Are Rosslyns Apprentice and Master Pillars really Masonic symbols, found in Masonic temples today?
If they are, Rosslyn had them first. Since modern Freemasonry did not exist before the Reformation (1560), whatever is to be found in modern Masonic buildings may be identical but was built a millennium and a half later. In fact, any Masonic-looking emblems in the Chapel were inserted in the 1860s when the Fourth Earl of Rosslyn, the Grand Master Mason of Scotland, was replacing damaged carvings in the Lady Chapel. Most were so eroded that there was no way of knowing what to replace them with, so the architect, the stonemason and the Fourth Earl designed and executed some mediaeval-looking stone bosses, which seemed to have Masonic meanings. For the legend of the Master and the Apprentice, see the previous section.
