A SURVIVAL OF MEDIEVAL CREDULITY. 583 



ary deliberations were rendered piquant by dreadful blasphemies. 

 Thus General Cadorna, a renegade priest, parodied the consecra- 

 tion of the host with a piece of bread, which he finally threw into 

 the fire with the words, " In honor of Lucifer ! " Thereupon Luci- 

 fer rose up in person through the floor, gazed benignantly for a 

 moment on his faithful followers, and said, " The moment is come 

 for firing the third salvo of cannon." A month later General 

 Cadorna entered Rome through the breach of the Porta Via. La 

 Luciferian lingo, the first salvo was the Reformation and the second 

 the French Revolution, while the third victory of Satan was the 

 overthrow of the Pope's temporal power. 



Hacks relates that in Freiburg, Switzerland, there was a Ma- 

 sonic temple of Satan hewn in a rock and provided with altars and 

 all the paraphernalia of this cult. There men and women assem- 

 bled in the costume worn by our first parents before the fall. At- 

 tached to the lodge was a brothel, the scene of the most disgusting 

 debaucheries. One altar, in the form of a triangle with an image 

 of the demon Baphomet, was used for stabbing the body of Christ, 

 in the form of consecrated wafers, with a dagger. At this altar, 

 too, was said the so-called " black mass," an invention of the Grand 

 Master Holebrook and Albert Pike, of Charleston. During this 

 service hymns were sung to Satan. The consecrated wafers were 

 procured by Miss Lucia Claraz, of Freiburg, who stole them while 

 pretending to partake of the communion, and passed the night be- 

 fore committing the theft in the wildest orgies. This incredibly 

 foolish story was published in the Moniteur de Rome, against which 

 Miss Claraz, a lady " piously inclined and morally irreproachable," 

 according to the testimony of the Bishop of Freiburg, brought suit 

 for defamation. The court sentenced the editor, Monsignore 

 Voglin, to a fine of twenty-five thousand lire and four years' im- 

 prisonment. 



These examples suffice to show the wretched stuff which Hacks 

 hashed up for the edification of the clerical and the entertainment 

 of the carnal-minded public. Even the silly statement that he saw 

 a gigantic tree bow down before Sophia TValder, the predestined 

 great-grandmother of antichrist, and present her with a bouquet, 

 did not shake the faith of the true believers. The editor of 

 the Revue Mensuelle declared, in 1894, that Dr. Bataille had really 

 made all these discoveries on his travels, and that his honesty and 

 sincerity were beyond question. This was the attitude of the whole 

 clerical press almost without exception, as well as of abbots, bish- 

 ops, cardinals, and the highest dignitaries of the Church. Even as 

 late as July, 1897, when the impos.ture had been exposed and con- 

 fessed, a Parisian Catholic .journal continued to regard " the mys- 



