Chapter VI: Part 6

Originally, among the Germans, the freemen themselves were the court and chose their president, the Graf (graf now equals count). Not until the time of Karl the Great (Charlemagne) did the grafs become standing officials, and later an hereditary order and lords proprietary. As the functions of government were by degrees entrusted to fewer and ever fewer hands, being transferred from the people to favored feudal lords, and from them passing finally into the hands of an individual sovereign—a quite natural process, for while the people increased in number they did not become better educated, and therefore grew ever less fitted for self-government—so, too, judgment, quitting the open, embowered courts amid the lindens, with heaven’s breezes whispering among the leaves, and heaven’s blue dome overarching all, withdrew behind dank and frowning walls, from the countenance of the whole people to a meeting of a small bench of stern judges.

Thus gradually were the rights of the freemen diminished. The freemen was less and less frequently called to sit in judgment, for the president of the court, the graf, was no longer an equal, but a great lord, their superior, who made up the court as to him seemed best, and who even cared nothing for the Emperor.[2]

Footnote 2:

What follows regarding the Femgerichte is based on Theodor Lindner’s
work, “Die Femgerichte,” Münster and Paderborn, 1888. (Whatever may
have been the original meaning of the word “fem” in “femgericht,” it
is enough to know that in usage it is equivalent to “secret”; hence
femgericht—secret judgment, or secret tribunal.)

Westphalia was the original home of the Femgerichte, and they owed their rise to the fact that there the royal ban (Koenigsbann), that is to say, the right possessed by the King alone, of conferring the grafship on the grafs, was still alive, in modified form indeed, yet with its substance unimpaired. Owing to the granting of various privileges to ecclesiastical and secular magnates the jurisdiction of the grafs was in time divided up. Besides, there were special courts for freemen, and special courts for the half-free and the unfree, the former courts being under the free grafs, and the other under the gaugrafafs (district grafs). Now, as the majority of the population were under the gaugrafs, the possession of a gaugrafship developed into sovereignty; while the position of the free grafs became peculiar: the office was often sold and passed from hand to hand. The free grafs, who were often persons of little means, in order to maintain their dignity, had to lean on the King’s ban, or warrant, obtainable from the King alone. But often the free grafships died out, or they were consolidated with gaugrafships. But nowhere did they retain so much of their original character as in Westphalia—a geographical expression of various meanings, indeed, but in general it denoted the region between the Rhine and the Weser. The term Freigraf dates from the twelfth century.

Not only the King but the duke also had influence over the free grafships. After the break-up of the ancient duchy of Saxony, every princely land proprietor within its territory was duke of Westphalia; this is specially true of the Archbishop of Cologne, and also of the bishops of Muenster, Osnabrueck and Minden, and of the Duke of Saxe-Lauenburg—dukes of Westphalia all, but with more or less limitation. Probably the duke was entitled to preside over any free court, and to summon to his own tribunal, the “botding,” the free grafs. So, too, the stuhlherr (lord of the manor) possessed the right of presiding, even when he was no prince, but only a graf; and often he assumed that the free graf gave judgment only in his (the lord’s) name, and so granted release from the jurisdiction of the free courts, to cities, for example. The free graf and his assessors, the schoeffen (a lower grade of judges), afterward called freischoeffen, constituted the freigericht (free court), afterward known as femgericht. These offices might fall to any freeman—and any one was reckoned a freeman who had “his own smoke,” i. e., a house of his own.

In the latter half of the 14th and the first half of the 15th century the emperors bestowed on the archbishops of Cologne, as dukes of Westphalia and lieutenants of the Emperor, the right of investiture of all free grafs and supervision of them all over Westphalia. A chapter of free grafs was held yearly at Arnsberg, and hence the Arnsberg tribunal obtained the first rank.

As the free grafs held their investiture from the king, they looked on themselves as king’s officers, and little by little went on extending their jurisdiction over the whole empire—a design favored by the confusion reigning everywhere, and even approved by the emperors themselves. At last the free grafs began to think that they were higher than the emperor, and had no need of his meddling: this arrogance was at its height in the reign of Sigmund, and it was still to be seen under Frederic VII.; in fact, Frederic, for having taken steps to punish some insubordinate free grafs, was summoned by free grafs to stand trial.

Some of the emperors did, indeed, set up free graf tribunals outside the limits of Westphalia; but these never prospered. In the 15th century it was an axiom that such courts could exist only in Westphalia, or, as the saying was, “on red earth,” a phrase that does not occur prior to 1490, and the sense of which is not quite clear; for neither is the soil of all Westphalia red, nor is red soil confined to Westphalia: and the same criticism may be made if “red earth” be taken for “blood-stained earth.”

2. THE SECRET TRIBUNAL.

The early “free courts” were in a certain sense “private” courts, inasmuch as they were not open to all like the courts of the gaugrafs (or judges of districts). The associate judges (Freischoeffen) were called “wissende” (wisemen, knowing ones), which, in old times, meant “judges.” The “private” tribunal of the Feme became by degrees a “secret” tribunal about the middle of the 14th century, as the free grafs became more conscious of their ambitious aims. The Schoeffen were now required to bind themselves by oath to observe secrecy: the one who proved false to his oath was first to have his tongue plucked out, and then he was to be hanged, either three or seven feet higher than a thief. The penalty was exacted very rarely, and probably never the first item of it. The obligation of secrecy extended over all the proceedings of the secret courts, even their letters and summonses. But the most important secret was the countersign, by means of which the initiated recognized each other. This was made up of four words (taken from the oath), Stock, Stein, Gras, Grein; and as the words were pronounced one laid his right hand on the others’ left shoulder. Poetry and romance have made the Feme courts sit in subterranean chambers, at night, the faces of the judges masked. The fact is that the tribunals of the Feme were set up at the ancient seats of the free tribunals, and of such places there were in Westphalia more than a hundred; and the trials were always held in the open air, in broad daylight. Whether in certain cases they were also public, so that any one might be present, is not known. In all cases where testimony was taken the proceedings were secret; whoever willingly or unwillingly was present unbidden at the secret deliberations was straightway hanged from the nearest tree.

Very remarkable was the universal recognition throughout Germany of the power of the Femgerichte. In 1387 the most distinguished people of Cologne were “wissende”; about 1420 the Rhineland was full of wissende belonging to every grade in society; and soon after the same might be said of Bavaria, Tyrol, Switzerland, Suabia, Franconia, Saxony, Prussia. Every manor lord and every free city needed the advice of wissende. Princes and cities had their judges admitted as schoeffen; archbishops and princes, even the Emperor Sigmund, were initiated: in the middle of the 15th century there must have been more than 100,000 freischoeffen in the empire. To be initiated became a craze, a fad; the native Westphalians were amazed at the folly of their southern and eastern countrymen.

And the long arm of the Femgericht jurisdiction reached as far as the host of wissende: the localities in which the activity of the secret tribunals was manifested were scattered all over the empire; in fact, the proceedings of these courts which affected Westphalia itself became a very small fraction of the whole.

But with the spread of the Feme jurisdiction arose opposition to the same. There were seen faint beginnings of opposition even in the early part of the 14th century, when Bremen decided not to allow members of the Feme courts to reside within its jurisdiction; toward the close of that century other cities took more effective measures, and in the 15th were even formed leagues of cities for self-defense against the encroachments of the Feme. Brunswick appealed to the Pope and the Emperor, and Hildesheim and Erfurt to the Council of Basel. In the middle of the 15th century several cities, especially in Southern Germany and in Holland, were freed from the jurisdiction of the secret courts by the supreme ecclesiastical and civil authorities. Then the dukes of Bavaria and of Saxony forbade their subjects laying complaints in the Westphalian courts, and some cities punished that offense with death, imprisonment, or banishment.

A Feme court consisted of a free graf and at least seven schoeffen. The graf was required to be a freeborn Westphalian of stainless reputation, whatever his station in life, for peasants were often chosen to be grafs. The schoeffen also had to be freemen born, and if not of Westphalian birth, were required to present proofs of their fitness. There was a fee for admission to the Feme. As time went on the examination of applicants became less and less strict, and often very questionable characters, even serfs and men accused of crimes, were admitted: such admissions were illegal, and the men chosen under such circumstances were called notschoeffen (makeshift schoeffen).

The free graf sat at a judgment-board, on which lay a naked sword and a rope as symbols of avenging justice, and the schoeffen took oath on these instruments. Each free graf and each schoeffe of a given court was required not only to be present at a trial, but to take part in pronouncing sentence. When the trial was one of special importance several hundred schoeffen would be in attendance.

The Femgerichte had their special codes and statutes, which were from time to time amended. In these the competence of the courts was defined, and this had to do with matters purely criminal, at least so far as the trials were held in secret. The crimes of which the Femgerichte took cognizance—vemewrogige punkte (points for femic animadversion)—were, according to the list drawn up at Dortmund in 1430, as follows: 1, robbery and acts of violence against ecclesiastics or churches; 2, larceny; 3, robbery of a woman in childbed or of a dying person; 4, plundering the dead; 5, arson and murder; 6, treachery; 7, betrayal of the Feme; 8, rape; 9, forgery of money or of title to property; 10, robbery on the imperial highway; 11, perjury and perfidy; 12, refusal to appear in court on summons. Apostasy from the Christian faith was put at the head of the list in an assembly held at Arnsberg 1437, and in 1490 heresy and witchcraft were added. For the person found guilty there was but one punishment, death, and only one manner of death, by the rope. This penalty could be inflicted without sentence if the offender were taken in the act, or if he confessed guilt, or if there were eyewitnesses of the crime.

That among the offenses punishable by the Feme heresy and witchcraft held almost the first place shows that these tribunals were no object of apprehension to the ecclesiastical power. This secret association, therefore, differed from that of the Templars, as also from that of the Stonemasons (which will be next considered) especially in this, that the Feme was no league of Illuminati, but that their specialty was opposition to the law of the stronger and to the rule of petty states, and that their aim was to uphold and exaggerate antiquated judicial institutions.

The procedure of the Femgerichte was entirely in accord with the principle of ancient Teutonic law, that “where no complainant appears, neither is there any judge.” It was not the inquisitorial court procedure of the 16th–19th centuries, in which the judge made investigation on his own account, but a procedure founded entirely in the practice of civil courts, and one that agreed well with the independent spirit of the Middle Age, and the view that then prevailed that law was a matter of personal rights.

The free tribunals took up the complaint from whatever quarter it came. All schoeffen, too, were under obligation to bring to the attention of the free courts, and to prosecute all doings coming under the animadversion of the Feme. Hence were a schoeffe to give information regarding such offenses to any other court, he was liable to be hanged; and the same fate befel the one who, having been entrusted with a bill of accusation, should open the same and betray its contents. Accusations were not entertained unless when submitted by wissende. The accuser had to stand betwixt two fellow schoeffen, his sponsors, in front of the tribunal in kneeling posture.

In every case the first thing done was to decide whether the crime was one meet for animadversion by the Feme. That decided, the accused was summoned to appear, if he was a wissender, before the secret tribunal, if not a wissender, before the open court. The first summons to a wissender to appear before the secret tribunal was drawn up in writing by two schoeffen, and allowed the accused a delay of six weeks and three days. If he did not obey the summons, then four schoeffen summoned him in person; and this proving ineffectual, six schoeffen and one free graf repeated the summons, which now was called the “warning.” The delay allowed was the same as at first. If the accused was a free graf the number of schoeffen employed in each of the three processes of summoning was 7, 14 and 21, respectively, and of free grafs 2, 4 and 7. The schoeffe, on receiving the summons, could appear at any time within the three delays before the free court and demand a statement of the charges and the names of the accusers; then he might on his sword swear to his innocence, and obtain his freedom; but he was liable to be summoned again. Outsiders were summoned once only, and usually by only one schoeffe. When the whereabouts of an accused person was unknown, four summonses were prepared, and these were posted in four places where he might possibly be found. If the accused was one who inspired fear, the summons might in the night time be posted or left at the gate of the castle or of the city in which he lived. In such cases the schoeffen walked or rode up before the gate, hacked off the crossbeam three chips, which they kept, put a penny of the realm in the notch, affixed the summons, and cried out to the castellan or the burgomaster, “We have stuck a king’s brief in the notch and taken the proof with us: say you to him that is in the castle that he must on his appointed day present himself before the free tribunal, on behalf of highest law and the Emperor’s ban.” When the opposition to the Femgerichte began to gain force, the summoners were in greater peril often than the summoned: often they lost their lives.

The day of the trial having arrived, if the accuser was not on hand the accused was discharged. But if the accused failed to appear, the accusation was repeated and testimony taken. The free graf then thrice called the accused by name, and asked if any one was there as his attorney. If there was no appearance of the accused, the accuser could demand judgment “after a se’ennight.” In making this demand, he knelt, laid two fingers of the right hand on his naked sword, affirmed the guilt of the accused, and six schoeffen, as his sponsors, maintained the truth of what he swore. If the verdict was against the accused, the free graf arose, and outlawed the accused, in words like these: “The accused (name and surname) I except from the peace, the laws and the freedom (of the empire) as the same have been stablished and decreed by popes and emperors; and I cast him down and place him in uttermost unquiet and disgrace, and make him illegitimate, banned, outside the peace, dishonored, insecure, loveless; and I do outlaw him according to the sentence of the secret tribunal, and devote his neck to the rope, his carcass to the birds and beasts to devour; and I commend his soul to the power of God in heaven; and his fiefs and goods I give up to the lords of whom the fiefs are held; and I make his wife a widow and his children orphans.” Then the free graf threw a twisted cord out over the bounds of the court, the schoeffen spat out, and the name of the outlaw was written in the book of the condemned. Among the persons thus condemned were numbered some men of high station, as the dukes Henry and Louis of Bavaria (1429), John, bishop of Wurtzburg, and others. All free grafs and schoeffen were henceforth under obligation to arrest and to execute sentence upon the outlaw (but three members of the Feme were required); and executing sentence meant hanging the culprit from the nearest tree. Often the relatives of executed outlaws of the Feme accused the executioners in the free courts as assassins, and the court could outlaw its own ministers for carrying out its own decrees. Many were the abuses that arose, assassination of innocent persons, for example. Murderers, too, pretended to be schoeffen; and highwaymen robbed under pretense of sequestering the property of persons condemned by judgment of the Feme.

If ever the condemned, being a wissender and not having overstayed the se’ennight of grace, appeared in court with six compurgators he was set free; but if he confessed his guilt, or was convicted, he was executed forthwith in the usual way. The ban of the Feme could never be lifted; but the number of death sentences actually carried out was, says Lindner, “so very small that one might readily allow the Feme’s decree of outlawry to be pronounced upon him.” Pope Nicolas V. in 1452 condemned the capital executions done by the Feme.

If a man under sentence of death should be proved innocent before he fell into the hands of the executioners, he was, if a wissender, brought before the court, with a rope around his neck, wearing white gloves, carrying a green cross, and attended by two schoeffen; falling on his knees before the free graf he pleaded for mercy. The free graf, taking him by the hand, bade him rise, removed the rope from around his neck, and restored him to the grace and favor of the Feme. But one who was not a wissender had no rights! He merely escaped death, but there was no amend. The Emperor gave him “a reprieve of 100 years, 6 weeks and a day”—that was all; he was forever ineligible to become a schoeffe. Both processes were called the “entfemung” (“unfeming,” undoing of the Feme’s judgment).

Many of the condemned, unable to procure the entfemung, ventured to appeal to the Emperor, the camera, the Pope, or a Church Council. But the Femgerichte never recognized such appeals, and protested strongly to the Emperor against them. They regarded the condemned as dead, and said that no one had the right “to awaken the dead.” The Emperor Sigmund could think of no means of saving a man under condemnation, except by taking him into his own service, for the Femgerichte did not care to take measures against officials of the Kaiser and the empire. Women, too, as well as aged men and children, were excepted from the cognizance of the Feme, also, in theory, Jews, for Jews were “servants of the Emperor’s bedchamber”; ecclesiastics, also, for they could in the Middle Age be tried only in the spiritual courts; but in the 15th century the Feme disregarded these provisions, and summoned both Jews and ecclesiastics.

3. THE END OF THE FEME.

But the Initiates of the Red Earth league met the fate that overtakes all movements that lag behind the times. The Feme did by no means render in the days of “faustrecht” (fist-right, the rule of the stronger) so great services as it has been credited with: never was the insecurity of life and property so great as when the Femgerichte were most flourishing. If the extension of the Feme beyond the borders of Westphalia was a wrong, that wrong became aggravated through the excessive secrecy of the tribunals. The Feme degenerated steadily, and the respect in which it was held declined in equal degree. The free grafs forgot the fair promise of their original institution—that their function was to protect innocence against the machinations of bad men. They, and especially the presidents of courts, enriched themselves with fees for admission of new members, with costs of court, with fines and fees, and even with moneys got by extortion and oppression. They delayed trials, condemned innocent persons, overstepped the limits of their jurisdiction so as to condemn to death the entire male population (over 18 years) of a town, for not obeying a summons. The opposition to the Femgerichte culminated in the decree of the Emperor Maximilian I. creating the supreme court of judicature (kammergericht), which left no further excuse for protecting the free courts. The applications for admission to the Feme soon grew less, and at last ceased. The princes changed the free courts into ordinary tribunals, or abolished them. At the end of the 16th century a capital execution by a Femgericht was a thing unknown; at the end of the 17th these courts had nearly all disappeared. But even when Westphalia was a Napoleonic kingdom there were still living some schoeffen, and not till the decade 1880–90 did the last free graf disappear, “taking with him to the grave the secret of the countersign.” The existence of the Feme is still commemorated by the stone judgment seats under the lindens; and the branches overhead are still whispering the story of the redoubtable Wissende of the Red Earth country.

_PART EIGHTH._
_Stonemasons’ Lodges of the Middle Ages._

1. MEDIEVAL ARCHITECTURE.

We have already noted as a prominent characteristic of the Middle Age this, that freedom of action, except so far as it interfered with the interests of the clergy or the nobles, was left unrestricted and that individuals formed social unions for the exercise of it. Thus we have seen these two dominant classes uniting to form associations which finally were crowned by the institution of the military orders. But the medieval world had not followed the arts of peace very long after the stormy times of the barbarian invasions, before it became conscious of a need not only of a union of swordsmen and penmen, but also and still more of a union of handicraftsmen. True, the Middle Age could not rise to such an intellectual height as would enable it to see that work is more to be honored than indolence, peace than war: hence the worker had to take a subordinate place. Of the agricultural laborer this is true without any reservation: but the artisan was more favorably situated as soon as the cities had begun to develop.

But the progress made by the artisans was due to their union in corporations or gilds. The constitutions of the trade gilds derive partly from the “collegia” of artisans in ancient Rome and partly from the monastic orders. The “collegia” had secret rites, mysteries, but of these we have no reliable information; and it is certain that the medieval gilds had their mysteries, too. Of not all the gilds is this true; in some of them the secret ceremonial consisted only of passwords and countersigns by which craftsmen recognized their fellows. The most elaborate of these mysteries was that of the Stonemasons. And the reason if this is obvious, for of all trades that of the builder not only makes most demands on the thinking faculty, involves most details, is the first to require new methods of facilitating operations, new “wrinkles,” and these easily are made trade secrets: besides, as builders of temples, the masons acquired a sacred and mystical character.

After the great migrations the mason’s trade had its home in the monasteries. As long as architecture or the builder’s art was thus under monastic guidance, it affected the Romanic style—simple columns, rounded arches, squat towers; but when the monks forsook art and science, in the 11th and 12th centuries, the craftsmen no longer saw why they should serve under the direction of men who had no taste for anything but wine, the chase, and war. And so there arose unions of masons outside of the monasteries, especially in the cities, and henceforth the monastic churches were inferior to the city churches in size and splendor. The change in the circumstances of the builders’ unions, which were now selfcontrolled, was seen in the development of a new style. Instead of the single columns rose clustered columns, symbol of free union, and of the strength that comes of harmonious action between equals; in the place of rounded arches, pointed ones, to show that the forces that conspired to raise the structure did not sacrifice their several individualities, but freely contributed each its share toward the attainment of the end; in place of squat, close towers, tall spires aspiring to infinitude, and open on all sides, as much as to say, “Here we stand free and open, acknowledging no laws but those of heaven.” Then came decoration of the window arches, which showed a different design in each, thus entering a protest against all stereotyped uniformity. This was the true Germanic or Gothic architecture, the triumph of the free Teutonic spirit, which favors the unhindered development and the unrestricted independence of individual genius. It was also the expression of mysticism, with innumerable spirelets striving heavenward to find the Divine. Hence the Gothic style has somewhat of gloom and melancholy in its vast arches and narrow windows. It invites the free spontaneous spirit of man to sound the depths of his own nature, and so is as adverse to obtrusive dogmatism as to reckless investigation and illuminism, which disturb prejudices. Hence as the Romanic style is the architecture of the popedom, so is the Gothic that of free church life; and then the architecture of illuminism followed as the style of the Renaissance.

2. THE STONEMASONS’ LODGES OF GERMANY.

The meeting places of the masons’ unions in the cities were the board huts that stood on the site of churches in process of construction, affording shelter to the masons or stone cutters while at work. These huts, or “lodges,” were at an early period leagued together, and the members of the leagues, in memory of their formerly having been inmates of monasteries, called one another Brother, and their unions Brotherhoods; they also bestowed on their chief officers such tokens of respect as are found in the clerical epithets “reverend” and “worshipful.” The date of the formation of this league cannot be determined. It appears to have been in full swing in the 13th century, and the credit of its definitive organization is usually given to Albert the Great, Count of Bollstadt, a celebrated Dominican friar (b. 1200, d. 1280). Albert lived nearly all his life in Cologne, and therefore the famous Cathedral of Cologne is to be regarded as the cradle of the great league of stonemasons’ lodges.

For the government of this league an assembly of delegates from the lodges, which came together “in chapter” (another reminiscence of the monastic origin of these unions) at Ratisbon in 1459, drew up a trade constitution entitled “Ordnung und Vereinigung der gemeinen Bruderschaft des Steinwerks und der Steinmetzen” (Regulation and Combination of the general brotherhood of stonework and stonemasons): it was revised and amended at Basel in 1497, and at Strasburg 1498. From this and other ancient documents relating to the organization of the brotherhood we gather that the Brethren were classed as Masters, “Parleyers” and Comrades (meister, parlirer, gesellen), and to these were added, though not as brethren, yet as dependents, Helpers,—that is, apprentices. At the head of a lodge stood the Master of Works, or Master-Builder. The masters of the three lodges at Strasburg, Cologne and Vienna were the Chief Judges of the league, and he of Strasburg held the foremost rank among these. To the judicial district of Strasburg belonged the left bank of the Rhine down to the Moselle, and on the right bank Suabia, Franconia, Hesse; to the district of Cologne belonged the region on the other side of the Moselle; and to that of Vienna, Austria, Hungary, Italy. Switzerland stood apart under a separate master, who had his seat at Berne; Zurich afterward succeeded to the place of Berne. The masons of Northern Germany, on the right bank of the Rhine (Thuringia, Saxony, etc.), were only nominally members of the league: as matter of fact they were subordinate to none of these lodges, but they adopted a special “order” for themselves at Torgau in 1462. In these regulations we find many striking evidences of the sturdy good sense of the masons. For example, they were forbidden to disparage deceased masters and their works; also to teach others their art for money, for they ought to deal with each other as friends; one master was not to expel a fellowcraft; to do so he must not only take counsel with two other masters, but also a majority of the fellowcrafts must approve; differences between masters should be settled by arbitrators chosen from members of the league.

In the brotherhoods brotherly comradeship played an important part. Meetings were held monthly, and the business ended with a feast. Each General lodge yearly held a grand assembly; and the festivals of Saint John the Baptist, and of the so-called “Four Crowned Ones,” were holidays for the league. Each meeting of a lodge was opened and closed with questions and answers of the master and the comrades. To the journeyman, as soon as he began to travel, were communicated the secret signs of the brotherhood—passwords, grip, etc. With these he identified himself as a brother mason wherever he went, and so had the right to learn the trade gratis. On coming to a hut where stone-cutting was going on, he first shut the door, so as to knock on it after the masonic fashion; then asked, “Are German masons at work here?” Forthwith the comrades made search through the hut, shut the doors, and ranged themselves in a right angle; the visitor placed his feet at right angles, saying, “God bless the worthy masons;” to which the answer was “God thank the worthy masons,” and so on, questions and answers many, among them these: “Who sent you forth”? “My honored master, honored sureties, and the whole honored masons’ lodge at X.” “What for?” “For discipline and right behavior.” “What is discipline and right behavior?” “The usages of the craft and its customs.”

Of the rites of initiation in those times we know nothing: what Fallou has on that head regarding the usages of the German stonemasons is simply borrowed from the Freemasons’ ritual of the present time. It is highly probable that in the medieval masons’ lodges the technical details of the craft and its secrets played the chief part in the ceremonies of initiation. The medieval stonemasons also employed as symbols of their craft the hammer, the circle, the square, etc., also mystic figures, e. g., the flaming star (which was the Pythagorean pentagram, or the magic hexagram—two triangles laid across each other), the two pillars of Solomon’s temple, wine skins, ears of corn, interlaced cords, etc. The only other point of any consequence of which we have certainty is that the postulant swore to observe secrecy. But there is no doubt that the drinking usages as handed down to us are authentic. For example, the glass was never to be handed to the banqueter, but set on the table before him; then, he must not touch it save with the right hand—covered with a white glove or a white napkin, when a special toast is drunk.

The masons’ brotherhoods were a distinctly Christian institution: the members were required by the “Ordinances” to comply with all the usages of the Church. This was a survival from the time when the lodges had their origin in monasteries. The sects that arose on every side despite bloody persecutions, and the illuminism spread abroad by them, contributed to bring about a change in the spirit of the masons which was noticeable in the 14th and 15th centuries: many, perhaps a majority, of them acquired a spirit of opposition to Roman ecclesiasticism, and it was very plainly manifested in their sculpture. More bitter satire cannot be imagined than they employed; and what is most significant is that it found expression in the churches themselves. Thus in a representation of the Last Judgment in the Berne minster a pope wearing a glittering tiara of gold is seen tumbling headlong into Hell; and in the vestibule the Wise and the Foolish Virgins are shown keeping vigil, but the foolish ones wear cardinals’ hats, bishops’ mitres and priests’ caps. The Doberan Church in Mecklenburg shows a mill in which church dogmas are ground out. At Strasburg was seen a procession of all manner of beasts with blazing torches and an ass performing the mass; at Brandenburg was shown a fox preaching to a flock of geese, etc.

Illuminism is the foe of knighthood and ecclesiasticism, for illuminism knows no privilege of birth or of rank or of vocation. Hence, in so far as such bodies as the Templars and Stonemasons favored illuminism, they undermined the institutions to which they owed their existence, and so were working for their own extinction. The downfall of the Stonemasons’ brotherhood had its causes even in the age before the Reformation, in that there was no lack now of churches, and that hardly any new churches were erected. What the relation was of the lodges to the Reformation we shall see later on. The savageries of the 16th and 17th centuries, particularly the Thirty Years’ War, dealt a severe blow at the building-craft; but the deathblow to the Stonemasons’ league was the treacherous seizure of the seat of the principal lodge, Strasburg, by Louis XIV. Naturally, the German princes interdicted communication of their subjects with foreign associations, and, of course, with the principal lodge in Strasburg, 1707. And as the discords of the German masons and their weakness prevented them from instituting a new head lodge, the Emperor at one stroke did away with all lodges, principal and subordinate, and forbade the oath of secrecy, the use of the “nonsensical form of salutation” (so ran the text of the decree), and the distinction between “salutation-masons” and “letter-masons” (grussmaurer, briefmaurer). Nevertheless, the lodges remained as secret societies until modern freedom of industrial trades stripped them of all meaning, and cut the ground under their feet.

3. FRENCH CRAFTSMEN.

Very different from the German societies of craftsmen were those of France. Whereas, in Germany we find strenuous endeavor toward perfection in the craft, cultivation of the beautiful, and a disposition no less elevated in a moral sense than devoutly religious; in France we see only rude, undirected effort, with here and there some encouraging features. In France there is sharp distinction between the gilds of the masters and the lodges of the journeymen. The masters have neither a common bond of union, nor any common property; the craftsmen form strong societies, with secret constitutions and usages.

There are several societies of French craftsmen (compagnonnages), but they are not distinguished according to locality, but according to the supposed manner of their first institution and the branch of the craft which they represent. They are divided, first, into two great sections, the Compagnons du Devoir (companions of duty), and the Compagnons de la Liberte (companions of liberty). The former are again divided into the Enfants de Maitre Jacques (Master James’s children), and the Enfants de Maitre Soubise (Master Soubise’s children), but the latter commonly called themselves Enfants de Salomon. Between the Compagnons du Devoir and the Compagnons de la Liberte, as well as between the children of James and those of Soubise, there exists the bitterest enmity which is mirrored in their myths and traditions. According to the story of the Devoir comrades, at the building of Solomon’s temple, Hiram, master-builder, to maintain discipline and order among the workmen, instituted societies with special passwords and secret ritual. But that act was the occasion of his death, for some workmen slew him because he refused to give them the countersign of the masters: those evildoers were the founders of the Compagnonnage de la Liberte! Now among the faithful workmen were two Gaulish masters, James, stonemason, and Soubise, carpenter: these, after the completion of the temple, returned home, and landing, one at Marseilles, the other at Bordeaux, founded societies after the pattern of those instituted by Hiram; and these societies, little by little, admitted craftsmen other than builders, but the two bodies lived in perpetual hatred of each other, each claiming priority. Each of them refers its own institution (on what grounds is unknown) to the years 558 B. C. and 550 B. C., respectively, and each possesses authentic documents in proof, though none has ever seen them. The Liberte tradition is the same as that of the Devoir, only the respective parts of the chief actors are reversed. In the bosom of La Liberte are gathered four crafts—stonemasons, carpenters, joiners, locksmiths. The Devoir includes 28 crafts, and of these the children of Soubise comprise the carpenters, roofers and plasterers; to the children of James belong the stonemasons, joiners, locksmiths, and 22 other trades, introduced in later times, but all connected with housebuilding, except hatmakers. All other craftsmen whose work is the production of clothing and foodstuffs are excluded from the compagnonnages, and form separate societies of their own. The shoemakers and the bakers, in particular, are held in contempt, and persecuted in every way by the compagnons; while among James’s children even the members of the building crafts despise their juniors (trades of less ancient lineage), and in their ignorance derive the word compagnon from “compas” (a pair of compasses), the symbol of the art of building; hence in their eyes the other trades are quite destitute of art or skill.

Even craftsmen of the same trade, but belonging to different leagues, whether Devoir or Liberte, oppose each other in every way. The carpenters of Paris have made an end of this strife by dividing the cosmopolitan city between themselves, the compagnons du Devoir taking the left and those of La Liberte the right bank of the Seine. With the other trades and in the provinces the case is worse, the hostile leagues often engaging in street fights and pitched battles. Even in the same trade and in the same league hostilities often break out.

Of the French corporations of craftsmen, those of the building trades, especially the stonemasons, probably arose about the same time as the German masons’ lodges: at least there existed in the Middle Age in southern France, a society of bridge-builders, who, for the behoof of pilgrims to the Holy Land and wayfarers in general, maintained bridges, roads and inns. The earliest known charter was granted in 1189, by Pope Clement III., who, like his third predecessor, Lucius III., took them under his protection. As emblem they wore on the breast a pointed hammer. The other compagnonnages can show no authentic records of earlier date than the 14th century. The most ancient of them is the society of the Dyers, dating from 1330. Admission to these societies involves many ceremonies derived from the ritual of the Catholic Church; hence, the Tailors and Shoemakers were in 1645 denounced to the ecclesiastical tribunals, and their meetings forbidden by the theological faculty of Paris.

4. THE ENGLISH STONEMASONS.

While the German societies of handicraftsmen were oppressed by the imperial power, and the French societies lived in obscurity, the English masons’ lodges, on the contrary, attained high importance. Tradition traces English (operative) masonry back to King Alfred the Great (871–901), and his successor, Athelstan, whose younger son, Edwin, is said to have called meetings of masons, and to have given laws to their lodges. However that may be, it is certain that in England, as in Germany, important edifices were erected by the clergy, and that Dunstan, archbishop of Canterbury, was an accomplished architect; but after the rise of Gothic architecture the builders were laymen, and in all probability many of them Germans. In the early English societies of masons we find rules and usages that clearly follow German precedent, and the lists of master masons contain many decidedly German names. Nevertheless, English masonry showed some peculiar features, e. g., the station of the master in the east, the holding of the lodge meetings in open air in fair weather, the posting of guards around the lodge, the drenching of peepers with the drip from the roof “till the water ran out of their shoes,” etc.

The English Freemasons may have got their name from the fact that the original founders of lodges were workers in freestone—freestone masons, as distinguished from workers in rough stone; freestone mason, it is supposed, was afterward contracted to the form “freemason.” In an act of parliament of the year 1350 the word freemason is found for the first time. By that act congregations and chapters of masons were forbidden. But the masons survived this persecution. Among themselves all masons were equals, comrades or fellows; in the lodges no distinction was made of master and fellow, though, of course, the actual master of a lodge presided over the meetings. The members studied mutual improvement in technical knowledge, and aided one another in misfortune. In the reign of Edward III. the laws prohibiting assemblage of masons was relaxed so as to permit meetings when held in presence of the sheriff of a county or the mayor of a city. Out of these societies of operative masons arose the modern institution of “speculative” freemasonry.

_Astrologers and Alchemists._

The epoch of the Reformation closed with the recovery to the Catholic Church of a large proportion of its lost territory through the labors of the Jesuits. Long before the Thirty Years’ War the zeal for religious creeds had died out; people had grown weary of theological strifes, though they had little taste for other serious matters; and thus it came about that in the transition from the 16th to the 17th century such pseudo-sciences as Alchemy and Astrology had great vogue. The study of Astrology had for its aim only fame and glory, and, therefore, was pursued openly; while Alchemy being inspired mainly by avarice, had its laboratories in dark cellars, and made a strict secret of its processes.

Hence, it was natural that Alchemy, or the pretended art of producing gold and silver, should give rise to secret associations, especially as it employed sundry mystic, theosophic, and kabbalistic means for attaining its ends, such as were used by the pupils and followers of the famous Theophrastus Bombastus Paracelsus, reformer of the medical art, and one of the most zealous of astronomers and alchemists. That was the era of a Jacob Boehme, shoemaker and philosopher, who, though he had none of the “accurst hunger” for the precious metals, gave an impetus to fatuous investigations of divine things.

At the beginning of the 17th century a multitude of writings about this mystic and superstitious business appeared, pro and contra. In this battle of goosequills the Lutheran theologian, John Valentine Andraea of Tuebingen (b. 1586, d. 1654), took a very prominent part. Andreae in 1614 conceived the thought of playing a trick on these mystics by publishing two satirical pieces, in which was given an account of an alleged secret society designed to promote studies of that kind; to this society he gave a name suggested by the design of his own family seal (a Saint Andrew’s cross, with roses at the ends of its four arms)—Rosicrucians. These writings, “Fama Fraternitatis Roseae Crucis” (Fame of the Brotherhood of the Rosy Cross) and “Confessio Fraternitatis” (Confession of Faith of the Brotherhood) traced the pretended society back to a monk named Christian Rosenkreuz, who, in the 14th and 15th centuries, visited the holy land, was instructed in the occult sciences in the East, founded among his fellow-monks the brotherhood called by his name, and died at the age of 106 years. After a lapse of 120 years, in his tomb, which, in accordance with the rule of the order, was kept secret, but which was a magnificent structure in a vault, was found resting on his incorrupt body a parchment book containing the constitution and the secrets of the order. A later document “Chymische Hochzeit Christiani Rosenkreuz” (alchymic nuptials of Christian Rosenkreuz), which appeared in 1616, span the story out to greater length. Now, so great was the alchemistic furore of that time that the tale passed for solemn truth, and a swarm of writings followed, championing or battling against the Society of the Rosicrucians. To the opponents of the Rosy Cross belonged the theologians, who sniffed heretical tenets in the “documents,” and the medical men who scented danger to their close gild; while the alchemists, and particularly the followers of Paracelsus, inquired diligently after the Rosicrucians, and maintained the authenticity of their Constitution. Nor was there lack of attempts at interpreting in a mystical sense the symbol of the Rosy Cross: it signified Holiness joined with Silentiousness; it typified the rose-colored Blood of Christ poured out on the cross. Astounded by the war of no-wits against little-wits occasioned unintentionally by himself, Andreae tried to undo the mischief by putting forth two pieces, “Mythologia Christiana,” and “Turris Babel,” to prove that the whole thing was a joke, that the Brotherhood was a fiction and non-existent. But as he neglected to name himself as author of the first two writings, in vain did he pour out on the Rosicrucianistic partisans all the vitriol of his contempt. In vain, with a view to lead men’s fancy in other directions, did he found a “Christian Brotherhood” for the purpose of purging religion of abuses and planting true piety. The insanity persisted. Alchemy, barely alluded to in Andreae’s writings, became the subject of a multitude of new books, whose authors gave out that they were members of the alleged society. The incident was also turned to account by adventurers and by factions of every sort; the thing went so far that in the Rhineland and the Low Countries secret alchemistic societies were founded under the name of Rosicrucians, which also took the style Fraternitas Roris Cocti (Brotherhood of Boiled Dew), that is, of the Philosophers’ Stone; but these societies had no general organization among themselves. Many a wight was choused out of his money by these schemers. There were branch societies in Germany and Italy. In England Dr. Robert Fludd, an ardent mystic and alchemist, propagated the singular order by publishing a number of writings. With regard to the usages of the societies, we are told that the members roamed about meanly clad, with hair cropped close near the forehead, wearing as a token a black silken cord in the top buttonhole, carrying, when several went together, a small green banner. They claimed that their society was an offshoot of the great knightly order of St. John (Hospitalers). At their lodge meetings they wore a blue ribbon, on which was a gold cross inscribed with a rose, and their president (styled Imperator, emperor) was dressed in priestly togs. They observed strict secrecy as toward outsiders. They disappeared little by little in the 18th century, and there is no means of determining the relation between them and the masonic Rosicrucians, of whom more anon.

_PART NINTH._
_Rise and Constitution of Freemasonry._

1. RISE OF FREEMASONRY.

The Reformation and the events connected with it had given people much matter of meditation. But the intolerance shown by the authorities and by the members of both creeds, in maltreating and persecuting their opponents, so alienated all humane minded men that secretly people began to care neither for the interest of Protestantism nor for that of Catholicism, and in the common brotherhood of mankind to disregard all differences of creed. Illuminism, which had been “good form” though in a frivolous sense among the Templars, and in a satiric sense among the Stonemasons, took a more dignified shape, not of incredulity but of earnest desire to build up, and to this consummation the English masons contributed materially. In England people had had enough of strife over creeds, enough of persecution of Protestants under “Bloody Mary” and of Catholics under the inflexible Elizabeth, and they longed for tolerance. They derived the principles of tolerance from renascent literature and art, which made such impression that as in an earlier age the Romanic architecture, so now the Gothic, as the expression of a definite phase of belief, lost its following, and the so-called Augustan or “Renaissance” style—an imitation of the ancient Grecian and Roman styles—won the day with all who knew anything of art. The Renaissance style was brought to England by the painter Inigo Jones, who had learned his art in Italy, and who, under James I., became in 1607 superintendent general of royal constructions, and at the same time president of the Freemasons, whose lodges he reformed. Instead of the yearly general meetings he instituted quarterly meetings: such masons as adhered to the manual craft and cared nothing for intellectual aims were permitted to go back into the trade gilds; while, on the other hand, men of talent not belonging to the mason’s trade, but who were interested in architecture and in the aspirations of the time, were taken into the lodges under the name of “accepted brethren.” Under the altered circumstances a new, bold spirit awoke among the Freemasons, and it found support in the sentiment of brotherliness, irrespective of creeds, then everywhere prevalent. This disposition of minds was promoted in an incalculable degree by the pictures drawn by Sir Thomas More in his “Utopia,” and by Sir Francis Bacon in his “New Atlantis,” of countries existing, indeed, only in their imagination, but which presented ideal conditions, such as enlightened minds might desire to realize upon this earth; also by the writings of the Bohemian preacher, Amos Komensky (latinized Comenius), who, during the Thirty Years’ War was expelled from his country by the partisans of the Emperor, and came to England in 1641—writings that condemned all churchly bigotry and pleaded for cosmopolitanism. As men of the most diverse views, political and religious, were in the lodges, the order suffered severely during the civil commotions of the first and second revolution, but on the return of peace it more than recovered lost prestige. The rebuilding of London, and in particular St. Paul’s Cathedral (1662), added greatly to the fame of English masonry: Sir Christopher Wren, builder of Saint Paul’s, was of the brotherhood. But about the time of the death of William III. (1702), owing to slackness of occupation in the building trades, the Freemason lodges became conscious of a serious defect in their organization. The members who were practically connected with the operative craft of masonry were steadily declining in number, and the “accepted” masons had become the majority. The lodges, therefore, had come to be a sort of clubs, and this transformation spread rapidly in London.

Another influence that came in to affect the development of English freemasonry was the diffusion of deistical opinions by Locke’s school in philosophy. Though the lodges then, as now, made loud protestations of orthodoxy, they could not withdraw themselves out of the deistical atmosphere of the period.

The resultant of these different influences gained the upper hand in the clubs or lodges of the quondam masons, now Freemasons. They now aimed at a more thorough betterment of morals on a conservatively deistical basis. But the necessity of a closer organization was recognized. Two theologians, Theophilus Desaguliers (who was both a naturalist and a mathematician) and James Anderson, together with George Payne, antiquary, were the foremost men of those who, in the year 1717, effected the union of the four lodges of masons in London in one Grand Lodge, and procured the election of a Grand Master and two Grand Wardens, thus instituting the Freemasons’ Union as it exists at this day. What Jerusalem is to Jews and Mecca to Mohammedans, and Rome to Catholics, that London is to Freemasons.