Builders’ Corporations.

This and similar titles are often used to introduce dissertations intended to give the impression that the stonemasons of the Middle Ages were organized into corporations but they always merge into discussions of the Roman Collegia of Artificers, the so-called Comacine Masters, the Travelling Freemasons, the Bridge Builders, Gilds (see each of these titles) and others, which, so far from confirming the original hypothesis, serve to demonstrate the contrary. Such articles indulge purely in generalities, quoting as authority other generalizations, and never cite any direct evidence of incorporated stonemasons, but do succeed usually in showing that the field was occupied in every leading country by brotherhoods of stonemasons such as the Steinmetzen of Germany, the Compagnons of France, and the Freemasons of Britain. So far as we know, none of these was ever incorporated, nor was any of them authorized or dispatched about the world by P*pal Bulls. The Roman Collegia of Artificers were corporations but, like the builders’ incorporations of Scotland, which existed contemporaneously with the lodges of Freemasons, they were composed of other trades as well as stonemasons and, hence, lacked the peculiar cement, arcana, and spirit of the brotherhoods which enabled them to maintain secrecy of the principles of Gothic architecture and dictate and control their own operations, the very opposite of municipal or state control over the corporations and gilds. See GERMAN STEINMETZEN; FRENCH COMPAGNONS; SCOTLAND; FREEMASONS.