The Oak Island Mystery

by Lionel

  M. Fatin the sculptor, owner of Château Hautpoul.

  Stone-age artefacts from M. Fatin’s collection.

  The village of Coustaussa viewed from the cemetery where Father Gélis lies.

  Patricia Fanthorpe in the doorway of mysterious old Father Boudet’s church in Rennes-les-Bains.

  Bérenger Saunière was born in Couiza Montazels, just across the valley from Rennes-le-Château. Those who knew him best as a child said that while other children played their normal games, young Bérenger would lead his adventurous boyhood companions into the woods and rocky valleys around Rennes and say: “Let us go and search for the lost treasure.”

  He grew up strong and athletic, a powerful, independent, ambitious man, who hardly seemed cut out for the priesthood. Yet he endured long, boring years of seminary deprivation and discipline in order to complete his rigorous theological and pastoral training. Did Bérenger Saunière have a genuine vocation? God alone can judge a question as significant as that: no human arbiter should ever presume to do so. The possibility remains, however, that he put up with it all simply to gain access to Rennes-le-Château and its ancient Church of St. Mary Magdalene.

  Just imagine that from his earliest youth, someone knowledgeable and influential during his vital formative years had convinced young Saunière that there was an ancient treasure — the fabulous Arcadian Treasure — hidden at Rennes. He was a determined character, and a shrewd one. What better vantage point than the Presbytery of Rennes? What better local authority than that of the village priest? Was that why Saunière did it? But there may have been still more to it than that: the Saunière family of Couiza-Montazels went back a long way. That area of southwestern France had once been the territory of the independent Counts of Razes. It had strong Merovingian connections. It had once been Cathar and Templar heartland. Pedigrees went back for centuries, and local families were proud of their ancient lineages. The noble Hautpoul family had once owned the château which gave Rennes-le-Château its name. The ruined Château Blanchefort nearby was once said to have been a Templar stronghold, and there was another legendary Templar citadel at Bézu.

  What if the impressionable young Saunière had been led to believe (rightly or wrongly) that he had Merovingian blood in his veins, that he was descended from the same Dagobert II who featured in the legend of the Arcadian Treasure, or from the Counts of Razes — that he was, in fact, as far as anyone could be in the nineteenth century, the rightful and legitimate heir of those who had concealed the Arcadian Treasure at Rennes so many centuries ago?

  A picture begins to emerge. Saunière obtains the living of Rennes-le-Château. Within a matter of months he is indisputably one of the wealthiest men in the south of France. He spends money like water until his death — in suspicious circumstances — in 1917. What was the source of his sudden wealth?

  Once again, the trail goes back to Solomon, and earlier still. Saunière is said in one account of the mystery to have had access to certain secret documents, which were found in his church. When these were decoded they alluded to a treasure that had once been in Sion (Jerusalem), and had eventually passed from there to the Merovingian King Dagobert II.

  Much further back in the mists of time, Melchizedek was priest-king of Salem (Jerusalem?) when he met Abraham the Patriarch.[1] The concept of a priest-king is an inescapable reminder of the title of the elusive Prester John and his connection with Solomon’s lineage.

  Suppose that the ancient Arcadian Treasure (whatever it actually was) had been known both to the ancient Egyptian Pharoahs as well as to Melchizedek, and that it had travelled as a unit, or perhaps in instalments, from Egypt to Salem — or even in the reverse direction. Ancient Jewish legends tell of Sarah (Abraham’s sister-wife) encountering the sleeping Hermes Trismegistus (alias Thoth? alias Melchizedek?) in a cavern during the long journeys which she and Abraham undertook. The legend says that she disturbed the fabulous Emerald Tablets and that the sleeper began to stir. Sarah fled from the cave without them.

  Long years pass. The Israelites have gone to Egypt as honoured guests — the family of Joseph, saviour of starving Egypt. They have left centuries later as runaway slaves under the protecting hand of Yahweh and the guidance of his servant Moses. Pharaoh does something that is tantamount to military insanity: he hurls the best of his charioteers in reckless pursuit of the Israelites across a very dangerous stretch of temporarily dry land — until very recently the bed of the Red Sea. The waters rush back. The cream of Pharaoh’s horsemen are destroyed. The triumphant Israelites escape. So why did Pharaoh do it? What motivated this particular piece of tactical lunacy, the Egyptian equivalent of the suicidal “Charge of the Light Brigade” in the Crimean War as immortalized in the poem by Tennyson (first published in The Examiner on December 9, 1854)?

  When the Israelites left Egypt, they did not leave empty-handed. Were part of the treasures they carried with them the priceless Emerald Tablets of Hermes Trismegistus, and did those fabulous Emerald Tablets eventually form the core of the legendary Arcadian Treasure associated with Rennes-le-Château?

  Rennes-le-Château was deep in Cathar country, barely half-a-day’s ride from the great Cathar fortress of Montségur. When the four fearless Cathar mountaineers escaped from that last fatal siege in 1244 carrying “pecuniam infinitam” and “the treasure of their faith,” did the Emerald Tablets go with them? Was it the indomitable Templars who took over where the defeated Cathars left off? Did part of that Arcadian Treasure make its way to a secret repository in a hidden Merovingian mausoleum deep beneath the ancient Church of St. Mary Magdalene at Rennes? When the Templars themselves went down in 1307, did the Arcadian Treasure leave an ungrateful European mainland and find safety with the noble House of Sinclair in the Orkneys? Did some, at least, of the Emerald Tablets go from Rennes to Oak Island with the Templar refugees and the Zeno navigators?

  And what of Nicholas Poussin’s place in the strange tale of Rennes and the Arcadian Treasure? How does he provide a link connecting Admiral Anson of Shugborough Hall, the shepherds and shepherdess at the Tomb of Arques and the coded parchments which Bérenger Saunière was said to have discovered in his church?

  During the heyday of the opulent Louis XIV, the so-called Sun King of France (1638–1715), Nicholas Fouquet, his minister of finance, had a younger brother who acted as one of his espionage agents. This younger Fouquet met Poussin, the painter, in Italy. Vitally important secret information passed between them. Fouquet junior wrote a very excited letter home to Nicholas, his elder brother, the massive power-behind-the-throne, often referred to by historians as “the real king of France.” Amazingly that letter has survived in French archives:

  I have given to Monsieur Poussin the letter that you were kind enough to write to him; he displayed overwhelming joy on receiving it. You wouldn’t believe, sir, the trouble that he takes to be of service to you, or the affection with which he goes about this, or the affection with which he goes about this, or the talent and integrity that he displays at all times.

  He and I have planned certain things of which in a little while I shall be able to inform you fully; things which will give you, through M. Poussin, advantages which kings would have great difficulty in obtaining from him, and which, according to what he says, no one in the world will ever retrieve in the centuries to come … and they are matters so difficult to enquire into that nothing on earth at the present time could bring a greater fortune nor, perhaps, ever its equal.[2]

  Shortly afterwards, Fouquet senior fell from power, and has long been one of the leading candidates proposed by research historians for the unenviable role of the Man in the Iron Mask. This unfortunate character was held at various prisons in top security conditions, and ended his days in the Bastille itself. No one except St. Mars, the governor and totally trusted agent of Louis XIV, was ever allowed to communicate with the mysterious masked prisoner. When he finally died, all furniture from his cell was destroyed, and the walls themselves were stripped and re-plastered.

/>   Only one rational explanation for his weird behaviour seems to present itself. The masked prisoner was so well-known (as Fouquet was) that his face must not be seen in case influential friends attempted to free him. If he held a secret (one that Poussin had given him?) which made him potentially so dangerous that he was a threat to the throne itself, he must never be allowed to escape, nor to communicate with his powerful family, friends, and allies outside.

  So why not simply kill so dangerous a rival? Louis XIV had few moral inhibitions. Removing a threat by liquidating an opponent would not have troubled the royal conscience unduly. The dangerous masked prisoner would have been kept alive only because the king himself wanted the captive’s priceless secret. Fouquet — if it was Fouquet — was also a wily politician, who understood the vagaries and vicissitudes of power only too well. Life was sweet — even as a masked prisoner. Fouquet would not part with Poussin’s Arcadian secret (assuming that he’d got it) because he knew that the moment he did he would be murdered on Louis’s order. It was a classical Mexican stand-off, with neither party willing to lower his metaphorical gun first because his antagonist would certainly shoot if he did!

  Fouquet’s place as finance minister was taken by the sinister, scheming Colbert, another of Louis’s instruments, who almost immediately sent an expedition to the Rennes-le-Château area to re-excavate and explore the original Tomb of Arques. This must have been an ancient structure once occupying the site of the relatively modern one which the authors measured and photographed in 1975. That one was built — or modified above ground level — by an American named Lawrence at the end of the nineteenth century, or during the first decade of the twentieth. It was his design that precisely emulated Poussin’s final version of the legendary Arcadian Tomb. Even more curiously, Poussin’s original canvas was taken to Louis’s royal apartments at Versailles, before it found its way to the Louvre many years afterwards.

  Bérenger Saunière was alleged to have translated and decoded some mysterious parchments which were said to have been found in the Visigothic altar pillar of the badly neglected, ancient hilltop church of St. Mary Magdalene, which Saunière had taken over in 1885, when he was thirty-three years old. The coded message contained references to Poussin as well as to the Arcadian Treasure of Sion and the burial place of the murdered Merovingian King Dagobert II.

  “Shepherdess no temptation to which Poussin and Teniers hold the key …” began the strange message. The shepherdess is the dominant figure in the Poussin composition. Art experts have actually analyzed the picture to show that her head is the centre of a pentagon which governs the whole design of the painting and extends outside the frame. X-rays also showed that one shepherd’s staff in the foreground had been painted before the background, and the length of the staff played a critical part in the geometry of the painting.

  As David Wood has pointed out with commendable care and precision in “Genisis” and “Geneset” [sic],[3] geometry is one of the major clues to the Rennes mystery, and Henry Lincoln has expounded his similar significant discoveries in The Holy Place.[4]

  But Rennes is only half of the French connection with the Arcadian Treasure and its link with Oak Island. The other half is at the tiny hamlet of Glozel near Vichy. We have spoken with Emile Fradin, who actually made the discoveries in the strange pit at Glozel in 1924. We have seen the inexplicable exhibits in his museum there. Not far to the southeast of the Fradin farm lie the imposing ruins of the thirteenth-century Château de Montgilbert — contemporary with both the Templars and the ill-fated Cathars, or Albigensians. Just a few kilometres due east of Vichy itself, and the same distance due north of Glozel and the Montgilbert Chateau, on the D7 route, is La Croix Rouge (“The Red Cross” — the symbol of the Templars). Also very close to Glozel, but lying just to the southwest of the Fradin farm, are Les Murs du Temple (“The Walls of the Temple”). Just a coincidence? Or an indication that the Templars were as closely involved with Glozel as they were with Rennes-le-Château?

  The Tomb of Arques photographed by the authors in 1975.

  Poussin’s painting “The Shepherds of Arcadia,” Louvre version.

  What sort of pattern are all these historical threads weaving? They lead back time and again to our central hypothesis that some very ancient object — said to be a source of enormous wealth and power — was pursued across the centuries by those who knew of it, regardless of the risks involved. Did Gilgamesh and Enkidu seek it in ancient Sumeria? In the fifth tablet of their great epic, they have to seek out and overcome the formidable Khumbaba, guardian of the trees. What other treasure is hidden among the sacred cedars which Khumbaba defends so desperately against the two heroic intruders?[5]

  Did Abram know of it when he and his family were called by God to leave Ur of the Chaldees? What mysterious truth lay behind Sarah’s legendary discovery in Hermes’ cavern? Were Melchizedek, Thoth, and Trismegistus three different names for the same wise and powerful man, and what secret powers lay concealed in his Emerald Tablets? Suppose, too, that the Tablets became the true core of the mysterious Arcadian Treasure, and that they went at one period from Melchizedek’s Salem to Pharoah’s Egypt, only to be retrieved by Moses and eventually returned to Jerusalem in Solomon’s time. Suppose that it was the reckless pursuit of those same Emerald Tablets that precipitated the pride of Pharaoh’s charioteers to their deaths in the Red Sea.

  Solomon dies. Some, if not all, of the Tablets find their way to Ethopia via his son, Menelik, born to the beautiful black Queen Makeda (encoded as the lovely Belacane in Wolfram’s Parzival). Solomon’s son is accompanied by a party of his loyal Jewish supporters, who settle in Ethiopia and become the ancestors of the present-day Falashas.

  Suppose that many years later there are Templars at the Ethiopian Court of Lalibela (“Prester John”) in the thirteenth century, Templars at Chartres Cathedral, Templars at Château Montgilbert near Glozel, Templars at Rennes-le-Château among the carefully hidden Merovingian tombs — Templars who know about the Arcadian treasure and the Emerald Tablets.

  Then comes the tragic involvement of Philip IV, the downfall of the Middle Eastern and European Templars, the flight of the refugees to the Orkneys with part, at least, of the priceless treasure, and, finally, the Atlantic voyage.

  Yet there is another complication that has to be considered very carefully before the examination of the French connection can be satisfactorily concluded — and that complication is Sir Francis Bacon’s enigmatic brother Anthony, who spent a great deal of time in France as part of the Elizabethan “secret service.” What was Anthony so busy investigating, and what secrets did he send home to the brilliant and frequently underestimated Francis?

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  Francis Bacon’s Secret Cypher

  Francis Bacon, Baron Verulam, Viscount St. Albans, was born on January 22, 1561. (By curious coincidence, it was on Bacon’s birthday in 1917 that Bérenger Saunière died.) Francis lived until April 9, 1626, which puts him squarely inside the same time frame as Shakespeare, Spenser, Sidney, Marlowe, and the three painters who were said to “hold the key” to the Arcadian Treasure of Rennes — Poussin and both Teniers. Bacon’s other contemporaries included fellow lawyer William Anson, whose fortune founded the Shugborough Hall dynasty, and the remarkable Dr. John Dee (1527–1608), wizard, astrologer, mathematician, and crystal gazer. If there was a secret society of Arcadian Treasure guardians with which the Cathars and Templars had once been closely involved, and which had later re-surfaced under the Rosicrucian banner, Dee is a very likely candidate for membership, or perhaps even control of it, in Tudor times.

  Although Francis was officially accepted as the younger son of Sir Nicholas Bacon and his second wife, Ann (who was the daughter of Sir Anthony Cooke and the sister-in-law of Sir William Cecil, Lord Burghley), there are reasonable grounds for believing that he was actually the secret son of Queen Elizabeth I. One theory suggests that Francis Drake, “the Queen’s pirate,” was his natural father.

  Another strong su
spicion was that the father of Elizabeth’s son was Lord Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester. He had apparently arranged for the murder of his wife, Amy Robsart, at Cumnor Place, Oxfordshire, in the hope that Elizabeth would marry him. Such was the fanatical Protestant loyalty of Sir Nicholas and Lady Ann, that they would have done anything necessary to protect their beloved queen from scandal.

  Despite the possibility that he was not the biological son of Nicholas Bacon, young Francis learned a great deal from the man the world regarded as his father. Nicholas himself had been born circa 1510 and by dint of sheer intelligence and hard work had gained a place at Cambridge. He was in Paris for a while after leaving university and then went on to Gray’s Inn to read law. His great chance came when Archbishop Heath, who was then lord chancellor, declined to carry out some of Queen Elizabeth’s instructions — never a prudent course to follow in Tudor times! Although not acquiring the official title of chancellor, Sir Nicholas took over much of Heath’s former work. This elder Bacon was in many ways a curious contradiction: a strangely paradoxical man. Contemporary portraits show him as grossly overweight, and give him a decidedly earthy, crafty, untrustworthy appearance — like Bumble the Beadle in Dickens’ Oliver Twist.

  Yet all who knew him well, and so could write of him with some accuracy and authority, commented warmly on his generosity, his kindness, his patience, and understanding. Those who knew him best regarded him as a man of undoubted shrewdness, intelligence, and good humour.