An American Bigot in King Arthur's Court

I mentioned in an earlier post, that having abandoned Ben Hur, I began reading Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. When I began that post, I wrote that I had read the Twain novel over 50 years ago. Now that I'm head long into reading it, I realize that I couldn't have finished reading the book all those many years ago. I have a reasonably strong memory of the "eclipse episode", but that's all I can remember. I'm pretty sure that had I actually finished the novel, I would have recalled more that I have.

Be that as it may, one of my great disappointments was my having become aware of Mark Twain's strong anti-Catholic bias in The Innocents Abroad. The wikipedia article on Twain puts it down to the general anti-Catholic sentiment of 19th century America. However, Twain cannot hide his hatred of the Catholic Church in A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court.

It was not until reading the above mentioned wikipedia article that I learned Twain was a Freemason. Being a member of that organization goes a long way to explaining why Twain was so enthusiastic about his anti-Catholicism.