The Fellow Craft

Learning objectives

• Explain the position of the Fellow Craft degree between the Entered Apprentice and the Master Mason.
• Describe the operative fellow of the medieval and early modern building trade and the meaning of the word “fellow”.
• Interpret the traditional link between the second degree and the stage of human maturity.
• Recognise why the theme of knowledge stands at the centre of the degree.

The second degree of Freemasonry is often treated as a passage, a brief stop on the way from the first degree to the third. This course takes a different view. The Fellow Craft degree contains more explicit teaching than either of the other two, and it sets out a programme of study that can occupy a whole life. To understand it well, the learner must first understand its place in the sequence of the degrees, its roots in the working world of the builder, and the human situation it is meant to describe.

In most Masonic systems the three Craft degrees form a single, connected story. The first degree receives the candidate, teaches him the basic duties of a Mason and asks him to master himself. The third degree confronts him with mortality, fidelity and the hope that lies beyond death. The second degree stands between these two poles. It is the degree in which the candidate, now accepted and instructed, is turned outward toward the world and invited to understand it. Many brethren describe it simply as the degree of learning.

The operative fellow

The title of the degree comes directly from the building trade. In medieval and early modern Europe, the craft of the mason was organised by custom and, in many places, by written regulation. A young person entered the trade as an apprentice, bound to a master for a long period of training. During this time the apprentice learned by watching, assisting and repeating, and was not yet trusted to work independently. When the training was complete and the apprentice had shown sufficient skill, he could be admitted as a fellow of the craft.

The word “fellow” in older English meant a companion, a partner or an equal. A fellow of the craft was a member in full standing: a qualified worker who could take paid employment, cut stone to a pattern, and work beside other skilled men as their equal. The same idea appears in other European languages. The French compagnon and the German Geselle both describe the qualified worker who has left apprenticeship behind but has not yet become an independent master. The English word “journeyman”, from the French journée, a day, refers to the same stage, since such a worker was paid by the day.

Scottish records give a particularly clear picture of this structure. The Schaw Statutes of 1598, issued by William Schaw as Master of Works to the Scottish crown, regulated the lodges of masons and set out the relationship between apprentices, fellows of craft and masters. They required a long period of apprenticeship, usually seven years, and expected further service before a worker could be received as a fellow. Historians value these statutes because they show lodges as real, organised bodies with records, officers and rules, more than a century before the first Grand Lodge.

It is worth noting a point of historical detail that often surprises modern Masons. In the earliest speculative lodges, and in the first printed Constitutions of 1723, the grade of Fellow Craft was the highest grade a member normally received. The Master of a lodge was chosen from among the Fellow Crafts, and the separate degree of Master Mason appears in the records only in the mid-1720s. Historians continue to debate exactly how the third degree emerged, but most agree that the Fellow Craft was once the full, mature member of the Craft. The modern degree still carries something of that dignity.

Manhood and maturity

Masonic teaching has long compared the three degrees with the three great stages of human life: youth, manhood and age. The Entered Apprentice represents the time of youth, when a person is formed by instruction and discipline. The Master Mason represents age, when a person must face the end of life and consider what he has built. The Fellow Craft represents the long middle period, the years of full strength in which a person works, takes responsibility and grows in understanding.

This comparison should not be read too literally. A candidate for the second degree may be young or old, and a person of any age can be at the beginning or the middle of his intellectual journey. The point of the comparison is not biological. It is that each degree describes an attitude. The apprentice receives; the fellow works and inquires; the master reflects and passes on. The second degree asks the candidate to accept the responsibilities of an adult mind, which include independent judgement, the patient search for truth, and the willingness to be corrected.

Maturity in this sense also involves a change in the relationship between the individual and the community. An apprentice depends on others for guidance. A fellow is expected to contribute. In the operative lodge, the fellow was trusted with a share of the building, and the quality of the whole structure depended in part on his work. In the speculative lodge, the Fellow Craft is likewise expected to bring something to the common life of the brethren, whether that is knowledge, effort, or simply reliable presence.

Why knowledge is the central theme

If the first degree is chiefly concerned with morality and self-control, the second is chiefly concerned with knowledge. Its symbols point again and again to learning: the tools that test whether work is true, the pillars at the threshold, the stairs that rise step by step, the orders of architecture, the senses, the liberal arts and sciences, and the letter that stands for geometry. A careful reader can see the degree as a kind of curriculum presented in symbolic form.

This emphasis reflects both operative and intellectual history. The operative fellow needed real knowledge to do his work, above all practical geometry, which allowed him to set out angles, proportions and curves. The speculative Freemasons of the eighteenth century lived in an age of scientific discovery, and many of them were interested in natural philosophy, mathematics and architecture. The Royal Society, founded in 1660, counted several early Freemasons among its fellows. It is not surprising that the degree they shaped gave such honour to learning.

The degree does not demand that every Fellow Craft become a scholar. It asks something both simpler and harder: that he should never stop learning, that he should prefer truth to comfortable opinion, and that he should use his knowledge to improve himself and to serve others. Knowledge in the Masonic sense is never merely a collection of facts. It is understanding joined to character. The lessons that follow examine each part of the degree in turn, always with this central purpose in view.

Key points

• The Fellow Craft degree is the degree of learning, standing between the self-discipline of the first degree and the reflection on mortality of the third.
• The operative fellow was a qualified craftsman in full standing, equivalent to the French compagnon, the German Geselle and the English journeyman.
• The Schaw Statutes of 1598 show organised Scottish lodges with apprentices, fellows of craft and masters, long before the first Grand Lodge.
• In the earliest speculative period the Fellow Craft was the senior grade; the separate Master Mason degree appears only in the mid-1720s.
• The comparison with manhood describes an attitude of responsibility and inquiry rather than a physical age.
• Knowledge joined to character is the central theme that unites the symbols of the degree.