Before “accepted” and “speculative” members who were neither stonemasons nor architect were allowed to join the craft, it operated for centuries as a professional guild.
by Massimo Introvigne
Article 2 of 8. Read article 1.
In the first article of the series, I discussed the legend of the Rosicrucians. Since Rosicrucians, in the sense of members of a brotherhood dating back to the Middle Ages, were basically fictional characters, those who sought them based on the early 17th century manifestos could not find them. However, in the 17th and into the 18th century the number of those seeking them grew. Among the many places where people went to look for Rosicrucians were the ancient guilds of arts and crafts, which were losing their economic importance but retained a rich body of symbols and legends. This was particularly true in England and Scotland.
The guild of free masons, experiencing its heyday in the Middle Ages, had its roots in the professional groups of builders that during the Roman Empire had taken the name “collegia fabrorum.” With the waning of the Western Roman Empire these “collegia” quickly disappeared, except for the regions of Italy that remained connected to Byzantium such as Ravenna, Venice, and Rome. There, during the early Middle Ages they changed their name to “scholae,” without, however, undergoing substantial changes.
In the areas of Italy occupied by the Longobards, and where Roman institutions had been abolished, the guilds continued nonetheless their existence. This is evidenced by the experience of the “Maestri Comacini,” who originated in the ancient diocese of Como. From Como, they spread to the rest of Italy and around the year 1000, gave birth to a peculiar Longobard style considered by specialists as a prelude to Romanesque art. Privileges reserved for the Comacini were established by the Longobard king Rothari (606–652), who codified Longobard civil customs in his Edict of 642.
Between the 7th and 10th centuries, builders grouped in monastic associations built churches and monasteries. Between the 11th and 12th centuries confraternities of lay builders appeared. Finally, especially in Germanic and Anglo-Saxon countries, guilds of builders organized as associations of a corporate type were formed, related to the ancient Germanic practice of “convivium.”
A page by one of the greatest historians of Italian Freemasonry, Carlo Francovich (1910–1990), can help to penetrate the experience of these realities: “These corporations, as indeed all medieval associations, had certain specific functions to be conducted in the interest of the adherents. Foremost among these was the teaching and perfecting of the art, from which derived two necessities: gradualism and secrecy. Gradualism placed the various members in the various categories, according to their abilities and according to their knowledge of the art. Generally, it seems that the guild was divided into the three grades of apprentice, worker, and master. The venue where the members met was the hut erected near the building under construction and precisely called the lodge. In West-Central Europe, when it came to building a Gothic cathedral, the lodge built parallel to the church was, like the church, facing from the east (‘ex oriente lux’) to the west. The masters imparted teachings to the two first degrees and decided the promotion of the adherent from one degree to the other. Their teaching was not only technical, but also moral and religious […]. As is obvious, the teachings of the art were given under the seal of secrecy: the secrets of the trade, it is still said today. And to make the secrecy more solemn and more demanding, the revelations of the art were imparted according to certain rites and oaths, which, while falling within Christian-Catholic orthodoxy, were distinguished by their own particular characterization from the official religion” (“Storia della Massoneria in Italia dalle origini alla Rivoluzione francese”, Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1974, 2–3).
Those in the guild of free masons were called in England “ffremasons” in 1376 and “masonfree” in 1381, “ffremaceons” in a later license of the Archbishop of Canterbury (who contrasted them with “lathomos vocatos ligiers,” from the term “ligius,” meaning “vassals”), and finally “freemasons” in English and “franc-maçons” in French. The guild included construction workers from stonemasons to architects. It had as mentioned earlier a fairly lush legendary inspired by famous buildings of antiquity, from Noah’s ark to Solomon’s temple.
Could not the secrets of the Rosicrucians lie in this guild, someone wondered in the seventeenth century? The answer, of course, was no, again, for the good reason that the Rosicrucians did not exist. But this did not prevent nobles and bourgeois enthusiasts of Rosicrucian mysteries from being received, paying their dues, in the “lodges” of the guild of “free masons,” even though they were neither architects nor masons.
The phenomenon began in Scotland in the last years of the sixteenth century and by the end of the 17th century was so widespread that by then it was no longer sufficient in Britain to speak of freemasons. It was necessary to specify whether these were “operative” masons, i.e., workers in the old guild, or “accepted,” i.e., those who entered the lodges in search of Rosicrucian secrets or just for social reasons. The expression “speculative” came into use in the first decades of the 18th century to refer to the non-“operative” members who joined lodges for esoteric and philosophical reasons and to distinguish them from the “accepted” who were motivated by simple curiosity or social reasons.
What did the “accepted” and the “speculative” find in Masonic guild lodges? Perhaps less than they expected. In England, local “operative” organizations were called “misteres” in the Middle Ages, a word that later transcribed to “mystery” understandably excited those in search of esoteric secrets. Unfortunately, modern philologists have ascertained that the archaic English word “mistere” is a simple misspelling of the Italian “mestiere” (trade). The importance of Italy for the activity of builders is well known.
The decisive elements in the formation of the later “speculative” ritual found in British “operative” freemasonry are basically two. On the one hand, there is a corpus of legends contained in the so-called “Manuscript Constitutions of Freemasonry,” the main texts of which are two manuscripts, “Halliwell,” better known as “Regius,” and “Cooke,” dating from the years 1390–1410.
The second element relevant to the later “speculative” developments found by the “accepted” in the lodges of Masonry is the “Masonic word,” a secret word or sign allowing members to recognize fellow freemasons they did not know personally.
