Freemasonry: A Very Short Introduction - Andreas Önnerfors 2017
Guild traditions
Historical legacies
The different guilds of craftsmen across medieval Europe all sought to promote their own significance by developing a craft mythology, linking their particular trade and skills to biblical references and the legends of Christian patron saints. Both St Johns are traditionally associated with the craft of masonry; the day of St John the Baptist is June 24th and that of St John the Evangelist is December 27th, which explains why the summer and winter solstices played an important role in the gatherings and festivities of medieval masons.
As with so many issues of rank, the aspect of age was decisive—the more ancient the roots and prominent (sacred and secular) the patronage a craft could claim, the higher its status among other guilds, and the greater capacity it had to mobilize political power. The guilds filled an important function in the medieval city: they regulated professional life, wages, and prices; they participated in political representation and security for the town; they provided education and social security to their members (including widows and orphans); and they occupied an important function as lay fraternities, engaged in religious festivities such as mystery plays or processions. This religious role was almost erased in Protestant Europe after the Reformation. The modern state (together with its new economic theories) was not interested in guild privileges and internally agreed trade monopolies. More and more of the traditional functions of guilds were taken over by public authorities, and more and more trade privileges were abandoned. It has also been argued that the capitalist economy had a powerful impact in superseding the self-regulated ’moral economy’ of the guilds.
Originally, the regulations for craft masonry were firmly based within the imaginative world of medieval Christian religion. These regulations also reflected how religion was used in the construction of a mythical historical past, which played an important symbolic function in the self-fashioning of medieval craft guilds and their role in urban lay religiosity. Similarly, history could be mobilized in the negotiation of power relationships within the medieval city and with the feudal hierarchy in general. It would be wrong to require historical accuracy in these accounts, since they were not primarily written to provide objective descriptions of the past, but rather to claim legacy and prestige. For example, it was not until the Renaissance that it was revealed that the ’Donation of Constantine’—an 8th-century manuscript purporting to describe the surrender of secular power by the Roman emperor to the pope—was in fact a forgery.
Another important feature of medieval craft guilds was that, in a time of widespread illiteracy and an absence of printed books, practical and applied know-how was orally transmitted and treated as privileged insider knowledge, constituting the secrets of a trade. Medieval society was organized into strict hierarchies and thus knowledge within the guilds was transferred vertically from master to journeyman to apprentice. The craft guild was a professional, social, and religious fraternity, as well as representing a community of knowledge. To be admitted into such a community marked a significant transition, and the acquisition of further knowledge implied authority, responsibility, status, and access to privileges both within the trade and within society. Many guilds developed special ceremonies and customs to mark these different transitions, unquestionably inspired by similar practices in the clergy, at universities, and in the knighthood.
Masonry occupied a particular position in medieval society at that time since it involved active work with geometry, the fifth of the so-called ’Seven Liberal Arts’ (grammar, dialectic, rhetoric, arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music) that dominated the medieval understanding of science. The term ’freemason’ refers to a mason who specializes in carving freestone (sandstone or limestone) for the decoration of capitals and cornices. The ability to apply the laws of geometry in the construction of cathedrals and major secular buildings exhibited a person’s possession of attractive and superior knowledge.
As the medieval historian Andrew Prescott has pointed out, in the British context, freemasonry originates, as a social movement, in the religious fraternities of the 14th century, which, following the devastating societal impact of the Black Death, increasingly took over the responsibilities of trade regulation. Most medieval craft ordinances are concerned with practical issues of guild organization. The first known manuscript outlining the legends of freemasonry dates from around 1425 and is preserved to this day in two versions (the Regius and the Cooke manuscripts). The main claims of these legends are that masons were provided with ancient charters allowing them to hold assemblies and that all masons were brethren of equal status. As in many pre-modern conflicts, the masons (as an association of craftsmen) sought to protect their privileges (including level of payment) and independence by referring to their seniority and noble protection (provided by a fictitious Anglo-Saxon prince). The same pattern was repeated a century and a half later when inflation threatened to lower the wages of craftsmen. A new, presumed royal, protection was incorporated into the legends, specifically mentioning York. Between 1583 and 1717, more than twenty manuscripts with the ’old charges’ of freemasonry were produced.