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

COMPAGNONAGE
COMPASSES 173
As soon as a Craftsman had passed through
his apprenticeship, he joined one of these
gilds, and commenced his journey over
France, which was called the tour de France, in
the course of which he visited the principal
cities, towns, and villages, stopping for a
time wherever he could secure employment .
In almost every town there was a house of
call, presided over always by a woman, who
was affectionately called "la Mere," or the
Mother, and the same name was given to the
house itself . There the Compagnons held
their meetings and annually elected their
officers, and traveling workmen repaired there
to obtain food and lodging, and the necessary
information which might lead to employment .
When two Companions met on the road,
one of them addressed the other with the
topage, or challenge, being a formula of words,
the conventional reply to which would indicate
that the other was a member of the same
devoir . If such was the case, friendly greetings
ensued . But if the reply was not satisfactory,
and it appeared that they belonged to different
associations, a war of words, and even of
blows, was the result . Such was formerly the
custom, but through the evangelic labors of
Agricol Perdiquier, a journeyman joiner of
Avignon, who traveled through France inculcating
lessons of brotherly love, a better
spirit now exists .
In each locality the association has a chief,
who is annually elected by ballot at the General
Assembly of the Craft . He is called the
First Compagnon of Dignity . He presides over
the meetings, which ordinarily take place on
the first Sunday of every month, and represents
the society in its intercourse with other
bodies, with the Masters, or with the municipal
authorities.
Compagnonage has been exposed at various
periods, to the persecutions of the i%urch and
the State, as well as to the opposition of the
Corporations of Masters, to which, of course,
its designs were antagonistic, because it opposed
their monopoly. Unlike them, and particularly
the Corporation of Freemasons, it
was not under the protection of the Church .
The practise of its mystical receptions was
condemned by the Faculty of Theology at
Paris, in 1655, as impious. But a hundred
years before, in 1541 a decree of Francis I .
had interdicted the (iompagnons de la Tour
from binding themselves by an oath, from
wearing swords or canes, from assembling in a
greater number than five outside of their Masters'
houses, or from having banquets on any
occasion . During the sixteenth, seventeenth,
and eighteenth centuries, the parliaments
were continually interposing their power
against the associations of Compagnonage, as
well as against other fraternities . The effects
of these persecutions, although embarrassing,
were not absolutely disastrous . In spite
of them, Compagnonage was never entirely
dissolved, although a few of the trades abandoned
their devoirs • some of which, however
---such as that of the shoemakers-were subsequently
renewed. And at this day the gilds
of the workmen still exist in France having
lost, it is true, much of their original code of
religious dogmas and symbols and, although
not recognized by the law, always tolerated
by the municipal authorities and undisturbed
by the police . To the Masonic scholar the
history of these devoirs or gilds is pecu1iarl
interesting . In nearly all of them the Temp
of Solomon prevails as a predominant symbol,
while the square and compass, their favorite
and constant device, would seem, in some way,
to identify them with Freemasonry so far as
respects the probability of a common origin .
Compagnons de la Tour . The title assumed
by the workmen in France who belong
to the different gilds of Compagnonage, which
see.
Companion . A title bestowed by Royal
Arch Masons upon each other, and equivalent
to the word brother in Symbolic Lodges . It
refers, most probably, to the companionship
in exile and captivity of the ancient Jews,
from the destruction of the Temple by Nebuchadnezzar
to its restoration by Zerubbabel,
under the auspices of Cyrus . In using this title
in a higher degree, the Masons who adopted
it seem to have intimated that there was a
shade of difference between its meaning and
that of brother. The latter refers to the universal
fatherhood of God and the universal
brotherhood of mani but the former represents
a companionship or common pursuit of
one object-the common endurance of suffering
or the common enjoyment of happiness .
Companion represents a closer tie than Brother .
The one is a natural relation shared by all men ;
the other a connection, the result of choice
and confined to a few . All men are our brethren,
not all our companions .
Companions, The Twelve. George F .
Fort says that the "twelve Companions of
Master Hiram correspond unquestionably to
the twelve zodiacal signs, or the twelve months
of the year . The ground-work of this tradition
is a fragment of ancient natural religion,
common to both Oriental and European nationsi
or, more properly, was derived from
identical sources . The treacherous Craftsmen
of Hiram the Good are the three winter
months which slew him. He is the sun surviving
during the eleven consecutive months, but
subjected to the irresistible power of three
ruffians, the winter months ; in the twelfth
and last month, that luminary, Hiram, the
good, the beauteous, the bright, the sun god,
is extinguished ." (The Early History and
Antiquities of Freemasonry, p . 408.)
Compasses. As in Operative Masonry,
the compasses are used for the admeasurement
of the architect's plans, and to enable
him to give those just proportions which will
ensure beauty as well as stability to his work ;
so, in Speculative Masonr this important
implement symbolic of that LIT even tenor of
deportment, that true standard of rectitude
which alone can bestow happiness here and
felicity hereafter. Hence are the compasses
the most prominent emblem of virtue, the
true and only measure of a Mason's life and