OPERATIVE FREEMASONRY
THE WORD "MASON" was
the name of a workman in the building Craft in
the Middle Ages. In
England that Craft was divided into five or six
branches, called by
different names, such as tilers, quarrymen, wailers,
setters, etc., and
each one of these was separately organized with
its own officers,
rules and regulations; in the large centers of population
they were organized
as Masons' Companies, each with a building of its
own, and working
under the borough (municipal) ordinances which governed
Companies of all the
trades, arts, and professions. These branches
and companies were a
part of the general gild system in which the whole
of Medieval work and
trade was organized, and which was governed as
a whole by a large
body of gild laws; these laws belonged to the Law
of the Realm; and
since there was also in operation a body of laws
enforced by the
church, of authority equal to that of the state, and
called The Ordinances
of Religion, each gild was under a triple government:
its own rules and
regulations; civil laws; church laws. If some custom,
rule, or symbol was
preserved by a Craft, and if it continues to be
in use, it does not
follow that it had its origin in some practice
in the work of the
gild, but may have been a church practice, or a
practice required by
the civil law.
Among the five or six
branches of the general Craft of builders was
one which confined
itself to architecture properly so called, which
is listed among the
fine arts, and the practice of which is a profession.
This branch belonged
to the gild system in the sense that it came under
general gild laws,
but in a narrower sense was not a gild but was a
fraternity; because
after a member of it had finished his work in one
place he moved on to
another, some times from one country to another.
The Craftsmen in this
Fraternity were called Freemasons. It was from
this particular
branch, and not from the building craft in general,
that our own
Fraternity of Free & Accepted Masons descended. As a convenience,
and to distinguish
the first half of Masonic history from its later
half, we call the
workmen in the first period Operative Freemasons,
and in the later
period Speculative (or Accepted, or nonOperative)
Freemasons, but this
distinction must not be pushed very far, because
as we have learned
from the past half century of historical research
there is not as much
difference between Speculative and Operative as
we once believed; in
Freemasonry as a fraternity there has been an
unbroken continuity
from the end of the Dark Ages (about the Tenth
Century) to the
present time.
In order to make our
history yet more intelligible we must carry the
distinction between
the Freemasons branch of the early building craft
and other branches to
a farther point. In the Fourteenth Century a
number of Freemasons
(though not all of them) began to organize permanent
Lodges. After that
date any given Freemason might or might not belong
to one of those
Lodges. A further step came when among the two or three
hundred Lodges in
Britain a few of them in London set up a Grand Lodge
in 1717 A.D.; each
and every regular Lodge or Grand Lodge now in the
world traces its
history to that Grand Lodge. The line of our history
can therefore be
plainly drawn: from the general Craft of Masonry (or
building) at the end
of the Dark Ages, through the branch of it called
Freemasonry, through
the permanent Lodges first set up among Freemasons
in the Fourteenth
Century, through the Grand Lodge set up in 1717 A.D.,
by a few of those
permanent Lodges. We came from Medieval Operative
Masonry, but we came
from it along that particular path; in each year
since the beginning,
large areas of the building craft have remained
outside the area
which that path has traversed.
Architects were
called Freemasons rather than Masons partly because
they were in a
fraternity and free to move about, partly because they
worked in free-stone,
and partly for a number of other and lesser reasons
- the word in itself
can tell us little about our history. These Freemasons
designed and
constructed the cathedrals, churches, chapels, monasteries,
nunneries, palaces,
guildhalls, borough halls, college buildings, forts,
and other structures
of a monumental type, for public purposes, which
then as now, and
everywhere, are architecture properly so called, and
which stand far
apart, almost in another world, from the simple structures
of residences,
stores, factories, barns, etc., which any man with normal
skill and a few years
of experience can learn to design and construct.
The Freemasons were
in a class apart from other Masons because their
buildings were in a
class apart from other buildings.
But it was not this
superiority of the art of architecture to other
building construction
which alone gave Freemasons their great preeminence
in the Middle Ages.
In the long period between the end of the Dark
Ages and the
Reformation, in which there was a general illiteracy,
and the sciences were
forbidden, architecture was the only art to reach
greatness, and next
to the church itself it accomplished more to shape
the world of the
Middle Ages than any other agency - even now the Middle
Ages are often
represented or typified by a picture of a cathedral.
Freemasons were then
what specialists in the pure sciences are now,
picked men, of
extraordinary native ability and talents; they were
given a long and
severe training and education in a system of apprenticeship,
and they each one had
to be equally adept in engineering, geometry,
building design,
ornamentation, carving, sculpture - they had to be
past masters in the
use of stone, that grandest and most difficult
of all the materials
with which men have ever had to work. And since
the structures which
they designed and constructed were not only for
public use but also
in their design and ornamentation had to express
the spirit and ideas
of religion, government, education, and society
the Freemasons built
at the center of those realms of culture because
their work carried
them there; for more than two centuries they were
the supreme men in
Britain and Europe for their intelligence, knowledge,
ability, and
character. No other society in the world can look back
to an ancestry nobler
than our own. Our pride in that
ancestry could have been almost as great as it is
had the Operative
Freemasons done nothing more than to carry on at
a normal level of
excellence the old Roman architecture, called Romanesque,
which they had
recovered from the wreckage of the Dark Ages; but it
happens that in the
Twelfth Century they made a great new discovery
of their own which
was so epoch-making that in the whole history of
the world's
architecture only one other discovery (the Greek) can be
compared with it.
This was their invention of the extraordinary, radically
new Gothic Style. It
was this style which made the cathedrals possible
(1500 of them), and
which after it had percolated down to such details
as the design of
buttons and the shape of written letters of the alphabet
gave to Europe that
shape, form, and color which in all cultural matters
is meant by
"Medieval." It called forth a Freemason who was a new kind
of man, who mastered
arts and sciences not known to others at the time,
a man as great in
mind as in skill. That particular development within
the wide expanse of
the building Craft which finally led to our own
Fraternity might have
occurred if all architects for many generations
had not been
exclusively trained in the Gothic Style, but probably
it would not have
done so; therefore 1140 A.D., the date of the first
Gothic building, is
important in the history of Freemasonry.
The work of using a
hammer and chisel on a block of stone was only
one among many
elements in the Fraternity of Freemasons. A Freemason
had his family with
him; if he had an apprentice that apprentice was
as much a part of his
own family as a foster son; the families of the
Freemasons at work in
the same place were grouped together in a separate
quarter, or
neighborhood; the Craftsmen at work, their Lodge, and their
neighborhood, along
with everything belonging to each of them, comprised
the Masonic
Community; and the rules and regulations, with the responsibilities
of the Officers,
included their Community and were not restricted to
the Lodge only.
Apprentices had training, schooling, education. Adult
Craftsmen had to give
as much of their time to thinking, to study,
and to designing as
to work with their hands, for without geometry,
engineering, and
carving they could do nothing. They were an organized
Community, therefore
there were Officers, meetings and conferences.
The Community had its
own funds, its own religious observances, its
amusements, feasts,
sports, its social life, and cared for its own
injured, crippled,
dead, the widows, and orphans. In the meantime the
State and the Church
were never far away, and civil laws and religious
ordinances entered
deeply into the Freemason's daily life to shape
it in many ways. Much
(and the present writer would say "most") of
what we now call
Speculative Freemasonry was in the practice of the
Fraternity eight
centuries ago.
When a bishop decided
to build a cathedral he set up a board, usually,
with himself at the
head of it, which was called an Administration,
or a Foundation. This
Foundation employed a Master of Masons who was
a Freemason of high
reputation and after they had agreed with him on
the general design of
the building and on costs they and he together
made a contract. He
then sent out word for Craftsmen. When a Craftsman
applied he identified
himself, was examined, and if satisfactory was
"signed on," his
family to follow. When a sufficient number were signed
up the Master called
them together, and they formed themselves into
a Lodge, which
continued to exist as long as the work was in progress
and was dissolved
when the work was completed. The first act of the
Lodge was to secure
housing for its members and their families; its
next step was to
erect a building for its own use (sometimes two),
which also was called
the Lodge. This building was the headquarters
for daily work, a
meeting place, and was also sometimes used as a work
room. By "Lodge" was
meant a body of men organized for the sole purpose
of working together
as a unit, therefore when the Master had instructions
for this body as a
whole he called it into Communication. The Freemasons
worked according to a
set of rules and regulations of their own, centuries
old, among them being
a number of Landmarks, and such questions of
organization or of
work as arose in any given Lodge were settled according
to those rules; and
since the same rules were in force wherever Freemasons
worked, and each
Apprentice and Fellow was under oath never to violate
them, it was this
body of rules which gave its unity and consistency
to a Fraternity which
had no national organization or national officers,
and until the
Fourteenth Century did not even have permanent local
organizations, and
which at the same time preserved its rules and trade
secrets in the memory
of its members and taught them to Apprentices
by word of mouth.
In a period when
Freemasons had the use of no books, handbooks, treatises,
or blue-prints
anything they thought, or learned, or put into practice
which appeared to
have permanent worth either had to be enacted on
the floor of the
Lodge, or else had to take an oral form. In order
to preserve such
things in their purity, and to guard against alteration,
these forms
necessarily had to be repeated over and over; such forms,
thus repeated in
exactly the same detail generation after generation,
are what historians
mean by forms, ceremonies, and symbols. If the
word "symbolic" is
used as a general name for the whole body of such
fixed forms then it
is not an exaggeration to say that there was as
much of this
"Symbolic" Freemasonry in the earliest periods of the
Operative Freemasonry
as there is now in Speculative Freemasonry; and
if we are willing to
hazard an over-simplification we also may say
that if we grasp the
eight or ten centuries of the history of Freemasonry
as a whole, the only
fundamental difference between Operative Freemasonry
in an early century
and Speculative Freemasonry now, is that a Speculative
Freemason does not
use Freemasonry as a means of livelihood, but for
another purpose.
If we take the
Twelfth Century as the great formative period of the
Fraternity, and if we
return to it to see what it was that among the
thousands of gilds
and fraternities at the time gave to the one Fraternity
of Freemasonry the
secret of surviving after other gilds had perished,
and of developing
into a world-wide Fraternity, the facts as given
in the paragraph
above show us what to look for. Whatever it was that
those Freemasons
learned which was to be preserved through future centuries
they learned in and
from their work; and once they learned it they
did not put it into
the form of abstract ideas, or doctrines, or books
(as we do) but
incorporated it into their practices and customs; instead
of becoming a book,
or a lecture, or a creed, it became a ceremony,
or rite, or symbol.
The Freemasons as men of mind stood far above the
theologians,
philosophers, and scholars of Britain for more than two
centuries, and under
"theologians" are included such men as Thomas
Aquinas, Abelard,
Roger Bacon, etc.; what the theologians thought,
they could write down
in treatises; what the Freemasons thought, they
embodied in their
practices, customs, and symbols. The subject of theology
the Freemasons left
to the theologians; they devoted their own great
minds to the great
subject of work, and as will be explained in detail
in later chapters
they were the first men in the world until that time
to discover the truth
about that subject. We modern Speculative Masons
have therefore a
double reason for looking back to the fathers and
founders of our
Fraternity: we give them the veneration which men give
everywhere to fathers
and founders; and we look up to them, as also
do historians of
philosophy and of theology, as having been great men
of thought whose
achievement as thinkers was even more epoch-making
than their discovery
of the Gothic Style in architecture. If they did
not write down in a
book the new truths about work which they discovered
it does not matter;
any trained Mason can read the Ritual as easily
as an open book. The Operative Period
of Freemasonry was brought to a close and gave
place to the
Transition Period by a series of historical events which,
by one of the most
extraordinary coincidences known in history, occurred
within a few years of
each other. Henry VIII broke Great Britain's
tie with the Pope and
prepared the way for the Reformation. The same
King also abolished
the gild system - which was followed by the Mercantile
System, a period in
business and finance which present - day theorists
in economics find it
convenient to forget! The Renaissance broke into
final flower, in the
form of the printing press, printed books, and
changed the mental
climate in Britain as much as in Europe generally.
The discovery of
America by Columbus opened the sluice-gates to the
Age of Exploration, a
wild and adventurous time in which Europe exploded
itself over all the
world. Gothic architecture gave way with an almost
abrupt suddenness to
a new style in architecture which originated in
Italy and has since
passed under many names, such as Classical, Neo
Classical, Italian,
Palladian and Wren. The old trade secrets of the
Operative Freemasons
could be kept secret no longer after Euclid's
Geometry was
published in print, along with many other lesser, old
secrets in the arts
and sciences. The center of control in Freemasonry
passed from the
individual Freemason going here and there in his work,
and from his
temporary Lodges, into the permanent Lodges which were
constituted under
authority of manuscript copies of the Old Charges, and from them
passed into the new Grand Lodge System after 1717 A.D.
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