Page:Devil-Worship in France 1896.djvu/57

Rh made by Mgr. de Ségur, and having reference to a long anterior period. He states that in the year 1848 there was a Masonic lodge at Rome, where the mass of the devil was celebrated in the presence of men and women. A ciborium was placed on an altar between six black candles; each person, after spitting and trampling on a crucifix, deposited in this ciborium a consecrated host which had been purchased or received in church. The sacred elements were stabbed by the whole assembly, the candles were extinguished at the termination of the mass, and an orgie followed, similar, says Mgr. de Ségur, to those of "Pagan mysteries and Manichaean re-unions." Such abominations were, however, admittedly rare, and the story just recited rests on nothing that can be called evidence.

During the years intervening between 1870 and 1891 we may search the literature of French Anti-Masonry in vain for any hint of the Palladium. In 1884 the collaboration of Louis D'Estampes and Claudio Jannet produced a work entitled "Freemasonry and the