The Origin of Freemasonry and Knights Templar ... - Lodge Prudentia

FREEMASONRY AND KXKillTS TEML'LAKAncient toModern.In passing from this brief outline of the conditionof the fraternity in what we may properly denominatethe ancient history, we will now endeavorto trace itsto the moreprogress from that periodenlightened days of modern architecture, and thecultivation of the arts and sciences, in such chronologicalorder as will give the most concise historicalfacts, based upon substantial documents, and theprincipal monuments erected by the traveling operativefraternities or Freemasons.Roman Colleges of Artificers."fr In 716 before the Christian era, the Roman collegesof Artificers were established. They werecomposed of men learned in all the arts and tradesnecessary for the execution of civil, religious, navaland hydraulic architecture, with their own laws andjudges, laws based on those of the Dionysian Artificers,whose mysteries had spread among the1principal peoples of the East. (See Dionysian Mysteries,p. 12). Numa, the great lawgiver, the secondking of Rome, in founding these colleges, madethem at the same time civil and religious societies,with the exclusive privilege of building temples andedifices, their relations to the state and priesthoodbeing determined by the general laws. At theirhead were presidents called Masters, Overseers or1"The papal briefs which protected them alleged that immunitieswere given them, after the example of Hiram, kingof Tyre, when he sent artisans to King Solomon, for the purposeof building the temple at Jerusalem" (Royal MasonicCyclopedia, p. 741).59