Clepsammia: Thief of Sand

Hourglass, ca. 1700. Italy. Gift of Mrs. Willis R. Michael, 85.108.20. Photograph by David Bohl.

As the remaining hours of 2022 run down, let’s investigate this unusual hourglass in the collection of the Scottish Rite Masonic Museum & Library. Called clepsammia, meaning thief of sand, sand hourglasses are an early method of keeping time. Devices using a fixed amount of sand to measure time were likely first developed in the 1300s, but the need for contained, reliable, and stable timekeeping on ships to aid with navigation helped popularize clepsammia during the Age of Sail (roughly 1650-1850).

Before the invention of the modern clock, hourglasses were used in churches to time sermons, in government offices to time speeches, and in factories to time work shifts. These useful items came in many types, materials, and sizes. A common form of hourglass was intended to measure one hour and was constructed of two glass bulbs, often set in a frame, that were joined with wax and cord.

Another kind of hourglass, used to mark the quarter hour, featured four horizontally-oriented glass bulbs. Each bulb contained either 15-, 30-, 45-, or 60-minutes’ worth of sand. As each ran out, the user could track quarter hours. The vertically-oriented hourglass held by the museum is an unusual form. The sand flows through two glass bulbs - one shaped into four equal chambers and another larger bulb. There seem to be only a few existing examples of this type of hourglass. One is in the collection at the Louvre.

The museum’s clepsammia was crafted in Italy, around 1700. The “sand” is actually powdered stone contained within the glass bulbs, fixed within a wooden frame covered with decorated paper. Compared to beach sand, which has angular edges, powdered stone flows smoothly through the apertures between bulbs. In one direction, the material moves from the largest bulb down, filling first one bulb, then the next in fifteen-minute intervals. When flipped over, the sand empties from each bulb, again in fifteen-minute intervals. This hourglass stands ten inches tall and, at over three hundred years old, is in good condition for its age.

This clepsammia is part of a collection of clocks, watches, tools, and books donated by Ruth Michael of York, Pennsylvania. Her gift of more than 140 items from the collection that she and her husband, Willis R. Michael, assembled over many years forms the core of the museum’s horological holdings. If you’d like to learn more about timepieces in the museum’s collection, you can see more examples in this Flickr album. You can also see this hourglass in action in the video below.

The Plight of Italian Freemasonry in the Post-War Years

Today, we highlight a document from the Scottish Rite Masonic & Library’s archives. President Harry S. Truman wrote this letter to the Scottish Rite Northern Masonic Jurisdiction’s Sovereign Grand Commander Melvin Maynard Johnson in 1948.

Letter from President Harry S. Truman to Melvin M. Johnson, 1948 August 3.

August 3, 1948 I am grateful to you for forwarding with your letter of July thirteenth, copy of a document – CIVIL TRIBUNAL OF ROME – CITATION ACT. I had been hopeful that we could arrive at an amicable adjustment regarding the Masonic property in Italy. I was, however, apprehensive after receiving Ambassador Dunn’s report, copy of which I forwarded to you. The Citation Act, text of which you sent, particularly paragraph eight, page eighteen, is most informative. With legal complications going back more than twenty years when Mussolini ordered the dissolution of the Masonic Lodges and seized their property, I fear court action now pending will be a long drawn out process. However, I shall continue to do everything possible to bring about restoration. I know you will keep me informed of any developments which come to your attention. Sincerely yours, Harry Truman Honorable Melvin M. Johnson, 1117 Statler Building, Boston 16, Massachusetts.

As Commander Johnson noted in his 1950 Allocution, Freemasonry had “led a precarious existence” in Italy since its inception in the early eighteenth century. However, since the rise of the Fascist regime of Benito Mussolini starting in 1922, matters had only grown worse for Italy’s brethren. Throughout late 1923 and into early 1924, Fascist troops victimized Masonic lodges. Among the many losses were the temples of Lodge Giuseppe Mazzoni in Prato and Lodge Ferruccio in Pistoria, which were demolished, and the great Masonic library of Lodge Ernesto Nathan in Termoli, which was destroyed. Tensions in Italy during this period between its Freemasons and the government had risen to a boil, and The Builder reported in its September 1927 edition that a “nation-wide persecution was launched” against the supposed enemies of the state, Italy’s Freemasons and socialists.

These events and many others culminated in the passage of Mussolini’s anti-Masonic bill, Law No. 2029/1925, on May 19, 1925, which essentially banned the fraternity in Italy. Six months later, Fascist police occupied Palazzo Giustiniani, the grand sixteenth-century Renaissance building and seat of the Grand Orient of Italy in Rome. A few months later, on January 29, 1926, the ministry of public instruction declared the Grand Orient’s 1911 purchase agreement for the building null and void.

As President Truman noted in his letter to Johnson, the process to return Masonic property was a “long drawn out process" after the war. The matter was finally settled in 1960 in an out of court settlement mediated by American ambassador James David Zellerbach. Starting that year, the Grand Orient of Italy regained use of a wing in the Palazzo Giustiniani. Twenty-five years later, in 1985, the organization moved to its current location, the Villa del Vascello on the Janiculan, a hill in western Rome.

As for Truman and Johnson, these two Freemasons, along with many other American and European Freemasons, helped European Freemasonry rise from the ashes after the war.  

 

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Captions

Letter from President Harry S. Truman to Melvin M. Johnson, 1948 August 3. Collection of the Scottish Rite Masonic Museum and Library, SC 069.

 

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References

“Freemasonry and Fascism in Italy.” The Builder 8, no. 8 (1927) : 244-248. Accessed: 11 March 2022. http://www.phoenixmasonry.org/the_builder_1927_august.htm

“Freemasonry and Fascism in Italy.” The Builder 8, no. 9 (1927) : 257-264. Accessed: 11 March 2022. http://www.phoenixmasonry.org/the_builder_1927_september.htm

“Grande Oriente d'Italia,” n.d. Accessed: 11 March 2022. https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grande_Oriente_d%27Italia

Johnson, Melvin M. Advance copy of the allocution of the M. P. Sovereign Grand Commander Melvin M. Johnson, 33° : to be delivered at the one hundred thirty-eight Annual Meeting of the Supreme Council, 33° : Philadelphia, Pennsylvania : September 26, 1950. [Boston, Mass.] : Supreme Council 33°, Northern Masonic Jurisdiction, U.S.A., 1950.