Holy Blood, Holy Grail

by Baigent, Michael

  In Paris in 1802 Nodier wrote of his affiliation with a secret society he described as "Biblical and Pythagorean."21 Then, in 1816, he published anonymously one of his most curious and influential works, A History of Secret Societies in the Army under Napoleon. In this book Nodier is deliberately ambiguous. He does not clarify definitively whether he is writing pure fiction or pure fact. If anything, he implies, the book is a species of thinly disguised allegory of actual historical occurrences. In any case it develops a comprehensive philosophy of secret societies. And it credits such societies with a number of historical accomplishments, including the downfall of Napoleon. There are a great many secret societies in operation, Nodier declares. But there is one, he adds, that takes precedence over all others, that in fact presides over all others. According to Nodier this "supreme" secret society is called the Philadelphes. At the same time, however, he speaks of "the oath which binds me to the Philadelphes and which forbids me to make them known under their social name."22 Nevertheless, there is a hint of Sion in an address Nodier quotes. It was supposedly made to an assembly of Philadelphes by one of the plotters against Napoleon. The man in question is speaking of his newly born son:

  He is too young to engage himself to you by the oath of Annibal; but remember I have named him Eliacin, and that I delegate to him the guard of the temple and the altar, if I should die ere I have seen fall from his throne the last of the oppressors of Jerusalem.23

  Nodier’s book burst on the scene when fear of secret societies had assumed virtually pathological proportions. Such societies were often blamed for instigating the French Revolution; and the atmosphere of post-Napoleonic Europe was similar, in many respects, to that of the McCarthy era in the United States during the 1950s. People saw, or imagined they saw, conspiracies everywhere. Witch hunts abounded. Every public disturbance, every minor disruption, every untoward occurrence was attributed to "subversive activity"—to the highly organized clandestine organizations working insidiously behind the scenes, eroding the fabric of established institutions, perpetrating all manner of devious sabotage. This mentality engendered measures of extreme repression. And the repression, often directed at a fictitious threat, in turn engendered real opponents, real groups of subversive conspirators—who would form themselves in accordance with the fictitious blueprints. Even as figments of the imagination, secret societies fostered a pervasive paranoia in the upper echelons of government; and this paranoia frequently accomplished more than any secret society itself could possibly have done. There is no question that the myth of the secret society, if not the secret society itself, played a major role in nineteenth-century European history. And one of the chief architects of that myth, and possibly of a reality behind it, was Charles Nodier.24

  DEBUSSY AND THE ROSE-CROIX

  The trends to which Nodier gave expression—a fascination with secret societies and a renewed interest in the esoteric—continued to gain influence and followers throughout the nineteenth century. Both trends reached a peak in the Paris of the fin de siècle—the milieu of Claude Debussy, Sion’s alleged grand master when Bérenger Saunière, in 1891, discovered the mysterious parchments at Rennes-le-Château.

  Debussy seems to have made Victor Hugo’s acquaintance through the symbolist poet Paul Verlaine. Subsequently he set a number of Hugo’s works to music. He also became an integral member of the symbolist circles that, by the last decade of the century, had come to dominate Parisian cultural life. These circles were sometimes illustrious, sometimes odd, sometimes both. They included Emma Calve and the young cleric Émile Hoffet, through whom Debussy came to meet Saunière. There was also the enigmatic magus of French symbolist poetry, Stéphane Mallarmé—one of whose masterpieces, L’Après-Midi d’un Faune, inspired the composer. There was the symbolist playwright Maurice Maeterlinck, whose Merovingian drama, Pelléas et Mélisande, Debussy turned into a world-famous opera. There was the flamboyant Comte Philippe Auguste Villiers de l’Isle-Adam, whose Rosicrucian play, Axel, became a bible for the entire symbolist movement. Although his death in 1918 prevented its completion, Debussy began to compose a libretto for Villiers’ occult drama, intending to turn it, too, into an opera. Among his other associates were the luminaries who attended Mallarmé’s famous Tuesday night soirées—Oscar Wilde, W. B. Yeats, Stefan George, Paul Valéry, the young André Gide, and Marcel Proust.

  In themselves Debussy’s and Mallarmé’s circles were steeped in esoterica. At the same time they overlapped circles that were more esoteric still. Thus, Debussy consorted with virtually all the most prominent names in the so-called French occult revival. One of these was the Marquis Stanislas de Guaïta, an intimate of Emma Calve and founder of the so-called Cabalistic Order of the Rose-Croix. A second was Jules Bois, a notorious Satanist, another intimate of Emma Calve, and a friend of MacGregor Mathers. Prompted by Jules Bois, Mathers established the most famous British occult society of the period, the Order of the Golden Dawn.

  Another occultist of Debussy’s acquaintance was Doctor Gérard Encausse—better known as Papus,25 under which name he published what is still considered one of the definitive works on the tarot. Papus was not only a member of numerous esoteric orders and societies but also a confidant of the czar and czarina, Nicholas and Alexandra of Russia. And among Papus’s closest associates was a name that had already figured in our inquiry—that of Jules Doinel. In 1890 Doinel had become librarian at Carcassonne and established a neo-Cathar church in the Languedoc in which he and Papus functioned as bishops. Doinel in fact proclaimed himself Gnostic bishop of Mirepoix, which included the parish of Montségur, and of Alet, which included the parish of Rennes-le-Château.

  Doinel’s church was supposedly consecrated by an eastern bishop in Paris—at the home, interestingly enough, of Lady Caithness, wife of the earl of Caithness, Lord James Sinclair. In retrospect this church seems to have been merely another innocuous sect or cult, like so many of the fin-de-siècle. At the time, however, it caused considerable alarm in official quarters. A special report was prepared for the Holy Office of the Vatican on the "resurgence of Cathar tendencies." And the Pope issued an explicit condemnation of Doinel’s institution, which he militantly denounced as a new manifestation of "the ancient Albigensian heresy."

  Notwithstanding the Vatican’s condemnation, Doinel, by the mid-1890s, was active in Saunière’s home territory—and at precisely the time that the curé of Rennes-le-Château began to flaunt his wealth. The two men may well have been introduced by Debussy. Or by Emma Calvé. Or by the Abbé Henri Boudet—curé of Rennes-les-Bains, best friend of Saunière, and colleague of Doinel in the Society of Arts and Sciences of Carcassonne.

  One of the closest of Debussy’s occult contacts was Josephin Péladan—another friend of Papus and, predictably enough, another intimate of Emma Calve. In 1889 Péladan embarked on a visit to the Holy Land. When he returned he claimed to have discovered Jesus’ tomb—not at the traditional site of the Holy Sepulchre but under the Mosque of Omar, formerly part of the Templars’ enclave. In the words of an enthusiastic admirer Péladan’s alleged discovery was "so astonishing that at any other era it would have shaken the Catholic world to its foundations.’’26 Neither Péladan nor his associates, however, volunteered any indication of how Jesus’ tomb could have been so definitively identified and verified as such, or why its discovery should necessarily shake the Catholic world, unless, of course, it contained something significant, controversial, perhaps even explosive. In any case, Péladan did not elaborate on his purported discovery. But though he was a self-professed Catholic, he nevertheless insisted on Jesus’ mortality.

  In 1890 Péladan founded a new order—the Order of the Catholic Rose-Croix, the Temple, and the Grail. And this order, unlike the other Rose-Croix institutions of the period, somehow escaped papal condemnation. In the meantime Péladan turned his attention increasingly to the arts. The artist, he declared, should be "a knight in armor, eagerly engaged in the symbolic quest for the Holy Grail." And in adherence to this pr
inciple Péladan embarked on a full-fledged aesthetic crusade. It took the form of a highly publicized series of annual exhibitions, known as the Salon de la Rose + Croix— whose avowed purpose was "to ruin realism, reform Latin taste and create a school of idealist art." To that end certain themes and subjects were autocratically and summarily rejected as unworthy— "no matter how well executed, even if perfectly." The list of rejected themes and subjects included "prosaic" history painting, patriotic and military painting, representations of contemporary life, portraits, rustic scenes, and "all landscapes except those composed in the manner of Poussin.’’ 27

  Nor did Péladan confine himself to painting. On the contrary, he attempted to promulgate his aesthetic in music and the theater as well. He formed his own theater company, which performed specially composed works on such subjects as Orpheus, the Argonauts and the Quest for the Golden Fleece, the "Mystery of the Rose-Croix," and the "Mystery of the Grail." One of the regular promoters and patrons of these productions was Claude Debussy.

  Among Péladan’s and Debussy’s other associates was Maurice Barrès—who, as a young man, had been involved in a "Rose-Croix" circle with Victor Hugo. In 1912 Barrès published perhaps his most famous novel, La Colline Inspirée (The Inspired Mount). Certain modern commentators have suggested that this work is in fact a thinly disguised allegory of Bérenger Saunière and Rennes-le-Château. Certainly there are parallels that would seem too striking to be wholly coincidental. But Barrès does not situate his narrative in Rennes-le-Chateau or anyplace else in the Languedoc. On the contrary, the "inspired mount" of the title is a mountain surmounted by a village in Lorraine. And the village is the old pilgrimage center of Sion.

  JEAN COCTEAU

  More than Charles Radclyffe, more than Charles Nodier, Jean Cocteau seemed to us a most unlikely candidate for the grand mastership of an influential secret society. In Radclyffe’s and Nodier’s cases, however, our investigation had yielded certain connections of considerable interest. In Cocteau’s we discovered very few.

  Certainly he was raised in a milieu close to the corridors of power—his family was politically prominent and his uncle was an important diplomat. But Cocteau, at least ostensibly, abandoned this world, leaving home at the age of fifteen and plunging into the seedy subculture of Marseilles. By 1908 he had established himself in bohemian artistic circles. In his early twenties he became associated with Proust, Gide, and Maurice Barrès. He was also a close friend of Victor Hugo’s great-grandson, Jean, with whom he embarked on assorted excursions into spiritualism and the occult. He quickly became versed in esoterica, and Hermetic thinking shaped not only much of his work, but also his entire aesthetic. By 1912, if not earlier, he had begun to consort with Debussy, to whom he alludes frequently, if noncommittally, in his journals. In 1926 he designed the set for a production of the opera Pelléas et Mélisande because, according to one commentator, he was "unable to resist linking his name for all time to that of Claude Debussy."

  Cocteau’s private life—which included bouts of drug addiction and a sequence of homosexual affairs—was notoriously erratic. This has fostered an image of him as a volatile and recklessly irresponsible individual. In fact, however, he was always acutely conscious of his public persona; and whatever his personal escapades, he would not let them impede his access to people of influence and power. As he himself admitted, he had always craved public recognition, honor, esteem, even admission to the Académie Française. And he made a point of conforming sufficiently to assure himself of the status he sought. Thus, he was never far removed from prominent figures like Jacques Maritain and André Malraux. Although never ostensibly interested in politics, he denounced the Vichy government during the war and seems to have been quietly in league with the Resistance. In 1949 he was made a Chevalier of the Legion of Honor. In 1958 he was invited by de Gaulle’s brother to make a public address on the general subject of France. It is not the kind of role one generally attributes to Cocteau, but he appears to have played it frequently enough and to have relished doing so.

  For a good part of his life Cocteau was associated—sometimes intimately, sometimes peripherally—with royalist Catholic circles. Here he frequently hobnobbed with members of the old aristocracy— including some of Proust’s friends and patrons. At the same time, however, Cocteau’s Catholicism was highly suspect, highly unorthodox, and seems to have been more an aesthetic than a religious commitment. In the latter part of his life he devoted much of his energy to redecorating churches—a curious echo, perhaps, of Bérenger Saunière. Yet even then his piety was questionable. "They take me for a religious painter because I’ve decorated a chapel. Always the same mania for labeling people." 28

  Like Sauniere, Cocteau, in his redecorations, incorporated certain curious and suggestive details. Some are visible in the church of Notre Dame de France, around the corner from Leicester Square in London. The church itself dates from 1865—and may, at its consecration, have had certain Masonic connections. In 1940, at the peak of the blitz, it was seriously damaged. Nevertheless, it remained the favorite center of worship for many important members of the Free French forces, and after the war it was restored and redecorated by artists from all over France. Among them was Cocteau, who, in 1960, three years before his death, executed a mural depicting the Crucifixion. It is an extremely singular Crucifixion. There is a black sun and a sinister, green-tinged and unidentified figure in the lower right-hand corner. There is a Roman soldier holding a shield with a bird emblazoned on it—a highly stylized bird suggesting an Egyptian rendering of Horus. Among the mourning women and dice-throwing centurions there are two incongruously modern figures—one of whom is Cocteau himself, presented as a self-portrait, with his back significantly turned on the cross. Most striking of all is the fact that the mural depicts only the lower portion of the cross. Whoever hangs upon it is visible only as far up as the knees—so that one cannot see the face or determine the identity of who is being crucified. And fixed to the cross, immediately below the anonymous victim’s feet, is a gigantic rose. The design, in short, is a flagrant Rose-Croix device. And if nothing else, it is a very singular motif for a Catholic church.

  THE TWO JOHN XXIIIs

  The Dossiers secrets, in which the list of Sion’s alleged grand masters appeared, were dated 1956. Cocteau did not die until 1963. There was thus no indication of who might have succeeded him or of who might preside over the Prieuré de Sion at present. But Cocteau himself posed one additional point of immense interest.

  Until the "cutting of the elm" in 1188, the "Prieuré documents" asserted, Sion and the Order of the Temple shared the same grand master. After 1188 Sion is said to have chosen a grand master of its own, the first of them being Jean de Gisors. According to the "Prieuré documents" every grand master, on assuming his position, has adopted the name Jean (John)—or, since there were four women, Jeanne (Joan). Sion’s grand masters are therefore alleged to have comprised a continuous succession of Jeans and Jeannes, from 1188 to the present. This succession was clearly intended to imply an esoteric and Hermetic papacy based on John, in contrast (and perhaps opposition) to the exoteric one based on Peter.

  One major question, of course, was which John. John the Baptist? John the Evangelist—the "Beloved Disciple" in the Fourth Gospel? Or John the Divine, author of the Book of Revelation? It clearly seemed to be one of these three because Jean de Gisors in 1188 had purportedly taken the title of Jean II. Who, then, was Jean I?

  Whatever the answer to that question, Jean Cocteau appeared on the list of Sion’s alleged grand masters as Jean XXIII. In 1958, while Cocteau still presumably held the grand mastership, Pope Pius XII died and the assembled cardinals elected as their new Pontiff Cardinal Angelo Roncalli of Venice. Any newly elected Pope chooses his own name; and Cardinal Roncalli caused considerable consternation when he chose the name of John XXIII. Such consternation was not unjustified. In the first place the name John had been implicitly anathematized since it was last used in the early fifteenth century
— by an Antipope. Moreover, there had already been a John XXIII. The Antipope who abdicated in 1415—and who, interestingly enough, had previously been bishop of Alet—was in fact John XXIII. It was thus unusual, to say the least, for Cardinal Roncalli to assume the same name.

  In 1976 an enigmatic little book was published in Italy and soon after translated into French. It was called The Prophecies of Pope John XXIII and contained a compilation of obscure prophetic prose poems reputedly composed by the Pontiff who had died thirteen years before—in 1963, the same year as Cocteau. For the most part these "prophecies" are extremely opaque and defy any coherent interpretation. Whether they are indeed the work of John XXIII is also open to question. But the introduction to the work maintains that they are Pope John’s work. And it maintains something further as well—that John XXIII was secretly a member of the Rose-Croix, with whom he had become affiliated while acting as papal nuncio to Turkey in 1935.

  Needless to say, this assertion sounds incredible. Certainly it cannot be proved, and we found no external evidence to support it. But why, we wondered, should such an assertion even have been made in the first place?