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Article THE HISTORY OF FREEMASONRY. ← Page 4 of 6 →
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The History Of Freemasonry.
Many of the old Charges have appeared in print , owing to the energy of Bros . Woodford and Hughan , and others ; and however we may regret that in the present instance we are not treated to all the various manuscripts in extenso , we think that Bro . Gould exercised a wise discretion in only printing one as a specimen—the Buchanan MS .,
now in the possession of Grand Lodge—which here appears for the first time . Chapter III . is devoted to the Steinmetzen . Since the publication in 1861 of Findel ' s History , the theory of the derivation of Freemasonry from the German stonemasons has , as Bro . Gould states , " held
possession of our Encyclopaedias , " the previous theory of " travelling companies of masons " having given way to it . This being the case , it was necessary to subject it to a searching examination . In a lengthy chapter , in which are given , for the - first time , translations into English of some of the " Ordinances , " dating from the fifteenth
and sixteenth centuries , Bro . Gould has fairly and without any prejudice , so to speak , weighed it in the scale and—it has been found wanting . When this most interesting discussion and the list of " general conclusions " on page 177 , have been read , we feel sure that the impression will be that the " Ordinances" of this Society or
Gild , in spite of some general resemblances , are nothing more than we should expect to find composed for the regulation and preservation of any craft or trade , and that , wherever we turn to seek the origin of Freemasonry , it must be to a better source than the Steinmetzen .
It will be remembered , as mentioned above , that the British Masons and the Gompagnonage were the only two fraternities which appear to have preserved a legendary history ; that the Gompagnonage has only incidentally been connected by some authors with Freemasonry ; and , finally , that it is a subject about which we really know
little or nothing . For these reasons we looked forward with no ordinary amount of pleasure to the consideration of the two last chapters of the first instalment of Bro . Gould's work—The Craft Gilds ( corps d ' etat ) of France , and The Gompagnonage , or Les Gompagnons du Tour de France .
This anticipation was by no means diminished by Bro . Gould ' s suggestive remarks on page 58 : " On the whole it may be reasonably concluded that the Gompagnons of the Middle Ages preserved legends of their own , which are not derived from the Freemasons ( or masons ) ; and the latter doubtless assembled in lodges , although the Acts of
Parliament and other historical records are provokingly silent upon this point . " " But if the legends of the Gompagnonage were not derivative , can the same be said of those which have been preserved by the masons ?
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software.
The History Of Freemasonry.
Many of the old Charges have appeared in print , owing to the energy of Bros . Woodford and Hughan , and others ; and however we may regret that in the present instance we are not treated to all the various manuscripts in extenso , we think that Bro . Gould exercised a wise discretion in only printing one as a specimen—the Buchanan MS .,
now in the possession of Grand Lodge—which here appears for the first time . Chapter III . is devoted to the Steinmetzen . Since the publication in 1861 of Findel ' s History , the theory of the derivation of Freemasonry from the German stonemasons has , as Bro . Gould states , " held
possession of our Encyclopaedias , " the previous theory of " travelling companies of masons " having given way to it . This being the case , it was necessary to subject it to a searching examination . In a lengthy chapter , in which are given , for the - first time , translations into English of some of the " Ordinances , " dating from the fifteenth
and sixteenth centuries , Bro . Gould has fairly and without any prejudice , so to speak , weighed it in the scale and—it has been found wanting . When this most interesting discussion and the list of " general conclusions " on page 177 , have been read , we feel sure that the impression will be that the " Ordinances" of this Society or
Gild , in spite of some general resemblances , are nothing more than we should expect to find composed for the regulation and preservation of any craft or trade , and that , wherever we turn to seek the origin of Freemasonry , it must be to a better source than the Steinmetzen .
It will be remembered , as mentioned above , that the British Masons and the Gompagnonage were the only two fraternities which appear to have preserved a legendary history ; that the Gompagnonage has only incidentally been connected by some authors with Freemasonry ; and , finally , that it is a subject about which we really know
little or nothing . For these reasons we looked forward with no ordinary amount of pleasure to the consideration of the two last chapters of the first instalment of Bro . Gould's work—The Craft Gilds ( corps d ' etat ) of France , and The Gompagnonage , or Les Gompagnons du Tour de France .
This anticipation was by no means diminished by Bro . Gould ' s suggestive remarks on page 58 : " On the whole it may be reasonably concluded that the Gompagnons of the Middle Ages preserved legends of their own , which are not derived from the Freemasons ( or masons ) ; and the latter doubtless assembled in lodges , although the Acts of
Parliament and other historical records are provokingly silent upon this point . " " But if the legends of the Gompagnonage were not derivative , can the same be said of those which have been preserved by the masons ?