booknetsaWebster-secretSocietiesAndSubversiveMovements

Freemasonry traced to the Crusades: At the time of the Crusades in Palestine many princes, lords, and citizens
associated themselves, and vowed to restore the Temple of the Christians in the Holy Land, and to employ
themselves in bringing back their architecture to its first institution. They agreed upon several ancient
signs and symbolic words drawn from the well of religion in order to recognize themselves amongst the heathens
and Saracens. These signs and words were only communicated to those who promised solemnly, and
even sometimes at the foot of the altar, never to reveal them. This sacred promise was therefore not an execrable
oath, as it has bean called, but a respectable bond to unite Christians of all nationalities into one confraternity.
Some time afterwards our Order formed an intimate union with the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem.
From that time our Lodges took the name of Lodges of St John.(28)
This speech of Ramsay's has raised a storm of controversy amongst Freemasons because it contains a
very decided hint of a connexion between Templarism and Freemasonry. Mr. Tuckett, in the paper referred
to above, points out that only the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem are here mentioned,(29) but Ramsay distinctly
speaks of " our Order " forming a union with the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem, and we know that
the Templars did eventually form such a union. The fact that Ramsay does not mention the Templars by
name admits of a very plausible explanation. It must be remembered that, as Mr. Gould has shown, a copy
of the oration was enclosed by Ramsay in his letter to Cardinal Fleury appealing for royal protection to be
extended to Freemasonry; it is therefore hardly likely that he would have proclaimed a connexion between
the Order he was anxious to present in the most favourable light and one which had formerly been suppressed
by King and Pope. Moreover, if the Charter of Larmenius to be believed, the newly elected Grand
Master of the Temple was the Duc de Bourbon, who had already incurred the Cardinal's displeasure. Obviously,
therefore, Templar influence was best kept in the background. This is not to imply bad faith on the
part of Ramsay, who doubtless held the Order of Templars to be wholly praiseworthy; but he could not expect
the King or Cardinal to share his view, and therefore held more prudent to refer to the progenitors of
Freemason under the vague description of a crusading body. Ramsay's well-meant effort met, however, with
no success. Whether on account of this unlucky reference by which the Cardinal may have detected Templar
influence or for some other reason, the appeal for royal protection was not only refused, but the new Order,
which hitherto Catholics had been allowed to enter, was now prohibited by Royal edict. In the following
year, 1738, the Pope, Clement XII, issued a bull, In Eminenti, banning Freemasonry and excommunicating
Catholics who took part in it.
But this prohibition appears to have been without effect, for Freemasonry not only prospered but soon
began to manufacture new degrees. And in the masonic literature of the following thirty years the Templar
tradition becomes still more clearly apparent. Thus the Chevalier de Bérage in a well-known pamphlet, of
which the first edition is said to have appeared in 1747,(30) gives the following account of the origins of
Freemasonry: This Order was instituted by Godefroi de Bouillon in Palestine in 1330,(31) after the decadence
of the Christian armies, and was only communicated to the French Masons some time after and to a
very small number, as a reward for the obliging services they rendered to several of our English and Scottish
Knights, from whom true Masonry is taken. Their Metropolitan Lodge is situated on the Mountain of Heredom
where the first Lodge was held in Europe and which exists in all its splendour. The General Council is
still held there and it is the seal of the Sovereign Grand Master in office. This mountain is situated between
the West and North of Scotland at sixty miles from Edinburgh.
Apart from the historical confusion of the first sentence, this passage is of interest as evidence that the
theory of a connexion between certain crusading Knights and the Lodge of Heredom of Kilwinning was current
as early as 1747. The Baron Tschoudy in his Etoile Flamboyante, which appeared in 1766, says that the
crusading origin of Freemasonry is the one officially taught in the lodges, where candidates for initiation are
told that several Knights who had set forth to rescue the holy places of Palestine from the Saracens " formed
an association under the name of Free Masons, thus indicating that their principal desire was the reconstruction
of the Temple of Solomon," that, further, they adopted certain signs, grips, and passwords as a defence
against the Saracens, and finally that " our Society... fraternized on the footing of an Order with the Knights
of St. John of Jerusalem, from which it is apparent that the Freemasons borrowed the custom of regarding
St. John as the patron of the whole Order in general."(32) After the crusades " the Masons kept their rites
and methods and in this way perpetuated the royal art by establishing lodges, first in England, then in Scotland,"
etc.(33)
In this account, therefore, Freemasonry is represented as having been instituted for the defence of Christian
doctrines. De Bérage expresses the same view and explains that the object of these Crusaders in thus
binding themselves together was to protect their lives against the Saracens by enveloping their sacred doctrines
in a veil of mystery. For this purpose they made use of Jewish symbolism, which they invested with a
Christian meaning. Thus the Temple of Solomon was used to denote the Church of Christ, the bough of aca-
Nesta H. Webster — Secret Societies and Subversive Movements — Part I
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