166 FROM THE ART OF BUILDING TO THE ART OF THINKING
young, before settling down in a village or town and becoming a mas-
ter in their own right. It was in the best interests of these itinerant jour-
neymen to organize in order to ensure for themselves the availability of
lodging in those various towns and places where they could learn of
local job opportunities.
The Church was even more poorly disposed to the compagnon-
nages than the civil authorities, condemning them under the pretext
that their observance of symbols and traditional rites parodied that of
holy objects and rites and violated their sworn oaths. There are records
of some interesting sentences handed down on May 30, 1648, and on
March 14, 1655, by the Theology School (Sorbonne) condemning and
at the same time describing the impious, sacreligious, and superstitious
practices of journeymen cobblers, saddlers, tailors, cutlers, and hatters.
Some raised the objection that these traditional rites had been prac-
ticed for centuries by the former religious brotherhoods who were
guided by the clergy. The Church responded easily to this objection,
however, suggesting that for the propagation of their art, especially
with respect to symbolic teachings and the preservation of their trade
secrets, the monks had been under an obligation to preserve them.
Furthermore, these rites were traditionally followed and monitored in a
sacred and orthodox fashion. These conditions did not apply to the
compagnonnages, which no longer included any clerics among their
members and which appeared in the eyes of the Church as impious
associations when compared to those brotherhoods it once accepted
and directed. Finally, and this was the Church's best justification, it is
plausible that even if the compagnonnage rites did not disfigure tradi-
tional symbols to a great extent, their deeper meaning was nonetheless
ungrasped by the humble journeymen. It is merely one step from incom-
prehension to superstition.
Condemned by royal power and ecclesiastical authority, the com-
pagnnonages still had one safe haven: the Temple commanderies,
which, until the Revolution, offered traditional right of asylum to those
pursued by the king or Church. We have already seen how the jour-
neyman masons of Paris always maintained their seats—their
cayennes—in the censive district of the former Temple commandery. It
was only for rather exceptional reasons that the bailiff of the Temple