F
The sixth letter in the English and Latin alphabets, and the same as the Greek digamma or the ¢ or ph. and the vau of the Hebrew, which has a numerical value of six.
F. . In French Masonic documents the abbreviation of Frére, or Brother. FF. . is the abbreviation of Frères, or Brethren.
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FABRE-PALAPRAT BERNARD RAYMOND
The restorer, or, to speak more correctly, the organizer of the Order of the Temple at Paris, of which he was elected Grand Master in 1804. He died at Pau, in the lower Pyrénées, February 18, 1838 (see Temple Order of the).
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FACULTY OF ABRAC
In the so-called Leland Manuscript. it is said that Freemasons "conceal the way of wynninge the facultye of Abrac." That is, that they conceal the method of acquiring the powers bestowed by a knowledge of the magical talisman that is called Abracadabra (see Abracadabra and Leland Manuscript).
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FAITH
In the theological ladder, the explanation of which forms a part of the instruction of the First Degree of Masonry, faith is said to typify the lowest round. Faith, here, is synonymous with confidence or trust, and hence we find merely a repetition of the lesson which had been previously taught that the first, the essential qualification of a candidate for initiation, is that he should trust in God. In the lecture of the same Degree, it is said that "Faith may be lost in sight; Hope ends in fruition; but Charity extends beyond the grave, through the boundless realms of eternity And this is said, bee cause as faith is "the evidence of things not seen," when we see we no longer believe by faith but through demonstration; and as hope lives only in the expectation of possession, it ceases to exist when the object once hoped for is at length enjoyed, but charity, exercised on earth in acts of mutual kindness and forbearance, is still found in the world to come, in the sublime form of mercy from God to his erring creatures.
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FAITHFUL BREAST
See Breast, the Faithful
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FALK, RABBI DE
A native Israelite of Furth, mho attracted attention in London at the close of the eighteenth century in consequence of his presumed extraordinary powers, acquired through the secrets of the Cabala, as a Thaumaturgist, a worker of wonders. It was alleged. among other surprising stories that he could and did transmute metals, making one into another, and thereby acquired large sums with which he was liberal to the poor. A merry incident is perhaps not familiar to the reader. An invitation was extended by the Baal Shem, the sacerdotal pronouncer of the Holy Name, to the Doctor to call as a visitor for a friendly and philosophical discussion. This was assented to, when the Doctor was asked to fix a time.
He did 80 by taking from his pocket a small taper and, handing it to his new friend, saying: "Light this, sir, when you get home, and I shall be with you as soon as it goes out." This the gentleman did next morning, expecting an early call, but the taper appeared to have a charmed life, and it was deposited in a special closet, where it continued to burn for three weeks, and until in the evening, when the Doctor drove up to the door and alighted, much to the - surprise of the host, who, with wonderment, had watched the bright-burning taper. As soon as his visitor was announced, the light and candlestick disappeared. The Doctor was asked if the candlestick would t)e returned, when he replied, "It is already in the kitchen;" and so it was found. A further incident is mentioned of his leaving upon his death a sealed box to his particular friend, Aaron Goldsmid, stating that to open it portended evil. Aaron could not withstand his curiosity, and one day opened it, and ere the night came Aaron was picked up dead.
Brother Gordon P. G. Hills (Transactions, Quatuor Coronati Lodge, 1913, volume xxvi, pages 93-130) says:
Mackenzie in his Royal Masonic Cyclopedia appears to make three individuals out of the one personality His dates are wrong and he evidently has a suspicion that two of the characters, Rabbi de Falk and Caïn Chenuel Falk, or Falcon, may be the same person as they undoubtedly are, but he further refers to John Freidrich Falk a son of the preceding born at Homburg of Jewish parents, reported to have been the head of the Cabalistic college in London and to have died about 1824. As Doctor Falk had no children this seems another confusion The description would fit Falk himself. But see paper by Doctor Adler (transactions Jewish Historical Society of England, volume v, page 148) entitled the "Baal Shen of London," Baal Shen meaning Master of the Name of God or one able to work miracles through the Name of God.
This expression became a professional designation for a practitioner combining quack doctor, physician and cabalist in his art. Born in Podhayce, in Poodle, a portion of Poland. a territory afterwards included in the Austrian Empire, he came to London in 1742 where he gained a position of notoriety by his practices and strange stories were told of supernatural achievements which evidently lost nothing in the telling. He died on April 17 1782.
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FALL OF WATER
See Waterfall
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FAMILY LODGE
A Lodge held especially for the transaction of private and local business of so delicate a nature that it is found necessary to exclude, during the session, the presence of all except members. In France a Lodge when so meeting is said to be en .family, or in the family, a private affair, and the meeting is called a tenue de famille or family session; in Germany such Lodges are called, sometimes, Familien-Logen, but more generally Conferenz-Logen (see Conference Lodges) .
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FANATICISM
The English interpretation of the name of the second assassin of the Grand Master, or of mankind. The frenzy that over-balances the mind. The Gravelot or Romvel of philosophical Freemasonry.
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FANOR
The name given to the Syrian Freemason, who is represented in some legends as one of the assassins, Amru and Metusael being the other two.
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FARRAGUT, ADMIRAL DAVID GLASGOW
famous American Civil War Admiral, born near Knoxville, Tennessee, July 5, 1801; died August 14, 1870. He entered navy at nine. First to possess grade of admiral in United States Navy. He was a Freemason. The Masonic Lodge at Portsmouth, New Hampshire, conducted his burial service (see .New .Age, July, 1994).
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FASCES
The bundle of rods borne before the Roman magistrates as an ensignia of their authority. In French Freemasonry, faisceau, or fasces, is a term used to denote a number of speeches or records tied up in a roll and deposited in the archives.
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FAST DAYS AND FREEMASONRY
In the earls days of the Lodge "Canongate Kilwinning from Leith," now Saint David, Edinburgh, No. 36 the records of the Lodge occasionally make reference to the adjournment or cancellation of the regular meeting upon account of the date coinciding with that fixed by royal proclamation "as a day of fasting, humiliation, and prayer." The Minute of Saint John the Evangelist day, December 27, 1739, concludes as follows:
The Right Worshipful toasted and drunk the usual healths upon this occasion. and the Lodge was closed by the proper officers and adjourned till Thursday the tenth day of January 1740 the Wednesday preceding being a National fast day therefore we could have no meeting as usual.
From the Scots Magazine we learn the reason for the observance of this "National fast day" Edinburgh, November 1739. The Reverend Commission of the General Assembly met the beginning of this month and agreed on an act for a national fast, to implore the blessing of God for success to his Majesty's arms, &e.
At the same time. they humbly addressed his Majesty to nominate the day on which it should be observed, and further to interpose his royal authority for that effect. In consequence of this, the King has been pleased. by a proclamation. to order its observance on the 9th day of January next, thro' Scotland; as also in England and Wales.
A reference to the holding of the Fast is contained in the January number of the same magazine: Agreeable to the address of the Commission of the General Assembly, and the royal proclamation consequent thereupon the 9th of January was observed as a May of fasting, humiliation and prayer, to implore the blessing of God on his Majesty's arms, &e.
War was declared in October, 1739, between the forces of George II, of Great Britain and Ireland, and of Philip V, of Spain, and only came to an end with the Treaty of Peace signed in October, 1748. In consequence of the war, and the weather, the regular meetings of the Lodge in April and October 1744 were given up altogether. "April 10th, 1744 New Lodge being the day appointed for a National fast." The date, which should really be April 11, was fixed by royal proclamation to be observed as in the former instance "as a fast throughout G. Britain, on account of the war with Spain."
Cannongate Killwinning from Leith 10th of October. 1744 Year of Masonry, 5744 . This being the Day immediately after the fast appointed by the Presbytery for the judgment like weather it was thought proper to hold no Lodge but adjourned to the 14th Nov. next.
From what are termed "Poetical Essays" printed in the October number of the Scots Magazine of that y ear we obtain some idea of "the judgment like weather"
ON THE INCLEMENCY OF THE WEATHER
Bye rural swains lament. in plaintive strains,
The dislnal ruins of our wasted plains.
Tempestous winds. in hurricanes. have torn
From 'mongst our reapers hands our richest corn
Strange and impetuous deluges of rain
Have spread a mournful aspect o'er the plain;
While raging Hoods in rapid surges sweep
Our hapless harvest to the foaming deep:
. . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Yet lets resign'dly bear
Those griefs and troubles heav'n assigns us here.
'Tis for our crimes.
The author of these lines appears to have had no doubt as to the cause of the ruined harvest "Tis for our crimes" but as referred to in Graham's Social Life of Scotland in the Eighteenth Century, the folks of these days seemed sometimes to find it very difficult to decide whether a calamity was due to the devil who is vexing a man! or due to Heaven which is punishing him. To quote further from the same book:
In the religious life of Scotland in the early decades of the eighteenth century, the intense religious fervor and faith which characterized the covenanting days retained all its influence and hold over great masses of the people of all classes, and the belief in the constant interference of Providence with every act of existence, however minute, was unbounded.
That there were unbroken, unbreakable laws, a succession of physical cause and effect, inevitable, changeless, passing on their silent course unbending to mortal prayers, unyielding to human needs this, of course, was a conception of the material world unknown to those days, incredible to these men.
When calamaries befell the country it was not easy to discriminate for which or for whose particular sins the wrath was shown. When therefore a Fast and day of humiliation was appointed to avert the hand of Providence, there was always announced a list of various alternative sins for which penitence was due.
When the 'ill years" came with frost and haar, snow and rain, destroying crops and starving the people, the General assembly ordered a Fast. comprehensively "to appease the anger of God for the sins of Sabbath breaking, profanity, drunkenness, uncleanness and infidelity." A. M. Mackay P. M. 36. The above information furnished to us by Past Master A. M. Mackay; Royal Lodge of Saint David, No. 36.
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FATHER AND PROMOTER
A title of affection bestowed on an English Brother, John Maclean, in 1766. The thanks of the Chapter were given to him for his instructions and attendance, and as a mark of the respect of the Brethren he was requested to wear a gold plate suitably engraved in Latin with the following inscription: "The Father of the Society By the gift of the Companions of the Royal Arch stilled the Grand and Royal Chapter of Jerusalem, London, A. L. 5770
Glory to God in the highest.
In the beginning was the word We have found."
He was also presented with a robe peculiar to the Past Most Excellent Zerubbabel. Note as to year that the Grand Chapter added 4004 to the Christian Era, 1766 (see Origin of the English Rite of Freemasonry, Brother W. J. Hughan, 1913, page 109).
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FAVORITE BROTHER OF SAINT ANDREW
The Ninth Degree of the Swedish Rite
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FAVORITE BROTHER OF SAINT JOHN
The Eighth Degree of the Swedish Rite
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FAVORITE OF SOLOMON
The Seventh Degree, Third Division, of the system of the Chapter of the High Degrees of Stockholm (see Thory, Acta Latomorum i, 313).
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FEAST
The convocation of the Craft together at an annual feast, for the laudable purpose of promoting social feelings, and cementing the bonds of brotherly love by the interchange of courtesies, is a time-honored custom, which is unfortunately growing into disuse. The Assembly and Feast are words constantly conjoined in the Book of Constitutions.
At this meeting, no business of any kind, except the installation of officers, was transacted, and the day was passed in innocent festivity. The election of officers always took place at a previous meeting in obedience to a regulation adopted by the Grand Lodge of England, in 1720, as follows: "It was agreed, in order to avoid disputes on the annual feast-day, that the new Grand Master for the future shall be named and proposed to the Grand Lodge some time before the feast" (see Constitutions, 1738, page 111).
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FEASTS OF THE ORDER
The festivals of Saint John the Baptist and Saint John the Evangelist, June 24 and December 27, are so called.
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FEELING
One of the five human senses, and esteemed by Freemasons above all the others. For as Anthony Brewer, an old dramatist, says:
Though one hear, and see, and smell, and taste,
If he wants touch, he is counted but a block
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FEES OF HONOR
In the Grand Lodge of England every Grand Officer, on his election or re-election, is required to pay a sum of money, varying from two to twenty guineas, an amount ranging from say ten to one hundred dollars. The sums thus paid for honors bestowed are technically called Fees of Honor. A similar custom prevails in the Grand Lodges of Ireland and Scotland; but the usage is unknown in America.
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FEE, TEST
See Test Fee
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FEIX-FEAX
A term signifying School of Thought, which is found in the First Degree of the French Adoptive Rite.
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FIELD LOGE
What is designated in England and America as a Military or Traveling Lodge is called in Germany a Feld Loge. Sometimes, ein ambulance Loge.
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FELICITAIRES, ORDRE DES
French for the Order of Happy People. An Order established in Paris in 1742 or 1743 by Brother de Chambonnet and several officers of marine. All the emblems of the Order, the ritual and expressions were nautical in character.
The Order, which for a long time conducted its proceedings without reproach, numbered at first many noblemen and distinguished women amongst its members but later the meetings became 80 grossly immoral in character that, within two years of its foundation, it was dissolved, to be succeeded in 1745 by L'Ordre des Chevaliers et Chevaliers de l'Ancre, the latter meaning anchor. The principal features of The Order of Happy People were followed, their four Degrees being Cabin-boy, Captain, Commodore, and Vice-Admiral. Only) the passwords and regalia were changed. The cable was replaced by an anchor, this becoming the jewel of the Order.
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FELICITY, ORDER OF
An androgynous, or both sexes, secret society, founded in 1743, at Paris. by M. Chambonnet. It was among the first of the pseudo-Masonic associations, or coteries, invented by French Freemasons to gratify the curiosity and to secure the support of women. It had a ritual and a vocabulary which were nautical in their character, and there was a rather too free indulgence in the latitude of gallantry. It consisted of four Degrees, Cabin Boy, Master, Commodore, and Vice Admiral. The chief of the order was called Admiral, and this position was of course occupied by M. Chambonnet, the inventor of the system (Clavel, Historie Pittoresque, page 111).
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FELLOW
The Saxon word for fellow is felaw. Spelman derives it from two words be and toy, which signifies bound in mutual trust a plausible derivation, and not unsuited to the meaning of the world. But Hicks gives a better etymology when he derives it from the Anglo-Saxon folgian, meaning to follow and thus a fellow would be a follower, a companion, an associate. In the Middle Ages, therefore, the Operative Masons were divided into Masters and Fellows. Thus in the Harleian Manuscript, No. 2054, it is said: "Now I will rehearse other charges in singular for Masters & fellows." Those who were of greater skill held a higher position and were designated as Masters, while the masses of the Fraternity, the commonalty, as we might say, were called Fellows. In the Matthew Cooke Manuscript this principle is very plainly laid down. There it is written that Euclid "ordained that they who were passing of cunning should be passing honored, and commanded to call the cunninger Master .... and commanded that they that were less of wit should not be called servant nor subject, but Fellow, for nobility of their gentle blood" (see lines 675-88). From this custom has originated the modern title of Fellow Craft, given to the Second Degree of Speculative Freemasonry; although not long after the revival of 1717 the Fellows ceased to constitute the main Body of the Fraternity, the Masters having taken and still holding that position.
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FELLOW CRAFT
The Second Degree of Freemasonry in all the Pites is that of the Fellow Craft. In French it is called Compagnon; in Spanish, Compañero; in Italian, Compagno; and in German, Gesell: in all of which the radical meaning of the word is a fellow workman, thus showing the origin of the title from an operative institution. Like the Degree of Apprentice, it is only preparatory in the higher initiation of the Master; and yet it differs essentially from it in its symbolism.
For, as the First Degree was typical of youth, the Second is supposed to represent the stage of manhood, and hence the acquisition of science is made its prominent characteristic.
While the former is directed in all its symbols and allegorical ceremonies to the purification of the heart, the latter is intended by its lessons to train the reasoning faculties and improve the intellectual powers.
Before the eighteenth century, the great Body of the Fraternity consisted of Fellow Crafts, who are designated in all the old manuscripts as Fellows. After the revival in 1717, the Fellow Crafts, who then began to be called by that name, lost their prominent position, and the great body of the brotherhood was, for a long time, made up altogether of Apprentices, while the government of the institution was committed to the Masters and Fellows, both of whom were made only in the Grand Lodge until 1725, when the regulation was repealed, and subordinate Lodges were permitted to confer these two Degrees (see Middle Chamber Lecture and the Dew Drop Lecture).
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FELLOW CRAFT PERFECT ARCHITECT
The French expression being Compagnon Parfait Architect. The Twenty-sixth Degree of the Rite of Mizraim. There are several other Degrees which, like this, are so called, not because they have any relation to the original Second Degree of Symbolic Freemasonry, but to indicate that they constitute the second in any particular series of Degrees which are preparatory to the culmination of that series.
Thus, in the Rite of Mizraim, we have the Master Perfect Architect, which is the Twenty-seventh Degree, while the Twenty-fifth and Twenty-sixth are Apprentice and Fellow Craft Perfect Architect. So we have in other rites and systems the Fellow Craft Cohen, Hermetic, and Cabalistic Fellow Craft, where Master Cohen and Hermetic and Cabilistic Master are the topmost Degrees of the different series. Fellow Craft in all these, and many other instances like them, means only the second preparation toward perfection.
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FELLOWS, COLONEL JOHN
The author of An Exposition of the Mysteries, or Religious Dogmas and Customs of the ancient Egyptians, Pythagoreans, and Druids, also an Inquiry into the Origin, History, and Purport of Freemasonry, New York, 1835. A similar volume published at London in 1857 and followed by other editions in 1860, 1866, 1871, and 1880, was entitled The Mysteries of Freemasonry. Moncure D. Conway, biographer of Thomas Paine, credits Colonel Fellows with the authorship of the preface to Paine's essay on Freemasonry.
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FELLOWSHIP, FIVE POINTS OF
See Points of Fellowship, Five
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FELLOWSHIP OF MASONS
See Masons, Company of
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FEMALE FREEMASONRY
See adoptive Freemasonry
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FEMALE FREEMASONS
The landmarks of Speculative Freemasonry peremptorily exclude females from any active participation in its mysteries. But there are a few instances in which the otherwise unalterable rule of female exclusion has been made to yield to the peculiar exigencies of the occasion; and some cases are well authenticated where this Salic law has been violated from necessity, and females have been permited to receive at least the First Degree. The Salic regulation, law of the Salian Franks excluded women from the throne of France. Such, however, have been only the exceptions which have given confirmation to the rule (see Aldworth, Beaton, and Yaintrailles).
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FENCING THE LODGE
The name of an old ceremony in the Scottish Operative Lodges. There was prayer to God for power to impartially deal with what might be brought before the Brethren and there was also a solemn obligation that all the participants should be purged of the evils of prejudice and injustice in making their decisions (see also Purging the Lodge).
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FENDEURS
More fully in French, L'Ordre des Ferdeurs, meaning the Order of Woodcutters, was a secret society, established at Paris in 1743, by the Chevalier Beauchaine.
The Lodge represented a forest, and was generally held in a garden. It was androgynous, for both sexes, and held secret signs and words, and an allegorical language borrowed from the profession of woodoutting.
The Abbe Barruel (tome ii, page 350, edition of 1797) thought that the Order originated in the forests among the actual woodcutters, and that many intelligent inhabitants of the city having united with them, the operative business of felling trees was abandoned and Philosophic Lodges were established—a course of conversion from Operative to Speculative precisely like that, he says, which occurred in Freemasonry, and this conversion was owing to the number of Fendeurs who were also Freemasons. A complete ritual of the Fendeurs is given in the Transactions of Quatuor Coronati Lodge (volume xxu, pages 37-52).
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FENDEURS, ORDER OF
Ordre des Fendeurs et Fendeuses
Also known as the Forest Masons
A French Order accepting both men and women as members, though not necessarily connected with the Masonic Fraternity. They traced their Order back to the time of Alexander the Great. They were, in all probability, a branch of the Carbonari, or Charcoal Burners, a political league which made its appearance in the twelfth century. In 1747 there was a revival of this society and it became popular with ladies and gentlemen of high rank and distinction. Meetings were held in rooms decorated to represent a forest or in the summer time, when the weather permitted, the meetings were held outdoors. In their ritual they used implements connected with woodcutting, such as axes, logs, tree stumps, stone cups, whistles, and their regalia included a carpenter's apron and a russet-colored sash edged with green. The Master was called Pére Maître or Parent Master, and the other offices were Cousin Hermit, Cousin Winedresser, Cousin Bear, Cousin Elm, Cousin Oak, and so forth. A woman candidate was called a Briquette and a man, Briquet.
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FAMOUS MEN AND MASONS
From the end of World War I to the end of World War II Freemasonry was through no fault of its own drawn into the most public centers of European conflict, and had the misfortune to become, when war was loosed, one of the casus belli; as when one of Hitler's announced reasons for opposing Czechoslovakia was that President Benes was a Freemason; and when, later, Pétain tried over the radio to justify himself as against Daladier on the ground that Daladier was a Mason (see on this latter Pierre van Passen's great book, Days of Our Years; van Passen himself belonged to the Grand Orient of Franee). In consequence of these new world developments the question as to who is and is not a Mason has become more than one of idle curiosity; has indeed become almost a specialty, and apparently has established itself as a regular department in Masonic periodicals and books.
A roster of public men and of men of eminent fame in the arts and sciences of Europe, Britain, and this Continent would fill this whole volume; those here given are selected to show from how many quarters of the compass Masons come; and how Freemasonry appeals to nothing in a man except that he is a man; and that like St. John's New Jerusalem in the skies it opens its gates North, South, East, and West.
In an address to the Duke of Kent, Grand Master of England, April 30, 1941, the Pro Grand Master quoted "words used by the Prime Minister [himself a Freemason] the last time when he broadcast to the nation." (Churchill.) Irving Bacheller, author of Eben Holden, was made a Mason in Kane Lodge, No. 454, December 5, 1899. The Rev. S. Parkes Cadman was raised in Shekomenko Lodge, No. 458, Pleasant Valley, N.Y., June 18, 1892; and from 1909 was a Grand Chaplain, Grand Lodge of New York, until his death, July 12, 1936. Sir Walter Besant, famous for the books he wrote, notably the great series of volumes on the history of London, was made a Mason in Mauritius in 1862; it was Besant who first conceived the idea of forming the Quatuor Coronati Lodge, and suggested it to W. R. Rylands, who started the movement.
Luther Burbank was made a Mason in Santa Rosa Lodge, Calif., August 31, 1921. His great forerunner, Charles Darwin, was not, it is believed, himself a Mason but most of the men in his family were, including his almost equally famous grandfather, Dr. Erasmus Darwin. Rear Admiral Byrd is a member of Kane Lodge, No. 454, New York City; in 1930 the Lodge presented him with its Explorer Medal; he in return presented the Lodge with the U.S. flag he had carried over the South Pole.
William Jennings Bryan was made a Mason in Masonic Lodge, No. 19, Lincoln, Neb., April 15, 1902; he later affiliated with Temple Lodge, No. 247, Miami Fla. Irving Berlin, America's most popular composer, is a Mason; in the New York Masonic Outlook, page 11, September, 1930, he expressed a love and admiration for the Craft.
H. P. H. Bromwell, Colorado's most famous Mason, author of Restoration of Masonic Symbolry, a work of prodigious erudition, was made a Mason in Temperance Lodge, No. 16, Vandalia, Ill., in 1854. Edward Gibbon, historian, was a member of Lodge of Friendship, No. 3, a very old Lodge of which an excellent history has been published, in London; his Grand Lodge Certificate was dated December 19, 1774. Clarence Boutelle, it will satisfy many inquirers to know, author of Man of Mount Moriah, was made a Mason in Rochester Lodge, No. 21, 1885; and was a contributor to Masonic periodicals.
The author of The Last Days of Pompeii, Lord Bulwer-Lytton, w as a Mason, a Rosicrucian, and wrote the poem, "The world may rail at Masonry." Davy Crockett was a Mason the Texas Grand Lodge Magazine published a photograph of his R.A. Apron but his affiliation remains unknown. Bolivar, the George Washington of South Ameriea, was made a Mason in Cadiz, Spain. Gran Martin, who won the independence of the Argentine, was made a Mason in England, founded a Lodge in Rio de Janeiro, and had a copy of the Book of 11, Constitutions translated into Spanish. Edwin Booth, the actor, was a member of New York Lodge, No. 330, N.Y.C. Sibelius, the composer of "Finlandia," is a SIason, and composed a musical accompaniment for the Degrees. Houdini, magician, was made a Mason in the afternoon musicians' and actors' Lodge, St. Cecile, No. 568, New York City, August 21, 1923; he accumulated an expert's library on magic, occultism, ete.; (see The New York Masonie Outlook; March, 1927; page 206; and The Master Mason; April, 1926; page 293).
William F. Kuhn, one of Kansas City's most eminent citizens, a son of Alsatian emigrants, born in Lyons, N.Y., April 15, 1849, grew up in Michigan among the celery farms, graduated from Wittenberg College, Springfield, Ohio, in 1871, taught a while; graduated from Jefferson Medieal College, Phila.; settled in Eldorado, Kans., for four years, then moved to Kansas City, where he practiced, taught medicine, and all the while had his heart in Masonry, having been made a Mason at Belle Center, Ohio; during his three years as General Grand High Priest he evangelized the Craft throughout the country "on the necessity for the Holy Royal Arch." Bro. David Eugene Smith aroused general interest when he presented the Grand Lodge Library of New York with a number of original documents written or signed by famous Eighteenth Century Frenchmen and Masons; one of them, a certificate which belonged to Dr. Joseph Ignace Guillotin (it is not believed that he invented the guillotin or that it was named for him), carries a constellation of signatures once known over Europe (see The New York Masonic Outlook; February, 1929; frontispiece)- Arthur Nash, famous as the founder of the "Golden Rule Nash Business" in Cincinnati, was a Masonry-made man, became a Mason in Masonic Blue Lodge, in 1909, Waterville, Ohio; he will long be remembered in Cincinnati for the help he gave to the S2,000,000 Temple Fund. Wilbur D. Nesbit, author of the poems "My Flag and Your Flag," and "I Sat in Lodge With You" was a member of Evans Lodge, No. 624, Evanston, III., famous for its Masters' Lectures.
General Douglas D. MacArthur, like his father before him, is a Mason; like President Taft, he was "made at sight," the Grand Master of the Philippine Islands conferring that honor in January, 1936, at Manila, where the General affiliated with Manila Lodge, No. 1, thereby coming under a Grand Jurisdiction which admits Chinese and men of almost every other Asiatic nationality. touch is made of the fact that so many commanders in the Allied armies and navies are Masons, but it calls for no comment; Lodge life means more to army and navy men than to civilians. Thomas R. Marshall, Viee-President for eight years, was a member of the Supreme Council, N.J., from 1911; from the time he retired from the Vice-Presidency until his death in 1925 he devoted the whole of his time to Freemasonry. Captain Frederick Marryat, author of MT. Midshipman Easy, with the British Navy in the War of 1812, became a Mason in Lodge of Antiquity No. 2, one of "The Four Old Lodges," while the Duke of Sussex was W.-.M.-. and Marryat became a Warden; he was in the most distinguished Lodge in the world, which had written in its books the names of Anderson and Desaguliers, and of which William Preston had been Master; Prime Minister George Canning, who fathered the Monroe Doctrine on our President Monroe, and Richard Brinsley Sheridan, were among his Lodge mates the great two-volume history of the Lodge by Bros. Rylands and Firebrace is a gallery of men famous in Masonry as well as in the public life of Britain; Christopher Wren is said to have been a Master of it.
Lord Chesterfield was a Masons as were most of the men in the Stanhope family, and was once asked to be Grand Master of the Antient Grand Lodge; though author of Chesterf eld Ss Letters to his Son, a treatise on diplomatic manners and courtly behavior, there was no effeminancy in him, and he held many high offices of state, being once the Governor General of Ireland. (see Gould's History; Vol. II; page 159.) The Craft in Ireland then (as now) was starred with famous names the Duke of Wellington among them (Lodge No-494; Dec.7,1791), and Laurenee Dermott, creator of the Antient Grand Lodge.
The American Craft, though the fact is overlooked or generally unknown, owes more to Ireland and the Antients, of which it was mother and exemplar, than to the Grand Lodge of 1717, because our rules, customs, and Ritual generally are of Irish origin; and if American students and Research Lodges will turn to the subject they will open up the richest of the unexplored fields of American historical research. When they do they will become acquainted with the author of one of the very few Masonic classics—classic when considered solely as literature the re-written version of the Anderson Constitutions composed by the gifted John Pennell, published by the Grand Lodge of Ireland in 1730; Gould, with a harshness of judgment which too often was his weakness, described it as "little more than Anderson's publication [it was Grand Lodge's, not Anderson's, publication] brought down to date"; but Penned re-wrote the whole of it, and his Irish Brother, Dean Swift, could not have done it better, if as well.
Admiral George W. Baird, once Grand Master of District of Columbia and for years writer of its Foreign Correspondence Report, who had fought in the Mexican War, had supervised the installation of the first electric lighting on an Ameriean Naval vessel, who illustrated his letters with little cartoons in color of an amazing skill, discovered onee where a monument to a Mason had had its Masonie emblems defaced, and then went on to discover that there was at work a general endeavor to erase out of history and other records the Masonie membership of famous Ameriean public and military men; he became so wrathful that he began a nation-wide investigation at his own expense of time and money; it resulted in his publication in The Builder of a long series of "Memorials," which was in part later re-issued as one volume in the Masonic Service Association's Little Masonic Library but he was never able to prepare more than a portion of his overflowing material for print. (The Freemasons, by Eugene Lennhoff, one of the most powerful of Masonic books, is a gallery of hundreds of famous European Masons; Oxford University Press; New York; 1934. Famous Masons, by H. L. Haywood; Masonic History Company; Chicago; 1944, contains short biographies of one hundred famous Masons [famous for their work in the Craft], and long chapters on "Presidents Who Were Masons.")
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FASCISM AND MASONRY
Benito Mussolini and his collaborators developed a well-rounded philosophy for the Fascist party, which, though never collected or stated in one book, was a unified body of theory; it consisted of a statement of the Fascist program, an exposition of its theories along with a defense of them, an attack on what Mussolini called democracy, liberalism, parliamentarianism, etc. (he had Scarcely more than a vestige of knowledge about the United States or of demoeracy, and little more about England and France; excepting when hiding out in Switzerland he spent his life in middle-class Italian circles); and an attempt to make Fascist theory look like a continuation or fulfillment of what Mussolini believed the "ideology" of Rome to have been.
Regular Freemasonry had never had Lodges in Fascist Italy (there were a large number of irregular Lodges and of political clubs masquerading as Masonry) but Masonic ideas had infiltrated the country; there is no shadow of doubt that Mussolini shaped more than one of his dogmas with an eye on those ideas. (The greatest book, and most brilliantly written, thus far published on Fascism, is Goliath, by G. A. Borgese: Viking Press; N. Y.; 1937. Dr. Borgese is guilty of an error in one of his references to Freemasonry: he says that it has "an Eighteenth Century ideology" Freemasonry was centuries old before 1700. It has no "ideology" neither now nor ever.)
It is one of the pleasures of the warfares of the mind to admire one's enemy. Even Thomas Aquinas paid a soldier's tribute to Avicenna and Averroes. But no Mason can admire the books put out by the Fascist Anti-Masons, either Italian or French, because they are rehashes of three or four old Anti-Masonic books which the Rev.George Oliver reviewed and criticized in 1856. Prof. Robison had a mind like Marshal Pétain's, simple, amiable, and treacherous; the Abbe Barruel was credulous, his book consisting of scraps of gossip picked up in provincial papers. Yet the Abbe Gruber, Nesta Webster, Bernard Fa, Rosenberg the so-called "Black Balt," and the rest bring out the arguments and allegations of Robison and Barruel and state them and print them one after another after they had been stated and printed thousands of times ever since the days, incredibly enough, of our Revolution!
They are flat, stale, and unprofitable, and unutterably wearisome—the Abbe Gruber who had done the same chore of threshing the same straw for the Catholic Encyclopedia privately expressed his disgust, and regretted in his old age that he had not been more honorably-minded in his youth. Even a Mason could think up a better set of arguments against Masonry than the scribes to whom the Fascists paid the salaries, better, and certainly more original, and also a great deal more brilliant.
(A Fascist Anti-Mason is also a man before he is a Fascist and ought to be able to keep hold of his own intellect, and be able to use it a little; the penalty he had paid in the eyes of his foes for failing to do so is the derisive one that his books were reviewed and answered a century before they were written. See The History of Masonic Persecution, edited by the Rev. Kxeorge Oliver; New York; James W. Leonard & Co.; 1850 It will be found as Vol. VIII in the Universal Masonic Library; in Vol. VII of the same collection see list of Anti-Masonic movements active in the 1850's.)
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FELLOW OF THE CRAFT
The word "fellow" derived from early northern languages; the central meaning which persisted from one language or dialect to another was that of associate, one in full and equal membership. There are indications that the word first entered our nomenclature in Scotland, but the status or grade thus named was as old as Freemasonry.
In Medieval Freemasonry an Apprentice served a long period of years as a learner or student. He was under oath to the Lodge to obey its rules and regulations; and he was indentured or bonded to a Master. Data belonging to the Transition period suggest that formal papers of indenture were drawn under seal and signed by the youth's father or guardian—one Scottish Lodge admitted a lawyer for that express purpose. During the years of apprenticeship the youth acted as a servant to his master, lived in a dormitory or in his master's home (whence the old "oaths of chastity," etc.), received food and clothing; but worked without pay, and if an Apprentice's work was sold his master received the money.
At the end of his term, usually of seven years, he was "released from his indentures" and was made a fellow, or full member, of the Craft. As regards his art he was a master mason; as regards his status or grade he was a fellow. He could have an apprentice of his own; was paid wages; had a voice and a vote and could hold office; he could go to other communities or to other countries to work. He was "free of the gild." Such a man was called "journeyman" very frequently.
This word itself may have carried two meanings at once, as words often do: in its French usage it meant "worker by the day" it also probably meant "jour neying Masons," fellows who could travel; and in some periods newly-made fellows made it a rule to travel, working in one place after another in order to perfect their knowledge, during the first two years. The highest positions in the Craft, the best-paid and the most honored, were the officers, the Master of Masons in particular, supervisors, administrators, overseers, etc. Also, one experienced Mason might employ a number of Masons with their apprentices; he was the Master and they were journeymen. The word "master" therefore could mean a workman who had mastered the art, the chief officer of a Lodge, an employer, a supervisor, etc. As regards the art he was on a level with fellows; as regards official standing he was in a grade above them. There was in Medieval Freemasonry a wealth of ritualism, ceremony, symbolism—this could be said with safety even if there were no records, because in the Middle Ages, when almost every special form of work was separately organized, the gilds and fraternities were saturated with ritualism and symbolism even the gilds of yeomen, often consisting of farm laborers, and at the bottom of social classes, had their rites; but in the sense of the word as now used there were no Degrees in Medieval Freemasonry. There were, however, the germs or beginnings of what became Degrees in Speculative Freemasonry; the apprentice was examined, sworn, charged, etc. and it is almost certain that he was again sworn, charged, etc., before his raising to the status of fellow. In the Medieval period there were in the Lodges practices and customs both operative and speculative, with the major emphasis on the former; during the Transition Period the movement was away from the operative to the speculative; after 1717-1735 only the speculative remained. The work of the Lodge was no longer organized primarily for sake of the daily work of the members; it became organized around the teachings, rites, ceremonies, symbols, fellowship. In consequence there came into existence three separate Degrees—in reality they are Lodges, because each meets separately, has its own officers, and conducts its own business, and in the By-laws and Minutes is described as a Lodge.
The first Speculative Lodges went to extreme lengths to conceal their esoteric work; the Grand Lodge kept no Minutes for a number of years, and the Minutes of a local Lodge consisted of only one or two bare entries. Few facts are known about the Ritual of that period. There were, however, at least two parts, or sets of ceremonies, one fot Apprentices, one for Fellows; a Lodge sat first as a Lodge of Appren tices, and then as a Lodge of Fellows.
There could have been no proficiency tests because in thousands of known cases a Candidate received the two ceremonies in one evening. After some fifteen years or so, separate Master's Lodges were set up; apparently these were for Worshipful Masters, Past Masters, and "virtual" Past Masters who had received a ceremony called ''passing the Chair." There was no official, uniform Work. As time passed the "amount of Ritual material" increased, and this must have been especially true f the Ritual of the Masters' Lodges. In the next stage, so the meagre records suggest, this Masters' Ritual was divided in two; one part becoming a separate Master Mason Degree, the other the Royal Arch Degree. The Master Mason Degree, connected faith the first two, came under the jurisdiction of the Lodge; the Royal Arch was made over to the Chapter. It may be that this outline of events was not true of some particular Lodge (a number of them did not have the use of separate Masters' Lodges) but it is a reasonable summarization of the few data and hints which are available.
In the seven or eight centuries of Masonic history the phrase "Fellow of the Craft" has thus had a number of separate meanings: a craftsman free from his indentures of apprenticeship; a full member of the Lodge; a Master of the Mason art; a journeyman Mason (in both senses); in the first period of Speeulative Masonry, a full-fledged Freemason (he had been 'made a Mason"); in the later period, a Mason with a half-way status between Apprentice and Master; and the name of the Second Degree (or, rather, Lodge).
NOTE. The Constitutions of 1723 provided that Apprentices could be made Fellows—and—Masters only in Grand Lodge except by dispensation; this attempt to rob Lodges of their ancient right to make Masons was so vigorously protested that in 1725 Grand Lodge ordained that "particular Lodges" could "make Masters at discretion"; the Grand Lodge itself was then using "fellows" and masters" interchangeably. Scottish Lodges were a full generation behind England in adoptingatri-gradalsystem.
One of the possibilities is that what became the Masters' Degree had been a portion of the Felloweraft Work but that the latter had given it only as a lecture in interpretation of symbols on the Tracing Board, whereas in the Masters' Lodges it was enacted in full, and in costume. In 1764 Old Dundee Lodge Minutes have "made a Mason" and "raised a Master." They unquestionably distinguished between "Mason" and "Master."
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FILLMORE: ANTI-MASON
President Millard Fillmore (1800-1874), a native of Cayuga County, N.Y., was bonded as an apprentice to a cloth-maker, and remained one for a number of years. (Historians of the old apprenticeship system overlook the use of it in America; it was continued here to a time within the memory of men still living.) He was almost wholly self-educated. A lawyer friend, Judge Walter Wood, tought his indentures, and took the young man into his offiee. In 1821 he moved to Aurora, N.Y. (a name to be made familiar in after years by Elbert Hubbard), and in 1823 was admitted to the bar in nearby Buffalo. He vwas married in Aurora, practiced law, and lived there until 1830. It was in that period that he became an Anti-Mason (Morgan disappeared, or was kid1laped, or murdered in 1826) in the political party of which he was to become one of the three national leaders, along with Thurlow Weed and William H. Seward. In 1828 he became a member (thanks to Weed) of the State Assembly, where he belonged to the Anti-Masonie minority. While in the Assembly Fillmore proved himself no mere bigot, and he was one of the men who helped abolish the 18th Century British system of imprisonment for debt (the United States was a long time ridding itself of such anachronisms) and of religious tests for witnesses. In 1833 he was elected to the U. S. Congress; since with Weed and Seward he had by that time helped to vote the Anti-Masonic Party ("the hollow party") out of existence, he went to Washington as a man without a party, but in 1834 joined the Whigs. He sat in the house a total of eight years; as Chairman of the Ways and Means Committee he helped to appropriate $30,000 to assist Morse in developing the telegraph.
In 1848 he was elected Vice-President; upon the death of Zachary Taylor he took the oath of office as President, July 10, 1850. He signed the notorious Fugitive Slave Law and the Compromise, both in 1850. Also, he experienced a change of heart about Freemasonry (he had broken with Seward and Weed) for he invited it to lay the corner-stone of the new wing of the Capitol, so that the nation was given the bizarre spectacle of a President originally sent to Washington as an Anti-Mason leading a procession of Masons. In 1852 he lost the Whig nomination, and, to the nation's astonishment, accepted the nomination by the American (or Know-nothing) Party; it was a surprise to see a man who had begun his career as an avowed enemy of secret societies now head the American Party, which was a political secret society. Defeated, he retired from politics, lived in Buffalo (the city which was to become the residence of another President, Grover Cleveland!, was Chancellor of its University, founded the Historical Society there, and died there in 1874.
NOTE. That section of New York in which Fillmore was born must lie not under a star but under a poltergeist, for it has been the cradle of new religions and strange heresies and a number of weird personalities: The Anti-Masonic Movement, the Millerites, Mormonism Spiritualism, hypnotism as a religion, etc.; possibly because for generations it was the cross-roads of the nation for the great movements north and south and east and west and the focus of many conflicting streams of immigration.
John Quincy Adams also was an Anti-Masonic leader but after he left the Presidency, John Adams almost became one in 1801. As it turned out in the end the whole country found that it had formed a wholly erroneous opinion of the Craft, taking it to be something it never was; for this the Craft itself was partly responsible because it published nothing by which the nation could know it character and purposes. Masons who still (a few of them take the grounds that Masonry should maintain a complete silence forget that both a people and a government have a right to know what they are harboring in the form of a powerful society of three million men.
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FOREIGN LANGUAGE LODGES IN LAW
In Masonic principle and in the Landmarks there is nothing to forbid a Lodge from working in any language of its choice Lodges under England, Ireland, Scotland, and almost every American Grand Lodge have done so; but there are circumstances, as in time of war, when the question of the language used is raised because it i8 the language of an enemy people and when it is thus raised it may be carried to court because it may involve a Charter, and a Charter involves property. The classical case in America was that of Schiller Lodge, No. 66, of Newark, N. J. During World War I the Grand Lodge of New Jersey ordered discontinuance of German; Schiller Lodge conformed for a period, then in 19191 and on its own authority, resumed the use of German, whereupon the Grand Lodge revoked its Charter and took possession of its assets valued at $8,000. The Lodge sued; the case was carried to the New Jersey Court of Appeals and Errors, and the Grand Lodge was there sustained. A number of fundamentals in both Masonic and Civil law were recognized, or defined, or employed in the case, among them being:
1. There was a provision in Sehiller's Charter to permit its use of German. A Charter is an official recognition of a Lodge's sovereignty, but that sovereignty is limited; a Grand Lodge can for cause suspend or revoke a Charter; therefore no Charter of itself stands in absolute perpetuity, nor is inalterable, nor releases a Lodge from the superior authority of Grand Lodge.
2. When a Grand Lodge takes due and regular action in governance of Lodges the mandate is one that every Lodge is to obey. Schiller Lodge disobeyed, and for that reason its Charter was revoked, and on that ground the Grand Lodge defended itself in Court; the Lodge raised the general question of language, prejudice, etc., but this was declared irrelevant by the Court.
3. Since the question of language is not covered by any Landmark (except negatively) a Grand Lodge is free to permit, to refuse, and to reverse itself at will if circumstances ordain, or if circumstances change.
4. The Landmark of Peace and Harmony can be invoked on the question of language. If a single Lodge holds out against each and every sister Lodge it, not they, has destroyed Peace and Harmony. The question of the language to be used in Schiller Lodge was decided at the moment of Grand Lodge action; it was not in the power of the Lodge to rescind an action by Grand Lodge, as it itself knew; when therefore it became recalcitrant it disturbed Peace and Harmony.
5. Peace and Harmony is maintained in Freemasonry not by compromise, evasion, indifference, or appeasement but by the even and uncompromising enforcement of the laws, regulations, and rules; when a Grand Lodge revokes the Charter of a recalcitrant Lodge it is not itself destroying Peace and Harmony but is acting to preserve it.
6. In a dissenting opinion Justice F. Minturn took the ground that Schiller's members were Germans, therefore a minority, and he appealed to the right of minorities. The Court held that its members were American citizens, not a minority, and that there can be no "minorities" in Masonry.
7. The dissenting Justice also argued that the property of Schiller belonged to its members; the Court ruled that the members own and use it conditionally; and by the terms on which a Lodge exists its property reverts to Grand Lodge if its Charter is revoked.
8. Students of Masonic jurisprudence find in the Schiller Lodge case a profoundly interesting set of subjects and questions. The most interesting subject is the coincidence at many points of Masonic law and civil law, and the fact that any Masonic law or mill may be a law or a datum in a civil Court; the most interesting question lies in the fact that in this as in almost every other case both the Court and the attorneys were troubled because the Craft has never adopted an official definition of Freemasonry.
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FORT, GEO. FRANKLIN
George Franklin Fort was born in Atlantic County, New Jersey, in a Methodist parsonage, November 20, 1843. When he was eight years of age his uncle, also named Geo. F. Fort, was Governor of New Jersey (from 1851 to 1854); and John Franklin Fort, of the same family, was Governor from 190S1911. Fort had a range of learning such as no other American scholar then possessed.
There had been learned men before him in Ameriea but they had been specialists; Kiropp Lake, Henry Charles Lea, George Park Baker, Roseoe Pound and other scholars of the same encyclopedic sweep came afterwards. His family reported that he had seventeen languages in addition to his own; learned Europe by traveling over it and by studying its history in the places where the history had occurred; he attended Heidelberg University, studied law, returned home and was admitted to the bar in 1866, and began to practice.
But it was for history, archeology, and antiquarianism, not law, that he had a passion, especially the history of the Middle Ages, which at that time was not the well-explored familiar period of history it is now. He wrote and published treatise after treatise on Medieval subjects; this outpouring by one of the most brilliant and learned men went unnoticed in America because Americans knew almost nothing about the Middle Ages, and felt no need to take an interest in them. The one exception to this national apathy was the Masonic Fraternity, which had spent some four or five centuries of its existence in Medieval times, and in origin, form, and tradition was more Medieval than modern. Had not publishers permitted Fort's books to go out of print he would by this time be a name almost as well known as Mackey, and far better known than Findel whom he surpassed at every point.
Fort was made a Mason in Camden Lodge, No. 15, Camden, New Jersey. Charles S. Peiree, the father of Pragmatism, the philosophy which William James was to make the American philosophy, lived only a short distance away; it would be interesting to know if Peirce was a Mason, because he also was one of the band of men of encyclopedic scholarship whom America has so wholly neglected. In 1870 Fort demitted to help form a new Lodge, Trimble No. 117, at Camden, and was Master the following year. Also he was member of Cyrene Commandery, No. 7; Van Hook Council, No. 8; Excelsior Consistory, Camden; Honorary Member of York No. 236, York, England, and Representative of the United Grand Lodge of England near the Grand Lodge of New Jersey. He published many Masonic treatises, brochures, and books on Operative Architects, Builders Marks, Etc.
But it was into his great Early History and Antiquities of Freemasonry that he poured his knowledge of the earlier periods of the Craft. As against Oliver, who had an uncritical mind, and was a reader of books but not a trained scholar, and who could not tell the difference between a fable and a fact, and whose books preceded his, Fort insisted on exact learning and upon not going farther than records and proofs and sound reasons could carry him. As against Gould, Hughan, Lane, etc., who were to follow him, he refused to cut the history of the Craft down to written documents, and saw, as neither Gould nor Hughan ever was able to see, that any history of Freemasonry must be a history of the whole of it, including its philosophy, ritual, symbols, along with Lodge records and Lodge officers; must take in Freemasonry now as well as Freemasonry in the Eighteenth Century, must not omit the two centuries of Freemasonry in America from the scope of it, as Hughan did, and must not set the High Grades to one side as if they had no place in Masonic history.
The only easily available source of information about the biography of Fort is in two articles published in The Builder: "George Franklin Fort, Masonic Historians by his brother, John Henry Fort; June, 1918, page 171. "The Masonic Writings of George Franklin Fort, " by Oliver Day Street, author of 5ymbolis7n of the Three Degrees; July, 1918; page 210.
The Early History and Antiquities of Freemasonry, by Geo. F. Fort; Fortescue & Co.;
Philadelphia; 1878. This edition contains a weighty treatise by J. F. Garrison on "A Contribution to the History of the Lost Word."
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FOUR OLD LODGES, ONE OF THE
Of the four old Lodges of London known to have met in 1716 to discuss the formation of a Grand Lodge and in 1717 met and elected a Grand Master, two are still active: Lodge of Antiquity (see history of it by Rylands and Firebrace) and the Lodge about which Rev. and Bro. Arnold Whitaker Oxford wrote: No. 4: An Introduction to the History of the Royal So7nerset House and Inverness Lodge (Bernard Quaritch; London; 1928). Other old Lodges still at work were, as Old Dundee Lodge very probably was, of Time Immemorial origin but did not participate (as far as any records show) in the formation of the Grand Lodge. Those which did participate must have agreed among themselves that each Time Immemorial Lodge would ever remain independent in some very real sense; Preston insisted upon this independence for Antiquity when he led a secession of a majority of its members; Bro. Oxford still insists upon it for No. 4. The fact, at least as it is generally believed to have been the fact, that many more old Lodges were at work in London and in England before 1717 than was once believed, makes the place of Antiquity and No. 4 the more distinguished among Lodges; they are the oldest existing Lodges of Speculative Free masonry not only in England but in the whole world where by "Speculative" is meant the Grand Lodge system.
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FRATERNAL ARMY LODGE, NO. 4
On October 17, 1861, Grand Master Coolidge, Grand Lodge of Massachusetts, chartered Fraternal Army Lodge, No. 4. Worshipful Joseph B. Knox, Master of Morning Star Lodge of Boston at the time, was named its Worshipful Master. It was one of many military Lodges in both armies of the Civil War, including local Lodges in the zone of conflict, which faithfully carried into practice the claims of the Mystic Tie; as then, at New Bern, N. C., No. 4 recovered the possessions of St. John's Lodge, No. 3, sent them back to Boston for safe-keeping, and returned them after the war. Innumerable instances of a like kind, carried on through fours years, completely proved the reality of the Masonic spirit; hundreds of civil and military leaders (Wm. McKinley among them) were drawn into the Craft because of it; and it led to such an increase in Masonic growth and influence that the Civil War Period was a turning-point in the history of American freemasonry. Also it drove completely out of the nations memory the stupid allegations made during the craze of Anti-Masonry from 1826 to 1850. (For a detailed history of No. 4 see A Centennial History of Morning Star Lodge, No. 4, by Edward S. Nason; Worcester, Mass.; 1894.)
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FRATERNITY, OPERATIVES
A. In the Middle Ages and until about 1500 the Operative Masons were not organized as Speculative Freemasons are. The builders as a whole, including the numbers of special types of them such as Freemasons, wallers, setters, tilers, quarrymen, etc., were everywhere subject to the general laws of the gild system. In some periods and in some places they had a local gild of their own. If a cathedral (or abbey, or priory of large size) was to be built they formed their organization on the spot; a Master of Masons (called by different titles) would be secured by the foundation or administration behind the building enterprise, and he would sign an agreement; this done he would send out a call for workmen, so many of one sort, so many of another; if houses for them and their families were not available they would build them; they would build a dodge room or building for their own use, and also, in most instances, a second room or building in which plans were drawn, models were made, etc.
The Freemasons among the total number of workmen would have meetings in the Lodge room or building, when the need for one arose, or possibly at fixed times, their officers presiding. From then until the building was completed, in ten, twenty-five, or even fifty years, the Freemasons thus had their own local organization. There is no evidence of any national or general organization with a single center, but there is evidence in Masonic traditions and in the text of labor laws that a local organization would send delegates to assemblies, which appear to have been called only at need.
Yet there was such a thing as Masonry in general. Apprentices received everywhere the same training, same at least in general outline though it is known that in detail it differed an experienced Craftsman could tell a workman's origin by his use of a stone axe. The modes of recognition were such that any regular Freemason could prove himself to be one not only at any place in his own country but also in foreign countries.
If a workman came seeking work, a certain form of ceremony was used to greet him, to examine him, and to employ him; if no employment was to be had he was given hospitality for a night and received advises as to where work could be found. On the whole, and allowing for a certain flexibility in the word, Operative Freemasonry was a fraternity without a single, over-all organization and center. This held true even where local Freemasons became units in a local City Company and where two or three other trades or crafts might be in the same Company; for in such organizations each member craft had its own customs, members, officers, meetings inside the Company. In the period between the dissolution of the gilds and the first Grand Lodge of Speculative Masons in 1717, permanent Lodges became established, each one a center for Freemasons who might work privately, not in organized groups, for shorter or longer period, over a surrounding area. Apprenticeship, the old rules and regulations and customs, modes of recognition, and ceremonies were the same in these separate Lodges, though they had no Grand Lodge. Operative Masons had in use a number of names for themselves, and might call themselves a brotherhood, "the lodge," a society, a company, an assembly, a fraternity, a modality, a corps, etc.; any one of these terms might refer to workmen of every type in architecture as a whole, or it might refer to the Freemasons only.
See The Cathedral Builders in England, by Edward S. Prior; Seeley and Co.; New York; 1905. This is one of the few non-Masonic books in which a historian of Masonry attempts to discover or to describe the general form of organization of the Craftsmen. He accounts for the extraordinary unity of Freemasonry in Britain and Europe together, by their training, modes of recognition, traveling, and believes that much working for the Benedictine Monastic Order also played a part. The unity of monasticism (he could have included the Orders of the Temple and of Malta) may have had a share, but it could not have been a large one because the dissolution of the monastic orders did not affect the unity of the Masonic fraternity.
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FERDINAND X
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FERDINAND IV
This King of the two Sicilies, on the 12th of September, 1775, issued an edict forbidding the meeting of Freemasons in Lodges in his dominions, under penalty of death. In 1777, at the solicitation of his queen, Caroline, this edict was repealed, and Freemasonry was once more tolerated; but in 1781 the decree was renewed.
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FERDINAND VI
In 1751, Ferdinand VI, King of Spain, at the solicitation of Joseph Torrubia, Visitor of the Holy Inquisition, enforced in his dominions the Bull of excommunication of Pope Benedict XIV, and forbade the congregation of Freemasons under the highest penalties of law. In the Journal of Freemasonry, Vienna, 1784 (pages 176-224), will be found a translation from Spanish into German of Torrubia's Act of Accusation, which gave rise to this persecution.
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FERDINAND VII
The King of Spain who bore this title was one of the greatest bigots of his time. He had no sooner ascended the throne in 1814, than he reestablished the Inquisition, which had been abolished by his predecessor, prescribed the exercise of Freemasonry, and ordered the Closing of all the Lodges, under the heaviest penalties. In September following, twenty-five persons, among whom were several distinguished noblemen, were arrested as "suspected of Freemasonry." On March 30, 1818, a still more rigorous edict was issued, by which those convicted of being Freemasons were subjected to the most severe punishments, such as banishment to India and confiscation of goods, or sometimes death by a cruel form of execution. But the subsequent Revolution of 1820 and the abolition of the Inquisition removed these blots from the Spanish records.
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FERNOW, KARL LUDWIG
Painter and author on ancient art, was born on November 19, 1763, at Pomerania, Germany; was at Rome from 1795 and lectured there on archaeology; returning to Germany, 1802, he became a professor of Italian literature at Sena; then in 1804 was librarian for the Duchess Amalia at Weimar. Fernow was a member of the Lodge Arrmlia, which honored his memory by a special assembly in 1809, he having died on December 4, 1808.
FERRY, JULES FRANÇOIS CAMILLE
A French statesman, born at Saint Dié, April 5, 1832, studied law, entered politics at Paris, protested against war of 1870 but administered that city during the siege by the German army. Twice Premier, he had been Minister of Education and Minister of Foreign Affairs; in the latter positions he organized public education on a non-clerical basis and provided for colonial growth. He made elementary education free, obligatory, and non-clerical, and urged the destruction of church control in the University and the removal from religious orders of a right to teach. Violent attacks made upon him ended in his death on March 17, 1893, from a pistol shot. He was an associate of Emile Littré and Leon Gambetta and in company with them affiliated with the Masonic Lodge La Clemente Amitie at Paris on July 8, 1875.
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FERVENCY
From the middle eighteenth century, ardent devotion to duty, fervor or fervency, was taught as a Masonic virtue in the lectures of the First Degree, and symbolized by charcoal, because, as later instructions say, all metals were dissolved by the fervor of ignited charcoal. Subsequently, in further Degrees, fervency and zeal were symbolized by the color scarlet, which is the appropriate tincture of Royal Arch Masonry.
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FESSLER, IGNAZ AURELIUS
A distinguished German writer and Masonic reformer, who was born at Czurendorf, in Hungary, in 1756. He was the son of very poor parents. His mother, who was a bigoted Catholic, had devoted him to a monastic life, and having been educated at the Jesuit School of Raab, he took holy orders in 1772, and was removed to the Capuchin monastery in Vienna. In consequence, however, of his exposure to the Emperor Joseph II of monastic abuses, he incurred the persecutions of his superiors. But the emperor, having taken him under his protection, nominated him, in 1783, as ex-professor of the Oriental languages in the University of Lemberg. But the monks having threatened him with legal proceedings, he fled to Breslau in 1788, where he subsequently was appointed the tutor of the son of the Prince of Corolath. Here he established a secret order, called by him the Evergreen, which bore a resemblance to Freemasonry in its organization, and was intended to effect moral reforms, which at the time he thought Freemasonry incapable of producing. The Order, however, never really had an active existence, and the attempt of Fessler failed by the dissolution, in 1793, of the society. In 1791 he adopted the Lutheran faith, and, having married, settled in Berlin, where until 1806, he was employed as a superintendent of schools. He wrote during this period several historical works, which gave him a high reputation as an author.
But the victorious progress of the French army in Prussia caused him to lose his official position. having been divorced from his wife in 1802, he again married, and retiring in 1803 from Berlin, betook himself to the quietude of a country life. Becoming now greatly embarrassed in pecuniary matters, he received adequate relief from several of the German Lodges, for which he expressed the most lively gratitude. In 1808 he accepted the position of a professor in the University of St. Petersburg, which, however, he was soon compelled to relinquish in consequence of the intrigues of the clergy, who were displeased with his liberal views.
Subsequently he was appointed superintendent of the evangelical community, over nine Russian departments, and Ecclesiastical President of the Consistory at Saratow, with a large salary. In l827, on the invitation of the Emperor Alexander, he removed permanently to St. Petersburg, where, in 1833, he received the appointment of Ecclesiastical Counselor, and died there December 15, 1839, at the advanced age of eighty-three years.
Fessler was initiated in Freemasonry at Lemberg, in 1783, and immediately devoted himself to the study of its science and history. In June, 1796, he affiliated with the Lodge Royal York, zur Freundschaft, in Berlin, and having been made one of its Sublime Council, was invested with the charge of revising and remodeling the entire ritual of the Lodge, which was based on the advanced Degrees of the French system. To the accomplishment of this laborious task, Fessler at once, and for a long time afterward, devoted his great intellect and his indefatigable energies. In a very short period he succeeded in a reformation of the symbolic Degrees, and finding the Brethren unwilling to reject the high Degrees, which were four in number, then practiced by the Lodge, he remodeled them, retaining a considerable part of the French ritual, but incorporated with it a portion of the Swedish system. The work thus accomplished met with general approbation. In his next task of forming a new Constitution he was not so successful, although at length he induced the Royal York Lodge to assume the character and rank of a Grand Lodge, which it did in 1798, with seven subordinate Lodges under its obedience. Again Fessler commenced the work of a revision of the ritual.
He had always been opposed to the high Degree system. He proposed, therefore, the abolition of everything above the Degree of Master. In this, however, he was warmly opposed, and was compelled to abandon his project of reducing German Free masonry to the simplicity of the English system. Yet he was enabled to accomplish something, and had the satisfaction, in 1800, of metamorphosing the Elu, the Ecossais, and the Rose Croix, of the old ritual of the Royal York Lodge into the "degrees of knowledge, " which constitute the System known as the Rite of Fessler. In 1798, Fessler had been elected Deputy Grand Master when there were but three Lodges under the Grand Lodge. In 1801, by his persevering activity the number had been increased to sixteen. Still, notwithstanding his meritorious exertions in behalf of Freemasonry, he met with that ingratitude, from those whom he sought to serve, which appears to be the fate or almost all Masonic reformers. In 1802, wearied with the opposition of his antagonists, he renounced all the offices that he had filled, and resigned from the Grand Lodge. Thenceforth he devoted himself in a more retired way to the pursuits of Freemasonry.
Before Fessler resigned, he had conceived and carried out the scheme of establishing a great union of scientific Freemasons, who should devote themselves to the investigation of the history of Freemasonry. Of this society Mossdorf, Fischer; and many other distinguished Freemasons, were members (see Scientific Masonic Association).
Fessler's contributions to the literature of Freemasonry were numerous and valuable. His chief work was An Atternpt to Furnish a Critical History of Freemasonry and the Masonic Fraternity from the earliest times to the year 1802. This work was never printed, but only loaned in four folio manuscript volumes at the price of £30, say about $135, in present-day ratios, to persons who pledged themselves eventually to return it. It was a mistake to circumscribe the results of his researches within so narrow a field. But he published many other works. His productions were mostly historical and judicial, and made a great impression on the German Masonic mind. His collected works were published in Berlin, from 1801 to 1807, but unfortunately, they have never been translated into English. The object of all he wrote was to elevate Freemasonry to the highest sphere of intellectual character.
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FESSLER, RITE OF
This Rite, which was prepared by Fessler at the request of the Grand Lodge Royal York of Berlin, consisted of nine Degrees, as follows:
1. Entered Apprentice
2. Fellow Craft.
3. Master Mason. These three differ but slightly from the same Degrees in all the Rites, and are followed by six other Degrees, which he called the higher knowledge, namely:
4. The Holy of Holies. This Degree is occupied in a critical exposition of the various hypotheses which have been proposed as to the origin of Freemasonry; as, whether it sprang from the Templars, from the Cathedral of Strasburg, from the Rose Croix of the seventeenth century, from Oliver Cromwell, from the Cathedral of Saint Paul's at London, from that of the Palace of Kensington, or from the Jesuits.
5. Justification. Critical examination of the origin of certain of the advanced Degrees, such as the Ecossais and the Chapter of Clermont.
6. Celebration. Critical examination of the four following systems: Rose Croix, Strict Observance, African Architects, and Initiated Brothers of Asia.
7. True Light. Critical examination of the Swedish System, the System of Zinnendorf, the Royal Arch of England, of the succession of the Mysteries, and of all systems and their ramifications.
8. The Country. Examination of the origin of the Mysteries of the Divine Kingdom, introduced by Jesus of Nazareth; of the exoteric doctrines communicated by him immediately to his disciples, and of those which sprang up after his death, up to the time of the Gnosties. 9. Perfection. A complete critical history of all Mysteries comprehended in actual Freemasonry.
Both Clavel and Ragon say that the rituals of these Degrees svere drawn up from the work of the Golden Rose Croix, of the Rite of Strct Observance, of the Illuminated Chapter of Sweden, and the Ancient Chapter of Clerrnont. Fessler's Rite was, perhaps, the most abstrusely learned and philosophical of all the Masonic systems; but it did not have a long existence, as it was abandoned by the Grand Lodge, which had at first accepted it, for the purpose of adopting the Ancient York Rite under the Constitutions of England.
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FESTIVALS
All religions have had certain days consecrated to festive enjoyrnent, hence called festivals. Sir Isaac Newton (on Daniel, page 204) says:
The heathen were delighted with the festivals of their gods, and unwilling to part with these delights, and therefore, Gregory Thaumaturgus, who died in 265, and was Bishop of Neocaesarea, to facilitate their conversion instituted annual festivals to the saints and martyrs. Hence it came to pass that, for exploding the festivals of the heathens, the principal festivals of the Christians succeeded in their room: as the keeping of Christmas with joy, and feasting, and playing, and sports, in the room of the Bacchinatia and Satumlia; the celebrating of May day with flowers, in the room of the floral and the keeping of festivals to the Virgin Mary, John the Baptist and divers of the apostles, in the room of the solemnities at the entrance of the sun into the signs of the Zodiac in the old Julian Calendar.
The Freemasons, borrowing from and imitating the usage of the Church, have also always had their festivals or days of festivity and celebration. The chief festivals of the Operatives or Stonemasons of the Middle Ages were those of Saint John the Baptist on June 24, and the Four Crowned Martyrs on the 8th of November. The latter was, however, discarded by the Speculative Freemasons; and the festivals now most generally celebrated by the Fraternity are those of Saint John the Baptist, June 24, and Saint John the Evangelist, December 27. These are the days kept in the United States. Such, too, was formerly the case in England; but the annual festival of the Grand Lodge of England now falls on the Wednesday following Saint George's day, April 23, that Saint being the patron of England. For a similar reason, Saint Andrew's day, November 30, is kept by the Grand Lodge of Scotland. In Ireland the festival kept is that of Saint John on December 27.
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FEUILLANS
An androgynous, both sexes, system, found in Fustier's collection, and governed by the statutes of Saint Bernard.
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FEUILLANTS, or DAMES PHLEIADES
An organization established about the middle of the eighteenth century in Brittany, France. The grip was given by shaking hands with the fingers interlaced three times reciprocally. The sign was made by the hands being raised to a level with the eyes, the palms turned upwards with the fingers interlaced.
The pass-words were
Have you gathered the roses?
The correct response was
Also the grapes.
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FIAT LUX ET LUX FIT
A Latin motto frequently written Sit Lux et Lux Fuit, referring to Genesis(I, 3), "Let there be light, and there was light" (see True Light).
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FIDELITY
See Fides
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FIDELITY OF BADEN DURLACH, ORDER OF
Instituted in 1716 by Charles Margrave of Baden Durlach. The members of the Order were knighted, selections being made only from the nobles of ancient family. The reigning princes were hereditary Grand Masters.
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FIDES
In the instruction of the First Degree, it is said that "our ancient Brethren worshiped deity under the name of Fides or Fidelity, which was sometimes represented by two right hands joined, and some times by two human figures holding each other by the right hands." The deity here referred to was the goddess Fides, to whom Numa first erected temples, and whose priests were covered by a white veil as a symbol of the purity which should characterize Fidelity. No victims were slain on her altars, and no offerings made to her except flowers, wine, and incense. Her statues were represented clothed in a white mantle, with a key in her hand and a dog at her feet. The virtue of Fidelity is, however, frequently symbolized in ancient medals by a heart in the open hand, but more usually by two right hands clasped.
Horace calls her Incorrupta Fides, and makes her the sister of Justice; while Cicero says that which is religion toward God and piety toward our parents is fidelity toward our fellow-men. There was among the Romans another deity called Fidius, who presided over oaths and contracts, a very usual form of imprecation or oath being Me dius fidius adjured that is, so help me the God Fidius. Noel (Dictionary of Fables) says that there was an ancient marble at Rome consecrated to the god Fidius, on which was depicted two figures clasping each other's hands as the representatives of Honor and Truth, without which there can be no fidelity nor truth among men. Freemasonry, borrowing its ideals from the ancient poets, also makes the right hand the symbol of Fidelity.
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FIDUCIAL SIGN
That is, the sign of confiding trust, called also the sign of Truth and Hope. One of the signs of the English Royal Arch system, which is thus explained by Doctor Oliver (Dictionary of Symbolic Masonry). The fiducial sign shows us if we prostrate ourselves with our face to the earth, we thus throw ourselves on the mercy of our Creator and Judge, looking forward with humble confidence to his holy promises, by which alone we hope to pass through the Ark of our redemption into the mansion of eternal bliss and glory to the presence of Him who is the great I AM, the Alpha and Omega, the Beginning and the lending, the First and the Last.
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FIELD LODGE, or ARMY LODGE
A Lodge duly instituted under proper authority from a Grand Body of competent jurisdiction, and authorized to exercise during its peripatetic existence all the powers and privileges that it might possess if permanently located. 6 Charters of this nature, as the name implies, are intended for the tented field, and have been of the no greatest service to humanity in its trying hours, when the worst of passions are appealed.
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FIFTEEN
A sacred number symbolic of the name of God, because the letters of the holy name xs, Jah, are equal, in the Hebrew mode of numeration by the letters of the alphabet, to fifteen; for is equal to ten, and n is equal to five. Hence, from veneration for this sacred name, the Hebrews do not, in ordinary computations, when they wish to express the number fifteen, make use of these two letters, but of two others, which are equivalent to nine and six (see also Fourteen).
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FJI ISLANDS
See Oceania
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FINANCES
According to universal usage on Freemasonry, the Treasurer of the Lodge or other Body is the banker or depositary of the finances of the Lodge. They are first received by the Secretary, who receipts for them, and immediately pays them over to the Treasurer. The Treasurer distributes them under the orders of the Master and the consent of the Lodge. This consent can only be known officially to him by the statement of the Secretary, and hence all orders drawn on the Treasurer for the disbursement of money should be countersigned by the Secretary.
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FINCH, WILLIAM
A Masonic charlatan, or fraud, who flourished at the end of the preceding and the beginning of the nineteenth century. Finch was a tailor in Canterbury, who, having been expelled for some misconduct by the Grand Lodge, commenced a system of practical Freemasonry on his own account, and opened a Lodge in his house, where he undertook to initiate candidates and to give instructions in Freemasonry. He published a great number of pamphlets, many of them in a cipher of his own, which he pretended were for the instruction of the Fraternity. Among the books published by him are: A Masonic Treatise, with an Elucidation on the Religious and Moral Beauties of Freemasonry, etc.; printed at Canterbury in 1802. The Lectures, Laws, and Ceremonies of the Holy Arch Degree of Freemasonry, etc., Lambeth, 181. The Origin of Freemasons, etc.; London, 1816.
Finch found many dupes, and made a great deal of money. But having on one occasion been sued bar an engraver named Smith, for money due for printing his plates, Finch pleaded an offset of money due by Smith for initiation and instruction in Freemasonry. Smith brought the brand Secretary and other distinguished Freemasons into court, who testified that Finch was an impostor. In consequence of this exposure, Finch lost credit with the community, and, sinking into obscurity, died sometime after, in abject poverty.
As it is impossible to read Finch's Treatises without a knowledge of the cipher employed by him, the following key will be found useful. We owe it to the researches of Brother H. C. Levander (Freemasons Magazine and Review, 1859, page 490). In the first part of the book the cipher used is formed by reversing the alphabet, writing z for a, by for b, etc. The cipher used the title-page differs somewhat from this, as will be seen from the following:
FOR THE TITLE-PAGE
Cipher. a,b,c,d,e,f,g,h,i,j,k,l,m,n,o,p,q,r,s,t,u,v,w,x,y,z,
Key. b, d, f, h, j. l, n, p, r, t, v, x, z, y, w, u, s, q, o, m, k, i, g, e, c, a.
FOR THE FIRST PART
Cipher. a, b, c, d, e, f, g, h, i, j, k, l, m, n, o, p, q, r, t, u, v, w, x, y, z.
Key. z, y, x, v., v, u, t, s, r, q, p, o, n, m, l, k, j, i, h f, e, d, c, b, a.
In the second part of the work, a totally different svstem is employed. The words may be deciphered by taking the last letter, then the first, then the last but one, then the second, and so on. Two or three words are also often run into one; for example erectemhdrdoh, is he ordered them. The nine digits, the Arabic numerals, 1 to 9, represent certain words of frequent recurrence, a repetition of the same digit denoting the plural; thus stands for Lodge; 11, for Lodges; 3, Fellow Craft; 33, Fellow Crafts, etc.
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FINDEL. J. G
A Masonic writer of more than ordinary note, who was admitted in the Lodge Eleusis zur Verschwiegenheit (relating to the secrecy discretely followed at Eleusis, the place in Grecee of the famous Mysteries of Demeter and Persephone), at Baireuth in 1856. He was editor of the Bauhütte, or Craft Lodged an interesting journal, at Leipsic, in 1858, and added materially to Masonic literature in founding the Verein Deutscher Freimaurer, Union of German Freemasons about 1860, and publishing, in 1874, Geist unit Form der Freimaurerei, Genius and Form of Freemasonry.
His best known and most important work is his Geschichte der Freimaurerei or General History of Freemasonry, published in 1861, which has been translated into English, Freneh, and other languages, and was the first attempt at a critical history of the Craft. He died in 1905.
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FINES
Fines for nonattendance or neglect of duty are not now usually imposed in Masonie Bodies, because each member is bound to the discharge of these duties by a motive more powerful than any that could be furnished by a pecuniary penalty. The imposition of such a penalty would be a tacit acknowledgment of the inadequacy of that motive, and would hence detract from its solemnity and its binding nature. It cannot, however, be denied that the records of old Lodges show that it was formerly a common custom to impose fines for a violation of the rules.
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FIRE
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FIRE
The French, in their Table Lodges, called the drinking of 3 toast, fee or fire. The word is also applied to the action immediately following the drinking of a toast in British Lodges when a quaint little ceremonial is observed by all the Brethren.
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PHILOSOPHERS
See Theosophists
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FIRE, PILLAR OF
See Pillars of Cloud arms Fire
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FIRE, PURIFICATION BY
See Purification
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FIRE-WORSHIP
Of all the ancient religions, fire-worship was one of the earliest next to Sabaism; the worship of the heavenly bodies, and even of this it seems only have been a development, as with the Sabaists the sun was deemed the Universal Fire. "Darius," says Quintus Curtius, "invoked the sun as Mithras, the sacred and eternal fire." It was the faith of the ancient Magi and the old Persians, still retained by their modern descendants the Parsees. But with them it was not an idolatry. The fire was venerated only as a visible symbol of the Supreme Deity, of the Creative Energy, from Whom all things come, and to Whom all things ascend. The flame darting upward to meet its divine original, the mundane fire seeking an ascension to and an absorption into the celestial fire, or God Himself, constituted what has been called the lame-secret of the fire-worshipers. This religion was not only ancient, but also universal. From India it passed over into Egypt, and thence extended to the Hebrews and to the Greeks, and has shown its power and prevalence even in modern thought. On the banks of the Nile, the people did not, indeed, fall down like the old Persians and worship fire, but they venerated the fire-secret and its symbolic teaching. Hence the Pyramids, pyr is Greek for fire, the representation of ascending flame; and Hargrave Jennings shrewdly says that what has been supposed to be a tomb, in the center of the Great Pyramid, was in reality a depository of the sacred, ever-burning fire. Monoliths were everywhere in antiquity erected to fire or to the sun, as the type of fire. Among the Hebrews. the sacred idea of fire, as something connected with the Divine Being, was very prominent. God appeared to Moses in a flame of fire; he descended on Mount Sinai in the midst of flames; at the Temple the fire ascended from heaven to consume the burnt offering. Everywhere in Scripture, fire is a symbol of the holiness of God. The lights on the altar are the symbols of the Christian God. The purifying power of fire is naturally deduced from this symbol of the holiness of the element. And in the advanced Degrees of Freemasonry, as in the ancient institutions, there is a purification by fire, coming down to us insensibly and unconsciously from the old Magian cultus. In the Medieval ages there was a sect of fire-philosophers hilosophi per ignem who were a branch of offshoot of Rosicrucianism, with which Freemasonry has so much in common. These fire-philosophers kept up the veneration for fire, and cultivated the fire-secret, not as an idolatrous belief, but modified by their hermetic notions. They were also called theosophists, and through them, or in reference to them, we find the theosophic Degrees of Freemasonry, which sprang up in the eighteenth century. As fire and light are identical, so the fire, which was to the Zoroastrians the symbol of the Divine Being, is to the Freemason, under the equivalent idea of light, the symbol of Divine Truth, or of the Grand Architect.
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FIRRAO, JOSEPH
A cardinal priest who, in 1738, published the edict of Pope Clement XII against Freemasonry.
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FIRST MASONIC OPERA
See Generous Freemason
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FISH
The Greek word for fish is IZ0T2. Now these five letters are the initials of the five words X ous Xp~vros Leon TLos Zxrr/p, that is, Jesus Christ the Son of God, the Savior. Hence the early Christians adopted the fish as a Christian symbol; and it is to be found on many of their tombs, and was often worn as an ornament. Clement of Alexandria, in writing of the ornaments that a Christian may constantly wear, mentions the fish as a proper device for a ring, as serving to remind the Christian of the origin of his spiritual life, the fish referring to the waters of baptism. The Vesica Piscis, which is an oval figure, pointed at both ends, and representing the air bladder of a fish, was adopted, and is still often used as the form of the seal of religious houses and con-fraternities, Margoliouth (Vestiges of General Freemasonry, 45) says: "In former days, the Grand Master of our Order used to wear a silver fish on his person; but it is to be regretted that, amongst the many innovations which have been of late introduced into the Society to conciliate the prejudices of some who cannot consistently be members of it, this beautiful emblem has disappeared "
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FITS; PETER, GEOFFREY
Anderson, 1738, shows this English Chief Justice as Deputy Grand Master, or Chief Surveyor, under Peter de Rupibus, Bishop of Dorchester, Grand Master, in the reign of King John of England, until the death of Geoffrey, 1213.
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FIVE
Among the Pythagoreans five was a mystical number, because it was formed by the union of the first even number and the first odd, rejecting unity; and hence it symbolized the mixed conditions of order and disorder, happiness and misfortune, life and death. The same union of the odd and even, or male and female, numbers made it the symbol of marriage. Among the Greeks it was a symbol of the world, because, says Diodorus, it represented ether and the four elements. It was a sacred round number among the Hebrews.
In Egypt, India. and other Oriental nations says Gesenius, the five minor planets and the five elementary powers were accounted sacred. It was the pentas of the Gnosties and the Hermetic Philosophers; it was the symbol of their quintessence, the fifth or highest essence of power in a natural body. In Freemasonry, five is a sacred number, inferior only in importance to three and seven. It is especially significant in the Fellow Craft's Degree, where five are required to hold a Lodge, and where, in the winding stairs, the five steps are referred to the orders of architecture and the human senses. In the Third Degree we find the reference to the five points of fellowship and their Symbol, the five-pointed star. Geometry, too, which is deemed synonymous with Freemasonry, is called the fifth science; and, in fact, throughout nearly all the Degrees of Freemasonry, we find abundant allusions to five as a sacred and mystical number.
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FIVE-POINTED STAR
The five-pointed star, which is not to be confounded with the blazing star, is not found among the old symbols of Freemasonry; indeed, some writers have denied that it is a Masonic emblem at all. It is undoubtedly of recent origin, and was probably introduced by Jeremy Cross, who placed it among the plates in the emblems of the Third Degree prefixed to his Hieroglyphic Chart. It is not mentioned in the ritual or the lecture of the Third Degree, but the Freemasons of the United States have, by tacit consent, referred to it as a symbol of the Five Points of Fellowship. The outlines of the five-pointed star are the same as those of the pentalpha of Pythagoras, which was the symbol of health. M. Jomard, in his Description de L'Egypte (tome viii, page 423) says that the star engraved on the Egyptian monuments, where it is a very common hieroglyphic, has constantly five points. never more nor less.
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FIVE POINTS
See Chromatic Calendar
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FIVE POINTS OF FELLOWSHIP
See Points of Fellowship, Five
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FIVE SENSES
The five senses of Hearing, Seeing, Feeling, Tasting, and Smelling are introduced into the lecture of the Fellow Craft as a part of the instructions of that Degree (see each word in its appropriate place). In the earlier lectures of the eighteenth century, the five senses were explained in the First Degree as referring to the five who make a Lodge. Their subsequent reference to the winding stairs, and their introduction into the Second Degree, were modern improvements. As these senses are the avenues by which the mind receives its perceptions of things exterior to it, and thus becomes the storehouse of ideas, they are most appropriately referred to that Degree of Freemasonry whose professed object is the pursuit and acquisition of knowledge.
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FIXED LIGHTS
In the old lectures of the eighteenth century, the fired lights were the three windows always supposed to exist in the East, South, and West. Their uses were, according to the old instructions "to light the men to, at, and from their work." In the modern lectures they have been omitted, and their place as symbols supplied by the lesser lights.
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FLAG CEREMONY
A formal reception of the National Flag was especially frequent in all fraternal Bodies during the World War and ceremonies of most impressive character were noted in leading Masonic organizations as in the Grand Lodges of Iowa, Indiana, and elsewhere.
The making of the first "Stars and Stripes" is credited to Mrs. Elizabeth Ross of Philadelphia. We have seen on the door posts of the old ancestral home of the Washington's at Sulgrave Manor, England, two shields each bearing three stars surmounting a horizontal bar or stripe. Doubtless this had a suggestive force in designing the new flag.
When the National Flag is hung either horizontally or vertically across a wall, the union (the stars on the blue field or background) should be uppermost and to the flag's own right, that is to the observer's left. When displayed from a staff projecting horizontally or at an angle from a window sill or the front of a building, the same rule should be followed. The union should go down to the truck (as the peak or point of the staff is called) unless the flag is at half-mast position. A Service Flag was designed by Brother Robert L. Queisser, Captain, Fifth Ohio Machine Gun Company, in honor of those in the military or naval service. This flag was much used in the United States during the World War. The flag had a center field of white with a red border. On the white field blue stars were placed for those in service, gold stars for the dead.
At the fifty-fourth annual session held at Miami, Florida, May 1-3, 1928, of the Imperial Council, Nobles of the Mystic Shrine, the Committee on Revision of Ritual reported that some Temples were using elaborate and beautiful flag ceremonies. In a great many cases bugle calls were used in connection with the activities of the Color Guard and bands rendered patriotic airs in keeping with the spirit of the occasion. Usually the National Anthems were sung by the entire membership present. The Committee submitted a minimum requirement to be made applicable to all the Temples of the Order with the understanding that the following simple ceremony might be developed and elaborated:
When the Color Guard, or Marshal, with his assistants presents the Colors at the altar after the Temple has been duly opened. the Potentate win cause the Nobility to come to attention and salute. After the salute is rendered, the following pledge will be recited in concert: "I pledge allegiance to my flag, to the principles for which it stands. one Brotherhood indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
The Color Guard will then escort the Colors to their proper position while the Nobility continue at attention. The Color Guard will then return to the altar and the Potentate will seat the Temple. The suggestion of the Committee was recommended to the Subordinate Temples.
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FLAMING SWORD
A sword whose blade is of a spiral or twisted form is called by the heralds a flaming swords from its resemblance to the ascending curvature of a flame of fire. Until very recently, this was the form of the Tiler's sword. Carelessness or ignorance has now in many Lodges substituted for it a common sword of any form. The flaming sword of the Tiler refers to the flaming sword which guarded the entrance to Paradise, as described in Genesis (iii, 4): "So he drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden cherubim's and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life;" or, as Raphall has translated it, "the flaming sword which revolveth, to guard the way to the tree of life." In former times, when symbols and ceremonies were more respected than they are now; when collars were worn, and not ribbons in the buttonhole; and when the standing column of the Senior Warden, and the recumbent one of the Junior during labor, to be reversed during refreshment, were deemed necessary for the complete furniture of the Lodge, the cavalry sword was unknown as a Masonic implement, and the Tiler always bore a flaming sword. It were better if we could get back to the old customs.
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FLEMING. DR. WALTER MILLARD
Established the Ancient Arabic Order of the Nobles of the Mystic Shrine in the United States. In 1867 Brother William J. Florence made a trip to the Old World and is reported to have secured there useful information for the introduction and establishment of the Shrine.
When he returned to the United States with all the data obtainable he communicated the particulars to Doctor Fleming, and thereby after further consultation with Brother Charles T. McClenachan and other able Masonic ritualists, they prepared the way to establish the Shrine in the United States. On June 16, 1871, Doctor Fleming, assisted by Brother Florence, conferred the Degrees upon four Knights Templar and seven members of Aurora Grata Consistory, Thirty-second Degree, and September 96, 1872, the organization was effected and officers elected.
Doctor Fleming was born on June 13, 1838, in Portland, Maine, and died at Mount Vernon, New York, September 9, 1913, being buried in Kensico Cemetery. He was a prominent medical man; joined the Masonic Fraternity February 13, 1869; was raised in Rochester Lodge No. 660 of Rochester, New York. He removed his office and residence to New York City and associated himself with Aurora Grata Lodge of Perfection in 1870; received the Degrees of the Consistory up to and including the Thirty-second Degree on May 31, 1871, and was given, on September 19, 1872, his Thirty-third Degree. December 3, 1872, he affiliated with New York Lodge, No. 330, of New York City, he having demitted from his Rochester Lodge. He was exalted in Lafayette Chapter, No. 207, Royal Arch Masons; became a member of Adelphic Council, No. 7, Royal and Select Masters; was knighted in Columbia Commandery No. 1, Knights Templar of New York City, March 19, 1872, and was unanimously elected Eminent Commander at the succeeding Conclave, April 15, 1872, which office he retained four successive years. He founded and served as Illustrious Potentate the Mecca Temple, originally named Gotham, which was the first Temple established by the Shrine.
Mecca Temple received its Charter on September 26, 1872, and Brother Fleming held his original office from the time of its inception until December, 1887. Re was elected Grand Imperial Potentate at the first Session of the Imperial Grand Council of the Order, June 6, 1876, and retained this office until June 14, 1886. The name Grand was after a time dropped from the titles (see Doctor Mackey's revised History of Freemasonry, pages 1973-83, for a detailed account of the Order of the Mystic Shrine. See also Florence, William Jermyn, and Shrine).
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FLOATS
Pieces of timber, made fast together with rafters, for conveying burdens down a river with the stream. The use of these floats in the building of the Temple is thus described in the letter of King Hiram to Solomon: "And we will cut wood out of Lebanon, as much as thou shalt need: and we will bring it to thee in flotes by sea to Joppa; and thou shalt carry it up to Jerusalem" (Second Chronicles ii, 16).
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FLOCQUET
French Freemason and musician; composer of the Te Deum (a term based on the opening words in Latin of an early hymn, Te Deum Laudamus, we Praise Thee, O God, and often applied to any thanksgiving song or service), which; the Mother Lodge of the Scottish Philosophic Rite sang in 1781 at the Church of Notre Dame, Paris, in honor of the birth of the Dauphin, the first-born son of the King of France.
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FLOOR
The flour of a properly constructed Lodge-room should be covered with alternate squares of black and white, to represent the Mosaic pavement which was the ground floor of King Solomon's Temple.
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FLOOR-CLOTH
A framework of board or canvas, on which the emblems of any particular Degree are inscribed, for the assistance of the Master in giving a lecture. It is so called because formerly it was the custom to inscribe these designs on the floor of the Lodge-room in chalk, which were wiped out when the Lodge was closed. It is the same as the Carpet, Or Tracing-Board.
The washing out of the designs chalked upon the floor is seen in the early caricatures of the Craft where a mop and pail are illustrated. These would soon be put aside when Lodges met in carpeted rooms. Then the symbols were shown by marking out the Lodge with tape and nails or shaping the symbols in wood or metal to be laid upon the floor or table or pedestal as the case might be in the Lodge. Such use of separate symbols we have seen in English Lodges, as at Bristol, where the ancient ceremonies are jealously and successfully preserved.
An easy development would be to picture the designs on a cloth to be spread out on floor when in use or folded up for storage. Then there would be the further movement to the stereopticon slides of a similar character, and which find frequent use in the United States. Brother John Harris in 1820 designed and made a set of Tracing Boards for the three Degrees. These designs were never authorized by the Grand Lodge of England, the individual Lodges employed their own artists and the results varied accordingly, though the influence of Brother Harris tended to the uniformity that practically now prevails among Tracing-Board makers. Articles of much interest and value on the subject are "Evolution and Development of the Tracing or Lodge Board," by Brother E. H. Dring (Transactions, Quatuor Coronati Lodge, 1916, volume xxix, pages 243 and 275), and "Some Notes on the Tracing Board of the Lodge of Union, No. 3S," bar Brother O. N. Wvatt (Transactions Quatuor Coronati Lodge, 1910, volume xxiii, page 191). The latter article refers particularly to the work of Brother Josiah Bowring, a portrait painter of London, also painted the Boards for the Chichester Lodge in 1811, himself being initiated in 1795.
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FLOORING
The same as Floor-cloth, which see
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FLORENCE, WILLIAM J.
William J., or Billy, Florence was the professional name used by William Jermyn Conlin, a popular actor, and a Freemason whose name is romantically as well as practically associated with the founding of the Ancient and Arabic Order of the Nobles of the Mystic Shrine. This organization was doubtless erected upon a ritual and ceremonies established and brought into being by Brother Florence and his coworker, Dr. Walter M. Fleming, with their immediate Masonic friends. Little of the actual detail of the work at headquarters w as done by Florence himself, that being left to Doctor Fleming, due to Brother Florence's enforced long absences awhile touring the United States or foreign lands in following his profession. He, however, lent his popular name to the cause and enthusiastically contributed what assistance he could to the propagation of the Order.
Brother Florence was born July 26, 1831, at Albany, New Work. Adopted the stage as a profession and met with immediate success and continuous popularity until the time of his death, which occurred at the Continental Hotel, Philadelphia, November l9, 1891. His body was interred in Greenwood Cemetery ,Protestant, in Brooklyn, in a plot which Florence had purchased years before and which was the burial place of his mother, although his wife was a Roman Catholic who had the last rites performed over him by the priesthood of her choice in Saint Agnes Church. Brother Charles Thomas McClenachan, Thirty-third Degree, and closely associated with Brothers Florence and Fleming in the founding of the Mystic Shrine, conferred the Scottish Rite up to and including the Thirty-second Degree upon Brother Florence at the Metropolitan Hotel, New York Cites April 21, 1867. This was just prior to Florence s departure for Europe, on which trip he is said to haste been received into several organizations similar to the Shrine both in France and Algiers. These visits of his M ere highly colored by the imaginative Doctor Flemin, and used in the ritual which was finally perfected, replete with oriental atmosphere and "regal splendor," as he termed it. Frequent assertions! even by Masonic authorities, have been made that Brother Florence was not a Freemason. The facts are that he was initiated into the Masonic Order in Philadelphia (see also One Hundred } ears of Aurora Grata, 18081908, page 47). Brethar Charles A. Brockaway writes that he was a member of Mount Moriah Lodge, No. 155, Philadelphia; Initiated, Crafted, and Raised October 12, 1853. Zerubbabel Chapter, No. 162, 1854. Pittsburgh Commandery, No. 1, 1854. Brother Brockaway copies the following from the Minutes of Aurora Grata Lodge of Perfection, Brooklyn, New York, of which he was Thrice Potent Master:
At a special communication of Aurora Grata Lodge of Perfection held at their rooms, Halsey's building, on Tuesday evening, April 16, 67, Illustrious Brother C. T. McClenachan, Thirty-third Degree, proposed Brother lV. J. Florence, Age 40, Occupation Actor, Residence Metropolitan Hotel. Refers to Illustrious Brother McClenachan and Illustrious Charles brown M.D., which was on motion received and referred to lliustriols Brothers Willets, Smith and McClennchan for investigation, who immediately reported favorably and recommended his election. The T.P.G . M . then ordered a ballot and Brother Florence was declared duly elected. Brother Florence being about to depart for Europe and wishing to receive the Degrees of the Ancient and Accepted Rite, permission was given Illustrious Brother McClenachan to confer the Degrees upon him as soon as convenient and wherever his judgment might dictate.
Noble Florence conferred the Degrees of the Shrine upon Sam Briggs, who was Potentate of Al Ivoran Temple from 1876 to 1901, and Imperial Potentate from 1886 to 1899, as well as on Brenton D. Babcock and three other Clevelanders at the Opera House and at the Rennard Hotel on October 91 and 00, ]876. When the Al Koran Temple of Cleveland was instituted, Florence was an honored visitor, he having suggested its name.
William Winter's Wallat of Time, a history of the American stage, contains a beautiful eulogy upon Florence, stating that he was "in art admirable; in life gentle; he was widely known, and he was known only to be loved.
By Virtue cherished, by Affeetion mourned
By Honor hallowed and by Fame adorned
Here Florenee sleeps, and o'er his sacred rest
Each word is tender and each thought is blest.
Long, for his loss, shall pensive Memorv show,
Through Humor's mask, the visage of her woe
Dale breathe a darkness that no sun dispels,
And Night be full of whispers and farewells;
While patient Kindness shadow-like and dim
Droops in its loneliness, bereft of him
Feels its sad doom and sure decadence high
For how should Sindness live, when he could die!
The eager heart, that felt for every grief;
The bounteous hand, that loved to give relief
The honest smile, that blest where'er it lit
The dew of pathos and the sheen of wit:
The sweet, blue eyes, the voice of melting tone
That made all hearts as gentle as his own;
The aetor's charm, supreme in royal thrall
That ranged through every field and shone in all—
For these must Sorrow make perpetual moan
Bereaved, benighted, hopeless and alone9
Ah, no! for Nature does not aet amiss
And Heaven were lonely but for souls like this.
Doctor Mackey's revised History of Freemasonry contains further details of this Brother and of the Shrine (see chapter 107).
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FLORIAN, SQUIN DE
The first accuser of Grand Master Jacques deMolay and the Knights Templar. He was subsequently assassinated.
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FLORIDA
The Grand Lodge of Scotland was petitioned in March, 176S, for a Charter for Grants East Florida Lodge. When this was issued Governor James Grant was appointed Provincial Grand Master over the Lodges in the Southern District of North America. This Grand Lodge, however, became extinct with the Spanish succession at St. Augustine in 1786. Saint Andrew's Lodge, No. 1 then applied for authority to the Grand Lodge of Philadelphia to continue the work;. In 1783 this Lodge came under the jurisdiction of South Carolina, but in 1790 it became dormant and dropped from the roll. On July 5, 1830, Jackson, Washington and Harmony Lodges sent representatives to a Convention for forming a Grand Lodge of Florida. .A Constitution was framed and adopted on the following day and the Grand Cheers elected and installed. Two Chapters, Magnolias No. 16, and Florida, No. 32, were chartered in Florida by the Grand Chapter of Virginia. and one at St. Augustine by the Grand Chapter of South Carolina. Delegates from these three Chapters met on January 11, 1847, and resolved to form a Grand Chapter for Florida. On the 2lst of the month they elected officers and organized the Grand Chapter. After some delay, due to their not having furnished particulars of the Chapters who took part in the Convention, the General Grand High Priest was authorized in 1856 to recognize the Grand Chapter of Florida.
For some years the Council Degrees were conferred in the Chapters. Companion Albert G. Mackey then organized a Council of Royal and Select Masters, Columbia Council at Lake City. The records of this and of the establishment of two other Councils were lost, but Companion Mackey, to whom an appeal for dates was made, said that the probable date of Columbia Council was 1852. At a meeting held at Tallahassee on January 12, 1868, Columbia, Mackey and Douglas Councils opened a Grand Council and appointed a Committee to draft a Constitution and By-Laws. These were adopted the following day and Brother Thomas Hayward, then Grand High Priest, was elected Grand Master.
A Dispensation was granted on March 17, 1851, to DeMolay Commandery, No. 1, at Quincy. When the hall of this Commandery was destroyed by fire permission was given to hold several meetings at Tallahassee. Representatives of five Commanderies, namely, Coeur de Lion, No. 1; Damascus, No. 2; Olivet, So. 4; Palatka, under Dispensation, and Plant City, under Dispensation, took part in the organization of a Grand Commandery on August 15, 1895. The first introduction of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite to Florida was the establishment on October 19, 1892, of the Ponce de Leon Lodge of Perfection, No. 3, at Ocala. On October 20, 1899, the McLean Chapter of Rose Croix, No. 1, was opened, and on October 24, 1901, the Bruce Council of Kadosh, No. 1, and the Tampa Consistory, No. 1, began work.
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FLUDD, ROBERT
Robert Fludd, or, as he called himself in his Latin writings, Robertus de Fluctibus, was in the seventeenth century a prominent member of the Rosicrucian Fraternity. He was born in England in 1574, and having taken the degrees of Bachelor and Master of Arts at Saint John's College, Oxford, he commenced the study of physic, and in due time took the degree of Doctor of Medicine. He died in 1637. In 1616, he commenced the publication of his works and became a voluminous writer, whose subject and style were equally dark and mysterious.
The most important of his publications are: Apologia Compendaria, Fraternitatem de Rosea Cruce. suspicionis et infamioe maculis aspersum abluerus, published at Leyden, 1616. The Latin title means:
A Brief apology, clearing the Fraternity of the Rosy Cross from tile stigma of suspicion and infamy with which they have been aspersed, and Tractatus Apoloqeticus integritatem Societatis de Rosea Cruce defendens contra Libanium et alios, Leyden, l617,and meaning in English An Apologetic Tract defending the purity of the Society of the Rosy Cross from the attacks of Libanius and others. And last. and wildest of all was his extravagant work on magic, the cabala, alchemy, and Rosicrucianism, entitled Summum bonum, quod est verum magioe, cabaoel, alchymioe, fratrum Rosoe Crucis verorum veroe subjectum.
Rosicrucianism was perhaps indebted more to Fludd than to any other person for its introduction from Germany into England, and it may have had its influence in molding the form of Speculative Freemasonry; but we are not prepared to go as far as a distinguished writer in the London Freemasons Magazine (April, 1858, page 677), who says that "Fludd must be considered as the immediate father of Freemasonry as Andrea was its remote father." Nicolai more rationally remarks that Fludd, like Andrea, exerted a considerable and beneficial influence on the manners of his age. His explanation of the Rose Croix is worth quoting. He says that it symbolically signifies the cross dyed with the blood of the Savior; a Christian idea which was in advance of the original Rosicrucians.
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FOLGER, ROBERT B
author of a history of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite, New York, 1862, a second edition in l881. In 1852 he delivered an address to the memory of George Washington for the members of Benevolent Lodge. Said to have been initiated in the Fireman's Lodge, New York, in 1825, but in the introduction to his book (page 12) mentions "the Latomia Society of Atlantic Lodge, of which he (the author) is a member." The dedication of the work is "To the Latomia Society of Atlantic Lodge No. 178, Free and Accepted Masons, New York." Brother Folger was a member of the medical profession.
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FOLKES, MARTIN
From his acquaintance with Sir Christopher Wren, and his intimacy with Doctor Desaguliers, Martin Folkes was induced to take an active part in the reorganization of Freemasonry in the beginning of the last century, and his literary attainments and prominent position in the scientific world enabled him to exercise a favorable influence on the character of the Institution. He was descended from a good family, being the eldest son of Martin Folkes, Counselor at Law, and Dorothy, the daughter of Sir William Howell, of the County of Norfolk. He was born in Queen Street, Leicester Inn Fields, Westminster, October 29, 1690. In 1707 he was entered at Clare Hall, Cambridge, and in 1713 elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, of which, in 1723, he was appointed vice-president. In 1727, on the death of Sir Isaac Newton, he became a candidate for the Presidency, in which he was defeated by Sir Hans Sloane, who, however, renewed his appointment as Vice-president, and in 1741, on the resignation of Sloane as President, he was elected his successor. In 1742 he was elected a member of the Royal Academy of Sciences of Paris, and in 1746 received the degree of Doctor of Laws from the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge.
In 1750, he was elected President of the Society of Antiquaries. To this and to the Royal Society he contributed many essays, and published a work entitled, A Table of English Silver Coins, which is still much esteemed as a numismatic authority. On September 26, 1751, he was struck with paralysis, from which he never completely recovered. On November 30, 1753, he resigned the presidency of the Royal Society, but retained that of the Society of Antiquaries until his death. In 1733, he visited Italy, and remained there until 1735, during which time he appears to have ingratiated himself with the Freemasons of that country, for in 1742 they struck a medal in his honor, a copy of which is to be found in Thory's History of the Foundation of the Grand Orient of France. On one side is a pyramid, a sphinx, some Masonic ciphers, and the two pillars, and on the obverse a likeness of Folkes.
Of the Masonic life of Folkes we have but few records. In 1725, he was appointed Deputy Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of England, and is recorded as having paid great attention to the duties of his office. Anderson says that he presided over the Grand Lodge in May of that year, and "prompted a most agreeable Communication" (see Constitutions, 1738, page 119). But he held no office afterward; yet he is spoken of as having taken great interest in the Institution. Of his literary contributions to Freemasonry nothing remains.
The Pocket Companion cites an address by him, in 1725, before the Grand Lodge, probably at that very Communication to which Anderson has alluded, but it is unfortunately no longer extant. He died June 28, 1754, and was buried in the Chancel of Hillington Church near Lynn, Norfolk. He left a wife and two daughters, an only son having died before him.
Nichols, who knew him personally, says in his Literary Anecdotes (ii, 591) of him: "His knowledge was very extensive, his judgment exact and accurate, and the precision of his ideas appeared from the perspicuity and conciseness of his expression in his discourses and writings on abstruse and difficult topics.... He had turned his thoughts to the study of antiquity and the polite arts with a philosophical spirit, which he had contracted by the cultivation of the mathematical sciences from his earliest youth." His valuable library of more than five thousand volumes was sold for £3090 at auction after his decease.
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FONTANES, MARQUIS LOUIS DE
Born at Niort, France, March 6, 1757; he died at Paris, March 17, 1821. Poet and statesman; President of the Corps Legislatif, head of the Imperial University and Senator under Napoleon I; a member of the famous Lodge of Sine Sisters, his name appears on the lists of members for 1783, 1784, and 1806 (see Une Loge Maçonnique, Louis Amiable, 1897, page 308). Created a marquis and a peer by Louis XVIII.
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FOOL
A fool, as one not in possession of sound reason, a natural or idiot, is intellectually unfit for initiation into the mysteries of Freemasonry, because he is incapable of comprehending the principles of the Institution, and is without any moral responsibility for a violation or neglect of its duties.
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FOOTSTONE
The Corner-stone. To level the Footstone means to lay the Corner-stone. Thus, Dr. George Oliver says "Solomon was enabled to level the footstone of the Temple in the fourth year of his reign."
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FOOT TO FOOT
The old lectures of the eighteenth century descanted on the symbolism of foot to foot as teaching us "that indolence should not permit the foot to halt or wrath to turn our steps out of the way; but forgetting injuries and selfish feelings, and remembering that man was born for the aid of his fellow-creatures, not for his own enjoyments only, but to do that which is good, we should be swift to extend our mercy and benevolence to all, but more particularly to a Brother Mason." The later lecture on the same subject gives the same lesson more briefly and more emphatically, when it says, owe should never halt nor grow weary in the service of a Brother Mason. "
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FORDS OF THE JORDAN
The slaughter of the Ephraimites at the passages or fords of the River Jordan, which is described in the twelfth chapter of the Book of Judges, is referred to in the Fellow Craft's Degree. Brother Rob Morris, in his Freemasonry in the Holy Land (page 316) says:
The exact locality of these fords or "passages " as the Bible terms them, cannot now be designated, but most likely they were those nearly due east of Seikoot and opposite Mizpah. At these fords, in summer time, the water is not more than three or four feet deep. the bottom being composed of a hard limestone rock. If, as some think the fords, thirty miles higher up, are those referred to the same description will apply. At either place, the Jordan is about eighty feet wide, its banks encumbered by a dense growth of tamarisks, cane, willows thorn-bushes, and other low vegetation of the shrubby and thorny sorts, which make it difficult even to approach the margin of the stream. The Arabs cross the river at the present day, at stages of low water, at a number of fords, from the one near the point where the Jordan leaves the Sea of Galilee down to the Pilgrims' Ford, six miles above the Dead Sea.
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FOREIGN COUNTRY
A certain Degree lecture begins by declaring that the recipient was induced to seek that sublime Degree "that he might perfect himself in Masonry, so as to travel into foreign countries, and work and receive wages as a Master Mason."
Thousands have often heard this expression in connection with a Master's Lodge, without dreaming for a moment of its hidden and spiritual meaning, or, if they think of any meaning at all, they content themselves by interpreting it as referring to the actual travels of the Freemasons, after the completion of the Temple, into the surrounding countries in search of employment, whose wages were to be the gold and silver which they could earn by the exercise of their skill in the operative art.
But the true symbolic meaning of the foreign country into which the Master Mason travels in search of wages is far different. The symbolism of this life terminates with the Master's Degree. The completion of that degree is the lesson of death and the resurrection to a future life, where the True Word, or Divine Truth, not given in this, is to be received as the reward of a life worthily spent in its search Heaven, the future life, the higher state of existence b after death, is the foreign country in which the Master Mason i8 to enter, and there he is to receive his wages in the reception of that Truth which can be imparted only in that better land.
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FORESTERS DEGREES
This title has been given to certain secret associations which derive their symbols and ceremonies from trades practiced in forests, such as the Carbonari, or Charcoal-burners; the Fendeurs. or Woodcutters; the Sawyers, etc. They are all imitative of Freemasonry.
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FOREST MASONS
See Fendeurs, Order of
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FOREST OF LEBANON
See Lebanon
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FORFEITURE OF CHARTER
A Lodge may forfeit its Charter for misconduct, and when forfeited, the Warrant or Charter is revoked by the Grand Lodge.
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FORM
In Freemasonry, an official act is said to be done, according to the rank of the person who does it, either in ample form, in due form, or simply in form. Thus, when the Grand Lodge is opened by the Grand Master in person, it is said to be opened in ample form; when by the Deputy Grand Master, it is said to be in due form; when by any other qualified officer, it is said to be in form. The legality of the act is the same whether it be done in form or in ample form; and the expression refers only to the dignity of the officer by whom the act is performed The terms Ample and Due Form appear to have been introduced by Anderson in the 1738 edition of the Constitutions (page 110).
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FORM OF THE LODGE
The form of a Freemason's Lodge is said to be an oblong square, having its greatest length from east to west, and its greatest breadth from north to south. This oblong form of the Lodge, has, as Brother Mackey thought, a symbolic illusion that has not been adverted to by any other writer.If, on a map of the world, we draw lines which shall circumscribe just that portion which was known and inhabited at the time of the building of Solomon's Temple, these lines, running a short distance north and south of the Mediterranean Sea, and extending from Spain to Asia Minor, will form an oblong square, whose greatest length will be from east to west, and whose greatest breadth will be from north to south, as is shown in the annexed diagram.
There is a peculiar fitness in this theory, which is really only making the Masonic Lodge a symbol of the world. It must be remembered that, at the era of the Temple, the earth was supposed to have the form of a parallelogram, or oblong square. Such a figure inscribed upon a map of the world, and including only that part of it which was known in the days of Solomon, would present just such a square, embracing the Mediterranean Sea and the countries lying immediately on its northern, southern, and eastern borders. Beyond, far in the north, would be Cimmerian deserts as a place of darkness, while the pillars of Hercules in the west, on each side of the Straits of Gades now Gibraltar might appropriately be referred to the two pillars that stood at the porch of the Temple. Thus the world itself would be the true Freemason's Lodge, in which he was to live and labor. Again: the solid contents of the earth below, "from the surface to the centre," and the profound expanse above, "from the earth to the highest heavens," would give to this parallelogram definition which says that "the form of the Lodge ought to be a double cube, as an expressive emblem of the powers of light and darkness in the creation."
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FORMULA
A prescribed mode or form of doing or saving anything. The word is derived from the technical language of the Roman law, where, after the old legal actions had been abolished, suits were practiced according to certain prescribed forms called formulae. Formulas in Freemasonry are very frequent. They are either oral or monitorial. Oral formulas are those that are employed in various parts of the ritual, such as the opening and closing of a Lodge, the investiture of a candidate, etc. From the fact of their oral transmission they are frequently corrupted or altered, which is one of the most prolific sources of nonconformity so often complained of by Masonic teachers. Monitorial formulas are those that are committed to writing, and are to be found in the various Monitors and Manuals. They are such as relate to public installations, to laying foundation stones, to dedications of halls, to funerals! etc. Their monitorial character ought to preserve them from change; but uniformity is not even here always attained, owing to the whims of the compilers of manuals or of monitors, who have often unnecessarily changed the form of words from the original standard.
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FORT, GEORGE FRANKLIN
Masonic author. Born at Absecon, New Jersey, November 20, 1848, and died at Atlantic City, March 30, 1909. Edited the Keystone, Philadelphia, and wrote Early History and Antiquities of Freemasonry, A Historical Treatise on Early Builders' Marks, Medieval Builders, and other works of Masonic worth. Initiated in Camden Lodge No. 15, Camden, New Jersey, a founder member and second Master, 1871, of Trumble Lodge No. 117, also of Camden, New Jersey (see Builder, 1918, pages 171 and 210).
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FORT HIRAM
An earthwork erected on October 3, 1814, at Fox Point, Rhode Island, by the Grand Lodge, with the members of the subordinate Lodges, about two hundred and thirty in number. The object was to build a fortification for the defense of the harbor of Providence, and the Grand Lodge, of which Thomas Smith Webb was Grand Master, through its Deputy, Senior Grand Warden, and Worshipful Brother Carlisle, were authorized to work on the defenses. They formed a procession, marched in the early morning to the Point, and by sunset had completed their labors, consisting of a breastwork four hundred and thirty feet in length, ten wide, and five high. They then marched and countermarched upon the parapet from one extremity to the other, when the Grand Master gave the work the appellation of Fort Hiram, which was approved and sanctioned by the Governor.
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FORTITUDE
One of the four cardinal virtues, whose excellencies are dilated on in the First Degree. It not only instructs the worthy Freemason to bear the ills of life with becoming resignation, "taking up arms against a sea of trouble," but, by its intimate connection with a portion of our ceremonies, it teaches him to let no dangers shake, no pains dissolve the inviolable fidelity he owes to the trusts reposed in him. Or, in the words of the old Prestonian lecture, it is "a fence or security against any attack that might be made upon him by force or otherwise, to extort from him any of our Royal Secrets."
Spence, in his Polymetis (page 139), when describing the moral virtues! says of Fortitude: "She may be easily known by her erect air and military dress, the spear she rests on with one hand, and the sword which she holds in the other. She has a globe under her feet; I suppose to shows that the Romans, by means of this virtue, were to subdue the whole world."
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FORT MASONIC
A redoubt of the fortifications on what was known as the Heights of Brooklyn, located between, what was later, Bond and Nevins Streets, Brooklyn, the south point of the quadrangle resting on State Street and extending north nearly to Schermerhorn Street. This Fort Masonic was built by members of the fourteen Lodges located in New York City, who, agreeable to a resolution of the Grand Lodge, of which Brother De Witt Clinton was Grand Master, adopted August 22, 1814, assembled at sunrise on the morning of Thursday, September.
Accompanied by the officers of the Grand Lodge, they proceeded to Brooklyn where they were joined by the members of Fortitude and Newton Union Lodges, marched to the Height and performed one day's work on the fortifications.
The redoubt not completed, however, until September 17, when another day's labor w as performed.
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FORTY
The multiple of two perfect numbers four and ten. This was deemed a sacred number, as commemorating many events of religious signification, some of which are as follows:
The alleged period of probation of our first parents in Eden; the continuous deluge of forty days and nights, and the same number of days in which the maters remained upon the face of the earth; the Lenten season of forty days' fast observed by Christians with reference to the fast of Jesus in the Wilderness, and by the Hebrews to the earlier desert fast for a similar period; of the forty years spent in the Desert by Moses and Elijah and the Israelites, which succeeded the concealment of Moses the same number of years in the land of Midian. Moses was forty days and nights on the Mount. The days for embalming the dead were forty.
The forty years of the reign of Saul, of David, and of Solomon; the forty days of grace allotted to Nineveh for repentance; the forty days' fast before Christmas in the Greek Church; as well as its being the number of days of mourning in Assyria, Phenicia, and Egypt, to commemorate the death and burial of their Sun God; and as well the period in the festivals of the resurrection of Adonis and Osiris; the period of forty days thus being a bond by which the whole world, ancient and modern, Pagan, Jewish, and Christian, is united in religious sympathy. Hence, it was determined as the period of mourning by the Supreme Council of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of the Northern Jurisdiction, United States of America.
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FORTY-SEVENTH PROBLEM
The forty-seventh problem of Euclid's first book, which has been adopted as a symbol in the Master's Degree, is thus enunciated: "In any right-angled triangle, the square which is described upon the side subtending the right angle is equal to the squares described upon the sides which contain the right angle." Thus, in a triangle whose perpendicular is three feet, the square of which is nine, and whose base is four feet, the square of which is sixteen, the hypothenuse, or subtending side, will be five feet, the square of which will be twenty-five, which is the sum of nine and sixteen. This interesting problem, on account of its great utility in making calculations and drawing plans for buildings, is sometimes called the Carpenter's Theorem.
For the demonstration of this problem the world is indebted to Pythagoras, who, it is said, was so elated after making the discovery, that he made an offering of a hecatomb, or a sacrifice of a hundred oxen, to the gods. The devotion to learning which this religious act indicated in the mind of the ancient philosopher has induced Freemasons to adopt the problem as a memento, instructing them to be lovers of the arts and sciences.
The triangle, whose base is four parts, whose perpendicular is three, and whose hypothenuse is five, and which would exactly serve for a demonstration of this problem, was, according to Plutarch, a symbol frequently employed by the Egyptian priests, and hence it is called by M. Jomard, in his Exposition du Systeme Métrique des Amperes Egyptians, Exposition of the Ancient Egyptians System of Measurements, the Egyptian triangle. It was, with the Egyptians, the symbol of universal nature, the base representing Osiris, or the male principle; the perpendicular, Isis, or the female principle; and the hypothenuse, Horus, their son, or the produce of the two principles. They added that three was the first perfect odd number, that four was the square of two, the first even number, and that five was the result of three and two. But the Egyptians made a still more important use of this triangle. It was the standard of all their measures of extent, and was applied by them to the building of the pyramids. The researches of M. Jomard, on the Egyptian system of measures, published in the magnificent work of the French savants on Egypt, has placed us completely in possession of the uses made by the Egyptians of this forty-seventh problem of Euclid, and of the triangle which formed the diagram by which it was demonstrated.
If we inscribe within a circle a triangle, whose perpendicular shall be 300 parts, whose base shall be 400 parts, and whose hypotenuse shall be 500 parts, which, of course, bear the same proportion to each other as three, four, and five; then if we let a perpendicular fall from the angle of the perpendicular and base to the hypothenuse, and extend it through the hypothenuse to the circumference of the circle, this chord or lane will be equal to 480 parts, and the two segments of the hypothenuse, on each side of it, will be found equal, respectively, to 180 and 320. From the point where this chord intersects the hypothenuse let another lane fall perpendicularly to the shortest side of the triangle, and this line will be equal to 144 parts, while the shorter segment, formed by its junction with the perpendicular side of the triangle, will be equal to 108 parts. Hence, we may derive the following measures from the diagram: 500, 480, 400, 320, 180, 144, and 108, and all these without the slightest fraction. Supposing, then, the 500 to be cubits, we have the measure of the base of the great pyramid of Memphis. In the 400 cubits of the base of the triangle we have the exact length of the Egyptian stadium.
The 320 gives us the exact number of Egyptian cubits contained in the Hcbrew and Babylonian stadium. The stadium of Ptolemy is represented by the 480 cubits, or length of the line falling from the right angle to the circumference of the circle, through the hypothenuse. The number 180, which expresses the smaller segment of the hypothenuse being doubled, will give 360 cubits, which will be the stadum of Cleomedes. By doubling the 144, the result will be 288 cubits, or the length of the stadium of Archamedes; and by doublang the 108, we produce 216 cubits, or the precise value of the lesser Egyptian stadium.
Thus we get all the length measures used by the Egyptians; and since this triangle, whose sides are equal to three, four, and five, was the very one that most naturally would be used in demonstrating the forty-seventh problem of Euclid; and since by these three sides the Egyptians symbolized Osiris, Isis, and Horus, or the two producers and the product, the very principle, expressed in symbolic language, which constitutes the terms of the problem as enunciated by Pythagoras, that the sum of the squares of the two sides will produce the square of the third, we have no reason to doubt that the forty-seventh problem was well known to the Egyptian Priests, and by them communicated to Pythagoras.
Doctor Lardner, in his edition of Euclid, says:
Whether we consider the forty-seventh proposition with reference to the peculiar and beautiful relation established in it, or to its innumerable uses in every department of mathematical science, or to its fertility in the consequences derivable from it, it must certainly be esteemed the most celebrated and important in the whole of the elements, if not in the whole range, of mathematical science. It is by the influence of this proposition, and that which establishes the similitude of equiangular triangles, in the sixth book, that geometry has been brought under the dominion of algebra, and it is upon the same principles that the whole science of trigonometry is founded. The thirty-second and forty-seventh propositions are said to have been discovered by Pythagoras, and extraordinary accounts are given of his exultation upon his first perception of their truth. It is however, supposed by some that Pythagoras acquired a knowledge of them in Egypt, and was the first to make them known in Greece.
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FORTY TWO
The number of judges required to sit by the body of the Egyptian dead pending the examination and without which the deceased had no portion in Amenti (see Truth).
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FORTY TWO LETTERED NAME
See Twelve Lettered Name
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FOUL
The ballot-box is said to he foul when, in the ballot for the initiation or advancement of a candidate, one or more black balls are found in it.
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FOUNDATION-STONE
This term has been repeatedly used by Doctor Oliver, and after him by some other writers, to designate the chief stone or corner-stone of the Temple or any other building. Thus, Oliver says, "the Masonic days proper for laying the Foundation-stone of a Mason's Lodge are from the 15th of April to the 15th of May"; evidently meaning the corner-stone. The usage is an incorrect one. The foundation-stone, more properly the stone of foundations, is very different from the corner-stone (see Corner-stone).
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FOUNDATION, STONE OF
See Stone of Foundation
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FOUNTAIN
In some of the advanced Degrees a fountain constitutes a part of the furniture of the initiation. In the science of symbology, the fountain, as representing a stream of continually flowing water, is a symbol of refreshment to the weary; and so it might be applied in the Degrees in which it is found, although there is no explicit interpretation of it in the Masonic instructions, where it seems to have been introduced rather as an exponent of the dampness and darkness of the place which was a refuge for criminals and a spot fit for crime.
Brother Albert Pike refers to the fountain as "tradition, a slender stream flowing from the Past into the Present, which, even in the thickest darkness of barbarism, keeps alive some memory of the Old Truth in the human heart." But this beautiful idea is not found in the symbolism as interpreted in the old ceremonies.
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FOUR
Four is the tetrad or Quaternary of the Pythagoreans! and it is a sacred number in the advanced Degrees. The Pythagoreans called it a perfect number, and hence it has been adopted as a sacred number in the Degree of Perfect Master. In many nations of antiquity the name of God consists of four letters, as the Adad, of the Syrians, the Amum of the Egyptians, the efos of the Greeks, the Deus of the Romans, and pre-eminently the Tetragrammaton or four-lettered name of the Jews. But in Symbolic Freemasonry this number has no special significance.
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FOUR CROWNED MARTYRS
The legend of the Four Crowned Martyrs should be interesting to k Masonic scholars, because it is one of the few instances, perhaps the only one, in which the church has been willing to do honor to those old workers in stone, whose services it readily secured in the Medieval ages, but with whom, as with their successors the modern Freemasons, it has always appeared to be in a greater or less degree of antagonism. Besides, these humble but true-hearted confessors of the faith of Christianity were adopted by the Stonemasons of Germany as the patron saints of Operative Masonry, just as the two Saints John have been since selected as the patrons of the Speculative branch of the Institution. Dr. Christian Ehrmann, of Strasbourg who for thirty years had devoted his attention to this and to kindred subjects of Masonic archeology, has supplied us with the most interesting details of the life and death of the Four Crowned Martyrs. The Roman Church has consecrated November 8 to the commemoration of these martyrs, and yearly, on that day, offers up the prayer: "Grant, we beseech thee, O Almighty God, that as we have been informed of the constancy of the glorious martyrs in the profession of Thy faith, BO we may experience their kindness in recommending us to Thy mercy-." The Roman Breviary of 1474 is more-explicit, and mentions them particularly by name. It is, therefore, somewhat remarkable, that, although thus careful in their commemoration, the Missals of the Roman Church give us no information of the deeds of these holy men. It is only from the Breviaries that we can learn anything of the act on which the commemoration in the calendar was founded. Of these Breviaries, Ehrmann has given full citations from two: the Breviary of Rome, published in 1474, and the Breviary of Spire, published in 1478. These, with some few extracts from other books on the subject, have been made accessible to us by George Kloss, in his interesting work entitled, Freimaurerei in ihrer wahren Bedeutung, or Freemasonry in its true significance. The Breviarium Romanum is much more complete in its details than the Breviarium Spirense; and yet the latter contains a fen incidents that are not related in the former. Both agree in applying to the Four Crowned Martyrs the title of quadratarii. Now quadratarius, in the Latin of the lower age, signified a Stone-squarer or a Mason. This will remind us of the passage in the Book of Rings, thus translated in the authorized version: "And Solomon's builders and Hiram's builders did hew them, and the stonesquarers. " It is evident from the use of this word quadratarii in the ecclesiastical legends as well as from the incidents of the martyrdom itself, that the four martyrs were not simply sculptors, but stone-cutters and builders of temples: in other words, Operative Masons. Nor can we deny the probability of the supposition, that they were members of one of those colleges of architects, which afterward gave birth to the gilds of the Middle Ages, the corporations of builders, and through these to the modern Lodges of Freemasons. Supposing the legend to be true, or even admitting that it is only symbolical, we must acknowledge that there has been good reason why the Operative Masons should have selected these martyrs as the patron saints of their profession. Now let us apply ourselves to the legend. Taking the Roman Breviary as the groundwork, and only interpolating it at the proper points with the additional incidents related in the Breviary of Spire, we have the following result as the story of the Four Crowned Martyrs. In the last quarter of the third century Diocletian was Emperor of the Roman Empire. In his reign commenced that series of persecutions of the Christian church, which threatened at one time to annihilate the new religion, and gave to the period among Christian writers the name of the Era of Martyrs. Thousands of Christians, who refused to violate their consciences by sacrificing to the heathen gods, became the victims of the bigotry and intolerance, the hatred and the cruelty, of the Pagan priests and the Platonic philosophers; and the scourge, the cross, or the watery grave daily testified to the constancy and firmness of the disciples of the prophet of Nazareth. Diocletian had gone to the Province of Pannonia, that he might by his own presence superintend the bringing of metals and stones from the neighboring mines of Noricum, wherewith to construct a temple consecrated to the sun-god, Apollo. Among the six hundred and twenty-two artisans whom he had collected together for this purpose were four—by name Claudius, Castorius, Symphorianus, and Nichostratus —said to have been distinguished for their skill as Stonemasons. They had abandoned the old heathen faith and were in secret Christians, doing all their work as Masons in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. The Breviary of Spires relates here an additional occurrence, which is not contained in the Breviary of Rome, and which, as giving a miraculous aspect to the legend, must have made it doubly acceptable to the pious Christians of the fifteenth century, upon whose religious credulity one could safely draw without danger of a protest. It seems that, in company with our four blessed martyrs, there worked one Simplicius, who was also a mason, but a heathen. While he was employed in labor near them he wondered to see how much they surpassed in skill and cunning all the other artisans. They succeeded in all that they attempted, while he was unfortunate, and always breaking his working tools. At last he approached Claudius, and said to him: "Strengthen, I beseech thee, my tools, that they may no longer break." Claudius took them in his hands, and said: "In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ be these tools henceforth strong and faithful to their work." From this time, Simplicius did his work well, and succeeded in all that he attempted to do. Amazed at the change, Simplicius was continually asking his fellowworkmen how it was that the tools had been so strengthened that now they never broke. At length Claudius replied: "God, who is our Creator, and the Lord of all things, has made His creatures strong." Then Simplicius inquired Was not this done by the God Zeus?" To this Claudius replied: "Repent, O my brother, of what thou hast said. for thou hast blasphemed God, our Creator, whom alone we worship, that which our own hands have made we do not recognize as a God." With these and such sentences they converted Simplicius to the Christian faith, who, being baptized by Cyrillus, bishop of Antioch, soon afterward suffered martyrdom for his refusal to sacrifice to the Pagan gods. One day Diocletian issued an order, that out of a piece of marble should be constructed 3 noble statue of Apollo sitting in his chariot. And now all the workmen and the philosophers began to consult on the subject. and each one had arrived at a different opinion. And when at length they had found a huge block of stone, which had been brought from the Island of Thasos, it proved that the marble was not fit for the statue which Diocletian had commanded, and non began 3 great war of Lords between the masters of the work and the philosophers. glut one day the whole of the artisans, six hundred and twenty-two in number, with five philosophers, came together, that they might examine the defects and the veins of the stone, and there arose a still more wonderful contest between the workmen and the philosophers. Then began the philosophers to rail against Claudius, Symphorianus, Nichostratus, and Simplicius, and said: " Why do ye not hearken to the commands of our devout Emperor, Diocletian, and obey his will?" Claudius answered and said: " Because we cannot offend our Creator and commit a sin, whereof we should be found guilty in His sight " Then said the philosophers: " From this it appears that you are Christians." Claudius replied: "Truly we are Christians." thereupon the philosophers chose other masons, and caused them to make a statue of Esculapius out of the stone which had been rejected, which, after thirty-one days, they finished and presented to the philosophers, These then informed the Emperor that the statue of Esculapius was finished, when he ordered it to be brought before him for inspection. But as soon as he saw it he was greatly astonished, and said: 'This is a proof of the skill of these men, who receive my approval as sculptors." It is very apparent that this, like all other legends of the church, is insufficient in its details, and that it leaves many links in the chain of the narrative to be supplied by the fancy or the judgment of the readers. It is equally evident from what has already been said, in connection with what is subsequently told, that the writer of the legend desired to make the impression that it was through the influence of Claudius and the other Christian Masons that the rest of the workmen were persuaded that the Thasian stone w as defective and unfit for the use of a sculptor; that this was done by them because they were unwilling to engage in the construction of the statue of a Pagan god; that this was the cause of the controversy between the workmen and the philosophers; that the Latter denied the defectiveness of the stone; and, lastly, that they sought to prove its fitness by causing other masons, who were not Christians, to make out of it a statue of Esculapius. These explanations are necessary to an understanding of the legend, which proceeds as follows: As soon as Diocletian had expressed his admiration of the statue of Esculapius, the philosopher said: " Most mighty Caesar, know that these men whom your majesty has praised for their skill in Masonry, namely, Claudius, Symphorianus, Nichostratus, and Castorius, are Christians, and by magic spells or incantations make men obedient to their will." Then said Diocletian: "If they have violated the lawns and if your accusations he true, let them suffer the punishment of sacrilege." But Diocletian, in consideration of their skill, sent for the Tribune Lampadius, and said to him: " If they refuse to offer sacrifice to the sun-god Apollo, then let them be scourged with scorpions. But if they are willing to do so, then treat them with kindness." For five days sat Lampadius in the same place, before the temple of the sun-god, and called on them by the proclamation of the herald, and showed them many dreadful things, and all sorts of instruments for the punishment of martyrs, and then tie said to them: " Hearken to me and avoid the doom of martyrs, and be obedient to the mighty prince, and offer a sacrifice to the sun-god, for no longer can I speak to you in gentle words." But Claudius replied for himself and for his companions with great boldness: "This let the Emperor Diocletian know: that we truly are Christians, and never can depart from the worship of our God." Thereupon the Tribune Lampadius, becoming enraged. caused them to be stripped and to be scourged with scorpions, while a herald, by proclamation, announced that this was done because they had disobeyed the commands of the emperor. In the same hour Lampadius, being seized by an evil spirit, died on his seat of judgment. As soon as the wife and the domestics of Lampadius heard of his death, their ran with great outcries to the palace. Diocletian, when he had learned what had happened, ordered four leaden coffins to be made, and that— Claudius and his three companions being placed therein alive—they should be thrown into the river Danube. This order Nicetius, the assistant of Lampadius, caused to be obeyed, and thus the faithful masons suffered the penalty and gained the crown of martyrdom. There are some books of legends which give the names of the Four Crowned Martyrs as Severus, Severzanus, Carpophorus, and Vidorinus, and others again which speak of five confessors who, a few years afterward, suffered martyrdom for refusing to sacrifice to the Pagan gods, and whose names being at the time unknown, Pope Melehiades caused them to be distinguished in the church calendar as the Four Crowned Martyrs: an error, says Jacob de Voragine, which, although subsequently discovered, was never corrected. But the true legend of the Four Crowned Martyrs is that which has been given above from the best authority, the Roman Breviary of 1474. "On the other side of the Esquiline," says Mrs. Jameson in her Sacred and Legendary Art (volume ii, page 0324), "and on the road leading from the Coliseum to the Lateran, surmounting a heap of sand and ruins, we come to the church of the 'Quattro Coronati,' the Four Crowned Brothers. On this spot, some time in the fourth century, were found the bodies of four men who had suffered decapitation, whose names being then unknown, they were merely distinguished as Coronati, crowned—that is, with the crown of martyrdom." There is great obscurity and confusion in the history of these men. Their church, Mrs. Jameson goes on to say, is held in particular respect by the builders and stone-cutters of Rome. She has found allusion to these martyr masons not only in Roman art, but in the old sculpture and stained glass of Germany. Their effigies she tells us, are easily distinguished by the fact that they stand in a row, bearing palms, with crowns upon their heads and various Masonic implements at their feet— such as the rule, the square, the mallet, and the chisel. They suffered death on the 8th of November, 987, and hence in the Roman Catholic Missal that day is dedicated to their commemoration. From their profession as Stonemasons and from the pious firmness with which they refused, at the cost of their lives, to consecrate their skill in their art to the construction of Pagan temples, they have been adopted by the Stonemasons of Germany as the Patron Saints of Operative Masonry. Thus the oldest Regulation of the Stonemasons of Strasbourg, which has the date of the year 1459, commences with the following invocation: "In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, and of our gracious Mother Mary, and also of her Blessed Servants, the Four Crowned Martyrs of everlasting memory." Such allusions are common in the German Masonic documents of the Middle ages. It is true, however that the English Freemasons ceased at a later period to refer in their Constitutions to those martyrs, although they undoubtedly borrowed many of their usage's from Germany. Yet the Regius .Manuscript of the Constitutions of Freemasonry, the oldest of the English records, which is supposed to have been written about the year 1390, under the title of Ars Quatuor Coronatorum gives a rather copious detail of the legend (lines 497 to 534), which is here inserted with only those slight alterations of its antiquated phraseology which are necessary to render it intelligible to modern readers, although in doing so the rhyme of the original is somewhat destroyed: Pray we now to God Almighty And to His .Mother, Mary bright That we may keep these articles here And these points well altogether, As did those holy martyrs four That in this Craft were of great honor. They were as good Mason as on earth shall go Gravers and image makers they were also, For they were workmen of the best, The emperor had them in great liking He willed of them an image to make, That might be worshiped tor his sake; Such idols he had in his day To turn the people from Christ's law, But they were steadfast in Christ's law And to their Craft, without denial; They loved well God and all his lore, And were in his service evermore. True men they were, in that day, And lived well in God s law They thought no idols for to make, For no good that they might take; To believe on that idol for their god They would not do so, though he were mad, For they would not forsake their true faith, And believe on his false lan. The emperor caused to take them at once And put them in a deep prison. The sorer he punished then in that place, The more joy was to them of Christ's grace. Then whet e saw no other one To death he let them then go. Who so will of their life more know, By the book he may it show, In the legends of the saints The names of the four crowned ones. Their feast will be without denial, After All Hallows, the eighth day. The devotion of these saints, which led to the introduction of their legend into an ancient Constitution of Freemasonry, shows how much they were reverenced by the Craft. In fact, the Four Crowned Martyrs were to the Stone-cutters of Germany and to the earlier Operative Masons of England what Saint John the Baptist and Saint John the Evangelist became to their successors, the Speculative Freemasons of the eighteenth century. From them the famous literary Lodge—the Quatuor Coronati, of London, England—has been so named.
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FOURFOLD CORD
In the instructions of the Past Master's Degree in America we find the following expression: "A twofold cord is strong, a threefold cord is stronger, but a fourfold cord is not easily broken." The expression is taken from a Hebrew proverb which is to be found in the Book of Ecclesiastes (iv, 12): "And if one prevail against him, two shall withstand him; and a threefold cord is not quickly broken." The form of the Hebrew proverb was changed to suit the symbolism of the Degree.
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FOUR NEW YEARS
According to the Talmud there were four New Years. The first of Nisan was the new year for kings and festivals; the reign of a king was calculated from this date. The first of Elul was a new year for the tithing of cattle. The first of Tishri was a new year for civil years, for years of release, jubilees, and planting. The first of Shebat was a new year for the tithing of trees.
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FOUR OLD LODGES
Of the four old Lodges which constituted the Grand Lodge of England, on Saint John the Baptist's day, 1717, the Lodge of Antiquity, No. 2, London, was the first. The Lodge meets by "Time Immemorial Constitution," having no Warrant and, until the "Union," was first on the roll; a decision, however, by ballot. lost it its numerical priority. As Lodges were known by the house in which they met, Antiquity Lodge was designated The West India and American. The Royal Somerset House and Inverness, No. 4, London, is the junior of the four Lodges which constituted the Grand Lodge. At that time it met at the Rummer and Grapes Tavern, Westminster, and subsequently at the Horn, which latter gave the Lodge a name for many years. This Lodge now represents three united Lodges, the names of two of which are to be found in its present designation. Of the four original Lodges, two only have been on the roll from 1740 as of "Time Immemorial Constitution." The original No. 2 ceased working about 1736 and was erased in 1740, and No. 3 accepted a "New Constitution," now No. 12, and is known as Fortitude and Cumberland. The four original Lodges, after the issue of the Regulations of 1723, simply enjoyed the advantage of being ahead of all the Warrant Lodges, the privilege of assembling by "Time Immemorial Constitution," and the honor of having established the first Grand Lodge in the universe (see Freemasonry, Early British).
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FOURTEEN
It is only necessary to remind the well-informed Freemason of the fourteen days of burial mentioned in the legend of the Third Degree. Now, this period of fourteen was not in the opinion of Masonic symbolists, an arbitrary selection, but was intended to refer to or symbolize the fourteen days of lunary darkness, or decreasing light, which intervene between the full moon and its continued decrease until the end of the lunar month. In the Egyptian mysteries, the body of Osiris is said to have been cut into fourteen pieces by Typhon, and thrown into the Nile. Plutarch, speaking of this in his treatise on Isis and Osiris, thus explains the symbolism of the number fourteen, which comprises the Masonic idea: The body of Osiris was cut into fourteen pieces; that is, into as many parts as there are days between the full moon. The moon, at the end of fourteen days, enters Taurus, and becomes united to the sun, from whom she collects fire upon her disk during the fourteen days which follow. She is then found every month in conjunction with him in the superior parts of the signs. The equinoctial year finishes at the moment when the sun and moon are found united with Orion, or the star of Orus a constellation placed under Taurus, which unites itself to the Neomenia of spring. The moon renews herself in Taurus. and a few days afterward is seen, in the form of a crescent in the following sign. that is, Gemini, the home of Mercury. Then Orion. united to the sun in the attitude of a formidable warrior, precipitates Scorpio. His rival, into the shades of night, for he sets every time Orion appears above the horizon. The day becomes lengthened, and the germs of evil are by degrees destroyed. It is thus that the poet Nonnus pictures to us Typhon conquered at the end of winter, wizen the sun arrives in Taurus, and when Orion mounts into the heavens with him. The first few lines of this article. Fourteen, prompted a discussion in the Builder of November, 1927 (page 35 ), and in the Sandusky Masonic Bulletin, December 1927 (page 149), relative to fourteen or fifteen days of burial. The former quotes Prichard of 1730 in favor of fifteen; that several Masonic Jurisdictions in the United States prefer fifteen as the number; that Webb and Cross so taught; that England has no definite period but mentions a considerate time; that Doctor Mackey was probably right in assuming an astronomical significance—the lunar period between the full and the new moon—but the fifteenth day is nevertheless the first day of the new moon. Doctor Merz in she Bulletin, however, quotes Fellows in favor of fourteen days, mentions the Great Pyramid and its latitude as providing that fourteen days before the Vernal Equinox, the sun would cease to east a shadow at noon and would not again cast it for fourteen days after the autumnal Equinox, and that the significant conformity of the legends of Osiris and of Hiram deserves favor. The Builder suggests further that altogether too many alterations in the ritual have been made in the interests of schemes of interpretation and of superficial consistency, that the thing to do is to discover the oldest available wording and then try to assign a meaning to it, the first duty being to preserve the tradition, a conclusion in which Doctor Merz and the rest of us will join cordially with Brother Meekren (see Fifteen).
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FOWLE, HENRY
A native of Medford, Massachusetts. born in September, 1766, went to Boston at fourteen N ears of age and served an apprenticeship as a pump and block maker, which occupation he followed in after life. Better educated than most mechanics of his time, he had good knowledge of the French language and spoke it with the same fluency as his mother tongue. He was initiated into the Lodge of Saint Andrew, Boston, April 10, 1793; was first Master of Mount Lebanon Lodge, Boston, the Charter for which Lodge he had been active in securing, which office he held in 1801, 1802, l803 and 1805, the Lodge having been granted its Charter on June 8, 1801. In 1805, Brother Fowle resigned his membership in the Mount Lebanon Lodge and returned to the Lodge of Saint Andrew, where he served as Master from 1810 to 1817. He was elected Junior Grand Deacon of the Grand Lodge of Massachusetts and served in this capacity from December 27, 1802, to December 7, 1805, then as Senior Grand Deacon until December 14, 1807. From 1807 until December 27, 1808, he was Junior Grand Warden and from that time to December 28, 1809, he held the office of Senior Grand Warden. December 17, 1810, to December ''8, 1818, he was Grand Marshal. Brother Fowle united with Saint Andrew's Royal Arch Chapter as a member on February 18, 1795, and was admitted an honorary member on November 2, 1808. In October, 1797, he was elected Scribe of the Chapter and held the office two years, and October of 1799 he was elected to the office of King, held this situation five years, in 1804 becoming High Priest of the Chapter and remaining in this position four years. He also headed the Chapter in 1813 and 1814. He was Deputy Grand High Priest of the Grand Royal Arch Chapter of Massachusetts for ten years, and for several years an officer of high rank in the General Grand Royal Arch Chapter of the United States. Received Knight Templar Degree in Saint Andrew's Chapter, January 28, 1795, and first Sovereign Master, Boston Encampment, Red Cross Knights, 1802-24; Grand Ceneralissimo, Grand Encampment of United States, 1816, Deputy Grand Master, 1819. See Bylaws of Saint Andrew's Royal Arch Chapter, Boston, 1866 (pages 106 and 107) where we are also told of Brother Fowle that, "As he was perfect in the ritual of every grade of the Order, he was considered high authority by his younger and less informed Brethren" (see Memorial Volume, Knights Templar Massachusetts and Rhode Island, Henry W. Rugg, pages 97-103). During the many years of his activity he served almost constantly on various Committees of the Grand Lodge and records show his name on each and every Committee appointed which had anything whatever to do with matters pertaining to regalia, and his correspondence shows that he personally submitted designs to the Grand Lodge for many of the official Jewels of Office. Right Worshipful Brother Henry Fowle died in Boston, at the age of seventy-one, March 10, 1837.
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FRANCE
The early history of Freemasonry in France is, from the want of authentic documents, in a state of much uncertainty. Kloss, in his Geschichte der Freimaurerei in Frankreich or History of Freemasonry in France (volume i, page 14), says, in reference to the introduction of Freemasonry into that kingdom, that the earliest date of any certainty is 1725. Yet he copies the statement of the Sceau Rompu, meaning the Broken Seal a work published in 1749 that the earliest recognized date of its introduction is 1718; and the Abbé Robin says that nothing of it is to be found further back than 1720.
Brother Lalande, the great astronomer, was the author of the article on Freemasonry in the Encyclopédie Méthodique, and his account has been generally recognized as authentic by succeeding writers. According to him, Lord Derwentwater, the Chevalier Maskeleyne, a Mr. Heguetty, and some other Englishmen, the names being corrupted, of course, according to French usage, founded, in 1725, the first Lodge in Paris. It was held at the house of an English confectioner named Hure, in the Rue de Boucheries. In ten years the number of Lodges in Paris had increased to six, and there were several also in the provincial towns.
As the first Paris Lodge had been opened by Lord Derwentwater, he was regarded as the Grand Master of the French Freemasons, without any formal recognition on the part of the Brethren, at least until 1736, when the six Lodges of Paris formally elected Lord Harnouester as Provincial Grand Master; in 1738, he was succeeded by the Duke d' Antin; and on the death of the Duke, in 1743, the Count de Clermont was elected to supply his place. Brother R. F. Gould, in his Concise History of Freemasonry (page 355), considers that the name Harnouester is probably a corruption of Derwentwater.
Organized Freemasonry in France dates its existence from this latter year. In 1735, the Lodges of Paris had petitioned the Grand Lodge of England for the establishment of a Provincial Grand Lodge, which, on political grounds, had been refused. In 1743, however, it was granted, and the Provincial Grand Lodge of France was constituted under the name of the Grande Loge Anglaise de France. The Grand Master, the Count de Clermont, was, however, an inefficient officer; anarchy and confusion once more invaded the Fraternity; the authority of the Grand Lodge was prostrated; and the establishment of Mother Lodges in the provinces, with the original intention of superintending the proceedings of the distant provincial Lodges, instead of restoring harmony, as was vainly expected, widened still more the breach. For, assuming the rank and exercising the functions of Grand Lodges, they ceased all correspondence with the metropolitan Body, and became in fact its rivals.
Under these circumstances, the Grand Lodge declared itself independent of England in 1755, and assumed the title of the Grande Loge de France. It recognized only the three Degrees of Apprentice, Fellow Craft, and Master Mason, and was composed of the Grand Officers to be elected out of the body of the Fraternity, and of the Masters for life of the Parisian Lodges; thus formally excluding the provincial Lodges from any participation in the government of the Craft.
But the proceedings of this Body were not less stormy than those of its predecessor. The Count de Clermont appointed, in succession, two Deputies, both of whom had been displeasing to the Fraternity. The last, Lacorne, was a man of such low origin and rude manners, that the Grand Lodge refused to meet him as their presiding officer. Irritated at this pointed disrespect, he sought in the taverns of Paris those Masters who had made a traffic of initiations, but who, heretofore, had submitted to the control, and been checked by the authority of the Grand Lodge. From among them he selected officers devoted to his service, and undertook a complete reorganization of the Grand Lodge.
The retired members, however, protested against these illegal proceedings; and in the subsequent year, the Grand Master consented to revoke the authority he had bestowed upon Lacorne, and appointed as his deputy, M. Chaillou de Jonville. The respectable members now returned to their seats in the Grand Lodge; and in the triennial election which took place in June, 1765, the officers who had been elected during the Deputy Grand Mastership of Lacorne were all removed. The displaced officers protested, and published a defamatory memoir on the subject, and were in consequence expelled from Freemasonry by the Grand Lodge. Ill feeling on both sides was thus engendered, and carried to such a height, that, at one of the communications of the Grand Lodge, the expelled Brethren, attempting to force their way in, were resisted with violence. The next day the lieutenant of police issued an edict, forbidding the future meetings of the Grand Lodge. The expelled party, however, still continued their meetings. The Count de Clermont died in 1771 and the excluded Brethren having invited the Duke of Chartres, afterward Duke of Orleans, to the Grand Mastership, he accepted the appointment. They now offered to unite with the Grand Lodge, on condition that the latter would revoke the decree of expulsion.
The proposal was accepted, and the Grand Lodge went once more into operation. Another union took place, which has since considerably influenced the character of French Freemasonry. During the troubles of the preceding years, Masonic Bodies were instituted in various parts of the kingdom, which professed to confer Degrees of a higher nature than those belonging to Craft Freemasonry, and which have since been so commonly known by the name of the High Degrees. These Chapters as summed a right to organize and control Symbolic or Blue Lodges, and this assumption has been a fertile source of controversy between them and the Grand Lodge. By the latter Body they had never been recognized, but the Lodges under their direction had often been declared irregular, and their members expelled.
They now, however, demanded a recognition, and proposed, if their request was complied with, to bestow the government of the Hauts Grades, or High Degrees, upon the same person who was at the head of the Grand Lodge. The compromise was made, the recognition was decreed, and the Duke of Chartres was elected Grand Master of all the Councils, Chapitels, and Scotch Lodges of France.
But peace was not yet restored. The party who had been expelled, moved by a spirit of revenge for the disgrace formerly inflicted on them, succeeded in obtaining the appointment of a committee which was empowered to prepare the new Constitution. All the Lodges of Paris and the provinces were requested to appoint Deputies, who were to form a Convention to take the new Constitution into consideration. This Convention, or, as they called it, National Assembly, met at Paris in December, 1771. The Duke of Luxembourg presided, and on the twenty-fourth of that month the Ancient Grand Lodge of France was declared extinct, and in its place another substituted with the title of Grand Orient de France.
Notwithstanding the declaration of extinction by the National Assembly, the Grand Lodge continued to meet and to exercise its functions. Thus the Fraternity of France continued to be harassed, by the bitter contentions of these rival Bodies, until the commencement of the Revolution compelled both the Grand Orient and the Grand Lodge to suspend their labors.
On the restoration of civil order, both Bodies resumed their operations, but the Grand Lodge had been weakened by the death of many of the perpetual Masters, who had originally been attached to it; and a better spirit arising, the Grand Lodge was, by a solemn and mutual declaration, united to the Grand Orient on the 28th of June, 1799.
Dissension's, however, continued to arise between the Grand Orient and the different Chapters of the high Degrees. Several of those Bodies had at various periods given in their adhesion to the Grand Orient, and again violated the compact of peace. Finally, the Grand Orient, perceiving that the pretensions of the Scottish Rite Freemasons would be a perpetual source of disorder, decreed on the 16th of September, 1805, that the Supreme Council of the Thirty-third Degree should thenceforth become an independent Body, with the power to confer Warrants of Constitution for all the Degrees superior to the Eighteenth, or Rose Croix; while the Chapters of that and the inferior Degrees were placed under the exclusive control of the Grand Orient.
But the Concordat was not faithfully observed by either party, and dissension's continued to exist with intermittent and unsuccessful attempts at reconciliation, which was, however, at last effected in some sort in 1841. The Masonic Obedience of France was later on more amicably divided between the the Bodies, and the Grand Orient and the Supreme Council exist as independent powers in French Freemasonry. The constant tendency of the former to interfere in the administration of other countries would furnish an unpleasant history for the succeeding thirty years, at last terminated by the general refusal of the Grand Lodges in the United States, and some in Europe, to hold further Masonic communication with it; a breach which every good Freemason must desire to see eventually healed. One of the most extraordinary acts of the Grand Orient of France has been the abolition in 1871 of the office of Grand Master. the duties being performed by the President of the Council of the Order.
Discussion and an attempted avoidance of a threatening Masonic calamity by a large number of the Fraternity of France did not avail to prevent the General Assembly of the Grand Orient of France from completing its overthrow and that of its subordinates by the almost unanimous adoption of the now famous amendment of Article I of the Constitution of Freemasonry, on September 14, 1877.
The following is the text of the amendment and of the original second paragraph which was expunged:
Original paragraph: "Freemasonry has for its principles the existence of God, the immortality of the soul, and the solidarity of mankind."
Substituted amendment: "Whereas, Freemasonry is not a religion, and has therefore no doctrine or dogma to alarm in its Constitution, the Assembly adopting the Vaeu IX has decided and decreed that the second paragraph of .Article I of the Constitution shall be erased, and that for the words of the said article the following shall be substituted:
Being an institution essentially philanthropic, philosophy, and progressive, Freemasonry has for its object, search after truth, study of universal morality, sciences and arts, and the practice of benevolence. It has for its principles. absolute liberty of conscience and human solidarity, it excludes no person on account of his belief and its motto as Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity." The adoption of the above was after a full and deliberate consideration by its constituents, who for more than a year were in the throes of deep deliberation and judgment.
The Grand Lodge of England appointed a Committee to consider this action of the Grand Orient in thus expunging the existence of T. G. A. O. T. U. from its tenets, and they reported that such alteration is "opposed to the traditions, practice and feelings of all true and genuine Masons from the earliest to the present time"; and it was resolved that foreign brethren could only be received as visitors if they had been initiated in a Lodge professing belief in T. G. A. O. T. U., and would themselves acknowledge such belief to be an essential landmark of the Order. Similar action was taken by other Grand Lodges.
Since the above article was prepared by Brother E. L. Hawkins, a third Grand Lodge came into being in France. This is the Grande Loge Nationale indépendante et Réguliere pour la France et les Colonies Françaises, or the National Independent and Regular Grand Lodge for France and the French Colonies as constituted and recognized by the Grand Lodge of England. From the Manifesto issued to the Brethren on December 27, 1913, at Paris by Grand Master E. de Ribancourt, and from the Histoire de la Franc Maçonnene Française by Albert Lantoine, 1925 (pages 410-5) we learn that a Lodge at Paris, named the Centre des Amis, the Center of Friends, worked the Degrees of the Rectified Scottish Rite, in French the Rite Ecossais Rectify, from 1910 under the auspices of the Diretoire Helvétique of Geneva, Switzerland, but joined the Grand Orient of France in 1911 with the understanding that it could continue to practices its old ritualistic customs. The Lodge was accordingly constituted as a subordinate Lodge of the Grand Orient on Stay 1 , 1911, by Gaston Bouley, President of the Council. This Lodge in 1913 wished to establish a Chapter of Saint Andrew which in operation we may say in passing is deemed by the Grand Orient and similar Bodies to be equivalent, to use Brother Albert Lantoine's expression in his History (page 411), to the Eighteenth Degree, the completion of the series contemplated by the usual ceremonies of the Rectified Scottish Rite that the Lodge practiced. When the rituals were supplied through the Grand Orient they avers discovered to omit mention of the Grand Architect of the Universe. Against this omission the Lodge protested but in vain. Accordingly the Lodge Centre des Amis of Paris with the Lodge Anglaise (meaning English) of Bordeaux formed the new Grand Lodge as is said by the Manifesto, "to safeguard the integrity of our Rectified Rituals and preserve in France the true Masonry of Tradition.!' Brother NV. J. Coombes. Commenting on the situation in a paper read in 1927 before the literary Lodge, Saint Claudius, No. 21, Paris, had this to say:
Our position (that of the National, Independent and Regular Grand Lodge) is clear for the Grand Orient forbids the use of the phrase concerning the (Se A. O. T. U. (Grand Architect of the Universe) and Juvanon, in his Vers la Lumiére (meaning in French, Towards the Light) puts the status of the Grand Lodge of France quite clearly when he says (page 81) that the Grand Lodge of France has in order to attract the sympathy of the Anglo-Saxons, authorized its Lodges to use or to reject, as they please, the formula of the Grand Architect of the Universe, and has even permitted certain Lodges to place the V. S. L. (the Volume of the Sacred Law, the Bible) on the pedestal of the Worshipful Master, and on its Master Masons Diplomas puts A. L. G. D. G. A. D. L. U. (the initials of the French words meaning To the Glory of the Grand Architect of the Universe) leaving every member to interpret the phrase as he pleases.
This Grand Lodge formed the Provincial Grand Lodge of Neustrie with headquarter at Paris, and the Provincial Grand Lodge of Aquitaine under Bordeaux, having several Lodges at Paris, as well as at Boulogne, Havre, Dunkirk. Rouen, Bordeaux, etc. (see Independent and Regular National Grand Lodge of France).
An essay read by Brother N. Choumitsky, Saint Claudius Lodge, No. 21, Paris, 1927, deals with the matter of mutual recognition and was based on some twenty documents in the archives of the Grand Lodge of the Urkraine. From these we find the Grand Lodge of France early in 1764 asked the Grand Lodge at London to supply a list of the Lodges she had warranted. On July 18, 1764, these details were sent showing that of 340 Lodges only three were constituted in France by her: The Lodge, No. 49, Paris, a la Ville de Tonnerre, July 3, 1732; Lodge, No. 60, Valenciennes, in Hainault, 1733, and Lodge No. 73, Chateau d'Aubigny (in Artois or Berry, probably the latter), October 12, 1735. These Lodges were erased from the English list and the two Grand Lodges agreed not to create Lodges on each other's territory. In 1765 the French Grand Lodge sent a list of her Lodges to England, and a new list early in 1767 with copy of rules and a form of Deputation. These were welcomed and the reply to them promised various documents. But operations in France were suspended by the authorities, February 21, 1767. The official relations of the two Grand Bodies ceased. Freemasonry again showed signs of life in France in 1771 and in 1772 there was submitted to the Grand Lodge of England the subject of a treaty drawn up by Lebady. Brother Choumitsky says the Grand Lodge of England no longer wished to treat as between peers, but attempted to enjoy certain prerogatives.
This did not meet with approval but efforts toward establishing mutual relations continued and December 1, 1773, prompted by La Chaussee, Baron de Toussainet, Grand Secretary, wrote to the Marquis de Vignoles, of the Grand Lodge of England, but his letter remained unanswered. Again he wrote on December 17 to the Marquis as well as to Brother Charles Dillon, D.G.M., also to Lord Petre, Grand Master, and to the Grand Lodge of England itself. To each one of them he sent a report of his Masonic organization.
A treaty was sent from France on June 13, 1776, and we may also note that on June 28, in the name of the Grand Lodge of England, Brother Vignoles complained of the establishment at Naples of a Lodge, Saint John of Secret and Perfect Friendship, by the French authorities. On August 8, 1775, Vignoles wrote to La Chaussee expressing a belief that the treaty would be acceptable. Three items were announced on September 5, bar Brother Heseitine, as being inadmissible because of the same objections as were made to Lebady's project in 1772. The difficulty really arose by the word equality.
Brother Heseltine, as reported by Vignoles, was of the opinion that basis could not hold good since Germanic Sweden, Holland, etc., recognized their Mother in the Grand Lodge of London, and the latter had proofs of its pioneer Masonic labors in France. Vignoles planned to meet this in a complimentary way by suggesting that the reference to English authorities should be to the Sublime Grand Lodge of the Noble and the Ancient Society of Free and Accepted Masons, established at the East of London, etc. However, Brother Guillotin, Orator of the Chamber of Provinces and member of the Commission charged to examine this, offered advice that the best course would be not to speak about equality at all, taking care at the same time to insert nothing whatever in the treaty which might confirm the idea of any claim for superiority.
Vignoles again wrote, June 4, 1776, announcing that the Grand Lodge of England remained steadfast in her decision. brother Choumitsky tells of the upheaval in their plans made by the struggle for American Independence followed by the French Revolution and the altars of the Empire. He quotes Rebold about the later and undated sending of Brother Morand to London unsuccessfully to negotiate an alliance with the Grand Lodge of England, and that in 1851 Brother Razy also failed. He therefore makes the claim that while French Freed masons were individually welcome, the Grand Bodies in France were not recognized until the formation of the relational and Independent Grand Lodge in October, 1913. (if the Grande Loge Mixte in France, and the steps leading up to this curious situation, the proposed initiation of women, see Masonry.
The Histoire de la Franc-Maçonnerie Française by Brother Albert Lantoine (pages 383-93) points out that the Grand Orient of France in the General Assembly of 1920 recognized the Lodge Droit Humain (Human Right or Equity) a leading Co-Masonic Lodge at Paris but that this recognition was limited, Brothers but not Sisters might visit Grand Orient Lodges. The Grand Lodge of France has since the Convention of October 25, 1903, declared members of any Co-Masonic Bodies as irregular and by a decision of the Federal Council of September 15, 1913, refused to make any distinction between the Bodies claiming to be Co-Masonic.
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FRANCIS I, EMPEROR OF AUSTRIA
Eldest son of the Duke of Lorraine, born December 8, 1708, succeeding his father in 1729 Also Duke of Tuscann. He married the famous Maria Theresa, Empress of Austria, and in 1745 became Emperor of Germany. Initiated at The Hague, 1731, and made a Master Mason at a Special Lodge held at Houghton Hall that year while visiting England. During the reign of Maria Theresa Freemasonry was tolerated in Vienna, due, no doubt, to the patronage of the Emperor. His death occurred at Innsbruck, Austria, August 18, 1765, when he was Grand Master (see Dr. A. Mackey's History of Freemasonry, 1921, pages 2236 and 2255).
*
FRANCIS II
This Emperor of Germany, was a bitter enemy of Freemasonry. In 1789, he ordered all the Lodges in his dominions to be closed, and directed all civil and military functionaries to take an oath never to unite with any secret society, under pain of exemplary punishment and destitution of office. In 1794, he proposed to the Diet of Ratisbon the suppression of the Freemasons, the Illuminati, and all other secret societies. Diet, by the way, is frown the Latin dies, meaning a day, and formerly applied to the period of a session or sitting of delis gates or other persons of importance was given to the group of individuals and in Austria and Germany particularly the name has been attached to assemblies of parliament. The Diet, controlled by the influence of Prussia, Brunswick, and Hanover, refused to accede to the proposition, replying to the emperor that he might interdict the Lodges in his own states, but that others claimed Germanic liberty. In 1801, he renewed his opposition to secret societies, and especially to the Masonic Lodges, and all civil, military, and ecclesiastical functionaries were restrained from taking any part in them under the penalty of forfeiting their offices.
*
FRANCKEN, HENRY A.
The first Deputy Inspector General appointed by Stephen Morin, under his Commission from the Emperors of the East and West. Francken received his Degrees and his appointment at Kingston, Jamaica. The date is not known, but it must have been between 1769 and 1767. Francken soon afterward repaired to the United States, where he gave the appointment of a Deputy to Moses M. Haves, at Boston, and organized a Council of Princes of Jerusalem at Albany. He may be considered as the first propagator of the advanced Degrees in the United States.
*
FRANC-MAÇON, FRANC- MAÇONNERIE
The French names of Freemason and of Freemasonry. The construction of these words is not conformable to the genius or the idiom of the French language, which would more properly employ the terms Mason libre, and Maçonnerie libre; and hence Laurens, in his Essais historiques et critiques sur la Franc-Maçonnerie, meaning Essays, Historical and Critical, on Freemasonry, adduces their incorporation into the language as an evidence that the Institution in France was derived directly from England, the words being a literal and unidiomatic translation of the English titles. But he errs in supposing that Franc-mason and Franc- Masonry are any part of the English language.
*
FRANÇOIS DE NEUFCHATEAU, LE COMTE
In the memoirs of Dixmerie, the surname is shortened to Chateau. Member of the famous Lodge of Nine Sisters and a renowned man of letters in France, as well as an able statesman. Born at Saffais, Lorraine, France, April 17, 1750; died at Paris, January 10, 1828. His real name was Francois but he was authorized by the Nancy Parliament in 1777 to take the name of Neufchateau. He was twice Minister of the Interior, President of the Senate, 1804 and 1814, and in 1806, together with Comte Lacepede, he revived the Lodge first founded in 1776. His name is on the Lodge lists of members in 1783, 1784, and on both issued for 1806. In the calendar of the Grand Orient for 1814, he figures as one of the three Conservators of the Grand Chapter (see Une Loge Maçonnique, Louis Amiable, 1897, page 304-7).
*
FRANKFORT-ON-THE-MAIN
A Provincial Grand Lodge was established in this city, in 1766, by the Grand Lodge of England. In the dissension's which soon after prevailed among the Freemasons of Germany, the Provincial Grand Lodge of Frankfort, not finding itself supported by its mother Grand Lodge, declared itself independent in 1783. Since 1823, it has worked under the title of the Grosse Mutterloge des Eklektischen Freimaurerbundes zu Frankfort a. M.
*
FRANKLIN, BENJAMIN
Greatest of American diplomats, hero of the War of Independence, distinguished also as publisher and printer, editor and author, a notable philosopher whose instructive wisdom always charms and edifies, a scientist whose valuable discoveries are even today highly esteemed fundamental additions to practical knowledge he was a devoted Freemason occupying for many years places of official prominence and serving his Brethren with conspicuous Masonic zeal and aptitude.
Born at Boston, Massachusetts, he had only two years of school and at the age of ten left to work for his father in soap and candle making. At thirteen apprenticed to his brother James, a printer and publisher who started in 1721 a newspaper, the New England Courant, Franklin soon commenced to write both verse and prose, the latter quaint and vigorous of timely argument on public questions. Franklin went to rev York and in 1723 to Philadelphia, working as a printer. Encouraged to go into business for himself, he left for England, December, 1724, but the promised support failed and as a printer he was employed at London until October, 1796, when he again reached Philadelphia to resume his position there as a workman. In 1728 he formed a printing partnership.
Two years later he owned the business. From 1729-65 he published and edited the Pennsylvania Gazette. His enterprising career was industrious and capable in the extreme, a record not readily condensed in a brief article. He taught himself the use of several languages, made his influence multiplied by the printing press, his witty Almanacs brightly written for a quarter of a century averaged a sale of 10,000 copies annually. Postmaster in 1737, he also with twenty-three other citizens in 1749 founded an academy that became the University of Pennsylvania, a promoter of the American Philosophical Society, the organizer of the Junto a compact debating club somehow curiously resembling in its practices the same exchange of thought characterizing many past and present French Lodges to which Franklin may easily have contributed some influence if only by example.
Active in forming the first police force in the Colonies, starting the fire department, the militia, improving street paving, bettering the street lighting, introducing hospital service, and so forth, it has truly been said of him that he gave in his day the impulse to nearly every project for the welfare of his city. A member of the General Assembly of Pennsylvania, for almost twenty years in joint charge of the mails in the Colonies, delegated to the Albany Convention where he submitted a plan for colonial union, he was later entrusted with the raising of troops and the building of forts in the wilderness against the Indians. Recalled from this western responsibility, he was sent eastward, to England, as the agent of the protesting Colonies.
Honored by the freedom of the city of Edinburgh, made a Doctor of Laws by the University of Saint Andrews, Doctor of Civil Law by Oxford, he was already a Master of Arts at Harvard, at Yale, and at the College of William and Mary. Returning to handle successfully public service at home, he was once more employed abroad to represent the Colonies at a Committee of the English Parliament, and was back in Philadelphia in 1775.
v delegate to the Continental Congress, Post-Master General, on the Commission to Canada, one of the five to prepare the Declaration of Independence, President of the Constitutional Convention of Pennsylvania, chosen by Congress one of three to discuss terms of peace with Admiral Howe in 1776, Commissioner to France where John Adams wrote of him "Franklin's reputation was more universal than that of Leibnitz or Newton, Frederick or Voltaire; and his character more esteemed and beloved than all of them." Of his shrewd forcefulness we may read the dramatic estimate of Thackeray in the Virginians (chapter 9).
A member appointed in 1781 of the Commission to make peace with England, he also made treaties with Sweden and Prussia. Going home he at once was elected on the Municipal Council of Philadelphia and its chairman, then President of the Supreme Executive Council, and twice reelected Delegate to the Convention of 1787 framing the Federal Constitution, President of the Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery —signing a petition to Congress in 1790 and six weeks later in his old spirited style he defended with wit and literary art this plea. Last of his remarkable exploits for the public good these efforts just preceded his serene death in his home at Philadelphia on April 17, 1790.
Franklin's Masonic connections are discussed in Beginnings of Freemasonry in America by Brother Melvin M. Johnson, P. G. M.; Benjamin Franklin as a Freemason by Brother Julius F. Sachse; Une Loge Maconnique d'Avant 1789, by Brother Louis Amiable, the latter work being the history of the Lodge of the Nine Sisters, or Muses, at Paris. Other sources of information are mentioned in the text. A concise statement of Franklin's activities of leading interest to Freemasons is as follows:
1705 6, January 6, Old Style, born at Boston, Massachusetts (New Style, January 17, 1706).
1727, organized the Leathern Apron Club, a secret society, at Philadelphia (see Franklin as a Freemason pages 7-9, Annals of Philadelphia and Pennsylvania 1850, volume u, page 495).
1730-1, February, initiated in Saint John's Lodge, Philadelphia (see Liberal in Collection of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania; also An Account of Saint John's
1732, June, drafted a set of By-laws for Saint John's Lodge (see Proceedings, Grand Lodge of Pennsylvania, 1885, pages 37-39).
1732, June 24, elected Junior Grand Warden (see Pennsylvania Gazette, No 187, June 26, 1732).
1734, June 24, elected Grand Master of Pennsylvania (see Pennsylvania Gazette, No. 290, June 2" 1734).
1734, August, advertised his Mason Boolc, a reprint of Anderson's Constitutions of the Free-Masons, the first Masonic book printed in America (see Pennsylvania Gazette, No. 284, May 9 to May 16, 1734). 1734, November 28, wrote as Grand Master to Brother Henry Price at Boston two fraternal letters, one officially regarding Masonic affairs and the other less formal (see Price, Henry)
1734-5, the State House, Independence Hall, built during Franklin's administration as Grand Masters According to the old Masonic and family traditions the cornerstone was laid by him and the Brethren of Saint John's Lodge (set Votes of the Assembly; Etting's History of Independence Hall, also date on water spouts of the Hall) 1735-8, served as Secretary of Saint John's Lodge (see Liber B. 1731-8).
1738, April 13, Franklin, in a letter to his mother wrote, "Freemasons have no principles or practices that are inconsistent with religion and good manners." (See original draft in Franklin's handwriting in his Commonplace Book in Collection of Historical Society of Pennsylvania )
1743, May 25, visited First Lodge (Saint John's) Boston (see Proceedings Grand Lodge of Massachusetts 1733-92) page 390). 1749, June 10, appointed Provincial Grand Master by Thomas Oxnard, of Boston (see Proceedings, Grand Lodge of Pennsylvania, 1882, page 157).
1749, August 29, Tun Tavern Lodge petitioned Provincial Grand Master Franklin for a " Deputation under his sanction" (see manuscript, Minutes of the Tun Tavern Lodge)1750, March 13, deposed as Provincial Grand Master and immediately appointed Deputy Grand Master by William Allen, Provincial Grand Master (see Proceedings, Grand Lodge of Pennsylvania, 1882, page 157).
1752, Marsh 12, appointed on Committee for buildings the "Freemason's Lodge" in Philadelphia (see original manuscript in Masonic Temple Library, Philadelphia).
1752. October 25, visited the Tun Tavern Lodge (see manuscript Minutes of the Tun Tavern Lodge).
1754, October 11, present at Quarterly Communication of the Grand Lodge of Massachusetts, held in Concert Hall, Boston (see Proceedings, Grand Lodge of Massachusetts 1733-92, page 34, and 1871, page 361).
1755, June 24 took a prominent part in the Grand Anniversary and Dedication of the "Freemason's Lodge" in Philadelphia, the first Masonic building in America (see Pennstilvania Gazette, No. 1384. July 3,
1755; also A Sermon preached in Christ Church. Philadelphia 1755, in Collection of Historical Society of Pennsylvania).
1759, October 10, visitor to Lodge Saint David, Edinburgh, Scotland (see Ars Quatuor Coronatorum, 1908 volume xxi, Part 3, page 270).
1760, Provincial Grand Master of Philadelphia (see Noorthouck's Constitutions, page 276 edition of 1784 London)
1760, November 17, present at Grand Lodge of England, held at Crown & Anchor, London. Entered upon the Minutes as "Provincial Grand Master" (see Minute Book of Grand Lodge of England).
1762, addressed as Grand Master of Pennsylvania (ses letters to Franklin from Brother Valentz in Collection of American Philosophical Society).
1776, affiliated with Masonic Lodges in France (see documents in Collection of American Philosophical Society)
1778, April 7, assisted at the initiation of Voltaire in the Lodge of the Nine Sisters, Loge des Neuf Soeurs meaning Nine Sisters or Muses a famous Lodge at Paris (see Amiable's Une Loge Magonnique d'Avant 1787, page 65); Lantoines Histoire de la Franc-Maçonnerie Francaise; Kloss Historp of Freemasonry in France).
1778, affiliated with Loge des Neuf Soeurs at Paris Presumably the example of Franklin was not without influence on the resolution taken by the leader of philosophy to be accepted a Freemason; and on the other hand if is certain that the initiation of Voltaire determined the Illustrious American to become affiliated with the Nine Sisters (Lodge)-" " The name of Franklin comes a little after that of Voltaire on the printed list of 1779"(see Une Loge Maçonnique d'Avant 1789, page 145).
1778,-November 28, officiated at the Lodge of Sorrou) or Maçonic funeral services of Voltaire (see Manuseript in Collection of American Philosolyhical Society also Medal struck in honor of the occasion in Masonic Temple Library, Philadelphia. Brother Hnwkins states that another specimen of this rare medal is in the possession of the Grand Lodge of Mecklenburg. Germany).
1779, May 21, elected Worshipful Master of the Lodge of the Sine Sisters and the committee in notifying him at Passy, near Paris, spoke of the Important and many affairs in which he was engaged and that note withstanding that responsibility he could find time to "follow the sessions of the Freemasons as though a brother of utmost leisure." Franklin was Worshipful Master for two years his authority being renewed in 1780 (see Une Loge Maçonnique d'Atant 1789, by Brother Louis Amiable 1897, pages 136, 145).
1782, elected Venerable, meaning Worshipful Master of Loge des Neuf Soeurs, Grand Orient de Paris (see documents in Collection of American Philosophical Society)
1782, July 7, member of the Respectable Lodge de Saint Jean de.Jerusalem (see docurnents in Collection of American Philosophical Society).
1785, April 24, elected Venerable d'Honneur of Respectable Lodge de Saint Jean de Jerusalem (see documents in Collection of American Philosophical Society).
1785, elected honorary member of Loge des Ron Amis, Good Friends, Rouen, France (see documents in Collection of University of Pennsylvania).
1786, December 27, in the dedication of a sermon delivered at the request of the R. W. Grand Lodge of Pennsylvania, by Reverend Joseph Pilmore in Saint Paul's Church, Philadelphia, Franklin is referred to as " an Illustrious Brother whose distinguished merit among Masons entitled him to their highest veneration" (copy of the book is on Collection of Historical Society of Pennsylvania and. in Masonic Temple Library Philadelphia).
1790, April 17 Benjamin Franklin passed to the Grand Lodge above
l906, April 19, memorial services at his grave in Christ Church yard, S- E corner Fifth and Arch Sts., Philadelphia, by the officers of the R. NV. Grand Lodge of Pennsylvania "the occasion being to observe the two hunderedth anniversary of the birth of Brother Benjamin Franklin.
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FRANKS, ORDER OF REGENERATED
A political brotherhood that was instituted in France in 1815, flourished for a while, and imitated in its ceremonies the Masonie Fraternity.
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FRASER, GEORGE
On November 30, 1736, when William Saint Clare of the Hereditary Grand Mastership of Scottish Freemasons resigned, the resignation being signed on November 24, Brother Fraser was present and his name was attached as a witness to the document. He was Deputy-Auditor of the Excise and Worshipful Master, Canongate Kilwinning Lodge (see History of Freemasonry and Grand Lodge of Scotland, William A. Laurie, 1859, page 100).
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FRATER
Latin, meaning Brother. An expression borrowed from the monks by the Military Orders of the Middle Ages, and applied by the members to each other. It is constantly employed in England by the Masonic Knights Templar, and is beginning to be adopted, although not as generally, in the United States. When speaking of two or more, it is an error to call them Fraters, The correct plural is Fratres.
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FRATERNALLY
Doctor Mackey records the vusual mode of subscription to letters in his day written by one Freemason to another as, "I remain, fraternally yours," custom and preference that continues to be frequently adopted.
*
FRATERNITY
The word was originally used to designate those associations formed in the Roman Catholic Church for the pursuit of special religious and ecelesiastical purposes such as the nursing of the sick, the support of the poor, the practise of particular devotions, etc. They do not date earlier than the thirteenth century. The name was subsequently applied to secular associations, such as the Freemasons. The word is only a Latin form of the Anglo-Saxon Brotherhood. In the earliest lectures of the eighteenth century we find the word fraternity alluded to in the following fonnula:
How many particular points pertain to a Freemason?
Three: Fraternity, Fidelity, and Taciturnity.
What do they represent?
Brotherly Love, Relief, and Truth among all Right Masons.
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FRATERNIZE
To recognize as a Brother; to associate with Masonically.
*
FREDERICK
*
FREDERICK, DUKE OF YORK
Born 1763, second son of George III; died in 1827. Made a Freemason, November 21, 1787, at the Star and Garter Tavern, London, England, at a Special Lodge held for that purpose by the Duke of Gumberland, then Grand Master. The Prince of Wales, afterwards George IV, acted as sponsor for his brother.
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FREDERICK HENRY LOUIS
Prince of Prussia, was received into Freemasonry at Berlin by Frederick the Great, his brother, in 1740.
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FREDERICK OF NASSAU
Prince Frederick, son of the King of the Netherlands, and for many years the Grand Master of the National Grand Lodge of that kingdom. He was ambitious of becoming a Masonic reformer, and in addition to his connection with the Charter of Cologne, an account of which has been given under that head, he attempted, in 1819, to introduce a new rite. He denounced the advanced Degrees as being contrary to the true intent of Freemasonry, and in a circular to all the Lodges under the obedience of the National Grand Lodge, he proposed a new system, to consist of five Degrees, namely, the three symbolic, and two more as complements or illustrations of the third, which he called Elect Master and Supreme Elect Master. Some few Lodges adopted this new system, but most of them rejected it. The Grand Chapter, whose existence it had attacked, denounced it. The Lodges practicing it in Belgium there Solved in 1830, but a few of them probably remain in Holland. The full rituals of the two supplementary Degrees are printed in the second volume of Hermes, and an attentive perusal of them does not give an exalted idea of the inventive genius or the Prince.
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FREDERICK PRINCE OF WALES
Father of King George III. Made a Freemason November 5, 1737, in a Special Lodge at Kew, Doctor Desaguliers presiding. He died in 1751. Three of his sons became members of the Craft, the Dukes of York and Gloucester initiated in 1766, the Duke of Cumberland, 1767 (see Royal Freemasons, George W. Speth, 1885).
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FREDERICK THE GREAT
Frederick II, King of Prussia, surnamed the Great, was born on January 14, 1712, and died on August 17, 1786, at the age of seventy-four years and a few months. He was initiated as a Freemason, at Brunswick, on the night of August 14, 1738, not quite two years before he ascended the throne.
In English, we have two accounts of this initiation, one by Campbell, in his work on Frederick the Great and his Times, and the other by Carlyle in his History of Frederick the Second. Both are substantially the same, because both are merely translations of the original account given by Bielfeld in his Freundschaftliche Briefe, or Familiar Letters. The Baron von Bielfeld was, at the time, an intimate companion of the Prince, and was present at the initiation.
Bielfeld tells us that in a conversation which took place on August 6 at Loo though Carlyle corrects him as to time and place, and says it probably occurred at Minden, on July 17 the Institution of Freemasonry had been enthusiastically lauded by the Count of Lippe Buckeburg. The Crown Prince soon after privately expressed to the Count his wish to join the society. Of course, this wish was to be gratified.
The necessary furniture and assistance for conferring the Degrees were obtained from the Lodge at Hamburg. Bielfeld gives an amusing account of the embarrassments which were encountered in passing the chest containing the Masonic implements through the Custom-House without detection. Campbell, quoting from Bielfeld, says: The whole of August 14 was spent in preparations for the Lodge, and at twelve at night the Prince Royal arrived, accompanied by Count Wartensleben, a captain in the king's regiment at Potsdam. The Prince introduced him to us as a candidate whom he very warmly recommended, and begged that he might be admitted immediately after himself. At the same time, he desired that he might be treated like any private individual, and that none of the usual ceremonies might be altered on his account. Accordingly, he was admitted in the customary form, and I could not sufficiently admire his fearlessness, his composure, and his address. After the double reception, a Lodge was held. All was over by four in the morning, and the Prince returned to the dual palace apparently as well pleased with us as we were charmed with him.
Of the truth of this account there never has been any doubt. Frederick the Great was certainly a Freemason. But Carlyle, in his usual sarcastic vein, adds:
The Crown Prince prosecuted his Masonry at Reinsberg or elsewhere, occasionally, for a year or two, but was never ardent in it, ant very soon after his accession left off altogether.... A Royal Lodge was established at Berlin, of which the new king consented to be patron; but he never once entered the palace, and only his portrait, a welcomely good one still to be found there, presided over the mysteries of that establishment.
Now how much of truth with the sarcasm, and how much of sarcasm without the truth, there is in this remark of Carlyle, is just what the Masonic world is bound to discover. Until further light is thrown upon the subject by documentary evidence from the Prussian Lodges, the question can not be definitely answered. But what is the now known further Masonic history of Frederick? Bielfeld tells us that the zeal of the Prince for the Fraternity induced him to invite the Baron Von Oberg and himself to Reinsberg, where, in 1739, they founded a Lodge, into which Keyserling, Jordan, Moolendorf, Queis, and Fredersdorf, Frederick's valet, were admitted.
Bielded is again our authority for stating that on June 20, 1740, King Frederick for he had then ascended the throne—held a Lodge at Charlottenburg, and, as Master in the chair, initiated Prince William of Prussia, his brother, the Margrave Charles of Brandenburg, and Frederick William, Duke of Holstein. The Dulce of Holstein was seven years afterward elected Adjutant Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of the Three Globes at Berlin.
We hear no more of Frederick's Freemasonry in the printed records until the 16th of July, 1774, when he granted his protection to the National Grand Lodge of Germany, and officially approved of the treaty with the Grand Lodge of England, by which the National Grand Lodge was established. In the year 1777, the Mother Lodge, Royal York of Friendship, at Berlin, celebrated, by a festival, the king's birthday, on which occasion Frederick wrote the following letter, which, as it is the only printed declaration of his opinion of Freemasonry that is now extant, is well worth copying:
I cannot but be sensible of the new homage of the Lodge Royal York of Friendship on the occasion of the anniversary of my birth bearing, as it does the evidence of its zeal and attachment for my person. Its orator has well expressed the sentiments which animate all its labors; and a society which employs itself only in sowing the seed and bringing forth the fruit of every kind of virtue in my dominions may always be assured of my protection. It is the glorious task of every good sovereign and 1 will never cease to fulfill it. And so I pray God to take you and your Lodge under his holy and deserved protection. Potsdam, this 14th of February, 1777. Frederick. Brother ad. E. Cauthorne submits here that, Frederick did not ill his latter days take the active interest in Freemasonry that had distinguished his early life before coming to the throne. It cannot be established that he ever attended a meeting after he became king, though manic such efforts have been attempted. Some overzealous persons have claimed that he established the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of the Thirty-third Degree but the Grand Lodge of the Three Globes at Berlin as well as many European historians, have often shown this a> have been impossible. But we must not forget that the adoption of the Constitutions makes them legally binding upon the Freemasons who subscribe to this document, no matter whether it was or was not the creation of Frederick. Further, in reference to the above comments by Brother Cauthorne, the subject of Frederick's Masonic activity and the Constitutions has been given critical study by Brothers General Albert Pike, Enoch T. Carson and Dr. Wilhelm Begemann (see their various conclusions in Mackey's revised History of Freemasonry, pages 1828-39).
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FREDERICK WILLIAM III
King of Prussia, and, although not a Freemason, a generous patron of the Order. On December 29, 1797, he wrote to the Lodge Royal York of Friendship, at Berlin, these words: "I have never been initiated, as every one knows, but I am far from conceiving the slightest distrust of the intentions of the members of the Lodge. I believe that its design is noble, and founded on the cultivation of virtue; that its methods are legitimate, and that every political tendency is banished from its operations. Hence, I shall take pleasure in manifesting on all occasions my good-will and my affection to the Lodge Royal York of Friendship, as well as to every other Lodge in my dominions." In a similar tone of kindness toward Freemasonry, he wrote three months afterward to Fessler. And when he issued, October 20, 1798, an Edict forbidding secret societies, he made a special exemption in favor of the Masonic Lodges. To the time of his death, he was always the avowed friend of the Order.
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FREE
The word Free, in connection with Mason, originally signified that the person so called was free, entrusted with certain rights, of the Company or Gild of Incorporated Masons. For those Operative Masons who were not thus made free of the gild, were not permitted to work with those who were. A similar regulation still exists in many parts of Europe, although it is not known to the United States. The term appears to have been first thus used in the tenth century, when the traveling Freemasons we are told were incorporated by the Roman Pontiff (see Traveling Freemasons).
In reference to the other sense of free as meaning not bound, not in captivity, it is a rule of Freemasonry that no one can be initiated who is at the time restrained of his liberty. The Grand Lodge of England extends this doctrine, that Freemasons should be free in all their thoughts and actions, so far, that it will not permit the initiation of a candidate who is only temporarily in a place of confinement. In the year 1783, the Master of the Royal Military Lodge at Woolwich, No. 371, being confined, most probably for debt, in the King's Bench prison, at London, the Lodge, which was itinerant in its character and allowed to move from place to place with its regiment, adjourned, with its Warrant of Constitution, to the Master in prison, where several Freemasons were made.
The Grand Lodge, being informed of the circumstances, immediately summoned the Master and Wardens of the Lodge "to answer for their conduct in making Masons in the King's Bench prison," and, at the same time, adopted a resolution, affirming that "it is inconsistent with the principles of Masonry for any Freemasons' Lodge to be held, for the purposes of making, passing or raising Masons, in any prison or place of confinement" (see Constitutions, 1784, page 349).
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FREE AND ACCEPTED
The title Free and Accepted first occurs in the Roberts Print of 172 , which is headed The Old Constitutions belonging to the Ancient and Honorable Society of Free and Accepted Masons, and was adopted by Doctor Anderson in the second edition of the Book of Constitutions, published in 1738, the title of which is The New Book of Constitutions of the Antient and Honorable Fraternity of Free and Accepted Masons. In the first edition of 1723 the title was, The Constitutions of the Freemasons. The newer title continued to be used by the Grand Lodge of England, in which it was followed by those of Scotland and Ireland; and a majority of the Grand Lodges in the United States have adopted the same style, and call themselves Grand Lodges of Free and accepted Masons (see also Accepted). The old lectures formerly used in England give the following account of the origin of the term:
The Masons who were selected to build the Temple of Solomon mere declared Free and were exempted, together with their descendants from imposts duties, and taxes. They had also the privilege to bear arms. .At the destruction of the Temple by Nebuckadnezzar, the posterity of these Masons were carried into captivity with the ancient Jews. But the good-will of Cyrus gave them permission to erect a second Temple having set them at liberty for that purpose. It is from this epoch that we bear the name of Free and Accepted Masons.
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FREE AND ACCEPTED AMERICANS
Formed about 1863 as a native American patriotic secret society by William Patton, who became its first president, the first meeting being held in a stable, the second in Convention Hall, New York City.
By 1805 there were fifty-nine Temples of the organization in New York City and Kings County. Later on the society vas absorbed by the Know-nothing Party which flourished in the ten y ears preceding 1860, and did not survive that movement. Its first name was the American Brethren, afterwards the Wide Awakes, but most commonly the Templars Order of the American Star, Free and Accepted Americans. While the style adopted for the name might suggest that some of its founders were members of the Craft, we have no definite information relative to that point (see John Bach McMaster's History of the People of the United States from the Revolution to the Civil War, and the Builder, volume vu, 1921, page 303). The Know-nothing Party to which reference has been made, has also been called the American Party.
The National Council, at a meeting in Philadelphia, February '1, 1556, adopted a platform and a ritual. The latter is claimed to be the one given in American Politics, published in 1882 by Cooper and Fenton, Chicago. The purposes of the Party are stated in the second Article of the Constitution as follows:
The object of this organization shall be to protect every American citizen in the legal and proper exercise of all his civil and religious rights and privileges; to resist the insidious policy of the Church of Rome, and all foreign influence against our republican institutions in all lawful ways, to place in all offices of honor, trust or profit, in the gift of the people, or by appointment, none but native-born Protestant citizens, and to protect, preserve and uphold the Union of these States and the Constitution of the same.
The name, Know-nothing, came from that or an equivalent expression being used by the members in reply to questions concerning the organization.
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FREE AND ACCEPTED ARCHITECTS
See Bromwell, Henry P. H.
*
FREE-BORN
In all the old Constitutions, free birth is required as a requisite to the reception of Apprentices. Thus the Lansdowne Manuscript says, "That the prentice be able of birth, that is, free born." So it is in the Edinburgh Kilwinning, the York, the Antiquity, and in every other manuscript that has been so far discovered. And hence, the modern Constitutions framed in 1721 continue the regulation. After the abolition of slavery in the West Indies by the British Parliament, the Grand Lodge of England on September 1, 1847, changed the word free-born into free man, but the ancient landmark never has been removed in America.
The non-admission of a slave seems to have been founded upon the best of reasons; because, as Freemasonry involves a solemn contract, no one can legally bind himself to its performance who is not a free agent and the master of his own actions.
That the restriction is extended to those who were originally in a servile condition, but who may have since acquired their liberty, seems to depend on the principle that birth in a servile condition is accompanied by a degradation of mind and abasement of spirit which no subsequent disenthralment can so completely efface as to render the party qualified to perform his duties, as a Freemason, with that freedom, fervency, and zeal which are said to have distinguished our ancient Brethren. "Children)" says Brother George Oliver, "cannot inherit a free and noble spirit except they be born of a free woman."
The same usage existed in the spurious Freemasonry or the mysteries of the ancient world. There, no slave, or man born in slavery, could be initiated; because the prerequisites imperatively demanded that the candidate should not only be a man of irreproachable manners, but also a free-born denizen of the country in which the mysteries were celebrated.
Some Masonic writers have thought that in this regulation, in relation to free birth, some allusion is intended, both in the mysteries and in Freemasonry, to the relative conditions and characters of Isaac and Ishmael. The former—the accepted one, to whom the promise was given was the son of a free woman, and the latter, who was east forth to have his hand against every man and every man's hand against him, was the child of a slave.
Wherefore, we read that Sarah demanded of Abraham, "Cast out this bondwoman and her son; for the son of the bondwoman shall not be heir with my son." Doctor Oliver, in speaking of the grand festival with which Abraham celebrated the weaning of Isaac, says that he "had not paid the same compliment at the weaning of Ishmael, because he was the son of a bondwoman, and consequently could not be admitted to participate in the Freemasonry of his father, which could only be conferred on free men born of free women." The ancient Greeks were of the same opinion; for they used the word oovXo7rpe7reLa, or slave manners, to designate any great impropriety of behavior.
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FREEDOM
This is defined to be a state of exemption from the control or power of another. The doctrine that Freemasons should enjoy unrestrained liberty, and be free in all their thoughts and actions, is carried so far in Freemasonry, that the Grand Lodge of England will not permit the initiation of a candidate who is only temporarily deprived of his liberty, or even in a place of confinement (see Free). It is evident that the word freedom is used in Freemasonry in a symbolical or metaphysical sense differing from its ordinary signification. While, in the application of the words free-born and free man, we use them in their usual legal acceptation, we combine freedom with fervency and zeal as embodying a symbolic idea. Gadicke, under the word Freiheit, in his Freimaurer-Lexicon, thus defines the word:
A word that is often heard among us, but which is restricted to the same limitation as the freedom of social life. We have in our assemblies no freedom to act each one as he pleases. But we are, or should be, free from the dominion of passion, pride, prejudice, and all the other follies of human nature. We are free from the false delusion that we need not be obedient to the laws. Thus he makes it equivalent to integrity; a sense that Brother Mackey believed it to bear in the following article.
Fisk has some observations on the freeing of slaves among the Romans that are of value here. The liberating of slaves took place in several ways. The most usual mode seems to have been by will, freedom by bequest, manumissio per testamentum, on the death of the owner. There were two other modes; census, the listing, and per vindictam, by the freedom of the rod; the former was when the slave with the master's consent, was enrolled in the taxation list as a freedman; the latter was a formal and public enfranchisement before the praetor (a Roman magistrate). In the last case, the master appeared with his slave, before the tribunal, and commenced the ceremony by striking him with a rod, vindicta; thus treating him as still his slave. Then a protector or defender, assertor libertatis, steps forward and requests the liberation of the slave, by saying hunc hominem liberum esse aio, jure Quirtium; upon which the master, who has hitherto kept hold of the slave, lets him ao, e manu emil-'ebat, and gives up his right over him, with the words hunc hominem liberum esse volo. A declaration by the praetor, that the slave should be free, fonned the conclusion.
To confirm this manumission, the freed slave sometimes went to Terracina and received in the Temple of Feronia a cap or hat, pileus, as a badge of liberty.
The slave to be freed must not be under twenty years of age, nor the person setting him free under thirty (Classical Antiquities, N. W. Fisk, page 290).
Feronia was honored as the patroness of enfranchised slaves who ordinarily received their liberty in her Temple on Mount Soracte. Her name was derived by some from a town near the Temple, others credit it to the idea of her bringing relief, hero, to slaves, or to her productiveness of trees and fruits (Fisk, page 120; see also his allusions to sacrifices, page 237; jus Quiritium, page 286; and Raising, page 287).
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FREEDOM, FERVENCY, AND ZEAL
The earliest lectures in the eighteenth century designated freedom, fervency, and zeal as the qualities which should distinguish the servitude of Apprentices, and the same symbolism is found in the ritual of the present day. The word freedom is not here to be taken in its modern sense of liberty, but rather in its primitive Anglo-Saxon meaning of frankness, generosity, a generous willingness to work or perform one's duty (see Fervency and Zeal). so Chaucer uses it in the Prologue to the Canterbury Tales (line 43):
A knight there was. and that a worthy man,
That fro the time that he first began
To riden out, he loved chivalric
Trouthe and Honor, Freedom and Courtesy.
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FREE MAN
The Grand Lodge of England, on September 1, 1847, erased from their list of the qualifications of candidates the word free-born, and substituted for it free man. Their rule now reads, "every candidate must be a free man." This has been generally considered in other countries as the violation of a landmark.
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FREEMASON
One who has been initiated into the mysteries of the Fraternity of Freemasonry. Freemasons are so called to distinguish them from the Operative or Stone-Masons, who constituted an inferior class of workmen, and out of whom they sprang (see Stonemasons and Traveling Freemasons). The meaning of the epithet free, as applied to Mason, is given under the word Free. In the old lectures of the eighteenth century a Freemason was described as being "a freeman, born of a freewoman, brother to a king, fellow to a prince, or companion to a beggar, if a Mason," and by this was meant to indicate the universality of the Brotherhood.
The word Freemason was until recently divided into two words, sometimes with and sometimes without a hyphen; and we find in all the old books and manuscripts Free Mason or Free-Mason. But this usage has generally been abandoned by writers, and Freemason is usually spelled as one word. The old Constitutions constantly used the word Mason. E et the word was employed at a very early period in the parish registers of England, and by some writers. Thus, in the register of the parish of Astbury we find these items:
1685. Smallwood, Jos., fils Jos. Henshaw, Freemason bapt 3 die Nov. 1697. Jos. fil Jos. Henshaw, Freemason, buried 7 April.
But the most singular passage is one found in Cawdray's Treasurie of Similies, published in 1609, and which he copied from Bishop Coverdale's translation of Werdmuller's A Spiritual and most Precious Perle, which was published in 1550. It is as follows:
As the freemason heweth-the hard stones . . . even so God the Heavenly Free-Mason buildeth a Christian church.
But, in fact, the word was used at a much earlier period, and occurs, Steinbrenner says in his Origin and Early History of Masonry (page 110), for the first time in a statute passed in 1350, in the twenty-fifth year of Edward I, where the wages of a Master Freemason are fixed at 4 pence, and of other Masons at 3 pence. The original French text of the statute is "Mestre de franche-peer." "Here," says Steinbrenner, "the word Freemason evidently signifies a free-stone mason—one who works in free-stone, the French franche-peer, meaning franche-pierre, as distinguished from the rough masons who merely built walls of rough, unhown stone." This latter sort of workmen was that class called by the Scotch Masons cowans whom the Freemasons were forbidden to work with, whence we get the modern use of that word.
Ten years after, in 1360, we have a statute of Edward III, in which it is ordained that "every Mason shall finish his work, be it of free-stone or of rough-stone," where the French text of the statute is file franche-pere ou de grosse-pere." Thus it seems evident that the word free-mason was originally used in contradistinction to rough-rruson. The old Constituitions sometimes call these latter masons rough layers.
Doctor Murray's New English Dictionary has the following information under Freemason: The precise import with which the adjective was originally used in this designation has been much disputed Three views have been propounded.
1. The suggestion that free mason stands for free stone mason would appear unworthy of attention, but for the curious fact that the earliest known instances of any similar appellation are mestre mason de France peer, master mason of free stone. Act 25, Edward III, st. II, e. 3, A.D. 1350, and sculptores lapidum liberorum "carvers of free stones," alleged to occur in a document of 1217, Finders History of freemasonry (51), citing Wyatt Papworth; the coincidence, however, seems to be merely accidental.
2. The view most generally held is that free masons were those who were free of the masons' gild. Against this explanation many forcible objections have been brought by Mr. G. W. Speth, who suggests:
3. That the itinerant masons were called free because they claimed exemption from the control of the local gilds of the towns in which they temporarily settled.
4. Perhaps the best hypothesis is that the term refers to the mediaeval practice of emancipating skilled artisans, in order that they might be able to travel and render their services wherever any great building was in process of construction.
And then the following meanings are given:
1. A member of a certain class of skilled workers in stone, in the fourteenth and following centuries often mentioned in contradistinction to rough masons, ligiers, etc. They traveled from place to place, finding employment wherever important buildings were being erected, and had a system of secret signs and passwords by which a craftsman who had been admitted on giving evidence of competent skill could be recognized. In later use, sixteenth to eighteenth centuries, the term seems often to be used merely as a more complimentary synonym of mason, implying that the workman so designated belonged to a superior grade.
The earliest instance quoted of the word in this sense is in a list of the London City Companies of 1376.
2. A member of the Fraternity, called more fully Free and Accepted Masons. Early in the seventeenth century, the Societies of Freemasons, in sense 1, began to admit honorary members, not connected with the building trades, but supposed to be eminent for architectural w or antiquarian learning. These were caned Accepted Masons, though the term Free Masons was often loosely applied to them; and they were admitted to a knowledge of the secret signs, and instructed in the legendary history of the Craft, which had already begun to be developed. The distinction of being an Accepted Mason became a fashionable object of ambition, and before the end of the seventeenth century, the object of the Societies of Freemasons seems to have been chiefly social and convivial. In 1717, under the guidance of the physicist J. T. Desaguliers, four of these Societies or Lodges in London united to form a Grand Lodge, with a new constitution and ritual, and a system of secret signs, the object of the Society as reconstituted being mutual help and the promotion of brotherly feeling among its members.
Brother E. L. Hawkins observes that the earliest instance quoted of the word in this sense is in Ashmole's Diary under date of 1646 (see Ashmole).
Gould in his Concise History has this to say upon the subject:
Two curious coincidences have been connected with the above year, 1375.
The first, that the earliest copy of the manuscript constitutions, Remus Manuscript, refers to the customs of that period;
the second, that the formation p of a wonderful society, occasioned by a combination of masons undertaking not to work without an advance of wages, when summoned from several counties by writs of Edward III, to rebuild and enlarge Windsor Castle, under the direction of William of Wykeham, has been plated at the same date. It is said also that these masons agreed on certain signs and tokens by which they might know one another, and render mutual assistance against impressment- and further agreed not to work unless free and on their own terms. Hence they called themselves Free-Masons.
A child's book, Dives Pragmaticus, printed in the year 1563, and reproduced in 1910 by the owner, the John Rylands Library at Manchester, England, contains a list of occupations and line 97 is Al Free masons, Brike layers and dawbers of walled.
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FREE ASSOCIATION
For certain necessary and inescapable purposes men now and then, and of their own free will, form themselves into associations (fraternities, clubs, sodalities, societies), designed for a stated purpose, self-governed, and excluding control by persons not in its membership. Men cannot work, or have culture or civilization, or protect themselves as a people, or wage war when war becomes a duty, or have schools, or sciences, or arts, or any freedom of thought or speech or publication, or any means of information, if they cannot form free associations; to do 60 belongs so essentially to the nature of man and to the world that even such terms as rights and privileges are not sufficiently strong to describe the sheer, absolute need for free associations; which are to be classed with food, clothing, shelter in the order of needs. To strike at free associations is to strike at man himself; to make them impossible is to make it impossible for him to live.
When tyrannies or despotisms arise, when some man or group or class, sets out to subjugate men, to render them impotent, to turn them into helots, serfs, or slaves, it is against the right of free association that they invariably aim their first blow, and it matters not whether the tyranny be in politics, work, war, religion, or society. The struggle of the rank and file of ordinary men to resist, to overthrow those groups or classes or churches or other organizations which have countless times attempted to subjugate them is one of the two or three keys to world history; the many struggles taken together, and considered as one, is what Heinie meant by "the warfare for humanity." World War I, waged against the ruling class in Germany which was out "to conquer and rule" other peoples, and World War II against an international group which called itself variously Fascists, Nazis, Falangists, etc., who undertook to divide the whole of Europe between a small "master class" and populations of slaves, were only the two most recent of the battles in that warfare. It was profoundly significant that when the Vichy government ordered free associations destroyed and appealed to organized workmen of each and every type to join a "totalitarian" government, the French Underground issued in May, 1941, a manifesto in which it declared that no body of citizens would co-operate with the regime until it acknowledged the principle "of freedom of association."
In the famous chapters on the Roman Collegia in his History of Freemasonry (Vol. II) Bro. Albert G. Mackey properly describes the collegia as genuine forms of free association, but when he comes to the suspension or repression of them by the late emperors was too willing to take the emperors' word for it that a number of the collegia were illicita, or unlawful. Much has been learned by archeologists since l)r. Mackey wrote those pages, enough to make it clear that the collegia illicita were not (except for a few) engaged in conspiracies, etc., but only fought for enough wages to live on, and for their rights before the law, etc. The Imperial gangsters at Rome gave the emperors' crown to a succession of cut-throats of the same type, Mussolini and Hitler who made use of the collegia (associations of workmen) as a means of robbing workmen of almost everything they earned.
After Charlemagne in 800 set up the new and continental, so-called Holy Roman Empire it took up where the old Empire had left off; as soon as Charlemagne himself died his successors began the old war against free associations; and scholae, covines, sodalities, assemblies, etc., were forbidden. (The Mason gilds escaped the worst restrictions because of the nature of their work, especially the Freemasons who worked in Gothic, because they either had to have a large measure of liberty or they could neither move about when needed nor practice their art. They may not have called themselves Free Masons for that reason, but they were always conscious of being freer than other Craftsmen and made much of the fact. Their use or not of the name is not important.)
The Roman Catholic Church issued its first Bull of Excommunication against Freemasonry in 1738, in an absurdly worded and ambiguous document signed by Clement XII, then in his dotage. But the Vatican had always been opposed to the Fraternity, and had been so because it was a free association, a society the priests could not control; it was then, as now, opposed to free association on principle.
This opposition was announced in no uncertain terms as early as 1326 when the Council of Avignon issued a statute of excommunication "Concerning the Societies, Unions and Confederacies called Confraternities, which are to be utterly extirpated or wiped out." The Freemasons were included under this ban, and the same ban was readapted and reinforced in the 1860's, and again by the Arch Anti-Mason, Pope Leo XIII, in the 1880's. According to the Council of Avignon nobody was to meet "under the name of a fraternity," nor wear "a similar dress with certain curious signs or marks," etc.
England in that same period was in reality a trifle more free than France, a little more humane, but was not so in theory. In 1305 Henry IV forbade workmen if to hold combinations (assemblies, general organizations) outside gild limits; Masons living in the same town could meet, but they could not meet with Masons from other towns. In 1361 Edward III declared "null and void all alliances and covines of Masons and carpenters." In 1425 Henry VI forbade Masons to hold any longer "yearly congregations and confederacies made in their general chapiters (sic) assembled."
In his History Gould argues against the supposition that Masons ever held assemblies, but it may be supposed that Henry VI, living at the time, must have been better informed. In 1467 the Crown issued an edict that the tilers (a branch of men in the building trade; roofers) of Worcester were to "sett no parliament among them."
AUTHOR'S NOTE- As early as 1917 the writer took the world that Freemasonry belongs under that general head of social organization which for some 1200 years has been called "free associations" and he has ever since held that this fact is the corner-stone of Masonic sociology, and that it is the starting-point for any history of the Fraternity. In Freemasonry and Roman Catholicism, written in 1943 and published in 1944, intended to be a fair, non-controversial essay on a difficult theme, he took the same ground, and stated that because the Roman papal system has always been a totalitarian dictatorship it would be compelled by the logic of its own organization to seek to destroy free associations, and that this would have to include Freemasonry.
Between those two dates he had opportunity to study Professor Gierke's work on Medieval law along with Professor Maitland's notes and commentaries on it, and in addition a number of other works in the same field of Medieval law and custom which belong to the Gierke constellation including one history of Medieval agricultural law. Professor Gierke had no thesis to prove, nor was he a crusader for any cause, his sole purpose was to bring under review the forms of Medieval Law in one century and country after another. He found that Medieval law was essentially corporative law, and that where modern law is aimed at the individual man Medieval law was aimed at an incorporated body of men hence the importance of charters, warrants, articles of incorporation in the Medieval period. Among the species of corporative bodies were the free associations.
Since writing the brief article to which this note is a pendant, the writer has belatedly secured once again after having been without it for years a copy of the 1908 edition of The Gilds and Companies of London, by George Unwin; Methuen & Co.; London. It is apropos in the present connection because on page 11 Mr. Unwin unequivocally states that in free associations is the principle of progress which most distinguishes western civilization and under the head of free associations he brings the craft and trade gilds, including the gilds, fraternities and societies of Masons. "The greatest body of essential truth yet attained in this field is to be found in the great work of Professor Gierke, of Berlin, on the development of free association, with the ideas of which Professor Maitland has done so much to make us familiar . . . free fellowship has been the most vitally essential element in social and political progress since the fall of the Roman Empire."
This fact explains many things: it explains why the Roman Church has since 1738 conducted an active crusade, at an expense of millions of dollars and the work of thousands of its employees and partisans, to destroy Freemasonry; why Mussolini and Hitler both sought to destroy Freemasonry and for the same reason as the Popes namely, that it is the witness to, and bearer of the principle of free association; nearer home, it explains why our own Masonic historians, such of them as have failed w to begin with the fact that Freemasonry is in essence a free association, have been led off into so many bogs or morasses of confusion; and why the earliest Lodges set so much store on their first charters or warrants. H.L.H.
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FREEMASON, THE WORD
The word "free mason" first came into use in the Fourteenth Century; from then until the Eighteenth Century it appears in many forms, and oftentimes as a synonym for other names and in more than one form: mason, builder, architect, free mason, freemason, free stone mason, etc. In the first period of Masonic scholarship it was assumed that Operative Masons had used the word in one form, with one meaning; many investigators at tempted to discover that original meaning. It was also assumed that the origin of the word would throw light on the origin of the Fraternity. At the present time scholars have abandoned the first assumption, and they rely very little on the origin of the word to explain the origin of Freemasonry. The data collected from many periods and places indicate that the word must have had a number of origins, and that a Crafts man who might be called a Freemason in one place would not be called one in another. The following are only a partial list of the origins, or possible origins, of the word:
1. A worker in free-stone. Much quarry stone used in walls, foundations, and single buildings was unequal in hardness, coarse grained, and had either a crooked grain or a grain which ran one way, like the grain in a pine board. The stone used for carving had no grain, or a very fine grain, and could be cut in any direction without splitting or chipping, and would take a flat surface and a polish. It was called free-stone.
2. Local masons were by gild custom and civil law confined to their own parishes—at least, under usual and normal circumstances. The cathedral and church building Masons were not thus restricted, but were free to move about. (An ordinary workman coming into a parish from outside, even from the next parish, was a "foreigner" and in the towns more than one street riot broke out over these outsiders.)
3. An apprentice was bonded to his master for a period of years. This was called his indenture, at the end of hie term he was examined, and then set free. Any master Mason was in this sense a free Mason.
4. Once a town received a Charter of its own it virtually became an independent government; and in the course of time each resident of such a town became a citizen Outside the walls was serfdom, inside was freedom from serfdom. This freedom belonged to the "liberties" of the town. The member of a Mason Company in such a town would be a citizen and therefore free, whereas a mason outside the walls would not be free. (In many cities strangers coming in to reside in a town might receive this freedom at the end of one year and a day.)
5. It was once supposed that the Popes had granted the Mason Fraternity a charter to travel about at will unrestricted by local parish rules. Since no record of any such charter has ever been found the theory is abandoned yet from the Fabric Rolls (or day-by-day book-keeping records) of a number of cathedrals and abbeys it is evident that the Freemasons working on the building kept themselves separate from the local workmen who worked with them, and did so under an ecclesiastical authority of some sort.
6. There is no proof for the existence of a separate fraternity of traveling, or (in one sense of the word) journeymen Masons (unless the Compagnonage was one) but it is certain that Masons, singly or in groups, often went about from one country to another. They were free to travel in search of work.
7. Civil and ecclesiastical authorities both, and for centuries, used the method of impressment ("the press gang") not only to recruit sailors and soldiers but also to recruit workmen. There are a few instances of the impressment of Masons, but not many; the over-all impression of the data is that the Freemasons were considered a special class of craftsmen, and free from many of the restrictions and indignities which often drove other working men to desperation and revolt.
8. There is a psychological and ethical (or the two combined) type of free man—one who is free from ignorance, free from superstition, free from servility, and therefore a free man, meeting others as equals, even when belonging technically to one of the so-called lower orders It is likely that it was this freedom which the Freemasons felt and prized more deeply than any other.
It may be that it was some one of these meanings of the word "Freemason" which found its way into those Old Constitutions, called the Old Charges, which possessed warranting authority for the Lodges which set up the present Fraternity of Speculative Freemasonry; it may be that a confluence of a number of different meanings found their way into usage; in any event the word had then, as it continues to have, a multiordinal, or many-sided, meaning.
It is possible that future research will be able to define the original meaning of "Freemason" with rigorous correctness; if it does, Masons can then know who were Freemasons among Medieval builders and who were not. But even if that discovery were made, it would not solve the problem of the origin of Speculative Freemasonry. The Speculative Fraternity did not grow up everywhere as an inevitable outcome of the "evolution" of Medieval architecture; had that been true there would have come into existence a general Speculative Fraternity in Britain and in every European country as well, whereas it is of record that the Speculative Fraternity came into existence in England only, and very probably in one place, and very likely in the Fourteenth Century; not from Freemasons at large, but from one group of Freemasons in particular. The founders of the Fraternity were Freemasons; but not all Freemasons were founders of the Fraternity. (See page 378.)
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FREEMASONRY, DEFINITION OF
A Masonic Lodge represents a body of workmen in which each member has a station or place corresponding to his task or function. Its chief officer is a Master Workman charged with responsibility to see that the members work peaceably and harmoniously as a unit at the task for which he lays the design upon his Tracing Board; his principal assisting officer is responsible for seeing that each man begins and ends on time and is at work in the place where he belongs.
The body of potential workmen from whom new members may be drawn is called the quarries; a man who comes from them is called a Petitioner, and he must be qualified to take his place among the body of workmen or he is not admitted. Immediately he is accepted he becomes an Apprentice, which means he is to be trained, is to become a learner of a craft, or form of work; and he is said to be seeking light, which means intelligence and knowledge for the work he is to do.
At the beginning he is given a learner's tools; later he will receive tools for more advanced skill; and at the end will receive the use of all of them; they are working tools. He is clothed in a workman's apron; it is his livery, or badge, and he is warned against ever feeling shame while wearing it. These craftsmen are to act as one man, as men do when working together in the same place. They have traditions which concern men who worked on buildings, represented by a Temple, and of a Master of Workmen, who superintended the building of that Temple; but it is made clear that the work of builders is only a specimen of each and every form of work—it is symbolic. Their rules and regulations concern their hours, wages, their duty to their officers or overseers, and their discipline.
The Freemasons of the Middle Ages who formed the first of these Lodges lived in a society in which not only institutions and rulers but the great majority of men and women were opposed to the teachings of Masonic Lodges, and were ready to destroy them by force and violence. The fundamental doctrine of the Church was that work as a curse which had been pronounced on Adam's descendants as a supernatural and never-ceasing penalty for his disobedience. The great reward of a good life was to be released by death from toil, and entrance into "an everlasting rest"where men have ceased from their labors and go about in a never-ending worklessness. The two Patron Saints of a man in work are his wife and family, but the head of the Church had no wife, children or home.
The only truly holy man was a celibate priest who did no cork, or monks and nuns who kept long vigils of idleness, or friars who went about the roads begging for food and lodging. The King and his nobles and the aristocracy by which they were surrounded looked down upon work as something beneath them; and next below them came the rich merchants. From that level downward men and women belonged to the lower classes because they were working men and women in a descending series, skilled workmen, mechanics laborers, peasants, villains, serfs, cotters, slaves. These men and women of the lower classes were paid a few cents per day; had no voice or vote in Church or State; could hold no high office in army or government received no education could not even read and write, could not marry above their class; could own almost no property; were compelled by law to dress according to their station; could be impressed with force by the sheriffs to labor on public works or to fight in the army or navy. When the new colonies were opened up they were herded into small ships like cattle and sent without tools, implements, weapons, doctors, or teachers to live in the wilderness among savages.
To prevent their rebellion some 200 small felonies were made punishable by death—one man was hanged, burned, and quartered because he had dared to translate the Bible into the language used by the common people These disgraces, indignities, injustices, and atrocities were heaped upon them with a terrible inhumanity s century after century not because they were criminals, traitors, or recusants but because they were neither lords nor landlords but w ere working men. There were better times and worse; there were occasions when a man was honored for work that he had done; once in a thousand times a man might marry above or below his class; but these were nothing but sporadic exceptions, and did not avail to overthrow the barbaric feudalism, the cardinal principle of which was that a lord on and not only the land but the men who worked on it, and since he owned the men he owned the products of their work. The Medieval Freemasons found out the truth about work; they found it out for themselves, and from the work they themselves were doing, which was unlike the work being done by any other craftsmen. They did not write that truth down in books or cast it in the form of a creed, and Masons have never done so since, nevertheless it is possible to set it down in a series of statements in the language of today:
1. To work is to produce, grow, or make something without which men and women cannot continue to live; to have such things a man must make use of himself as the means to produce them. Since this is true he is neither an animal nor a machine; to take away from him by force. fraud or chicane, directly or indirectly, the products of his work, is to do violence not to things but to the man himself, and hence is absolute injustice.
2. The need men and women have for countless products, services, and commodities is not a temporary one, nor is it accidental, but continues to be true for ever. For this reason work is neither a curse nor an inconveniences but is a fact about the nature of man and the world, and is so eternally.
3. Since this is true, work is one of the attributes of God. It is for this reason that He is named Sovereign Grand Architect of the Universe.
4. Man is by nature a worker. It is only in his work that a man finds himself, his fulfillment and satisfaction; idlers and parasites become less than men, are ex-men. This truth is plain to any observer; when a man ceases or refuses to work an inner deterioration begins, first in his character, later in his mind, and in the end his body undergoes a process of degeneration; and while this process of disintegration goes forward he knows himself to be under contempt.
5. To be able to carry on his work a man must have Knowledge and intelligence which means education; he must be free to think because work calls for reasoning and understanding; he must one free to speak, because the larger part of the world's work is done by numbers of men working together and therefore they must have information from each other; they must one free to enter or to leave any form of work because always some things are completed and new things must be done, to work in continuous association with each other establishes them in a fraternalism a fact so clearly seen by Freemasonry that often it is said of men in the same trade or art that "they have a freemasonry among themselves," and it is this which is meant by morale or es t de corps.
There can be no chasms of class distinction among workers because they must meet upon the level in order to co-operate with each other. If a man be not honorable, upright, and truthful it is not he alone who suffers from his failure; his fellows suffer also, they and the work together. If work fails the world fails, and workers and non-workers go down in catastrophe together. no church or government is more stupid than one which denies men the liberty to work, or interferes with the liberties required by work.
The best thought of men about the matters which belong to religion are embodied in the great organized Sligions such as Christianity, Judaism, hiohammedanism, Buddhism, Confucianism, etc., and by them is stated in their creeds which in turn are amplified and expounded and taught by their theologies. It is an astounding fact that thus far no theology has ether embodied in its creed any doctrines about work.
Men's best thought about their way of life in the world is embodied in the great philosophies, of which the first were founded by Greek thinkers of about 600 B.C. Although a philosopher may endeavor to incorporate the whole world in his system it is always found in the end that his philosophy consists of the elaboration or exposition or exploration of some one idea or truth or fact. The philosophy of Plato concerns itself with ideas. Aristotle w as the philosopher of logic. Roman Stoicism was an elaboration of the theory that there are laws of nature, and that these are the laws of man. Descartes declared that everything is a dualism of matter and mind; Spinoza declared that there is no dualism and only one Reality, but that this Reality manifests itself in the two modes of matter and mind. Kant was an epistemologist, concerned with the nature of knowledge. Haeckel was a materialist. Bergson examined and elaborated the fact of change, or flux, or motion. There is scarcely an idea or truth capable of being thought which has not been seized upon, expanded and expounded, and made into a system of philosophy by some thinker. And yet, and again it is an astounding fact, no Scnoum system of philosophy has eater been devoted to tile subject of work! William James and John Dewey have come closest to it but neither of them took work itself as his subject matter but only used it as if it were a means to an end. Thomas Carlyle saw the need for a philosophy of work, and cried out for some man to do it, but did not produce it himself.
When the first Freemasons found out for them8elves the truth about work and though they did not embody it in creeds or books but left it, as it w ere, to speak for itself, and only among themselves, it w as a far greater achievement than the discovery and perfection of Gothic cathedrals. They won a place for themselves among history's great way-showers, thinkers, philosophers, prophets. Nor is it any wonder that in those days of feudalism they kept it among themselves, in their tiled rooms, behind locked doors, and pledged every candidate to hold inviolate the privacy of his Lodge. What they thought and taught and knew was not a heresy, theological or philosophical, but it differed so radically from the whole mass and drive of the beliefs and practices of the feudalism around them that they saw no need to disturb outsiders by what those outsiders could not have understood; and not being fanatics, and having intelligence as well as character, they saw no need to expose themselves to the fury of the priests or the barbaric brutalities of the lords.
It is not all-important to Freemasons that the founders of their Fraternity were builders, or even great builders; the all-important fact is that they were great thinkers, and found out for themselves a set of truths which no men had found or seen before, and which, even now, only a few are beginning to see; there would be neither point nor purpose for adult men to carry on, month after month, a mere routine repetition of builder customs. The soul of Freemasonry as well as its purpose in the world. is the set of truths which they found. The fact that those truths are not codified, or printed, or tabulated but are embodied in rites and symbols and Lodge practices does not matter; they are there, and while a man is being made a Mason they stamp themselves upon his mind. It is because they are there that after a man has worn off the first strangeness of being a member of a Lodge and begins to learn for himself what Freemasonry is and what its history has been, there begins to grow in him a zeal and an enthusiasm for it. H. L. H.
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FRENCH PRISONERS' LODGES
The short paragraph on page 382 was based on French Prisoners' Lodges, by J. T. Thorp; Leicester, England; 1900. Bro. Thorp was one of those great and good men who would have been a Mason in mind and spirit had he never united with the Fraternity; and in addition belonged to that rare brotherhood of good and great men whose hearts are as large and as active as their intellects—such a one as, in the Middle Ages, men had described as "humane scholars." Once he discovered that the French Prisoners' Lodges had existed, with infinite toil he hunted out meager details about twenty-six of them, and published a book about them. But it n as not in him to stop short; he made the subject his own, kept it before him until he died; and, assisted by Bros. Crowe, Sitwell, and Wonnacott, he accumulated so much material that at the time of his death in 1932 he had a new and much larger book prepared and ready to print. In 1935 it was brought out by the Lodge of Research, Leicester, No. 2429; Freemasons' Hall; Leicester; cloth; illustrated; 304 pages; with Introduction by Lionel Vibert.
Bro. Thorp was made a Mason in John of Gaunt Lodge, No. 523, in 1870; was its Master in 1875, and in 1882. He was made a full member of Quatuor Coronati Lodge of Research, No. 2076, in 1900; was Master in 1909. He had already founded Leieester Lodge of Research in 1892, and was its first Master. "This Lodge," writes Bro. Vibert, "commenced the issue of Transactions at once, and up to his [Thorp's] death he was the Editor of them .... He was closely associated with that great student, the late Bro. Hughan, who made him his literary executor.... Besides several histories of Lodges which he published as independent works, he issued, in connection with the Lodge of Researeh, an important series of reprints of scarce Masonic works .... In 1898 he became the possessor of the version of the Old Charges that bears his name: a full account and transcript will be found at A.Q.C.; XI, 205."
Great Britain and France were almost continuously at war from 1740 to 1815. During the period called the Seven Years War the average number of French prisoners of war in England averaged 18,800; in 1763 it was about 40,000. Between 1803 and 1814 some 122,000 army and navy prisoners were interned, most of them at eight centers. Since Napoleon grabbed conscripts wherever he could lay hands on them between 1810 and 1815, sometimes emptying them out of prisons, there were among the prisoners interned in England men of a dozen nationalities; and since Napoleon remitted no money for their care (Great Britain remitted fifty cents a day for feeding its own men in France), the suffering of the men, more than 200,000 of them between 1740 and 1814, was beyond description. In some centers they were paroled; they even went into trades and secured permanent positions; in other places they were locked up in verminous barracks; the worst fate was for the thousands who were crowded into old prison hulks. There were 34 of these ships. Thorp says: "The mortality on these hulks was abnormally high."
"During the period with which these records deal— 1756 to 1814 Freemasonry was as popular in the French as it was in the British army . . . The members of the British Craft seem to have done their utmost to alleviate the distress of these French Brethren." (Note. If any Mason has the impression that the Mystic Tie is only a pious sentiment, good in intention, but of no great reality, or that the G.H.S.D. can be made in vain, he can disabuse himself of the illusion by reading Thorp's book; wherein, amid a somber blackness of misery almost too horrible to contemplate, the Craft moved with its Great Lights; and on more than one prison hulk it was the only star in a black night; the same Mason can be further disillusioned if he will read the history of a hundred or so army Lodges of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century. There are hundreds of instances on record; many as they are, they are a minute fraction of the unrecorded instances which occurred. The harder the Tie was stretched, and certainly it never was so tightly stretched as on those prison hulks, the stronger it became—perhaps it is for that very reason that it is called a Mystic Tie!)
"That the Freemasons amongst the prisoners on parole were received as visitors at Masonic meetings in England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales, the minutes of Lodges at Leicester, Winchester, Bandon, Selkirk, Kelso, Hawick, Melrose, Redruth and other towns amply testify, and in some cases there is no doubt they were initiated in, or became joining members of these Local Lodges. In four cases in England, viz., at Ashby-de-la-Zouch, Chesterfield, Leek, and Northampton, the French Brethren obtained a permit to hold their Lodges from the Earl of Moira, the Acting Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of England ...." (Page 29.)
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FRENCH REVOLUTION, MASONRY AND
When French Fascists began the concerted movement to overthrow the French Republic they organized a bureau, a set of bureaus in reality, to make war on Freemasonry because they believed the Lodges, centers of Protestantism and supporters of free public schools, to be one of the Republic's strongest supports. In doing so they employed in the 1920's one Bernard Fa to write and publish a number of books which would undermine Freemasonry not by a direct attack but under the disguise of a fair and good-humored series of historical and biographical studies. Mr. Fay came to the United States to write a biography of Benjamin Franklin. In his capacity as a friendly visiting French scholar he visited the Grand Lodge Library of New York, in New York City, where he asked the courtesy of making use of it in order, he said, to incorporate some pages on Franklin as a Mason, for, he said, he believed that Franklin's Masonry had been a prime influence in his career, etc.
The courtesy was granted and the facilities of the Library staff were put at his disposal. But when the biography appeared (it sold widely) it transpired that Mr. Fay had not sought out the data on Franklin's Masonry to incorporate them truthfully in his book but in order to twist and subtly distort them. There is scarcely a true statement in his pages; he even states that Franklin set out to "build up a Masonic press" in the Colonies in order to undermine the government and to throw dictation into the hands of the Masons! Had this been true the fifty or sixty Masons in Philadelphia would have been more than busy l The thing is a piece of mendacity, and it was unfortunate that the Fraternity had no means to make known that fact to the publishers and to the book reviewers.
Mr. Fay brought his contemptible purpose into the light with another book, also published by an American firm, in 1935, under the title of Revolution and Freemasonry. The Fraternity cannot have the right nor could it have the desire to dictate to American publishers what they may or may not publish, but again it was unfortunate that no responsible Masonic agency did not make clear to the general public what a set of lies were incorporated in that book, and did not protest to the American publisher for sponsoring a volume in which the facts about Freemasonry were distorted, and with statements fabricated out of nothing. Other books against the Fraternity had met with no resentment because they had been written at least with sincerity, and were untrue only because of ignorance; the Fa books were of another species, because he was too well-informed not to know how false to facts his statements were.
The two books taken together were American Masonry's first experience of an anti-Masonic technique which had been a employed in Europe since the 1890's—a bold, open t assertion of lies and false accusations. The French Revolution was an explosion of resentment by a whole people against an inhuman regime did not begin anywhere in particular; was not conspired or engineered. Except for a few, the French people had then never even heard of Freemasonry because the Lodges were small and there were few of them. Moreover there were as many Masons among the Royalist parties as among the Revolutionary leaders. The general popularity of the Craft which burst out so suddenly about 1800 was one of the 6SUltsS not one of the causes, of the Revolution. (Revolution and Freemasonry, by Bernard Fay; Boston; Little, Brown & Co.; 1935. After the fall of France in 1940 a Bernard Fay was assigned to turn into the Petain headquarters at Vichy and the German offices in Paris a list of the names and addresses of Masons throughout France, in order that they should be 'purged"; at present writing it is not certain that this was the same Bernard Fay who came to America to traduce a Fraternity to which the President belonged, but both the circumstances and reports from abroad indicate that it was. In a list of enemies published by the French underground who were nuned for assassination published in Life Magazine his name stood third in a list of ten. See also The t Secret Societies and Subversive Movements, by Nesta Webster.)
Volume VIII of the Cambridge Modern History consists of a history of the French Revolution. The sifted and tested findings of thousands of historians and specialists who for a century and a half had been at work accumulating data were either represented or incorporated which means that the volume was supported by the whole body of European, British, and American scholarship and at the same time was sponsored by a University which ranks above others in the field of historical research. Against a history of that comprehensive authority a man like Mr. Fay or a woman like Mrs. Webster have no weight.
The Cambridge volume contains more words than ten large books of ordinary size and is a solid mass of facts; yet in it are only three references to Masonry and the Revolution; of these, two are items without significance; the third is on page 772, in Chapter XXV: "The Masonic movement had challenged traditional ideas." Had the whole body of historical scholarship found that the Revolution had been a Masonic conspiracy and had been engineered and led by the Fraternity, Freemasonry would have been the subject-in-chief of the whole volume.
When Pope Leo in 1894 set up his Church's Anti Masonic Bureau, and when Fascists of Italy, France, Germany, Poland, Hungary, Belgium, and Spain made the obliteration of Freemasonry one of the first undertakings on their agenda, they adopted the technique of, first, attacking the personal reputation of individual Masonic leaders; second, of publishing defamatory accusations which were to be made of lies as large as possible and stated as brazenly as possible on the presupposition that the majority of readers would be too little informed about the Fraternity to resist an cut-in-the-open mendacity.
That technique proved in its results to be so effectual in Europe that it is almost certain to be adopted by Anti-Masons in America. As regards any action taken for or against the French Revolution by Regular and Duly-constituted Lodges of English-speaking Freemasonry there is no room for guesswork or surmise (as was explained to Mr. Fay in person when he was in New York) because a detailed, complete record of evidence is available to any historian. The present writer read for the period 1775-1815 the histories and Minute books of some 200 British and American Lodges with this subject in view and found that British Lodges almost never so much as mentioned the Revolution except in some two or three instances where something was done "with reference to the troubles in France."
The British government was at war with France from 1801 to the Battle of Waterloo; Lodges without exception continued loyal to their Government, and offices in Grand Lodge and Provincial Grand Lodges were occupied by members of the Royal Family.
The only action of any kind taken by any British Lodges was to vote relief to French prisoners kept in England, a Red Cross type of relief action and without political significance. In American Lodges the Revolution was even more completely ignored. The only exception of importance is page 37 of One Hundred and Seventy-five Years of Masonic History of Lodge No. 2 (1758-1933) by Percival H. Granger; Philadelphia; 1933; "We are told that the year 1793 was a portentous one." The French emigres arrived in Philadelphia in large numbers about this time and exerted a baneful influence upon our whole social and political economy, for a time even threatening the stability of our government and attempting to impeach and overthrow President Washington. The first arrivals were fugitive royalists, and then later were fugitives from San Domingo, and still later, Genet, the representative of the new French Republic, and his followers. The latter were opposed to religious services, and during the yellow fever epidemic of 1793 succeeded in closing all but twelve churches in Philadelphia. Their agitation, however, had little effect upon the Lodges. Our Revolutionary War had won us independence from Great Britain but had up to then left undisturbed the social institutions which had been imported from Great Britain; the War had not revolutionized American soaety and was not to do so in effect until the Presidency of Andrew Jackson; the French Revolutionists through Genet came to start a revolution here like the revolution in France. The French counterrevolutionists, led by the Royalists and the Roman hierarchy, wealthy and powerful, worked from centers outside of France to destroy the new Republic in America in order to discredit the Revolution in France. Between the two, Frenchmen in general aroused so much resentment and hatred of both parties that the friendliness Americans had felt for France in 1781 gave way to hatred for everything French, and by 1825 had led to that complete ignoring of France and indifference to everything "Frenchified" that was to continue until after 1900.
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FREIMAURER
German for Freemason. Mauer means a way, and mauern, to build a way. Hence, literally, freimaurer is a builder of ways, who is free of his gild, from the fact that the building of walls was the first occupation of masons.
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FREIMAUREREI
German for Freemasonry
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FRElMAURERISCHE WELTGESCHAEFTSSTELLE, DIE
See International Bureau for Masonic Affairs
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FREIMAURER, VEREIN DEUTSCHER
See Union of German Freemasons
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FRENCH
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FRENCH, BENJAMIN BROWN
A distinguished Freemason of the United States, who was born at Chester, in New Hampshire, September 4, 1800, and died at the City of Washington, where he had long resided, on August 12, 1870. He was initiated into Freemasonry in 1825, and during his whole life took an active interest in the affairs of the Fraternity.
He served for many years AS General Grand Secretary of the General Grand Chapter, and Grand Recorder of the Grand Encampment of the United States. In 1846, soon after his arrival in Washington, he was elected Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of the District, a position which he repeatedly occupied. In 1859, he WAS elected Grand Master of the Templars of the United States, a distinguished position which he held for six years, having been reelected in 1862. His administration, during a period of much excitement in the country, WAS marked by great firmness, mingled with a spirit of conciliation. He was also a prominent member of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite, and at the time of his death was the Lieutenant Grand Commander of the Supreme Council for the Southern Jurisdiction of the United States.
Brother French was possessed of much intellectual ability, and contributed no small share of his studies to the literature of Freemasonry. His writings, which have not yet been collected, were numerous, and consisted of Masonic odes, many of them marked with the true poetic spirit, eloquent addresses on various public occasions, learned dissertations on Masonic law, and didactic essays, which were published at the time in various periodicals. His decisions on Templar Law have always been esteemed of great value.
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FRENCH GUIANA
See Cayenne
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FRENCH GUINEA
The capital of this district, Snaky, on the west coast of Africa, has one Lodge, No. 468, which is controlled by the Grand Lodge of France, since 1916, and is named L'Etoile de Guinée, meaning the Star of Guinea.
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FRENCH INDO CHINA
See Indo-China, French, also Cochin China
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FRENCH PRISONERS LODGES
Between 1740 and 1815, almost constant warfare between France and Britain resulted in a large number of French prisoners of war, who, from 1759 onwards, established Masonic Lodges, working without Warrant or authority. Freemasonry was exceedingly popular with the army of France and, while some French officers visited and joined the local Lodges in England where they were being held, most of them belonged to these French Prisoners' Lodges conducted by themselves (see French Prisoners' Lodges, an account of twenty six Lodges established by them in England and elsewhere, John T. Thorp, 1900, Leicester, England).
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FRENCH RITE
The French term is Rite Francais ou Moderne. The French or Modern Rite is one of the three principal Rites of Freemasonry. It consists of seven Degrees, three symbolic and four higher, namely,
1. Apprentice
2. Fellow Craft
3. Master
4. Elect
5. Scotch Master
6. Knight of the East
7. Rose Croix
This Rite is practiced in France, in Brazil, and in Louisiana. It was founded in 1786 by the Grand Orient of France, who, unwilling to destroy entirely the advanced Degrees which were then practiced by the different Rites, and yet anxious to reduce them to a smaller number and to greater simplicity, extracted these Degrees out of the Rite of Perfection, making some few slight modifications. Most of the authors who have treated of this Rite have given to its symbolism an entirely astronomical meaning. Among these writers, we may refer to Ragon, in his Cours Philosophiquc, as probably the most scientific..
Ragon, in his Tuileur Géneral, meaning Handbook to the Degrees (page 51 ), says that the four Degrees of the French Rite, which were elaborated to take the place of the thirty Degrees of the Scottish Rite, have for their basis the four physical proofs to which the recipiendary submits in the First Degree. And that the symbolism further represents the sun in its annual progress through the four seasons. Thus, the Elect Degree represents the element of Earth and the season of Springs the Scottish Master represents Air and the Summer; the Knight of the East represents Water and Autumn; and the Rose Croix represents Fire; but he does not claim that it is consecrated to Winter, although that would be the natural conclusion.
The original Rose Croix was an eminently Christian Degree, which, being found inconvenient, was in 1860 substituted by the Philosophic Rose Croix, which now Id forms the summit of the French Rite.
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FRERES PONTIFES
See Bridge Builders of the fiddle Ages
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FREY or FREIA
Grimme, in his Deutsche Mythology (pages 191, 279), traces the name Freia through the ancient Teutonic dialects and explains it to signify plenty and beauty (see Thorpe, Northern Mythology, volume i, pages 197-8, for further information). The column or pillar set apart to the goddess Frey in the temple of Upsala became the pillar of beauty or plenteousness.
Brother Fort says, in his Antiquities (chapter ''7) the three divinities in the Norse temple at Upsala, in Denmark, Odin, Thor, and Frey, were typical supports of the universe Wisdom, Strength, and Beauty—or the three of the ten columns in the Hebrew Sephiroth, in the Jewish philosophy, designated as Sapientia, Pulchritudo, and Fundamentum, which, like the three columns existing in a Lodge of Freemasons, symbolize the moralistic pillars of the world, represented by the Lodge itself. An additional significant fact confronts us at this point: the column of Beauty or Plenty, originally emblematic of Frey, is situated in the south of the Lodge. Masonic symbol—sheaf of grain—always suspended above that station, denoted plenteousness. Freia may also be comparatively described as the Scandinavian Isis, the principal goddess of Egyptian mythology.
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FRIENDLY SOCIETIES
Societies first established toward the end of the eighteenth century, in England, for the relief of mechanics, laborers, and other persons who derived their support from their daily toil. By the weekly payment of a stipulated sum, the members secured support, and assistance from the society when sick, and payment of the expenses of burial when they died. These societies gave origin to the Odd Fellows and other similar associations, but they have no relation whatever to Freemasonry.
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FRIENDLY SOCIETY OF FREE AND ACCEPTED MASONS
Brother W. Wonnacott (on page 45, Transactions, Quatuor Coronati Lodge volume xxvii 1914) mentioned a Society conducted as a club for mutual benefit, which in 1737 met at the White Swan tavern in New Street, Covent Garden, London, and went by the name of the Friendly society of Free and Accepted Masons (see also Miscellanea Latomorum, August, 1913, page 13).
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FRIEND OF ST. JOHN
The Sixth Degree of the system practiced by the Grand Lodge of Sweden. It is comprehended in the Degree of Knight of the blast and West.
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FRIEND OF TRUTH
The Fifth Degree of the Rite of African architects
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FRIENDSHIP
Leslie, in 1741, delivered the first discourse on Friendship, as peculiarly a Masonic virtue. He was followed by Hutchinson, Preston, and other writers, and now in the modern lectures it is adopted as one of the precious jewels of a Master Freemason. Of universal friendship, blue is said to be the symbolic color. "In regular gradation," says Munkhouse (Discussions i, 17), "and by an easy descent, brotherly love extends itself to lesser distinct societies or to particular individuals, and thus becomes friendship either of convenience or personal affection." Cicero says, "Amicitia nisi inter bonos non potest," 'meaning, "Friendship can exist only among the good."
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FUND, GRAND MASTERS
A fund over which the Grand Master of the United Grand Lodge of England exercises exclusive control. It originated with a sum of £2,730 subscribed by the Craft in 1870, when the Earl of Zetland retired from the Grand Mastership, and is known as the Zetland Fund.
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FUND OF BENEVOLENCE
fund established in 1727 by the Grand Lodge of England, and solely devoted to charity. The regulations for its management are as follows: Its distinction and application is directed by the Constitutions to be monthly for which purpose a Board of Benevolenec is holden on the last Wednesday of every month except December, when it is on the third Wednesday. This Lodge consists of all the present and past Grand Officers, all actual Masters of Lodges, and twelve Past Masters.
The Brother presiding is bound strictly to enforce all the regulations of the Craft respecting the distribution of the fund, and must be satisfied, before any petition is read, that all the required formalities have been complied with. To every petition must be added a recommendation, signed in open Lodge by the Master, Wardens, and a majority of the members then present, to which the petitioner does or did belong, or from some other contributing Lodge, certifying that they have known him to have been in reputable or at least tolerable, circurnstances, and that he has been not less than five years a subscribing member to a regular Lodge.
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FUNDS OF THE LODGE
The funds of the Lodge are placed in the keeping of the Treasurer, to whom all moneys received by the Secretary must be immediately paid. Hence each of these officers is a check on the other. And hence, too, the Thirty-nine Regulations of 1721 say that the Grand Treasurer should he "a Brother of good worldly substance" (see Constitutions, 1723) lest impecuniosity and the urge of poverty should tempt him to make use of the Lodge funds .
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FUNERAL LODGE
See Sorrow Lodge
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FUNERAL RITES
See Burial
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FURLAC
A word in the advanced Degrees, whose etymology is uncertain, but probably from the Arabic. It is said to signify the Angel of the Earth.
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FURNITURE OF A LODGE
The Bible, Square, and Compasses are technically said to constitute the furniture of a Lodge. They are respectively dedicated to God, the Master of the Lodge, and the Craft. Our English Brethren differ from those in the United States in their explanation of the furniture. Brother George Oliver gives their illustration, from the English lectures (in his Landmark I, 169) as follows:
The Bible is said to derive from God to man in general because the Almighty has been pleased to reveal more of His divine will by that holy book than by any other means. The Compasses, being the chief implement used in the construction of all architectural plans and designs, He assigned to the Grand Master in particular as emblems of his dignity, he being the chief head and ruler of the Craft. The Square is given to the whole Masonic body, because we are all obligated within it, and are consequently bound to act thereon.
But the lecture of the early part of the eighteenth century made the furniture consist of the Mosaic Pavement, Blazing Star, and the Indented Tarsel, while the Bible, Square, and Compasses were considered as additional furniture.
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FUSTIER
An officer of the Grand Orient of France in the beginning of the nineteenth century. In 1810, he published, and presented to the Grand Orient, a Geographical Chart of the Lodges in France and its Dependencies. He was the author of several memoirs, dissertations, etc., on Masonic subjects, and of a manuscript in French entitled Nomenclature Alphabétiquc des Grades, or Alphabetical List of Names of Degrees. Brother George Oliver in his Landmarks (95), Says that he promul gated a new system of sixty-four Degrees. But he seems to have mistaken Fustier's catalogue of Degrees invented by others for a system established by him self. No record can be found elsewhere of such a system . Lenning says (Encyclopedie der Freimaurerei, the German for Encyclopedia of Freemasonry) that Fustier was a dealer in Masonic decorations and in the transcription of rituals, of which he had made a collection of more than four hundred, which he sold at established prices.
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FUTURE LIFE
Lorenzo de Medici said that all those are dead, even for the present life, who do not believe in a future state. The belief in that future life, it is the object of Freemasonry, as it was of the ancient initiations, to teach (see Immortality of the Soul).
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FYLFOT
An ancient symbol well known in the science of coats of arms and the other details of heraldry. It is sometimes known as the Crux dissimulata, found in the catacombs of Rome, and forms one of the symbols of the Degrees of Prince of Mercy, Scottish Rite System. It is a form of the Swastika (see Jaina Cross)
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