156 FROM THE ART OF BUILDING TO THE ART OF THINKING
These sworn masons purchased their charge and in return they alone
were responsible for appraisals, reports, toises, and estimations.
According to the Guilde des Corps des Marchands of 1776, the
duration of the apprenticeship period among masons was six years by
the terms of their statutes, but was in fact only three years. There was
no required period established for work as a journeyman; an apprentice
could graduate directly to the status of master.
Like masons, carpenters, too, were divided into ordinary masters
and those sworn to the king. Philip the Fair abolished the post of royal
carpenter in 1314. It was subsequently restored for a brief time before
being definitively terminated. In the terms of the 1649 statute that
replaced older statutes dating from 1454, the community was governed
by a syndic elected every two years from among those sworn to the
king. The elections, reviews, and the settling of business matters took
place on March 20, the day after the feast day of Saint Joseph, the
patron saint of carpenters.
The examination of an aspiring member consisted of one drawn
geometrical design and a masterpiece. The sons of masters and appren-
tices paid the same rights for master status, 20 pounds total. Six years
of apprenticeship were required and journeyman status was intended to
last six months. The sons, nephews, and cousins of a master did not
count as apprentices. A foreigner to France had to work for an addi-
tional four years in Paris before achieving the grade of master.
Carpenters' workshops were known as lodges. An arret issued by
Parliament on August 30, 1631, mentions the lodge in its rejection of
the appeal of an earlier sentence "that forbade all journeymen carpen-
ters from carrying away from the worksites and even the lodges and
workshops of the bourgeois the trimmings, chips, wood ends, and
blocks, if it is without the wishes and consent of said bourgeois and
carpenters.. ."*
* The term lodge was contemporaneous with Etienne Boileau's Litre des Metiers-
Masons also used it: "A document in the archives of Notre Dame de Paris records an
incident that took place in the works lodge on the eve of the Feast of Assumption in
1283." [J. Gimpel, The Cathedral Builders (New York: Harper and Row, 1984), 77.]
Concerning the existence of a lodge in Paris under Louis IX, see Marcel Olle, Le
Symbolisme, July/September 1960.