CHAPTER XXI

THE PRESTONIAN THEORY


THE Legend given by Preston in his Illustrations of Masonry, which details
the origin and early progress of the Institution, is more valuable and more
interesting than that of Anderson, because it is more succinct, and although
founded like it on the Legend of the Craft, it treats each detail with an
appearance of historical accuracy that almost removes from the narrative
the legendary character which, after all, really attaches to it.

In accepting the Legend of the Craft as the basis of his story, Preston
rejects, or at least omits to mention, all the earlier part of it, and begins his
story with the supposed introduction of Masonry into England.

Commencing with a reference to the Druids, who, he says, it has been
suggested, derived their system of government from Pythagoras he thinks
that there is no doubt that the science of Masonry was not unknown to
them.  Yet he does not say that there was an affinity between their rites and
those of the Freemasons, which, as an open question, he leaves everyone
to determine for himself.

Masonry, according to this theory, was certainly first introduced into
England at the time of its conquest by Julius Caesar, who, with several of
the Roman generals that succeeded him, were patrons and protectors
of the Craft.

The fraternity were engaged in the creation of walls, forts, bridges, cities,
temples, and other stately edifices, and their Lodges or Conventions
were regularly held.

Obstructed by the wars which broke out between the Romans and the
natives, Masonry was at length revived in the time of the Emperor
Carausius.  He, having shaken off the Roman yoke, sought to improve
his country in the civil arts, and brought into his dominions the best
workmen and artificers from all parts.  Among the first class of his
favourites he enroled the Masons, for whose tenets he professed the
highest veneration, and appointed his steward, Albanus, the
superintendent of their Assemblies.  He gave them a charter, and
commanded Albanus to preside over them in person as Grand Master. 
He assisted in the initiation of many persons into the mysteries of the
Order.

In 680 some expert brethren arrived from France and formed a Lodge
under the direction of Bennet, Abbot of Wirral, who was soon afterward
appointed by Kenred, King of Mercia, inspector of the Lodges and
general superintendent of the Masons.

Masonry was in a low state during the Heptarchy, but in 856 it was
revived under St. Swithin, who was employed by Ethelwolf, the Saxon
king, to repair some pious houses; and it gradually improved until the
reign of Alfred, who was its zealous protector and who maintained a
number of workmen in repairing the desolations of the Danes.

In the reign of Edward, his successor, the Masons continued to hold
their Lodges under the sanction of Ethred, his sister's husband, and
Ethelward, his brother.

Athelstan succeeded his father in 924 and appointed his brother Edwin,
patron of Masons.  The latter procured a charter from Athelstan for the
Masons to meet annually in communication at York where the first Grand
Lodge of England was formed in 926, at which Edwin presided as Grand
Master.  The Legend of the Craft, in reference to the collection of old
writings, is here repeated.

On the death of Edwin, Athelstan undertook in person the direction of
the Lodges, and under his sanction the art of Masonry was propagated
in peace and security.

On the death of Athelstan, the Masons dispersed and continued in a
very unsettled state until the reign of Edgar, in 960, when they were
again collected by St. Dunstan, but did not meet with permanent
encouragement.

For fifty years after Edgar's death Masonry remained in a low condition,
but was revived in 1041 under the patronage of Edward the Confessor,
who appointed Leofric, Earl of Coventry, to superintend the Craft,

William the Conqueror, who acquired the crown in 1066, appointed
Gundulph, Bishop of Rochester, and Roger de Montgomery, Earl of
Shrewsbury, joint patrons of the Masons.  The labours of the fraternity
were employed, during the reign of William Rufus, in the construction of
various edifices.

The Lodges continued to assemble under Henry I. and Stephen.  In the
reign of the latter, Gilbert de Clare, Marquis of Pembroke, presided over
the Lodges.

In the reign of Henry II., the Grand Master of the Knights Templars
employed the Craft in 1135 in building their Temple.  Masonry continued
under the patronage of this Order until 1199, when John succeeded to
the throne and Peter de Colechurch was appointed Grand Master.  Peter
de Rupibus succeeded him, and Masonry continued to flourish during
this and the following reign.

Preston's traditionary narrative, or his theory founded on Legends, may
be considered as ending here.

The rest of his work assumes a purely historical form, although many of
his statements need for authenticity the support of other authorities. 
These will be subjects of consideration when we come to the next part of
this work.
At present, before dismissing the theory of Preston, a few comments are
required which have been suggested by portions of the narrative.

As to the Legend of Carausius, to whom Preston ascribes the patronage
of the British craft in the latter part of the 3d century, it must be
remarked that it was first made known to the fraternity by Dr. Anderson
in the 2d edition of his Constitutions.  He says that the tradition is
contained in all the old Constitutions and was firmly believed by the old
English Masons.  But the fact is that it is to be found in none of the old
records that have as yet been discovered.  They speak only of a king
who patronized St. Alban and who made him the steward of his
household and his Master of Works.  Anderson designated this until then
unnamed king as Carausius, forgetting that the Saint was martyred in the
same year that the monarch assumed the throne.  This was a strange
error to be committed by one who had made genealogy his special
study and had written a voluminous work on the subject of royal
successions.

From Anderson, Preston appears to have borrowed the Legend,
developing it into a minuter narrative, by the insertion of several
additional circumstances, a prerogative which the compilers of Masonic
as well as monastic Legends have always thought proper to exercise.

The advent of French Masons into England toward the end of the 7th
century, brought thither by the Abbot Bennet or Benedict, which is
recorded by Preston, is undoubtedly an historical fact.  Lacroix says that
England from the 7th century had called to it the best workmen among
the French Masons, the Maitres de pierre.

The Venerable Bede, who was contemporary with that period, says that
the famous Abbot Benedictus Biscopius (the Bennet of Preston) went
over to France in 675 to engage workmen to build his church, and
brought them over to England for that purpose

Richard of Cirencester makes the same statement.  He says that "Bennet
collected Masons (coementarios) and all kinds of industrious artisans
from Rome, Italy, France, and other countries where he could find them,
and, bringing them to England, employed them in his works."

Preston is, however, in error as to the reign in which this event occurred. 
Kenred, or rather Coenred, did not succeed as King of Mercia until 704,
and the Abbot Benedict had died the year before.  Our Masonic writers
of the last century, like their predecessors, the Legendists, when giving
the substance of a statement, were very apt to get confused in their
dates.

Of the Legend of the "weeping St. Swithin," to whom Preston ascribes
the revival of Masonry in the middle of the 9th century, it may be
remarked that as to the character of the Saint as a celebrated architect,
the Legend is supported by the testimony of the Anglo-Saxon
chroniclers.

Roger of Wendover, who is followed by Matthew of Westminster, records
his custom of personally superintending the workmen when engaged in
the construction of any building, "that his presence might stimulate them
to diligence in their labours."

But the consideration of the condition of Masonry at that period, in
England, belongs rather to the historical than to the legendary portion of
this work.

On the whole, it may be said of Preston that he has made a
considerable improvement on Anderson in his method of treating the
early progress of Masonry.  Still his narrative contains so many
assumptions which are not proved to be facts, that his theory must, like
that of his predecessor, be still considered as founded on legends rather
than on authentic history.






CHAPTER XXII

THE HUTCHINSONIAN THEORY



THE theory advanced by Bro. William Hutchinson as to the origin and the
progress of Freemasonry, in his treatise, first published in the year 1775
and entitled The Spirit of Masonry, is so complicated and sometimes
apparently so contradictory in its statements, as to require, for a due
comprehension of his views, not only a careful perusal, but even an
exhaustive study of the work alluded to.  After such a study I think that I am
able to present to the reader a collect summary of the opinions on the rise
and progress of the Order which were entertained by this learned scholar.

Let it be said, by way of preface to this review, that however we may
dissent from the conclusions of Hutchinson, he is entitled to our utmost
respect for his scholarly attainments.  To the study of the history and the
philosophy of Masonry he brought a fund of antiquarian research, in which
he had previously been engaged in the examination of the ecclesiastical
antiquities of the province of Durham.  Of all the Masonic writers of the 18th
century, Hutchinson was undoubtedly the most learned.  And yet the theory
that he has propounded as to the origin of the Masonic Institution is
altogether untenable and indeed, in many of its details, absurd.

Of all the opinions entertained by Hutchinson concerning the origin of
Freemasonry, the most heterodox is that which denies its descent from
and its connection, at any period, with an operative society. "It is our
opinion," he says, "that Masons in the present state of Masonry were
never a body of architects.... We ground a judgment of the nature of our
profession on our ceremonials and flatter ourselves every Mason will be
convinced that they have not relation to building and architecture, but
are emblematical and imply moral and spiritual and religious tenets." (1)

(1) Spirit of Masonry," lect. xiii., p. 131.


In another place, while admitting that there were in former times builders
of cities, towers, temples, and fortifications, he doubts "that the artificers
were formed into bodies ruled by their own proper laws and knowing
mysteries and secrets which were kept from the world." (1)

Since he admits, as we will see hereafter, that Masonry existed at the
Temple of Solomon, that it was there organized in what he calls the
second stage of its progress, and that the builders of the edifice were
Masons, one would naturally imagine that Hutchinson would here
encounter an insuperable objection to his theory, which entirely
disconnects Masonry and architecture.  But he attempts to obviate this
difficulty by supposing that the principles of Freemasonry had, before
the commencement of the undertaking, been communicated by King
Solomon to "the sages and religious men amongst his people," (2) and
that these "chosen ones of Solomon, as a pious and holy duty
conducted the work." Their labours as builders were simply incidental
and they were no more to be regarded by reason of this duty as
architects by profession, than were Abel, Noah, Abraham, Jacob, Moses,
and David by reason of the building of their altars, which were, like the
Temple, works of piety and devotion. (3)

This theory, in which all connection between operative and speculative
Masonry is completely dissevered, and in which, in fact, the former is
entirely ignored, is peculiar to Hutchinson.  No other writer, no matter to
what source he may have attributed the original rise of speculative
Masonry, has denied that there was some period in the history of its
progress when it was more or less intimately connected with the
operative art.  While, therefore, it is plain that the opinion of Hutchinson
is in opposition to that of all other Masonic writers, it is equally evident
that it contradicts all the well established facts of history.

But besides these opinions concerning the non-operative character of
the Institution, Hutchinson has been scarcely less peculiar in his other
views in respect to the rise and progress of Freemasonry and its
relations to other associations of antiquity.

(1) "Spirit of Masonry," lect. x., p. 107.
(2) Hutchinson's language is here somewhat confused, but it seems that
this is the only rational interpretation that can be given to it.
(3) "Spirit of Masonry," lect. x., p. 108.



The Hutchinsonian theory may indeed be regarded as especially and
exclusively his own.  It is therefore worthy of consideration and review,
rather in reference to the novelty of his ideas than in respect to anything
of great value in the pseudo-historical statements that he has advanced.

The prominent thought of Hutchinson in developing his theory is that
Masonry in its progress from the earliest times of antiquity to the present
day has been divided into three stages, respectively represented by the
three ancient Craft degrees. (1)

He does not give a very lucid or satisfactory explanation of the reasons
which induced him to connect each of these "stages of progress" with
one of the symbolical degrees, and indeed the connection appears to be
based upon a rather fanciful hypothesis.

The three stages into which he divides the progress of Masonry from its
birth onwards to modern times are distinguished from each other, and
distinctively marked by the code of religious ethics professed and taught
by each.  The first stage, which is represented by the Entered Apprentice
degree, commences with Adam and the Garden of Eden and extends to
the time of Moses.

The religious code taught in this first stage of Masonry was confined to a
"knowledge of the God of Nature and that acceptable service wherewith
He was well pleased." (2)

To Adam, while in a state of innocence, this knowledge was imparted, as
well as that of all the science and learning which existed in the earliest
ages of the world.

When our first parent fell, although he lost his innocence, he still retained
the memory of all that he had been taught while in the Garden of Eden.
This very retention was, indeed, a portion of the punishment incurred for
his disobedience.

It, however, enabled him to communicate to his children the sciences
which he had comprehended in Eden, and the knowledge that he had
acquired of Nature and the God of Nature.  By them these lessons were
transmitted to their descendants as the cornerstone and foundation of
Masonry, whose teachings at that early 

(1) It is known to the world, but more particularly to the brethren, that
there are three degrees of Masons - Apprentices, Craftsmen, and
Masters; their initiation, and the several advancements from the order of
Apprentices, will necessarily lead us to observations in these distinct
channels" - "spirit of Masonry," lect. i., p. 6.
(2) "Spirit of Masonry," lect. i., p. 6.

 
period consisted of a belief in the God of Nature and a knowledge of the
sciences as they had been transmitted by Adam to his posterity.  This
system appears to have been very nearly the same as that afterward
called by Dr. Oliver the "Pure Freemasonry of Antiquity."

All of the descendants of Adam did not, however, retain this purity and
simplicity of dogma.  After the deluge, when mankind became
separated, the lessons which had been taught by the antediluvians fell
into confusion and oblivion and were corrupted by many peoples, so
that the service of the true God, which had been taught in the pure
Masonry of the first men, was defiled by idolatry.  These seceders from
the pure Adamic Masonry formed institutions of their own, and
degenerated, as the first deviation from the simple worship of the God of
Nature, into the errors of Sabaism, or the adoration of the Sun, Moon,
and Stars.  They adopted symbols and allegories with which to teach
esoterically their false doctrines.  The earliest of these seceders were the
Egyptians, whose priests secreted the mysteries of their religion from the
multitude by symbols and hieroglyphics that were comprehensible to the
members of their own order only.  A similar system was adopted by the
priests of Greece and Rome when they established their peculiar
Mysteries.  These examples of conveying truth by symbolic methods of
teaching were wisely followed by the Masons for the purpose of
concealing their own mysteries.

From this we naturally make the deduction, although Hutchinson does
not expressly say so, that, according to his theory, Masonry was at that
early period merely a religious profession " whose principles, maxims,
language, learning, and religion were derived from Eden, from the
patriarchs, and from the sages of the East," and that the symbolism
which now forms so essential an element of the system was not an
original characteristic of it, but was borrowed, at a later period, from the
mystical and religious associations of the pagans. (1)

(1) Long after, Mr. Grote, in his "History of Greece," spoke of an
hypothesis of an ancient and highly instructed body of priests having
their origin either in Egypt or the East, who communicated to the rude
and barbarous Greeks religious, physical, and historical knowledge
under the veil of symbols.  The same current of thought appears to have
been suggested to the Masonic writer and to the historian of Greece, but
each has directed it in a different way - one to the history of the Pagan
nations, the other to that of Masonry.

Such, according to the theory of Hutchinson, was the "first stage" in the
progress of Masonry represented by the Entered Apprentice degree, and
which consisted simply of a belief in and a worship of the true God as
the doctrine was taught by Adam and the patriarchs.  It was a system of
religious principles, with few rites and ceremonies and fewer symbols. 
The second stage in the progress of Masonry, which Hutchinson
supposes to be represented by the Fellow Craft degree, commences at
the era of Moses and extends through the whole period of the Jewish
history to the advent of Christianity.  According to the theory of
Hutchinson, the Jewish lawgiver was, of course in possession of the
pure Masonry of the patriarchs which constituted the first stage of the
institution, but was enabled to extend its ethical and religious principles
in consequence of the instructions in relation to God and the duties of
man which he had himself received by an immediate revelation.  In other
words, Masonry in its first stage was cosmopolitan in its religious
teachings, requiring only a belief in the God of Nature as he had been
revealed to Adam and his immediate descendants, but in the second
stage, as inaugurated by Moses, that universal belief was exchanged for
one in the Deity as He had made himself known on Mount Sinai.  That is
to say, the second or Mosaic stage of Masonry became judaic in its
profession.

But in another respect Masonry in its second stage assumed a different
form from that which had marked its primitive state.  Moses, from his
peculiar education, was well acquainted with the rites, the ceremonies,
the hieroglyphs, and the symbols used by the Egyptian priesthood. 
Many of these he introduced into Masonry, and thus began that system
which, coming originally from the Egyptians and subsequently
augmented by derivations from the Druids, the Essenes, the
Pythagoreans, and other mystical associations, at last was developed
into that science of symbolism which now constitutes so important and
essential a characteristic of modern Freemasonry.

A third change in the form of Masonry, which took place in its Mosaic or
Judaic stage, was the introduction of the operative art of building among
its disciples.  Instances of this occurred in the days of Moses, when
Aholiab, Bezaleel, and other Masons were engaged in the construction
of the Tabernacle, and subsequently in the time of Solomon, when that
monarch occupied his Masons in the erection of the Temple.

But, as has already been shown in a preceding part of this chapter,
Hutchinson does not conclude from these facts that Masonry was ever
connected in its origin with "builders, architects, or mechanics." The
occupation of these Masons as builders was entirely accidental, and did
not at all interfere with or supersede their character as members of a
purely speculative association.

But it may be as well to give, at this point, in his own words, his
explanation of the manner in which the Masons became, on certain
occasions, builders, and, whence arose in modern times the erroneous
idea that the Masonic profession consisted of architects. (1)

"I presume," he says, "that the name of Mason in this society doth not
denote that the rise or origin of such society was solely from builders,
architects, or mechanics; at the times in which Moses ordained the
setting up of the sanctuary, and when Solomon was about to build the
Temple at Jerusalem, they selected from out of the people those men
who were enlightened with the true faith, and, being full of wisdom and
religious fervour, were found proper to conduct these works of piety.  It
was on those occasions that our predecessors appeared to the world as
architects and were formed into a body, under salutary rules, for the
government of those who were employed in these great works, since
which period builders have adopted the name of Masons, as an
honourary distinction and title to their profession.  I am induced to
believe the name of Mason has its derivation front a language in which it
implies some indication or distinction of the nature of the society, and
that it has not its relation to architects."  (2)

Masonry was not organized at the Temple of Solomon, as is believed by
those who adopt the Temple theory, but yet that building occupies,
according to the views of Hutchinson, an important place in the history
of the institution.  It was erected during the second stage of the progress
of Masonry not, as we must infer from the language of our author, by the
heathen operatives of Tyre, but solely by Israelitish Masons; or, if
assisted by any, it was only by proselytes who on or before their
initiation had accepted the Jewish faith.

(1) In a subsequent lecture (xiii.) he attempts, in an historical argument,
to show that the guild of Masons incorporated in the reign of Henry V.,
and the laws concerning "congregations and confederacies of Masons,"
passed in the succeeding reign, had no reference whatever to the
speculative society.
(2) "Spirit of Masonry," lect. i., p. 2. In another place in this work the
etymological ideas of Hutchinson and other writers will be duly
investigated.


The language of Hutchinson is on this point somewhat obscure, yet I
think that it admits only of the interpretation which has been given He
says: "As the sons of Aaron alone were admitted to the holy office and to
the sacrificial rites, so none but devotees were admitted to this labour
(on the temple).  On this stage we see those religious who had received
the truth and the light of understanding as possessed by the first men,
embodied as artificers and engaged in this holy work as architects." (1)

Still more explicit is the following statement, made in a subsequent part
of the work: "Solomon was truly the executor of that plan which was
revealed to him from above; he called forth the sages and religious men
amongst his people to perform the work; he classed them according to
their rank in their religious profession, as the priests of the Temple were
stationed in the solemn rites and ceremonies instituted there.... The
chosen ones of Solomon, as a pious and holy duty, conducted the
work." (2)

Solomon did not, therefore, organize, as has very commonly been
believed, a system of Masonry by the aid of his Tyrian workmen, and
especially Hiram Abif, who has always been designated by the Craft as
his "Chief Builder," but he practiced and transmitted to his descendants
the primitive Masonry derived from Adam and modified into its sectarian
Jewish form by Moses.  The Masonry of Solomon, like that of the great
lawgiver of the Israelites, was essentially Judaic in its religious ethics.  It
was but a continuation of that second stage of Masonry which, as I have
already said, lasted, according to the Hutchinsonian theory, until the era
of Christianity.

But the wisdom and power of Solomon had attracted to him the
attention of the neighbouring nations, and the splendour of the edifice
which he had erected extended his fame and won the admiration of the
most distant parts of the world, so that his name and his artificers
became the wonder of mankind, and the works of the latter excited their
emulation.  Hence the Masons of Solomon were dispersed from
Jerusalem into various lands, where they superintended the architectural
labours of other princes, converted infidels, initiated foreign brethren into
their mysteries, and thus extended the order over the distant quarters of
the known world. (3)

(1) "Spirit of Masonry," lect. vii., p. 86. 
(2) Ibid., lect. x., p. 108.
(3) I have employed in this paragraph the very language of Hutchinson.
However mythical the statements therein contained may be deemed by
the iconoclasts, there can be no doubt that they were accepted by the
learned author as undeniably historical.


Hence we see that, according to the theory of Hutchinson, King
Solomon, although not the founder of Masonry at the Temple and not
our first Grand Master, as he has been called, was the first to propagate
the association into foreign countries.  Until his time, it had been
confined to the Jewish descendants of the patriarchs.

The next or third stage of the progress of Masonry, represented by the
Master's degree, commenced at the advent of Christianity.  As
Hutchinson in his description of the two preceding progressive classes
of Masons had assigned to the first, as represented by the Apprentices,
only the knowledge of the God of Nature as it prevailed in the earliest
ages of the world, and to the second, as represented by the Fellow
Crafts, the further knowledge of God as revealed in the Mosaic Legation,
so to this third stage, as represented by Master Masons, he had
assigned the complete and perfect knowledge of God as revealed in the
Christian dispensation.

Masonry is thus made by him to assume in this third stage of its
progressive growth a purely Christian character.

The introduction of rites and ceremonies under the Jewish law, which
had been derived from the neighbouring heathen nations, had clouded
and obscured the service of God, and consequently corrupted the
second stage of Masonry as established by Moses and followed by
Solomon.  God, perceiving the ruin which was overwhelming mankind
by this pollution of His ordinances and laws, devised a new scheme for
redeeming His creatures from the errors into which they had fallen.  And
this scheme was typified in the Third or Master's stage in the progressive
course of Masonry.

Hence the Master's degree is, in this theory, exclusively a Christian
invention; the legend receives a purely Christian interpretation, and the
allegory of Hiram Abif is made to refer to the death or abolition of the
Jewish law and the establishment of the new dispensation under Jesus
Christ.

A few citations from the language of Hutchinson will place this theory
very clearly before the reader. (1)

The death and burial of the Master Builder, and the consequent loss of
the true Word, are thus applied to the Christian dispensation.  "Piety,
which had planned the Temple at Jerusalem, was expunged. (2)


(1) They are taken from "Spirit of Masonry," lect. ix. 
(2) The Master is slain.


The reverence and adoration due to the Divinity was buried in the filth
and rubbish of the world. (1) Persecution had dispersed the few who
retained their obedience, (2) and the name of the true God was almost
lost and forgotten among men. (3)

"In this situation it might well be said That the guide to Heaven was lost
and the Master of the works of righteousness was smitten.'" (4)

Again, "True religion was fled. 'Those who sought her through the
wisdom of the ancients were not able to raise her; she eluded the grasp,
and their polluted hands were stretched forth in vain for her restoration.'"
(5)

Finally he explains the allegory of the Third degree as directly referring to
Christ, in the following words: "The great Father of All, commiserating the
miseries of the world, sent His only Son, who was innocence (6) itself, to
teach the doctrine of salvation, by whom man was raised from the death
of sin unto the life of righteousness; from the tomb of corruption unto the
chambers of hope; from the darkness of despair to the celestial beams
of faith." And finally, that there may be no doubt of his theory that the
third degree was altogether Christian in its origin and design, he
explicitly says: "Thus the Master Mason represents a man under the
Christian doctrine saved from the grave of iniquity and raised to the faith
of salvation.  As the great testimonial that we are risen from the state of
corruption, we bear the emblem of the Holy Trinity as the insignia of our
vows and of the origin of the Master's order." (7)

The christianization of the Third or Master's degree, that is, the
interpretation of its symbols as referring to Christ and to Christian

(1) Burial and concealment in the rubbish of the Temple first, and then in
an obscure grave.
(2) The confusion and consternation of the Craft.
(3) The Master's word is lost.
(4) In the 18th century it was supposed, by an incorrect translation of the
Hebrew, that the substitute word signified "The Master is smitten." Dr.
Oliver adopted that interpretation.
(5) By "the wisdom of the ancients" is meant the two preceding stages of
Masonry represented, as we have seen, by the Apprentices and the
Fellow Craft.  In the allegory of Hiram, the knowledge of each of these
degrees is unsuccessfully applied to effect the raising.
(6) Acacia. The Greek word akakia means innocence. Hence in the
succeeding paragraph he calls Masons "true Acacians."
(7) "Spirit of Masonry," lect. ix., p. 100.


dogmas, is not peculiar to nor original with Hutchinson.  It was the
accepted doctrine of almost all his contemporaries, and several of the
rituals of the 18th century contain unmistakable traces of it. It was not,
indeed, until the revisal of the lectures by Dr. Hemming; in 1813, that all
references in them to Christianity were expunged.  Even as late as the
middle of the 19th century, Dr. Oliver had explicitly declared that if he
had not been fully convinced that Freemasonry is a system of Christian
ethics - that it contributes its aid to point the way to the Grand Lodge
above, through the Cross of Christ - he should never have been found
among the number of its advocates. (1)

Notwithstanding that the Grand Lodge of England had authoritatively
declared, in the year 1723, that Masonry required a belief only in that
religion in which all men agree, (2) the tendency among all our early
writers after the revival of 1717 was to Christianize the institution.

The interpretation of the symbols of Freemasonry from a Christian point
of view was, therefore, at the period when Hutchinson advanced his
theory, neither novel to the Craft nor peculiar to him.

The peculiarity and novelty of his doctrine consisted not in its Christian
interpretation of the symbols, but in the view that he has taken of the
origin and historical value of the legend of the Third degree.

At least from the time of Anderson and Desaguliers, the legend of Hiram
Abif had been accepted by the Craft as an historical statement of an
event that had actually occurred.  Even the most skeptical writers of the
present day receive it as a myth which possibly has been founded upon
events that have been distorted in their passage down the stream of
tradition.

Now, neither of these views appears to have been entertained by
Hutchinson.  We look in vain throughout his work for any reference to
the legend as connected with Hiram Abif. In his lecture on "The Temple
at Jerusalem," in which he gives the details of the labors of Solomon in
the construction of that edifice, the name of Hiram does not once occur,
except in the extracts that he makes from the Book of Kings and the
Antiquities of Josephus.  Indeed,

(1) "Antiquities of Masonry," chap. vi., p. i66, note.
(2) "Book of Constitutions," 1st ed., "Charges of a Freemason," I.


we must infer that he did not recognize Hiram Abif as a Mason, for he
expressly says that all the Masons at the Temple were Israelites and
believers in the Jewish faith.

In a subsequent lecture, on "The Secrecy of Masons," he, in fact,
undervalues Hiram Abif as an architect, and says that he does not doubt
that "Hiram's knowledge was in the business of a statuary and painter,
and that he made graven images of stone and wood and molten images
in metals," thus placing him in a subordinate position, and completely
ignoring the rank given to him in all the Masonic rituals, as the equal and
colleague of Solomon and the Master Builder of the Temple. (1)

There is nowhere to be found in the work of Hutchinson any reference,
however remote, to the circumstances of the death and raising of the
"Widow's Son." He must have been acquainted with the legend, since it
was preserved and taught in the lodges that he visited.  But he speaks,
in the most general terms, of the third degree as symbolizing the
corruption and death of religion, and the moral resurrection of man in
the new or Christian doctrine.

If he believed in the truth of his own theory - and we are bound to
suppose that he did - then he could not but have looked upon the
details of the Master's legend as absolutely false, for the legend and the
theory can in no way be reconciled.

If I rightly understand the language of Hutchinson, which, it must be
admitted, is sometimes confused and the ideas are not plainly
expressed, he denies the existence of the third degree at the Temple.

That edifice was built, according to his theory, within the period of the
second stage of the progress of Masonry.  Now, that stage, which was
inaugurated by Moses, was represented by the Fellow Craft's degree.  It
was not until the coming of Christ that the Master's degree with its rites
and ceremonies came into existence, in the third stage of the progress
of Masonry, which was represented by that degree.  Indeed, in the
following passage he explicitly makes that statement.

"The ceremonies now known to Masons prove that the testimonials and
insignia of the Master's order, in the present state of

(1) Hutchinson bas here ventured on a truth which, however, none of his
successors have accepted.  See hereafter the chapter in this work on
"The Legend of Hiram Abif," in which I bave advanced and endeavored
to sustain the same view of the character of this celebrated artist.


Masonry, were devised within the ages of Christianity; and we are
confident there are not any records in being, in any nation or in any
language, which can show them to be pertinent to any other system or
give them greater antiquity." (1)

We can not explain this language with any respect for consistency and
for the meaning of the words except by adopting the following
explanation of the Hutchinsonian theory.  At the building of the Temple,
the Masonry then prevailing, which was the second or Fellow Crafts
stage, was merely a system of religious ethics in which the doctrines of
the Jewish faith, as revealed to Moses, had been superimposed upon
the simple creed of the Patriarchs, which had constituted the first or
Apprentice's stage of the institution.  There was at that time no
knowledge of the legend of Hiram Abif, which was a myth subsequently
introduced in the Third or Master's stage of the progress of the Order.  It
was not until after the advent of Jesus Christ, "within the ages of
Christianity," that the death and raising of the Master Builder was devised
as a mythical symbol to constitute what Hutchinson calls "the
testimonials and insignia of the Master's order."

The myth or legend thus fabricated was to be used as a symbol of the
change which took place in the religious system of Masonry when the
third stage of its progress was inaugurated by the invention of the
Master's degree.

Here again Hutchinson differs from all the writers who preceded or who
have followed him.  The orthodox doctrine of all those who have given a
Christian interpretation to the legend of the Third Degree is that it is the
narrative of events which actually occurred at the building of the Temple
of Solomon, and that it was afterward, on the advent of Christianity,
adopted as a symbol whereby the death and raising of Hiram Abif were
considered as a type of the sufferings and death, the resurrection and
ascension, of Christ.

No words of Hutchinson give expression to any such idea.  With him the
legend of Hiram the Builder is simply an allegory, invented at a much
later period than that in which the events it details are supposed to have
occurred, for the purpose of symbolizing

(1) "Spirit of Masonry," lect. x., p. 1,062. It is "passing strange" that a
man of Hutchinson's learning should, in this passage, have appeared to
be oblivious of the mythical character of the ancient Mysteries.


the death and burial of the Jewish law with the Masonry which it had
corrupted, and the resurrection of this defunct Masonry in a new and
perfect form under the Christian dispensation.

Such is the Hutchinsonian theory of the origin and progress of Masonry. 
It is sui generis - peculiar to Hutchinson - and has been advanced or
maintained by no other Masonic writer before or since.  It may be
summarized in a very few words:

1. Masonry was first taught by Adam, after the fall, to his descendants,
and continued through the patriarchal age.  It consisted of a simple code
of ethics, teaching only a belief in the God of Nature.  It was the
Masonry of the Entered Apprentice.

2. It was enlarged by Moses and confirmed by Solomon, and thus lasted
until the era of Christ.  To its expanded code of ethics was added a
number of symbols derived from the Egyptian priesthood.  Its religion
consisted in a belief in God as he had been revealed to the Jewish
nation.  It was the Masonry of the Fellow Craft.

3. The Masonry of this second stage becoming valueless in
consequence of the corruption of the Jewish law, it was therefore
abolished and the third stage was established in its place.  This third
stage was formed by the teachings of Christ, and the religion it
inculcates is that which was revealed by Him.  It is the Masonry of the
Master Mason.

4. Hence the three stages of Masonry present three forms of religion:
first, the Patriarchal; second, the Jewish; third, the Christian.

Masonry, having thus reached its ultimate stage of progress, has
continued in this last form to the present day.  And now Hutchinson
proceeds to advance his theory as to its introduction and growth in
England.  He had already accounted for its extension into other quarters
of the world in consequence of the dispersion and travels of King
Solomon's Masons, after the completion of the Temple. He thinks that
during the first stage of Masonry - the Patriarchal - its principles were
taught and practiced by the Druids.  They received them from the
Phoenicians, who visited England for trading purposes in very remote
antiquity.  The second stage - the Judaic - was with its ceremonials
introduced among them by the Masons of Solomon, after the building of
the Temple, but at what precise period he can not determine.  The third
and perfect form, as developed in the third stage, must have been
adopted upon the conversion of the Druidical worshippers to Christianity,
having been introduced into England, as we should infer, by the
Christian missionaries who came from Rome into that country.

While Hutchinson denies that there was ever any connection between
the Operative and the Speculative Masons, he admits that among the
former there might have been a few of the latter.  He accounts for this
fact in the following manner:

After Christianity had become the popular religion of England, the
ecclesiastics employed themselves in founding religious houses and in
building churches.  From the duty of assisting in this pious work, no
man of whatever rank or profession was exempted.  There were also a
set of men called "holy werk folk," to whom were assigned certain lands
which they held by the tenure of repairing, building, or defending
churches and sepulchers, for which labors they were released from all
feudal and military services.  These men were stone-cutters and builders,
and might, he thinks, have been Speculative Masons, and were probably
selected from that body.  "These men," he says, "come the nearest to a
similitude of Solomon's Masons, and the title of Free and Accepted
Masons, of any degree of architects we have gained any knowledge of."
But he professes his ignorance whether their initiation was attended with
peculiar ceremonies or by what laws they were regulated.  That they had
any connection with the Speculative Order whose origin from Adam he
had been tracing, is denied.

Finally, he attributes the moral precepts of the Masonry of the present
day to the school of Pythagoras and to the Basilideans, a sect of
Christians who flourished in the 2d century.  For this opinion, so far as
relates to Pythagoras, he is indebted to the celebrated Leland
manuscript, of whose genuineness he had not the slightest doubt. 
These precepts and the Egyptian symbols introduced by Moses with
Jewish additions constitute the system of modern Masonry, which has,
however, been perfected by a Christian doctrine.

Such is the theory of Hutchinson as to the origin and progress of
Speculative Masonry.  That it has been accepted as a whole by no other
writer, is not surprising, as it not only is not supported by the facts of
history, but is actually contradicted by every Masonic document that is
extant.

It is, indeed, a mere body of myths, which are not clad with the slightest
garment of probability.

And yet there are here and there some glimmerings of truth, such as the
appropriation of his real character to Hiram Abif, and the allusions to the
"holy werk folk," as showing a connection between Operative and
Speculative Masonry, which, though not pushed far enough by
Hutchinson, may afford valuable suggestions, if extended, to the
searcher after historic truth in Freemasonry.





CHAPTER XXIII

THE OLIVERIAN THEORY



In commendation of the Rev. Dr. Oliver as a learned and prolific writer on
Freemasonry, too much can not be said.  His name must ever be clarum
et venerabile among the Craft.  To the study of the history and the
philosophy of the Institution he brought a store of scholarly acquirements,
and a familiarity with ancient and modern literature which had been
possessed by no Masonic author who had preceded him.  Even
Hutchinson, who certainly occupied the central and most elevated point in
the circle of Masonic students and investigators who flourished in the 18th
century must yield the palm for erudition to him whose knowledge of books
was encyclopedical.

In his numerous works on Freemasonry, of which it is difficult to specify the
most important, the most learned, or the most interesting, Dr. Oliver has
raised the Institution of Masonry to a point of elevation which it had never
before reached, and to which its most ardent admirers had never aspired
to promote it.

He loved it for its social tendencies, for he was genial in his inclination and
in his habits, and he cherished its principles of brotherly love, for his heart
was as expanded as his mind.  But he taught that within its chain of union
there was a fund of ethics and philosophy, and a beautiful
science of symbolism by which its ethics was developed to the initiated,
which awakened scholars to the contemplation of the fact never before
so completely demonstrated, that Speculative Masonry claimed and was
entitled to a prominent place among the systems of human philosophy.

No longer could men say that Freemasonry was merely a club of good
fellows.  Oliver had proved that it was a school of inquirers after truth. 
No longer could they charge that its only design was the cultivation of
kindly feelings and the enjoyment of good cheer. He had shown that it
was engaged in the communication to its disciples of abstruse doctrines
of religion and philosophy in a method by which it surpassed every other
human scheme for imparting such knowledge.

But, notwithstanding this eulogium, every word of which is merited by its
subject, and not one word of which would I erase, it must be confessed
that there were two defects in his character that materially affect the
value of his authority as an historian.

One was, that as a clergyman of the Church of England he was
controlled by that clerical espirit du corps which sought to make every
opinion subservient to his peculiar sectarian views.  Thus, he gave to
every symbol, every myth, and every allegory the interpretation of a
theologian rather than of a philosopher.

The other defect, a far more important one, was the indulgence in an
excessive credulity, which led him to accept the errors of tradition as the
truths of history.  In reading one of his narratives, it is often difficult to
separate the two elements.  He so glosses the sober facts of history with
the fanciful coloring of legendary lore, that the reader finds himself
involved in an inextricable web of authentic history intermixed with
unsupported tradition, where he finds it impossible to discern the true
from the fabulous.

The canon of criticism laid by Voltaire, that all historic certainty that does
not amount to a mathematical demonstration is merely extreme
probability, is far too rigorous. There are many facts that depend only on
contemporaneous testimony to which no more precise demonstration is
applied, and which yet leave the strong impression of certainty on the
mind.
But here, as in all other things, there is a medium - a measure of
moderation - and it would have been well if Dr. Oliver had observed it.
But not having done so, his theory is founded not simply on the Legend
of the Craft, of which he takes but little account, but on obscure legends
and traditions derived by him, in the course of his multifarious reading,
sometimes from rabbinical and sometimes from unknown sources. (1)

(1) He divides the legends of Masonry into two classes, neither of which
embraces the incredible.  He says that "many of them are founded in
fact, and capable of unquestionable proof, whilst others are based on
Jewish traditions, and consequently invested with probability, while they
equally inculcate and enforce the most solemn and important truths" -
"Historical Landmarks," vol. i., p. 399.


The theoretical views of Oliver as to the origin and progress of Masonry
from a legendary point of view are so scattered in his various works that
it is difficult to follow them in a chronological order.  This is especially
the case with the legends that relate to the periods subsequent to the
building of the Temple at Jerusalem.  Up to that era, the theory is
enunciated in his Antiquities of Freemasonry, upon which I shall
principally depend in this condensation.  It was, it is true, written in the
earlier part of his life, and was his first contribution to the literature of
Masonry, but he has not in any of his subsequent writings modified the
views he there entertained.  This work may therefore be considered, as
far as it goes, as an authoritative exposition of his theory.  His Historical
Landmarks, the most learned and most interesting of his works, if we
except, perhaps, his History of Initiation, will furnish many commentaries
on what he has advanced in his Antiquities, but as it is principally
devoted to an inquiry into the origin and interpretation of the symbols
and allegories of Masonry, we can not obtain from its pages a
connected view of his theory.

Preston had introduced his history of Masonry by the assertion that its
foundations might be traced "from the commencement of the world." Dr.
Oliver is not content with so remote an origin, but claims, on the
authority of Masonic traditions, that the science "existed before the
creation of this globe, and was diffused amidst the numerous systems
with which the grand empyreum of universal space is furnished." (1)

But as he supposes that the globes constituting the universe were
inhabited long before the earth was peopled, and that these inhabitants
must have repossessed a system of ethics founded on the belief in God,
which he says is nothing else but Speculative Masonry, we may regard
this opinion as merely tantamount to the expression that truth is eternal.



Passing by this empyreal notion as a mere metaphysical idea, let us
begin with Oliver's theory of the mundane origin of the science of
Masonry.

While in the Garden of Eden, Adam was taught that science which is
now termed Masonry. (2) After his fall, he forfeited the gift of inspiration,
but certainly retained a recollection of those degrees


(1) "Antiquities," Period I., ch. ii., P. 26.
(2) Oliver, " Antiquities," I., ii., 37.


of knowledge which are within the compass of human capacity, and
among them that speculative science now known as Freemasonry. (1)

These, in the course of time, he communicated to his children.  Of these
children, Seth and his descendants preserved and cultivated the
principles of Masonry which had been received from Adam, but Cain
and his progeny perverted and finally abandoned it. However, before his
complete secession, the latter, with some of his descendants, reduced
the knowledge he had received from Adam to practice, and built a city
which he called Hanoch.  The children of Lamech, the sixth in descent
from Cain, also retained some faint remains of Masonry, which they
exerted for the benefit of mankind.

It is in this way that Dr. Oliver attempts to reconcile the story of the
children of Lamech, as detailed in the Legend of the Craft, with his
theory, which really ousts Cain and all his descendants from the pale of
Masonry.  The sons of Lamech were Masons, but their Masonry had
been greatly corrupted.

Dr. Oliver makes the usual division of Masonry into Operative and
Speculative.  The former continued to be used by the Cainites after they
had lost all pretensions to the latter, and the first practical application of
the art was by them in the building of the city of Hanoch, or, as it is
called in Genesis, Enoch.

Thus Masonry was divided, as to its history, into two distinct streams,
that of the Operative and that of the Speculative; the former cultivated by
the descendants of Cain, the latter by those of Seth.  It does not,
however, appear that the Operative branch was altogether neglected by
the Sethites, but was only made subordinate to their Speculative
science, while the latter was entirely neglected by the Cainites, who
devoted themselves exclusively to the Operative art.  Finally they
abandoned it and were lost in the corruptions of their race, which led to
their destruction in the flood.

The Speculative stream, however, flowed on uninterruptedly to the time
of Noah.  Oliver does not hesitate to say that Seth, "associating himself
with the most virtuous men of his age, they formed lodges and
discussed the great principles of Masonry," and were called by their
contemporaries the "Sons of Light."

Seth continued to preside over the Craft until the time of

(1) Oliver, " Antiquities," I., ii., 40.


Enoch, when he appointed that patriarch as his successor and Grand
Superintendent. (1)

Enoch, as Grand Master, practiced Masonry with such effect that God
vouchsafed to reveal to him some peculiar mysteries, among which was
the sacred WORD, which continues to this day to form an important
portion of Masonic speculation, and for the preservation of which from
the impending destruction of the world he constructed a subterranean
edifice in which he concealed the sacred treasure.  He also erected two
pillars, one of brass and one of stone, on which he engraved the
elements of the liberal sciences, including Masonry. (2) Enoch then
resigned the government of the Craft to Lamech, who afterward
surrendered it to Noah, in whose hands it remained until the occurrence
of the flood.

Such is Oliver's legendary narrative of the progress of Masonry from the
creation to the flood.  The Craft were organized into lodges and were
governed during that long period by only five Grand Masters - Adam,
Seth, Enoch, Lamech, and Noah.

To the Institution existing at that time he gives the appropriate title of
"Antediluvian Masonry," and also that of "Primitive Masonry."

Of its character he says that it had but few symbols or ceremonies, and
was indeed nothing else but a system of morals or pure religion.  Its
great object was to preserve and cherish the promise of a Messiah.

On the renewal of the world by the subsidence of the waters of the
deluge, it was found that though Enoch's pillar of brass had given way
before the torrent of destruction, the pillar of stone had been preserved,
and by this means the knowledge of the state of Masonry before the
flood was transmitted to posterity.

Of the sons of Noah, all of whom had been taught the pure system of
Masonry by their father, Shem and his descendants alone preserved it. 
Harn and Japhet leaving; dispersed into Airica and Europe, their
descendants became idolaters and lost the true principles

(1) Anderson gives the direction of the Craft, after Seth, successively to
Enoch, Kainan, Mahalaleel, and Jared, whom Enoch succeeded.  Const.
2d edit., p. 3.
(2) This legend of the vault of Enoch was not known to the mediaeval
Masons.  It forms, therefore, no part of the ritual of Ancient Craft
Masonry.  It is an invention of a later period, and is recognized only by
the more modern "high degrees." The form of the legend as known to
Anderson in 1722 was that he erected pillars on which the science of
Masonry was inscribed.


of Masonry, which consisted in the worship of the one true God.  The
descendants of Japhet not only fell from the worship of God and
embraced the adoration of idols, but they corrupted the form of Masonry
by the establishment on its basis of a system of secret rites which are
known in history as the "Mysteries."

This secession of the children of Japhet from the true system which their
ancestor had received from Noah, has been called by Dr. Oliver
"Spurious Freemasonry," while that practiced by the descendants of
Shem he styles "Pure Freemasonry."

Of these two divisions the Spurious Freemasons were more
distinguished for their cultivation of the Operative art, while the Pure
Freemasons, although not entirely neglectful of Operative Masonry,
particularly devoted themselves to the preservation of the truths of the
Speculative science.

Shem communicated the secrets of Pure Freemasonry to Abraham,
through whose descendants they were transmitted to Moses, who had,
however, been previously initiated into the Spurious Masonry of the
Egyptians.

Masonry, which had suffered a decay during the captivity of the Israelites
in Egypt, was revived in the wilderness by Moses, who held a General
Assembly, and, as the first act of the reorganized Institution, erected the
Tabernacle.


From this time Masonry was almost exclusively confined to the Jewish
nation, and was propagated through its judges, priests, and kings to the
time of Solomon.

When Solomon was about to erect the Temple at Jerusalem, he called to
his assistance the artists of Tyre, who were disciples of the Spurious
Masonry and were skillful architects, as members of the Dionysiac
fraternity of artificers.

By this association of the Tyrian Masons of the spurious order with the
Jewish workmen who practiced the pure system, the two classes were
united, and King Solomon reorganized the system of Freemasonry as it
now exists.

For the subsequent extension of Masonry throughout the world and its
establishment in England, Dr. Oliver adopts the legendary histories of
both Anderson and Preston, accepting as genuine every mythical
narrative and every manuscript.  From the Leland manuscript he quotes
as if he were citing an authority universally admitted to be authentic. 
Receiving the narrative of the General Assembly which was called at
York by Prince Edwin as an event of whose occurrence there can be no
possible doubt, he claims that the Halliwell poem is a veritable copy of
the Constitutions enacted by that Assembly.

On the subject of the religious character of Freemasonry, Dr. Oliver in
the main agrees with Hutchinson, that it is a Christian Institution, and
that all its myths and symbols have a Christian interpretation.  He differs
from Hutchinson in this, that instead of limiting the introduction of the
Christian element to the time of Christ, he supposes it to have existed in
it, from the earliest times.  Even the Masonry of the patriarchs he
believes to have been based upon the doctrine of a promised Messiah.

But his views will be best expressed in his own language, in a passage
contained in the concluding pages of his Historical Landmarks: "The
conclusion is therefore obvious.  If the lectures of Freemasonry refer only
to events which preceded the advent of Christ, and if those events
consist exclusively of admitted types of the Great Deliverer, who was
preordained to become a voluntary sacitce for the salvation of mankind,
it will clearly follow that the Order was originally instituted in accordance
with the true principles of the Christian religion; and in all its consecutive
steps bears an unerring testimony to the truth of the facts and of their
typical reference to the founder of our faith."

He has said, still more emphatically, in a preceding part of the same
work, that "Freemasonry contains scarcely a single ceremony, symbol,
or historical narration which does not apply to this glorious
consummation of the divine economy of the Creator towards his erring
creatures"; by which economy he, of course, means the Christian
dispensation and the Christian scheme of redemption.

If in the multifarious essays in which he has treated the subject Dr. Oliver
meant to announce the proposition that in the very earliest ages of the
world there prevailed certain religious truths of vast importance to the
welfare and happiness of mankind, which had been communicated
either by direct inspiration or in some other mode, and which have been
traditionally transmitted to the present day, which truths principally
consisted in an assertion of a belief in God and in a future life, such a
proposition will hardly meet with a denial.

But if he also meant to contend that the transmission of these truths to
posterity and to the present age was committed to and preserved by an
order of men, an association, or a society whose form and features have
been retained in the Freemasonry of the present day, it will, I imagine,
be admitted that such a proposition is wholly untenable.  And yet this
appears to be the theory that was entertained by this learned but too
credulous scholar.






CHAPTER XXIV

THE TEMPLE LEGEND



THE Temple Legend is a name that I give to that legend or tradition which
traces the origin of Freemasonry as an organized institution to the Temple
of Solomon and to the builders, Jewish and Tyrian, who were employed in
the construction of that edifice.

This is the legend that is now almost universally accepted by the great
niass of the Masonic fraternity.  Perhaps nine out of ten of the Freemasons
of the present day - that is to say, all those who receive tradition with the
undoubting faith that should be given to history only - conscientiously
believe that Freemasonry, as we now see it, organized into lodges and
degrees, with Grand Masters, Masters, and Wardens, with the same ritual
observances, was first devised by Solomon, King of Israel, and assumed
its position as a secret society during the period when that monarch was
engaged in the construction of the Temple on Mount Moriah. (1)

This theory is not a new one.  It was probably at first suggested by the
passage in the Legend of the Craft which briefly describes the building of
the Temple and the confirmation by Solomon of the charges which his
father David had given to the Masons.

There can be no doubt from this passage in the Legend that the Temple
of Solomon occupied a prominent place in the ideas of the mediaeval
Masons.  How much use they made of it in their esoteric ceremonies we,
of course, are unable to learn.  It is, however,

(1) In a sermon by the Rev. A.N. Keigwin, at the dedication of the
Masonic Temple in Philadelphia (1873), we find the following passage:
"Historically, Masonry dates from the building of the Temple of Solomon. 
No one at the present day disputes this claim." I cite this out of hundreds
of similar passages in other writers, to show how universal among such
educated Masons is the belief in the Temple theory.  It is, in fact, very
true that only those scholars who have made the history of the Order an
especial study have any doubts upon the subject.


significant coincidence, if nothing more, that there was a somewhat
similar legend among the "Compagnons de la Tour," those mystical
associations of workmen who sprang up in France about the 12th
century, and who are supposed to have been an offshoot of dissatisfied
journeymen from the body of oppressive Masters, who at that period
constituted the ruling power of the corporate guilds of operative Masons
and other crafts.

As the traditions of this society in reference to the Temple of Solomon
are calculated to throw much light on the ideas which prevailed among
the Masons in respect to the same subject, and as the Temple legends
of the "Compagnons" are better known to us than those of the mediaeval
operative Masons, and finally, as it is not at all unlikely that the ideas of
the former were derived from those of the latter, it will not be inexpedient
to take a brief view of the Temple legend of the Compagnonage.

The Compagnons de la Tour have three different legends, each of which
traces the association back to the Temple of Solomon, through three
different founders, which causes the Compagnonage to be divided into
three distinct and, unfortunately, hostile associations.  These are the
Children of Solomon, the Children of Maitre Jacques, and the Children of
Pere Soubise.

The Children of Solomon assert that they were associated into a
brotherhood by King Solomon himself at the building of the Temple.

The Children of Maitre Jacques and those of Pere Soubise declare that
both of these workmen were employed at the Temple, and after its
completion went together to Gaul, where they taught the arts which they
had learned at Jerusalem. (1)

The tradition of Maitre Jacques is particularly interesting.  He is said to
have been the son of a celebrated architect named Jacquain, who was
one of the chief Masters of Solomon and a colleague of Hiram Abif. 
From the age of fifteen he was employed as a stone-cutter.  He traveled
through Greece, where he acquired a knowledge of architecture and
sculpture.  He then went to Egypt and thence to Jerusalem, where,
being engaged in the construction of the Temple, he fabricated two
pillars with such consummate skill that he was at once received as a
Master of the Craft.


(1) The reader will remember the story in the "Legend of the Craft" of one
Namus Grecus, who came from Jerusalem and from the Temple in the
time of Charles Martel and propagated Masonry in France.


It is not necessary to pursue the legend of the French Compagnonage
any further.  Sufficient has been told to show that they traced their origin
to the Temple of Solomon and that the legend referred, to events
connected with that edifice.

Now, as these traveling journeymen (for thus may we translate their
French title) are known to have separated themselves in the 12th century
from the corporations of Master Workmen in consequence of the narrow
and oppressive policy of these bodies, making what in modern times
would be called a " strike," it is reasonable to suppose that they carted
Nvkh them into their new and independent organization many of the
customs, ceremonies, and traditions which they had learned from the
main body or Master's guilds of which they were an offshoot.  Therefore,
although we have not been able to find any legend or tradition of the
medioeval operative Masons which traced their origin to the Temple of
Solomon, yet as we find such a tradition prevailing among an
association of workmen who, as we know, were at one time identified
with the Operative Masons and seceded from them on a question of
policy, we have a reasonable right to believe that the legend of the
Compagnons de la Tour, or Traveling journeymen, which traced their
origin to the Temple of Solomon, was derived by them from the
Corporations of Masters or Guilds of Operative Masons, among whom it
was an accepted tradition.

And therefore we have in this way the foundation for a reasonable belief
that the Legend of the Temple origin of Masonry is older than the era of
the Revival in the beginning of the 18th century, and that it had been a
recognized doctrine among the operative Masons of the Middle Ages.

The absence of the Legend in any formal detail from all the old
manuscripts does not prove that there was no such Legend, for being of
an esoteric character, it may, from conscientious motives, or in
obedience to some regulation, never have been committed to writing. 
This is, however, a mere supposition and can not in any way interfere
with deductions drawn from positive data in reference to the Legend of
the Third Degree.  There may have been a Temple Legend, and yet the
details narrated in it may have been very incomplete and not have
included the events related in the former Legend.

The first reference in the old records to the Temple of Solomon as
connected with the origin of Freemasonry is to be found in the Cooke
MS. and is in the following words:

"What tyme that the children of isrl dwellid in Egypte they lernyd the craft
of masonry.  And afterward they were driven, out of Egypte they come
into the lond of bihest (promise) and is now callyd Jerl'm (Jerusalem)
and it was ocupied and chsrgys yholde.  And the makyng of Salomonis
tempull that kyng David began.  Kyng David lovyd well masons and he
gaf hem rygt nye as thay be nowe.  And at the makyng of the temple in
Salomonis tyme as hit is seyd in the bibull in the iij boke of Regum in
teicio Regum capito quinto (i Kings, Cap. 5) That Salomon had iiii score
thowsand masons at his werko. And the kyngis sone of Tyry was his
master mason, And (in) other cronyclos hit is seyd and in olde bokys of
masonry that Salomon confirmed the chargys that David his fadir had
geve to masons.  And Salomon hymself taught hem here (their) maners
(customs) but lityll differans fro the maners that now ben usyd.  And fro
thens this worthy sciens was brought into Fraunce and into many other
regions." (1)

The Dowland MS., whose supposed date is some fifty or sixty years later
than the Cooke, gives substantially the same Legend, but with the
additional circumstances, that David learned the charges that he gave,
from Egypt, where they had been made by Euclid; that he added other
charges to these; that Solomon sent into various countries for Masons,
whom he gathered together; that the name of the King of Tyre was Iram,
and that of his son, who was Solomon's chief Master, was Aynon; and
finally that he was a Master of Geometry and of carving and graving.

In this brief narrative, the first edition of which dates back as far as the
close of the 15th century, we see the germs of the fuller Legend which
prevails among the Craft at the present day.  That there was an
organization of Masons with "Charges and Manners," that is, laws and
customs at the building of the Temple of Jerusalem, and that King
Solomon was assisted in the work by the King of Tyre and by a skillful
artist who had been sent to him by Hiram, are the two most important
points in the theory of the Temple origin of Masonry, and both are
explicitly stated in these early legends.  We next find the Legend
repeated, but with more

(1) Cooke MS., lines 539-575.


elaborate details, most of which, however, are taken from the Book of
Kings as referred to in the Legend of the Craft by Anderson, in the first
edition of the Constitutions, and with a few additional particulars in the
second edition of the same work.

Preston, the next important Masonic writer after Anderson, does not
indeed relate or refer to the Legend in any part of his Illustrations of
Masonry, but the theory that Masonry found its origin at the Temple is to
be deduced from the historical traditions contained in the third lecture of
the Prestonian system, from which Webb derived it, and has perpetuated
it among American Masons to the present day.

Hutchinson, who followed Preston, although, as has been seen, he
inclined to a remoter origin of the Order, repeatedly refers in his spirit of
Masonry, and especially in his Sixth Lecture, to the Temple of Solomon
as the place where "the true craftsmen were proved in their work," and
where Solomon distinguished them into different ranks, giving to each
appropriate signs and secret tokens, and organized them for the first
time into an association of builders, the predecessors of the Masons
being previous to that time sages who, though acquainted with the
principles of geometry and architecture, were engaged solely in
philosophical speculations.  In this way Hutchinson gave the weight of
his influence in favor of the Legend which ascribed the origin of
operative and speculative Masonry to Solomon and to his Temple,
although his views on this subject differ from those of other writers.

Dr. Oliver, one of the latest and the most prolific of the legendary writers,
although in his own theory he seeks to trace the origin of Freemasonry
to a much more remote antiquity, yet speaks so much in detail in most
of his works, but principally in his Antiquities and in his Historical
Landmarks, of the system which was for the first time organized at the
building of the Solomonic Temple, that most readers who do not closely
peruse his writings and carefully scan his views are under the impression
that he had fully adopted the Legend of the Temple origin, and hence
his authority has been lent to the popular belief.

Existing, as may be supposed from the analogy of a similar legend of
the Compagnons de la Tour, among the craftsmen of the Middle Ages;
transmitted to the Revival era of the beginning of the 18th century, and
since then taught in all the rituals and sustained by the best Masonic
writers up to a recent period, this Legend of the Temple origin of
Freemasonry, or, in plainer words, the theory that Freemasonry received
at the time of the building of the Temple of Jerusalem that form and
organization which it holds at the present day, has been and continues
to be a dogma of faith implicitly believed by the masses of the fraternity.

It is well, therefore, that we should now see what precisely is the form
and substance of this popular Legend.  As received at the present day
by the body of the Craft, it may be stated as follows:

When Solomon was about to commence the building of his Temple, his
own people not being expert or experienced architects, he applied to his
friend Hiram, the monarch of the neighboring kingdom of Tyre, for
assistance.  Hiram, in complying with his request, sent to him a
numerous body of workmen, and at their head a distinguished artist
called, as a mark of distinction, Hiram Abif, (1) equivalent to the title,
"Hiram his father," who is described as "a cunning man endued with
understanding."

King Solomon then proceeded to organize the institution into a form,
which has been adopted as the model of that which exists at the present
day in every country where Freemasonry exists.  The Legend that
contains the classification of the workmen at the Temple, which has
been adopted in the rituals of modern Masonry, is delved partly from
Scipture and partly from tradition. An examination of it will not be
inappropriate.

There are two accounts, slightly conflicting, in the Scriptural narrative.  In
the Second Book of Chronicles, chapter ii., verses 17 and 18, are the
following words:

"And Solomon numbered all the strangers that were in the land of Israel,
after the number wherewith David his father had numbered them, and
there were found an hundred and fifty thousand and three thousand and
six hundred.

"And he set three score and ten thousand of them to be bearers of
burdens and four score thousand to be hewers in the mountains and
three thousand six hundred overseers to set the people at work."

The same numerical details are given in the second  verse of the

(1) Of Hiram Abif a more detailed account will be given when we come
to consider the legend connected with him.


same chapter.  Again in the First Book of Kings, chapter v., verses 13
and 14, it is said:

"And King Solomon raised a levy out of all Israel; and the levy was thirty
thousand men.

"And he sent them to Lebanon, ten thousand a month by courses; a
month they were in Lebanon, and two months at home: and Adoniram
was over the levy."

In the Legend of the Craft this enumeration was not strictly adhered to. 
The Cooke MS. says that there were "four score thousand masons at
work," out of whom three thousand were chosen as Masters of the work. 
The Landsdowne MS. says that the number of Masons was twenty-four
thousand.  But this number must have been a clerical error of the
copyist in which he is followed only by the Antiquity MS.  All the other
manuscripts agree with the Dowland and make the number of Masons
eighty thousand, including the three thousand overseers or Masters of
the Work.

This statement does not accord with that which is in the Book of Kings
nor with that in Chronicles, and yet it is all that the Legend of the Craft
furnishes.

Dr. Anderson, who was the first author after the Revival who made an
enumeration and classification of the workmen at the Temple,
abandoned the Legend altogether and made up his account from the
Bible.  This he published in the first edition of the Constitutions and
tempered it with some traditional information, whence derived I do not
know.  But it is on this classification by Anderson that all the rituals that
have been in use since his time are framed.  Hence he may justly be
considered as the author of the Legend of the Workmen at the Temple;
for notwithstanding the historical element which it contains, derived from
Scripture, there are so many traditional interpolations that it properly
assumes a legendary character.

Anderson's account is that there were employed on the building three
thousand six hundred Master Masons, to conduct the work according to
Solomon's directions; eighty thousand hewers of stone in the mountains
who he says were Fellow Craftsmen, and seventy thousand laborers who
were not Masons, besides the levy of thirty thousand who worked under
the superintendence of Adoniram, making in all one hundred and
eighty-three thousand six hundred.  For this great number, Anderson
says Solomon was "much obliged" to Hiram, King of Tyre, who sent his
Masons and carpenters to Jerusalem.

Over this immense number of builders and laborers, Anderson says that
King Solomon presided as Grand Master at Jerusalem, King Hiram in the
same capacity at Tyre, and Hiram Abif was the Master of Work.

Fifteen years afterward, Anderson, in the second edition of his
Constitutions somewhat modified these views and added certain other
particulars.  He promotes Hiram Abif from the position of Magister Operis
or Master of the Work, to that of Deputy Grand Master in Solomon's
absence and to that of Senior Grand Warden in his presence.  He also
says:

"Solomon partitioned the Fellow Crafts into certain Lodges with a Master
and Wardens in each; that they might receive commands in a regular
manner, might take care of their tools and jewels, might be paid every
week, and be duly fed and clothed, etc., and the Fellow Crafts took care
of their succession by educating Entered Apprentices." (1)

Anderson adds in a marginal note that his authority for this statement is
"the traditions of old Masons, who talk much of these things."

If such a tradition ever existed, it is now lost, for it can not be found in
any of the old manuscripts which are the record of the Masonic
traditions.  It is admitted that similar usages were practiced by the
Operative Masons of the Middle Ages, but we have no historical
authority, nor even legendary, outside of Anderson's work, for tracing
them to the Temple of Jerusalem.

Out of these materials the ritualists have manufactured a Legend; which
exists in all the Masonic rituals and which must have been constructed in
London, at a very early period after the Revival, to have secured such an
universal acceptance among all the nations who derived their Masonry
from the Grand Lodge of England.  The Legend of the Temple origin of
Masonry, as generally accepted by the Craft at the present day, is that
there were one hundred and fifty-three thousand, three hundred
workmen employed in the construction of the Temple.  Three thousand
three hundred of these were overseers, who were among as well as over
the Craft, but who at


(1) Constitutions," 2d edit., p. 13.


the completion of the Temple were promoted to the rank of Master
Masons.  The remaining workmen were divided into eighty thousand
Fellow Crafts and seventy thousand Entered Apprentices.

Three Grand Masters presided over the large number of workmen,
namely, Solomon, King of Israel; Hiram, King of Tyre, and Hiram Abif.
These were the only persons who at the building of the Temple were
Master Masons and in possession of the secrets of the Third Degree.

The statement in the ritual is that the workmen were divided into Lodges. 
The Lodge of Master Masons, for there could be only one of that degree,
consisted of three members; the Lodges of Fellow Crafts, of which there
must have been sixteen thousand, was composed of five members
each; and the Lodges of Entered Apprentices, of which there must have
been ten thousand, was composed of seven each.

But as this statement has neither historical authority nor logical
possibility to support it, it must be considered, as it undoubtedly was
originally intended to be considered, merely as a reference to the
symbolic character of those sacred numbers in Masonry - three, five,
and seven.  In the same spirit of symbolic reference the steps of the
winding stairs leading to the middle chamber were divided into a series
of three, five, and seven, with the addition in the English ritual of nine
and eleven.  All of this is, therefore, to be rejected from the class of
legends and referred to that of symbols.

Viewing then this Legend or theory of the origin of Masonry at the
Temple, tracing it from the almost nude state in which it is presented in
the Legend of the Craft through the extraneous clothing which was
added by Anderson and I suppose by Desaguliers, to the state of tinsel
ornamentation in which it appears in the modern ritual, we will come to
the following conclusion:

In the Legend of ihe Craft we find only the following statement: That King
Solomon was assisted in the building of the Temple by the King of Tyre,
who sent him materials for the edifice and a skillful artist, on whose
name scarcely any two of them agree, and whom Solomon appointed as
his Master of the Work; that Solomon invited Masons from all lands and
having collected them together at Jerusalem, organized them into a
body by giving them a system of laws and customs for their government. 
Now, most of these facts are sustained by the historical authority of the
Books of Kings and Chronicles, and those that are not have the support
of extreme probability.

That Solomon, King of Israel, built a Temple in Jerusalem is an historical
fact that can not be doubted or denied.  Richard Carlile, it is true, says,
"My historical researches have taught me that that which has been called
Solomon's Temple never existed upon earth; that a nation of people
called Israelites never existed upon earth, and that the supposed history
of the Israelites and their Temple is nothing more than an allegory." (1)

But the measure of the moral and mental stature of Carlile has long been
taken, and even among the most skeptical critics he remains alone in his
irrational incredulity.

Doubtless there are Oriental exaggerations in respect to the amount of
money expended and the number of workmen employed on the
building, which have been overestimated.  But the simple, naked fact
that King Solomon built a temple remains uncontradicted, and is as
historically true and undoubted as that of the construction of any other
public edifice in antiquity.

It is equally historical that the King of Tyre gave assistance to Solomon
in carrying out his design.  However fiercely the skeptics may have
attacked certain portions of the Bible, the Books of Kings and Chronicles
have been placed upon the footing of other ancient historical records
and subjeated to the same canons of criticism.

Now we are distinctly told that Hiram, King of Tyre, "sent masons and
carpenters to David to build him a house; " (2) we learn subsequently
that the same Hiram (some say his son) was equally friendly with
Solomon, and although there is no distinct mention either in Kings or
Chronicles that he sent workmen to Jerusalem, (3) except his namesake,
the artificer, yet we may infer that he did so, from the friendship of the
two kings, from the need of Solomon for expert workmen, and from the
fact which we learn from the First Book of Kings, that the stones for the
edifice were hewn by " Solomon's builders and Hiram's builders and the
Giblim." The authorized version, on what authority I know not, translates
this word "Giblim" as "stone-squarers."  They were, however, the
inhabitants

(1) Manual of Freemasons," Part I, p. 4. 
(2) Chronicles, xiv., i.
(3) We are told in i Kings, v., and it is repeated in 2 Chron., ii., that
Hiram sent his workmen to Lebanon to cut down trees.  The timber they
were to carry to Joppa, where Solomon was to receive it, and,
presumably, the workmen were to return to the forest.


of the city of Gebal, called by the Greeks, Byblos, which was the
principal seat of the worship and the mysteries of Adonis. The
inhabitants were celebrated for their skill in stone-carving and in
shipbuilding.

Thus we see that there were, according to the Scriptural account, three
classes of Masons engaged at the building of the Temple.  First there
were the workmen of Solomon: these were of the "four score thousand
hewers in the mountains " (1) who were taken by Solomon from "the
strangers that were in the land of Israel" (2) - men whom Dr. Adam
Clarke supposes to have been not pure Israelites, but proselytes to the
Jewish religion so far as to renounce idolatry and to keep the precepts
of Noah.  But we must believe that among these four score thounnd
snangers mtre to be enumerated the workmen who came from Tyre, or
there will be no place allotted to them in the distribution in the First Book
of Kings.  The three thousand three hundred who were "over the work,"
are said to have been chief officers of Solomon and therefore Israelites,
and the remaining seventy thousand were mere laborers or bearers of
burden - a class for whom Solomon need not have been indebted to the
King of Tyre.

Secondly, there were the workmen of Hiram, King of Tyre.  These I have
already said were probably, and indeed necessarily, included in the
number of four score thousand strangers or foreigners.  The words in
the original are amoshim gherim, men who are foreigners, for Gesenius
defines the word gherim, to be "sojourners, strangers, foreigners, men
living out of their country." (3)

Thirdly, we have the Giblim, the inhabitants of the city of Gebal in
Phoenicia, who came to Jerusalem, invited there by Solomon, to assist
in the construction of the Temple, and who must also be reckoned
among the four score thousand strangers.

Thus the Legend of the Craft is justified in saying; that Solomon "sent
after Masons into divers countries and of divers landes," and that he had
"four score workers of stone and were all named Masons." For these
were the foreigners or sojourners, whom he found in Jerusalem, many of
whom had probably come there on his invitation, and the Tyrians who
had been sent to him by King Hiram, and the Phoenicians, whom he
had called out of Gebal on account of their well-known skill in
stone-cutting.  And all of these


(1) I Kings, v., 15. 
(2) Chron. ii., 17.
(3) Lexicon, in voce.


amounted to eighty thousand, the number stated in the Books of Kings
and Chronicles, and just the number mentioned in the Legend of the
Craft.

It will be seen that the Legend of the Craft takes no notice of the levy of
thirty thousand who worked under Adoniram on Mount Lebanon, nor of
the seventy thousand who were employed as bearers of burdens.  As
the former were merely wood-cutters and the latter common laborers,
the Legend does not class them among the Masons, any more than it
does the three thousand three hundred who were, according to the
Biblical account, officers of the court of Solomon, who were appointed
merely to overlook the Masons and to see that they worked faithfully;
perhaps also to pay them their wages, or to distribute their food, and to
supervise generally their conduct.

In all this, the Legend of the Craft differs entirely from the modern rituals,
which have included all these classes, and therefore reckon that at the
building of the Temple there were one hundred and fifty-three thousand
three hundred Masons, instead of eighty-thousand.  The Legend is
certainly more in accord with the authority of the Bible than are the
rituals.

The Legend of the Craft is also justified in saying that Solomon
organized these Masons into what might be called a guild, that is, a
society or corporation, (1) by giving them "charges and manners" - in
other words, a code of laws and regulations.  On this question the Bible
account is silent, but it amounts to an extreme probability, the nearest
approximation to historical evidence, that there must bave been some
regulations enacted for the government of so large a number of
workmen.  It is also equally probable that to avoid confusion these
workmen must have been divided into sections, or what, in modern
parlance, would be called "gangs," engaged in various parts of the
building and in different employments.  There must have been a higher
and more skillful class occupied in directing the works of these several
sections; there must have been others less skillful and yet competent to
discharge the duties of stone-cutters and layers, and there must have
been another and still inferior class who were only acquiring the
rudiments of the profession.

Founded on these enident propositions, Anderson made his


(1) The Latin original of the Krause MS. calls it "Societas architedonica" -
an architectural society.


division of the workmen at the Temple into the three classes of Master
Masons, Fellow Crafts, and Entered Apprentices.  But he abandoned the
Legend in calling the three thousand six hundred officers of King
Solomon Master Masons, and making the whole number, exclusive of
the seventy thousand laborers and the thirty thousand wood-cutters on
Mount Lebanon, eighty-three thousand, and afterward stating that there
were one hundred and eighty-three thousand Masons in all - a
contradiction of his own previous statement as well as of the Legend of
the Craft which states the whole number of Masons to have been eighty
thousand.

The modern ritual may, however, be considered as having adopted the
Temple of Jerusalem as a type of that abstruse symbol of a spiritual
temple, which forms, as will be hereafter seen, one of the most important
and most interesting symbolic lessons on which the philosophy of
Speculative Masonry depends.  But viewing it as an historical statement,
it is devoid of all claims to credence.  The facts stated in the ritual are an
outgrowth of those contained in the Legend of the Craft which it has
greatly altered by unauthorized additions, and it is in entire contradiction
to those given in the Books of Kings and Chronicles.

The claim that Freemasonry took its origin at the building of the Temple
is without any historical authority.  The Legend of the Craft, upon which,
to be consistent, all Masonic rituals should be founded, assigns its oigin
equally to two other periods - to that of the building of the Tower of
Babel, when Nimrod was Grand Master, and to Egypt under the
geometrician Euclid.  Why the Temple of Solomon was exclusively
selected by the modern Masons as the incunabulum of their Order can
be only conjecturally accounted for.

I am not unwilling to believe, for reasons that have been already
assigned, that the Operative or Stone Masons of the Middle Ages had
some tradition or Legend of the origin of the Institution at the Temple of
Solomon.  If so, I am inclined to attribute their selection of this in
preference to any other stately edifice of antiquity to these reasons.

The mediaeval Masons were, as an association of builders, most
intimately connected with the ecclesiastics of that age.  Their principal
home at one time was in the monasteries, they worked under the
immediate patronage and supervision of bishops and abbots, and were
chiefly engaged in the construction of cathedrals and other religious
edifices.  Private houses at that early period were mostly built of wood,
and the building of them was the business of carpenters.  The
treow-wyr-hta, literally the tree-workman, in modern phrase the
carpenter, was one of the most important handicrafts of the early
Anglo-Saxons.  He was the builder of their ships as well as of their
houses, and the trade is frequently spoken of in ancient Saxon
documents.  He was constantly employed in the construction of vessels
for the carrying on of trade, or the erection of dwellings
for the residences of the people.

To the stone-masons was exclusively entrusted the nobler vocation of
building religious edifices.

Imbued, from their connection with the priests as well as from their
peculiar employment, with religious sentiments, they naturally looked for
the type of the great cathedrals which they were erecting, not to Pagan
temples, however splendid might be their architecture, but rather to that
Jewish cathedral which had been consecrated on Mount Moriah to the
worship of the true God.  Hence the brief notice of that building in the
Legend of the Craft was either the suggestion of that esoteric Legend of
the Temple which has not, from its necessarily oral character, been
handed down to us, or if the written Legend was posterior in time to the
oral one, then it was a brief record of it.

But I do not believe that this lost Legend of the stone-masons was ever
intended to be historical.  It was simply a symbol to illustrate the idea
that the Temple at Jerusalem was the type of all Christian cathedrals.

This symbolic Legend, which I suppose to have existed among the
stone-masons of the Middle Ages, was probably lost before the revival of
Masonry in the year 1717.  Anderson therefore framed a new Legend out
of the Legend of the Craft, the Scriptural account, and his own invention.

Upon this Andersonian Legend, simple in the first edition of the
Constitutions, but considerably expanded in the second, the modern
ritualists have framed another Legend, which in many important details
differs from Anderson's, from the Legend of the Craft, and from the
account in the Bible.

This is the Legend now accepted and believed by the great body of the
Craft to be historically true.  That it has no claim to historical credence is
evident from the fact that it is, in its most important details, unauthorized,
and in fact contradicted by the Scriptural account, which is the only
authentic memorial that we have of the transactions that took place at
the building of the Solomonic Temple.

And moreover, the long period that elapsed between the building of the
Temple, a thousand years before the Christian era, and the time, not
earlier than the 3d century after Christ, during which we have no traces
of the existence of such an architectural association connected with
Jewish Masons and transmitted from them to the Christian architects,
presents an extensive lacuna which must be filled by authentic records,
before we can be enabled, as scholars investigating truth, to consent to
the theory that the Freemasons of the present day are, by uninterrupted
successions, the representatives of the Masons who wrought at King
Solomon's Temple.

The Legend of the ritual is, in fact, a symbol - but a very important and a
very interesting one, and as such will be fully discussed when the
subject of Masonic symbols comes to be treated in a subsequent part of
this work.





CHAPTER XXV

LEGEND OF THE DIONYSIAC ARTIFICERS



WE now approach a very interesting topic in the legendary history of
Masonry.  The reader has already seen in the last chapter that the Masons
of the kingdom of Tyre were invited to join with the Jewish builders in the
construction of the Temple.  Who these Tyrian Masons were, what was their
character, whence they came, and what was the influence exerted by them
on the Jewish workmen with whom they were united in a common labor,
are questions which can only be solved by a reference to what may be
called the Legend of the Dionysiac Artificers.

This Legend was entirely unknown to the old Masons of the Middle Ages. 
There is no reference to it in any of the manuscripts, The brief allusion to
the Dionysiacs of Asia Minor in Robison's anti-Masonic work does not
necessarily connect them with the Masons of King Solomon. (1)

The first writer who appears to have started the theory that the Masons sent
by King Hiram to the King of Israel were members of the Dionysiac
fraternity, is Sir David Brewster, who presented the Legend under the guise
of an historic statement in the History of Freemasonry, published in the
beginning of this century, and the authorship of which, although it was
actually written by him, has been falsely attributed to Alexander
Lawrie, the bookseller of Edinburgh and at the time the Grand Secretary
of the Grand Lodge of Scotland.  Brewster may therefore, I think, be
fairly considered as the original framer of the Legend.

The origin of the mystical and architectural society which Brew-


(1) "Proofs of a Conspiracy," P. 20.


ster closely connects with the Masons of the Temple may be given in
almost his own words: (1)

Between 1055 and 1044 years before Christ, or something more than
half a century anterior to the building of the Temple, the inhabitants of
Attica, complaining of the narrowness of their territory and the
unfruitfulness of the soil, went in quest of more extensive and fertile
settlements.  Being joined by a number of the inhabitants of the
surrounding provinces of Greece, they sailed to Asia Minor and drove
out the inhabitants of that portion of the western coast from Phoccea in
the north to Miletus in the south.  To this narrow strip of land they gave
the name of Ionia, because the greatest number of the adventurers were
natives of that Grecian state.  After partly subduing and partly expelling
the original inhabitants, they built several towns, of which one of the
principal was Teos.


Prior to this emigration the Greeks had made considerable progress in
the arts and sciences, which the adventurers carried with them into their
new territory, and they introduced into Ionia the Mysteries of Pallas and
Dionysus, before they had become corrupted by the licentiousness of
the Athenians.

Especially popular, not only in Ioca but throughout Asia Minor, were the
Mysteries of Dionysus, the Roman Bacchus.  In these, as in all the
religious Mysteries of antiquity, there was a funereal legend.

In the Dionysiac Mysteries the legend of initiation recounted or
represented the death of the demigod Dionysus, the search for and
discovery of his body, and his subsequent restoration to life.

In the initiations the candidate was made to represent in his own person,
the events connected with the slaying of the hero-god.  After a variety of
preparatory ceremonies, intended to call forth all his fortitude and
courage, the aphanism or mystical death of Dionysus - torn to pieces by
the Titans - was presented in a dramatic form and followed by the
confinement or burial of the candidate, as the representative of Dionysus
in the pastos, couch, or coffin, all of which constituted the first part of the
ceremony of initiation. Then began the search for the remains of
Dionysus, which was continued amid scenes of the greatest confusion
and tumult, until at last, the search having been successful, the morning
was turned to joy, light suc-


(1) Lawrie's "History of Freemasonry," 1st edit., P. 27.


ceeded to darkness, and the candidate was invested with the knowledge
of the secret doctrine of the Mysteries - the belief in the existence of one
God and a future and immortal state. (1)

Now these Mysteries of Dionysus were very intimately connected with a
society of architects.  As this association, according to the Legend which
we are now considering, had much to do with the organization of
Masonry at the Solomonic Temple, it is necessary to take a brief notice
of its origin and character.

It is an historical fact that at the time of the building of the Temple at
Jerusalem, there existed at Tyre as well as in other peas of Asia Minor
an association known as the Dionysian Architects, because they joined
to the practice of operative architecture the observance of the religious
rites of the Dionysiac Mysteries.

It has been already stated that the priests of Dionysus had devoted
themselves to the study and the practice of architecture, and about one
thousand years before the Christian era, or at the time that King
Solomon began the construction of the Temple at Jerusalem, had
emigrated from Greece and established themselves as a society or
fraternity of builders in Asia Minor, and devoted themselves to the
construction of temples and other public edifices. (2) 

Hiram, who then reigned over the kingdom of Tyre, and who from his
cultivation of the sciences has been styled the Augustus of his age, is
said to have patronized these religious builders, and to have employed
them in the magnificent works by which he adorned and strengthened
his capital.

The internal government and the usages of this association were very
similar to those exhibited by the Masonic society in the present day, and
which the legendary theory supposes to have prevailed among the
builders of the Solomonic Temple.

The fraternity was divided into communities called synoeciae, (3) having
houses or dwellings in common, which might well be com-
(1) Le meurtre de Bacchus mis a mort et dechire en pieces par les
Titans, et son retour a la vie, ont ete le sujet d'explications allegoriques
tout-a-fait analogues a celles que l'on a donnees de l'enlevement de
Proserpine et du meurtre d'Osiris. - Sylvestre de Tracy in Sainte-Croix's
"Recherches sur les Mysteres du Paganisme" T. ii., p. 86.
(2) Chandler says "the Dionysiasts were artificers or contractors for the
Asiatic theaters, and were incorporated and settled at Teos, under the
Kings of Pergamum." - "Travels in Asia Minor," vol. i., ch. xxviii., p. 123.
[This was at a later period than the era of the Temple]
(3) "Antiquitates Asiaticae Christianam Acram Antecedentes," p. 139.


pared to the Masonic Lodges of the present day.  Their plans of meeting
were also called in Greek koina, which signifies communities, and each
received a distinctive name, just as our Lodges do.  Thus Chishull
speaks in his account of the prechristian antiquities of Asia of a koinon
ton Attaliston, or a "community of the Attalistae," so called, most
probably in honor of King Attalus, who was their patron.(1)

There was an annual festival, like the General Assembly or Grand Lodge
of the Masons, which was held with great pomp and ceremony.
Chandler says (but he speaks of a later period, when they were settled
at Teos) that it was the custom of their synod to bold yearly a General
Assembly, at which they sacrificed to the gods and poured out libations
to their deceased benefactors.  They likewise celebrated games in honor
of Bacchus, when the crowns which had been bestowed by any of the
communities as rewards of merit were announced by heralds, and the
wearers of them were applauded by the other members.  These
meetings, he adds, were solemnized with great pomp and festivity. (2)

The same traveler mentions a long decree made by one of the
communities in honor of its magistrates, which he found inscribed on a
slab in a Turkish burying-ground.  The thanks of the community with a
crown of olives are given as a recompense to these officers for their
great liberality and trouble while in office; and to perpetuate their
memory and to excite an emulation of their merit, it is besides enacted
that the decrees be engraved, but at their expense, "so desirable," says
Chandler, "was the testimony to the individuals and so frugal the usage
in bestowing it." (3)

Of course as an architectural association the Dionysiacs used many of
the implements employed by Operative Masons, and as a secret
brotherhood they had a system of signs and tokens by which any one of
the members could make himself known to the others.  Professor
Robison, who may be accepted on this point as authority, admits that
they were "distinguished from the uninitiated or profane inhabitants by
the science which they possessed and by many private signs and
tokens by which they recognized each other. (4)

(1) Rollin's "Universal History" places Attalus in the rank of those princes
who loved and patronized letters and the arts.
(2) Chandler, "Travels in Asia Minor," vol. i., ch. xxx., P. 126.
(3) Ibid., vol. i., ch. xxviii., p. 124. 
(4) "Proofs of a Conspiracy," p. 20.


Each of the koina or separate communities into which they were divided
was under the direction of officers corresponding to a Master and
Wardens. (1)

The Masonic principle of charity was practiced among them and the
opulent members were bound to provide for the wants and necessities
of their poorer brethren.

The Legend which connects these architects with the building of the
Temple at Jerusalem, assumes that Hiram Abif was a member of this
secret association.  Although the Scriptural narrative is adverse to this
theory, since it states that he was simply a worker in metals and
precious stones, yet we may reconcile it with possibility by supposing
that such craftsmen were admitted into the association of the Dionysiacs
because their decorative art was necessary for the completion and
perfection of the temples and public buildings which they constructed. 
This is, however, merely conjectural.

The Legend, now connecting itself in part with history, proceeds to state
that when Solomon was about to build a temple to Jehovah, he made
his intention known to his friend and ally, Hiram, King of Tyre, and
because he was well aware of the architectural skill of the Tyrian
Dionysiacs, he besought that monarch's assistance to enable him to
carry his pious design into execution.  Hiram complied with his request
and sent him the necessary workmen, who by their skill and expeience
might supply the mechanical deficiencies and ignorance of the Israelites.

With the body of builders he sent this Hiram Abif, who as "a curious and
cunning workman," highly recommended by his patron, was entrusted
by King Solomon with the superintendence of the construction and
placed at the head of both the Tyrian and Jewish craftsmen as the chief
builder and principal conductor of the work.

To this distinguished artist, on account of the large influence which his
position gave him and the exalted personal virtues which are traditionally
supposed to have characterized him, is to be attributed, according to the
Legend, the intimate union of two peoples so dissimilar in manners and
so antagonized in religion as the Jews and the Tyrians, which resulted in
the organization of the Institution of Freemasonry.

Supposing Hiram Abif, as the Legend does, to have been con-


(1) Brewster in Lawrie's "History," P. 29.

 
nected with the Dionysiac fraternity, we may also suppose that he could
not have been a very humble or inconspicuous member, if we may
judge of his rank in the society, from the amount of talent which he is
said to have possessed, and from the elevated position that he held in
the alleabns and at the court of the King of Tyre.

He must therefore have been very familiar with all the ceremonial usages
of the Dionysiac artificers and must have enjoyed a long expeience of
the advantages derived from the government and discipline which they
practiced in the erection of the many sacred edifices which they had
constructed.  A portion of these ceremonial usages and of this discipline
he would naturally be inclined to introduce among the workmen at
Jerusalem.  He therefore united them in a society, similar in many
respects to that of the Dionysiac artificers.  He inculcated lessons of
charity and brotherly love; he established a ceremony of initiation to test
experimentally the worth and fortitude of the candidate; adopted secret
methods of recognition; and impressed the obligations of duty and the
principles of morality by means of symbols and allegories.
Just at this point a difficulty must have arisen in reconciling the pagan
symbolic instruction of the Tyrians with the religious notions of the Jews,
which, however, the Legend ingeniously overcomes.

The most prominent symbol of Speculative Masonry, that, indeed, on
which the whole of the ethical instructions is founded, is contained in the
lesson of resurrection to a future life as developed in the allegorical
Legend of the Master's Degree.

In the Pagan Mysteries, of which the Dionysia were a part, this doctrine
was also illustrated by an allegorical legend.  In the Mysteries of
Dionysus which were practiced by the Tyrian architects the legend
related to the death and subsequent resuscitation of Bacchus or
Dionysus.

But it would have been utterly impossible to have introduced such a
legend as the basis of any instructions to be communicated to Jewish
initiates.  Any allusion to the mythological fables of their Gentile
neighbors would have been equally offensive to the taste and repugnant
to the religious prejudices of a nation educated from generation to
generation in the worship of a Divine Being, who, they had been taught,
was jealous of his prerogatives, and who had made himself known to
their ancestors as the JEHOVAH, the only God of time present, past, and
future.

The difficulty of obtaining a legend on which the dogma of the Third
Degree might be founded was obviated by substituting Hiram Abif, after
his death (at which time only the system could have been perfected), in
the place of Dionysus.  The lesson taught in the Mysteries practiced by
the Dionysiac artificers was thus translated into the Masonic initiation, the
form of the symbolism remaining the same, but the circumstances of the
legend necessarily varying.

By this union of the Dionysiacs with the Jewish workmen and the
introduction of their mystical organization, the Masonic Order assumed
at the building of the Temple that purely speculative form connected with
the operative which it has ever since retained.

From its Jewish element it derived its religious character as a pure
theism.
From its Tyrian element it borrowed its peculiar mystical character and
its system of symbolism, which so much assimilated it to the ancient
Pagan Mysteries, that a Legend has been framed (to be hereafter
considered) which traces its origin directly to those secret associations
of antiquity.

Upon the completion of the Temple, the workmen, invested with all the
secrets which had been promised in their initiation, and thus becoming
Master Masons, dispersed, that they might be enabled to extend their
knowledge and to renew their labors in other lands.

Such is the Legend which seeks to attribute the present form of
Freemasonry to the connection of the Dionysiac artisans of Tyre with the
Jewish workmen at the building of the Temple.  So much of the Legend
as relates to the existence of a building sodality at Tyre (leaving out the
question whether they were or were not Dionysiacs), some of whose
members went to Jerusalem to assist in the construction of the
Solomonic Temple, may, I think, be accepted as indisputably historic. 
What were the real influences exerted by them on the Jewish people, is
a question whose answer finds no place in the realm of history, but must
be relegated to the doubtful domain of conjecture.  Brewster has
descibed the Dionyiacs as they existed in about the 3d century before
Christ, and after their incorporation by King Attalus, as if they maintained
the same condition in the reign of Hiram of Tyre seven hundred years
before.  For this statement there is no warrant in any historical record. 
The supposition that the Dionysiacs of Tyre and those of Teos were
identical in organization, is simply a theory based on a mere
assumption.  It is, however, certain that they who adopt the legendary
theory that Freemasonry was fast organized at the Temple of Solomon,
will find much to sustain their theory in the Legend of the Dionysiac
Artificers.

It is equally certain that those who deny the Temple theory will have to
reject the Dionysic, for the two are too closely connected to be arbitrarily
dissevered.

But laying the subject of Freemasonry altogether aside, and considering
the connection of the Tyrians and the Jews at the Temple as a mere
historical question, it would present a very interesting study of history to
determine what were the results of that connection, if there were any way
of solving it except by mere conjecture.

The subsequent history of the association of Dionysiac Architects forms
no part of the Legend which has just been recited; but it may be
interesting to trace their progress.  About seven hundred years after the
building of the Temple at Jerusalem, they are said to have been
incorporated by the King of Pergamum, an ancient province of Mysia, as
a society exclusively engaged in the erection of public buildings such as
theaters and temples.  They settled at Teos, an Ionian city, on the coast
of Asia Minor, where, notwithstanding its intestine troubles, they
remained for several centuries.  Among the works accomplished by
them were a magnificent theater and a splendid temple of Dionysus,
some ruins of which still remain.

But proving turbulent and seditious they were at length expelled from
Teos and removed to the city of Ephesus.  Thence they were transferred
by King Attalus to the town of Myonessus.  The Teians having sent an
embassy to Rome to request that the Myonessians should not be
permitted to fortify their city, the Dionysiacs removed to Lebedos, about
fifteen miles from Teos, where they were joyfully welcomed.

In the 5th century of the Christian era the Emperor Theodosius abolished
all mystical associations, but the Dionysiacs are said to have continued
their existence until the time of the Crusades, when they passed over
into Europe and were merged in the association of builders known as
the Travelling Freemasons of the Middle Ages. This latter part of the
narrative is, I think, merely legendary or traditional, and will find no
support in authentic history. It is however, an historical study to be
examined hereafter.