maçonnerie

Maçonnerie is Old French, from maçon (mason, stone-worker), probably from Frankish *makjo (one who makes) or from a Vulgar Latin *matio (mason). The word named the trade of cutting, shaping, and laying stone to build walls, arches, and structures. A mason was a maker. Masonry was what he made. The word was as practical and unpretentious as the trade itself — stones cut to fit, mortar mixed to hold, walls built to stand.

Medieval masonry was organized into guilds. Masons were divided into 'rough masons' (who cut and laid rough stone) and 'freemasons' (who carved the fine, decorative stone — freestone — that did not require reinforcement). The freemasons were the elite of the trade. They traveled between cathedral sites, carrying their tools and their knowledge of geometry with them. Their guild had signs, passwords, and rituals that allowed members to prove their qualifications at distant worksites.

In the seventeenth century, Freemasonry — the fraternal organization — adopted the symbols and terminology of the operative masons' guild while admitting members who had never cut stone. The square, the compass, the plumb line, the level — these tools became symbols of moral and philosophical principles. The word masonry split: operative masonry (building with stone) and speculative masonry (the fraternal order). The builders' trade became a metaphor for building character.

Masonry as a construction trade has declined in the developed world. Concrete, steel, and glass have replaced stone in most new construction. But masonry walls still stand from Roman aqueducts to medieval cathedrals to nineteenth-century brownstones. The oldest human-made structures on earth — the pyramids, Stonehenge, the walls of Jericho — are masonry. The Old French word for building with stone named the construction method that has lasted longer than any other.