Bacon's DictionaryAppendices

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The exhibits and miniatures of which are found in this section, are designed to assist the serious student and reader in following the path of the Authorship Controvesy that has been so laboriously persued by many authors and researchers during its commence.

These exhibits have been placed here as not to interrupt the flow of reading in the Baconian Dictionary sections, being a finding list of Bacon’s works, his history, his thoughts and his aims, which are a subject of study and discussion.

Mason Etymology

Hutchinson, in his search for a derivation, seems to have been perplexed with the variety of roots that presented themselves, and, being inclined to believe that the name of Mason “has its derivation from a language in which it implies some strong indication or distinction of the nature of the society, and that it has no relation to architects,” looks for the root in the Greek tongue. Thus he thinks that the word Mason may come from Mao Soon, “I seek salvation, or from Mystes, an initiate” and that Masonry is only a corruption of Mesouraneo, “I am in the midst of heaven;” or from Mazourouth, a constellation mentioned by Job, or from Mysterion [Greek], “a mystery.” Lessing says, in his Ernst und Folk that Masa in the Anglo-Saxon signifies a table, and that Masonry, consequently, is a society of the table. Nicolai thinks he finds the root in the Low Latin word of the Middle Ages Massonya, or Masonia, which signifies an exclusive society or club, such as that of the round-table.

Coming down to later times, we find C.W. Moore, in his Boston Magazine, of May 1844, deriving Mason from Lithotomos, [Greek] “a Stone-cutter.” But although fully aware of the elasticity of etymological rules, it surpasses our ingenuity to get Mason etymologically out of Lithotomos. Giles F. Yates sought for the derivation of Mason in the Greek word Mazones, a festival of Dionysus, and he thought that this was another proof of the lineal descent of the Masonic order from the Dionysiac Artificers. William S. Rockwell, who was accustomed to find all his Masonry in the Egyptian mysteries, and who was a thorough student of the Egyptian hieroglyphic system, derives the word Mason from a combination of two phonetic signs, the one being MAI, and signifying “to love,” and the other being SON, which means “a brother.” Hence, he says, “this combination, MAISON, expresses exactly in sound our word MASON, and signifies literally loving brother, that is, philadelphus, brother of an association, and thus corresponds also in sense.”

But all of these fanciful etymologies, which would have terrified Bopp, Grimm, or Muller, or any other student of linguistic relations, forcibly remind us of the French epigrammatist, who admitted that alphina came from equus, but that, in so coming, it had very considerably changed its route. What, then, is the true derivation of the word Mason? Let us see what the orthoepists, who had no Masonic theories, have said upon the subject.

Webster, seeing that in Spanish “masa” means “mortar”, is inclined to derive Mason, as denoting one that works in mortar, from the root of “mass”, which of course gave birth to the Spanish word. In Low or Mediaeval Latin, Mason was “machio” or “macio”, and this Du Cange derives from the Latin “maceria”, [a long wall]. Others find a derivation in “machince”, because the builders stood upon machines to raise their walls. But Richardson takes a common sense view of the subject. He says, “It appears to be obviously the same word as “maison”, a house or mansion, applied to the person who builds, instead of the thing built. The French “maissoner” is to build houses; “masonner”, to build of stone. The word “Mason” is applied by usage to a builder in stone, and “Masonry” to work in stone.” Carpenter gives “massom”, used in 1225, for a building of stone, and “massonus”, used in 1304, for a “mason”; and the Benedictine editors of Du Cange define Massoneria “a building, the French “maconnerie”, and “massonerius,” as Latomus or a Mason, both words in manuscripts of 1385.

As a practical question, we are compelled to reject all those fanciful derivations which connect the Masons etymologically and historically with the Greeks, the Egyptians, or the Druids, and to take the word Mason in its ordinary signification of a worker in stone, and thus indicate the origin of the Order from a Society or Association of practical and operative builders. We need no better root than the Mediaeval Latin “Maconner”, to build, or “Maconetus”, a builder. (Mackey). 1 The Concise Dictionary of English Etymology gives it as follows:

Mason. (F.=Low L.=G.?) O.F. masson; F. maçon. = Low L. macionem, acc. Of macio, macho, maco, mactio, mattio, matio. Perhaps from M.H.G. mezzo, a mason, whence G. steinmetz, a stone-mason; allied to O.H.G. meizan, to hew, cut (whence G. meissel, a chisel). + Icel. meita, to hew, Goth. maitan, to hew, cut, a strong verb. (Base MIT.)

De Quincey writes: “The immediate Father of Freemasonry was the author of the Summum Bonum, the work of a Friend of Fludd.” Robert Fludd being one of Francis Bacon’s fieldworkers propagating Rosicrucian Principles. According to Dodd, 2 Robert Fludd “lived for a time at Stratford and was responsible for the Stratford Monument with its Rosicrosse Signals in conjunction with Francis Bacon’s intimate friend, George Carew, whose influence in Stratford was paramount, and his cousin, Sir Anthony Cook, who also lived in the neighbourhood.” Robert Fludd, or, as he called himself in his Latin writings, Robertas de Fluctibus, was in the seventeenth century a prominent member of the Rosicrucian Fraternity. He was born in England in 1574, and having taken the degrees of Bachelor and Master of Arts at St. John’s College, Oxford, he commenced the study of physic, and in due time took the degree of Doctor of Medicine. He died in 1637. [Also see Part II: Fludd Robert.]