First Templar Nation

by Freddy Silva

  Mathilde was an Italian noblewoman and a fief of the comte de Champagne and, briefly, wife of Godefroi the Hunchback.3 She was also aunt and foster mother to a ten-year-old nephew who was himself of Merovingian descent and whose name was Godefroi.4 Some years later this exceptionally pious young man would inherit this land, become a knight, acquire the title de Bouillon, liberate the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, and be king of Jerusalem.

  It takes quite an effort to erect a monastery, and yet less than forty years into its construction the monks at Orval just packed up their meager belongings and vanished as mysteriously as they’d appeared. Some say they departed for the Holy Land because their sect already possessed a church in Jerusalem. Indeed, this may be true, for the monks are said to have been associated with a certain Ordre de Sion—the namesake of the hill outside Jerusalem and its run-down basilica, which a grown-up Godefroi de Bouillon would call home after becoming protector of the city.

  Of great interest is the identity of one of the original monks at Orval, a noble who renounced his worldly possessions to lead an ascetic life, a certain Peter the Hermit.5 Peter was a vassal of Eustache de Boulogne, who happened to be the father of Godefroi de Bouillon.6

  When these two men met at Orval, Godefroi was a mere ten years of age. It is probable that Peter became a tutor to the impressionable young man, and if so, the monk’s view of the world must have imprinted itself on young Godefroi, given how their friendship remained true over the course of thirty years, right up to that fateful day when Godefroi’s crusading army picked Peter’s emaciated body up off the dirt road near Antioch.

  The story sounds like a meticulously executed plan, perhaps because it is reasonable to assume it was. Various chroniclers and historians, both contemporary and modern, have suggested that a small, tight-knit enclave of highly influential people lay behind Godefroi’s initial motivation to march on Jerusalem to relieve the Holy Sepulcher of infidels, even in installing him as king; at one time this group may even have been involved with restoring the Merovingian bloodline in Lorraine.7 Albert of Aachen, a historian who traveled with the First Crusade, describes a small group of knights who were separate and close to Godefroi, whom he refers to as clientele Godefridi and domus Godefridi, consisting of clergymen and close relatives, quite possibly family.

  All these connections converged in 1099 in a freshly reconquered Jerusalem.

  It is said that Godefroi assisted a group of monks from Orval in taking up residence in the compound of holy buildings on Mount Sion, the high ground barely half a mile from the site of Solomon’s Temple, then installed an order of twelve knights to protect it.8 One account says of this, “There were in Jerusalem during the Crusades . . . knights attached to the Abbey of Notre Dame de Sion who took the name of Chevaliers de l’Ordre de Notre Dame de Sion.”9 The commune became known as Sainte-Marie du Mont Syon et du Saint-Esprit.10

  But what was so special about Mount Sion—and its dilapidated church in particular—that drew so much attention that monks, knights, even the protector of Jerusalem himself chose it above all other domiciles, despite its exposed location? Were they simply paying homage to their faith, motivated by a promise in the Bible “You come to Mount Sion, to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumerable company of angels”?11

  Indeed, the rock of Sion does receive an unusual amount of attention throughout the Bible, where it is regularly referred to as a stone that is overlooked during the building of the temple that must be retrieved and incorporated as the structure’s keystone.*1 This “precious cornerstone” of the New Jerusalem described in the Book of Isaiah12 is similarly identified in Islamic scholarship as the cornerstone of the Ka’Ba in Mecca13—the holiest of Muslim shrines—and by the prophet Mohammed, who refers to it as Sahyun.14 The origin of the word sion is related to the Arabic sahi (ascend to the top)15 a metaphor that suggests the hill is somehow associated with a process of rising, perhaps where the Mysteries of initiation and resurrection were conducted.

  The Arabic interpretation is echoed in Jewish Kaballah, where the reference to Sion assumes an esoteric mantle as Tzion, a spiritual point from which all reality emerges. It is the center of existence, nay, the purpose of existence itself, the underlying goal of life. As Rabbi Heshy Grossman describes it, “There is a purpose and theme that unites all of creation. Just as the center of a sphere, which is the common point unifying every extremity on its surface, so too Tsion is the ‘Tachlis’ that all of life aspires to . . . and it has the power on earth to wake us from our stupor and remind us of Heaven.”16

  The Byzantine basilica on Mount Sion stood on the site of an earlier community of Essenes who lived there during the era of John the Baptist and who granted Jesus the use of their ritual room in order for him to conduct his own ritual, the Last Supper. Following the destruction of the city in AD 68, a new sanctuary was erected. Emperor Hadrian saw the tiny building still intact during his visit to the city following the Roman rampage, and even by his time it was already referred to as the Mother of All Churches, built as it was over the tomb of King David and probably an even older temple.*217 By the fourth century this small church was enlarged into the Byzantine Hagia Sion, but in the waning and waxing political fortunes of subsequent centuries the honorable basilica inevitably fell into disrepair. It was its empty shell that Godefroi de Bouillon recycled when he expressly ordered the reconstruction of the new Abbey de Notre Dame. Interestingly, Godefroi made additions to the original floor plan. One room in particular was named the Chamber of Mysteries. It was supported on a foundation of eight pillars and built right above the tomb of King David, the room associated with the Last Supper.18

  Godefroi’s refurbished abbey became a self-contained community, heavily fortified, with high walls and battlements. Not only was it an unusual deviation from standard ecclesiastical building procedure, it also was totally out of character for a place of worship, as though the architect intended to keep something very secret. A place of veneration, after all, is supposed to beckon the faithful, not scream “go away!” Of all the real estate available to him in Jerusalem, Godefroi not only chose a property outside the city and in a state of total disrepair, he also picked one with a legacy of sacred space spanning at least two thousand years by his time. And now that we know the origin of events surrounding young Godefroi’s life in Orval, none of this appears to have been by accident: Peter the Hermit and a group of monks arrive from Calabria to build a monastery on land owned by Godefroi’s aunt, claim their seat to be the church on Mount Sion, and during their tenure there, become associated with the name Ordre de Sion.

  One document goes so far as to claim the Ordre de Sion was founded in 1090 by Godefroi de Bouillon himself—six years before the Crusaders marched to Jerusalem—while another states the founding date as 1099.19 Depending on the point of view, both could be right. A plan may have been initially drawn up between Peter the Hermit, the Calabrian monks, and Godefroi, then executed nine years later thanks to the convenient timing of a Crusade marching on Jerusalem, which allowed for the city to become accessible once again to Christians.

  If the Ordre de Sion was indeed an echo of a former sect with a long history on Mount Sion—the Essenes—changing circumstances and war would have rendered its corpus dormant for a thousand years, and in returning to Jerusalem the brotherhood was merely recovering its original place of veneration. By rebuilding the abbey Godefroi helped the brotherhood reestablish its long-lost physical domicile on that hill.

  Whatever went on inside the abbey’s compound, it was conducted within a perimeter built more like a fortress than a church and pursued with utmost conviction, tenacity, and secrecy,20 as though the Ordre de Sion was engaged in some crucial yet undisclosed plan, to all intents and purposes behaving like a secret society pursuing a holy grail.

  One of the alleged aims of the Ordre de Sion was to allow eligible Muslims, Jews, and people of other denominations to be allied to a Christian Order that in time would evolve into a
nother equally secretive Order, the Knights Templar.21 Indeed, it is documented that the closeted brotherhood inhabiting the Abbey de Notre Dame du Mont de Sion did maintain close bonds with the future Templars, the relationship revealed in a ceremony performed at Gisors, France, eighty-eight years after Godefroi de Bouillon exercised his plan in Jerusalem.*322 And as we shall soon discover, the cooperation between these two brotherhoods became integral to the creation of a nation-state on the other side of the Mediterranean.

  The Ordre de Sion had a second stated aim, and it involved the reestablishment of the Merovingian bloodline.23

  The Merovingian bloodline is a messianic lineage of priest-kings, in the Egyptian and Sumerian tradition, whose history possesses near mythical status and claims direct descent from the Sicambrians, a branch of the Trojan royal family who settled along the river Danube and eventually in the area covered by the duchies of Lorraine and Flanders.24 Unlike created kings, their succession was automatic by virtue of hallowed appointment.25 Thei71r name stems from merovie or meruvie, meaning “sea of life” or “source of life,”26 and as such, their kings were considered vessels of a sacred water that was transmitted down a lineage of priest-kings known as the People of the Bear. Their practices were similar to those of the Druids, Sumerian magi, even early Nazarites; like the Celts of Porto Cale they followed the goddess Anu. They were regarded as highly spiritual people, teachers, and healers; they were well versed in the esoteric sciences, and possessed clairvoyant ability. Their principal interests were education, agriculture, and maritime trade, and their belief in wisdom, insight, and the divine harmony in nature was represented by their adopted symbol, the bee—the same sacred emblem of ancient Egyptian and Sumerian royalty.

  These attributes will be of central interest in the development of our story, but for now the following five points are of prime concern:

  After migrating to central Europe, the Sicambrians/Merovingians became closely associated with the Burgundians.

  One of their most important cities was named in honor of their Trojan heritage: Troyes, in Champagne.

  Their revered model was King Solomon and his temple.

  The Roman Catholic Church’s focus on eradicating their bloodline bordered on the fanatical.

  According to legend, people of their lineage bore a distinctive “birthmark” in the form of a red cross on their chest.27

  It has long been claimed that the Ordre de Sion was instrumental in electing the kings of Jerusalem, and if so, such an organization would have been invested with enormous power, for in those days the appointment of kings was the sole domain of the pope. The Ordre de Sion may have asserted that power, for shortly after the conquest of Jerusalem, a secret conclave, featuring a bishop from Calabria, met in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher to elect a king of the city28—Godefroi de Bouillon, a knight of the Merovingian bloodline.29

  Sadly, Godefroi’s enjoyment of his tenure as patriarch was brief, for he died a year after conquering the city, poisoned by Muslim leaders at a banquet under the ruse of a peace treaty: “The Muslim leaders . . . brought supplies and served them in his presence. Godefroi accepted and unsuspectingly ate the dishes they presented, which were poisoned. He died several days later along with forty other people.”30 The crown he never wore was immediately passed to his younger brother, Baudoin, who was crowned first Latin king of Jerusalem on the winter solstice, a highly symbolic pagan celebration of the day when the sun begins its triumphant journey over the days of darkness.

  A foremost authority on the Crusades states that Baudoin I, like his brother, came from a royal tradition founded on the rock of Sion that was equal to the reigning dynasties of Europe, a kind of holy bloodline.31 As with the appointment of Godefroi, the Ordre de Sion appears to have been behind his brother’s election, for it was claimed that Baudoin I “owed his throne” to the Ordre, whose seat was the Abbey de Notre Dame du Mont de Sion.32

  But the creation of kings was not the only thing to come out of the abbey that Godefroi rebuilt and the Ordre de Sion inhabited. The abbey was also the domicile of a man whose background would form a bridge between the nascent Templars and their involvement in the creation of a nation-state on the opposite side of Europe. An original document bears the seal of the Ordre de Sion, “represented on one side by the Pentecost with the phrase sigil. spe. sci. de monte syon and on the other side, an image of the death of the Virgin . . . with the inscription transitus dei genitricis.”33 The document is signed by the prior of Notre Dame du Mont de Sion, a certain Arnaldus, or as he was better known in the Portuguese city of Braga, Arnaldo da Rocha.34

  Abbey de Notre Dame du Mont de Sion.

  9

  1114. BRAGA. A VERY OLD CITY IN PORTUGALE . . .

  A long line of lords, townspeople, and country folk stood on either side of the nine miles of dirt road connecting Guimarães with the cathedral city of Braga. It was the beginning of May and the Celtic fertility feast of Beltane, but there was little to celebrate. Along the final stretch of gray cobblestones leading to the cathedral, a solemn procession carried the casket of a dignified Burgundian knight who had been born in Dijon and died in the small territory he carefully cultivated eight hundred miles from his birthplace, deeded to him by his father-in-law, King Alfonso VI of Castilla e León.

  At fifty-five years of age Count Dom Henrique the Good, father of the county of Portucale, was dead.

  In his time he had been much admired by his subjects, whose quality of life he raised by making a priority of education and the husbandry of the land. He would leave behind his wife, Tareja, to act as regent for their five-year-old son, Afonso Henriques, who, with good fortune, would complete his father’s dream: the establishment of an independent state of Portucale, an idea the count had set in motion a few years earlier while taking advantage of the civil war raging in Castilla e León following the death of its king, the very man who awarded Dom Henrique his territory. Even now the county was referred to in the softer local dialect—Portugale.

  And so on this somber day in 1114 began the adult life of the child Afonso, surrounded by the austere granite of the cathedral of Braga.*41

  Afonso could not have imagined he would rise to power with the help of a fraternity of spiritual knights with whom his father had become involved—in their embryonic stage—during his voyages to Jerusalem or that the activities of the brotherhood would be centered unequivocally around the city of Braga.

  By all surviving accounts, Braga is the oldest Portuguese city and one of the oldest in Iberia, allegedly founded by Teukros, son of the Greek king Telamon, who fought in the Trojan War even though he was related to the royal family of Troy. The legends may well be correct. After the war Teukros moved to Cyprus and founded the city of Salamis before departing westward along the Mediterranean, sailing through the Pillars of Heracles, then turning north along the Lusitanian coast before disembarking in the town of Porto Cale. This dates the founding of nearby Braga to around 1190 BC.2 Hellenistic presence in this part of the world is strong, with other Greek settlements founded nearby at Tuy and Hellene.3 Brutus of Troy is also known to have sailed here circa 1100 BC with a large contingent of fellow countrymen on his way to southern Britain, where by the banks of the river Isis, or Tammuz, he founded the city of Caer Troyus, later renamed Llandin. We know these landmarks today as the river Thames and the city of London.4 Certainly, there still lingers a great kinship between the Greek/Trojan and Portuguese cultures to this day, but little love for the Romans. Much to the embarrassment of Rome, during a forty-year siege of Braga even the women joined in to defeat its legions, leaving six thousand soldiers dead.5

  Count Dom Henrique at rest.

  Myths also link the founding of Braga with the Egyptian god of resurrection, Osiris, and a temple dedicated to his wife Isis still existed in AD 44. The cult of Isis was venerated throughout the region and partly lent its name to the nearby province of Gallissa.6 There was also a temple in the city dedicated to the god of two faces, Baal-Ianus, symbolizing
the balance of opposing forces; a street still honors the location today.7 Indeed, ancient esoteric roots run very deep here, as they do along much of northern Iberia through to Gaul, for it was an area where the teachings of Priscillian were held in high esteem.

  Stone in Braga cathedral marking the temple of Isis.

  Priscillian was a fourth-century bishop, mystic, and theologian, and the first person in the history of Christianity to be executed for heresy—or to be legally precise, for the practice of magic. As with later characters such as Walter the Penniless and Peter the Hermit, Priscillian was a rich noble who renounced his material possessions in favor of ascetic mysticism, and through a classical pagan education came to the understanding that true Christian principles require a mystical and continual intercourse with God.8 To prove it he upheld the esoteric Christian ethos, “Know ye not that ye are the temple of God?” and argued that to make itself a vessel fit for the habitation of the divine a person must renounce material goods, do works of love, and above all—and this will come as no surprise—practice a hard asceticism.9

  Priscillian founded a group that subsisted for several centuries despite persistent persecution. Naturally, his growing appeal among large numbers of followers threatened the growing authority of the Catholic Church, which led to trumped up charges of heresy. Priscillian responded with an appeal to both the Holy Roman emperor and the pope, for which he and six of his followers were beheaded—the first Christian heretics murdered by Christians. Thus Priscillianism was quite at home in Portugale and Braga, places with a long appetite for the independent of spirit.