Note 259 — Chapter V · SOME FAMOUS SORCERERS AND MAGICIANS

The interpretation of the Divine Comedy as embodying an act of war against the papacy was begun by Gabriele Rossetti, about 1830, in his Disquisitions on the Anti-Papal Spirit which produced the Reformation. For the obscure and dubious tenets to which Éliphas Lévi gives the name of Johannite, he substitutes the doctrines of Albigenses and Waldenses. The same thesis, taken over from its Italian deviser, was maintained in the same interest by Eugène Aroux, firstly in Les Mystêres de la Chevalerie, and afterwards in the great body of annotation attached to his translation of Dante. The latter work appeared in 1856. The interpretation of Lévi is a variant of that of Aroux. The disquisitions of the French writer are a fountain of joy for criticism. He produced yet another monument, being Dante, Hérétique, Revolutionnaire et Socialiste, 1854. He was a devoted member of the Latin Church, though I think that there would have been joy among the faithful had his books been burnt at Rome.