Speculative Freemasonry 239incorporate the new architectural style were completed, working
masons were forced to disperse in order to seek employment. The same
was not true for the accepted masons, who gained strength through the
admission of new brothers. This fact and the social position of these let-
tered individuals ensured that the accessory portion became the princi-
pal part and took the corporation's business into their hands. The
statutes published on the occasion of the large masonic assembly held
in 1663 establish evidence of this.
Philosophical and Mystical InfluencesIt is important to understand the spiritual influences freemasonry was
subject to during this transformation, or at least to comprehend those
that facilitated this transformation.
An accepted fact of history is that from the end of the fifteenth cen-
tury in Italy through the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in Europe
as a whole, there was a strong inclination among educated individuals
to join together in more or less secret societies. The desire to create
these kinds of groups, their organizational plan, and their goals arose
in large part from the reading of certain books published in different
forms by the illustrious authors of that time, principally Thomas More,
Rabelais, Andrea, Francis Bacon, and Robert Fludd.
In his famous work Utopia (1516), Sir Thomas More (1477-1535)
puts into practice a program of democratic reform on the imaginary
island of Utopia. In this society, the chief concern of government is to
furnish the material needs for individual and public consumption. Each
individual is given as much time as possible to free him- or herself from
the servitude of the body, freely cultivate his or her mind, and develop
his or her intellectual abilities through the study of the letters and sci-
ences. The civil organization of the Utopians is republican and all reli-
gions are tolerated. Here we should note an important point as
observed by A. Lantoine. "It was Sir Thomas More who created a word
that until that time was unknown: tolerance."
In his rule of the abbey of Theleme, Rabelais (1494-1553), who
was certainly an accepted mason, has left us with the constitution of a
society of free men. The sole rule of the Thelemites was this: