The story about Freemasonry
At present, the history of Freemasonry is raised in three great blocks:
- Legendary Freemasonry.
It is the period of gestation of great cultures and civilizations. An era of which there are hardly any written data whose culmination would bring the termination of great works such as Stonehenge, the Pyramids or the Solomon Temple. It is a time when religion, science and magic have not yet separated and walk together to illuminate the great Mediterranean civilizations: Egypt, Greece and Rome.
- Operational Freemasonry.
Legendary it is claimed that it was Numa Pompilio, king of Rome around 700 to. of j.C., Who founds the Collegiae, artisan workshops where not only manually worked but also in liberal thought. It should be noted that Numa was not very possibly. Therefore there are authors who avoid making any reference to this king, successor of the equally mythical Romulus, founder of Rome with his brother Remo and the first king of Rome. And set the beginning of this era in Pythagorean Greece. We refer to this issue because in many Masonic and esoteric texts of the nineteenth century, although from a historical perspective it is important to place the beginning of this period in the seventh century to. of e.C., or in the IV a. of e.C. because it was never a uniform process that occurred in all the planet regions at the same time. What these historical references intend to reflect is the beginning of history as long as written texts arise. Important pointing out that since the beginning of civilization, special importance was given to union groups, which away from all religious or political fanaticism, based their life on personal fulfillment through honest work and having as a compass science, philosophy and morals.
Already the Hammurabi Code (2000 A. of e.C.) regulated the privileges of architects, quarries and masons. His secrets were transmitted from teacher to a disciple, almost always orally, covered from the profane world, preventing those who were not worthy of knowing their secrets could access them.
These men, the Masons, grouped in Rome in the famous Collegiae, had a stroll that demanded that their associates identify through secret signs, being essential to overcome hard initiation tests and complex rites to belong and associate.
These Collegiae became so influential in Roman society that Julio César himself gave his ‘Lex Julia’ to try to control them.
After the fall of the Roman Empire and the arrival of Christianity, the Collegiae disappeared, but their knowledge was perpetuated in the unions, which became the guardians of both natural and esoteric knowledge.
At the end of the eleventh century the Romanesque constructions, promoted by the orders of Cluny and the Cister, in turn derived from the Benedictine pre -Romanesque, favored the expansion of the guildas or unions. With the crusades, in addition, the builders began to emancipate the monasteries, which gave rise to a differentiation between the artisans assigned to a court or monastery, called ‘jurized artisans’, since they brought an oath of submission to the school that there were themformed, and the ‘free artisans’, in English called ‘Free-Mason’s’ and in French ‘Francmaçons’, which were not badly seen by the Church and even received privileges, such as those granted by Pope Nicolás III in 1277 and BenedictXII in 1334.
These free Masons begin to work with the Byzantine and Muslim builders brought by the Templars from Jerusalem, to build their multiple castles and monasteries (about ten thousand according to Naudon), thus configuring the "companies of the Holy Duty". Sample of this syncretism and the link that the free freemasons begin to have with the temple can be seen when King Luis, the fatFrance moved to this little "Masonic Templar State".
The activity of these "Companies of the Holy Duty" ended up being regulated in the context of the regulation of the unions through the "Book of the Trades" of 1268, written by the Preboste Etienne Boileau at the request of King Luis de France. By then, the relations of the Templars with the Catholic Church and many of the European monarchies did not go through their best moment. It was largelyof the nobility and the clergy the existence of the Templars and the power they accumulated, converted for a long time in the great bankers of the West.
It is not surprising, therefore, that in 1312, King Felipe, the beautiful, of France and Pope Clemente V, indebted to the hooks with the temper, will be conspired to destroy the order of the temper and loot their wealth. This event also marks an important moment in the history of Europe, because not only ends with the first of the military religious orders that had been constituted in the shadow of the crusades, but also implies the beginning of absolutism, the beginning of aconcentration of power in the monarchs, who did not hesitate to destroy anyone who opposed them, including rural nobility, which saw their power very diminished.
Through the bull of March 23, 1312, they suppress the order of the temper and burn alive Jacques de Molay, his great master, in 1314, canceling the loans granted by the order and looting all the possessions of the temple. The Company of the Holy Duty is also persecuted and protects itself again in the convents, this time in the hospitals of the Order of San Juan, later the Order of Malta.
For Scottish rites, history does not end here, and even with very few historical sources that support their legend, they defend that these free freemasons, along with those temples that managed to escape the persecution to which they submitted to the Templars in France, took refugein Scotland. There they would fight next to King Robert Bruce in the battle of Bannockburn, being decisive to achieve victory, thus achieving the independence of Scotland.
The king, in prize for his help, granted land and constituted the order of San Andrés del Cardo, under which the Templars could continue with their existence.
Legend tells how Pierre D´Aumont organized the departure of the Templars of France and other points in Europe to meet in Scotland. Meanwhile, he and eight other Templar Knights remained hidden in Paris, waiting for the time to free Molay. However, they could not save their life and when the last great teacher of the Temple order was burned at the stake, Pierre D´Aumont and his eight gentlemen drew their swords and pointing to them to the flames, they shouted a word that since then is since thenThe secret word that is transmitted from mouth to ear – and with the proper precautions – in the degree of Master Mason.
After this cry they swore to avenge the injustice and crime that was being committed. It is also said that that same night they managed to get the ashes of the pyre in which the last templar was burned to the bones and escaped from France disguised as mason. Already in Scotland, on the island of Mull, Pierre D´Aumont was chosen Grand Master of the Temple and sealed forever the union between the Templars and the companies of duty, joining forever to the warrior monks of the Temple with the Masons, so thatSince then and until they fulfill his work, they were always one.
Other versions of the legend ensure that the election of Pierre D´Aumont as a new Grand Master took place in the solstice of 1315, a year after the battle of Bannockburn and already as a great master of the order of San Andrés del Cardo.
These legends, however, are not accepted as true by most Masons. In fact, only Scotland rites have it in its tradition, and when they are explained, they are made with an overlapping tone of skepticism. In our opinion, however, it is this legend that justifies both the "antiquity of Freemasonry" and the inclusion in it of the so -called "chivalrous degrees", degrees and titles of the nobility that come to perpetuate in the lodges the oldTraditions. If no value is given to this oral history, transmitted (of this there is no doubt) generation after generation, the Freemasonry would only make sense if it were explained from the decline of the unions at the end of the Middle Ages.
Indeed, from the fifteenth century the guilds begin to enter into crisis and the operational masonry decays. Its members begin to accept non-operational lodges (that is, people not linked to the construction trade) with whom to share humanistic ideas, as is the case of Tomás Moro (1478-1553), executed by not accepting theKing’s spiritual authority;The Benedictine friar Rabelais (1494-1553), accepted Mason;or that of the Archbishop of Colonia, who summoned in 1535 a tenant to grant his letter from the chosen masons of the order of San Juan.
These accepted initiations had the purpose of gaining the support of relevant figures of the society of their time, in order to preserve the privileges of the Masons. However, what they achieved was to integrate under the lodges the most flowery of humanistic thinking of the time, turning the lodges into a space of intellectual progress and fraternal coexistence. A coexistence that facilitated the integration of various heterodox thinking currents, such as alchemy, cabal and especially rosemates. This is the end of operational Freemasonry and the beginning of speculative or philosophical Freemasonry.
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