In the Fourth Century A. D., there reigned the first Christian Emperor of Rome-Constantine the Great. Until this period, there is little or no evidence of Christian architecture, because the followers of the Christ had been pursued with such relentless fury that they had but little heart and much less funds to invest in buildings for the worship of their God, but when in the course of time, liberty to preach and worship was granted them, they became liberal patrons of the builders' art and architecture which had heretofore been confined principally to the palaces of rulers, and pagan temples commenced to give visible expression of the spiritual and moral nature of man.

The early Christians adopted places of worship which could be readily constructed. Many of the Roman Temples which had been rendered useless for their original purposes were utilized as meeting places for members of the new faith, and in addition, churches were built on the model of the old Roman basilicas and formed of columns and other features of pagan buildings. From the Fifth to the Tenth Century progress had been slow but at this period commenced the spread of Christianity into Europe and its rapid development. With it came a demand for skilled workers to construct edifices for religious worship. This caused Italian workmen to form companies for the purpose of employing their art among other nations. To encourage them and to assist in the upbuilding of this propaganda, the Pope extended them many privileges such as exemption from taxation, as well as independence of the sovereign in whose domain they might labor. This is one reason for the name being given them of Freemasons. Without some form of organization, these traveling Freemasons could hardly have conducted their labors without confusion. It is reasonable to assume that in the trying conditions in which they lived, they bound themselves together for mutual protection, requiring from all who joined their guilds, certain trade qualifications, and whatever ritual they may have used, if any, was simply categorical in form in which lessons of obedience and charity were inculcated.

One of the strongest proofs in connection with the Traveling Freemasons to sustain evidence that they must have maintained some sort of an organization is the deliberation with which they worked. Winchester was four hundred and forty years in building, Ely four hundred twenty-one, Canterbury four hundred forty-seven years, and other great cathedrals occupied centuries in construction, all demanding numbers of skilled workers who could not have been supplied from the ordinary vocations.

The Masonic student must not lose sight of the fact that, in the early periods of the world, knowledge was rare and the things which were known were carefully guarded by a chosen few. There were no free schools and books and manuscripts were extremely scarce. Until the middle of the twelfth century, science, letters, art, and enlightenment generally were the monopoly of religious bodies, and pupils of monks frequently became the designers of many of the great Gothic cathedrals. Down to the thirteenth century, architecture was practiced largely by the clergy, and came to be regarded as a sacred science. It is most natural to suppose that the men who traveled about Europe constructing the great cathedrals of the middle ages maintained an element of secrecy concerning the principles of their art, and may have sustained a peculiar semi-secret relationship to one another which enabled them to preserve their professional secrets in the midst of turbulent communities.

There is no direct proof to warrant the assumption that the men who erected the great cathedrals and religious edifices were the direct descendants of the Roman Collegia. It is impossible to trace these builders in a continuity of lineal descent. There are many gaps which cannot be bridged. There is abundant proof, however, that from the Fifth to the Seventeenth Century bands of well organized artisans and workers traveled throughout Europe and engaged themselves in the construction of secular and religious edifices. It is reasonable to assume that this fraternity of cathedral builders may have been erected on the remains of former similar organizations, and that this new fraternity marks the beginning of associations which, through a long process of evolution, were destined to become the great society of Free and Accepted Masons of the present day.

One has only to stand in the great cathedrals of Europe and gaze up at their vaulted ceilings or to behold the sky piercing spires, ever pointing upward to the one true God, to be overwhelmed with the idea that the men who constructed these marvelous edifices possessed an intellectuality, a culture, and a knowledge of the building art, far in advance of the times in which they lived. Such artistic triumphs are not produced by the unskilled and illiterate. Some one has said that architecture had its origin in religious feeling and that its noblest monuments among all nations, whether Pagan or Christian, are the temples which they erect to the objects of their reverence.

Taking into account that the building trades were under the direct patronage of the church of Rome, it is easy to understand why a strong religious sentiment may have been connected with their labors. The monks, who were largely responsible for the propagation of religious buildings, undoubtedly, exercised no small amount of influence over the workmen, and injected religious elements into the crude organization which existed among them. But as the craftsmen grew in knowledge and technical execution, they absolved themselves, from the control of the clergy, traveling from place to place, erecting their crude abodes, wherever opportunity offered for the employment of their talents. There is good ground for belief that the strong religious element in Freemasonry today may in a measure be directly traced to the influence exerted upon the Masonic guilds to which Freemasonry owes its origin, by the early Roman Church.

Those who composed these Masonic guilds were necessarily nomadic, moving from place to place, and country to country, as the ever varying demand came to claim their skill at new centers of activity. Enjoying as they did peculiar privileges in their relations to the state, some means of recognition between them became a necessity, not only to prevent loss by separation in moving about, but in order to determine who were entitled to such privileges. Out of this necessity undoubtedly grew some sort of a crude ritualistic language, which, in a measure, served as the credentials of the craftsmen the same as the union card protects the artisan of the Twentieth Century.

The claim that the traveling Freemasons of the middle ages made use of symbolism thereby establishing the fact that much of the symbology of Masonry is traceable to these societies is not warranted. There is nothing to prove that symbolism was in any way employed by these builders. Technical skill and study were the two requisites for successful endeavor in their line of work. The simple ceremonies which the traveling Freemasons may have employed were not designed to I veil any secret doctrine nor to excite superstition on the part of the members of the guild by the use of any form of mysticism. Whatever secrets these builders recognized were purely technical and belonged to the trade with the exception possibly of such means of recognition as they employed to make themselves known to one another.

The claim has been made by some Masonic enthusiasts that the great cathedrals which were the product of these medieval workers gave expression in a symbolic way to the religious faith of the builders. This, however, is purely imaginative. The cross, the nave, the chancel, the pointed arch, the column, spire, and decoration were merely an expression of the religious faith of the men concerned in planning their construction. The Gothic type of architecture was worked out by the monks and clergy of the north, and may be said to be a complete expression of the symbolism of the Roman church. "Its form and distribution was a confession of faith: it typified the creed. Everywhere was the mystic number. The Trinity was proclaimed by the nave and the aisle (multiplied sometimes to the other sacred number seven), the three richly ornamented recesses of the portal, the three towers. The rose over the west was the Unity, the whole building was a Cross. The altar with its decorations announced the real perpetual Presence. The solemn crypt below represented the tinder world, the soul of man in darkness and the shadow of death, the body awaiting the resurrection."

A distinguished writer declares that the building corporations of the Tenth Century belonged to different nations and at the same time publicly or secretly to sects often condemned as heretical. As they were frequently of different faith, customs, and manners of living, it was with difficulty that they could be induced to go into foreign countries and to remain there without receiving from the Pope and King, satisfactory liberties and letters of jurisdiction giving them absolute control over their own organizations and granting them the right to settle their own wages. It cannot be doubted that the different tenets of the members of these guilds, their scientific occupation, their associa natution, with members of the clergy rally gave rise in them to a broader view of religion, a more liberal spirit of toleration and stricter morals than were common in those early days of civil feud and religious persecution.

The guilds of the Middle Ages are described to have been of three principal classes: the faith or peace-guilds which were associations for defense, based on mutual obligations, "sworn communities for the protection of right and the preservation of liberty;" Social or religious, for devotions, orisons, charities, the performance of miracle and other plays, the setting out of pageants, and the providing of minstrels; and the trade guilds, divided into guildsmerchant and craft-guilds. The essential element of all these was mutual help in sickness and poverty, and it was the absence of this element in the collegium so far as is known, that has led some of the ablest writers to deny its identity with the cathedral builders, though analogous in many respects. Some writers, however, affirm an identity. If historical research discovers sufficient data to fully determine the question it will probably be found that in this case there has been no departure from the general law of evolution along existing lines; and that from the experiences of the collegia was finally evolved or patterned the central idea of the guilds.

While the absence of the element of mutual assistance in the Roman collegium has been accepted as a basis of denial that there was any analogy whatsoever between the Freemason's guilds of the middle ages and the Roman college of artisans, it is believed, however, that the general law of evolution will satisfactorily answer the whole question. The element of mutual assistance was merely a natural outcome of the growth and development of these building societies as they improved in morals and intellectuality.

The first reliable account of these traveling Freemasons is found in connection with the erection of Melrose Abbey Church, thirty-two miles southeast of Edinburg, which is credited to the year 1136. On a block of stone at one of the doors is an inscription attesting the fact that John Monroe was a General or Grand Master of all Mason work. Engraved on the walls over one of the doors is a shield carved in relief and displaying a pair of compasses.

In Melrose Abbey churchyard among the inscribed stones, is one marked "Andrew Mein: Meayson in Newsteid, aged 63," and dated February, 1624, with a finely cut square and compass. Mention is made of a choir built of arched stone in 1439, "agreeably to the mode of Peter De Main."

The old lodge of Melrose is supposed to date from the building of Melrose Abbey. The first written evidence of this old lodge is their minute book of 1675, in which is to be found a mutual agreement signed by eighty names. "In the mutual agreement betwixt the masons of the lodge of Melrose ye master mason and wardines were invested with full powers to enforce regulations, collect fees, fines, and penalties." This old record, also, mentions that when any "prentice is to be made frie Mason, lie is to pay 4 pond Scots and sufficient gloves."

In 1684, by permission of Lord Huddington, a "Mason Loft" (gallery) was built by the lodge "above the eist kirk door of the said Kirk of Meir," the cost of which was £242, 13s, 6d. The work was to be done "at the sight of Robert Faa, his Lordship's 'bailie.' " Their papers, notes, and money were kept in a box in charge of the Box Master, or Master. Their funds seem to have been freely loaned to the members on "Tickets, Obligat'n's and Bonds." In 1694, December 27th, the assets of their Box was "Tottall of money and bonds, £125, 25s."

Early in their proceedings, the terms "prentises" and "fellow-crafts" appear, and the following dated at "New Stead," in 1695, is of especial interest, as showing their regulations for Apprentices and Fellow Crafts who were to be fined "ten pund Scots" for any non-compliance with their glove regulation, viz : "At Neusteid the 27 day of deer. 1695 it is heirby enacted and ordained be the Masons tread that nather prentis nor fallow Craft be received into our companie unless they hev ther gloves presentile produst to those persons they are concernd to pay too. And that suficient gloves with four shillin per pair for prentises & with five shillin per pair for fallow crafte."

"The qlk act is to be performed & keepit under the pain of ten pund Scots presentile payd to the trad as said is to be the breaker thereof."

While from the Tenth to the Seventeenth Century there had been a wonderful architectural development and craft guilds had waxed strong with varying degrees of success, yet great political and social changes were taking place.

The Crusades had caused the decimation of the flower of European manhood. In 1377 began in France the Hundred Years War. That great scourge, the Black Death, which commenced in 1349 caused the death of thousands. The wars of the White and Red Roses resulted in a great waste of human life and the depopulation of villages. Arts and sciences had been neglected and it only required the reformation in the Sixteenth Century to deal a death blow to Mediaeval architecture. In the city of London and the South of England, the scourge had carried away a hundred thousand of the population, and the great London fire of 1666 brought untold misery and suffering to hundreds of people. These circumstances not only impoverished the people so that architecture rapidly declined, but the Church itself commenced to lose its influence. In the rebuilding of London, which required nearly fifty years of arduous effort following the fire, the influx of foreign workmen was so great that the existing guilds of operative Masons were demoralized and soon commenced to disintegrate.

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