How we cite our quotes: (Act.Scene.Line)
Quote #10
ARCHBISHOP
Please it, your Holiness, I think it be some ghost crept out of purgatory and now is come unto your Holiness for his pardon.
POPE
It may be so.
Go then; command our priests to sing a dirge
To lay the fury of this same troublesome ghost.
[Exit an Attendant. The Pope crosses himself.]
FAUSTUS
How now! Must every bit be spiced with a cross? (3.2.80-86)
The Pope and his cronies just keep getting more and more ridiculous. In this passage, they believe that the invisible Faustus is a soul that's come out of Purgatory to haunt them all. And this mention of Purgatory is yet another reminder of the rather negative view Protestants held of the Catholic Church. Many Protestants believed that Purgatory didn't exist. It was just as absurd to them as the other rituals the Pope and Archbishop participate in here—exorcism and crossing oneself. Faustus can't resist mocking the Pope for these habits and beliefs.