Fortune and Glory

by David McIntee

  There are various other cups and dishes around which have been claimed as the Grail, but have all turned out to be later medieval creations. One now in Genoa was captured from the Saracens in the 12th century, while another now held in New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art was made in Antioch, but no earlier than the 6th century AD.

  THE OPPOSITION IN YOUR WAY

  Unlike a lot of the famous treasures you might hope to find, this one does actually have some rightful owners – the Catholic Church of Spain – who would not be best pleased if you try to make off with it. That would mean you’d be lumbered with the full force of Spanish law enforcement and military coming down on you like the proverbial ton of bricks.

  So, the Spanish police, army, navy and air force would all be somewhat miffed if someone tried to walk off with it, no matter how good they look in spandex or a fedora.

  As a treasure to make money out of, you’ll have problems. There would be some issues in trying to get a decent price for the Valencia Grail simply because being a known tourist attraction means it’s pretty recognizable to the authorities, and therefore could not be sold on as easily as simple gold. Likewise, breaking it up to disguise its nature and origins would also destroy most of its value, to the point where it wouldn’t have been worth the bother.

  The trick, therefore, would be to sell it to some private collector who is willing to pay a huge amount for something they know they can never show off to anyone, or even admit that they own. This, again, is somewhat counterproductive, as collecting such historical treasures does tend to be about bragging rights for private individuals.

  On the other hand, if you simply want to see it for youself, then the only things standing in your way are the ticket prices for a trip to Valencia, and any queues in front of you.

  ARTEFACT SMUGGLING

  It’s currently estimated by archaeological authorities (after a worldwide survey of archaeologists) that looting and smuggling is endemic in 103 countries. Not just war-torn ones, either: 90 per cent of Iron Age sites in Turkey have been dug up by looters.

  There are laws in most countries about the transport and ownership – and especially the sale – of artefacts and treasure. In general, the laws in countries from which artefacts tend to be taken are more punitive than in receiving countries. Get caught smuggling stuff into a modern Western country, and you’ll probably face a hefty fine, a loss of licence and business opportunities, and maybe a few months in jail. Get caught smuggling artefacts out of a country where they’ve been found, and you’re likely to end up in a roachinfested dungeon for which they’ve thrown away the key. Unless you’ve paid the appropriate backhanders and bribes, obviously.

  There are two reasons for the severity of laws about artefact smuggling. The first reason is that historical and treasure artefacts tend to be part of a country’s cultural heritage, so stealing it amounts to demeaning the nation and its people. The second, and more prosaic, reason is that there’s often a crossover with the drugs trade, as both types of trafficking require the employment of a talent for smuggling. This also means that if you’re suspected of smuggling artefacts, you’ll also be suspected of drugs smuggling first and foremost.

  In various parts of the world, artefact smuggling is also increasingly associated with terrorism, as such organizations seek to raise funds for buying arms by looting historic sites and selling the treasures off to private collectors. The collectors who buy looted artefacts see the looting and smuggling as a victimless crime, but that’s overlooking the fact that so many of the smuggling networks – especially in the Middle East – are run by terrorist and insurgent groups.

  The way it tends to work is that a group of bandits or bribed soldiers will force locals at gunpoint to help them access the artefacts on-site. They will then be handed over first to representatives of a criminal gang in the nearest city, who will arrange for them to be taken across the border to a neighbouring country. From there, the pipeline is taken over by a dealer equally at home with gangsters and art collectors, who will supervise the advertising, sale and transport of the antiquities.

  He also arranges for the laundry of the artefacts. As with money laundering, the pieces have to be made to seem legitimate, either by forging their provenances, and licences to export, or by outright physically disguising them.

  As with all forms of smuggling – be it drugs, rare animals, or people – the organized smugglers are constantly coming up with new ways to disguise their activities and protect themselves, while the individuals are more likely to be caught.

  THE TEMPLAR TREASURE

  WHAT IS IT?

  A matter for debate to start with. At the very least you can expect coinage, title deeds and personal belongings held by the Order, since members were required to hand over their family fortunes – or at least their individual shares of such – as part of joining up. The amount of coinage would surely be considerable, as the King of France was in debt to them, and very much annoyed that the Paris Preceptory alone was, apparently, richer than his court.

  However, over time, stories have evolved which imply the potential for them to have also owned various other more exotic and unique treasures – many of which have their own chapters in this book. In recent decades especially, many people have come to believe that the Knights Templar had uncovered treasures from the Temple of Solomon while they were in Jerusalem; treasures such as the Holy Grail, and the Ark of the Covenant, not to mention gold that had been given to Solomon by the Queen of Sheba.

  In any event, the main targets among seekers after this particular treasure are the glittering cargoes of 18 ships under the Templar flag.

  HOW MUCH IS IT WORTH TO YOU?

  Eighteen or so shiploads of gold coinage alone would be worth billions of dollars – or indeed pounds – today, even before looking at any specific valuable historical artefacts which the Templars, according to legend, supposedly dug up in the Holy Land.

  This could potentially include the Holy Grail and the Ark of the Covenant – you can check the chapters on those artefacts for the sort of value they carry.

  THE STORY

  Long story short, in 1119, a French knight called Hugues de Payens formed a posse with eight other knights (all of whom were his relatives) and set out to provide protection for pilgrims travelling to and from the Holy Land. Soon, King Baldwin gave them permission to set up an HQ at the Al-Aqsa Mosque, which is on the site of Solomon’s Temple.

  From this HQ, the Templars got their name, in various slightly different translations that average out to ‘Poor Knights of Christ and the Temple of Solomon’. They weren’t a big noise, even in the Crusades, until the Council of Troyes in 1129, at which they got the official nod from the Church (thanks to being bigged up by influential Abbot Bernard de Clairvaux, who just happened to be the nephew of Andre de Montbard, one of the original nine knights) to be a proper monastic Order. In fact, St Bernard here codified the Templars’ rules as the ideal Christian life.

  This gave them the right to seek donations (of cash, lands and titled sons as recruits), and the popularity to get them. Recruits would give up all their worldly goods to the Order, while other donors could feel confident that they were not just helping defend Jerusalem from Islam, but were buying a place in Heaven after death.

  Although the Order had been founded in the Holy Land, it had a foothold back home in Europe within a couple of years, first in Portugal, and then in Spain, France, England and elsewhere. In 1139 they really hit it big when Pope Innocent II proclaimed that the Templars could cross all borders, pay no taxes and submit to no authority other than the Pope himself. This meant that they could keep all their income, without turning it over to any kings.

  Over the course of the next few decades, the order got into banking – having started by safely escorting pilgrims, the Order evolved into escorting their valuables, by basically inventing the promissory note, or bearer bond. Travellers and pilgrims could deposit funds at the nearest Templar Preceptory in return for a note
of what the goods were worth. This could then be taken to any other preceptory and redeemed in full, or in part. The practical upshot of which was that the Templar Preceptories would be full of gold and the travellers wouldn’t have to carry inconvenient bandit-bait.

  Eventually, however, things began to go awry. Firstly, the Templars got their asses handed to them by Saladin at the Battle of the Horns of Hattin. Rival orders, the Hospitallers and Teutonic Knights, got into the banking game, and European Royalty really didn’t like the idea of there being an independent private army allowed to cross borders freely, and whom they were funding blindly.

  The man most worried about this was King Philippe IV of France. The Order’s founders were French, his kingdom was their homeland and they were beginning to fancy the idea of having a country to themselves – following the lead of the Teutonic Knights, who had founded Prussia. In 1306, the Order facilitated a coup on Cyprus, and Philippe felt they might try to topple him. He also owed them money, and the royal coffers were empty. A good heresy charge would strip the Order of its riches…

  So, on 13 October 1307, Preceptories were raided, the members of the Order arrested for trial by the Inquisition and their assets seized. Philippe had issued secret orders for the arrests, with the intent of rounding up every Templar in France, as well as having sent requests for other nations to do the same, with the backing of the newest Pope.

  Over the next few years, the Templars were charged with assorted heresies and treasons, such as idolatry and sodomy. During their trials, it emerged from the testimony of a Templar called Jean de Châlon that a Gérard de Villiers had put to sea with 18 galleys, and that a Templar Preceptor from Champagne, Hugues de Chalon (brother of Jean), had taken the hoard of Templar treasurer Hugues de Pairaud to these ships on 50 horses.

  The ships then sailed out of La Rochelle for parts unknown, immediately before the raids, leaving King Philippe fuming that so much of the Templar assets had escaped his clutches.

  PREVIOUS SEARCHES IN FACT AND FICTION

  The Templars have been a subject of fascination from the 18th century onwards. Most of this fascination, however, has been about their character and their exploits, rather than about the treasure they may have spirited away.

  From here on in, the legend of the missing Templar treasure has become big business, and the Templar connection has been appended to several other treasures and supposed locations that originally had nothing to do with them – Oak Island, for example.

  In later years the Templar treasure got associated with the stories of treasure at Rennes-le-Château, in the popular book, The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail.

  This story supposedly started in 1892, when the local priest, Bérenger Saunière, dug up some parchments with clues to a buried treasure. Cue mysterious influxes of cash and the restoration of the local church, with its strange devil-carving, and a trail of coded art pieces throughout history … Throw in secret societies and Freemasons, and you’re halfway to the idea of surviving Templars already.

  This has all spawned a veritable industry of Templar-themed conspiracy and treasure books, such as Steve Berry’s novel The Templar Legacy.

  THE TRUTH IS OUT THERE

  Let’s get the Rennes-le-Château stuff out of the way first. In fact the Saunière story originated with a Belgian named Roger Crouquet, in Le Soir illustré, in 1948. Crouquet had visited friends in the area and heard from locals about how Saunière preferred debauchery to his priestly job, and how, at the turn of the century, he decided to fund his lifestyle by putting ads in foreign newspapers saying that the poor priest of Rennes-le-Château lived among heretics and the place was in dire need of funds and repairs. Crouquet said that an old woman told him it was Saunière, ‘changed into a devil’.

  A few years later, Noël Corbu, who had opened a restaurant on Sauniere’s former estate, started telling stories that Saunière had dug up parchments in 1892 (while renovating the church), which led to a treasure. However, in Corbu’s version, the treasure was that of Blanche of Castile, and amounted to 28,500,000 gold pieces. This was nothing to do with the Templars, though she was around in the first half of the 13th century. The money was supposedly raised by Blanche to pay the ransom of St Louis, a prisoner of the Saracens. Corbu, of course, had it that Saunière had only found a small part of the treasure.

  A decade later, Pierre Plantard and Gérard de Sède expanded upon this into their hoax Priory of Sion, which supposedly descended from the Templar Grand Masters, and so brought the Order into the myth. But they never actually had anything to do with it originally.

  The first question you need answered is how rich the Templar Order actually was in 1307. Unfortunately, and perhaps surprisingly, the answer is ‘not very’. None of the military orders really were, and for a simple reason: they were in a very expensive business, which ate through funds very quickly.

  Although the Order was partly funded by donations from members, churches and nobles, these donations didn’t come permanently or without changes. Over time, two things happened to this income. Firstly, it decreased, partly because of changing politics at home, and partly because the focus of how people gave their money had changed from giving to the Church as an institution, to giving as patronage to individuals, nobles or knights. Secondly, a lot of kings and princes, jealous of the amounts that the Church were amassing, began to forbid donations of land to the Church or military Orders without express permission from the Crown. In the era, religious authority could often overrule secular royalty, thanks to Innocent II’s ruling in 1139, but the crowned heads of Europe were by now able to argue that when Innocent II proclaimed that the Order(s) only owed allegiance to the Pope, he really just meant himself personally, and that now that he was dead, the rule had expired.

  This restriction was a problem because the orders also made their money from trade, brewing and farming – all things which required the ownership of land. For extra fun, the turn of the 14th century was already experiencing what we’d now call horrific inflation, so that the value of the income from rents, trade, etc. that the order got was greatly reduced.

  The Kings of Aragon were also unhappy with all of the military orders’ lack of actual military ability and delivery, because their warriors kept being hauled away to fight in papal wars in Sicily, leaving castles and preceptories undermanned. Which was a bit of a problem as Berbers were making huge advances into Christianheld territory at the time.

  So, although the Order had a reputation for riches despite its professed vows of poverty, the fragmentary records that survive seem to indicate that the vows were more accurate than the reputation. In Acre in 1275, William de Beaujeu wrote that the Order ‘was in a weaker state than it had ever been, with many expenses and almost no revenues, as its possessions had all been plundered by the Sultan’.

  Combine these territorial and manpower losses with a fall in income, and it’s no surprise that things were running on a low logistics budget. In Huesca, the preceptory could only arm seven knights and three sergeants. Remember that a ‘knight’ in this context is supported by squires, grooms, a sergeant and a platoon of men-at-arms, so here we see a situation where they can only afford to run a full crew for half the knights available (people writing conspiracy-themed books often ask how ‘nine knights’ could protect however many miles of road. The answer, of course, is that ‘nine knights’ actually means about three hundred fighters, when the sergeants and men-at-arms are counted in).

  After the Templar Order was raided and shut down, an inventory was taken of its properties. Not only did this survey not turn up piles of hidden loot, but in fact it showed that Templar properties were, in general, what modern folks would call fixeruppers, or, frankly, falling to bits.

  All Templar property that could be found was seized, of course, but even that inventory shows that the quality and values of materials seized were on a par with ordinary people’s – peasants’ – belongings, rather than the sort of bling expected to be found in places frequented by the nob
ility.

  The next question is the size and nature of the Templar fleet. Most people assume by the word ‘fleet’ that there must have been a lot of ships, able to carry multiple cargoes of treasure. When you do your research (the first rule of treasure hunting, remember?), you’ll find lots of different numbers for how many ships the Order had. Some sources are more reliable than others, but since no record giving a number of ships has survived from the Order, even the reliable sources aren’t guaranteed to be right.

  The more wide-eyed, conspiracy-minded, or gullible, treasure and Templar fans have come up with a range of ridiculous numbers – up to 181 ships, according to one website. Most historians, however, seem to plump for there being 18, which supposedly left La Rochelle with the treasure, as per de Chalon’s story. This is unfortunate, as it later turned out that de Chalon’s testimony was as Douglas Adams might have said, apocryphal, or at least wildly inaccurate.

  We know they had ships, of course, because they had income, lands, resources and recruits in Western Europe, and had to get them to the Holy Land somehow – which meant crossing the Mediterranean. The Order could also make little on the side by ferrying pilgrims, which makes sense since the Order was founded to protect pilgrims on their journey. The Templars actually had two ‘fleets’ – the pilgrim fleet taking pilgrims from Marseille to the Holy Land twice a year (at Easter and August), which consisted of two or three ships, depending on whether the Easter and August ones were the same ships, plus one kept in port, plus their proper business and war fleet at La Rochelle, which included ships named La Templere and La Buzzard.