Holy Blood, Holy Grail Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Epigraph

  Acknowledgements

  Praise

  Introduction

  Introduction to the Paperback Edition

  Part One - THE MYSTERY

  1 - Village of Mystery

  RENNES-LE-CHATEAU AND BÉRENGER SAUNIÈRE

  THE POSSIBLE TREASURES

  THE INTRIGUE

  2 - The Cathars and the Great Heresy

  THE ALBIGENSIAN CRUSADE

  THE SIEGE OF MONTSEGUR

  THE CATHAR TREASURE

  THE MYSTERY OF THE CATHARS

  3 - The Warrior-Monks

  KNIGHTS TEMPLAR—THE ORTHODOX ACCOUNT

  KNIGHTS TEMPLAR—THE MYSTERIES

  KNIGHTS TEMPLAR—THE HIDDEN SIDE

  4 - Secret Documents

  Part Two - THE SECRET SOCIETY

  5 - The Order Behind the Scenes

  THE MYSTERY SURROUNDING THE FOUNDATION OF THE KNIGHTS TEMPLAR

  LOUIS VII AND THE PRIEURÉ DE SION

  THE "CUTTING OF THE ELM" AT GISORS

  ORMUS

  THE PRIEURÉ AT ORLÉANS

  THE "HEAD" OF THE TEMPLARS

  THE GRAND MASTERS OF THE TEMPLARS

  6 - The Grand Masters and the Underground Stream

  RENÉ D’ANJOU

  RENÉ AND THE THEME OF ARCADIA

  THE ROSICRUCIAN MANIFESTOS

  THE STUART DYNASTY

  CHARLES NODIER AND HIS CIRCLE

  DEBUSSY AND THE ROSE-CROIX

  JEAN COCTEAU

  THE TWO JOHN XXIIIs

  7 - Conspiracy Through the Centuries

  THE PRIEURÉ DE SION IN FRANCE

  THE DUKES OF GUISE AND LORRAINE

  THE BID FOR THE THRONE OF FRANCE

  THE COMPAGNIE DU SAINT-SACREMENT

  CHTEAU BARBERIE

  NICOLAS FOUQUET

  NICOLAS POUSSIN

  ROSSLYN CHAPEL AND SHUGBOROUGH HALL

  THE POPE’S SECRET LETTER

  THE ROCK OF SION

  THE CATHOLIC MODERNIST MOVEMENT

  THE PROTOCOLS OF SION

  THE HIÉRON DU VAL D’OR

  8 - The Secret Society Today

  ALAIN POHER

  THE LOST KING

  CURIOUS PAMPHLETS IN THE BIBLIOTHÈQUE NATIONALE, PARIS

  THE CATHOLIC TRADITIONALISTS

  THE CONVENT OF 1981 AND COCTEAU’S STATUTES

  M. PLANTARD DE SAINT-CLAIR

  THE POLITICS OF THE PRIEURÉ DE SION

  9 - The Long-haired Monarchs

  LEGEND AND THE MEROVINGIANS

  THE BEAR FROM ARCADIA

  THE SICAMBRIANS ENTER GAUL

  MEROVÉE AND HIS DESCENDANTS

  BLOOD ROYAL

  CLOVIS AND HIS PACT WITH THE CHURCH

  DAGOBERT II

  THE USURPATION BY THE CAROLINGIANS

  THE EXCLUSION OF DAGOBERT II FROM HISTORY

  PRINCE GUILLEM DE GELLONE, COMTE DE RAZES

  PRINCE URSUS

  THE GRAIL FAMILY

  THE ELUSIVE MYSTERY

  10 - The Exiled Tribe

  Part Three - THE BLOODLINE

  11 - The Holy Grail

  THE LEGEND OF THE HOLY GRAIL

  THE STORY OF WOLFRAM VON ESCHENBACH

  THE GRAIL AND CABALISM

  THE PLAY ON WORDS

  THE LOST KINGS AND THE GRAIL

  THE NEED TO SYNTHESIZE

  THE HYPOTHESIS

  12 - The Priest-King Who Never Ruled

  PALESTINE AT THE TIME OF JESUS

  THE HISTORY OF THE GOSPELS

  THE MARITAL STATUS OF JESUS

  THE WIFE OF JESUS

  THE BELOVED DISCIPLE

  THE DYNASTY OF JESUS

  THE CRUCIFIXION

  WHO WAS BARABBAS?

  THE CRUCIFIXION IN DETAIL

  THE SCENARIO

  13 - The Secret the Church Forbade

  THE ZEALOTS

  THE GNOSTIC WRITINGS

  14 - The Grail Dynasty

  JUDAISM AND THE MEROVINGIANS

  THE PRINCIPALITY IN SEPTIMANIA

  THE SEED OF DAVID

  15 - Conclusion and Portents for the Future

  Appendix - The Alleged Grand Masters of the Prieuré de Sion

  BY THE SAME AUTHORS

  Bibliography

  Notes and References

  Copyright Page

  DID JESUS MARRY AND FATHER A CHILD? ARE HIS DESCENDANTS ALIVE TODAY?

  PRAISE FOR

  HOLY BLOOD, HOLY GRAIL

  "To call Holy Blood, Holy Grail controversial would be

  an understatement. The book’s contentions have met a

  religious firestorm." —International Herald Tribune

  "If you like a pleasant brainteaser from the ’What If’

  school of historical speculation you will be sure to enjoy

  this book."

  — Los Angeles Herald Examiner

  "A highly provocative work of investigative journalism."

  — Booklist

  "A bizarre theory." — Houston Chronicle

  "A thoroughly concept-shattering web of historical intrigue.... Destined to become an occult classic."

  — Fate Magazine

  "Revolutionary and provocative.... Whether taken as

  incontrovertible proof, or simply fascinating

  documentation of a theory, Holy Blood, Holy Grail

  will intrigue all readers."

  — Baker and Taylor Book Alert

  BY THE SAME AUTHORS

  THE MESSIANIC LEGACY

  Acknowledgments

  We should like particularly to thank Ann Evans, without whom this book could not have been written. We should also like to thank the following: Jehan l’Ascuiz, Robert Beer, Ean Begg, Dave Bennett, Colin Bloy, Juliet Burke, Henri Buthion, Jean-Luc Chaumeil, Philippe de Chérisey, Jonathan Clowes, Shirley Collins, Chris Cornford, Painton Cowan, Roy Davies, Liz Flower, Janice Glaholm, John Glover, Liz Greene, Margaret Hill, Renee Hinchley, Judy Holland, Paul Johnstone, Patrick Lichfield, Douglas Lockhart, Guy Level, Jane McGillivray, Andrew Maxwell-Hyslop, Pam Morris, Les Olbinson, Pierre Plantard de Saint-Clair, Bob Roberts, David Rolfe, John Saul, Gérard de Sède, Rosalie Siegel, John Sinclair, Jeanne Thomason, Louis Vazart, Colin Waldeck, Anthony Wall, Andy Whitaker, the staff of the British Museum Reading Room and the residents of Rennes-le-Château.

  Photographs were kindly supplied by the following: AGRACI, Paris, 36; Archives Nationales, Paris, 16a; Michael Baigent, London, 1,2,5, 6, 7, 14, 15, 18, 24, 25, 31, 32, 34; Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, 28, 29, 30; Michel Bouffard, Carcassonne, 4; W. Braun, Jerusalem, 11, 13; British Library, London, 9, 16b, 35; British Museum, London (reproduced by courtesy of the Trustees of the British Museum), 33; Courtauld Institute of Art, London, 10; Roy Davies, London, 26, 27; Devonshire Collection, Chatsworth (reproduced by permission of the Trustees of the Chatsworth Settlement), 21; Jean Dieuzaide/YAN photo, Toulouse, 8; Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Antica, Rome, 20; Patrick Lichfield, London, 23; Henry Lincoln, London, 3; Musée du Louvre, Paris, 22; Ost. Nationalbibliothek, Vienna, 19; H. Roger Viollet, Paris, 12, 17.

  Permission to quote extracts in copyright was granted by: Le Charivari magazine, Paris for material from issue no. 18, "Les Archives du Prieuré de Sion"; Victor Gollancz, London and Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc., New York for specified material on pp. 280-82 from pp. 14-17 in The Secret Gospel by Morton Smith copyright © 1973 by Morton Smith; Random House, Inc., New York for material from Parzival by Wolfram von Eschenbach, translated by Helen Mustard and Charles E. Passage, copyright © 1961 by Helen Mustard and Charles Passage.

  Le jour
du mi-été tranquille

  Brûle au centre de l’estoile,

  Où miroitée la mare dedans

  Son cœur doré Nymphaea montre clair.

  Nostres dames adorées

  Dans l’heure fleurie

  Dissoudent les ombres ténébreuses du temps.

  JEHAN L’ASCUIZ

  Introduction to the Paperback Edition

  On January 18, 1982 The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail was published in England. Five weeks later, on February 26, it appeared in the United States. During the month attending publication in each country we found ourselves amid what seemed at times a kind of circus. We had written a book which we knew would be controversial in certain respects. We expected it to be criticized in the usual ways—in book reviews by the vested theological and historical interests we had implicitly challenged—but we expected no more attention than most publications usually receive. To our bemused bewilderment, however, we found ourselves attracting as much celebrity (or, more accurately, notoriety) as if we’d personally staged a coup d’etat in the Vatican. Not only did we attract reviews, we also attained certifiable shock-horror status as a news story—a full-fledged news story that actually made the front pages of various newspapers. It was, granted, a quiet time: things were relatively calm in Poland; no public figures had been shot of late; and Argentina had not yet invaded the Falklands. In the absence of anything more catastrophic we became darlings of the media. Responses and reactions assumed torrential proportions, pouring in to the newspapers, our publishers and agent, and ourselves. The spectrum of responses was so broad that it seemed entirely different books were being referred to. At one extreme there were reactions epitomized by a letter which extolled our book as "the greatest work of the century"—a judgment which we unfortunately cannot presume to share. At the opposite extreme there were statements which, albeit less succinctly, implied it might well be the worst. Rarely in recent publishing history have so many Don Quixotes tilted so zealously against one small windmill.

  Much of the furor was precipitated by the BBC’s Omnibus, on which Barry Norman interviewed us along with Hugh Montefiore, bishop of Birmingham, and the historian Marina Warner. Somewhat naively, with a lamb-being-led-to-slaughter acquiescence, we had accepted an invitation to appear on the program. The producer had earnestly assured us that we would be participating in a discussion that would permit some serious exploration of our book’s conclusions. We had no way of knowing at the time that our producer’s definition of discussion was somewhat idiosyncratic. By our own definition we seemed to have blundered not into a discussion, but into an ambush staged by some latter-day ad hoc Inquisition. After Barry Norman had summarized something which bore only a tenuous resemblance to our book, Ms. Warner and the bishop proceeded to adumbrate, pell-mell, a prearranged scroll of charges long enough to sanction an immediate auto-da-fé of both our work and ourselves. To shift metaphors, we found ourselves suddenly subjected to a blitz. Broad generalities and pedantic trivialities were launched against us like a veritable Luftwaffe of flies. We could have swatted virtually all of them; we did, in fact, swat a great many. But it takes only a moment for a voice, arrogating the resonance of authority, to stigmatize a book—to label it irresponsible, implausible, poorly researched, or simply bad. It takes rather longer to refute such charges. One must do so point by point, citing specific examples. One must become embroiled in minutiae and academic quibbles that scarcely conduce to good television, for good television revels more in dramatic bloodbaths than in dry exchanges of information. For every half-dozen objections raised by Ms. Warner and the bishop, we were allowed to reply to only one in studio; and when the program was transmitted on January 17th, even many of the replies allowed us had been excised. Each of us was edited down to one or two statutory comments, and that was all. In consequence the "discussion" seen by BBC viewers was very different from the "discussion" that actually occurred in the studio. A number of people commented afterward that it seemed we’d not been given much chance to speak. In reality we were given slightly more chance than was apparent, but most of what we said ended up on the cutting-room floor.

  Such things constantly happen in the world of television—a world with which we were sufficiently familiar not to have been surprised. The pity of it was that some magnificently comic moments were irretrievably lost. For example, at one point Barry Norman asked the bishop whether such books as ours were potentially dangerous. "Absolutely," replied the bishop, who had only read two chapters of it. Our book, he declared, was a shameless exploitation of sex and sensationalism. A stunned silence descended on the studio. Sex? Had we written a book about sex? We gaped at one another in stupefaction, half-wondering whether a deranged printer had bound a few pages of the Kama Sutra into our text or replaced one of our illustrations with a picture of a nude Templar. As far as we knew, our book, on a scale of sexiness, ranked somewhere below the Turin shroud, which, though a full frontal portrait of a naked man, has never attracted much prurient interest.

  Barry Norman shook his head quickly, as if to shake water out of his ear. Even Ms. Warner looked manifestly embarrassed. Somewhat ironically we attempted to ascertain precisely which book the bishop had read. Before we could do so the heavens intervened in the form of a humble technician who hurried into the studio and requested that we shoot the scene again. Something had gone wrong, he explained—a gremlin had unsprocketed the technical apparatus. Barry Norman accordingly asked his question again. The bishop by now had realized that instead of moistening his fingers with the tip of his tongue he had jammed both hands and both feet into his mouth simultaneously. Given a second opportunity, he retreated as rapidly as his tongue could carry him. Was our book potentially dangerous? Not at all, he replied with seraphic serenity. On the contrary he was confident that Christianity would prove sufficiently robust to withstand the challenge we had posed. As we harbored no desire to demolish Christianity, we could only share his optimism.

  As we have said, this entire sequence and a number of others were entirely excised from what was transmitted. But if Omnibus was less than honorable in its editing, that could be ascribed to various extenuating circumstances: the format of the program, the shortage of time, the exigencies of television as a medium. And we had, after all, written a book which we knew would be subject to attack and distortion. What cannot be excused, however, was the BBC’s apparent attempt to make the duke of Devonshire look ridiculous, which seemed to have been a cause célèbre on the part of our producer. In our book—and the wording is very precise—we state that certain members of the Devonshire family seem to have been privy to fragments of information. This statement was based on material dating from the eighteenth century, as well as on remarks by a member of the Devonshire family today—a member of a collateral branch of the family, not directly connected with the duke at all. We had patiently and painstakingly explained this to our producer, who had pressed us insistently on the matter. But he was bent on exhuming some sensational "English angle" and rather overzealously trun - dled out to Chatsworth to interview the duke of Devonshire personally. In order to maximize the drama, he appears to have confronted the duke with an assertion we never made. According to a forthcoming book, His Grace was told, the Devonshires were directly descended from Jesus. Not surprisingly the Duke was mortified. "Absolutely obnoxious!" he replied indignantly. Because we had not made it the assertion to which he was replying had to be cut from the transmission. The television viewer only saw His Grace replying "Absolutely obnoxious!" to something quite unspecified. Someone might have been asking him about French tactics during the Battle of Quiberon Bay in 1759 or the quality of modern English tweed.

  During the Omnibus interview the bishop of Birmingham charged us with no less than "seventy-nine errors of fact" in two chapters— the two chapters, that is, which he had read. This indictment, issuing from so august a figure, seemed to be authoritative—an unimpugnable judgment pronounced by the Voice of Truth Itself, and therefore definitively damning. Accordi
ngly it was seized by the newspapers, by radio and television, and disseminated across the world. "You were attacked by a bishop," someone reported anxiously, ringing us long-distance from the United States. "Are you in any danger?"

  We were not unduly alarmed by the prospect of an episcopal hit squad—a cadre of mitered commandos with crosiers converted into blowpipes and SAS ski masks above flowing copes and stoles. Nevertheless, the charge of seventy-nine errors, when it was first leveled against us, took us momentarily aback. Could we really have got seventy-nine things wrong? We must confess to a certain fleeting alarm, an instant of self-doubt. But within the week, at our express request, the bishop deigned to send us a typed list of the seventy-nine "errors" he claimed to have found. It was a singular document indeed. In reality the bishop had discovered four genuine errors of fact. We had mistakenly said that Palestine, in Jesus’ era, was divided into two provinces and, as the bishop correctly observed, it was actually divided into one province and two tetrarchies. We had mistakenly ascribed the origin of Jesus’ image as a carpenter to Luke’s Gospel and, as the bishop correctly observed, it actually derives from Mark’s. A careless compositor, whose slip we had overlooked in proofreading, had placed Julius Africanus in the third century rather than in the first; and out manuscript, which alluded to "the Greek city of Ephesus," had got altered, presumably by a copy editor, to "the city of Ephesus in Greece." Ephesus is in Asia Minor.