The altar then was the naked buttocks of a woman; in the seventeenth century it was the abdomen, and now ?" "Nowadays a woman is hardly ever used for an altar, but let us not anticipate.

In the eighteenth century we shall again find abbes--among how many other monsters--who defile holy objects.

One Canon Duer occupied himself specially with black magic and the evocation of the devil.

He was finally executed as a sorcerer in the year of grace 1718.
There was another who believed in the Incarnation of the Holy Ghost as the Paraclete, and who, in Lombary, which he stirred up to a feverish pitch of excitement, ordained twelve apostles and twelve apostolines to preach his gospel.

This man, abbe Beccarelli, like all the other priests of his ilk, abused both sexes, and he said mass without confessing himself of his lecheries.