Читать книгу The Freemasons In America: - H. Paul Jeffers - Страница 10

TO SOME MUSLIMS AND ISLAMIC FUNDAMENTALIST FOLLOWERS, terrorists, members of Al Qaeda, and other “jihadist” groups at the start of the twenty-first century, it’s as if the period of Crusaders battling for control of the Holy Land in the Middle Ages happened yesterday.

Since the destruction of King Solomon’s Temple by the Babylonians in 486 B.C., the city of Jerusalem had been conquered and ruled by the Persians, Greeks, Romans, and the Christian Byzantine Empire until A.D. 638. In that year, a new power swept through the gates of the Holy City to take it over in the name of a new religion that had already claimed Arabia for its God, Allah. Led by Caliph Omar, the forces of Islam had defeated troops of the emperor Heraclitus in the Battle of Yarmuk on August 20, 636, and marched on to lay siege to the city until it surrendered in February 638. Because Mohammed, the founding prophet of Islam, had been miraculously taken into heaven from the city and returned to earth to promulgate the faith, the city was regarded as holy by Muslims. To venerate the prophet’s journey, they built two sacred structures, the Dome of the Rock and the Al-Aqsa Mosque, on the ruins of Solomon’s Temple and its successor that had been restored by King Herod and destroyed by the Romans in A.D. 70.

During two centuries of Islamic rule, relations between Muslims and Christians were amiable. This mutual toleration between the two religions ended in 1000, when the Christians of Europe heard reports from Jerusalem that Christian pilgrims and holy places were suffering at the hands of Muslims. Disturbed by these accounts and concerned about a growing threat to the Byzantine Empire by the westward spread of Islam, Pope Urban II, in a speech at the Council of Clermont in the spring of 1096, called on European powers to set aside internal disputes and rivalries to unite in a holy war to liberate the Holy City from the “infidels.” The reward for those who took up arms in the name of Christ would be absolution and remission of sins. He declared, “God wills it.”

The day after this exhortation, the council granted the privileges and protections that he promised. Those who took up arms to liberate Jerusalem adopted a red cross as their emblem and garnered the name “Crusaders.” Setting out for the Holy Land, 60,000 soldiers and hordes of noncombatant peasants and pilgrims, with wives and children, were followed in the fall of 1096 by five more armies. After a year of arduous marching, the Crusaders were at Jerusalem’s gates. When they took the city and thronged to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre (the traditional site of the Crucifixion and Resurrection), one of the leaders, Raymond of Agiles, saw a scene that would be “famous in all future ages, for it turned our labors and sorrows into joy and exultation.” It was to him and his Crusader comrades a day of “justification of all Christianity, the humiliation of paganism, the renewal of faith.”

Between 1096 and 1250, there would be seven Crusades. As they continued and many thousands of Christians made their way to and from Jerusalem, the pilgrimages were frequently attacked by Muslims. To provide protection for them, an order of warrior monks was founded in 1118 in France by Hugues de Payens, a knight of Burgundy, and Godefroid de St. Omer, a knight of southern France. They took a vow of poverty and the name “Poor Knights of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon.” Given sanction by the Church in 1128 at the Council of Troyes, and with the support of St. Bernard of Clairvaux, the Templars became renowned for their ferocity in battle. Welcomed to the Holy City after the First Crusade by Baldwin I, the self-proclaimed king of Jerusalem, they were provided living space at the site of Solomon’s Temple, hence the name “Templars.”

Waging war on Muslims provided loot that not only left the Templars the richest men in Europe but also bankers to the king of France and the pope. This eventually resulted in the destruction of the order, execution of its leaders, and exile for survivors in Scotland. Over time, they called themselves Freemasons. The explanation for this transformation from warrior knights to Masons is attributed to a mingling of Templar precepts and Celtic mystery cults. The merger resulted in the Masonic Royal Order of Scotland. Known as the Scottish Rite, it would flourish in parts of Europe and eventually take root in America.

When a group of Boston Masons found themselves in disagreement in 1752 with what they called the “silk stocking” Masonry of the St. John’s Grand Lodge that was approved by the Grand Lodge of England, they organized a more “democratic” group that was chartered by the Grand Lodge of Scotland (1756) and named it St. Andrew’s Royal Arch Lodge. In a charter dated August 28, 1769, William Davis was recorded as “Accepted and Accordingly made by receiving the four steps” of Excellent, Super Excellent, Royal Arch, and Knight Templar.

Davis, who was thereby recognized as the first knight templar in America, was born in Boston on June 13, 1724. An Episcopalian, he owned an apothecary shop in Prince Street, was active in politics, and would play a significant role in the events leading up to the American Revolution. A member of the Committee on Correspondence in charge of “inspection and safety” in the Boston area, he was originally a member of the St. John’s Lodge, then signed the petition to the Grand Lodge of Scotland that authorized St. Andrew’s Lodge.

Outraged by the information of a rival body, St. John’s membership “imagined their jurisdiction infringed” and refused any communications or visits from members of St. Andrew’s. The rivalry was exacerbated in 1769 by the creation of the “Massachusetts Grand Lodge,” with the assistance of three Masonic lodges within the ranks of the British army stationed in Boston. The new lodge conferred the degrees of Royal Arch and Knight Templar. At a “festival” held on May 30, 1769, a commission from the Earl of Dalhousie in his role of Grand Master of Masons in Scotland was given to Dr. Joseph Warren, appointing him Grand Master of Masons in Boston and within 100 miles of the city.

Describing these competing lodges in The Temple and the Lodge, the historians Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh observe, “Not surprisingly, things became acrimonious, tempers flared, a ‘them against us’ situation developed and a miniaturized civil war of Free-masonic insult ensued. St. John’s looked askance at St. Andrew’s and, with vindictive passion, repeatedly ‘passed resolutions against it.’ Whatever they entailed, these resolutions produced no effect and St. John’s Lodge proceeded to sulk, petulantly forbidding its members to visit St. Andrew’s.”

America’s second Knight Templar was Paul Revere, who was installed on December 11, 1769. (Warren was the third, on May 11, 1770.) Knight Templar degrees were also awarded in Pennsylvania, South Carolina, and Massachusetts. By May 13, 1805, there were enough knights to hold a convention in Providence, Rhode Island. They adopted a constitution and declared the “Grand Encampment of Knights Templar in the United States duly formed.” After two centuries, the Knights Templar remain an important component of Freemasonry in the United States.

A modern brochure explains:

The Knights Templar is a Christian-oriented fraternal organization that was founded in the 11th century. Originally, the Knights of Templar were laymen who protected and defended Christians traveling to Jerusalem. These men took vows of poverty, chastity and obedience, and were renowned for their fierceness and courage in battle. Today the Knights Templar display their courage and goodwill in other ways. They organize fund-raising activities such as breakfast, dinners, dances, and flea markets. They support Masonic-related youth groups and they raise millions of dollars for medical research and educational assistance.

Today’s Templars are governed by the Grand Encampment of Knights Templar. State groups are called “Grand Commandery of Knights Templar.” There are about 1,600 in the United States, Germany, Italy, and Mexico, with more than 260,000 members. Their motto is “Integrity, Obedience, Courage.” In public ceremonies, the knights wear uniforms. Baigent and Leigh note that having conferred for the first time anywhere in the world the degree of Knight Templar, St. Andrew’s Lodge “continued to meet and to gain new recruits—sometimes, indeed, pilfering them from St. John’s.”

Three years before the establishment of St. John’s, the flourishing of Freemasonry in the colonies was noted in a Philadelphia newspaper. On December 8, 1730, the Pennsylvania Gazette referred to “several Lodges of FREE MASONS erected in this Province.” The owner, editor, and printer of the Gazette was a former Bostonian. Born in 1706, Benjamin Franklin was mostly self-taught and served an apprenticeship to his father (a soap maker), then went to work for his half brother, James. A printer, James founded the New England Courant, the fourth newspaper in the colonies, to which Benjamin contributed fourteen essays. Because of some brotherly dissension, he left New England for Philadelphia in 1723 and obtained employment as a printer. After a year, he sailed to London and returned to Philadelphia two years later. He rose rapidly in the printing trade and took over the Pennsylvania Gazette from its founder. His most successful literary venture was Richard’s Almanac. By 1748, he was financially independent and recognized for his philanthropy. When his Masonry articles appeared in the Pennsylvania Gazette in 1730, he used the power of the press to advance a desire to join the fraternity. He became a member of St. John’s Lodge.

On November 28, 1734, Franklin wrote to the Boston lodge in reply to a letter from Henry Price, its Grand Master. After noting that Price had “so happily recovered” from an illness and wishing well to him and “the prosperity of your whole Lodge,” he turned to the legal status of the lodge in Philadelphia. Stating that he had read “in Boston prints an article of news from London” that Price’s “power was extended over all America,” he appealed to Price to “give the proceedings and determinations of our Lodge their due weight.” Six months after it received a charter, he was named Junior Warden of the Pennsylvania Grand Lodge, and two years after that he was made Grand Master.

Franklin’s lodge’s meetings were held in Tun’s Tavern. The meeting place would gain another historical distinction in 1775 when the Continental Congress authorized raising two battalions of a “United States Marine Corps.” The first volunteers were enlisted there. The leader of the group was Samuel Nicholas. A Freemason, he was born in Philadelphia in 1744 and became a successful businessman. Congress commissioned him “to organize and train five companies of marine forces, skilled in the use of small and large firearms, to protect America’s ships at sea.” They demonstrated their skills with forays in the Bahamas that captured military supplies. In the winter of 1776–1777, they aided General George Washington’s small force in stealthily crossing the Delaware River from Pennsylvania in a surprise Christmas Eve 1777 attack on Hessian mercenaries at Trenton and later fought in the Battle of Princeton.

In 1743, Franklin held “fraternal communion” with his brethren in the First (St. John’s) Lodge of Boston. Six years later, he was named Provincial Grand Master, an appointment that lasted one year. In 1755, he was present for the Quarterly Communication of the Grand Lodge of Massachusetts and prominent in the anniversary and dedication of the Freemason’s Lodge in Philadelphia, the first Masonic building in America. Two years later, he went to London in the interest of Pennsylvania. Staying five years, he befriended leading intellectuals in England and Scotland, including the political and economic theorist Adam Smith, and contacted many English Freemasons. After returning to Philadelphia for two years, he was back in Britain in 1764. As a negotiator on behalf of the thirteen colonies concerning increasing tensions between them and King George III’s government on the issue of taxation, he remained in London ten years. On January 29, 1774, he was summoned before the king’s privy council, denounced as a thief and man without honor, and called to answer for an event that had occurred in Boston Harbor six weeks earlier.

On the night of December 16, 1773, a small group of men disguised as Mohawk Indians boarded the British East India Company’s merchant ship Dartmouth to protest a tax on tea by dumping its cargo of 342 tea chests, valued at 10,000 pounds, into the harbor. Enshrined in U.S. history as the “Boston Tea Party,” this milestone on the road to the Revolution is proudly claimed by Freemasonry as the work of members of St. Andrew’s Lodge. The morning after the raid, St. Andrew’s Lodge member and Knight Templar Paul Revere mounted his horse to carry the news to New York. On the night of April 18, 1775, he would be in the saddle again to sound the alarm to “every Middlesex village and farm” that British troops were marching from Boston to seize caches of weapons at Concord. When the smoke of Battles at Lexington and Concord cleared and British soldiers were back in Boston, the stage was set for Freemasonry to claim its first American hero in the person of St. Andrew’s Grand Master.