The History of Freemasonry

by Albert Gallatin Mackey

Chapter 5 - Early Masonry in France

The first link: Settlement of Roman Colleges - Contents - Early Masonry in Britain

The condition of Masonry in Gaul, which afterward became France, immediately subsequent to the decadence of the Roman Empire, and afterward up to the Middle Ages, we are by no means as familiar as we are with its condition during the same period in Germany and in Britain. French Masonic writers have been too speculative in their views, and have given too loose a rein to their imaginations, to permit us to attach any value to the authenticity of what they present as historical statements.

This is a fault, which it is but fair to say has been shared by the English writers of what has been called Masonic history. Clavel and Thory are hardly to be considered more reliable as historians than Anderson and Oliver. In the works of each of these distinguished writers we find many statements which are hardly plausible, and which, although offered as historical facts, are wholly unsupported by any authentic authority.

But recently in England a new school of Masonic history has sprung up, which is rapidly clearing away the cobwebs of absurdity and inconsistency, of doubt and error which had been woven around the pure form of history by the older writers of the last and the beginning of the present century.

In France, no such school has been established. In that country there have been no Hughans, Woodfords, or Lyons to exhume from their sepulcher, on the shelves of national or private libraries, the old charters and capitularies which might throw some light on the real condition of the Masonic sodalities which were left behind in Gaul on the retreat of the Roman legions, and which were afterward developed, by a gradual but uninterrupted growth, into the building corporations of the Middle Ages.

If the scholars of France supply us with no valuable assistance in our inquiries on this subject, we shall look in vain for aid from English or German writers.

These have, in general, thought it a task sufficiently arduous to seek the elucidation of the Masonic history of their own countries, and have not, therefore, found either time or inclination to labor, to any great extent, in other fields.

Even Findal, who is somewhat exhaustive in his account of the early and mediaeval Masonry of Britain, and more especially of Germany passes over that of France without notice. Indeed he begins his chapter on French Masonry with the year 1725 as his starting-point, and thus entirely ignores all the events that preceded the organization of the modern lodges in Paris after the revival, as it is called, which took place in London in the year 1717.

Hence his history is not really that of Masonry in France, but only that of the French Grand Lodge.

From Kloss, another German writer of eminence, we derive no better information. He wrote in two volumes a History of Freemasonry in France, Drawn from Authentic Documents, but his theory is that the Institution was introduced into France from England, and he goes, like Findal, no farther back than to the organization of a French lodge in 1715, under the auspices of the Grand Lodge of England.

It will be seen, when we come to the consideration of the origin of the Grand Lodge of Speculative Masons in France, that there is great question of the correctness of this date, for the researches of Bro. Hughan have led to the doubt whether there was a legal lodge in France, deriving its authority from the English Grand Lodge before the year 1732. This, however, is not germane to the present inquiry.

It is altogether in vain that we look in the pages of French Masonic writers, such as Thory and Clavel, for any documentary history of French Freemasonry anterior to the beginning of the 8th century.

Thory, in his Acta, Lalomorum, commences his annals, so far as they relate to France, with the year 1725, and the establishment of a lodge in Paris by the titular Earl of Derwentwater. Not a single word does be say of the condition of the association, either as Operative or Speculative, previous to that date.

Clavel, in his Histoire Pictitresaite, gives a very loose and indefinite account of the origin of Freemasonry in France. He traces it, and in so far he is correct, to the Roman Colleges of Artificers through the architects of Lombardy, and passes very rapidly on to the connection of the French operative Masons with the building corporations of Germany and the Grand Lodge of Strasburg. But he does not attempt to show how that connection was effected. There is no objection to the theory which he propounds. His principal fault, as an historian, lies in his extreme generalization and in the meagerness of his details. Taking as his point of departure the Roman colleges, he leaps almost at a bound from them to the mediaeval corporations. He devotes no attention to the period which immediately succeeded the fall of the empire, nor to the influences exerted on, or the methods pursued by, the Roman and Gallic Masons who were left in Gaul on the departure of the legions, and which led to the gradual development of the guilds, sodalities, or lodges which sprang up in time as the successors of the Roman colleges.

But another falling of Clavel as an historian, and one which produces the most unsatisfactory results upon the minds of his readers. is that he produces no documents, does not even refer to any, and cites no authority to corroborate any of the statements that he makes.

Even in a writer of acknowledged care and attention to the credibility and genuineness of the facts that he records, such a method of treating an historical narrative would be objectionable. But what little claim Clavel's unsupported assertions have to our respect, and how far they are from necessarily demanding our belief, may be learned from the fact that he cites as an undoubted instance of the existence of a Masonic lodge in the year 1512, what is now known to have been merely a convivial society of literary men who met at Florence in that year under the title of the " Society of the Trowel." (1)

(1) It counted some of the most distinguished inhabitants of Florence among its members. Its symbols were the trowel, the square, the hammer, and the level, and its patron saint was St. Andrew. Vasari describes it as a festive association of Florentine artists, who met annually to dine together. He describes the origin of its existence and its title to the merely accidental circumstance that certain painters and sculptors, dining together in a garden, observed in the vicinity of their table a mass of mortar in which a trowel was sticking. Some rough practical jokes passed thereupon, such as casting portions of the mortar on each other and the calling for the trowel to scrape it off. They then re-

The allusion to an implement of operative masonry in the title of the society, led Clavel, as it has done Reghellini, Lenning, and some others, to believe that it was a Masonic organization. But a reference to the authority of Vasari, in his Lives of the Painters would have shown that the apparently professional title was actually selected by a mere accident and in reference to a jocular proceeding which suggested the name.

There is hardly any necessity to refer to the writings of the Chevalier Ramsay, as throwing any light on the early history of Masonry in France. His theory is that Freemasonry originated among the Crusaders and was introduced into France by the Templars, who brought it with them on their return from Palestine. This hypothesis is now generally, perhaps I should say universally, admitted to be untenable. It comprises a history, or the figment of a history, not founded on facts nor supported by any documentary evidence, but one that was simply invented to sustain a preconceived theory. The theory was first invented and then the history was written. Hence it has been rejected by all scholars and has fallen into utter extinction together with the system of Strict Observance that was founded in it. In this work, which seeks to trace Freemasonry back to the Colleges of Artificers of Rome, it can of course have no place.

Rebold is a pleasing exception to the rest of his countrymen who have treated or attempted to treat this subject, though it is to be regretted that he has not thought proper to corroborate his statements by a reference to authorities, or by what would have been most valuable, the citation of any old records or constitutions. On the whole, however, he is more satisfactory than any other writer of early French Masonic history, and gives a fuller account of the institution as it existed when Gaul emerged from the dominion of Rome.

His history, (1) briefly analyzed, is to the following effect lie says that Masonry was introduced into Gaul by the Roman confraternities of builders, one of which was attached to each legion of the army. He describes the vicissitudes to which these architects were

solved to dine together annually, and as a memorial of the ludicrous event that had led to their organization as a dinner-club they called themselves the Societi della Cuechiara, or the Society of the Trowel.

(1) "Histoire des Trois Grandes Loges de Franc-macons en France," Paris, 1864.

subjected during the repeated conflicts of the Romans with the hordes of barbarians, whose alternate defeats and successes were followed by the destruction or the renewal of the labors of the Masons. At length, in the year 426, the victorious arms of Clovis, King of the Franks, put an end to the Roman domination, and the armies of the empire left, forever, the soil of Gaul.

But the confraternities of builders, which had come into the country with the Roman legions, remained there after their departure. They, however, underwent material alterations in their organization, and developed a new system, which Rebold thinks became the basis of that Freemasonry which existed for a long time afterward in France.

Moller, in his Memorials of German Gothic Architecture, (1) when referring to the fact that the Roman architecture of the 5th and 6th centuries prevailed at a much later period in Italy, Spain, Gaul, and Britain, explains the circumstance as follows:

"The conquerors did not exterminate the old inhabitants, but left to them exclusively, at least in the first periods of their invasion, the practice of those arts of peace, upon which the rude warrior looked with contempt. And even at a later time, the intimate connection with Rome, which the clergy, then the only civilized part of the nation, entertained, and the unceasing and generally continued use of the Latin language in the divine service, gave considerable influence to Roman arts and sciences. This must have been so much more the case, from the constant obligation of all freemen to devote themselves to war; whereby the practice of the arts was left almost exclusively to the clergy."

The corporations of builders which had been attached, some to the legions and some to the governors of the provinces, under whose orders they had constructed many great edifices, then began to admit into their bosom a large number of native Gauls who had been converted to Christianity.

The most important modification, however, to which they were compelled to submit, was this that being originally a general association of artisians, whose central sect and school of instruction was at Rome, they were obliged to abandon this relation on the retreat of the Roman armies from Gaul, and the severance of all

(1) Translation by W.H. Leeds, London, 1836, p. 17.

political connection between the province and the imperial, government.

The builders, as well as the other craftsmen, then divided themselves into a variety of sodalities, each being occupied with the cultivation of a different art or trade.

It is here that Rebold should have cited some authority for his statement of a fact that is contrary to what has always been supposed to be the true character of the Roman colleges. The division into different trades, which he supposes to have been a forced necessity in Gaul, was in existence, if history be correct, from the first organization of the colleges by Numa, when they were ten in number, which was subsequently increased to a large extent under the empire

These sodalities of different trades, he says, subsequently gave rise to the corporations or guilds of the Middle Ages.

Of these sodalities, that of the builders, or Masons, being the most important, and the one most needed in the countries where they were left after the departure of the Romans, especially in Gaul and Britain, were alone enabled to retain the ancient organization and the ancient priveleges while they had possessed under the domination of the Romans.

But amid the continued invasions of barbarians, and the wars and political disturbances that followed, the confraternities of builders were at last everywhere without occupation. The arts and architecture among then; paralyzed by international contests, found a refuge only in the monasteries, where they were successfully cultivated by the ecclesiastics who had been admitted into the fraternity of Masons.

Among the most celebrated architects of France who were the products of those rnonastic schools of architecture, Rebold mentions St. Eloi, Bishop of Noyon; St. Fereol, of Limoges; Dalmac, of Rodez; and Agniola, of Chalons, all of whom flourished in the 7th century. But he says that there were among the laity, also, architects not less distinguished, under whose direction numerous edifices were built in Gaul and in Britain at a later period.

The most distinguished of those whom Rebold has described as architects and as the disciples of the monastic schools of architecture was St. Eloi, or Eligius. But St. Eloi was not an architect, but a goldsmith, having regularly served an apprenticeship to that trade, even after his appointment by Clothaire II. to the position of treasurer, or master of the mint. Subsequently, when fifty-two years of age, he was elevated to the bishopric of Noyon, for which he was obliged to prepare himself by two years of study and admission to ecclesiastical orders.

As a prelate be patronized, as many others had done, the architects by the erection of churches and monasteries. But his connection with Operative Masonry is rather through the guild organizations than through any close connection with the craft of building. He organized the monks of his abbey, according to St. Croix, (1) into a guild or school of smiths, for whom he drew up a code of regulations.

According; to the same authority the statutes for the government of the craftsmen of Paris, prepared in the 14th century by Stephen Boileau, were but a transcript of those of St. Eloi.

Whittington says that St. Eloi belonged, properly, to the class of professional artists who were magnificently patronized and held in high estimation by him. (2)

The writer of his life in the Spicilegium describes him as a very skillful goldsmith and most learned in all constructive arts." (3)

It is very evident that Rebold has so far given us the early history of architecture in France rather than that of Freemasonry. In this respect, his work follows, in its spirit, that of Dr. Anderson in the first and especially in the second edition of the Book of Constitutions. To the student of Masonic history such annals are of value only because of the traditional relations that exist between the Operative and the Speculative systems.

Well-authenticated history leaves us no room to doubt that the Romans introduced architecture into France, or, to speak more correctly, into Gaul at a very early period, and many magnificent ruins are still remaining in the older cities as Arles, Avignon, Nimes, and other ancient places, which are the vestiges of the labors of builders and architects under the Roman domination. In fact, when the barbarians began their invasions into Gaul, the soil was covered with the monuments of Roman art. Many of these were destroyed,

(1) "Les Arts au Moyen Age et la Renaissance." (2) "Ecclesiastical Antiquities of France," P. 27. (3) Aurifex partissimus atque in omni arte fabricaudi doctissimus. "Spicilegium," t.v ., in Vita S. Eligii.

but there still remained, in the 6th century, a great number of public and private edifices which had been spared. In fact, there is at Nimes a temple and an aqueduct still remaining, in a state of excellent preservation. The former is now used as a museum of antiquities, and the latter, known as the pont du gard, is solid and strong, and is admitted by antiquaries to be the noblest Roman monument in France.

The people, during a long period of subjection to the Roman rule, had been traditionally educated in the architectural taste and spirit of Rome, and hence with the revival of the art of construction in the 6th, 7th and 8th centuries, the Christian churches became but the reflection of the Pagan basilica, and the palaces of kings and the castles of nobles were but copies of the Romano-Gallic villas.

Hence French Masonic writers have, with a great claim to plausibility, assumed that the Masons of France were a continuation in regular and uninterrupted descent of the Roman Colleges of Artificers. This view has been strengthened by another historical fact, that admits of no doubt, that Charlemagne, whose name and that of his grandfather Charles Alartel are frequently referred to as patrons of Masonry in the old English records, was distinguished for his zeal in the erection of churches and palaces and brought many architects from Byzantium into France, founding there, or rather transplanting there, the Byzantine Order of Architecture which, however, afterward gave place to the Gothic, or that Order of which the mediaeval Freemasons were, it is generally conceded, the inventors.

Rebold, (1) who, as an historian, occupies a middle term between the incredulous iconoclasm of the modern school and the facile credulity of the early Masonic annalists, says that after the final evacuation of Gaul by the Romans, about the end of the 5th century, though many of the Colleges of Artificers which had been established under the Roman domination remained in Gaul, yet their organization underwent important modifications. In the first place the general association of the dim erent artisans who were necessary to the pursuit of architecture, religious, naval, and hydraulic, or the building of temples, of ships, and of bridges and aqueducts, being no longer able to maintain itself in a country which had been abandoned by the Romans, and having lost its center of action and its principal school at

(1) "Histoire des Trois Grandes Loges," p. 24.

Rome, no longer practiced architecture as a profession in common and under one head, but was divided into various associations, each of which occupied itself thereafter with only the study and practice of a single art or trade.

It is in this way that he accounts for the rise of the corporations which flourished subsequently in the Middle Ages, and which were in the transition period between the ancient colleges and the modern lodges.

Of these different sodalities, which sprang out of the general association of artisans existing under the Roman Empire, the corporation of builders or masons, as being the most important fraction, preserved, says Rebold, their ancient organization and their ancient privileges, because the countries in which they resided after the departure of the Romans, being greatly in need of their services as builders, freely accorded to them the privileges which they had possessed under the Romans.

The Teutonic invaders of Gaul who drove out the Romans, though barbarians, were wise enough not to destroy the old monuments of Roman art and civilization, but to make use of and profit by them.

But in the same century the cathedral erected by Naumatius, Bishop of Auvergne, surpassed that of Perpeticus. Gregory of Tours, who was a native of Auvergne, describes the edifice with much eloquence of phrase in his Historia Francorum, and states the fact, interesting as showing the collection of high ecclesiastics with operative Masonry, that he built it according to his own designs- ecclesiam suo studio fabricavat.

The invasion of the Franks into Gaul in the 6th century caused at first, amid the tumult of war, while the arts of peace were silent, the destruction of religious edifices. But the conversion and baptism of Clovis placed Christianity on a firm foundation and caused the preservation of the remaining monuments of the ancient civilization.

The Franks, who were a bold, enterprising and warlike offshoot from the great Teutonic race, and who were the real founders of the kindom which afterward became modern France, were notwithstanding their intestine broils and their conflicts with neighboring people, inclined to cultivate the arts of peace. They occupied, says Mr. Church, a land of great natural wealth and great geographical advantages, which had been prepared for them by Latin culture; they inherited great cities which they had not built, and fields and vineyards which they had not planted; and they had the wisdom not to destroy but to use their conquest. (1)

The Franks were indeed friendly to Roman culture; preserved many of the Roman laws and customs, and accepted for their vernacular a modified form of the Latin language.

Hence architecture, which had languished during the stormy period when the Romans were unsuccessfully striving to defend their acquired provinces and the very existence of the empire itself from the barbarous hordes of northern invaders, began, in the 5th and 6th centuries, to revive, The confraternities of builders and the art of architecture to some extent, says Rebold, (2) resumed activity.

The fact, already adverted to elsewhere, that the art of building, especially of religious edifices, had passed into the hands of the monks, is found to prevail also in the history of the art in France at this early period. The remarks of Mr. Whittington on this subject in his Historical Survey are well worthy of quotation.

"The ancient writers often mention instances of an abbot giving a plan which his convent assisted in carrying into execution. The edifices of religion owed their first existence to the zeal of the clergy. The more enlightened prelates invented or procured the plans and carried them into execution. But although from record as well as from probability we may conclude that the arts in this age were principally cultivated by the clergy, it is no less certain that there were persons who practiced them as a profession. What that powerful Order found necessary to promote by their own exertions, they did not fail to patronize in others, and to the common masons and carpenters who might be found in the different cities of France persons of superior skill and intelligence were added who were invited from distant quarters by the enterprising liberality of the bishops. The superstition of the times and the authority of the Church secured them employment and protection; they gradually increased in numbers and improved in science, till at length they produced the most able artificers from among themselves. France, in fact, at this

(1) "The Beginning of the Middle Ages," by R. W. Church, Dean of St. Paul's, p. 85. (2) "Histoire des Trois Grandes Loges," p. 25.

time was not without professional artists, but they seem to have been neither numerous nor eminent, and the clergy were frequently left to their own exertions and resources. Gregory of Tours (who flourished in the 6th century) speaks of several of his predecessors as if they had superintended the building of their churches, particularly Ommatius, who rebuilt the Church of Sts. Gervase and Protasius and began that of St. Mary; and he expressly affirms that Leo Bishop of Tours was an artist of great skill, particularly in works of carpentry, and that he built towers which be covered with gilt bronze, some of which had lasted till his time. One general spirit indeed seems to have prevailed among the French Bishops of the 6th century to establish new churches and to improve the towns of their dioceses." (1)

The progress of architecture in the 7th century under St. Eloi, or Eligius, and during the reign of Clothaire II., has already been referred to. In the 7th and 8th centuries the mode of building and the artistic taste of the builders remained about the same as in the 6th, but the features were somewhat enlarged and enriched, and towers and belfries became common.

In the 9th century, architecture and operative Masonry received a new impetus under the fostering care of Charlemagne. The buildings erected in his reign exceeded in taste and extent the works of preceding monarches. There was an increased intercourse with the East and with Byzantine artists. Italian architects were brought from Lombardy, and the monuments of ancient Rome were imitated. (2)

The anonymous Monk of the Monastery of St. Gall, who wrote the Gestes de Charlemagne, in describing the cathedral of Aix-la Chapelle, which was erected by Charlemagne, says that it surpassed in splendor the works of the ancient Romans, and that for its construction he called together masters and workmen from all parts of the continent. (3)

Rebold thinks that the fact that Charlemagne had sought for builders in other counties an evidence of their diminution in

(1) "Historical Survey of the Ecclesiastical Antiquities of France," P. 22. (2) Ibid., p. 30. (3) "Basilica, antiquis Romanorum operibus praestantiore, brevi ab eo fabricate, ex omnibus cismarinis regionibus, magistris et opificibus advocatis." Legend, lib, i., cap. xxxii

France. This is scarcely a legitimate conclusion. The monarch might very properly avail himself of the skill and experience of foreign artists, without necessarily indicating by their importation that there were none in his own country. The wrecks of the ancient Roman colleges were still remaining in Lombardy, and it has already been shown that there was a flourishing school of architecture at Como.

Indeed it cannot be doubted that the intercourse established by Charlemagne, between France and other countries of Europe, was very favorable to the progress and improvement of the arts. The number of artists was greatly increased, and they were supplied with better models for imitation.

"Charlemagne," says Sismondi, " was one of the greatest characters of the Middle Ages. Contrasted with his contemporaries, he possessed all the advantages of a man who was a stranger to his age. As we have seen before his time, extraordinary men who have subjugated a civilized people by the energy of a character hall savage, so in him we see a man who, being in advance of the civilization of his times, has subdued barbarians by the force of his intellect and by his knowledge. He combined the qualities of a legislator with those of a warrior, and united the genius which creates with the vigilant prudence which preserves and maintains an empire. lie drew together in one chain barbarians and Romans, the con querors and the conquered, and united them in a new empire. He laid the foundations of a new order for Europe, an order which essentially reposed on the virtues of a hero, and on the respect and admiration which he inspired." (1)

Such has been at all times the concurrent opinion of all historians with the exception of Voltaire, and perhaps a few others. And even they, while charging him with unproved faults and even crimes, admit the magnificence of his enterprises and the splendor of his reign. It is therefore singular that in the traditions of the early Masons his name has not been permitted to occupy a place.

In the Legend of the Craft, found in the Old Records of the English Masons, the introduction of Masonry into France is attributed to a certain Greek: artist who had been at the building of the Temple of Solomon, and came into France in the time of Charles

(1) Sismondi, "Histoire des Republique Italiennes," tome i., chap. i., p. 19.

Martel, who patronized the Craft made Masons, and gave them charges. (1)

The gross anachronism of making a workman at Solomon's temple a visitor at the court of Charles Martel at once, exposes the great ignorance and the liability to error of the original composer of the "legend. It is not, therefore, at all improbable that he confounded Charles Martel with his grandson Charlemagne.

It is very evident that the spirit of the Legend does not apply to Martel, who, during his administration under two feeble kings, was fully occupied in wars with rebellious subjects, with the Saxons on the north and the Saracens from Spain in the south, and who had neither time nor inclination to devote to the arts of peace. The monks, who were then the principal builders, were not his favorites, and St. Boniface has not hesitated to call him " the destroyer of monasteries." It is hardly to be doubted that he destroyed more than he built.

Charlemagne, on the contrary, was, as we have seen, the patron of the arts of civilization, and might, with but a little stretch of imagination, be called the founder of ope rative Masonry in France. His intercourse with Byzantium and the East gives color also to the legend that he was visited by a Greek architect, which is simply a symbolic expression of the idea that Byzantine architecture and Greek art and culture were beginning to be introduced into France and the West during the period in which Charlemagne reigned.

We may, therefore, I think very safely correct the English

(1) It may be well to note here an error as to the signification of the name of this celebrated Mayor of the Palace, who, without assuming the title, exercised all the functions of a king. It has been the universal custom to derive the word Martel from the French Marteau, which signifies a hammer, and it has been supposed that he obtained the cognomen from the fact that he crushed the barbarians with whom he fought, as with a hammer as potent as that of Thor. And so it has been very usual with English writers to Anglicize his name as Charles the "Hammer." But M. de Feller (Biographie Univer-

selle), a very competent authority on French etymology, has shown that Martel is only a synonym of Martin; that Martin was a familiar name in the family of Pepin, of which Charles Martel was a member, and that it was adopted in the spirit of devotion to St. Martin, who was then the favorite saint of the Franks. This note is not exactly germane to the history we are pursuing, but the subject is interesting enough to claim a passing notice. It must, however, in fairness be admitted that M. Michelet (Histoire de France, lib. ii., p. 112), an authority as good, at least, as M. de Feller, recognizes the current derivation from Marteau, which he thinks referred to the hammer of the Scandinavian god Thor, and he thence concludes that Charles was not a Christian.

Legend of the Craft by substituting the name of Charlemagne for that of Charles Martel.

Louis the Feeble, the son and successor of Charlemagne, though, as the sobriquet which was bestowed upon him imports, a prince of no force of character, yet patronized architecture, and in his reign many religious structures were built, under the superintendence of his architect. The name of this artist was Rumalde. We know scarcely more of him than the fact that he was the architect of Louis. Whittington thinks it probable that he was not an ecclesiastic, since it is clear that he practiced his art as a profession, and professional architects were at that time becoming common.

The universal belief that prevailed in the 10th century, in the approaching destruction of the world and the advent of the millennium, had naturally the effect of paralyzing all industrial arts, and architecture made little or no progress.

But in the 11th century there was a revival, and the records of that period contain the names of many distinguished architects, who were not monks but professional architects, for Masonry had for some time been passing away out of the hands of the ecclesiastics in those of the laity and the guilds.

The guilds or trade corporations, in France began about this time to take an active existence and to exert a powerful interest on the progress of the arts. The consideration of their history is well worthy of a distinct chapter. But our attention must now be turned to the early history of Masonry in other countries.

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