 Like several other Borges stories, it is written in the form of a scholarly article.The story carries three footnotes and quotes many people, some of which are real (like Antônio Conselheiro), some have been concocted from real life (like Maurice Abramowicz, who was once his classmate, and later became a deputy for the Swiss communist party, but is made a French religious philosopher in the story) and some are completely fictitious (like Jaromir Hladík, who is a character from his own story "The Secret Miracle").The story is similar in theme and subject to the subsequent short story "The Sect of the Thirty".