history 5

HISTORY OF FREEMASONRY

CHAPTER V

THE ROMAN COLLEGIA

by H.L. HAYWOOD

AMERICANS who have not yet advanced far into the twilight of

life are able to recall an epoch in the social history of the country

that has now largely passed away. Children were born into homes

in which their father had been born before them and his father,

perhaps, before him. Grandparents, uncles, aunts and cousins

resided in the same neighborhood, not too far apart for frequent

interchanges of visits. For an established family to remove from

the neighborhood, or a new to enter it, was an incident sufficiently

rare to flutter the dovecote of gossip. If one became ill or suffered

from accident or failed in business or lost a job or encountered

other misadventure, kinsfolk and neighbors were on hand to

perform whatever ministrations of friendship the case seemed to

demand. A cordon of benevolent protection was thrown about the

conduct of each individual, for where his daily doings were so

closely woven into the lives of others, the community necessarily

exercised its influence for moral restraint or direction. The

community might be parochial in outlook and narrow in

limitations, but in return for individual support it accorded to each

member a sense of security and stability that made for prosperity

and peace. A man was strong with the strength of his

neighborhood.

Slowly at first and afterwards at accelerated pace, changes came.

Railways cut through quiet countrysides; life was stirred by the

shrill outcry of the locomotive. Daily newspapers brought the

clamor of the outside world into calm rounds of rural thought. The

telegraph and the telephone were nerve fibers vibrating with

strange sensations singularly disturbing to Village quiet. Highways

with hard surfaces replaced the country roads. Swiftly moving

motor cars annihilated distance. Factories replaced home

industries, destroyed village occupations and lured young men and

women into larger towns, which in turn grew into cities population

began to pyramid in amazing fashion. Inashort time the center of

gravity had shifted from the country to the city.

Social life underwent corresponding changes. Families were forced

to move about, in response to shifting currents of employment. An

influx of immigration tinctured the old rural American culture with

new and sometimes disconcerting colors. The home began to

disintegrate into a mere place to eat and sleep. Children were more

often sent away from home to be educated the head of the house

frequently found work miles away; the family washing was sent to

laundries; homemade preserves, pickles, jellies, salted meats and

even bread succumbed to the products of the cannery, the bakery

and the delicatessen store; clothes were bought ready tailored;

hired nurses were called in to attend the sick. Mounting rent and

incidental inconveniences drove families from individual houses

into apartments, flats and tenements, where neighbor was stranger

to neighbor. In some cases the moral bond of family life became

loosened or relaxed.

Isolated among strangers, the individual found himself bereft of the

old-time supports. Few gave more than perfunctory notice if he

became ill, disabled or bankrupt. Thus thrown largely upon his

own private resources, he began to feel the tension of life as he had

not felt it before. Loneliness beset him, worries increased, his

temper became unsettled. If he had not already incurred the

obligations of family life, he was inclined to shrink from incurring

them, for fear the added strain might prove too great.

To escape from this feeling of helplessness men began organizing

themselves into fraternities, benefit societies, insurance

associations, clubs and innumerable other artificial groups, the

grand purpose of them all being to supply one or many of the

deficiencies left by the passing of the old home community. This

development of fraternal life set a lamp at the heart of the modern

world, revealing its misery and its unfulfilled social longings. Why

this has received so little attention from professional sociologists

remains a mystery, but such is the fact; the sociology of secret

societies calls in vain for its Lester Ward and its Franklin

Giddings.

The curve of the astounding growth of Freemasonry - cause of so

much anxiety to thoughtful Masons - coincides so exactly with this

transference of population from country to town that the relation of

the two becomes apparent. The statistics are eloquent. In 1890

there were in all the United States only 641,410 Master Masons.

By 1910, when the trend of population to the city had become

marked, the number had grown to 1,369,760. In 1915 lodge rolls

contained a total of 1,656,061, and by 1924 it had leaped to

2,971,662, a gain of 1,315,601 in nine years or an average yearly

gain of 146,178. On January 1, 1927, the total had passed beyond

3,000,000. At the same time, and no doubt for the same reason,

other fraternities, the Odd Fellows, Eastern Star, Knights of

Columbus, Knights of Pythias, Woodmen and scores beside,

recorded growths equally astonishing. Nowadays the man or

woman who does not belong to some club, fraternity or other

organized group, is so rare as almost to be considered a social

deviate.

This modern development of fraternalism parallels to a remarkable

degree the rise and growth of a similar movement in the

Graeco-Roman world of twenty centuries ago. The redemptive

rites of the Mysteries, as has already appeared in the course of this

narrative, made an irresistible appeal to men in a state of moral or

religious bankruptcy. Something needs now to be said about

another system which flourished alongside the Mysteries, partly in

response to the same need and to an extent duplicating their

methods. It produced certain associations of workers employed in

skilled crafts, which are commonly known as the Roman collegia.

In the period of the Roman republic, life was stable and secure, for

most classes at least, and family ties were close - closer, perhaps

than were our own a generation or so ago. The imperial regime

brought changes which altered the whole structure of Roman

society. The country man was uprooted from his native soil; an

independent working class was altered into a proletariat or still

further demoted into slavery. The native toiler was exposed to

competition from aliens who arrived in great throngs. Farmsteads

were merged into great estates. Villages were overshadowed by

rapidly growing cities with slums and tenement districts.

This alteration penetrated to the marrow of individual life. A man

came to live among strangers; nervous tension increased and there

was an inevitable search for relief in gaudy shows or in exciting

pastimes. The individual burdened by family responsibilities was

thrown back upon his own unaided resources, with the

consequences that

On that Hard Roman world, disgust

And silent loathing fell;

Deep weariness and sated lust

Made human life a hell.

"In the blank wilderness created by universal despotism," wrote Sir

Samuel Dill, "the craving for sympathy and mutual succor inspired

a great social movement, which legislation was powerless to check

Probably no age, not even our own, ever felt a greater craving for

some form of social life, wider than the family and narrower than

the State."

That craving was satisfied to a large extent by the collegia, social

organizations combining a little of the functions of a modern trade

union with a little of the modern club, but with an element of

religion and charity not found in either. Such clubs had previously

grown up among the Greeks - the Hetaireiai. Usually they revolved

about some local deity, although many of them were doubtless of

political character resembling in this respect later societies which

sprang up in eighteenth-century Europe. Egypt also had its peculiar

type of club, records of which were found among the papyri in the

Fayum, and there were collegia in North Africa and Asia Minor.

The collegia - collegia fabrorum - actually existed long before the

imperial period of Roman history. Numa Pompilius, who ruled

some 650 years before the Christian era, is said in certain legends

not only to have founded them but also to have divided the various

trades into distinct districts, each with its own independent society.

Associations of masons, musicians, goldsmiths, potters, tanners,

shoemakers, braziers and dyers, are mentioned by Plutarch, but

there is an intimation of still others even at that early day. They

were formally recognized by the state, had their own laws and

were ruled by their own officials. From time to time new

associations came into being, but as the centuries passed, official

recognition became more difficult to obtain. Ultimately all

associations of the kind were frowned upon by tyrants of the

imperial period and membership in many of them rendered an

individual liable to severe penalties.

That the collegia derived from still older societies there can be

little doubt. Several learned attempts have been made to connect

them with the Dionysiac Artificers of Asia Minor, but beyond

showing general resemblances these efforts have been far from

successful. It is probable, however, that in their earlier stages a

majority were little more than burial clubs. His pagan theology

taught the ancient Roman that if his memory was neglected after

death his spirit would wander, lonely and homeless. Accordingly it

was natural for men to band together in little groups - each with its

own meeting place, its treasury and its officers - the principal

function of which was to preserve the memory of the departed and

to see that each member received sepulture according to his desire.

Afterwards almost every clique of persons having common

interests organized its own college. Servants in some great house

would have one; garbage collectors had one, and so it was with pig

raisers, merchants, wine growers. Every legion carried with it

collegia of masons, carpenters, road makers, bridge builders and

what not. Subsequently the system crystallized into a regime of

tyranny, with the emperor at its head, so that a man was compelled

to carry on the trade his father had followed before him; in some

cases men were forbidden to leave one community to go into

another in search of work. Among craft organizations were

collegia of men engaged in various branches of the building trade,

but there is little evidence to show that these in any way occupied a

peculiar place or received special attention. Indeed all collegia

were taken so much for granted that literary men of the time did

not give them special notice. Modern knowledge of them is

obtained mainly through archaeology, although the silence of

historians regarding these things now appears as strange as it

would be for American historians to pass over in silence such

important social factors as trade unionism, fraternalism and the

public school system.

Although enthusiastic writers have tried to prove that the collegia

employed a form of organization almost identical with that of the

Masonic lodge, no strong case has been made out for that

contention. Their members, or sodales, had the right of electing

their officers and of balloting for new members. Admission was at

first reserved to freemen, but the Code of Justinian permitted the

admission of slaves with the consent of the masters of such slaves.

Honorary memberships were occasionally created for patrons, as

afterwards was done by operative Freemasons.

The typical college met in a building or hall, seldom owned by

itself, called the schola, sometimes the curia. Presiding officers

were known as proesides or magistri. Next to them in importance

were the decuriones, the designation being held by some

authorities to indicate there may have been one such supervisor or

warden for every ten members. Different collegia appear to have

had different subordinate officers - or at least different names for

them - as factores and quoestores for the management of business

affairs, haruspices or soothsayers, and secretaries of one kind and

another. There was also a general division of the membership,

apparently according to the mechanical proficiency of each

craftsman. There were dues and fees and there was a constitution

or set of by-laws. Being poor, collegia were usually glad to accept

fees and legacies or to obtain the patronage of some person of high

rank who might be depended on to use his influence to throw work

in the way of the membership.

It will be seen at once that the college was little like a modern

Masonic lodge, either in its purposes or in its organization. There

is no closer analogy between its officers and the official staff of a

lodge than there is between the lodge's staff and that of almost any

other organized group. Every society which meets at stated periods

needs a presiding officer, and he will require assistants. If records

are to be kept there will be need for a secretary; if funds are to be

handled there will be need for a treasurer. A good deal more has

been made of such resemblances than the facts appear to justify.

Affording, as they did, unusual opportunities for secret

assemblage, the collegia gradually fell under official suspicion in

the troubled days of the empire. Julius Caesar and Augustus both

issued edicts ordering the suppression of all of them, "except those

which had been anciently instituted." The Justinian Code upheld

this distinction. That even the most ancient and honored societies

did not escape mistrust is apparent from a letter in which Trajan

refused Pliny's request for permission to establish a collegium of

builders at Nicomedia. "Whatever name we may give to them," the

Emperor wrote, "bodies of men, however small in number, who are

drawn together by the same design will become political societies."

Nevertheless, and in spite of the ever-present danger to tyrants

which is inherent in such associations, collegia of the more

intelligent classes of artisans were too useful to be destroyed. This

was particularly true of those whose members practiced building

trades. Roman legions on the march in hostile regions needed

masons and carpenters in whose loyalty they could trust and bridge

builders in whose work they could repose confidence. Workmen of

this kind were to be found in the collegia; indeed, if they were

found at all and thrown together they could be depended upon to

organize their own collegia. This was especially the case among

stone masons, since the nature of their work required them to

journey from place to place and they were forced to make of a

collegium a substitute for the homes from which they were so

frequently compelled to wander.

For Freemasons this naturally raises the important question of what

relationship, if any, existed between Roman collegia of this kind

and the trade guilds of the Middle Ages. If a definite connection

can be established, it also connects Freemasonry with the collegia,

since beyond question Freemasonry emerged from operative

mason guilds of medieval times. On this point there has been

heated and, unfortunately, inconclusive debate. H.C. Coote in The

Romans of Britain - extensively quoted first chapter of Gould's

History - observes that Roman collegia spread throughout Britain

in the Roman occupation; that they continued without molestation

by the later Anglo-Saxon invaders, and survived as medieval

guilds.

Coote makes note of the fact that Germanic conquerors of Gaul

and Italy ruthlessly suppressed collegia in those lands, looking

upon them as seminaries of free Roman thought, but he concludes

that the Anglo-Saxons were lenient in Britain "either out of

ignorance of their tendency or contempt of their effect." But

Freeman in The History of the Norman Conquest and Haverfield in

The Roman Occupation of Great Britain agree that Roman

civilization was utterly destroyed in Britain by its Anglo-Saxon

conquerors. They observe that the followers of Horsa and Hengist,

unlike other Germanic tribes which overran other parts of the

Roman empire, had no desire to acquire the culture of conquered

peoples. Even town life was hateful to them. Whatever vestiges of

Roman social life are to be found in England, these authors appear

to think, are not remains of the civilization stamped out by the

Anglo-Saxons but are survivals taken back to England in the

Norman conquest. Haverfield even goes so far as to declare that no

case is known where Saxons dwelt in a Roman villa.

It is difficult to believe that where all else was so completely

destroyed the collegia alone survived. They depended almost

entirely upon the existence of towns and upon craft activities. Even

if they had escaped the natural suspicions of Anglo-Saxon

overlords, their usefulness must have been destroyed through force

of hostile economic pressure. It is clear that if there was a bridge

between the collegia and the medieval guilds it must be sought

elsewhere.

Gould turned aside for a moment to examine the possibility that

such a bridge could be found at Byzantium, or, as it is now known,

Constantinople. He referred to George F. Fort's The Early History

and Antiquities of Freemasonry, a work published in the period

midway between the older school of thought represented by

Preston and Oliver and the modern school of which Gould himself

was one of the founders. Fort argued that the collegia of builders

did not pass out of existence under the impact of barbarian

invasions but found asylum at Byzantium and remained intact

behind the defenses of that city; that a new culture arose there, in

which Oriental, Roman and Greek elements blended, with the

Greek predominating; that in the building up of Gothic civilization

trained artists and artisans emerged from their Byzantine refuge to

perpetuate the traditions of classical culture.

In support of this theory Fort constructed an elaborate and brilliant

thesis which occupies the most considerable portion of his

ingenious and readable book. He described in some detail the

general history of the collegia, told how Augustus began to look

upon them with distrust, how Trajan crushed them under the

grinding force of governmental power, how Alexander Severus

endeavored to resuscitate them, how Constantine, by imperial

rescript, transplanted the collegia of builders to Byzantium and

there established them on a sound and enduring foundation.

Theodosius in 438 confirmed the grants of Constantine.

Unfortunately for this contention, however, it appears that Fort

confused the arts possessed by the collegia with the collegia

themselves. He assumes that because the trades continued to

flourish in Byzantium the old Roman trades organizations

continued with them and became in time the guilds of the Middle

Ages. On the contrary, there is stronger and better evidence that

Byzantium developed a new culture of its own, preserving, of

course, much that was borrowed from earlier Greece and Rome. If

the collegia did survive in the Eastern city adequate proof thereof

is wanting.

"When Constantine moved his capital to the shores of the

Bosphorus," Arthur Kingsley Porter wrote in Medieval

Architecture: Its Origins and Development, "he exerted every

energy to make the new Rome as splendid in architecture as the

old. The number and size of the buildings which, according to

contemporary authors, he caused to be erected is well-nigh

incredible. Executed with more than the usual Roman haste, these

buildings were probably inferior to the really remarkable structures

erected at this epoch elsewhere in the Empire. At least, the fact that

of all the vast city of Constantine hardly a single monument has

survived to our day, argues ill for the character of the

workmanship. As to the general style of these edifices, we are left

in no doubt, although no examples are extant - they could have

been only Roman. Similarly the earliest churches of

Constantinople must unquestionably have been basilicas of the

usual Latin type.

"The Roman period in Byzantine architecture was doubtless

succeeded by one of transition, during which the individual

character of the Eastern style gradually took form. The monuments

furnish us with actual knowledge of the progress of this

development only after the middle of the V century, a time when

the change had already been almost completed. However, by a

study of the historical conditions of the time, and by comparison of

the later monuments, it is possible to construct in broad outline the

story of this growth."

The author then sketches in colorful phrase the story of how, when

Rome was being pillaged by barbarian hordes, Byzantium was

gradually freeing itself from Latin influence. The Latin tongue

gave way to Greek, and Plato, Aristotle and Homer came once

more into their own. Byzantines looked toward the Parthenon and

discovered that Greek decoration was superior to Roman. From

India, Persia and China came rugs, silks, fabrics and hangings in

colors that were luminous and not harsh like the reds and yellows

and blacks of Rome. Thus Byzantine architecture built upon

Roman foundations, but looked to the old Hellenic monuments for

its models of beauty and to the Orient for its richness of color.

Interesting as this undoubtedly is, it is rather conclusively against

the theory that the Roman collegium passed into the guild of the

later Gothic period by way of Byzantium. In the first place, the

immunity granted by Constantine excusing certain workmen from

obligations of public service extended to persons in other crafts

than those of building and architecture. In the second place there is

no evidence that the collegia could and did survive the general

Hellenization of the Eastern city. In the third place, there is strong

reason for believing that the medieval guild system was an

autochthonous development out of general medieval culture, owing

fully as much to Teutonic influences as to those of Byzantium and

Rome. Indeed, almost any process of reasoning by analogy which

would show essential relationship between the guilds and the

collegia, could be used also to show essential relationship between

the guilds and various ancient Scandinavian and Teutonic

brotherhoods. Herbert Spencer traced the guild system to customs

of paternal inheritance; and Maine, as A. E. Crawley observed in

his treatise contributed to the Encyclopaedia of Religion and

Ethics, traced it to primitive customs of adoption.

In other words, the specialists have not been able to agree among

themselves as to the origin of the guild, and about the best

hypothesis of the matter is that of Crawley that they were a growth

from the crossing of Teutonic and Greco-Roman ideas and

institutions. Fort's attempt to find the bridge at Byzantium must

therefore be set down as having failed of approval in the courts of

critical opinion.

Other bridges have been sought elsewhere, and notably in southern

France and on Lake Como. The possibility that it is to be found

among the Comacine Masters is a subject so large in itself that it

must be discussed in a separate chapter. Moreover, differences

between the collegia and the guilds are quite as marked as are their

similarities.

The collegia were essentially social clubs, affected by religion,

with little or no control over hours, laws, wages or conditions of

labor; the medieval guilds, as will be shown hereafter, were trade

organizations, one of their principal purposes being to direct their

members in the proper conduct of their work. From this it is not to

be understood that the guilds had many things in common with the

modern trades union. On the contrary, as J. S. Reid has sagaciously

observed, there is hardly a single true point of comparison.

Medieval workers as organized into a society might obtain certain

advantages which, scattered as individuals, they could not hope to

get, but these societies did not attempt to control wages or

prescribe the conditions under which alone their members would

consent to work. They were maintained for the technical

betterment of the craftsmen themselves, for social relaxation, for

relief of the distressed, for preserving the operative secrets of their

trade and, no doubt, for the moral improvement of the

membership.

This does not mean, however, that even if the collegia did pass

utterly away without leaving direct heirs they handed nothing

down to the guilds and, by consequence, to Freemasonry. Their

influence was felt in more than one part of Europe long after their

history had been forgotten. It could scarcely be otherwise. The

rude inhabitants of many a barbaric village in Africa, in Gaul, in

Spain and in the far-away regions beyond the Danube must have

marveled at the works and the working methods of these societies

of Roman artisans, must have culled out and preserved whatever

they could understand or use. Roman social organization could be

extirpated root and branch while Roman intrenchments, Roman

walls and Roman viaducts, roads and bridges defied "the unsparing

ravages of barbarous force." Ideas are more indestructible than

viaducts.

When the Dark Ages were at their darkest the germs of the great

revival were lying dormant far under ground, needing but sunnier

skies to spring up again into new and abundant life. There were

numerous towns that had maintained unbroken connections with

the past. In these, if nowhere else, memories and traditions

lingered, handed down from fathers to sons, altered no doubt in the

telling but still basically the same. Nowhere is there positive and

incontrovertible evidence connecting Freemasonry, in a direct line

through the guilds, with the Roman collegia. Neither is there

positive and incontrovertible evidence denying such connection

may actually have existed.