Freemasonry: A Very Short Introduction - Andreas Önnerfors 2017

Hieroglyphs, emblems, and vision: the Renaissance heritage
Historical legacies

During the Renaissance, the medieval canon of knowledge was slowly replaced with more sophisticated scientific, aesthetic, and religious ideas, still resting firmly on a Christian basis. Cultural encounters with the Arab world, accelerated by the fall of Constantinople in 1453, brought new historical awareness, language skills, and the re-discovery of primary sources of antiquity, which were revered as examples of perfection. It was now possible to read re-constructed original texts by classical thinkers such as Plato, Aristotle, or Cicero, bringing philosophy back to a broad readership. Theologians were at pains to explain the compatibility of the European pagan past with Christianity. Further blows to the ideological authority of the Church were occasioned by the advent of the printing press, European expeditions around the globe, and the pioneering discoveries of the scientific revolution. Finally, the Reformation undermined the former unity of the medieval worldview through a conscious elimination of Catholic religion and a preference for a direct reading of the Holy Scriptures.

Under the surface of Protestantism, mystical currents of religiosity emerged, such as Rosicrucianism, which radically individualized the spiritual and personal encounter with the divine, and charged it with strong symbolism. One of the master themes of the period was the search for secret and revealed analogies and correspondences between microcosm and macrocosm, heaven and earth, visible and invisible, and divine and human. During this period, hermetic and mystical ideas such as alchemy, astrology, and Christian readings of Jewish Kabbalah were also disseminated. For freemasonry, this intellectual development meant that most of its privileged knowledge relating to geometry and architecture was available publicly in print from around 1500; that the Gothic paradigm of architecture was replaced by a new appreciation for classical examples of style; and that some features belonging to the hermetic tradition of thought found their way into masonic practices.

Essentially a revolution of vision, the Renaissance re-established and refined the rules of central perspective and three-dimensionality. Optical instruments such as the microscope and the telescope accelerated the process known as the scientific revolution with an ever-growing number of new discoveries. However, these are only the external aspects of a movement that also embraced the idea that ’seeing’ and ’vision’ were a divine skill exclusive to the select few who were equipped with more-or-less arcane knowledge. The radiant ’All-Seeing Eye of God’ placed within a perfect triangle (a prominent symbol in freemasonry as well) became a symbol for these deeper levels of the all-seeing of visible and invisible dimensions. Both in original art and in printed artwork such as frontispieces and etchings, a veritable play of hide-and-seek developed in which hints and references to ancient pagan mythology and philosophy as well as to the Christian religion were displayed in a visual narrative. Medieval art had already developed a predefined and stereotyped system of symbolic references to saints and biblical episodes which was manifested in miracle plays and Christian typology (in which the faithful, for instance, identify with the Stations of the Cross). However, the Renaissance and subsequent periods brought these expressions to new heights, particularly disseminated through books on architecture.

In such books, hieroglyphs were understood as representing a divine and universal language that would immediately reveal their sense to the initiated viewer. Emblematic books displayed moral and philosophical images with mottos and epigrams. Pictures were used as condensed rhetorical narratives of philosophical and religious self-reflection. Freemasonry bought into this tradition and is still burdened with symbols that assume multiple layers of meaning. As three-dimensional objects, these symbols come to life in masonic ritual where they are used in the performance and contribute to the creation of ritualistic time and space. As visual symbols, they are displayed in masonic prints, on regalia and furniture, and, most significantly, on so-called tracing boards in the middle of lodge rooms. These tracing boards show the significant symbols of each degree in which they are used.

As historian David Stevenson has pointed out, ’Scotland’s century’ in the development of freemasonry occurred within this period. The Reformation heavily influenced all organized forms of religious and lay fraternities in Britain, including the medieval guild system. In Scotland in particular, signs of recovery can be found and, in 1598/9, new statutes of masonry were issued (the ’Schaw Statutes’). These statutes regulated the organization of Scottish masonry, establishing the practice of a double organization: on a local and broader territorial level. Stevenson argues that the re-organization of Scottish masonry at this time coincided exactly with the intellectual impact of the Renaissance. The Schaw Statutes explicitly mention the ’art of memory and science’—which might refer to the hermetic practices circulating in Europe at that time. During the 17th century, the first instances occurred of the admission of non-craftsmen to the lodges in both Scotland and England, an occurrence that might point to overlaps in intellectual interests or simply to a shared desire for refined sociability.