history 7

HISTORY OF FREEMASONRY

CHAPTER VII

THE GOTHIC CATHEDRALS

by H.L. HAYWOOD

IN the Arabian Nights there is a tale of a city in which every living

thing had been changed instantaneously into stone. Generations of

readers have been thrilled by the romantic possibilities latent in

that theme. In such a city a wanderer might pass through street and

market place, through palace and hovel, into hall and chamber,

seeking from each immobile form to reconstruct the history of the

life which once animated it. Caught and unalterably fixed as he

was at the moment of doom, each separate person would have

summed up in one frozen posture all he had been, nay, all he might

hope to be, unless some necromancer with a word of power should

restore to him the vitality which once was his.

Like that fancied wanderer, the archaeologist walks among the

ruins of lost civilizations and reconstructs much of their former

grandeur. Wherever it can find structures built by human hands

archaeology is particularly capable of doing so. The Gothic

builders left few and fragmentary records of themselves, but,

fortunately for posterity, they left in their cathedrals, churches,

monasteries, palaces, aqueducts and bridges memorials more

eloquent than words. As the eye of science scans these remains,

many of them yet retaining their original beauty, it is able to read

therein the old, familiar story with which it has come to associate

all other forms of human progress - the story of development

through evolution.

The best refutation of a once popular belief that Gothic architecture

was the product - and its technique the peculiar possession - of a

single great association or fraternity of architects is to be found in

reading aright the story which the cathedrals have preserved in

their own walls of stone. Examined in a proper serial order, these

buildings rehearse a drama of trial and error, of adventure and

achievement, of disappointment and triumph, of trimming here and

expanding there to meet the exactions of local taste or the

limitations of local skill. They can be divided into species and

classes, speaking French or German or Spanish or English as

unmistakably as if they were capable of human speech.

The origin of the word Gothic, as applied specifically to

architecture, is somewhat in doubt. Artists of the Renaissance

period used the word as a contemptuous epithet which they applied

to all the art of the Middle Ages. De Caumont and his brother

architects in the nineteenth century began using it in its modern

technical sense as referring to a distinct era of architectural

development, placed roughly between the Romanesque and the

Renaissance periods. Romanesque is a broad general term

including all the various phases of the round-arch style of

architecture intervening between the Gothic and the ancient Roman

schools. For convenience it has become a practice to differentiate

between the Roman and the Romanesque by the fact that

Romanesque employed rounded arches to replace the flat lintels of

the preceding period; to discriminate between Romanesque and

Gothic by the fact that Gothic, in turn, supplanted the rounded arch

with a pointed one. That usage is extremely loose, however, and is

by no means to be regarded as a complete, or even measurably

accurate, definition.

The Goths, after whom the medieval style is named, were members

of Teutonic tribes which, in about the first century of the Christian

era, lived in the vast area stretching from the basin of the Vistula

river westward perhaps as far as Scandinavia. They have been

roughly classified in two major divisions, known to history as the

Western Goths and the Eastern Goths. The Eastern Goths, for a

long period of time, stayed north of the Danube, but the Western

Goths crossed the Danube in 376, entering the Roman provinces as

peaceful settlers. This is not the place to recount the story of

subsequent Gothic migrations; it is sufficient to say that in various

streams these Teutonic peoples flowed in upon Europe,

overrunning Italy, Gaul and Spain until, by the year 586, they were

at the peak of their power and influence in European affairs. They

had long passed the height of their affluence before the first of the

buildings now existing and known as Gothic had been erected.

Distinctive features of Gothic architecture are best understood by

contrasting them with styles of construction which went before. In

the ancient Roman scheme of building, a structure, large or small,

consisted of four walls, like the sides of a box, with a roof to cover

it. When it became necessary to enlarge the structure, it was also

necessary to strengthen its walls; the larger and higher it was, the

thicker its walls had to be. Windows, that they might not weaken

it, were made as few and as small as possible. For these reasons

Roman buildings tended to be low and squat, dark and gloomy.

The art of internal decoration naturally languished, since there was

little use lavishing care upon adornments which could not be seen,

or at best could be seen but imperfectly.

In later times the Romans learned how to avoid many of these

difficulties. What must have been a triumph of art for them was the

Basilica Julia, which was erected on the Forum. This was a

rectangular building, with a central hall 255 feet long by 6o feet

wide, surrounded by a double aisle of arches, carried on piers, with

groined vaults. Afterwards, in the Basilica Julia, erected in the time

of Trajan, piers were replaced by monolithic columns ornamented

with Corinthian capitals.

When Constantine transferred the capital of the empire to

Byzantium in the year 330, he took Roman builders with him and

began the erection of buildings in the Roman style. But Roman art

underwent, in the eastern city, marked transitions and

modifications. Arches began more and more to take the places of

lintels; daring and more daring the arch became in itself. By the

year 532, when construction began upon the church of St. Sophia,

the Roman school had given way completely to the Byzantine,

itself an early stage of the Romanesque. The architects of that

famous temple, Anthemius of Tralles and Isidorus of Miletus, laid

out plans for a structure which was to be 260 feet from east to west

and 238 feet from north to south, to carry a dome 107 feet in

diameter, the apex of which should be 175 feet above the ground.

This dome was to be supported upon four round arches.

The completion of St. Sophia was a marvelous accomplishment.

The use of broad, sweeping arches gave to its interior an

appearance of spaciousness such a no Roman basilica could boast.

Although the first dome fell, it was rebuilt and the temple exists

today in substantially its original form to remind the world of the

intellectual splendor and material resourcefulness of an age which

could design and execute a work so vast. The round arch was

destined to distinguish a general type of architecture which in time

became known in Italy as Byzantine and Lombard Romanesque; in

Germany as Rhenish; in France as Romane and Norman; in

England as Saxon and Norman.

By a slow process of experiment, the Gothic builders worked out

many and astonishing changes from this Byzantine superstructure

erected on a Roman foundation. For the pier-like walls of the

original basilica they substituted an organized system of ribs, with

flying buttresses and pointed arches, arranged to constitute a

self-contained organization, so that the framework could stand

without any walls at all, since the weight and outward thrust of the

roof were taken up by the buttresses. In such a building the roof

could be carried to a great height; as many windows could be used

as the areas between pillars and ribs would accommodate. Each

member of the structure could be employed as an element in the

decorative scheme of the whole. Columns, piers and pillars could

be carved in a great variety of shapes, could stand on ornamented

bases and might terminate in graceful capitals.

Each rib could be twisted and fashioned into whatever form fancy

suggested. Each arch could be made to flower into intricate

patterns, like a blossoming shrub; floors and panels could be

overlaid with rich and colorful mosaics, the subtlest shades of

which could be distinguished in the abundance of light streaming

in from numerous windows; the windows themselves could be as

glamorous in coloring as any painting by a master artist. C. H.

Moore, whose book on Gothic architecture has become something

of a classic, summed these characteristics into this definition:

"In fine, then, Gothic architecture may be shortly defined as a

system of construction in which vaulting on an independent system

of ribs is sustained by piers and buttresses whose equilibrium is

maintained by the opposing action of thrust and counter thrust.

This system is adorned by sculptures whose motives are drawn

from organic nature, conventionalized in obedience to architectural

conditions, and governed by the appropriate forms established by

the ancient art, supplemented by color designs on opaque ground

and more largely in glass. It is a popular church architecture - the

product of secular craftsmen working under the stimulus of

national and municipal aspiration and inspired by religious faith."

How the style was perfected and how it originated still remain

something of a mystery, with almost no two historians agreeing

among themselves. That it proceeded to its culmination through a

long series of experiments is plain enough, yet even so its full

accomplishment continues a theme for never ending wonder.

Moore, as is apparent from the quotation, saw the flying buttress as

its chief characteristic. Others have seen it in the pointed arch, or in

the rib vault, or in the use of stained-glass windows or in stone

vaulting; still others have found the secret to lie in the manner in

which all these peculiarities were united into an indivisible whole.

Where and when any of them was originally developed, invented

or discovered remains a riddle to which an astonishing variety of

answers has been proposed. Earlier writers made ingenious guesses

ranging from the ridiculous to the sublime and back again; most

modern historians have taken the ground that each distinctive trait

developed little by little from an earlier form.

English historians of the style have claimed for their own land the

glory of its discovery, urging that its advent was at Durham in the

year 1100. The preponderance of authoritative opinion seems to

incline, however, toward the view of French writers, who place the

emergence of the style at the construction of the abbey church of

St. Denis. Whether it did in fact originate, as enthusiastic

Frenchmen sometimes assert, in the region known as Ile de France

in the second quarter of the twelfth century, is a matter of

conjecture; it certainly flourished there with early luxuriance and

has left in that district some of its finest masterpieces.

Work began on the abbey church of St. Denis in 1137. In rapid

order construction of cathedrals at Noyon, Senlis and Sens

followed. By that time French taste for buildings of slenderer and

more energetic types than those of the earlier churches had become

pronounced. Notre Dame cathedral in Paris was be gun in 1163.

Some few years later construction started on the cathedral of Notre

Dame at Chartres, in which the flying buttress was brought to

triumphant artistic culmination.

By examining one after another these ancient cathedrals it is

possible to trace the working out of important details of

construction. In imperishable stone the hand of medieval

architecture wrote a stirring tale of adventure and achievement.

Between the abbey church of St. Denis and the cathedral at

Chartres stretch almost a hundred years of time, marked by

milestones of progress. The edifice at Chartres was destroyed by

fire almost as soon as it was completed, but clergy and people with

undiminished courage at once set about rebuilding and soon a new

structure had been reared. Its main portion, with the two famous

towers - one of which was not completed, however, until the

sixteenth century - stands today; within recent months this

cathedral was accepted as the model upon which one of the

costliest of American churches should be patterned. Chartres

cathedral and the one at Rouen are usually considered as having

marked the close of the first great period of Gothic architecture.

While the ashes were being cleared away at Chartres, newer and

more daring ideas were taking shape in the plans for building the

cathedral at Reims. This marvelous structure, which is regarded as

having instituted the second great phase of Gothic development,

was started in 1211. Its most striking characteristic, aside from the

perfection of tower which so delighted Villard. de Honnecourt,

was the use of ornamental stonework to form divisions between the

lights of windows which, radiating from a center, suggest the

unfolding petals of a flower.

The great rose window of that cathedral is too famous to require

description here. It has awakened the wonder and admiration of

centuries; it has inspired poets, painters, architects. It gave to the

fine lines of a Gothic interior a crown of glory. The traceries at

Reims gave new inspiration to French architecture. In 1220 a still

larger cathedral was begun at Amiens; in 1247 one still more vast

was begun at Beauvais. A novel perfection in aisle vaulting

marked a still further architectural advance in the building of the

cathedral at Le Mans. With the completion of Sainte Chapelle -

begun at Paris in 1244 - Gothic architecture, as a learned writer has

said, reached complete maturity. Here large tracery windows were

brought to perfection, and moreover the structure was so organized

into a series of wide window spaces, only divided by strong,

far-projecting buttress piers, "that the stained glass ideal found full

expression and the building became a lantern for its display."

In England as in France during all these years Gothic Architecture

also had been undergoing an evolutionary process, the details of

which differed from those in France as their purposes were

modified by climatic and other local requirements. Edmund Sharpe

has divided it into six distinct stages, beginning with the Norman,

which he assigns to the years from 1066 to 1145, and following

with the Transitional, which lasted for about half a century; with

the Lancet, which endured for a similar period; with the

Geometrical, which prevailed from 1245 to 1315; with the

Curvilinear, which lasted until about 1360 and ending with the

Rectilinear, lasting from the middle of the fourteenth century to the

middle of the sixteenth.

That similar processes of development took place in other

countries the facts abundantly testify. Goodyear in Roman and

Medieval Art sums the matter up in a paragraph when, after

commenting upon certain designations of main periods as being

"early," "middle" and "late," he observes: "It must be understood

that there are no definite limits between these periods. Speaking

generally, the late twelfth century was the time of Gothic

beginnings in France, and it is rarely found in other countries

before the thirteenth century; the thirteenth and fourteenth

centuries are both periods of great perfection, and the fifteenth

century is the time of relative decadence. Both in Germany and in

England the thirteenth century was the time of the introduction of

Gothic. In Italy it was never fully or generally accepted. Within the

field of the Gothic proper (i.e., excluding Italy) England is the

country where local and national modifications are most obvious,

many showing that the style was practiced more or less at second

hand. In picturesque beauty and general attractiveness, the English

cathedrals may be compared with any, but preference must be

given to the French in the study of the evolution of the style."

These statements are somewhat didactic, but while the conclusions

of Goodyear in some respects have been open to challenge, there

must be substantial agreement with his chief contention, which is

that the so-called periods shaded into one another by a natural and

evolutionary process.

If this is so, many fanciful attempts to discover the origin of Gothic

architecture have succeeded no better than have the fanciful

attempts to discover the origin of Freemasonry. Here, as in so

many other fields of investigation, the lineally minded historian

has pursued his old fallacy of believing that every given thing

should be retraced to some antecedent point in space or time.

Lascelles decided that the pointed arch was originally suggested by

the timbering of Noah's ark. Stukely and Warburton fancied that

the Gothic builders were trying to imitate the groves in which

Druidic priests conducted their mystic rites. Sir Christopher Wren

believed they borrowed it from the Saracens. Findel and Fort say

they got it from Germany; Leader Scott says they derived it from

the Germans but learned it through the Masters of Lake Como.

Hayter Lewis concludes it was so united and homogeneous in all

its parts that it must have come from the brain of a single genius.

He nominates Suger, counsellor of Louis le Gros and of Louis VII,

as a plausible candidate for that honor. And of course there is the

tradition of the one big fraternity which has bulked so large in

Masonic thought.

Weighing against all of these theories is the story in stone which is

to be read in the cathedrals themselves. It declares that Gothic

architecture did not come into being full-blown, but evolved

slowly from antecedent styles, accepting here and rejecting there.

It asserts that the flying buttress, so essential in every phase of the

style, was not given to the world as a single donative, but came

into use through experimentation, many of the earliest Gothic

builders having failed to make use of it, either because they did no

know of it or did not approve of it. This tale in imperishable

marble further proclaims the evolution of the pointed arch from the

rounded arch, and says it was adopted in many buildings under the

compulsion of necessity.

Something of this for a long time has been understood. Gilbert

Scott enunciated the theory and Robert Freke Gould quoted Scott's

remarks with strong approval in his History of Freemasonry. Gould

in an exceedingly lucid discussion of the subject remarked that

Gothic buildings of different lands exhibit altogether too many

local peculiarities to admit of the supposition that their architecture

was subject to central control. It cannot be too strongly emphasized

that if the body of "secrets" of Gothic architecture had been in the

possession of a single fraternity, subsequent experiments which

resulted in local modifications would have been unlikely, if not

impossible. "I have shown," wrote Gould in his most positive

manner, "that the idea of a universal body of men working with

one impulse and after one set fashion, at the instigation of a

cosmopolitan body acting under a certain direction . . . is a myth."

In spite of all this, however, the idea survives in certain forms of

Masonic writing. It serves the necessities of those who support the

hypothesis that Freemasonry has been in continuous organized

existence from the days of Adam until now, since they are required

by the nature of their dogma to be able at any given period in

history, to point to some particular set of men and say these

constituted Freemasonry as it was in that day. If they cannot do

that, the chain is broken; a broken chain means that the whole

theory must fall to pieces. Clearly, if the Fraternity was in

existence in the Middle Ages, the logical place to look f or it is

among the builders of Gothic cathedrals. In point of fact, when it

does appear as a distinct body of workers in stone, it appears first

among the guilds which grew up with the Gothic system. But to

suppose on that account that all the guilds and the Gothic architects

themselves were united in a single society, or even in a general

confederation of societies, is merely to believe what one wishes to

believe notwithstanding the preponderance of weighty reasons

against it.

Both the Gothic system and Freemasonry were social evolutions,

and both appear to have been affected by the same major currents

of medieval culture. Evolution presupposes orderly growth from a

lower state to a higher. Biological evolution may begin with a

single living cell, which develops, expands, divides, subdivides,

acts upon its environment and is strongly reacted upon in return.

Social evolutions follow similar processes. They, too, must have

their beginning in at east one vital principle and must contain

within themselves the power of reproduction and expansion. Civil

government begins with the household, passes from household to

clan, from clan to tribe, from tribe to state and from state to

empire. It starts with an imperative need for mutual protection and

with capability for reducing social arrangements to some rude

order. It is modified by its surroundings, by considerations of soil

and climate, shelter, fuel and food, by the forces of nature to be

overcome or to be harnessed to do man's bidding, by the salubrity

or the unhealthfulness of mountain, forest, morass or plain. In a

fertile, well-watered and well-wooded land it possesses assets of

inestimable value with which it may develop more rapidly than it

can in arctic or antarctic regions or in the arid deserts of Arabia

and the Sahara. Whether it does so develop remains a question of

the inner spirit or genius of the people who form it.

To say, therefore, of a highly organized social structure that it has

risen through evolution is to say with equal force that it developed

from something. Whatever else it may be in its present form, it is

at least a growth from previous forms and a development of them,

else it is a new creation. It is moreover a growth which has been

animated by forces resident within it and inherent in its very

nature. From time to time it may gain new forces through the

operation of old ones upon their environment, but always the

primary, elemental force abides and replenishes itself by what it

feeds upon. Sometimes it happens that two separate processes

come into contact for the first time and profoundly affect one

another. Here, for instance, is a plant which has borne nothing but

yellow flowers, as its ancestors have borne them for countless

generations. On the other side of the valley is another with an

ancestral inheritance of blue flowers. One day a chance current of

wind carries pollen from one to the other. From this union, all

other conditions being favorable, may spring up a third plant which

bears flowers of a color scheme different from that of either of its

parents.

Cross pollination is not a miracle of botany alone. It can take place

- indeed, is extremely likely to take place - in all fields of the mind

where ideas bud and burgeon. The Middle Ages, in which Gothic

architecture and Operative Masonry grew up side by side, saw the

common man, after long, bleak centuries of despair, everywhere

standing erect and peering upward through the gloom in search of

light. Everywhere minds were thirsty for illumination. They

eagerly drank from every stream of culture which trickled down to

them out of the past. Men turned instinctively to the promises of

religion and because religion fed this craving of their souls, they

lavished upon their temples the utmost they could conceive of

beauty and of grandeur. Gothic architecture was a splendid

expression of that emotion; one more splendid the world has rarely

known.

How useless it is to label that triumphant art as a new creation,

formed in the brain of a single man or in the collective intelligence

of a particular society! It was nothing of the sort. In response to

creative impulse, peoples began to build, starting with what they

already knew and incessantly trying to find further enlightenment

by means of experiments. They were frequently unsuccessful, but

often they were rewarded beyond their fondest dreams. In England,

in France, in Germany, in Lombardy, in Spain, builders were at

work, and on a thousand winds of thought the pollen of ideas was

carried from one to another. Armies carried it, missionaries carried

it, the Crusaders carried it, traveling artisans carried it, merchants,

mendicants, minstrels, pilgrims, sailors, noble lords and ladies,

journeying for business or pleasure, all bore it with them.

But it was not alone in architecture or in formal religion that cross

pollination took place. The stirrings of medieval unrest took many

forms. The world for so long had been drenched in blood and

deafened by the clangor of war, so long had been conscripted by

tyrannical force and marshaled into footsore armies, that it

experienced insatiable longings for, peace and the pursuits of

peace. For some the halls of monastery or convent offered asylum;

others sought a measure of liberty and security within the stout

walls of free cities or within the enfolding arms of strong secular

brotherhoods. What happened earlier in the waning civilization of

Rome and what, to a certain extent, is happening in the twentieth

century, was taking place all over Europe at that time. Those who

could flocked to the towns, and those who lived in the towns began

uniting themselves into societies of various kinds. Skilled

workmen banded themselves together into guilds, gaining

emancipation from serfdom as time went on. Out of this grew craft

industries. But industries cannot thrive without marketing and the

exchange of commodities, so a new system of merchandising

began to develop. The merchants formed themselves into guilds,

organized fairs and perfected means of transportation, so that

surplus commodities of one town or country might be taken to

another for barter or sale.

The Crusades reopened to Europe commerce with the East.

Returning warriors brought rich and soft fabrics, objects of art and

luxury. The poor Knights of the Temple, whose original function

was to protect travelers to the Holy Land, became common carriers

of treasure; they waxed so wealthy that they drew upon themselves

the covetous eyes of lords temporal and spiritual and ultimately

paid at the stake or on the rack for their presumptuous prosperity.

The feudal system, under which each baron had been a petty king

in his own right, holding over his vassals the high justice, the

middle and the low, and rendering to his king indifferent and

grudging service, had begun to break down under the pressure of a

new spirit of nationalism. The first glimmer of dawn for the

common man had begun to steal over the horizon.

The common man early realized, however, that for everything he

would get he must fight. As an individual he could no more hope

successfully to compete with the social forces arrayed against him

than he could hope, naked and armed with a club, to compete

successfully on the field of battle with a warrior encased in linked

mail and bearing battle-axe, shield and spear. But if he could not

wage successful struggle in open warfare, he could associate

himself with his fellows and in economic strife hope to prosper

through organized weight of numbers. Every guild, whether of

merchants or of laborers, was consciously or unconsciously a

weapon with which that kind of contest could be undertaken.

The guild itself was no more a new creation than Gothic

architecture was; it was simply a new phase of an old process. It,

like that art, simply began to build upon foundations that were

already laid, starting with familiar forms and always experimenting

with new ones. It was inevitable, of course, that societies of men

engaged in the various branches of technical construction should

tend to identify themselves with the buildings they helped to erect.

Here again cross pollination was to take place, until in time it was

practically impossible to differentiate between the worker and his

work. To erect Gothic temples it was essential to employ men

particularly skilled in certain mechanical tasks; in time these men

were compelled to depend upon the building of temples for

employment. As the art of temple-building waxed, their prosperity

waxed with it; as that art waned, their art waned with it.

Of all these architectural guilds, those of the stone masons were

most important. Theirs was an industry which tended to become

highly specialized. In their own eyes this invested them with

peculiar dignity. They were aristocrats of the building trades. Their

organization was precious to them. They cherished its traditions,

preserved its operative secrets, maintained its discipline and

decorum. They watched with anxious eyes the progress of their

novices and apprentices and jealously guarded the approaches to

mastership. Most important of all, they preserved a warm faith in

the antiquity of their institution, which set it apart from all other

societies of the kind even if only half what they believed about it

was true.

Were they mistaken in that belief? It is possible to say that in a

very true sense they were not. If their society was really a product

of evolution, they could not have been altogether mistaken. Their

guild had its ancestors, must have had them, although it is not

feasible, out of the multitude of possible progenitors, to say of this

or that one that it was sire or grandfather. Of all the groups

immediately preceding the medieval emergence of the masonic

guilds, however, there is none for which this honor has been more

persistently and plausibly urged than f or that curious Lombard

band known as the Comacine Masters. Further discussion of that

claim must be reserved for another chapter.