Mackey A G - Encylopedia of Freemasonry - The Grand Masonic ...

BACULUS
BADGE 91
rod (virgam), that he may with the seal of reo.
titude strike down the vices of delinquents ."
The transmission of episcopal ensigns from
bishops to the heads of ecclesiastical associa .
tions was not difficult in the Middle Ages ; and
hence it afterward became one of the insignia
of abbots, and the heads of confraternities connected
with the Church, as a token of the possession
of powers of ecclesiastical jurisdiction .
Now, as the Papal bull, Omne datum Optimum,
invested the Grand Master of the
Templars with almost episcopal jurisdiction
over the priests of his Order, he bore the
baculus, or pastoral staff, as a mark of that
jurisdiction, and thus it became a part of the
Grand Master's insignia of office .
The baculus of the bishop, the abbot, and
the confraternities was not precisely the same
in form. The earliest episcopal staff terminated
in a globular knob, or a tau cross . This
was, however, soon replaced by the simplecurved
termination, which resembles and is
called a crook, in allusion to that used by
shepherds to draw back and recall the sheep of
their flock which have gone astray, thus symbolizing
the expression of Christ, "I am the
good Shepherd, and know my sheep, and am
known of mine ."
The baculus of the abbot does not differ in
form from that of a bishop, but as the bishop
carries the curved part of his staff pointing
forward, to show the extent of his episcopal
jurisdiction, so the abbot carries his pointing
backward, to signify that his authority is
limited to his monastery .
The baculi, or staves of the confraternities,
were surmounted by small tabernacles, with
images or emblems, on a sort of carved cap,
having reference to the particular guild or
confraternity by whom they were borne .
The baculus of the Knights Templars, which
was borne by the Grand Master as the ensign
of his office, in allusion to his quasi-episcopal
jurisdiction, is described and delineated in
Muster, Burnes, Addison, and all the other
authorities, as a staff, on the top of which is
an octagonal figure, surmounted with a cross
patee. The cross, of course, refers to the
Christian character of the Order, and the octagon
alludes, it is said, to the eight beatitudes
of our Savior in his Sermon on the Mount .
The pastoral staff is variously designated, by
ecclesiastical writers, as virga, frules, cambutta,
crocia, and pedum . From crocia, whose root
is the Latin crux, and the Italian croce, a cross,
we get the English crozier.
Pedum, another name of the baculus, signifies,
in pure Latinity, a shepherd's crook, and
thus strictly carries out the symbolic idea of
a pastoral charge . Hence, looking to the
pastoral jurisdiction of the Grand Master of
the Templars, his staff of office is described
under the title of "pedum magistrate seu
patriarchate," that is, a "magisterial or patriarchal
staff," in the Statuta Commilitonum
Ordinis Templi ; or the "Statutes of the
Fellow-soldiers of the Order of the Temple,"
as apart of the investiture of the Grand Master,
in the following words :
"Pedum magistrate, see paffardlale, aureum,
in eacumins ctvus crux Ordtnis super
orbem exaltatur " ; that is, "A magisterial or
patriarchal staff of gold, on the top of which
is a cross of the Order, surmounting an orb or
globe ." (Slat ., xxviii ., art, 358 .) But of all
these names, baculus is the one more commonly
used by writers to designate the
Templar pastoral staff .
In the year 1859 this staff of office was first
adopted at Chicago by the Templars of the
United States, during the Grand Mastership
of Sir William B . Hubbard . But, unfortunately,
at that time it received the name of
abacus, a misnomer, which has continued to
the present day, on the authority of a literary
blunder of Sir Walter Scott, so that it has
fallen to the lot of American Masons to perpetuate,
in the use of this word, an error of
the less great novelist, resulting from his too care-
writing, at which he would himself have
been the first to smile, had his attention been
called to it.
Abacus, in mathematics, denotes an instrument
or table used for calculation, and in
architecture an ornamental part of a column ;
but it nowhere, in English or Latin, or any
known language, signifies any kind of a staff .
Sir Walter Scott, who undoubtedly was
thinking of baculus, in the hurry of the moment
and a not improbable confusion of words
and thoughts, wrote abacus, when, in his novel
of Ivanhoe, he describes the Grand Master
Lucas Beaumanoir, as bearing in his hand
" that singular abacus, or staff of office,"
committed a very gross, but not very uncommon,
literary blunder, of a kind that is quite
familiar to those who are conversant with the
results of rapid composition, where the writer
often thinks of one word and writes another .
Baden . In 1778 the Lodge "Karl of
Unity " was established in Mannheim, which
at that time belonged to Bavaria . In 1785 an
electoral decree was issued prohibiting all
secret meetings in the Bavarian Palatinate and
the Lodge was closed. In 1803 Mannheim
was transferred to the Grand Duchy of Baden,
and in 1805 the Lodge was reopened, and in
the following year accepted a warrant from
the Grand Orient of France and took the name
of "Karl of Concord." Then it converted
itself into the Grand Orient of Baden and was
acknowledged as such by the Grand Orient
of France in 1807 .
Lodges were established at Bruchsal,
Heidelberg, and Mannheim, and the Grand
Orient of Baden ruled over them until 1813,
when all secret societies were again prohibited,
and it was not until 1846 that Masonic activity
recommenced in Baden, when the Lodge
"Karl of Concord " was awakened .
There is no longer a Grand Orient of Baden,
but the Lodges in the Duchy, of which several
have been established, are under the Grand
National Mother-Lodge "Zu den drei Weltkugein
" (Of the three Globes) in Berlin .
[E . L . H .]
Badge. A mark, sign, token, or thing,
says Webster, by which a person is distin-