PREHISTORIC MASONRY
CHAPTER XXXVII
THE PYTHAGOREANS AND FREEMASONRY
The theory which ascribes, if not the actual origin of Freemasonry
to Pythagoras, at least its introduction into Europe by him,
through the school which he established at Crotona, in Italy, which
,was a favorite(oke one among our early writers, may very properly
be placed among the legends of the Order, since it wants all the
requisites of historical authority for its support.
The notion was most probably derived from what has been called the
Leland Manuscript, because it is said to have been found in the
Bodleian Library, in the handwriting of that celebrated antiquary.
The author of the Life of Leland gives this account of the
manuscript :
"The original is said to be the handwriting of King Henry VI. and
copied by Leland by order of his highness, King Henry VIII. If the
authenticity of this ancient monument of literature remains
unquestioned, it demands particular notice in the present
publication, on account of the singularity of the subject, and no
less from a due regard to the royal writer and our author, his
transcriber, indefatigable in every part of literature. It will
also be admitted, acknowledgment is due to the learned Mr. Locke,
who, amidst the closest studies and the most strict attention to
human understanding, could unbend his mind in search of this
ancient treatise, which he first brought from obscurity in the year
1796."' (1)
This production was first brought to the attention of scholars by
being published in the Gentlemen's Magazine for September, 1753,
where it is stated to have been previously printed at Frankfort, in
Germany, in 1748, from a copy found in " the writing-desk of a
deceased brother."
(1) "Life of John Leland," p. 67
The title of it, as given in the magazine, is in the following
words:
Certeyne Questyons wyth Answeres to the same, concerynge the
Mystery of Maconrye ; wrytenne by the hande of Kynge Henrye the
Sixthe of the Name, and faythefullye copyed by me Johan Leylande,
Antiquarius, by the commaunde of His Highnesse."
The opinion of Masonic critics of the present day is that the
document is a forgery. It was most probably written about the time
and in the spirit in which Chatterton composed his imitations of
the Monk Rowley, and of Ireland with his impositions of
Shakespeare, and was fabricated as an unsuccessful attempt to
imitate the archaic language of the 15th century, and as a pious
fraud intended to elevate the character and sustain the pretensions
of the Masonic Fraternity by furnishing the evidence of its very
ancient origin.
Such were not, however, the views of the Masonic writers of the
last and beginning of the present century.
They accepted the manuscript, or rather the printed copy of it -for
the original codex has never been seen--with unhesitating, faith as
an authentic document. Hutchinson gave it as an appendix to his
Spirit of Masonry, Preston published in the second and enlarged
edition of his Illustrations, Calcott in his Candid Disquisition ,
Dermott in his Ahiman Rezon, and Krause in his Drei Altesten
Kunslurkunden. In none of these is there the faintest hint of its
being anything but an authentic document. Oliver said: " I
entertain no doubt of the genuineness and authenticity of this
valuable Manuscript." The same view has been entertained by
Reghellini among the French, and by Krause, Fessler, and Lenning
among the Germans.
Mr. Halliwell was perhaps the first of English scholars to express
a doubt of its genuineness. After a long and unsuccessful search
in the Bodleian Library for the original, he came, very naturally,
to the conclusion that it is a forgery. Hughan and Woodford, both
excellent judges, have arrived at the same conclusion, and it is
now a settled question that the Leland or Locke Manuscript (for it
is known by both titles) is a document of no historic character.
It is not, however, without its value. To its appearance about the
middle of the last century, and the unhesitating acceptance of its
truth by the Craft at the time, we can, in all probability, assign
the establishment of the doctrine that Freemasonry was of a
Pythagorean origin, though it had been long before adverted
to by Dr. Anderson.
Before proceeding to an examination of the rise and progress of
this opinion, it will be proper to cite so much of the manuscript
as connects Pythagoras with Masonry. I do not quote the whole
document, though it is short, because it has so repeatedly been
printed, in even elementary Masonic works, as to be readily
accessible to the reader. In making my quotations I shall so far
defer to the artifice of the fabricator as to preserve unchanged
his poor attempt to imitate the orthography and style of the 15th
century, and interpolate in brackets, when necessary, an
explanation of the most unintelligible words.
The document purports to be answers by some Mason to questions
proposed by King Henry VI., who, it would seem, must have taken
some interest in the " Mystery of Masonry," and had sought to
obtain from competent authority a knowledge of its true character.
The following are among the questions and answers:
Q.Where dyd ytt [Masonry] begynne ?
A.Ytt dyd begynne with the fyrst menne, yn the Este, which were
before the fyrste Manne of the Weste, and comyngc westlye, ytt
hathe broughte herwyth alle comfortes to the wylde and
comfortlesse.
Q. Who dyd brynge ytt Westye ?
A. The Venetians [Phoenicians] who beynge grate Merchandes comed
ffyrst ffrome the Este yn Venctia [Phoenicia] for the commodyte of
Merchaundysinge beithe [both] Este and Weste bey the redde and
Myddlelonde [Mediterranean] Sees.
Q. Howe comede ytt yn Englonde?
A. Peter Gower [Pythagoras] a Grecian journeyedde tor kunnynge yn
Egypt and in Syria and in everyche Londe whereat the Venetians
[Phoenicians] hadde plauntedde Maconrye and wynnynge Entraunce yn
all Lodges of Maconnes, he lerned muche, and retournedde and woned
[dwelt] yn Cirecia Magna wachsynge [growing] and becommynge a
myghtye wyseacre [philosopher] and gratelyche renouned and here he
framed a grate Lodge at Groton [Crotona] and maked many Maconnes,
some whereoffe dyd journeye yn Fraunce, and maked manye Maconnes
wherefromme, yn processe of Tyme, the Arte passed yn Engelonde."
I am convinced that there was a French original of this document,
from which language the fabricator translated it into archaic
English. The internal proofs of this are to be found in the
numerous preservations of French idioms. Thus we meet with Peter
Gower, evidently derived from Pythagore, pronounced Petagore, the
French for Pythagoras ; Maconrye and Maconnes, for Masonry and
Masons, the French c in the word being used instead of the English
s,- the phrase wynnynge the Facultye of Abrac, which is a pure
Gallic idiom, instead of acquiring the faculty, the word gayner
being indifferently used in French as signifying to win or to
acquire,- the word Freres for Brethren,- and the statement, in the
spirit of French nationality, that Masonry was brought into England
out of France.
None of these idiomatic phrases or national peculiarities would
have been likely to occur if the manuscript had been originally
written by an Englishman and in the English language.
But be this as it may, the document bad no sooner appeared than it
seemed to inspire contemporary Masonic writers with the idea that
Masonry and the school of Pythagoras, which he established at
Crotona, in Italy, about five centuries before Christ, were closely
connected-an idea which was very generally adopted by their
successors, so that it came at last to be a point of the orthodox
Masonic creed.
Thus Preston, in his Illustrations of Masonry, when commenting on
the dialogue contained in this document, says that , the records of
the fraternity inform us that Pythagoras was regularly initiated
into Masonry; and being properly instructed in the mysteries of the
Art, he was much improved, and propagated the principles of the
Order in other countries into which he afterwards travelled."
Calcott, in his Candid Disquisition, speaks of the Leland
Manuscript as " an antique relation, from whence may be gathered
many of the original principles of the ancient society, on which
the institution of Freemasonry was ingrafted "-by the " ancient
society meaning the school of Pythagoras.
Hutchinson, in his Spirit of Masonry, quotes this " ancient Masonic
record," as he calls it, and says that " it brings us positive
evidence of the Pythagorean doctrine and Basilidian principles
making the foundation of our religious and moral duties." Two of
the lectures in his work are appropriated to a (discussion of the
doctrines of Pythagoras in connection with the Masonic system.
But this theory of the Pythagorean origin of Freemasonry does not
owe its existence to the writers of the middle of the 18th century.
It had been advanced at an early period, and soon after the Revival
in 1717 by Dr. Anderson. In the first edition of the
Constitutions, published in 1723, he alludes to Pythagoras as
having borrowed great knowledge from the Chaldean Magi and the
Babylonish Jews, but he is more explicit in his Defense of Masonry,
published in 1730, wherein he says: " I am fully convinced that
Freemasonry is very nearly allied to the old Pythagorean
Discipline, from whence, I am persuaded, it may in some
circumstances very justly claim a descent."
Now, how are we to explain the way in which this tradition of the
connection of the Philosopher of Samos first acquired a place among
the legends of the Craft? The solution of the problem does not
appear to be very difficult.
In none of the old manuscript constitutions which contain what has
been called the Legend of the Guild, or the Legend of the Craft, is
there, with a single exception, any allusion to the name of
Pythagoras. That exception is found in the Cooke MS., where the
legendist, after relating the story of the two pillars inscribed
with all the sciences, which had been erected by Jabal before the
Flood, adds, in lines 318-326, this statement :
" And after this flode many yeres as the cronyclc tellcth these ii
were founde and as the polycronicon seyeth that a grete clerke that
called putogaras [Pythagoras] fonde that one and hermes the
philisophre fonde that other, and thei tought forthe the sciens
that thei fonde therein ywritten."
Now, although the Cooke MS. is the earliest of the old records,
after the Halliwell poem, none of the subsequent constitutions have
followed it in this allusion to Pythagoras. This was because the
writer of the Cooke MS., being in possession of the Polychronicon
of the monk Ranulph Higden, an edition of which had been printed
during his time by William Caxton, he had liberally borrowed from
that historical work and incorporated parts of it into his Legend.
Of these interpolations, the story of the finding of one of the
pillars by Pythagoras is one. The writer acknowledges his
indebtedness for the statement to Higden's Polychronicon. But it
formed no part of the Legend of the Craft, and hence no notice is
taken of it in the subsequent manuscript copies of the Legend, In
none of them is Pythagoras even named.
It is evident, then, that in the 14th and following centuries, to
the beginning of the 18th, the theory of the Pythagorean origin of
Freemasonry, or of the connection of the Grecian philosopher with
it, was not recognized by the Craft as any part of the traditional
history of the Fraternity. There is no safer rule than that of the
old schoolmen, which teaches us that we must reason alike
concerning that which does not appear and that which does not
exist-" de non apparentibus et de non existentibus, eadem est
ratio." The old craftsmen who fabricated the Legend were workmen
and not scholars ; they were neither acquainted with the scholastic
nor the ancient philosophy; they said nothing about Pythagoras
because they knew nothing about him.
But about the beginning of the 18th century a change took place,
not only in the organization of the Masonic institution, but also
in the character and qualifications of the men who were engaged in
producing the modification, or we might more properly call it the
revolution.
Although in the 17th, and perhaps in the 16th century, many persons
were admitted into the Lodges of Operative Masons who were not
professional builders, it is, I think, evident that the society did
not assume a purely speculative form until the year 1717. The
Revival in that year, by the election of Anthony Sayer, "
Gentleman," as Grand Master; Jacob Lamball, a " Carpenter," and
Joseph Elliott, a " Captain," as Grand Wardens, proves that the
control of the society was to be taken out of the hands of the
Operative Masons.
Among those who were at about that time engaged in the recon-
struction of the Institution were James Anderson and Theophilus
Desaguliers. Anderson was a Master of Arts, and afterward a Doctor
of Divinity, the minister of a church in London, and an author;
Desaguliers was a Doctor of Laws, a fellow of the Royal Society,
and a teacher of Experimental Philosophy of no little reputation.
Both of these men, as scholars, were thoroughly conversant with the
system of Pythagoras, and they were not unwilling to take advantage
of his symbolic method of inculcating his doctrine, and to
introduce some of his symbols into the symbolism of the Order which
they were renovating.
Jamblichus, the biographer of Pythagoras, tells us that while the
sage was on his travels he caused himself to be initiated into all
the mysteries of Byblos and Tyre and those which were practiced in
many parts of Syria. But as these mysteries were originally
received by the Phoenicians from Egypt, he passed over into that
country, where he remained twenty-two years, occupying himself in
the study of geometry, astronomy, and all the initiations of the
gods, until he was carried a captive into Babylon by the soldiers
of Cambyses. There he freely associated with the Magi in their
religion ;and their studies, and, having obtained a thorough
knowledge of music, the science of numbers, and other arts, he
finally returned to Greece.(1)
The school of philosophy which Pythagoras afterward estalablished
at the city of Crotona, in Italy, differed from those of all the
other philosophers of Greece, in the austerities of initiation to
which his disciples were subject in the degrees of probation into
which they were divided, and in the method which lie adopted of
veiling his instructions under symbolic forms. In his various
travels he had imbibed the mystical notions prevalent among the
Egyptians and the Chaldeans, and had borrowed some of their modes
of initiation into their religious mysteries, which he adopted in
the method by which he communicated his own principles.
Grote, in his History of Greece, has very justly said that "
Pythagoras represents in part the scientific tendencies of his age,
in part also the spirit of mysticism and of special fraternities
for religious and ascetic observance which became diffused
throughout Greece in the 6th century before the Christian era."
(1) "Jamblichus de Pythagorica Vita," c. iii., iv.
Of the character of the philosophy of Pythagoras and of his method
of instruction, which certainly bore a very close resemblance to
that adopted by the founders of the speculative system, such
cultivated scholars as Anderson and Desaguliers certainly were not
ignorant. And if, among those who were engaged with them in the
construction of this new and improved school of speculative
Masonry, there were any whose limited scholastic attainments would
not enable them to consult the Greek biographics of Pythagoras by
Jamblichus and by Porphyry, they had at hand and readily accessible
an English translation of M. Dacier's life of the philosopher,
containing also an
elaborate explication of his symbols, together with a translation
of the Commentaries of Hierodes on the Golden Verses of Pythagoras,
all embraced in one volume and published in London in the year
1707, by the celebrated bibliopole Jacob Tonson.
There was abundant material and ready opportunity for the partially
unlearned as well as for the more erudite to obtain a familiarity
with the philosophy of Pythagoras, his method of initiation, and
his system of symbols.
It is not, therefore, surprising that these " Revivalists," as they
have been called, should have delighted, as Anderson has done in
his Defense of Masonry, to compare the two schools of the
Pythagoreans and the Freemasons ; that they should have dwelt on
their great similarity ; and in the development of their
speculative system should have adopted many symbols from the former
which do not appear to have been known to or used by the old
Operative Masons whom they succeeded.
Among the first Pythagorean symbols which were adopted by the
Speculative Masons was the symbolism of the science of numbers,
which appears in the earliest rituals extant, and of which Dr.
Oliver has justly said, in his posthumous work entitled The
Pythagorean Triangle, that " the Pythagoreans had so high an
opinion of it that they considered it to be the origin of all
things, and thought a knowledge of it to be equivalent to a
knowledge of God."
This symbolism of numbers, which was adopted into Speculative
Masonry at a very early period after the Revival, has been
developed and enlarged in successive revisions of the lectures,
until at the present day it constitutes one of the most important
and curious parts of the system of Freemasonry. But we have no
evidence that the same system of numerical symbolism, having the
Pythagorean and modern Masonic interpretation, prevailed among the
Craft anterior to the beginning of the 18th century. It was the
work of the Revivalists, who, as scholars familiar with the
mystical philosophy of Pythagoras, deemed it expedient to introduce
it into the equally mystical philosophy of Speculative Masonry
In fact, the Traveling Freemasons, Builders, or Operative Masons of
the Middle Ages, who were the real predecessors of the Speculative
Masons of the 18th century, did not, so far as we can learn from
their remains, practice any of the symbolism of Pythagoras. Their
symbol, such as the vesica piscis, the cross, the rose, or certain
mathematical figures, were derived either from the legends of the
church or from the principles of geometry applied to the art of
building. These skillful architects who, in the dark ages, when
few men could read or write, erected edifices surpassing the works
of ancient Greece or Rome, and which have never been equalled by
modern builders, were wonderful in their peculiar skill, but were
wholly ignorant of metaphysics or philosophy, and borrowed nothing
from Pythagoras.
Between the period of the Revival and the adoption of the
Prestonian system, in 1772, the lectures of Freemasonry underwent
at least seven revisions. In each of these, the fabricators of
which were such cultivated scholars as Dr. Desaguliers, Martin
Clare, a President of the Royal Society, Thomas Dunckerley, a man
of considerable literary attainments, and others of like character,
there was a gradual increment of Pythagorean symbols. Among these,
one of the most noted is the forty-seventh proposition of Euclid,
which is said to have been discovered by Pythagoras, and which the
introducer of it into the Masonic system, in his explanation of the
symbol, claims the sage to have been " an ancient brother."
For some time after the Revival, the symbols of Pythagoras, growing
into gradual use among the Craft, were referred to simply as an
evidence of the great similarity which existed between the two
systems-a theory which, so far as it respects modern Speculative
Masonry, may be accepted with but little hesitation.
The most liberal belief on this subject was that the two systems
were nearly allied, but, except in the modified statement of
Anderson, already quoted from his Defense ofmasonry, there was no
claim in the years immediately succeeding the Revival that the one
was in direct descent from the other.
In none of the speeches, lectures, or essays of the early part of
the last century, which have been preserved, is there any allusion
to this as a received theory of the Craft.
Drake, in his speech before the Grand Lodge of York, delivered in
1726 does indeed, speak of Pythagoras, not as the founder of
Masonry, but only in connection with Euclid and Archimedes as great
proficients in Geometry, whose works have been the basis " on which
the learned have built at different times so many noble
superstructures." And of Geometry, he calls it "that noble and
useful science which must have begun and goes hand in hand with
Masonry," an assertion which, to use the old chorus of the Masons,
nobody will deny."
But to say that Geometry is closely connected with Operative
Masonry, and that Pythagoras was a great geometrician, is very
different from saying that he was a Mason and propagated Masonry in
Europe.
Martin Clare, in his lecture on the Advantages Enjoyed by the
Fraternity, whose date is 1735, does not even mention the name of
Pythagoras, although, in one passage at least, when referring to
"those great and worthy spirits with whom we are intimately
related," he had a fair opportunity to refer to that illustrious
sage.
In a Discourse Upon Masonry, delivered before a Lodge of England
in 1742, now lying before me, in which the origin of the Order is
fully discussed, there is not one word of reference to Pythagoras.
The same silence is preserved in a Lecture on the Connection
Between Freemasonry and Religion, by the Rev. C. Brockwell,
published in 1747.
But after the middle of the century the frequent references in the
lectures to the Pythagorean symbols, and especially to that
important one, in its Masonic as well as its geometrical value, the
forty-seventh proposition, began to lead the members of tile
society to give to Pythagoras the credit of a relationship to the
order to which historically he had no claim.
Thus, in A Search After Truth, delivered in the Lodge in 1752, the
author says that " Solon, Plato, and Pythagoras, and from them the
Grecian literati in general in a great measure, were obliged for
their learning to Masonry and the labors of some of our ancient
brethren."
And then, when this notion of the Pythagorean origin of Freemasonry
began to take root in the minds of the Craft, it was more firmly
established by the appearance in 1753, in the Gentleman's Magazine,
of that spurious document already quoted, in which, by a " pious
fraud," the fabricator of it sought to give the form of an
historical record to the statement that Pythagoras, learning his
Masonry of the Eastern Magi had brought it to Italy and established
a Lodge at Crotona, whence the institution was propagated
throughout Europe, and from France into England.
As to this statement in the Leland MS., it may be sufficient to say
that the sect of Pythagoras did not subsist longer than to the end
of the reign of Alexander the Great. So far from disseminating its
Lodges or schools after the Christian era, we may cite the
authority of the learned Dacier, who says that " in after ages
there were here and there some disciples of Pythagoras, but these
were only private persons who never established any society, nor
had the Pythagoreans any longer a public school."
And so the result of this investigation into the theory of the
Pythagorean origin of Freemasonry may be briefly epitomized thus:
The mediaeval Freemasons never entertained any such theory, nor in
their architectural labors did they adopt any of his symbols.
The writer of the Cooke MS., in 1490, having at hand Higden's
Polychronicon, in Trevisa's translation, a new edition of which had
just been printed by Caxton, incorporated into the Legend of the
Craft some of the historical statements (such as they were) of the
Monk of (Chester, but they were extraneous to and formed no part of
the original Legend. Therefore, in all the subsequent Old Records
these interpolations were rejected and the Legend of the Craft, as
accepted by the writers of the manuscripts which succeeded that of
the Cooke codex, from 1550 to 1701, contained no mention of
Pythagoras.
Upon the Revival, in 1717, which was really the beginning of
genuine Speculative Masonry, the scholars who fabricated the
scheme, finding the symbolic teaching of Pythagoras very apposite,
adopted some of its symbols, especially those relating to numbers
in the new Speculative system which they were forming.
By the continued additions of subsequent ritualists these symbols
were greatly increased, so that the name and the philosophy of
Pythagoras became familiar to the Craft, and finally, in 1753, a
forged document was published which claimed him as the founder and
propagator of Masonry.
In later days this theory has continued to be maintained by a few
writers, and the received rituals of the Order require it as a part
of the orthodox Masonic creed, that Pythagoras was a Mason and an
ancient brother and patron of the Order.
Neither early Masonic tradition nor any historical records exist
which support such a belief.