The Genesis of Freemasonry - Onondaga and Oswego Masonic ...

light on their exact character; but their judicious historian, Martin Saint Leon, considered, and with probability, that they existed long
before 1500. He also thought it likely, though proof, as he frankly admitted, was absent, that they first developed in the twelfth or the
thirteenth century among the workers employed on French cathedrals in the great age of Gothic architecture.(1)
For the economic historian the compagnonnage is important as marking a stage in the evolution of labor organization. The
compagnon was a worker for whom the chance of becoming an independent master was disappearing, if not quite gone. As gild
organization became more exclusive and oligarchic, the status of journeymen tended to become not temporary but permanent, and
those who, by apprenticeship, had attained it had an increasing motive to stand by one another in defense of their interests against
the patrons, or employers. Association for that purpose was disliked by the gild authorities (who might, however, decide to regulate
and control associations whose existence they could not prevent), and was generally prohibited by law. Partly, no doubt, as
camouflage and partly through simple piety, the compagnonnages assumed a religious aspect, and, perhaps by imitation of the gilds
and their liveries, the compagnons adopted peculiarities of dress, were it only the wearing of ribbons.
Not a few of the trades in which this organization was found were connected with the tour de France, i.e., the journeymen were
accustomed to wander, in search of wider experience or of employment, from town to town along a more or less well defined route.
Consequently measures were taken for the reception of traveling craftsmen, so that they might be provided with work in the town to
which they came, or helped on their way to another. In much the same way in England the masons were bidden to "receive and
cherish strange masons ... and set them to work" or to refresh them "with money to the next lodge".(2) Given such an organization, it
would be prudent to confine its benefits to those who were really compagnons, and who might be proved by passwords or in other
ways. As societies opposed to the masters and obnoxious to the police, the compagnonnages required secrecy of their
1 E. Martin Saint L6on, Le Compagnonnage, Paris, 1901, p. 15.
2 See Thomas W. Tew MS., printed in Poole and Worts. For an account of a similar practice among trade unions see W. Kiddier,
The Old Trade Unions, Chapter I. [57]
members. According to the theological faculty of Paris, in 1655: "les compagnons font jurer sur les evangiles a ceux qu'ils re~oivent
de ne reveler ni a pere, ni a mere, femme ni enfants, ni confesseur ce qu'ils feront ou verront faire" *,(1) and the same causes which
brought this about in the seventeenth century may well have had the effect in earlier times of compelling the compagnon to "hele the
councelle of his felows in logge and in chambre".(2) Within the association a moral discipline was enforced without the help of
external authorities, so that bad payers, thieves, and forsworn men were punished. Finally, it may be noted, the compagnonnages
developed rituals for admissions and other occasions, such as the burial of a member, and ceremonies for their convivial meetings.
They also possessed legends giving what were no doubt edifying, if utterly impossible, accounts of their origins.
* companions do swear on the Gospels to those they re~oivent not reveal either a father or a mother, wife or children, or
confessor what they will or will do.
There were in fact three legends, one for each of the competing branches into which the compagnonnages were divided. One
claimed to have been founded by Hiram, Solomon's master mason, said to have been slain by three wicked apprentices; a
second traced its origin to Hiram's colleague, Maitre Jacques, maker of two columns with pictures; and the third professed to be
derived from Father Soubise, also one of Solomon's master workmen, who later quarrelled with Maitre Jacques after both had
landed in France.(3) Two of these legends, it will be observed, have the motif of the slain master mason and one refers to two
pillars. All three refer to Solomon's Temple, but there may, in the Soubise story, have been some confusion with the Knights
Templar.
Unfortunately, it seems impossible to assign dates to these legends or to trace their evolution. Saint Leon takes it that they were
orally transmitted from age to age from a comparatively early period and that below their surface absurdity they contain vestiges, at
least, of history:
1 Saint Uon, 40.
2 Cooke MS., ll. 842 3 (Two MSS., 121).
3 Saint Leon, 10. [58]
The stories of the life and death of Hiram, Maitre Jacques and Soubise, the repeated allusions to the rebuilding of Solomon's
Temple are but an allegory, a weakened and deformed memory of the works undertaken at Chartres, Paris, Noyon, Rheims and
Orleans in order to build new temples for the Lord.(1)
On the other hand, the remarkable similarity between the compagnonnage rituals of initiation and English Masonic catechisms,(2)
and Saint Leon's conclusion that the former were almost certainly modeled on the latter,(3) suggest that the compagnons may have
borrowed legends as well as catechisms from eighteenth century freemasons. This, however, though it might explain Hiram Abif,
can hardly apply to Maitre Jacques,(4) or Father Soubise. It seems reasonable, therefore, to conclude that it is at least possible that
the compagnonnages and English and Scottish operative masonry had some common element in their traditions as well as
resemblances in their organization and objects. Viewed in perspective, the operative lodges of Scotland, having the Mason Word
and the practices connected with it, are not very different, with one important exception, from the compagnonnages, with their
headquarters at a boutique of Angers, Chartres or Orleans. The exception is that the operative lodges of Scotland embraced
masters as well as journeymen, whereas the compagnonnages consisted solely of journeymen.
1 Ibid., 24.
2 Ibid., 219 seq.
3 Ibid., 223.
4 Unless Maitre Jacgues was the original whence Naymus Grecus and the like were derived. See p. 75 below. [59]
The two bodies were, however, very different in their subsequent development. Operative masonry in England and Scotland, we
believe, lost its ritual and organization, which were taken over, modified and elaborated into modern freemasonry first by the
accepted masons and then by the 'speculatives'. The compagnonnages, on the other hand, retained them, and, though influenced
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