Holy Blood, Holy Grail (27 page)

Masonic activity in the early and mid-seventeenth century. When Charles

Radclyffe, alleged Grand Master of Sion, escaped from Newgate Prison in 1714, he was aided by his cousin, the earl of Lichfield. Later in the century the earl of Lichfield’s line became extinct and his title lapsed.

It was bought in the early nineteenth century by descendants of the Anson family, who are the present earls of Lichfield.

The seat of the present earls of Lichfield is Shugborough Hall in Staffordshire. Formerly a bishop’s residence, Shugborough was purchased by the Anson family in 1697. During the following century it was the residence of the brother of George Anson, the famous admiral who circumnavigated the globe. When George Anson died in 1762, an elegiac poem was read aloud in

Parliament. One stanza of this poem reads:

Upon that storied marble cast thine eye.

The scene commands a moralising sigh.

E’en in Arcadia’s bless’d Elysian plains,

Amidst the laughing nymphs and sportive swains,

See festal joy subside, with melting grace,

And pity visit the half-smiling face;

Where now the dance, the lute, the nuptial feast,

The passion throbbing in the lover’s breast,

Life’s emblem here, in youth and vernal bloom,

But reason’s finger pointing at the tomb !24

This would seem to be an explicit allusion to Poussin’s painting and the inscription “Et in Arcadia Ego’ right down to the “finger pointing at the tomb’. And in the grounds of Shugborough there is an imposing marble has relief executed at the command of the Anson family between 1761 and 1767.

This has-relief comprises a reproduction reversed, mirror-fashion of Poussin’s “Les Bergers d’Arcadie’. And immediately below it, there is

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an enigmatic inscription, which no one has ever satisfactorily deciphered:

O.U.O3N.ANN.

D M

The Pope’s Secret Letter

In 1738 Pope Clement XII issued a Papal Bull condemning and

excommunicating all Freemasons, whom he pronounced ‘enemies of the Roman Church’. It has never been altogether clear why they should have been regarded as such especially as many of them, like the Jacobites at Catholic. Perhaps the pope was aware of the connection we had discovered between early Freemasonry and the anti-Roman “Rosicrucians’ of the seventeenth century. In any case some light may be shed on the matter by a letter released and published for the first time in 1962. This letter had been written by Pope Clement XII and addressed to an unknown correspondent.

In its text the pope declares that Masonic thought rests on a heresy we had encountered repeatedly before the denial of Jesus’s divinity. And he further asserts that the guiding spirits, the ‘masterminds’, behind

Freemasonry are the same as those who provoked the Lutheran Reformation.”

The pope may well have been paranoid; but it is important to note that he is not speaking of nebulous currents of thought or vague traditions. On the contrary, he is speaking of a highly organised group of individuals -a sect, an order, a secret society who, through the ages, have dedicated themselves to subverting the edifice of Catholic Christianity.

The Rock of Sion

In the late eighteenth century, when different Masonic systems were proliferating wildly, the so-called Oriental Rite of Memphiszs made its appearance. In this rite the name Ormus occurred, to our knowledge, for the first time the name allegedly adopted by the Prieure Sion between 1188 and 1307. According to the Oriental Rite of Mem phis,

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Ormus was an Egyptian sage who, around A.D. 46, amalgamated pagan and Christian mysteries and, in so doing, founded the

Rose-Croix.

In other eighteenth century Masonic rites there are repeated references to the “Rock of Sion’ the same Rock of Sion which, as the “Prieure documents’ quote, rendered the ‘royal tradition’ established by Godfroi and

Baudouin de Bouillon “equal’ to that of any other reigning dynasty in Europe. We had previously assumed that the Rock of Sion was simply Mount

Sion the “high hill’ south of Jerusalem on which Godfroi built an abbey to house the order which became the Prieure de Sion. But Masonic sources ascribe an additional significance to the Rock of Sion. Given their preoccupation with the Temple of Jerusalem, it is not surprising that they refer one to specific passages in the Bible. And in these passages the Rock of Sion is something more than a high hill. It is a particular stone overlooked or unjustifiably neglected during the building of the Temple, which must subsequently be retrieved and incorporated as the structure’s keystone. According to Psalm 118, for example:

The stone which the builders refused is become the head stone of the corner.

In Matthew 21:42 Jesus alludes specifically to this psalm:

Did ye never read in the scriptures, The stone which the builders rejected, the same is become the head of the corner.

In Romans 9:33 there is another reference, rather more ambiguous: Behold, I lay in Sion a stumbling stone and rock of offence: and whosoever believeth on him shall not be ashamed.

In Acts 4:11 the Rock of Sion might well be interpreted as a metaphor for

Jesus himself:

by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth .. . doth this man stand here before you whole.

This is the stone which was set at nought of you builders, which is become the head of the corner.

In Ephesians 2:20 the equation of Jesus with the Rock of Sion becomes

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more apparent: built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner stone.

And in 1 Peter 2:3-8 this equation is made even more explicit: the Lord is gracious. To whom coming, as unto a living stone, disallowed indeed of men, but chosen of God, and precious. Ye also, as lively stones, are built up a spiritual house, an holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God by Jesus Christ.

Wherefore it is also contained in the scripture, Behold, I lay in Sion a chief corner stone, elect, precious: and he that believeth on him shall not be confounded. Unto you therefore which believe he is precious: but unto them which be disobedient, the stone which the builders disallowed, the same is made the head of the corner, And a stone of stumbling, and a rock of offence, even to them which stumble at the word, being disobedient; whereunto also they were appointed.

In the very next verse, the text goes on to stress themes whose significance did not become apparent to us until later. It speaks of an elect line of kings who are both spiritual and secular leaders, a line of priest-kings:

But you are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people .. .

What were we to make of these baffling passages? What were we to make of the Rock of Sion the keystone of the Temple, which seemed to figure so saliently among the “inner secrets’ of Freemasonry? What were we to make of the explicit identification of this keystone with Jesus himself? And what were we to make of that “royal tradition’ which because founded on the

Rock of Sion or on Jesus himself was “equal’ to the reigning dynasties of

Europe during the Crusades?=’

The Catholic Modernist Movement

In 1833 Jean Baptiste Pitois, Charles Nodier’s former disciple at the Arsenal Library, was an official in the Ministry of Public Education.zd

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And in that year the Ministry undertook an ambitious project to publish all hitherto suppressed documents pertinent to the history of France. Two committees were formed to preside over the enterprise.

These committees included, among others, Victor

Hugo, Jules Michelet and an authority on the Crusades, Baron Emmanuel Rey.

Among the works subsequently published under the auspices of the Ministry of Public Education was Michelet’s monumental Le Proces des Templiers an exhaustive compilation of Inquisition records dealing with the trials of the Knights Templar. Under the same auspices Baron Rey published a number of works dealing with the Crusades and the Frankish kingdom of Jerusalem.

In these works there appeared in print for the first time original charters pertaining to the Prieure de Sion. At certain points the texts Rey quotes are almost verbatim with passages in the “Prieure documents’.

In 1875 Baron Rey co-founded the Societe de 1”Orient Latin (“Society of the

Latin or Frankish Middle East’). Based in Geneva, this society devoted itself to ambitious archaeological projects. It also published its own magazine, the Revue de FOrient Latin, which is now one of the primary sources for modern historians like Sir Steven Runciman, The Revue de FOrient Latin reproduced a number of additional charters of the Prieure de

Sion.

Rey’s research was typical of a new form of historical scholarship appearing in Europe at the time, most prominently in’ Germany, which constituted an extremely serious threat to the Church. The

dissemination of

Darwinian thought and agnosticism had already produced a “crisis of faith’ in the late nineteenth century, and the new scholarship magnified the crisis. In the past, historical research had been, for the most part, an unreliable affair, resting on highly tenuous foundations -on legend and tradition, on personal memoirs, on exaggerations promulgated for the sake of one or another cause. Only in the nineteenth century did German scholars begin introducing the rigorous, meticulous techniques that are now accepted as commonplace, the stockin-trade of any responsible historian. Such preoccupation with critical examination, with investigation of first-hand sources, with cross-references and exact chronology, established the

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conventional stereotype of the Teutonic pedant. But if German writers of the period tended to lose themselves in minutiae, they also provided a solid basis for inquiry. And for a number of major archaeological discoveries as well. The most famous example, of course, is Heinrich Schliemann’s excavation of the site of Troy.

It was only a matter of time before the techniques of German scholarship were applied, with similar diligence, to the Bible. And the Church, which rested on unquestioning acceptance of dogma, was well aware that the Bible itself could not withstand such critical scrutiny. In his best-selling and highly controversial Life of Jesus, Ernest Renan had already applied German methodology to the New Testament, and the results, for Rome, were extremely embarrassing.

The Catholic Modernist Movement arose initially as a response to this new challenge. Its original objective was to produce a generation of ecclesiastical experts trained in the German tradition, who could defend the literal truth of Scripture with all the heavy ordnance of critical scholarship. As it transpired, however, the plan backfired.

The more the

Church sought to equip its younger clerics with the tools for combat in the modern polemical world, the more those same clerics began to desert the cause for which they had been recruited. Critical examination of the Bible revealed a multitude of inconsistencies, discrepancies and implications that were positively inimical to Roman dogma. And by the end of the century the Modernists were no longer the elite shock-troops the Church had hoped they would be, but defectors and incipient heretics. Indeed, they posed the most serious threat the Church had experienced since Martin Luther, and brought the entire edifice of Catholicism to the brink of a schism unparalleled for centuries.

The hotbed for Modernist activity as it had been for the Compagnie du Saint-Sacrement was Saint Sulpice in Paris. Indeed, one of the most resonant voices in the Modernist movement was the man who was director of the Seminary of Saint Sulpice from 1852 to 1884.29 From Saint Sulpice

Modernist attitudes spread rapidly to the rest of France, and to Italy and

Spain. According to these attitudes, Biblical texts were not unimpugnably authoritative, but had to be understood in the specific context of their time. And the Modernists also rebelled against the

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increasing centralisation of ecclesiastical power especially the recently instituted doctrine of papal infallibility,3” which ran flagrantly counter to the new trend. Before long Modernist attitudes were being disseminated not only by intellectual clerics, but by distinguished and influential writers as well. Figures like Roger Martin du Gard in France, and Miguel de

Unamuno in Spain, were among the primary spokesmen for Modernism.

The Church responded with predictable vigour and wrath. The Modernists were accused of being Freemasons. Many of them were suspended or even excommunicated, and their books were placed on the Index. In 1903 Pope Leo XIII established the Pontifical Biblical Commission to monitor the work of scriptural scholars. In 1907 Pope Pius X issued a formal condemnation of

Modernism. And on September 1st, 1910, the Church demanded of its clerics an oath against Modernist tendencies.

Nevertheless Modernism continued to flourish until the First World War diverted public attention to other concerns. Until 1914 it remained a cause celebre. One Modernist author, the Abbe Turmel, proved a particularly mischievous individual. While ostensibly behaving impeccably at his teaching post in Brittany, he published a series of Modernist works under no less than fourteen different pseudonyms. Each of them was placed on the

Index, but not until 1929 was Turmel identified as their author.

Needless to say, he was then summarily excommunicated.

In the meantime Modernism spread to Britain, where it was warmly welcomed and endorsed by the Anglican Church. Among its Anglican adherents was

William Temple, later archbishop of Canterbury, who declared that Modernism ‘is what most educated people already believe ‘.3’ One of Temple’s associates was Canon A. L.

Liney. And Liney knew the priest from whom we had received that portentous letter which spoke of ‘incontrovertible proof’ that Jesus did not die on the cross.

Liney, as we knew, had worked for some time in Paris, where he made the acquaintance of the Abbe tmile Hoffet the man to whom Sauniere brought the parchments found at Rennes-leChateau. With his expertise in history, language and linguistics, Hoffet was the typical young