ONE DAY ELEMENTS CAME TOGETHER, AND MASONRY BECAME A PRESENCE

Above all, we are ruled by our human nature. We are curious creatures, creatures of imagination with an insatiable appetite for the newest form of communication.  The 15th century accelerated how and what we communicated producing a means to distribute ideas.  In the 14th century, Wm Wycliffe was creating quite a stir, translating the Bible directly from Hebrew daring to step on the authority of clerics. Exercising a robust authority over people echoed the earliest days of  Christianity when it had no power. As an idea, it competed for followers with other ideas. There was never an exit plan to reach a point where dominion over the people by church bureaucracy would be complete. Since the impact of Constantine at Nicean 325, the Christian church had felt this insecurity warranted control. Catholic and Protestant factions battled for supremacy wielding wealth against one another and the will of the people, even against King and Country.  The 14th century was a watershed period.  It began with existence and the universe being defined by scripture controlled by an elite and in an inaccessible language (Latin).   It ended with observation being the threshold for understanding- the age of scientific inquiry exploded onto Europe. Change is always a lumpy affair. Slivers begin in forward-thinking minorities,  with marginalized holdouts thinking progress is either good or bad, resisting what they choose to deny. This is how the Craft not so much discovered but valued study of the symbolism of the Arts and Sciences. Symbolic communication conveyed profound messages of a humanist movement in a rush to confirm individual responsibility for our destiny.  It was truly the Enlightenment.