The Mysteries of the Great Cross of Hendaye

by Jay Weidner

  THE GRAIL IN PROVENCE

  The Rhône River begins as clay-filled glacial runoff high in the Swiss Alps. It winds its milky way across Switzerland, emptying its alluvial deposits at last into Lake Geneva and becoming, as Byron put it, “the blue rushing of the arrowy Rhône.”9 After curving through the foothills of the western Alps, the Rhône falls into a deep valley and turns south, running along the natural gap between the Cévennes Mountains and the French Alps toward the sea. For over one hundred miles, the river follows the valley, hugging the eastern edge of the Cévennes, until, as the mountains fall away to the east and the west, it gathers its tributaries and fans out in a wide delta across the head of the Gulf of Lion, a small arm of the Mediterranean Sea.

  Just before the Rhône splits into its two main channels, a last straggling arm of the Alps, the Alpilles, reaches westward, ending in a jumbled and rocky promontory a few miles from the river. This protective line of hills forms the baseline of another delta, or triangle, with the upper lines created by the confluence of the Durrance and the Rhône. Within this secure and fertile triangle, successive waves of ancient cultures established their communities and towns. Neolithic farmers arrived early in the seventh millennium B.C.E. and dwelt in Arcadian simplicity until Bronze Age trading cultures, such as the Egyptian, Mycenaean, and Phoenician, began to arrive in the second millennium B.C.E. Soon after this contact, Celtic tribes began to filter down the river from their European homeland north of Lake Geneva and conquered or integrated with the local culture to form a unique variety of Gallic Celt (see fig. 6.1).

  More than half a millennium before the birth of Christ, Greek traders built a fortress a few miles to the southwest of the old Celtic town, at the point where the Rhône forks. The Romans called it Arelate; in French it’s Arles, now known mostly for the visits of artists such as van Gogh and Gauguin. It began, however, as a center of Greek culture in a barbarian paradise. The two communities mixed and grew into a larger city nestled in the protected delta north of the low range of volcanic hills, the Alpilles, near the present-day town of Saint-Remy-de-Provence.

  Figure 6.1. Map of Provence.

  Michel Nostradamus, the justly famous Seer of Provence, was born at Saint-Remy barely a mile from the arch and monument that is all that remained in the sixteenth century of the ancient Roman city of Glanum Livii, once the most prosperous town in Provence and home, in the first century C.E., to a large community of Diaspora Jews. They are still standing today (see figs. 6.2 and 6.3), stark reminders along the modern road into the Alpilles of the area’s ancient past.10

  While secrets may remain hidden near the lost city of Glanum, at least according to Nostradamus,b other clues to Provence’s unusual role in the history of Western esotericism, including its Hebrew and Gnostic Christian roots, are hidden in plain sight. At Arles, which has often been called the soul of Provence, Greek and Roman relics abound. It is but a brief walk from the lovely Roman arena, equal in elegance if not in scale to Rome’s Coliseum, to the town square where a curious Romanesque church with a Gothic facade draws the attention of the serious student of hermeticism in search of the Grail.

  Figure 6.2. The mausoleum at Glanum. (Photo by Vincent Bridges)

  Figure 6.3. The remains of the “lost” city of Glanum Livii near Saint-Remy-de-Provence. (Photo by Vincent Bridges)

  On sunny Sunday afternoons in the spring, the tour guides compete with hurdy-gurdy music and the laughter of children as they explain the images on the church front in terms of Hercules’ labors. Few tourists ponder why a Christian church in Provence uses the symbolism of ancient Greek myth, why its saint is called Trophime, or Trophy, or even why both Constantine, founder of the imperial Church in the fourth century, and Frederick Barbarossa, the Holy Roman Emperor in the late twelfth century, chose Arles (see fig. 6.4) for their confirmation and coronation.11

  Attempting to answer these questions takes us deep into the heart of the Grail legends. The coronation of Frederick Barbarossa appears to be the key point of diffusion, the place and time where the Grail myths were inserted into the story of King Arthur. As many other researchers have found, and Robert de Boron openly tells us, the Grail stories have much to do with a bloodline, the descendants of the Holy Family and possibly Jesus himself, hence the “green-languagesque” pun of sang réal, “holy blood,” out of san grael, “holy grail.” In the romances, those of the bloodline are depicted as the guardians of the Grail, not the Grail itself. Even though the nature of the object is obscure, it is clearly an object, a relic or artifact of some sort: In Chrétien, it is a wide flat plate, in de Boron it is a chalice that held Jesus’ blood; the Perlesvaus depicts the Grail as a series of objects, and Wolfram describes a miraculous stone.

  Could the trophy of Saint Trophime be the Holy Grail? Could Arles be the home of a sacred relic of such wonder and importance that it became the model for the Holy Grail? And if so, what bloodline, or line of descendants, could be called its guardians?

  Farther to the southwest of Arles, where the western branch of the Rhône flows into the Mediterranean, stood an ancient Egyptian port and lighthouse, founded perhaps a thousand years before the Greek traders arrived. Called Re by the Romans, this lighthouse and port marked the turning point in the channel that brought Egyptian merchant ships into the Rhône. Today, the ruins of the Egypto-Roman fortress of Re lie a quarter mile beyond the breakwater off the small beach town of Les-Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer. However, this resort town, far off the beaten path at the end of a region of marshes and tidal flats called the Camargue, holds the key to what happened to the Holy Family after the death and possible resurrection/ascension of Jesus in Palestine.12

  Figure 6.4. Town square and fountain, Arles. (Photo by Darlene)

  Hebrew migration to the region around the mouth of the Rhône began with the era of Greek colonization spurred on by Alexander’s conquests in the East. The flow increased in the early first century C.E. under the encouragement of the Roman emperor Octavius Augustus. After the destruction of Palestine in 70 C.E., the flow became a torrent, and some of these Hebrew refugees were Christians (see fig. 6.5).13

  Provençal tradition holds that soon after the Crucifixion, a shipload of Jesus’ relatives landed off the old Roman fort of Re, near present-day Les-Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer. By all accounts, the group included three Marys, covering the interwoven family of Jesus and John the Baptist. One of the three was Mary Magdalene, first witness to the Resurrection and, by Gnostic accounts, Jesus’ foremost disciple and wife. Also included were Martha and Lazarus, members of Mary Magdalene’s family, a few local Romanized Jews including Maximinius and Sidonius, the blind man from Jericho, and, either welcoming them home or miraculously as part of the ship’s company, Sarah the Egyptian. Tradition relates that the group spread out through Provence and preached the Good News with such success that by the time of the destruction of the Temple and the Diaspora, barely more than a generation later, Provence was at least partially converted to Christianity.14

  Figure 6.5. A ship of Marys. Statue is from l’Église Ste.-Maries-dele-Mer, unknown date and origin. (Photo by Darlene)

  Two of the Marys, along with Sarah the Egyptian, remained in the seaside village where they landed. When they died, around 50 C.E., Saint Trophime himself came from Arles to administer the last rites. The three were buried near a small oratory, or chapel, they had built in the center of the village. In the ninth century, a new church was built over the oratory and the graves; fortified, it became part of the town walls. When King René d’Anjou, count of Provence, excavated the old church in the 1440s looking for the Holy Grail, he found the holy relics of the two Marys and Sarah and a curious stone buried with them. Called the Saint’s Pillar, it was incorporated into a support column when King René built a lofty and imposing church of pinkish stone to house the saints’ relics (fig. 6.6). With its parapets, merlons, embrasures, and internal freshwater spring, the church acted as a virtually impregnable fortress designed to protect the town’s inhabitants from M
oorish pirates and other marauders.15

  That as late as the fifteenth century someone of the stature of King René d’Anjou should coming looking for the Holy Grail at an obscure seaside church in Provence is evidence in favor of a long-standing tradition connecting Provence, and the region of Arles and Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer in particular, with a miraculous stone or artifact that came to be identified as the Holy Grail.

  Figure 6.6. The fortress church at Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer, built by King René d’Anjou. (Photo by Vincent Bridges)

  Stepping into the cool darkness of the church at Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer from the bright clear sunlight of Provence is to step back into another age, an age of faith that was at least superficially Christian but actually illuminated, from within as it were, by the antiquity of its goddess worship. Under the chancel, a flight of stairs leads down to the crypt, where King René found the bones of Sarah and the two Marys. Blackened by the candles of myriad pilgrims, most of them Gypsies who come to pray before the statue of Sarah (fig. 6.7), the crypt envelops the visitor with an atmosphere of dark and earthy mystery. If this is Christianity, it’s far different from its more orthodox varieties. Here, the feminine is not excluded; it is worshipped in a manner that is far more primitive than early Christianity itself.

  This impression is heightened during the Fête of May, when the Gypsy guardians gather to honor Saint Sarah and the two Marys. For several days prior to the festival on May 24 and 25, Gypsies from all over Provence, southern France, and northern Italy pour into Les-Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer, some still in their colorful horse-drawn caravans. The guardians, those who will carry the relics in the festival, make an all-night vigil at Saint Trophime, then travel in a procession with twelve young girls in white, the virgins of Arles, to the church at Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer. The three-day festival begins with the guardians taking down the reliquaries of the two Marys from their chapel above the chancel. The relics are left on display while the statue of Sarah is brought up from the crypt, draped in many rich cloaks, and paraded down to the sea.

  Figure 6.7. Sarah of the Gypsies, in the crypt of the church at Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer. (Photo by Darlene)

  The next day it is the two Marys’ turn to make the journey. Standing in a small blue boat, piled high with roses and holding an urn full of healing balm, called a graal in the local Camargue provençal, the two Marys travel on the shoulders of their four guardians down to the sea, where they landed almost two millennia ago. In this simple ritual can be heard echoes of a goddess tradition going back to Egypt and beyond. After the Marys are returned to their chapel, the dancing and singing goes on late into the night as the crowds prepare for the third day’s bullfights, bandito runs, and parties in honor of the Gypsy benefactor, Folco de Baroncelli.16

  These celebrations mark a fountainhead. Like the spring in the church of the two Marys, one of many miraculous springs and wells in Provence, these traditions serve as a source point for the broad esoteric current that King René himself labeled the underground stream of lost Arcadia. And with this knowledge—the mystery hidden in plain sight, known to the Gypsies and the common folk—the true history of that underground stream, the Gnostic Christianity of the West, can be traced through the centuries.

  Why should Arles be such an important locality in the history of the Grail? For one thing, there is its ancient history and persistent connections to certain myths and legends. When Hannibal crossed the Rhône a few miles north of present-day Arles in 218 B.C.E., the Gallo-Greek settlement was already a trading post of some note. The earliest versions of the Greek legend of Jason and the Argonauts suggest that they sailed west from Argos, around the heel of Italy and through the Strait of Messina to the mouth of the Rhône. They then traveled up the river, founding the trading center of Theline at the head of the Rhône delta along the way, to the land of the Golden Fleece, located, according to proponents of this theory, around the source of the Rhône at Lake Leman. In this interpretation, the Argonauts’ return route was over the Alps by way of the Saint Bernard Pass, and then down the Po River to the Adriatic Sea.17

  Under the Romans, who called it Arelate, the city retained its commercial status and flourished. Christianity arrived before the middle of the first century, brought, according to legend, by Saint Trophimus, or Trophime. Curiously enough, Saint Trophime dedicated the very first shrine to the Virgin here, even before her death. By the late first century C.E., Arles had become an ecclesiastical center, a position it would retain for the next four centuries, partly on the strength of its legendary cemetery, the Alyscamps.18

  Perhaps the most famous necropolis of the medieval era, the Alyschamps (from Elisii Campi, or Elysian Fields) owed its fame to Saint Trophime. Built outside the city walls, as were all Roman cemeteries, and along the via Aurelia, the main road to Italy and Rome, the Alyschamps was a perfect location for secret meetings. Saint Trophime soon attracted a following. However, we are not sure exactly who Saint Trophime really was. The Church claims he was the disciple of Saint Paul mentioned in 2 Timothy 4:20.

  This seems impossible, given that our Saint Trophime was in Arles at least a decade before the events mentioned in Timothy’s letter. He apparently didn’t arrive with the Holy Family, although he was close, possibly even related, to the two Marys at Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer. His devotion to a Mary, possibly the Virgin Mary, but more likely Mary Magdalene, has already been noted. He is reported to have spent years in meditation at his hermitage a little farther outside Arles, beyond the Alyschamps, and in the year before his death or disappearance, probably in 52 C.E., he invoked a blessing on the cemetery. Christ himself was said to have attended the ceremony and left the imprint of his knee on a sarcophagus lid.19

  In 314 C.E., Constantine came to Arles to swear on this relic before the Church council that the Christian God was his personal protector. He founded a small chapel—Saint Honoré—to house the relic. All of this attention made the Alyschamps famous, and it became so desirable as a final resting place that bodies were shipped from all Europe for burial in its holy grounds. The twelfth-century chronicle of the Pseudo-Turpin informs us that the peers of Charlemagne, Roland, and the other fallen heroes were transported with great difficulty to the Alyschamps.20

  Arles, therefore, is ground zero for whatever version of Christianity it was that swept the region in those early years. In Mystery of the Cathedrals, Fulcanelli also directs us here, to Arles, the Alyschamps, and to the cathedral of Saint Trophime in particular, with several tantalizing references. He points out to us a rose-cross ankh on a sarcophagus lid at Saint Honoré in the Alsycamps and bids us pay close attention to the tympanum on the Great Portal of Saint Trophime (fig. 6.8).21

  Built in the mid-fifth century by Saint Hilaire and originally dedicated to Saint Stephan, the cathedral was rebuilt in the eleventh century and the Great Portal was finished a century later, in time for the coronation of Frederick I Barbarossa as king of Arles in 1178. Rededicated to Saint Trophime when the relics of his miracle were moved from the Alyscamps in 1152,22 the cathedral failed to retain the sacred cache of its saint’s miraculous status, probably because the Holy Stone, the sarcophagus lid with the knee print, had disappeared. This missing stone, which conferred “knowledge of the Living Christ” to those who beheld it and “certainty of resurrection and eternal life” to those sacred dead who slept in its embrace, according to the thirteenth-century Golden Legends, might just be the origin point of all the later Holy Grail legends.23

  Figure 6.8. The front of Saint Trophime, Arles. (Photo by Darlene)

  Consider that, although Chrétien de Troyes had invented all the other trappings of the Arthurian legends, the Matter of Britain as it was known in the Middle Ages, in his earlier works before 1180 or so, there is no hint that he had any idea of anything remotely resembling the Grail. Then he was supposedly given an ancient manuscript “in the Breton tongue” by Philip of Flanders and asked to render the material into an epic poem, which became Perceval, or the Story of the Grail.24
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br />   So where did Philip of Flanders come by the story? Chrétien doesn’t tell us much and, although there have been many suggested sources, we just don’t know. However, Wolfram von Eschenbach, author of Parzival, a complete version of the story that Chrétien only began, tells us that he had the true story from its source: one Kyot or Guyot of Provence.

  This is an important clue, because there was a Guyot de Provins, a troubadour poet. And there is only one place that a young squire soon to be knight such as Wolfram could have met Guyot de Provins: at the coronation of Frederick I Barbarossa as king of Arles in 1178. Guyot de Provins was there, in the company of the Lords of les Baux, a curious clan from the Alpilles north of Arles who claimed descent from Balthazar, one of the three magi. We are less certain that Wolfram was there, but it does seem probable, as it has been determined from the texts of his poems that he entered the service of Frederick I Barbarossa at an early age.25

  We can be certain, however, that Philip of Flanders and his sister-in-law Marie de Champagne did attend, as they are prominently listed among the assembled nobles in various sources.26 It is possible that even Chrétien de Troyes was there, as he was at the court of Flanders during these years. Thus, on this one occasion, all of the people involved in the creation and propagation of what would later be the Grail legends crossed paths in Arles. And curiously enough, also in Arles, we find the veneration of a holy stone with miraculous properties.