Behold the days come, oracle of the Eternal . . . I will set my law within them and write it on their hearts . . . Behold the days come that city shall be built.
JEREMIAH 31:33–38
To find the origins of Freemasonry, it is important first to isolate its original characteristics, which can be found in the institutions from which it appears to have emerged:
1. It was a professional builders—or, more precisely, construction—organization; the long-ago vocation of mason does not correspond directly to the modern specialization, but included an extensive knowledge of architecture. The organization was represented hierarchically.
2. The organization extended beyond a strictly professional framework. Its members considered themselves brothers and provided mutual assistance.
3. The association, in both its operations and assistance, followed traditional rites. Members were accepted into it through an initiation and the brothers were united by sacred practices that were illustrative of an asceticism, an indispensable condition for the realization of the work.
4. The association accepted members who were not practitioners of the trade.
5. The association displayed and highlighted its character of universalism.
This study of Freemasonry looks at both its specific history and the influences and events that have left their imprint over time on its formation and evolution. As such, it includes an examination of various spheres—social, juridical, religious, and philosophical—that have conditioned these events.
From a chronological perspective, the most certain sources of Freemasonry have emerged as the following:
1. The Roman collegia, the remnants of which remained in the West following invasions and survived in the East as institutions discovered by the Crusaders at the end of the eleventh century.
2. The ecclesiastical associations of builders formed by the bishops of the early Middle Ages, especially the Benedictines, the Cistercians, and the Templars.
3. Trade-based freemasonry, which was born under the aegis of these associations and followed the form of lay brotherhoods or guilds.
The history of Freemasonry and its origins will form the first part of this book. In the second part, we will study the evolution of the professional organization; its purposes, both operational and speculative; its initiatory and spiritualist nature; its gradual transformation from an organization of those who worked in the art of building to those who engaged in a stricto sensu art of thinking and living; and the creation of modern Freemasonry under the influences of and in circumstances connected to British history.
The greatest common denominator that we can distinguish across the centuries, truly the millennia, is the coexistence and interdependence of masonic objectives and a sense of the sacred. In fact, it is the sacred that is the effective and ultimate cause of these objectives, however different from one another they may appear in the various stages of their evolution. This is an exemplary illustration of an important truth: Faith lives only through works and works are worth only the faith that moves them.