antediluvian tradition of Lamech, the copyist had selected a portion which begins with line 535 and ends at line 576. He had previously interpolated the lines from 471 to 496.
5. We have, then, the whole of the first manuscript, from the 1st line to the 794th, with the addition of two interpolations from the second, consisting only of 68 lines, namely: from line 471 to 496, and from line 535 to 576.
6. The first manuscript is deficient in any references to antediluvian Masonry, but begins with the foundation of Masonry in Egypt, as its title imports. This deficiency was, in part, supplied by the second interpolation (535‑596). This part begins with the building of Babel. But it is evident from the words, "many years after," that there was a preceding part to this manuscript that has not been copied. The "many years after" refer to some details that had been previously made. The account of the Seven Sciences, found in all later manuscripts, is not given in the first poem. It is inserted in this from the second.
7. So of the poem in the form we now have it, the parts copied from the second MS. consist only of 68 lines, which have been interpolated in two places into the first MS. ‑ namely, lines 471 ‑ 496, and lines 535‑576; and these have been dislocated from their proper places. All the rest of the poem constitutes the original first manuscript. If I hesitate at all in coming to the positive conclusion that the first and last parts of the poem were composed by the same author, it is because the latter is written in a slightly different metre. This, therefore, leaves the question where the first poem ends and where the second begins, still open to discussion.
The variations which exist between the Halliwell poem, or, rather, poems, and other Masonic manuscripts of later date, are very important, because they indicate a difference of origin, and, by the points of difference, suggest several questions as to the early progress of Masonry in England.
1. The form of the Halliwell MS. differs entirely from that of the others. The latter are in prose, while the former is in verse. The language, too, of the Halliwell MS. is far more antiquated than that of the other manuscripts, showing that it was written in an earlier stage of the English tongue. It belongs to the Early English which succeeded the Anglo‑Saxon. The other manuscripts were written at a later period of the language.
2. The Halliwell MS. is evidently a Roman Catholic production, and was written when the religion of Rome prevailed in England. The later manuscripts are all Protestant in their character, and must have been written after the middle of the 16th century, at least, when Protestantism was introduced into that country by Edward VI. and by Queen Elizabeth. (1)
The different religious character of the two sets of manuscripts
(1) Edward VI. reigned from 1547‑1553; Elizabeth reigned from 1558‑1603; the interval was occupied by the Roman Catholic reign of Mary. But the archaic style of the "Halliwell MS." forbids any theory of its having been written during that intermediate period.
is very patent. We see ecclesiastical influence very strongly manifested in the Halliwell MS. So marked is this that Mr. Halliwell supposes that it was written by a priest, which, I think, is not impossible, although not for the reason he assigns, which is founded on his incorrect translation of a single word. (1)
But the Roman Catholic character of the poem is proven by lines 593‑692, which are occupied in directions how the mass is to be heard; and, so ample are these directions as to the ritual observance of this part of the Roman Catholic worship, that it is very probable that they were written by a priest.
In the subsequent manuscripts we find no such allusions. Freemasonry, when these documents were written, was Christian in its character, but it was Protestant Christianity. The invocation with which each one begins is to the Trinity of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost; but no mention is made, as in the Halliwell MS. of the Virgin and the saints. The only reference to the Church is in the first charge, which is, "that you shall be a true man to God and the holy Church, and that you use no heresy nor error by your understanding or teaching of discreet men" ‑ a charge that would be eminently fitting for a Protestant Christian brotherhood.
On referring to the first charge adopted after the revival in 1717 by the Grand Lodge of England, we find that then, for the first time, the sectarian character was abandoned, and the toleration of a universal religion adopted.
Thus it is said in that charge: "Though in ancient times Ma‑
(1) A philological note may, here, be not uninteresting. Mr. Halliwell, in support of his assertion that the writer of the poem was a priest, quotes line 629: "And, when the Gospel me rede schal" ‑ where he evidently supposes that me was used instead of I, and that the line was to be translated‑ "when I shall read the Gospel." But in none of the old manuscripts is the flagrant blunder committed of using the accusative me in place of the nominative Y or I. The fact is, that the Anglo‑Saxon man, signifying one, or they, like the French on in "on dit," as "man dyde," one or they did, or it was done, gave way in Early English to me, used in the same sense. Examples of this may be found in the writers who lived about the time of the composition of the "Halliwell MS." A few may suffice. In the Ayenbite of Inwyt is the following line: "Ine the ydele wordes me zeneyeth ine vif maneres," that is, "In the idle word one sinneth in five ways." Again, in Robert of Gloucester's Chronicle are these phrases "By this tale me may yse," i.e.: "By this tale may be seen," Story of Lear, line 183. And best me may to hem truste," i.e.: "And they may be trustedliest," ib., 1. 184. "The stude that he was at yslawe me cleputh yet Morgan," i.e.: "The place where he was slain is called Morgan still," ib., 1. 213. And the line in the Halliwell poem, which Mr. Halliwell supposed to mean, "And when I shall read the Gospel," properly translated, is, " And when the Gospel shall be read." It furnishes, therefore, no proof that the writer was a priest.
sons were charged in every country to be of the religion of that country or nation, whatever it was, yet 'tis now thought more expedient only to oblige them to that religion in which all men agree, leaving their particular opinions to themselves." (1)
Now, comparing the religious views expressed in the oldest Masonic Constitution of the 14th century, with those set forth in the later ones of the 16th and 17th, and again with those laid down in the charge of 1717, we find an exact record of the transitions which from time to time took place in the religious aspect of Freemasonry in England and in some other countries.
At first it was Roman Catholic in its character, and under ecclesiastical domination.
Then, after the Reformation, rejecting the doctrines of Rome and the influence of the priesthood, it retained its Christian character, but became Protestant in its peculiar views.
Lastly, at the time of the so‑called Revival, in the beginning of the 18th century, when Speculative Masonry assumed that form which it has ever since retained, it abandoned its sectarian character, and adopted a cosmopolitan and tolerant rule, which required of its members, as a religious test, only a belief in God.
(1) Anderson's " Constitutions," 1st ed, 1723, P. 50.
P. 32
CHAPTER VI
THE ORIGIN OF THE HALLIWELL POEM
ALL these facts concerning the gradual changes in the religious character of the Institution, which by a collation of the old manuscripts we are enabled to derive from the Legend of the Craft, are corroborated by contemporaneous historical documents, as will be hereafter seen, and thus the "Legend," notwithstanding the many absurdities and anachronisms which deface it, becomes really valuable as an historical document.
But this is not all. In comparing the Halliwell poem with the later manuscripts, we not only find unmistakable internal evidence that they have a different origin, but we learn what that origin is.
The Halliwell poem comes to us from the Stonemasons of Germany. It is not, perhaps, an exact copy of any hitherto undiscovered German document, but its author must have been greatly imbued with the peculiar thoughts and principles of the German "Steinmetzen" of the Middle Ages.
The proof of this is very palpable to any one who will carefully read the Halliwell poem, and compare its idea of the rise and progress of Geometry with that exhibited in the later manuscript Constitutions.
These latter trace the science, as it is always called, from Lamech to Nimrod, who "found" or invented the Craft of Masonry at the building of the Tower of Babel, and then to Euclid, who established it in Egypt, whence it was brought by the Israelites into Judea, and there again established by David and Solomon, at the building of the Temple. Thence, by a wonderful anachronism it was brought into France by one Namus Grecus, who had been a workman at the Temple, and who organized the Science in France under the auspices of Charles Martel. From France it was carried to England in the time of St. Alban. After a long interruption in consequence of the Danish and Saxon wars, it finally took permanent root at York, where Prince Edwin called an Assembly, and gave the Masons their charges under the authority of a Charter granted by King Athelstan.
It will be observed that nowhere in this later Legend is there any reference to Germany as a country in which Masonry existed. On the contrary, the Masonry of England is supposed to have been derived from France, and due honor is paid to Charles Martel as the founder of the Order in that kingdom.
Hence we may rationally conclude that the Legend of the Craft was modified by the influence of the French Masons, who, as history informs us, were brought over into England at an early period.
In this respect, authentic history and the Legend coincide, and the one corroborates the other.
Different from all this is the Legend of the Halliwell poem, the internal evidence clearly showing a Germanic origin, or at least a Germanic influence. The Rev. Bro. Woodford objects to this view, because, as he says, "the Legend was then common to both countries." But with all due respect, I can not but look upon this argument as a sort of petitio principi. The very question to be determined is, whether this community of belief, if it existed at that time, did not owe its origin to an importation from Germany. It is certain that in none of the later English manuscripts is there any allusion to the Four Crowned Martyrs, who were the recognized patrons of German Operative Masonry.
The variations of the Halliwell poem from the later manuscripts are as follows: It omits all reference to Lamech and his sons, but passing rapidly over the events at the Tower of Babel, the building of which it ascribes to Nebuchadnezzar, it begins (if we except a few lines interpolated in the middle of the poem) with the Legend of Euclid and the establishment of Masonry by him in Egypt.
There is no mention of King Solomon's Temple, whereas the history of the building of that edifice, as a Masonic labor, constitutes an important part of all the later manuscripts.
The Legend of the Four Crowned Martyrs, concerning whom all the later manuscripts are silent, is given at some length, and they are described as "gode masonus as on erthe schul go." These were the tutelar saints of the German Operative Masons of the Middle Ages, but there is no evidence that they were ever adopted as such by the English brotherhood.
There is no allusion in the Halliwell poem to Charles Martel, and to the account of the introduction of Masonry into England from France, during his reign, which forms a prominent part of all the later manuscripts.
Neither is there any notice of the Masonry in England during the time of St. Alban, but the poem attributes its entrance into that country to King Athelstan.
Lastly, while the later manuscripts record the calling of the Assembly at the city of York by Prince Edwin, the Halliwell makes no mention of York as the place where the Assembly was called, nor of Edwin as presiding over it. This fact demolishes the theory of Dr. Oliver, that the Halliwell poem is a copy of the so‑called Old York Constitutions.
From all these considerations, I think that we are justified in assigning to the Halliwell poem and to the other later manuscripts two different sources. The former is of Germanic, and the latter of French origin. They agree, however, in a general resemblance, diversified only in the details. This suggests the idea of a common belief, upon which, as a foundation, two different structures have been erected.
P.35
CHAPTER VII
THE LEGEND, THE GERM OF HISTORY
THE Legend of the Craft, as it has been given in the fourth chapter of this work from the exemplar in the Dowland MS., appears to have been accepted for centuries by the body of the Fraternity as a truthful history. Even at the present day, this Legend is exerting an influence in the formation of various parts of the ritual. This influence has even been extended to the adoption of historical views of the rise and progress of the Institution, which have, in reality, no other foundation than the statements which are contained in the Legend.
For these reasons, the Legend of the Craft is of great importance and value to the student of Masonic history, notwithstanding the absurdities, anachronisms, and unsupported theories in which it abounds.
Accepting it simply as a document which for so long a period claimed and received the implicit faith of the Fraternity whose history it professed to give ‑ a faith not yet altogether dead ‑ it is worthy of our consideration whether we can not, by a careful examination of its general spirit and tenor, irrespective of the bare narrative which it contains, discover some key to the true origin and character of that old and extensive brotherhood of which it is the earliest record.
I think that we shall find in it the germ of many truths, and the interpretation of several historic facts concerning which it makes important suggestions.
In the first place, it must be remarked that we have no way of determining the precise period when this Legend was first composed, nor when it was first accepted by the Craft as a history of the Institution. The earliest written record that has been discovered among English Masons bears a date which is certainly not later than about the end of the 14th century. But this by no means proves that no earlier exemplar ever existed, of which the Constitutions, which have so far been brought to light, may only be copies.
On the contrary, we have abundant reason to believe that all the Old Records which have been published are, with the exception of the Halliwell MS., in fact derived from some original text which however, has hitherto escaped the indefatigable researches of the investigators. If, for instance, we take the Sloane MS., No. 3,848, the assumed date of which is A.D. 1646, and the Harleian MS., NO. 2,054, the date of which is supposed to be A.D. 1650, and if we carefully collate the one with the other, we must come to the conclusion either that the latter was copied from the former, or that both were copied from some carlier record, for whose exhumation from the shelves of the British Museum, or from the archives of some old Lodge, we may still confidently hope.
The resemblances in language and ideas, and the similarity of arrangement that are found in both documents, very clearly indicate a common origin, while the occasional verbal discrepancies can be safely attributed to the carelessness of an inexpert copyist. Brother Hughan, (1) who is high authority, styles the Harleian, from its close resemblance, "an indifferent copy" of the Sloane. The Rev. A.F.A. Woodford, (2) who assigns the earlier date of 1625 to the original Harleian, says it "is nearly a verbatim copy of Dowland's form, slightly later, and must have been transcribed either from an early, and almost contemporary, copy of Dowland's, or it is really a copy of Dowland's itself." These opinions by experts strengthen the view I have advanced, that there was a common origin for all of these manuscripts.
If we continue the collation of the manuscripts of later date, as far, even, as the Papworth, which is supposed to have been transcribed about the year 1714, the same family likeness will be found in all. It is true, that in the transcription of the later manuscripts ‑ those, for example, that were copied toward the end of the 17th and the beginning of the 18th centuries ‑ the language has been improved, some few archaisms have been avoided, and more recent words substituted for them. Scriptural names have been sometimes spelt with a greater respect for correct orthography, and a feeble
(1) "Old Charges of the Brit. Freemasons," p. 8. (2) Preface to Hughan's "Old Charges," p. xi.
attempt has been made to give a modern complexion to the document. But in all of them there is the same misspelling of words, the same violations of the rules of grammar, the same arrangement of the narrative, and a preservation and repetition of all the statements, apocryphal and authentic, which are to b)e found in the earliest exemplars.
I have said that the Legend of the Craft, as set forth in the later manuscripts, was for centuries accepted by the Operative Masons of England, with all its absurdities of anachronism, as a veritable history of the rise and progress of Masonry from the earliest times, and that the influence of this belief is still felt among the Speculative Masons of the present day, and that it has imbued the modern rituals with its views.
This fact gives to this Legend an importance and a value irrespective of its character as a mere Legend. And its value will be greatly enhanced if we are able to show that, notwithstanding the myths with which it abounds, the Legend of the Craft really contains the germ of historical truth. It is, indeed, an historical myth ‑ one of that species of myths so common in the mythology of antiquity, which has a foundation in historical truth, with the admixture of a certain amount of fiction in the introduction of personages and circumstances, that are either not historical, or are not historically treated. Indeed, it may be considered as almost rising into the higher class of historical myths, in which the historical and truthful greatly predominate over the fictitious. (1)
In the contemplation of the Legend of the Mediaeval Masons from this point of view, it would be well if we should govern ourselves by the profound thought of Max Muller, (2) who says, in writing on a cognate subject, that "everything is true, natural, significant, if we enter with a reverent spirit into the meaning of ancient art and ancient language. Everything becomes false, miraculous, and unmeaning, if we interpret the deep and mighty words of the seers of old in the shallow and feeble sense of modern chroniclers."
Examined in the light of this sentiment, which teaches us to look upon the language of the myth, or Legend, as containing a deeper meaning than that which is expressed upon its face, we shall
(1) For a classification of myths into the historical myth and the mythical history, see the author's treatise on the "Symbolism of Freemasonry," P‑ 347. (2) "Science of Language," 2d series, p. 578.
find in the Legend of the Craft many points of historical reference, and, where not historical, then symbolical, which will divest it of much of what has been called its absurdities.
It is to an examination of the Legend in this philosophic spirit that I now invite the reader. Let it be understood that I direct my attention to the Legend contained in the later manuscripts, such as the Dowland, Harleian, Sloane, etc., of which a copy has been given in preceding pages of this work, and that reference is made only, as occasion may require to the Halliwell MS. for comparison or explanation. This is done because the Legend of the later manuscripts is undoubtedly the one which was adopted by the English Masons, while that of the Halliwell MS. appears to have been of exotic growth, which never took any extensive root in the soil of English Masonry.
In the subsequent chapters devoted to this subject, which may be viewed as Commentaries on the Legend of the Craft, I shall investigate the signification of the various subordinate Legends into which it is divided.
P. 39
CHAPTER VIII
THE ORIGIN OF GEOMETRY
THE manuscript begins with an invocation to the Trinity. This invocation is almost identical with that which prefaces the Harleian, the Sloane, the Landsdowne, and, indeed, all the other manuscripts, except the Halliwell and the Cooke. From this fact we may justly infer that there was a common exemplar, an "editio princeps," whence each of these manuscripts was copied. The very slight verbal variations, such as "Father of Kings" in the Dowland, which is "Father of Heaven" in the others, will not affect this conclusion, for they may be fairly attributed to the carelessness of copyists. The reference to the Trinity in all these invocations is also a conclusive proof of the Christian character of the building corporations of the Middle Ages ‑ a proof that is corroborated by historical evidences. As I have already shown, in the German Constitutions of the Stone‑masons, the invocation is "In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, in the name of the blessed Virgin Mary, and also in honor of the Four Crowned Martyrs " ‑ an invocation that shows the Roman Catholic spirit of the German Regulations; while the omission of all reference to the Virgin and the Martyrs gives a Protestant character to the English manuscripts.
Next follows a descant on the seven liberal arts and sciences, the nature and intention of each of which is briefly described. In all of the manuscripts, even in the earliest ‑ the Halliwell ‑ will we find the same reference to them, and, almost literally, the same description. It is not surprising that these sciences should occupy so prominent a place in the Old Constitutions, as making the very foundation of Masonry, when we reflect that an equal prominence was given to them in the Middle Ages as comprehending the whole body of human knowledge. Thus Mosheim (1) tells us that in the 11th century they
(1) "Ecclesiast. Hist. XI. Cent.," part ii., chap. i.
were taught in the greatest part of the schools; and Holinshed, who wrote in the 16th century, says that they composed a part of the curriculum that was taught in the universities. Speculative Masonry continues to this day to pay an homage to these seven sciences, and has adopted them among its important symbols in the second degree. The connection sought to be established in the old manuscripts between them and Masonry, would seem to indicate the existence of a laudable ambition among the Operative Masons of the Middle Ages to elevate the character of their Craft above the ordinary standard of workmen ‑ an elevation that, history informs us, was actually effected, the Freemasons of the Guild holding themselves and being held by others as of higher rank and greater acquirements than were the rough Masons who did not belong to the corporation of builders.
The manuscript continues by a declaration that Geometry and Masonry are idendcal. Thus, in enumerating and defining the seven liberal arts and sciences, Geometry is placed as the fifth, "the which science," says the Legend, "is called Masonrys." (1)
Now, this doctrine that Geometry and Masonry are identical sciences, has been held from the time of the earliest records to the present day by all the Operative Masons who preceded the 18th century, as well as by the Speculative Masons after that period.
In the ritual of the Fellow Craft's degree used ever since, at least from the middle of the last century, the candidate is informed that "Masonry and Geometry are synonymous terms." The Lodge‑room, wherever Speculative Masonry has extended, shows, by the presence of the hieroglyphic letter in the East, that the doctrine is still maintained.
Gadicke, the author of a German Lexicon of Freemasonry, says, that as Geometry is among the mathematical sciences the one which has the most especial reference to architecture, we can, therefore, under the name of Geometry, understand the whole art of Freemasonry.
Hutchinson, speaking of the letter G, says that it denotes Geometry, and declares that as a symbol it has always been used by artificers ‑ that is, architects ‑ and by Masons. (2)
(1) Dowland MS. The Halliwell poem expresses the same idea in different words:
"At these lordys prayers they counterfetyd gemetry, And gaf hyt the name of Masonry." (Lines 23, 24.)
(2) "Spirit of Freemasonry," lect. Viii., P. 92, 2d edit.
The modern ritual maintains this legendary idea of the close connection that exists between Geometry and Masonry, and tells us that the former is the basis on which the latter, as a superstructure, is erected. Hence we find that Masonry has adopted mathematical figures, such as angles, squares, triangles, circles, and especially the 47th proposition of Euclid, as prominent symbols.
And this idea of the infusion of Geometry into Masonry as a prevailing element ‑ the idea that is suggested in the Legend ‑ was so thoroughly recognized, that in the 18th century a Speculative Mason was designated as a "Geometrical Mason."
We have found this idea of Geometry as the fundamental science of Masonry, set forth in the Legend of the Craft. It will be well to see how it was developed in the Middle Ages, in the authentic history of the Craft. Thus we shall have discovered another link in the chain which unites the myths of the Legend with the true history of the Institution.
The Operative Masons of the Middle Ages, who are said to have derived the knowledge of their art as well as their organization as a Guild of Builders from the Architects of Lombardy, who were the first to assume the title of "Freemasons," were in the possession of secrets which enabled them everywhere to construct the edifices on which they were engaged according to the same principles, and to keep up, even in the most distant countries, a correspondence, so that every member was made acquainted with the most minute improvement in the art which had been discovered by any other. (1) One of these secrets was the knowledge of the science of symbolism, (2) and the other was the application of the principles of Geometry to the art of building.
"It is certain," says Mr. Paley, (3) "that Geometry lent its aid in the planning and designing of buildings"; and he adds that "probably the equilateral triangle was the basis of most formations."
The geometrical symbols found in the ritual of modern Freemasonry may be considered as the debris of the geometrical secrets of the Mediaeval Masons, which are now admitted to be lost. (4) As
(1) Hope, " Historical Essay on Architecture." (2) M. Maury ("Essai sur les Legendes Pieures du Moyen‑Aye") gives many instances of the application of symbolism by these builders to the construction of churches. (3) "Manual of Gothic Architecture," P. 78. (4) Lord Lindsay, "Sketches of the History of Christian Art," ii., 14.
these founded their operative art on the knowledge of Geometry, and as the secrets of which they boasted as distinguishing them from the "rough Masons" of the same period consisted in an application of the principles of that science to the construction of edifices, it is not surprising that in their traditional history they should have so identified architecture with Geometry, and that with their own art of building, as to speak of Geometry and Masonry as synonymous terms. "The fifth science," says the Dowland MS., is "called Geometry, . . . the which science is called Masonrye." Remembering the tendency of all men to aggrandize their own pursuits, it is not surprising that the Mediaeval Masons should have believed and said that "there is no handycraft that is wrought by man's hand but it is wrought by Geometry."
In all this descant in the old manuscripts on the identity of Geometry and Masonry, the Legend of the Craft expresses a sentiment the existence of which is supported by the authentic evidence of contemporaneous history.
P.43
CHAPTER IX
THE LEGEND OF LAMECH'S SONS AND THE PILLARS
THE traditional history of Masonry now begins, in the Legend of the Craft, with an account of the three sons of Lamech, to whom is attributed the discovery of all sciences. But the most interesting part of the Legend is that in which the story is told of two pillars erected by them, and on which they had inscribed the discoveries they had made, so that after the impending destruction of the world the knowledge which they had attained might be communicated to the post‑diluvian race.
This story is not mentioned in the Bible, but is first related by Josephus in the following words:
"They also [the posterity of Seth] were the inventors of that peculiar sort of wisdom which is concerned with the heavenly bodies and their order. And that their inventions might not be lost before they were sufficiently known, upon Adam's prediction that the world was to be destroyed at one time by the force of fire, and at another time by the violence and quantity of water, they made two pillars, the one of brick, the other of stone; they inscribed their discoveries on them both, that in case the pillar of brick should be destroyed by the flood, the pillar of stone might remain and exhibit those discoveies to mankind, and also inform them that there was another pillar of brick erected by them. Now this remains in the land of Siriad to this day." (1)
Although this traditional narrative has received scarcely any estimation from scholars, and Josephus has been accused either of incredible audacity or frivolous credulity," (2) still it has formed the
(1) Josephus, "Antiquities of the Jews," B.I., ch. ii., Whiston's trans. (2) " Incredibili audacia aut futili credulitate usus est," is the language of Hornius in his "Geographia Vetus." But Owen ("Theologomena," lib. iv., c. ii., 6), although inclined to doubt the story, thinks it not impossible if we suppose hieroglyphics like those of the Egyptians to have been used for the inscriptions, instead of letters.
foundation on which the Masonic Legend of the pillars has been erected. But in passing from the Jewish historian to the Legend‑ maker of the Craft, the form of the story has been materially altered. In Josephus the construction of the pillars is attributed to the posterity of Seth; in the Legend, to the children of Lamech. Whence was this important alteration derived ?
The Dowland and all subsequent manuscripts cite the fourth chapter of Genesis as authority for the Legend. But in Genesis no mention is made of these pillars. But in the Cooke MS., which is of an earlier date, we can trace the true source of the Legend in its Masonic form, which could not be done until that manuscript was published.
To the Cooke MS. has been accorded the date of 1490. It differs materially in form and substance from the Halliwell MS., which preceded it by at least a century, and is the first of the Old Constitutions in which anything like the present form of the Legend appears.
The way in which the Legend of Lamech is treated by it, enables us to dicover the true source whence this part of the Legend of the Craft was derived.
It must be remarked, in the first place, that the Halliwell poem, the earliest of the old manuscripts, the date of which is not later than the close of the 14th century, contains no allusion to this Legend of Lamech and his children. The Cooke MS. is the first one in which we find the details. The Cooke MS. is assigned, as has been before said, to the end of the 15th century, about the year 1490. In it the Legend of the pillars is given (from line 253 to 284) in the following words:
"And these iii brotheryn [the sons of Lamech] aforesayd, had knowlyche that God wold take vengans for synne other by fyre or watir, and they had greter care how they myght do to saue the sciens that they founde, and they toke her [their] consell to gedyr and by all her [their] witts they seyde that were ij manner of stonn of suche virtu that the one wolde neuer brenne [burn] and that stonn is called marbyll and that other stonn that woll not synke in watir, and that stone is namyd laterus, (1) and so they deuysyd to wryte all the sciens that they had Found (2) in this ij stonys if that god wolde
(1) From the Latin "later," a brick. (2) It is to be regretted that in nearly all the recent printed copies of the old manuscripts, the editors have substituted the double ff for the capital F which is in the original. The scribes or amanuenses of the Middle Ages were fond of employing capital letters often when there was really no use for them, but they never indulged in the folly of unnecessarily doubling initial letters. What the modern editors of the manuscripts have mistaken for a double ff was really the ff or ff the capital F of the scribes. This is not of much importance, but even in small things it is well to be accurate. Bro. Hughan, in his edition of the "Old Charges," is, as we might expect, generally correct in this particular. But sometimes, perhaps inadvertently, he has printed the double instead of the capital letter.‑
take vengeans by fyre that the marbyll scholde not brenne. And yf god sende vengeans by watir that the other scholde not droune, and so they prayed her elder brother jobell that wold make ij pillers of these ij stones, that is to sey of marbill and of laterus, and that he wolde write in the ij pylers alle the sciens and crafts that alle they had founde, and so he did."
Comparing this Legend with the passage that has been cited from Josephus, it is evident that the Legend‑maker had not derived his story from the Jewish historian. The latter attributes the building of the pillars to the children of Seth, while the former assigns it to the children of Lamech. How are we to explain this change in the form of the Legend ? We can only solve the problem by reference to a work almost contemporary with the legendist.
Ranulph Higden, a Benedictine monk of St. Werburg's Abbey, in Chester, who died in the latter half of the 14th century, wrote a Universal history, completed to his own times, under the title of Polychronicon.
The Polychronicon was written in the Latin language, but was translated into English by Sir John Trevisa. This translation, with several verbal alterations, was published in London by William Caxton in 1482, about ten years before the date of the Cooke MS. With this work, the compiler of the Legend in the Cooke MS. appears to have been familiar. He cites it repeatedly as authority for his statements.
Thus he says: "Ye schal understonde that amonge all the craftys of the world of mannes crafte Masonry hath the most notabilite and moste parte of this sciens Gemetry as his notid and seyd in storiall as in the bybyll and in the master of stories. And in policronico a cronycle prynted."
Now the Legend of Lamech's children is thus given in Caxton's edition of the translation of Higden's Polychronicon: (1)
(1) Book 11., ch. v.
"Caym Adams fyrste sone begate Enoch, he gate Irad, he gate Manayell, he gate Matusale, he gate Lameth. This Lameth toke twey wyves, Ada and Sella, and gate tweyne sons on Ada. Iabeh that was fader of them that woned in tentes and in pauylons. And Tuball that was fader of organystre and of harpers. And Lameth gate on Sella Tubal cayn that was a smith worchyng with hamer, and his sister Noema, she found fyrst weuynge crafte.
"Josephus. Jabell ordayned fyrste flockes of beestes and marks to know one from another. And departed kyddes from lam bes and yonge from the olde. Peir s Tubalcayn founde fyrst smythes crafte. Tuball had grete lykynge to here the hareers sowne. And soo he vsed them moche in the accords of melodys, but he was not finder of the instruments of musyke. For they were founde longe afterwarde."
The reader will at once perceive whence the composer of the Legend in the Cooke MS. derived his information about the family of Lamech. And it will be equally plain that the subsequent writers of the Old Constitutions took the general tone of their Legend from this manuscript.
The Polychronicon, after attributing the discovery of music to Pythagoras, proceeds to descant upon the wickedness of mankind immediately after the time of Seth, and repeats the biblical story of the intermarriage of the sons of God and the daughters of men, which he explains as signifying the sons of Seth and the daughters of Cain. Then follows the following passage
"Josephus. That tyme men wyste as Adam and sayde, that they sholde be destroyed by fyre or elles by water. Therefore bookes that they hadde made by grete trauaille and studys, he closed them in two grete pylers made of marbill and of brent tyle. In a pyler of marbill for water and in a pyler of tyle for fyre. For it should be sauved by that maner to helpe of mankynde. Men sayth that the pyler of stone escaped the floods, and yet is in Syrya."
Here we find the origin of the story of the two pillars as related in the Legend of the Craft. But how can we account for the change of the constructors of these pillars from the children of Seth, as stated in Josephus, and from him in the Polychronicon, to the children of Lamech, as it is given in the Legend ?
By the phrase "That tyme men wyste," or "at that time men knew," with which Trevisa begins his translation of that part of Higden's work, he undoubtedly referred to the "tyme" contemporary with the children of Seth, of whom he had immediately before been speaking. But the writer of the Legend engaged in recounting the narrative of the invention of the sciences by the children of Lamech, and thus having his attention closely directed to the doings of that family, inadvertently, as I suppose, passed over or omitted to notice the passage concerning the descendants of Seth, which had been interposed by the author of the Polychronicon, and his eye, catching the account of the pillars a little farther on, he applied the expression, "that tyme," not to the descendants of Seth, but to the children of Lamech, and thus gave the Masonic version of the Legend.
I have called this ascription of the pillars to the children of Lamech a "Masonic version," because it is now contained only in the Legend of the Craft, those who do not reject the story altogether as a myth, preferring the account given by Josephus.
But, in fact, the error of misinterpreting Josephus occurred long before the Legend of the Craft was written, and was committed by one of the most learned men of his age.
St. Isidore, Bishop of Seville, who died in the year 636, was the author of many works in the Latin language, on theology, philosophy, history, and philology. Among other books written by him was a Chronicon, or Chronicle, in which the following passage occurs, where he is treating of Lamech:
"In the year of the world 1642, Lamech being 190 years old, begat Noah, who, in the five hundredth year of his age, is commanded by the Divine oracle to build the Ark. In these times, as Josephus relates, those men knowing that they would be destroyed either by fire or water, inscribed their knowledge upon two columns made of brick and of stone, so that the memory of those things which they had wisely discovered might not be lost. Of these columns the stone one is said to have escaped the Flood and to be still remaining in Syria." (1)
It is very evident that in some way the learned Bishop of Seville had misunderstood the passage of Josephus, and that to him the sons of Lamech are indebted for the honor of being considered the con‑
(1) "Opera Isidori," ed. Matriti, 1778, tom. i., p. 125.
structors of the pillars. The phrase "his temporibus," in these times, clearly refers to the times of Lamech.
It is doubtful whether the author of the Legend of the Craft was acquainted with the works of Isidore, or had read this passage. His Etymologies are repeatedly cited in the Cooke manuscript, but it is through Higden, whose Polychronicon contains many quotations from the Libri Etymologiarum of the Spanish Bishop and Saint. But I prefer to assume that the Legend‑maker got his ideas from the Polychronicon in the method that I have described.
In the last century a new Legend was introduced into Masonry, in which the building of these pillars was ascribed to Enoch. But this Legend, which is supposed to have been the invention of the Chevalier Ramsay, is altogether modern, and has no connection with the Legend of the Craft.
In borrowing the story of the antediluvian pillars from Josephus, through the Polychronicon, though they have made some confusion in narrating the incidents, the Old Operative Masons were simply incorporating into their Legend of the Craft a myth which had been universal among the nations of antiquity, for all of them had their memorial columns. Sesostris, the great Egyptian king and conqueror, sometimes called Sethos, or Seth, and who, Whiston think, has been confounded by Josephus with the Adamic Seth, erected pillars in all the counties which he conquered as monuments of his victories.
The Polychronicon, with which we see that the old Masons were familiar, had told them that Zoroastres, King of Bactria, had inscribed the seven liberal arts and sciences on fourteen pillars, seven of brass and seven of brick. Hercules was said to have placed at the Straits of Gades two pillars, to show to posterity how far he had extended his conquests.
In conclusion, it should be observed that the story of the pillars as inserted in the Legend of the Craft has exerted no influence on the modern rituals of Freemasonry, and is never referred to in any of the ceremonies of Ancient Craft Masonry. The more recent Legend of the pillars of Enoch belongs exclusively to the higher and more modern degrees. The only pillars that are alluded to in the primitive degrees are those of Solomon's temple. But these develop so important a portion of the symbolism of the Institution as to demand our future consideration in a subsequent part of this work.
P. 50
CHAPTER X
THE LEGEND OF HERMES
THE next part of the Legend of the Craft which claims our attention is that which relates to Hermes, who is said to have discovered one of the pillars erected by the sons of Lamech, and to have communicated the sciences inscribed on it to mankind. This may, for distinction, be called "The Legend of Hermes."
The name has suffered cruel distortion from the hands of the copyists in the different manuscripts. In the Dowland MS. it is Hermarynes; in the Landsdowne, Herminerus; in the York, Hermarines; in the Sloane, 3,848, Hermines and Hermenes, who "was afterwards called Hermes"; and worst and most intolerable of all, it is in the Harleian, Hermaxmes. But they all evidently refer to the celebrated Hermes Trismegistus, or the thrice great Hermes. The Cooke MS., from which the story in the later manuscripts is derived, spells the name correctly, and adds, on the authority of the Polychronicon, that while Hermes found one of the pillars, Pythagoras discovered the other. Pythagoras is not mentioned in any of the later manuscripts, and we first find him referred to as a founder in Masonry in the questionable manuscript of Leland, which fact will, perhaps, furnish another argument against the genuineness of that document.
As to Hermes, the Legend is not altogether without some historical support although the story is in the Legend mythical, but of that character which pertains to the historical myth.
He was reputed to be the son of Taut or Thoth, whom the Egyptians deified, and placed his image beside those of Osiris and Isis. To him they attributed the invention of letters, as well as of all the sciences, and they esteemed him as the founder of their religious rites.
Hodges says, in a note on a passage of Sanchoniathon, (1) that "Thoth was an Egyptian deity of the second order. The Graeco‑ Roman mythology identified him with Hermes or Mercury. He was reputed to be the inventor of writing, the patron deity of learning, the scribe of the gods, in which capacity he is represented signing the sentences on the souls of the dead." Some recent writers have supposed that Hermes was the symbol of Divine Intelligence and the primitive type of Plato's "Logos." Manetho, the Egyptian priest, as quoted by Syncellus, distinguishes three beings who were callcd Hermes by the Egyptians. The first, or Hermes Trismegistus, had, before the deluge, inscribed the history of all the sciences on pillars; the second, the son of Agathodemon, translated the precepts of the first; and the third, who is supposed to be synonymous with Thoth, was the counsellor of Osiris and Isis. But these three were in later ages confounded and fused into one, known as Hermes Trismegistus. He was always understood by the philosophers to symbolize the birth, the progress, and the perfection of human sciences. He was thus considered as a type of the Supreme Being. Through him man was elevated and put into communication with the gods.
The Egyptians attributed to him the composition of 36,525 books on all kinds of knowledge. (2) But this mythical fecundity of authorship has been explained as referring to the whole scientific and religious encyclopoedia collected by the Egyptian priests and preserved in their temples.
Under the title of Hermetic books, several works falsely attributed to Hermes, but written, most probably, by the Neo‑Platonists, are still extant, and were deemed to be of great authority up to the 16th century. (3)
It was a tradition very generally accepted in former times that this Hermes engraved his knowledge of the sciences on tables of pillars of stone, which were afterward copied into books.
Manetho attributes to him the invention of stylae, or pillars, on which were inscribed the principles of the sciences. And Jamblichus
(1) Cory's "Ancient Fragments," edited by E. Richmond Hodges, Lond., 1876, p. 3. (2) Jamblichus, citing Selencos, "de Mysteries," segm. viii., c. 1. (3) Rousse, Dictionnaire in voc. The principal of these is the "Poemander," or of the Divine Power and Wisdom.
says that when Plato and Pythagoras had read the inscriptions on these columns they formed their philosophy. (1)
Hermes was, in fact, an Egyptian legislator and priest. Thirty‑ six books on philosophy and theology, and six on medicine, are said to have been written by him, but they are all lost, if they ever existed. The question, indeed, of his own existence has been regarded by modern scholars as extremely mythical. The Alchemists, however, adopted him as their patron. Hence Alchemy is called the Hermetic science, and hence we get Hermetic Masonry and Hermetic Rites.
At the time of the composition of the Legend of the Craft, the opinion that Hermes was the inventor of all the sciences, and among them, of course, Geometry and Architecture, was universally accepted as true, even by the learned. It is not, therefore, singular that the old Masons, who must have been familiar with the Hermetic myth, received it as something worthy to be incorporated into the early history of the Craft, nor that they should have adopted him, as they did Euclid, as one of the founders of the science of Masonry.
The idea must, however have sprung up in the 15th century, as it is first broached in the Cook MS. And it was, in all probability, of English origin, since there is no allusion to it in the Halliwell poem.
The next important point that occurs in the Legend of the Craft is its reference to the Tower of Babel, and this will, therefore, be the subject of the next chapter.
(1) Juxta antiquas Mercurii columnas, quas Plato quondam, et Pythagoras cum lectitas‑sent, philosophism constituerunt. Jamblichus, " de Mysteries," segm. i., c. 2.
P. 52
CHAPTER XI
THE TOWER OF BABEL
UNLIKE the legend of Hermes, the story of the Tower of Babel appears in the Halliwell poem, which shows, if my theory of the origin of that poem be correct, that the Legend was not confined at an early period to the English Masons. In the second of the two poems, which I have heretofore said are united in one manuscript, the legend of Babel, or Babylon, is thus given: (1)
"Ye mow hen as y do rede, That many years after, for gret drede, That Noee's flod was alle y‑ronne, (2) The tower of Bebyloine was begonne, Also playne werk of lyme and ston, As any mon schulde toke uppon, Seven myle the heyghte shadweth the sonne. King Nabugodonosor let hyt make To gret strenthe for monus (3) sake Thaygh such a flod agayne schulde come, Over the werke hyt schulde not nome, (4) For they hadde so hye pride, with strange bost, Aile that werke therfore was y‑lost ; An angele smot hem so with dyvcres speechs, That never won wyste what other schuld reche." (5)
The statements of this Halliwell Legend are very meagre, nor is it possible to say with any certainty whence the writer derived his details. From neither the Book of Genesis, nor Berosus, nor Josephus could he have derived the information which has given its peculiar form to the legend. The anachronism of making Nebuchadnezzar, who lived about sixteen centuries after the event, the builder of the
(1) Lines 535‑550. (2) Rain ‑ Ang. ‑Sax. rinan, to rain ‑ That Noah's flood would still rain. (3) Men's sake. (4) Get ‑ should not get over the work ‑ cover it. (5) Say
tower is worthy of notice. It would appear that the writer of the poem had a general acquaintance with the well‑known tradition of Babel, and that in loosely giving an account of it, he had confused the time and place of the erection and the supposed name of the builder. At all events, the subsequent Masonic legendists
did not accept the Halliwell writer as authority, or, more probably, were wholly unacquainted with his poem. It did not exert any influence over the subsequent manuscripts.
The next time that the Babel legend appears is in the Cooke MS., written at least a century after the Halliwell. The legend, as there given, is in the following words:
"Hit is writen in the bibull Genesis, Cap. I mo wo [how] that Cam, Noe's sone, gate Nembrothe, and he wax a myghty man apon the erthe, and he wax a stronge man, like a Gyant, and he was a grete kyng, and the bygynyng of his kyngdom was [the] trew kyngdom of Babilon and Arach and Archad and Calan (1) and the lond of Sennare. And this same Cam (2) he gan the towre of babilon, and he taught to his werkemen the craft of mesurie, (3) and he had with him mony masonys mo than x1. thousand, and he louyd and chereshed them well, and hit is wryten in Policronicon and in the master of stories and in other stories rno, and this a part wytnes [the] bybull in the same x. chapter where he seyth that asure [Assur] was nye kynne to Nembrothe (4) gede [went] owt of the londe of Senare, and he bylded the City Nunyve and Plateas and other mo. Thus he seyeth, 'De terra illa et de Sennare egressus est Asure et edifiiavit Nunyven et Plateas civitates et Cale et Iesu quoque inter Nunyven et haec est Civitas Magna.'
"Reson wolde [requires] that we schold telle opunly how and in what manner that the charges of masoncraft was fyrst foundyd and ho gaf [who gave] fyrste the name to hit of masonri. And ye schyll knaw well that hit [is] told and writen in Policronicon and in Methodus episcopus and Martyrus that Asur that was a worthy lord
(1) The names of cities. (2) The word Nembroth had been first written in the manuscript, then erased, and the "Cam" (for Ham) inserted. But this correction is itself incorrect and incongruous with the rest of the legend. (3) Mesuri‑measure. The author of the manuscript had previously maintained that measure and geometry were identical. So here "the craft of mesuri" means the craft of geometry, and geometry was always supposed to be the same as Masonry. (4) Cam originally written, then erased and Membrothe inserted.
of Sennare, sende to Nembroth the kyng to sende hym masons and workemen of crafte that myght helpe hym to make his Cite that he was in wyll to make. And Nembroth sende hym xxx C. (3,000) of masons. And whan they scholde go and [he] sende hem forth he callyd hem by for hym [before him] and seyd to hem, ye must go to my cosyn Asure to helpe hym to bilde a cyte, but loke that ye be well governyd, and I shall give you a charge profitable for you and me. . .
"And they resceyved the charge of him that was here [their] maister and here lordq, and went forth to Asure and bilde the cite of Nunyve in the country of Plateas and other cites mo, that men call Cale and lesen that is a gret cite bi twene Cale and Nunyve. And in this manner the craft of masonry was fyrst preferryd [brought forward] and chargyd for a sciens."
We next meet with the Legend in the later manuscripts, in a form differing but little from that of the Cooke MS. The Dowland, which is the earliest of these manuscript Constitutions, and the date of which is supposed to be about the year 1550, has already been printed in this work. But for the convenience of the reader, in comparing the three forms of the Legend, so much of it as refers to the Babel legend is again inserted. It is in these words, which, it may be remarked, are very closely followed by all the subsequent manuscipts up to the beginning of the 18th century:
"At the makinge of the Tower of Babylon, there was Masonrye first made much of. And the Kinge of Babylon that height Nemrothe was a mason himselfe, and loved well the science as it is said with masters of histories. And when the City of Ninyve and other citties of the East should be made, Nemrothe the Kinge of Babylon sent thither three score masons at the rogation of the Kinge of Nyneve, his cosen. And when he sent them forth he gave them a charge in this manner. . . . And this was the first tyme that ever Masons had any charge of his science."
In comparing the three forms of the Babylonish legend, which have here been cited, namely, as given in the Halliwell, the Cooke, and the Dowland MSS., we shall readily detect that there was a gradual growth of the details until the legend eventually took the shape which for a long time was accepted by the Craft.
In the Halliwell poem the legend is very brief, and by its abrupt termination would impress the opinion upon the reader that Masonry had no part in the building of the Tower of Babel, the only effect of which was to produce a confusion of languages and the dispersion of mankind. It was only "many years after" that the "craft of geometry," or Masonry, was taught by Euclid. In fact, the whole tendency of the Halliwell legend is to trace the origin of Masonry to Euclid and the Egyptians. In his account of the Tower of Babel, the writer of the Halliwell poem seems to have been indebted only to the Scriptural narrative, although he has confounded Nebuchadnezzar, the repairer of Babylon, with Nimrod, its original founder.
But the writer of the Cooke MS. took his details of the legend from another source. Only a few years before the composition of this manuscript, Caxton had published, and thus placed in the hands of the English Masons, Trevisa's translation of Ranulph Higden's Polychronicon, or Universal History. Of this book, rich in materials for legendary composition the writer of the Cooke MS. readily availed himself. This he honestly acknowledges in several places. And although he quotes as other authorities Herodotus, Josephus, and Methodius, it is very evident that he knows nothing of these historians except from the citations from them made by the monk Higden in the Polychronicon.
The English Masons were probably already acquainted with the legend in the imperfect form in which it is given in the Halliwell poem. But for the shape which it assumed from the time of the composition of the Cooke MS., and which was adopted in the Dowland and all the later manuscripts, the Craft were, I think, undoubtedly indebted to the Polychronicon of the Monk of Chester, through its translation by Trevisa and its publication by Caxton.
There are two other forms of the Babylonian legend, of later date, which must be read before we can thoroughly understand the growth of that legend.
In 1723 Anderson published, by authority of the Grand Lodge of England, the Constitutions of the Free‑Masons. Dr. Anderson was, no doubt, in possession of, or had access to, many sources of information in the way of old manuscripts which have sincc been lost, and with these, assisted in some measure by his own inventive genius, he has extended the brief Legend of the Craft to 34 quarto pages. But as this work was of an official character, and was written and published under the sanction of the Grand Lodge, and freely distributed among the Lodges and Masons of the time, the form of the Legend adopted by him was accepted by the Fraternity for a very long period as authentic. The Andersonian legend of the Tower of Babel molded, therefore, the belief of the English Craft for at least the whole of the 18th century.
Before giving any citations from the Andersonian version of the legend, it will be necessary to refer to another copy of the Old Constitutions.
Dr. Krause, the author of a learned Masonic work, entitled The Three Oldest Documents of the Brotherhood of Freemasons, published in that work in 1810 a German translation of a document which he calls the York Constitutions. (1)
Of this document Krause goves the following account. He says that Bro. Schneider, of Altenberg, had written communication from Bro. Bottger, who stated that in the year 1799 he had seen at London a copy of the York Constitutions in a very old manuscript, consisting of 107 leaves in large folio, almost one‑third of which he had been unable to read, because it was written in the early English language, and hence he was forced to employ a learned Englishman as an interpreter. Schneider made diligent inquiries after this manuscript, and eventually received a certified Latin translation, made in 1806, from which, in 1808, he composed a German version.
This document Krause supposes to be a genuine exemplar of the Constitutions enacted at York in 926. The original manuscript has, however, never been found; it is not referred to in any of the records of the old Grand Lodge of York, and seems to have remained in mysterious obscurity until seen in 1799 by this Bro. Bottger while on a visit to London.
For these reasons, Findel deems it a spurious document. Bro. Woodford, than whom there is none more competent to judge of questions of this kind, does not assent to this opinion, but, having his doubts, thinks the matter should remain in abeyance for the present. Bro. Hughan, another accomplished critic, believes that it is probably a compilation of the early part of the last century.
When the reader shall have collated the extracts about to be given from Anderson's Constitutions and the Krause MS., he will, I think, concur with me, that either Anderson had seen the latter
(1) "Die drei altesten Kunsturkunden der Freimaurerbruderschaft," vol. iii., P. 5.
manuscript, or that the author of it had been familiar with the work of Anderson. The general similarity of ideas, the collocation of certain words, and the use of particular phrases, must lead to the conclusion that one of the two writers was acquainted with the production of the other. Which was the earlier one is not easily determined, nor is it important, since they were almost contemporaneous documents, and, therefore, they both show what was the form assumed by the legend in the early part of the 18th century. (1)
The Anderson version of the Babylon legend is as follows: (2)
"About 101 years after the Flood we find a vast number of 'em [the offspring of the sons of Noah], if not the whole race of Noah, in the vale of Shinar, employed in building a city and large tower, in order to make themselves a name and to prevent their dispersion. And tho' they carried on the work to a monstrous height, and by their vanity provoked God to confound their devices, by confounding their speech, which occasioned their dispersion; yet their skill in Masonry is not the less to be celebrated, having spent above 53 years in that prodigious work, and upon their dispersion carried the mighty knowledge with them into distant parts, where they found the good use of it in the settlement of their kingdoms, commonwealths, and dynasties. And tho' afterwards it was lost in most parts of the earth it was especially preserved in Shinar and Assyria, where Nimrod, the founder of that monarchy, after the dispersion built many splendid cities, as Ereck, Accad and Calneh in Shinar, from whence afterwards he went forth into Assyria and built Nineveh, Rehoboth, Calch, and Rhesin.
"In these parts, upon the Tigris and the Euphrates, afterwards flourished many learned Priests and Mathematicians, known by the names of Chaldees and Magi, who preserved the good science, Geometry, as the kings and great men encouraged the Royal Art."
The Krause MS., or the reputed York Constitutions, gives the Babylonian legend as follows: (3)
(1) The oftener I read this document, and the more I reflect on its internal evidence, the more I become convinced that it was written after the first edition of Anderson's "Constitutions," and, perhaps, after the second. Indeed, I am almost prepared to assign any part of the 18th century for the date of its composition. (2) "Constitutions," 1st edition, p. 3. (3) See it in Hughan's "Old Charges of the British Freemasons," p.80. It must be remembered that it is there an English version of the German which had been translated from a Latin translation of the original old English ‑ ut dicitur. I have corrected a few errors in the translation in the "Old Charges" by a collation with the German of Krause.
"Two generations after Noah, his descendants, proud of their knowledge, built on a plain, in the land of Shinar, a great city and a high tower of lime, stones, and wood, in order that they might dwell together, under the laws which their ancestor, Noah, had made known, and that the names of Noah's descendants might be preserved for all time. This arrogance, however, did not please the Lord in heaven, the lover of humility, therefore he caused a confusion of their speech before the tower was finished, and scattered them in many uninhabited lands, whither they brought with them their laws and arts, and then founded kingdoms and principalities, as the Holy Books often testify. Nimrod, in particular, built a town of considerable size; but Noah's son, Shem, remained in Ur, in the land of the Chaldeans, and propagated a knowledge of all the arts and sciences abroad, and taught also Peleg, Serug, Nahor, Terah, and Abraham, the last of whom knew all the sciences, and had knowledge, and continued to instruct the sons of free‑born men, whence afterwards the numerous learned priests and mathematicians who have been known under the name of the wise Chaldeans."
We have now five different documents presenting three different forms of the Legend of the Tower of Babel: 1. The Halliwell poem. This Legend briefly recounts the facts of the building of the tower and the subsequent interruption of the work by the confusion of tongues and the dispersion of the builders. By an anachronism, Nebuchadnezzar is designated as the monarch who directed the construction. Not a word is said about the Institution of Masonry at that time. In fact, the theory of the Halliwell MS. seems rather to be that Masonry was, "many years after," taught for the first time in Egypt by Euclid.
The form of the Legend was never accepted by the Operative Masons of the Guild, certainly not after the end of the 15th century.
2. The Cooke and later manuscripts. This form of the Legend ascribes the origin of Masonry to the era of the building of the tower. Nimrod is made the Grand Master and makes the first charge ‑ that is, frames the first Constitution that the Masons ever had. Asshur, the son of Shem, is also represented as a great Mason, the builder of the city of Nineveh, and to whom Nimrod sent workmen to assist him. From Babylon, Masonry was carried next into Egypt.
This form of the Legend, first presented in the Cooke MS., and followed almost literally in the Dowland and all the succeeding manuscript Constitutions, seems to have embodied the prevailing belief of the Fraternity until about the end of the 17th or the beginning of the 18th century.
3. The Andersonian and the York Constitutions. In these the form of the Legend is greatly improved. The idea that Masonry was first established with appropriate laws at the Tower of Babel under the supeintendence of Nimrod is still preserved. But Asshur no longer appears as a builder of cities, assisted by "his cosen," but is transformed, and correctly too, into the kingdom of Assyria, where Nimrod himself built Nineveh and other cities. And the next appearance of Masonry is said to be, not in Egypt, as in the preceding manuscripts, but is said to have been propagated after the dispersion by the Magi in the land of the Chaldeans.
This form of the Legend prevailed during perhaps the whole of the 18th century. It became the settled conviction of the Masons of that period that Masonry was instituted at the Tower of Babel by Nimrod and thence propagated to the Chaldeans.
Thus, in Smith's Use and Abuse of Freemasonry, (1) published in 1783, it is said that after the Flood the Masons were first called Noachidvae, and afterwords sages or wise men, Chaldeans, etc. And Northouck, who, in 1784, by order of the Grand Lodge, published an edition of the Constitutions far superior to that of Anderson, says (2) that Nimrod founded the empire of Babylon, and that "under him flourished those learned mathematicians whose successors were styled Magi, or wise men."
But about the end of the last century, or, perhaps, still later, about the beginning of the present, this legendary account of the origin of Freemasonry began to be repudiated, and another one, in contradiction of the old manuscripts, was substituted for it.
Masonry was no longer believed to have originated at the Tower of Babel; the Temple of Jerusalem was considered as the place of its birth; and Solomon and not Nimrod was called the "first Grand Master."
Accepting this Legend, as we do the other Legends of Masonry, which, in the language of Oliver, (3) "are entitled to consideration, though their authenticity may be denied and their aid rejected," we
(1) Op. Cit., P. 29. (2) Op. Cii., p. 11. (3) "Historical Landmarks," vol. i., lect. i., p. 53.
say that at the present day the Babylonish legend has assumed the present form.
Before the Flood there was a system of religious instruction which, from the resemblance of its legendary and symbolic character to that of Freemasonry, has been called by some authors "antediluvian Masonry." This system was preserved by Noah, and after the deluge was communicated by him to his immediate descendants. This system was lost at the time of the dispersion of mankind, and corrupted by the pagans in their Mysteries. But subsequently it was purified, and Freemasonry, as we now have it, was organized by the King of Israel at the time of the building of the temple.
This idea is well exemplified in the American ritual, which was, we have every reason to believe, invented about the end of the last century.
In this ritual, much of which is, however, being lost or becoming obsolete, from the necessary imperfections of oral transmission, the aspirant is supposed to represent one who is travelling from the intellectual blindness of the profane world into the brightness of Masonry, in whose arena he expects to find the light and truth, the search for which is represented by his initiation. This symbolic journey is supposed to begin at the Tower of Babel, where, in the language of the ritual "language was confounded and Masonry lost," and to terminate at the Temple of Solomon, where "language was restored and Masonry found."
Hence, according to this latest form of the Legend, the Tower of Babel is degraded from the prominent place which was given to it in the older forms as the birth‑place of Masonry, and becomes simply the symbol of the darkness and ignorance of the profane world as contradistinguished from the light and knowledge to be derived from an initiation into the system of Speculative Masonry.
But the old Masons who framed the Legend of the Craft were conforming more than these modern ritualists to the truth of history when they assigned to Babylon the glory of being the original source of the sciences. So far from its being a place of intellectual darkness, we learn from the cuneiform inscriptions that the Ancient Babylonians and their copyists, the Assyrians, were in possession of a wonderful literature. From the ruins of Babylon, Nineveh, and other ancient cities of the plain of Shinar tablets of terra cotta have been excavated, inscribed with legends in cuneiform characters.
The interpretation of this once unknown alphabet and language has yielded to the genius and the labors of such scholars as Grotefend, Botta, Layard and Rawlinson.
From the fragments found at Kouyunjik, the modern Arabic name for the site of Nineveh, the late Mr. George Smith conjectured that there were in the Royal Library at Nineveh over ten thousand inscribed tablets, including almost every subject in ancient literature, all of which literature was borrowed by the Assyrians from Babylonian sources. (1)
Speaking of this literature, Smith says that "at an early period in Babylonian history a great literary development took place, and numerous works were produced which embodied the prevailing myths, religion, and science of that day. Written, many of them, in a noble style of poetry, and appealing to the strongest feelings of the people on one side, or registering the highest efforts of their science on the other, these texts became the standards for Babylonian literature, and later generations were content to copy these writings instead of making new works for themselves." (2)
We see, therefore, that the Masons of the present day are wrong when they make Babel or Babylon the symbol of intellectual darkness, and suppose that there the light of Masonry was for a time extinguished, to be re‑illumined only at the Temple of Solomon.
And, again, the Legend of the Craft vindicates its character, and correctly clothes an historical fact in symbolic language, when it portrays Babylonia, which was undoubtedly the fountain of all Semitic science and architecture, as also the birth‑place of Operative Masonry.
(1) "Chaldean Account of Genesis," P. 21. (2) Ibid., P. 22.
P. 62
CHAPTER XII
THE LEGEND OF NIMROD
THE universal sentiment of the Masons of the present day is to confer upon Solomon, King of Israel, the honor of being their "first Grand Master." But the Legend of the Craft had long before, though there was a tradition of the temple extant, bestowed, at least by implication, that title upon Nimrod, the King of Babylonia and Assyria. It had attributed the first organization of a fraternity of craftsmen to him, in saying that he gave a charge to the workmen whom he sent to asist the King of Nineveh in building his cities. That is to say, he framed for them a Constitution, and, in the words of the Legend, "this was the first tyme that ever Masons had any charge of his science." It was the first time that the Craft were organized into a fraternity working under a Constitution or body of laws; and as Nimrod was the autocratic maker of these laws, it results as a necessary consequence, that their first legislator, legislating with dictatorial and unrestricted sovereign power, was also their first Grand Master.
This view of the early history of Masonry, presented to us by the Legend of the Craft, which differs so much from the modern opinion, although it has almost become obsolete, is worthy of at least a passing consideration.
Who was this Nimrod, who held so exalted a position in the eyes of the old legendists, and why had they assigned to him a rank and power which modern Craftsmen have thought to belong more justly to the King of Israel?
The answers to these questions will be an appropriate commentary on that part of the Legend of the Craft which contains the story of this old Assyrian monarch.
The estimation of the character of Nimrod which has been almost universally entertained by the ancients as well as the moderns, obtains no support from the brief account of him contained in the Book of Genesis.
Josephus portrays him as a tyrant in his government of his people, vainglorious of his great power, a despiser and hater of God, and instigated by this feeling, the builder of a tower through which he would avenge himself on God for having destroyed the world.
For this view of the character of Nimrod, Josephus was in an probability indebted to the legends of the orientalists, which had clustered around the name of Nimrod, just as in ancient times legends always did cluster around great and mighty men.
Thus in the ancient chronicles he was represented as of gigantic stature, ten or twelve cubits in height. To him was attributed the invention of idolatry, and he is said to have returned to Chaldea after the destruction of the Tower of Babel, and to have persuaded the inhabitants to become fire‑worshippers. He built a large furnace and commanded that all who refused the idolatrous worship should be cast into it. Among his victims were Abraham or Abram, the patriarch, and his father Terah. The latter was consumed, but the former by the interposition of a miracle came out unhurt. It is hardly necessary to say that such legends are altogether mythical and of no historical value.
The Scriptural account of Nimrod is a very brief and unsatisfactory one. It is merely that:
"Cush begat Nimrod; he began to be a mighty one in the earth. He was a mighty hunter before the Lord; wherefore it is said, Even as Nimrod the mighty hunter before the Lord. And the beginning of his kingdom was Babel, and Erech, and Accad, and Calneh, in the land of Shinar. Out of that land went forth Ashur and builded Nineveh, and the city Rehoboth, and Calah, and Resen between Nineveh and Calah: the same is a great city." (1)
The most learned commentators have differed as regards the translation of the 11th verse. The Septuagint, the Vulgate, Luther's and our own recognized version say‑ "Out of that land went forth Ashur, and builded Nineveh." Higden, in the Polychronicon, which I have already said was the source of the Masonic Legend, adopts the same version. And the Cooke and the later manuscripts assign the building of Nineveh and the other cities of Assyria to Ashur, the son of Shem, and the kinsman of Nimrod, who assisted
(1) Genesis x. 8‑12.
him with workmen. Such was the legend until the beginning of the 18th century.
But the best modern Hebrew scholars, such as Borhart, Le Clerc, Gesenius, and a great many others, insist that Ashur is not the name of a person, but of a country, and that the passage should be rendered: "Out of that land he (Nimrod) went forth to Assyria and builded Nineveh, and the city Rehoboth, and Calah, and Resen, between Nineveh and Calah." This is the form of the legend that was adopted by Dr. Anderson and by the author of the Krause document, and after the publication of Anderson's work it took the place of the older form.
The Craft have in both forms of the legend recognized Nimrod as a great Mason, nor have the vituperations of Josephus and the scandalous legends of the orientalists had the slightest effect on their apparent estimation of that mighty monarch, the founder of nations and the builder of cities.
And now, in the latter part of the 19th century, comes a learned scholar, (1) well acquainted with the language of the ancient Babylonians and Assyrians, and with the complicated cuneiform alphabet in which it is clothed, and visiting the remains of the ruined cities which Nimrod had built, finds the fragments of twelve tablets which contain the history of a Babylonian monarch to whom he gave the provisional name of Izdubar and whom he identified with Nimrod. If this identification be correct, and there is certainly strong internal evidence in favor of it, we have in these tablets a somewhat connected narrative of the exploits of the proto‑monarch of Babylon, which places his character in a more favorable light than that which had hitherto been received as the popular belief founded on the statement of Josephus and the oriental traditions.
The Izdubar legends, as Mr. Smith has called the inscriptions on these tablets, represent Nimrod as a mighty leader, a man of great prowess in war and in hunting, and who by his ability and valor had united many of the petty kingdoms into which the whole of the valley of the Euphrates was at that time divided, and thus established the first empire in Asia. (2) He was, in fact, the hero of the ancient
(1) The late George Smith, of the British Museum, the author of "Assyrian Discoveries," of the "Chaldean Account of Genesis," and many other writings in which he has eNen the learned result of his investigations of the cuneiform inscriptions. (2) Smith, "Chaldean Account of Genesis," p. 174.
Babylonians, and therefore it was only natural that they should consecrate the memory of him who as a powerful and beneficent king had first given them that unity which secured their prosperity as a nation. (1)
If we now refer to the Legend of the Craft, we shall find that the old Masonic legendist, although of course he had never seen nor heard of the discoveries contained in the cuneiform inscriptions, had rejected the traditional estimate of Nimrod's character, as well as the supposed results of the destruction of the Tower of Babel, and had wisely selected Babylon as the first seat and Nimrod (whoever may have been meant by that name) as the founder of the sciences, and especially of architecture.
In this there is a conformity of the legendary account with the facts of history, not usual with legendists.
"We must give," says Canon Rawlinson, "the Babylonians credit for a genius and a grandeur of conception rarely surpassed, which led them to employ the labor whereof they had the command, in works of so imposing a character. With only 'brick for stone,' and at first only 'slime for mortar,' they constructed edifices of so vast a size that they still remain, at the present day, among the most enormous ruins in the world, impressing the beholder at once with awe and admiration."
The Legend of the Craft continually confounds Masonry, Geometry, and Architecture, or rather uses them as synonymous and convertible terms. It is not, therefore, surprising that it should have selected Babylon as the birth‑place, and Nimrod as the founder of what they called "the science." The introduction of his name into the Legend, may be attributed, says the Rev. Bro. Woodford, (3) "to an old assumption that rulers were patrons of the building sodalities." I rather imagine that the idea may be traced to the fact that Nimrod was supposed to be a patron of architecture and the buider of a great number of cities. The mediaeval Operative Masons were always ready to accept any distinguished architect or builder as a patron and member of the Craft. Thus the history of Masonry compiled by Dr. Anderson, out of the Old Records, is nothing but a history of architecture, and almost every king, prelate, or nobleman who had erected a palace, a church, or a castle, is called a distinguished Freemason and a patron of the Institution.
(1) Smith, ib., p. 294. (2) In Smith's "Dict. of the Bible," voce, Babel. (3) Kenning's " Encyclopaedia," in voce Nimrod.
P. 66
CHAPTER XIII
THE LEGEND OF EUCLID
HAING disposed of the establishment of Masonry in Babylon, the Legend of the Craft next proceeds by a rapid transition to narrate the history of its introduction into Egypt. This Egyptian episode, which in reference to the principal action in it has been called the "Legend of Euclid," is found in all the old manuscripts.
It forms the opening feature of the Halliwell poem, being in that document the beginning of the history of Masonry; it is told with circumstantial minuteness in the Cooke MS., and is apparently copied from that into all the later manuscripts, where the important details are essentially the same, although we find a few circumstances related in some which are omitted in others.
Divesting the narrative of the archaic language of the manuscripts, the legend may be given as follows:
Once on a time, to use the story‑teller's style, Abraham and his wife went to Egypt. Now Abraham was very learned in all the seven arts and sciences, and was accompanied by Euclid, who was his scholar, and to whom he had imparted his knowledge. At that time the lords or rich men of Egypt were in sore distress, because having a very numerous progeny of sons, for whom they could find no occupation, they knew not how they could obtain for them a livelihood.
In this strait they held a council and made proclamation that if any one could suggest a remedy, he should lay his plans before them, when he should be suitably rewarded.
Upon this Euclid presented himself and offered to supply these sons with an honest means of living, by teaching them the science of Geometry, provided they should be placed by their fathers under his exclusive control, so that he might have the power of ruling them according to the laws of the Craft.
To this proposition the Egyptian nobles gladly consented, and granted Euclid all the power that he had asked, and secured the grant to him by a sealed commission.
Euclid then instructed them in the practical part of Geometry, and taught them how to erect churches, castles, towers, and all other kinds of buildings in stone. He also gave them a code of laws for their government.
Thus did Euclid found in the land of Egypt the science which he named Geometry, but which has ever since been called Masonry.
I have said that while all the manuscripts agree in the prominent circumstances of this legend, there are in some of them a few discrepancies as to some of the minor details.
Thus the Halliwell poem makes no allusion to Abraham, but imputes the founding of Masonry to Euclid alone, and it will be remembered that the title of that poem is, "The Constitutions of the art of Geometry according to Euclid."
The Cooke MS. is far more full in details than either the Halliwell poem or the manuscripts that succeeded it. It says that Abraham taught Geometry to the Egyptians, and that Euclid was his scholar. But a few lines after, quoting St. Isidore as its authority, it says that Euclid was one of the first founders of Geometry, and that in his time there was an inundation of the Nile, and he taught them to make dykes and walls to restrain the water, and measured the land by means of Geometry, and divided it among the inhabitants, so that every man could enclose his own property with ditches and walls. In consequence of this the land became fertile, and the population increased to such a degree, that there was found a difficulty in finding for all employment that would enable them to live. Whereupon the nobles gave the government of their children to Euclid, who taught them the art of Geometry, so called because he had with its aid measured the land, (1) when he built the walls and ditches to separate each one's possession.
The needles repetitions and confusion of details in the Cooke MS. show that the author had derived the information on which he constructed his legend from various sources ‑ partly from the authority of St. Isidore, as he is quoted in Higden's Polychronicon, and partly from the tradition of the Craft.
(1) Geometry from the Greek ge land and metron measure.
The later manuscripts have copied the details of the Legend as contained in the Cooke codex, but with many omissions, so as to give it the form in which it was known to the Craft in the 16th and 17th centuries.
Thus the Dowland MS., whose date is supposed to be about 1550, gives the story almost exactly as it is in the Halliwell poem, except that it adds Abraham and Sarah as dramatis persona, making it in this respect coincide with the Cooke MS., and probably with the form of the original Legend.
In this it is followed by the York, No. 1 (1600), the Grand Lodge (1632), the Sloane (1646), the Lodge of Hope (1680), the Alnwick (1701), and even the Papworth MS., as late as 1714.
The Landsdowne MS. (1560), and the Antiquity (1686), have the Legend in a very imperfect form, and either did not copy or greatly curtailed the Dowland MS., as they but slightly refer to Egypt and to Euclid, and not at all to Abraham.
As to the reputation for great learning which the legendists have given to Abraham, although the Bible dwells only on his piety, they found their authority in Josephus, as well as in Isidore.
Josephus says that among the Egyptians he was esteemed as a very wise man, and that besides reforming their customs, he taught them arithmetic and astronomy.
It is evident, as has been already noticed, that the Legend of the Craft has been indebted for much of its materials to the Antiquities of Josephus, and the Etymologies of St. Isidore, and the Polychronicon of Ranulph Higden ‑ the first two at second hand, in all probability through the citations of those works which are mdde in the third.
The Krause MS., which is said to have been translated from the English into the Latin, and afterward into German, and published by Dr. Krause, (1) gives the Legend in an entirely different form.
Notwithstanding that I have declared my belief that this document is spurious with a date of not earlier than the second decade, or more probably toward the middle of the 18th century, yet, as an indication of the growth and the change of the Legend at that period, it will be worth while to compare its form with that in the
(1) "Die drei altesten Kunsturkunden," iii., 59 ‑ 113.
older manuscripts, at least so far as relates to the Egyptian episode, which is in the following words:
"Abraham was skilled in all the sciences and continued to teach them to the sons of the freeborn, whence afterwards came the many learned priests and mathematicians who were known by the name of the Chaldean Magi. Afterwards, Abraham continued to propagate these sciences and arts when he came to Egypt, and found there, especially in Hermes, so apt a scholar, that the latter was at length called the Trismegistus of the sciences, for he was at the same time priest and natural philosopher in Egypt; and through him and a scholar of his the Egyptians received the first good laws and all the sciences in which Abraham had instructed him. Afterwards Euclid collected the principal sciences and called them Geometry. But the Greeks and Romans called them altogether Architecture.
"But in consequence of the confusion of languages, the laws and arts and sciences could not formerly be propagated until the people had learned to make comprehensible by signs that which they could not understand by words. Wherefore, Mizraim, the son of Cham, brought the custom of making himself understood by signs with him into Egypt, when he colonized a valley of the Nile. This art was afterwards extended into all distant lands, but only the signs that are given by the hands have remained in architecture; for the signs by figures are as yet known to but few.
"In Egypt the overflowings of the Nile afforded an opportunity to use the art of measurement, which had been introduced by Mizraim, and to build bridges and walls as a protection against the water. They used burnt stone and wood and earth for these purposes. Therefore when the heathen kings had become acquainted with this, they were compelled to prepare stone and lime and bricks and there‑with to erect buildings, by which, through God's will, however, they became only the more expeienced artists and were so celebrated that their art spread as far as Persia."
If the reader compares this legend of the Krause manuscript with that which is given by Dr. Anderson in the first edition of his Constitutions, he will be constrained to admit that both documents are derived from the same source, or that one of them is an abridged or an expository copy of the other. It is evident that the statement in Anderson is merely a synopsis of that more detailed narrative contained in the Krause Legend, or that it is an expansion of the statement in the first edition of the Constitutions.
If the Krause MS. was written before Anderson compiled his history, it could not have been long anterior, and must have been composed between 1714, the date of the Papworth MS., which contains the Legend in its mediaeval form, and 1723, when Anderson published his work.
Within this period the Masons sought to modify the old Legend of the Craft, so as to deprive it of its apparent absurdities, and to omit its anachronisms so as to give it the appearance of an authentic historical narrative.
Instead, therefore, of having the date of 926, which has been ascribed to it by Dr. Krause, his manuscript is, as Bro. Hughan thinks it, "a compilation of the early part of the last century." It is, however, important, as I have said, because it shows how the old Legend was improved and divested of its anachronisms.
It is certainly a very absurd anachronism to make Euclid the contemporary of Abraham, who lived more than two thousand years before him. Nor is it less absurd to suppose that Euclid invented Masonry in Egypt, whence it was carried to India, and practiced by King Solomon, since the great geometrician did not flourish until six centuries and a half after the construction of the Temple.
Considered, then, as an historical narrative, the Legend of Euclid is a failure. And yet it has its value as the symbolical development of certain historical facts.
The prominent points in this Legend being, of course, those on which the old believers of it most strenuously dwelt, are: 1. That Geometry is the groundwork of Masonry; 2. That Euclid was the most distinguished of all geometricians; and, 3. That the esoteric method of teaching this as well as all the other sciences which was pursued by the priests of Egypt, was very analogous to that which was adopted by the Operative Masons of the Middle Ages, in imparting to their disciples the geometric and architectural secrets, which constituted what they called the Mystery of the Craft.
The Legend, in fact, symbolizes the well‑recognized fact, that in Egypt, in early times ‑ of which there is no historical objection to make Abraham the contemporary ‑ there was a very intimate connection between the science of Geometry and the religious system of the Egyptians; that this religious system embraced also all scientific instruction; that this instruction was secret, and communicated only after an initiation, (1) and that in that way there was a striking analogy between the Egyptian system and that of the mediaeval Masons. And this fact of an analogy, the latter sought to embody in the apparent form of an historical narrative, but really in the spirit of a symbolic picture.
Thus considered, the Legend of the Craft, in its episode of Euclid and his marvelous doings in the land of Egypt, is divested of its absurdity, and it is brought somewhat nearer to the limits of historical verity than the too literal reader would be disposed to admit.
(1) Kendrick confirms this statement in his Ancient Egypt," where he says: "When we read of foreigners (in Egypt) being obliged to submit to painful and tedious ceremonies of initiation, it was not that they might learn the secret meaning of the rites of Osiris, or Isis, but that they might partake of the knowledge of astronomy, physick, geometry, and theology."‑(Vol. i., p. 383.)
P. 72
CHAPTER XIV
THE LEGEND OF THE TEMPLE
FROM this account of the exploits of Abraham and his scholar Euclid, and of the invention of Geometry, or Masonry in Egypt, the Legend of the Craft proceeds, by a rapid stride, to the narrative of the introduction of the art into Judea, or as it is called in all of them, "the land of behest," or the land of promise.
Here it is said to have been principally used by King Solomon, in the construction of the temple at Jerusalem. The general details connected with the building of this edifice, and the assistance given to the King of Israel, by Hiram, King of Tyre, are related with sufficient historical accuracy, and were probably derived either directly or at second hand, through the Polychronicon, from the first Book of Kings, which, in fact, is referred to in all the manuscripts as a source of information. (1)
The assumption that Freemasonry, as it now exists, was organized at the Temple of Solomon, although almost universally accepted by Masons who have not made Masonry, a historical study but who derive their ideas of the Institution from the mythical teachings of the ritual, has been utterly rejected by the greater part of the recent school of iconoclasts, who investigate the history of Freemasonry by the same methods which they would pursue in the examination of any other historical subject.
The fact, however, remains, that in the Legend of the Craft the Temple is prominently and definitely referred to as a place where Masons congregated in great numbers, and where Masonry was confirmed or established, and whence it traveled into other countries. (2)
(1)"As it is said in the Bible, in the third book of Kings," are the words of the Cooke MS. In the canon of Scripture as then used, the two books of Samuel were called the first and second of Kings. The third book of Kings was then the first according to the present canon. (2) "And thus was that worthy Science of Masonry confirmed in the country of Jerusalem, and in many other kingdoms."‑Dowland MS.
Considering the Legend of the Craft as merely a narrative of the rise and progress of architecture in its connection with a peculiar architectural association, it was natural that in such a narrative some reference should be made to one of the most splendid specimens of ancient architectural art that the ancient world had exhibited. And since this Temple was, by its prominence in the ritual of Jewish worship, intimately connected with both the Jewish and Christian religions, we shall be still less surprised that an association not only so religious, but even ecclesiastical as mediaeval Masonry was, should have considered this sacred edifice as one of the cradles of its Institution.
Hence we find the Temple of Jerusalem occupying a place in the Legend of the Craft which it has retained, with many enlargements, to the present day.
But there is a difference in the aspect in which this subject of the Temple is to be viewed, as we follow the progress of the Order in its transition from an Operative to a Speculative Institution.
Originally referred to by the legendists as a purely historical fact, whose details were derived from Scripture, and connected by a sort of esprit du corps, with the progress of their own association, it was retained during and after the development of the Order into a Speculative character, because it seemed to be the very best foundation on which the religious symbolism of that Order could be erected.
But notwithstanding that the masses of the Institution, learned as well as unlearned, continue to accept the historical character of this part of the Legend, the Temple is chiefly to be considered in a symbolic point of view. It is in this aspect that we must regard it, and in so doing we shall relieve the Legend of another charge of absurdity. It is true that we are unable now to determine how much of true history and how much of symbolism were contemplated by the authors of the Legend, when they introduced the Temple of Jerusalem into that document as a part of their traditional narrative. But there is a doubt, and we can not now positively assert that the mediaeval Freemasons had not some impression of a symbolic idea when they incorporated it into their history.
The Temple might, indeed, from its prominence in the ritual, be almost called the characteristic symbol of Speculative Masonry. The whole system of Masonic Symbolism is not only founded on the Temple of Jerusalem, but the Temple idea so thoroughly permeates it that an inseparable connection is firmly established, so that if the Temple symbol were obliterated and eliminated from the system of Freemasonry ‑ if that system were purged of all the legends and myths that refer to the building of the Solomonic Temple, and to the events that are supposed to have then and there occurred, we should have nothing remaining by which to recognize and identify Speculative Masonry, as the successor of the Operative System of the Middle Ages. The history of the Roman Empire with no account of Julius Caesar, or of Pompey, or that of the French Revolution, with no allusion to Louis XVI., or to Robespierre, would present just as mutilated a narrative as Freemasonry would, were all reference to the Temple of Solomon omitted.
Seeing, then, the importance of this symbol, it is proper and will be interesting to trace it back through the various exemplars of the Legend of the Craft contained in the Old Constitutions, because it is to that Legend that modern Freemasonry owes the suggestion at least, if not the present arrangement and formulae of this important symbol.
In the oldest Constitution that we have, the one known as the Halliwell MS., whose date is supposed not to be later than the end of the 14th century, there is not the least allusion to the Temple of Solomon, which is another reason why I ascribe to that document, as I have before said, an origin different from that of the other and later manuscripts.
The word temple occurs but once in the entire poem, and then it is used to designate a Christian church or place of worship. (1) But in the Cooke MS., written, as it is estimated, about a century afterward, there are ample references to the Solomonic Temple, and the statement made in the Legend of the Craft is for the first time enunciated.
After this, there is not a Constitution written in which the same narrative is not repeated. There does not appear in any of them, from the Landsdowne MS. in 1560 to the Papworth in 1701, any enlargement of the narrative or any development of new occur‑
(1) "He made the bothe halle and eke bowre, And hye temhuls of gret honoure, To sport hym yn bothe day and nighth, And to worschepe hys God with all hys myght." (Lines 63‑66).
rences. Each of them dilates, in almost the same words, upon the Temple of Solomon as connected with Masonry in many words, and gives elaborate details of the construction of the edifice, of the number of Masons employed, how they were occupied in performing other works of Masonry, and, finally, how one of them left Jerusalem and extended the art into other countries. We thus see that up to the end of the 17th century the Legend of the Craft in all its essential details continued to be accepted as traditionary history.
In the beginning of the 18th century the Legend began to assume a nearer resemblance to its present form. The document already referred to as the Krause MS., and which Dr. Krause too hastily supposed was a copy of the original York Constitutions of 926, is really, as I have heretofore shown, a production of the early part of the 18th century. In this document the Legend is given in the following words:
"Although, by architecture great and excellent buildings had already been everywhere constructed, they all remained far behind the holy Temple, which the wise King Solomon caused to be erected in Jerusalem, to the honor of the true God, where he employed an uncommonly large number of workmen, as we find in the Holy Scriptures; and King Hiram of Tyre also added a number to them.
Among these assistants who were sent was King Hiram's most skilful architect, a widow's son, whose name was Hiram Abif, and who afterwards made the most exquisite arrangements and furnished the most costly works, all of which are described in the Holy Scriptures. The whole of these workmen were, with King Solomon's approval, divided into certain classes, and thus at this great building was first founded a worthy Society of Architects."
Whether the author of the Krause MS. had copied from Anderson, or Anderson from him, or both from some other document which is no longer extant, is a question that has already been discussed. But the description of the Temple and its connection with the history of Masonry, are given by Dr. Anderson with much of the features of the Krause form of the Legend, except that the details are more copious. Now, what was taught concerning the Temple by Anderson in his History contained in the first edition of the Constitutions, although afterward polished and perfected by Preston and other ritual makers, is substantially the same as that which is taught at the present day in all the Lodges.
Therefore, notwithstanding that Dr. Krause asserts, (1) that "the Temple of Solomon is no symbol, certainly not a prominent one of the English system," I am constrained to believe that it was one of the prominent symbols alluded to in the Mediaeval Legend, and that the symbol of the Temple upon which so much of the symbolism of Modern Speculative Masonry depends, was, in fact, suggested to the revivalists by the narrative contained in the Legend of the Craft.
Whether the Operative Masons of the Middle Ages, who seem to have accepted this Legend as authentic history, had also, underlying the narrative, a symbolic interpretation of the Temple and of certain incidents that are said to have occurred in the course of its erection, as referring to this life and the resurrection to a future one, or whether that interpretation was in existence at the time when the Legend of the Craft was invented, and was subsequently lost sight of, only to be recovered in the beginning of the 18th century, are questions that will be more appropriately discussed in succeeding pages of this work, when the subject of the myths and symbols of Freemasonry is under consideration.
But it is evident that between the narrative in the Legend concerning the Temple, with its three builders, the Kings of Israel and Tyre, and Solomon's Master of the Works, and the symbolism of Modern Speculative Masonry in allusion to the same building and the same personages, there has been a close, consecutive connection.
Hence, again, we find that the Legend of the Craft is of value in reference to the light which it throws on the progress of Masonic science and symbolism, which otherwise it would not possess, if it were to be considered as a mere mythical narrative without any influence on history.
Before concluding this subject, it will be necessary to refer to the name of the chief builder of the Temple, and whose name has undergone that corruption in all the manuscripts to which all proper names have been subjected in those documents.
Of course, it is known, from the testimony of Scripture, that the real name and title of this person, as used in reference to King Solomon and himself, was Hiram Abif, that is, "his father Hiram." (2)
(1) "Die drei altesten Kunsturkunden," vol. i., p. 155, note 41. (2) When the King of Tyre speaks of him, it is as Hiram Abi that is, "My
father Hiram," 2 Chron‑ ii. 13‑
This Hebrew appellative is found for the first time in Masonic documents in Anderson's Constitutions, and in the Krause MS., both being of the date of the early part of the 18th century. Previous to that period we find him variously called in all the Old Manuscripts, from the Dowland in 1550 to the Alnwick in 1701, Aman, Amon, Aynone, Aynon, Anon, and Ajuon.
Now, of what word are these a corruption? (1)
The Cooke MS. does not give any name, but only says, that "the King's son of Tyre was Solomon's Master Mason." All the other and succeeding manuscripts, without exception, admit this relation. Thus the Dowland, in which it is followed by all the others, says that King Hiram "had a son that was called AYNON, and he was a Master of Geometry, and was chief Master of all Solomon's Masons."
The idea was thus established that this man was of royal dignity, the son of a King, and that he was also a ruler of the Craft.
Now, the Hebrew word Adon denotes a lord, a prince, a ruler or master.
It is, in short, a title of dignity. In the Book of Kings we meet with Adoniram, who was one of the principal officers of King Solomon, and who during the construction of the Temple, performed an important part as the chief or superintendent of the levy of thirty thousand laborers who worked on Mount Lebanon.
The old Masons may have confounded this person with Hiram from the similarity of the terminational syllables. The modern Continental Masons committed the same error when they established the Rite of Adonhiram or Adoniram, and gave to Hiram Abif the title of Adon Hiram, or the Lord or Master Hiram. If the Old Masons did this, then it is evident that they abbreviated the full namc and called him Adon.
But I am more inclined to believe that the author of the first or original old manuscript, of which all the rest are copies, called the chief builder of Solomon Adon, Lord and Master, in allusion to his supposed princely rank and his high position as the chief builder or Master of the Works at the Temple.
(1) The Papworth MS., whose supposed date is 1714, rejects all these words and calls him Benaim, which is a misspelling of Bonaim, builders, and that a grammatical error for Boneh, the Builder. The writer had evidently got an inkling of the new form which the Legend was beginning to assume. Anderson, it will be recollected, speaks of the " Bonai, or builders in stone."
The corruption from Adon to Aynon, or Amon, or even Ajuon, is not greater than what occurs in other names in these manuscripts, as where Hermes is transmuted into Hermarines, and Euclid into Englet. Indeed the copyists of these mediaeval documents appear to have had a Gallic facility in corrupting the orthography of all foreign names, very often almost totally destroying their identity.
As to the real meaning of Hiram Abif, either as a historic or symbolic character, that topic will be thoroughly considered in another part of this work, when the subject of Masonic Symbols comes to be considered.
The topic of the corruption of the name in the old manuscripts, and its true signification, will again be treated when I come to investigate the " Legend of Hiram Abif."
The Legend of the Temple could not be appropriately completed without a reference to Solomon, King of Israel, and some inquiry as to how he became indebted for the important place he has held in mediaeval Freemasonry.
The popularity of King Solomon among the Eastern nations is a familiar fact, known not only to Oriental scholars, but even to those whose knowledge on the subject is confined to what they have learned from their youthful reading of the Arabian Nights' Entertainments. Among the Arabians and the Persians, the King of Israel was esteemed as a great magician, whose power over the genii and other supernatural beings was derived from his possession of the Omnific Name, by the use of which he accomplished all his wonderful works, the said name being inscribed on his signet ring.
It is not singular seeing the communication which took place before and after the Crusades between the East and the West, that the wise son of David should have enjoyed an equal popularity among the poets and romancers of the Middle Ages.
"But among them the character that he sustains is not that of a great magician, so much as that of a learned philosopher. Whenever a Norman romancer or a Provencal minstrel composed a religious morality, a pious declamation, or a popular proverb, it was the name of Solomon that was often selected to "point the moral or adorn the tale."
Unlike the Orientalists, whose tendencies were always toward the mystical, the mediaeval writers most probably derived their opinion of the King of Israel, from the account of him and of his writings in the Bible. Now, there he is peculiarly distinguished as a proverbialist.
Proverbs are the earliest outspoken thought of the people, and they precede, in every nation, all other forms of literature. It was therefore to be expected, that at the awakening of learning in the Middle Ages, the romancers would be fascinated by the proverbial philosophy of King Solomon, rather than by his magical science, on which the Eastern fabulists had more fondly dwelt.
Legrand D'Aussy, in his valuable work On the Fables and Romances of the 12th and 13th Centuries, gives two interesting specimens from old manuscripts, of the use made by their writers of the traditional reputation of King Solomon.
The first of these is a romance called "The Judgment of Solomon." It is something like the Jewish story of the two mothers. But here the persons upon whom the judgment is to be passed are two sons of the Prince of Soissons. The claim advanced was for a partition of the property. To determine who was better entitled to be the heir, by the reverence he might exhibit for the memory of his father, Solomon required each to prove his knightly dexterity by transfixing a mark with his lance, and that mark was to be the body of his dead father. The elder readily complied with the odious condition. The younger indignantly refused. To him Solomon decreed the heritage.
We see here how ready these romancers of the Middle Ages were to invent a narrative and fit it into the life of their favorite Solomon. The makers of the Masonic Legend of the Craft, who were their contemporaries, promptly followed their example. There is in that Legend, as we have seen, some anachronisms, but none more absurd than that which makes a Prince of Soissons, who could not have been earlier than the time of Clovis, in the 6th century, the contemporary of a Jewish monarch who lived at least sixteen centuries before Soissons was known as a kingdom.
But it shows us the spirit of the age and how Legends were fabricated.
We are thus prepared to form a judgment of the Masonic myths.
The Middle Ages also attributed to King Solomon a very familiar acquaintance with the science of astrology. In so doing they by no means borrowed the Oriental idea that he was a great magician; for astrology formed no part of Eastern occult magic. The mediaeval astrologer was deemed a man of learning, just as at this day is the astronomer. Astrology was, in fact, the astronomy of the Middle Ages.
Solomon's astrological knowledge was therefore only a part of that great learning for which he had the reputation.
In the collection of unpublished Fabliaux et Contes, edited by M. Meon, is a poem entitled, "Le Lunaire que Salemon fist"; that is, "The Lunary which Solomon made."
The lunary or lunarium was a table made by astrologers to indicate the influence exerted by the moon on human affairs.
The poem, which consists of 910 lines, written in the old French or Norman language, contains directions for the conduct of life, telling what is to be done or what omitted on every day of the month. The concluding lines assign, without hesitation, the authorship to Solomon, while it pays the mediaeval tribute to his character:
"Here is ended the lesson
Made by the good King Solomon, To whom in his life God gave
Riches and honor and learning, More than to any other born
Or begotten of woman."
The canonical book of Proverbs gave the writers of the Middle Ages occasion to have an exalted opinion of Solomon as a maker of those pithy sayings ‑ a characteristic of his genius of which the Orientals seem to have been unmindful.
One of the most remarkable works of mediaeval literature is a poem by the Comte de Bretagne, entitled "Proverbs of Marcol and Solomon."
This Marcol is represented as a commentator, or rather, perhaps, a rival of King Solomon. The work is a poem divided into stanzas of six lines each. The first three lines contain a proverb of Solomon; the next three another proverb on the same subject, and in response, by Marcol.
There is another mediaeval poem in the collection of M. Meon, entitled "Of Marco and Solomon." The responsive style is the same as that of the Comte de Bretagne, but the one hundred and thirty‑seven proverbs which it contains are all new.
But still more apposite to the present inquiry is the fact that among the medioeval writers Solomon bore the reputation of an artisan of consummate skill. He was like the Volund or Wieland of the Scandinavian and Teutonic myths ‑ the traditional smith who fabricated the decorations of chambers, the caparison of war‑horses, and the swords and lances of cavaliers. In the poems of the Middle Ages whenever it becomes necessary to speak of any of these things as having been made with exquisite and surpassing skill, it is said to be "the work of Solomon" ‑ l'uevre Salemon.
But enough has been said to show that King Solomon was as familiar to the romancers of the Middle Ages as he was to the Jews of Palestine or to the Orientalists of Arabia and Persia. Philip de Thuan, who, in the 12th century, wrote his Besliary, a sort of natural history spiritualized, says that by Solomon was signified any wise man ‑ Sacez par Salemuon sage gent entendum.
Now, about the same time that these fable‑makers and song‑writers of the 12th, 13th, and 14th centuries were composing these stories about King Solomon, the makers of the Masonic Legend of the Craft were inventing their myths about the same monarch and the Temple which he erected.
This is a concurrence of time which suggests that possibly the popularity of King Solomon with the romancers of the Middle Ages made the incorporation of his name in the Masonic Legend less difficult to those who framed that mythical story.
We might, indeed, be led to suspect that the use of Solomon in their Legends and traditions was first suggested to the Stonemasons and to the cognate associations, such as the "Compagnons de la Tour" of France, from the frequent references to it by the contemporary romancers.
But the subsequent myths connected with Solomon as the head of the association of Masons at the Temple were, at a much later period, borrowed, in great part, from the Talmudists, and have no place among the song‑writers and fabulists of the Middle Ages.
P. 82
CHAPTER XV
THE EXTENSION OF THE ART INTO OTHER COUNTRIES
THE Legend of The Craft next proceeds to narrate how Masonry was extended "into divers countryes," some of the Masons traveling to increase their knowledge of their art, and others to extend that which they already possessed.
This subject is very briefly treated in the different manuscripts. The Halliwell poem says nothing of the progressive march of Masonry except that it details almost as an episode the persecution of the "Four Crowned Martyrs" as Christian Masons, in the reign of the Roman Emperor Diocletian, and we should almost be led to infer from the tenor of the poem that Masonry was introduced directly into England from Egypt.
The Cooke MS. simply says that from Egypt Masonry "went from land to land and from kingdom to kingdom," until it got to England.
The later manuscripts are a little more definite, although still brief. They merely tell us that skillful craftsmen largely traveled into various countries, some that they might acquire more knowledge and skill, and others to teach those who had but little skill.
There is certainly nothing that is mythical or fabulous in this statement.
Every authentic history of architecture concurs in the statement that at an early period the various counties of Europe were perambulated by bodies of builders in search of employment in the construction of religious and other edifices. The name, indeed, of "Travelling Freemasons" which was bestowed upon them, is familiar in architectural historical works. (1)
Indeed, as Mr. George Godwin says, "There are few points in the Middle Ages more pleasing, to look back upon than the existence
(1) See Hope's " Historical Essay on Architecture."
of the associated Masons; they I are the bright spot in the general darkness of that period, the patch of verdure when all around is barren." (1)
But this interesting subject will be more fully discussed in another part of this work, when we come to treat of the authentic history of Masonry.
This portion of the Legend can not be said to belong to the prehistoric period.
It is sufficient, for the present, to have shown that in this part, as elsewhere, the Legend of the Craft is not a merely fictitious narrative, but that the general statement of the extension of Freemasonry throughout Europe at an early period is confirmed by historical evidence.
On examining the Legend of the Craft, it will be found to trace the extension of Masonry through its successive stages of progress from Babylon and Assyria to Egypt, from Egypt to Judea, from Judea to France, and from France to England. Accepting Masonry and the art of building as synonymous terms, this line of progress will not be very adverse, with some necessary modifications, to that assumed to be correct by writers on architecture. But, as I have just said, the consideration of this subject belongs not to the prehistoric, but to the historic period of the Society.
(1) "The Builder," vol. ix., p. 463.
P. 84
CHAPTER XVI
THE LEGEND OF CHARLES MARTEL AND NAMUS GRECUS
THE Legend, now approaching the domain of authentic history, but still retaining its traditional character, proceeds to narrate, but in a very few words, the entrance of Masonry into France.
This account is given in the following language in the Dowland manuscript.
"And soe it befell that there was one curious Mason that height MAYMUS GRECUS, that had been at the making of Solomon's temple, and he came into France, and there he taught the science of Masonrys to men of France.
And there was one of the Regal lyne of Fraunce, that height CHARLES MARTELL; and he was a man that loved well such a science, and drew to this MAYMUS GRECUS that is above said, and learned of him the science, and tooke upon him the charges and manners; and afterwards, by the grace of God, he was elect to be Kinge of France. And whan he was in his estate, he tooke Masons and did helpe to make men Masons that were none; and he set them to worke, and gave them both the charge and the manners and good pale, as he had learned of other Masons; and confirmed them a Charter from yeare to yeare, to holde their semble wher they would; and cherished them right much; and thus came the science into France."
This Legend is repeated, almost word for word, in all the later manuscripts up to the year 1714.
It is not even alluded to in the earliest of all the manuscripts ‑ the Halliwell poem ‑ which is another proof that that document is of German origin.
The Cooke MS. has the Legend in the following words:
"Sumtyme ther was a worthye kyng in Frauns, that was clepyd Carolus secundus that ys to sey Charlys the secunde. And this Charlys was elyte [elected] kyng of Frauns by the grace of God and by lynage [lineage] also. And sume men sey that he was elite [elected] by fortune the whiche is fals as by cronycle he was of the kynges blode Royal.
And this same kyng Charlys was a mason bifor that he was kyng. And after that he was kyng he lovyd masons and cherschid them and gaf them chargys and mannerys at his devise the whiche sum ben yet used in fraunce and he ordeynyd that they scholde have a semly [assembly] onys in the yere and come and speke togedyr and for to be rculed by masters and felows of thynges amysse." (1)
The absence of all allusion to Namus Grecus (a personage who will directly occupy our attention) in the Cooke document is worthy of notice.
When Dr. Anderson was putting the Legend of the Craft into a modern shape, he also omitted any reference to Namus Grecus but he preserved the spirit of the Legend, so far as to say, that according to the old records of Masons, Charles Martel "sent over several expert craftsmen and learned architects into England at the desire of the Saxon kings." (2)
I think it will be proved, when in the course of this work the authentic history of Masonry comes to be treated, that the statement in the Legend of the Craft in relation to the condition of the art in France during the administration of Charles Martel is simply a historical fact. In claiming for the "Hammerer" the title of King of France, while he assumed only the humble rank of Duke of the Franks and Mayor of the Palace, the legendists have only committed a historical error of which more experienced writers might be guilty.
The introduction of the name of Namus Grecus, an unknown Mason, who is described as being the contemporary of both Solomon and of Charles Martel, is certainly an apparent anachronism that requires explanation.
This Namus Grecus has been a veritable sphinx to Masonic antiquaries, and no CEdipus has yet appeared who could resolve the riddle. Without assuming the sagacity of the ancient expounder of enigmas, I can only offer a suggestion for what it may be considered worth.
I suppose Grecuis to be merely an appellative indicating the fact that this personage was a Greek. Now, the knowledge of his exist‑
(1) Cooke MS., lines 576 ‑ 601.
(2) "Constitutions," ed. 1723, p. 30,.
ence at the court of Charles Martel was most probably derived by the English legendist from a German or French source, because the Legend of the Craft is candid in admitting that the English Masons had collected the writings and charges from other countries. Prince Edwin is said to have made a proclamation that any Masons who "had any writing or understanding of the charges and the manners that were made before in this land [England] or in any other, that they should shew them forth." And there were found "some in French, some in Greek, some in English, and some in other languages."
Now, if the account and the name of this Greek architect had been taken from the German, the text would most probably have been "ein Maurer Namens Grecus"; or, if from the French, it would have been "un Macon nomme Grecus." The English legendist would, probably, mistake the words Namens Grecus, or nomme Grecus, each of which means "he was named Grecus," or, literally, "a Mason by the name of Grecus," for the full name, and write him down as Namus Grecus. The Maymus in the Dowland MS. is evidently a clerical error. In the other manuscripts it is Namus. The corrected reading, then, would be ‑ "there was a Mason named (or called) a Greek."
It can not be scd that it is not probable that any legendist would have fallen into such an error when we remember how many others as great, if not greater, have been perpetrated in these Old Records. See, for instance, in these manuscripts such orthographical mistakes as Hermarines for Hermes, and Englet for Euclid; to say nothing of the rather ridiculous blunder in the Leland MS., where Pythagore, the French form of Pythagoras, has suffered transmutation into Peter Gower. So it is not at all unlikely that Namens Grecus, or nomme Grecus, should be changed into Namus Grecus.
The original Legend, in all probability meant to say merely that in the time of Charles Martel, a Greek artist, who had been to Jerusalem, introduced the principles of Byzantine architecture into France.
Now, history attests that in the 8th century there was an influx of Grecian architects and artificers into Southern and Western Europe, in consequence of persecutions that were inflicted on them by the Byzantine Emperors. The Legend, therefore, indulges in no spirit of fiction in referring to the advent in France, at that period, of one of these architects.
It is also a historical fact that Charles the Great of France was a liberal encourager of the arts and sciences, and that he especially promoted the cultivation of architecture on the Byzantine or Greek model in his dominions.
Dr. Oliver, in the second edition of the Constitutions, repeats the Legend with a slight variation. He says that "Ethelbert, King of Mercia, and general monarch, sent to Charles Martel, the Right Worshipful Grand Master of France (father of King Pippin), who had been educated by Brother Nimus Graecus, he sent over from France (about A.D. 710) some expert Masons to teach the Saxons those laws and usages of the ancient fraternity, that had been happily preserved from the havock of the Goths."
Pritchard, in his Masonry Dissected, gives, upon what authority I know not, the Legend in the following form:
Euclid "communicated the art and mystery of Masonry to Hiram, the Master Mason concerned in the building of Solomon's Temple in Jerusalem, where was an excellent and curious Mason, whose name was Mannon Grecus, who taught the art of Masonry to one Carolus Marcil in France, who was afterwards elected King of Flance."
Upon this change of the name to Mannon Grecus, Krause suggests a derivation as follows: In using this name he thinks that Pritchard intended to refer to the celebrated scholastic philosopher Mannon, or Nannon, who was probably celebrated in his time for his proficiency in the language and literature of Greece. Nannon lived in the reign of Charles the Bold, and was the successor of Erigena in the direction of the schools of France.
I think the derivation of the name offered by Dr. Krause is wholly untenable though ingenious, for it depends upon a name not found in any of the old manuscripts, and besides, the philosopher did not live in the time of Charles Martel, but long afterward.
Between his derivation and mine, the reader may select, and probably will be inclined to reject both.
As far as the Legend regards Charles Martel as the patron of architecture or Masonry in France, one observation remains to be made.
If there has been an error of the legendists in attributing to Charles Martel the honor that really belonged to his successor, Charles the Great, it is not surprising when we consider how great was the ignorance of the science of chronology that prevaded in those days.
However, it must be remarked, that at the present day the French Masonic writers speak of Charles Martel as the founder of Masonry in France.
The error of making the Greek architect a contemporary both of Solomon and of Charles Martel is one which may be explained, either as the expression of a symbolic idea, alluding to the close connection that had existed between Oriental and Byzantine architecture, or may be excused as an instance of blundering chronology for which the spirit of the age, more than the writer of the Legend, is to be blamed. This objection will not, however, lie if we assume that Namus Grecus meant simply a Greek architect.
But this whole subject is so closely connected with the authentic history of Masonry, having really passed out of the prehistoric period, that it claims a future and more elaborate consideration in its proper place.
P. 89
CHAPTER XVII
THE LEGEND OF ST. ALBAN
THE Legend of the Craft now proceeds to narrate the history of the introduction of Masonry into England, in the time of St. Alban, who lived in the 3d century.
The Legend referring to the protomartyr of England is not mentioned in the Halliwell poem, but is first found in the Cooke MS., in the following words: "And sone after that come seynt Adhabell into Englond, and he convertyd seynt Albon to cristendome. And seynt Albon lovyd well masons, and he gaf hem fyrst her charges and maners fyrst in Englond. And he ordeyned convenyent (1) to pay for their travayle." (2)
The later manuscripts say nothing of St. Adhabell, and it is not until we get to the Krause MS. in the beginning of the 18th century, that we find any mention of St. Amphibalus, who is described in that document as having been the teacher of St. Alban. But St. Amphibalus, of which the Adhabell of the Cooke MS. is undoubtedly a corruption, is so apocryphal a personage, that I am rejoiced that the later legendists have not thought proper to follow the Cooke document and give him a place in the Legend.
In fact, amphibalum was the ecclesiastical name of a cloak, worn by priests of the Romish Church over their other vestments. (3) It was a vestment ecclesiastically transmuted into a saint, as the hand‑
(1) Cooke translates this "convenient times," supplying the second word.
But a more correct word is suitable or proper, which is an old meaning of convenient. "He ordained suitable pay for their labor," and this agrees with the Iater manuscripts which impress the fact that St. Alban "made their pay right good." (2) Cooke MS., lines 602 ‑ 611. (3) It is significant that among the spurious relics sent, when fearing the Danish invasion, in the reign of Edward the Confessor, by the Abbot of St. Albans, to the monks of Ely, was a very rough, shagged old coat, which it was said had been usually worn by St. Amphibalus.
kerchief on which Christ left the image of His face when, as it is said, it was handed to Him on His way to Calvary, by a pious Jewess, became from the Greco‑Latin vera icon, "the true image," converted into St. Veronica. The Masonic are not the only legendists who draw deeply on our credulity.
Of St. Alban, ecclesiastical history furnishes only the following meager details, and even of these some are apocryphal, or at least lack the stamp of authenticity.
He was born (so runs the tradition) in the 3d century, in Hertfordshire, England, near the town of Verulanium. Going to Rome, he served for seven years as a soldier under the Emperor Diocletian. He then returned with a companion and preceptor Amphibalus, to Britain, and betook himself to Verulanium. When the persecutions of the Christians commenced in Britain, Amphibalus was sought for, as one who had apostatized to the new religion; but as he could not be found, St. Alban voluntarily presented himself to the judge, and after undergoing torture was imprisoned. Soon after this, the retreat of Amphibalus having been discovered, both he and St. Alban suffered death for being Christians.
Four centuries after his martyrdom, Offa, King of the Mercians, erected a monastery at Holmehurst, the hill where he was buried, and soon after the town of St. Albans arose in its vicinity.
When the Christian religion became predominant in England, the Church paid great honors to the memory of the protomartyr. A chapel was erected over his grave which, according to the Venerable Bede, was of admirable workmanship.
The Masonic Legend contains details which are not furnished by the religious one. According to it, St. Alban was the steward of the household of Carausius, he who had revolted from the Emperor Maximilian, and usurped the sovereignty of England. Carausius employed him in building the town walls. St. Alban, thus receiving the superintendence of the Craft, treated them with great kindness, increased their pay, and gave them a charter to hold a general assembly. He assisted them in making Masons, and framed for them a constitution ‑ for such is the meaning of the phrase, "gave them charges."
Now, there is sufficient historical evidence to show that architecture was introduced into England by the Roman artificers, who followed, as was their usage, the Roman legions, habilitated themselves in the conquered colonies, and engaged in the construction not only of camps and fortifications, but also when peace was restored in the building of temples and even private edifices. Architectural ruins and Latin inscriptions, which still remain in many parts of Britain, attest the labors and the skill of these Roman artists, and sustain the statement of the Legend, that Masonry, which, it must be remembered, is, in the Old Records, only a synonym of architecture, was introduced into England during the period of its Roman colonization.
As to the specific statement that St. Alban was the patron of Masons, that he exercised the government of a chief over the Craft, and improved their condition by augmenting their wages, we may explain this as the expression of a symbolical idea, in which history is not altogether falsified, but only its dates and personages confused.
Carausius, the Legend does not mention by name. It simply refers to some King of England, of whose household St. Alban was the steward.
Carausius assumed the imperial purple in the year in which St. Alban suffered martyrdom. The error of making him the patron of St. Alban is not, therefore, to be attributed to the legendist, but to Dr. Anderson, who first perpetrated this chronological blunder in the second edition of his Constitutions. And though he states that "this is asserted by all the old copies of the Constitutions," we fail to find it in any that are now extant.
This "Legend of St. Alban," as it has been called, is worthy of a farther consideration.
The foundation of this symbolical narrative was first laid by the writer of the Cooke MS., or, rather, copied by him from the tradition existing among the Craft at that time. Its form was subsequently modified and the details extended in the Dowland MS., for tradition always grows in the progress of time. This form and these details were preserved in all the succeeding manuscript Constitutions, until they were still further altered and enlarged by Anderson, Preston, and other Masonic historians of the last century.
With the gratuitous accretions of these later writers we have no concern in any attempted explanation of the actual signification of the Legend.
Its true form and spirit are to be found only in the Dowland MS. of the middle of the 16th century, and in those which
(1) Anderson, "Constitutions," 2d edit., p. 57.
were copied from it, up to the Papworth, at the beginning of the 18th.
To these, and not to anything written after the period of the Revival, we must direct our attention.
Admitting that on the conquest of England by the Roman power, the architects who had accompanied the victorious legions introduced into the conquered colony their architectural skill, it is very likely that some master workmen among them had been more celebrated than others for their skill, and, indeed, it is naturally to be supposed that to such skillful builders the control of the Craft must have been confided. Whether there were one or more of these chief architects, St. Alban, if not actually one of them, was, by the lapse of time and the not unusual process by which legendary or oral accretions are superimposed on a plain historical fact, adopted by the legendists as their representative. Who was the principal patron of the Architects or Masons during the time of the colonization of England by the Romans, is not so material as is the fact that architecture, with other branches of civilization, was introduced at that era into the island by its conquerors.
This is an historical fact, and in this point the Legend of the Craft agrees with authentic history.
But it is also an historical fact that when, by the pressure of the Northern hordes of barbarians upon Rome, it was found necessary to withdraw all the legions from the various colonies which they protected from exterior enemies and restrained from interior insurrection, the arts and sciences, and among them architecture, began to decline in England. The natives, with the few Roman colonists who had permanently settled among them, were left to defend themselves from the incursions of the Picts on the north, and the Danish and Saxon pirates in the east and south. The arts of civilization suffered a depression in the tumult of war. Science can not flourish amid the clang and clash of arms. This depression and suspension of all architectural progress in England, which continued for some centuries, is thus expressed in the quaint language of the Legend:
"Right soone after the decease of Saint Albone, there came divers wars into the realme of England of divers Nations, soe that the good rule of Masonrye was destroyed unto the tyme of Kinge Athelstone's days."
There is far more of history than of fiction in this part of the Legend.
The next point of the Legend of the Craft to which our attention is to be directed, is that which relates to the organization of Masonry at the city of York, in the 10th century. This part of the Legend is of far more importance than any of those which have been considered. The prehistoric here verges so closely upon the historic period, that the true narrative of the rise and progress of Masonry can not be justly understood until each of these prehistoric and historic elements has been carefully relegated to its appropriate period. This will constitute the subject matter of the next chapter.
P. 94
CHAPTER XVIII
THE YORK LEGEND
THE suppression of all architectural art and enterprise having lasted for so long a period in Britain, the Legend of the Craft next proceeds to account for its revival in the 10th century and in the reign of Athelstan, whose son Edwin called a meeting, or General Assembly, of the Masons at York in the year 926, and there revived the Institution, giving to the Craft a new code of laws.
Now, it is impossible to attach to this portion of the Legend, absolutely and without any reservation, the taint of fiction. The convocation of the Craft of England at the city of York, in the year 926, has been accepted by both the Operative Masons who preceded the Revival, and by the Speculatives who succeeded them, up to the present day, as a historical fact that did not admit of dispute. The two classes of Legends ‑ the one represented by the Halliwell poem, and the other by the later manuscripts ‑ concur in giving the same statement. The Cooke MS., which holds an intermediate place between the two, also contains it. But the Halliwell and the Cooke MSS., which are of older date, give more fully the details of what may be called this revival of English Masonry. Thoroughly to understand the subject, it will be necessary to collate the three accounts given in the three different sets of manuscripts.
The Halliwell poem, whose conjectural date is about 1390, contains the account in the following words. I will first give it, relieved of its archaisms, for the convenience of the reader inexpert in early English, and then follow with a quotation of the original language:
"This craft came into England, as I tell you, in the time of good King Athelstane's reign. He made them both hall and also chamber, and lofty churches of great honour, to recreate him in both day and night and to worship his God with all his strength. 'This good lord loved this craft full well, and purposed to strengthen it in every part, on account of several defects which he discovered in the craft. He sent about into the land after all the masons of the craft to come straight to him, to amend all these defects by good counsel, if it could be done. Then he permitted an assembly to be made of various lords according to their rank, dukes, earls, and barons also, knights, squires, and many more, and the great burgesses of that city, they were all there in their degree; these were there, each one in every way to make laws for the society of these masons. There they sought by their wisdom how they might govern it.
There they invented fifteen articles, and there they made fifteen points." (1) The original is as follows:
"Thys craft com ynto England as y you say, Yn tyme of good kynge Athelston's day; He made the both halle and eke boure, And hye templus of gret honoure, To sportyn hym yn bothe day and nyghth, And to worschepe his God with alle hys myghth. Thys goode lorde loved thys craft ful wel, And purposud to strenthyn hyt ever del, For dyvers defautys that yn the craft he fonde; He sende aboute ynto the londe After alle the masonus of the crafte To come to hym ful evene strayfte, For to amende these defaultys alle By good counsel gef hyt mygth falle. A semble thenne he cowthe let make Of dyvers lordis in here state Dukys, erlys and barnes also, Knygthys, sqwyers and mony mo, And the grete burges of that syte, They were ther alle yn here degre; These were there uchon algate, To ordeyne for these masonus estate, Ther they sowgton ly here wytte How they mygthyn governe hytte Fyftene artyculus they there sowgton, And fyftene poyntys ther they wrogton."
One hundred years afterward we find the Legend, in the Cooke MS., as follows:
"And after that was a worthy kynge in Englond that was callyd
(1) Halliwell MS., lines 61‑87.
ANTHONY SAYER
First Grand Master of Speculative Masons 1717
Athelstone, and his yongest sone lovyd well the sciens of Gemetry, and he vont well that handcraft had the practyke of Gemetry so well as masons, wherefore he drew him to consell and lernyd [the] practyke of that sciens to his speculatyfe. (1) For of speculatyfe he was a master, and he lovyd well masonry and masons. And he bicome a mason hymselfe. And he gaf hem [gave them] charges and names (2) as it is now usyd in Englond and in other countries. And he ordeyned that they schulde have resonabull pay. And purchesed [obtained] a fre patent of the kyng that they schulde make a sembly when they saw resonably tyme a [to] cume togedir to her [their] counsell of the whiche charges, manors & semble as is write and taught in the boke of our charges wherefor I leve it at this tyme." (3)
In a subsequent part of the manuscript, which appears to have been taken from the aforesaid "boke of charges," with some additional details, are the following words:
"After that, many yeris, in the tyme of Kyng Adhelstane, wiche was sum tyme kynge of Englonde, bi his counsell and other gret loritys of the lond by comyn [common] assent for grete defaut y‑fennde [found] among masons thei ordeyend a certayne reule amongys hem [them]. On [one] tyme of the yere or in iii yere as nede were to the kyng and gret loritys of the londe and all the comente [community], fro provynce to provynce and fro countre to countre congregacions schulde be made by maisters, of all maisters masons and felaus in the forsayd art. And so at such congregacions, they that be made masters schold be examined of the articuls after written & be ransacked [examined] whether they be abull and kunnyng to the profyte of the loritys hem to serve [to serve them] and to the honour of the forsayd art." (4)
Sixty years afterward we find this Legend repeated in the Dowland MS., but with some important variations. This Legend has already been given in the Legend of the Craft, but for the convenience of immediate comparison with the preceding documents it will be well to repeat it here. It is in the following words:
"Right soone after the decease of Saint Albone there came divers
(1) Cooke calls particular attention to this word as of much significative import. I think it simply means that the king added a practical knowledge of Masonry or architecture to his former merely speculative or theoretical acquaintance with the art. (2) This is evidently an error of the pen for maners, i.e., usages. (3) Cooke MS., lines 611‑642. (4) Cooke MS., lines 693‑719.
warrs into the realme of England of divers Nations, soe that the good rule of Masonrye was destroyed unto the tyme of Kinge Athelstones days that was a worthy Kinge of England, and brought this land into good rest and peace and builded many great works of Abbyes and Towres and other many divers buildings and loved well Masons. And he had a Sonn that height Edwinne, and he loved Masons much more than his father did. And he was a great practiser in Geometry, and he drew him much to talke and to commune with Masons and to learne of them science, and afterwards for love that he had to Masons and to the science he was made Mason, (1) and he gatt of the Kinge his father a Chartour and Commission to hold every yeare once an Assemble wher that ever they would within the realme of England, and to correct within themselves defaults and trespasses that were done within the science.
And he held himselfe an Assemble at Yorke, and there he made Masons and gave them charges and taught them the manners, and commanded that rule to be kept ever after. And tooke them the Chartour and Commission to keepe and made ordinance that it should be renewed from kinge to kinge. "And when the Assemble was gathered he made a cry that all old Masons and young, that had any writeings or understanding of the charges and the manners that were made before in this land, or in any other, that they should shew them forth. And when it was proved there was founden some in Frenche and some in Greek and some in English and some in other languages; and the intent of them all was founden all one. And he did make a booke thereof, and how the science was founded. And he himselfe bad and commanded that it should be readd or tould, when that any Mason should be made, for to give him his Charge. And fro that day into this tyme manners of Masons have beene kept in that forme as well as men might governe it. And furthermore divers Assembles have beene put and ordayned certain charges by the best advice of Masters and Fellowes."
It will be remarked that in neither of the two oldest manuscripts,
(1) The next MS. in date, the Landsdowne, names the place where he was made as Windsor. This statement is not found in any of the other manuscripts except the Antiquity MS. It may here be observed that nothing more clearly proves the great carelessness of the transcribers of these manuscripts than the fact that although they must have all been familiar with the name of Edwin, one of them spells it Ladrian, and another Hoderine.
the Halliwell and the Cooke, is there any mention of Prince Edwin, or of the city of York. For the omission I shall hereafter attempt to account.
As to that of the lauer I agree with Bro. Woodford, that as the fact of the Assembly is stated in all the later traditions, and as a city is mentioned whose burgesses were present, we may fairly, understand both of the oldest manuscripts also to refer to York. (1) At all events, their silence as to the place affords no sufficient evidence that it was not York, as opposed to the positive declaration of the later manuscripts that it was.
We see, then, that all the old Legends assert expressly, or by implication, that York was the city where the first General Masonic Assembly was held in England, and that it was summoned under the authority of King Athelstan.
The next point in which all the later manuscripts, except the Harleian, (2) agree is, that the Assembly was called by Prince Edwin, the King's son.
The Legend does not here most certainly agree with history, for there is no record that Athelstan had any son. He had, however, a brother of that name, who died two years before him.
Edward the Elder, the son of Alfred the Great, died in the year 925, leaving several legitimate sons and one natural one, Athelstan. The latter, who was the eldest of the sons of Edward, obtained the throne, notwithstanding the stain on his birth, in consequence of his age, which better fitted him to govern at a time when the kingdom was engaged in foreign and domestic wars.
All historians concur in attributing to Athelstan the character of a just and wise sovereign, and of a sagacious statesman. It has been said of him that he was the most able and active of the ancient princes of England.
What his grandfather, the great Alfred, commenced in his efforts to consolidate the petty monarchies into which the land was divided, into one powerful kingdom, Athelstan, by his energy, his political wisdom, and his military prowess, was enabled to perfect, so that he has been justly called the first monarch of all England.
Although engaged duhng his whole reign in numerous wars, he
(1) "On the Connection of York with the History of Freemasonry in England." By A.F. Woodford, A.M., in Hughan's " Masonic Sketches and Reprints," p. 168. (2) The Harleian MS makes no mention of Prince Edwin, but attributes the organization of Masonry at York to King Athelstan himself.
did not neglect a cultivation of the employments of peace, and encouraged by a liberal patronage the arts and especially architecture.
The only stain upon his character is the charge that having suspected his brother Edwin of being engaged in a conspiracy against his throne, he caused that prince to be drowned. Notwithstanding the efforts of Preston to disprove this charge, the concurrent testimony of all the old chroniclers afford no room to doubt its truth. But if anything could atone for this cruel act of state policy, it would be the bitter anguish and remorse of conscience which led the perpetrator to endure a severe penance of seven years.
Of Edwin, the Saxon historians make no mention, except when they speak of his untimely death. If we may judge of his character from this silence, we must believe that he was not endued with any brilliant qualities of mind, nor distinguished by the performance of any important act.
Of all the half‑brothers of Athelstan, the legitimate children of Edward the Elder, Edmund seems to have been his favorite. He kept him by his side on battle‑fields, lived single for his sake, and when he died in 941, left to him the succession to the throne.
But there is another Edwin of prominent character in the annals of Saxon England, to whom attention has been directed in connection with this Legend, as having the best claim to be called the founder or reviver of English Masonry.
Of Edwin, King of Northumbria, it may be said, that in his narrow sphere, as the monarch of a kingdom of narrow dimensions, he was but little inferior in abilities or virtues to Athelstan.
At the time of his birth, in 590, Northumbria was divided into two kingdoms, that of Bernicia, north of the Humber, and that of the Deira, on the south of the same river. Of the former, Ethelfrith was King, and of the latter, Ella, the father of Edwin.
Ella died in 593, and was succeeded by Edwin an infant of three years of age.
Soon after, Ethelfrith invaded the possessions of Edwin, and attached them by usurpation to his own domains.
Edwin was sent to Wales, whence when he grew older he was obliged to flee, and passed many years in exile, principally at the Court of Redwald, King of East Anglia. By the assistance of this monarch he was enabled to make war upon his old enemy, Ethelfrith, who, having been slain in battle, and his sons having fled into Scotland, Edwin not only regained his own throne, but that of the usurper also, and in the year 617 became the King of Northumbria, of which the city of York was made the capital. Edwin was originally a pagan, but his mind was of a contemplative turn, and this made him, says Turner, more intellectual than any of the Saxon Kings who had preceded him. He was thus led to a rational consideration of the doctrines of Christianity, which he finally accepted, and was publicly baptized at York, on Easter day, in the year 627. The ceremony was publicly performed in the Church of St. Peter the Apostle, which he had caused to be hastily constructed of wood, for the purposes of divine service, during the time that he was undergoing the religious instructions preliminary to his receiving the sacrament.
But as soon as he was baptized, he built, says Bede, under the direction of Paulinus, his religious instructor and bishop, in the same place, a much larger and nobler church of stone.
During the reign of Edwin, and of his successors in the same century, ecclesiastical architecture greatly flourished, and many large churches were built. Edwin was slain in battle in 633, having reigned for seventeen years.
The Venerable Bede gives us the best testimony we could desire as to the character of Edwin as ruler, when he tells us that in all of his dominions there was such perfect peace that a woman with a newborn babe might walk from sea to sea without receiving any harm. Another incident that he relates is significant of Edwin's care and consideration for the comforts of his people. Where there were springs of water near the highways, he caused posts to be fixed with drinking vessels attached to them for the convenience of travelers. By such acts, and others of a higher character, by his encouragement of the arts, and his strict administration of justice, he secured the love of his subjects.
So much of history was necessary that the reader might understand the argument in reference to the true meaning of the York Legend, now to be discussed.
In the versions of the Legend given by Anderson and Preston, the honor of organizing Masonry and calling a General Assembly is attributed to Edwin the brother, and not to Edwin the son of Athelstan. These versions are, however, of no value as historical documents, because they are merely enlarged copies of the original Legend.
But in the Roberts Constitutions, printed in 1722, and which was claimed to have been copied from a manuscript about five hundred years old, but without any proof (as the original has never been recovered), the name of Edwin is altogether omitted, and Athelstan himself is said to have been the reviver of the institution. The language of this manuscript, as published by J. Roberts, is as follows: (1)
"He [Athelstan] began to build many Abbies, Monasteries, and other religious houses, as also Castles and divers Fortresses for defence of his realm. He loved Masons more than his father; he greatly study'd Geometry, and sent into many lands for men expert in the science. He gave them a very large charter to hold a yearly assembly, and power to correct offenders in the said science; and the king himself caused a General Assembly of all Masons in his realm, at York, and there were made many Masons, and gave them a deep charge for observation of all such articles as belonged unto Masonry and delivered them the said Charter to keep."
In the omission of all reference to Prince Edwin, the Harleian and Roberts manuscripts agree with that of Halliwell.
There is a passage in the Harleian and Roberts MSS. that is worthy of notice. All the recent manuscripts which speak of Edwin as the procurer of the Charter, say that "he loved Masons much more than his father did" ‑ meaning Athelstan. But the Harleian and Roberts MSS., speaking of King Athelstan, use the same language, but with a different reference, and say of King Athelstan, that "he loved idasons more than his father " ‑ meaning King Edward, whose son Athelstan was.
Now, of the two statements, that of the Harleian and Roberts MSS. is much more conformable to history than the other. Athelstan was a lover of Masons, for he was a great patron of architecture, and many public buildings were erected during his reign. But it is not recorded in history that Prince Edwin exhibited any such attachment to Masonry or Architecture as is attributed to him in the old records, certainly not an attachment equal to that of Athelstan. On the contrary, Edward, the son of Alfred and the father of Athelstan, was not distinguished during his reign for any marked patronage of
(1) The book was republished by Spencer in 1870. The Roberts "Constitutions" and the Harleian MS. No. 1942, are evidently copies from the same original, if not one from the other. The story of Athelstan is, of course, identical in both, and the citation might as well have been made from either.
the arts, and especially of architecture; and it is, therefore, certain that his son Athelstan exhibited a greater love to Masons or Architects than he did.
Hence there arises a suspicion that the Legend was originally framed in the form presented to us by the Halliwell poem, and copied apparently by the writers of the Harleian and Roberts MSS., and that the insertion of the name of Prince Edwin was an afterthought of the copiers of the more recent manuscripts, and that this insertion of Edwin's name, and the error of making him a son of Athelstan, arose from a confusion of the mythical Edwin with a different personage, the earlier Edwin, who was King of Northumbria.
It may also be added that the son of Athelstan is not called Edwin in all of the recent manuscripts. In one Sloane MS. he is called Ladrian, in another Hegme, and in the Lodge of Hope MS. Hoderine. This fact might indicate that there was some confusion and disagreement in putting the name of Prince Edwin into the Legend. But I will not press this point, because I am rather inclined to attribute these discrepancies to the proverbial carelessness of the transcribers of these manuscripts.
How, then, are we to account for this introduction of an apparently mythical personage into the narrative, by which the plausibility of the Legend is seriously affected ?
Anderson, and after him Preston, attempts to get out of the difficulty by calling Edwin the brother, and not the son, of Athelstan. It is true that Athelstan did have a younger brother named Edwin, whom some historians have charged him with putting to death. And in so far the Legend might not be considered as incompatible with history. But as all the manuscripts which have to this day been recovered which speak of Edwin call him the king's son and not his brother, notwithstanding the contrary statement of Anderson, (1) I prefer another explanation, although it involves the charge of anachronism.
The annals of English history record a royal Edwin, whose de
(1) Anderson says in the second edition of the "Book of Constitutions" that in all the Old Constitutions it is written Prince Edwin, the king's brother ‑ a statement that is at once refuted by a reference to all the manuscripts from the Dowland to the Papworth, where the word is always son. So much for the authority of the old writers on Masonic history.
votion to the arts and sciences, whose wise statesmanship, and whose patronage of architecture, must have entitled him to the respect and the affection of the early English Masons. Edwin, King of Northumbria, one of the seven kingdoms into which England was divided during the Anglo‑Saxon heptarchy, died in 633, after a reign of sixteen years, which was distinguished for the reforms which he accomplished, for the wise laws which he enacted and enforced, for the introduction of Christianity into his kingdom, and for the improvement which he emeacd in the moral, social, and intellectual condition of his subjects. When be ascended the throne the northern metropolis of the Anglican Church had been placed at York, where it still remains. The king patronized Paulinus, the bishop, and presented him with a residence and with other possessions in that city. Much of this has already been said, but it will bear repetition.
To this Edwin, and not to the brother of Athelstan, modern Masonic archaeologists have supposed that the Legend of the Craft refers.
Yet this opinion is not altogether a new one. More than a century and a half ago it seems to have prevailed as a tradition among the Masons of the northern part of England. For in 1726, in an address delivered before the Grand Lodge of York by its Junior Grand Warden, Francis Drake, he speaks of it as being well known and recognized, in the following words:
"You know we can boast that the first Grand Lodge ever held in England was held in this city [York]; where Edwin, the first Christian King of the Northumbers, about the six hundredth year after Christ, and who laid the foundation of our Cathedral, (1) sat as Grand Master."
Bro. A.F.A. Woodford, a profound Masonic archaeologist, accepts this explanation, and finds a confirmation in the facts that the town of Derventio, now Auldby, six miles from York, the supposed seat of the pseudo‑Edwin, was also the chief seat and residence of Edwin, King of Northumbria, and that the buildings, said in one of the manuscripts to have been erected by the false Edwin, were really erected, as is known from history, by the Northumbrian Edwim
I think that with these proofs, the inquirer will have little or no
(1) Bede (L. 2., C. 13) and Rapin (P. 246) both confirm this statement that the foundations of the York Cathedral, or Minster, were laid in the reign of Edwin.
hesitation in accepting this version of the Legend, and will recognize the fact that the writers of the later manuscripts fell into an error in substituting Edwin, the son (as they called him, but really the brother) of Athelstan, for Edwin, the King of Northumbria.
It is true that the difference of dates presents a difficulty, there being about three hundred years between the reigns of Edwin of Northumbria, and Athelstan of England. But that difficulty, I think, may be overcome by the following theory which I advance on the subject:
The earlier series of manuscripts, of which the Halliwell poem is an exemplar, and, perhaps, also the Harleian and the Roberts MSS., (1) make no mention of Edwin, but assign the revival of Masonry in the 10th century to King Athelstan.
The more recent manuscripts, of which the Dowland is the earliest, introduce Prince Edwin into the Legend and ascribe to him the honor of having obtained from Athelstan a charter, and of having held an Assembly at York.
There are, then, two forms of the Legend, which, for the sake of distinction, may be designated as the older and the later. The older Legend makes Athelstan the
