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

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98 BASTARD
BARRUEL
conferred only upon men of distinguished rank
in society and who filled a sacred office . It
was the third or lowest of the three degrees
into which Druidism was divided . (See Druidical
Mysteries .)
There is an officer of the Grand Lodge of
Scotland called the "Grand Bard ."
Bastard. The question of the ineligibility
of bastards to be made Freemasons was first
brought to the attention of the Craft by
Brother Chalmers I. Paton, who, in several
articles in The London Freemason, in 1869,
contended that they were excluded from initiation
by the Ancient Regulations . Subsequently,
in his compilation entitled Freemasonry
and its Jurisprudence published in 1872,
he cites several of the Old Constitutions as
explicitly declaring that the men made Masons
shall be "no bastards ." This is a most nnwarrantable
interpolation not to be justified in
any writer on Jurisprudence ; for on a careful
examination of all the old manuscript copies
which have been published, no such words
are to be found in any one of them . As an
instance of this literary disingenuousness (to
use no harsher term) I quote the following
from his work (p . 60j : "The charge in this
second edition [of Anderson's Constitutions] is
in the following unmistakable words : `The
men made Masons must be freeborn, no bastard
(or no bondmen,) of mature age and of
good report, hale and sound, not deformed or
dismembered at the time of their making .' "
Now, with a copy of this second edition
lying open before me, I find the passage thus
ed: "The men made Masons must be
reeborn, (or no bondmen,) of mature age and
of good report, hale and sound, not deformed
or dismembered at the time of their making ."
The words "no bastard " are Paton's interpolation.
Again, Paton quotes from Preston the An-
.cient Charges at makings, in these words :
"That he that be made be able in all degrees ;
that is, freeborn, of a good kindred, true, and
no bondsman or bastard, and that he have his
right limbs as a man ought to have ."
But on referring to Preston (edition of 1775,
and all subsequent editions) we find the passage
to be correctly thus : "That he that be
made be able in all degrees ; that is, freeborn,
of a good kindred, true, and no bondsman,
and that he have his limbs as a man ought to
have ."
Positive law authorities should not be thus
cited, not merely carelessly, but with designed
inaccuracy to support a theory .
But although there is no regulation in the
Old Constitutions which explicitly prohibits
the initiation of bastards, it may be implied
from their language that such prohibition did
exist . Thus, in all the old manuscripts, we
find such expressions as these : he that shall be
made a Mason "must be freeborn and of good
kindred" (Sloane MS ., No. 3323), or "come of
good kindred" (Edinburgh Kilwinning MS .),
or, as the Roberts Print more definitely has it,
"of honest parentage."
It is not, I therefore think, to be doubted
that formerly bastards were considered as ineligible
for initiation, on the same principle
that they were, as a degraded class, excluded
from the priesthood in the Jewish and the primitive
Christian church. But the more liberal
spirit of modern times has long since made the
law obsolete, because it is contrary to the principles
of justice to punish a misfortune as if it
was a crime .
Barbati Fratres . Bearded Brothers-at
an earlier date known as the Conversi-craftsmen
known among the Conventual Builders,
admitted to the Abbey Corbey in the year
851, whose social grade was more elevated
than the ordinary workmen, and were freeborn
. The Conversi were filiates in the Abbeys,
used a quasi-monastic dress, could leave
their profession whenever they chose and could
return to civil life. Converts who abstained
from secular pursuits as sinful and professed
conversion to the higher life of the Abbe,
without becoming monks . Schoke or guilds of
such Operatives lodged within the convents .
We are told by Bro. Geo . F . Fort (in his Critical
Inquiry Concerning the Medicevat Conventual
Builders, 1884) that the schoo of
dextrous Barbati Fratres incurred the anger
of their coreigionists, by their haughty deportment,
sumptuous garb, liberty of movement
and refusal to have their long, flowing
beards shaven-hence their name-thus tending
to the more fascinating attractions of civil
life as time carried them forward through the
centuries to the middle of the thirteenth, when
William Abbott, of Premontre, attempted to
enforce the rule of shaving the beard . "These
worthy ancestors of our modern craft deliberately
refused," and said, "if the execution of
this order were pressed against them, `they
would fire every cloister and cathedral in the
country.' " The decretal was withdrawn .
Barefeet. See Discalceation .
Barruel, Abbe . Augustin Barruel, generally
known as the Abbe Barruel, who was
born, October 2, 1741, at Villeneuve de Berg,
in France, and who died October 5, 1820, was
an implacable enemy of Freemasonry . He
was a prolific writer, but owes his reputation
principally to the work entitled Memoires
pour servir a l'Histoire du Jacobinisme, 4 vols .,
8vo, published in London in 1797 . In this
work he charges the Freemasons with revolutionary
principles in politics and with infidelity
in religion . He seeks to trace the origin
of the Institution first to those ancient heretics,
the Manicheans, and through them to the
Templars, against whom he revives the old
accusations of Philip the Fair and Clement
V . His theory of the Templar origin of
Masonry is thus expressed (ii ., 382) : " Your
whole school and all your Lodges are derived
from the Templars. After the extinction of
their Order, a certain number of guilty knights,
having escaped the proscription, united for
the preservation of their horrid mysteries . To
their impious code they added the vow of
vengeance against the kings and priests who
destroyed their Order, and against all religion
which anathematized their dogmas. They