The Corporative Masonry of Great Britain 185the brotherhood responsible for religious practices. The guild assumed
responsibility for both kinds of duties. Of course, as was the case
throughout medieval Christian Europe, the Church kept its hand on the
trades and by virtue of this had its own place in the guild. A priest
would thus perform the duties of chaplain.
This should not lead us to believe, however, that the guild enjoyed
a kind of monopoly and that there were not, outside its walls,
autonomous and even rival brotherhoods that were simultaneously pro-
fessional, religious, and charitable organizations, and that also served
as keepers—and sometimes better ones—of the tradition.
In all of this we should not overlook one important fact: During the
Middle Ages Great Britain, like the countries of the continent, was sub-
ject to feudal law, which was tangibly identical everywhere. All cities
freed themselves from their manorial bonds under the same conditions
and with the same measures. The guilds, which were the essential cogs
in this process, benefited only from the rights and franchises that had
been granted to them, and these applied only within the limits of their
respective cities.
As in other countries, things went differently for the professional
brotherhoods that remained tied to the domain and suzerainty of the
religious orders that held all the rights to administer justice. This was
the case in the jurisdictional areas of the Benedictine abbeys and the
Templar commanderies. The generally extensive franchises that the arti-
sans of these brotherhoods enjoyed extended to all the dependent terri-
tories of the suzerain orders and all places where the talents of these
artisans earned them summons. This fact is of capital importance in the
formation of freemasonry.
There are several documents in England that are quite important to
the study of operative masonry but, contrary to what has been previ-
ously thought, do not have bearing on modern Freemasonry: In 1212,
the court of taxes in London alludes to a company of cementarii
(masons) and sculptores lapidum liberorum (sculptors in free stone)^2
and in the Workers Statute issued in 1351, which was composed in
French, there is mention of mestre mason de franche pere [master
mason of free stone].
Some have deduced from these texts that the term freemason may