History of Freemasonry and Concordant Orders

The curious good reputation for Freemasonry has regrettably been treated only by its panegyrists or calumniators, either mendacious. I actually do. not desire to pry in to the mysteries from the craft but it might be interesting to understand much more of their history throughout the time once they were literally designers. They're billed by an action of Parliament with fixing the cost of the labor within their annual sections, unlike the statute of workers, and the like sections were consequently prohibited. This really is their first persecution they've since gone through others, and therefore are possibly restricted to still more. It's amazing, that Masons weren't legally incorporated, like other traders their bond of union being more powerful than any charter.

—HENRY HALLAM, The Dark Ages.

CHAPTER I

Free-Masons

In the foregoing pages it should be apparent that Masonry, once we think it is within the Dark Ages, wasn't a novelty. Already, when we accept its very own records, it had been hoary as we grow older, getting come lower from the far past, getting by using it a amazing deposit of legendary lore. Also, it been on its maintaining your same simple, eloquent emblems which, as we view, are over the age of the earliest living religion, so it received being an inheritance and it has sent like a treasure. Everything we may think about the stories of Masonry, as recited in the earliest documents, its symbols, over the age of an order itself, link it using the earliest thought and belief from the race. Without doubt individuals emblems lost a few of their luster within the troublous duration of transition we're going to traverse, however their beauty never wholly faded, plus they had simply to huged to shine.

Otherwise the particular successors from the Roman College of Designers, the truly amazing order of Comacine Masters began upon its ruins, and ongoing its tradition

each of meaning as well as art. Coming back to Rome following the dying of Diocletian, we discover them busy there under Constantine and Theodosius and from remains lately introduced to understanding it's plain their type of building in those days was very similar to those of the places of worship built at Hexham and You are able to in England, and individuals from the Ravenna, also nearly contemporary. They might not have been really known as Free-masons as soon as Leader Scott demands these were,