Doctor CamNC4Me wrote: ↑Mon Jun 06, 2022 10:39 pm
Was free masonry originally designed to keep trade secrets within a workers’ cooperative, hence the oaths and penalties?
- Doc
Hi Doc. Great question.
For context and clarity, I want to make a distinction between two different groups: Operative Masons (those who actually built cathedrals, castles, etc.) and Speculative Masons (the philosophical Fraternity of which I am a part). When Gothic architecture (in which Operative Masons specialized) started to go out-of-style towards the end of the 1500s, they started to look for reasons to stay together; from this dilemma was born Speculative Masonry, where they used their tools and techniques as symbols for moral self-improvement, personal integrity, and service to the community.
Now, to answer your question concerning each group:
Operative Masons
Having started in medieval times, many members of stonemason guilds were illiterate. This posed a problem for two reasons:
- Stonemasons, by the nature of their work, would often travel to another country for their next project;[1] after all, one city or town did not usually call for more than one cathedral, castle, etc.
- In order to prove their proficiency to show that they were skilled enough to work at a site and to show how much money they deserved for their time/expertise, they needed some form of credential.
Written credentials would be useless due to illiteracy being common. So they came up with certain, secret physical gestures and secret words (to be revealed in a certain manner between both the credential-checker and the credentialed) to be used. Different sets of such gestures and words were used for each degree of proficiency: Apprentice, Journeyman (sometimes also called Fellow of the Craft), and Master. These (along with various techniques related to stonemasonry) were trade secrets and helped credential-checkers (probably foremen) to weed out less-skilled or unskilled imposters trying to make a quick buck from those who were properly trained and skilled in the craft of stonemasonry. Operative Masons would have obligated themselves not to reveal these things. I am not aware, however, of any penalties being a part of Operative Masonry.
Speculative Masons
As Operative Masonry died out and Speculative Masonry came to be (the late 1500s),[2] various traditions were kept, including the concepts of physical gestures and words as credentials; except now these were used to prove what degree of philosophical knowledge/tools had been conferred onto the credentialed person.
Expanding on the theme of stonemasonry as a representative of morality, integrity, and service, and being mostly of Protestant denominations, these speculative Masons adopted the Biblical setting of the construction of King Solomon's Temple as an allegory for teaching these values. Also adopted from the Bible (and from European culture; for example, being drawn and quartered for going AWOL from the British military) was the concept of penalties; however, in Masonry, these were only ever symbolic, being a measure of how much they valued being honest men of their word.[3] They also adopted the concept of obligations, promising not to reveal certain things concerning the ritualistic workings of the Craft (although I don't know if I would refer to them as "trade secrets" and I don't think that I've heard anyone else do so; but that's just me, some in other parts of the world very well might).
I hope that this answers your question. If I need to clarify anything, please do not hesitate to ask me.
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[1] “Chapter 2: From Cathedrals to Lodge Rooms: A History of the Freemasons.”
Freemasons for Dummies, by Christopher Hodapp, 2nd ed., John Wiley & Sons, Inc, 2013, p. 23,
https://smile.amazon.com/Freemasons-for-Dummies-2nd-Edition/dp/B00NU69GHY/.
[2] Wallace-James, R. E.
The Book of the Lodge of Aitchison's Haven, 1598-1764. Lodge St John Kilwinning, No. 57, 1998,
Ars Quatuor Coronatorum,
https://freemasonry.bcy.ca/aqc/aitchison-lodge.pdf.
[3] Cole, Brandon. “What Are Masonic Penalties? (Symbolic vs Literal).”
MasonicFind, 26 Jan. 2021,
https://masonicfind.com/what-are-masonic-penalties.
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EDIT: Hyperlinks in sources fixed.