page_title: Rosslyn Chapel
section_title: Apprentice pillar
hierarchical_section_title: Rosslyn Chapel / Architecture / Apprentice pillar
caption_attribution_description: The Apprentice Pillar, which is said to be tied to Freemasonic legend.
context_page_description: Rosslyn Chapel, formerly known as the Collegiate Chapel of St Matthew, is a 15th-century chapel located in the village of Roslin, Midlothian, Scotland.
  Rosslyn Chapel was founded on a small hill above Roslin Glen as a Catholic collegiate church in the mid-15th century. The chapel was founded by William Sinclair, 1st Earl of Caithness of the Scoto-Norman Sinclair family. Rosslyn Chapel is the third Sinclair place of worship at Roslin, the first being in Roslin Castle and the second in what is now Roslin Cemetery.
  Sinclair founded the college to celebrate the Divine Office throughout the day and night, and also to celebrate Masses for all the faithful departed, including the deceased members of the Sinclair family. During this period, the rich heritage of plainsong or polyphony were used to enrich the singing of the liturgy. Sinclair provided an endowment to pay for the support of the priests and choristers in perpetuity. The priests also had parochial responsibilities.
  After the Scottish Reformation, Catholic worship in the chapel was brought to an end. The Sinclair family continued to be Catholics until the early 18th century.
context_section_description: One of the more notable architectural features of the Chapel is the "Apprentice Pillar, or "Prentice Pillar".  Originally called the "Prince's Pillar" (in the 1778 document An Account of the Chapel of Roslin) the name morphed over time due to a legend dating from the 18th century, involving the master mason in charge of the stonework in the chapel and his young apprentice mason. According to the legend, the master mason did not believe that the apprentice could perform the complicated task of carving the column without seeing the original which formed the inspiration for the design.
  The master mason travelled to see the original himself, but upon his return was enraged to find that the upstart apprentice had completed the column by himself. In a fit of jealous anger, the master mason took his mallet and struck the apprentice on the head, killing him. The legend concludes that as punishment for his crime, the master mason's face was carved into the opposite corner to forever gaze upon his apprentice's pillar. There is however, no evidence that any such murder took place.
  On the architrave joining the pillar there is an inscription, Forte est vinum fortior est rex fortiores sunt mulieres super omnia vincit veritas: "Wine is strong, a king is stronger, women are stronger still, but truth conquers all" (1 Esdras, chapters 3 & 4).
  The author Henning Klovekorn has proposed that the pillar is representative of one of the roots of the Nordic Yggdrasil tree, prominent in Germanic and Norse mythology. He compares the dragons at the base of the pillar to the dragons found eating away at the base of the Yggdrasil root and, pointing out that at the top of the pillar is carved tree foliage, argues that the Nordic/Viking association is plausible considering the many auxiliary references in the chapel to Celtic and Norse mythology.
  The general form of the pillar has been related to a type described by the French architect Eugène Viollet-le-Duc as a "bunch of sausages."
  A full-size plaster cast of the Apprentice Pillar and the adjacent bay of the chapel was made in 1871, and is in the Cast Courts of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.
caption: The Apprentice Pillar
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