The Earth Will Shake

Naples, 1764: young Sigismundo Celine is initiated, kidnapped and re-initiated by rival secret societies — Rosicrucians, Freemasons, Carbonari, and things pretending to be each of them — until he cannot tell which conspiracy he belongs to. Which is the lesson. First volume of the Historical Illuminatus Chronicles.

Chapel Perilous in period dress: the same epistemology as Cosmic Trigger, run in a century where no character can check anything and every explanation arrives from a man in a robe.