Sufficient has been told to show that they traced their origin to the Temple of Solomon and that the legend referred, to events connected with that edifice. It is not necessary to pursue the legend of the French Compagnonage any further. He then went to Egypt and thence to Jerusalem, where, being engaged in the construction of the Temple, he fabricated two pillars with such consummate skill that he was at once received as a Master of the Craft. He traveled through Greece, where he acquired a knowledge of architecture and sculpture.
From the age of fifteen, he was employed as a stone-cutter. He is said to have been the son of a celebrated architect named Jacquain, who was one of the chief Masters of Solomon and a colleague of Hiram Abif. The tradition of Maitre Jacques is particularly interesting. The Children of Maitre Jacques and those of Pere Soubise declare that both of these workmen were employed at the Temple, and after its completion went together to Gaul, where they taught the arts which they had learned at Jerusalem. The Children of Solomon assert that they were associated into a brotherhood by King Solomon himself at the building of the Temple. These are the Children of Solomon, the Children of Maitre Jacques, and the Children of Pere Soubise. The Compagnons de la Tour have three different legends, each of which traces the association back to the Temple of Solomon, through three different founders, which causes the Compagnonage to be divided into three distinct and, unfortunately, hostile associations. It is, however, significant coincidence, if nothing more, that there was a somewhat similar legend among the “Compagnons de la Tour,” those mystical associations of workmen who sprang up in France about the 12th century, and who are supposed to have been an offshoot of dissatisfied journeymen from the body of oppressive Masters, who at that period constituted the ruling power of the corporate guilds of operative Masons and other crafts.Īs the traditions of this society in reference to the Temple of Solomon are calculated to throw much light on the ideas which prevailed among the Masons in respect to the same subject, and as the Temple legends of the “Compagnons” are better known to us than those of the mediaeval operative Masons, and finally, as it is not at all unlikely that the ideas of the former were derived from those of the latter, it will not be inexpedient to take a brief view of the Temple legend of the Compagnonage. How much use they made of it in their esoteric ceremonies we, of course, are unable to learn.
There can be no doubt from this passage in the Legend that the Temple of Solomon occupied a prominent place in the ideas of the medieval Masons. It was probably at first suggested by the passage in the Legend of the Craft which briefly describes the building of the Temple and the confirmation by Solomon of the charges which his father David had given to the Masons. Perhaps nine out of ten of the Freemasons of the present day – that is to say, all those who receive tradition with the undoubting faith that should be given to history only – conscientiously believe that Freemasonry, as we now see it, organized into lodges and degrees, with Grand Masters, Masters, and Wardens, with the same ritual observances, was first devised by Solomon, King of Israel, and assumed its position as a secret society during the period when that monarch was engaged in the construction of the Temple on Mount Moriah.
This is the legend that is now almost universally accepted by the great mass of the Masonic fraternity.
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