THE STONEMASONS OF GERMANY.
wj
builders left the emjiloy of their masters, the monks, now grown opulent, fat, lazy, and vicious,
and unable to provide them with further work, and amalgamated with the craft builders in
the towns, and that the two together formed the society afterwards known throughout
Germany as the Steinmetzen. Many other causes may also have contributed to this end
—
such as the munificence of the prince bisliops, desirous of surpassing in their cathedrals the
of
sumptuous edifices of the abbots and priors; also the increasing importance and wealth
and pay more liberal the feasibility, in such places,
the towns, rendering work more certain
;
workman becoming an independent master, and acquiring a competence and possibly
the disgiist felt by the industrious workman at the vices of the degenerate monks, although I
am inclined to think that undue stress has been laid on this reason by German authors.
All German writers place the exodus from the convents at about this date, but they
of the
;
able to
generally ascribe the trade organisation also to the convent builders, and therefore are
with any previously existing stonemasons' guilds, quietly ignoring them altogether.
dispense
Passing this by, in the twelfth century we certainly do hear of the stonemasons as a distinct
cathedrals and churches and
fraternity, occupied in the construction of large edifices, chiefly
;
their origin either in the convents or the cities, and as I have attempted
And precisely as we find all trades inclined to
to show, probably in both simultaneously.
subdivide themselves, so did the Spinnewetter, who at first included all the building trades,
they must have had
resolve themselves into
component parts
;
but the particular branch of this union, denominated
masons, further divided itself into other ramifications
and we
;
find these subdivisions taking
the names of Steinmetze7i (stonemasons), Stcinhmtcr (stonehewers), and Maurcr (masons, rough
masons, bricklayers, etc.). It is with the first of these, the stonemasons, tiiat we have
principally to deal,
and whose subsequent
elucidated by their documents,
history, as
it
will
next be our business to investigate.
All documents anterior to a.d. 1459 relating to the Stonemasons of Germany, which have
hitherto been made known, throw very little light upon the subject, being either charters
similar to the one previously quoted, or contracts for quarrying stone,^ erecting buildings, etc.
We
have also one of 1257, being the grant of a plot of building land by the dean and chapter
of Cologne Cathedral to the Master Steinmetz Gerard, for the erection of a dwelling-house for
But none of these are capable of disclosing the inner life and organisation of the
himself.^
Heldmann, however, anxious to trace a code of Stcmmctz laws of which he had
and which is still religiously preserved under triple lock at Strassburg,^ made fruitless
heard,
endeavours to inspect it in 1817, but was fortunate enough later on to find a true copy
fraternity.
in the possession of Herr Osterrieth, which he fir.st published to the world in 1819,* in the
These laws or ordinances are commonly distinguished as the
original old German dialect.
"
Constitutions
"
sary to include
1563 and
Having been
(or code) of 1459.
them with the
1462— as
so frequently reprinted,
series of ordinances
the interested
which
will be unneces-
it
illustrate this chapter
reader can readily refer to
them
in one
—those
of
of the several
In the introduction we are informed, that for the greater advanpublications below noted.^
and to avoid disputes, the masters and
tage of their employers, as also of their own members,
"
1
Lacomblet, Urkunden fur Geschichte der Nieder Rheins,
' F.
5
Heldmann, Die
Findel, p. C60
psedia, p.
;
vol.
drei Aeltesten Geschiclitliclien Deiikmale,
Steinbrenner,
529 (Ordminfjen
lier
p.
84
SUinmetzen).
;
ii.,
i).
p.
liul-, vol.
381.
*
201.
Masonic Eclectic (New York, 1865),
vol.
i.,
p.
ii.,
p.
242.
Ibid., p. 203.
35
;
and Kcnning's Cyclo-