THE CRAFT GUILDS OF FRANCE.
209
century, •when their scattered fragments were absorbed by the city guilds." (Here he evidently
alludes to the bodies of travelling masons, with special papal privileges, whose veiy existence
in this sense
is
problematical.)
"At length, in 1539, Francis
I.
abolished
guilds of
all
workmen,
and, in France, thus perished Freemasonry, according to the old signification of the word."
The inaccuracy
number of these
of this
historian
is
still
fraternities diminished
more glaringly evident in a
degrees in almost all countries,
by
—
later work,
and
"
^
The
in France they
were dissolved in 1539, by edict of Francis I., for having persisted in the revindication of their
ancient privileges, but particularly for having given umbrage to the clergy by the purity of
their religious ideas
and
secret reunions."
^
The gravamen
of the charges against the frater-
was the lad, not the good use they made of their secret meetings, in conspiring against
the supremacy in trade matters of the State, and in buttressing the pernicious monopolies of
the masters and when a hundred and twenty years later some of these came into collision
nities
;
with the clergy, it was not on account of the purity of their religious ideas, but was entirely
due to the travesties of religion exhibited in their rites and ceremonies.^ These writers, instead
would have done
of following blind guides,
statutes,
The
and drawn from the fountainhead.
attempted
infinitely better
had they turned
truth of the matter simply
is,
French
to the
that Francis
I.
(though unsuccessfully) to suppress the fraternities, but he never sought to abolish
on the contrary, the same law acknowledges their legality by regulating them.
the guilds;
Both the guilds and the fraternities survived him for two centuries and more.
A translation of a few of the most important paragraphs of the ordinance
will
show
its
real character.
"
artisans shall be abo Ɨ6