The Secret History of Freemasonry

Builders Corporations in Italy, Germany, and Switzerland 171

were also guilds of the Four Crowned Martyrs in Flanders, notably in
Brussels and Anvers, that consisted of masons, stonecutters, sculptors,
and others.* Given the importance of these patrons to the builders, it is
probably helpful to recall the legend of the four crowned martyrs. It
varies according to version, but this is how it was recorded in The
Golden Legend:

The four crowned martyrs were Severus, Severianus, Carpoforus,

and Victorinus, who, by the commandment of Diocletian, were

beaten with plummets of lead unto the death. The names of whom

could not be found, but after a long time they were shown by divine

revelation, and it was established that their memory should be wor-

shipped under the names of five other martyrs, that is to wit

Claude, Castor, Symphorian, Nicostratus, and Simplician, which

were martyred two years after the four crowned martyrs. And these

martyrs knew all the craft of sculpture or of carving, and Diocletian

would have constrained them to carve an idol, but they would not

carve it, nor consent to do sacrifice to the idols. And then by the

commandment of Diocletian they were put into tuns of lead all liv-

ing, and cast into the sea about the year of our Lord two hundred

four score and seven. And Melchiades, the pope, ordained these

four saints to be honoured and to be called the four crowned mar-

tyrs before that their names were found.+

The feast day of the Four Crowned Martyrs is celebrated on

November 8 and churches in some way dedicated to them can be found

in a number of locations. There is a Church of the Quatro Santi

Coronati in Rome and a depiction of the Four Crowned Martyrs can be

* C. Van Cauvenberghs, La Corporation des Quatre Couronnes d'Anvers (Anvers,

1889). Deserving special mention is the handsome sixteenth-century triptych that once

graced either the corporative hall of the Craft of the Four Crowned Martyrs in Brussels

or the altar of Saint Catherine Church in the Chapel of the Crowned Martyrs. Today it

is housed in the Municipal Museum and is reproduced in P. du Colombier's book, Les

Chanters des Cathedrales, plates XXIV and XXV.+

Jacobus de Voraique, The Golden Legend or Lives of the Saints, ed. by F. S. Ellis

(Edinburgh: T. and A. Constable / University Press, 1900). The 1942 French translation

of this book reproduces an engraving that depicts the saints holding a mallet, rule,

square, and prybar.