Rey’s research was typical of a new form of historical scholarship appearing in Europe at the time, most prominently in Germany, which constituted an extremely serious threat to the Church. The dissemination of Darwinian thought and agnosticism had already produced a "crisis of faith" in the late nineteenth century, and the new scholarship magnified the crisis. In the past historical research had been, for the most part, an unreliable affair, resting on highly tenuous foundations—on legend and tradition, on personal memoirs, on exaggerations promulgated for the sake of one or another cause. Only in the nineteenth century did German scholars begin introducing the rigorous, meticulous techniques that are now accepted as commonplace, the stock in trade of any responsible historian. Such preoccupation with critical examination, with investigation of first-hand sources, with cross-references and exact chronology established the conventional stereotype of the Teutonic pedant. But if German writers of the period tended to lose themselves in minutiae, they also provided a solid basis for inquiry. And for a number of major archaeological discoveries as well. The most famous example, of course, is Heinrich Schliemann’s excavation of the site of Troy.
It was only a matter of time before the techniques of German scholarship were applied, with similar diligence, to the Bible. And the Church, which rested on unquestioning acceptance of dogma, was well aware that the Bible itself could not withstand such critical scrutiny. In his best-selling and highly controversial Life of Jesus, Ernest Renan had already applied German methodology to the New Testament, and the results, for Rome, were extremely embarrassing.
The Catholic Modernist Movement arose initially as a response to this new challenge. Its original objective was to produce a generation of ecclesiastical experts trained in the German tradition, who could defend the literal truth of Scripture with all the heavy ordnance of critical scholarship. As it transpired, however, the plan backfired. The more the Church sought to equip its younger clerics with the tools for combat in the modern polemical world, the more those same clerics began to desert the cause for which they had been recruited. Critical examination of the Bible revealed a multitude of inconsistencies, discrepancies, and implications that were positively inimical to Roman dogma. And by the end of the century the Modernists were no longer the elite shock troops the Church had hoped they would be, but defectors and incipient heretics. Indeed, they posed the most serious threat the Church had experienced since Martin Luther and brought the entire edifice of Catholicism to the brink of a schism unparalleled for centuries.
The hotbed for Modernist activity—as it had been for the Compagnie du Saint-Sacrement—was Saint Sulpice in Paris. Indeed, one of the most resonant voices in the Modernist movement was the man who was director of the Seminary of Saint Sulpice from 1852 to 1884.29 From Saint Sulpice Modernist attitudes spread rapidly to the rest of France and to Italy and Spain. According to these attitudes biblical texts were not unimpugnably authoritative, but had to be understood in the specific context of their time. And the Modernists also rebelled against the increasing centralization of ecclesiastical power— especially the recently instituted doctrine of papal infallibility,30 which ran flagrantly counter to the new trend. Before long Modernist attitudes were being disseminated not only by intellectual clerics but by distinguished and influential writers as well. Figures like Roger Martin du Gard in France and Miguel de Unamuno in Spain were among the primary spokesmen for Modernism.
The Church responded with predictable vigor and wrath. The Modernists were accused of being Freemasons. Many of them were suspended or even excommunicated, and their books were placed on the Index. In 1903 Pope Leo XIII established the Pontifical Biblical Commission to monitor the work of scriptural scholars. In 1907 Pope Pius X issued a formal condemnation of Modernism. And on September 1, 1910, the Church demanded of its clerics an oath against Modernist tendencies.
Nevertheless, Modernism continued to flourish until the First World War diverted public attention to other concerns. Until 1914 it remained a cause célèbre. One Modernist author, the Abbé Turmel, proved a particularly mischievous individual. While ostensibly behaving impeccably at his teaching post in Brittany, he published a series of Modernist works under no less than fourteen different pseudonyms. Each of them was placed on the Index, but not until 1929 was Turmel identified as their author. Needless to say, he was then summarily excommunicated.
In the meantime Modernism had spread to Britain, where it was warmly welcomed and endorsed by the Anglican Church. Among its Anglican adherents was William Temple, later archbishop of Canterbury, who declared that Modernism "is what most educated people already believe."31 One of Temple’s associates was Canon A. L. Lilley. And Lilley knew the priest from whom we had received that portentous letter—which spoke of "incontrovertible proof" that Jesus did not die on the cross.
Lilley, as we knew, had worked for some time in Paris, where he made the acquaintance of the Abbé Émile Hoffet—the man to whom Saunière brought the parchments found at Rennes-le-Château. With his expertise in history, language, and linguistics, Hoffet was the typical young Modernist scholar of his age. He had not been trained at Saint Sulpice, however. On the contrary, he had been trained in Lorraine. At the Seminary School of Sion: La Colline Inspirée.32
THE PROTOCOLS OF SION
One of the most persuasive testimonials we found to the existence and activities of the Prieuré de Sion dated from the late nineteenth century. The testimonial in question is well enough known—but it is not recognized as a testimonial. On the contrary, it has always been associated with more sinister things. It has played a notorious role in recent history and still tends to arouse such violent emotions, bitter antagonisms, and gruesome memories that most writers are happy to dismiss it out of hand. To the extent that this testimonial has contributed significantly to human prejudice and suffering, such a reaction is perfectly understandable. But if the testimonial has been criminally misused, our researches convinced us that it has also been seriously misunderstood.
The role of Rasputin at the court of Nicholas and Alexandra of Russia is more or less generally known. It is not generally known, however, that there were influential, even powerful esoteric enclaves at the Russian court long before Rasputin. During the 1890s and 1900s one such enclave formed itself around an individual known as Monsieur Philippe and around his mentor, who made periodic visits to the imperial court at Petersburg. And Monsieur Philippe’s mentor was none other than the man called Papus33—the French esotericist associated with Jules Doinel (founder of the neo-Cathar church in the Languedoc), Péladan (who claimed to have discovered Jesus’ tomb), Emma Calve, and Claude Debussy. In a word, the French occult revival of the late nineteenth century had not only spread to Petersburg, its representatives also enjoyed the privileged status of personal confidants to the czar and czarina.
However, the esoteric enclave of Papus and Monsieur Philippe was actively opposed by certain other powerful interests—the Grand Duchess Elizabeth, for example, who was intent on installing her own favorites in proximity to the imperial throne. One of the grand duchess’s favorites was a rather contemptible individual known to posterity under the pseudonym of Sergei Nilus. Sometime around 1903 Nilus presented a highly controversial document to the czar—a document that supposedly bore witness to a dangerous conspiracy. But if Nilus expected the czar’s gratitude for his disclosure, he must have been grievously disappointed. The czar declared the document to be an outrageous fabrication and ordered all copies of it to be destroyed. And Nilus was banished from the court in disgrace.
Of course the document—or, at any rate, a copy of it—survived. In 1903 it was serialized in a newspaper but failed to attract any interest. In 1905 it was published again—this time as an appendix to a book by a distinguished mystical philosopher, Vladimir Soloviov. At this point it began to attract attention. In the years that followed it became one of the single most infamous documents of the twentieth century.
The document in question was a tract or, more strictly
speaking, a purported social and political program. It has appeared under a variety of slightly differing titles, the most common of which is The Protocols of the Elders of Sion.34 The Protocols allegedly issued from specifically Jewish sources. And for a great many anti-Semites at the time they were convincing proof of an "international Jewish conspiracy." In 1919, for example, they were distributed to troops of the White Russian army—and these troops, during the next two years, massacred some sixty thousand Jews, who were held responsible for the 1917 Revolution. By 1919 the Protocols were also being circulated by Alfred Rosenberg, later the chief racial theoretician and propagandist for the National Socialist Party in Germany. In Mein Kampf Hitler used the Protocols to fuel his own fanatical prejudices, and he is said to have believed unquestioningly in their authenticity. In England the Protocols were immediately accorded credence by the Morning Post. Even The Times, in 1921, took them seriously and only later admitted its error. Experts today concur— and rightly so, we concluded—that the Protocols, at least in their present form, are a vicious and insidious forgery. Nevertheless, they are still being circulated—in Latin America, in Spain, even in Britain—as anti-Semitic propaganda.35
The Protocols propound in outline a blueprint for nothing less than total world domination. On first reading they would seem to be the Machiavellian program—a kind of interoffice memo, so to speak— for a group of individuals determined to impose a new world order, with themselves as supreme despots. The text advocates a manytentacled hydra-headed conspiracy dedicated to disorder and anarchy, to toppling certain existing regimes, infiltrating Freemasonry and other such organizations, and eventually seizing absolute control of the Western world’s social, political, and economic institutions. And the anonymous authors of the Protocols declare explicitly that they have "stage-managed" whole peoples "according to a political plan which no one has so much as guessed at in the course of many centuries .36
To a modern reader the Protocols might seem to have been devised by some fictitious organization like SPECTRE—James Bond’s adversary in Ian Fleming’s novels. When they were first publicized, however, the Protocols were alleged to have been composed at an international Judaic congress that convened in Basle in 1897. This allegation has long since been disproved. The earliest copies of the Protocols, for example, are known to have been written in French— and the 1897 congress in Basle did not include a single French delegate. Moreover, a copy of the Protocols is known to have been in circulation as early as 1884—a full thirteen years before the Basle congress met. The 1884 copy of the Protocols surfaced in the hands of a member of a Masonic lodge—the same lodge of which Papus was a member and subsequently Grand Master.37 Moreover, it was in this same lodge that the tradition of Ormus had first appeared— the legendary Egyptian sage who amalgamated pagan and Christian mysteries and founded the Rose-Croix.
Modern scholars have established in fact that the Protocols, in their published form, are based at least in part on a satirical work written and printed in Geneva in 1864. The work was composed as an attack on Napoleon III by a man named Maurice Joly, who was subsequently imprisoned. Joly is said to have been a member of a Rose-Croix order. Whether this is true or not, he was a friend of Victor Hugo; and Hugo, who shared Joly’s antipathy to Napoleon III, was a member of a Rose-Croix order.
It can thus be proved conclusively that the Protocols did not issue from the Judaic congress at Basle in 1897. That being so, the obvious question is whence they did issue. Modern scholars have dismissed them as a total forgery, a wholly spurious document concocted by anti-Semitic interests intent on discrediting Judaism. And yet the Protocols themselves argue strongly against such a conclusion. They contain, for example, a number of enigmatic references—references that are clearly not Judaic. But these references are so clearly not Judaic that they cannot plausibly have been fabricated by a forger, either. No anti-Semitic forger with even a modicum of intelligence would possibly have concocted such references in order to discredit Judaism. For no one would have believed these references to be of Judaic origin.
Thus, for instance, the text of the Protocols ends with a single statement, "Signed by the representatives of Sion of the 33rd Degree." 38
Why would an anti-Semitic forger have made up such a statement? Why would he not have attempted to incriminate all Jews, rather than just a few—the few who constitute "the representatives of Sion of the 33rd Degree"? Why would he not declare that the document was signed by, say, the representatives of the international Judaic congress? In fact, the "representatives of Sion of the 33rd Degree" would hardly seem to refer to Judaism at all, or to any "international Jewish conspiracy." If anything, it would seem to refer to something specifically Masonic. And the thirty-third degree in Freemasonry is that of the so-called Strict Observance—the system of Freemasonry introduced by Hund at the behest of his "unknown superiors," one of whom appears to have been Charles Radclyffe.
The Protocols contain other even more flagrant anomalies. The text speaks repeatedly, for example, of the advent of a "Masonic kingdom," and of a "King of the blood of Sion" who will preside over this "Masonic kingdom." It asserts that the future king will be of "the dynastic roots of King David." It affirms that "the King of the Jews will be the real Pope" and "the patriarch of an international church." And it concludes in a most cryptic fashion, "Certain members of the seed of David will prepare the Kings and their heirs ... Only the King and the three who stood sponsor for him will know what is coming." 39
As an expression of Judaic thought, real or fabricated, such statements are blatantly absurd. Since biblical times no king has figured in Judaic tradition, and the very principle of kingship has become utterly irrelevant. The concept of a king would have been as meaningless to Jews of 1897 as it would be to Jews today; and no forger can have been ignorant of this fact. Indeed, the references quoted would appear to be more Christian than Judaic. For the last two millennia the only "king of the Jews" has been Jesus himself— and Jesus, according to the Gospels, was of the "dynastic roots of David." If one is fabricating a document and ascribing it to a Jewish conspiracy, why include such patently Christian echoes? Why speak of so specifically and uniquely Christian a concept as a Pope? Why speak of an "international church" rather than an international synagogue or an international temple? And why include the enigmatic allusion to "the King and the three who stood sponsor"—which is less suggestive of Judaism and Christianity than it is of the secret societies of Johann Valentin Andrea and Charles Nodier? If the Protocols issued wholly from a propagandist’s anti-Semitic imagination, it is difficult to imagine a propagandist so inept or so ignorant and uninformed.
On the basis of prolonged and systematic research we reached certain conclusions about the Protocols of the Elders of Sion. They are as follows.
1. There was an original text on which the published version of the Protocols was based. This original text was not a forgery. On the contrary, it was authentic. But it had nothing whatever to do with Judaism or an "international Jewish conspiracy." It issued, rather, from some Masonic organization or Masonically oriented secret society that incorporated the word "Sion."
2. The original text on which the published version of the Protocols was based need not have been provocative or inflammatory in its language. But it may very well have included a program for gaining power, for infiltrating Freemasonry, for controlling social, political, and economic institutions. Such a program would have been perfectly in keeping with the secret societies of the Renaissance, as well as with the Compagnie du Saint-Sacrement and the institutions of Andrea and Nodier.
3. The original text on which the published version of the Protocols was based fell into the hands of Sergei Nilus. Nilus did not at first intend it to discredit Judaism. On the contrary, he brought it to the czar with the intention of discrediting the esoteric enclave at the imperial court—the enclave of Papus, Monsieur Philippe, and others who were members of the secret society in question. Before doing so he almost certainly doctored th
e language, rendering it far more venomous and inflammatory than it initially was. When the czar spurned him, Nilus then released the Protocols for publication in their doctored form. They had failed in their primary objective of compromising Papus and Monsieur Philippe. But they might still serve a secondary purpose—that of fostering anti-Semitism. Although Nilus’ chief targets had been Papus and Monsieur Philippe, he was hostile to Judaism as well.
4. The published version of the Protocols is not, therefore, a totally fabricated text. It is, rather, a radically altered text: But despite the alterations certain vestiges of the original version can be discerned—as in a palimpsest or as in passages of the Bible. These vestiges—which referred to a king, a Pope, an international church, and to Sion—probably meant little or nothing to Nilus. He certainly would not have invented them himself. But if they were already there, he would have had no reason, given his ignorance, to excise them. And while such vestiges might have been irrelevant to Judaism, they might have been extremely relevant to a secret society. As we learned subsequently, they were—and still are—of paramount importance to the Prieuré de Sion.
THE HIÉRON DU VAL D’OR
While we pursued our independent research, new "Prieuré documents" had continued to appear. Some of them—privately printed works, like the Dossiers secrets, and intended for limited circulation— were made available to us through the offices of friends in France or through the Bibliothèque Nationale. Others appeared in book form, newly published and released on the market for the first time.
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