The Mammoth Encyclopedia of Unsolved Mysteries

by Colin Wilson

  Understandably, Saunière’s superiors were curious about his wealth and wanted to know where it came from. Saunière told them coolly that he was not at liberty to divulge the source of his wealth – some of it came from rich penitents who had sworn him to secrecy. He had also been paid well for saying masses for the souls of the dead. The old bishop decided to mind his own business, but a new one later revealed a pertinacious curiosity, and when Saunière declined to satisfy it, ordered his transfer to another parish. Saunière declined to be transferred. A new priest was appointed to Rennes-le-Château, but the villagers still continued to treat Saunière as their spiritual pastor. Eventually, in 1917, Saunière suffered a stroke, and died at the age of sixty-four. A priest from a neighbouring parish who was called to his deathbed emerged looking pale and shaken, and a local account, doubtless exaggerated, says that he “never smiled again”.

  His housekeeper, Marie Denarnaud, lived on until 1953 in considerable affluence. When after the Second World War the French government issued new currency, and demanded to know the source of any large sums (the aim being to trap tax-evaders and profiteers) she burned piles of ten-franc notes in the garden, and lived for the remainder of her life on the proceeds of the sale of Saunière’s villa. She was evidently determined not to betray Saunière’s secret. Just before her death she confided to the purchaser of the villa that she would tell him a secret that would make him both rich and powerful; but she died after a stroke that left her speechless.

  The obvious solution to the mystery is that Saunière discovered the treasure mentioned in the parchment, and somehow turned it into modern currency. In which case the mystery is simply what clues he found in the parchment, and how he followed them up to discover the concealed hoard.

  Henry Lincoln, a modern investigator, became fascinated by the problem after reading a book called Le Trésor Maudit [The Accursed Treasure], by Gérard de Sède, in 1969. He made many visits to Rennes-le-Château, and eventually made a programme for BBC television called “The Lost Treasure of Jerusalem . . .?” Lincoln went to Paris to see Gérard de Sède, and before the programme was made de Sède had presented him with the solution of the “long cipher” from the Visigothic column. De Sède claimed that this had been broken with the help of French army experts who had used a computer. Lincoln suspected that this was untrue, and British Intelligence confirmed his suspicion that the code could not have been broken by computer.

  The code was unbelievably complex – so complex that Lincoln does not even attempt to explain it in the book he later wrote on the mystery. Cracking it involved a technique known to cipher experts as the Vigenère process, which involves writing out the alphabet twenty-six times in a square, with the first line beginning with A, the second with B, the third with C, and so on. Then the key word Mort Epée is placed over the whole message in this case, of the longer of the two parchments and the letters are transformed by a simple process using the Vigenère table. But the new text is still meaningless. The next step is to move each letter one letter farther down the alphabet. It is still meaningless. The next step is to use a new key word on the jumble. This new key word is the entire text of the headstone beginning “Ci gît noble Maria” etc, and to take from the gravestone the two lots of letters “P.S” and “Prae cum” (Latin for “before” and “with”). This new “keyword” is applied backward to the text, ending with “P.S.” and “Prae cum”. Then all the letters are moved two spaces down the alphabet. Next, the text is divided into two groups of 64, and these are laid out on two chessboards, and the knight makes a series of knight’s moves on the chessboards. Then the letter contained in each square of this series is written down. And now at last the message emerges – although it still looks quite absurd. The message runs: BERGERE PAS DE TENTATION QUE POUSSIN TENIERS GARDENT LE CLEF PAX DCLXXXI PAR LA CROIX ET CE CHEVAL DE DIEU J´ACHEVE CE DAEMON DE GARDIEN A MIDI POMMES BLEUES. This may be translated: SHEPHERDESS WITHOUT TEMPTATION TO WHICH POUSSIN AND TENIERS HOLD THE KEY PEACE 681 WITH THE CROSS AND THIS HORSE OF GOD I REACH THIS DAEMON GUARDIAN AT MIDDAY BLUE APPLES.

  This message, we must presume, led Saunière to the treasure. Which raises the interesting question: how did he succeed in deciphering the message? True, he had the all-important “key words” from the grave of Marie de Blanchefort. But even if he also knew about the Vigenère table and the knight’s moves, that would still make the decipherment an unbelievably complex task for an ordinary parish priest without training in cryptography. Leaving aside for the moment the actual meaning of the message, who handed Saunière the thread that guided him through this complex labyrinth?

  Lincoln concluded, logically, that there must be someone who had already known some of the basic answers to the mystery or, more likely, some group or organization. This, presumably, was the organization from which his own informant, Gérard de Sède, had received his own information. This guess seemed to be supported by the number of books and pamphlets about Saunière and Rennes-le-Château that had appeared since 1956. Many of these were under obvious pseudonyms like “Anthony the Hermit”. They proved to be available in the Bibliothèque Nationale, although some of them were curiously difficult to get hold of and one of them was constantly engaged for three months. And it was in the Bibliothèque Nationale that Lincoln found one of his most vital clues: a number of miscellaneous items gathered together in stiff covers under the title Dossiers secrets. And one of these documents spoke about a secret order called the Priory of Sion. We may recall that the shorter of the two documents Saunière found in the pillar ended with the letters P.S., while the longer document – the one containing the “shepherdess” message – is signed with the letters NO-IS which back to front reads “Sion”. According to this document, the Grand Masters of this secret order included the alchemist Nicolas Flamel (who is reputed to have made gold), Leonardo da Vinci, Isaac Newton, Victor Hugo – and Claude Debussy. Saunière had met Debussy in Paris. This then could explain where he had received the key to the code.

  And what exactly was the Priory of Sion? It was, according to the Secret Dossiers, the inner hierarchy of the order of “warrior monks” called the Knights Templars. In the year AD 1118, after the first Crusade had opened the Holy Land to Christian pilgrims, a knight called Hugues de Payens conceived the apparently absurd idea of policing the dangerous roads of the Holy Land with a small band of knights. They were successful beyond all expectation, and were granted a wing of Solomon’s temple on Mount Sion in Jerusalem as their headquarters. As grateful pilgrims left them legacies they became immensely wealthy – they were also virtually the bankers of the Holy Land. Their downfall came two centuries later when the French king Philip the Fair (Philippe le Bel) had them all arrested in one sudden swoop – it was 13 October 1307 – and accused them of all kinds of horrible blasphemies and indecencies. Dozens of them were tortured and executed, and in 1312 the order was dissolved. Philip had gained his chief objective – to lay his hands on their wealth – but he was unsuccessful in his attempt to seize the treasures of one of their major strongholds, Bezu, which is near Rennes-le-Château . . .

  Mount Sion is just outside Jerusalem, and Jerusalem is often referred to as Sion in the scriptures. According to the Secret Dossiers, the Order of Sion (as it was at first called) was the secret society that originally created the Templars, and it was unaffected by the latter’s downfall in 1307. And what was the purpose of the Priory? It was apparently to restore the Merovingians – the dynasty founded by King Clovis at the beginning of the sixth century AD – to the throne of France. Later Merovingian kings were distinctly feeble – in fact, they became known as “the feeble kings” (rois fainéants) – and left most of the work to their major-domos (or Mayors of the Palace). In AD 679 one of these major-domos organized the murder of King Dagobert II – a lance was driven through his eye while he was asleep – and in due course the major-domos became kings: they were known as the Carolingians.

  According to the Secret Dossiers, Dagobert’s son Sigisbert fled so
uth to Languedoc, and inherited the title duke of Razés and count of Rhedae from his uncle. Rhedae is another old name for Rennes-le-Château (which was then a large town), and Razés is the name of the county (or comté) in which Rennes is situated. And three centuries later, another descendant of Dagobert, Godfrey de Bouillon, led the First Crusade and freed Jerusalem from the Moslems.

  It seems rather a strange ambition – to restore to the throne of France a dynasty known as “the feeble kings”. Why should anyone bother? It seems as irrelevant and absurd as wanting to restore the Tudors or Stuarts to the English throne. And what connection could there be between this curious aspiration and the “treasure” that made Saunière a rich man? As Lincoln pursued his researches, he found himself drawn into an increasingly bewildering labyrinth of mystery and rumour.

  To begin with, Gérard de Sède told him, while he was preparing the original television programme, that the tomb shown in Poussin’s painting had now been discovered. It was at a place called Arques, a few miles east of Rennes-le-Château. The tomb is close to the Château of Arques, and is in fact an exact duplicate of the tomb in Poussin’s painting. One can even see Rennes-le-Château in the background of the painting. The first vertical line of the tombstone inscription on Marie de Blanchefort’s grave reads “Et in Arc”. The central inscription reads “At royal Reddis in the caves of the fortress”. An odd-looking circle surrounds the letters P.S. which starts before the P and curls back so that it ends before the S. The letter before P is O. The letter before S is R. O and R together spell “or”, the French for gold. The message seems to be saying that the gold is at Royal Reddis in the caves of the fortress. Why royal Reddis? Because it is associated with the Merovingian line of kings . . .

  So we can being to see why the coded message on the parchment said that Poussin held the key; it was presumably to this painting it was referring. But the message also mentioned the painter Teniers, a Flemish artist who was a contemporary of Poussin. What part does he play in the mystery? Lincoln discovered that there is a copy of Poussin’s Shepherds of Arcady at Shugborough Hall, in Staffordshire – a bas relief which is a reversed mirror image of the painting. But also at Shugborough Hall there is a painting of St Anthony by Teniers. The temptation of St Anthony was one of Teniers’s favourite subjects. But this one is different – it simply shows St Anthony in meditation: no temptation. And in the background there is a shepherdess. “Shepherdess, no temptation, that Poussin and Teniers hold the key . . .” Shugborough Hall is the seat of the earls of Lichfield, and Lincoln discovered that it had been a hotbed of masonic activity in the seventeenth century. In 1715 one of the earls helped his cousin when he escaped from Newgate prison. The cousin was called Charles Radclyffe, and he is listed in the Secret Dossiers as one of the Grand Masters of the Priory of Sion. The offence for which Radclyffe was imprisoned was, significantly, aiding the Old Pretender in his attempt on the throne of England. Radclyffe became the secretary of the Young Pretender in France – and presumably Grand Master of the Priory of Sion – and was executed after Culloden in 1746. So there could be good reasons why more clues to the Rennes-le-Château mystery are to be found at Shugborough Hall. Unfortunately, Lincoln found himself unable to decipher these clues.

  What precisely is the treasure of Rennes-le-Château? The obvious guess is that it is the treasure of the Templars of Bezu, which Philippe le Bel failed to lay his hands on. And this could well be correct. But there is another clue that is contained in the longer of the two coded parchments. In the middle of the message there are twelve letters raised above the others; these have to be discarded before the decoding process begins. But in addition there are eight small letters that occur at random throughout the text, and these spell the words Rex Mundi, King of the World. This links the message with a religious sect called the Cathars, which might be regarded as an early form of Protestantism. The Cathars or “Pure Ones” held a belief that was derived from a much older sect called the Manichees: that everything to do with the world of matter is evil, and everything to do with the world of spirit is good. They believed that this world was not created by God but by a “demiurge” or demon, who is the King of this world. Although they accepted salvation through Christ, they did not believe that he was crucified on the cross. This sect of early puritans became so powerful in the Languedoc – where Rennes-le-Château is situated – that the pope called a crusade against them, and in 1209 a huge army invaded Languedoc and murdered thousands of people. The last stand of the Languedoc Cathars occurred in 1244; the Cathars took refuge in the citadel of Montségur, situated on a mountain-top. After a ten-month siege they surrendered, and were offered lenient terms by the besiegers – all who renounced their faith could go free. Heretics who refused to surrender would be burned alive. They were given two weeks to think about it; at the end of that time two hundred heretics were dragged down the mountain (about two hundred family members were spared) and burnt on a huge pyre. But during those two weeks four men escaped from the citadel carrying the “treasure” of the Cathars – two months earlier another two Cathars had escaped with more “treasure”. These were not caught.

  So Saunière’s treasure may have been that of the Cathars of Montségur. But surely this cannot have been very substantial – after all, six men scrambling down a steep mountain-side cannot carry much gold and silver. It is, of course, conceivable that they were carrying some other form of treasure – the holy objects of the Cathars. But if that is so, what were these holy objects?

  For completeness we should mention yet another treasure associated with the area: the treasure of the Visigoths (or Western Goths), the German “barbarians” who played an important part in the downfall of Rome. In Dagobert’s time Rennes-le-Château was a Visigoth bastion, and Dagobert was married to a Visigoth princess. In their triumphant march across Europe the Visigoths accumulated vast treasures, which seem to have included some of the treasures from the Temple at Jerusalem, removed after the Roman emperor Titus took Jerusalem in AD 69. Much of this treasure was never recovered.

  But for Henry Lincoln the Priory of Sion materials in the Secret Dossiers were leading to another and far stranger line of ènquiry. After his first television programme on Rennes-le-Château (he went on to make three) he received a curious letter from an Anglican priest which claimed that the treasure did not involve gold or precious stones. It consisted of “incontrovertible proof” that the Crucifixion was a fraud, and that Jesus was still alive as late as AD 45. (The date of the crucifixion is usually assumed to be about AD 33.) Lincoln went to see the priest, who declined to go into detail. But he admitted that his information came from an Anglican scholar named Canon Alfred Leslie Lilley. Lilley had maintained contacts with Catholic scholars based at St Sulpice, and had been acquainted with Emile Hoffet, the trainee priest who had introduced Saunière to Debussy and others.

  And it gradually became clear that this was in fact the “great secret” of the Priory of Sion. The real founder of the Merovingian dynasty was not the legendary King Merovech (or Merovée), but Jesus himself, and this was why the descendants of the Merovingians felt that they had a right to the throne of France. In the course of his investigations Lincoln had encountered repeated mentions of the Holy Grail or “Sangreal”. One legend asserted that it was in the possession of the Templars, another that it was the “treasure” carried down Montségur by the four Cathars. But “sang real” also means “royal blood”. The Grail was supposed to be the cup from which Jesus drank at the last supper, and Glastonbury legends assert that it was taken there by Joseph of Arimathea. In two of the Gospels, Jesus is described as being a descendant of King David, and therefore of royal blood; the notice “The King of the Jews” displayed above the cross is generally assumed to be sarcasm, but it may have referred to a claim actually made by the close followers of Jesus.

  It was in a book, The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail (1982), co-authored by Michael Baigent and Richard Lee, that Lincoln finally revealed this astonishing theory. It is di
fficult to discover from the book how far this is his own deduction from the evidence, and how far he received the information from sources like Gérard de Sède, or from M. Pierre Plantard de Saint-Clair, who claims to be a lineal descendant of Dagobert II, and the chief Merovingian pretender to the throne of modern France. But the theory itself is straightforward enough. It is that Jesus did not die on the cross – that the sponge that was proffered to him contained a drug. Lincoln points out that Jesus seems to have taken only a few hours to die, while most people took days, even weeks. His death forestalled the breaking of his legs – an act of mercy that prevented a crucified man from supporting himself on his nailed feet, and ensured his swift suffocation as his weight dragged on his arms. The sponge was offered in the nick of time. The theory also involves the assumption that Jesus was married, and that his wife was probably Mary Magdalene, who may have been identical with Mary the sister of Martha and of Lazarus. According to the theory, Jesus left Palestine and came to Languedoc, although he may have ended his life at the siege of Masada in AD 74. The hillside tomb depicted by Poussin could well be the actual tomb of Jesus.

  Whether or not there is historical evidence for this theory, there is certainly evidence that this is the belief held by the Priory of Sion and by Saunière himself. He built himself a tower to house his library and called it the Magdala tower (Magdala being the name of the village from which Magdalene came). He called his house the Villa Bethania, after Bethany, the home of the other Mary, and the place from which two of the disciples fetch the ass on which Jesus rides into Jerusalem. Lincoln suggests that the man who provided the ass was Lazarus, and that it was all part of a carefully laid plan which would involve the false crucifixion.