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BACK NEXT Issue 53 Letter from the Editor Grand Secretary's Column Grand Lodge News Grand Lodge Speeches Grand Chapter Speeches Grand Chapter Convocation Grand Chapter News News and Views On The Level Masonic Education International News Freemasonry's Dream The Beautiful Game Honourable to the Builder Singapore and Freemasonry An Argonaut - A Journeyman Hermes 'The Philosopher' Celebrating Wives and Friends A Frog in a Beer Mug Review: Researching British Freemasonry Review: The Portfolio of Villard De Honnecourt Review: Nightfighter Navigator Review: Belief and Brotherhood Letters to the Editor Library & Museum of Freemasonry Grand Lodge: Board of General Purposes Grand Charity Masonic Samaritan Fund RMBI RMTGB Revealing Our Craft Copyright 1997-2010 Grand Lodge Publications Ltd Designed and Maintained by: Cyberpoint

FREEMASONRY TODAY Guilds and Friendly Societies For the Support of Brothers When in 1883 J.M. Baernreither, a Doctor of Law from Venice, visited Britain he got very excited. He found that ‘there [had] gradually been formed an aristocracy of workmen, a kind of vanguard, which already counts many hundreds of thousand’, actors in a ‘gigantic’ ‘theatre’ of ‘associated life’. For Baernreither these Working-Men’s Orders as he called them, were ‘offshoots of, or in imitation of, Freemasonry’. These ... From Fraternal Groups to Trade Unions While we have at Freemasons’ Hall in London a public relations machine to combat ill-informed reports and to proactively promote Freemasonry, we still have a rather fixed view of masonic history: that is, the history written by Freemasons for Freemasons. In itself it is harmless enough but until quite recently this was also the only history available for non-masons to get any feeling about where Freemasonry came from. However good this history is ... Symbolism and the Guilds? Culross, a small Scottish town on the Firth of Forth, is unusual in possessing two graveyards where almost every tombstone bears the symbol of a craft guild. The more recent of these two graveyards is that of Culross Abbey, on the eastern edge of the town, which holds many graves from the 18th century. The other surrounds the older, and ruined “West Kirk”, which lies across fields to the north-west. Here, the graves date mostly from the 17th century. While trade guilds were common in ancient Greece and Rome, in medieval England the first evidence of their existence ...   Guilds and Friendly Societies © Grand Lodge Publications Ltd 1997-2010