History of Freemasonry
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The History of Freemasonry studies the development, evolution and events of the fraternal organization known as Freemasonry. This history is generally separated into two time periods: before and after the formation of the Grand Lodge of England in 1717. Before this time, the facts and origins of Freemasonry are not absolutely known and are therefore frequently explained by theories or legends. After the formation of the Grand Lodge of England, the history of Freemasonry is extremely well-documented and can be traced through the creation of hundreds of Grand Lodges that spread rapidly worldwide.
Pre-Foundation of the Grand Lodge of England (Before 1717)
"Facts" of Freemasonic Origins
There are very few incontrovertible facts about the origins of Freemasonry, but the formation of the first Grand Lodge in London in 1717 was a watershed for Freemasonry as a whole. Prior to that time, the following events stand out:
- 1356 - Formation of the London Masons Company; also ordinances governing the Lodge at York Minster
- 1376 - Earliest known use of the word Freemason
- 1390 Regius Poem or Halliwell Manuscript
- 1410 - The Matthew Cooke Manuscript
- 1425 - Statute of Henry VI of England forbidding the yearly congregation of Masons
- 1598 & 1599 - Schaw Statutes for the regulation of the craft in Scotland identifying a governance hierarchy.
- 1599 - Minutes of the Aitchisons Haven Lodge and St Mary's Lodge in Edinburgh
- 1646 - Initiation of Elias Ashmole into Freemasonry in Warrington
- 1717 - Formation of the first Grand Lodge in London
The Craft that evolved into modern Freemasonry emerged in the period between the Black Death, 1348, and the Wars of the Roses, 1453. Before that time, there are no trends or events that can be identified as leading definitely towards Freemasonry, which appears to have emerged from the building industry. Equally, there is no part of England that can claim the honour of originating Freemasonry; the pre-eminence of London was not yet apparent. The Regius Poem and Cooke manuscript, about 1390 and 1410 respectively, are written in the dialects of the west and southwest of England, and may have been written for the school of masonry associated with Salisbury Cathedral.
The first recorded use of the word lodge in a Masonic context was in 1278 during the building of a Cistercian monastery at Vale Royal near Chester, England. Initially, the lodge here was no more than a rude hut in which the stonemasons worked and possibly took their midday meal, but at other sites they may also have slept in the lodge. By 1352 there were elaborate rules governing the behaviour of stonemasons connected with the lodge at York Minster. These regulations are described as the "ancient customs of the stonemasons" (consuetudines antiquae quibus cementarii). Therein, the Master and Deputy Master were required to swear an oath that the ancient customs would be adhered to. Fifty years later, all stonemasons were required to swear the same oath. There appears to be nothing esoteric about these customs; they mainly concern rates of pay, hours of work, holidays, and so on. However, given the medieval obsession with mysticism it is unlikely that these customs were wholly mundane.
A pen drawing by Matthew Paris c. 1250 purports to show Henry II in conference with his masons. The men building a wall are shown using a level. The mason actually being addressed by the King is holding a large square and compass almost as if to demonstrate his importance, the implication being that he is the Master Mason. There is a similar carving in Worcester Cathedral, c. 1224, which shows the architect clutching a pair of dividers and apparently discussing the plans with a monk, which may suggest the beginnings of the ceremonial significance which is now given to the square and compass.
The earliest occurrence of the word "Freemason" was in London in 1376. Four men were chosen to represent the city's builders on the Common Council of Trades, and this was the first time that they had been represented. The four were originally listed as Freemasons although the word is then crossed out and replaced with Mason. The possible reason for this error is significant. Much of the building in the south of England was done with a material called "freestone", which is a form of limestone which is soft and easily worked when freshly quarried, but afterwards hardens and becomes very durable. The men who worked it were called, of course, Freestone Masons. There seems to be no evidence at this time to link the prefix free- with "freedom". The balance of probability seems to suggest that "Freemason" is indeed a contraction of "Freestone Mason".
John Wycliffe, writing about 1383, used the terms "men of sutel craft, as fre masons and others"; he also refers to "fraternytes or gildis". Henry Yevele, a master builder who died in 1400 may have been described as a Freemason on his tombstone. However the word Freemason appears in neither the Regius nor the Cooke Manuscripts, which date from a slightly later period.
At this distance in time there can be no certainty, but the evidence strongly supports the suggestion the Freemasonry could have developed from Guilds and Lodges of medieval stonemasons. This does not mean, however, that other movements, bodies of ideas, or organizations did not also contribute significantly to the survival and growth of Freemasonry.
Theories of possible origins of speculative freemasonry
There is a distinct absence of documentation as to Freemasonry’s origins, which has led to a great deal of speculation among historians both within and outside the fraternity. The validity of any of this speculation is very much open to debate.
Freemasonry has variously been attributed as <ref>A History of Freemasonry by H.L. Haywood and James E. Craig, pub. ca 1927 </ref>:
- an institutional outgrowth of the medieval guilds of stonemasons, <ref>The Origins of Freemasonry: Scotland's Century, 1590-1710 by David Stevenson, pub Cambridge 1990</ref><ref>English Speculative Freemasonry: Some possible Origins, Themes and Developments. The Prestonian Lecture for 2004 in Ars Quatuor Coronatum 2004 by Trevor Stewart, pub London 2005</ref>
- an offshoot of the ancient Mystery schools, <ref>The Hiram Key: Pharoahs, Freemasons and the Discovery of the Secret Scrolls of Christ by Christopher Knight and Robert Lomas, pub London 1997</ref>
- an administrative arm of the Priory of Sion,<ref>The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail by Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh and Henry Lincoln, pub London, 2005</ref>
- the intellectual descendants of the Roman Collegia<ref>Freemasonry and the Roman Collegia by H.L. Haywood, The Builder, 1923 — Freemasonry and the Roman Collegia</ref>,
- the intellectual descendants of the Comacine masters<ref>Freemasonry and the Comacine masters by H.L. Haywood, The Builder, 1923 — Freemasonry and the Comacine Masters</ref>,
- the intellectual descendants of Noah<ref>The History of Freemasonry by Albert G. Mackey, Gramercy Books, 1996 , pp.406-411, sec. "Noah and the Noachites"</ref> or Enoch<ref>The History of Freemasonry by Albert G. Mackey, Gramercy Books, 1996 , pp.396-405, sec. "The Legend of Enoch"</ref>,
- a survivor of the late 17th century enlightenment period fashion for fraternal bodies with no real connections at all to earlier organizations.
Origins from Operative Stonemasonry
It is thought by many that Freemasonry is unlikely to be a straightforward outgrowth of medieval guilds of stonemasons. Amongst the reasons given for this conclusion are the facts that stonemasons lived near their worksite and thus had no need for secret signs to identify themselves, and that the "Ancient Charges" of Freemasonry are nonsensical when thought of as being rules for a stonemasons' guild.
Alternatively, it is widely thought that stonemasons, unlike virtually all Europeans except the clergy, were not bound to the land on which they were born, and were thus "free". The various skills required in building ever more complex stone structures, especially churches and cathedrals, allowed skilled masons to travel and find work at will. They were "lodged" in a more temporary structure either attached to, or near, the main building. In this lodge, they ate, slept and received their work assignments from the master of the work. The freedom they enjoyed was far beyond that of the average European. To maintain such freedom required exclusivity of skills, and thus, as the apprentice was trained, his instuctors attached moral values to the tools of the trade, binding the young man to his fellows.
Origins from the Knights Templar
Template:Main It is theorized that Freemasonry is a direct descendant of the "Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and the Temple of Solomon in Jerusalem" (the Knights Templar)<ref>The History of Freemasonry by Albert G. Mackey, Gramercy Books, 1996 , pp.217-266, secs. "Freemasonry and the Crusades" & "The Story of the Scottish Templars"</ref><ref name="knighttemplars">Freemasons for Dummies, by Christopher Hodapp, Wiley Publishing Inc., Indianapolis, 2005, pp. 203-208, sec. "A crash course in Templar history"</ref>
See also The Freemasonic Degree of Knights Templar
Origins Proposed by York Rite Freemasonry
Amongst York Rite Freemasons, Freemasonry is said to have existed in the 10th century CE, at the time of King Athelstan of England. Athelstan is said to have been converted to Christianity in York, and to have issued the first Charter to the Masonic Lodges there. The story of his conversion is purely mythological, as that royal dynasty had been Christian for centuries.
Contemporary Prominent Origin Theories
Current theory <ref>English Speculative Freemasonry: Some possible Origins, Themes and Developments. The Prestonian Lecture for 2004 in Ars Quatuor Coronatum 2004 by Trevor Stewart, pub London 2005</ref> suggests that the development of Freemasonry has two distinct growth periods.
- Stage 1 Freemasonry being operative in nature and likely to have been associated with the craft guilds. Ritual elements are simple and there is no evidence of a sophisticated philosophical outlook.
- Stage 2 emerges in the 18th Centry with a gentrification process<ref>http://www.cornerstonesociety.com/Insight/Articles/articles.html</ref> and is evidenced by an increasing non-operative membership notable for their social position and position in English, particularly London based, society. The Prestonian ritual and lectures demonstrate an infusion of enlightenment philosophy and increasing use of ritual as a vehicle for the communication and exploration of that philosophy.
18th Century Freemasonry and the Establishment of Grand Lodges
Creation of the Grand Lodge of England
Organized Freemasonry in London was established on 24 June 1717 when four London lodges came together at the Goose and Gridiron Ale House in St Paul’s Churchyard and formed the Premier Grand Lodge of England, which was the first Grand Lodge of Freemasons to be publicly created.
See also The United Grand Lodge of England
The Great Schism of the Grand Lodge of England (1751-1813)
In 1723, James Anderson wrote and published The Constitutions of the Free-Masons, For the Use of the Lodges in London and Westminster. This work was reprinted in Philadelphia in 1734 by Benjamin Franklin, who was that year elected Grand Master of the Masons of Pennsylvania.
The Grand Lodge of England (GLE) expanded the degree system from two degrees — Entered Apprentice and Fellow Craftsman — to three, by adding the Master Mason degree c. 1725 and by reorganising, adding and dispersing ritual elements. The GLE and those jurisdictions in amity with it were known colloquially as the Moderns (or the Premier Grand Lodge), to distinguish them from a newer, rival group within Freemasonry, known (paradoxically) as the Antients (or the Antient Grand Lodge). The Antients broke away in 1753, prompted by changes to the Ritual and a wish to have a fourth Holy Royal Arch (HRA) degree within Craft Masonry. Benjamin Franklin was a Modern, but by the time he died, his lodge had gone over to the Antients and would no longer recognize him as one of their own, going so far as declining to give him Masonic honours at his funeral.<ref>Revolutionary Brotherhood, by Steven C. Bullock, Univ. N. Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, 1996</ref>
This schism was not healed until 1813 with the formation of the United Grand Lodge of England, which is discussed later in the article.
Foundation of Freemasonry on the European Continent
Original bans
The first official action against Freemasonry was in 1735 in Holland.
In 1736, the Roman Catholic Church began to investigate a Masonic Lodge in Florence, Italy which had been founded for (Protestant) English residents but had been admitting Italian members. The Lodge in question was condemned by the Chief Inquisitor in Rome on 25 June 1737, and on 9 May 1739, Tommaso Crudeli, a free-thinker and physician in Florence, was questioned under torture about his beliefs and Masonic affiliation. He was released in April 1741 and died in January 1745<ref name="TTISTF">'The Truth Is Stranger Than Fiction', Alphonse Cerza, published by the Masonic Service Association, September 1967</ref>
In 1738, partly due to the Florentine case, the Catholic church first denounced Freemasonry in the Papal Constitution In Eminenti. The Protestant states of Sweden and Geneva banned Freemasonry in 1738, followed by Zurich in 1740 and Berne in 1745.
Freemasonry and the Inquisition
Another early case involved John Coustos, a Swiss native living in England. Coustos travelled to Portugal on business where he founded a lodge. He was arrested by the Inquisition and was tortured and questioned before being sentenced to the galleys. Three of the members of his lodge were executed. He was released in 1744 as a result of the intercession of George II of England. After his release and return to England, John Coustos wrote a book detailing his experiences in the hands of the Inquisition<ref name="TTISTF">'The Truth Is Stranger Than Fiction', Alphonse Cerza, published by the Masonic Service Association, September 1967</ref>.
In 1815, Francisco J. Mier y Campillo, one of the Inquisitors-General of Spain, launched a new purge on Freemasonry and denounced the lodges as "societies which lead to sedition, to independence, and to all errors and crimes." The subsequent purge involved many Spaniards being imprisoned on the charge of being "suspected of Freemasonry".
See also Catholicism and Freemasonry
Early Freemasonry in the United States (1733-1799)
In 1733, Henry Prince, the Provincial Grand Master over all of North America for the London Grand Lodge, granted a charter to a group of Bostonian Freemasons. This lodge was later named St. John's Lodge and was the first duly constituted lodge in America. <ref name="American_Freemasons_Colonial America">American Freemasons: Three Centuries of Building Communities Mark A. Tabbert, New York Universoty Press, New York: 2005, pp.33-47 </ref>
Establishment of Prince Hall Freemasonry (1775-1827)
19th Century Freemasonry
The Healing of the Great Schism: The Formation of the United Grand Lodge of England (1813)
The aforementioned schism between the Antients and the moderns was healed in when the competing Grand Lodges were amalgamated into the United Grand Lodge of England (UGLE) in 1813, by virtue of a delicately worded compromise that returned the modes of recognition to their pre-1753 form, but kept Freemasonry per se as consisting of three degrees only, while still allowing the Antients to view the HRA degree as the completion of the third degree.<ref>A Pragmatic Masonic History, by Leo Zanelli, accessed November 14 2005</ref> Both the Antients and the Moderns had daughter lodges throughout the world, and because many of those lodges still exist, there is a great deal of variability in the ritual used today, even between UGLE-recognized jurisdictions in amity. Most private lodges conduct themselves in accordance with an agreed-upon single Rite.
The Morgan Affair and Decline in American Freemasonry (1826 - c.1850)
In 1826, William Morgan disappeared after threatening to expose Freemasonry's secrets, causing some to claim that he had been murdered by Masons. What exactly occurred has never been conclusively proven. However, Morgan's disappearance — and the minimal punishment received by his kidnappers — sparked a series of protests against Freemasons throughout New York and the neighboring states.
Under the leadership of Thurlow Weed, an anti-Masonic and anti-Andrew Jackson (Jackson was a Mason) movement grew to become the political party and made the ballot for the presidency in 1828, while gaining the support of such notable politicians as William H. Seward. Its influence was such that other Jackson rivals, including John Quincy Adams, denounced the Masons. In 1847, Adams wrote a widely distributed book titled "Letters on the Masonic Institution" that was highly critical of the Masons. In 1832, the party fielded William Wirt as its presidential candidate. This was rather ironic because he was, in fact, a Freemason, and even gave a speech at the Anti-Masonic convention defending the organization. The party only received seven electoral votes. Three years later, the party had disbanded in every state save Pennsylvania, as other issues such as slavery had become the focus of national attention.
The Derecognition of the Grand Orient of France (1877)
Another great schism in Freemasonry occurred in the years following 1877, when the Grand Orient de France (GOdF) started accepting atheists unreservedly, which was contrary to the Landmarks of Freemasonry. Concerning religious requirements, the oldest constitution found in Freemasonry — that of Anderson, 1723 — says that a Mason "will never be a stupid Atheist nor an irreligious Libertine" if he "rightly understands the Art". The only religious requirement was "that Religion in which all Men agree, leaving their particular Opinions to themselves".<ref> Anderson's Constitutions, accessed November 14 2005.</ref> There is Masonic debate as to whether "stupid" and "irreligious" are meant as either necessary, or accidental, modifiers of "atheist" and "libertine". It is possible the ambiguity is intentional.
While the issue of atheism is probably the greatest single factor in the split with the GOdF, the English also point to the French recognition of women's Masonry and co-Masonry, as well as the tendency of French Masons to be more willing to discuss religion and politics in Lodge. While the French curtail such discussion, they do not ban it as outright as do the English.<ref name="Bessel recognition">see Masonic U.S. Recognition of French Grand Lodges in the 1900s, Paul M. Bessel. Accessed November 14 2005</ref> The schism between the two branches has occasionally been bridged for short periods of time, especially during the First World War when American Masons overseas wanted to be able to visit French Lodges.<ref name="Bessel recognition"/>
In 1815, the newly amalgamated UGLE modified Anderson's constitutions to include: "Let a man's religion or mode of worship be what it may, he is not excluded from the Order, provided he believes in the glorious Architect of Heaven and Earth, and practices the sacred duties of morality." In 1849, the GOdF in France followed the UGLE lead by adopting the "Supreme Being" requirement, but pressure from Latin countries produced, by 1875, the alternative phrase "Creative Principle". This was ultimately not enough for the GOdF, and in 1877 it re-adopted the original Anderson document of 1723. They also created an alternative ritual that made no direct reference to any deity with the attribute of the Great Architect of the Universe. This new Rite did not replace the older ones, but was added as an alternative, as Continental European jurisdictions generally tend not to restrict themselves to a single Rite — offering a menu of Rites, from which their lodges may choose.
There is some controversy, originating in the Roman Catholic Church, over how divided the jurisdictions were, with some American Freemasons in the early twentieth century (before the partial reconciliation of Freemasonry in the First World War) stressing the unity of Freemasonry.<ref name="MacCalla">"There is no universal church, no universal body of politic; but there is an universal Fraternity, that Freemasonry; and every Brother who is a worthy member, may feel proud of it" Past Grand Master Clifford P. MacCalla of Pennsylvania, The Freemason's Chronicle, 1906, II, page 132, footnote 172, in Masonry (Freemasonry) in the Catholic Encyclopedia</ref>, which was viewed as evidence that the schism was only partial.<ref name="tylerkey">"Important Masonic journals, for instance, "The American Tyler-Keystone" (Ann Arbor), openly patronize the efforts of the French Grand Orient Party." in Masonry (Freemasonry) in the Catholic Encyclopedia</ref>
Taxil hoax
Template:Main Between the years 1885 and 1897, Léo Taxil maintained a hoax against both Freemasonry and the Roman Catholic Church, by making increasingly outlandish claims regarding Freemasonry. On 19 April 1897, Taxil called a press conference at which he claimed he would introduce the "author" of his books to the press. He instead announced that his revelations about the Freemasons were fictitious. Nevertheless, the material is still used on some anti-Masonic websites today.
20th Century Freemasonry
Freemasonry under Totalitarian Regimes (1900-current)
Template:Main Many twentieth century totalitarian regimes, both Fascist and Communist have treated Freemasonry as a potential source of opposition due to it's secret nature and international connections. It has been alleged by Masonic scholars that the language used by the totalitarian regimes is similar to that used by some modern critics of Freemasonry.
Freemasonry during the First World War
Freemasonry between the World Wars
Freemasonry during the Second World War
Freemasonry in the Post-World War II World (1945-current)
Contemporary Freemasonry on the European Continent
Contemporary Freemasonry in the United Kingdom
Contemporary Freemasonry in the United States
Notes
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See also
External links
- Craft, Trade or Mystery by Dr Bob James (Revised 2002). Provides extensive discussion on the operative and speculative origins of Freemasonry, including extensive citations.
- The Constitutions of the Free-Masons written by James Anderson and published "For the Use of the Lodges" in 1723 in London, and in 1734 by Benjamin Franklin in Philadelphia. Contains a mythical-biblical-historical account of the order, as well as "charges" and general regulations for members and lodges.
- The Web of Hiram at Bradford University An electronic database of the Masonic material held in many of the University's Special Collectionsde:Geschichte der Freimaurerei