Mackey's Encylopedia

CHAIN, TRIANGULAR

One of the legends of Freemasonry tells us that when the Jewish Freemasons were carried as captives from Jerusalem to Babylon by Nebuchadnezzar they were bound by triangular chains, which was intended as an additional insult, because to them the triangle, or delta, was a symbol of the Deity, to be used only on sacred occasions. The legend is of course apocryphal, and is worth nothing except as a legendary symbol.

CHAIR

A technical term signifying the office of Master of a Lodge. Thus he is eligible to the chair is equivalent to he is eligible to the office of Master. The word is applied in the same sense to the presiding officer in other Masonic Bodies.

CHAIRMAN

The presiding officer of a meeting or committee. In all committees of a Lodge, the Worshipful Master, if he chooses to attend, is ex-offcio or by reason of that fact the chairman; as is the Grand Master of any meeting of the Craft when he is present.

CHAIR, MASTER IN THE

The German Freemasons call the Worshipful Master der Meister im Stuhl, or the Master in the Chair.

CHAIR, ORIENTAL

The seat or office of the Master of a Lodge is thus called---sometimes, more fully, the Oriental Chair of King Solomon.

CHAIR, PASSING THE

The ceremony of inducting the Master-elect of a Lodge into his office is called passing the chair. He who has once presided over a Lodge as its Master is said to have passed the chair, hence the title Past Master.

CHALDEA

A large tract of country, lying in a nearly northwest and southeast direction for a distance of four hundred miles along the course of the rivers Euphrates and Tigris, with an average width of one hundred miles. The kingdom of Chaldea, of which Babylon was the chief city, is celebrated in Masonic history as the place where the Jewish captives were conducted after the destruction of Jerusalem. At that time Nebuchadnezzar was the king. His successor during the captivity, were Evilmerodach, Neriglissar, Labosordacus, and Belshazzar. In the seventeenth year of his reign, the City of Babylon was taken and the Chaldean kingdom subverted by Cyrus, King of Persia, who terminated the captivity of the Jews, and restored them to their native country.

CHALDEAN CYLINDER

The cylinder discovered by Rassam in the course of his excavations in Babylonia, which greatly attracted the attention of the London Society of Biblical Archeology, is one of the most remarkable yet made known, by reason of the light it throws upon the ancient chronology of the Chaldean Empire. It dates from the time of Nabonides, and records, among various things, that this sovereign, when digging under the foundations of the Temple of the Sun-god at Sippara, forty-five years after the death of King Nebuchadnezzar, came upon a cylinder of Naramsin, the son of Nargon, which no one had seen for "3200 years. " This gives as the date of the ancient sovereign named 3750 B.C. This, and the fact pointed out by Professor Oppert, that there was in those early days already "lively intercourse between Chaldea and Egypt," will have to be taken into account by future Bible critics. This destroys the conception of Abraham, the founder of the Jews, as a wanderer or nomad, and establishes the existence of two highly civilized, as well as cultured, empires in Egypt and Chaldea more than 5,500 years ago ; that the highroad between them lay direct through Southern Palestine, and that Abraham was a native of the one great empire and an honored visitor in the other. Thus has been opened up a new field for investigation in the matter of Akkad and Akkadian civilization.

CHALDEANS or CHALDEES

The ancient Diodorus Siculus says the "most ancient"-inhabitants of Babylonia. There was among them, as among the Egiptians, a true priestly caste, which was both exclusive and hereditary; for although not every Chaldean was a priest, yet no man could be a priest among them unless he were a Chaldean. "At Babylon," says Doctor Smith (Ancient History of the East, page 398), "they were in all respects the ruling order in the body politic, uniting in themselves the characters of the English sacerdotal and military classes. They filled all the highest offices of state under the king, who himself belonged to the order."

The Chaldean priests were famous for their astronomical science, the study of which was particularly favored by the clear atmosphere and the cloudless skies of their country, and to which they were probably urged by their national worship of the sun and the heavenly hosts. Diodorus Siculus says that they passed their whole lives in meditating questions of philosophy, and acquired a great reputation for their astrology. They were addicted especially to the art of divination, and framed predictions of the future.

They sought to avert evil and to insure good by purifications, sacrifices, and enchantments. They were versed in the arts of prophesying and explaining dreams and prodigies. All this learning among the Chaldeans was a family tradition; the son inheriting the profession and the knowledge of the priesthood from his father, and transmitting it to his descendants. The Chaldeans were settled throughout the whole country, but there were some special cities, such as Borsippa, Ur, Sippera, and Babylon, where they had regular colleges. The reputation of the Chaldeans for prophetic and magical knowledge was so great, that astrologers, and conjurers in general, were styled Babylonians and Chaldeans, just as the wandering fortune-tellers of modern times are called Egyptians or gipsies, and Ars Chaldoearum was the name given to all occult sciences.

CHALICE

A cup used in religious rites. It forms a part of the furniture of a Commandery of Knights Templar, and of some of the higher Degrees of the French and Scottish Rites. It should be made either of silver or of gilt metal. The stem of the chalice should be about four inches high and the diameter from three to six.

CHALK, CHARCOAL, AND CLAY

By these three substances are beautifully symbolized the three qualifications for the servitude of an Entered Apprentice---freedom, fervency, and zeal. Chalk is the freest of all substances, because the slightest touch leaves a trace behind. Charcoal, the most fervent, because to it, when ignited, the most obdurate metals yield; and Clay, the most zealous, because it is constantly employed in man's service, and is as constantly reminding us that from it we all came, and to it we must all return. In the earlier lectures of the eighteenth century, the symbols, with the same interpretation, were given as Chalk, Charcoal, and Earthen Pan.

CHAMBER OF REFLECTION

In the French and Scottish Rites, a small room adjoining the Lodge, in which, preparatory to initiation, the candidate is enclosed for the purpose of indulging in those serious meditations which its somber appearance and the gloomy emblems with which it is furnished are calculated to produce. It is also used in some of the advanced degrees for a similar purpose. Its employment is very appropriate, for, as Gädicke well observes, "It is only in solitude that we can deeply reflect upon our present or future undertakings, and blackness, darkness, or solitarine, is ever a symbol of death. A man who has undertaken a thing after mature reflection seldom turns back."

CHANCELLOR

An officer in a Council of Companions of the Red Cross, corresponding in some respects to the Senior Warden of a Symbolic Lodge.

CHANCELLOR, GRAND

An officer in the Supreme Councils and Grand Consistories of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite, whose duties are somewhat similar to those of a Corresponding Secretary.

CHAOS

A confused and shapeless mass, such as is supposed to have existed before God reduced creation into order. It is a Masonic symbol of the ignorance and intellectual darkness from which man is rescued by the light and truth of Freemasonry. Hence, Ordo ab chao, or, Order out af chaos, is one of the mottoes of the Institution.

CHAOS DISENTANGLED

One of the names formerly given to the Twenty-eighth Degree of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite, or Knight of the Sun. It is likewise found in the collection of M. Pyron. Discreet and Wise Chaos are the Forty-ninth and Fiftieth Degrees of the Rite of Mizraim.

CHAPEAU

The cocked hat worn in the United states bodies by Knights Templar. The regulations of the Grand Encampment of the United States, in 1862, prescribe that it shall be "the military chapeau, trimmed with black binding, one white and two black plumes, and appropriate cross on the left side. "

CHAPEL

The closets and anterooms so necessary and convenient to a Lodge for various purposes are dignified by German Masons with the title of Capellen, or chapels.

CHAPEL, MARY'S

Known also as the Lodge of Edinburgh. The oldest Lodge in Edinburgh, Scotland, whose Minutes extend as far back as the year 1599. This long stood as the oldest Minute, but in 1912 one was found of Aitchison's-Haven Lodge dated 1598 (see Aitchison's- Haven). They show that John Boswell, Esq., of Auchinleck was present in the Lodge in the year 1600, and that the Hon. Robert Moray, Quartermaster-General of the Army of Scotland, was created a Master Mason in 1641 at Newcastle by some members of the Lodge of Edinburgh who were present there with the Scotch Army. These facts show that at that early period persons who were not Operative Freemasons by profession were admitted into the Order. The Lodge of Edinburgh, Mary's Chapel, 18 No. 1 on the roll of the Grand Lodge of Scotland; the date of its formation is unknown, and at one time it stood first on the roll, but in 1807 the Mother Kilwinning Lodge was placed before it as No. 0. It met at one time in a chapel dedicated to the Virgin Mary; hence comes the second part of its name. Its history was published in 1873 by D. M. Lyon.

CHAPITER

The uppermost part of a column, pillar, or pilaster, serving as the head or crowning, and placed immediately over the shaft and under the entablature. The pillars which stood in front of the porch of King Solomon's Temple were adorned with chapiters of a peculiar construction, which are largely referred to, and their symbolism explained, in the Fellow Craft's Degree (see Pillars af the Porch).

CHAPLAIN

The office of Chaplain of a Lodge is one which is not recognized in the ritual of the United States of America, although often conferred by courtesy. The Master of a Lodge in general performs the ,duties of a Chaplain.

CHAPLAIN, GRAND

An office of very modern date in a Grand Lodge. It was first instituted on the 1st of May, 1775, on the occasion of the laying of the foundation of the Freemasons' Hall in London. It is stated in the English Constitutions of 1784 (page 314) that the office "which had been discontinued for several years, was this day revived," but there is no record of any appointment to it before the date given. This office is now universally recognized by the Grand Lodges of America. His duties are confined to offering up prayer at the communications of the Grand Lodge, and conducting its devotional exercises on public occasions.

CHAPTER

In early times the meetings of Freemasons were called not only Lodges, but Chapters and Congregations. Thus, the statute enacted in the third year of the reign of Henry VI of England, 1425 A. D., declares that "Masons shall not confederate in Chapiters and Congregations." The word is now exclusively appropriated to designate the bodies in which degrees more advanced than the symbolic are conferred. Thus there are Chapters of Royal Arch Masons in the York and American Rites and Chapters of Rose Croix Masons in the Ancient and Accepted Rite.

CHAPTER MASONRY

A colloquialism intended to denote the Degrees conferred in a Royal Arch Chapter.

CHAPTER OF ROYAL ARCH MASONS, AN OLD

There is in Boston, Massachusetts, a Chapter of Royal Arch Masons which was holden in Saint Andrew's Lodge and formed about the year 1769 (see Royal Arch Masons, Massachusetts; also, Pennsylvania).

CHAPTER, ROYAL ARCH

A Convocation of Royal Arch Masons is called a Chapter. In Great Britain, Royal Arch Masonry is connected with and practically under the same government as the Grand Lodge ; but in America the Jurisdictions are separate.

In America a Chapter of Royal Arch Masons is empowered to give the preparatory Degrees of Mark, Past, and Most Excellent Master ; although, of course, the Chapter, when meeting in any one of the Degrees, is called a Lodge.

In some Chapters the Degrees of Royal and Select Master have also been given as preparatory Degrees ; but in most of the States, the control of these is conferred upon separate bodies, called Councils of Royal and Select Masters.

The presiding officers of a Chapter are the High Priest, King, and Scribe, who are, respectively, representatives of Joshua, Zerubbabel, Haggai, and son of Josedech. In the English Chapters, these officers are generally styled either by the founders' names, as above, or as First, Second, and Third Principals. In the Chapters of Ireland the order of the officers is King, High Priest, and Chief Scribe. Chapters of Royal Arch Masons in America are primarily under the jurisdiction of State Grand Chapters, as Lodges are under Grand Lodges ; and secondly, under the General Grand Chapter of the United States, whose meetings are held triennially, and which exercisers a general supervisor over this branch of the Order throughout the Union (see Royal Arch Degree).

CHARACTERISTICS

The prefix to signatures of Brethren of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite is as follows: To that of the Sovereign Grand Commander, the triple cross crosslet, as in the illustration and Figure 1 in red ink. To that of an Inspector General other than a Commander,

Figure 2, in red ink. To that of a Brother of the Royal Secret, Thirty-second Degree, Figure 3, in red ink. In the Northern Masonic Jurisdiction of the United States, a Rose Croix Knight will suffix a triangle surmounted by a cross in red ink, as in Figure 4. In all eases it is usual to place the Degree rank in a triangle after the name (see Abbreviations).

CHARGE

So called from the Old Charges, because, like them, it contains an epitome of duty. It is the admonition which is given by the presiding officer, at the close of the ceremony of initiation, to the candidate, and which the latter receives standing, as a token of respect. There is a Charge for each Degree, which is to be found in all the monitors and manuals from Preston onward.

CHARGES OF A FREEMASON

These Charges or Regulations, published in 1723, have been adopted by various Grand Lodges and made a part of their Constitutions:

CHARGES OF 1722

The Fraternity had long been in possession of many records, containing the ancient regulations of the Order; when, in 1722, the Duke of Montague being Grand Master of England, the Grand Lodge finding fault with their antiquated arrangement, it was directed that they should be collected, and after being properly digested, be annexed to the Book of Constitutions, then in course of publication under the superintendence of Dr. James Anderson.

This was accordingly done, and the document now well known under the title of The Old Charges of the Free and Accepted Masons, constitutes, by universal consent, a part of the fundamental law of our Order.

The charges are divided into six general heads of duty, as follows:

1. Concerning God and religion.
2. Of the civil magistrate, supreme and subordinate.
3. Of Lodges.
4. Of Masters, Wardens, Fellows, and Apprentices.
5. Of the management of the Craft in working.
6. Of behavior under different circumstances and in various conditions.

These charges contain succinct directions for the proper discharge of a Freemason's duties, in whatever position he may be placed, and are as modern researches have shown, a collation of the charges contained in the Old Records and from them have been abridged, or by them suggested, all those well-known directions found in our monitors, which, Masters are accustomed to read to candidates on their reception (see Records, Old).

CHARGES, OLD

The Freemasons' Constitutions are old records, containing a history, very often some-what apocryphal, that is of doubtful authority, of the origin and progress of Freemasonry, and regulations for the government of the Craft. These regulations are called Charges, and are generally the same in substance, although the differ in number, in the different documents.

These charges are divided into Articles and Points; although it would be difficult to say in what the one section differs in character from the other, as each details the rules which should govern a Freemason in his conduct toward his Lord, or employer, and to his Brother workmen.

The oldest of these charges is to be found in the York Constitutions, if they are authentic, and consists of Fifteen Articles and Fifteen Points.

It was required by the Constitutions of the time of Edward III, ''that, for the future, at the making or admission of a brother, the constitutions and charges should be read."

This regulation is still preserved in form, in modern Lodges, by the reading of the charge by the Master to a candidate at the close of the ceremony of his reception into a degree (for a list of the Old Charges, see Manuscripts, Old).

CHARITY

"Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal.

And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing" (First Corinthians xiii,1-2).

Such was the language of an eminent apostle of the Christian church, and such is the sentiment that constitutes the cementing bond of Freemasonry. The apostle, in comparing it with faith and hope, calls it the greatest of the three, and hence in Freemasonry it is made the topmost round of its mystic ladder.

We must not fall into the too common error that charity is only that sentiment of commiseration which leads us to assist the poor with pecuniary donations.

Its Masonic, as well as its Christian application, is more noble and more extensive.

The word used by the apostle is, in the original, love, a word denoting that kindly state of mind which renders a person full of good-will and affectionate regard toward others.

John Wesley expressed his regret that the Greek had not been correctly translated as love instead of charity, so that the apostolic triad of virtues would have been, not "faith, hope, and charity," but "faith, hope, and love."

Then would we have understood the comparison made by Saint Paul, when he said, "Though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not love, it profiteth me nothing."

Guided by this sentiment, the true Freemason will "suffer long and be kind."

He will be slow to anger and easy to forgive.

He will stay his falling Brother by gentle admonition, and warn him with kindness of approaching danger, He will not open his ear to the slanderers, and will lose his lips against all reproach.

His faults and his follies will be locked in his breast, and the prayer for mercy will ascend to Jehovah for his Brother's sins.

Nor will these sentiments of benevolence be confined to those who are bound to him by ties of kindred or worldly friendship alone; but, extending them throughout. the globe, he will love and cherish all who sit beneath the broad canopy of our universal Lodge.

For it is the boast of our Institution, that a Freemason, destitute and worthy, may. find in every clime a Brother, and in every land a home.
Colonel Edward M L. Ehlers, a soldier of the Civil War in which he was severely wounded, was subsequently and at his death the Grand Secretary of New York.

To his courtesy and promptness the Revisor of this work is much indebted for many favors and there is a distinct satisfaction in submitting here one of the eloquent addresses to initiates that so often heartened his hearers (see Definitions of Freemasonry).

CHARITY FUND

Many Lodges and Grand Lodges have a fund especially appropriated to charitable purposes, which is not used for the disbursement of the current expenses, but which is appropriated to the relief of indigent brethren, their widows, and orphans.

CHARLATAN

A charlatan is a babbling mountebank, who imposes on the populace by large pretensions and high-sounding words. A charlatan in Freemasonry is one who seeks by a display of pompous ceremonial, and often by claims to supernatural powers, to pervert the Institution of Freemasonry to the acquisition of mere gain, or the gratification of a paltry ambition. Every man, says a distinguished writer, is a charlatan who extorts money by charging for sixpenny trash the amount that should only be paid for works of science, and that, too, under the plea of conveying knowledge that cannot otherwise be obtained (Freemasons Magazine, London, 1844, page 505). The eighteenth century presented many examples of the Masonic charlatans, of whom Brother Mackey deemed the one by far the greatest was Cagliostro; nor has the nineteenth century been entirely without them.

CHARLEMAGNE

The great Charles, King of France, who ascended the throne in the year 768, is claimed by some Masonic writers as a patron of Freemasonry. This is perhaps because architecture flourished in France during his reign, and because he encouraged the arts by inviting the architects and traveling Freemasons, who were then principally confined to Italy, to visit France and engage in the construction of important edifices. The claim has been made that at his castle at Aix-la-Chapelle he set apart a room or rooms in which the seven liberal arts and sciences were taught. This comprised a liberal education for that period.

The paragraph about Charlemagne on page 195 makes note of the tradition that he had a school for Masons in his castle at Aix-la-ChapeIle (Aachen). To this may be added two other points at which he enters the circle of Masonic studies:

1. Beginning at line 576 the Cooke MS. refers to a Carolus Secundus, that is, Charles the Second; and in 590 ff. goes on to say that he was a King who loved Masons and cherished them and gave them charges and manners of which some are still in use in France, and ordained for them an annual assembly "and for to be ruled by matters & fellows of alle thyngs a-mysse." It is likely that Charles the Bold (840-77 A.D.) is here referred to ; but some commentators believe rather that it refers to Charlemagne, and if so it explains the origin of the tradition referred to in the above paragraph.

2. In Medieval wall paintings and stained glass windows the conventionalized picture of Charlemagne represents him as a large, bearded, Moses-like figure, carrying the model of a cathedral in the crook of his arm. In a few French Medieval manuscripts this cathedral at Aix is described as "our Solomon's Temple," Charlemagne is "our Solomon," and the knowledge and skill showed in building it is described "as Solomon's art."

CHARLES MARTEL

He was the founder of the Carlovingian dynasty, and governed France with , supreme power from 720 to 741, under the title of Duke of the Franks, the nominal kings being only his puppets. He is claimed by the authors of the Old Records as one of the patrons of Freemasonry. Thus, the Manuscript (Grand Lodge, No. l, Volume iv, Quatuor Coronati Lodge reprints) tells us:

CHARLES I AND II

For their supposed connection with the origin of Freemasonry, see Stuart Freemasonry.

CHARLES EDWARD STUART

This Chapter created a few others, and in 1780 one in Paris, under the distinctive title of Chapter of Arras, in the valley of Paris. It united itself to the Grand Orient of France on the 27th of December, 1801. It was declared First Suffragan of the Scottish Jacobite Chapter, with the right to constitute others. The Chapter established at Arras, by the Pretender, was named the Eagle and Pelican, and Oliver, Origin of the Royal arch (page 22), from this seeks to find, perhaps justifiably, a connection between it and the R. S. Y. C. S. of the Royal Order of Scotland.

Brother Hawkins points out that the story of the establishment of this Chapter by the Pretender is doubted by some writers and it certainly lacks confirmation ; even his joining the Craft at all is disputed by several who have carefully studied the subject.

Brother Hughan in the Jacobite Lodge at Rome (page 27), quotes the advice to students of Brother George W. Speth that they "put no trust whatever in accounts connecting the Stuarts with Freemasonry.

We have it in the Young Pretender's own written and verbal statements that they are absolutely baseless, pure inventions."

CHARLES XIII

The Duke of Sudermanland was distinguished for his attachment to Freemasonry. In 1809 he ascended the throne of Sweden under the title of Charles XIII, Having established the Masonic Order of Knighthood of that name, he abdicated in favor of Charles John Bernadotte, but always remained an active and zealous member of the Order. There is no king on record so distinguished for his attachment to Freemasonry as Charles XIII, of Sweden, and to him the Swedish Freemasons are in a great measure indebted for the high position that the Order has maintained in that country.

CHARLES XIII, ORDER OF

An Order of knighthood instituted in 1811 by Charles XIII, King of Sweden, which was to be conferred only on the principal dignitaries of the Masonic Institution in his dominions. In the manifesto establishing the Order, the king says:

The number of Knights are twenty-seven, all Freemasons, and the King of Sweden is the perpetual Grand Master. The ribbon is red, and the jewel a maltese cross pendant from an imperial crown.

CHARLESTON

A city in the United States of America, and the metropolis of the State of South Carolina. It was there that the first Supreme Council of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite was established in 1801, whence all other Supreme Councils have emanated, directly or indirectly. Hence, it has assumed the title of Mother Council of the World. The headquarters of the Southern Supreme Council were removed in 1870 to the city of Washington (see Scottish Rite).

CHART I

A map on which is delineated the emblems of a degree, to be used for the instruction of candidates, formerly called a carpet, which see. 2. The title given by Jeremy L. Cross to his Hieroglyphic Monitor, which acquired on its first appearance in the Lodges of America a popularity that it has not yet entirely lost. Hence the word chart is still sometimes used colloquially and improperly to designate any other Masonic manual of monitorial instruction.

CHARTERED LODGE

A Lodge working under the authority of a Charter or Warrant of Constitution issued by a Grand Lodge as distinguished from a Lodge working under a Dispensation issued by a Grand Master. Chartered Lodges only are entitled to representation in the Grand Lodge. They alone can make by-laws, elect members or have their officers installed- They are the constituent Bodies of a Jurisdiction, and by their representatives compose the Grand Lodge. CHARTERS AND THE OLD CHARGES

When King Henry III was in want of money to carry on his war against the Barons he announced to the Prior of the Templars that he intended to commandeer some portions of the riches with which their vaults were crowded (The Templars, the Knights of St. John, and the Church among them owned one-third of England) and in spite of the Charters he had given them, the Prior of the Templars replied: "What sayest thou, O King? Far be it that thy mouth should utter so disagreeable and silly a word. . . Thou wilt cease to be king."

The Prior took his defiant stand on his Charter, the solidest thing in the Middle Ages. Even the Tudor Kings, unafraid of man or devil, were smitten with fear at the mere thought of Charter breaking. There are in modern use contracts, deeds, charters, warrants, and similar instruments through which authority acts, and in which sovereignty resides; but no one of those documents is what a Medieval Charter was. For in the Middle Ages, a Charter was a document which possessed sovereignty, power, authority in itself, not as delegated, but as original. If a town received a Charter (a town might pay the king a large sum for one) it was thereby made a free, independent, sovereign, self-governing incorporation which could levy taxes, conscript soldiers, hold courts, execute criminals, buy, sell, or construct property; subject only to the national sovereignty it was almost a small nation.

The town of Cambridge was such a chartered incorporation; the University of Cambridge, though a school and not a city, and only a short distance from the town, also had a Charter, and therefore had its own courts and peace officers; and in the Town and Gown battles the two were more than once virtually at war with each other. If a gild of craftsmen or churchmen or merchants received a Charter, they became a self-governing unit even though they had no territory or property. Chartered Colonies, chartered trading companies like the East India, West India African Companies, were English governments in pello in foreign places. Medieval England was almost a government by Charters. Magna Carta was epoch making because it was a charter granted to the people of London; it was therefore the guarantee of the liberties named in it, and as against any King or Parliament, because it was a Charter.

It is evident from the Old MSS., the Craft's oldest existing written records, that the Freemasons, a fraternity spread over England, claimed to possess a Charter as a fraternity, and that it had been granted to them by Prince Edwin in the Tenth Century; from this "Great Charter" they claimed authority to constitute themselves as Lodges, to hold assemblies (so often forbidden by the Kings), to hold their own courts, to have their own laws, to make contracts (as often they did), to hold property, to regulate their own hours and wages, to take apprentices under bond, and to regulate their own affairs wherever one Freemason or a Lodge of them might be.

When any city, university, or society petitioned for a Charter it usually gave the grounds upon which it felt a right to ask it, and among the more common grounds were a great antiquity, a record of peaceableness, the prestige of names among its members, etc. ; the writer of the original book of the Old Charges (old MSS.), of which nearly two hundred copies have been found, sets out in the first half of his document, though with great brevity, and discontentedly, the grounds upon which the Fraternity of Freemasons had obtained a Charter from Prince Edwin. Freemasonry was ancient, because building went back to Adam; among its earliest founders (men who made the art possible) were such famous and learned men as Pythagoras and Euclid; such great kings as Charlemagne and Athelstan had been among its patrons; Freemasons had always been educated men, not lewd fellows ("lewd" meant illiterate) or churls, but lovers of the Liberal Arts and Sciences (curriculum of the schools and universities); they had never held unlawful assemblies to conspire against lawful rulers, and it was while holding one of their lawful and peaceable assemblies that Edwin had given them their Great charter. Copies of such a charter, duly authenticated, were sufficient authority for regular Freemasons anywhere to hold local assemblies and constitute themselves into Lodges, nor could local prelates or lords forbid them.

Having thus shown the ground of authority the document then goes on to set down the set of rules and charges which, on Charter authority, the Masonic Fraternity imposed upon its membership.

Boys come to be made apprentices, though of gentle birth, need not expect that they would be in a loose and carefree circle, to act as they wished; they would be governed under strict laws. This grounding of the authority of the Craft on an original Charter is repeated in the records of the Grand Lodge of Scotland, the formation of which was not attempted until after the ancient family holding the rights of Masonic Charter had made over those rights to the governing body to be.

It has been assumed by some Masonic writers that the Old charges were a mere "tradition" of legendary Graft ,,history," to be piously believed, and to be read to Apprentices to give them an impression of the Craft's antiquity; and they took the charges and the rules and regulations, to be mere by-laws of a voluntary social Fraternity, or sodality. It is submitted on the basis of facts given above that this is an error. A copy of the old Charges was a Lodge's Charter, its legal right to exist. From its Minute Book it is evident that Antiquity Lodge insisted that it never had surrendered its own Charter to the new Grand Lodge in 1717; when later it believed that the Grand Master had violated Antiquity's Charter, Antiquity withdrew and continued to work in independence for more than ten years. The new Grand Lodge was not to replace the authority inherent in each Lodge but was to supervise only such matters as lay among the Lodges. And it is certain that most of the old Lodges looked upon the Book of Constitutions as a Grand Lodge Charter, and that the old Masons (represented by fourteen members) had insisted on incorporating in it the old grounds on which the original Charter (as they believed) had been given by Prince Edwin ; so that the first half of the Book was not, as Gould and Hughan erroneously believed, a fabulous and pleasing tale or legend but a claim to original Charter authority one thousand years old.

The "new men," the "gentlemen" or "accepted" Masons who followed the Duke of Montague into the Craft in a stream, and who came into control of the Fraternity had only a sketchy knowledge of Masonry and little understanding of its ancient customs and landmarks.

They committed one fateful blunder after another One of the cardinal discoveries, as even the young and green Grand Lodge found out in thirty years was that a Grand Master, privately and personally , and at his own pleasure, could not "make" a Lodge though until 1757 he undertook to do so; for if he could make a Lodge at his own pleasure he could break a Lodge at his pleasure (and often did), could control the making of Masons and decide whom to admit etc., would leave a Lodge no authority or sovereignly of its own, and would reduce it to a number of members meeting under club rules. When the Grand Lodge ordained that Master Masons could "be made only at Grand Lodge, Masons everywhere rebelled Lodges withdrew by the score, and the erection of the Ancient Grand Lodge, no such innovator was one of the consequences.

Come to its senses the Grand Lodge (of 1757) began in 1757 following Ireland by two years, to issue no more Grand Master's written consents, for that is what the Deputations or Warrants had been, but Charters, documents possessing original authority in themselves.

These charters did not create the right of Freemasons to form a Lodge, they recognized it, they were an official evidence that a given Lodge received one was deemed regular by other Lodges and entitled to be represented at Craft Assemblies in the Grand Lodge.

This means that a regular Lodge possesses inherent authority, by time immemorial rights, and not a merely provisional and delegated authority; and it is one that cannot be usurped by any faction among its own members, or by other Lodges, or by the Grand Master or by the Grand Lodge. It was this which he had in mind when Albert G. Mackey stated that Masons right to form and to assemble in Lodges is an Ancient Landmark, as indubitably it is; and it is for the same reason that Lodges are not "subordinate'' to Grand Lodge, mere local branches of it, but are constituents of it, and hence are properly called Constituent Bodies.

Thus it turns out at the end of some eight or so centuries of Masonic history that modern Speculative Freemasonry discovered what the original authors of the Old Charges knew and affirmed, that a Lodge, or assembly of Masons, without a Charter will find in experience that their Lodge and assembly is an empty vanity; and that each Lodge has inherent and alienable Charter rights.

American Masons are separated by the Atlantic Ocean and centuries of time from the Middle Ages : in the nature of things they cannot be expected to have a clear and adequate knowledge of Medieval history. The fact explains the acceptance by many American Masons of the theory, often set out in Masonic periodicals and in Grand Masters' Addresses, that the original and sovereign Masonic authority was the Holy Bible. l. During almost one-half of the total history of the Craft, Masons had no copies of the Bible. In the earliest centuries they did not, excepting only a few, even know of the existence of such a Book. They had from it only a few stories, such as Adam's fall, Noah's Ark, etc., and some portions of the New Testament, and those they had not from any text directly, but only as they were used by the Church, which had modified them out of recognition by accretions of stories and legends.

2. If there had been a Bible available, the Masons could not have been persuaded to use it by any cajolery or the direst threats, because to do so would have meant a march to the stake, or the dreaded excommunication. Holy Church forbade laymen to own or use copies of any Holy Scriptures, and often forbade laymen to read the Scriptures under any circumstances. In the eyes of the Masons It would have been an unspeakable heresy for them to employ the Scriptures in their own Lodges. They left the Church to itself; never intruded upon it or interfered with it, nor permitted it to interfere with Lodges ; they taught no religious doctrines, nor made any theological pronouncements. Masons like other men of the time were men of religion but they incorporated nothing of theology in their own Fraternity, and never have; they did not see that Church and Theology had anything more to do with the Chartered Craft of builders than with a Chartered Company of Hierohants.

3. The "book" on which Apprentices made their oath was in the beginning not the Bible but the Old Charges. In the first years of the new Grand Lodge officers of Antiquity Lodge held a copy of the Old Charges aloft on a cushion and carried it around the Grand Lodge Room, thus exhibiting the authority on which the Grand Lodge was being assembled. In the minutes of the oldest Lodges and in the engravings they printed it is seen that a copy of the Old Charges (not the Bible) is placed on a pedestal directly in front of the Master. The Bible is used in the Lodge not as an original warrant of authority and constitution, but symbolically, like the Square and Compasses, and is one of the Great Lights. Its power and authority in its own place and for its own proper use is none the less for that, but the authority on which every Lodge works is not, and never was, a religious or theological authority, but is in the written, signed, and sealed Charter which hangs on the Lodge Room walls, and which is in essence and meaning as ancient as Freemasonry itself. Whether such a Charter goes back in unbroken succession to a particular sealed document issued by Prince Edwin at York does not matter; it goes back to some written Charter, or Charters, issued to the Freemasons in the beginnings of their Fraternity.

CHARTERIS, FRANCIS

Sixth Earl of Wemyss Grand Master of Scotland, 1747. Another Francis Charteris, afterwards Lord Elcho, was Deputy Grand Master of Scotland 1786-7.

CHARTER MEMBER

A Freemason whose name is attached to the petition upon which a Charter or Warrant of Constitution has been granted to a Lodge, Chapter, or other subordinate body.

CHARTRES, LOUIS PHILIPPE JOSEPH, DUKE OF

Afterwards Duke of Orleans, known as Egalité or Equality. Succeeded Comte de Clermont as Grand Master of France in 1771. In 1793, January 5, a letter in the Journal de Paris, signed Egalité, repudiated the Grand Orient of France and Freemasonry, to which the Grand Orient replied by declaring the Grand Mastership vacant (see Histoire de la Franc-Maçonnerie, Albert Lantoine, 1925, Paris, page 74). Died by the guillotine November 6, 1793. Besuchet says that the Duke de Chartres was not the head of the entire Masonic Order as there was also in existence the Grand Lodge of France and the Grande Loge Nationale, or the Grand Orient de France.

CHASIDIM

In Hebrew, pronounced Khaw-seed-eem, meaning saints. The name of a sect which existed in the time of the Maccabees, and which was organized for the purpose of opposing innovations upon the Jewish faith. Their essential principles were to observe all the ritual laws of purification, to meet frequently for devotion, to submit to acts of self-denial and mortification, to have all things in common, and sometimes to withdraw from society and to devote themselves to contemplation. Lawrie, History of Freemasonry (page 38), who seeks to connect them with the Masonic Institution as a continuation of the Freemasons of the Solomonic era, describes them under the name of Kasideans as "a religious Fraternity, or an Order of the Knights of the Temple of Jerusalem, who bound themselves to adorn the porches of that magnificent structure, and to preserve it from injury and decay. This association was composed of the greatest men of Israel, who were distinguished for their charitable and peaceful dispositions, and always signalized themselves by their ardent zeal for the purity and preservation of the Temple."

CHASTANIER, BENEDICT

A French surgeon, who in the year 1767 introduced into England a modification of the Rite of Pernetty, in nine degrees, and established a Lodge in London under the name of the Illuminated Theosophists ; which, however, according to Lenning, soon abandoned the Masonic forms, and was converted into a mere theosophic sect, intended to propagate the religious system of Swedenborg. White, in his Life of Emanuel Swedenborg, published at London in 1868 (page 683), gives an account of "The Theosophical Society', instituted for the purpose of promoting the Heavenly Doctrines of the New Jerusalem by translating, printing, and publishing the theological writings of Emanuel Swedenborg." This society was formed in 1784, and met on Sundays and Thursdays at Chambers in New Court, Middle Temple, for the discussion of Swedenborg's writings. Among the twenty-five persons mentioned by White as having either joined the society or sympathized with its object, we find the name of "Benedict Chastanier, Freach Surgeon, 62 Tottenham Court." The nine degrees of Chastanier's Rite of Illuminated Theosophists are as follows: 1, 2, and 3, Symbolic degrees; 4, 5, 6, Theosophic Apprentice, Fellow Craft, and Master; 7, Sublime Scottish Mason, or Celestial Jerusalem; 8, Blue Brother; and 9, Red Brother.

CHASTITY

In the Regius or Halliwell Manuseript of the Constitutions of Freemasonry, written not later than the latter part of the fourteenth century, the seventh point is in these words:

Again, in the Constitutions known as the Matthew Cooke Manuscript, the date of which is about the latter part of the fifteenth century, the same regulation is enforced in these words : ''The 7th Point. That he covet not the wyfe ne the daughter of his masters, another of his fellows but if (unless) hit be in maryage.'' So all through the Old Constitutions and Charges we find this admonition to respect the chastity of our Brethren's wives and daughters ; an admonition which, it is scarcely necessary to say, is continued to this day.

CHASUBLE

The outer dress which is worn by the priest at the altar service, and is an imitation of the old Roman toga. It is a circular cloth, which falls down over the body so as completely to cover it, with an aperture in the center for the head to pass through. It is used in the ceremonies of the Rose Croix Degree.

CHAUCER AND FREEMASONRY

For some centuries the Kings of England had a general overseer to manage and to supervise their own many and often very large building operations, and to act in the King's name when Royal supervision of any other building enterprise might be called for, such officials being called at times Commissioner, Supervisor, Chief Clerk, etc. Elias de Dereham and William of Wykeham were two of the more famous ''surveyors''; as also were, at a later time, Inigo Jones, who introduced the Palladian style from Italy into England, and Christopher Wren.

Geoffrey Chaucer, the poet, held the office late in the Fourteenth Century. On page 67, of the Transactions of the Manchester Association for Masonic Research, Vol. 19-21 (for 1928-31) was quoted a document which Chaucer issued and signed:

Chaucer's Canterbury Tales also establish a link, though a less obvious one, between the poet and the Craft of Masons. The Masons' Company in London, with which Chaucer had official connections, sustained the St. Thomas Hospital there, left it many bequests, and often visited it in livery. Masons' Companies in two, and possibly three, other cities also helped to support local hospitals of their own named for St. Thomas and it is possible that they looked on St. Thomas as their Patron Saint. This Saint Thomas was the martyred Archbishop of Canterbury, St. Thomas Becket, who was murdered in his own cathedral in 1170. The fact that three knights, described at the time as "the three ruffians," murdered the fifty-three year old prelate by beating him over the head after demanding that he "give them his word," threatened to bury him in the rubbish, and that his body was buried in a spot between a memorial to John the Baptist on one side and John the Evangelist on the other, the two forming parallel lines, must have held a peculiar interest to men in the Masons' Companies, and may account for their support of St. Thomas Hospitals; and it is possible that Chauser, connected with the Mason Company in London as he was, may from that association have had his interest in Canterbury first aroused, and as a result of which he wrote in rhyme the Canterbury (St. Thomas' church) Tales.

It belongs to the in curable romanticism of Medieval England 'that this St. Thomas, England's "favorite saint,'' her most "glorious martyr," "the most English of the Saints," was by blood only half English, and half Christian. Gilbert Becket was a member of the Mercers Company, or gild, but as a young man went off on one of the Crusades to war on the infidel Saracens, was captured, was released by "a fair Saracen," a Mohammedan lady ; they fell in love, she followed him to London, professed conversion, and Thomas was their son.

Thomas learned reading and writing, went to work in the Sheriff's office, and then was employed by the King, upon whose wish, and against Thomas' own desires, he took Holy Orders expressly in order to be named Archbishop of Canterbury, where the King purposed to have a friend and supporter in that highest of ecclesiastical offices, but discovered to his chagrin, and too late, that "he had a Tartar there."

The Mercers Company afterwards was given the land which had belonged to the senior Becket; and in the Charter given it by Henry IV in 1406 its members were named "Brothers of St. Thomas à Becket." St. Thomas was for centuries a favorite Patron Saint among the gilds and companies.

CHEF-D'OEUVRE

French, meaning superior production. It was a custom among many of the gilds, and especially among the Compagnans du Devoir, who sprang up in the sixteenth century in France, on the decay of Freemasonry in that kingdom, and as one of its results, to require every Apprentice, before he could be admitted to the freedom of the gild, to present a piece of finished work as a proof of his skill in the art in which he had been instructed. The piece of work was called his chef-d'oeuvre, or masterpiece.

CHEREAU, ANTOINE GUILLAUME

He was a painter in Paris, who published, in 1806, two hermetico-philosophical works entitled Explication de la Pierre Cubique, and Explication de la Croix Philosophique; or Explanations of the Cubical Stone and of the Philosophical Cross. These works are brief, but give much interesting information on the ritualism and symbolism of the advanced degrees. They have been republished by Tessier in his Manuel General, without, however, any acknowledgment to the original author.

CHERUBIM

The second order of the angelic hierarchy, the first being the seraphim. The two cherubim that overtopped the mercy-seat or covering of the ark, in the holy of holies, were placed there by Moses, in obedience to the orders of God : " And thou shalt make two cherubims of gold, of beaten work shalt thou make them, in the two ends of the mercy seat. And the cherubims shall stretch forth their wings on high, covering the mercy-seat with their wings, and their faces shall look one to another; towards the mercy-seat shall the faces of the cherubims be" (see Exodus xxv, 18, 20). It was between these cherubim that the Shekinah or Divine Presence rested, and from which issued the Bathkol or Voice of God. Of the form of these cherubim we are ignorant. Josephus says that they resembled no known creature, but that Moses made them in the form in which he saw them about the throne of God; others, deriving their ideas from what is said of them by Ezekiel, Isaiah, and Saint John, describe them as having the face and breast of a man, the wings of an eagle, the belly of a lion, and the legs and feet of an ox, which three animals, with man, are the symbols of strength and wisdom. But all agree in this, that they had wings, and that these wings were extended. The cherubim were purely symbolic. But although there is great diversity of opinion as to their exact signification, yet there is a very general agreement that they allude to and symbolize the protecting and overshadowing power of the Deity. Reference is made to the extended wings of the cherubim in the Degree of Royal Master.

Much light has been thrown upon the plastic form of these symbols, says Brother C. T. MeClenachan, not only as to the Cherubim of the Ark of the Covenant spoken of in Exodus, Samuel, Kings, and Chronicles, but those of Chaldeo-Assyrian art which beautified the gates of the palace of Sennacherib at Nineveh, and other structures.

Brother McClenachan adds the following comments: The Kirubi of the Assyrian type, in the shape of bulls with extended wings, in nowise meet the description given above. The figures which can be found in various places upon Egyptian monuments, placed face to face on either side of the Naos of the gods, and stretching out their arms, furnished with great wings, as though to envelop them (see Wilkinson, Manners and Custom of Ancient Egyptians, 1878, volume iii), more fully meet the idea - in fact, it is convincing, when we remember the period, and note that all else about the sacred furnishings of the Tabernacle, or Ohel-mo'ed, are exclusively Egyptian in form, as well as the sacerdotal costumes (see L'Egypte et Moïse, by Abbé Ancessi, Paris, 1875). Furthermore, this was most natural, since the period was immediately after the exodus. The Cherubim of the Ark were remodeled by Solomon after designs by his father, David (First Chronicles xxviii, 18).

At this epoch, says François Lenormant, Professor of Archeology at the National Library of France, in his Beginnings of History, 1882, the Egyptian influence was no longer supreme in its sway over the Hebrews; that the Assyro-Babylonian influence balanced it; that the new Cherubim, then executed, may have been different from the ancient ones as described in Exodus; in fact, Kirubi after the Assyrian type, which formed a Merkabah, meaning a chariot (First Chronicles xxviii, 18), upon which Yahveh was seated. In the Egyptian monuments the gods are often represented between the forward-stretching wings of sparrow-hawks or vultures. placed face to face, and birds of this kind often enfold with their wings the divine Naos.

The adornment of the Tabernacle, as mentioned in Exodus, excluded every figure susceptible of an idolatrous character, which is far from being the case in what we know of the Temple of Solomon. In the matter of plastic images, none was admitted save only the Cherubim, which were not only placed upon the Ark, but whose representations are woven into the hangings of the Mishkan and the veil which separates the Holy Place from the Holy of Holies. It is therefore most probable that the Cherubim of Exodus were great eagles or birds-Kurubi-while under the remodeling by Solomon these were changed to Kirubi with human faces.

The prophet Ezekiel describers four hay-yoth or Cherubim, two and two, back to back, and going "each one straight forward'' toward the four quarters. The Cherubim of the Merkabah of Ezekiel have four wings-two lifted up and two covering their back and four human faces set in pairs, to the right and to the left, one of a man, one of a bull, one of a lion, and one of an eagle-the faces of creatures which combine all the emblems of strength depicted by the Chaldeo-Assyrian bull. Ezekiel thus describes the Cherubim with several faces which, alternately with the palm-trees, decorated the frieze around the interior of the temple at Jerusalem: "Each Kerub had two faces, a man's face turned one way toward the palm-tree, and a lion's face turned the other way toward the other palm-tree; and it was in this wise all around the house."

The following information, furnished by Professor Lenormant, on the subject of Cherubim, is important: "Deductions were formerly made from the Aryan theory to support primitive tradition as to origin and form, but these have been overthrown, and the Semitic interpretation made manifest through finding the name of the Cherubim in the cuneiform inscriptions; that in place of referring the Hebrew word kerub to the Aryan root grabh, meaning to seize, the word is more properly of Semitic origin, from the root karab, signifying bull, or a creature strong and powerful. Referring to the prophet Ezekiel (i, 10, and x, 14), the two parallel passages use the word kerub interchangeably with shore, bull, the face of a bull and face of a cherub, which are synonymous expressions. Since we have come to know those colossal images of winged bulls with human faces, crowned with the lofty cidaris, decorated with several pairs of horns, which flanked the gateways of the Assyrian palaces, a number of scholars, intimately acquainted with antique sculpture, have been zealous in associating them with the Cherubim of the Bible. The winged bull with a human head figures in a bas-relief in the palace of Khorsabad as a favoring and protecting genius, which watches over the safe navigation of the transports that carry the wood of Lebanon by sea. The bulls whose images are placed at the gateways of the palaces and temples, as described in the above ideographic group, are the guardian genii, who are looked upon as living beings. As the result of a veritable magical operation, the supernatural creature is supposed to reside within these bodies of stone." In a bilingual document, Akkadian with an Assyrian version, we read invocations to the two bulls who flanked the gate of the infernal abode, which were no longer simulacra of stone, but living beings, like the bulls at the gates of the celestial palaces of the gods. The following is one of the unique expressions made in the ear of the bull which stands to the right of the bronze enclosure:

Similar expressions were then made on the other side.

These genii, in the form of winged bulls with human countenances, were stationed as guardians at the portals of the edifices of Babylonia and Assyria, and were given the name of Kirubi ; thus, Kirubu damqu lippaqid, meaning May the propitious Kirub guard. Numerous authorities may be given to show that the Chaldeo-Assyrians' Kirub, from the tenth to the fifth century before our era, whose name is identical with the Hebrew Kerub, was the winged bull with a human head. The Israelites, during the times of the Kings and the Prophets, pictured to themselves the Cherubim under this form. The figures of the Cherubim are said to have defeated Dante's power of constructive imagination.

CHESED

A word which is generally corrupted into Hesed. It is the Hebrew pronounced chesed, and signifies mercy. Hence it very appropriately refers to that act of kindness and compassion which is commemorated in the degree of Select Master of the American system. It is the fourth of the Cabalistic Sephiroth, and is combined in a triad with Beauty and Justice.

CHESTERFIELD AND NASH

The absence of Lord Chesterfield and Beau Nash from the Masonic histories thus far published is yet another of the proofs that no really complete Masonic history has been written. They were eminent men and Masons but so were thousands of others; their distinction is that they were leaders and spokesmen for one of the most drastic reforms by which England has ever been purged, the reform of manners. Chesterfield was asked to take the Grand East of the Ancient Grand Lodge; it is unfortunate that a journey he was about to take made it impossible because his name in the list would have been both a reminder and a monument to one of the largest services the British and American Lodges rendered their countries in the Eighteenth and the first quarter of the Nineteenth Centuries. Chesterfield's letters to his son (the family name was Dormer) circulated privately for years before they were published and became one of the classics of English literature.

In one of his histories of England, Trevelyan, summarizing hundreds of reports and findings about the manners of the Eighteenth Century, notes that between 1700 and 1725 (the first Grand Lodge was erected in 1717), somebody found a way to manufacture cheap gin ; this hard liquor replaced beer and ale, children as well as women joined the men at the pubs, and thousands increasingly began to die in delirium tremens; this' national orgy of drunkenness was at home among the other fatal vices which accompanied it: lust, uncounted prostitution, universal profanity, gambling, filth, slums, vomitarian feasts, rowdyism, mobs.

The fight against this lunatic determination of the masses to commit suicide was a grim business. To Chesterfield it was a question of life or death. Beau Nash managed to make his resort at Bath popular with the aristocracy; but he compelled the young bloods from the city and the young squires from the country to bathe every day, excluded them if drunk, stopped their profanity, and pounded into them the rudiments of manners.

The Masonic Lodges set themselves against vulgarity with thin-lipped determination. At the Lodge in Highen, wealthy and aristocratic, meeting in a dining room that one of the kings had himself designed, a member rode his horse upstairs and jumped it over the banquet table. Tilers here and there had fist fights with young bloods determined to wear their swords in Lodge. When almost every Lodge was a small circle of close friends who sat around the table while conducting the Order of Business or initiating candidates, vulgarity, quarreling, profanity were fatal to it. Minute books are filled with cases where members were fined for swearing, refused admittance for arriving "disguised with liquor," rebuked, or reprimanded or excluded for quarreling, expelled for insolence or bad manners.

The Lodges were determined to wipe out this new species of barbarism or perish in the attempt; hundreds perished, but more hundreds succeeded. For decades on both sides of the Atlantic, Lodges were schools of good manners, and the fact is more important for any history of them than whole chapters about the election of officers or the names of committees.

Washington was to American Lodges what Chesterfield had been to the English, at once the ideal and the embodiment of the gentleman Mason; if biographers and historians complain that he was too stiff, too formal, too correct it is because they do not realize the dreadful dangers both to the American Fraternity and American society there was in lust, drunkenness, and vulgarity, or how much continuing power of the will was required, as it was required of Washington himself, to stand out against it.

(The literary references for this subject, and authority for the statements made above, have never been collected into one chapter or volume; they lie in thousands of entries in the Minute Books and histories of some 200 of the oldest British and American Lodges.)

Chesterfield was very early made a Mason, probably in the Lodge which met at the Horn Tavern and had been No. 4 among the "four old Lodges" which had formed the first Grand Lodge in 1717. while on a tour in Italy he met Montesquieu and the two become fast friends. When Montesquieu was on a visit to London in the early 1720's he was made a Mason, and the indications are that since he was visiting Chesterfield he was introduced and made a Mason in Chesterfield's own Lodge. When Montesquieu helped to Set up the first Lodge in Paris in 1725 it also is probable that Chesterfield and his English friends living in Paris had a hand in it. A number of famous men in that period were initiated but took no active Part in Lodge work afterwards; not so Chesterfield and Montesquieu, both of whom were Masonic leaders for many years. (See article on MONTESQUIEU).

After the murrain of bad manners with its profanity, vulgarity, lust, gambling, and drunkenness had raged Unchecked for decades the English discovered (what every other people in a like case have discovered) that the collapse of manners leads to a plague of crime; for the end of vulgarity is not, as often thought, the decay of religion (though there is much of that) because vulgarians cling to a superstitious form of religion, but to murder, thievery, rape, robbery, mobbing, arson, piracy, etc. The English at home suddenly lost interest in their great war in France where the Duke of Marlborough was winning his famous victory of Malplaquet and began assiduously to read Addison, and Steele, and Chesterfield's Letters. This has been a mystery to many historians. The explanation is that the English at home had suddenly discovered themselves in greater danger from the flood of vulgarity in which they were engulfed than from their foreign foe, and were moving heaven and earth to stem that flood. They had to stop it or perish.

CHEVALIER

Employed by the French Freemasons as the equivalent of Knight in the name of any degree in which the latter word is used by English Freemasons as Chevalier du Soleil for Knight of the Sun, or Chevalier de l'Orient for Knight of the East. The German word is Ritter.

CHIBBELUM

A significant word used in the rituals of the eighteenth century, which define it to mean a worthy Freemason. It is a corruption of Giblim.

CHICAGO, CONGRESS OF

A convention of distinguished Freemasons of the United States, held at the city of Chicago in September, 1859, during the session of the Grand Encampment and General Grand Chapter, for the purpose of establishing a General Grand Lodge, or a Permanent Masonic congress. Its results were not of a successful character; and the death of its moving spirit, Cyril Pearl, which occurred soon after, put an end to all attempts to carry into effect any of its preliminary proceedings.

CHICHELY, HENRY

Archbishop of Canterbury under King Henry V of England in 1413. About 1425, under King Henry VI, an Act was passed prohibiting the assembling of the chapters and conventions of the Freemasons but this Act was not put into effect and they continued to flourish under Archbishop Chichely. William Preston in his Illustrations of Masonry (12th edition, page 163) says, "The Latin Register of William Molart, prior of Canterbury, in manuscript, page 88, entitled, Liberatio generalis Domini Gulielmi 'Prioris Ec&siae Christi Cantuariensis, erga Pestum Natalis Domini 1429 informs us that, in the year 1429, during the minority of this prince, a respectable Lodge was held at Canterbury, under the patronage of Henry Chichely, the archbishop; at which were present Thomas Stapylton, the Master; John Morris, Warden of the Lodge of Masons; with fifteen Fellow-Crafts, and three Entered Apprentices, all of whom are particularly named." Among the Tanner Manuscripts, Bodleian Library, Oxford, is the Register of Christ Church, Canterbury. It gives no mention of a Lodge being held under Chichely, but, according to Brother A. F. A. Woodford, it states that the Lathomi received Livery-Murray Cloth for Livery annually, and in 1429 it gives the names of the Magister of the Custos de la Loygye Lathamorum, of sixteen Lathami and three Apprenticii ibidem--At the head of the Clericorum stands Domino Archiepiscopo, volume iii, by which is understood that he received three panni or cloaks. Brother Woodford says that Preston has built too much upon this as all it proves is that a Loygye Lathamorum was at Canterbury in 1429 consisting of a Master, a Custos, sixteen Lathami, and three Apprentices, all of whom received Livery or clothing annually from the monastery. Henry Chichely is said to have been Grand Master of English Masons until 1443.

CHIEF OF THE TABERNACLE

The Twenty-third Degree in the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite. It commemorates the institution of the Order of the Priesthood in Aaron and his sons Eleazar and Ithamar. Its principal officers are three, a Sovereign Sacrificer and two High Priests, now called by the Supreme Councils of America the Most Excellent High Priest and Excellent Priests, and the members of the Hierarchy or Court, as the Lodge is now styled, are called Levites. The apron is white, lined with deep scarlet and bordered with red, blue, and purple ribbon. A golden chandelier of seven branches is painted or embroidered on the center of the apron. The jewel, which is a thurible, is worn from a broad yellow, purple, blue, and scarlet sash from the left shoulder to the right hip.

CHIEF OF THE TWELVE TRIBES

In French the expression is Chef des dauze Tribus. The Eleventh Degree of the Chapter of Emperors of the East and West. It is also called Illustrious Elect.

CHIEFS OF MASONRY

A title formerly given in the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite to Princes CHILDREN OF LIGHT. Some Masonic writers, as Hutchinson, use this name for Freemasons.

CHILDREN OF THE WIDOW

A common Masonic expression for our Brethren of Hiram. The French phrase is Enfants de la Veuve and the German is Kinder der Witwe.

CHILDREN'S EXCHANGE BUREAU

Under the auspices of the Grand Lodge of the Sun, Zur Sonne, Bayreuth, Germany, there was established a Kinderaustauschstelle or Children's Exchange Department, the purpose being to transfer temporarily between the families of the Freemasons those of the ages from eleven to twenty years, these exchanges to be preferably during the summer or autumn, though efforts will be applied on request for any other selection of a season of the year. Participation was particularly favored among all Lodges recognized by the adjacent Masonic Powers of Germany, Switzerland, Belgium and France. With a view to the most helpful results, the placing of the children was to be done by aiming at a holiday spent by healthy youngsters in hygienic surroundings and Masonic atmosphere, the choice of a healthy family being also considered in the light of choosing a temporary home of the same social station as that of the child's parents. All this was planned to be done for the interested parties free of cost as to the making of all arrangements by the Bureau, which was in charge of Brother Dr. Fritz Rackhorst, Lennep, Rhineland, Germany.

A French Lodge established a similar undertaking for the interchange without fees of children for educational purposes. This work of the Lodge, La Fraternite Vosgienne, was put in charge of Brother A. Gonnaud, Epinal, France.

These benevolent enterprises were interrupted by the World War, but the exchange of children between families of Freemasons internationally has, particularly in Europe, some promise, as by that first-hand acquaintance there would be a friendly understanding built up that furnishes another agency for harmony. Such an object is meritorious in purpose however much it may falter or even fail in practise (see Orphans and Masonic Homes).

CHILE

A republic extending along the west coast of South America. It has been thought that Freemasonry began in Chile as early as 1840 but there is little evidence to support this view.

The Grand Orient of France instituted Lodge L'Etoile du Pacifique, Star of the Pacific, on September 12, 1851. When Marshal Magnan was appointed Grand Master of the Grand Orient in April, 1862, two French Lodges, L'Union Fraternelle and Fraternidad, returned their Charters. Failing, however, to persuade Lodge L'Etoile du Pacifique to join them, they proceeded to form a third Lodge Progresso without obtaining the necessary authority.

On April 20,1862, the three Lodges met in Convention, and, with delegates from Lodge Orden y Libertad which has also been refused recognition, they formed the Grand Lodge of Chile. In 1923 it had grown to include 55 Lodges. There are also many Lodges in this district which pay no allegiance to the Grand Lodge of Chile but are controlled by the Grand Lodges of England, Hamburg, Massachusetts, etc.

There is a District Grand Lodge of Chile under the Grand Lodge of Massachusetts with Bethesda Lodge at Valparaiso chartered in 1853; Huelin Lodge at Santiago, 1876, and Saint John's Lodge at Concepcion, 1884.

The Grand Lodge of Hamburg has a Lodge at each of the following places: Concepcion, Santiago, Valparaiso, and Talca. The Grand Lodge of Scotland has two Lodges at Antofagasta, and one each at Coquimbo, Iquique, Taltal, and Valparaiso.

A Supreme Council of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite was founded in 1899.

CHINA

A dominion of Eastern Asia. In 1767 Amity Lodge, No. 407, was instituted by English authority in Canton and in 1788 a Swedish Lodge, Elizabeth, was opened. Neither lasted many years beyond the end of the eighteenth century.

The next Masonic Body to be formed was Royal Sussex Lodge, No. 735, at Canton, warranted in 1844 by the United Grand Lodge of England. In 1847 Samuel Rawson was appointed Provincial Grand Master for China and in 1877 Cornelius Thorne became District Grand Master for Northern China.

There is also a District Grand Lodge of China under authority from Massachusetts, with several Lodges at Shanghai, one at Peking, the capital, and another at Dairen in Manchuria.

The Grand Lodge of England has established Lodges in Southern China at Amoy, Canton, Foochow, Swatow, and five at Hongkong; and in Northern China at Chefoo, Chinkiang, Hankow, Newchang, Tongshan, Wei-Hai-Wei, two at Tientsin, and three at Shanghai. The Grand Lodge of Scotland has a Lodge at Chefoo, three at Shanghai, and three at Hongkong. There is a Lodge, Germania, working in that language at Shanghai, and another, Freimaurer-Vereinigung, United Freemasons, at Tsingtau. The Grand Orient of Italy has a Lodge, Italia, at Shanghai, and in 1909 the Grand Orient of Portugal erected a Lodge, Luis de Camoes, at Macau, or Macao, a Portuguese settlement on the Coast near the Canton River.

The Supreme Council of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite, Southern Jurisdiction of the United States of America, chartered Yangste Lodge of Perfection, Shanghai Chapter of Rose Croix, Cathay Council of Kadosh and Orient Consistory, all at Shanghai, and all on September 19, 1901; and Ming Te Lodge of Perfection, Tung Te Chapter of Rose Croix, Hou To Council of Kadosh and Chung Te Consistory were all chartered on October 20, 1917, and all are at Shanghai.

A secret society, described by Doctor Mackey as akin to Freemasonry and indigenous to China, is the Most Ancient Order of Suastica, or the Brotherhood of the Mystic Cross, said to have been founded 1027 is.c. by Fohi, and introduced into China 975 B.c. It contains three degrees: Apprentice Brothers, Tao Sze or Doctors of Reason, and Grand Master. The Apprentice wears the Jaina Cross (see Fylfot, and Jaina Cross), worked on a blue silk ribbon; the Tao Sze wears a cross of silver; and the Grand Master one in gold. The meetings are called Tents.

CHINA, FREEMASONRY IN

The History of Freemasonry in Northern China: 1913-1937 Shanghai; privately printed in 1938; cloth; 435 pages. This invaluable work is bacdeker as well as history. As of 1937 there were 11 Lodges in China under Charters from the United Grand Lodge of England; five Lodges of Instruction; a District Grand Lodge of Northern China; two Mark Lodges, and one Knight Templar Body.

There was one Lodge under Irish Constitution (Shanghai). Under Scottish Charters were seven Lodges, including one Lodge of Instruction, one District Grand Lodge, two Royal Arch Chapters and one Council, one Body of Royal Order of Scotland. Under Charters from the United States there were eight Lodges; one Lodge of Instruction; one District Deputy Grand Lodge (sic); two Royal Arch Chapters; one K. T. Commandery; eight Scottish Rite Bodies, four in Shanghai and four in Peking. Under the Grand Lodge of the Philippine Islands were six Lodges, including one U. D., and one District Grand Lodge.

The eight Lodges under American charters were constituted by the Grand Lodge of Massachusetts, which long has led other Grand Jurisdictions in work for foreign countries, followed by New York. The Mother Lodge of America in China was Ancient Landmark Lodge, Shanghai, Chartered Dec. 14, 1864.

(The History referred to at the beginning of the paragraph above is the second of two; it was preceded by an earlier volume of the same name, and included a history of Ancient Landmarks Lodge.) In 1937 it had 95 members. Shanghai Lodge was Chartered September 14, 1904; Sinim Lodge in 1904, at Shanghai; International Lodge at Peking (Peiping) was Chartered in June, 1916; Hykes Memorial Lodge, Tientsin, was Chartered in September, 1922; Pagoda Lodge, Mukden, in March, 1926; Sungari Lodge, Harbin, in March 1929. From 1864 until 1915 the Massachusetts Lodges in China (and Manchuria) were supervised by a District Deputy Grand Master, of which there were five during the period. In 1915 the District Grand Lodge of China was formed.

CHINESE CLASSICS AND MASONIC SYMBOLISM

Giles, well versed in matters pertaining to Chinese literature, customs, and archeology, is the authority for stating that in the written language of the Chinese many curious expressions were in use seven hundred years before the Christian era, or only about two hundred years after the death of King Solomon, bearing close proximity to those used prominently in Freemasonry. The following quotation from the works of Mencius, the great disciple of Confucius, is given in illustration: "A Master Mason, in teaching his apprentices, makes use of the compasses and the square. Ye who are engaged in the pursuit of wisdom must also make use of the compasses and the square." These two words, compasses and square, in the Chinese language represent order, -regularity, and propriety. Giles points out that in the oldest of the Chinese classics, "which embraces a period from the twenty-fourth to the seventh century before Christ, there are distinct allusions to this particular symbolism."

CHINESE SECRET SOCIETIES.

In China, as in all other countries, secret societies have existed, such as the Tien-tee-whee, or Association of Heaven and Earth, and the Tien-lee, or Society of Celestial Reason. But the attempt to trace any close analogy other than some similarity without identity between them and Freemasonry is a mistaken one. These Eocieties have in general been of a political character, with revolutionary tendencies, and as such, have been prohibited by the government, sometimes under the penalty of the death or banishment of their members. Their similarity to Freemasonry consists only in these points: that they have privat, forms of initiation, an esoteric instruction, and secret modes of recognition. Beyond these all further resemblance fails.

CHISEL

In the American Rite the chisel is one of the working tools of a Mark Master, and symbolizes the effects of education on the human mind. For as the artist, by the aid of this instrument, gives form and regularity to the shapeless mass of stone, so education, by cultivating the ideas and by polishing the rude thoughts, transforms the ignorant savage into the civilized being. In the English ceremonies, the chisel is one of the working tools of the Entered Apprentice and has the same reference to the advantages of education. Preston (Illustrations of Masonry, 1812, page 86) thus elaborates its symbolism as one of the implements of Freemasonry:

But the idea is not original with Preston. It is found in Hutchinson, who, however, does not claim it as his own. It formed, most probably, a portion of the lectures of the period. In the French system, the chisel is placed on the tracing board of the Fellow Craft as an implement with which to work upon and polish the Rough Ashlar. It has, therefore, there the same symbolic signification.

CHIVALRY

The origin of chivalry is involved in very great obscurity. Almost every author who has written on this subject has adopted an hypothesis of his own. Some derive the institution from the equestrian order of ancient Rome, while others trace it to the tribes who, under the name of Northmen about the ninth century, invaded the southern parts of Europe. Warburton ascribes the origin of chivalry to the Arabians; Pinkerton, Mallet, and Percy, to Scandinavians. Clavel derives it from the the secret societies of the Persians, which were the remains of the mysteries of Mithras. In Christendom, it gave rise to the orders of knighthood, some of which have been incorporated into the Masonic System (See Knighthood).

CHRIST, ORDER OF

After the overthrow of the Order of Knights Templar throughout Europe, Dennis 1, King of Portugal, in 1317, solicited of John XXII permission to re-establish the Order of The Temple in his dominions under the name of the Order of Christ, and to restore to it the possessions which had been wrested from the Templars. The Pope, consented, approved the statutes which had been submitted to him, and, in 1319, confirmed the institution reserving to himself, and to his successors, the right of creating knights, which has given rise to the Pontifical branch of the Order which exists at Rome The knights follow the rule of Saint Benedict, and conform in points to the statutes of the Order of the Temple. The Grand Mastership is vested in the King of Portugal, and the Order having been secularized in 1789, the members were divided into the three classes of six Grand Crosses, four hundred and fifty Commanders and an unlimited number of knights. It was designated the Most Noble Order, and none but those nobly descended, of unsullied character, could be admitted. That the grandfather had been a mechanic was a impediment to the exaltation even of knights of third class. The Grand Crosses and Commanders had generally valuable grants and great privileges; the latter were also enjoyed by the knights, having pensions with reversion to their wives.

CHRISTIANIZATION OF FREEMASONRY

The interpretation of the symbols of Freemasonry from a Christian point of view is a theory adopted by some of the most distinguished Masonic writers of England and this country, but one which Brother Mackey believed does not belong to the ancient system. Hutchinson, and after him, Oliver—profoundly philosophical as are the Masonic speculations of both—have, Brother Mackey was constrained believe, fallen into a great error in calling the Master Mason's Degree a Christian institution. It is true that it embraces within its scheme the great truths Christianity upon the subject of the immortality the soul and the resurrection of the body; but this was to be presumed, because Freemasonry is truth, and all truth must be identical. But the origin of each is different; their histories are dissimilar. The principle of Freemasonry preceded the advent of Christianity. Its symbols and its legends are derived from the Solomonic Temple and from the people even anterior to that. Its religion comes from the ancient priesthood; its faith was that primitive one of Noah and immediate descendants. If Freemasonry were simply a Christian Institution, the Jew, and the Moslem, the Brahaman and Buddhist, could not conscientiously partake of its illumination. But its universality is its boast. In its language citizens of every nation may converse; at its altar men of all religions may kneel; to its creed disciples of every faith may subscribe.

Yet Brother Mackey thought, it cannot be denied that since the advent of Christianity a Christian element has been almost imperceptibly infused into the Masonic system, at least among Christian Freemasons, This has been a necessity; for it is the tendency of every predominant religion to pervade with its influence all that surrounds it or is about it, whether religious, political, or social. This arises from a need of the human heart. To the man deeply imbued with the spirit of his religion, there is an almost unconscious desire to accommodate and adapt all the business and the amusements of life - the labors and the employments of his everyday existence--to the indwelling faith of his soul.

The Christian Freemason, therefore, while acknowledging and appreciating the great doctrines taught in Freemasonry, and also while grateful that these doctrines were preserved in the bosom of his ancient Order at a time when they were unknown to the multitudes of the surrounding nations, is still anxious to give to them a Christian character; to invest them, in some measure, with the peculiarities of his own creed, and to bring the interpretation of their symbolism more nearly home to his own religious sentiments.

The feeling is an instinctive one, belonging to the noblest aspirations of our human nature; and hence we find Christian Masonic writers indulging in it to an almost unwarrantable excess, and, by the extent of their sectarian interpretations, materially affecting the cosmopolitan character of the Institution.

This tendency to Christianization has, in some instances, been so universal, and has prevailed for so long a period, that certain symbols and myths have been, in this way, so deeply and thoroughly imbued with the Christian element as to leave those who have not penetrated into the cause of this peculiarity, in doubt whether they should attribute to the symbol an ancient or a modern and Christian origin.

The foregoing is by Doctor Mackey and to it may be added that the Swedish Rite is essentially Christian, and that the intimate connection of the Hiramic Legend with the history of Christ is a most interesting and suggestive study.

CHROMATIC CALENDAR. THE FIVE POINTS

In the great Temple, usually known as the Ocean Banner Monastery, at Honam, a suburb of Canton, China, we find four colossal idols occupying a large porch, each image being painted a different color. Ch'i-kwoh, who rules the north and grants propitious winds, is dark ; Kwang-muh is red, and to him it is given to rule the south and control the fire, air, and water; To-man' rules the west, and grants or withholds rain, his color being white; while Chang-tsang, whose color is green, rules the winds and keeps them within their proper bounds, his supreme control being exercised over the east. The old custom of associating colors with the four quarters of the globe has probably led to the habit of describing the winds from these respective points as possessed of the same Colors. The fifth, the earth, the central remaining point, still is conjectural. Thus, we also find in China a set of deities known as the five rulers; their colors, elements, and points may be thus represented as in the table.

These again are in turn associated with the planets, and the study of Chinese and Babylonian planet colors is full of curious points of similarity.

BLACK, typifying the north, has two direct opponents in symbolic colors, and these are red and white. The first as implying ignorance arising from evil passions, the second indicating ignorance of mind.

Red-black is called in Hebrew Heum, from which comes Heume, an enclosing wall. Black from white, in Hebrew, is Seh-her, signifying the dawn of light to the mind of the Masonic profane, the hand to back, as the words of wisdom are about to be spoken.

In the Egyptian, the black Osiris appears at the commencement of the Funereal Ritual, representing the state of the soul which passes into the world of light.

Anubis, one of the sons of Osiris, who weighs the soul in the seales of Amenti, and is the god of the dead, is black. The Conductor, or Master of Ceremonies, Thoth Psychopompe, has the head of the black Ibis (see Truth).

RED In Hebrew, the fire of love, which burns in the south, is are, to bum, On Egyptian monuments, and in their temples, the flesh of men is painted red, and that of women, yellow. The same difference exists between the gods and goddess, except where speciality otherwise defined. Mill's name in Hebrew signifies red, and as the image of fire is love, it is the universal tie of beings from breast to breast.

GREEN pronounced yeh'-rek, meaning green thing, verdure. pronounced rake-eh-ah meaning vault of heaven, the firmament, also the winds. Green designates the beginning, the creation, the birth, as the world was called into being in the wisdom of God by his word of mouth, and Light was to appear in the East.

Phtha was the Egyptian Creator of the world; he was at times represented with his flesh painted green, and holding a scepter of four colors, red, blue, green, and yellow: fire, air, water, and earth. The god Lunus, the Moon, in Hebrew pronounced yeh-rak, is formed of one of the roots of green, signifying to found or set in order. Green is the symbol of Victory as well as Hope, in the symbolic colors (see Green).

WHITE He-ur, to be white; Heurim, meaning to be noble and pure. The Egyptian spirits of the dead were clothed in white, like the priests. Phtha, the creator and generator, was frequently robed in a white vestment, symbol of the egg from which he was born, enveloped in the white or albumen. The head of Osiris was draped in a white tunic. While the Chinese metaphorically represented Metal by this color, the Egyptians and Hebrews made it the symbol of Earth.

Its reference to the West would imply the first point whereat the profane bent the knee in supplication to the Deity.

YELLOW pronounced tsaw-hab, gold color, designates a radiation of light, signifying to shine, to be resplendent. Man, or the male principle, symbolized by ardent fire, was represented by red, and the female principle, identified with the idea of light or flame, represented by yellow or light-colored earth, over which the swift-footed messenger bears the tidings of a Freemason's distress and the return of obligatory succor. This light of the fire, the female of Divine beauty, the Egyptian Venus, was called Athor, signifying dwelling of Horus, and was as represented in the engraving.

CHURCH, FREEMASONS OF THE

An Architectural College was organized in London, in the year 1842, under the name of Freemasons of the Church for the Recovery, Maintenance, and Furtherance of the True Principles and Practice of Architecture.

The founders announced their objects to be "the rediscovery of the ancient principles of architecture; the sanction of good principles of building, and the condemnation of bad ones; the exercise of scientific and experienced judgment in the choice and use of the most proper materials ; the infusion, maintenance, and advancement of science throughout architecture ; and eventuality, by developing the powers of the College upon a just and beneficial footing, to reform the whole practice of architecture, to raise it from its present vituperated condition, and to bring around it the same unquestioned honor which is at present enjoyed by almost every other profession" (Builder, volume 1, page 23).

One of their own members has said that "the title was not intended to express any conformity, with the general body of Freemasons, but rather as indicative of the professed views of the College, namely, recovery, maintenance, and furtherance of the free principles and practice of architecture." And that, in addition, they made it an object of their exertions to preserve or effect the restoration of architectural remains of antiquity threatened unnecessarily with demolition or endangered by decay. But it is evident, from the close connection of modern Freemasonry with the building gilds of the Middle Ages, that any investigations into the condition of medieval architecture must throw light on Masonic history.

Athor, The Egyptian Venus

CINCINNATI, GENERAL SOCIETY OF THE

The true and authentic sources of information about this Society over which there has been so much debate ever since 1783 are in transactions, proceedings, and other papers published by the Society itself. Chief among these is Proceedings of the General Society of the Cincinnati with the Original Institution of the Order (Sherman, printer; Philadelphia; 1847). This perpetuates in a better form a copy of the Institution that had been published in Philadelphia by John Steele, in 1785, except that it omits a number of letters included in the latter.

A sufficient amount of original sources is accumulated if to the above two brochures is added A Journal of the General Meeting of The Cincinnati in 1784, by Major Winthrop Sargent; Philadelphia; 1859. Of the storms of printed objections to the Society the most famous was Consideration of the Order of Cincinnati, by The Count De Mirabeau; London ; 1785. The plan as stated in the General Institution was to enable the officers of the Revolutionary Army to have a national society of their own with a branch in each state; that its first purpose was to perpetuate the fellowship of the army in the field, and its second purpose to give relief to the needy in its circles; it was assumed that to be a member would in itself be a military honor; and-it was this which aroused the storm of objections-"as a testimony of election to the memory and the offspring of such officers as have died in the service, their eldest male branches shall have the same right of becoming members as the children of the actual members of the society."

This constitution was adopted and the Society was formed on it at the Verplanck House, Steuben's Headquarters, near Fishkill, shortly before demobilization.

Washington was the first President-General, elected in 1787, two years before his inauguration as first President; he was succeeded by Alexander Hamilton; C. C. Pinckney; Thomas Pinckney; Aaron Ogden ; Morgan Lewis; William Popham, H. A. S. Dearborn; Hamilton Fish ; William Wayne; Winslow Warren. The last original member died in 1854. The Society is still in existence.
In the accumulated literature belonging to the Society the most valuable is a series of sermons and orations delivered before the General Societies or the State Branches between 1784 and about 1825 ; almost without exception they are discussions by able spokesmen of the nation (President Timothy Dwight of Yale was one of them), of its problems, anxieties, and of the conceptions of the American republican system and of its National Government. They are a better portrait of what was going on in the minds of responsible and representative Americans in the critical period between 1787 and 1825 than many volumes of general history.

(The documents referred to above, along with a number of others, are preserved in the Iowa Masonic Library, Cedar Rapids, Iowa.)

CIPHER WRITING

Cryptography, or the art of writing in cipher, so as to conceal the meaning of what is written from all except those who possess key, may be traced to remote antiquity. De la Guilletiere (Lacedoemon), attributes its origin to the Spartans, and Polybius says that more than two thousand years ago Aeneas Tacitus had collected more than twenty different kinds of cipher which were then in use. Kings and generals communicated their messages to officers in distant provinces, by means of preconcerted cipher; and the system has always employed wherever there was a desire or a necessity to conceal from all but those who were entitled to the knowledge the meaning of a written document.

The Druids, who were not permitted by the rules of their Order to commit any part of their ritual to ordinary writing, preserved the memory of it by use of the letters of the Greek alphabet. The Cabalis concealed many words by writing them backward: method which is still pursued by the French Freemasons. The old alchemists also made use of cipher writing, in order to conceal those processes the knowledge of which was intended only for the adepts. Thus Roger Bacon, who discovered the composition of powder, is said to have concealed the names of ingredients under a cipher made by a transposition of the letters.

Cornelius Agrippa tells us, in his Occult Philosophy, that the ancients accounted it unlawful to write the mysteries of God with those characters with which profane and vulgar things were written; and he cites porphyry as saying that the ancients desired to conceal God, and divine virtues, by sensible figures which were visible, yet signified invisible things, and therefore delivered their great mysteries in sacred letters, and explained them by symbolical representations. Porphyry here, undoubtedly, referred to the invention and use of hieroglyphics by the Egyptian priests; but these hieroglyphic characters were in fact nothing else but form of cipher intended to conceal their instructions from the uninitiated profane.

Peter Aponas, an astrological writer of the thirteenth century, gives us some of the old ciphers which were used by the Cabalists, and among others one alphabet called "the passing of the river," which is referred to in some of the advanced degrees of Freemasonry.

But we obtain from Agrippa one alphabet in cipher which is of interest to Freemasons, and which he says was once in great esteem among the Cabalists, but which has now, he adds, become so common as to placed among profane things. He describes this cipher as follows in De Occulta Philosophia (book iii, chapter 3): The twenty-seven characters (including the finals) of the Hebrew alphabet were divided in three classes of nine in each, and these were distributed into nine squares, made by the intersection of two horizontal and two vertical lines, forming the accompanying figure.

In each of these compartments three letters were placed; as, for instance, in the first compartment, the first, tenth, and nineteenth letters of the alphabet; in the second compartment, the second, eleventh, and twentieth, and so on. The three letters in ach compartment were distinguished from each other by dots or accents. Thus, the first compartment or L, representing the first letter; the same compartment with a dot, thus

represented the tenth letter; or with two dots, thus

; it represented the nineteenth letter, and so with the other compartments; the ninth or last representing the ninth, eighteenth, and twenty-seventh letters, u, X, or y, accordingly as it was figured

without a dot in the center or with one or two.

About the middle of the eighteenth century, the French Freemasons adopted a cipher similar to this in principle, but varied in the details, among which was the addition of four compartments, made by the oblique intersection of two lines in the form of a Saint Andrew's Cross. This French cipher was never officially adopted by the Freemasons except in the American Royal Arch. It is, however, still recognized in all the Tuilleurs or handbooks of the French Rite. It has become so common as to be placed, as Agrippa said of the original scheme, "among profane things." Its use would certainly no longer subserve any purpose of concealment. Rockwell openly printed it in his Ahiman Rezon of Georgia; and it is often used by those who are not initiated, as a means of amusement.

However the use of these curious characters is common on the Royal Arch Ark of the Chapters and is officially recognized by the General Grand Chapter of the United States. In the instructions of the Oliver Ptitual, purporting to be used in 1749 at London, there is this explanation, "You are also, my brethren, entitled as Master Masons to the use of an alphabet which our venerable Grand Master Hiram Abif employed in communications with King Solomon at Jerusalem and King Hiram at Tyre. It is geometrick in its character and is therefore eminently useful to Master Masons in general. By means of two squares and a mallet a brother may make the whole alphabet and even silently convey his ideas to another. That this geometrick alphabet may be easily learned and remembered, I will now entrust you with the key thereof ."

Some present-day Lodge Boards have characters which must be read backwards. Brother Edward H. Dring (Transactiom, Quatuor Coronati Lodge, volume xxix, pages 243-64) has an article on "The Evolution and Development of the Tracing or Lodge Board" in which he states that this reversal took place about the year 1825, and has been perpetuated ever since. On the old-time Lodge Board the dot is not used to indicate the second time the key diagram is used, and thus each character may stand for either of two letters.

Browne and Finch printed books intended only for Freemasons, and not as expositions, invented ciphers for their own use, and supplied their initiated readers with the key. Without a key, their works are unintelligible, except by the art of the decipherer.

Although not used in the first three degrees, the cipher is common in the advanced degrees, of which there is scarcely one which has not had its peculiar cipher. But for the purposes of concealment, the cipher is no longer of any practical use. The art of deciphering has been brought to so great a state of perfection that there is no cipher so complicated as to bid defiance for many hours to the penetrating skill of the experienced decipherer. Hence, the cipher has gone out of general use in Freemasonry as it has among diplomatists, who are compelled to communicate with their respective countries by methods more secret than any that can be supplied by a dispatch written in cipher. Edgar A. Poe has justly said, in his story of The Gold Bug, that "it may well be doubted whether human ingenuity can construct an enigma of the kind, which human ingenuity may not, by proper application, resolve."

But there are some interesting instances of the use of a cipher outside the field of fiction (see Masonic Cipher Message, A Mysterious).

CIPRIANI, JEAN BAPTISTE

Born in 1727, died in 1785. A famous Florentine artist, who came to England in 1755, and co-operated with Bartolozzi in the production of the frontispiece of the 1784 edition of the Book of Constitutions.

CIRCLE

The circle being a figure which returns into itself, and having therefore neither beginning nor end, has been adopted in the symbology of all countries and times as a symbol sometimes of the universe and sometimes of eternity. With this idea in the Zoroastrian mysteries of Persia, and frequently in the Celtic mysteries of Druidism, the temple of initiation was circular. In the obsolete lectures of the old English system, it was said that "the circle has ever been considered symbolical of the Deity; for as a circle appears to have neither beginning nor end, it may be justly considered a type of God, without either beginning of days or ending of years. It also reminds us of a future state, where we hope to enjoy everlasting happiness and joy.'' But whatever refers especially to the Masonic symbolism of the circle ,will be more appropriately contained in the article on the Point within a Circle.

CIRCLES

The name in German is Kränzchen
There are in Germany many small Masonic clubs, or Circles, which are formed in subordination to some Lodge which exercises a supervision over them and is responsible for their good behavior to the Grand Lodge, by whose permission they have been established. The members devote themselves to Masonic work, organize lectures, ete., and acquire a Masonic library (see Ars Quatuor Coronatorum, ix, 66).

CIRCUIT

Fort, in his Early History and Antiquities of Freemasonry, says: "Northern kings, immediately upon acceding to the throne, made a 'gait' or procession about their realms. According to the Scandinavian laws, when real property was sold, granted, or conveyed, the transfer of possession was incomplete until a circuit was made around the estate by the buyer and vendor, in which tour all the inhabitants of the nearest hamlet united.

"During the installation ceremonies of the Master of a Masonic Lodge, a procession of all the Craftsmen march around the room before the Master, to whom an appropriate salute is tendered. This Circuit is designed to signify that the new incumbent reduces the Lodge to his possession in this symbolic manner" (Fort's Early History, page 320; see also Circumambulation).

CIRCULAR TEMPLES

These were used in the initiations of the religion or Zoroaster. Like the square temples of Freemasonry, and the other mysteries, they were symbolic of the world; and the symbol was completed by making the circumference of the circle a representation of the zodiac. In the mysteries of Druidism also, the temples were sometimes circular.

CIRCUMAMBULATION, RITE OF

Circumambulation is the name given by sacred archeologists to that religious rite in the ancient initiations which consisted in a formal procession around the altar, or other holy and consecrated object. The same Rite exists in Freemasonry.

In ancient Greece, when the priests were engaged in the rite of sacrifice, they and the people always walked three times round the altar while singing a sacred hymn. In making this procession, great care was taken to move in imitation of the course of the sun. For this purpose; they commenced at the east, and passing on by the way of the south to the west and thence by the north, they arrived at the east again. The strophe of the ancient hymn was sung in going from the east to the West : the antistrophe in returning to the east, and the epode while standing still. The strophe in Greek choral poetry was the first in a pair of two corresponding stanzas, or rhymed lines ; the second being called the antistrophe. The epode was the name for the last part of an ancient ode or poem. In this procession, as it will be observed, the right hand was always placed to the altar. "After this," says Potter, "they stood about the altar, and the priest, turning towards the right hand, went round it and sprinkled it with meal and holy water", (Antiquities of Greece, Book II, chapter iv, page 206). This ceremony the Greeks called moving, from the right to the right, which was the direction of the motion, and the Romans applied to it the term dextrovorsum, or dextrorsum, which signifies the same thing. Thus, Plautus (Curculis, 1,1, 70), makes Palinurus, a character in his comedy of Curculio, say: "If you would do reverence to the gods, you must turn to the right hand," Si deos salutas dextroversum censeo. Gronovius, in commenting on this passage of Plautus, says : ''In worshiping and praying to the gods, they were accustomed to turn to the right hand." A hymn of Callimachus has been preserved, which is said to have been chanted by the priests of Apolio at Delos, while performing this ceremony of circumambulation, the substance of which is ''we imitate the example of the sun, and follow his benevolent course. "

Among the Romans, the ceremony of circumambulation was always used in the rites of sacrifice, of expiation or purification. Thus, Vergil (Aeneid, vi, 229), describes Corynacus as purifying his companions at the funeral of Misenus, by passing three times around them while aspersing them with the lustral waters; and to do so conveniently, it was necessary that he should have moved with his right hand toward them.

Idem ter socios pura circumtulit unda,
Spargens rore levi et ramo felicis olivae.
That is:

Thrice with pure water compass'd he the crew,
Sprinkling, with olive branch, the gentle dew.

In fact, so common was it to unite the ceremony of circumambulation with that of expiation or purification, or, in other words, to make a circuitous procession in performing the latter rite, that the term lustrate, whose primitive meaning is to purify, came at last to be synonymous with circumire, to walk round anything, and hence a purification and a circumambulation were often expressed by the same word.

The circuit of sacred places as a significant religious rite has many recorded examples. William Simpson (The Jonah Legend, page 18), says: "With the Semites there is one example which appears to be a good illustration of the principle. The pilgrims of Mecca perform what is considered to be a very sacred part of the ceremonies ; that is, the tawuf or circumambulation of the Kaabah. The reason given for this is that the first Kaabah was an imitation of the celestial throne which is constantly being circumambulated by the angels. Going round sacred places and things is not peculiar to the Semites; it is a ritualistic custom that can be traced through most parts of the ancient world, and in many cases it is continued down to our own times. Being part of the ritual at the Kaabah, it is not difficult to understand how it gave birth to the mythos of the angels and the throne."

Among the Hindus, the same Rite of Circumambulation has always been practiced. As an instance, we may cite the ceremonies which are to be performed by a Brahman, upon first rising from bed in the morning, an accurate account of which has been given by Colebrooke in the sixth volume of the Asiatic Researches.

The priest having first adored the sun, while directing his face to the east, then walks toward the west by the way of the south, saying, at the same time, "I follow the course of the sun," which he thus explains: "As the sun in his course moves round the world by way of the south, so do I follow that luminary, to obtain the benefit arising from a journey round the earth by the way of the south.'' Lastly, we may refer to the preservation of this Rite among the Druids, whose "mystical dance" around the cairn, or heap of sacred stones, was in the opinion of Brother Mackey nothing more nor less than the Rite of Circumambulation.

On these occasions, the priest always made three circuits from east to west, by the right hand, around the altar or cairn, accompanied by all the worshipers. And so sacred was the rite once considered, that we learn from Toland (Celtic Religion and Learning, II, xvii), that in the Scottish Isles, once a principal seat of the Druidical religion, the people "never come to the ancient sacrificing and fire-hallowing cairns, but they walk three times around them, from east to west, according to the course of the sun.'' This sanctified tour, or round by the south, he observes, is called Deaseal, as the contrary, or unhallowed one by the north, is called Tuapholl. And, he further remarks, that this word Deaseal was derived ''from Deas, the right (understanding in this case the hand) and soil, one of the ancient names of the sun ; the right hand in this round being ever next the heap.''

This Rite of Circumambulation undoubtedly refers to the doctrine of sun-worship, because the circumambulation was always made around the sacred place, just as the sun was supposed to move around the earth; and although the dogma of sun-worship does not of course exist in Freemasonry, we find an allusion to it in the Rite of Circumambulation, which it preserves, as well as in the position of the officers of a Lodge and in the symbol of a point within a circle. The Rite of Circumambulation may not be without some suggestion of the old ceremony of beating the bounds or, as it is called in Scotland, riding the marches, a custom still observed in some cities. The procession usually started and ended at the town cross if there should be one. So much we are told on page 16 of By-Gone Church Life in Scotland in an essay by Reverend George S. Tyack.

A more elaborate discussion of the old ceremony of beating the bounds is given by John T. Page in the collection of essays contained in Curious Church Customs edited by William Andrews. From this we learn that in the early days when deities were called into existence at the will of any human power we may note the fact that somewhere between the years 715 and 672 B.C. Numa Pompilius introduced to the Roman cities the worship of the god, Terminus. The king originated a plan by which the fields of the cities were separated from each other by means of boundary stones. These were dedicated and made sacred to a god Terminus. Terminalia, as the Feast of Terminus was called, was celebrated annually on the 23rd of February. On this day the people turned out in force and visiting the several boundary stones, bedecked them out with flowers and performed various sacrificial rites with great rejoicing.

From the seventh century before Christ to the present time is a long step, but it is generally admitted that in this yearly Terminalia of the ancient Romans we have the germ of the custom known as beating the bounds ,which in many parishes throughout England is still carried out either annually or every third or seventh year as the case may be.

The early Christians readily adopted some of the heathen customs to their own requirements. Thus we soon find them making a perambulation around their fields accompanied by their bishops and clergy. They repeated litanies and implored God to avert plague and pestilence and to enable them in due season to reap the fruits of the earth. We find these processions recorded as early as the 550th year of the Christian era.

The curious custom of whipping during these processions around the bounds of any particular locality came to form a part of the ceremony. In order that the boundaries of the parish might be deeply impressed on the younger portion of the community, it became common to publicly whip a boy while he was near one of these landmarks in the course of the procession. In order to encourage the youngsters to undergo this treatment, we find that a present was usually given to them at the close of the proceedings.

Something of the same sort has been preserved in certain religious observances whenever a piece of property has been dedicated for sacred use. Then the procession marches around the various boundary marks and dedicates them solemnly.

In all this there is a kinship showing the ancient source of the Rite of Circumambulation.

CIRCUMSPECTION

A necessary watchfulness is recommended to every man, but in a Freemason it becomes a positive duty, and the neglect of it constitutes a heinous crime. On this subject, the Old Charges of 1722 (vi, 4) are explicit. "You shall be cautious in your words and carriage, that the most penetrating stranger shall not be able to discover or find out what is not proper to be imitated; and sometimes you shall divert a discourse and manage it prudently for the Honor of the Worshipful Fraternity" (Constitutions, 1723, page 55).

CITY OF DAVID

A section in the southern part of Jerusalem, embracing Mount Zion, where a fortress of the Jebusites stood, which David reduced, and where he built a new palace and city, to which he gave his own name.

CITY OF THE GREAT KING

Jerusalem, so called in Psalm xlviii, 2, and by the Savior in Matthew v, 35.

CIVILIZATION AND FREEMASONRY

Those who investigate in the proper spirit the history of Speculative Freemasonry will be strongly impressed with the peculiar relations that exist between the history of Freemasonry and that of civilization. They will find these facts to be patent: that Freemasonry has ever been the result of civilization ; that in the most ancient times the spirit of Freemasonry and the spirit of civilization have always gone together; that the progress of both has been with equal strides; that where there has been no appearance of civilization there has been no trace of Freemasonry; and, finally, that wherever Freemasonry has existed in any of its forms, there it has been surrounded and sustained by civilization, which social condition it in turn elevated and purified, Speculative Freemasonry, therefore, seems to have been a necessary result of civilization, It is, even in its primitive and most simple forms, to be found among no barbarous or savage people. Such a state of society has never been capable of introducing or maintaining its abstract principles of divine truth. But while Speculative Freemasonry is the result of civilization, existing only, in its bosom and never found among barbarous or savage races, it has, by a reactionary law of sociology, proved the means of extending and elevating the civilization to which it originally owed its birth. Civilization has always been progressive. That of Pelasgic Greece was far behind that which distinguished the Hellenic period of the same country. The civilization of the ancient world was inferior to that of the modern, and every century shows an advancement in the moral, intellectual, and social condition of mankind.

But in this progress from imperfection to perfection the influence of those speculative systems that are identical with Freemasonry has always been seen and felt. Let us, for an example, look at the ancient heathen world and its impure religions. While the people of Paganism bowed, in their ignorance, to a many-headed god, or, rather, worshiped at the shrines of many gods, whose mythological history and character must have exercised a pernicious effect on the moral purity of their worshipers, speculative Philosophy, in the form of the Ancient Mysteries, was exercising its influence upon a large class of neophytes and disciples, by giving this true symbolic interpretation of the old religious myths. In the adyta or secret shrines of their temples in Greece and Rome and Egypt, in the sacred caves of India; and in consecrated groves of Scandinavia and Gaul and Britain, these ancient sages were secretly divesting the Pagan faith of its polytheism and of its anthropomorphic deities, and were establishing a pure monotheism in its place, and illustrating, by a peculiar symbolism, the great dogmas-since taught in Freemasonry--of the unity of God and the immortality of the soul.

And in modern times, when the religious thought of mankind, under a better dispensation, has not required this purification, Freemasonry still, in other ways, exerts its influence in elevating the tone of civilization ; for through its working the social feelings have been strengthened, the amenities and charities of life been refined and extended, and, as we have had recent reason to know and see, the very bitterness of strife and the blood-guiltiness of war have been softened and oftentimes obliterated.

We then arrive at these conclusion, namely, that Speculative Freemasonry is a result of civilization, for it exists in no savage or barbarous state of society, but has always appeared with the advent in any country of a condition of civilization, "grown with its growth and strengthened with its strength" ; and, in return, has proved, by a reactionary influence, a potent instrument in extending, elevating, and refining the civilization which gave it birth, by advancing its moral, intellectual, and religious character.

CLANDESTINE

The ordinary meaning of this word is secret, hidden. The French word clandestin, from which it is derived, is defined by Boiste to be something fait en cachette et contre les lois, a phrase meaning in the French language Done in a hiding place and against the laws, which better suits the Masonic signification, which refers to what is illegal, or not authorized. Irregular is the word which is often used for small departures from custom.

Brothers Newton R. Parvin, former Grand Secretary of Iowa, and C. C. Hunt, who succeeded him in office, have sent us an account of the American Masonic Federation.

A book, the Thomson Masonic Fraud, a Study in Clandestine Masonry, has also been written by Brother Isaac Blair Evans, United States Attorney for Utah in 1921, who not only prepared the case, with the assistance of Brother M. G. Price, for presentation to the Grand Jury but also drew the indictment upon which Messrs. Thomson, Perrot, and Bergera were Convicted.

The principal reason for the financial success of the American Masonic Federation was, as Brothers Parvin, Hunt and Blair point out, due to the general ignorance of the Craft on the subject of Masonic history and Law. By setting forth claims on this subject, which very few Freemasons because of lack of knowledge were able to disprove, the convicted persons were able to impose upon the public. We may here point out that neither the Judge nor any member of the jury were Freemasons. From these two sources of first hand information the following particulars are obtained. Brother Evans says in the introduction to his book, page 1:

On the latter subject see Mackey's revised History of Freemasonry (volume vi) ; General Albert Pike's Cerneauism, 1885, his report on Joseph Cerneau, 1886, and other works; A History of Spurious Supreme Councils in the Northern Jurisdiction, William Gardiner, Past Grand Master, Massachusetts, 1863-4, republished 1884; The History of the Peckham Supreme Council, E. T. Carson, 1884; The Ancient Acceptet Scottish Rite of Freemasonry, William Homan, 1905, this latter work containing valuable reports on proceedings against unauthorized conferring of Craft as well as other degrees.

Forrest Adair, 33 , a Brother memorable for his labors for crippled children, spent freely his time and money protecting Masonic interests, as in the rights of the Nobles of the Mystic Shrine determined by the Supreme Court of Georgia in 1915, and the Supreme Court of the United States in 1918. A Committee headed by Brother Frank C. Jones on behalf of the Imperial Council continued this work successfully for the Shrine in other States, as in Texas, 1925, and the results will probably, end the matter for the whole country (see Infringing upon Freemasonry).

CLANDESTINE FREEMASON

One made in or affiliated with a clandestine Lodge. With clandestine Lodges or Freemasons, regular Freemasons are forbidden to associate or converse on Masonic subjects.

CLANDESTINE LODGE

A body of Freemasons or of those improperly claiming to be Freemasons, uniting in a Lodge without the consent of a Grand Lodge, or, although originally legally constituted, continuing to work after its Charter has been revoked, is styled a Clandestine Lodge. Neither Anderson nor Entick employ the word. It was first used in the Book of Constitutions in a note by Noorthouck, on page 239 of his edition (see the Constitutions of 1784).Regular Lodge would be the better term.

CLARE DE GILBERT

Marquis of Pembroke. According to Masonic tradition, said to have been, with Ralph Lord Monthermer. and Walter Gifford, Archbishop of York, given charge of the Operative Masons in 1272

CLARE, MARTIN

A London schoolmaster and a celebrated Freemason of England in the eighteenth century. The date of Brother Clare's birth is not on record, but it is known that his death occurred May 19, 1751, Martin Clare served the Fraternity as Grand Steward in 1734, as Junior Warden in 1735, Deputy Grand Master in 1741, continuing his activity in the work of the Grand Lodge up to 1749. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society on March 27, 1735. He was, in 1736, Master of the Lodge at the Shakespeare's Head, Saint James, which was constituted in 1721, then No. 4, and later became the Lodge of Friendship, No. 6. The Minutes of the Lodge from January, 1738, to December, 1749, were recorded in his handwriting.

He was distinguished for zeal and intelligence in Freemasonry, and it has been pretty well established that he was the author of A Defense of Masonry, which was issued in 1730 in answer to Prichard's Masonry Dissected, and which was reproduced in the 1738 Edition of the Constitutions.

Brother Henry Sadler, in his Thomas Dunckerley, his Life, Labors and Letters, tells on page 114 that on January 25, 1742, ''The Master proposed the Revival of the Lectures in this place and this seeming universally agreeable to the Society, his Worship requested the D.G.M., to entertain the Lodge this Day Fortnight at nine o'clock and the Subject was left to his own choice. After him Brother Wagg promised to read this Day Month." On page 114, Brother Sadler says, "The scientific lectures had been omitted for several months past. The word Revival was originally written Revisal by Clare, but as the proceedings were transcribed by him, from rough minutes, probably taken by some one else, he doubtless mistook the word and afterwards altered the s into a v, although at first sight and taken without the context the word might now easily be mistaken for Revisal.

This trifling error may have given rise to the tradition that Clare revised the Craft Lectures by request of the Grand Lodge; I am not, however, aware of the existence of the least evidence or indication that he did anything of the kind."

Clare's oration before the Grand Lodge on December 11, 1735, was translated into several foreign languages. A reprint of it is in the Pocket Companion and History of Freemasons for 1754, also in Oliver's Masonic Institutes, reprints of the Lodge of Research at Leicester, etc. (see the Transactions, Quatuor Coronati Lodge, volume iv, pages 33--li). Het translated into English a work which had been published the preceding year, in Dublin, under the title of Relation Apologique et Historique de la Société des Franc-Maçons, or A Defense and Historical Account of the Society of Freemasons.

The Freemason of June 6, 1925, says: "The second name in the roster of Old King's Arms Lodge, No. 28, London, is that of Sir Cecil Wray's Senior Warden in 1730---Martin Clare ; one of the greatest worthies the Craft in England has known, who represented the Lodge on the Board of Grand Stewards in 1734, became Junior Grand Warden in the following year, and in 1741 was appointed Deputy Grand Master to the Earl of Morton. There seems little doubt that he was initiated in the Lodge, and, although he never sat in the Master's Chair, the Minute Books contain many references which testify to his love for it and to the great services he rendered to it. When Sir Cecil Wray was invited to become the Master he accepted on condition that Martin Clare would undertake the duties of Senior Warden. Many of the Lodge Minutes are in his handwriting, and those Minutes are certainly a model, both in penmanship and composition, of what such chronicles should be. He frequently lectured at the Old King's Arms Lodge. It was the custom for many years for his Oration to be read in the Lodge annually.

He was also the author of numerous lectures or discourses dealing with Freemasonry which he delivered at various Lodges, and the Minutes intimate his keenness in promoting discussions on matters of Masonic interest. The first act of his, on rejoining the Lodge in 1747, after a short absence, was to revive the custom of lectures and papers, which he had also inaugurated in the Lodge of Friendship. Clare presided on, at least, four Communications of the Grand Lodge.''

CLARENCE, H. R. H. THE DUKE OF

afterward King William IV, was initiated in Lodge 86, Plymouth, on March 9, 1796.

CLASSIFICATION OF FREEMASONS

Oliver says, in his Dictionary of Symbolical Masonry, that ancient Masonic tradition informs us that the Speculative and Operative Freemasons who were assembled at the building of the Temple were arranged in nine classes, under their respective Grand Masters ; namely 30,000 Entered Apprentices, under their Grand Master Adoniram ; 80,000 Fellow-Crafts, under Hiram Abif ; 2,000 Mark Men under Stolkyn; 1,000 Master Masons under Mohabin; 600 Mark Masters, under Ghiblim; 24 Architects, under Joabert; 12 Grand Architects, under Adoniram ; 45 Excellent Masons, under Hiram Abif; 9 Super-Excellent Masons, under Tito Zadok; besides the Ish Sabbal or laborers. The tradition is, however, rather apocryphal, a matter of doubt.

CLAVEL, F. T. BEGUE

An abbé. A French Masonic Writer, who published, in 1842, a Histoire pittoresque de la Franc-Maçonnerie et des Sociétés Secrétes Anciennes et Modernes or Picturesque History of Freemasonry and of Ancient and Modern Secret Societies. This work contains a great amount of interesting and valuable information, notwithstanding many historical inaccuracies, especially in reference to the Ancient Accepted Scottish Rite, of which the author was an adversary. For the publication of the work without authority he was suspended by the Grand Orient for two months, and condemned to pay a fine, Clavel appealed to the intelligence of the Fraternity against this sentence. In 1844, he commenced the publication of a Masonic Journal called the Grand Orient, the title of which he subsequently changed to the Orient. As he had not obtained the consent of the Grand Orient, he was again brought before that body, and the sentence of perpetual exclusion from the Grand Orient pronounced against him.

Rebold says that it was the act of a faction, and obtained by unfair means. It was not sustained by the judgment of the Craft in France, with whom Clavel gained reputation and popularity. Notwithstanding the Masonic literary labors of Clavel, an account of the time of his birth, or of his death, appears to be obscure. His desire seemed to be to establish as history, by publication, those views which he personally entertained and formed ; gathered from sources of doubtful character, he desired they should not be questioned in the future, semel pro semper, once for all.

CLAY GROUND

In the clay ground between Succoth and Zeredatha, Hiram Abif cast all the sacred vessels of the Temple, as well as the pillars of the porch. This spot was about thirty-five miles in a northeast direction from Jerusalem ; and it is supposed that Hiram selected it for his foundry, because the clay which abounded there was, by its great tenacity, peculiarly fitted for making molds. The Masonic tradition on this subject is sustained by the authority of Scripture (see First. Kings vii, 46, and Second Chronicles iv, 17). Morris, in his Freemasonry in the Holy Land, gives the following interesting facts in reference to this locality. "A singular fact came to light under the investigations of my assistant at Jerusalem. He discovered that the jewelers of that city, at the present day, use a particular species of brown, arenaceous clay in making molds for casting small pieces in brass, etc. Inquiring whence this clay comes, they reply, 'From Seikoot, about two days' journey north-east of Jerusalem.' Here, then, is a satisfactory reply to the question, Where was the 'clay ground' of Hiram's foundries? It is the best matrix-clay existing within reach of Hiram Abif, and it is found only in 'the clay ground between Succoth and Zeredatha'; and considerable as was the distance, and extremely inconvenient as was the locality, so important did that master-workman deem it, to secure a sharp and perfect mold for his castings, that, as the Biblical record informs us, he established his furnaces there."

CLAY, HENRY

American statesman and orator; born April 12, 1777; died June 29, 1852. At twenty-two elected delegate to Kentucky Constitutional Convention; at twenty-six to legislature, at twenty-nine United States Senator, at thirty-four Speaker of House of Representatives, Secretary of State 1825--9. "An active, zealous Mason, as the records of the Grand Lodge (Kentucky) abundantly prove" (Centennial History, Grand Secretary H. B. Grant, 1900, page 72). Elected Grand Master, August 29, 1820. He advocated a General Grand Lodge of the United States and at the Washington (D.C.) conference, March 9, 1822, offered the resolutions unanimously adopted favoring his views.

CLEAN HANDS

Clean hands are a symbol of purity. The Psalmist says "that he only shall ascend into the hill of the Lord, or shall stand in his holy place, who hath clean hands and a pure heart." Hence, the washing of the hands is an outward sign of an internal purification; and the Psalmist says in another place, "I will wash my hands in innocence. And I will encompass thine altar, Jehovah." In the Ancient Mysteries the washing of the hands was always an introductory ceremony to the initiation; and, of course, it was used symbolically to indicate the necessity of purity from crime as a qualification of those who sought admission into the sacred rites ; and hence, on a temple in the Island of Crete, this inscription was placed: "Cleanse your feet, wash your hands, and then enter." Indeed, the washing of hands, as symbolic of purity, was among the ancients a peculiarly religious rite. No one dared to pray to the gods until he had cleansed his hands. Thus, Homer (in the Iliad vi, 266) makes Hector say:

I dread with unwashed hands to bring
My incensed wine to Jove an offering.

In a similar spirit of religion, Aeneas, when leaving burning Troy, refuses to enter the Temple of Ceres until his hands, polluted by recent strife, had been washed in the living stream (see the Aeneid11, 718).

Me bello e tanto digressum et coede recenti,
Attrectare nefas, donec me flumine vivo Abiuero.
In me, now fresh from war and recent strife,
'Tis impious the sacred things to touch,
Till in the living stream myself I bathe.

The same practice prevailed among the Jews, and a striking instance of the symbolism is exhibited in that well-known action of Pilate, who, when the Jews clamored for Jesus that they might crucify him, appeared before the people, and, having taken water, washed his hands, saying at the same time, "I am innocent of the blood of this just man, see ye to it" (see Matthew xxvii, 24).

The white gloves worn by Freemasons as a part of their clothing, as well as the white gloves presented to the initiate in the Continental and Latin Rites, allude to this symbolizing of clean hands ; and what in some of the advanced Degrees has been called Masonic Baptism is nothing else but the symbolizing, by a ceremony, this doctrine of clean hands as the sign of a pure heart (see Baptism Masonic, and Lustration).

CLEAVE

The word cleave is twice used in Freemasonry, and each time in an opposite sense. First, in the sense of adhering, where the sentence in which it is employed is in the Past Master's Degree, and is taken from the 137th Psalm: "Let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth;" second, in the Master's Degree, where, in the expression "The flesh cleaves from the bone," it has the intransitive meaning of to separate, and is equivalent to "the flesh parts, or separates, itself from the bone." In this latter use the word is less common, and in the above expression is used only technically as a Masonic term.

CLECHE

Pronounced kleesh-a, and in heraldry usually described as a cross charged with another of the same figure, but, whose color is that of the field, but the reader may understand it as being a cross designed to show merely a border or outline or having the ends of the four arms enlarged, one or the other.

CLEFTS OF THE ROCKS

The whole of Palestine is mountainous, and these mountains abound in deep clefts or caves, which were anciently places of refuge to the inhabitants in time of war, and were often used as lurking places for robbers. It is, therefore, strictly in accordance with geographical truth that the statement, in relation to the concealment of certain persons in the clefts of the rocks, is made in the Third Degree (see the latter part of the article Caverns).

CLEMENT AUGUSTUS

Born 1700; died 1766. Duke of Bavaria and Elector of Cologne, a Freemason until 1738 when, at the publication of Pope Clement XII'S Bull, he withdrew from the Masonic Order openly although said to have privately maintained affiliation with it and to have founded the Society of Mopses.

CLEMENT V

Before his election, as Pope of Rome, known as Bertrand d' Agoust, or Bertrand de Gôt, Archbishop of Bordeaux. As the price of the papal crown, said to have made an agreement with Philippe le Bel for the destruction of the Knights Templar. It is also recorded that either Jacques de Molay, or Guy, the Dauphin d'Auvergne, when at the stake, summoned Clement V before God in forty days. A few days after the execution, March 11, 1314, an illness began for the Pope, ending in his death on April 20, 1314.

CLEMENT XI I

A Pope, who assumed the pontificate on the 12th of August, 1730, and died on the 6th of February, 1740. On the 24th of April, 1738, he published his celebrated Bull of Excommunication, entitled In Eminenti A postolatus Specula, in which we find these words: "For which reason the temporal and spiritual communities are enjoined, in the name of holy obedience, neither to enter the society of Freemasons, to disseminate its principles, to defend it, nor to admit nor conceal it within their houses or palaces, or elsewhere, under pain of excommunication ipso facto, for all acting in contradiction to this, and from which the pope only can absolve the dying." Clement was a bitter persecutor of the Masonic Order, and hence he caused his Secretary of State, the Cardinal Firrao, to issue on the 14th of January, 1739, a still more stringent edict for the Papal States, in which death and confiscation of property, without hope of mercy, was the penalty or, as the original has it, "sotto Pena della morte, e confiscazione de beni da incorressi, irremissibilmente senz a speranzs di grazia.''

CLEMENT XIV

Pope of Rome, previously having the name of J. V. A. Ganganelli, who suppressed the Jesuits by his order of June 14, 1773, although it was later on revived by a successor.

CLERKS OF STRICT OBSERVANCE

Known also as the Spiritual Branch of the Templars, or Clerici Ordinis Templarii. This was a schism from the Order or Rite of Strict Observance; and was founded by Starck in 1767. The members of this Rite established it as a rival of the latter system. They claimed a pre-eminence not only over the Rite of Strict Observance, but also over all the Lodges of ordinary Freemasonry, and asserted that they alone possessed the true secrets of the Order, and knew the place where the treasures of the Templars were deposited (for a further history of this Rite, see Starck). The Rite consisted of seven Degrees, viz.:

1, 2, and 3. Symbolic Freemasonry.
4. Junior Scottish Freemason, or Jungschotte.
5. Scottish Master, or Knight of Saint Andrew.
6. Provincial Capitular of the Red Cross.
7. Magus, or Knight of Purity and Light.

Clavel ( Histoire Pittoresque, or Picturesque History, page186) gives different names to some of these Degrees. This last was subdivided into five sections, as follows:

I. Knight Novice of the third year.
II. Knight Novice of the fifth year.
III. Knight Novice of the seventh year.
IV. Levite, and V. Priest.

Ragon errs in calling this the Rite of Lax Observance unless he said it satirically.

CLERMONT, CHAPTER OF

On the 24th of November, 1754, the Chevalier de Bonneville established in Paris a Chapter of the Advanced Degrees under this name, which was derived from what Doctor Mackey deemed the Jesuitical Chapter of Clermont. This society was composed of many distinguished persons of the court and city, who, disgusted with the dissensions of the Parisian Lodges, determined to separate from them. They adopted the Templar system, which had been created at Lyons, in 1743, and their Rite consisted at first of but six Degrees, namely,

1, 2, 3. Saint John's Freemasonry.
4. Knight of the Eagle.
5. Illustrious Knight or Templar.
6. Sublime Illustrious Knight.

But soon after that time the number nf these Degrees was greatly extended. The Baron de Hund received the advanced Degrees in this Chapter, and derived from them the idea of the Rite of Strict Observance, which he subsequently established in Germany. CLERMONT, COLLEGE OF

college of Jesuits in Paris, where James II, after his flight from England, in 1688, resided until his removal to St. Germain.

During his residence there, he is said to have sought the establishment of a system of Freemasonry, the object of which should be the restoration of the House of Stuart to the throne of England. Relics of this attempted system are still to be found in many of the advanced Degrees, and the Chapter of Clermont, subsequently organized in Paris, appears to have had some reference to it.

CLERMONT, COUNT OF

Louis of Bourbon, prince of the blood royal and Count of Clermont, was elected by sixteen of the Paris Lodges Perpetual Grand Master, for the purpose of correcting the numerous abuses which had crept into French Freemasonry. He did not, however, fulfil the expectations of the French Freemasons; for the next year he abandoned the supervision of the Lodges, and new disorders arose. He still, however, retained the Grand Mastership, and died in 1771, being succeeded by his nephew, the Duke of Chartres.

CLINTON, DE WITT

A distinguished statesman, who was born at Little Britain, New York, March 2, 1769, and died on the 11th of February, 1828. He entered the Masonic Order in 1793, and the next year was elected Master of his Lodge. In 1806, he was elevated to the position of Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of New York, and in 1814, to that of Grand Master of the Grand Encampment. In 1816, he was elected General Grand High Priest of the General Grand Chapter of the United States. In 1813, he became unwittingly complicated with the Spurious Consistory, established by Joseph Cerneau in the city of New York, but he took no active part in its proceedings, and soon withdrew from all connection with it. When the anti-Masonic excitement arose in this country in 1826, in consequence of the affair of William Morgan, whom the Freemasons were accused of having put to death, Brother Clinton was Governor of the State of New York, and took all the necessary measures for the arrest of the supposed criminals. But, although he offered a liberal reward for their detection, he was charged by thp Anti-Masons with official neglect and indifference, charges which were undoubtedly false and malicious. Spenser, the special attorney of the State, employed for the prosecution of the offenders, went w far as to resign his office, and to assign, as a mason for his resignation, the want of sympathy and support on the part of the Executive. But all of the accusations and insinuations are properly to be attributed to political excitement, Anti Masonry having been adopted soon after its origin by the politicians as an engine for their advancement to office. Brother Clinton was an honorable man and a true patriot, an ardent and devoted Freemason. (For details as to his farsighted and successful activity in the foundation of the Public School System in New York City and State see Public Schools.)

CLOSING

The duty of closing the Lodge is as imperative, and the ceremony as solemn, as that of opening; nor should it ever be omitted through negligence, nor hurried over with haste. Everything should be performed with order and precision, so that no Brother shall go away dissatisfied. From the very nature of our Constitution, a Lodge cannot properly be adjourned. It must be closed either in due form, or the Brethren called off to refreshment. But an adjournment on motion, as in other societies, is unknown to the Order. The Master can alone dismiss the Brethren, and that dismission must take place after a settled usage. In Grand Lodges which meet for several days successively, the session is generally continued from day to day, by calling to refreshment at the termination of each day's sitting.

CLOTHED

A Freemason in the United States of America is said to be properly clothed when he wears white leather gloves, a white apron, and the jewel of his Masonic rank.

The gloves are now often, but improperly, dispensed with, except on public occasions. "No Mason is permitted to enter a Lodge or join in its labors unless he is properly clothed.'' Lenning, speaking of Continental Freemasonry, under the article Kleidung in his Lexicon, says that the clothing of a Freemason consists of apron, gloves, sword, and hat. In the York and American Rites, the sword and hat are used only in the Degrees of chivalry. In the catechisms of the early eighteenth century the Master of a Lodge, was described as clothed in a yellow jacket and a blue pair of breeches, in allusion to the brass top and steel legs of a pair of compasses. After the middle of the century, he was said to be "clothed in the old colors, namely, purple, crimson, and blue"; and the reason assigned for it was "because they are royal, and such as the ancient kings an d princes used to wear. "

The actual dress of a Master Mason was, however, a full suit of black, with white neck-cloth, apron, gloves, and stockings; the buckles being of silver, and the jewels being suspended from a white ribbon by way of collar.

(For the clothing and decorations of the different Degrees, see Regalia. )

Brother Preston (Illustrations of Freemasonry, 1772, page 235) describes the dress of the Brethren when "properly clothed" for public processions. He says "All the Brethren, who walk in procession, should observe, as much as possible an uniformity in their dress. Decent mourning, with white stockings, gloves and aprons, is most suitable and becoming; and no person ought to be distinguished with a jewel, unless he is an officer of one of the Lodges invited to attend in form, The officers of such Lodges should be ornamented with white sashes and hatbands; as also the officers of the Lodge to whom the dispensation is granted, who should likewise be distinguished with white rods."

One of the earliest accounts of Masonic clothing and regalia in a procession on Saint John's Day is recorded in Faulkner's Dublin Journal (January 10-4, 1743--l, and on pages 98-9, Freemasonry in Ireland, Brothers Lepper and Crossle, 1925):

An early reference to the clothing of the Brethren in the United States is in the By-laws adopted by the Lodge at Boston, Massachusetts, on November 14 and October 24, 1733. The thirteenth and fourteenth regulations read as follows: X

Brother Melvin M. Johnson comments on the foregoing rules in his Beginnings of Freemasonry in America (page 107), "'Being Clothed' refers to the very ancient custom, now forgotten, of requiring the candidate to furnish each member present with an apron and a pair of white gloves" (see Clothing the Lodge).

At a celebration of the Festival of Saint John the Baptist, reported in the Boston Gazette for July 2, 1739, and also given by Brother Johnson in the above work (page 222) we learn that, At three in the Afternoon They assembled at the House of their Brother John Wagbom, from whence they walked in Procession to His Excellency's House, properly Clothed, and Distinguished, with Badges, and other Implement pertaining to the several Orders and Degrees of the Society, proceeded by a complete band of Music consisting of Trumpets, Kettle Drums, etc.

The American Apollo, a magazine printed in Boston, had an account of the procession in verse by Joseph Green, who tells us of the visit to the House of Brother Wagborn,

Here, having drank and giv'n the sign,
By which he was oblig'd to join,
From hence in leather apron drest
With tinsel ribbons on their breast
In pompous order march'd the train,
First two, then three, then two again.

The lines wind up with an allusion to the decorated ship, Hallowell, of which Brother Alexander French was part owner and in command. This vessel, trimmed with red baize on top and with colors hoisted, was given a peculiarly Masonic significance.

And on the mizzen peak was spread,
A leather apron, lin'd with red.
The men on board all day were glad,
And drank and smoked like any mad.
And from her sides three times did ring
Great guns, as loud as anything,
But at the setting of the sun,
Precisely ceas'd the noise of gun,
All ornaments were taken down,
Jack, ensign, pendant, and Apron.

A further mention of the clothing is seen in the lines written by Green to burlesque the celebration of Saint John the Evangelist's Day at Boston, December 27, 1749. These lines are entitled Entertainment for a Winter's Evening, and alluding to the public procession to and from church of the Freemasons the author speaks of them as "in scarlet aprons dressed," see the verse in this work under the heading of Sermons, Masonic. We need not speculate too curiously about the use of scarlet aprons at the time.

The suggestion may however be offered that the apron so lined was capable of being used either side to the front according to the Body or Degree in which the wearer participated. Aprons in certain cases are still so worn though not usually in connection with the first three Degrees of the Craft (see also Regalia).

The modern regalia and clothing, as for example those approved by the Constitutions and Regulations of the Grand Lodge of Massachusetts, as shown in the Revision adopted in 1918, may here be appropriately given. The references to saltire, or saltier, being an expression in heraldry meaning cross-wise, as in the letter x.

The Jewels of the Grand Officers shall be as follows:

That of the Grand Master, the Compasses extended to 45 , with the segment of a circle at the points and a gold plate included, on which is represented an eye, eradicated within a triangle, also eradicated.

That of the Deputy Grand Master the Compasses and square united, with a five-pointed star in the center.

That of the District Grand Masters, the Compasses and Square united, with a five-pointed star in the center upon which shall be superimposed a Roman letter D.

Those of the District Deputy Grand Masters, the Compasses extended to 45 , with the segment of a circle at the points and a crescent in the center.

Senior Grand Warden, the Level.
Junior Grand Warden, the Plumb.
Grand Treasurer, a chased Key.
Grand Secretary, two Pens in saltire tied by a ribbon.
Grand Chaplains, a Book within a Triangle, surmounting a glory.
Grand Marshal, two Rods in saltire tied by a ribbon.
Grand Lecturers, an open Book upon the Square and Compasses.
Grand Deacons, a Dove and Olive Branch.
Grand Stewards, a Cornucopia.
Grand Sword Bearer, two Swords in saltire.
Grand Standard Bearer, a Banner.
Grand Pursuivants, a Rod and a Sword saltire-wise.
Grand Organist, a Lyre.
Grand Tyler, a Sword.

Each Past Grand Officer may be distinguished by the jewel prescribed for the office he has filled, with this difference, that such jewel shall be fixed within a circle or oval, of gold or metal gilt. It shall be worn over the left breast, pendant to a purple ribbon or metal chain.

It may be suspended from the neck by a purple ribbon when another authorized jewel is worn over the left breast.

The Jewel of each Grand Officer, with the exception of the District Deputy Grand Masters, shall be enclosed within a wreath composed of a sprig of Acacia and an ear of Wheat. The Collars of the Grand Officers shall be chains of gold or metal gilt.

The Apron. of the Grand Master shall be of white lambskin, lined with purple, ornamented with the blazing Sun, embroidered in gold in the center; on the edging the pomegranate and lotus, with the seven-eared wheat at each corner, and also on the fall,-all in gold embroidery, the fringe of gold bullion, with purple edging and strings.

The Apron of the Deputy Grand Master and of a District Grand Master shall be of the same material and lining, having the emblem of his office in gold embroidery in the center, and the pomegranate and lotus alternately embroidered in gold on the edging.

The emblem of the District Grand Master shall be within a double circle bearing the name of his District.

The Aprons of the other Grand Officers shall be of white lambskin, lined with purple ; edging of purple three and a half inches wide; with purple strings; ornamented with gold, having the emblems of office, in gold, in the center.

Each officer of a Lodge shall wear a blue velvet collar trimmed with silver lace, or a white metal chain collar upon blue ribbon of such pattern or patterns as shall be approved by the Grand Master, from which shall be suspended the jewel of the office in silver. The aprons may bear the emblems of the offices and a fringe of silver.

The Jewels of the officers of a Lodge shall be as follows:

That of the Master, the Square;
Senior Warden, the Level;
Junior Warden, the Plumb;
Treasurer, two Keys in saltire;
Secretary, two Pens in saltire;
Chaplain, the Bible within a circle;
Marshal, a Baton within a square ;
Deacons, the Square and Compasses united within a circle;
Stewards, a Cornucopia within a circle;
Organist, a Lyre within a circle;
Inside Sentinel, two Swords in saltire within a circle;
Tyler, a Sword within a circle.

The Jewel of a Past Master shall be the blazing Sun within the Square and Compasses extended on a Quadrant. This Jewel may be of gold or silver, and shall be worn over the left breast, pendant to a blue ribbon or metal chain. It may be suspended from the neck by a blue ribbon when another authorized Jewel is worn over the left breast.

The Apron of a Master Mason shall be a plain white lambskin, fourteen inches wide by twelve inches deep.

The Apron may be adorned with sky-blue lining and edging, and three rosettes of the same color. No other color shall be allowed, and no other ornament shall be worn except by officers and past officers.

The Grand Encampment of Knights Templar and the General Grand Chapter of Royal Arch Masons made a public procession in the City of New York on September 16, 1841. The notice giving the order of the procession as well as the instructions for the clothing of the Brethren is of a considerable degree of interest and appears in the History of the Origin and Development of the Royal Arch Degree, by Charles A. Conover, 1926. That portion which refers to tho clothing of the Brethren is as follows:

The Master of each Lodge to wear Chapeau trimmed with blue and silver, and the Gavel in his hand.

The three Committees appointed by the three Grand Bodies are to act as Marshals to their respective Grand Bodies in the uniform of their constituents, with Chapeaus and swords, and are to be distinguished by a thin white rod and acorn, with bow of ribbon of three colors (Blue, Scarlet, and Black), and a Rosette of five inches, of the same three colors on the left breast. Each subordinate Body will appoint two Marshals to assist the Grand Marshals, to be distinguished by a truncheon or scroll, trimmed with ribbon of the color of his grade.

An early reference to Aprons is in the Book of Constitutions (1738, page 153). On March 17, 1731, it was resolved that "Masters and Wardens of particular Lodges may line their white Leather Aprons with "white Silk, and may hang their Jewels at white Ribbons about their Necks." Article xxiii also records that "The Stewards for the Year were allowed to have Jewels of Silver, tho not guilded, pendent to Red Ribbons about their Necks, to bear White Rods, and to line their White Leather Aprons with Red Silk. Former Stewards were also allowed to wear the same Sort of Aprons, White and Red."

Laurence Dermott (Ahiman Rezon, 1764) gives a regulation of Grand Lodge that blue or purple, is the peculiar badge of Grand Officers. However, he states that he "is certain that every member of the Grand Lodge has an undoubted right to wear purple, blue, white or crimson." From this time blue seems the Masonic color except for Grand Stewards, who wear crimson.

Another exception was the Grand Lodge at York, which used only white and pink; no other color is named. In the schedule of January 1, 1776, of Grand Lodge Regalia, we read ''one Grand Master's Apron, five Aprons lined with pink silk and ten common Aprons," and again in 1779, "An Apron for the Grand Master, four Aprons lined with pink silk, five Aprons."

None of the early Aprons had tassels and Brother Fred J. W. Crowe declares it is certain that these were never intended, as is so frequently asserted, to represent the two great Pillars. He says they are neither more nor less than the ends of broadened strings ornamented with fringe and that the fringe on the Apron is coeval with fringing the ends of strings.

Down to the Union in 1813, many engraved, painted and embroidered Aprons were in common use. At the Union, however, the clothing under the United Grand Lodge of England was clearly laid down. The same Apron was sometimes used for the Craft and Royal Arch during the eighteenth century, the distinguishing mark being the binding of purple and crimson when used for the latter.

The Collar was originally a simple ribbon supporting the jewel of office. This ribbon was white in 1727, except in the case of Stewards, when it was red.

But in 1731 it was ordered that Grand Officers wear their jewels of gold suspended from blue ribbons.

From the ribbon has gradually evolved the broad, decorative collar worn so generally in Great Britain.

Gloves were a part of the Freemason's clothing from the earliest time, but gauntlets, although Brother Crowe says these were undoubtedly worn before the Union, were only comparatively recently authoritatively laid down as a part of the regalia.

In Scotland, the clothing of Grand Lodge and of Provincial and District Grand Lodges is of thistlegreen, doubtless from the color used in the national Order of the Thistle; but private Lodges may select any color they please, and may also add a considerable amount of ornament and embellishment, which is usually on the fall or flap. This fall in Scottish Aprons is circular, not triangular as in English and American Aprons. The Grand Lodge in 1736 ordered that the jewels of the Grand Master and Wardens shall be worn "at a green ribbon." Embroidered Aprons with Officers' emblems were introduced in 1760, and in 1767, the "garters," which in the days of knee-breeches formed part of the regalia, and the ''ribbands for the jewels" were ordered to be renewed. Sashes for office-bearers were adopted in 1744, jewels in 1760. The Lodge of Dundee wore white Aprons in 1733, and the Lodge of Edinburgh in 1739 ordered "a new blew ribband for the whole five jewels."

In Ireland, most Lodges wear very simple cotton Aprons, edged with blue, and bearing the number of the Lodge, but at their annual Festivals, the Brethren wear lambskin Aprons almost identical with the English Master Mason's Apron, except that there is a narrow silver braid in the center of the ribbon. The Grand Lodge Clothing is of the same color, with gold fringe, but the bottom of the fall is squared off, and curiously enough, there are no tassels. The rank of the wearer is indicated by the number and width of the rows of gold braid. Although the Grand Lodge of Ireland was formed in 1725 or earlier, there has never been any regulation as to Clothing in its Constitutions, the only authority, until quite recently, being in a book entitled Clothing and Insignia, with colored plates, first published in 1860. Brother F. C. Crossle says that in days gone by the Worshipful Master in many parts of Ireland, if not everywhere, was always attired in a red cloak and top hat, and this custom had obtained even within the memory of living Brethren, although now obsolete.

The only jewels which may be worn in English Craft Lodges are those of Craft and Royal Arch Masonry, including Past Master, Past Zerubbabel, Grand and Provincial Lodge jewels, Presentation jewels of Craft or Royal Arch offices, Founders' jewels and Charity jewels. All others are illegal.

In Denmark all the Brethren wear small trowels; that of the Entered Apprentice is of rough silver on a string of leather, that of the Fellow Craft of polished silver on white silk, that of the Master Mason of gold on a blue ribbon. Brethren who have taken Degrees above the seventh, wear a special attire in Bodies of their own Order, which is not allowed to be seen by Brethren of the lower Degrees.

In the case of the Grand Lodges of Norway and Sweden, the Clothing is practically identical with that of Denmark. It also includes a Collarette, trowel, and an ivory key. The latter is still worn in many Grand Lodges as it was once in England, and a reference to it is found in some old ''catch'' questions of the Fraternity. In Sweden, the brotherhood is so highly esteemed, that it has its own Order of Knighthood, that of Charles XIII, and membership of the higher Degrees also carries civil nobility.

Under the Grand Orient of France the Aprons are elaborately embroidered or painted, and edged sometimes with crimson or with blue. Blue embroidered Sashes, lined with black for the Third Degree, are in common use.

In ltaly, the Entered Apprentice Apron is a plain white skin; the Fellow Craft has one edged and lined with green, and with a square printed in the center; the Master Mason wears one lined and edged with crimson, bearing the square and compasses. Master Masons also wear a handsome sash of green silk, edged with red, richly embroidered in gold, and lined with black silk on which are embroidered the emblems of mortality in silver. Members of the Third Degree can wear more elaborately ornamented Aprons.

In Greece, Master Masons formerly wore silk or satin Aprons, painted or embroidered, and edged with crimson, with a beautiful sash similar to that worn in Italy, but of blue and red instead of green; later on the clothing became identical with that worn in England.

In Holland, a custom similar to that in Scotland prevails, and each Lodge selects its own color or colors for the clothing and the ribbons to which seals are attached. Considerable additional ornament in embroidery, painting, fringes, etc., is freely employed at the pleasure of the Lodge or the individual.

In Belgium, the Grand Lodge clothing is of light blue silk bordered with gold fringe, and without tassels. The collars are embroidered in gold with the jewel of the office to which they pertain, and with acacia and other emblems.

In Switzerland, under the Grand Lodge Alpina, the clothing is simple. The Entered Apprentice Apron is of white leather, and only varied from the English one in having the lower corners round. That of Fellow Craft has blue silk edging and strings. The Master Mason Apron has a wider border, with three rosettes on the body of the Apron, whilst the flap is entirely covered with blue silk ; a small blue sash, with a white rosette at the point is also worn with this. The Apron of a Grand Officer is edged with crimson, and has neither tassels nor rosettes, except in the case of the Grand Master, distinguished by three crimson rosettes; the collar is of crimson watered ribbon, edged with white, from which is suspended the jewel, a gold square and compasses, enclosing a star, on which is enameled the white Geneva Cross on a red field, the shield of the Republic. Each Lodge has its own distinctive jewel.

In Hungary, the members of the Grand Lodge wear collars of light blue watered silk, with a narrow edging of red, white and green-the national colors- from which is suspended a five-pointed star, enameled in the center with a number of emblems, and bearing the inscription Magnus Latom Hunc Coetus Symbolicus.

The Grand Officers wear collars or orange-colored ribbon, with a narrow edging of dark green, lined with white silk, and embroidered with the emblem of office and acacia leaves. The Aprons are simple, with blue edging, and, for Master Masons, three rosettes; that of the Grand Master is the same.

In Germany, the various Grand Lodges exhibit considerable variation in size and shape of Aprons; some are diminutive, others large, whilst the shape varies, square, rounded or shield-shaped. Some bear rosettes, others levels, the latter even on the Entered Apprentice Apron, so that obviously their symbolism is not the same as in England, where they designate Past Masters only. Each German Lodge possesses its own distinctive jewel.

Under the Grande Oriente Nacionale of Spain, the Entered Apprentice Apron is of white leather, rounded at the bottom, but with a pointed flap, worn raised; that of Fellow Craft is identical, the flap being turned down; the Master Mason Apron is of white satin, with curved flap, edged with crimson, and embroidered with square and compasses, enclosing the letter G., the letters M.'. and B:. and three stars. The Apron is lined with black brocaded silk, and embroidered with skull, cross-bones and three stars, for the Third Degree. The Officers' jewels are identical with those of England.

In Portugal, the Grand Officers wear white satin Aprons edged with blue and gold, and with three rosettes. The collar is of blue watered silk embroidered with acacia in gold. The gauntlets have also G. O. L. U., Grande Oriente Lusitania Unido, embroidered on them, with the date of its formation, 1869. The ordinary Craft clothing is simple.

The clothing of the Grand Orient of Egypt is practically identical with that of England, but the colors are thistle and sea-green instead of dark and light blue.

The Organists' jewel is an od, a kind of guitar, instead of a lyre, and the rank of the wearer is indicated by the number of stars embroidered on the collar.

For the above information regarding European procedure we are indebted to a paper by Brother Fred J. W. Crowe (Transactions, 1901-2, page 81, Lodge of Research, Leicester, England; see also American Union Lodge).

CLOTHING AND WAGES

As a modern student reads the Fabric Rolls, Borough Records, and Statutes of the Middle Ages he sees that nothing burned itself more deeply into the minds of Operative Masons (and other workers) than the bitter and brutal question of wages, and it is little wonder that the "wages of a Master Mason" was a theme carried over into the symbolism of Speculative Freemasonry centuries afterwards. There were three reasons for this : the amount of pay was unjustly small, unbelievably so; wages were not adjusted to a worker's ability or production but were by the state socialism so long in vogue fixed by civil Statutes, and were arbitrarily fixed ; and workers resented the loss of so many days of work each year because of the senseless multiplication of holidays, an evil owed directly to the monks and priests who never tired of their endeavor to have a new workless day set aside for each new saint. A table covering 1351 A.D. (about the time when the first permanent Lodges were formed) to 1495 (the period of the discovery of America) shows that in 1351 a "Master freemason" received 4sh a day; in 1361 the same; in 1495 his summer wages were 6 or 4d, and his winter wages, 5 or 3cl. An "ordinary mason" in 1351 received 3d per day; a "Mason's servant" (or helper) 1,5d; a tiler (or roofer) 3d; a tiler's helper, 1,5d.

The clothing worn by Masons and their wives, sons, and daughters also was prescribed by law, partly to prevent those of the "lower orders" from dressing as well as "their betters," partly because in the Middle Ages liveries or costumes were worn in order to show what craft, profession, art, or class a man belonged to.

Gilbert Stone writes: "Thus by 37 Edw. III, C. 9, it was provided that 'people of handicraft and yeomen' were not to wear cloth of a higher price than forty shillings and their wives and daughters were only permitted to wear, so far as furs were concerned, some of the cheapest kinds . . ." This wearing of a prescribed costume also bit deeply into the minds of Masons, and it helps to explain why in the earliest Lodges so much stress was laid on "being properly clothed," and why gloves were so important-a sign of equality then ; it also helps to explain the proud boast that a Mason's apron, once a badge which proclaimed him a member of the "lower orders" and a workman, was now an honor, more ancient than the Golden Fleece, more honorable than the Star and Garter---as in literal truth it was.

(A History of Labor, by Gilbert Stone; London; George C. Harrap & Co., London; 1921, is not a Masonic book yet few books throw a clearer light on early Masonic history. Where other historians of Medieval Masons and kindred craftsmen fit their narrative into a framework of general or political history, or write of the subject in the terms of an art, Stone primarily sees in the Medieval craftsman a man, and brings his abundance of data to bear on the question, "What was it like to be a workman?" "A List of Selected Books" beginning on Stone's page 403 is one of the best bibliographies ever published in this field.)

CLOTHING THE LODGE

In the General Regulations, approved by the Grand Lodge of England in 1721, it is provided in article seven that "Every new Brother at his making is decently to cloth the Lodge, that is, all the Brethren present ; and to deposit something for the relief of indigent and decayed Brethren.'' By "clothing the Lodge" was meant the furnishing of the Brethren with gloves and aprons. The regulation no longer exists. It is strange that Oliver should have quoted as the authority. for this usage a subsequent regulation of 1767. In Scotland this was practiced in several Lodges to a comparatively recent date and continues to be frequently observed in many Lodges in South and Central America, the Continent of Europe, and in Lodges receiving their Masonic customs therefrom.

CLOUDY

A word sometimes improperly used by the Wardens of a Lodge when reporting an unfavorable result of the ballot. The proper word on such an occasion is foul.

CLUBS

The eighteenth century was distinguished in England by the existence of numerous local and ephemeral associations under the name of Clubs, where men of different classes of society met for amusement and recreation. Each profession and trade had its club, and "whatever might be a man's character or disposition," says Oliver, ''he would find in London a club that would square with his ideas." Addison, in his paper on the origin of clubs (Spectator, No. 9) remarks: "Man is said to be a social animal, and as an instance of it we may observe that we take all occasions and. pretenses of forming ourselves into those little nocturnal assemblies which are commonly known by the name of Clubs. When a set of men find themselves agreed in any particular, though never so trivial, they establish themselves into a kind of Fraternity and meet once or twice a week, upon the account of such a fantastic resemblance." Hard drinking was characteristic of those times, and excesses too often marked the meetings of these societies. It was at this time that the Institution of Freemasonry underwent its revival commonly known as the revival of 1717, and it is not strange that its social character was somewhat affected by the customs of the day. The Lodges therefore assumed at that time too much of a convivial character, derived from the customs of the existing clubs and coteries; but the moral and religious principles upon which the Institution was founded prevented any undue indulgence; and although the members were permitted the enjoyment of decent refreshment, there was a standing law which provided against all excess (see Masonic Clubs, National League of).

COAT OF THE TILER

In olden times it was deemed proper that the Tiler of a Lodge, like the beadle of a parish--whose functions were in some respects similar-should be distinguished by a tawdry dress. In a schedule of the regalia, records, etc., of the Grand Lodge of all England, taken at York in 1779, to be found in Hughan's Masonic Sketches and Reprints (page 33), we find the following item; "a blue cloth coat with a red collar for the Tyler."

COCHIN CHINA

A country in the southeast of Asia in the extreme south of French Indo-China. The name was formerly applied to the whole Annamese Empire but is now usually applied to the six southern provinces annexed by France in 1862 and 1867. The Grand Orient of France opened a Lodge in Cochin China, at Saigon, Le Réveil de l'orient, meaning The Awakening of the East, in 1868. The Grand Lodge of France in 1908 also established a Lodge at Saigon, La Ruche d'orient, meaning The Beehive of the East (see Indo-China, French).

COCHLEUS

A very corrupt word in the Fourth Degree of the Scottish Rite; there said to signify in the form of a. screw, and to be the name of the winding staircase which led to the middle chamber. The true Latin word is cochlea. But the matter is so historically absurd that the word ought to be and is rejected in the modern rituals.

COCK

The ancients made the cock a symbol of courage, and consecrated him to Mars, Pallas, and Bellona, deities of war. Some have supposed that it is in reference to this quality that the cock is used in the jewel of the Captain-General of an Encampment of Knights Templar. Reghellini, however, gives a different explanation of this symbol. He says that the cock was the emblem of the sun and of life, and that as the ancient Christians allegorically deplored the death of the solar orb in Christ, the cock recalled its life and resurrection. The cock, we know, was a symbol among the early Christians, and is repeatedly to be found on the tombs in the catacombs of Rome. Hence it seems probable that we should give a Christian interpretation to the jewel of a Knight Templar as symbolic of the resurrection.

COCKADE

Some few of the German Lodges have a custom of permitting their members to wear a blue cockade in the hat as a symbol of equality and freedom-a symbolism which, as Lenning says, it is difficult to understand, and the decoration is in appropriate as a part of the clothing of a Freemason. Yet it is probable that it was a conception of this kind that induced Cagliostro to prescribe the cockade as a part of the investiture of a female candidate in the initiation of his Lodges. Clavel says the Venerable or Master of a French Lodge wears a black cockade.

COCKLE-SHELL

The cockle-shell was worn by pilgrims in their hats as a token of their profession; later on was used in the ceremonies of Templarism.

CODY, COLONEL WILLIAM FREDERICK

Born February 26, 1845; died January 10, 1917. Famous American scout and showman, pony express mail carrier covering seventy-five miles daily in wild country among hostile Indians; served as cavalry man and guide through Civil War; contracted to supply laborers on construction of Kansas-Pacific railroad with meat and in eighteen months killed four thousand buffaloes and became known as Buffalo Bill; served as army scout against Sioux and Cheyennes, 1868-72, and again in 1876, when in single combat he killed Chief Yellow Hand; member of Nebraska Legislature; again serving as scout against Sioux Indians, 1890-1. A member of Platte Valley Lodge No 32, North Platte, Nebraska, Initiated March 5,1870; Passed April 2, 1870; Raised January 10, 1871. Became Mark Master, Past Master and Most Excellent Master, November 14, 1888, and was exalted on November 15, 1888, in Euphrates Chapter No. 15, Royal Arch Masons at North Platte, Companion Cody selecting as his Mark a buffalo's head. He was created a Knight Templar, April 2, 1889, in Palestine Commandery No. 13, at North Platte. This information sent to us by Worshipful Master Abner J. Wessling of Platte Valley Lodge. Brother Cody was given Masonic burial by Golden City Lodge No, 1 at Golden, Colorado, and his remains rest on Lookout Mountain where there is also a Memorial Museum in that State.

COETUS

Latin word meaning an assembly. It is incorrectly used in some old Latin Masonic diplomas for a Lodge. It is used by Laurence Dermott in a diploma dated September 10, 1764, where he signs himself Sec. JI. Coetus, or Secretary of the Grand Lodge.

COFFIN

In the Ancient Mysteries the aspirant could not claim a participation in the highest secrets until he had been placed in the Pastos, a bed or coffin. The placing him in the coffin was called the symbolical death of the mysteries, and his deliverance was termed a raising from the dead. "The mind,'' says an ancient writer, quoted by Stobaeus, "is affected in death just as it is in the initiation into the mysteries. And word answers to word, as well as thing to thing; for is to die, and to be initiated." The coffin in Freemasonry is found on tracing boards of the early part of the eighteenth century, and has always constituted a part of the symbolism of the Third Degree, where the reference is precisely the same as that of the Pastos in the Ancient Mysteries.

COHEN

A Hebrew word pronounced kohane, signifying a priest. The French Masonic writers, indulging in a Gallic custom of misspelling all names derived from other languages, universally spell it coën.

COLE, BENJAMIN

He published at London, in 1728, and again in 1731, the Old Constitutions, engraved on thirty copper plates, under the title of "A Book of the Ancient Constitutions of the Free and Accepted Masons." In 1751, Cole printed a third edition with the title of The Ancient Constitutions and Charges of Freemasons, with a true representation of their noble Art in several Lectures or Speeches. Subsequent editions were published up to 1794. Brother Richard Spencer, the well-known Masonic bibliographer, says that Cole engraved his plates from a manuscript which he calls the Constitutions of 1726, or from a similar manuscript by the same scribe. Brother Hughan published in 1869 in his Constitutions of the Freemasons, in a limited edition of seventy copies, a lithographed facsimile of the 1729 edition of Cole, and in 1897 a facsimile of the 1731 edition, which was limited to 200 copies, was published by Richard Jackson of Leeds, with an introduction by Brother Hughan.

COLE, SAMUEL

He was at one time the Grand Secretary of the Grand Lodge of Maryland, and the author of a work entitled The Freemason's Library, or General Ahiman Rezon, the first edition of which appeared in 1817, and the second in 1826. It is something more than a mere monitor or manual of the Degrees, and in Brother Mackey's opinion greatly excels in literary pretensions the contemporary works of Webb and Cross.

COLE'S MANUSCRIPT

The record from which Cole is supposed to have made his engraved Constitutions, now known as the Spencer Manuscript. It was in the possession of Brother Richard Spencer, who published it in 1871, under the title of A Book of the Ancient Constitutions of the Free and Accepted Masons. Anno Dom., 1726. The subtitle is The Beginning and First Foundation of the Most Worthy Craft of Masonry, with the charges thereunto belonging. In 1875 it was bought by Brother E. T. Carson of Cincinnati, Ohio.

COLLAR

An ornament worn around the neck by the officers of Lodges, to which is suspended a jewel indicative of the wearer's rank. The color of the collar varies in the different grades of Freemasonry. That of a symbolic Lodge is blue; of a Past Master, purple; of a Royal Arch Mason, scarlet; of a Secret Master, white bordered with black; of a Perfect Master, green, etc. These colors are not arbitrary, but are each accompanied with a symbolic signification. In the United States, the collar worn by Grand Officers in the Grand Lodge is, properly, purple edged with gold. In the Grand Lodge of England, the Grand Officers wear chains of gold or metal gilt instead of collars, but on other occasions, collars of ribbon, garter blue, four inches broad, embroidered or plain. The use of the collar in Freemasonry, as an official decoration, is of very old date. It is a regulation that its form should be triangular; that is, that it should terminate on the breast in a point. The symbolical reference is evident. The Masonic collar is derived from the practices of heraldry; they are worn not only by municipal officers and officers of State, but also by knights of the various orders as a part of their investiture.

COLLEGE

The regular Convocation of the subordinate bodies of the Society of Rosicrucians is called an Assemblage of the College, at which their mysteries are celebrated by initiation and advancement, at the conclusion of which the Mystic Circle is broken.

COLLEGES IRISH

These were established in Paris between 1730 and 1740, and were rapidly being promulgated over France, when they were superseded by the Scottish Chapters.

COLLEGES, MASONIC

There was at one time a great disposition exhibited by the Fraternity of the United States to establish Colleges, to be placed under the supervision of Grand Lodges. The first one ever endowed in this country was that at Lexington, in Missouri, established by the Grand Lodge of that State, in October, 1841, which for some time pursued a prosperous career. Other Grand Lodges, such as those of Kentucky, Mississippi, Arkansas, North Carolina, Florida, and a few others, subsequently either actually organized or took the preliminary steps for organizing Masonic colleges in their respective Jurisdictions. But experience has shown that there is an incongruity between the official labors of a Grand Lodge as the Masonic head of the Order, and the superintendence and support of a college. Hence, these institutions have been very generally discontinued, and the care of providing for the education of indigent children of the Craft has been wisely committed to the subordinate Lodges and other branches of the Masonic Institutions.

Brother Thomas Brown, a distinguished Grand Master of Florida, thus expressed the following views on this subject:

The above summary of the situation by Doctor Mackey may be extended to the extent of a few comments on. some of the enterprises of the past in which the Craft was interested for substantially the same benevolent reasons that in these modern days of ours prompt the Brethren to suggest somewhat similar activities.

Stephen W. B. Carnemegy, born 1797, died 1892, Grand Master in 1836-8, was the author of a resolution at the Grand Lodge Communication of 1841 to establish a Masonic College in Missouri "for the education of the sons of indigent Masons and others'' and this was approved. Subscriptions were reported at the Communication of 1842 as $3,556.25 for sons, and $3,926.25 for daughters, and $185 for the erection of a Masonic Hall. Brother Carnegy was an active force. We find him in attendance at the Grand Lodge of Kentucky in 1844 and on being invited at 3:30 to make any desired suggestions, he asked aid for the Masonic College then under construction in his State and "a voluntary collection was taken up" (Doings of the Grand Lodge of Kentucky, 1800--1900, H. B. Grant). In all likelihood this enthusiasm encouraged the Kentucky Brethren to undertake a Masonic College of their own. The regulations for the Masonic College in Missouri required a preparatory school and a collegiate department, the Faculty to consist of a Professor for each of the following departments: ''On Natural Philosophy and Astronomy,'' ''On Mathematics," "On Mental and Moral Science," and "Ancient Languages and Literature.'' This is some course, even if not a very practicable one, as seen in the eyes of this age. The conditions were : six months' tuition free, but charges for board; the Grand Lodge to designate the number of students each subordinate Lodge could send free of charge. The College was chartered by. the State. In those days $25 paid the board and washing of a student for a whole Session, and a cord of good wood could be purchased for a dollar.

COLLEGIA ARTIFICUM

Colleges of Artificers. See Roman Colleges of Artificers.

COLLEGIUM

In Roman jurisprudence, a collegium, or college, expressed the idea of several persons united together in any office or for any common purpose. It required not less than three to constitute a college, according to the Latin law maxim, Tres faciunt collegium, meaning Three make a college, and hence, perhaps, the Masonic rule that not fewer than three Master Masons can form a Lodge.

COLLOCATIO

The Greek custom of exposing the corpse on a bier over night, near the threshold, that all might be convinced of the normal death.

COLOGNE, CATHEDRAL OF

The city of Cologne, on the banks of the Rhine, is memorable in the history of Freemasonry for the connection of its celebrated Cathedral with the labors of the Steinmetzen of Germany, whence it became the seat of one of the most important Lodges of that period. It has been asserted that Albertus Magnus designed the plan, and that he there also altered the Constitution of the Fraternity, and gave it a new code of laws. It is at least clear that in this Cathedral the symbolic principles of Gothic architecture, the distinguishing style of the Traveling Freemasons, were carried out in deeper significance than in any other building of the time. Whether the document known as the Charter of Cologne be authentic or not, and it is fairly well established that it is not, the fact that it is claimed to have emanated from the Lodge of that place, gives to the Cathedral an importance in the views of the Masonic student.

The Cathedral of Cologne is one of the most beautiful religious edifices in the world, and the vastest construction of Gothic architecture. The primitive Cathedral, which was consecrated in 873, was burned in 1248. The present one was commenced in 1249, and the work upon it continued until 1509. But during that long period the labors were often interrupted by the sanguinary contests which raged between the city and its archbishops, so that only the choir and the chapels which surrounded it were finished. In the eighteenth century it suffered much from the ignorance of its own canons, who subjected it to unworthy mutilations, and during the French Revolution it was used as a military depot.

In 1820, this edifice, ravaged by men and mutilated by time, began to excite serious anxieties for the solidity of its finished portions. The debris of the venerable pile were even about to be overthrown, when archeologic zeal and religious devotion came to the rescue. Societies were formed for its restoration by the aid of permanent subscriptions, which were liberally supplied; and it was resolved to finish the gigantic structure according to the original plans which had been conceived by Gerhard de Saint Trond, the ancient master of the works. The works were renewed under the direction of M. Zwiner. The building is now completed; Seddon says in his Rambles on the Rhine (page 16), "It is without question, one of the most stupendous structures ever conceived."

There is a story, that may be only a tradition, that there was a book written by Albertus Magnus called Liber Constructionum Alberti, which contained the secrets of the Operative Freemasons, and particularly giving directions of how to lay the foundations of cathedrals.

Even though these builders had a special treatise on laying the foundations of cathedrals, they had not made provision for inventions which came later. It has been shown that within these modern days the foundations of the Cathedral were being loosened by the constant shaking from the railway trains that now run near, so that they became unsafe and seriously threatened the destruction of this wonderful masterpiece of Gothic architecture. The German Government came to the relief and saved the structure.

COLOGNE, CHARTER OF

this is an interesting Masonic document, originally written in Latin, and purporting to have been issued in 1535. Its history, as given by those who first offered it to the public, and who claim that it is authentic, is as follows: From the year 1519 to 1601, there existed in the city of Amsterdam, in Holland, a Lodge whose name was Het Vredendall, or The Valley of Peace. In the latter year, circumstances caused the Lodge to be closed, but in 1637 it was revived by four of its surviving members, under the name of Frederick's Vredendall, or Frederick's Valley of Peace. In this Lodge, at the time of its restoration, there was found a chest, bound with brass and secured by three locks and three seals, which, according to a protocol published on the 29th of January, 1637, contained the following documents:

It is not known how long these documents remained in possession of the Lodge at Amsterdam. But they were subsequently remitted to the charge of Brother James Van Vasner, Lord of Opdem, whose signature is appended to the last attestation of The Hague register, under the date of the 2d of February, 1638. After his death, they remained among the papers of his family until 1790, when M. Walpenaer, one of his descendants, presented them to Brother Van Boetzelaer, who was then the Grand Master of the Lodges of Holland. Subsequently they fell into the hands of some person whose name is unknown, but who, in 1816, delivered them to Prince Frederick.

There is a story that the Prince received these documents accompanied by a letter, written in a female hand, and signed "C., child of V. J." In this letter the writer states that she had found the documents among the papers of her father, who had received them from Brother Van Boetzelaer. It is suspected that the authoress of the letter was the daughter of Brother Van Jeylinger, who was the successor of Van Boetzelaer as Grand Master of Holland. Another version of the history states that these documents had long been in the possession of the family of Wassenaer Van Opdem, by a member of which they were presented to Van Boetzelaer, who subsequently gave them to Van Jeylinger, with strict injunctions to preserve them until the restitution of the Orange regency.

The originals are now, or were very lately, deposited in the archives of a Lodge at Namur, on the Meuse ; but copies of the charter were given to the Fraternity under the following circumstances: In the year 1819, Prince Frederick of Nassau, who was then the Grand Master of the National Grand Lodge of Holland, contemplating a reformation in Freemasonry, addressed a circular on this subject to all the Lodges under his Jurisdiction, for the purpose of enlisting them in behalf of his project, and accompanied this circular with copies of the charter, which he had caused to be taken in facsimile, and also of the register of the Amsterdam Lodge, Valley of Peace, to which Brother Hawkins has already referred as contained in the brass-mounted chest.

A transcript of the charter in the original Latin, with all its errors, was published, in 1818, in the Annales Maçonniques. The document was also presented to the public in a German version, in 1819, by Dr. Fred Heldmann; but his translation has been proved, by Lenning and others, to be exceedingly incorrect. In 1821, Doctor Krause published it in his celebrated work entitled The Three oldest Masonic Documents. It has been frequently published since in a German translation, in whole or in part, but is accessible to the English reader only in Burnes' Sketch of the History of the Knights Templar, published at London in 1840; in the English translation of Findel's History of Freemasonry, and in the American Quarterly Review of Freemasonry, where it was published with copious notes by Brother Mackey.

P. J. Schouten, a Dutch writer on the history of Freemasonry, who had undoubtedly seen the original document, describes it as being written on parchment in Masonic cipher, in the Latin language, the characters uninjured by time, and the subscription of the names not in cipher, but in the ordinary cursive character. The Latin is that of the Middle Ages, and is distinguished by many incorrectly spelled words, and frequent grammatical solecisms. Thus, we find bagistri for magistri, trigesimo for tricesimo, ad nostris ordinem for ad nostrum ordinem, etc.

Brother Hawkins who prepared this article concluded, that of the authenticity of this document, it is but fair to say that there are well-founded doubts among many Masonic writers. The learned antiquaries of the University of Leyden have testified that the paper on which the register of the Lodge at The Hague is written, is of the same kind that was used in Holland at the commencement of the seventeenth century, which purports to be its date, and that the characters in which it is composed are of the same period. This register, it will be remembered, refers to the Charter of Cologne as existing at that time ; so that if the learned men of Leyden have not been deceived, the fraud---supposing that there is one in the charter-must be more than two centuries old.

Doctor Burnes professes to have no faith in the document, and the editors of the Hermes at once declare it to be surreptitious. But the condemnation of Burnes is too sweeping in its character, as it includes with the charter all other German documents on Freemasonry ; and the opinion of the editors of the Hermes must be taken with some grains of allowance, as they were at the time engaged in a controversy with the Grand Master of Holland, and in the defense of the Advanced Degrees, whose claims to antiquity this charter would materially impair. Doctor Oliver, on the other hand, quotes it unreservedly, in his Landmarks, as a historical document worthy of credit; and Reghellini treats it as authentic. In Germany, the Masonic authorities of the highest reputation, such as Heldermann, Morsdorf, Kloss, and many others, have repudiated it as a spurious production, most probably of the beginning of the nineteenth century.

Kloss objects to the document, that customs are referred to in it that were not known in the rituals of initiation until 1731; that the Advanced Degrees were nowhere known until 1725 ; that none of the eighteen copied documents have been found; that the declaimer against Templar Freemasonry was unnecessary in 1535, as no Templar Degrees existed until 1741; that some of the Latin expressions are not such as were likely to have been used; and a few other objections of a similar character. Bobrik, who published, in 1840, the Text, Translation, and Examination of the Cologne Document, also advances some strong critical arguments against its authenticity.

Summing up the above' evidence, Brother E. L. Hawkins was convinced that on the whole, the arguments to disprove the genuineness of the charter appear to be very convincing, and are strong enough to throw at least great doubt upon it as being anything else but -a modern forgery. See Mackey's revised History of Freemasonry (page 780) and Gould's History of Freemasonry (1, 496), where the question of the authenticity of the document is examined, and it is classed among the doubtful manuscripts.

COLOGNE, CONGRESS OF

A Congress which is said to have been convened in 1525, by the most distinguished Freemasons of the time, in the City of Cologne, as the representatives of nineteen Grand Lodges, who are said to have issued the celebrated manifesto, in defense of the character and aims of the Institution, known as the Charter of Cologne. Whether this Congress was ever held is a moot point among Masonic writers, most of them contending that it never was, and that it is simply an invention of the early part of the nineteenth century (see Cologne, Charter of).

COLOMBIA

A republic in the northwestern part of South America. In 1824 Colonel James Hamilton was appointed by England head of the Masonic Province of Colombia.

The Republic of Colombia consisted at first of New Granada, Ecuador, and Venezuela. In 1831, however, all these became independent and in 1861 Colombia was constituted by New Granada.

Concord Lodge, No. 792, was established by England in 1824 but its authority was withdrawn in 1862. A Scotch Lodge, Eastern Star of Colombia, was opened the same year as Concord Lodge.
On June 19, 1833, the Grand Orient of New Granada was established at Carthagena and has continued work up till the present day. Towards a Grand Orient founded June 13, 1864, at Bogota for the southern states of the Republic, it maintained, with occasional interruptions, a friendly attitude. A Supreme Council of Colombia had existed at Bogota as early as 1825 but ceased work.

The present Supreme Council was created later. v The Grand Lodge of Colombia was opened on November 30, 1919, with all due ceremony by delegates from the four Lodges, Astrea, No. 56; Siglo XX, No. 61: Libertad, No. 54, and Luz de la Verdad, No. 46, at Barranquilla.

Three other Bodies, the National Grand Lodge of Colombia at Barranquilla, the Most Serene National Grand Lodge of Colombia at Carthagena and the Grand Lodge of the Republic of Colombia, at Carthagena, established in 1918, 1920 and 1922 respectively, are still in existence and all six, according to Brother Oliver Day Street, are more or less independent.

COLONIAL LODGES

Lodges in the colonies of Great Britain are under the immediate supervision and jurisdiction of District Grand Lodges, to which title the reader is referred.

COLONIAL MASTERS, ORDER OF

This organization was instituted at Halifax, North Carolina. December 30, 1912, and comprises in its membership Worshipful Masters and Past Masters of Colonial Lodges. No application on the part of such Brethren was ever to be required but whenever such a Brother shall present himself and pay the fee he is to be initiated without ballot and that no objection shall debar him except for non-affiliation with some Lodge. The first lesson of the Order was to honor the Fathers by perpetuating and building up their Colonial Lodges and not only to glorify the early guardians of Freemasonry on the Continent of America but to -also listen to the call for service, fidelity and faith, and to be pledged to a higher consecration and a more vivid realization of duty.

COLORADO

When Auraria, or Denver as it later came to be called, sprang up in consequence of the discovery of gold in Jefferson Territory, the Brethren in the town applied to the Grand Master of Kansas for a Dispensation to open a Lodge. This was granted on October 1, 1859. While their request for a Charter, granted on October 15, 1862, was being considered by the Grand Lodge of Kansas they resigned the Dispensation from that State and as Denver Lodge accepted one, and in due course received a Charter, December 11, 1861, from the Grand Lodge of Colorado. The Grand Lodge of Colorado was organized by representatives of Golden City Lodge, No. 34; Summit Lodge, No. 7, and Rocky Mountain Lodge, no. 8, who met on August 2, 1861. Brother Eli Carter of Golden City presided over the Convention and Brother Whittemore acted as secretary. A Constitution drawn up by a Committee composed of Brothers J. A. Moore, C. F. Holly, and S. M. Robbins was submitted and approved. John M. Chivington was elected Grand Master and O. A. Whittemore, Grand Secretary.

The first Chapter in Colorado was Central City, No. l, in Central City. Its Dispensation, dated March 23, 1863, was granted by the General Grand King. On May 11, 1875, a Convention was held at Denver City by authority of Elbert H. English, the General Grand High Priest, and the Grand Chapter of Colorado was duly established. Companion William II. Byers was the first Grand High Priest, Companion Irving W. Stanton, Deputy Grand High Priest, and Companion Francis E. Everett, Grand Secretary. The General Grand Council of Royal and Select Masters issued a Dispensation to Denver, No. l, at Denver, on January 16, 1892, and a Charter on August 21, 1894. Denver, No. l, with Rocky Mountain, No. 2, and Durango, No. 3, met and organized the Grand Council of Colorado on December 6, 1894.

In the year 1866 a Commandery, namely Colorado, No, l, was established by Dispensation dated January 13. On September 10, two years later, a Charter was granted and it was constituted on January 26, 1869. With Central City, no. 2, and Pueblo, No. 3, Colorado, No. l, organized a Grand Commandery which was opened on March 14, 1876. A Lodge of Perfection, Delta, No. l, was chartered at Denver on January 26, 1877; a Chapter of Rose Croix, Mackey, No. l, on April 11, 1878; a Council of Kadosh, Denver, No, l, on September 3, 1888, and a Consistory, Colorado, No. l, on October 17, 1888.

COLORED FRATERNITIES

The secret societies of negroes claiming to be Masonic are quite extensive, embracing Grand Lodges in practically every State (see Negro Masonry).

COLORS, SYMBOLISM OF

Wemyss, in his Clavis Symbolica, the Latin meaning Symbolic Key, says: "Color, which is outwardly seen on the habit of the body, is symbolically issued to denote the true state of the person or subject to which it is applied, according to its nature." This definition may appropriately be borrowed on the present occasion, and applied to the system of Masonic colors. The color of a vestment or of a decoration is never arbitrarily adopted in Freemasonry. Every color is selected with a view to its power in the symbolic alphabet, and it teaches the initiate some instructive moral lesson, or refers to some important historical fact in the system. Frederic Portal, a French archeologist, has written a valuable treatise on the symbolism of colors, under the title of Des Couleurs Symboliques dans l'antiquité, le moyen âge et les temps modernes, meaning Symbolic Colors in Antiquity, the Middle Ages and Modern Times, which is well worth the attention of Masonic students.

The Masonic colors are seven in number, namely:

1. blue
2. purple
3. red
4. white
5. black
6. green
7. yellow
8. violet (see those respective titles in this Encyclopedia).

About the Church of God as well as the Bodies of Freemasonry has clustered a rich store of symbolism.

Their foundation is the same. Writers through the centuries have found peculiar significance galore in the various features of church construction and adornment. Among these the symbolism of colors has been prominently mentioned. Bishop William Durandus, was born at Puy-moisson in Province about the year 1220 A.D., and died at Rome in 1296.

A book of his dealing freely with symbolism was finished in 1286 and from it we take the following item to illustrate the early ceremonial symbolism of colors:

We must not overlook the authorities whose comments on the symbolism of colors are not in complete accord with the findings of Bishop Durandus and with those who have accepted and continued his conclusions. While an exact meaning may not universally have been applied to the individual colors there is found a striking correspondence with several of them.

Anyway, a difference in the symbolic meanings does not destroy or even impair the circumstance that colors have long been and are now freely employed as Symbols. The preface to English Liturgical Colors, by Sir Wm. St. John Hope and E. G. Cuthbert F. Atchley, published in 1918 by the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, refers to the discussion of the subject in 1860 in the Ecclesiologist (volume xxi, pages 133--i), by a writer over the initials J. C. J, who, after showing the considerable variety of the colors recorded, and that no strict rule for their use was possible, pointed out that

Of the growth of such symbolism and the outcome, Messrs. Hope and Atchley have this to say on page viii:

COLUMN

A round pillar made to support as well as to adorn a building, whose construction varies in the different orders of architecture. In Freemasonry, columns have a symbolic signification as the supports of a Lodge, and are known as the Columns of Wisdom, Strength, and Beauty. The broken column is also a symbol in Freemasonry (see the titles Supports of the Lodge and Broken Column).

COLUMNS, THE WARDENS

In Freemasonry the Senior Warden's Column represents the pillar Jachin while the Junior Warden's Column represents the pillar Boaz. The Senior Warden's Column is in an erect position and the Junior Warden's placed horizontally during labor, these positions being reversed during refreshment.

COMACINE MASTERS

It has long been a theory of some writers, secular and Masonic, that there was a direct succession of the Operative Gilds from the Roman Colleges to those who merged into Speculative Freemasonry in 1717, and as investigation proceeded, the proofs became stronger and stronger until now it can no longer reasonably be doubted.

At first it was not attempted to prove the succession it was only inferred, but recently more careful investigators have come to view, whose results go far in establishing the direct succession from Roman Colleges to speculative Freemasonry.

The principal purpose of this article is to put a link in the chain of Operative Gilds and establish a continuous connection from the oldest Gild formation, that of the Roman Colleges, which see, through the Lombard period and Renaissance to the formation of Speculative Freemasonry by the English Gilds.

Before beginning the description of the Comacine Masters, which, from the controversial character of the subject, must of necessity be kindred to a discussion resting heavily on citations and quoted authorities who have worked in this special field, it will be necessary to draw a fair picture of the Roman possessions and civilization at this period.

When Rome had passed the zenith of her power and had begun to decline from internal and external causes, it is but natural to suppose that her neighboring enemies noticed this, and as they had long looked upon Italy with avaricious eyes, felt the time had arrived for them to attain what they had most desired. The year 476 A.D.,when the last of the nominal Caesars ceased to rule in the West, is usually taken by historians as marking the fall of the Roman Empire.

However true that may be, the falling began when Constantine established the seat of his empire at Constantinople, in 327, and drew much strength from Rome, thereby making it easier for the Vandals and Goths to renew their attacks.

For five centuries horde after horde of barbarians flung themselves against the Roman frontiers, each striking deeper than the last, and being repelled with greater and greater difficulty, the Empire sinking beneath internal decay more than from her external enemies.

When the Western Empire ceased in the fifth century and Europe was plunged into what has been called The Dark Ages and all progress in letters and the arts of peace is supposed to have ceased, it is refreshing to quote what John Fiske said in Old and New Ways of Treating History, when speaking of that period: "In truth the dull ages which no Homer has sung or Tacitus described, have sometimes been critical ages for human progress. . . . This restriction of the views to literary ages has had much to do with the popular misconception of the 1,000 years that elapsed between the reign of Theodoric the Great and the Discovery of America.

For many reasons that period might be called the Middle Ages ; but the popular mind is apt to lump these ten centuries together, as if they were all alike, and apply to them the misleading epithet Dark Ages. A portion of the darkness is in the minds of those ,,who use the epithet.
" Brother E. E. Cauthorne who wrote this article says he also wishes to take exception to their position and conclusions, for in the success of these exceptions lies the potency and possibility of the subject, the Comacine Masters, who lived and built at this period, having descended from branches of the Roman Colleges of Artificers who had come to Como as colonists or had fled to this free republic for safety during barbaric invasions, creating and developing what is called Lombard architecture, and forming a powerful gild which later not only influenced, but had a connection with the gilds of France and Germany at the Renaissance, thereby establishing a direct line of descent of Roman Colleges to the Operative Gilds that grew into speculative Freemasonry.

It can be understood how a tribe or a small section of people may, from various causes, recede in letters, science and civilization, but how the world could do so is difficult to, comprehend, yet the historians and literature attempted to confirm this in describing the "gloom when the sun of progress was in a total or partial eclipse from the fifth to the twelfth centuries,'' or, between the period of ancient Classic Art of Rome and that early rise of Art in the twelfth century, which led to the Renaissance. Leader Scott says that "this hiatus is supposed to be a time when Art was utterly dead and buried, its corpse in Byzantine dress lying embalmed in its tomb at Ravenna. But all death is nothing but the germ of new life. Art was not a corpse ; it was only a seed laid in Italian soil to germinate and it bore several plants before the great deflowering period of the Renaissance."

Those who produced these several plants which it bore before the great Cathedral Building period that followed the Renaissance, will furnish the subject of this article, and trust it will be as interesting and important to the Masonic student as it is new in the literature of Freemasonry. Most things will become more and more clear as we follow up the traces of the Comacine Gild from the chrysalis state, in which Roman Art hibernated during the dark winter of the usually called Dark Ages, as Scott says "through the grub state of the Lombard period to the glorious winged flight of the full Gothic of the Renaissance." Many historians, Masonic and profane, who wrote as long as a generation ago, are inclined to give the impression that there was but little or nothing that transpired during the so-called Dark Ages which was essential to the world's progress at the time, or worthy of contemplation at present.

Had their views of the importance of historical matter prevailed, we would now know very little of what transpired from the Fall of the Western part of the Roman Empire to the Renaissance. We know that many cities in Italy were rebuilt after they had been sacked and partly destroyed by the Goths and Huns. Many cathedrals were built during this period, some of which work lasts till today, and is worthy workmanship. The historical architects have approached this period from another angle and the results of their efforts now make this article possible and open up a new and important field for Masonic students.

Toward the end of the fifth century a new wave of barbaric invasions swept over the West. North and East Gaul-all not previously held by the Visigoths fell into the hands of the Franks in 486 A. D. Theodoric and the Ostrogoths wrested Italy from Odoacer and established the Ostrogothic Kingdom in Italy, with its capital at Ravenna. This kingdom was established and governed on exceptionally enlightened lines.

Theodoric, often called The Great, was the most broad-minded and advanced of all the German conquerors.

He was a man of culture, yet some have said that he could not read. He had been educated from his eighth to his eighteenth year at Constantinople. His rule was, therefore, more like the revival of Roman ideas than a barbarous conquest.

Accordingly we need not be surprised to find him decorating his capital city, Ravenna, during the period of his occupation, 493-526, A.D., with a series of monuments which, although strongly tinctured with Byzantine fluence, yet constitute, perhaps, the finest examples we possess of the early Christian style.

Theodoric was an Aryan and opposed to the Bishop of Rome.

This fact and his education at Constantinople are sufficient to explain the strong Byzantine elements so noticeable even in those monuments at Ravenna, which antedate the Byzantine conquest. Charles A. Cummings in his History of architecture in Italy says: "One of the earliest acts of Theodoric after his accession to the throne was the appointment of an architect to have charge of all the public buildings-including the aqueducts and the city walls-of Ravenna and Rome, putting at his disposal for this purpose, yearly, twelve hundred pounds of gold, two hundred and fifty thousand bricks, and the income of the Lucrine Haven. A remarkable letter from Theodoric to this official on his appointment is preserved by Cassiodorus, who was the minister of the Empire. 'These excellent buildings,' he says, 'are my delight. They are the noble image of the power of the Empire, and bear witness to its grandeur and glory. The palace of the sovereign is shown to ambassadors as a monument worthy of their admiration, and seems to declare to them his greatness. It is then a great pleasure for an enlightened prince to inhabit a palace where all the perfections of art are united, and to find there relaxation from the burden of public affairs. . . . I give you notice that your intelligence and talents have determined me to confide to your hands the care of my palace. It is my wish that you preserve in its original splendor all which is ancient, and that whatever you add to it may be comfortable to it in style. It is not a work of small importance which I place in your hands, since it will be your duty to fulfill by your art the lively desire which I feel to illustrate my reign by many new edifices; so that whether the matter in hand be the rebuilding of a city, the construction of new castles, or the building of a Pretorium, it will be for you to translate my projects into accomplished realities.
And this is a service highly honorable and worthy of any man's ambition:-to leave to future ages the monuments which shall be the admiration of new generations of men. It will be your duty to direct the mason, the sculptor, the painter, the worker in stone, in bronze, in plaster, in mosaic. What they know not, you will teach them. The difficulties which they find in their work, you will solve for them.

But behold what various knowledge you must possess, thus to instruct artificers of so many sorts. But … you can direct their work to a good and satisfactory end, their success will be your eulogy, and will form the most abundant and flattering reward you could desire.'" From this it may be seen that an architect of those days was a complete Master of the art of building.

He was required to be able to construct a building from foundation to roof and also to be able to decorate it with sculpture and painting, mosaics and bronzes.

This broad education prevailed in all the schools or Lodges up to 1335, when the painters seceded, which was followed by other branches separating themselves into distinct gilds. It is a well-known fact that when the barbarians were sacking and carrying away the riches of many Italian cities and particularly of Rome, people fled to more secure places for the better protection of their lives and property. Of the various places to which they fled only one interests us in this article. Como was a free republic and many fled there for the protection it afforded. Rome had previously colonized many thousands in Como before the Christian Era (see Como). The first we hear of the Comacines was that they were living on an island called Isola Comacina in Lake Como, that most beautiful of lakes. They were so well fortified that it was years before the island was captured and then only by treachery. Their fortifications and buildings were similar to those built by the Colleges of Artificers at Rome, which gave rise to the belief that they were the direct descendants from these Roman builders, who had built for the Roman Empire for several centuries.

In offering the form of building as best evidence of the descent of the Comacines from the Roman Colleges, it is appreciated how recorded literature, which is usually the word and opinions of one person, can be biased, changed and often wrong. But all who have studied a people in their social, political or religious aspects, know how permanent these things are and how subject to slow changes.

Their forms of dress, songs, folklore and language undergo changes but slowly, climate, unsuccessful wars and amalgamation proving the most disastrous. But probably none of these change so slowly as forms of building, unless the latter be subjected to a marked change of climate from migration. Architecture is one of the noblest and most useful of arts and one of the first to attract the attention of barbarous people when evolution into higher civilization, and is at all times an accurate measure of a people's standing in civilization.

A law we learn from biology in the morphology of animals is, that nature never makes a new organ when she can modify an old one so as to perform the required functions. New styles of architecture do not spring from human intellect as creations. Cattaneo says: "Monuments left by a people are truer than documents, which often prove fallacious and mislead and prove no profit for those who blindly follow them.

The story of a people or a nation, if not known by writings, might be guessed through its monuments and works of art."

The Lombards, who had come from northern Germany and settled in northern Italy in 568 A.D., at once began to develop along many lines which made Lombardy known all over Europe---the result of which influence Europe feels today. They developed along lines which in our everyday parlance may be called business. They were not primarily architects or builders and they employed the Comacines for this kind of work and it was the Comacines who developed what is known today as Lombard architecture, covering a period that we may roughly put as from the seventh century to the Renaissance.

The first to draw attention to the name Magistri Comacini was the erudite Muratori, that searcher out of ancient manuscripts, who unearthed from the archives an edict, dated November 22, 643 A.D., signed by Rotharis, in which are included two clauses treating of the Magistri Comacini and their colleagues The two clauses, Nos. 143 and 144, out of the 386 inscribed in cribbed Latin, says Leader Scott, are, when anglicized, to the following intent:

Charles A. Cummings says: "The code of Luitprand, eighty years later, contains further provisions regulating the practice of Comacini, which had now become much more Ilumerous and important. Fixed rates of payment were established for their services, varying according to the kind of building on which they were engaged; definite prices being allowed for walls of various thicknesses, for arches and vaults, for chimneys, plastering and joiners' work. The difficulty which these early builders found in the construction of vaults is indicated by the allowance of a charge per superficial foot, from fifteen to eighteen times as great as in the case of a wall. The price of provisions and wine furnished to the workmen is also determined and is counted as part of their pay."

Scott maintains that "these laws prove that in the seventh century the Magistri Comacini were a compact and powerful gild, capable of asserting their rights, and that the gild was properly organized, having degrees of different ranks; that the higher orders were entitled Magistri, and could 'design' or 'undertake' a work; that is, act as architects ; and that the colligate or colleagues worked under, or with, them. In fact, a powerful organization altogether so powerful and so solid that it spoke of a very ancient foundation. Was it a surviving branch of a Roman Collegium? Or a decadent group of Byzantine artists stranded in Italy?"

Professor Merzario says: "In this darkness which extended all over Italy, only one small lamp remained alight, making a bright spark in the vast Italian metropolis. It was from the Magistri Comacini. Their respective names are unknown, their individual work unspecialized, but the breath of their spirit might be felt all through those centuries and their names collectively is legion. We may safely say that of all the works of art between 800 and 1000 A.D., the greater and better part are due to that brotherhood-always faithful and often secret-of the Magistri Comacini. The authority and judgment of learned men .justify the assertion."

Quaternal de Quincy, in his Dictionary of Architecture, under the heading Comacines, remarks that "to these men who were both designers and executors, architects, sculptors and mosaicists, may be attributed the Renaissance of art and its propagation in the southern countries, where it marched with Christianity.

Certain it is that we owe to them that the heritage of antique ages was not entirely lost, and it is only by their tradition and imitation that the art of building was kept alive, producing works which we still admire and which become surprising when we think of the utter ignorance of all science in those Dark Ages."

Hope, in his well-balanced style, draws quite a picture of the gilds at this period which, upon the whole, is fairly accurate. He says: "When Rome, the Eternal City, was first abandoned for Milan, Ravenna and other cities in the more fertile North, which became seats of new courts and the capitals of new kingdoms, we find in northern Italy a rude and barbarous nation-the Lombards-in the space of two short centuries, producing in trade, in legislation, in finance, in industry of every description, new developments so great, that from them, and from the regions to which they attach their names, has issued the whole of that ingenious and complex system of bills of exchange, banks, insurance, double sentry bookkeeping, commercial and marine laws and public loans, since adopted all over Europe---all over Europe retaining, in their peculiar appellations the trace and landmarks of their origin-and all over Europe affording to capital and commerce an case of captivity and a security unknown before.

"To keep pace with this progress, kings, lesser lords and the municipalities that by degrees arose, were induced, at one time from motives of public policy, at others, of private advantage, to encourage artificers of different professions. Thus of their own accord, they granted licenses to form associations possessed of the exclusive privilege of exercising their peculiar trades, and making them an object of profit; of requiring that youths anxious to be associated with their body, and ultimately to be endowed with the mastery of the profession, should submit to a fixed and often severe course of study, under the name of apprenticeship, for their master's profit, and in addition should frequently be compelled to pay a considerable premium; and of preventing any individual not thus admitted into their body, from establishing a competition against them. These associations were called Corporations or Gilds.

"These Bodies in order to enjoy exclusive exercise of their profession, and that its profits should be secure to them, not only by law, but by the inability of others to violate it, by degrees made their business, or craft, as they called it, a profound mystery from the world at large, and only suffered their own apprentices to be initiated in its higher branches and improvements, most gradually; and in every place where a variety of paths of industry and art were struck out, these crafts, these corporations, these masterships and these mysteries became so universally prevalent, that not only the arts of a wholly mechanical nature, but even those of the most exalted and intellectual nature---those which in ancient times had been considered the exclusive privilege of freemen and citizens, and those dignified with the name liberal-were submitted to all those narrow rules of corporations and connected with all the servile offices of apprenticeship.'' While Hope and writers of his time recognized that some well-organized body of workers had dominated the building trades at the Lombard period of history, they never attempted to trace their genealogy. Later historical critics of architecture have given some attention to origin and succession of these building crafts. One of the latest Italian students, Rivoiri, has devoted a separate chapter to the Comacine Masters.

As his extensive work on Lombard Architecture, Its Origin, Development and Derivatives may be accessible to but few, we shall give a generous quotation from him for the importance of his sound conclusions:

"The origin of the Comacine Masters in the diocese of Como is explained quite naturally, according to De Dartein, Merzario, and others, by the custom, which has always existed among the craftsmen and workmen of that region, of leaving their native places in order to betake themselves in gangs wherever building works are about to be or have been begun, urged thereto by their barren mountain soil, pecuniary gain, their innate ability and enterprising character.
Another explanation is to be found in the presence on the shores of the lakes of Como, Lugano and the Maggiore, of numerous stones, marble and timber yards which furnished building material for the cities of the plains. These yards gave scope for the practice of the crafts of carver, carpenter, builder, etc. ; and these, in their turn, by constant practice and continuous progress, ultimately developed architects and sculptors.

"And here we may naturally feel surprise at the appearance, amid the darkness of the early centuries of the Middle Ages, of a corporation of craftsmen who, though of Roman origin, none the less enjoyed Lombard citizenship and the rights belonging to it; while the Roman or Italian subjects of Lombard rule were, if not slaves, nothing better than 'aldi,' that is to say, midway between freedmen and serfs, manumitted on the condition of performing the manual tasks assigned them by the manumitter, A corporation, too, which had a legal monopoly of public and private building work within the territories occupied by the Lombards, as the code of Rotharis proves, and can claim the honor of filling up the gap which for so long was believed, especially by non-Italian writers, to exist between the incorporated artisans of the Roman epoch, supposed to have vanished with the fall of the Empire, and the gilds of craftsmen which sprang up so luxuriantly in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.

Such surprise, however, may easily be allayed if we consider that in reality the fraternity of craftsmen, in Italy at least, by no means came to an end with the barbarian invasions, and particularly that of the Lombards, who actually preserved those Roman institutions which best fulfilled their aim of keeping the conquered people in subjection. Accordingly, they would have maintained the corporation of artisans in order to make the exaction of tribute easier, and at the same time to be able to keep a hold over the individuals composing them. "Hence we have good grounds for inferring that the corporation of 'Comacini,' who apparently were neither more nor less than the successors of the Master Masons who in the days of the Empire had directed the operations of the collegia specially devoted to building, survived the barbarian invasions which were so disastrous to Italy in the centuries preceding , the accession of Rotharis to the Lombard throne.

This view is confirmed by the undoubted fact that from this time onwards the 'Comacini' formed a very important Gild, as is shown by the need which he felt of making regulations for it in his laws. This Gild cannot have sprung into existence full grown, and, as it were, by magic, just when the Code of Rotharis made its appearance in 643 A. D. It must have already been in existence and have attained some degree of importance well before Alboin's descent on Italy in 568 A.D. Troya, in fact, remarks that when the Lombards of the time of Autharis in 583-590 A.D., and of Agilulf and Theodelinda from 590--625 A.D., wanted to erect buildings, they must have made use of it ; and that everything leads one to think that before the promulgation of the Code of Rotharis, some of the members, those of the highest capacity and reputation had already been enfranchised by 'impans' or express grace of the King. However that may be, the mention of the associations of Comacini in the reign of Rotharis and Luitprand is one of the earliest in the barbarian world, and earlier than that of any Gild of architects or builders belonging to the Middle Ages. . . Whatever may have been the organization of the Comacine or Lombard Gilds, and however these may have been affected by outward events, they did not cease to exist in consequence of the fall of the Lombard kingdom. With the first breath of municipal freedom, and with the rise of the new brotherhoods of artisans, they, too, perhaps, may have reformed themselves like the latter, who were nothing but the continuation of the 'collegium' of Roman times preserving its existence through the barbarian ages, and transformed little by little into the mediaeval corporation. The members may have found themselves constrained to enter into a more perfect unity of thought and sentiment, to bind themselves into a more compact body, and thus put themselves in a condition to maintain their ancient supremacy in carrying out the most important building works in Italy. But we cannot say anything more. And even putting aside all tradition, the monuments themselves are there to confirm what we have said.

"Finally, toward the end of the eleventh century, the Comacine brotherhoods began to relax their bonds of union, to make room gradually for personality, and for artistic and scientific individuality, till at length they vanish at the close of the fifteenth century, with the disappearance of the Lombardic style which they had created, and the rise of the architecture of the Renaissance." Leader Scott has reasonably inferred: "

1. That the architects of the same Gild worked at Rome and in Ravenna in the early centuries after Christ.

2. That though the architects were Roman, the decorations up to the fourth century were chiefly Byzantine, or had imbibed that style, as their paintings show.

3. That in the time when Rome lay in a heap of ruins under the barbarians, the Collegium, or a Collegium, I know not which, fled to independent Como, and there, in after centuries they were employed by the Lombards, and ended in again becoming a powerful Gild."

There was the greatest similarity in form of the cathedrals of this period and when changes were introduced they became general thereby creating a unity of purpose and an interchange of ideas, which spoke the existence of some kind of Gild or fraternity with a perfected organization. That the Comacines received ideas which somewhat influenced their building art is probably true, particularly their decorations.

On the latter question Muller in his Archaeology der Kunst says: "From constantinople as a center of mechanical skill, a knowledge of art radiated to distant countries, and corporations of builders of Grecian birth were permitted to exercise a judicial government among themselves, according to the laws of the country to which they owed allegiance."

This was the age when more symbolism was made use of than at any other period, the reason being that the Christian religion having so lately supplanted Paganism, and as most converts could not read, the Bible was spread over the front of the cathedrals in the form of sculptured saints, animals, and symbolic figures. Hope says: "Pictures can always be read by all people and when symbolic uses are made and once explained will be ever after understood."

The Eastern branch of the Church at Constantinople prohibited imagery and other forms of adornment of their churches, and like disputants, when one denies, the other affirms, the Western branch of Rome espoused the carving of images and beautiful sculpture.

This caused the Eastern sculptors to come to Italy, where they were welcomed by the Roman branch of the Church. That policy of the Roman branch was carried throughout the cathedral building period that followed in Europe for several centuries and to this day is a dominant element with them, for they still believe that properly to spread their religion, noble architecture, fine sculpturing and painting, and inspiring music are prime requisites. We Speculative Freemasons should give full credit to the Roman Catholic Church for employing and fostering our Operative Brethren through many centuries and making possible Speculative Freemasonry of today, even though the Church is now our avowed enemy.

Combining some arguments that have been reasonably put forward for the maintenance of this theory, and adding others, it may be pointed out that the identical form of Lodges in different cities is a strong argument that the same ruling Body governed them all. An argument equally strong is the ubiquity of the members. We find the same men employed in one Lodge after another, as work required. Not only were these changes or migrations from one cathedral to another accomplished in Italy, but we have many examples of Masters and special workmen going into France, Germany, and other countries. Unfortunately no documents exist of the early Lombard times, but the archives of the Opera, which in most cities have been faithfully kept since the thirteenth century, would, if thoroughly examined, prove to be valuable stores from which to draw a history of the Masonic Gild. They have only begun to examine carefully these records, and when completed we may reasonably expect to learn much concerning this period. Leader Scott has examined several and gives continuous lists of Masters of the School or Lodge in different cities. In Sienese School, a list of sixty-seven Masters in continuous succession from 1259-1423; at Florence Lodge, seventy-eight Masters from 1258-- 1418; at Milan Lodge; seventy-nine Masters from 1387 - 647. She, for Leader Scott was a woman, whose real name was Mrs. Luey Baxter, gives headings of laws for these Lodges, and it may be interesting to glance over the headings of statutes of these Masonic Gilds, which will throw light on all the organizations. The Sienese Gild is a typical one. There are forty-one chapters, but the headings of only twelve will be selected:

C. 1. One who curses God or the Saints. A fine of 25 lira.
C. 2. One who opposes the Signora of city. A fine of 25 lira.
C. 5. How to treat underlings (sottoposti or apprentices).
C. 11. That no one take work from another Master.
C. 13. How the feast of the Four Holy Martyrs is to be kept. Feast of the Dead, November Two half-pound candles and offering ; grand fête of the Gild in June.
C.16. The camerlingo shall hand all receipts to Grand Master.
C.19. One who is sworn to another Gild cannot be either Grand Master or camerlingo.
C.22. How members are to be buried.
C.23. How to insure against risks.
C.24. No argument or business discussion to be held in public streets.
C.30. That no Master shall undertake a second work till the first has been paid.
C.34. On those who lie against others.

These statutes are very fair and well composed and must certainly have been made from long experience in the Gild.

The genealogy of the styles of architecture has baffled many. Leader Scott believes this to be the line of descent: First, the Comacines continued Roman traditions, as the Romans continued Etruscan ones; next, they orientalized their style by their connection with the East through Aquileia, and the influx of the Greek exiles into the Gild. Later came a different influence through the Saracens into the South, and the Italian-Gothic was born. In the old times (sixth to the tenth centuries) before the painters and sculptors, and after them the metal workers, split off and formed companies of their own, every kind of decoration was practiced by the Masters, as the letter of Theodoric plainly shows. A church was not complete unless it was adorned in its whole height and breadth with sculpture on the outside, mosaics or paintings on the inside, and in its completeness formed the peoples' Bible and dogma of religious belief, and this from the very early times of Constantine and his Byzantine mosaicists, and of Queen Theolinda and her fresco-painters, up to the revival of mosaics by the Cosmati and the fresco-painting in the Tuscan schools, but never were these arts entirely lost.

For the first, we have the identity of form and ornamentation in their works and the similarity of nomenelature and organization between the Roman Collegio and the Lombard Gild of Magistri. Besides this, the well-known fact that the free republic of como was used as a refuge by Romans who fled from barbaric invasions makes a strong argument. For the second, we may plead again the same identity of form and organization and a like similarity of ornamentation and nomenclature. Just as King Luitprand's architects were called Magistri, and the Grand Master the Gadtaldo, so we have the great architectural Gilds in Venice, in the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries, using the very same titles and having the very same laws. Again the hereditary descent is marked by the patron saints of the Lombard and Tuscan Lodges, being the Four Martyr Brethren from a Roman Collegio (see four Crowned Martyrs). All these and other indications are surely as strong as documental proof, and are practically the summary of the conclusions of Leader Scott and are not overdrawn, being amply home out by facts already known.

Older writers recognized the presence of a compact gild in the work, but did not connect them with the builders of the Renaissance. More recent writers, such as Rivoira, Porter, and others declare the connection. This connection is probably without the field of historical architects, whose work is the study of the product of the workmen, and not the workmen themselves, while our interest is centered on the workmen and their relations to those who follow them in connected sequence, and not on the product of their work, further than to show and prove relationships of the building crafts.

There are many most interesting and important things pertaining to the Conacines that must be omitted in a cyclopedia article. Their rich, varied, and curious symbolism, which even Ruskin failed to understand, would furnish matter for a fair-sized volume.

While it is recognized that history should always be written from as nearly original sources as is possible it has not been realized in this instance, as Brother Cauthome had to rely solely on those who have made their investigations at first-hand, and while some liberties have been taken, no violence has been done to their conclusions.

The reader will find a rich field in the following bibliography: The Cathedral Builders, The Story of a Great Masonic Guild, by Leader Scott. The Comacines, Their Predecessors and their Successors, by W. Ravencroft. Lombard Architecture, Its Origin, Development and Derivatives, by G. T. Rivoira. A History of Architecture in Italy, from the Time of Constantine to the Dawn of the Renaissance, by Charles A. Cummings. Medieval Architecture, by A. K. Porter.

Architecture in Italy from the Sixth to the Eleventh Century, Historical and Critical Researches, by Raflaele Cattaneo. Historical Essay on Architecture, by Thomas Hope. These are English works or have been translated into English. From them an extensive bibliography embracing other languages will be found.

COMACINE THEORY, THE

The article on Comacine Masters beginning on page 221 sets forth fairly and adequately the arguments in favor of the theory that the Magistri Comacimi were a school, or Compactly organized Brotherhood of Master Masons with a center and training school on Lake Como ; that this Comacine Brotherhood was the founder of Freemasonry, and that an unbroken continuity exists between it and the English Lodges out of which modern speculative Freemasonry arose. Mrs. Webster, writing under the name of Leader Scott, constructed this theory and published it in her Cathedral Builders, a work earnestly and competently written, supported by a wide knowledge of the literature; printed, bound, and illustrated magnificently.

Bro. Joseph Fort Newton epitomized the argument of her book in one chapter of his The Builders, and gave it a wide circulation because his book, "the Blue Lodge classic," had a large reading among American Masons. Bro. W. R. Rafenscroft followed this with two small books in which he restated or rehearsed Leader Scott's arguments with an audience of English Masons in mind (though he published much of his material in The Builder, Journal of the National Masonic Research Society). With this presentation, so rapidly successful, and accompanied as it was by innumerable speeches in Lodge Rooms and articles in the Masonic press throughout English-speaking Freemasonry, the Comacine Theory ceased to be a tentative and exploratory hypothesis constructed by one woman, and became a subject or discussion by the whole Fraternity.

One of the extraordinary features of this Masonry wide presentation and of the almost enthusiastic popularizing of it was the failure of both the proponents of the argument and of the popularizers of it to see that they were asking the Fraternity to abandon wholly, and at one stroke, the great structure of Masonic history which had been built up slowly and laboriously from 1870 to 1920 by some two hundred or so of the most learned scholars the Craft had or possibly ever can have. Beginning in the 1860's and 1870's Gould, Findel, Fort, Hughan, Crawley, Speth, Sadler, Lane, Lyon, the Rylands, E. H. Dring, etc., etc., had patiently pieced together evidences to show that Speculative Freemasonry had begun in England, that it was initiated by four or five Lodges in London out of some hundreds of Time Immemorial Lodges in England, Scotland and Ireland which had been at work during the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century ; and that these in turn were the descendants of Lodges of Operative Freemasons of which the history was very old, dating at least from the Twelfth Century.

They knew that Operative Freemasonry in general, as the art of architecture, was flourishing during those years throughout Europe, but they could find no traces on the Continent of that particular and almost singular special development among Operative Freemasons which gave rise to modern Speculative Freemasonry, general Operative Freemasonry had been as much European as British, but speculative Freemasonry from its first small beginnings was English; and it was from England that it went across to the Continent in the 1720's. If Leader Scott's argument had been sound, if Speculative Freemasonry had originated not in England (as each copy of the Old Charges clearly showed) but had been founded and propagated by a school of Operative Masons at Lake Como in Italy, then Gould's History, Mackey's History, the Ars Quatuor Coronatorum, and the body of English and American scholarship had made a vast, fatal, wholesale mistake, and the whole work would have to be done over again de novo.

1. There is nothing in the cathedrals, and other structures designed, constructed, and ornamented by the Medieval English Freemasons nor anything in the MSS., traditions, customs, rites, or symbols, or in the records of the oldest Lodges, which anywhere mentions the Comacine Masters, or looks backward toward Italy; nor were the truths, ideas, symbols which were perpetuated by the Time Immemorial Lodges such as could have originated in Medieval northern Italy; they bear on them everywhere the stamp of England.

Around and behind early Medieval Freemasonry in England lay the European milieu, the long history of the Continent, and the traditions of Antiquity, of early Christianity, and the Bible; but the elements drawn from this enveloping background which appear in the first forms of Speculative Freemasonry were demonstrably never drawn at first hand, not even from the Bible, but were mediated to the Craft through the reports, and rumors, and traditions of such things as they had come to England. Moreover, the genius of Medieval Operative Freemasonry was that of the Gothic architecture ; whereas in Italy, and including Como, the Gothic was only half accepted, and was mixed with elements of alien styles imported from Greece and the Arabs (via Sicily).

2. Leader Scott defines the phrase Magistri Comacini as meaning Masters of Como; she then employs this word itself as a principal support of her argument, and takes it that wherever Magistri Comacini appears in the records it refers to the school at Como. Since the phrase appears first in the Fifth Century, and was in wide use in following centuries, and hence was in use many centuries before there was any architecture or architects at Lake Como, Magislri Comacini is not Masters of "Como" etymologically. In the Low Latin in use at the period of which Leader Scott writes co-macioncs, frequently used, meant brothers, or gilds, of Masons, and hence could be applied to Masons anywhere; and Rivoira so applies it in the work referred to by Bro. Cauthorne in his paragraphs at page 221 of this Encyclopedia. Thus the Masons at any Italian center, at Florence, Pisa, Genoa, Venice, Rome, often were called como magistri. Moreover, Leader Scott takes it, or so to a reader it appears, that a schola was a school; in the Low Latin just mentioned schola was a gild.

3. Although she did not appear to note it herself, Leader Scott constructs not one Comacine Theory but two:

a) She attempts to show that the "school at Como'' was the center from which the whole Lombardic style had originated and been directed This theory cannot be sustained on historical grounds. Moreover, it repeats a fallacy which characterizes European theories about Freemasonry of both its origin and its present organization: viz, that it had (and has) some one center of control, and that this alone explains why it maintained its unity (and still does) everywhere, and from age to age. Medieval Freemasonry (as now) never had a center but maintained its unity by its modes of recognition, the movement of workers from one place to another, the prevalence of a single architectural style, and-above other means-by its training of apprentices, each of whom received his knowledge of the art and his practices of the Fraternity from a Master Mason who in turn had received the same from his own inlender, and so on backwards. b) Leader Scott's second Comacine Theory was that modern Speculative Freemasonry originated in her hypothetical school at Como. Rivoira says that this theory was not original with her, but was picked up by her from an Italian book which had never carried weight with Italian scholars; he himself dismisses the theory as not worth detailed investigation.

NOTE. In private correspondence Bro. Lionel Vibert, and writing as Secretary of Quatuor Coronati Lodge, stated that he had dismissed the Comacine Theory after finding that Leader Scott had misused the name Magistri Comacini, a keystone in her arch ; Bro. Ravenscroft Wrote not long before his death that he wished he could recall his two brochures because he had "come to see that the Comacine Theory was without foundation."

In addition to books mentioned above see : Medieval Architecture, by Arthur Kingsley Porter: vol. I, page 134. The Calhedral Builders, by Leader Scott, was published by Sampson, Low, Marston & Co.; London ; 80 illustrations; 435 pages. Lombardic Architecture, by G. T. Rivoira; two volumes. The Gilds of Florence, by Edgcumbe Staley; Methuen & Co.; London; 1906 ; 622 pages. (He has an interesting note about the Masons at Lincoln, England, as having had a social and religious Fraternity in 1313.) Arl and The Re-formation, by G. G. Coulton; ch. X. Medieval Italy, by H. B. Cotterill; Geo. C. Harrap; 1915. The Renaissance of The Twelfth Century, by Charles Homer Haskins, Harvard University Press; 1928. Medieval Europe, by Lynn Thorndike; Geo. C. Harrap & Co.; London; 1920. A History of Freemasonry, by H. L. Haywood and James E. Craig.

CO-MASONRY

There is a distinction to be drawn between that which is claimed to be the same thing and that which only resembles something else. Between identity and mere similarity there is a great difference. This fact is to be kept in mind when considering the past and present organizations allied in appearance or purpose with Freemasonry and those that are but imitating the Institution in greater or less degree. Of these we may instance the curious development known now as Co-Masonry. An extensive discussion of the subject has appeared in the French journal Symbolisme, beginning in 1920, written by Brother Albert Lantoine with the title La Femme dans la Franc-Masonnerie, meaning Woman in Freemasonry. There is also an article in the Builder, April, 1917, by Brother Arthur Edward Waite, dealing more exclusively but briefly with Co-Masonry. There has also been published in the United States the American Co-Mason, Larkspur, colorado, as the official organ of this system in America.

Some differences arose among members of the Supreme Council of France, Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite, and sundry Bodies withdrew in 1879 to form the Symbolic Grand Lodge, Le Grande Loge Symbolique de France, the assumption being that the ceremonies conferred in this newly-organized Body were the three fundamental Degrees of the Craft and not the advanced grades of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite, Lodges and not Chapters being governed by the central authority. However, this is not so important as the action of an independent Lodge, Les Libres Penseurs, a name meaning the freethinkers, and quite expressive of the attitude of the members, well illustrated in the course of subsequent events. This Lodge met at Pecq, a small town north of Paris in the Department Seine et Oise. Mademoiselle (Miss) Maria Desraimes was on November 25, 1881, proposed at the Lodge Les Libres Penseurs for membership. She was a well-known French writer upon woman's suffrage and other sociological questions. Proposed by the Master, Hubron, and half a dozen other members, she was initiated on January 14, 1882, in a large gathering of the Brethren of this organization, the Symbolic Grand Lodge. Presumably the candidate was passed and raised. Of this Lodge we learn that it soon went out of existence and Lantoine (Symbolisme, February, 1921, page 54) records that on November 17, 1882, the Master was expelled from Freemasonry. He tells us that at her initiation, Maria Desrairnes, in an address of gratitude after the ceremony, pronounced these words:

The prophecy did not materialize for that Lodge at least. However, the Worshipful Master of the Lodge at Pecq in order to hold his Brethren in hand had not only threatened he would dimit if the admission of the woman was not voted but had also announced that four or five other Lodges, one of which was the Lodge La Justice, would follow the example they set for the Fraternity. But the anticipations were not soon to be realized. Disturbances had arisen in the Lodge. A profession of faith had been uttered there "that no profane should enter the Lodge if he was not imbued with the principles of free thought, utter atheism," double d'atheisme is the expression. On June 9, 1882, a majority of the Brethren forming this Lodge demanded a restoration of their old discipline. They exhibited a sentiment of submission and the authorities, June 15, 1883, were assured that "a Lodge is not possessed of self-control to the extent that it steps aside from the General Laws of the Constitution." Lantoine explains that this is to say that they had stricken from their program the proposed admission of women and in their list of regular members the name of Maria Desraimes does not figure.

In 1890 the Lodge La Jerusalem Ecossaise of the Symbolic Grand Lodge already mentioned, at the instigation of Dr. Georges Martin who was a member of this Lodge, addressed to all the other Lodges of France a circular letter inviting them to study the question of the admission of women through the creation of mixed or joint Lodges of both the sexes. The Lodges so approached do not appear to have well understood the purpose. Then the Lodge La Jerusalem Ecossaise decided to pass on to action. Its order of the day, the program or agenda for the Communication of May 8, 1891, bore among the items a "Project of Constituting Mixed Lodges." The proposition was handled with more restraint than at Pecq. The Lodge La Jerusalem Ecossaise would not itself initiate women but she would create at her side a mixed or joint, both sexes, Lodge called Le Droit Humain, Human Right, of which the by-laws had already been discussed and determined. This latter organization under cover of adoption, somewhat modernized, was, Lantoine affirms, a means of attaining the desired end. But the Symbolic Grand Lodge did not fail to take heed of these tactics. The Commission d'Initiative, a species of Board of General Purposes of which the prominent Brother Gustave Mesureur was Chairman, assigned the duty of examining the proposition as regularly submitted and disposed of the matter in dispute by an altogether unfavorable report which occasioned a rather stormy debate. Here are sundry extracts from the official report:

Here Brother Georges Martin seemed touched by this avowal. But the sentiment evaporated and three votes, of which his was one, refused to adopt the decision rejecting his project. The result was officially made known in the report of the proceedings of May 11, 1891, to the effect, "The Brother Georges Martin replied that the discussion came too late and the plans were made; he added that there was only one means of hindering that creation and that was to go before the public powers for the purpose of having them refuse the authorization that was going to be asked."

Seemingly they did not intervene before the public authorities and the project was apparently abandoned, at least in the form that had been the purpose to realize it. They returned in a fresh way. Brothers Goumain-Corneille, Andrien, Schafer and Georges Martin deposited at the office of the Grand Lodge a proposition planned to admit women into Freemasonry. This plan came as an order of the day, a programmed item, on the agenda of July 6,1891 , but as none of the proposers were there to defend it, the project was unanimously rejected.

Was the Symbolic Grand Lodge opposed to feminine initiation? Did she evidence any retrograde spirit? Yes and no. As we have said above, she was tied by international relations to a conformity with the Landmarks. She had existed for a dozen years, She was treated as an equal with rival Obediences, even with the Supreme Council which finally had recognized her, says Lantoine, and it displeased her to compromise her situation by an experience, however interesting, but which might by a single stroke set her aside from the Freemasonry of the world. The gesture that she had been able to make at her birth, in adopting a program clearly new, might be more difficult for accomplishment, when, as something altogether revolutionary came along, she struggled to show herself worthy of the consideration that was accorded other Powers. For that reason from year to year, far from permitting conviction by the perseverance of Doctor Martin, she opposed him to the end.

When the mixed Lodge at last was created without the guardianship of a masculine Lodge, and announced officially its existence in January, 1894, under the title of "Le Droit Humain-Grand Lodge Symbolique Ecossaise," not only did she refuse to enter into relations with it but she was abusive under a plea that that might, lead to confusion. She sent to all the affiliations the following communication under date of March 21, 1894:

The following month the Lodge La Jerusalem Edossaise carried on its agenda the notice of a discussion on Secret Societies by the Brother Mayer, "active member of the mixed Lodge Le Droit Humain," and the Grand Lodge, not satisfied with calling the attention of the Lodge to the observation of the rules, voted also the preparation of a circular letter calling upon the Lodges "not to admit to their solemn sessions the members, men or women, of the mixed Lodge Le Droit Humain."

Needless to say that the Supreme Council did not accept with any more favor the birth of the mixed Lodge. The Lodges were told "that they ought to deem as nothing the communication addressed to it by the new group and to avoid all relations with it."

One may remark, says Lantoine, that the request for recognition had been made by Maria Desraimes. Brethren felt that Georges Martin was the true founder of the Lodge La Droit Hurnain. and he doubtless it was that the Brother Dequinsieux had in view when, at the session of June 12, 1894, of the Symbolic Grand Lodge, he demanded, "that the Symbolic Grand Lodge proceed to an investigation to ascertain who is the Brother who has given the Masonic signs and words to women, and that that Brother be put on trial."

But the defensive argument was given by a Deputy, Brother Serin, who explained by a report, probably by the Secretary of the session. "It is the Sister Maria Desrairnes who had received the three symbolic degrees at the Lodge, The Freethinkers, at the East of Pecq, Seine and Oise, having grouped around her a selection of women and conferred upon thern the symbolic degrees, as was incontestably her right, and in due course founded the mixed Lodge Le Droit Humain with the cooperation of a Brother."

This explanation was perhaps satisfactory to the hearers but far from acceptable to most Freemasons elsewhere. Perhaps the strain of these discussions was too severe for the continued existence of the Symbolic Grand Lodge itself, which expired, that is to say since 1896, when agreeably to a sovereignty granted by the Supreme Council to the Symbolic Lodges, these were fused with the others into the Grand Lodge of France.

After the initiating, passing and raising, on March 14, April 1 and April 4, 1893, according to Brother Waite, of some seventeen candidates, in which ceremonies Maria Desraimes and Georges Martin seem to have participated, in the year 1900 the Lodge claimed to possess and have the right to confer the whole Thirty-Three Degrees, the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite series united with those previously assumed. The title of Grande Loge Symbolique Ecossaise continued in use and the movement then spread from France to India, Great Britain and the United States. About 1902 the name Maconnerie Mixte, or Joint Masonry, seems to have given way to Co-Masonry. There were Lodges at Benares, Paris and London by 1903. The name of the first English Lodge was Human Duty. In 1908 there was a division, one party being headed by Mrs. Annie Besant, prominent in public life in Great Britain and India.

The reader will have noticed in this survey of the situation that the initiating ceremonies practised by these bodies were not claimed to be other than those pertaining to the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite and which are not authorized by this organization to be used in the United States of America nor in Great Britain. Whatever the ritual may have been originally, when used for the initiation of Maria Desraimes, there have been intimations that it has been materially changed, though to what extent these alterations have gone is impossible for us to determine with accuracy.

Brother George Fleming Moore printed articles entitled Notes from India and Co-Masonry in the October, 1910, and February, 1911, issues of the New Age, of which he then was the editor. These essays examined various assertions that have been circulated, one being that made in the columns of the Cherag, of July, 1910, this being a journal published at Bombay, India, in the interests of a society calling itself Masonic and using the name Universal Masonry. This magazine published a claim that Madame H. P. Blavatsky was a Thirty-third Degree Mason. In proof of this statement reference is made to the Franklin Register of February 8, 1878, for a copy of her Diploma which is reprinted as follows:

To the Glory of the Sublime Architect of the Universe.
Ancient and Primitive Rite of Masonry, Derived through the Charter of the Sovereign Sanctuary of America,
From the Grand Council of the Grand Lodge of France.

Salutation on all points of the triangle. Respect to the Order. Peace, Tolerance, Truth.

To all illustrious and enlightened Masons throughout the World - Union, Prosperity, Friendship. Fraternity.

We, the Thrice-Illustrious Sovereign Grand Master General, and we, the Sovereign Grand Conservators, thirty-third and last degree of the Sovereign Sanctuary of England, Wales, etc., decorated the Grand Star of Sirius, etc., Grand Commanders of the Three Legions of the Knights of Masonry, by virtue of the high authority with which we are invested, have declared and proclaimed and by these presents do declare and proclaim our illustrious and enlightened Brother, H. P. Blavatsky, to be an Apprentice, Companion, Perfect Mistress, Sublime Elect Scotch Lady, Grand Elect, Chevaliere de Rose Croix, Adoniramite Mistress, Perfect Venerable Mistress, and a crowned Princess of Rite of Adoption.

Given under our hands and the seals of the Sovereign Sanctuary for England and Wales, sitting in the Valley of London, this 24th day of November, 1877, year of true light 000,000,000.
John Yarker, 33* Sovereign Grand Master. M. Caspari, 33* Grand Secretary.
A. D. Loewenstark, 33' Grand Secretary.

In view of what is here said about Theosophy, it is but fair to add a frank statement bearing the imprint of the Aryan Theosophical Press at Point Loma and credited to Madame Katherine Tingley of the International Headquarters there. She states:

The subject in general of Woman in Freemasonry is examined freely in this work (see Woman).

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