Note 222 — Chapter I · PRIESTS AND POPES ACCUSED OF MAGIC

Éliphas Lévi, in his defence of the Catholic Religion, by which he means that of Rome, reminds one of Talleyrand proceeding to consecrate and entreating his familiars about him not to make him laugh: in the symbolic language of the man in the street, his tongue is so evidently in his cheek. An open enemy of Rome would think twice before saying that the pope who authorised the instruments which were used in the execrable massacres of Albigensians and Vaudois was “so eminently catholic.”