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

[66] "The honor due to the original founders of these edifices is
almost invariably transferred to the ecclesiastics under whose
patronage they rose, rather than to the skill and design of the Master
Mason, or professional architect, because the only historians were
monks.... They were probably not so well versed in geometrical science
as the Master Masons, for mathematics formed a part of monastic
learning in a very limited degree."--James Dallaway, _Architecture in
England_; and his words are the more weighty for that he is not a
Mason.
[67] _History of Masonry._ In the St. Sebaldus Church, Nuremburg, is a
carving in stone showing a nun in the embrace of a monk. In Strassburg
a hog and a goat may be seen carrying a sleeping fox as a sacred relic,
in advance a bear with a cross and a wolf with a taper. An ass is
reading mass at an altar. In Wurzburg Cathedral are the pillars of Boaz
and Jachin, and in the altar of the Church of Doberan, in Mecklenburg,
placed as Masons use them, and a most significant scene in which
priests are turning a mill grinding out dogmatic doctrines; and at the
bottom the Lord's Supper in which the Apostles are shown in well-known
Masonic attitudes. In the Cathedral of Brandenburg a fox in priestly
robes is preaching to a flock of geese; and in the Minster at Berne the
Pope is placed among those who are lost in perdition. These were bold
strokes which even heretics hardly dared to indulge in.
[68] _History of Masonry_, by Steinbrenner, chap. iv. There were,
indeed, many secret societies in the Middle Ages, such as the
Catharists, Albigenses, Waldenses, and others, whose initiates and
adherents traveled through all Europe, forming new communities and
making proselytes not only among the masses, but also among nobles, and
even among the monks, abbots, and bishops. Occultists, Alchemists,
Kabbalists, all wrought in secrecy, keeping their flame aglow under the
crust of conformity.
[69] _Realities of Masonry_, by Blake (chap. ii). While the theory of
the descent of Masonry from the Order of the Temple is untenable, a
connection between the two societies, in the sense in which an artist
may be said to be connected with his employer, is more than probable;
and a similarity may be traced between the ritual of reception in the
Order of the Temple and that used by Masons, but that of the Temple was
probably derived from, or suggested by, that of the Masons; or both may
have come from an original source further back. That the Order of the
Temple, as such, did not actually coalesce with the Masons seems clear,
but many of its members sought refuge under the Masonic apron (_History
of Freemasonry and Concordant Orders_, by Hughan and Stillson).
[70] Every elaborate History of Masonry--as, for example, that of
Gould--reproduces these old documents in full or in digest, with
exhaustive analyses of and commentaries upon them. Such a task
obviously does not come within the scope of the present study. One of
the best brief comparative studies of the _Old Charges_ is an essay by
W.H. Upton, "The True Text of the Book of Constitutions," in that it
applies approved methods of historical criticism to all of them (_A. Q.
C._, vii, 119). See also _Masonic Sketches and Reprints_, by Hughan. No
doubt these _Old Charges_ are familiar, or should be familiar, to every
intelligent member of the order, as a man knows the deeds of his
estate.