THE ARCANE SCHOOLS - Fort Myers Beach Masonic Lodge No. 362

evolution from Guild-masonry, but that is to err. They were never at
any time united or the same, though working almost side by side
through several centuries. Free-masons existed in large numbers long
before any city guild of Masons was formed, and even after the Guilds
became powerful the two were entirely distinct. The Guilds, as Hallam
says,[80] "were Fraternities by voluntary compact, to relieve each
other in poverty, and to protect each other from injury. Two
essential characteristics belonged to them: the common banquet, and
the common purse. They had also, in many instances, a religious and
sometimes a secret ceremonial to knit more firmly the bond of
fidelity. They readily became connected with the exercises of trades,
with training of apprentices, and the traditional rules of art."
Guild-masons, it may be added, had many privileges, one of which was
that they were allowed to frame their own laws, and to enforce
obedience thereto. Each Guild had a monopoly of the building in its
city or town, except ecclesiastical buildings, but with this went
serious restrictions and limitations. No member of a local Guild could
undertake work outside his town, but had to hold himself in readiness
to repair the castle or town walls, whereas Free-masons journeyed the
length and breadth of the land wherever their labor called them. Often
the Free-masons, when at work in a town, employed Guild-masons, but
only for rough work, and as such called them "rough-masons." No
Guild-mason was admitted to the order of Free-masons unless he
displayed unusual aptitude both as a workman and as a man of
intellect. Such as adhered only to the manual craft and cared nothing
for intellectual aims, were permitted to go back to the Guilds. For
the Free-masons, be it once more noted, were not only artists doing a
more difficult and finished kind of work, but an intellectual order,
having a great tradition of science and symbolism which they guarded.
Following the Norman Conquest, which began in 1066, England was
invaded by an army of ecclesiastics, and churches, monasteries,
cathedrals, and abbeys were commenced in every part of the country.
Naturally the Free-masons were much in demand, and some of them
received rich reward for their skill as architects--Robertus
Cementarius, a Master Mason employed at St. Albans in 1077, receiving
a grant of land and a house in the town.[81] In the reign of Henry II
no less than one hundred and fifty-seven religious buildings were
founded in England, and it is at this period that we begin to see
evidence of a new style of architecture--the Gothic. Most of the great
cathedrals of Europe date from the eleventh century--the piety of the
world having been wrought to a pitch of intense excitement by the
expected end of all things, unaccountably fixed by popular belief to
take place in the year one thousand. When the fatal year--and the
following one, which some held to be the real date for the sounding of
the last trumpet--passed without the arrival of the dreaded
catastrophe, the sense of general relief found expression in raising
magnificent temples to the glory of God who had mercifully abstained
from delivering all things to destruction. And it was the order of
Free-masons who made it possible for men to "sing their souls in
stone," leaving for the admiration of after times what Goethe called
the "frozen music" of the Middle Ages--monuments of the faith and
gratitude of the race which adorn and consecrate the earth.
Little need be added to the story of Freemasonry during the
cathedral-building period; its monuments are its best history, alike
of its genius, its faith, and its symbols--as witness the triangle and