174 FROM THE ART OF BUILDING TO THE ART OF THINKING
These five grand lodges each held independent and sovereign juris-
diction, and judged, with no possibility of appeal, all cases brought
before them in accordance with their organization's statutes.These
ancient statutes were revised on April 25, 1459, by the Ratisbonnc
Assembly under the title "Statutes and Regulations of the Brotherhood
of Stonecutters." The foundations for the revision had been cast in a
preparatory meeting held in Strasbourg in 1452 and the resulting
statutes were subsequently endorsed by Emperor Maximilian in 1498
and confirmed by Charles Quint in 1520 and Ferdinand I in 1588. The
1459 assembly, held in Ratisbonne, the seat of the German Diet, was con-
voked by Jobs Dotzinger, master builder of the Strasbourg Cathedral.
Those gathered there also dealt with general business concerning archi-
tecture and the brotherhood.^9
The signatures affixed to the revised statutes indicate that the
lodges of northern Germany were not represented in Strasbourg or
Ratisbonne. These lodges added their voice of support to the revision at
an assembly held in Torgau in 1462 by crafting ordinances that were
described simply as reproductions of the Strasbourg statutes established
on the ancient foundations instituted "by the Holy Martyrs crowned in
the honor and glory of the Holy Trinity and Mary Queen of Heaven."^10
A second masonic assembly, also convoked by the Grand Lodge of
Strasbourg, was held in Ratisbonne in 1464. Along with discussing gen-
eral lodge business, including reports on buildings then under con-
struction, the assembly gave more precise definition to the rights and
attributions of the four existing grand lodges (in Cologne, Strasbourg,
Vienna, and Bern) and named the master builder Konrad Kuhn to the
high mastery association of Cologne.
In 1469, the grand lodge of Strasbourg convoked a new assembly,
this time in Spire. According to Rebold, the objectives of this congress
were as follows: 1. To share information concerning the status of all com-
pleted religious buildings or of those still being built and those whose
completion had been halted; 2. To study the situation of the brotherhood
in England, the Gallic lands, Lombardy, and Germany (which under-
scores the international nature of the craft); and 3. To examine relation-
ships between the different lodges and their attributions.
In 1535, the bishop of Cologne, Herman, convoked a masonic