from that very curious, if authentic, document, dated at Cologne, in the
year 1535, and hence designated as the "Charter of Cologne." In that
instrument, which purports to have been issued by the heads of the order
in nineteen different and important cities of Europe, and is addressed to
their brethren as a defence against the calumnies of their enemies, it is
announced that the order took its origin at a time "when a few adepts,
distinguished by their life, their moral doctrine, and their sacred
interpretation of the arcanic truths, withdrew themselves from the
multitude in order more effectually to preserve uncontaminated the moral
precepts of that religion which is implanted in the mind of man."

We thus, then, have before us an aspect of Freemasonry as it existed in
the middle ages, when it presents itself to our view as both operative and
speculative in its character. The operative element that had been infused
into it by the Dionysiac artificers of Tyre, at the building of the
Solomonic temple, was not yet dissevered from the pure speculative element
which had prevailed in it anterior to that period.




IX.

Disseverance of the Operative Element.



The next point to which our attention is to be directed is when, a few
centuries later, the operative character of the institution began to be
less prominent, and the speculative to assume a pre-eminence which