These important manifestations of occultism coincide with the fall of the Templars, since Jean de Meung, or Clopinel, a contemporary of Dante in the old age of the latter, flourished during his best years at the court of Philip the Fair. The _Romance of the Rose_ is the epic of old France, a profound work in a trivial form, a revelation of occult mysteries as instructed as that of Apuleius. The roses of Flamel, Jean de Meung and Dante belong to the same bush. A genius like Dante could not be an arch-heretic. Great men give an impetus to intelligence, and the impetus takes effect subsequently in activities which are started by restless mediocrities. It may have been that Dante was never read and he would assuredly not have been understood by Luther. This notwithstanding, the mission of the Ghibellines, made fruitful by the potent thought of the poet, raised up the empire against the papacy by slow degrees; it was continued from century to century under various names, and in the end it made Germany protestant. It was certainly not Luther who produced the Reformation; it was the latter which took possession of Luther and impelled him forward. This square-shouldered monk could boast only obstinacy and daring, but he was the needful instrument for revolutionary ideas. Luther was the Danton of anarchic theology; superstitious and rash, he believed that he was obsessed by the devil; it was the devil who dictated his arguments against the Church, made him declaim, spout nonsense, and above all things write. The inspiring genius of all the Cains asked nothing at that time but ink, preassured that, given this fluid flowing from the pen of Luther, there would be presently a sea of blood. Luther was conscious of the fact, and he hated the devil because he was another master; one day he threw the ink-horn at his head, as if to satiate him by the violent libation. The episode recalls that jocular regicide who daubed his accomplices with ink when he signed the death-warrant of Charles I. The device of Luther was: “Turk rather than papist;” and as a fact protestantism at its root is, like Islamism, simple Deism organised into a conventional cultus, or if it differs therefrom it is only by its remnants of catholicism imperfectly effaced. From the standpoint of the negation of catholic dogma, the protestants are Moslems with a few superstitions the more and a prophet the less.