The one Mason whose rank corresponds in Italy to that of Albert Pike in America is not Adriano Lemmi, but Signor Timoteo Riboli, Sovereign Grand Commander of the 33rd and last degree of the Ancient and Accepted Scotch Rite. Adriano Lemmi is, or was, Grand Master of the Craft Section of Italy and Deputy Grand Commander only of the Supreme Council of Italy of the 33°. The pretended Grand Central Directory of Naples, which governs all Europe in the interests of Charleston, with Giovanni Bovio for Sovereign Director, is a Masonic myth--_pace_ Signor Margiotta. Signor Bovio is a Member of the Grand Master's Council and a 33° at Rome. There is a Neapolitan Section of the Ancient and Accepted Rite, but it has powers only up to the 30°, and as such has no authority in general government, nor does Bovio appear to be a member of the Neapolitan section, though as a member of Lemmi's Council, and a 33°, he no doubt has his share in the government of the Neapolitans.
The history of the Ancient and Accepted Rite as given by Signor Margiotta and sketched in my second chapter is an incorrect history. The facts are as follows:--A person named Isaac Long was engaged in propagating the French Rite of Perfection of 25° in America before 1796; in that year he gave the degrees to one de Grasse and also to de la Hogue, who established a Consistory of the 25° at Charleston. In 1802 this Consistory had blossomed into a Supreme Grand Council, 33°, and at a little later period they forged the name of Voltaire's friend, Frederick the Great of Prussia, to what Mr Yarker terms "one of the most stupidly concocted documents ever palmed upon an ignorant public." However this may be, Long does not seem to have been at any time a member of this body. This is how the "Mother Council of the World" is said to have come into existence, and Charleston has established Supreme Councils 33°, between 1811 and 1846, in France, Ireland, Scotland, England, and elsewhere.
There is no foundation for the legend of the Charleston Templar relics, namely, the skull of Jacques de Molay and the Baphomet, beyond the fact that one of the grades, the 23° of the old Rite of Perfection and the 30° of the modern Rite, uses a representation of the Papal tiara in its ceremonies and also of the crown of France, in allusion to Pope Clement V. and Philip le Bel.