|
HISTORY OF FREEMASONRY
CHAPTER IX
THE OLD CHARGES
by H.L. HAYWOOD
SCIENTIFIC approach to what may be described as the
authentic historical period of Freemasonry must be made by
way of the curious documents which are known variously as
the Old Charges, the Ancient Constitutions, the Ancient
Manuscripts, the Gothic Manuscripts and the Legend of the
Craft. This does not mean that these venerable scriptures,
abounding in quaint conceits and naive legends, are to be
accepted as giving correct and dependable accounts of the
origins of the institution. To assume they did so would be as
absurd as to suppose that the Iliad of Homer gives a reliable
historical narrative of the siege of Troy. But if the modern
reader knew nothing of the ancient Greeks save what that
immortal poem tells of them, he would still have an excellent
idea of their racial characteristics and ideals. In like manner
the Old Charges illuminate the state of the Masonic Craft as
it was in the operative days, revealing what the ancient
brethren believed about their Fraternity, illustrating their
customs and practices and showing forth something of the
purposes which animated them.
To the historian they are of the utmost importance. The
critic's microscope finds in them innumerable hidden
implications. The turn of a phrase or the peculiar use of a
word may prove far more important for fixing a date than
anything related in a manuscript itself. Indeed, there are few
branches of knowledge more interesting than that which
bears upon the use of words. It is almost as difficult for a
man to forge another's finger prints as for an author to
conceal the era in which he writes. Even when he attempts
with the greatest skill and patience to imitate the literary style
of a previous age, he will be certain to make some error that
will betray the deception.
Living languages are forever changing. The same word may
mean one thing in one century and something entirely
different in a later century. The English of the original King
James version of the Holy Bible has undergone so many
alterations that a large part of it would be confusing, if not
actually unintelligible, if presented to an unschooled reader
of the twentieth century. The word conversation, for
instance, was formerly employed to denote conduct or
deportment, whereas it now has a different meaning. If a
modern were attempting to pass his own compositions off as
of the time of James and if he used such words as mob,
dynamite, lynching, self-conscious, egoism and thousands of
others, it would be proof positive, to the critic of discernment,
that the pretension of antiquity was wholly fraudulent. The
Ephraimites, who could not correctly pronounce the word
shibboleth, labored under no greater disadvantage than
does the author of one age who seeks to employ the
phraseology of an antecedent one. Every science, art, trade
and profession contributes to the whole language a jargon of
its own; in time many cant words acquire popular
acceptance and become imbedded in literature as well as in
the vernacular. What fossil remains are to one branch of
science, word forms are to another; they enable the
interpreter to fix with reasonable certainty the approximate
time in which they were commonly employed.
For this reason the ancient Masonic manuscripts have come
to a new importance in recent years. They have been
studied more diligently than ever before; constant search for
additional information has brought to light many that had
been forgotten. It is interesting to observe that, after
exhaustive search, William James Hughan in 1872 was able
to catalogue only thirty-two of them. Seventeen years later,
Gould listed sixty-two and by 1895 Hughan succeeded in
stretching his original list to sixty-six. In 1918 R.H. Baxter
had increased the number to ninety-eight. One of the most
important of all, the Regius poem, as the reader has already
noticed, was discovered in the late 1830's by a non-Masonic
investigator.
These ancient writings supply the basis for what
Freemasons ordinarily term the Landmarks of the Fraternity.
Few words are more often used and less commonly
understood than is this word Landmarks. It greets the
Freemason at every turn. Very early in hi Masonic career he
hears of the Landmarks as something too sacred and
inviolate ever to be subject to modification or change. They
are at the foundation of Masonic jurisprudence, as
unalterable as the laws of the Medes and Persians. Very few
active Masons have more than a vague general notion of
what they are, yet they affect every Mason in his
relationships with the Craft as a whole. Learned writers have
attempted at one time or other to reduce them to some
definite code of rules and practices, but most of the learned
writers do not agree with one another. Various lists give
enumerations of Landmarks running all the way up from
three to fifty.
The truth is that the Landmarks partake somewhat of the
principle of English common law and somewhat of that of the
unwritten British Constitution. They are like the common law
in that they relate to customs used by the Craft at a time to
which the memory of man runneth not to the contrary. They
are like the British Constitution in that although they are the
fundamental law of the Craft they do not constitute a definite
set of formularies which can be divided off into articles,
sections and clauses. It will perhaps serve the present
purpose to describe the Landmarks as a body of Masonic
precedents derived from immemorial usage. To ascertain
whether a given doctrine is a Landmark it is therefore
necessary to ascertain whether it was in accordance with
Masonic practice at the earliest time of which there is record.
The several lists enumerate those customs which the
compilers consider important. It is clear that any article in
any list is invalid if it can be shown to be contrary to
immemorial usage; conversely there is a measure of validity
for every article in every list which cannot be shown to be
contrary to immemorial usage.
By this test, if it can be shown that the ancient brethren
insisted upon belief in a Supreme Being and the immortality
of the soul, then that doctrine must be accepted as a
Landmark; by the same token, if our ancient brethren
refused membership to all who were not freeborn men of
lawful age, hale in body and mind, that also may be
accepted as a Landmark. This background of basic law is
therefore the constitution of the Fraternity, which no Masonic
legislative power can amend or repeal. Provided it does not
infringe upon the provisions of that constitution, a Masonic
legislature - a Grand Lodge, for instance, - can make
whatever laws, rules and edicts may be advisable for the
government of the Craft.
In actual practice, every Grand Lodge does that very thing
and so, to a lesser degree, does every constituent Lodge.
But whenever complaint is raised that legislation has violated
the Landmarks, it becomes a subject or prompt judicial
determination when, if violation can be demonstrated, it
becomes null and void; no regular Mason is bound longer to
observe it, but every regular Mason may be bound to cease
Masonic intercourse with all who continue to observe it. It
may happen, of course, that the courts of different sovereign
Grand Jurisdictions will disagree as to whether there has
been violation; in that case, the individual Mason is obligated
to follow the interpretation of his own governing body. If it
breaks off Masonic intercourse with another Grand
jurisdiction, he is required, under pain of incurring that most
disagreeable of Masonic penalties, the stigma of
clandestinism, to break off Masonic intercourse with the
members yielding allegiance to that Grand jurisdiction.
It should be obvious that the term immemorial usage applies
in the main to usage which antedated the formation of the
first English Grand Lodge in 1717-1723. Few practices which
may have come into use since that time can be called
"immemorial," since they have been either ordered or
sanctioned by legislative or judicial authority, and of this
there is, or ought to be, authentic record. These new
customs therefore do not belong to the Landmarks, although
they may be wholly legal within themselves, since they have
been found to be not inconsistent with the Landmarks. Thus,
it will be readily apparent, that, since the Ancient
Manuscripts furnish almost the sole account of Masonic laws
and customs prior to the organization of the Grand Lodge,
these documents are of vital importance to Masonic
jurisprudence as well as to Masonic history.
It is with their historical import, however, that the present
work is chiefly concerned; although in the last analysis there
is probably no way to separate the purely historical from the
purely legal phase. In their language, in their legends, in
their doctrines and dogmas and above all in their customs,
these ancient records bear weighty attestation to the
medieval influences which held sway over the minds of
operative Craftsmen. Some of them are in the form of
manuscript rolls of parchment or paper, occasionally written
in the calligraphy of Gothic script. Others are written by hand
on sheets stitched together in book form; a few later ones
were printed in books from movable type. The oldest - the
Regius poem - is a copy dating from about the year 1390;
the most recent of them belong to the year 1725, or after the
creation of the first Grand Lodge.
The most striking thing about the older ones is the way in
which they differ from one another in their versions of the
Legend of the Craft. To historians of the lineal mind these
variations have caused no small amount of perplexity. They
indicate that there was not one basic tradition but that there
were several, and that these were in conflict in certain
important particulars. It would be difficult to understand how
this could be so if there had been one continuous, self-
conscious Fraternity, projected into the Middle Ages from the
remotest past. The difficulty disappears, however, when it is
noticed that all these versions can be related to a central
theme. They differ from one another precisely as certain folk
tales differ from one another; that is, they contain the germ
of a common idea which, in different countries, has sprouted
and grown in slightly different ways.
The Regius poem alone contains at least two, and perhaps
three, variations. The central narrative gives what has come
to be regarded as the general English version. But in one
place somebody has interpolated an allusion to the Four
Crowned Martyrs, which does not appear in any other
English version. Now the legend of the Four Crowned
Martyrs, although it is ignored in other English accounts,
played an important part in the lore of the German
Steinmetzen of the Middle Ages. Its appearance in an
English manuscript therefore becomes a theme for legitimate
curiosity.
According to this legend, four sculptors, Claudius, Castorius,
Semphorianus and Nicostratus, were employed among
others by the Roman Emperor Dioclein building a temple to
AEsculapius, god of health. They were devout Christians
and their constant prayers to the Saviour had brought them
remarkable skill at their work. An unskilled competitor,
Simplicius, upon learning the secret of their power,
embraced the Christian religion, whereupon he, too,
immediately became proficient. The fame of this conversion
reached the ears of the pagan authorities, who demanded
that the Christians abjure their faith. Although subjected to
barbarous scourgings, they refused to recant, and in
punishment were placed in leaden coffins which were thrown
into the Tiber. Later the bodies were recovered and placed
at rest in the catacombs.
Some months later four Christian soldiers, who were masons
by trade, were also tortured to death for refusing to do
homage to AEsculapius. All nine bodies ultimately came to
rest under a Christian basilica. The names of the soldiers
were unknown until the ninth century when it was said to
have been learned that they were Severus, Severianus,
Carpoferus and Victorianus. Meanwhile they had been
known as the Four Crowned Martyrs, they having received
the "crown" of martyrdom. There has been dispute whether
the distinction belonged to the soldiers or to the four original
sculptors, but, at any rate, all were regarded as distinguished
masons who had been immortalized by their fidelity. In time
the Four Crowned Ones became patron saints of German
Masons and probably of other medieval guilds.
The allusion to them in the Regius poem, in addition to the
fact that an early English church was dedicated to them, has
been urged as showing direct connection between the
mason guilds of England and Germany. It is rather a slender
circumstance upon which to place so much responsibility. A
more plausible supposition is that the legend had its origin in
the general. Catholic martyrology of the times; that the
compiler of the Regius narrative, coming across a German
legend, incorporated it into the body of his tale. Its non-
appearance in other English manuscripts may be taken as
an indication that their writers were not familiar with it. It was
rejected in the later mythology of the Craft, an almost certain
indication that it had come to be considered apocryphal.
It is not until the Regius poem passes from the realm of
legend and reaches that of practical affairs that it throws real
light upon the state of Masonry in the England of its day. It
contains a set of "articles" and one of
"points," which are of
interest not only as being the oldest extant code of Masonic
laws, but also as indicating the strictly utilitarian character of
teachings in the operative days. The following transcription
from the Regius verse is that of Silas H. Shepherd in The
Landmarks of Freemasonry:
1. The Master Mason must be steadfast, trusty and true and
render perfect justice to both his workmen and his employer.
2. The Master Mason shall be punctual in his attendance at
the general congregation or Assembly.
3. The Master must take no apprentice for less than seven
years.
4. The Master must take no apprentices who are bondsmen
but only such as are free and well born.
5. The Master shall not employ a thief or maimed man for an
apprentice but only those who are physically fit.
6. The Master must not take craftsmen's wages for
apprentices' labor.
7. The Master shall not employ a thief or immoral person.
8. The Master must maintain a standard of efficiency by not
permitting incompetent workmen to be employed.
9. The Master must not undertake to do work which he
cannot complete.
10. No Master shall supplant another in the work
undertaken.
11. The Master shall not require Masons to work at night
except in the pursuit of knowledge.
12. No Mason shall speak evil of his fellows' work.
13. The Master must instruct his apprentices in everything
they are capable of learning.
14. The Master shall take no apprentice for whom he has not
sufficient labor.
15. The Master is not to make false representations nor
compromise any sins of his fellows.
And the following are the "points":
1. Those who would be Masons and practice the Masonic art
are required to love God and his Holy Church, the Master for
whom they labor and their Masonic brethren, for this is the
true spirit of Masonry.
2. The Mason must work diligently in working hours that he
may lawfully refresh himself in the hours of rest.
3. The Mason must keep the secrets of his Master, his
brethren and the Lodge, faithfully.
4. No Mason shall be false to the Craft but maintain all its
rules and regulations.
5. The Mason shall not murmur at fair compensation.
6. The Mason shall not turn a working day into a holiday.
7. The Mason shall restrain his lust.
8. The Mason must be just and true to his brethren in every
way.
9. The Mason shall treat his brethren with equity and in the
spirit of brotherly love.
10. Contention and strife shall not exist among the brethren.
11. The Mason should caution his brother kindly about any
error into which he may be about to fall.
12. The Mason must maintain every ordinance of the
Assembly.
13. The Mason must not steal nor protect one who does.
14. The Mason must be true to the laws of Masonry and to
the laws of his country.
15. The Mason must submit to the lawful penalty for any
offense he may commit.
|