The Secret Societies of All Ages and Countries V. 2

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free.This is an OCR edition with typos.Excerpt from book:Masons call themselves the Brethren of St. John, because St. John the Baptist was the forerunner of the Light. According to the same document, the name of Freemasons was first given to the Brethren chiefly in Flanders, because some of them had been instrumental in erecting in the province of Hainault hospitals for persons suffering from St. Vitus's dance. And though some etymologists pretend the name to be derived from massa, a club, with which the doorkeeper was armed to drive away uninitiated intruders, we can only grant this etymology on the principle enunciated by Voltaire, that in etymology vowels go for very little, and consonants for nothing at all. The derivation from maison is as probable as any other that is alleged. 388. Freemasonry derived from many Sources.—But considering that Freemasonry is a tree the roots of which spread through so many soils, it follows that traces thereof must be found in its fruit; that its language and ritual should retain much of the various sects and institutions it has passed through before arriving at their present state, and in Masonry we meet with Indian, Egyptian, Jewish, and Christian ideas, terms, and symbols. 389. True History of Masonry.—The plain history of Freemasonry, without the varnish and tinsel Masonic writers have bedizened it with, may be summed up as follows:— In antiquity there were corporations of architects and engineers, who undertook the building of temples and stadia ; the " Dionysiacs " in Greece, the " Collegium Muriornm " in Rome were such. They were the prototypes of the associations of masons, builders, carpenters, who in the Middle Ages flourished, chiefly in Germany and England.. These, sometimes numbering six to eight hundred members, made contracts with monks, chapters, and other ecclesiastical auth...