²¹Allcroft, A. H. The Circle and the Cross, a Study in Continuity. London: Macmillan, 1927. V. 2, 75.
Another author wrote in 1971: "The leaders of the Church thus abandoned the struggle against superstition whenever it seemed in their interest to do so. Throughout the Middle Ages their attitude to the credulities of their simpler followers was fundamentally ambivalent. They disliked them as gross and superstitious, but they had no wish to discourage attitudes which might foster popular devotion." (Thomas, Keith. Religion and the Decline of Magic. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1971. 49.)