"The high grades" is a name which long ago was given to the Degrees conferred in the Royal Arch, in Cryptic Masonry, in Knight Templarism, and in the Scottish Rite. The name has never been universally satisfactory but neither has any one of the other names proposed to take its place, among them being The Concordant Orders, the Auxiliary Rites, The Appendant Rites, The Additional Grades. The word "high" has in it a sense of being above, being superior to, and a certain amount of encouragement was given to that sense when in one of its lectures the Fellowcraft Degree depicts the three Degrees of Apprentice, Fellowcraft, and Master Mason in the form of three steps in a stair; if this picture were carried farther it would mean that the Fourth Degree is superior to the Third, the Fifth superior to the Fourth, etc.; but this simple arithmetical scheme cannot work because. first, no Grand Body in any of the four Rites of the High Grades is superior to a Grand Lodge, and, second, because there are two series using the same number after the Third Degree, one through the Royal Arch, the Council and Knight Templar, the other through the Scottish Rite. The Masons who fathered the High Grades and the Masons since who have most loved them and best understood them have always used "high" in another sense, and are carrying no suggestion that the High Grades are "above'' or "superior to" the Three Degrees in the Lodge; in them it has meant that Ancient Craft Freemasonry has always had a rich and a very complex content, that among the elements in it a certain number were the best or highest, or noblest, or profoundest, and that each of the High Grades is an elaboration. or exposition, or interpretation of some one of these element, to them therefore the subject matter of all the High Grades is contained in Ancient Craft Masonry. This explanation comes closest to the facts, and it has the great advantage of enabling us to picture the whole of Freemasonry as being single and individual, and protects us from the mistake of picturing the Fraternity as a loose collection of five independent Freemasonries. This is a better definition than the arithmetical one (after all each Degree is properly known by name, not by number) but even so it is not wholly satisfactory. It is probable that the easiest course to follow is not to use "High Grades" (or any other name) as either a term or a name but as a label, and merely for the purpose of roughly denoting a large number of different things and facts; it also is probable that nomenclature will never find a wholly satisfactory name, and that Masonic scholars will never be able to find a rigidly correct, adequate, and self consistent definition for any name ("Further Degrees," has been suggested) the subject would overflow the definition.
A Masonic historian has a wholly different way of accounting for the origin of the High Grades and of explaining their role, or place, in the general field of Masonry. In the very beginning Operative Masonry had in it so much that was active, dynamic, growing, that it could not be diked into a single organization or captured by a single definition. Operative Freemasonry itself was but one among a number of separate organizations in the general Craft of Masonry. After it had waxed large and strong the same process began inside itself; when the first permanent Lodges were constituted many Freemasons remained outside them; after a while those permanent Lodges (using the Old Charges) began to expand by accepting non-Operative members, with the result that by the Seventeenth Century a number of Lodges consisted exclusively of non-Operative (Accepted, or Speculative) members; among these Lodges a new development began in 1717 A.D., with the setting up of the Grand Lodge System; and afterwards, and under the Grand Lodge leadership, another new development began when Lodges conferred three Degrees instead of two. In the meantime a number of what we should now call Side Orders grew like shoots out of the parent trunk Masonic clubs, "Masonic Orders," "Wandering Degrees," and what for a long time were called "Masonic dilettanti"; and also in the meantime were twenty or thirty City Companies in the larger towns and cities in which Freemasons had one section of the membership. Therefore when in the second half of the Eighteenth Century a number of Royal Arch, Cryptic, Templar and Scottish Rite Degrees were formed, and when at the end of that half century those Degrees were organized into local and Grand Bodies, the historian sees in them not a new departure nor an innovation, but another overflowing of Ancient Craft Freemasonry. Nor can any historian believe that this principle of growth, this tendency to proliferate has come to an end; Freemasonry has not yet become conscious of itself as a World Fraternity, but it will do so at some unguessed date in the future; when it does so that tendency to proliferate will then produce new Masonic forms which we cannot now predict.
A Masonic philosopher would have yet another way of explaining the High Grades, and of describing their place, or role, in the Craft. Some forty odd degrees belong to the American Masonic System of five Rites; in other countries, of which Frame and Sweden are conspicuous examples, yet other High Grades arc in official use; this adds up, the world over, to a large number of High Grades, and it makes it impossible either to list or to number them what, to take one case only, would be meant by "The Seventh Degree"? In the world over it would be the number used by some Masonic System for any one of ten or twelve Degrees wholly unlike each other. The Masonic philosopher does not concern himself with the number of them, nor is he disturbed by the size of the tableau of these High Grades; he concerns himself with the principles which various groups of thee Degrees have in common. From his point of view the American System (to confine ourselves to it) is less a system of Rites than it is a group of Masonic families. Of these there are three; the family of Ancient Craft Freemasonry, which includes the Degrees of the Lodge, of the Cryptic Rite, and of the Royal Arch; the family of Knight Templarism; the Scottish Rite family, not including that Rites' version of the Apprentice, Fellowcraft, and Master Mason Degrees. In his eyes each of these families has a central, or fundamental, characteristic, and can be explained in the term of that characteristic. The characteristic of the Ancient Craft family is history; of Knight Templar Degrees, it is the idea (or principle) of a Christian order; of the Scottish Rite Degrees, it is philosophy (they have been called "the Masonry of the Mind").
At the present time of writing the oldest written record of the words Royal Arch is dated December 27, 1743 A.D., in the account of a Masonic procession in Yonghal Lodge, in Ireland. It is referred to again in a book published by Dr. Fifield Dassigny in 1744 A.D. The oldest known record in a Lodge Minute Book is dated December 22, 1753 A.D. in the records of Fredericksburg Lodge, The George Washington Mother Lodge, in Virginia. These and a number of other records similar to them, prove that, first, the Royal Arch was in an inchoate (or incomplete, or unorganized) condition until near the end of the Eighteenth Century; and, second, that it must have been popular among Masons or it could not have spread from Ireland, across England, and over the American Colonies in only ten years of time. The same records, however, are silent on the origin of the Degree (or Degrees); but it is probable that the Ritualistic materials which later on were separately organized in the Capitular (Royal Arch) Degrees and Chapters had been a part of the Ritualistic material and in the Masters' Lodges, the first records of which begin in 1725 A.D. In the middle of the Eighteenth Century the Royal Arch was used as a Side Order attached to Ancient Craft Lodges, but by about 1785 A.D., and afterwards the Royal Arch began to organize its own local Bodies, called Chapters, and then to organize these into Grand Chapters. The first American Grand Chapter was organized in the United States in Connecticut in 1798 A.D.; the General Grand Chapter was constituted in 1799 A.D., one year later. The esteem in which Royal Arch Masonry was held here is shown by the fact that when Thomas Smith Webb published his Freemasons Monitor in 1797 A.D., he signed it not in his own name but as "a Royal Arch Mason."
If the earliest known Royal Arch Masons were in symbolic Lodges, if the Ritualistic material belonged to the Ritual of the Masters' Lodges, if it was conferred by many Lodges for a half century as a Side Order, if it was officially recognized by the Ancient Grand Lodge, and if the two Grand Lodges in England agreed at their Union in 1813 A.D., that Royal Arch Masonry is an integral part of Ancient Craft Masonry, then it can only be so, because for some two centuries Freemasons have believed it to belong to the same family as the Three Degrees of Ancient Craft Lodges.
The Degrees conferred in a Royal Arch Chapter are (as a rule) Mark Master, Past Master, Most Excellent Master, and Royal Arch Mason. A Council of Cryptic Masons confers the Degrees of Royal Master and Select Master, and (in some Councils) of Super excellent Master. If a student dovetails these Degrees into each ocher and then dovetails the Apprentice, Fellowcraft, and Master Mason Degrees into them, omitting such things as are repeated from one Degree to another, he will find before him a single body of Ritual, homogeneous in its subject matter, its roots in Masonic history, and everywhere the same in spirit and purpose. It could almost be said that the Capitular and Cryptic Rites are a commentary in the grand style on the Three Degrees, especially of the Third Degree; and also it could almost be said that the whole family of Degrees in the three Rites could be conferred as a single Degree.
When we turn from the family of Degrees in Ancient Craft Masonry to the family of Knight Templar Degrees we find ourselves in another world of Masonry. We also find ourselves with an almost complete lack of facts or records of this Templar Family. The first mention of it in print is dated 1757 A.D. It appears to have had two centers of origin and growth, one in Europe (particularly in Germany and in France), and one in northern England. At Bristol, England, there was a Baldwyn Encampment which left behind it a written record dated in 1780 A.D., and since the document refers to "the Supreme Grand and Royal Encampment" organized Masonic Templarism must have been at work some years before that. The Grand Commandery of the United States was established in 1816 A.D. These dates show that the beginnings of Masonic Templarism were in the middle of the Eighteenth Century, and were roughly contemporaneous with the beginnings of the Royal Arch, and chat the Rice was established, organized, and completed by about 1800 A.D. Since, as will be shown in a later page, the Degrees of the Scottish Rite, though possibly older, a few of them, than the Templar Degrees, were established, organized, and completed in about 1800 A.D., it means that the four Rites of High Grades were in their origin contemporaneous with each other.
At a (late which may be represented by the year 1750 A.D., and (luring the period from that dace to about 1800 A.D., we thus have a remarkable series of Masonic historical facts: The Lodges adopted three Degrees in place of two; the Ancient and Modern Grand Lodges drew together in fraternal amity and practiced the same Masonry; a system of the Standard Monitor was incorporated in the Ritual; Lodges and independent Grand Lodges were planted around the world; the families of the High Grades were established and officially adopted; the Craft became a World Fraternity instead of an Anglo-Saxon or European Fraternity; the combinations of facts such as these prove that in that halfcentury a ground swell moved powerfully among the sources of Freemasonry, which may be most simply described as being the Craft's preparation of itself to become a permanent World Fraternity. The greatly significant fact about Masonic Templarism is that it was one of the new forms of Freemasonry which were brought into existence by chat ground swell.
1. By a "Knight" the early Middle Ages (possibly about 1000 A.D.) meant a professional soldier. Ocher crafts, arts, and professions already had been professionalized and organized into gilds. Knighthood was the soldiers' gild. It cook in apprentices, gave them a severe and exacting training for many years, and then, if they were proved proficient, they were made fellows of their gild it was a ceremony called "dubbing." Their rules and regulations were called Knighthood.
2. For generations the Catholic Church coveted Palestine for religious reasons, and European merchants were under a great pressure to extend their trading posts and routes into the Eastern Mediterranean as far south as Egypt, but nothing came of either because Europe was divided into hundreds of small kingdoms, colonies, duchies, and free cities, and while each of these had its own corps of professional soldiers no one of them could put into the field either an army or a navy of sufficient size to be effective. Pope Urban conceived the brilliant idea of forming an army under the immediate command of himself, with each of the small nations contributing a quota, and the church adopted his plan at the Council of Clermont. Each of the quotas was to be under its own command except that its commanders agreed to follow a general plan, each to wear its own uniform except that it was also to wear the Church's badge, which was a red cross. The quotas together were the crusaders; their war upon the Mohamedan people in the Near East was called a crusade. From the first crusade in 1096 A.D., and thereafter for some Zoo years the crusaders fought countless battles on land and water, won many victories and suffered many defeats; and though they failed in the end neither Europe nor Asia was ever the same afterwards. One of the roots in Knight Templar Ritual goes back to those crusades.
2. While the crusades were under way, and in a manner strikingly like modern specialized armies, the crusaders formed among themselves, either on the Pope's insistence or with his official consent and approval, a number of separate and specialized armies which were trained and equipped for special purposes, and had their own independent organizations; among these the most important were those called Knights of the Temple, Knights of the Hospital, and the Teutonic Knights. Among these the Templars became the richest and most powerful, and had great houses and vast areas of land and almost untold money in Britain and on the continent as well as in the Near East. By the beginning of the Fourteenth Century they became too powerful, and civil government began to discuss among themselves means to curb them; but they refused to tolerate restraint, and at last the Order had to be destroyed. This abolishment was begun by Philip the Fair of France when in 1314 A.D., he burned at the stake the Order's Grand Master, Jacques de Molay, and his three principal officers. Philip's methods were criminal, and the world has never forgiven him; but the Order would have been abolished in any event, and it passed completely out of existence when Pope Clement V cancelled its charters and ordered it dissolved.
3. Attempts were made to revive it, but they failed; and even if these attempts had succeeded the revived Order would have been illegal each of the hard driven peoples of Europe already carried the burden of two governments, the Church and the State; they would not tolerate a third. Another form of "revival" was, however, more successful, because they were imitative societies or fraternities which had no purpose except to perpetuate what men had most admired in the Templars. Masonic Templarism has its roots as much in these later, imitative "revivals" as in the original, and historical Order.
4. The gilds of professional soldiers ("knighthood") were the most glamorous and romantic of any men in the Middle Ages, but it was not for that reason alone that next to the Church and to architects they made the largest and deepest impression on the Middle Ages; these soldiers also were travelers, explorers, adventurers, speakers of other languages, news bringers from distant places, and best able to explain to stay-at-home villagers the mysteries of wages, of international politics, and diplomacy; in addition to that they also were local guardians, and that meant much at a time when there were feuds between towns, wars among dukes and earls, and no regular police forces even in the largest cities. As the generations passed there collected about these soldiers a vast amount of tradition, tales, stories, histories, poems, plays, songs, music; and at the same time the soldierly form of honor, with its attendant forms of politeness, was in time everywhere adopted and became "courtesy." This courtesy and the traditions, and the soldierly rules and regulations, came at last to form a vast body of art and culture, to which we give the general name of "chivalry." It was from this chivalry far more than from historical events or military practices that modern Masonic Templarism drew the materials of its rituals and its nomenclature.
5. But what did the ancient art of Freemasonry,
which was the art of architecture, have to do with chivalry? Until
after the Third Degree and the Royal Arch were adopted and completed
it could have had nothing to do with it; but once those Degrees
were in use it is obvious that Freemasons began to take an interest
in the Order of the Temple because it was an Order of the Temple
that is, Solomon's Temple. That is one of the answers to the question,
"why Templarism inside the Masonic Fraternity?" The
other answer is even more cogent but is not as obvious indeed
it is difficult to see. Ancient Craft Freemasonry is an Order;
each Master Mason sees that it is, and he often refers to it as
"The Order"; but it is doubtful if many Masons realize
to the full extent what it means to Masons that their Craft is
an order, how compelling is the order in it, how captivating,
how much alive, and how powerful; but any Mason can realize it
for himself if lie will consider how a Lodge exists in the form
of grades and ranks, and how hard and long a member will work
to win such a rank and title as Worshipful Master. Order is one
of the most living things in a Lodge; therefore the Order of the
Temple also made an appeal because it was an Order, and a Christian
Church Order.
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