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

190 CRUCEFIX
CRUSADES
stockade and forced an entrance into the
enemy's camp . 8th . The Ovation crown, or
chaplet of myrtle, awarded to a General who
had destroyed a despised enemy and thus obtained
the honor of an ovation . 9th . The
Eastern or Radiated crown, a golden circle
set with projecting rays .
The crown of Darius, used in Red Cross
knighthood and in the Sixteenth Degree, Scottish
Rite, was one of seven points, the central
front projection being more prominent than
the other six in size and height .
Crucefix, Robert T . An English Mason,
distinguished for his services to the Craft .
Robert Thomas Crucefix, M .D ., LL .D ., was
born in Holborn, Eng ., in the year 1797, and
received his education at Merchant Tailors'
School. After leaving school, he became the
pupil of Mr. Chamberlayne, a general and celebrated
practitioner of his day, at Clerkenwell ;
he afterward became a student at St. Bartholomew's
Hospital and was a pupil of the
celebrated Abernethy . On receiving his diploma
as a member of the Royal College of
Surgeons, in 1810, he went out to India, where
he remained but a short time ; upon his return
he settled in London, and be continued to
reside there till the year 1845, when he removed
to Milton-on-Thames, where he spent
the rest of his life till within a few weeks before
his decease, when he removed, for the benefit
of his declining health, to Bath, where he expired
February 25, 1850 . Dr. Crucefix was initiated
into Masonry in 1829, and during the
greater part of his life discharged the duties of
important offices in the Grand Lodge of England,
of which he was a Grand Deacon, and in
several subordinate Lodges, Chapters, and
Encampments. He was an earnest promoter
of all the Masonic charities of England, of one
of which, the "Asylum for Aged and Decrepit
Freemasons," he was the founder . In 1834, he
established the Freemasons' Quarterly Review,
and continued to edit it for six years, during
which period he contributed many valuable
articles to its pages .
In 1840 hrough the machinations of his
enemies (For' he was too great a man not to
have had some), he incurred the displeasure
of the ruling powers ; and on charges which,
undoubtedly, were not sustained by sufficient
evidence, he was suspended by the Grand
Lodge for six months, and retired from active
Masonic life. But he never lost the respect
of the Craft, nor the affection of the leading
Masons who were his contemporaries . On his
restoration, he again began to labor in behalf
of the Institution, and spent his last days in
advancing its interests . To his character, his
long-tried friend, the venerable Oliver, pays
this tribute : "Dr . Crucefix did not pretend to
infallibility, and, like all other public men, he
might be sometimes wrong ; but his errors
were not from the heart, and always leaned to
the side of virtue and beneficence . He toiled
incessantly for the benefit of his brethren, and
was anxious that all inestimable blessings
shouldbe conveyed by Masonry on mankind .
In sickness or in health he was ever found at
his post, and his sympathy was the most
active in behalf of the destitute brother, the
widow, and the orphan. His perseverance
never flagged for a moment ; and he acted as
though he had made up his mind to live and
die in obedience to the calls of duty ."
Crucifix. A cross with the image of the
Savior suspended on it . A part of the furniture
of a Commandery of Knights Templar
and of a Chapter of Princes of Rose Crojx .
Crusades. There was between Freemasonry
and the Crusades a much more intimate
relation than has generally been supposed .
In the first place, the communications frequently
established by the Crusaders, and especially
the Knights Templar, with the Saracens,
led to the acquisition, by the former, of
many of the dogmas of the secret societies of
the East, such as the Essenes, the Assassins,
and the Druses . These were brought by the
knights to Europe, and subsequently, on the
establishment by Ramsay and his contemporaries
and immediate successors of Templar
Masonry, were incorporated into the high
degrees, and still exhibit their influence . Indeed,
it is scarcely to be doubted that many
of these degrees were invented with a special
reference to the events which occurred in
Syria and Palestine. Thus, for instance, the
Scottish degree of Knights of the East and
West must have originally alluded, as its name
imports, to the legend which teaches a division
of the Masons after the Temple was finished,
when the Craft dispersed-a part remaining
in Palestine, as the Assideans, whom Lawrie,
citing Scaliger, calls the "Knights of the Temple
of Jerusalem," and another part passing
over into Europe, whence they returned on the
breaking out of the Crusades . This, of course,
is but a legend, yet the influence is felt in the
invention of the higher rituals.
But the influence of the Crusades on the
Freemasons and the architecture of the Middle
Ages is of a more historical character . In 1836,
Mr. Westmacott, in a course of lectures on art
before the Royal Academy, remarked that the
two principal causes which materially tended
to assist the restoration of literature and the
arts in Europe were Freemasonry and the Crusades
. The adventurers, he said, who returned
from the Holy Land brought back some ideas
of various improvements, particularly in architecture,
and, along with these, a strong
desire to erect castellated, ecclesiastical, and
palatial edifices, to display the taste they had
acquired ; and in less than a century from the
first Crusade above six hundred buildings of
the above description had been erected in
Southern and Western Europe . This taste was
spread into almost all countries by the establishment
of the Fraternity of Freemasons, who
it appears, had, under some peculiar form of
brotherhood, existed for an immemorial period
in Syria and other parts of the East, from
whence some bands of them migrated to Europe,
and after a time a great efflux of these
ingenious men - Italian German, French,
Spanish, etc .-had spread themselves in communities
through all civilized Europe ; and in