Holy Blood, Holy Grail

by Baigent, Michael

  Such a program may well appear quixotic. But history by now should have taught us not to underestimate the potential of the collective psyche and the power to be obtained by harnessing it. A few years ago it would have seemed inconceivable that a religious zealot—without an army of his own, without a political party behind him, without anything at his disposal save charisma and the religious hunger of a people—could singlehandedly topple the modern and superbly equipped edifice of the shah of Iran’s regime. And yet that is precisely what the Ayatollah Khomeini managed to do.

  We are not, of course, sounding a warning. We are not, implicitly or explicitly, comparing the Pricuré de Sion to the Ayatollah. We have no reason to think Sion sinister—as one might the demagogue of Iran. But the demagogue of Iran bears eloquent witness to the deep-rooted character, the energy, the potential power of man’s religious impulse—and the ways in which that impulse can be channeled to political ends. Such ends need not entail an abuse of authority. The religious impulse can be channeled in any of innumerable directions. It is a source of immense potential power. And it is all too often ignored or overlooked by modern governments founded on, and often fettered to, reason alone. The religious impulse reflects a profound psychological and emotional need. And psychological and emotional needs are every bit as real as the need for bread, for shelter, for material security.

  We know that the Prieuré de Sion is not a "lunatic fringe" organization. We know it is well financed and includes—or, at any rate, commands sympathy from—men in responsible and influential positions in politics, economics, media, the arts. We know that since 1956 it has increased its membership more than fourfold, as if it were mobilizing or preparing for something; and M. Plantard told us personally that he and his order were working to a more or less precise timetable. We also know that since 1956 Sion has been making certain information available—discreetly, tantalizingly, in piecemeal fashion, in measured quantities just sufficient to provide alluring hints. Those hints provoked this book.

  In a very real sense the time is ripe for the Prieuré to show its hand. The political systems and ideologies that in the early years of our century seemed to promise so much have virtually all displayed a degree of bankruptcy. Communism, socialism, fascism, capitalism, Western -style democracy have all, in one way or another, betrayed their promise, jaundiced their adherents, and failed to fulfill the dreams they engendered. Because of their small-mindedness, lack of perspective, and abuse of office, politicians no longer inspire confidence, only distrust. In the West today there are increasing cynicism, dissatisfaction, and disillusion. There are increasing psychic stress, anxiety, and despair. But there is also an intensifying quest for meaning, for emotional fulfillment, for a spiritual dimension to our lives, for something in which genuinely to believe. There is a longing for a renewed sense of the sacred that amounts, in effect, to a full-scale religious revival—exemplified by the proliferation of sects and cults, for example, and the swelling tide of fundamentalism in the United States. There is also, increasingly, a desire for a true "leader"—not a führer, but a species of wise and benign spiritual figure, a "priest-king" in whom mankind can safely repose its trust. Our civilization has sated itself with materialism and in the process become aware of a more profound hunger. It is now beginning to look elsewhere, seeking the fulfillment of emotional, psychological, and spiritual needs.

  Such an atmosphere would seem eminently conducive to the Prieuré de Sion’s objectives. It places Sion in the position of being able to offer an alternative to existing social and political systems. Such an alternative is hardly likely to constitute Utopia or the New Jerusalem. But to the extent that it satisfies needs that existing systems do not even acknowledge it could well prove immensely attractive.

  There are many devout Christians who do not hesitate to interpret the Apocalypse as nuclear holocaust. How might the advent of Jesus’ lineal descendant be interpreted? To a receptive audience, it might be a kind of Second Coming.

  Appendix

  The Alleged Grand Masters of the Prieuré de Sion

  JEAN DE GISORS. According to the "Prieuré documents," Jean de Gisors was Sion’s first independent grand master, assuming his position after the "cutting of the elm" and the separation from the Knights Templar in 1188. He was born in 1133 and died in 1220. He was at least nominal lord of the fortress of Gisors in Normandy— where meetings were traditionally convened between English and French kings and where, in 1188, a curious squabble did occur that involved the cutting of an elm. Until 1193 Jean was a vassal of the king of England—Henry II, and then Richard 1. He also possessed property in England—in Sussex, and the manor of Titchfield in Hampshire. According to the "Prieuré documents" he met with Thomas a Becket in 1169. No independent record of this meeting survives, but Becket was at Gisors in 1169 and must have had some contact with the lord of the fortress.

  MARIE DE SAINT-CLAIR. Information on Marie de Saint-Clair was even more meager than information on Jean de Gisors. Born around 1192, she was descended from Henry de Saint-Clair, Baron of Rosslyn in Scotland, who accompanied Godfroi de Bouillon on the First Crusade. Rosslyn itself was situated not far from the Templars’ major preceptory in Scotland, and Rosslyn Chapel, built in the fifteenth century, became mantled with Rose-Croix and Freemasonry legends. Marie de Saint-Clair’s grandmother married into the French Chaumont family—as did Jean de Gisors. The genealogies of the Chaumont, Gisors, and Saint-Clair families were thus closely intertwined. There is some evidence that Marie de Saint-Clair was, in fact, Jean de Gisors’s second wife, but we could not confirm this definitely. According to the genealogies in the "Prieuré documents" Marie’s mother was one Isabel Levis. This surname, which would seem to be of Judaic origin, occurs frequently in the Languedoc, where there were Jewish settlements dating from before the Christian epoch.

  GUILLAUME DE GISORS. Guillaume de Gisors, Jean de Gisors’s grandson, was born in 1219. We had already encountered his name in connection with the mysterious head found in the Templars’ Paris preceptory after the arrests in 1307. Apart from this, however, we found only one external mention of him, on a deed dated 1244, which states that he was a knight. According to the genealogies in the "Prieuré documents" his sister married one Jean des Plantard. The "Prieuré documents" also state that Guillaume was inducted into the Order of the Ship and the Double Crescent in 1269. This order was created by Louis IX (Saint Louis) for nobles who accompanied him on the ill-fated Sixth Crusade. If Guillaume de Gisors was a member of it, he must therefore have been with Saint Louis during the campaign in Egypt.

  EDOUARD DE BAR. Born in 1302, Edouard, comte de Bar, was a grandson of Edward I of England and a nephew of Edward II. He was descended from a family that had been influential in the Ardennes since Merovingian times and was almost certainly connected with the Merovingian dynasty. Edouard’s daughter married into the house of Lorraine, and the genealogies of Bar and Lorraine subsequently become closely intertwined.

  In 1308, at the age of six (!), Edouard accompanied the duke of Lorraine into battle, was captured and not ransomed until 1314. On attaining his majority he purchased the seigneury of Stenay from one of his uncles, Jean de Bar. In 1324 he was allied in military operations with Ferry de Lorraine and Jean de Luxembourg—and the house of Luxembourg, like that of Lorraine, would seem to be of Merovingian blood. In 1336 Edouard died in a shipwreck off the coast of Cyprus.

  No independent source could provide us with any link between Edouard de Bar and Guillaume de Gisors. According to the genealogies in the "Prieuré documents," however, Edouard was grand-nephew of Guillaume’s wife, Iolande de Bar. While we could not confirm this affiliation, we found nothing to contradict it.

  If, as the "Prieuré documents" maintain, Edouard assumed Sion’s grand mastership in 1307, he would have done so at the age of five. This is not necessarily improbable, if he was captured on the battlefield at the age of six. Until Edouard attained his majority the comté of Bar was governed by his uncle, Jean de Bar, who acted
as regent. It is possible that Jean acted in the capacity of "regent grand master" as well. But there would seem to be no sense in the selection of a five-year-old boy as grand master—unless at this time the grand mastership was in some way linked to heredity or blood descent.

  JEANNE DE BAR. Jeanne de Bar was born in 1295, the elder sister of Edouard. She was thus a granddaughter of Edward I of England and a niece of Edward II. In 1310, at the age of fifteen, she was married to the earl of Warren, Surrey, Sussex, and Strathern—and divorced from him some five years later after he was excommunicated for adultery. Jeanne continued to live in England, however, and though we could find no detailed record of her activities, she seems to have enjoyed extremely cordial relations with the English throne. She seems to have had similar relations with the king of France—who in 1345 invited her back to the continent, where she became regent of the comté of Bar. In 1353—despite the Hundred Years War and the consequent hostility between England and France—Jeanne returned to England. When the French monarch was captured at the Battle of Poitiers in 1356 and imprisoned in London, Jeanne was allowed to "comfort" and minister to him. During his subsequent prolonged incarceration, Jeanne is said to have been his mistress, although both were elderly at the time. She died in London in 1361.

  According to the "Prieuré documents" Jeanne de Bar presided over the Prieuré de Sion until 1351, ten years before her death. She thus appears to be the only figure on the list of grand masters to have resigned, abdicated, or been deposed from her position.

  JEAN DE SAINT-CLAIR. Our researches yielded virtually nothing about Jean de Saint-Clair, who seems to have been a very minor figure indeed. He was born around 1329 and descended from the French houses of Chaumont, Gisors, and Saint-Clair-sur-Epte. According to the genealogies in the "Prieuré documents" his grandfather was married to Jeanne de Bar’s aunt. This relationship is certainly tenuous. Nevertheless, it would seem to suggest that the grand mastership of Sion was still circulating exclusively within a network of interlinked families.

  BLANCHE D’EVREUX. Blanche d’Evreux was in fact Blanche de Navarre, daughter of the king of Navarre. She was born in 1332. From her father she inherited the comtés of Longueville and Evreux, both immediately adjacent to Gisors; and in 1359 she became countess of Gisors as well. Ten years previously she had married Philippe

  18 The families of Gisors, Payen, and Saint-Clair

  VI, king of France, through whom she almost certainly knew Jeanne de Bar. She spent much of her life at the Château of Neuphle, near Gisors, and died there in 1398.

  According to numerous legends Blanche was immersed in alchemical studies and experimentation; and tradition speaks of laboratories at certain of her châteaux. She is said to have possessed a priceless alchemical work, produced in the Languedoc during the fourteenth century but based on a manuscript dating from the last days of the Merovingian dynasty seven hundred years before. She is also rumored to have been a personal patron of Nicolas Flamel.

  NICOLAS FLAMEL. Flamel’s is the first name on the list of grand masters not to be affiliated by blood with the genealogies in the "Prieuré documents" and with him the grand mastership of Sion seems to have ceased being exclusively a family sinecure. Flamel was born around 1330 and worked for a time as a scrivener, or copyist, in Paris. By virtue of his occupation many rare books passed through his hands, and he acquired proficiency in painting, poetry, mathematics, and architecture. He also acquired an interest in alchemy and Cabalistic and Hermetic thought.

  Around 1361 Flamel, according to his own account, happened upon the alchemical text that was to transform his life. Its complete title is both puzzling and interesting—The Sacred Book of Abraham the Jew, Prince, Priest, Levite, Astrologer and Philosopher to that Tribe of Jews who by the Wrath of God were Dispersed amongst the Gauls. This work subsequently became one of the most famous in Western esoteric tradition. The original is said to have been deposited in the Arsenal Library in Paris. Reproductions of it have been assiduously, religiously, and, it would seem, vainly studied by successive generations of would-be adepts.

  According to his own account Flamel pored over the book with no greater success for twenty-one years. At last, on a journey to Spain in 1382, he claimed to have met a converted Jew in Léon who elucidated the text for him. On returning to Paris he applied what he had learned and is said to have performed his first successful alchemical transmutation at noon on January 17—the date that recurs so persistently in connection with Saunière and Rennes-le-Château.

  Whether Flamel’s account is accurate or not, the fact remains that he became phenomenally wealthy. By the end of his life he owned more than thirty houses and tracts of land in Paris alone. At the same time, however, he seems to have been a modest man who did not revel in power and lavished much of his wealth on good works. By 1413 he had founded and endowed fourteen hospitals, seven churches, and three chapels in Paris and a comparable number in Boulogne— the old comté of Godfroi de Bouillon’s father. This altruism, perhaps even more than his dazzling success, endeared him to posterity. As late as the eighteenth century he was revered by men like Sir Isaac Newton, who painstakingly read through his works, copiously annotated them, and even copied one of them out by hand.

  RENT D’ANJOU. We discovered no recorded contact between Flamel and René d’Anjou. At the same time, however, René himself gave us sufficient material to ponder. Although little known today, he was one of the most important figures in the years immediately preceding the Renaissance. Born in 1408, he came, in the course of his life, to hold an awesome array of titles. Among the most important were count of Bar, count of Provence, count of Piedmont, count of Guise, duke of Calabria, duke of Anjou, duke of Lorraine, king of Hungary, king of Naples and Sicily, king of Aragón, Valencia, Majorca, and Sardinia. And perhaps most resonant of all, king of Jerusalem. This latter status was, of course, purely titular. Nevertheless, it invoked a continuity extending back to Godfroi de Bouillon and was acknowledged by other European potentates. One of René’s daughters, in 1445, married Henry VI of England and became a prominent figure in the Wars of the Roses.

  According to the "Prieuré documents" René became grand master of Sion in 1418 at the age of ten—and his uncle, Louis, cardinal of Bar, is said to have exercised a "regency grand mastership" until 1428. Our research revealed that René was inducted into an order of some kind in 1418—l’Ordre du Levrier Blanc ("White Greyhound") —but we discovered no further information of consequence about it. Certainly it might have been Sion under another name.

  Sometime between 1420 and 1422 the cardinal of Lorraine created another order, l’Ordre de la Fidelité, and René was admitted as one of the original members. In 1448 René established an order of his own, the Order of the Crescent. René himself described the Order of the Crescent as a revived version of the old Order of the Ship and the Double Crescent—of which Guillaume de Gisors was a member a century and a half before. The original Knights of the Crescent included Francesco Sforza, duke of Milan and father of Leonardo da Vinci’s patron; the comte de Lénoncourt, whose descendant, according to the "Prieuré documents," compiled the genealogies in the Dossiers secrets; and one Ferri, lord of an important fiefdom in Lorraine dating from Merovingian times and called Sion-Vaudémont. These individuals were intended by René to comprise his riposte, so to speak, to the Order of the Garter in England and the Order of the Golden Fleece in Burgundy. But for reasons that remain unclear the Order of the Crescent incurred ecclesiastical displeasure and was suppressed by the Pope.

  It is from René d’Anjou that the modern Cross of Lorraine— symbol of the Free French Forces during the Second World War— ultimately derives. When he became duke of Lorraine, the now familiar cross with its two horizontal bars became his personal device.

  IOLANDE DE BAR. Born around 1428, Iolande de Bar was René d’Anjou’s daughter. In 1445 she was married to Ferri, lord of Sion-Vaudémont and one of the original knights in René’s Order of the Crescent. After Ferri’s death Iolande spen
t most of her life at Sion-Vaudemont—which under her auspices was extended from a local pilgrimage center to a sacred site for the whole of Lorraine. In the distant pagan past the place had already enjoyed such status, and a statue of Rosemerthe, an old Gallo-Teutonic mother goddess, was subsequently found there. Even in early Christian times the site was regarded as holy—although its name then was Mount Semita, implying something more Judaic than Christian. During the Merovingian epoch a statue of the Virgin had been erected there, and in 1070 the ruling comte de Vaudémont had publicly proclaimed himself "vassal of the Queen of Heaven.’’ The Virgin of Sion was officially declared "Sovereign of the Comté of Vaudémont." Festivals were held in her honor every May, and she was acknowledged protectress of all Lorraine. Our researches yielded a charter, dating from 1396, that pertains to a special chivalric confraternity based on the mountain, the Confraternity of Chevaliers de Sion—which reputedly traced its origins to the old abbey on Mount Sion just outside Jerusalem.1 By the fifteenth century, however, Sion-Vaudémont seems to have lost some of its significance. Iolande de Bar restored to it something of its former glory.

  Iolande’s son, René, subsequently became duke of Lorraine. On his parents’ instructions he was educated in Florence, thus becoming well versed in the esoteric tradition and orientation of the academies. His tutor was Georges Antoine Vespucci, one of Botticelli’s chief patrons and sponsors.

  SANDRO FILIPEPI. Better known as Botticelli, Sandro Filipepi was born in 1444. With the exception of Nicolas Flamel his is the first name on the list of Sion’s alleged grand masters not to be directly affiliated with the families whose genealogies figure in the "Prieuré documents." At the same time, however, he seems to have enjoyed an extremely close rapport with some of those families. Among his patrons were the Medicis, the Estes, the Gonzagas, and the Vespuccis—the last of whom had provided the tutor for Iolande de Bar’s son, the future duke of Lorraine. Botticelli himself studied under Filippo Lippi and Mantegna, both of whom had been patronized by René d’Anjou. He also studied under Verrocchio, an alchemist and exponent of Hermetic thought, whose other pupils included Leonardo da Vinci.