part in unintelligible language. Lucian once tested his powers by

submitting to him the one question, “When will Alexander be caught at his tricks,” written on eight tablets; he got eight different answers, all irrelevant. He missed no opportunity of unmasking the rogue, and of teaching the people by the evidence of their own senses that the man was a vulgar impostor. The knave affected a mild friendship for his adversary, but he bribed the helmsman of a vessel on which Lucian sailed to throw him overboard; this the man had not the courage to do. Lucian wished to have the impostor put on trial for this crime, but the proconsul advised him not to invoke the help of the law, Alexander being too high in favor with the officials and the public. The city of Abonotichus had coins struck bearing the effigy of the Aesculapius serpent, and the pseudoprophet attained the age of seventy years, enjoying to the end the undiminished respect of the people. Many were the impostors that sprang up after Alexander, and wherever there was any lack of real ones, fictitious pseudoprophets were imagined by satiric writers, Lucian’s Peregrinus, for example, a renegade Christian who devotes himself to a death by fire to win fame. It was a mad world then. New mysteries were invented in plenty, and people came in crowds for initiation. The “Golden Ass” of Apuleius is a striking satire on this mystery furore. To this period belong the Gnostics, whose doctrines were a mixture of Judaism, heathenism and Christianism; the Manichees, who gave a Christian varnish to the Persian fire worship; the Kabbalists, who heaped a vast amount of rubbish together, got out of the Hebrew Bible by juggling with its sentences, words, letters and numbers. Amid this tangle of doctrines the heathen religions sank, Judaism lost its native land, and Christianism fell into an incalculable number of sects—an evil that was not to be corrected even by the artificial unity of the Church under the Apostolical See. _PART SIXTH._ _The Knights Templar._ 1. THE MIDDLE AGE. With the spread of Christianism the heathen mysteries came everywhere to an end, and the Christian mysteries took their place. The Christians, it is true, no longer constituted a secret society, after their faith had become the creed of the state; but there was plenty of mystic doctrine, nevertheless, and incessant strife of parties and sects, Arians and Athanasians, Pelasgians and Semipelagians, Nestorians, Monophysites and Monothelites, Adoptionists, Priscillianists, and Donatists, to name no more, over Christ’s nature, on the question whether the Holy Ghost proceeds only from the Father or equally from him and the Son; whether the soul is saved by good works or by grace of God, and so on interminably. This wrangling so occupied the minds of all that there was no longer need of secret societies. Theology, i. e., the struggle for creed, and war, i. e., the struggle for power, were the occupations of the Middle Age. Monks and knights were the two great classes of that time, with the Pope as supreme head on one side, and the Emperor on the other. All the available knowledge was in the Middle Age employed in the service of the Church, and hence science slept from the migration of the barbarians till the invention of printing. During that period of a thousand years no addition was made to the sum of human knowledge. Arabian and Jewish physicians alone labored to save the intellectual wealth inherited from the ancient Greeks. As for Christendom, it was involved in profound intellectual darkness, and the Doctrine of Light that had been published by the Carpenter’s Son, was lost amid petty controversies and inane interpretations, till at last its strictly monotheistic groundwork was forgotten, and there remained visible only the superstructure of ethnic mysticism and of doctrines, as the Trinity, Incarnation, Resurrection, and Ascension, borrowed from Egyptian and Grecian mythology. And this ethnico-mystic structure acquired a splendor and a power never before equaled, so that the system was credited to divine intervention, whereas its purely human origin might easily have been traced. The root idea of the ethnic mysticism was to seek the supposedly “lost deity,” to find him, to be unified with him. And the self-same idea underlay the Christian mysticism, and it was by calling that idea into play and by giving it expression in brilliant achievement, that this mysticism won its highest triumph, and, aided by the Papacy, its widest influence. This new embodiment of the mystical idea was seen in the Crusades, in which the Christian mystics joined, going forth to seek the lost sepulchre of their God, and to obtain control of it. Possession of the sepulchre would be the surest guarantee for the unification of godhead and humanity. In this undertaking the two most powerful estates of the Middle Age took part—the monks and the knights. The monks, under orders from the Pope, joined the armies of the cross; the knights, commanded by the Emperor, marched to the Holy Land and conquered it. After the conquest, when there was a kingdom of Jerusalem after the model of the kingdoms of the West, there arose, as the necessary summit of medieval aspiration, the union of monkery and chivalry, in the monkish orders of knights, whose members wore the sword of the knight and took the monastic vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. These organizations had their origin in the gradual assumption of knightly elements by the monastic orders. Some merchants of Amalfi, oldest commercial emporium of Italy, had, as early as 1048, founded a monastery and a church at Jerusalem, and in conjunction with these a hospital in honor of John the Baptist. There the monks cared for pilgrims who were poor or ailing. Pope Paschal II. granted them a monastic constitution in 1113, and Godfrey of Bouillon, soon after the capture of Jerusalem, endowed them with considerable properties. They took the title of Brothers Hospitalers of Saint John of Jerusalem; their habit consisted of a black mantle with a white cross. A few years later (1119) the Knights Hugo of Payns, and Godfrey of Saint Omers, associated themselves and six other knights, all French, in a military league, under the style “Poor Knights of Christ,” pledging themselves to keep the highways of the Holy Land safe for pilgrims, and to observe the rule of Saint Benedict. The members were favored by King Baldwin I. and the Patriarch of Jerusalem, and came to be called Templars, because their convent stood on the site of the Solomonic Temple. The Templars received from the Synod of Troyes in 1128 recognition as a regular order, a monastic rule, a monastic habit, a special banner, etc. About the same date the Hospitalers, Johannites, or Knights of Saint John of Jerusalem, became invested with the knightly character. After the Hospitalers came the German Knights, whose theatre of action was principally the region of the Baltic Sea, but they also saw service in Spain in the war against the Saracens. Other knightly orders were those of Calatrava, of Alcantara, of Santiago de Compostella, in England the order of the Knights of the Holy Sepulchre, etc. 2. THE TEMPLARS. None of these orders rose to higher distinction than the order of the Templars, or of “the Poor Companions of the Temple of Jerusalem,” as it was styled in its rule. In those days it was full of the spirit of lowliness, but the time came when the knights were no longer called themselves “Poor Companions,” but “Knights Templar.” At first the brethren begged their bread, fasted, were diligent in attendance on divine worship, performed the duties of their religion, fed the poor, cared for the sick. Plain and unadorned was their attire, in color either black, white or brown; and the brother who tried to get the finest habit got the shabbiest. The hair and beard were close cropped. The chase was not permitted, except for the extermination of beasts of prey. Women were not allowed to live in the houses of the order; the brethren might not so much as kiss their female relations. But their mode of life became in time very different. They became rich in worldly goods, and so broke the vow of poverty. As an order and as individuals they followed their own inclinations, and thus was their vow of obedience made nought; and their vow of chastity fared not better; while the specific vow of the order—protection of pilgrims to the Holy Land—became a nullity through their negligence, or even by their treasonable surrender of posts to the Saracens. The candidate for admission to the order was required to be of noble birth, though sometimes illegitimate sons of knights were received. Furthermore, the candidate must be unmarried and unbetrothed; but this rule was circumvented by taking married candidates as “affiliate” members; they also admitted minors and even small boys. Lucre was the impelling motive of this disregard of their rule; money was their god. No other order of knights was in such disrepute for lewdness, duplicity, even treason. Originally all Templars were of one rank and degree—that of knights. But in time ecclesiastics were admitted to attend to the spiritual affairs, and these ecclesiastics were made independent of the ordinary jurisdiction of diocesans. Thus was formed a second rank or degree, subordinate to the knights, and mere dummies on festival and ceremonial occasions. Then was added still another class, Servientes, who were the personal attendants of the knights, or were otherwise employed for the benefit of the order, as mechanics, laborers, etc. The class Affiliates comprised persons of all ranks in life and of both sexes. They were not bound by all the vows of the order; they were required to make the order heir of their property; but they did not live in the houses of the order. These several classes were distinguished by their attire. Knights wore a white mantle with an eight-pointed red cross over the left breast. Clerics wore the cassock, with brown mantle (the mantle of the higher clerics was white). Servientes wore a brown garb. The members called each other Brother, and indeed they stood by each other like brothers; in battle their personal bravery was irreproachable. All these religious orders of knights possessed great power in the Middle Age, their grandmasters ranking next after Popes and monarchs. In fact they recognized no emperor or king as their lord, but only the Pope. The orders were favored by the Pontiffs, who loaded them with praise and privileges, though they feared them. If the Popes had now the arm of the flesh and not of the spirit only to defend them against the secular power, they owed that advantage to the knightly orders. And specially were they beholden to the Templars in this regard. The Templars were free from all Church tribute, and by the Pope’s favor had the right to harbor excommunicated knights, to conduct divine service in churches that were under interdict, to found churches and churchyards; which privileges brought down upon them the enmity of the clergy. As the order was exempt from all episcopal jurisdiction and subject only to the Roman See, the bishops endeavored to have that and other like privileges abated by the Lateran Council in 1179. At the time of their suppression the Templars possessed an empire of five provinces in the East and sixteen in the West, with 15,000 houses of the order. In possession of such resources, they aimed at nothing short of making all Christendom dependent on their order, and to set up a sort of military aristocratic commonwealth, governed ostensibly by the Pope, but really by themselves, with their grandmaster at the head. The grandmaster of the Templars was elected by a college of eight knights, four servientes and one cleric. The Grandmaster was only president of the Council and its representative; but in war he had supreme command; as the Pope’s deputy he had jurisdiction over the clerics. A splendid retinue attended him, and he had a treasury at his disposal. Next in rank after him stood the Seneschal, his deputy for civil affairs, and the Marshal for military, the Treasurer, the Drapier. The Council (Conventus) consisted of the Grandmaster, his assistants (i.e., the grand officers just mentioned), Provincial Masters who might be present, and such knights as the Grandmaster might summon. By addition of all eminent Templars the Council became the General Chapter; this was the legislative body. The other knightly orders were organized on a plan not essentially different. What interests us most at present is those features of the Templar order which marked it as in some respects a secret society. The order took its first steps in this direction in the thirteenth century, moved thereto by desire to safeguard its riches and power. Its secret doctrines or tenets were borrowed from the heretical sects of the time—Albigenses and Waldenses—or were such beliefs as were held in secret by many of the most enlightened men. Such views were shared by religious men, scholars, and worldlings alike, by the first class out of indignation against the moral degeneration of the rulers of the Church; by the second, because they suspected that the Church’s dogmas were but inventions of Popes and councils, and by the third, because in rejecting the Church’s authority and accepting the heretical doctrines, they fancied that they were freed from the obligations of morality. But the Templars, who were neither pious nor learned, but of whom many were very worldly indeed, found the enlightened new opinions to coincide well with their interest, which prompted them to care rather for their numerous possessions in the West than for the few they held in lands occupied by the Moslem. God, said they, showed his favor to the Mohammedans in the Crusades, and evidently willed the defeat of the Christian arms. So by adopting the more enlightened views, they prepared the way for a withdrawal from the useless Crusades, and a return with bag and baggage to Europe, where they could rest from their glorious but hard and thankless martial labors, and devote themselves to the service of princes, or pass the time in the splendid houses of their order, amid Oriental luxury, and surrounded by gardens like Fairyland, beguiling the hours with gaming and the chase, with songs and lovemaking, the while not neglecting their political interests. But the Templars were rapidly nearing their downfall. 3. THE SECRETS OF THE TEMPLARS. The Arcana of the Templars consisted of a secret doctrine and of a cult based on the same. The doctrine, which had no ground in scientific research, seems to have been akin to the doctrine of certain sects, specially the Albigenses, who worshiped a superior god of heaven and an inferior god of earth, and ascribed to the latter the origin of evil. For the Templars, Christ was no Son of God, had worked no miracles, had neither risen from the dead nor ascended into heaven; he was, in fact, often spoken of as a false prophet. The Church’s doctrine regarding the transubstantiation of the bread in the mass was for them crass superstition, the eucharist only a commemorative rite, the sacrament of penance a priestly imposture, the Trinity a human invention, veneration of the cross an act of idolatry. That the opposition of the order to the last-mentioned custom led on festival occasions, and particularly when new members were admitted, to overt acts of contempt for the cross, to spitting on the cross, for example—accusations like that are grave not only from the point of view of the Church, but even of common propriety, and they played an important part in the prosecution of the Templars. That postulants were compelled by force of arms and other violent means to perform such highly reprehensible acts is not to be discredited entirely, for they may have been part of a test of the postulants’ willingness to obey superiors: and besides, the objectionable ceremony was not practiced everywhere, but only in France. More excusable was the offense of the Templars in looking on the cross broidered on their mantle, not as the sign of redemption, but as a double T, the initial letter of the name of their society. They were said also to have substituted John the Baptist in the place of Jesus as the order’s patron, because John did not pretend to miraculous powers nor declare himself the Messiah. The clerics of the order must have approved these heretical opinions and practices. There were at that time many enlightened churchmen, and it is to be presumed that the Templars would adopt such of them as were at variance with the hierarchy and took refuge in the order. The Templars’ secret rites, introduced in the middle of the thirteenth century, were practiced as part of their peculiar religious service, and at the admission of new members: for though the Catholic liturgy was used in their chapels, the initiated performed a cult of their own in the chapter house, or chapel, before break of day. This consisted of confession and communion, as understood by Templars. This confession they regarded on the one hand as an act of brotherly trust, and on the other of brotherly counsel: hence, they confessed only to the chaplains of the order; in the latter times of the order the members were forbidden to confess to priests that were not Templars. By them the communion was taken in the natural species and substance of bread and wine, and in token of brotherly love, not as commemorative of any sacrifice. Two images played a part in the Templar rites. The image of John the Baptist typified the order’s opposition to the Church’s creed. The other image, jealously guarded from the eyes of outsiders, has been called an “idol.” It was made chiefly of copper, gilt, and represented now a human skull, anon the countenance of an old man heavily bearded (makroprosopos), again a very small face (mikroprosopos), which would be now the face of a man, then of a woman, anon male and female at once; it would have now one, again two or three, heads, with bright shining eyes of carbuncles. The idol was by some Templars called “Bassomet,” but why, does not appear. From the statements of members of the order it would seem that this idol was a kind of talisman that brought all manner of good fortune; that it was set up for veneration as rival to the cross, and that they called it “the savior of the order.” There were two forms of admission, the general and the special (or secret) form: the latter was used only at the admission of postulants that could be trusted with the secrets of the order. The Scribe, acting as Receptor, first asked the brethren, in chapter, if they had any objection to make the admission of the postulant. If none objected the postulant was led into an adjoining room and questioned as to his purpose in seeking entrance to the order, whether he knew of any impediment on his part, whether he owed debts that he could not pay, whether he was married or engaged to be married, and so forth. The questions having been satisfactorily answered, and the minutes of the replies reported to the brethren, the matter was again put to vote. Next, the candidate was brought before the chapter, and, after more questioning, took the vows and was formally admitted. In the secret rite of admission the Receptor showed to the candidate the Idol, with these words: “Believe in this, put your trust in this, and all will be well with you.” Then he girded the candidate with a cord of white wool fibres, the Baptist’s girdle, as it was called, which he was to wear over the shirt. The obligation of secrecy was very sternly enforced. Those who betrayed any of the secrets of the order were cast into prison, and the candidate was threatened with dungeons and death should he communicate to an outsider any information about the ceremony of initiation. Thus did the Templars, an order instituted for the purpose of guarding the Church’s interests, in the end reject the Church’s doctrines, and adopt principles that tended inevitably to the overthrow, not only of the Papacy, but of Christianism itself. Such was the irreconcilable opposition between the avowed and the secret convictions of the Templars, and such was the hypocrisy of the order: for, though they had apostatized from the creeds of the Church, they would not formally quit her communion; and though they regarded as true many points of anti-Christian doctrine, they veiled these with mystery, or even on occasion made sport of them, instead of publishing them, as so many poor, unarmed heretics did; and hence their aspirations were foiled, and the most powerful association of that time perished, not in glorious battle, but in ignominious dungeons and at the stake. 4. THE DOWNFALL OF THE KNIGHTS TEMPLAR. The Crusades having failed utterly, the Holy Land having again come under the power of the “infidels,” and the occupation of the knightly orders having gone, the Popes cast about for a remedy for this undesirable state of things. The order of German Knights had already forestalled the problem by choosing as their theatre of action the countries on the Baltic Sea, and the Spanish orders by waging continual wars against the Moors; and the Knights of Saint John (Hospitalers) later found a place for themselves by occupying Rhodes. But the Templars were without any fit employment, and that circumstance was the occasion of their downfall. About the year 1305 Pope Clement V. proposed a union of the Templars with the Hospitalers, and, if possible, with other orders, but both Templars and Hospitalers rejected the advice. Philip IV. (the Fair) of France found in the Templars a serious obstacle to his ambition, and in the early years of his reign sought to compel them by force to aid him in his schemes; but failing in that design, tried to win them by loading them with favors. Many different explanations have been offered to account for another change of policy on the part of Philip, but none of them is historically sound. Probably the change noticeable in the king’s attitude toward the order in 1305 was in some way connected with the outrageous doings of the Inquisition in the South of France; doubtless rumors of heresy in the Templar order had come to the omnipresent ear of the Holy Court. The Inquisitor-General of France, William Imbert, prior of the Dominicans in Paris, begged the King to call the Templars to account. The King, on Nov. 14, 1305, informed Clement V. of the accusation, but Clement, notwithstanding this, invited not only the Grandmaster of the Hospitalers, but also the head of the Templars, to meet with himself in conference about the project of a new Crusade. Yet in his letter to the Templars’ Grandmaster, James Molay (who resided in his palace in Cyprus), he counseled him to come without escort, “lest the news of his departure should give occasion to enemies (of the order) to make a sudden onslaught.” The Master of the Hospitalers was unable to come, being busied with the siege of Rhodes, and Molay, contrary to the Pope’s advice, came to France escorted by his entire council, sixty knights, and bringing the treasure and the archives of his order. In May, 1307, the Pope and the King met at Poictiers, and, it is supposed, discussed thoroughly the question of the Templars: about the same time the Templars informed the Pope of the dangers that threatened them, and asked for an investigation of the charges brought against them: such investigation the Pope decided to institute. It cannot be determined whether it was with the Pope’s approval, or against his wishes, that Philip on Oct. 13, 1307, had all the Templars in France arrested and their goods seized. Five heads of complaint were alleged against the order; viz., profanation of the cross, worship of an idol, indecent rites of initiation, omission of the sacramental words (i.e., the words of consecration or of transubstantiation, Hoc est corpus meum) in masses performed by priests belonging to the order, and indulgence of unnatural lusts. Two days after the arrests the people of Paris, whose partiality for the Templars was feared, were assembled before the royal palace, and there were labored with by monks and royal officials, to turn them against the order. The King took up his residence in the “Temple,” the Paris house of the order, in which was hid the treasure of the Grandmaster (150,000 gold florins, and twelve horseloads of silver pence). It was not quite 500 years later when the Temple became the prison of a descendant of the King. In that same building, in presence of the masters and bachelors of the university, the trial of the Grandmaster and his brethren was commenced, and proceeded under the direction of Imbert. The procedure was the same as in the ordinary trials for heresy and witchcraft in the court of the Inquisition. Confessions were obtained by use of the torture, and it is impossible at this day to tell how much in those confessions was due to the employment of that peculiar method of eliciting truth, and how much, if any part, was prompted by the desire to atone for past offenses by truthful (even if forced) admission of guilt. The Pope was not pleased with this turn of affairs. He claimed for himself the right to proceed against the Templars, declared that the King was infringing the privileges of the See of Rome, and attributed the action taken against the Templars to a desire to get possession of the order’s treasury and to annihilate a society whose existence was a cause of anxiety to the King. He, therefore, protested against the whole proceeding, and demanded that the arrested Templars and their property should be surrendered to him as judge of the questions at issue. The King refused, but he came to an understanding with the Pope in the matter of the prosecution, and Nov. 22 the Pope, by the bull “Pastoralis Praeeminentiae,” ordered the arrest of all the Templars throughout the Christian world. The King of England, Edward II. who was Philip’s son-in-law, obeyed this precept, though he had previously expressed disbelief of the guilt of the Templars. A like change of mind was seen in Aragon. In Cyprus the Templars attempted resistance, but submitted. Denis, King of Portugal, refused to institute a prosecution against them. Inasmuch as the measure was one that affected all countries, the case of the Templars belonged of right to the Papal jurisdiction. Even Philip admitted this; but he mistrusted the Pope, and feared that the Templars might be acquitted, and then take revenge on the King. Negotiations were opened. The King demanded the death of the Templars, but the Pope would not consent to this till their guilt was fully proven; and again he demanded the surrender to him of their persons and their possessions. The King at last acceded to the demand, for he had need of the Pope’s assistance in procuring the election of his brother as successor to the assassinated German King, Albert. Under the Papal jurisdiction the trials were conducted with more lenity: torture was not employed. But the Pope became convinced of the guilt of the accused; till then he had been in doubt. Molay made, without compulsion, many very important admissions, as did several high officials of the order, but on sundry points they contradicted one another. Nevertheless, the Pope was still firmly of the opinion that only individual Templars were on trial, not the order, while for the King the annihilation of the order was the main thing. August 8, 1308, the bull “Faciens Misericordiam” ordered a prosecution of the Templars in every country of Christendom; and on the 12th of the same month, by the bull “Regnans in Coelis,” a council was summoned for the year 1310, to determine the question of the Templars. Further ordinances of the Pope had to do with the surrender of the properties of the order to the Church. Meanwhile the Pope had forgotten to aid the French King’s brother in his pretensions to the crown of the Roman Empire. On the contrary, he favored the election of Henry VII. of Luxemburg, and was glad to find in him a prince who would strenuously oppose the overweening ambition of Philip IV. The tension between the Pope and the French King was increasing, and the trials of the Templars went on sluggishly for two years more. There was much arbitrary ill-usage of Templars. The bishops, to whom the Pope had committed the prosecution of the individual members of the order, in many places gave loose rein to their ancient enmity toward the Templars, and freely used the torture; nevertheless, very many of the accused maintained the innocence of their order, and declared the prior confessions false. This can be explained only by supposing that the abuses in the order did not extend to all the houses. Molay’s behavior on his trial was neither firm nor dignified, ever balancing between self-accusation and vindication. He was never sure of his ground, sought to retard procedure, used equivocal and obscure phrases, and continually protested his orthodoxy; and the other members for the most part acted in like manner: but their excuse is the hard usage they endured, and Molay was not permitted to complain of that. All the Templars arrested in Paris, numbering 546, were on the 28th of May, 1310, mustered in the garden of the Bishop’s palace, and there the accusation was read to them. Six of the accused—three knights and three clerics—protested in the name of all against the treatment they had received, and demanded the release of all Templars and arrest of their accusers. In vain! During the investigation thirty-six members of the order died in prison at Paris. May 12, 1310, those who had retracted their confessions, to the number of 54, were burned alive: to these were afterward added eight more, and at Rheims nine met the same fate: they all protested their innocence at the supreme moment. It is worthy of note that the Pope, who till then had favored delay in the proceedings, was now for instant action. He sharply reproved the English authorities for refusing to employ the torture; and he did his best to accomplish the destruction of the Templars at Avignon, who had taken up arms to defend themselves; but, though defeated, they were adjudged innocent; and it was the same in Castile. In Germany, where the order, though weak in numbers, made a resolute stand, the Pope offered no convincing proof of the charges; and in England, too, nothing could be proved against the accused members. But throughout the greater part of Italy the Templars fared as in France, except that they were not condemned to the stake. In vain did the celebrated Raymond Lully, at the Council of Vienne (1312), plead for the preservation of the order by a consolidation of all the military orders in one, whose Grandmaster should be that French prince who happened to be King of Jerusalem: for he hoped thus to conciliate the good will of Philip. The Pope, who had long been urged by the King to suppress the order, now made haste to save the property of the Templars from falling into secular hands, and so, by the bulls “Vox in Excelso” and “Ad Providam Christi Vicarii,” published April 3 and May 2, 1312, respectively, he made over to the Hospitalers all the estates of the Templars, estates in Spain excepted. The unfortunate Grandmaster Molay, who received a pittance of four sous per diem to alleviate his misery, bore his imprisonment with great fortitude; but March 11, 1313, he and Godfrey de Charney, an official of the order, having retracted their confessions, were slowly burnt to death on an island in the Seine, by order of the King, without any judicial process. Molay, it is said, cited the two murderers of his brethren, Philip and Clement, to appear before the judgment seat of God. They both died, one of colic, the other in consequence of a fall from his horse, eight and thirteen months, respectively, after the death of Molay. The order was suppressed everywhere except in Portugal, where it took the name “Order of Jesus Christ,” and continued in existence. Its Grandmaster, Prince Henry the navigator, a hundred years afterward, employed its wealth in promoting the high ends of civilization. In other countries the Templars either wandered about as fugitives, or entered the order of Hospitalers. The seizure of the order’s estates in France was annulled by the bull of suppression, but Philip, nevertheless, maintained his hold on the house of the order in Paris, and on the treasure there stored. The remainder of the property was plundered by the nobility and the Church; and the Pope surely was not forgetful of his own interest. The Hospitalers afterward succeeded to their rights, but that did them hardly less harm than good, for it cost them a great sum to release the estates of the Templars from the grasp of the robbers; besides, many a small piece of property was made away with by princes, great lords, orders, churches, and monasteries. _PART SEVENTH_ _The Femgerichte._ 1. COURTS OF JUSTICE IN THE MIDDLE AGE. The wild disorder attending the irruption of the Gothic nations having subsided, society, which had lost its bearings, had to organize itself anew. The first step toward this end was taken when society’s task was distributed among innumerable fractional parts of itself, each fraction trying to do its own share of the work; the next step was the uniting of all these fractional parts under one religious idea—that of Christianism, and under one political law—that of feudalism. The Pope and the Emperor represented the religious and the political ideas respectively. As long as one was true to Pope and Emperor—i.e., was a good Christian and a good subject—all was well with him, and he might, in all other matters, do as he pleased. The principle of Justice was not regarded: no wrong act was punished as violating right, but always as doing harm. Even murder was not regarded as infringement of human right to life, but simply as harm done to the people of the murdered one. If one was without relatives, his slayer went unpunished; but if the murdered man left a family or kinsmen, the murderer, on paying to them a certain sum, went forth free. Thus, the utmost unrestraint prevailed in the several small aggregations of people, and the utmost diversity between one little community and another. Of bureaucratic, centralized, cast-iron government there was no faintest foreshadow; nor was government a function assigned to any one, but, like the administration of justice, an acquired right. In a given province this one had acquired the government, that one the civil and a third the criminal judiciary; one was obeyed in peace, another commanded the people in war. Jurisdictions were undefined and inextricably mixed up—a consequence of the feudal system, under which the King granted rights now to one man, again to another, as favors, never inquiring how these might consist with rights previously granted to others. In this way it became possible in the Middle Age for such juristic abnormities as the Femgerichte to come into existence. The Femgerichte resulted from the confusion existing in judiciary affairs, just as the religious abnormity of the monastic orders of knights resulted from the very opposite condition of things in the Church—the excess of regulation. For the confusion (absence of regulation) and the excessive regulation were near akin; they both sprang out of the unrestraint of private life in the Middle Age, which unrestraint naturally produced, under the rule of the Church, a multitude of monastic rules (e.g., the Rule of St. Augustin, of St. Benedict, of St. Columba, etc.); while, on the contrary, the feebleness of the Empire, due to the jealousy of the Popes and the ambition and avarice of the feudal lords, was fatal to any organization of the administrative and judicial functions, and though there were many codes of law, there could be no standard for distinguishing right and wrong. The cause of this difference of development between State and Church was, that the Church had grown from the top downward, from the hierarchy down to the people; while the State, on the contrary, had grown from below upward. During the process of migration and settlement, each nation or horde was self-governed, perfectly free and independent: hence, the popular, genial, oftentimes even jovial and humorous cast of Teutonic law, as compared with the hard, pedantic, abstruse, austere character of the Jus Romanum. Roman law has only a corpus juris; Teutonic law has Wise Saws, Juristic Proverbs, Juristic Drolleries, Juristic Myths (Weistuemer, Rechtssprichtwoerter, Rechtsschwoernke, Rechtssagen). Originally, among the Germans, the freemen themselves were the court and chose their president, the Graf (graf now equals count). Not until the time of Karl the Great (Charlemagne) did the grafs become standing officials, and later an hereditary order and lords proprietary. As the functions of government were by degrees entrusted to fewer and ever fewer hands, being transferred from the people to favored feudal lords, and from them passing finally into the hands of an individual sovereign—a quite natural process, for while the people increased in number they did not become better educated, and therefore grew ever less fitted for self-government—so, too, judgment, quitting the open, embowered courts amid the lindens, with heaven’s breezes whispering among the leaves, and heaven’s blue dome overarching all, withdrew behind dank and frowning walls, from the countenance of the whole people to a meeting of a small bench of stern judges. Thus gradually were the rights of the freemen diminished. The freemen was less and less frequently called to sit in judgment, for the president of the court, the graf, was no longer an equal, but a great lord, their superior, who made up the court as to him seemed best, and who even cared nothing for the Emperor.[2] Footnote 2: What follows regarding the Femgerichte is based on Theodor Lindner’s work, “Die Femgerichte,” Münster and Paderborn, 1888. (Whatever may have been the original meaning of the word “fem” in “femgericht,” it is enough to know that in usage it is equivalent to “secret”; hence femgericht—secret judgment, or secret tribunal.) Westphalia was the original home of the Femgerichte, and they owed their rise to the fact that there the royal ban (Koenigsbann), that is to say, the right possessed by the King alone, of conferring the grafship on the grafs, was still alive, in modified form indeed, yet with its substance unimpaired. Owing to the granting of various privileges to ecclesiastical and secular magnates the jurisdiction of the grafs was in time divided up. Besides, there were special courts for freemen, and special courts for the half-free and the unfree, the former courts being under the free grafs, and the other under the gaugrafafs (district grafs). Now, as the majority of the population were under the gaugrafs, the possession of a gaugrafship developed into sovereignty; while the position of the free grafs became peculiar: the office was often sold and passed from hand to hand. The free grafs, who were often persons of little means, in order to maintain their dignity, had to lean on the King’s ban, or warrant, obtainable from the King alone. But often the free grafships died out, or they were consolidated with gaugrafships. But nowhere did they retain so much of their original character as in Westphalia—a geographical expression of various meanings, indeed, but in general it denoted the region between the Rhine and the Weser. The term Freigraf dates from the twelfth century. Not only the King but the duke also had influence over the free grafships. After the break-up of the ancient duchy of Saxony, every princely land proprietor within its territory was duke of Westphalia; this is specially true of the Archbishop of Cologne, and also of the bishops of Muenster, Osnabrueck and Minden, and of the Duke of Saxe-Lauenburg—dukes of Westphalia all, but with more or less limitation. Probably the duke was entitled to preside over any free court, and to summon to his own tribunal, the “botding,” the free grafs. So, too, the stuhlherr (lord of the manor) possessed the right of presiding, even when he was no prince, but only a graf; and often he assumed that the free graf gave judgment only in his (the lord’s) name, and so granted release from the jurisdiction of the free courts, to cities, for example. The free graf and his assessors, the schoeffen (a lower grade of judges), afterward called freischoeffen, constituted the freigericht (free court), afterward known as femgericht. These offices might fall to any freeman—and any one was reckoned a freeman who had “his own smoke,” i. e., a house of his own. In the latter half of the 14th and the first half of the 15th century the emperors bestowed on the archbishops of Cologne, as dukes of Westphalia and lieutenants of the Emperor, the right of investiture of all free grafs and supervision of them all over Westphalia. A chapter of free grafs was held yearly at Arnsberg, and hence the Arnsberg tribunal obtained the first rank. As the free grafs held their investiture from the king, they looked on themselves as king’s officers, and little by little went on extending their jurisdiction over the whole empire—a design favored by the confusion reigning everywhere, and even approved by the emperors themselves. At last the free grafs began to think that they were higher than the emperor, and had no need of his meddling: this arrogance was at its height in the reign of Sigmund, and it was still to be seen under Frederic VII.; in fact, Frederic, for having taken steps to punish some insubordinate free grafs, was summoned by free grafs to stand trial. Some of the emperors did, indeed, set up free graf tribunals outside the limits of Westphalia; but these never prospered. In the 15th century it was an axiom that such courts could exist only in Westphalia, or, as the saying was, “on red earth,” a phrase that does not occur prior to 1490, and the sense of which is not quite clear; for neither is the soil of all Westphalia red, nor is red soil confined to Westphalia: and the same criticism may be made if “red earth” be taken for “blood-stained earth.” 2. THE SECRET TRIBUNAL. The early “free courts” were in a certain sense “private” courts, inasmuch as they were not open to all like the courts of the gaugrafs (or judges of districts). The associate judges (Freischoeffen) were called “wissende” (wisemen, knowing ones), which, in old times, meant “judges.” The “private” tribunal of the Feme became by degrees a “secret” tribunal about the middle of the 14th century, as the free grafs became more conscious of their ambitious aims. The Schoeffen were now required to bind themselves by oath to observe secrecy: the one who proved false to his oath was first to have his tongue plucked out, and then he was to be hanged, either three or seven feet higher than a thief. The penalty was exacted very rarely, and probably never the first item of it. The obligation of secrecy extended over all the proceedings of the secret courts, even their letters and summonses. But the most important secret was the countersign, by means of which the initiated recognized each other. This was made up of four words (taken from the oath), Stock, Stein, Gras, Grein; and as the words were pronounced one laid his right hand on the others’ left shoulder. Poetry and romance have made the Feme courts sit in subterranean chambers, at night, the faces of the judges masked. The fact is that the tribunals of the Feme were set up at the ancient seats of the free tribunals, and of such places there were in Westphalia more than a hundred; and the trials were always held in the open air, in broad daylight. Whether in certain cases they were also public, so that any one might be present, is not known. In all cases where testimony was taken the proceedings were secret; whoever willingly or unwillingly was present unbidden at the secret deliberations was straightway hanged from the nearest tree. Very remarkable was the universal recognition throughout Germany of the power of the Femgerichte. In 1387 the most distinguished people of Cologne were “wissende”; about 1420 the Rhineland was full of wissende belonging to every grade in society; and soon after the same might be said of Bavaria, Tyrol, Switzerland, Suabia, Franconia, Saxony, Prussia. Every manor lord and every free city needed the advice of wissende. Princes and cities had their judges admitted as schoeffen; archbishops and princes, even the Emperor Sigmund, were initiated: in the middle of the 15th century there must have been more than 100,000 freischoeffen in the empire. To be initiated became a craze, a fad; the native Westphalians were amazed at the folly of their southern and eastern countrymen. And the long arm of the Femgericht jurisdiction reached as far as the host of wissende: the localities in which the activity of the secret tribunals was manifested were scattered all over the empire; in fact, the proceedings of these courts which affected Westphalia itself became a very small fraction of the whole. But with the spread of the Feme jurisdiction arose opposition to the same. There were seen faint beginnings of opposition even in the early part of the 14th century, when Bremen decided not to allow members of the Feme courts to reside within its jurisdiction; toward the close of that century other cities took more effective measures, and in the 15th were even formed leagues of cities for self-defense against the encroachments of the Feme. Brunswick appealed to the Pope and the Emperor, and Hildesheim and Erfurt to the Council of Basel. In the middle of the 15th century several cities, especially in Southern Germany and in Holland, were freed from the jurisdiction of the secret courts by the supreme ecclesiastical and civil authorities. Then the dukes of Bavaria and of Saxony forbade their subjects laying complaints in the Westphalian courts, and some cities punished that offense with death, imprisonment, or banishment. A Feme court consisted of a free graf and at least seven schoeffen. The graf was required to be a freeborn Westphalian of stainless reputation, whatever his station in life, for peasants were often chosen to be grafs. The schoeffen also had to be freemen born, and if not of Westphalian birth, were required to present proofs of their fitness. There was a fee for admission to the Feme. As time went on the examination of applicants became less and less strict, and often very questionable characters, even serfs and men accused of crimes, were admitted: such admissions were illegal, and the men chosen under such circumstances were called notschoeffen (makeshift schoeffen). The free graf sat at a judgment-board, on which lay a naked sword and a rope as symbols of avenging justice, and the schoeffen took oath on these instruments. Each free graf and each schoeffe of a given court was required not only to be present at a trial, but to take part in pronouncing sentence. When the trial was one of special importance several hundred schoeffen would be in attendance. The Femgerichte had their special codes and statutes, which were from time to time amended. In these the competence of the courts was defined, and this had to do with matters purely criminal, at least so far as the trials were held in secret. The crimes of which the Femgerichte took cognizance—vemewrogige punkte (points for femic animadversion)—were, according to the list drawn up at Dortmund in 1430, as follows: 1, robbery and acts of violence against ecclesiastics or churches; 2, larceny; 3, robbery of a woman in childbed or of a dying person; 4, plundering the dead; 5, arson and murder; 6, treachery; 7, betrayal of the Feme; 8, rape; 9, forgery of money or of title to property; 10, robbery on the imperial highway; 11, perjury and perfidy; 12, refusal to appear in court on summons. Apostasy from the Christian faith was put at the head of the list in an assembly held at Arnsberg 1437, and in 1490 heresy and witchcraft were added. For the person found guilty there was but one punishment, death, and only one manner of death, by the rope. This penalty could be inflicted without sentence if the offender were taken in the act, or if he confessed guilt, or if there were eyewitnesses of the crime. That among the offenses punishable by the Feme heresy and witchcraft held almost the first place shows that these tribunals were no object of apprehension to the ecclesiastical power. This secret association, therefore, differed from that of the Templars, as also from that of the Stonemasons (which will be next considered) especially in this, that the Feme was no league of Illuminati, but that their specialty was opposition to the law of the stronger and to the rule of petty states, and that their aim was to uphold and exaggerate antiquated judicial institutions. The procedure of the Femgerichte was entirely in accord with the principle of ancient Teutonic law, that “where no complainant appears, neither is there any judge.” It was not the inquisitorial court procedure of the 16th–19th centuries, in which the judge made investigation on his own account, but a procedure founded entirely in the practice of civil courts, and one that agreed well with the independent spirit of the Middle Age, and the view that then prevailed that law was a matter of personal rights. The free tribunals took up the complaint from whatever quarter it came. All schoeffen, too, were under obligation to bring to the attention of the free courts, and to prosecute all doings coming under the animadversion of the Feme. Hence were a schoeffe to give information regarding such offenses to any other court, he was liable to be hanged; and the same fate befel the one who, having been entrusted with a bill of accusation, should open the same and betray its contents. Accusations were not entertained unless when submitted by wissende. The accuser had to stand betwixt two fellow schoeffen, his sponsors, in front of the tribunal in kneeling posture. In every case the first thing done was to decide whether the crime was one meet for animadversion by the Feme. That decided, the accused was summoned to appear, if he was a wissender, before the secret tribunal, if not a wissender, before the open court. The first summons to a wissender to appear before the secret tribunal was drawn up in writing by two schoeffen, and allowed the accused a delay of six weeks and three days. If he did not obey the summons, then four schoeffen summoned him in person; and this proving ineffectual, six schoeffen and one free graf repeated the summons, which now was called the “warning.” The delay allowed was the same as at first. If the accused was a free graf the number of schoeffen employed in each of the three processes of summoning was 7, 14 and 21, respectively, and of free grafs 2, 4 and 7. The schoeffe, on receiving the summons, could appear at any time within the three delays before the free court and demand a statement of the charges and the names of the accusers; then he might on his sword swear to his innocence, and obtain his freedom; but he was liable to be summoned again. Outsiders were summoned once only, and usually by only one schoeffe. When the whereabouts of an accused person was unknown, four summonses were prepared, and these were posted in four places where he might possibly be found. If the accused was one who inspired fear, the summons might in the night time be posted or left at the gate of the castle or of the city in which he lived. In such cases the schoeffen walked or rode up before the gate, hacked off the crossbeam three chips, which they kept, put a penny of the realm in the notch, affixed the summons, and cried out to the castellan or the burgomaster, “We have stuck a king’s brief in the notch and taken the proof with us: say you to him that is in the castle that he must on his appointed day present himself before the free tribunal, on behalf of highest law and the Emperor’s ban.” When the opposition to the Femgerichte began to gain force, the summoners were in greater peril often than the summoned: often they lost their lives. The day of the trial having arrived, if the accuser was not on hand the accused was discharged. But if the accused failed to appear, the accusation was repeated and testimony taken. The free graf then thrice called the accused by name, and asked if any one was there as his attorney. If there was no appearance of the accused, the accuser could demand judgment “after a se’ennight.” In making this demand, he knelt, laid two fingers of the right hand on his naked sword, affirmed the guilt of the accused, and six schoeffen, as his sponsors, maintained the truth of what he swore. If the verdict was against the accused, the free graf arose, and outlawed the accused, in words like these: “The accused (name and surname) I except from the peace, the laws and the freedom (of the empire) as the same have been stablished and decreed by popes and emperors; and I cast him down and place him in uttermost unquiet and disgrace, and make him illegitimate, banned, outside the peace, dishonored, insecure, loveless; and I do outlaw him according to the sentence of the secret tribunal, and devote his neck to the rope, his carcass to the birds and beasts to devour; and I commend his soul to the power of God in heaven; and his fiefs and goods I give up to the lords of whom the fiefs are held; and I make his wife a widow and his children orphans.” Then the free graf threw a twisted cord out over the bounds of the court, the schoeffen spat out, and the name of the outlaw was written in the book of the condemned. Among the persons thus condemned were numbered some men of high station, as the dukes Henry and Louis of Bavaria (1429), John, bishop of Wurtzburg, and others. All free grafs and schoeffen were henceforth under obligation to arrest and to execute sentence upon the outlaw (but three members of the Feme were required); and executing sentence meant hanging the culprit from the nearest tree. Often the relatives of executed outlaws of the Feme accused the executioners in the free courts as assassins, and the court could outlaw its own ministers for carrying out its own decrees. Many were the abuses that arose, assassination of innocent persons, for example. Murderers, too, pretended to be schoeffen; and highwaymen robbed under pretense of sequestering the property of persons condemned by judgment of the Feme. If ever the condemned, being a wissender and not having overstayed the se’ennight of grace, appeared in court with six compurgators he was set free; but if he confessed his guilt, or was convicted, he was executed forthwith in the usual way. The ban of the Feme could never be lifted; but the number of death sentences actually carried out was, says Lindner, “so very small that one might readily allow the Feme’s decree of outlawry to be pronounced upon him.” Pope Nicolas V. in 1452 condemned the capital executions done by the Feme. If a man under sentence of death should be proved innocent before he fell into the hands of the executioners, he was, if a wissender, brought before the court, with a rope around his neck, wearing white gloves, carrying a green cross, and attended by two schoeffen; falling on his knees before the free graf he pleaded for mercy. The free graf, taking him by the hand, bade him rise, removed the rope from around his neck, and restored him to the grace and favor of the Feme. But one who was not a wissender had no rights! He merely escaped death, but there was no amend. The Emperor gave him “a reprieve of 100 years, 6 weeks and a day”—that was all; he was forever ineligible to become a schoeffe. Both processes were called the “entfemung” (“unfeming,” undoing of the Feme’s judgment). Many of the condemned, unable to procure the entfemung, ventured to appeal to the Emperor, the camera, the Pope, or a Church Council. But the Femgerichte never recognized such appeals, and protested strongly to the Emperor against them. They regarded the condemned as dead, and said that no one had the right “to awaken the dead.” The Emperor Sigmund could think of no means of saving a man under condemnation, except by taking him into his own service, for the Femgerichte did not care to take measures against officials of the Kaiser and the empire. Women, too, as well as aged men and children, were excepted from the cognizance of the Feme, also, in theory, Jews, for Jews were “servants of the Emperor’s bedchamber”; ecclesiastics, also, for they could in the Middle Age be tried only in the spiritual courts; but in the 15th century the Feme disregarded these provisions, and summoned both Jews and ecclesiastics. 3. THE END OF THE FEME. But the Initiates of the Red Earth league met the fate that overtakes all movements that lag behind the times. The Feme did by no means render in the days of “faustrecht” (fist-right, the rule of the stronger) so great services as it has been credited with: never was the insecurity of life and property so great as when the Femgerichte were most flourishing. If the extension of the Feme beyond the borders of Westphalia was a wrong, that wrong became aggravated through the excessive secrecy of the tribunals. The Feme degenerated steadily, and the respect in which it was held declined in equal degree. The free grafs forgot the fair promise of their original institution—that their function was to protect innocence against the machinations of bad men. They, and especially the presidents of courts, enriched themselves with fees for admission of new members, with costs of court, with fines and fees, and even with moneys got by extortion and oppression. They delayed trials, condemned innocent persons, overstepped the limits of their jurisdiction so as to condemn to death the entire male population (over 18 years) of a town, for not obeying a summons. The opposition to the Femgerichte culminated in the decree of the Emperor Maximilian I. creating the supreme court of judicature (kammergericht), which left no further excuse for protecting the free courts. The applications for admission to the Feme soon grew less, and at last ceased. The princes changed the free courts into ordinary tribunals, or abolished them. At the end of the 16th century a capital execution by a Femgericht was a thing unknown; at the end of the 17th these courts had nearly all disappeared. But even when Westphalia was a Napoleonic kingdom there were still living some schoeffen, and not till the decade 1880–90 did the last free graf disappear, “taking with him to the grave the secret of the countersign.” The existence of the Feme is still commemorated by the stone judgment seats under the lindens; and the branches overhead are still whispering the story of the redoubtable Wissende of the Red Earth country. _PART EIGHTH._ _Stonemasons’ Lodges of the Middle Ages._ 1. MEDIEVAL ARCHITECTURE. We have already noted as a prominent characteristic of the Middle Age this, that freedom of action, except so far as it interfered with the interests of the clergy or the nobles, was left unrestricted and that individuals formed social unions for the exercise of it. Thus we have seen these two dominant classes uniting to form associations which finally were crowned by the institution of the military orders. But the medieval world had not followed the arts of peace very long after the stormy times of the barbarian invasions, before it became conscious of a need not only of a union of swordsmen and penmen, but also and still more of a union of handicraftsmen. True, the Middle Age could not rise to such an intellectual height as would enable it to see that work is more to be honored than indolence, peace than war: hence the worker had to take a subordinate place. Of the agricultural laborer this is true without any reservation: but the artisan was more favorably situated as soon as the cities had begun to develop. But the progress made by the artisans was due to their union in corporations or gilds. The constitutions of the trade gilds derive partly from the “collegia” of artisans in ancient Rome and partly from the monastic orders. The “collegia” had secret rites, mysteries, but of these we have no reliable information; and it is certain that the medieval gilds had their mysteries, too. Of not all the gilds is this true; in some of them the secret ceremonial consisted only of passwords and countersigns by which craftsmen recognized their fellows. The most elaborate of these mysteries was that of the Stonemasons. And the reason if this is obvious, for of all trades that of the builder not only makes most demands on the thinking faculty, involves most details, is the first to require new methods of facilitating operations, new “wrinkles,” and these easily are made trade secrets: besides, as builders of temples, the masons acquired a sacred and mystical character. After the great migrations the mason’s trade had its home in the monasteries. As long as architecture or the builder’s art was thus under monastic guidance, it affected the Romanic style—simple columns, rounded arches, squat towers; but when the monks forsook art and science, in the 11th and 12th centuries, the craftsmen no longer saw why they should serve under the direction of men who had no taste for anything but wine, the chase, and war. And so there arose unions of masons outside of the monasteries, especially in the cities, and henceforth the monastic churches were inferior to the city churches in size and splendor. The change in the circumstances of the builders’ unions, which were now selfcontrolled, was seen in the development of a new style. Instead of the single columns rose clustered columns, symbol of free union, and of the strength that comes of harmonious action between equals; in the place of rounded arches, pointed ones, to show that the forces that conspired to raise the structure did not sacrifice their several individualities, but freely contributed each its share toward the attainment of the end; in place of squat, close towers, tall spires aspiring to infinitude, and open on all sides, as much as to say, “Here we stand free and open, acknowledging no laws but those of heaven.” Then came decoration of the window arches, which showed a different design in each, thus entering a protest against all stereotyped uniformity. This was the true Germanic or Gothic architecture, the triumph of the free Teutonic spirit, which favors the unhindered development and the unrestricted independence of individual genius. It was also the expression of mysticism, with innumerable spirelets striving heavenward to find the Divine. Hence the Gothic style has somewhat of gloom and melancholy in its vast arches and narrow windows. It invites the free spontaneous spirit of man to sound the depths of his own nature, and so is as adverse to obtrusive dogmatism as to reckless investigation and illuminism, which disturb prejudices. Hence as the Romanic style is the architecture of the popedom, so is the Gothic that of free church life; and then the architecture of illuminism followed as the style of the Renaissance. 2. THE STONEMASONS’ LODGES OF GERMANY. The meeting places of the masons’ unions in the cities were the board huts that stood on the site of churches in process of construction, affording shelter to the masons or stone cutters while at work. These huts, or “lodges,” were at an early period leagued together, and the members of the leagues, in memory of their formerly having been inmates of monasteries, called one another Brother, and their unions Brotherhoods; they also bestowed on their chief officers such tokens of respect as are found in the clerical epithets “reverend” and “worshipful.” The date of the formation of this league cannot be determined. It appears to have been in full swing in the 13th century, and the credit of its definitive organization is usually given to Albert the Great, Count of Bollstadt, a celebrated Dominican friar (b. 1200, d. 1280). Albert lived nearly all his life in Cologne, and therefore the famous Cathedral of Cologne is to be regarded as the cradle of the great league of stonemasons’ lodges. For the government of this league an assembly of delegates from the lodges, which came together “in chapter” (another reminiscence of the monastic origin of these unions) at Ratisbon in 1459, drew up a trade constitution entitled “Ordnung und Vereinigung der gemeinen Bruderschaft des Steinwerks und der Steinmetzen” (Regulation and Combination of the general brotherhood of stonework and stonemasons): it was revised and amended at Basel in 1497, and at Strasburg 1498. From this and other ancient documents relating to the organization of the brotherhood we gather that the Brethren were classed as Masters, “Parleyers” and Comrades (meister, parlirer, gesellen), and to these were added, though not as brethren, yet as dependents, Helpers,—that is, apprentices. At the head of a lodge stood the Master of Works, or Master-Builder. The masters of the three lodges at Strasburg, Cologne and Vienna were the Chief Judges of the league, and he of Strasburg held the foremost rank among these. To the judicial district of Strasburg belonged the left bank of the Rhine down to the Moselle, and on the right bank Suabia, Franconia, Hesse; to the district of Cologne belonged the region on the other side of the Moselle; and to that of Vienna, Austria, Hungary, Italy. Switzerland stood apart under a separate master, who had his seat at Berne; Zurich afterward succeeded to the place of Berne. The masons of Northern Germany, on the right bank of the Rhine (Thuringia, Saxony, etc.), were only nominally members of the league: as matter of fact they were subordinate to none of these lodges, but they adopted a special “order” for themselves at Torgau in 1462. In these regulations we find many striking evidences of the sturdy good sense of the masons. For example, they were forbidden to disparage deceased masters and their works; also to teach others their art for money, for they ought to deal with each other as friends; one master was not to expel a fellowcraft; to do so he must not only take counsel with two other masters, but also a majority of the fellowcrafts must approve; differences between masters should be settled by arbitrators chosen from members of the league. In the brotherhoods brotherly comradeship played an important part. Meetings were held monthly, and the business ended with a feast. Each General lodge yearly held a grand assembly; and the festivals of Saint John the Baptist, and of the so-called “Four Crowned Ones,” were holidays for the league. Each meeting of a lodge was opened and closed with questions and answers of the master and the comrades. To the journeyman, as soon as he began to travel, were communicated the secret signs of the brotherhood—passwords, grip, etc. With these he identified himself as a brother mason wherever he went, and so had the right to learn the trade gratis. On coming to a hut where stone-cutting was going on, he first shut the door, so as to knock on it after the masonic fashion; then asked, “Are German masons at work here?” Forthwith the comrades made search through the hut, shut the doors, and ranged themselves in a right angle; the visitor placed his feet at right angles, saying, “God bless the worthy masons;” to which the answer was “God thank the worthy masons,” and so on, questions and answers many, among them these: “Who sent you forth”? “My honored master, honored sureties, and the whole honored masons’ lodge at X.” “What for?” “For discipline and right behavior.” “What is discipline and right behavior?” “The usages of the craft and its customs.” Of the rites of initiation in those times we know nothing: what Fallou has on that head regarding the usages of the German stonemasons is simply borrowed from the Freemasons’ ritual of the present time. It is highly probable that in the medieval masons’ lodges the technical details of the craft and its secrets played the chief part in the ceremonies of initiation. The medieval stonemasons also employed as symbols of their craft the hammer, the circle, the square, etc., also mystic figures, e. g., the flaming star (which was the Pythagorean pentagram, or the magic hexagram—two triangles laid across each other), the two pillars of Solomon’s temple, wine skins, ears of corn, interlaced cords, etc. The only other point of any consequence of which we have certainty is that the postulant swore to observe secrecy. But there is no doubt that the drinking usages as handed down to us are authentic. For example, the glass was never to be handed to the banqueter, but set on the table before him; then, he must not touch it save with the right hand—covered with a white glove or a white napkin, when a special toast is drunk. The masons’ brotherhoods were a distinctly Christian institution: the members were required by the “Ordinances” to comply with all the usages of the Church. This was a survival from the time when the lodges had their origin in monasteries. The sects that arose on every side despite bloody persecutions, and the illuminism spread abroad by them, contributed to bring about a change in the spirit of the masons which was noticeable in the 14th and 15th centuries: many, perhaps a majority, of them acquired a spirit of opposition to Roman ecclesiasticism, and it was very plainly manifested in their sculpture. More bitter satire cannot be imagined than they employed; and what is most significant is that it found expression in the churches themselves. Thus in a representation of the Last Judgment in the Berne minster a pope wearing a glittering tiara of gold is seen tumbling headlong into Hell; and in the vestibule the Wise and the Foolish Virgins are shown keeping vigil, but the foolish ones wear cardinals’ hats, bishops’ mitres and priests’ caps. The Doberan Church in Mecklenburg shows a mill in which church dogmas are ground out. At Strasburg was seen a procession of all manner of beasts with blazing torches and an ass performing the mass; at Brandenburg was shown a fox preaching to a flock of geese, etc. Illuminism is the foe of knighthood and ecclesiasticism, for illuminism knows no privilege of birth or of rank or of vocation. Hence, in so far as such bodies as the Templars and Stonemasons favored illuminism, they undermined the institutions to which they owed their existence, and so were working for their own extinction. The downfall of the Stonemasons’ brotherhood had its causes even in the age before the Reformation, in that there was no lack now of churches, and that hardly any new churches were erected. What the relation was of the lodges to the Reformation we shall see later on. The savageries of the 16th and 17th centuries, particularly the Thirty Years’ War, dealt a severe blow at the building-craft; but the deathblow to the Stonemasons’ league was the treacherous seizure of the seat of the principal lodge, Strasburg, by Louis XIV. Naturally, the German princes interdicted communication of their subjects with foreign associations, and, of course, with the principal lodge in Strasburg, 1707. And as the discords of the German masons and their weakness prevented them from instituting a new head lodge, the Emperor at one stroke did away with all lodges, principal and subordinate, and forbade the oath of secrecy, the use of the “nonsensical form of salutation” (so ran the text of the decree), and the distinction between “salutation-masons” and “letter-masons” (grussmaurer, briefmaurer). Nevertheless, the lodges remained as secret societies until modern freedom of industrial trades stripped them of all meaning, and cut the ground under their feet. 3. FRENCH CRAFTSMEN. Very different from the German societies of craftsmen were those of France. Whereas, in Germany we find strenuous endeavor toward perfection in the craft, cultivation of the beautiful, and a disposition no less elevated in a moral sense than devoutly religious; in France we see only rude, undirected effort, with here and there some encouraging features. In France there is sharp distinction between the gilds of the masters and the lodges of the journeymen. The masters have neither a common bond of union, nor any common property; the craftsmen form strong societies, with secret constitutions and usages. There are several societies of French craftsmen (compagnonnages), but they are not distinguished according to locality, but according to the supposed manner of their first institution and the branch of the craft which they represent. They are divided, first, into two great sections, the Compagnons du Devoir (companions of duty), and the Compagnons de la Liberte (companions of liberty). The former are again divided into the Enfants de Maitre Jacques (Master James’s children), and the Enfants de Maitre Soubise (Master Soubise’s children), but the latter commonly called themselves Enfants de Salomon. Between the Compagnons du Devoir and the Compagnons de la Liberte, as well as between the children of James and those of Soubise, there exists the bitterest enmity which is mirrored in their myths and traditions. According to the story of the Devoir comrades, at the building of Solomon’s temple, Hiram, master-builder, to maintain discipline and order among the workmen, instituted societies with special passwords and secret ritual. But that act was the occasion of his death, for some workmen slew him because he refused to give them the countersign of the masters: those evildoers were the founders of the Compagnonnage de la Liberte! Now among the faithful workmen were two Gaulish masters, James, stonemason, and Soubise, carpenter: these, after the completion of the temple, returned home, and landing, one at Marseilles, the other at Bordeaux, founded societies after the pattern of those instituted by Hiram; and these societies, little by little, admitted craftsmen other than builders, but the two bodies lived in perpetual hatred of each other, each claiming priority. Each of them refers its own institution (on what grounds is unknown) to the years 558 B. C. and 550 B. C., respectively, and each possesses authentic documents in proof, though none has ever seen them. The Liberte tradition is the same as that of the Devoir, only the respective parts of the chief actors are reversed. In the bosom of La Liberte are gathered four crafts—stonemasons, carpenters, joiners, locksmiths. The Devoir includes 28 crafts, and of these the children of Soubise comprise the carpenters, roofers and plasterers; to the children of James belong the stonemasons, joiners, locksmiths, and 22 other trades, introduced in later times, but all connected with housebuilding, except hatmakers. All other craftsmen whose work is the production of clothing and foodstuffs are excluded from the compagnonnages, and form separate societies of their own. The shoemakers and the bakers, in particular, are held in contempt, and persecuted in every way by the compagnons; while among James’s children even the members of the building crafts despise their juniors (trades of less ancient lineage), and in their ignorance derive the word compagnon from “compas” (a pair of compasses), the symbol of the art of building; hence in their eyes the other trades are quite destitute of art or skill. Even craftsmen of the same trade, but belonging to different leagues, whether Devoir or Liberte, oppose each other in every way. The carpenters of Paris have made an end of this strife by dividing the cosmopolitan city between themselves, the compagnons du Devoir taking the left and those of La Liberte the right bank of the Seine. With the other trades and in the provinces the case is worse, the hostile leagues often engaging in street fights and pitched battles. Even in the same trade and in the same league hostilities often break out. Of the French corporations of craftsmen, those of the building trades, especially the stonemasons, probably arose about the same time as the German masons’ lodges: at least there existed in the Middle Age in southern France, a society of bridge-builders, who, for the behoof of pilgrims to the Holy Land and wayfarers in general, maintained bridges, roads and inns. The earliest known charter was granted in 1189, by Pope Clement III., who, like his third predecessor, Lucius III., took them under his protection. As emblem they wore on the breast a pointed hammer. The other compagnonnages can show no authentic records of earlier date than the 14th century. The most ancient of them is the society of the Dyers, dating from 1330. Admission to these societies involves many ceremonies derived from the ritual of the Catholic Church; hence, the Tailors and Shoemakers were in 1645 denounced to the ecclesiastical tribunals, and their meetings forbidden by the theological faculty of Paris. 4. THE ENGLISH STONEMASONS. While the German societies of handicraftsmen were oppressed by the imperial power, and the French societies lived in obscurity, the English masons’ lodges, on the contrary, attained high importance. Tradition traces English (operative) masonry back to King Alfred the Great (871–901), and his successor, Athelstan, whose younger son, Edwin, is said to have called meetings of masons, and to have given laws to their lodges. However that may be, it is certain that in England, as in Germany, important edifices were erected by the clergy, and that Dunstan, archbishop of Canterbury, was an accomplished architect; but after the rise of Gothic architecture the builders were laymen, and in all probability many of them Germans. In the early English societies of masons we find rules and usages that clearly follow German precedent, and the lists of master masons contain many decidedly German names. Nevertheless, English masonry showed some peculiar features, e. g., the station of the master in the east, the holding of the lodge meetings in open air in fair weather, the posting of guards around the lodge, the drenching of peepers with the drip from the roof “till the water ran out of their shoes,” etc. The English Freemasons may have got their name from the fact that the original founders of lodges were workers in freestone—freestone masons, as distinguished from workers in rough stone; freestone mason, it is supposed, was afterward contracted to the form “freemason.” In an act of parliament of the year 1350 the word freemason is found for the first time. By that act congregations and chapters of masons were forbidden. But the masons survived this persecution. Among themselves all masons were equals, comrades or fellows; in the lodges no distinction was made of master and fellow, though, of course, the actual master of a lodge presided over the meetings. The members studied mutual improvement in technical knowledge, and aided one another in misfortune. In the reign of Edward III. the laws prohibiting assemblage of masons was relaxed so as to permit meetings when held in presence of the sheriff of a county or the mayor of a city. Out of these societies of operative masons arose the modern institution of “speculative” freemasonry. _Astrologers and Alchemists._ The epoch of the Reformation closed with the recovery to the Catholic Church of a large proportion of its lost territory through the labors of the Jesuits. Long before the Thirty Years’ War the zeal for religious creeds had died out; people had grown weary of theological strifes, though they had little taste for other serious matters; and thus it came about that in the transition from the 16th to the 17th century such pseudo-sciences as Alchemy and Astrology had great vogue. The study of Astrology had for its aim only fame and glory, and, therefore, was pursued openly; while Alchemy being inspired mainly by avarice, had its laboratories in dark cellars, and made a strict secret of its processes. Hence, it was natural that Alchemy, or the pretended art of producing gold and silver, should give rise to secret associations, especially as it employed sundry mystic, theosophic, and kabbalistic means for attaining its ends, such as were used by the pupils and followers of the famous Theophrastus Bombastus Paracelsus, reformer of the medical art, and one of the most zealous of astronomers and alchemists. That was the era of a Jacob Boehme, shoemaker and philosopher, who, though he had none of the “accurst hunger” for the precious metals, gave an impetus to fatuous investigations of divine things. At the beginning of the 17th century a multitude of writings about this mystic and superstitious business appeared, pro and contra. In this battle of goosequills the Lutheran theologian, John Valentine Andraea of Tuebingen (b. 1586, d. 1654), took a very prominent part. Andreae in 1614 conceived the thought of playing a trick on these mystics by publishing two satirical pieces, in which was given an account of an alleged secret society designed to promote studies of that kind; to this society he gave a name suggested by the design of his own family seal (a Saint Andrew’s cross, with roses at the ends of its four arms)—Rosicrucians. These writings, “Fama Fraternitatis Roseae Crucis” (Fame of the Brotherhood of the Rosy Cross) and “Confessio Fraternitatis” (Confession of Faith of the Brotherhood) traced the pretended society back to a monk named Christian Rosenkreuz, who, in the 14th and 15th centuries, visited the holy land, was instructed in the occult sciences in the East, founded among his fellow-monks the brotherhood called by his name, and died at the age of 106 years. After a lapse of 120 years, in his tomb, which, in accordance with the rule of the order, was kept secret, but which was a magnificent structure in a vault, was found resting on his incorrupt body a parchment book containing the constitution and the secrets of the order. A later document “Chymische Hochzeit Christiani Rosenkreuz” (alchymic nuptials of Christian Rosenkreuz), which appeared in 1616, span the story out to greater length. Now, so great was the alchemistic furore of that time that the tale passed for solemn truth, and a swarm of writings followed, championing or battling against the Society of the Rosicrucians. To the opponents of the Rosy Cross belonged the theologians, who sniffed heretical tenets in the “documents,” and the medical men who scented danger to their close gild; while the alchemists, and particularly the followers of Paracelsus, inquired diligently after the Rosicrucians, and maintained the authenticity of their Constitution. Nor was there lack of attempts at interpreting in a mystical sense the symbol of the Rosy Cross: it signified Holiness joined with Silentiousness; it typified the rose-colored Blood of Christ poured out on the cross. Astounded by the war of no-wits against little-wits occasioned unintentionally by himself, Andreae tried to undo the mischief by putting forth two pieces, “Mythologia Christiana,” and “Turris Babel,” to prove that the whole thing was a joke, that the Brotherhood was a fiction and non-existent. But as he neglected to name himself as author of the first two writings, in vain did he pour out on the Rosicrucianistic partisans all the vitriol of his contempt. In vain, with a view to lead men’s fancy in other directions, did he found a “Christian Brotherhood” for the purpose of purging religion of abuses and planting true piety. The insanity persisted. Alchemy, barely alluded to in Andreae’s writings, became the subject of a multitude of new books, whose authors gave out that they were members of the alleged society. The incident was also turned to account by adventurers and by factions of every sort; the thing went so far that in the Rhineland and the Low Countries secret alchemistic societies were founded under the name of Rosicrucians, which also took the style Fraternitas Roris Cocti (Brotherhood of Boiled Dew), that is, of the Philosophers’ Stone; but these societies had no general organization among themselves. Many a wight was choused out of his money by these schemers. There were branch societies in Germany and Italy. In England Dr. Robert Fludd, an ardent mystic and alchemist, propagated the singular order by publishing a number of writings. With regard to the usages of the societies, we are told that the members roamed about meanly clad, with hair cropped close near the forehead, wearing as a token a black silken cord in the top buttonhole, carrying, when several went together, a small green banner. They claimed that their society was an offshoot of the great knightly order of St. John (Hospitalers). At their lodge meetings they wore a blue ribbon, on which was a gold cross inscribed with a rose, and their president (styled Imperator, emperor) was dressed in priestly togs. They observed strict secrecy as toward outsiders. They disappeared little by little in the 18th century, and there is no means of determining the relation between them and the masonic Rosicrucians, of whom more anon. _PART NINTH._ _Rise and Constitution of Freemasonry._ 1. RISE OF FREEMASONRY. The Reformation and the events connected with it had given people much matter of meditation. But the intolerance shown by the authorities and by the members of both creeds, in maltreating and persecuting their opponents, so alienated all humane minded men that secretly people began to care neither for the interest of Protestantism nor for that of Catholicism, and in the common brotherhood of mankind to disregard all differences of creed. Illuminism, which had been “good form” though in a frivolous sense among the Templars, and in a satiric sense among the Stonemasons, took a more dignified shape, not of incredulity but of earnest desire to build up, and to this consummation the English masons contributed materially. In England people had had enough of strife over creeds, enough of persecution of Protestants under “Bloody Mary” and of Catholics under the inflexible Elizabeth, and they longed for tolerance. They derived the principles of tolerance from renascent literature and art, which made such impression that as in an earlier age the Romanic architecture, so now the Gothic, as the expression of a definite phase of belief, lost its following, and the so-called Augustan or “Renaissance” style—an imitation of the ancient Grecian and Roman styles—won the day with all who knew anything of art. The Renaissance style was brought to England by the painter Inigo Jones, who had learned his art in Italy, and who, under James I., became in 1607 superintendent general of royal constructions, and at the same time president of the Freemasons, whose lodges he reformed. Instead of the yearly general meetings he instituted quarterly meetings: such masons as adhered to the manual craft and cared nothing for intellectual aims were permitted to go back into the trade gilds; while, on the other hand, men of talent not belonging to the mason’s trade, but who were interested in architecture and in the aspirations of the time, were taken into the lodges under the name of “accepted brethren.” Under the altered circumstances a new, bold spirit awoke among the Freemasons, and it found support in the sentiment of brotherliness, irrespective of creeds, then everywhere prevalent. This disposition of minds was promoted in an incalculable degree by the pictures drawn by Sir Thomas More in his “Utopia,” and by Sir Francis Bacon in his “New Atlantis,” of countries existing, indeed, only in their imagination, but which presented ideal conditions, such as enlightened minds might desire to realize upon this earth; also by the writings of the Bohemian preacher, Amos Komensky (latinized Comenius), who, during the Thirty Years’ War was expelled from his country by the partisans of the Emperor, and came to England in 1641—writings that condemned all churchly bigotry and pleaded for cosmopolitanism. As men of the most diverse views, political and religious, were in the lodges, the order suffered severely during the civil commotions of the first and second revolution, but on the return of peace it more than recovered lost prestige. The rebuilding of London, and in particular St. Paul’s Cathedral (1662), added greatly to the fame of English masonry: Sir Christopher Wren, builder of Saint Paul’s, was of the brotherhood. But about the time of the death of William III. (1702), owing to slackness of occupation in the building trades, the Freemason lodges became conscious of a serious defect in their organization. The members who were practically connected with the operative craft of masonry were steadily declining in number, and the “accepted” masons had become the majority. The lodges, therefore, had come to be a sort of clubs, and this transformation spread rapidly in London. Another influence that came in to affect the development of English freemasonry was the diffusion of deistical opinions by Locke’s school in philosophy. Though the lodges then, as now, made loud protestations of orthodoxy, they could not withdraw themselves out of the deistical atmosphere of the period. The resultant of these different influences gained the upper hand in the clubs or lodges of the quondam masons, now Freemasons. They now aimed at a more thorough betterment of morals on a conservatively deistical basis. But the necessity of a closer organization was recognized. Two theologians, Theophilus Desaguliers (who was both a naturalist and a mathematician) and James Anderson, together with George Payne, antiquary, were the foremost men of those who, in the year 1717, effected the union of the four lodges of masons in London in one Grand Lodge, and procured the election of a Grand Master and two Grand Wardens, thus instituting the Freemasons’ Union as it exists at this day. What Jerusalem is to Jews and Mecca to Mohammedans, and Rome to Catholics, that London is to Freemasons. Henceforth the masons of England were no longer a society of handicraftsmen, but an association of men of all orders and every vocation, as also of every creed, who met together on the broad basis of humanity, and recognized no standard of human worth other than morality, kindliness and love of truth. The new Freemasons retained the symbolism of the operative masons, their language and their ritual. No longer did they build houses and churches, but the spiritual temple of humanity; they used the square no more to measure right angles of blocks of stone, but for evening the inequalities of human character, nor the compass any more to describe circles on stone, but to trace a ring of brother-love around all mankind. It was, perhaps, a picture of the young league of the Freemasons that Toland drew in his “Socratic Society” (1720), which, however, he clothed in a vesture the reverse of Grecian. The symposia or brotherly feasts of this society, their give-and-take of questions and answers, their aversion to the rule of mere physical force, to compulsory religious belief, and to creed hatred, as well as their mild and tolerant disposition and their brotherly regard for one another, remind us strongly of the ways of the Freemasons. Though differences of creed played no part in the new masonry, nevertheless the brethren held religion in high esteem, and were steadfast upholders of the only two articles of belief that never were invented by man, but which are borne in on the mind and heart of every man, the existence of God, to wit, and the soul’s immortality. Accordingly every lodge was opened and closed with prayer to the “Almighty Architect of the universe”; and in the lodge of mourning in memory of a deceased brother, this formula was used: “He has passed over into the eternal East”—to that region whence light proceeds. Political parties, also, were not regarded among Freemasons: one principle alone was common to them all—love of country, respect for law and order, desire for the common welfare. Inasmuch as the league must prize unity, one of the first decrees of the Grand Lodge was one declaring illegitimate all lodges created without its sanction. Hence to this day no lodges are recognized as such which are not founded originally and mediately from London. Despite this restriction there sprung up even in the first years after the institution of the Grand Lodge a multitude of new lodges, which received authorization from the Grand Lodge. With these numerous accessions the need of general laws became pressing, and at request of the Grand Lodge, Anderson, one of the founders, undertook to compare the existing statutes of the order with the ancient records and usages of the Stonemasons, and to compile them in one body of law. The result was the “Book of Constitutions,” which is still the groundwork of Freemasonry. It has been printed repeatedly, and is accessible to every one. Another foundation stone of Freemasonry was laid by the Grand Lodge in 1724, when it instituted the “committee for beneficence,” thus giving play to one of the most admirable features of the order—that of giving help to the needy and unfortunate, whether within the order or without. The inner organization of the order, finally, was completed by the introduction of the Degrees. Brothers who had filled the post of Masters, on retiring from office, did not return to the grade of Fellows, but constituted a new degree, that of Masters: on the other hand, newly admitted members were no longer forthwith Fellows, but only apprentices: these degrees were instituted probably in 1720; at that time no other higher degrees were known. The right to promote apprentices to the degree of Fellow, and Fellows to that of Master, previously a function of the Grand Lodge, was accorded to the subordinate lodges in 1725. Soon Freemasonry spread abroad. Lodges arose in all civilized countries, founded by English masons or by foreigners who had received masonic initiation in England; these lodges, when sufficiently numerous, united under Grand Lodges. The Grand Lodge of Ireland was created in 1730, those of Scotland and of France in 1736, a provincial lodge of England at Hamburg in 1740, the Unity Lodge of Frankfort-on-the-Main in 1742, and in the same year a lodge at Vienna, the Grand Mother Lodge of the Three World-spheres at Berlin in 1744, etc. A lodge was instituted at Boston, Mass., in 1733, and from Boston the order spread to Philadelphia. Thus in the space of thirty years from its origin freemasonry existed in all civilized lands, and so did not lag behind its opposite pole, Jesuitism, in respect of rapidity of propagation. Opposite poles these two societies are, for each possesses precisely those qualities which the other lacks. The Jesuits are strongly centralized, the freemasons only confederated. Jesuits are controlled by one man’s will, Freemasons are under majority rule. Jesuits bottom morality in expediency, Freemasons in regard for the wellbeing of mankind. Jesuits recognize only one creed, Freemasons hold in respect all honest convictions. Jesuits seek to break down personal independence, Freemasons to build it up. 2. CONSTITUTION OF THE ORDER. The Society of Freemasons, because of its historic propagation, through sets from the English stock and through further budding and branching of these, forms no unitary organic whole. It has no central or supreme authority, no common head, whether acknowledged or unacknowledged. Its sole unity consists in a common name and a common end, in the common recognition signs, in agreement as to the general internal polity, and in a general uniformity of usages, though these show marked differences also. But very different between one country and another are the methods employed for attaining the ends of Freemasonry; different also is the organization of the lodge and the arrangement of the work. Regarding the common end and aim of Freemasonry there is lack of perfect definiteness. In this regard Freemasonry presents a strong contrast to its rival, Jesuitism, which has only too clear perception of its aim. But so much is absolutely indisputable, that the end of Freemasonry is neither religious nor political, but purely moral. “Freemasonry labors to promote the wellbeing of mankind”: here all Freemasons are at one, though some of them may lay more stress on material wellbeing, some on purely moral, some on spiritual welfare, while again others will consider the wellbeing of the whole, and still others, the wellbeing of individuals as the object of the society. But as these several views are by no means mutually exclusive, but, in fact, complementary of one another, this lack of definition in the end of the society cannot be any hindrance to the society’s beneficent labors. And as matter of fact the society has wrought much good. Not only does it help its own members in need; no worthy person in need ever appeals to the order for relief in vain. But as it is impossible that in so widely diffused a society the members should know one another personally, it became necessary to establish tokens by which a mason may be able to recognize the masonship and the degree of a fellow mason. These tokens consist of a word uttered in a peculiar way, a sign made by various motions of the hand and a peculiar pressure given in shaking hands (the grip). The mason is also recognized by his knock on a door, his way of drinking, etc., provided he cares to make use of these methods of intimating his masonry. Besides these peculiarities common to all Freemasons there are specialties shared only by particular sections of the masonic body. The whole body of Freemasons, because of its diffusion among diverse nationalities, is divided into a number of “systems” differing one from another in the ceremonies of initiation, of promotion to higher degrees, of the lodge of sorrow, and of other occasions. The differences consist largely in the form and tenor of the solemn addresses and counter-addresses, or questions and answers with which the meetings are opened and closed: these forms are an imitation of the rituals of the ancient stonemason lodges, and of other secret organizations. The ritual for the reception of an applicant into the first degree, that of apprentice, is modeled on the stonemasons’ ritual; and the ceremonies of the higher degrees are amplifications of the same originals, with embellishments. In brief, the ritual of admission is such as was used by the monkish and the knightly orders; but the prototype of all these rituals was undoubtedly the ceremonial of baptism in the Catholic Church. No doubt many persons are desirous of knowing what takes place on the admission of a would-be Freemason. For the sake of such persons it may be remarked that these ceremonies are different in different systems, and that consequently an exposition of them would require a more than ordinarily voluminous work; that, furthermore, when communicated in writing, they lose all the effect they have when employed in the act of initiation; and that they would be likely to make no impression whatever on one who should desire to know them out of mere curiosity. In the ceremonial of Freemasonry symbols or emblematic devices hold a prominent place. Of these the most ancient are borrowed from the stonemasons’ lodges, and, therefore, represent masons’ tools and implements; other symbolic devices are reminiscent of various secret societies or of ecclesiastical rites. But both in symbolism and in ceremonial many abuses have, in the course of time, crept in, and innovations have been made which mar the native simplicity of the order and divert it from the pursuit of more useful ends. The recognition signs, the ceremonial, and the symbols are the only secrets in Freemasonry. Mysteries, that is to say, knowledge of things that are hidden from all other persons, the order has none, and the claims that have been made in that regard are without foundation. Discretion, with respect to the business of the lodges and the membership, Freemasonry enjoins in common with many other societies; and so far the order is a close society, or a private society, and not a secret society. Of secret machinations and intrigues such as are hatched in the Jesuit order and in the secret political associations of our time, there is no trace in Freemasonry. The masonic organization of each country exists for itself and in entire independence of other countries. A minor union of Freemasons, consisting of members, all of whom, as a rule, attend its meetings, is called a Lodge. The place (city, town, village, etc.,) in which there are one or more lodges is called Orient; the presiding officer of a lodge is the Master, and with him are associated two Wardens besides other officers. The assemblage of the members, as well as the place in which they meet, is called a lodge. A lodge may be an isolated one, that is, entirely independent; but that is rarely the case; as a rule each lodge belongs to a union of lodges, called Grand Lodge, or Grand Orient. The several lodges of such a union work sometimes on one common system, sometimes on different systems. Again, the grand lodges differ greatly in their organization. As a rule they have a Grand Master, with several Grand Officers, and these are either elected by delegates from all the associate lodges, or are named by certain specially privileged lodges. The freest masonic constitution is that of Switzerland, adopted in 1844: there the seat of the Grand Lodge is changed in every five years. In monarchical countries the royal residence city is usually the seat of the Grand Lodge. There are in Germany eight grand lodges, whose jurisdictions overlap one another, so that often there may be in a given city several lodges belonging to as many different grand lodges: but that does no prejudice to fraternal harmony. France, Belgium, Spain, and Brazil have each two grand lodges, each with a distinct system of ritual. But in Holland, Switzerland, Denmark, Sweden, England, Scotland, Ireland, Hungary, Italy, Portugal, and Greece all the lodges of each country belong to one grand lodge. In each of the states of the American Union there is a grand lodge, and the same is to be said of the larger states of Central and South America. In the British colonies and dependencies, India, the Cape, Australasia, etc., the lodges are under the jurisdiction of the Grand Lodge of the United Kingdom: British America, however, has its own Grand Lodge. The grand lodges of the world number more than 90, the subordinate lodges more than 15,000, and the members, perhaps, one million, reckoning only those in good and regular standing; but this is only a rough estimate; precise figures are not obtainable in default of a unitary organization. 3. THE LODGE. The several lodges are named after persons, virtues, masonic emblems, historic events, etc. In America and England they are often designated by numbers indicative of the time of their foundation. A lodge may be erected wherever a certain number of resident accepted brethren, among them at least three masters, desire to effect an organization, and obtain the approval of the grand lodge having jurisdiction. An indispensable requisite for a lodge is a “well tiled” apartment—one well protected against the intrusion of outsiders, spies, or eavesdroppers. Usually the lodge is a square oblong hall or room, furnished after the manner of the time and country, and decorated with the masonic insignia. The attire of the assembled brethren is usually black, with white gloves (emblematic of hands not soiled by unjust gain) and a short white leather apron, a memento of the stonemasons and of the obligation to labor. The use of other insignia and of tokens to indicate the rank of the officials is left to the discretion of the several lodges. In England and her colonies, in the United States, Belgium and France on festive occasions Freemasons appear in public and on the streets in full masonic regalia, bearing the emblematic insignia of the order: in Germany and Switzerland such parade is frowned upon by Freemasons as unbecoming. A Freemason lodge is an Apprentice Lodge, a Fellowcraft Lodge, or a Masters’ Lodge, according to the degree of its members. In the Apprentice lodge, masons of all degrees take part: its business is to deliberate upon the affairs of the lodge, and to admit new apprentices. In the Fellowcraft lodge the Fellows and the Masters take part: its function is simply to promote members from the first to the second degree. The Masters’ lodge is for masters exclusively: the masters direct the work of the apprentices and promote Fellowcrafts to the master’s degree. Besides, in each degree there is given instruction upon the symbolism and work of the same—this is called a “Lodge of Instruction.” Each degree has its special meaning, a sum of doctrines and a certain number of symbols. The purport of the Apprentice degree is the seeing of the light in the spiritual sense—the spiritual birth of man: an explanation is given of the nature of the order, its aims and its constitution. The Second degree deals with the life of man, its joys, its griefs, its fears: teaches to withstand passion and temptation, to know oneself, and to form an idea of the model human career. Finally, the teaching of the master’s degree treats of the end of life, death, its inevitableness; proposes for imitation the examples of great men who have given up their life for humanity; suggests thoughts concerning the immortal life. Sometimes, also, the three degrees are explained as the embodiment of the masonic motto: Beauty, Strength, and Wisdom. These degrees are also known as the Saint John degrees, and the lodges as lodges of St. John, the Baptist being the chosen patron of the order, as he was also of the medieval stonemasons and of the Templars. The fact that the masons are under the patronage of Saint John the Baptist is interpreted to mean that the order is the forerunner of a happier condition of mankind, as John was the forerunner of Jesus. On the feast of Saint John (June 24th) or thereabout, in the year 1717, the first meeting of the Grand Lodge of London was held; and on that same day there is held in every masonic lodge throughout the world a festival at once grave and joyful.[3] Footnote 3: We make no mention here of the so-called “higher degrees,” which are, in fact, but amateurish fabrications, without any practical aim. They are distasteful forms of the true freemasonry; they differ as to name and number between one system and another; and the true lodges of Saint John freemasons recognize no such “supergraduation.” The higher degrees are considered in another part of this work. All males who have attained legal majority, and who are of good repute and their own masters, are eligible for admission to the order, without regard to race, station, calling, or creed. Unfortunately, Freemasons have not always and everywhere been free from antiquated prejudices in the admission of new members. Down to this day lodges in the United States shut their doors in the face of men of color, i. e., of those who are not whites; and many German, Danish, and Swedish lodges, both grand and particular, exclude Jews; in consequence, there are very many lodges of colored men and in Germany some Jewish lodges, whereas in the British colonies brethren of all colors and creeds work together in the same lodges. Women and children are not altogether shut out from Freemasonry everywhere. It is the almost universal custom to admit, before the attainment of majority, masons’ sons, who may have been instructed by their fathers as to the meaning of Freemasonry. There are also special meetings which the wives, the betrothed, the sisters, and the daughters of masons are permitted to attend. But we have an unmasonic excrescence and an abuse when, as in French lodges, with doors open to the public, a masonic baptism and a masonic marriage ceremony are performed with special ritual; still more worthy of reprobation are the Adoption lodges or Women’s lodges, instituted at various times in France: in these women were initiated with a ceremonial adapted to the occasion, and were promoted to various degrees; thus, before the Revolution the luckless Princess de Lamballe, in the time of Napoleon the Empress Josephine, and under the Restoration the Duchess de Larochefoucauld were presidents of lodges. In other quarters also the cry has been raised for the admission of the fair sex: but needless to say that such an innovation would very seriously compromise the gravity, the dignity, and the secrecy of the order, and breed trouble, both in the lodges and in the families of the members. Once a woman was unwittingly admitted to the secrets of Freemasonry. Elizabeth Aldworth, daughter of the Irish viscount Donneraile, in whose house a lodge used to hold its meetings, on one occasion, in her young girlhood, peeped through a crack in a partition and witnessed the admission of a mason. She was caught in the act, and, to prevent betrayal, was herself initiated. In her after life she was noted for her acts of benevolence, and once, wearing the masonic togs, headed a public walk of the brethren. The Empress Maria Theresa also, it is said, dressed in man’s apparel, once stole into a lodge in Vienna, having been informed that her husband, the Emperor Francis, was in the habit of meeting women there; but as she saw no women in the lodge, she withdrew in haste. Quite recently a Hungarian lodge admitted to membership a countess resident in its locality; but the Grand Lodge of Hungary canceled the act. _PART TENTH._ _Secret Societies of the Eighteenth Century._ 1. MISCELLANEOUS SECRET SOCIETIES. Conditions in the 18th century were specially favorable to the vogue of secret organizations: illuminism was making headway, but at the same time there remained many a relic of medieval barbarism. The manifest contrasts of opinion naturally inclined men of like mind to come together in secret societies for the advancement of their favorite principles. These societies copied the methods of Freemasonry, and were, in a greater or less degree its rivals. Some of them admitted women to membership. The societies of both sexes were intended to compensate women for their exclusion from the Freemason lodge. The “Order of Woodsplitters” (fendeurs), founded in 1747 by the Chevalier Beauhaine, a distinguished Freemason, took its symbolism entirely from the work of the woodsplitter or woodchopper; the lodges were yards (i. e., woodyards, chantiers), the members were cousins (cousins, cousines; i. e., male and female cousins), the candidate was a Steel (used to strike fire from a flint), and so forth. The “Order of Hope” (esperance) was founded expressly for the behoof of Freemasons’ wives, and they alone were admitted; but masons of the higher degrees could visit the lodges without initiation. The president was a woman. There were Esperance lodges in several cities of Germany; at Goettingen the university students joined the order for the sake of the refinement of manners got from association with the ladies. There is some doubt as to the true character of the “Order of Saint Jonathan” (afterward of Saint Joachim), qualified as “for True and Perfect Friendship,” or “for the Defense of the Honor of Divine Providence.” Its end would seem to have been to propagate belief in the Trinity, to refrain from the dance (especially the waltz), and from games of chance; also (this for the female members) to nurse their own children. It was founded by some German nobles, and its first grandmaster was Christian Francis, Duke of Saxe-Coburg. Though Protestants and Catholics were members of the order, it took on a strongly Catholic character, and in 1785 adopted the style of “the knightly Secular Chapter of the Order of Saint Joachim, the blessed Father of the Holy Virgin Mary, Mother of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ” (ritterlich-weltliches ordenskapitel von St. Joachim, etc.) The society passed quietly out of existence. The “Order of the Pilgrims’ Chain” (Kette der Pilgrime), in Germany and Denmark, whose members belonged to the higher classes, had for its motto “Courtesy, Steadfastness, and Silence” (Willfaehrigkeit, Bestaendigkeit, Stillschweigen), and wore in a buttonhole a white ribbon bearing the initial letters of those three words. The members, male and female, were called Favorites (favoriten); to admit a new member was “to add a link to the chain”; and any member could add any “link” whom he might have known for half a year. The symbolism was borrowed from travel. The “Order of Argonauts” was founded in 1772 by Conrad von Rhetz, a Brunswick Freemason. On an islet in a pond leased to him by the state he built a temple in which the members were initiated. They approached the temple in barges and there were entertained by the Grand Admiral, as the founder was styled. There was no fee for admission. The motto was “Long Live Gladness”; the badge of the order was a green-enameled anchor of silver. The officers, besides the Grand Admiral, were the Pilot, the Ship’s Chaplain, and so forth, and the members were Argonauts. After the founder’s death the order went to wreck, and the temple disappeared, leaving no vestige. The renowned Fenelon founded at Douai an order called “the Palladium,” its secret dialect was taken from his romance “Telemasque.” The “Order of the Mustardseed,” said to have been founded in England in 1708: it spread over Holland and Germany: it assumed the form of a Protestant clerico-knightly order, and concerned itself chiefly with religious affairs: its emblem was a gold cross, with mustard tree in the middle. This society was reputed to be connected with the Herrnhuters (Moravian brethren). The “Order of the Leal” (Orden der Echten), founded in 1758, at Landeshut, by Bessel, a Prussian military officer, had for its end simply good-fellowship: it labored to win over to Prussia the Silesian nobility. The “Society of the Ducats” (Dukatensocietat) had for its founder (1746) Count Louis of Neuwied, colonel in the Prussian Army. The members contributed one ducat a month; but when a member induced outsiders to join the society, then for the first outsider his own contribution for the month current was remitted; for the third, fifth and each following odd-numbered new accession procured by him he received a ducat. This vulgar swindle, which was the sole end of the society, worked finely, and the membership grew rapidly: but the Society of the Ducats was suppressed by the government after an existence of two years. Attempts to establish other fraudulent orders were made by a swindler who understood the foible of his contemporaries for mysteries. Matthew Grossinger, or as he styled himself, Francis Rudolf von Grossing, son of a butcher, born 1752, at Komorn, in Hungary, would seem to have been once a Jesuit. After the suppression of his order, he offered to sell to Frederic the Great some Austrian official documents, but met with a repulse; then he represented himself to Joseph II. as a victim of the reactionary policy of the preceding reign, and in 1784 founded in the interest of his own pocket the “Order of the Rose,” and again in 1788, donning women’s clothes, the “Order of Harmony,” both orders admitting members of either sex. He named “Frau von Rosenwald,” a non-existent personage, as head of the order, with the title Stiftsrose (The Institute’s Rose). The several local societies were known as Roses, and their presiding officers as Rosylords and Rosyladies (Rosenherren, Rosendamen). But in fact Grossing was all in all, and he appropriated to himself the very liberal contributions and all other income: for that end alone were the societies established. He died in wretched circumstances, having always squandered his gains in luxury and extravagance. 2. OBSCURANTIST INFLUENCES. The daybreak of illuminism in the 18th century gave to the partisans of the ancient despotism of creed and privilege matter of most serious concern. They saw all their contrivances for keeping the people ignorant and submissive baffled. For them, as for the Papacy at the daybreak of the Reformation the question was, To be or Not to be. But theirs was a war with a far more redoubtable foe than Protestantism ever was. Illuminism did not aim merely at separation from the Roman Church: it declared a war of extermination against Rome, it aimed at abolition of all authority that presumed to determine the beliefs of men or to dictate their opinions. To down this hateful spirit of illuminism with one blow—what satisfaction that would afford to the obscurantists of that time! But where should they begin? It was vain to think of silencing the literary champions of illuminism. The age of witch trials and courts of Inquisition was past. The problem was to find an organized institution in which the odious spirit of illuminism was, as it were, incorporated, and that could be no other than the society of the Freemasons. But the experience of the Popes and the Inquisition had shown that Freemasonry was not to be overmastered by persecution, by prisons, or by the stake. Hence, other champions must take the place of the Dominican inquisitors: the Freemasons must be won over to the good cause by flatteries and cajoleries. Among the illuminists of that day the Jesuits were regarded as the agents chosen for carrying out this plan; and though it cannot be demonstrated that they had an actual part in the business, the scheme surely was one quite consonant with the spirit of their order. The plan was shrewdly contrived. It dealt with political considerations affecting England, the native home of freemasonry; and thus the conspiracy aimed, so to speak, at capturing the den of the “dragon” of illuminism. The Stuart dynasty, which had returned to the Catholic fold, was in exile from the end of the 17th century, but, aided by France materially and by Rome intellectually, was ever striving to regain the lost throne. The efforts of kings and kings’ sons in exile possess a poetical and romantic quality. It was possible to win over all sympathetic enthusiasts by exploiting their foibles, the nobles and legitimists (the Tories) by preaching legitimacy, and the whole body of the Catholics by appealing to their loyalty to the Church. Now, the masonic order was a secret society, and as such, of course, was a rallying point for all enthusiasts, mystics, and dreamers. Besides, the nobility was strongly represented in the society: after the first four grandmasters of the Grand Lodge of England, who were all practical masons (architects), all the succeeding grandmasters belonged to the highest nobility of the realm. Among them we find dukes of Montague, Richmond, Norfolk, Chandos, to say nothing of a long series of viscounts, earls, and marquises. As for the Catholic element, it had many things in common with Freemasonry—ceremonies and mysticism, hierarchic degrees, and cosmopolitan extension; hence, with a little Jesuit finesse, the order might gradually and insensibly be made Catholic, as had been done with the Buddhist ceremonial in India: in this way the Society of Saint John might be transformed into a preparatory school for the Society of Jesus. And now, if we consider what a scandal it must have been to the coronetted chiefs of Freemasonry that their order originated among mechanics, we can see how easy it would be, by dishing up a few fables in proof of a nobler origin, to make converts of them for any ends whatever. In the event of success, the stronghold of illuminism would be captured, and with the help of its former champions the most powerful kingdom in Europe, and a great centre of illuminism, would be given back to a Catholic King, and thereby the road to conquest opened for the Church of Rome. Of course, these vast designs could not be carried out all at once. The work had to proceed by stages, as thus: 1. Aristocratic sentiment would be gratified by the institution of higher masonic degrees; 2. These degrees would be connected with the religious orders of knighthood by a chain of fable; 3. Obstinate Protestants would be quieted by the offer of a cryptic Catholicism which apparently would be in accordance with their own beliefs; 4. Persons inaccessible to religious considerations would be influenced by hopes of riches to be acquired through the secret arts of alchemy, and the like; 5. The whole purpose of the order would be directed toward spiritual and Catholic ends; finally, 6. when the process was completed, there would stand forth in all its nakedness the savage fury of the Inquisition. 3. THE “HIGH DEGREES” SWINDLE. Without any sufficient reason assigned, there arose in England between the years 1741 and 1743 a new degree, Royal Arch, at first as a higher division of the master’s degree afterward as an independent degree. Its content was a hotchpotch of New Testament passages, religious dogmas, and masonic, or, rather, unmasonic fables. Its tradition went back to the building of the second Temple of Jerusalem, after the return from Babylonian captivity; hence the president of a Royal Arch lodge took the name of Zerubbabel, and wore a vesture of scarlet and purple. The meeting was called a “chapter”; the three masonic degrees were dubbed “probationary degrees”; and soon, on the title page of the rules of the degree was represented an ark, with the inscription “Nulla Salus Extra” (no safety outside), whereby we are reminded that according to Catholic doctrine the ark of Noah was a type of the Church. Afterward the Royal Arch degree published a program of its work, in which masonry is divided into Operative and Speculative, and the former subdivided into manual, instrumental, and scientific; the aim of the “order” was defined to be, to gather the human race in one fold under the great Shepherd of souls. For the rest, the work of this degree was childish play. Even before this fruit was borne in England, there came into circulation in France, how or why nobody knows, a statement that Freemasonry arose in Palestine during the Crusades, and was there consolidated with the Knights of St. John (Hospitalers), wherefore the lodges came to be called Saint John’s lodges; that after the Crusades the order was established in Scotland, was thence afterward introduced into England, and later into other countries. This historic lie was, of course, welcomed by the nobles who were members of the order; as for the many uneducated members who had been admitted into the French lodges, they were easily deluded. Thenceforward there were High Degrees of all sorts in France. And as the fable assigned to Scotland the foremost place in the history of masonry, the highest degrees began to be known as Scottish, or, after the name of Scotland’s patron, Saint Andrew, Saint Andrew’s degrees, and the lodges Scottish or Saint Andrew’s lodges. In their rites of admission they adopted from the traditions of the English and French stonemasons a lot of myths about the death of Hiram, and taught the aspirants for admission to avenge that death, the meaning being that they were to avenge the expulsion of the Stuarts, and the wrongs done the Catholic Church by the Reformation and by illuminism. But as degrees were multiplied the Hiram myth no longer sufficed, and for the higher steps it was necessary to have recourse to other myths. Meanwhile it was seen that the story of the consolidation of the Freemasons and the Knights of Saint John would not work, for that knightly order was still in existence; therefore, if the aristocratic brethren were to have their vanity flattered, recourse must be had to a suppressed order of knighthood. True, that was not pleasing to strict Catholics, but there was no alternative—and a bond of connection had to be formed between Masonry and the order of the Templars—the heretical Templars. So here is the story of the relation of the Freemasons to the Templars: A few Templars, fleeing from papal and royal persecution—among them Grand Comptroller Harris and Marshal Aumont—reached Scotland, and in that country, in order to gain a livelihood, worked as common masons. Advised of the death of the Grandmaster Molay, and of his last will, wherein he had directed the brethren to perpetuate the order, these fugitive knights that same year established the “Freemasons’ league,” and on the Scotch Isle of Mull held the first “chapter” in 1314. Now, to say nothing of the fact that, as we shall see, the story took more than one different shape afterward, it is on other grounds quite unworthy of belief. It is beyond question that documentarily the Freemason league can assign for itself no other origin but the constitution of the Grand Lodge of England in 1717. But, besides, the story is ridiculous, not only in that Harris and Aumont are purely fictitious personages, but also in that the Grand Lodge of Scotland and the oldest lodges of that ancient kingdom know nothing of any such creation of a society; and, furthermore, the objects and the sentiments of Templarism and masonry differ too widely for any unification to take place between them. In the one body free thinking through levity of temperament: in the other repudiation of odium theologicum out of love of fellowmen; on one side egotism: on the other regard for the general weal; on one side pride of aristocracy: on the other regard only for the dignity of manhood. And yet the most eminent men of the 18th century were fooled into believing that the Freemasons are descended from the Templars. The first serious and formal introduction of spurious Templarism into masonry took place in France. The Chevalier de Boneville, on November 24, 1764, founded at Paris a chapter of the high degrees called (apparently in honor of the then grandmaster of Freemasons, Louis de Bourbon, count of Clermont) the “Clermont chapter”; its members were, for the most part, partisans of the Stuarts, and therefore of the Jesuits also. Here it was that the story of the wondrous transformation of Templars into Freemasons in Scotland was invented, taught, and employed as part of the ceremonial of admission to the higher degrees. The members wore the masonic togs, and in their ritual the death of the Grandmaster Molay took the place of that of Hiram; and, in fact, by Hiram, as some asserted, Molay was meant. From this chapter the influence of the Jesuits extended soon over the whole field of French Freemasonry. Surely, it was not by accident nor out of patriotism that the very next year the French Grand Lodge, till then dependent on England, declared itself independent, and adopted statutes according to which the “Scottish Masters” (unknown both in England and Scotland) were to have oversight of the work. 4. APOSTLES OF NONSENSE. Soon the craze spread further still, and first, of course, through Germany, where, in those degenerate days, whatever bore the French stamp was received with reverence and conscientiously aped. The Scottish lodges got entrance into Berlin as early as 1742. The dubious honor of this importation belongs to Baron E. G. von Marschall, who had been initiated into the new Templarism at Paris. Dying soon afterward, he was succeeded by a man who presented the curious spectacle of noblest and most strenuous endeavor toward a fantastic goal, of the nature of which he knew nothing. Charles Gotthilf, Imperial Baron of Hund and Altengrottkau (so he was styled), born in 1722, was a nobleman of Lusatia and actual privy councilor of the Emperor; he was a man of narrow mind, without high education, but he was an idealist, a chivalrous, hospitable and kindly gentleman. At Paris he was received into the Catholic Church and into the spurious order of Templars, to which he was devoted heart and soul: he was commissioned “Master of the Host” in Germany. He founded a lodge on one of his estates, which bore the ominous name of Unwurde (unworth), and soon had several subordinate lodges under his jurisdiction. “About this time,” says a contemporary writer, “the Seven-Years War broke out. The French troops came into Germany, and with them many Jesuits. With the French Army, and particularly in its commissariat, were a great many Freemasons of the higher degrees, and some of those gentlemen had calculated to make a good deal of money by the sale of merchandise in Germany. I knew one French commissary who had a whole wagonload of decorations for some forty-five degrees, and these he peddled all the way from Strasburg to Hamburg. Thereafter no German lodge was any longer content with the three symbolic degrees, but nearly every one of them had a series of higher degrees of one brand or another, according to the particular windbag each fell victim to; and so they dropped one system and took up another when a new apostle came that way and reformed them.” Such an apostle of fraud was the Marquis de Lernais or Lerney. Taken prisoner of war to Berlin, he there made known the Jesuitical doctrine of the Chapter of Clermont, and even founded a chapter in the Grand Lodge of the Three World-Spheres. To spread these chapters over the rest of Germany, or, in plain terms, to give the whole country into the hands of the Jesuits, a character by no means ambiguous, one Philip Samuel Rosa, once a Protestant clergyman, counsel to the consistory, and superintendent, but afterward deposed for immorality, was employed. Rosa’s whole endeavor was to make money. Joining the Chapter of Clermont he got the title “Knight of Jerusalem and Prior of the Chapter of Halle.” As he traveled up and down the land, the lodge at Halle paid his expenses. The eyes of the deluded brethren were at last opened, on the discovery of the relations between Rosa and another swindler, one Leuchte, who palmed himself off as an Englishman, Baron Johnson, and who founded a Grand Chapter, admitted novices and knights, boasted of armies and fleets at his command, and sent forth to all Templars in Germany an encyclical letter summoning them to his standard. Many were his dupes, among them Rosa, who visited him at Jena, humbled himself before him, and consented to the expulsion of the Berlin chapter from the “order.” But as Rosa was loth to admit at Halle his submission to Johnson, and counseled the “knights” there not to recognize Johnson, his double-dealing was betrayed to his dupes at Halle by the “Baron,” and he was dismissed from their service in disgrace. The “Baron” himself, after the discovery of his frauds, was repudiated by his followers, and in 1765 was imprisoned in the famous castle of Wartburg, and there remained till his death in 1775. This was the opportunity of the Baron von Hund, the Don Quixote of the 18th century. He became now the acknowledged head of the “order,” and ruled it as his fancy dictated. He always spoke of “Unknown Superiors” of the order as though his policy was guided by them; but the “Superiors” who imposed on the guileless gentleman were the intriguants at Paris. Because of the unconditional obedience required of the members, Hund called the system of the order that of “Strict Observance,” in contradistinction to the “lax observance” of ordinary Freemasons. The Strict Observance comprised seven degrees; viz., the three masonic degrees, the degree of the Scottish Master, that of the Novice, that of the Knight-Templar, finally the degree of the Eques Professus, or Professed Knight (one who has “professed” or taken the monastic vows!). All knights assumed Latin names or surnames. Hund was Eques ab Ense (Knight of the Sword); others were Knight of the Sun, of the Lion, of the Star, even of the Whale, of the Chafer, of the Golden Crab, of the Mole, etc. Soon Strict Observance was dominant in the German lodges, while genuine Freemasonry was forgotten. No less than twenty-six German princes joined the order, and so puffed up were its directors in consequence that forthwith they divided Europe up into provinces, after the manner of the Templars and the Jesuits, naming for each province a Master of the Host. The subdivisions of provinces were called, as among the Templars, Priories, Prefectures, Comptrollerships, etc. To give these subdivisions something more than an existence on paper, Hund dispatched the Baron G. A. von Weiler, Knight of the Golden Ear (of wheat, barley, etc.) to France and Italy, where he founded several chapters: even the Grand Orient of France united itself with the Strict Observance. Toward those German lodges which held aloof from this bastard masonry the Hundian Templars were supremely disdainful, and but few of the lodges had the spirit to speak out against the “obscurantist innovations.” Chief among the few was the gallant old Lodge of Unity, at Frankfort-on-the-Main, which declared itself an English provincial lodge, to show its independence of pseudo-Templarism. A zealous apostle of the Strict Observance was John Christian Schubart of Kleefeld, Knight of the Ostrich, who was constantly on the road converting lodges to that system. Schubart devised a plan by which the order was to acquire great wealth. Hund’s financial affairs were in confusion, in consequence of the war, and he proposed to bequeath his property to the order, in consideration of a certain sum in cash: but the order had not the money. Schubart now proposed to exact enormous fees for initiations and admissions to high degrees (for example, 350 thalers for admission). But the scheme could not be worked, and Schubart withdrew from the order. The order had no longer any use for Hund. The time had come for the Jesuit influence to assert itself: it would have no more fooleries with helmets, swords, accoutrements, and Templar’s mantles. It was seen by the original projectors of the “order” that if they would succeed in their design of winning over Freemasonry to the plan of catholizing Germany, they must betimes provide a clerical directorate for the organization, which till now had worn the mask of knighthood. They found a convenient instrument in the person of the Protestant theologian, John Augustus von Stark, born at Schwerin in 1741. While a student in Goettingen Stark was admitted (1761) to the masonic order; then he was a teacher in Petersburg, where he adopted the mystic system of one Melesino, a Greek. The ceremonial of Melesino’s system comprised a number of prayers and genuflections, and even a mass; the high-degree meetings were called Conclaves, and the members wore surplices. Later, at Paris, Stark took an interest in Oriental manuscripts, and joined the Catholic Church, but all the same, on his return home he served as professor of theology at Koenigsberg, and then as court preacher and general ecclesiastical superintendent in the same city, and afterward in Darmstadt. Through some acquaintances, who were members of the Strict Observance, he got an introduction to Hund, to whom he revealed the great secret which he had learned at Petersburg, namely, that the grand mysteries of the Templars were revealed not to the knights, but only to the clerical members, and that these mysteries had been kept and handed down to that time; further, that the true chief of the order of Templars was none other but the Knight of the Golden Sun, Charles Edward Stuart, the Pretender, then resident in Florence. Delighted at the prospect of an enhancement of what he fancied to be his sciences, Hund recognized Stark and two of Stark’s friends as Clerics of the Order of Templars. These clerical Templars thereupon drew up a ceremonial and created degrees of their own, and as a special favor initiated some secular knights into their mysteries. But because Hund declined to accommodate Stark with a loan of two hundred thalers to defray the expenses of a journey to Petersburg, where Pylades, head of the Templar clerics, resided, the two fell out, and Stark announced his purpose to keep the “Clericate” independent of the “Order.” Nevertheless, he begged a friend to negotiate on his behalf with the secular Templars. This friend was a noble personage, Ernest Werner von Raven, Knight of the Pearl, a wealthy landowner, “prior” in the “order,” member of a Chapter under Rosa and Hund, and also an initiate in Stark’s own clerical order of Templars. Like Hund, he was a man of honor, but vain and narrow-minded, a mystic and an alchemist. Raven, in 1772, attended a convention held at Kohlo, in Lusatia, for the purpose of bringing about an understanding between the Knights and the clerics. He appeared in the costume of the Templar clerics, viz.; white cassock with red cross on the breast and a hat like that of a cardinal. He presented to the meeting a project of union drawn up by Stark, which the knights received with plaudits of satisfaction. Hund was deposed from his high office, and appointed one of the Masters of the Host, while Duke Ferdinand of Brunswick was made Grandmaster, and other princes were named to be Superiors and Protectors under him. But the ritualistic pomp of the Clerics had already awakened suspicion in the minds of the Protestant members, and they began to cry out against mysteries of foreign origin and against the dictation of unknown Superiors. This discontent found expression in the convention held at Brunswick in 1775. There Hund was questioned as to the legitimacy of his appointment as a Master of the Host and the Clerics as to the authenticity of their mysteries. Hund was deposed from office; the following year he died of a broken heart, and, clothed in the regalia of Master of the Host, was interred in the church at Melrichsstadt in front of the altar. The seat of the Grandmaster was fixed permanently at Brunswick. Thus the machinations of the Jesuits seemed to have come to naught. But now they sent forth a new apostle, a man who was an enigma, whose place of birth and of death are unknown, and who himself admitted to his confidants that he was an agent of the Jesuits. Gugomos—such was his name—styled baron and professor of art, and as a member of the Strict Observance Knight of the Triumphant Swan, in 1776, in his capacity as dignitary of the order of Templars with a long string of titles, invited the Grandmaster, the Directorate, and the Prior of the Clerics to attend a convention at Wiesbaden, in order, as he said, to instruct them in the genuine Templarism. And many “Knights” obeyed this singular invitation, among them several princes. Gugomos made loud boasts of the great number of mysteries into which he had been initiated, and in telling of them used phrases and terms that remind us strongly of the “Exercitia Spiritualia;” he exhibited his insignia and the commission of a “Most Holy See” in Cyprus; and declared that the Order to which he belonged, and of which the ancient order of Templars was only an offshoot, was founded by Moses, whose successors in the office of Grandmaster had been Egyptian, Judean, and other kings, Grecian philosophers, Christ himself and his apostles, finally popes. The Templar succession, he said, had been perpetuated in Cyprus (not in Scotland, then), and the archbishops of Cyprus were the successors of the Grandmasters. The degrees of Freemasonry (thus he driveled on) were a later innovation on the original clerical and knightly system, which in its organization was, he said, exactly the same as the Jesuit order. The one thing needed in order to instruct men in the occult sciences was a holy temple. On the completion of such a temple the “natural fire” would fall from heaven, etc. Many persons recognized the fraud; others walked into the trap, and were initiated. But seeing how little confidence was placed in him, Gugomos absconded, and that was the end of Jesuit Freemasonry. But the farce of Templarism lived a few years yet, though people were growing tired of it. Some of the members went back to the old-fashioned masonry; others turned to new lights of mysticism that had for some time been looming on the horizon—the Swedish Rite and the New Rosicrucianism. 5. THE SWEDISH RITE. Swedish Freemasons, as early as the middle of the 18th century, had found the genuine English masonry too simple and inornate: they longed for more glitter and pomp, mysteries and degrees. King Gustavus III. attempted to satisfy this want by concocting a new system, the ingredients being genuine freemasonry, the Strict Observance, and the system then known at “Rosicrucianism,” and in largest proportion the Clermont system: the doctrines of the famous mystic and seer, Swedenborg, may also have given a flavor to the compound. In founding the Swedish Rite or System, Gustavus counted on obtaining the help of the members in his effort to rid himself of the party of the nobles. The Swedish Rite has ten degrees. It is founded on two stories, one that certain secrets have descended to it from Christ through the Apostles, the clerical Templars, and the Freemasons; the other, that a nephew of the Grandmaster Beaulieu, a predecessor of Molay, visited Molay in prison, and, at the suggestion of Molay, went down into his uncle’s sepulchre, where, in a casket, he found the insignia and the records of the order; that from Paris he took these into Scotland, and thence into Sweden. The symbols of the higher degrees refer to Templarism and Catholicism. The ceremonies of the highest degree are said closely to resemble the mass. Other alleged usages are, the wearing of the red cross of the Templars on the breast, reciting every night Saint Bernard’s prayer to the Lamb of God, fasting on Good Friday till sundown, then eating three slices of bread, with oil and salt. The title of the head of the System is Vicar of Solomon. Several distinguished members of the Swedish System, among them the celebrated poet J. H. Voss, have characterized its ceremonies as “vain, useless and ridiculous.” 6. THE NEW ROSICRUCIANISM AND ALLIED SYSTEMS. The New Rosicrucianism had its rise in Southern Germany about the year 1760, while Rosa and Johnson were busy with their systems. Its originators had no connection with Freemasonry, and of its nine degrees not even the first three were named after the masonic degrees. Several discontented members of the Strict Observance joined the new order. The members assumed fanciful names, as Foebron, Ormesus, Cedrinus; the lodges were called “Circles.” Unquestioning obedience was to be rendered to the Superiors. The members learned only the mysteries of their own particular circle. The motto was: “May God and His Word be with us.” They claimed to possess a cryptic Book containing a sacred history of events prior to the creation of the world, especially of the Fall of the Angels. Their specialty was a mystical, kabbalistic, and totally absurd interpretation of the Bible, and of other alleged sacred or occult writings, whence they deduced an explanation of the universe. For example, they taught that the planets and the other heavenly bodies reflect back on the sun the light they receive from him, thus conserving his might and his splendor. They also practiced necromancy, exorcization, alchemy, the art of making gold, of preparing the elixir of life: they studied such problems as the production of the noble metals from rain water, urine, and other bodies, and even of evolving human beings by chemical processes. In their assemblies the members wore white and black scarfs, but those of the higher degrees wore priestly vestments, with crosses of silver or gold. At the initiation the candidates swore fearful oaths. Aspirants to the ninth degree were assured that once they should attain that eminence they would understand all nature’s secrets and possess supreme control of angels, devils, and men. The first prophet of the New Rosicrucianism was John George Schrepfer, coffeehouse keeper in Leipsic. In 1777 he founded in his own shop a lodge of the Scottish Rite, to afford his customers a better style of masonry than was found in the ordinary lodges. The Duke of Courland, protector of one of the masonic lodges, had the man publicly bastinadoed: but Schrepfer shortly afterward inspired both him and the Duke of Brunswick with a curiosity to be instructed in the mysteries, and visited them at Dresden and at Brunswick. In his lodge he gave demonstrations of his supernatural powers as a magician and a necromancer: for example, he would summon up spirits of the dead. Puffed up by success, Schrepfer indulged in all manner of debauchery, and at last was reduced to penury. He died by his own hand, aged 35 years. But Rosicrucianism was yet to reach its highest point, which it did in the person of John Christopher Woellner (born at Spandau, 1732, ordained preacher 1759, a councilor in the Prussian service in 1766, and Minister of State 1788; deceased 1800), and John Rudolf Bischofswerder (born in Thuringia 1741, chamberlain to the Elector of Saxony; major in the Prussian army 1772; minister at war 1768; deceased 1803). Not content with the honor of being Knight of the Griffin in the Strict Observance, Bischofswerder went in search of an order that practiced the magic art, and was so fortunate as to find it in the New Rosicrucianism. He was initiated into the mysteries by Schrepfer, and it was he who converted the Duke of Courland from an enemy into a friend of the coffeehouse Rosicrucian. After the death of Schrepfer, whose most zealous supporter he had been, Bischofswerder obtained promotion in the Prussian service through the favor of the crown prince Frederic William, nephew of Frederic the Great, and shared his good fortune with Woellner, Knight of the Cube, who like himself had seceded from Templarism. The pair won the crown prince over to Rosicrucianism, and enjoyed his confidence both then and after his accession to the throne of Prussia in 1786, as William II. At last, as ministers of state, they succeeded in substituting obscurantism and state religionism in the place of the illuminism and toleration that had prevailed under old Fritz. It was they that dictated the odious Edict of Religion of 1788, which was expected to prove a deathblow to illuminism and free thought: but the death of the King upset all their calculations. That was the end of the New Rosicrucianism. Simultaneously with the order of the Rosicrucians arose two variant forms of the same, the society of the Asiatic Brethren, and that of the African Buildingmasters (Asiatische Brueder, Afrikanische Bauherren). The Asiatic Brethren’s order was founded in Vienna by Baron Hans Henry von Eckhofen, an ex-Rosicrucian: it admitted only Freemasons, but did not exclude Jews, and its aims were the same as those of the Rosicrucians. Its chief seat was at Vienna, called by them Thessalonica, for they gave a foreign name to every place. Its head officers were styled Inquisitors. There were five degrees, viz., two probationary—those of Seekers and of Sufferers—and three superior degrees. The members in the two lower degrees wore round black hats with distinctive feathers for each degree, black mantles, and white or black ribbons, broidered with different emblems; those in the higher degrees wore red hats and mantles; the attire of those in the highest degree was all rosy-red. Ten members constituted a Mastership, ten masterships a Decade, and so on. The order became shockingly corrupt in Austria. The African society, founded by War Councilor Koeppen in Berlin, had rather higher aims than the Rosicrucians and the Asiatic Brethren: they studied the history of Freemasonry, admitted to their order only scholars and artists, conducted their business in Latin, and offered prizes for scientific researches: but they indulged in farfetched and absurd symbolism, kabbalism, magic, and mysticism. Their degrees were five inferior or preparatory, and five higher or esoteric. The order lived for a few years only. There were many other societies, instituted mostly for the purpose of fraud and moneymaking: of these we give no account here. But there still remains one society which is worthy of mention—that of the Brethren of the Cross (Kreuzbrueder) or Devotees of the Cross (Kreuzfromme), founded by Count Christian von Haugwitz (1752–1832), who was at one time Knight of the Holy Mount in the Strict Observance, afterward belonged to a German imitation of the Swedish rite, and at last founded a society which was described by a contemporary as “a conspiracy of despotism against liberty, of vice against virtue, of stupidity against talent, of darkness against enlightenment.” The Devotees of the Cross observed the strictest secrecy, corresponded in cipher, inveigled princes, in order to rule in their stead (after the manner of Bischofswerder and Woellner) and practiced all manner of superstitions to make an end of science. They had no connection whatever with Freemasonry. Unfortunately this multiplication of mystical orders was not without effect on the fortunes of the masonic body, in that it has led to a vicious growth of “high degrees.” It was a French adventurer, Stephen Morin, who, in 1761, introduced into the United States the 33 degrees: they entered France again in 1803, and were regarded as a novelty, having been forgotten during the Revolution. The titles of these degrees are at once bombastic and unmeaning: Grand Scots, Knights of the East, High Princes of Jerusalem, Princes of Grace, Grand Inquisitors, Princes of the Royal Secret, etc., and in some of the variations of these ridiculous degrees we have Knights of the Ape, and of the Lion, and Emperor of East and West. _PART ELEVENTH._ _The Illuminati and Their Era._ 1. THE ILLUMINATI. By the suppression of the Jesuit order by Clement XIV., the results of two centuries of painful toil in the interest of a universal ecclesiastical dominion were undone. Then it was that an ingenious mind conceived the thought of employing on behalf of enlightenment such instrumentality as the Jesuits had employed against it. It was a pupil of the Jesuits to whom this thought first occurred: their mechanical, soul-stifling method of education had made him their enemy; but besides he had learned the artifices and the secrets of the Jesuits, and hoped that by imitating them in a Catholic country likely to be influenced by such arts, he might thereby promote the very opposite interests. Adam Weishaupt was born in 1748, and when only 25 years of age was professor of canon law and jurisprudence in the university of Ingolstadt, and also lecturer on history and philosophy, being the first in that institute to deliver lectures in the German language, and in consonance with the more enlightened spirit of the age. The intrigues of the ousted Fathers against their successor in a professorial chair which they had held for nearly a century forced to maturity the thought which he had cherished from his student days: and the founding in the neighboring village of Burghausen of a lodge of Rosicrucians, who were trying to attract to themselves his students, decided him to carry his idea into execution. On May 1, 1776, he founded the Order of Perfectibilists to which he afterward gave the name Illuminists (Illuminati). To propagate this institution and to strengthen it he adopted measures which, in the circumstances of the time, seemed not unpractical. First, he adopted entire the hierarchic system of government existing among the Jesuits—despotic rule from top to bottom; secondly, he employed Freemasonry to promote the ends of his order, just as the Jesuits had attempted to do. Accordingly Weishaupt, who was full of vanity, ambition, and desire of revenge, but knew nothing of the true Freemasonry, only of its perversions, obtained admission to the order in a lodge in Munich. Hence it is not true that the Freemasons founded the league of the Illuminati, but rather than an order that arose outside of the lodge simply made use of Freemasonry: and so to the defeated reactionary movement against Freemasonry now succeeded an unmasonic revolutionary movement. In executing his plan Weishaupt was assisted mainly by Francis Xavier von Zwackh, of Landshut, councilor to the government of the Bavarian Palatinate, a man initiated in the highest degrees of masonry. Several years after its foundation the order of the Illuminati was still confined to South Germany, or even to Bavaria; but as Weishaupt desired that the north also, and Protestants no less than Catholics, should take an interest in his institute, he sent the Marquis Costanzo von Costanza, Bavarian chamberlain, to Frankfort-on-the-Main in 1779 to win over to the order the lodges in that city. Costanzo himself had little success, the rich merchants of Frankfort being averse to anything that would unsettle the peace of the world; but a young man whose acquaintance he made was destined to be, after Weishaupt, the most effective promoter of the new society. This was Baron Adolf von Knigge, well known for his much-read book. “Ueber den Umgang mit Menschen.” He was born in 1752, and from his youth up had been an amateur of spiritism (ghostseership). He was already an Initiate of the higher degrees of the Strict Observance; but, dissatisfied with that order, he adopted the idea of Illuminism enthusiastically, and brought into the system a number of men who became its apostles; for example, Bode, the translator; Francis von Ditfurth, associate justice, of Weimar. With these two Knigge attended the Conventus of Wilhelmsbad, and there championed the cause of Illuminism stoutly, and helped to give the deathblow to Templarism. And now as Knigge, who supposed the order to be an ancient one, entered into a correspondence with Weishaupt, he was not a little astonished on learning from him that the society was as yet no more than an embryo: in fact, it had only the degree of the minor Illuminates (Kleine Illuminaten). Nothing disheartened, however, he journeyed to Bavaria, and was admitted to the order in splendid style. But his lively fancy led him to develop the order further; and the sober-minded Weishaupt, whose gifts were those of the thinker rather than of the contriver of forms, left to Knigge the elaboration of the several degrees and their Lessons, in which both were agreed that allusions to the fireworship and lightworship of the Persians should be employed, as typical of the spiritual fire and spiritual light of Illuminism. The groundwork of the polity of the Illuminati was as follows: A supreme president ruled the whole, having next below him two officers, each of whom again had two others under him, and so on, so that the first could most conveniently govern all. The doings of the order were kept most strictly secret. Each member took the name of some historic or mythic personage of distinction: Weishaupt was Spartacus; Zwackh, Cato; Costanzo, Diomede; Knigge, Philo; Ditfurth, Minos; Nicolai, Lucian, and so on. Countries and cities also had pseudonyms: Munich was Athens; Frankfort, Edessa; Austria, Egypt; Franconia, Illyria, and so forth. In correspondence the members used a secret cipher, numbers taking the place of letters; in reckoning time they followed the calendar of the ancient Persians with the Persian names of months and the Persian aera. The number of degrees and their designations were never definitely fixed, hence they are different in different localities. But all the accounts agree that there were three principal degrees. The first of these, the School of Plants (Pflanzschule) was designed to receive youths approaching adult age. The candidate for admission was at first a Novice, and, except the one who indoctrinated him, knew no member of the order. He was required, by submitting a detailed account of his life, with full particulars as to all his doings, and by keeping a journal, to prove himself a fit subject for admission, and one likely to be of service to the order. From the grade of Novice he passed to that of Minerval. The members of the Minerval class formed a sort of learned society, which occupied itself with answering questions in the domain of morals. The Minervals, furthermore, were required to make known what they thought of the order, and what they expected of it, and they assumed the obligation of obedience. They were under the eye of their superior officers, read and wrote whatever superiors required of them, and spied on each other, and reported one another’s faults to superiors as in the Jesuit system. The leaders of the Minervals were called Minor Illuminati; were taken by surprise at the meetings of their degree and nominated to that dignity—a method that wonderfully stimulated ambition; they were instructed in the management and oversight of their subjects, and practiced themselves in that art; they were besides required to report their experiences. The second principal degree was Freemasonry, through the three original degrees of which and the two so-called Scottish degrees the Illuminati passed; and strenuous effort was made to have the masonic lodges adopt a system agreeable to the ideas of the Illuminati, so that the membership of the order might be steadily increased. The three original degrees of masonry were imparted to the regular Illuminati without ceremonies. The members of the two Scottish degrees were called Greater Illuminati, and the task of these was to study the characters of their fellowmembers; and Dirigent Illuminati, who presided over the several divisions of the illuministic masonry. The third and highest degree was that of the Mysteries, comprising the four stages of Priest, Regent, Magus and King (rex). This principal degree was elaborated only in part, and was not brought into use. In these four divisions of the third degree the ends of the order were, according to Knigge’s plan, to be explained. The supreme heads of the several divisions of the order were called Areopagites, but their functions were never fully defined. It was proposed also to add a department for women. The aims of this organization of the Illuminati remind us forcibly of those of the Pythagorean League. They contemplated, not a sudden and violent but a gradual and peaceful revolution, in which the Illuminism of the 18th century should gain the victory. This revolution was to be effected by winning for the order all the considerable intellectual forces of the time, though the new associates were only little by little to learn what the aims of the order were. And inasmuch as the members, when they should have among their number all those forces, must everywhere attain the highest places in government, the triumph of their enlightened principles could not be for long delayed. In the superior degrees the members were to be taught as a grand secret of the order that the means whereby the redemption of mankind was one day to be accomplished was Secret Schools of Wisdom. These would lift man out of his fallen estate: these would, without violence, sweep Princes and National boundaries from the face of the earth, and constitute the human race one family, every housefather a priest and lord of his own, and Reason the one lawcode of mankind. To imbue the minds of men with these principles, illuminist books were prescribed to the members for their reading. In sharp contrast to the masonic systems in which Jesuits had had a hand, the Illuminati avoided all forms which might suggest obedience to any religion or church, and welcomed whatever favored the dominance of reason and the overthrow of revelation. In the very short period of its existence the order of the Illuminati attained a membership of 2,000, a result very materially promoted by the rule that any member possessing authority from the superiors could admit a candidate. Among the members were many men eminent, both socially and in science, as the dukes of Saxe-Gotha (Ernest), Brunswick (Ferdinand), of Saxe-Weimar (Charles Augustus, while yet only heir of the ducal crown); Dalberg, who was afterward prince-bishop; Montgilas, afterward minister of state; President Count Geinsheim; the celebrated philosopher Baader; Professors Semmer of Ingolstadt, Moldenhauer of Kiel, Feder of Goettingen; the educator Leuchsenring of Darmstadt; the Catholic cathedral prebendaries Schroeckenstein of Eichstadt and Schmelzer of Mayence; Haefelin, bishop of Munich; the authors Bahrdt, Biester, Gedike, Bode, Nicolai, etc. Goethe, Herder, and probably Pestalozzi also belonged to the order. The league in “Wilhelm Meister” reminds us strongly of the Illuminati. The order was not yet spread abroad beyond the German borders, though a few Frenchmen had been admitted while visiting Germany; but its plans were already reaching out farther. And now the head of the whole organization was to be the General (as among the Jesuits); under him there was to be in each country a head officer, the National; in each principal division of a country a Provincial; in subdivisions of provinces a Prefect, and so on. This aping of Jesuit polity and the imprudent admission of objectionable or indifferent characters proved the ruin of the order. Despotic rule and espionage could never promote the cause of liberty and enlightenment—and the founder of the order proposed to make enlightenment the means of attaining liberty. Then the dissensions ever growing more serious between Weishaupt and Knigge. Whereas Weishaupt cared only for the ends of the society, all else being in his eyes only incidental, mere formalism, Knigge, on the other hand, being a man of the world, shrank in horror from the program of his associate: religion, morality, the State were imperiled. He dreaded Liberalist books, and would have been far better pleased to see the order working on the lines of the Freemasons of that day, though with an elaborate ceremonial and manifold degrees and mysteries, and with some harmless, innocent ideal of human welfare and brotherly love as the object of their endeavors. Weishaupt called Knigge’s pet contrivance tinsel and trumpery and child’s playthings, and the pair of “Areopagites” grew steadily ever more asunder. This rising storm within boded less ill to the order than the attacks from without growing from day to day more violent. Illuminism was assailed by enemies of all sorts, that sprung up like mushrooms. First there were the masonic systems of the reactionary or superstitious kind, such as the Rosicrucians, the Asiatic Brethren, the African Masterbuilders, the Swedish Rite, the remnant of the Strict Observance, etc.; then such of the Illuminati as thought the hopes of the order had been disappointed, or who expected to profit by a betrayal of the order to the enemies of liberty and light; finally, and above all, there were the sons of Loyola, ever laboring industriously in the dark though their society had been suppressed, and now again, thanks to the licentious, bigoted despotic Elector Charles Theodore, possessing great influence in Bavaria, the country in which the membership of the Order of Illuminati was of longest standing and most numerous. At that court, the seat of corruption, some courtiers, professors, and clergymen who had been members of the order, with the secret pamphleteer, Joseph Utzschneider, at their head, played traitor, charging the order with rebellion, infidelity, and all manner of vices and crimes, and at the same time, without ado, classing with the Illuminati the Freemasons. By a decree of August 2, 1784, the lodges of all secret societies established without government’s approval, including the Illuminati and the Freemasons, were banned. The masonic lodges submitted at once, and closed their doors; but Weishaupt and his associates went on with their work, hoping to change the mind of the Elector by bringing up for public discussion their rules and their usages. Vain Hope. The Elector’s confessor, Father Frank, an ex-Jesuit, who already had labored against Freemasonry, procured on March 2, 1781, a second decree, by which the previous one was confirmed, and all secret organizations that continued to exist in violation of it, and specifically the Order of Illuminati, were forbidden to hold meetings, and all their property was confiscated. The Minister of State, Aloysius Xavier Kreitmayr, distinguished himself by the rigor with which he executed the ukaz. Weishaupt was deposed from his place at Ingolstadt, expelled from that city, and declared incapable of legal defense; he had to flee the country. He first tarried in Ratisbon; but soon, in consequence of the discovery of compromising documents in a search of the houses of Illuminati, very grave charges were brought against the members, and the Elector became alarmed for his throne. Without distinction of class or station a prosecution was entered against all persons accused of membership in the order, or even suspected of sympathy with it, and they were imprisoned, deposed from office, banished, and in the case of persons of the lower classes, punished with stripes. This whole business was managed, without any recourse to the regular tribunals, by a special commission under Court direction. This persecution lasted till after the outbreak of the French Revolution, and a refusal to condemn the French people was taken as evidence of a revolutionary spirit. This system naturally fostered ignorance among the lower classes, but among educated people it tended to spread the principles of Illuminism, and to awaken opposition to monkish rule in the state. Weishaupt, no longer safe at Ratisbon, the Bavarian government having set a price on his head, fled to Gotha, where Duke Ernest, a member of the order, protected him, and made him Court councilor. Here he lived till 1830, but he failed to resuscitate his order on an improved plan. As for Knigge, he made haste to quit the incriminated order, and in his prim, emasculate “Umgang mit Menschen,” strongly condemned all “secret societies”—he, the old-time Templar, Freemason, and Illuminist. Few were so stout-hearted and firm as Ignatius von Born, the naturalist, a native of Transylvania, who had been a Jesuit, but who, after the suppression of the Society of Jesus, had joined the Illuminati and become a Freemason. After the suppression of the Bavarian lodges, Born, who was then in the service of the Emperor Joseph II. at Vienna, sent back to the Bavarian Academy of Sciences his diploma as member of that body, accompanying it with a letter in which he bluntly declared that he would rather be a Freemason than a member of a body with which he had nothing in common. And thus was the cry of Voltaire, “Ecrasons l’Infame,” taken up by the party against which it was first uttered, and by them given effect in the shape of a most infamous persecution, before men of enlightenment had made the first move toward “stamping out” what to them seemed an “infamy.” For the rest it is said that the suppression of the Illuminati was the result of an understanding with Frederic the Great, whose policy was threatened by the order. 2. IMITATIONS OF ILLUMINISM. Not long after the break-up of the Order of Illuminati in the South, a similar order sprang up in Northern Germany. It originated in the brain of a man unfortunately at once a zealous Illuminist and a morally depraved vagabond, who made a deplorable misuse of the talents with which nature had endowed him richly. This was Dr. Charles Frederic Bahrdt, Protestant theologian, sometime preacher, professor, or teacher in sundry places, and once even keeper of an eating house at Halle. In 1788 it occurred to him to found an association to promote enlightened views, and his plan was to combine it with the masonic society, of which he had become a member in England. The projected association he called the “German Union of the XXII.” (Deutsche Union der XXII.), for the reason, as he explained in a circular letter, that twenty-two men had formed a union for the ends set forth. The Union was to be organized on the plan of Jesus Christ, whom Bahrdt in a voluminous work portrayed as the founder of a sort of Freemasonry, and of whose miracles he offered a rather forced natural explanation. In accordance with this plan the association was to be a “silent brotherhood” that was to hurl from their throne superstition and fanaticism, and this chiefly by the literary activity of the members. The literary labor was ingeniously organized in such fashion that the Union would by diligent effort in time gain control of the press and the whole book trade, thus acquiring the means of insuring the triumph of enlightenment. Outwardly the Union was to have the appearance of a purely literary association; but inwardly it was to consist of three degrees, of which the lower ones were to be simply reading societies, while the third alone would understand the real purpose of the order, viz., advancement of science, art, commerce, and religion, betterment of education, encouragement of men of talent, remuneration for services, provision for meritorious workers in age and misfortune, also for the widows and orphans of members. But inasmuch as Bahrdt had painted this beautiful picture solely to make money, the Deutsche Union existed only on paper; but it wrought for its projector a protracted term of imprisonment, which he survived but a short time; he died in 1792. Another imitation of the Order of Illuminati, the League of the Evergetes (Bund der Evergeten, or benefactors, or welldoers) which sprang up at the close of the 18th century, had a longer term of life, though but little expansion. Its activity extended over all the arts and sciences, except positive theology and positive jurisprudence. The members were designated after the manner of the Illuminati; but they acknowledged no unknown superiors. Time was reckoned from the death of Socrates, B. C. 400. The supreme head was called Archiepistat (archiepistates, chief overseer); there were two degrees, of which only the higher one had a political aim, popular representation. Fessler, by his protests against such tendencies, brought about a split in the association, and afterward his adversaries tried to convert it into a sort of moral Femgericht by tracking and branding all offenses. One of the three leaders betrayed the other two, and was with them put in prison, but soon afterward released: that ended the association. 4. FREEMASONRY AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. That there was any alliance of the Freemasons, or even of the Illuminists, with the men of the French Revolution, which broke out in 1789, can be affirmed only by those who are ignorant of history or wilfully blind—by men like the Privy Councilor Grolman of Giessen, friend of Stark (significantly named in the Strict Observance, Knight of the Golden Crab), or, like the abbe and canon Augustin Barruel in France, or the ship’s captain and professor, John Robinson, in England: their allegations were received only with ridicule, and passed into oblivion. As we have seen, the Illuminati were to be found only in Germany, where no revolution took place: in fact, they were no longer in existence when the French revolution broke out. As for the Freemasons, we have already shown that they were opposed to the movement; but that movement could have no other ground than the dissatisfaction of the people of France with the shameful Bourbon dynasty, whose mischief could not be repaired by the well-intentioned but narrow-minded Louis XVI. No critical or serious work of history gives any justification of the belief that Freemasonry had a hand in bringing about that Revolution: but a decisive proof of the true relation of Freemasonry to the troubles of those times is had in the fact that the Terror made an end of the Grand Orient of France. All the clubs of the French Revolution were open: the people would not tolerate secret clubs, not even private assemblages, and hence as early as 1791 began to persecute the Freemasons as aristocrats. The Grandmaster then existing, Louis Philip Joseph, Duke of Orleans, gave up his title, as we know, and called himself Citizen Equality, and at last, in 1793, declared that he had given up the “phantom” of equality, found in Masonry, for the reality; that in the Republic there should be no Mysteries; and, therefore, he would no more have anything to do with Freemasonry. That same year his head fell under the guillotine, and his blood sealed the “reality of equality”; and most of the members of the two zealous lodges, those of the “Contrat Social” and of the “Neuf Soeurs” were taught, when they met with a like fate, that “real” equality was a more dreadful “phantom” than those they had pursued in the lodges. Only three lodges continued in existence through the Terror by extreme caution and secrecy, and not till the fall of the Terrorists did Brother Roettiers de Montaleau come forth from the prison in which he had been incarcerated simply because he was a Freemason. Thus did French Masonry weather the terrible storm of the Revolution; the German lodges in the mean time were busy in reforming and strengthening themselves; for a season they withdrew into retirement, and exerted no longer any influence on public affairs. Superstition and child’s play fell into disrepute: the Rosicrucians, the “Asian” and “African” orders, the Templars, and their like, condemned by public opinion, had to give up their absurdities and return to right reason. The general league of German Freemasons projected in 1790 by Bode of Gotha, failed of realization in consequence of the death soon afterward of that enlightened mason (1793); but its purpose was served, though not in its whole extent, by the sturdy Eclectic League of Masonry (Ekletische Freimaurerbund) founded as early as 1783, with headquarters at Frankfort. This League has ever since rendered notable service to the cause of genuine Freemasonry. _PART TWELFTH._ _Secret Societies of Various Kinds._ 1. SOCIETIES OF WITS. The Comic has a place everywhere in history: there is no lack of it in secret societies; indeed, in such societies it assumes many different forms. For there be secret societies that would be comic; there be secret societies that are comic without knowing it; and finally there be men and parties that by their action against so-called secret societies make themselves comic without intending it. While Goethe lived at Weimar, there was formed in that city a satirical Society of Chevaliers. Curiously enough it was suggested by Frederic von Goue, a Knight of the Strict Observance and a strong believer in the descent of Freemasonry from Templarism, but a comical old soul withal, and author of a parody of Goethe’s Werther. The members took knightly names: Goethe, for example, was Goetz von Berlichingen; they spoke in the style of chivalry, and they had four degrees. In sarcastic allusion to the revelations promised (but never communicated) in the high pseudomasonic degrees, the degrees of the Society of Chevaliers were, 1, Transition; 2, Transition’s Transition; 3, Transition’s Transition to Transition; 4, Transition’s Transition to Transition of Transition. Only the initiated understood the profound meaning of the Degrees. Another society of similar nature was that of the Mad Court Councilors founded at Frankfort-on-the-Main by the physician Ehrmann in 1809. Membership consisted only in the receipt from the founder (in recognition of some humorous piece) of a Diploma written in burlesque style in Latin, and bearing the impress of a broad seal. Among men honored with the diploma were Jean Paul, E. M. Arndt, Goethe, Iffland, Schlosser, Creuzer, Chladny, etc. Goethe earned his diploma by a parody of his own “Westoestlicher Diwan,”—“Occidentalischer Orientalismus.” Many societies of this sort have since arisen, but those of Vienna are worthy of special mention. One of these was called “Ludlamshoehle,” after a not very successful drama of Oehlenschlager’s. It had many distinguished men in its membership. The members were called Bodies, the candidates Shadows. Though mirth was the only object, the police thought it best to suppress the society in 1826. In 1855 appeared the Green Island, a comic-chivalresque society, though it rendered good service to literature and art. Several writers and actors of note belonged to it. A society, the Allschlaraffia was founded at Prague in the ’fifties, which, in 1885, had eighty-five affiliated societies in Germany, Austria, Switzerland and other countries. A congress of the leagued societies met at Leipsic in 1876, and another at Prague in 1883. The president of each Schlaraffenreich (or society) was called Uhu, but on festive occasions was Aha, and in condemning offenses against the Allschlaraffia, Oho. 2. IMITATIONS OF THE ANCIENT MYSTIC LEAGUES. There have been and still are in France secret societies that have thought they could in our time transplant to Europe, under Masonic forms, the Egyptian Mysteries. Once there was a Holy Order of the Sophisians, founded by French military officers who had been with Bonaparte in Egypt. The highest dignitaries were called Isiarchs, and the rest of the officers of the society bore similar titles (mostly fictitious) of Egyptian priests. The lodges were Pyramids, and their aera began 15,000 years before Christ. Two orders which still subsist are those of Misraim and of Memphis, both of which in downright earnest trace their origin back to Egyptian antiquity and regard all the secret associations mentioned in the present volume, except those having political aims, as members of one grand association. The fact is that the Misraim system had its origin in 1805, and was founded by some men of loose morals, who contrived to get themselves received into a Freemasons’ lodge in Milan, but who, because they were not promoted as they had hoped to be, went out and formed a Freemasonry of their own. The order spread first over Italy and in 1814 to France. The system has no fewer than ninety degrees, grouped in seventeen classes, and three series. Only the Grandmaster received the ninetieth degree: the “content” of all the degrees is pure nonsense. The Memphis system was introduced into France in 1814 by a Cairene adventurer. It held its first lodge at Montauban in 1815, but has often since that time been obliged to interrupt its work. The Grand Lodge of Paris was called Osiris, the head of the order was Grandmaster of Light; the hierarchy of officials was complex and showy. The degrees were more than ninety in number, to which were added three supreme degrees, but the total was afterward reduced to thirty. They comprised the Indian, Persian, Egyptian, Grecian, Scandinavian, and even the Mexican mythologies and theologies. Only two lodges exist to-day, and these the Grand Orient of France took under its wing some years ago, they having given up their silly ideas, and turned to sensible, beneficent work. Another anachronism is the ghost of Templarism, which in the present century, as in the last, walks abroad: but its connection with Masonry is now rather loose, or even non-existent. Thus, there is no connection between Freemasonry and the New Templars of Paris, whose traditions do not differ from those of the New Observance. They reckon the years from the founding of the order of Templars (1118), and their “learned men” have imagined a succession of Grandmasters deriving from one Larmenius of Jerusalem, nominated, they say, by Molay as his successor. But Larmenius never existed. Here, then, is a new variant of the story put forth by the Strict Observance, the Royal Arch, etc. A document is shown to prove the nomination of Larmenius, but its Latin is not that of the 14th century; and, besides, only the Conventus of the Templars could name a Grandmaster. After the Revolution the new Templars purchased a splendid property in the Nouvelle France suburb of Paris, and from time to time observed the anniversary of Molay’s death, having a solemn mass of requiem performed. The Grandmaster, Raimond Fabre de Palaprat (1804–1838) had under him four Grand Vicars for Europe, Asia, Africa and America—indeed, the whole earth was parceled out among the members in Grand Priories, Minor Priories, Comptrolleries, etc., and the wearers of these titles were happy. There were Clerical Templars, too, the highest grade being that of Bishop. The rules of the New Templarism permitted none to be admitted to the order save men of noble birth: but many a shopkeeper wore the white mantle with red cross. There are New Templars also in England, Scotland, Ireland and the United States, almost all of whom have received the so-called higher degrees of Freemasonry. The English Templars are divided into two opposing parties, from one of which came the Irish and the American Templars. No one is competent for admission to any of these Templar societies who does not believe that Christ came on earth to save sinners with his blood, and the members must swear to defend this belief with their swords and with their lives. But no one, alas, has yet heard of their deeds on behalf of those imperiled articles of faith. Their lodges are called Commanderies. They have Swordbearers, Bannerbearers, Prelates. 3. IMITATIONS OF FREEMASONRY. The resuscitation of the ancient order of Druids is another example of imitation of the secret societies of antiquity. Among the Kelts of Gaul and Britain the Druids were, next after the nobles and the warriors, the highest estate. Religion, art, and science were their exclusive province: hence they were priests, poets, and scholars. Their head was a Chief Druid, and they formed an order with special garb, a special mode of writing, degrees and mysteries. The mysteries were certain theological, philosophical, medical, mathematical, etc., dogmata, and these were conveyed in three-membered sentences (triads). They believed in the immortality of the soul and its transmigration, in one god, creation of the world out of nothing, and its transformation (not destruction) by water and fire. Their assemblies were held in caverns and forests, on mountains, and within circles, ringed round with enormous blocks of stone. The Roman emperors persecuted them as they did Jews and Christians, because the Druidic mysteries seemed to them dangerous to the state. In Britain the Bards, i. e., those of the Druids who cultivated poetry and song, were the most influential division of their order. There were three degrees of the Bards—Probationers, Passed Scholars and Learned Bards. In 1781 a society was formed in London whose members called themselves Druids, and who practiced rites resembling those of Freemasonry. In 1858 there were twenty-seven mutually independent societies of Druids in Britain, but by consolidation the number is now reduced to fifteen. Druidism was introduced into the United States in 1833. Their local organizations are called Groves, and the central organizations Grand Groves. They have three degrees, to which are appended other higher degrees, each with its own High Arch Chapter. There is no close connection between British and American Druidism. In 1872 Druidism was imported into Germany from the United States: there are in the German empire forty Groves, with about 2,000 members. The order of Odd Fellows is of English origin, but is very strong in the United States. It was founded toward the end of the first half of the 18th century, but appears to have been at first a convivial society of “goodfellows,” or odd fellows, with mutual benefit as a secondary object. It was reorganized in 1812, the feature of conviviality dropped, and the beneficent ends made paramount; this is the Independent Order of Odd Fellows. A rather similar organization, the Ancient Order of Foresters, was founded in England about the same time with the Odd Fellows’ order. Forestry also has been transplanted to the United States. American Oddfellowship severed its connection with the British Grand Lodge in 1842. There were in the United States in 1889 more than 600,000 Oddfellows in 10,000 lodges. A society of American origin is that of the Knights of Pythias, founded in Washington in 1864; its object is to disseminate “the great principles of friendship, charity, and benevolence”: it had in 1885 2,000 separate lodges and 160,000 members. The Order of Red Men (Improved Order of Red Men) is of earlier origin than the preceding: the members in their lodge meetings imitate some of the customs of the American aboriginals, and wear an attire resembling that of the Indians. Besides these there are in the United States very many other secret societies having for their end mutual beneficence, as Knights of Malta, Senate of Sparta, Knights of the Mystic Chain, Legion of the Red Cross, Knights of Friendship, Royal Arcanum. The Grand Army of the Republic was founded soon after the close of the civil war. Its members are veteran soldiers of that war. Its ends are to perpetuate the associations of comrades in arms, to relieve distress of members and provide benefit funds, and to advance the interests of the members in every honorable and lawful way. The badge of membership is a small bronze button worn in the coat lapel. THE END. _INDEX._ African buildingmasters, 214 Akkadians, 26 Alexander, a false prophet, 124 sqq.; his trick serpent, 125; his wife the moon-goddess, 126; he claims to be a reincarnation of Pythagoras, 127 Amenhotep IV., reformer of Egyptian religion, 17 Angekoks, 36 Animals and trees as gods, 11 Aphrodite Urania, and Aphrodite Pandemos, 40 Apis, sacred bull of Memphis, 14 Apollonius of Tyana, heathen saint, mystic, and thaumaturge, 117 sqq.; in Mesopotamia, 119; India, 120; Ethiopia, 123; appears after his death, 124 Areoi among the Society Islanders, 37 Aristeas, mysterious personage, his death and sundry reappearances, 89 sqq. Asiatic Brethren, 214 Baal, 27 Babylonian religion, 26 sqq. Bacchanalia in Rome, Livy’s narrative, 62 sqq. Bible translated into Greek, 93 Book of the Dead, 19, 24 Brahma, soul of the universe, 35 Brahmans, 33 Brethren of the Cross, 215 Buddha, Buddhists, 33 sqq. Chaldaea, 26; Chaldee astrology, 28 Chimaera, 40 Christianism an inevitable development of Hellenic mysteries, Hellenic philosophies, and Jewish religion, 99; its origin, 107 sqq.; Paul the Apostle, 109; the Christian church, how developed, 115 Chuenaten, reformer of Egyptian religion, 17 Clermont Chapter, 202 Comic secret societies, 203 sqq.; Society of Chevaliers, 231; Ludlamshoehle, 231; Allschlaraffia, 231 Cretan mysteries, 59 Cuneiform writing, 28 Cybele or Rhea, her mysteries, 65 sqq.; antics of her devotees, 67 Daemons, Chaldaean, 27 Dead, realm of the, 18; judgment of the, 20 Death, existence after, with Osiris, 19 Demeter, 49 sqq. Demotic writing, 23 Devils unknown to the Hellenes, 40 Diodorus on Egyptian mysteries, 22 Dionysiac mysteries. 60 sqq.; the Dionysiac or Bacchic cult appealed to sensuality, 60; the phallus honored, 61; the Maenades and their orgies, 61 Druids, 234 Duk-Duk, 37 Egypt, 9 sqq.; Nile, 9; priests and warriors, 10; religion grounded on astronomy, 11; Re, the sun-god, becoming the one god, ib.; worship of animals and plants, 12; mysteries, 20 Egyptian gods: Shu, Set, Thot, Nunu, Tum, Horos Re, Isis, Osiris, Neit, Ptah, Amon, Hathor, Harmachis, 13 sqq. Eleusinian mysteries, 49 sqq.; basileus, basilissa, 51; Eumolpidae, Kerytae, 51; hierophant, 51; wars suspended during the solemnities, 52; the myth underlying the Eleusinia, 53; lesser and greater Eleusinia, 54; procession to Eleusis, 55; mystae, epoptae, 50; the Mystic House, 56 Essenes, a Palestinian order or sect of puritans, 94 sqq.; called also Therapeutae, 95; rites of admission, 96; Essenism a middle term between the Grecian mysteries and Christianism, 98 Evergetes, league of, 227 Femgerichte of Westphalia, 147 sqq.; origin, 148; femic courts exercise jurisdiction all over the empire, 154; procedure, 165; death by the rope, 159; condemning to death a town’s population, 161; femic courts superseded, 161 Fire Worship, 33 Foresters, 236 Freemasonry, 178 sqq.; grew out of the Stonemasons’ organization, 180; first grand lodge instituted 1717, ib.; recognizes human brotherhood regardless of race or creed, 181: institution of the three degrees, 182; diffusion of the order, 183; its aims, 184; signs, ritual, symbols, 186; grand and particular lodges, 187; women not admitted to the lodge, 190; Freemasonry in the French revolution, 228 sqq. German Union of the XXII, 226 Gods, animals and plants as, 11; of Egypt, 130 sqq.; of Babylonia, 27 sqq.; of India, 33 sqq. Graces, Fates, Furies, 8 Grecian religion, 38 sqq.; knew no dogma, 39; nor devils, 40; hospitable to foreign gods, 40; worship, a State function, 41; ritual and sacrifice, 43; seership and prophecy, 44; oracles, ib.; conjuration, 45 Greek initiates of Egyptian mysteries, 21 Gugomos, a mysterious personage, 209 Heaven and Earth as gods, 7 Hellenic mysteries, 45 sqq.; an anomaly, 47; Euripides, his praise of the mysteries, also Cicero’s, 48; their meaning—purification and expiation, 49; see “Eleusinian Mysteries.” Herodotus on the great Labyrinth, 18; on Egyptian mysteries, 26 Hieroglyphs, 23 Hierophant, 51 “High Degrees,” 195 sqq.; Royal Arch, 199; mythic descent from Templarism, 200; Scottish (or Saint Andrew’s) degrees, 201; peddling high degrees, 203; Lernais (Marquis), Rosa (Phil. Sam.), 204; the new Templarism in Germany, ib.; Strict Observance, 205 sqq.; fantastic titles, “Knight of the Cockchafer,” etc., 206; John Aug. Stark invents clerical Templarism, 207; Gugomos traces the high degrees back to Moses, 209 Hiram myth, 199, 202, 215 Hund, Baron von, a Don Quixote, 203 sqq. Iacchos, 50 Illuminati, 216 sqq. Imitations of ancient mystic leagues, 232 sqq.; Holy Order of Sophisians, 232; Order of Misraim, Order of Memphis, ib. Initiates, 5; initiation into Egyptian mysteries, 22 Isis, 14 Istar, Chaldaean goddess, her descent into the infernal realm, 31 Jasios, son of Zeus, inventor of husbandry, 90 Jesus, his personality, teaching, pretensions, miracles, 102 sqq. “Johnson, Baron,” a swindler, 204 Judaism and Hellenism, 91 sqq.; exchange of ideas between Jews and Hellenes, its effects, 93 Kings and queens, deceased, made gods, 17 Klobbergoll, 37 Knigge, Baron Adolf von, founder of Illuminism, 21; apostatizes, 225 Knights Templar, 129 sqq.; origin, 131; degrees, 133; wealth and power, 134; secret aims and cryptic beliefs, 135; contempt for the cross, 136; worship of an idol, 138; accused of heresy and members tried by the Inquisition, 141; many convicted and burnt to death, the order dissolved, 145 Labyrinth at Crocodilopolis, 18 Lernais, an apostle of fraud, 204 Lodge of Unity at Frankfort faithful to genuine freemasonry, 206 “Lost God,” the, 46 Lycurgus in Egypt, 21 Man rivaling Deity, 2 Mithras worship imported from Persia into Rome, 68; elaborate symbolism of the initiation, human sacrifices, 69; Heliogabalus an initiate, 70; Mithras coupled with Zagreus and Attis, and the compound deity called Sabazius, 70; initiation into the Sabazian mysteries, 71 Mysteries, invention of, 3; of Egypt included Monotheism, 23 Mythology of natural phenomena, 8 Natural forces worshiped, 6 New Testament, 110 sqq.; Joannine gospel a product of the Alexandrine school, 113 Nile, maker of Egypt, 9 Nirvana, 2 Orpheus in Egypt, 22 Orphic societies, 84 sqq.; secret schools or clubs, 85; became nests of mendicants and swindlers, 85 Osiris, mysteries of, 14 Pantheism of Brahmans, 34 Persephone, rape of, 49 Persian religion, 32 sqq. Philo, Hellenist Jewish philosopher, 94 Plato in Egypt, 22 Plutarch on Egyptian religion, 24 Pluto, 7 Poseidon, 7 Priests, ancient, their oeconomy of religious truths, 8 Priests of Assyria and Babylonia, 28 Pythagoras, 72 sqq.; his visit to Egypt, 75; to Babylon, 75; life in Crotona, 76; his mathematical science, astronomical knowledge, 77; philosophical views, 78; his school and the Pythagorean league, fall of the league, 79 sqq. Re, Egyptian supreme god, 16 Religious ideas, origin of, 5 Riddle of existence, 2 Rosa, Philip Samuel, promoter of the “High Degrees” fraud, 204 Rosicrucianism, 174 sqq.; John Valentine Andreae its originator, 175; the mythical friar Christian Rosenkreuz, ib.; the order claimed to be an offshoot of the knightly order of the Hospitalers, 177 Rosicrucianism, the new, 211 sqq. Sabazius: see “Mithras.” Sais, image at, 1 Samothrace, mysteries of, 57 sqq.; Cabiri, ib.; phallic worship, 58; the initiation, ib. Satyrs, 40 Schrepfer, founder of the new Rosicrucianism, 212 Schubart, John Christian, promoter of the “High Degrees” fraud, 206 Secret Leagues among savages, 36 Secret Societies, miscellaneous: The Woodsplitters, 192; Order of Hope, 193; of Saint Jonathan (or Joachim), 194; the Pilgrims’ Chain, ib.; Order of Argonauts, ib.; of the Mustardseed, 195; of the Leal, of the Ducats, ib.; of the Rose, 196 Shamanism, 26 Siva, 35 Solomonic Legend, 174, 199; see “Hiram Myth,” and “High Degrees.” Solon in Egypt, 22 Sorcery among savages, 36 Sphinxes, 15 Spirit, soul, and body, 18 Stark, promoter of the High Degrees delusion, 207 Stonemasons’ lodges, 166 sqq.; of Germany, 168 sqq.; league of lodges organized by Albertus Magnus, 169; usages, rites, passwords, 170; hostility to ecclesiasticism, 172; stonemasons and other craftsmen in France, 173 sqq.; the Solomonic myth, 174; rival organizations—Compagnonnages, 175; English stonemasons, 176 sq. Strict Observance, 207 sqq. Stuart, Charles Edward, 207 Sumerians, 26 Sun and moon as gods, 7 Swedish rite, 210 Templarism and Freemasonry, 201, 233; see “High Degrees.” Vishnu, 35 Weishaupt, Adam, father of Illuminism, 216 sqq. Zarathustrotema, 32 Zoroaster, 32 sqq. [Illustration: Ornamental horizontal divider with mirrored spiral designs at the center] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ TWO GREAT WORKS BY ALICE B. STOCKHAM, M. D. TOKOLOGY A BOOK FOR EVERY WOMAN =Tokology= teaches possible painless pregnancy and parturition, giving full, plain directions for the care of a woman before and after confinement. The ailments of pregnancy can be prevented and the pains and dangers of childbirth avoided WITHOUT DRUGS OR MEDICINES. Tokology is a popular GUIDE TO HEALTH. _Mrs. J. M. Davis, Sabula, Iowa_, says: “I have two dear _Tokology_ babies, and during the whole nine months, both times, had neither ache nor pain.” _Mrs. A. L. 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