THE BUILDER JULY 1918

THE MASONIC WRITINGS OF GEORGE FRANKLIN FORT
BY BRO. OLIVER DAY STREET, ALABAMA

WHEN some years ago we sought to learn something of Brother George
F. Fort and his writings, we found that printed information
concerning him was not to be found. He is not so much as mentioned
in either Mackey's, Macoy's, or Kenning's Cyclopedia of
Freemasonry. Little more than incidental mention of him or of his
work is made in the writings of others, and then generally to
disagree with him. Some of our writers pay high tribute to the
grace and elegance of his style, but make no attempt to fix his
position in Masonic literature or to estimate the historical value
of his writings. For years we sought in vain for an account of him
that would even afford information as to when or where he was born,
where he lived, or when or where he died. We appealed to the
learned librarian of the Grand Lodge of Pennsylvania, Brother
Julius F. Sachse, who could only refer us to Appleton's Cyclopedia
of American Biography, where Brother Fort and his uncle of the same
name are hopelessly confused and commingled in a single sketch.
Finally we addressed a query to Miscellanea Latomorum, London,
which may be found at page 69 in the January, 1914, issue of that
excellent little journal. Its intelligent editor, the late lamented
Brother F. W. Levander, became at once interested and made such
search that he was able to present a brief sketch of Brother Fort
in the August, 1915, issue of his paper, from the pen of Miss A. E.
Bear, of Camden, N. J. Meanwhile we had also located Mr. John H.
Fort, a brother of George F. Fort, from whom we obtained much
information and who has furnished the readers of THE BUILDER an
entertaining and instructive sketch of his distinguished brother.
It is indeed strange that one of the most brilliant and scholarly
writers on the subject of Freemasonry should have continued so long
virtually unknown to the Craft and we take personal, satisfaction
in having been to some extent instrumental in reviving interest in
our learned brother.

George Franklin Fort was born at Absecon, Atlantic county, New
Jersey, November 20, 1843. His father, John Fort, was a minister of
the Methodist Episcopal Church, and his uncle, George F. Fort, for
whom he was named, was governor of New Jersey from 1851 to 1854.
Another distinguished member of the family, John Franklin Fort, was
also governor of New Jersey from 1908 to 1911. The family is an old
and prominent one and has resided in the neighborhood of Pemberton,
New Jersey, since colonial times.

George F. Fort, the subject of this sketch, received a liberal
education which he improved by extensive travels in Europe, and by
a course of lectures at Heidelburg University. It is said of him
that he was able to lead and write seventeen languages besides his
mother tongue and that some of these he could speak with fluency
and ease. He was also trained for the bar, was admitted in 1866,
and practiced his profession with success. But the study of history
and antiquities was his passion. Upon these subjects he was a
frequent contributor to the press and wrote among other things
"Medical Economy in the Middle Ages" and an exhaustive treatise
upon "Norse Mythology," the latter of which, however, was never
published. He collected an extensive library in foreign languages
relating to many branches of knowledge, but particularly to
mythology, literature and art.

Substantial as were Brother Fort's contributions to the field of
knowledge in general, his enduring fame must lest upon his Masonic
labors. He was made a Mason in Camden Lodge No. 15, Camden, N. J.,
from which he dimitted in 1870 to become a charter member of
Trimble Lodge No. 117, of Camden. He became Master of this last
named lodge in 1871. He was a member of Cyrene Commandery No. 7,
Knights Templar; of Van Hook Council No. 8, R. & S. M.; and of
Excelsior Consistory 32d, Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite, all
of Camden. He was an Honorary Life member of York Lodge No. 236, of
England, and was the Representative of the United Grand Lodge of
England near the Grand Lodge of New Jersey.

He wrote a number of articles which from time to time appeared in
the Masonic press and was the author of "A Historical Treatise on
Early Builders' Marks" and of "Medieval Builders," both important
contributions to Masonic literature. But his chief work and that
upon which his fame as a writer depends is "The Early History and
Antiquities of Freemasonry." It is no exaggeration to say that this
is one of the most remarkable books that has ever been written
concerning Freemasonry.

In order to assign to Brother Fort his proper position among
Masonic historians it will be necessary briefly to review those
historians of the Fraternity who preceded as well as those who have
followed him. Chief among his predecessors were Dr. James Anderson,
William Preston, Dr. George Oliver, Alexander Lawrie (or rather as
is generally supposed, Sir David Brewster), J. G. Findel, and W. J.
Hughan. Perhaps we should not omit from this list Mr. J. O.
Halliwell-Phillips, though a non-Mason. His most notable successors
have been Robert Freke Gould, D. Murray Lyon, George William Speth,
all of Great Britain, and Wilhelm Begemann, of Germany.

Masonic historians may be divided in a general way into the
Idealistic and the Realistic schools. With the first of these may
be classed the Rev. James Anderson, who wrote the first "Book of
Constitutions," published in 1723; William Preston, who wrote what
has been called the first Monitor, "The Illustrations of Masonry,"
published in 1772; and the Rev. George Oliver, a voluminous writer
of the middle of the last century. To the Realistic school may be
assigned Robert Freke Gould and William J. Hughan of England; D.
Murray Lyon, of Scotland; J. G. Findel and W. Begemann of Germany.
Each of these schools boasts a multitude of less conspicuous
followers.

The Idealists do not feel themselves restrained by the limitations
applied to the history of other subjects. They maintain, at least
impliedly, that they are warranted in accepting fully all the
traditions of the Craft, as well as all that may be legitimately
inferred from them. Guided by this rule, or rather absence of rule,
they have furnished the fraternity with numerous fanciful and
highly improbable accounts of Freemasonry. It can not be denied
that in recent years they have been pretty thoroughly discredited
as historians.

On the other hand the Realistic school insists, at least impliedly,
that nothing is to be accepted as fact unless it is sustained by
contemporaneous documentary evidence of unquestioned genuineness.
They reject tradition in toto, deny that any play is to be allowed
to the imagination, and concede small scope to reasonable inference
and deduction; forgetful that, if these rigid rules were applied,
the early history of no subject could be written.

It is inevitable that between two such diverse schools there could
be slight common ground of agreement. Hence, Dr. Oliver wrote that
without doubt Freemasonry had existed from before the creation of
the world; Anderson that it dated from the days of Adam. Preston is
scarcely a less offender in this regard than Anderson. According to
these authors and their imitators, nearly every distinguished man
of ancient or Medieval times was a Grand Master, or a patron of the
Craft.

The Realists generally, on the contrary, contend that the earliest
possible historical date which can be assigned to Speculative
Freemasonry is A. D. 1600, or thereabout, though they admit that
prior to that period and as far back as A. D. 1390, and probably
much earlier, there was an operative society of Masons from which
the Speculative is a development. These hardheaded brethren, who so
completely reject tradition of all kinds, have surely in recent
years had their skepticism rudely shaken by the confirmations which
they have seen given to Biblical stories, long regarded by some as
mere fables, through the excavations of scholars in Egypt, Greece,
Babylonia, Palestine and other countries. The lesson of it all is
that it is equally unwise either to accept or to reject tradition
by the wholesale and unquestioningly.

It has thus happened that during the period from A. D. 1722 to a
time well after the middle of last century much foolish stuff was
put forth by Masonic writers under the denomination of Masonic
History. The foremost writers were our worst offenders. No tale, it
has been said, was too idle or too absurd to be narrated or too
marvelous to be believed provided only it was related concerning
the Society of Freemasons. But the pendulum has now swung to the
other extreme. Most of our leading historians as above stated now
laugh at tradition; they reject out of hand as absurd the idea that
Solomon had any connection with our fraternity or that the Temple
was built by Freemasons. They declare that Hiram Abif's death is a
myth and that there is no evidence of the existence of Speculative
Freemasonry prior to A. D. 1600. They pronounce as fables the
traditions recorded in our "Old Charges," that Naymus Graecus
introduced Freemasonry into France, that Charles Martel there
patronized and became a member of the Craft, and that St. Alban
introduced it into England in the third century. They regard it as
a waste of effort to attempt to solve the meanings of these
traditions among us. These incredulous and perhaps overcautious
brethren, it appears to us, have gone as far to one extreme as did
our historians of the past go to the other. The truth is no doubt
between the two.

Another large class, therefore, of our Masonic scholars have
recognized that there is something of the extreme in the
contentions of both of these schools. They have accordingly taken
a middle ground and hold that Masonic tradition, though to be
received with great caution is nevertheless entitled to
consideration in even a sober history of the Craft; that it usually
possesses a grain of truth, and is not to be lightly rejected; that
it should be tested by the known facts of history and if consistent
with them and with reason, may be accepted in its broad outline;
and that to subject our traditions to this process is one of the
chief offices of the Masonic historian. They further hold that from
the established facts of Masonic history they are justified in
drawing such further inferences and deductions as may appear
reasonable. This is the rule applied to the history of all other
subjects and they can not see why it should not apply to Masonic
history. The fact that the rule is one difficult of application and
requires the hand of a master does not render it any less sound.
Histories of Masonry thus written will be only of greater or less
value, as have been histories of all other subjects, according to
the several abilities of their authors.

Perhaps the most distinguished representative of this intermediate
school is the late Brother George William Speth, of England,
certainly one of the sanest and most luminous minds that has ever
written on the vexed subject of Masonic history. To this school we
assign Brother Fort also, but it would be a mistake to class him as
the follower or imitator of any one. Indeed his most notable
contributions to the literature of the Craft antedated those of
Brother Speth and others of this school.

The only general historians of the Craft who antedated Brother
Fort, whose works are accessible in English and who can be said to
have possessed the true historical spirit, were Sir David Brewster
(generally understood to have been the author of Lawrie's
"History") and J. G. Findel, of Germany. Lawrie's "History" is
greatly marred, if not rendered worthless, by the bias of its
author in favor of the Essenean origin of Freemasonry.

Findel's history betrays the strong Germanic prejudice of its
author. With all the zeal of racial and national pride he set
himself the task of proving that British Freemasonry was derived
directly and solely from the Steinmetzen of Germany. This, of
course, involved a denial that it descended from the Medieval and
ancient building corporations of Gaul, Italy, Rome, or Greece, to
say nothing of those that may have existed in Asia Minor,
Palestine, or Egypt. Findel's idea seems further to be that the
German Steinmetzen borrowed little or nothing from the older
societies of Europe; that in short it was an indigenous product of
German soil. It is needless to say that British Masonic scholars
have vigorously taken issue with his theory. At the same time, it
must be admitted that he brought scholarship and a fluent pen to
the support of his cause. His book is plainly not to be classed
with such effusions as those of Anderson, Preston and Oliver. While
strongly biased, it securely places Brother Findel among the
critical school of Masonic historians. It is now generally conceded
that the most that can be claimed for the Steimnetzen is a remote
common ancestry with Freemasonry.

Now in order to get a better appreciation of Brother Fort and the
place of his work in the literature of the Craft, it is necessary
to state somewhat fully his line of argument as developed in his
magnum opus, "The Early History and Antiquities of Freemasonry."
This is really as its title indicates two separate and distinct
works. The author has very properly discriminated both in substance
and method of treatment between what is historical and what is only
traditional. The "Early History" occupies the first half of the
book and in it the author endeavors to present, to use his own
words, "a narrative of the state of fine arts at the decline of the
Roman Empire and also of the propagation of architecture and its
kindred sciences by bodies of builders, who developed into the
Middle-Age Freemasons, whose history is carried down to the formal
extinction of this society as an operative brotherhood in the year
1717."

Brother Fort's view is that, in accordance with our oral and
written traditions, the Speculative Craft is directly descended
from the operative societies of past ages. These societies he
conceives to have been in full development before the fall of the
Roman Empire. With the fall of the Western Empire, arts and the
artists removed to Byzantium, the capital of the Eastern Empire. In
the fifth century, when Theodoric and the Longobards undertook the
readornment of Italy, artists came from Byzantium and other parts
of Greece and formed themselves into corporations which, under the
doctrine known as profession of law, enjoyed the right of living
under the laws of the country whence they came instead of those of
the country in which they were sojourning. The native building
societies of Italy which had survived the fall were thus brought in
contact with and subjected to the influence of these Greek artists,
with the result that in Northern Italy particularly there arose a
school of architects known as the Magistri Comacini, or Comacine
Masters. They were organized into societies quite similar to our
lodges. These societies at a very early date entered into close
contact and association with the ecclesiastical authorities. He
points for evidence of this to the possession by our present day
Craft of a symbolism familiar to the church in its early ages.
Architecture received renewed impetus under the Carlovingian kings
in France. By the middle of the eighth century the building
societies had become religio-artistic from their close and long
association with the monastic institutions of Western Europe and in
them architecture and its kindred arts were particularly
cultivated. Through Greek and Oriental artisans all the useful
rules and technicalities in possession of the East were introduced
into Western Europe and thus transmitted to the monastic artificers
and finally by them in turn abandoned to the lay corporations of
the Medieval Freemasons.

This union of the religious and the building orders resulted in a
system of symbolism combining both Oriental and Teutonic ideas.
This mingling of the Eastern and the Northern, Brother Fort thinks,
first occurred in Northern Italy under the Gothic and Lombardic
rulers. With the eleventh century began an unprecedented era of
church building demanding great numbers of the most skilled
artists. By the end of the twelfth century these had grown into a
very powerful and widespread building society of a quasi-religious
nature, combining the church symbolism of the East with that of the
pagan mythology of the North. Thus is explained the strange mixture
of Hebrew and Norse ideas found in Freemasonry. From the
monasteries, this building society appropriated the three grades of
apprentice, fellow and master. With the decline of church building
the control of architecture gradually passed from the church to the
lay societies, carrying into them the old system of symbolism.

By the twelfth century, Brother Fort evidently regards Freemasonry
and the building corporations as identical. Boileau's Code of A. D.
1254, he thinks, proves the Fraternity of Masons then fully
organized in France with presumptively a long history already to
its credit.

His view is that the history of British Freemasonry begins in A. D.
1136 with the building of Melrose Abbey, but that it was not
regularly organized in England till the thirteenth century. He
regards the York Assembly of A.D. 926 as fabulous.

Before the twelfth century England depended on Gallic Masons and
thus she derived her Freemasonry directly from France. The
influence, however, of German Masonry on that of England is
recognized.

Long prior to the middle of the fourteenth century numerous
so-called "statutes of laborers" had been passed by the British
Parliament regulating prices to be charged by the various
handicrafts. By A. D. 1350, the societies of Masons were so well
organized that they felt strong enough to resist these statutes. In
A. D. 1451, those employed in constructing Windsor Castle "struck"
for higher wages. A statute was passed providing for their branding
upon refusal to return to work after due notice. Other legislation
followed which was in turn broken by the Masons. Finally in A. D.
1424, in the reign of Henry VI, they were forbidden to assemble in
their "chapters and congregations." Thus they were deprived of the
power of regulating the craft of Masons or of determining who
should work at such labors. Nevertheless, they continued to meet in
their lodges and to practice their ancient rites and ceremonies of
initiation. But by these measures they were reduced from the
dignity of a craft to the position of clubs chiefly employed in
works of benevolence. At this period perhaps must be sought the
point of departure of Speculative Freemasonry from the operative
craft of Masons. The rites and ceremonies and moral instructions
hitherto in vogue in the lodges were however continued under the
new regime. Gradually the speculative features encroached upon and
finally almost effaced the operative. Even before A. D. 1424, "from
a very early age," non-operatives of high standing had been
occasionally admitted to the lodges. In Italy this custom prevailed
from the time the gilds obtained a legal corporate recognition. In
like manner, Edward III became a member of the gild of Linen
Armorers. The change from the operative to the Speculative
continued to grow during the remainder of the fifteenth and the
whole of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. This change
became complete with the organization of the Grand Lodge of England
in A. D. 1717.

Brother Fort habitually refers to the German Steinmetzen as the
"German Freemasons." In thus apparently assuming the identity of
the Steinmetzen with the Freemasonry of England, it must be
admitted Brother Fort departs from sound historical methods. While
the evidence is very strong of their kinship and of their
development from a remote common source, evidence is lacking of
their identity, notwithstanding Brother Findel as above stated and
other loyal German brothers have insisted earnestly that
Freemasonry is merely a direct derivative from the Steinmetzen. It
is very clear, however, that Brother Fort did not mean identity in
this sense.

This completes the review of the first portion of Brother Fort's
history, the portion which alone professes to be an attempt to
sketch an outline of the real history of the Society of Freemasons.
It will also be observed that this sketch does not attempt to go
further back than the "later Roman Emperors." By this expression he
apparently means Marcus Aurelius and his immediate predecessors, or
from about the beginning of the second century A. D.

The strength of Brother Fort's theory lies chiefly in three things:
(1) that it accords with our oral and written traditions; (2) that
it is not inconsistent at any point with the known facts of
history; (3) that it is throughout a reasonable hypothesis. He
wisely refrains in the historical portion of his book from any
attempt to trace the history or origin of the Society back of
historic times.

No one would pretend that Brother Fort has certainly hit the
solution of the development of Freemasonry during the last fifteen
hundred years. If it can not be said of him, neither can it be said
of any other writer. Notwithstanding recent researches and much
that has been written on this subject since Brother Fort's day, the
probabilities still remain about as strong in favor of the truth of
his theory as of any other. Indeed our opinion is that it has the
balance of probability in its favor.

The crux of Brother Fort's theory may be said to be that the
Magistri Comacini of Northern Italy afforded the connecting link
between the ancient building societies of Rome and Greece on the
one hand and modern Freemasonry on the other. In propounding this
theory he may be fairly regarded as the pioneer. It must be
conceded that his conclusions are largely the result of inference
and deduction. Many facts now known to Masonic scholars were not
known to those of Brother Fort's day. Recent studies and
discoveries have lent more or less corroboration to his views.

In 1899, there appeared a remarkable book written by a woman and
therefore a non-Mason, (The Cathedral Builders, by Leader Scott),
in which many proofs are adduced tending strongly to corroborate
Brother Fort. Brother Speth, in his Masonic Curriculum, thus
comments upon the support received from Leader Scott's book:

"It (The Cathedral Builders) supplies the evidence which was
lacking in Fort's work and is a brilliant vindication of our
brother's intuition, which I trust he has been spared to enjoy."

In this same connection Brother Speth refers to Brother Fort as
"the first Masonic writer to show the possibility of the
reintroduction of the usages and traditions of the Roman Collegia
into Medieval Masonry." He also says that when Brother Fort
advanced this theory he was looked upon as an "ingenious visionary"
and that his surmises "evoked little comment."

Still later another learned brother, Mr. W. Ravenscroft, of
England, published a book, The Comacines, in which he strongly
supports the view so long ago expressed by Brother Fort. Brother
Joseph Fort Newton, whose studies entitle his opinion to great
weight, gives his voice in favor of a like conclusion.

The remaining portion of Brother Fort's history can scarcely be
called history, he himself denominates it "Antiquities." It is a
discussion of our traditions, customs and symbols. The purpose, to
state it in his own words, is "to note with care such portions of
Freemasonry as have descended unimpaired and unchanged from Gothic-
sources and at what probable epoch Judaistic rites began to be
introduced into lodge or gildic observances."

It would be tedious even to enumerate the variety of topics touched
upon in the second portion of his book. Only a careful reading can
give any idea of its store of learning.

He supports his argument with such a wealth of illustrations and
authorities that it would be presumptuous for any but a profound
scholar in the mythology of the Northern races of Europe even to
attempt a criticism of this portion of the book. Nor would such a
thing be possible within the limits of an article suitable for the
pages of THE BUILDER. Suffice it to say of this part of Brother
Fort's work that for elegance of diction and sustained interest of
narrative no Masonic writer certainly has ever achieved a greater
success.

We have been promised at an early date a volume embracing an
adequate biographical sketch of Brother Fort and reprints of his
most important fugitive contributions to the Masonic press. We
trust the publication of this book will not be long delayed.
