Origins of Masonry
From cathedral builders to a moral brotherhood.
The Craft began on real scaffolding. Medieval stonemasons, organized in site lodges, developed rules, legends and means of recognition — their oldest document, the Regius Poem, is over six centuries old. From the 1600s, gentlemen who never cut stone were “accepted” into the lodges for the fellowship and symbolism; by 1717 four London lodges had formed the first Grand Lodge, and modern, speculative Freemasonry was born.
The eighteenth century carried it everywhere — Paris and Vienna, Boston and Calcutta — gathering Enlightenment ideals along the way: meeting on the level, tolerance between faiths, charity organized as a duty. Empires banned it; it outlived them.
One sentence to keep: the tools stayed, the stones became men.
Deeper dive: History of Freemasonry · Timeline.