Universal Freemasonry 211Craft SecretsThe international unity experienced by freemasonry was clearly dis-
played in the practice of its craft. The brotherhoods and communities
fulfilled an educational mission insofar as each master instructed jour-
neymen and apprentices in the craft.
Rather than being merely technical, this instruction assumed a basic
minimum knowledge of geometry and art in an era when work was not
at all specialized and the master builder was simultaneously architect,
entrepreneur, mason, carpenter, stonecutter, and sculptor. He had to pos-
sess all the knowledge that Vitruvius demanded of the architect during
Augustus's century, namely mathematics, arithemetic, geometry, physics,
history, astrology, music, and even jurisprudence, rhetoric, and medicine.
Perfection in the art of building implied a quintessence of the sciences and
human talents: "This art, which consists of giving proportion to the dif-
ferent parts of a monument, to raise those bold spires and audacious
belltowers, to curve those vaults beneath which sound, far from dimin-
ishing, will take on a more harmonious fullness, would seem to be a
magic art."^3 It was the first and noblest of them all; it was the Royal Art.
To builders it was so incomprehensible that science could be
excluded from their areas of expertise that in 1401 the Parisian master
Jean Mignot unleashed a controversy involving the Milanese artists
who had reproached him for the fact that his arguments were in the
domain of science and not art because, they insisted, the two were
entirely different. Mignot indignantly responded: "Art without science
does not exist (Ars sine scientia nihil est)."^4
Of course, such vast knowledge could be the privilege of only the
most gifted individuals. But even the least of masters had to possess a
minimum of equally developed skill and culture. So there is nothing sur-
prising in the fact that the time of apprenticeship for masons and car-
penters was six to seven years. Its duration eventually decreased as
technical and social advancements brought about a greater divison of
labor and a greater emphais was given to specialization.
In an era when teaching in general and mathematics in particular
were barely developed, the builders, more than any other craftsmen,
possessed true secrets. Teaching in part came in the form of a profes-
sional initiation that included the knowledge of natural forces, the