Holy Blood, Holy Grail (15 page)

“Prieure documents’. It was with this claim, therefore, that we started our examination.

As early as 1962 the Prieure de Sion had been mentioned, briefly, cryptically and in passing, in a work by Gerard de Sede. The first detailed reference to it that we found, however, was a single page in the Dossiers secrets. At the top of this page there is a quotation from Rene Grousset, one of the foremost twentieth-century authorities on the Crusades, whose monumental opus on the subject, published during the 1930s, is regarded as a seminal work by such modern historians as Sir Steven Runciman. The quotation refers to Baudouin I, younger brother of Godfroi de Bouillon,

Duke of Lorraine and conqueror of the Holy Land. On Godfroi’s death, Baudouin accepted the crown offered him and thereby became the first official king of Jerusalem. According to Rene Grousset, there existed, through Bau_douin I, a “royal tradition’. And because it was “founded on the rock of Sion’,” this tradition was “equal’ to the reigning dynasties in

Europe the Capetian dynasty of France, the Anglo Norman (Plantagenet) dynasty of England, the Hohenstauffen and Habsburg dynasties which presided over Germany and the old Holy Roman Empire. But Baudouin and his descendants were elected kings, not kings by blood. Why, then, should

Grousset speak of a ‘royal tradition’ which “existed through’ him?

Grousset himself does not explain. Nor does he explain why this tradition, because it was “founded on the rock of Sion’, should be

- 100 -

”equal’ to the foremost dynasties of Europe. On the page in the Dossiers secrets Grousset’s quotation is followed by an allusion to the mysterious Prieure de Sion or Ordre de Sion, as it was apparently called at the time. According to the text, the Ordre de Sion was founded by Godfroi de Bouillon in 1090, nine years before the conquest of

Jerusalem although there are other “Prieure documents’ which give the founding date as 1099. According to the text, Baudouin, Godfroi’s younger brother, ‘owed his throne’ to the Order. And according to the text, the

Order’s official seat, or ‘headquarters’, was a specific abbey the Abbey of Notre Dame duMont de Sion in Jerusalem. Or perhaps just outside

Jerusalem on Mount Sion, the famous ‘high hill’ just south of the city.

On consulting all standard twentieth-century works on the Crusades, we found no mention whatever of any Ordre de Sion. We therefore undertook to establish whether or not such an Order ever existed and whether it could have had the power to confer thrones. To do that, we were obliged to rummage through sheaves of antiquated documents and charters. We did not just seek explicit references to the Order. We also sought some trace of its possible influence and activities. And we endeavoured to confirm whether or not there was an abbey called Notre Dame duMont de Sion.

To the south of Jerusalem looms the ‘high hill’ of Mount Sion. In 1099, when Jerusalem fell to Godfroi de Bouillon’s crusaders, there stood on this hill the ruins of an old Byzantine basilica, dating supposedly from the fourth century and called ‘the Mother of all Churches’

- a most suggestive title. According to numerous extant charters, chronicles and contemporary accounts, an abbey was built on the site of these ruins. It was built at the express command of Godfroi de Bouillon. It must have been an imposing edifice, a self-contained community. According to one chronicler, writing in 1172, it was extremely well fortified, with its own walls, towers and battlements. And this structure was called the Abbey of Notre Dame duMont de Sion.

Someone, obviously, had to occupy the premises. Could they have been an autonomous ‘order’, taking their name from the site itself? Could the occupants of the abbey indeed have been the Ordre de Sion? It was

- 101 -

not unreasonable to assume so. The knights and monks who occupied the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, also installed by Godfroi, were formed into an official and duly constituted ‘order’ the Order of the Holy Sepulchre. The same principle might well have obtained for the occupants of the abbey on Mount Sion, and it would seem to have done so. According to the leading nineteenth-century expert on the subject, the abbey ‘was inhabited by a chapter of Augustinian canons, charged with serving the sanctuaries under the direction of an abbot. The community assumed the double name of

“Sainte-Marie duMont Syon et du Saint-Esprit’ 1.12 And another historian, writing in 1698, is more explicit still: “There were in Jerusalem during the

Crusades .. . knights attached to the Abbey of Notre Dame de Sion who took the name of “Chevaliers de 1”Ordre de Notre Dame de Sion’ 1.13

If this were not sufficient confirmation, we also discovered documents of the period original documents -bearing the seal and signature of one or another prior of “Notre Dame de Sion’. There is a charter, for example, signed by a Prior Arnaldus and dated July 19th, 1116.4 On another charter, dated May 2nd, 1125, Arnaldus’s name appears in conjunction with that of

Hugues de Payen, first Grand Master of the “Temple.5

So far the “Prieure documents’ had proved valid, and we could assert that an Ordre de Sion did exist by the turn of the twelfth century.

Whether or not the Order had actually been formed earlier, however, remained an open question. There is no consistency about which comes first, an order, or the premises in which it is housed. The Cistercians, for instance, “took their name from a specific place, Citeaux. On the other hand, the Franciscans and

Benedictines to cite but two examples took their names from individuals, and pre-dated any fixed abode. The most we could say, therefore, was that an abbey existed by 1100

and housed an order of the same name which may have been formed earlier.

The “Prieure documents’ imply that it was, and there is some evidence to suggest, albeit vaguely and obliquely, that this may indeed have been the case. It is known that in 1070, twenty-nine years before the First Crusade, a specific band of monks, from Calabria in southern Italy, arrived in the vicinity of the Ardennes Forest, part of Godfroi de Bouillon’s domains.6

- 102 -

According to Gerard de Sede, this band of monks was led by an individual called “Ursus’ - a name which the “Prieure documents’ consistently associate with the Merovingian bloodline. On their arrival in the Ardennes, the Calabrian monks obtained the patronage of Mathilde de Toscane, Duchess of Lorraine who was Godfroi de Bouillon’s aunt and, in effect, foster-mother. From Mathilde the monks received a tract of land at Orval, not far from Stenay, where Dagobert II had been assassinated some five hundred years earlier. Here an abbey was established to house them. Nevertheless they did not remain at Orval very long. By 1108 they had mysteriously disappeared, and no record of their whereabouts survives. Tradition says they returned to Calabria. Orval, by 1131, had become one of the fiefs owned by Saint Bernard.

Before their departure from Orval, however, the Calabrian monks may have left a crucial mark on Western history. According to Gerard de Sede, at least, they included the man subsequently known as Peter the Hermit. If this is so, it would be extremely significant, for Peter the Hermit is often believed to have been Godfroi de Bouillon’s personal tutor.” Nor is that his only claim to fame. In 1095, along with Pope Urban II, Peter made himself known throughout Christendom by charismatic ally preaching the need for a crusade a holy war which would reclaim Christ’s sepulchre and the

Holy Land from the hands of the Muslim infidel. Today Peter the Hermit is regarded as one of the chief instigators of the Crusades.

On the basis of hints intimated in the “Prieure documents’, we began to wonder whether there might have been some sort of shadowy continuity between the monks of Orval, Peter the Hermit and the Ordre de Sion. It would certainly seem that the monks at Orval were not just a random band of itinerant religious devotees. On the contrary their movements their collective arrival in the Ardennes from Calabria and their mysterious disappearance en masse attest to some kind of cohesion, some kind of organisation and perhaps a permanent base somewhere. And if Peter were a member of this band of monks, his preaching of a crusade might have been a manifestation not of rampant fanaticism, but of calculated policy. If he was Godfroi’s personal tutor, moreover, he

- 103 -

might well have played some role in convincing his pupil to embark for the

Holy Land. And when the monks vanished from Orval, they might not have returned to Calabria after all. They might have established themselves in

Jerusalem, perhaps in the Abbey of Notre Dame de Sion.

This, of course, was only a speculative hypothesis, with no documentary confirmation. Again, however, we soon found fragments of

circumstantial evidence to support it. When Godfroi de Bouillon embarked for the Holy

Land, he is known to have been accompanied by an entourage of anonymous figures who acted as advisors and administrators the equivalent, in effect, of a modern general staff.

But Godfroi’s was not the only Christian army to embark for Palestine. There were no less than three others, each commanded by an illustrious and influential Western potentate. If the crusade proved successful, if Jerusalem did fall and a Frankish kingdom were established, any one of these four potentates would have been eligible to occupy its throne. And yet Godfroi seems to have known beforehand that he would be selected.

Alone among the European commanders, he renounced his fiefs, sold all his goods and made it apparent that the Holy Land, for the duration of his life, would be his domain.

In 1099, immediately after the capture of Jerusalem, a group of anonymous figures convened in secret conclave. The identity of this group has eluded all historical inquiry although Guillaume de Tyre, writing three-quarters of a century later, reports that the most important of them was ‘a certain bishop from Calabria ‘.8 In any case the purpose of the meeting was clear to elect a king of Jerusalem. And despite a persuasive claim by Raymond,

Count of Toulouse, the mysterious and obviously influential electors promptly offered the throne to Godfroi de Bouillon. With uncharacteristic modesty, Godfroi declined the title, accepting instead that of “Defender of the Holy Sepulchre’. In other words. he was a king in everything but name.

And when he died, in 1100, his brother, Baudouin, did not hesitate to accept the name as well.

Could the mysterious conclave which elected Godfroi ruler have been the elusive monks from Orval including perhaps Peter the Hermit, who was in

- 104 -

the Holy Land at the time and enjoyed considerable authority? And could this same conclave have occupied the abbey on Mount Sion? In short, could those three ostensibly distinct groups of individuals the monks from Orval, the conclave who elected Godfroi and the occupants of Notre Dame de Sion -have been one and the same? The possibility cannot be proved, but neither can it be dismissed out of hand. And if it is true, it would certainly attest to the Ordre de

Sion’s power a power which included the right to confer thrones.

The Mystery Surrounding the Foundation of the Knights Templar The text in the Dossiers secrets goes on to refer to the Order of the Temple. The founders of the Temple are specifically listed as, “Hugues de

Payen, Bisol de St. Omer and Hugues, Comte de Champagne, along with certain members of the Ordre de Sion, Andre de Montbard, Archambaud de Saint-Aignan,

Nivard de Montdidier, Gondemar and Rossal’.9

We were already familiar with Hugues de Payen and Andre de Montbard, Saint

Bernard’s uncle. We were also familiar with Hugues, Count of Champagne who donated the land for Saint Bernard’s abbey at Clairvaux, became a Templar himself in 1124 (pledging fealty to his own vassal) and received from the bishop of Chartres the letter quoted in Chapter 3. But although the count of Champagne’s connection with the Templars was well known, we had never before seen him cited as one of their founders. In the Dossiers secrets he is. And Andre de Montbard, Saint Bernard’s shadowy uncle, is listed as belonging to the Ordre de Sion, in other words to another Order, which predates the Order -of the Temple and plays an instrumental role in the Temple’s creation.

Nor is that all. The text in the Dossiers secrets states that in March 1117, Baudouin 1, ‘who owed his throne to Sion’, was ‘obliged’ to negotiate the constitution of the Order of the Temple at the site of Saint Leonard of Acre. Our own research revealed that Saint Leonard of Acre was in fact one of the fiefs of the OFdre de Sion. But we were uncertain why Baudouin should have been ‘obliged’ to negotiate the Temple’s constitution. In

- 105 -

French the verb certainly connotes a degree of coercion or pressure.

And the implication in the Dossiers secrets was that this pressure was brought to bear by the Ordre de Sion to whom Baudouin “owed his throne’. If this were the case, the

Ordre de Sion would have been a most influential and powerful organisation an organisation which could not only confer thrones, but also, apparently, compel a king to do its bidding.

If the Ordre de Sion was in fact responsible for Godfroi de Bouillon’s election, then Baudouin, Godfroi’s younger brother, would have ‘owed his throne’ to its influence. As we had already discovered, moreover, there was indisputable evidence that the Order of the Temple existed, at least in embryonic form, a good four years before the generally accepted foundation date of 1118. In 1117 Baudouin was a sick man, whose death was patently imminent. It is therefore possible that the Knights Templar were active, albeit in an ex officio capacity, long before 1118 as, say, a military or administrative arm of the Ordre de Sion, housed in its fortified abbey. And it is possible that King Baudouin, on his deathbed, was compelled by illness, by the Ordre de Sion or by both to grant the Templars some official status, to give them a constitution and make them public.

In researching the Templars we had already begun to discern a web of intricate, elusive and provocative connections, the shadowy vestiges perhaps of some ambitious design.