High on a granite esplanade at the foot of Sierra de Guadarama outside Madrid, stands an imposing edifice - the monastery of San Lorenzo El Escorial. Intended simultaneously as a Palace, basilica, mausoleum and monastery, this impressive architectural mass was constructed at the behest of King Philip II, at the height of the Spanish Empire. It was from here that the doomed invasion of England was plotted - the Spanish Armada of 1588. However, this imperious building has other reasons to be famous - not least, that it greatly influenced European architecture in the seventeenth-century, a period that also witnessed the emergence of our modern craft.
    Preparations for the construction of the Escorial began in 1559, when the master builder, Juan de Toledo, was recalled from Italy, where he had been working as an assistant to Michelangelo. After a disastrous journey which resulted in sickness and repeated bouts of depression, Toledo's initial plans were criticised and soon modified by the military engineer Francesco Paciotto. The first stone was laid on the southern façade on 23 April 1563, but the exact reason for the choice of this site are still unclear. The practical advantages were obvious, for Philip wanted to avoid the midsummer heat of Madrid, which was frequently plagued with malaria epidemics. However there were also symbolic reasons, for it is thought that he was against positioning the monastery on the top of the mountain in order to avoid becoming a second tower of Babel. Moreover, it is also known that he commissioned a group of stonemasons, architects, astronomers, astrologers, and theologians to decide on the ideal place. In this light, it is no coincidence that the building is aligned to the sunset on 10 August - being the feast day of Saint Lawrence the Martyr - to whom the complex is dedicated. Indeed, the symbol of the gridiron recurs throughout the whole complex, as it was traditionally believed that St. Lawrence had been roasted to death on one; even the masons trowels were impractically carved cut in its shape.
    Architecturally, the ground plan and elevation of the building, can be reduced to two geometrical figures: the square and the rectangle; the whole complex was based on the Temple of Solomon and conceived as a large cube. From medieval times and especially during the Renaissance, scholars were fascinated with the ancient world and its classical temples, but pre-eminent among these was the biblical account of the Temple of Solomon. As work on the building got underway, a talented young architect and polymath, Juan de Herrera, was appointed to assist Juan de Toledo. Herrera would later take overall charge of the project.
    The building displays a good deal of symbolism which is instantly recognisable to modern freemasons. For instance, the church contains the symbols of the four evangelists; an angel for St. Matthew, a bull for St. Luke, a lion for St. Mark and an eagle for St. John. The four cardinal virtues are also depicted; Temperance, Fortitude, Prudence and Justice, as well as Faith, Hope and Charity. Marquetry doors inside the Palace look distinctly masonic, and appear to show a missing stone in a broken arch, revealing a vault beneath, containing builders tools and platonic bodies.
    In the main square courtyard before the library, stands a facade of six life-size statues of old Testament builder Kings as mentioned in Chronicles and Kings. In the middle appears David, holding a harp and sword, symbols of the musician and warrior king, while Solomon is depicted with book in hand, being the prototype of a wise King. To the right stands Manasseh holding a large square and compasses, while Josiah brandishes a scroll rediscovered during the reconstruction of the Temple. To the left is Hezekiah, shown holding a navicula and with a goat between his legs, which symbolises the restoration of the sacrificial altar he ordered to be built during his reign. (It is interesting to note that Freemasons in Ireland, when "on the Square", are often said to be "riding the goat"). The last figure in the grouping is Josaphat with an axe in his left hand, since he commanded that the woods in which the people worshipped the false gods be cut down, and a lamb and loaves of bread at his feet, since he reintroduced the practices of sacrifices in the temple.

The Library

These six royal figures, standing as if guardians to a gateway of learning, face the entrance to the library which is situated on the opposite side of the quadrangle. Here, Philip II instructed his architect to create a magnificent library in an attempt to surpass the Vatican's in Rome. Indeed, he was the first of many to endow the library with his personal collection and innumerable purchases were made all over Europe. Today the library possesses more than forty-five thousand volumes together with five thousand manuscripts in Latin, Greek, Arabic, Hebrew, Chinese, Persian, Turkish, Armenian and Nahuatl, covering a vast array of topics, but chiefly specialising in medicine, geometry, music and astronomy. Many deal with Platonism, astrology, Hermeticism and alchemy, subjects which enthralled both the king and his master builder. Terrestrial and celestial globes were also collected, together with maps, mathematical and scientific instruments, and sets of portraits of pontiffs, emperors, kings and scholars. The library has an extravagant ceiling devised by Philip's librarian, Arias Montano, and painted by Pellegrino Tibaldi. It depicts the seven liberal arts, together with Philosophy and Theology, and appears to have been an attempt to reconcile Christian orthodoxy with Platonism and Hermetic lore.
    Like the King, Juan de Herrera was fascinated with this subject matter. He had travelled widely, was fluent in Latin, and well versed in mathematics, architecture, astronomy and mechanics as well as being an accomplished draughtsman and sculptor. He was an admirer of the medieval Catalan philosopher and alchemist, Raymond Lull, and owned a fantastic library of his own with many works on esoteric subjects. He had copies of a number of Hermetic works, as well as tomes by medieval Arab philosophers such as Geber and Avicenna. His collection also extended to the Renaissance philosophers, including Marsilio Ficino, Pico Della Mirandola, Paracelsus, Giordano Bruno and the English Elizabethan magus, John Dee.
    In 1582, he was a prime mover in the establishment of the Academy of Mathematics in Madrid, and two years later, as a letter in his own hand reveals, he was busy trying to purchase “every possible work by Hermes Trismegistus available in Latin”. He wrote a mathematical treatise dealing with the magical properties of the cube, and one of the many works listed in his library was “A copy of the treatise that was made on Solomon's Temple in manuscript”. Significantly, when the church of the Escorial came to be built, Herrera suggested imitating Solomon's master builder, Hiram, by having all the stonework dressed and prepared at the quarry site.

Influence of the Escorial

It is not generally realised, that the Escorial's influence on European architecture in the seventeenth-century was considerable, and it should be also remembered that King Philip II actually became King of England when he married Mary Tudor at Winchester in 1554. Rather curiously, during his brief stay in London, Philip met the astrologer and magus John Dee and it is therefore not altogether surprising to discover that both he and Herrera owned copies of Dee's works in their respective collections.
    Furthermore, one of Herrera's students was the Jesuit, Juan Bautista Villalpando, who was also responsible for producing a popular reconstruction of Solomon’s Temple together with drawings of the Temple of Ezekiel’s vision in 1604. These famous reconstructions of the Temple influenced numerous scholars, architects and master builders well into the eighteenth-century; in England these included such figures as Inigo Jones, Rabbi Jehudah Leon and Sir Christopher Wren. Indeed, when Charles I travelled to Spain during the 1630s, accompanied by the Duke of Buckingham, he was greatly impressed by the Spanish royal palaces and art collections. He even attempted at one stage to try and recruit the Surveyor of the Spanish Royal Works to his own service and later instructed Inigo Jones to prepare designs for rebuilding the whole of the Whitehall Palace. These are known to reflect the influence of the Escorial. Unfortunately, due to the outbreak of the English Civil War, they were never realised. However, even during Charles' incarceration at Carisbrooke Castle on the Isle of Wight, it is known that he spent a good deal of time consulting Inigo Jones' personal copy of Villalpando's work on Solomon’s Temple. After his execution, building in England almost halted, but upon the restoration of Charles II in 1660, numerous construction projects began to flourish - when builders and their patrons once again began to look back to buildings such as the Escorial for inspiration and guidance.

© Text and Photographs, Matthew Scanlan, 2001

Matthew Scanlan, MA, is International Editor of Freemasonry Today. He is a member of the Duke of Wharton Research Lodge, No.18, Barcelona and the Centro Estudios Historicos de la Masoneria Española (CEHME) in Zaragoza.