Freemasonary is an ancient fraternity with many legends and theories surrounding its origins. The theory below, taken from "History Of Freemansonary" by Albert G. Mackey, is a popular belief among Freemason historians.
Most scholars believe the origins of modern Freemasonry can be traced to ancient Rome, where an organization of workmen formed under the name of the Collegium Artificum, or Collegium Fabrorum-the College of Artificers, or the College of Workmen. This brotherhood consisted of builders and architects and was the prototype of the guilds and incorporations of the Middle Ages. The college flourished under the Roman empire, which sent its members, endowed with skill in architecture and the spirit of confraternity, to the various provinces that the Romans had conquered. In all these provinces, but principally in Northern Italy, Gaul, and Britain, they established similar colleges or associations, in which they transmitted to the native inhabitants their knowledge of the art of building and impressed them with their spirit of fraternal cooperation in labor.
After the fall of the empire and the transition of the provinces into independent and sovereign states, these colleges of workmen evolved into organizations of builders-masons and architects-who in Italy assumed the name of Traveling Freemasons, in Gaul that of the Mestrice des Marons, in Germany that of the Steinmetzen, in England that of the Guilds and Companies, and in Scotland that of the Lodges and Incorporations. The first known record of the concept of Freemasons was discovered in the city archives of London dating 1375. These associations of builders and architects were bound together by regulations very similar to and evidently derived from those that governed the Roman Colleges, with other rules suggested by change of conditions and circumstances.
The associations, though mainly made up of professional workmen, sometimes admitted nonprofessionals-men of wealth, distinction, or learning-into their ranks as honorary members. At the end of the seventeenth century the number of these nonprofessional members greatly increased, and by the early eighteenth century they had completely changed the character of the Masonic organizations, known at that time as Lodges. The operative element-the practical application of the rules of architecture to the construction of public and private edifices-was entirely eliminated, and the Lodges were no longer companies of builders, but fraternities of speculative philosophers. The new institution of Speculative Freemasonry retained no relation to the practical purposes of operative Freemasonry other than the memory of its descent and the retention of its technical language and the tools of the art. These, however, were subjected to new and symbolic interpretations, adapted to the worship of God as the Grand Architect of the universe.
This transition from the operative to the speculative form of Masonry started when the Grand Lodge of England was founded on St. John the Baptist's day, 24 June 1717, in London, when 4 Craft Lodges, gathered at the Goose and Gridiron Ale-house in St. Paul's Church-yard in London and constituted themselves a Grand Lodge. The four lodges had previously met together in 1716 at the Apple-Tree Tavern, "and having put into the Chair the oldest Master Mason (now the Master of a Lodge), they constituted themselves a Grand Lodge pro Tempore in due form." It was at that meeting, in 1716, that they resolved to hold the Annual Assembly and Feast, and then choose a Grand Master from among themselves, which they did the following year. The four participating lodges were accustomed to meeting at the Goose and Gridiron Ale-house in St. Paul's Church-yard (Lodge now called Antiquity No. 2); the Crown Ale-house in Parker's Lane near Drury Lane; the Apple-Tree Tavern in Charles Street, Covent Garden (Lodge now called Lodge of Fortitude and Old Cumberland No. 12); and at the Rummer and Grapes Tavern in Channel Row, Westminster (Lodge now called Westminster Royal Somerset House and Inverness Lodge No. 4).
From England the change passed over to other Lodges as Freemasonry spread to the United States, South America, and throughout the rest of the world.
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