The Travelling Freemasons of the Middle Ages.
The first of these points to which I refer is the establishment of a body
of architects, widely disseminated throughout Europe during the middle
ages under the avowed name of _Travelling Freemasons_. This association of
workmen, said to have been the descendants of the Temple Masons, may be
traced by the massive monuments of their skill at as early a period as the
ninth or tenth century; although, according to the authority of Mr. Hope,
who has written elaborately on the subject, some historians have found the
evidence of their existence in the seventh century, and have traced a
peculiar masonic language in the reigns of Charlemagne of France and
Alfred of England.
It is to these men, to their preeminent skill in architecture, and to
their well-organized system as a class of workmen, that the world is
indebted for those magnificent edifices which sprang up in such
undeviating principles of architectural form during the middle ages.
"Wherever they came," says Mr. Hope, "in the suite of missionaries, or
were called by the natives, or arrived of their own accord, to seek
employment, they appeared headed by a chief surveyor, who governed the
whole troop, and named one man out of every ten, under the name of warden,
to overlook the nine others, set themselves to building temporary huts[35]
for their habitation around the spot where the work was to be carried on,
regularly organized their different departments, fell to work, sent for
fresh supplies of their brethren as the object demanded, and, when all was
finished, again raised their encampment, and went elsewhere to undertake
other jobs." [36]
This society continued to preserve the commingled features of operative
and speculative masonry, as they had been practised at the temple of
Solomon. Admission to the community was not restricted to professional
artisans, but men of eminence, and particularly ecclesiastics, were
numbered among its members. "These latter," says Mr. Hope, "were
especially anxious, themselves, to direct the improvement and erection of
their churches and monasteries, and to manage the expenses of their
buildings, and became members of an establishment which had so high and
sacred a destination, was so entirely exempt from all local, civil
jurisdiction, acknowledged the pope alone as its direct chief, and only
worked under his immediate authority; and thence we read of so many
ecclesiastics of the highest rank--abbots, prelates, bishops--conferring
additional weight and respectability on the order of Freemasonry by
becoming its members--themselves giving the designs and superintending
the construction of their churches, and employing the manual labor of
their own monks in the edification of them."
Thus in England, in the tenth century, the Masons are said to have
received the special protection of King Athelstan; in the eleventh
century, Edward the Confessor declared himself their patron; and in the
twelfth, Henry I. gave them his protection.
Into Scotland the Freemasons penetrated as early as the beginning of the
twelfth century, and erected the Abbey of Kilwinning, which afterwards
became the cradle of Scottish Masonry under the government of King Robert
Bruce.
Of the magnificent edifices which they erected, and of their exalted
condition under both ecclesiastical and lay patronage in other countries,
it is not necessary to give a minute detail. It is sufficient to say that
in every part of Europe evidences are to be found of the existence of
Freemasonry, practised by an organized body of workmen, and with whom men
of learning were united; or, in other words, of a combined operative and
speculative institution.
What the nature of this speculative science continued to be, we may learn
from that very curious, if authentic, document, dated at Cologne, in the
year 1535, and hence designated as the "Charter of Cologne." In that
instrument, which purports to have been issued by the heads of the order
in nineteen different and important cities of Europe, and is addressed to
their brethren as a defence against the calumnies of their enemies, it is
announced that the order took its origin at a time "when a few adepts,
distinguished by their life, their moral doctrine, and their sacred
interpretation of the arcanic truths, withdrew themselves from the
multitude in order more effectually to preserve uncontaminated the moral
precepts of that religion which is implanted in the mind of man."
We thus, then, have before us an aspect of Freemasonry as it existed in
the middle ages, when it presents itself to our view as both operative and
speculative in its character. The operative element that had been infused
into it by the Dionysiac artificers of Tyre, at the building of the
Solomonic temple, was not yet dissevered from the pure speculative element
which had prevailed in it anterior to that period.