According to one account the elm afforded the only shade on the Sacred Field. It was said to be more than eight hundred years old and so large that nine men, linking hands could barely encompass its trunk. Under the shade of this tree Henry II and his entourage supposedly took shelter, leaving the French monarch, who arrived later, to the merciless sunlight. By the third day of negotiations French tempers had become frayed by the heat, insults were exchanged by the men-at-arms, and an arrow flew from the ranks of Henry’s Welsh mercenaries. This provoked a full-scale onslaught by the French, who greatly outnumbered the English. The latter sought refuge within the walls of Gisors itself, while the French are said to have cut down the tree in frustration. Philippe II then stormed back to Paris in a huff, declaring he had not come to Gisors to play the role of woodcutter.
The story has a characteristic medieval simplicity and quaintness, contenting itself with superficial narrative while hinting between the lines at something of greater import—explanations and motivations that are left unexplored. In itself it would almost seem to be absurd— as absurd and possibly apocryphal as, say, the tales associated with the founding of the Order of the Garter. And yet there is confirmation of the story, if not of its specific details, in other accounts.
According to another chronicle Philippe seems to have given notice to Henry that he intended to cut down the tree. Henry supposedly responded by reinforcing the trunk of the elm with bands of iron. On the following day the French armed themselves and formed a phalanx of five squadrons, each commanded by a distinguished lord of the realm, who advanced on the elm, accompanied by slingsmen as well as carpenters equipped with axes and hammers. A struggle is said to have ensued, in which Richard Coeur de Lion, Henry’s eldest son and his heir, participated, attempting to protect the tree and spilling considerable blood in the process. Nevertheless, the French held the field at the end of the day, and the tree was cut down.
This second account implies something more than a petty squabble or minor skirmish. It implies a full-scale engagement involving substantial numbers and possibly substantial casualties. Yet no biography of Richard makes much of the affair, still less explores it.
Again, however, the "Prieuré documents" were confirmed by both recorded history and tradition—to the extent, at least, that a curious dispute did occur at Gisors in 1188, which involved the cutting of an elm. There is no external confirmation that this event was related in any way to either the Knights Templar or the Ordre de Sion. On the other hand, the existing accounts of the affair are too vague, too scant. too incomprehensible, too contradictory to be accepted as definitive. It is extremely probable that Templars were present at the incident—Richard I was frequently accompanied by knights of the order, and, moreover, Gisors, thirty years before, had been entrusted to the Temple.
Given the existing evidence, it is certainly possible, if not likely, that the cutting of the elm involved something more—or something other—than the account preserved for posterity implies. Indeed, given the sheer oddness of surviving accounts, it would not be surprising if there were something else involved—something overlooked, or perhaps never made public, by history, something, in short, of which the surviving accounts are a species of allegory, simultaneously intimating and concealing an affair of much greater import.
ORMUS
From 1188 onward, the "Prieuré documents" maintain, the Knights Templar were autonomous—no longer under the authority of the Ordre de Sion or acting as its military and administrative arm. From 1188 onward the Templars were officially free to pursue their own objectives and ends, to follow their own course through the remaining century or so of their existence to their grim doom in 1307. And in the meantime, as of 1188, the Ordre de Sion is said to have undergone a major administrative restructuring of its own.
Until 1188 the Ordre de Sion and the Order of the Temple are said to have shared the same grand master. Hugues de Payen and Bertrand de Blanchefort, for example, would thus have presided over both institutions simultaneously. Commencing in 1188, however, after the "cutting of the elm," the Ordre de Sion reportedly selected its own grand master, who had no connection with the Temple. The first such grand master, according to the "Prieuré documents,’’ was Jean de Gisors.
In 1188 the Ordre de Sion is also said to have modified its name, adopting the one which has allegedly obtained to the present—the Prieuré de Sion. And as a kind of subtitle it is said to have adopted the curious name "Ormus." This subtitle was supposedly used until 1306—a year before the arrest of the French Templars. The device for "Ormus" was and involves a kind of acrostic or anagram which combines a number of key words and symbols. Ours means "bear" in French—Ursus in Latin, an echo, as subsequently became apparent, of Dagobert II and the Merovingian dynasty. Orme is French for "elm." Or, of course, is "gold." And the M that forms the frame enclosing the other letters is not only an M but also the astrological sign for Virgo—connoting, in the language of medieval iconography, Notre Dame.
Our researches revealed no reference anywhere to a medieval order or institution bearing the name Ormus. In this case we could find no external substantiation for the text in the Dossiers secrets, nor even any circumstantial evidence to argue its veracity. On the other hand, Ormus does occur in two other—radically different—contexts. It figures in Zoroastrian thought and in Gnostic texts, where it is synonymous with the principle of light. And it surfaces again among the pedigrees claimed by late eighteenth-century Freemasonry. According to Masonic teachings, Ormus was the name of an Egyptian sage and mystic, a Gnostic "adept" of Alexandria. He lived, supposedly, during the early years of the Christian epoch. In A.D. 46 he and six of his followers were supposedly converted to a form of Christianity by one of Jesus’ disciples, Saint Mark in most accounts. From this conversion a new sect or order is said to have been born, which fused the tenets of early Christianity with the teachings of other, even older mystery schools. To our knowledge this story cannot be authenticated. At the same time, however, it is certainly plausible. During the first century A.D., Alexandria was a veritable hotbed of mystical activity, a crucible in which Judaic, Mithraic, Zoroastrian, Pythagorean, Hermetic, and neo-Platonic doctrines suffused the air and combined with innumerable others. Teachers of every conceivable kind abounded, and it would hardly be surprising if one of them adopted a name implying the principle of light.
According to Masonic tradition, in A.D. 46 Ormus is said to have conferred on his newly constituted "order of initiates" a specific identifying symbol—a red or a rose cross. Granted, the red cross was subsequently to find an echo in the blazon of the Knights Templar, but the import of the text in the Dossiers secrets and in other "Prieuré documents" is unequivocally clear. One is intended to see in Ormus the origins of the so-called Rose-Croix, or Rosicrucians. And in 1188 the Prieuré de Sion is said to have adopted a second subtitle in addition to Ormus. It is said to have called itself l’Ordre de la Rose-Croix Veritas.
At this point we seemed to be in very questionable territory, and the text in the "Prieuré documents" began to appear highly suspect. We were familiar with the claims of the modern "Rosicrucians" in California and other contemporary organizations that claim for themselves, after the fact, a pedigree harking back to the mists of antiquity and including most of the world’s great men. An Order of the Rose-Croix dating from 1188 appeared equally spurious.
As Frances Yates has demonstrated convincingly, there is no known evidence of any "Rosicrucians" (at least by that name) before the early seventeenth century—or perhaps the last years of the sixteenth.12 The myth surrounding the legendary order dates from approximately 1605 and first gained impetus a decade later with the publication of three inflammatory tracts. These tracts, which appeared in 1614, 1615, and 1616 respectively, proclaimed the existence of a secret brotherhood or confraternity of mystical "initiates" allegedly founded by one Christian Rosenkreuz—who, it was maintained, was born in 1378 and died, at the hoary age of 106, in 1484. Christian Rosenkreuz and his secre
t confraternity are now generally acknowledged to have been fictitious—a hoax of sorts devised for some purpose no one has yet satisfactorily explained, although it was not without political repercussions at the time. Moreover, the author of one of the three tracts, the famous Chemical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreuz, which appeared in 1616, is now known. He was Johann Valentin Andrea, a German writer and theologian living in Württemberg, who confessed that he composed The Chemical Wedding as a "ludibrium" —a joke, or perhaps a comedy in Dante’s and Balzac’s sense of the word. There is reason to believe that Andrea or one of his associates composed the other "Rosicrucian" tracts as well; and it is to this source that "Rosicrucianism" as it evolved and as one thinks of it today can be traced.
If the "Prieuré documents" were accurate, however, we would have to reconsider and think in terms of something other than a seventeenth-century hoax. We would have to think in terms of a secret order or society that actually existed, a genuine clandestine brotherhood or confraternity. It need not have been wholly or even primarily mystical. It might well have been largely political. But it would have existed a full 425 years before its name ever became public, and a good two centuries before its legendary founder is alleged to have lived.
Again we found no substantiating evidence. Certainly the rose has been a mystical symbol from time immemorial and enjoyed a particular vogue during the Middle Ages—in the popular Romance of the Rose by Jean de Meun, for instance, and in Dante’s Paradiso. And the red cross was also a traditional symbolic motif. Not only was it the blazon of the Knights Templar, but it subsequently became the cross of Saint George and, as such, was adopted by the Order of the Garter—created some thirty years after the fall of the Temple. But though roses and red crosses abounded as symbolic motifs, there was no evidence of an institution or an order, still less of a secret society.
On the other hand, Frances Yates maintains that there were secret societies functioning long before the seventeenth-century "Rosicrucians"—and that these earlier societies were, in fact, "Rosicrucian" in political and philosophical orientation, if not necessarily in name.13 Thus, in conversation with one of our researchers she described Leonardo as a "Rosicrucian"—using the term as a metaphor to define his values and attitudes. Not only that. In 1629, when "Rosicrucian" interest in Europe was at its zenith, a man named Robert Denyau, cure of Gisors, composed an exhaustive history of Gisors and the Gisors family. In this manuscript Denyau states explicitly that the Rose-Croix was founded by Jean de Gisors in 1188. In other words there is a verbatim seventeenth-century confirmation of the claims made by the "Prieuré documents." Granted, Denyau’s manuscript was composed some four and a half centuries after the alleged fact. But it constitutes an extremely important fragment of evidence. And the fact that it issues fom Gisors renders it all the more important. 14
We were left, however, with no confirmation, only a possibility. But so far in every respect the "Prieuré documents" had proved astonishingly accurate. Thus, it would have been rash to dismiss them out of hand. We were not prepared to accept them on blind, unquestioning faith. But we did feel obliged to reserve judgment.
THE PRIEURÉ AT ORLÉANS
In addition to their more grandiose claims the Prieuré documents" offered information of a very different kind, minutiae so apparently trivial and inconsequential that their significance eluded us. At the same time the sheer unimportance of this information argued in favor of its veracity; quite simply there seemed to be no point in inventing or concocting such minor details. And what was more, the authenticity of many of these details could be confirmed.
Thus, for example, Girard, abbot of the "little priory" at Orléans between 1239 and 1244, is said to have ceded a tract of land at Acre to the Teutonic Knights. Why this should warrant mention is unclear, but it can be definitively established. The actual charter exists, dating from 1239 and bearing Girard’s signature.
Information of a similar, albeit more suggestive kind is offered on an abbot named Adam, who presided over the "little priory" at Orléans in 1281. In that year, according to the "Prieuré documents," Adam ceded a tract of land near Orval to the monks then occupying the abbey there—Cistercians who had moved in under the aegis of Saint Bernard a century and a half before. We could not find written evidence of this particular transaction, but it would seem plausible enough—there are charters attesting to numerous other transactions of the same nature. What makes this one interesting, of course, is the recurrence of Orval, which had figured earlier in our inquiry. Moreover, the tract of land in question would seem to have been of special import, for the "Prieuré documents" tell us that Adam incurred the wrath of the brethren of Sion for his donation, so much so that he was apparently compelled to renounce his position. The act of abdication, according to the Dossiers secrets, was formally witnessed by Thomas de Sainville, grand master of the Order of Saint Lazarus. Immediately afterward Adam is said to have gone to Acre, then to have fled the city when it fell to the Saracens and to have died in Sicily in 1291.
Again we could not find the actual charter of abdication. But Thomas de Sainville was grand master of the Order of Saint Lazarus in 1281, and the headquarters of Saint Lazarus were near Orléans— where Adam’s abdication would have taken place. And there is no question that Adam went to Acre. Two proclamations and two letters were in fact signed by him there, the first dated August 1281,15 the second March 1289. 16
THE "HEAD" OF THE TEMPLARS
According to the "Prieuré documents," the Prieuré de Sion was not, strictly speaking, a perpetuation or continuation of the Order of the Temple. On the contrary, the text stresses emphatically that the separation between the two orders dates from the "cutting of the elm" in 1188. Apparently, however, some kind of rapport continued to exist, and "in 1307, Guillaume de Gisors received the golden head, Caput LVIII , from the Order of the Temple."17
Our investigation of the Templars had already acquainted us with this mysterious head. To link it with Sion, however, and with the seemingly important Gisors family, again struck us as dubious—as if the "Prieuré documents" were straining to make powerful and evocative connections. And yet it was precisely on this point that we found some of our most solid and intriguing confirmation. According to the official records of the Inquisition:
The guardian and administrator of the goods of the Temple at Paris, after the arrests, was a man of the King named Guillaume Pidoye. Before the Inquisitors on 11 May 1308, he declared that at the time of the arrest of the Knights Templar, he, together with his colleague Guillaume de Gisors and one Raynier Bourdon, had been ordered to present to the Inquisition all the figures of metal or wood they had found. Among the goods of the Temple they had found a large head of silver gilt ... the image of a woman, which Guillaume, on 11 May, presented before the Inquisition. The head carried a label, "CAPUT LVIII "18
If the head continued to baffle us, the context in which Guillaume de Gisors appeared was equally perplexing. He is specifically cited as being a colleague of Guillaume Pidoye, one of King Philippe’s men. In other words he, like Philippe, would seem to have been hostile to the Templars and to have participated in the attack upon them. According to the "Prieuré documents," however, Guillaume was grand master of the Prieuré de Sion at the time. Did this mean that Sion endorsed Philippe’s action against the Temple, perhaps even collaborated in it? There are certain "Prieuré documents" that hint that this may have been the case—that Sion, in some unspecified way, authorized and presided over the dissolution of its unruly protégés. On the other hand, the "Prieuré documents" also imply that Sion exercised a kind of paternal protectiveness toward at least certain Templars during the order’s last days. If this is true, Guillaume de Gisors might well have been a "double agent." He might well have been responsible for the "leak" of Philippe’s plans, the means whereby the Templars received advance warning of the king’s machinations against them. If, after the formal separation in 1188, Sion did in fact continue to exercise some clandestine control over Temple
affairs, Guillaume de Gisors might have been partially responsible for the careful destruction of the order’s documents— and the unexplained disappearance of its treasure.
THE GRAND MASTERS OF THE TEMPLARS
In addition to the fragmentary information discussed above, the text in the Dossiers secrets includes three lists of names. The first of these is straightforward enough—the least interesting and the least open to controversy or doubt. It is merely a list of abbots who presided over Sion’s lands in Palestine between 1152 and 1281. Our research confirmed its veracity; it appears elsewhere, independent of the Dossiers secrets, and in accessible, unimpugnable sources. 19 The lists in these sources agree with that in the Dossiers secrets except that two names are missing in the sources. In this case, then, the "Prieuré documents" not only agree with verifiable history, they are more comprehensive in that they fill certain lacunae.
The second list in the Dossiers secrets is a list of the grand masters of the Knights Templar from 1118 until 1190—in other words, from the Temple’s public foundation until its separation from Sion and the "cutting of the elm" at Gisors. At first there seemed nothing unusual or extraordinary about this list. When we compared it to other lists, however—those cited by acknowledged historians writing on the Templars, for instance—certain obvious discrepancies quickly emerged.
According to virtually all other known lists there were ten grand masters between 1118 and 1190. According to the Dossiers secrets there were only eight. According to most other lists André de Montbard—Saint Bernard’s uncle—was not only a cofounder of the order but also its grand master between 1153 and 1156. According to the Dossiers secrets, however, André was never grand master but would seem to have continued functioning as he does all through his career—behind the scenes. According to most other lists Bertrand de Blanchefort appears as sixth grand master of the Temple, assuming his office after André de Montbard, in 1156. According to the Dossiers secrets, Bertrand is not sixth, but fourth in succession, becoming grand master in 1153. There were other such discrepancies and contradictions, and we were uncertain what to make of them or how seriously to take them. Because it disagreed with those compiled by established historians, were we to regard the list in the Dossiers secrets as wrong?
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