The Provost and Judge is the seventh degree of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite and the fourth in the Lodge of Perfection. Its subject is justice: how to judge fairly, how to resist pressure and flattery, and how to remember that every act has consequences that cannot be undone. Of all the early Scottish Rite degrees it is perhaps the easiest to apply to ordinary life, because almost everyone is called upon at some point to judge other people.
The degree at a glance
- Body: Lodge of Perfection (4°–14°).
- Degree: 7°, Provost and Judge (historically called Irish Master).
- Setting: the tribunal that, in the legend, King Solomon set up after Hiram’s death to settle disputes among the thousands of workmen building the Temple.
- Principal figures: Zabud, now serving as a Provost and Judge, and two workmen who bring a dispute before him, Naboth and Uriah.
- Symbolic colour: red, here recalling the violent death of Hiram rather than the zeal it stands for in other degrees.
- In the Northern Masonic Jurisdiction: the degree keeps the name Provost and Judge and the same theme, a dispute among the workmen in which honesty and justice prevail, teaching that impartial justice protects a person’s property, happiness and reputation.
The lesson
With the master builder dead, somebody has to keep order on the Temple site. In the legend, as Rex Hutchens summarises it in A Bridge to Light, King Solomon appoints Provosts and Judges to hear complaints, settle disputes and apply one law to Hebrew and Phoenician workmen alike. The chief judge holds the key to an ebony box in which the tribunal’s records are kept.
The drama tests that ideal. A foreman, Naboth, has hired Phoenician labourers, and some of the Hebrew workmen object to their presence on sacred ground. Naboth comes to Zabud hoping for a favourable hearing and hints that he could help Zabud’s career in return. Uriah, speaking for the objecting workmen, arrives next and asks the judge to remove the foreigners. Zabud sends both men away. A judge, he makes clear, cannot be bought with promises of advancement, and cannot be asked to take sides on religious grounds or to use powers that are not his. Friendship and fellowship stop at the door of the court.
From this short scene the degree draws a series of principles about the office of judge, which Hutchens lists: a judge must be impartial, cautious, merciful and of good character; only a false judge excuses in himself what he condemns in others; he must understand the weight of his responsibility and know the law he applies; and no one should judge others unless he is willing to stand under the same judgment.
Albert Pike’s lecture in Morals and Dogma widens the subject far beyond the courtroom. He argues that injustice comes in two kinds, the harm we do and the harm we could have prevented but did not, and that it works either by force or by fraud, “of which force is lion-like, and fraud fox-like”. His most sobering point is that a wrong, once done, can never be undone: its consequences follow as naturally as “the acorn contains the oak”. And because we can see only a person’s actions and never the temptations he resisted, Pike urges great humility in judging anyone. We can tell, he says, who has the cleanest hands before men, “but not which has the cleanest soul before God”.
Duties of the degree
A Bridge to Light gives the degree a single duty and two lessons:
- Duty: let justice be the guide of all your actions. Not only in formal decisions, but in business, in the family and in the lodge.
- Lesson: all actions have consequences. What is done cannot be taken back, so think before acting.
- Lesson: be just in judging other people’s motives. Assume the best where the facts allow it, and remember how little of another person’s struggle is visible from outside.
Pike sums up the degree with the familiar words of Matthew 7:1–2, “Judge not, lest ye yourselves be judged”, and describes them as the lesson taught to the Provost and Judge. Hutchens adds that justice can only be truly practised by someone who is also charitable.
Symbols and regalia
The apron is white lambskin edged in red. In the centre is a red-edged pocket with a red and white rosette just below its opening; in the legend the pocket holds the plans of the Temple. On the flap is embroidered a hand of justice holding a pair of scales.
The jewel is a gold key, the key to the ebony box. Albert Mackey’s Encyclopedia of Freemasonry explains the box as a symbol of the human heart, where, in his words, “are deposited the secret designs and motives of our conduct by which we propose to erect the spiritual temple of our lives”. The key, says Hutchens, represents the justice and uprightness that alone can open the way to the teachings of the higher degrees.
The cordon is a broad crimson watered ribbon, worn from right to left, from which the jewel hangs. The gloves shown above complete the regalia pictured on this page.
Other important symbols are the equal balance, which warns us to weigh carefully, the triangle, which represents the Deity together with justice, equity and impartiality, and the colour red.
History. The degree began life in eighteenth-century France as the Irish Master. Hutchens explains that it was worked by lodges claiming a charter from Ireland, which asserted a right to inspect ordinary lodges; their jewel, a key, symbolised that authority. Mackey adds that it has been claimed as one of the degrees attributed to the Chevalier Ramsay, a claim he reports without endorsing. When the 25-degree Rite of Perfection was assembled in the mid-1700s, the Irish Master became its seventh degree under the name Provost and Judge, and Albert Pike later rewrote the ritual to centre it on the moral lesson of justice.
Reflections
The question A Bridge to Light asks of this degree is a good one: are the duties of a judge a burden or an honour?
The degree suggests they are both. Zabud’s position brings respect, but it also isolates him: he must refuse a friend’s favour, disappoint a fellow worker and accept that someone will leave his court unhappy. Pike reminds his readers that most of us judge others every day, in conversation, at work and in the lodge, usually without the evidence or the care a court would demand. Seen in that light, the Provost and Judge is less about holding an office than about the habit of fairness, applied to everyone and most strictly to ourselves.
Please view the video on the left, for a more detailed explanation of the 7th° Degree.
Sources:
– Rex R. Hutchens, A Bridge to Light: The Revised Standard Pike Ritual, 4th edition, edited by Arturo de Hoyos (Washington, D.C.: The Supreme Council, 33°, S.J., 2010), chapter “The 7th Degree – Provost and Judge”. Purchase ‘A Bridge To Light‘ by Rex R. Hutchens
– Albert Pike, Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry (1871), lecture VII “Provost and Judge”. Purchase ‘Morals & Dogma‘ by Albert Pike.
– Albert G. Mackey, Encyclopedia of Freemasonry: entries “Ebony Box” and “Provost and Judge”.
– Scottish Rite, Northern Masonic Jurisdiction, “Scottish Rite 7th Degree”: https://scottishritenmj.org/degrees/degrees-7