The Long-haired Monarchs

By this time, of course, we had already researched the Merovingian dynasty. As far as we could we had groped our way through a mist of fantasy and obscurity even more opaque than that surrounding the Cathars and the Knights Templar. We had spent some months endeavouring to disentangle complex strands of intertwined history and fable. Despite our efforts, however, the Merovingians remained for the most part shrouded in mystery.

The Merovingian dynasty issued from the Sicambrians, a tribe of the Germanic people collectively known as the Franks. Between the fifth and seventh centuries the Merovingians ruled large parts of what are now France and Germany. The period of their ascendancy coincides with the period of King Arthur—a period which constitutes the setting for the romances of the Holy Grail. It is probably the most impenetrable period of what are now called the Dark Ages.

But the Dark Ages, we discovered, had not been truly dark. On the contrary it quickly became apparent to us that someone had deliberately obscured them. To the extent that the Roman Church exercised a veritable monopoly on learning, and especially on writing, the records that survived represent certain vested interests.

Almost everything else has been lost or censored. But here and there something from time to time slipped through the curtain drawn across the past, seeped out to us despite the official silence. From these shadowy vestiges, a reality could be reconstructed—a reality of a most interesting kind, and one very discordant with the tenets of orthodoxy.

Legend and the Merovingians

We encountered a number of enigmas surrounding the origins of the Merovingian dynasty. One usually thinks of a dynasty, for example, as a ruling family or house which not merely succeeds another ruling family or house, but does so, by virtue of having displaced, deposed or supplanted its predecessors.

In other words one thinks of dynasties as commencing with a coup d’etat of one sort or another, often entailing the extinction of the previous ruling line. The Wars of the Roses in England, for instance, marked the change of a dynasty. A century or so later the Stuarts mounted the English throne only when the Tudors were extinct. And the Stuarts themselves were deposed forcibly by the houses of Orange and Hanover.

In the case of the Merovingians, however, there was no such violent or abrupt transition, no usurpation, no displacement, no extinction of an earlier regime. On the contrary the house that came to be called Merovingian seems already to have ruled over the Franks. The Merovingians were already rightful and duly acknowledged kings. But there appears to have been something special about one of them—so much so that he conferred his name on the entire dynasty.

The ruler from whom the Merovingians derived their name is most elusive, his historical reality eclipsed by legend. Merovee (Merovech or Meroveus) was a semi-supernatural figure worthy of classical myth. Even his name bears witness to his miraculous origin and character. It echoes the French word for ‘mother’, as well as both the French and Latin words for ‘sea’.

According to both the leading Frankish chronicler and to subsequent tradition, Merovee was born of two fathers. When already pregnant by her husband, King Clodio, Merovee’s mother supposedly went swimming in the ocean. In the water she is said to have been seduced and/or raped by an unidentified marine creature from beyond the sea—‘bestia Neptuni Quinotauri similis’, a “beast of Neptune similar to a Quinotaur”, whatever a Quinotaur may have been. This creature apparently impregnated the lady a second time. And when Merovee was born, there allegedly flowed in his veins a commingling of two different bloods—the blood of a Frankish ruler and of a mysterious aquatic creature.

Such fantastic legends are quite common, of course, not only in the ancient world, but in later European tradition as well. Usually they are not entirely imaginary, but symbolic or allegorical, masking some concrete historical fact behind their fabulous facade. In the case of Merovee the fabulous facade might well indicate an intermarriage of some sort—a pedigree transmitted through the mother, as in Judaism, for instance, or a mingling of dynastic lines whereby the Franks became allied by blood with someone else; quite possibly with a source from ‘beyond the sea’—a source which, for one or another reason, was transformed by subsequent fable into a sea-creature.

In any case by virtue of his dual blood Merovee was said to have been endowed with an impressive array of superhuman powers. And whatever the historical actuality behind the legend, the Merovingian dynasty continued to be mantled in an aura of magic, sorcery and the supernatural. According to tradition, Merovingian monarchs were occult adepts, initiates in arcane sciences, practitioners of esoteric arts worthy rivals of Merlin—their fabulous near-contemporary. They were often called ’the sorcerer kings’ or ’thaumaturge kings’. By virtue of some miraculous property in their blood they could allegedly heal by laying on of hands; and according to one account the tassels at the fringes of their robes were deemed to possess miraculous curative powers. They were said to be capable of clairvoyant or telepathic communication with beasts and with the natural world around them, and to wear a powerful magical necklace. They were said to possess an arcane spell which protected them and granted them phenomenal longevity—which history, incidentally, does not seem to confirm. And they all supposedly bore a distinctive birthmark, which distinguished them from all other men, which rendered them immediately identifiable and which attested to their semidivine or sacred blood. This birthmark reputedly took the form of a red cross, either over the heart—a curious anticipation of the Templar blazon—or between the shoulder blades.

The Merovingians were also frequently called ’the long-haired kings’. Like Samson in the Old Testament, they were loath to cut their hair. Like Samson’s, their hair supposedly contained their vertu—the essence and secret of their power. Whatever the basis for this belief in the power of the Merovingians’ hair, it seems to have been taken quite seriously, and as late as A.D. 754. When Childeric III was deposed in that year and imprisoned, his hair was ritually shorn at the pope’s express command.

However extravagant the legends surrounding the Merovingians, they would seem to rest on some concrete basis, some status enjoyed by the Merovingian monarchs during their own lifetime. In fact the Merovingians were not regarded as kings in the modern sense of that word. They were regarded as priest-kings—embodiments of the divine, in other words, not unlike, say, the ancient Egyptian pharaohs. They did not rule simply by God’s grace. On the contrary they were apparently deemed the living embodiment and incarnation of God’s grace—a status usually reserved exclusively for Jesus. And they seem to have engaged in ritual practices which partook, if anything, more of priesthood than of kingship. Skulls found of Merovingian monarchs, for example, bear what appears to be a ritual incision or hole in the crown. Similar incisions can be found in the skulls of high priests of early Tibetan Buddhism—to allow the soul to escape on death, and to open direct contact with the divine. There is reason to suppose that the clerical tonsure is a residue of the Merovingian practice.

In 1653 an important Merovingian tomb was found in the Ardennes—the tomb of King Childeric I, son of Merovee and father of Clovis, most famous and influential of all Merovingian rulers. The tomb contained arms, treasure and regalia, such as one would expect to find in a royal tomb. It also contained items less characteristic of kingship than of magic, sorcery and divination—a severed horse’s head, for instance, a bull’s head made of gold and a crystal ball.

One of the most sacred of Merovingian symbols was the bee; and King Childeric’s tomb contained no less than three hundred miniature bees made of solid gold. Along with the tomb’s other contents, these bees were entrusted to Leopold Wilhelm von Habsburg, military governor of the Austrian Netherlands at the time and brother of the Emperor Ferdinand III. Eventually most of Childeric’s treasure was returned to France. And when he was crowned emperor in 1804 Napoleon made a special point of having the golden bees affixed to his coronation robes.

This incident was not the only manifestation of Napoleon’s interest in the Merovingians. He commissioned a compilation of genealogies by one Abbe Pichon, to determine whether or not the Merovingian bloodline had survived the fall of the dynasty. It was on these genealogies, commissioned by Napoleon, that the genealogies in the “Prieure documents” were in large part based.

The Bear from Arcadia

The legends surrounding the Merovingians proved worthy of the age of Arthur and the Grail romances. At the same time they constituted a daunting rampart between us and the historical reality we wanted to explore. When we at last gained access to it—or what little of it survived—this historical reality was somewhat different from the legends. But it was not any the less mysterious, extraordinary or evocative.

We could find little verifiable information about the true origins of the Merovingians. They themselves claimed descent from Noah, whom they regarded, even more than Moses, as the source of all Biblical wisdom—an interesting position, which surfaced again a thousand years later in European Freemasonry. The Merovingians also claimed direct descent from ancient Troy—which, whether true or not, would serve to explain the occurrence in France of Trojan names like Troyes and Paris. More contemporary writers—including the authors of the “Prieure documents”—have endeavoured to trace the Merovingians to ancient Greece, and specifically to the region known as Arcadia. According to these documents, the ancestors of the Merovingians were connected with Arcadia’s royal house. At some unspecified date towards the advent of the Christian era they supposedly migrated up the Danube, then up the Rhine, and established themselves in what is now western Germany.

Whether the Merovingians derived ultimately from Troy or from Arcadia would now seem to be academic, and there is not necessarily a conflict between the two claims. According to Homer a substantial contingent of Arcadians was present at the siege of Troy. According to early Greek histories, Troy was in fact founded by settlers from Arcadia. It is also worth noting in passing that the bear, in ancient Arcadia, was a sacred animal—a totem on which mystery cults were based and to which ritual sacrifice was made. Indeed, the very name “Arcadia” derives from “Arkades”, which means “People of the Bear”. The ancient Arcadians claimed descent from Arkas, the patron deity of the land, whose name also means ‘bear’. According to Greek myth, Arkas was the son of Kallisto, a nymph connected with Artemis, the Huntress. To the modern mind Kallisto is most familiar as the constellation Ursa Major—the Great Bear.

For the Sicambrian Franks, from whom the Merovingians issued, the bear enjoyed a similar exalted status. Like the ancient Arcadians they worshipped the bear in the form of Artemis or, more specifically, the form of her Gallic equivalent, Arduina, patron goddess of the Ardennes. The mystery cult of Arduina persisted well into the Middle Ages, one centre of it being the town of Luneville, not far from two other sites recurring repeatedly in our investigation—Stenay and Orval. As late as 1304 statutes were still being promulgated by the Church forbidding worship of the heathen goddess.

Given the magical, mythic and totemic status of the bear in the Merovingian heartland of the Ardennes, it is not surprising that the name “Ursus”—Latin for “bear”—should be associated in the “Prieure documents” with the Merovingian royal line. Rather more surprising is the fact that the Welsh word for bear is “arth”—from whence the name “Arthur” derives. Although we did not pursue the matter at this point, the coincidence intrigued us that Arthur should not only be contemporary with the Merovingians, but also, like them, associated with the bear.

The Sicambrians Enter Gaul

In the early fifth century the invasion of the Huns provoked large-scale migrations of almost all European tribes. It was at this time that the Merovingians—or, more accurately, the Sicambrian ancestors of the Merovingians—crossed the Rhine and moved en masse into Gaul, establishing themselves in what is now Belgium and northern France, in the vicinity of the Ardennes. A century later this region came to be called the kingdom of Austrasie. And the core of the kingdom of Austrasie was what is now known as Lorraine.

The Sicambrian influx into Gaul did not consist of a horde of wild unkempt barbarians tumultuously overrunning the land. On the contrary it was a placid and civilised affair. For centuries the Sicambrians had maintained close contact with the Romans; and though they were pagans, they were not savages. Indeed they were well versed in Roman customs and administration, and followed Roman fashions. Some Sicambrians had become high-ranking officers in the imperial army. Some had even become Roman consuls. Thus, the Sicambrian influx was less an onslaught or an invasion than a kind of peaceful absorption. And when, towards the end of the fifth century, the Roman empire collapsed, the Sicambrians filled the vacuum. They did not do so violently or by force. They retained the old customs and altered very little. With no upheaval whatever, they assumed control of the already existing but vacant administrative apparatus. The regime of the early Merovingians thus conformed fairly closely to the model of the old Roman empire.

Merovee and His Descendants

Our research exhumed mention of at least two historical figures named Merovee, and it is not altogether clear which of them legend credits with descent from a sea creature. One Merovee was a Sicambrian chieftain, alive in 417, who fought under the Romans and died in 438. It has been suggested by at least one modern expert on the period that this Merovee actually visited Rome and caused something of a sensation. There is certainly a record of a visit by an imposing Frankish leader, conspicuous for his flowing yellow hair.

In 448 the son of this first Merovee, bearing the same name as his father, was proclaimed king of the Franks at Tournai and reigned until his death ten years later. He may have been the first official king of the Franks as a united people. By virtue of this perhaps, or of whatever was symbolised by his fabulous dual birth, the dynasty which succeeded him has since been called Merovingian.

Under Merovee’s successors the kingdom of the Franks flourished. It was not the crude barbaric culture often imagined. On the contrary, it warrants comparison in many respects with the ‘high civilisation’ of Byzantium. Even secular literacy was encouraged. Under the Merovingians secular literacy was more widespread than it would be two dynasties and five hundred years later. This literacy extended up to the rulers themselves—a most surprising fact, given the rude, untutored and unlettered character of later medieval monarchs. King Chilperic, for example, who reigned during the sixth century, not only built lavish Roman-style amphitheatres at Paris and Soissons, but was also a dedicated and accomplished poet, who took considerable pride in his craft. And there are verbatim accounts of his discussions with ecclesiastical authorities which reflect an extraordinary subtlety, sophistication and learning—hardly qualities one would associate with a king of the time. In many of these discussions Chilperic proves himself more than equal to his clerical interlocutors.

Under Merovingian rule the Franks were often brutal, but they were not really a warlike people by nature or disposition. They were not like the Vikings, for instance, or the Vandals, Visigoths or Huns. Their main activities were farming and commerce. Much attention was devoted to maritime trade, especially in the Mediterranean. And the artefacts of the Merovingian epoch reflect a quality of workmanship which is truly amazing—as the Sutton Hoo treasure ship attests.

The wealth accumulated by the Merovingian kings was enormous, even by later standards. Much of this wealth was in gold coins of superb quality, produced by royal mints at certain important sites including what is now Sion in Switzerland. Specimens of such coins were found in the Sutton Hoo treasure ship, and can now be seen in the British Museum. Many of the coins bear a distinctive equal-armed cross, identical to the one subsequently adopted during the Crusades for the Frankish kingdom of Jerusalem.

Blood Royal

Although Merovingian culture was both temperate and surprisingly modern, the monarchs who presided over it were another matter. They were not typical even of rulers of their own age, for the atmosphere of mystery and legend, magic and the supernatural, surrounded them even during their lifetimes. If the customs and economy of the Merovingian world did not differ markedly from others of the period, the aura about the Merovingian rulers did.

Sons of the Merovingian blood were not “created” kings. On the contrary they were automatically regarded as such on the advent of their twelfth birthday. There was no public ceremony of anointment, no coronation of any sort. Power was simply assumed, as by sacred right. But while the king was supreme authority in the realm, he was never obliged or even expected to sully his hands with the mundane business of governing. He was essentially a ritualised figure, a priest-king, and his role was not necessarily to do anything, simply to be. The king ruled, in short, but did not govern. In this respect, his status was somewhat similar to that of the present British royal family.

Government and administration were left to a non-royal official, the equivalent of a chancellor, who held the title “Mayor of the Palace”. On the whole the structure of the Merovingian regime had many things in common with modern constitutional monarchies.

Even after their conversion to Christianity the Merovingian rulers, like the Patriarchs of the Old Testament, were polygamous. On occasion they enjoyed harems of oriental proportions. Even when the aristocracy, under pressure from the Church, became rigorously monogamous, the monarchy remained exempt. And the Church, curiously enough, seems to have accepted this prerogative without any inordinate protest. According to one modern commentator:

Why was it [polygamy] tacitly approved by the Franks themselves? We may here be in the presence of ancient usage of polygamy in a royal family—a family of such rank that its blood could not be ennobled by any match, however advantageous, nor degraded by the blood of slaves… It was a matter of indifference whether a queen were taken from a royal dynasty or from among courtesans… The fortune of the dynasty rested in its blood and was shared by all who were of that blood.

And again, “It is just possible that, in the Merovingians, we may have a dynasty of Germanic Heerkonige derived from an ancient kingly family of the migration period.” But how many families can there possibly have been in the whole of world history which enjoyed such extraordinary and exalted status? Why should the Merovingians do so? Why should their blood come to be invested with such immense power? These questions continued to perplex us.

Clovis and His Pact with the Church

The most famous of all Merovingian rulers was Merovee’s grandson, Clovis I, who reigned between 481 and 511. Clovis’s name is familiar to any French schoolchild, for it was under Clovis that the Franks were converted to Roman Christianity. And it was through Clovis that Rome began to establish her undisputed supremacy in Western Europe—a supremacy that would remain unchallenged for a thousand years.

By 496 the Roman Church was in a precarious situation. During the course of the fifth century, its very existence had been severely threatened. Between 384 and 399 the bishop of Rome had already begun to call himself the pope, but his official status was no greater than that of any other bishop, and quite different from that of the pope today. He was not, in any sense, the spiritual leader or supreme head of Christendom. He merely represented a single body of vested interests, one of many divergent forms of Christianity and one which was desperately fighting for survival against a multitude of conflicting schisms and theological points of view.

Officially the Roman Church had no greater authority than, say, the Celtic church—with which it was constantly at odds. It had no greater authority than heresies such as Arianism, which denied Jesus’s divinity and insisted on his humanity. Indeed during much of the fifth century every bishopric in Western Europe was either Arian or vacant. If the Roman Church was to survive, still more assert its authority, it would need the support of a champion—a powerful secular figure who might represent it. If Christianity was to evolve in accordance with Roman doctrine, that doctrine would have to be disseminated, implemented and imposed by secular force—a force sufficiently powerful to withstand and eventually extirpate the challenge of rival Christian creeds. Not surprisingly the Roman Church, in its most acute moment of need, turned to Clovis.

By 486 Clovis had significantly increased the extent of Merovingian domains, striking out from the Ardennes to annex a number of adjacent kingdoms and principalities, vanquishing a number of rival tribes. As a result, many important cities—Troyes, for instance, Rheims and Amiens—were incorporated into his realm. Within a decade it was apparent that Clovis was well on his way to becoming the most powerful potentate in Western Europe.

The conversion and baptism of Clovis proved to be of crucial importance to our investigation. An account of it was compiled, in all its particulars and details, around the time it happened. Two and a half centuries later this account, called The Life of Saint Remy, was destroyed, except for a few scattered manuscript pages. And the evidence suggests that it was destroyed deliberately. Nevertheless the fragments that survive bear witness to the importance of what was involved.

According to tradition, Clovis’s conversion was a sudden and unexpected affair, effected by the king’s wife, Clothilde—a fervent devotee of Rome, who seems to have badgered her husband until he accepted her faith and who was subsequently canonised for her efforts. In these efforts she was said to have been guided and assisted by her confessor, Saint Remy. But behind these traditions, there lies a very practical and mundane historical reality. When Clovis was converted to Roman Christianity and became first Catholic king of the Franks, he had more to gain than his wife’s approbation, and a kingdom more tangibly substantial than the kingdom of Heaven.

It is known that in 496 a number of secret meetings occurred between Clovis and Saint Remy. Immediately thereafter an accord was ratified between Clovis and the Roman Church. For Rome this accord constituted a major political triumph. It would ensure the Church’s survival, and establish that Church as supreme spiritual authority in the West. It would consolidate Rome’s status as an equal to the Greek Orthodox faith based in Constantinople. It would offer a prospect of Roman hegemony and an effective means of eradicating the hydra heads of heresy. And Clovis would be the means of implementing these things—the sword of the Church of Rome, the instrument whereby Rome imposed her spiritual dominion, the secular arm and palpable manifestation of Roman power.

In return Clovis was granted the title of “Novus Constantinus”—“New Constantine”. In other words, he was to preside over a unified empire—a “Holy Roman Empire” intended to succeed the one supposedly created under Constantine and destroyed by the Visigoths and Vandals not long before. According to one modern expert of the period, Clovis, prior to his baptism, was ‘fortified… with visions of an empire in succession to that of Rome, which should be the inheritance of the Merovingian race’. According to another modern writer, “Clovis must now become a kind of western emperor, a patriarch to the western Germans, reigning over, though not governing, all peoples and kings.”

The pact between Clovis and the Roman Church, in short, was one of momentous consequence to Christendom—not only the Christendom of the time, but also the Christendom of the next millennium. Clovis’s baptism was deemed to mark the birth of a new Roman empire—a Christian empire, based on the Roman Church and administered, on the secular level, by the Merovingian bloodline. In other words, an indissoluble bond was established between church and state, each pledging allegiance to the other, each binding itself to the other in perpetuity. In ratification of this bond, in 496, Clovis allowed himself to be formally baptised by Saint Remy at Rheims. At the climax of the ceremony, Saint Remy pronounced his famous words:

Mitis depone colla, Sicamber, adora quod incendisti, incendi quod adorasti.

(Bow thy head humbly, Sicambrian, revere what thou hast burned and what thou hast revered.)

It is important to note that Clovis’s baptism was not a coronation as historians sometimes suggest. The Church did not make Clovis a king. He was already that, and all the Church could do was recognise him as such. By virtue of so doing, the Church officially bound itself not to Clovis alone, but to his successors as well—not to a single individual, but to a bloodline. In this respect the pact resembled the covenant which God, in the Old Testament, makes with King David—a pact which can be modified, as in Solomon’s case, but not revoked, broken or betrayed. And the Merovingians did not lose sight of the parallel.

During the remaining years of his life Clovis fully realised Rome’s ambitious expectations of him. With irresistible efficiency, faith was imposed by the sword; and with the sanction and spiritual mandate of the Church, the Frankish kingdom expanded to both east and south, encompassing most of modern France and much of modern Germany. Among Clovis’s numerous adversaries the most important were the Visigoths, who adhered to Arian Christianity. It was against the empire of the Visigoths—which straddled the Pyrenees and extended as far north as Toulouse—that Clovis directed his most assiduous and concerted campaigns. In 507 he decisively defeated the Visigoths at the Battle of Vouille. Shortly thereafter Aquitaine and Toulouse fell into Frankish hands. The Visigoth empire north of the Pyrenees effectively collapsed before the Frankish onslaught. From Toulouse, the Visigoths fell back to Carcassonne. Driven from Carcassonne, they established their capital, and last remaining bastion, in the Razes, at Rhedae—now the village of Rennes-le-Chateau.

Dagobert II

In 511 Clovis died, and the empire he had created was divided, according to Merovingian custom, between his four sons. For more than a century thereafter the Merovingian dynasty presided over a number of disparate and often warring kingdoms, while lines of succession became increasingly tangled and claims to thrones increasingly confused. The authority once centralised in Clovis became progressively more diffuse, progressively more inchoate, and secular order deteriorated. Intrigues, machinations, kidnappings and political assassination became ever more commonplace. And the court chancellors, or “Mayors of the Palace”, accumulated more and more power—a factor which would eventually contribute to the fall of the dynasty.

Bereft increasingly of authority the later Merovingian rulers have often been called “les rois faineant”—“the enfeebled kings”. Posterity has contemptuously stigmatised them as weak, ineffectual monarchs, effeminate and pliably helpless in the hands of cunning and wily counsellors. Our research revealed that this stereotype was not strictly accurate. It is true that the constant wars, vendettas and internecine strife thrust a number of Merovingian princes on to the throne at an extremely youthful age—and they were thus easily manipulated by their advisers. But those who did attain manhood proved as strong and decisive as any of their predecessors. This certainly seems to have been the case with Dagobert II.

Dagobert II was born in 653, heir to the kingdom of Austrasie. On his father’s death in 656 extravagant attempts were made to preclude his inheritance of the throne. Indeed Dagobert’s early life reads like a medieval legend, or a fairy tale. But it is well documented history.

On his father’s death Dagobert was kidnapped by the presiding Mayor of the Palace, an individual named Grimoald. Attempts to find the five-year-old child proved fruitless, and it was not difficult to convince the court that he was dead. On this basis Grimoald then engineered his own son’s acquisition of the throne, claiming this had been the wish of the former monarch, Dagobert’s deceased father. The ruse worked effectively. Even Dagobert’s mother, believing her son dead, deferred to the ambitious Mayor of the Palace.

However, Grimoald had apparently balked at actually murdering the young prince. In secret Dagobert had been confided to the charge of the bishop of Poitiers. The bishop, it seems, was equally reluctant to murder the child. Dagobert was therefore consigned to permanent exile in Ireland. He grew into manhood at the Irish monastery of Slane, not far from Dublin; and here, at the school attached to the monastery, he received an education unobtainable in France at the time. At some point during this period he is supposed to have attended the court of the High King of Tara. And he is said to have made the acquaintance of three Northumbrian princes, also being educated at Slane. In 666, probably still in Ireland, Dagobert married Mathilde, a Celtic princess. Not long after he moved from Ireland to England, establishing residence at York, in the kingdom of Northumbria. Here he formed a close friendship with Saint Wilfrid, bishop of York, who became his mentor.

During the period in question a schism still existed between the Roman and Celtic Churches, with the latter refusing to acknowledge the former’s authority. In the interests of unity Wilfrid was intent on bringing the Celtic Church into the Roman fold. This he had already accomplished at the famous Council of Whitby in 664. But his subsequent friendship and patronage of Dagobert II may not have been devoid of ulterior motive. By Dagobert’s time Merovingian allegiance to Rome as dictated by the Church’s pact with Clovis a century and a half before—was somewhat less fervent than it might have been. As a loyal adherent of Rome, Wilfrid was eager to consolidate Roman supremacy not only in Britain, but on the continent as well. Were Dagobert to return to France and reclaim the kingdom of Austrasie, it would have been expedient to ensure his fealty. Wilfrid may well have seen the exiled king as a possible future sword-arm of the Church.

In 670 Mathilde, Dagobert’s Celtic wife, died giving birth to her third daughter. Wilfrid hastened to arrange a new match for the recently bereft monarch, and in 671 Dagobert married for the second time. If his first alliance was of potential dynastic import, his second was even more so. Dagobert’s new wife was Giselle de Razes, daughter of the count of Razes and niece of the king of the Visigoths. In other words the Merovingian bloodline was now allied to the royal bloodline of the Visigoths. Herein lay the seeds of an embryonic empire which would have united much of modern France, extending from the Pyrenees to the Ardennes. Such an empire, moreover, would have brought the Visigoths—still with strong Arian tendencies—firmly under Roman control.

When Dagobert married Giselle, he had already turned his attention back to the continent. According to existing documentation, the marriage was celebrated at Giselle’s official residence of Rhedae, or Rennes-le-Chateau. Indeed, the marriage was reputedly celebrated in the church of Saint Madeleine—the structure on the site of which Berenger Sauniere’s church was subsequently erected.

Dagobert’s first marriage had produced three daughters but no male heir. By Giselle, Dagobert had two more daughters and at last, in 676, one son—the infant Sigisbert IV. And by the time Sigisbert was born, Dagobert was once more a king. For some three years he seems to have bided his time at Rennes-le-Chateau, watching the vicissitudes of his domains to the north. Finally, in 674, the opportunity had presented itself. With the support of his mother and her advisers, the long-exiled monarch announced himself, reclaimed his realm and was officially proclaimed king of Austrasie. Wilfrid of York was instrumental in his reinstatement. According to Gerard de Sede, so too was a much more elusive, much more mysterious figure, about whom there is little historical information—Saint Amatus, bishop of Sion in Switzerland.

Once restored to the throne, Dagobert was no roi faineant. On the contrary, he proved to be a worthy successor to Clovis. At once he set about asserting and consolidating his authority, taming the anarchy that prevailed throughout Austrasie and re-establishing order. He ruled firmly, breaking the control of various rebellious nobles who had mobilised sufficient military and economic power to challenge the throne. And at Rennes-le-Chateau he is said to have amassed a substantial treasury. These resources were to be used to finance the reconquest of Aquitaine, which had seceded from Merovingian hands some forty years previously and declared itself an independent principality.

At the same time Dagobert must have been a severe disappointment to Wilfrid of York. If Wilfrid had expected him to be a sword-arm of the Church, Dagobert proved nothing of the sort. On the contrary he seems to have curbed attempted expansion on the part of the Church within his realm, and thereby incurred ecclesiastical displeasure. A letter from an irate Frankish prelate to Wilfrid exists, condemning Dagobert for levying taxes, for “scorning the churches of God together with their bishops”.

Nor was this the only respect in which Dagobert seems to have run foul of Rome. By virtue of his marriage to a Visigoth princess he had acquired considerable territory in what is now the Languedoc. He may also have acquired something else. The Visigoths were only nominally loyal to the Roman Church. In fact their allegiance to Rome was extremely tenuous, and a tendency towards Arianism still obtained in the royal family. There is evidence to suggest that Dagobert absorbed something of this tendency.

By 679, after three years on the throne, Dagobert had made a number of powerful enemies, both secular and ecclesiastic. By curbing their rebellious autonomy, he had incurred the hostility of certain vindictive nobles. By thwarting its attempted expansion, he had roused the antipathy of the Church. By establishing an effective and centralised regime, he had provoked the envy and alarm of other Frankish potentates—the rulers of adjacent kingdoms. Some of these rulers had allies and agents within Dagobert’s realm. One such was the king’s own Mayor of the Palace, Pepin the Fat. And Pepin, clandestinely aligning himself with Dagobert’s political foes, did not shrink from either treachery or assassination.

Like most Merovingian rulers, Dagobert had at least two capital cities. The most important of these was Stenay, on the fringe of the Ardennes. Near the royal palace at Stenay stretched a heavily wooded expanse, long deemed sacred, called the Forest of Woevres. It was in this forest, on December 23rd, 679, that Dagobert is said to have gone hunting. Given the date, the hunt may well have been a ritual occasion of some sort. In any case, what followed evokes a multitude of archetypal echoes, including the murder of Siegfried in the Nibelungenlied.

Towards midday, succumbing to fatigue, the king lay down to rest beside a stream, at the foot of a tree. While he slept, one of his servants—supposedly his godson—stole furtively up to him and, acting under Pepin’s orders, pierced him with a lance through the eye. The murderers then returned to Stenay, intent on exterminating the rest of the family in residence there. How successful they were in this latter undertaking is not clear. But there is no question that the reign of Dagobert and his family came to an abrupt and violent end. Nor did the Church waste much time grieving. On the contrary, it promptly endorsed the actions of the king’s assassins. There is even a letter from a Frankish prelate to Wilfrid of York, which attempts to rationalise and justify the regicide.

Dagobert’s body and posthumous status both underwent a curious number of vicissitudes. Immediately after his death, he was buried at Stenay, in the Royal Chapel of Saint Remy. In 872—nearly two centuries later—he was exhumed and moved to another church. This new church became the Church of Saint Dagobert, for in the same year the dead king was canonised—not by the pope (who did not claim this right exclusively until 1159), but by a Metropolitan Conclave. The reason for Dagobert’s canonisation remains unclear. According to one source, it was because his relics were believed to have preserved the vicinity of Stenay against Viking raids—though this explanation begs the question, for it is not clear why the relics should have possessed such powers in the first place. Ecclesiastical authorities seem embarrassingly ignorant concerning the matter. They admit that Dagobert, for some reason, became the object of a fully fledged cult and had his own feast day—December 23rd, the anniversary of his death. But they seem utterly at a loss as to why he should have been so exalted. It is possible, of course, that the Church felt guilty about its role in the king’s death. Dagobert’s canonisation may therefore have been an attempt to make amends. If so, however, there is no indication of why such a gesture should have been deemed necessary, nor why it should have had to wait for two centuries.

Stenay, the Church of Saint Dagobert and perhaps the relics it contained were all accorded great significance by a number of illustrious figures in the centuries that followed. In 1069, for example, the duke of Lorraine—Godfroi de Bouillon’s grandfather—accorded special protection to the church and placed it under the auspices of the near-by Abbey of Gorze. Some years later the church was appropriated by a local nobleman. In 1093 Godfroi de Bouillon mobilised an army and subjected Stenay to a full-scale siege for the sole purpose, it would appear, of regaining the church and returning it to the Abbey of Gorze.

During the French Revolution, the church was destroyed and the relics of Saint Dagobert, like so many others throughout France, were dispersed. Today a ritually incised skull said to be Dagobert’s is in the custody of a convent at Mons. All other relics of the king have disappeared. But in the mid-nineteenth century a most curious document came to light. It was a poem, a twenty-one verse litany, entitled “De sancta Dagoberto martyre prose”—implying that Dagobert was martyred to, or for, something. This poem is believed to date from at least the Middle Ages, possibly much earlier. Significantly enough, it was found at the Abbey of Orval.

The Usurpation by the Carolingians

Strictly speaking Dagobert was not the last ruler of the Merovingian dynasty. In fact Merovingian monarchs retained at least nominal status for another three quarters of a century. But these last Merovingians did warrant the appellation of rois faineants. Many of them were extremely young. In consequence they were often weak, helpless pawns in the hands of the Mayors of the Palace, incapable of asserting their authority or of making decisions of their own. They were really little more than victims; and more than a few became sacrifices.

Moreover, the later Merovingians were of cadet branches, not scions of the main line descended from Clovis and Merovee. The main line of Merovingian descent had been deposed with Dagobert II. To all intents and purposes, therefore, Dagobert’s assassination may be regarded as signalling the end of the Merovingian dynasty. When Childeric III died in 754, it was a mere formality so far as dynastic power was concerned. As rulers of the Franks the Merovingian bloodline had been effectively extinct long before.

As power seeped from the hands of the Merovingians, it passed into the hands of the Mayors of the Palace—a process that had already commenced before Dagobert’s reign. It was a Mayor of the Palace, Pepin the Fat, who engineered Dagobert’s death. And Pepin the Fat was followed by his son, the famous Charles Martel.

In the eyes of posterity Charles Martel is one of the most heroic figures in French history. There is certainly some basis for the acclaim given him. Under Charles the Moorish invasion of France was checked at the Battle of Poitiers in 732; and Charles, by virtue of this victory, was, in some sense, both “defender of the Faith” and “saviour of Christendom”. What is curious is that Charles Martel, strong man though he was, never seized the throne—which certainly lay within his grasp. In fact he seems to have regarded the throne with a certain superstitious awe and, in all probability, as a specifically Merovingian prerogative. Certainly Charles’s successors, who did seize the throne, went out of their way to establish their legitimacy by marrying Merovingian princesses.

Charles Martel died in 741. Ten years later his son, Pepin III, Mayor of the Palace to King Childeric III, enlisted the support of the Church in laying formal claim to the throne. “Who should be king?” Pepin’s ambassadors asked the pope. “The man who actually holds power, or he, Pepin’s favour. By apostolic authority he ordered that Pepin be created king of the Franks—a brazen betrayal of the pact ratified with Clovis two and a half centuries before. Thus endorsed by Rome, Pepin deposed Childeric III, confined the king to a monastery and—to humiliate him, to deprive him of his “magical powers” or both—had him shorn of his sacred hair. Four years later Childeric died, and Pepin’s claim to the throne was undisputed.

A year before a crucial document had conveniently made its appearance, which subsequently altered the course of Western history. This document was called the “Donation of Constantine”. Today there is no question that it was a forgery, concocted and not very skilfully within the papal Chancery. At the time, however, it was deemed genuine, and its influence was enormous. The “Donation of Constantine” purported to date from Constantine’s alleged conversion to Christianity in A.D. 312. According to the “Donation”, Constantine had officially given to the bishop of Rome his imperial symbols and regalia, which thus became the Church’s property. The “Donation” further alleged that Constantine, for the first time, had declared the bishop of Rome to be “Vicar of Christ” and offered him the status of emperor. In his capacity as “Vicar of Christ” the bishop had supposedly returned the imperial regalia to Constantine, who wore them subsequently with ecclesiastical sanction and permission—more or less in the manner of a loan.

The implications of this document are clear enough. According to the “Donation of Constantine”, the bishop of Rome exercised supreme secular as well as supreme spiritual authority over Christendom. He was, in effect, a papal emperor, who could dispose as he wished of the imperial crown, who could delegate his power or any aspect thereof as he saw fit. In other words he possessed, through Christ, the unchallengeable right to create or depose kings. It is from the “Donation of Constantine” that the subsequent power of the Vatican in secular affairs ultimately derives.

Claiming authority from the “Donation of Constantine”, the Church deployed its influence on behalf of Pepin III. It devised a ceremony whereby the blood of usurpers, or anyone else for that matter, could be made sacred. This ceremony came to be known as coronation and anointment as those terms were understood during the Middle Ages and on into the Renaissance. At Pepin’s coronation, bishops for the first time were authorised to attend, with rank equal to that of secular nobles. And the coronation itself no longer entailed the recognition of a king, or a pact with a king. It now consisted of nothing less than the creation of a king.

The ritual of anointment was similarly transformed. In the past, when practised at all, it was a ceremonial accoutrement—an act of recognition and ratification. Now, however, it assumed a new significance. Now it took precedence over blood, and could “magically”, as it were, sanctify blood. Anointment became something more than a symbolic gesture. It became the literal act whereby divine grace was conferred upon a ruler. And the pope, by performing this act, became supreme mediator between God and kings. Through the ritual of anointment, the Church arrogated to itself the right to make kings. Blood was now subordinate to oil. And all monarchs were rendered ultimately subordinate, and subservient, to the pope.

In 754 Pepin III was officially anointed at Ponthion, thus inaugurating the Carolingian dynasty. The name derives from Charles Martel, although it is generally associated with the most famous of Carolingian rulers, Charles the Great, Carolus Magnus or, as he is best known, Charlemagne. And in 800 Charlemagne was proclaimed Holy Roman Emperor—a title which, by virtue of the pact with Clovis three centuries before, should have been reserved exclusively for the Merovingian bloodline. Rome now became the seat of an empire that embraced the whole of Western Europe, whose rulers ruled only with the sanction of the pope.

In 496 the Church had pledged itself in perpetuity to the Merovingian bloodline. In sanctioning the assassination of Dagobert, in devising the ceremonies of coronation and anointment, in endorsing Pepin’s claim to the throne, it had clandestinely betrayed its pact. In crowning Charlemagne it had made its betrayal not only public, but a fait accompli. In the words of one modern authority:

We cannot therefore be sure that the anointing with chrism of the Carolingians was intended to compensate for the loss of magical properties of the blood symbolised by long hair. If it compensated for anything, it was probably for loss of faith incurred in breaking an oath of fidelity in a particularly shocking way.

And again, “Rome showed the way by providing in unction a king-making rite that somehow cleared the consciences of ‘all the Franks’.”

Not all consciences, however. The usurpers themselves seem to have felt, if not a sense of guilt, at least an acute need to establish their legitimacy. To this end Pepin III, immediately before his anointment, had ostentatiously married a Merovingian princess. And Charlemagne did likewise. Charlemagne, moreover, seems to have been painfully aware of the betrayal involved in his coronation. According to contemporary accounts, the coronation was a carefully stage-managed affair, engineered by the pope behind the Frankish monarch’s back; and Charlemagne appears to have been both surprised and profoundly embarrassed. A crown of some sort had already been clandestinely prepared. Charlemagne had been lured to Rome and there persuaded to attend a special mass. When he took his place in the church, the pope, without warning, placed a crown upon his head, while the populace acclaimed him as “Charles, Augustus, crowned by God, the great and peace-loving emperor of the Romans”. In the words of a chronicler writing at the time, Charlemagne “made it clear that he would not have entered the Cathedral that day at all, although it was the greatest of all festivals of the Church, if he had known in advance what the Pope was planning to do.”

But whatever Charlemagne’s responsibility in the affair, the pact with Clovis and the Merovingian bloodline had been shamelessly betrayed. And all our inquiries indicated that this betrayal, even though it occurred more than 1100 years ago, continued to rankle for the Prieure de Sion. Mathieu Paoli, the independent researcher quoted in the preceding chapter, reached a similar conclusion:

For them [the Prieure de Sion], the only authentic nobility is the nobility of Visigothic/Merovingian origin. The Carolingians, then all others, are but usurpers. In effect, they were but functionaries of the king, charged with administering lands who, after transmitting by heredity their right to govern these lands, then purely and simply seized power for themselves. In consecrating Charlemagne in the year 800, the Church perjured itself, for it had concluded, at the baptism of Clovis, an alliance with the Merovingians which had made France the eldest daughter of the Church.

The Exclusion of Dagobert II from History

With the murder of Dagobert II in 679 the Merovingian dynasty effectively ended. With the death of Childeric III in 755 the Merovingians seemed to vanish from the stage of world history completely. According to the “Prieure documents”, however, the Merovingian bloodline in fact survived. According to the “Prieure documents”, it was perpetuated to the present day, from the infant Sigisbert IV—Dagobert’s son by his second wife, Giselle de Razes.

There is no question that Sigisbert existed and that he was Dagobert’s heir. According to all sources other than the “Prieure documents”, however, it is unclear what happened to him. Certain chroniclers have tacitly assumed that he was murdered along with his father and other members of the royal family. One highly dubious account asserts that he died in a hunting accident a year or two before his father’s death. If that is true Sigisbert must have been a precocious hunter, for he cannot possibly have been much more than three years old at the time.

There is no record whatever of Sigisbert’s death. Nor is there any record—apart from the evidence in the “Prieure documents”—of his survival. The whole issue seems to have been lost in “the mists of time”, and no one seems to have been much concerned about it except, of course, for the Prieure de Sion. In any case Sion appeared to be privy to certain information which was not available elsewhere; or was deemed of too little consequence to warrant much investigation; or was deliberately suppressed.

It is hardly surprising that no account of Sigisbert’s fate has been filtered down to us. There was no publicly accessible account even of Dagobert until the seventeenth century. At some point during the Middle Ages a systematic attempt was apparently made to erase Dagobert from history, to deny that he ever existed. Today Dagobert II can be found in any encyclopedia. Until 1646, however, there was no acknowledgment whatever that he had ever lived. Any list or genealogy of French rulers compiled before 1646 simply omits him, jumping (despite the flagrant inconsistency) from Dagobert I to Dagobert III—one of the last Merovingian monarchs, who died in 715. And not until 1655 was Dagobert II reinstated in accepted lists of French kings. Given this process of eradication, we were not unduly astonished at the dearth of information relating to Sigisbert. And we could not but suspect that whatever information did exist had been deliberately suppressed.

But why, we wondered, should Dagobert II have been excised from history? What was being concealed by such an excision? Why should one wish to deny the very existence of a man? One possibility, of course, is to negate thereby the existence of his heirs. If Dagobert never lived, Sigisbert cannot have lived either. But why should it have been important, as late as the seventeenth century, to deny that Sigisbert had ever lived? Unless he had indeed survived, and his descendants were still regarded as a threat.

It seemed to us that we were clearly dealing with some sort of ‘cover-up’. Quite patently there were vested interests which had something of import to lose if knowledge of Sigisbert’s survival were made public. In the ninth century—and perhaps as late as the Crusades—these interests would seem to have been the Roman Church and the French royal line. But why should the issue have continued to matter as late as the age of Louis XIV? It would surely have been an academic point by then, for three French dynasties had come and gone, while Protestantism had broken Roman hegemony. Unless there was indeed something very special about the Merovingian blood. Not ‘magical properties’, but something else—something that retained its explosive potency even after superstitions about magical blood had fallen by the wayside.

Prince Guillem de Gellone, Comte de Razes

According to the “Prieure documents”, Sigisbert IV, on the death of his father, was rescued by his sister and smuggled southwards to the domain of his mother—the Visigoth princess, Giselle de Razes. He is said to have arrived in the Languedoc in 681 and, at some point shortly thereafter, to have adopted or inherited his uncle’s titles, duke of Razes and count of Rhedae. He is also said to have adopted the surname, or nickname, of “Plant-Ard” (subsequently Plantard) from the appellation ‘rejeton ardent’—‘ardently flowering shoot’ of the Merovingian vine. Under this name, and under the titles acquired from his uncle, he is said to have perpetuated his lineage. And by 886 one branch of that lineage is said to have culminated in a certain Bernard Plantavelu—apparently derived from Plant-Ard or Plantard—whose son became the first duke of Aquitaine.

As far as we could ascertain, no independent historian either confirmed or disputed these assertions. The whole matter was simply ignored. But the circumstantial evidence argued persuasively that Sigisbert did indeed survive to perpetuate his lineage. The assiduous eradication of Dagobert from history lends credence to this conclusion. By denying his existence, any line of descent from him would have been invalidated. This constitutes a motive for an otherwise inexplicable action. Among the other fragments of evidence is a charter, dated 718, which pertains to the foundation of a monastery a few miles from Rennes-le-Chateau by “Sigebert, Comte de Rhedae and his wife, Magdala”. Apart from this charter nothing is heard of the Rhedae or Razes titles for another century. When one of them reappears, however, it does so in an extremely interesting context.

By 742 there was an independent and fully autonomous state in the south of France—a princedom according to some accounts, a fully fledged kingdom according to others. Documentation is sketchy and history is vague about it—most historians, in fact, are unaware of its existence—but there is no question of its reality. It was officially recognised by Charlemagne and his successors, and by the caliph of Baghdad and the Islamic world. It was grudgingly recognised by the Church, some of whose lands it confiscated. And it survived until the late ninth century.

Sometime between 759 and 768 the ruler of this state—which included the Razes and Rennes-le-Chateau—was officially pronounced a king. Despite Rome’s disapprobation, he was recognised as such by the Carolingians, to whom he pledged himself as vassal. In existing accounts he figures most frequently under the name of Theodoric, or Thierry. And most modern scholars regard him as being of Merovingian descent. There is no definitive evidence from where such descent might have derived. It might well have derived from Sigisbert. In any case, there is no question that by 790 Theodoric’s son, Guillem de Gellone, held the title of count of Razes—the title Sigisbert is said to have possessed and passed on to his descendants.

Guillem de Gellone was one of the most famous men of his time, so much so, indeed, that his historical reality—like that of Charlemagne and Godfroi de Bouillon—has been obscured by legend. Before the epoch of the Crusades, there were at least six major epic poems composed about him, chansons de geste similar to the famous Chanson de Roland. In The Divine Comedy Dante accorded him a uniquely exalted status. But even before Dante, Guillem had again become an object of literary attention. In the early thirteenth century he figured as the protagonist of Willehalm, an unfinished epic romance composed by Wolfram von Eschenbach whose most famous work, Parzival, is probably the most important of all romances dealing with the mysteries of the Holy Grail.

It seemed to us somewhat curious at first that Wolfram—all of whose other work deals with the Grail, the “Grail family” and the lineage of the “Grail family”—should suddenly devote himself to so radically different a theme as Guillem de Gellone. On the other hand, Wolfram stated in another poem that the “Grail castle”, abode of the “Grail family”, was situated in the Pyrenees—in what, at the beginning of the ninth century, was Guillem de Gellone’s domain.

Guillem maintained a close rapport with Charlemagne. His sister, in fact, was married to one of Charlemagne’s sons, thus establishing a dynastic link with the imperial blood. And Guillem himself was one of Charlemagne’s most important commanders in the incessant warfare against the Moors. In 803, shortly after Charlemagne’s coronation as Holy Roman Emperor, Guillem captured Barcelona, doubling his own territory and extending his influence across the Pyrenees. So grateful was Charlemagne for his services that his principality was confirmed by the emperor as a permanent institution. The charter ratifying this has been lost or destroyed, but there is abundant testimony to its existence.

Independent and unimpugnable authorities have provided detailed genealogies of Guillem de Gellone’s line—his family and descendants. These sources, however, provide no indication of Guillem’s antecedents, except for his father, Theodoric. In short, the real origins of the family were shrouded in mystery. And contemporary scholars and historians are generally somewhat puzzled about the enigmatic appearance, as if by spontaneous combustion, of so influential a noble house. But one thing, at any rate, is certain. By 886 the line of Guillem de Gellone culminated in a certain Bernard Plantavelu, who established the duchy of Aquitaine. In other words Guillem’s line culminated in precisely the same individual as the line ascribed by the “Prieure documents” to Sigisbert IV and his descendants.

We were tempted, of course, to jump to conclusions, and use the genealogies in the “Prieure documents” to bridge the gap left by accepted history. We were tempted to assume that the elusive progenitors of Guillem de Gellone were Dagobert II, and Sigisbert IV and the main line of the deposed Merovingian dynasty—the line cited in the “Prieure documents” under the name Plant-Ard or Plantard. Unfortunately we could not do so. Given the confused state of existing records, we could not definitively establish the precise connection between the Plantard line and the line of Guillem de Gellone. They might indeed have been one and the same. On the other hand, they might have intermarried at some point. What remained certain, however, was that both lines, by 886, had culminated in Bernard Plantavelu and the dukes of Aquitaine.

Although they did not always match precisely in dating and translation of names, the genealogies connected with Guillem de Gellone did constitute a certain independent confirmation for the genealogies in the “Prieure documents”. We could thus tentatively accept, in the absence of any contradictory evidence, that the Merovingian bloodline did continue, more or less as the “Prieure documents” maintained. We could tentatively accept that Sigisbert did survive his father’s murder, did adopt the family name of Plantard and, as count of Razes, did perpetuate his father’s lineage.

Prince Ursus

By 886, of course, the “flowering shoot of the Merovingian vine” had blossomed into a large and complicated family tree. Bernard Plantavelu and the dukes of Aquitaine constitute one branch. There were other branches as well. Thus the “Prieure documents” declare that Sigisbert IV’s grandson, Sigisbert VI, was known by the name of “Prince Ursus”. Between 877 and 879 “Prince Ursus” is said to have been officially proclaimed “King Ursus”. Aided by two nobles—Bernard d’Auvergne and the marquis of Gothic—he is said to have undertaken an insurrection against Louis II of France in an attempt to regain his rightful heritage.

Independent historians confirm that such an insurrection did indeed occur between 877 and 879. These same historians refer to Bernard d’Auvergne and the marquis of Gothic. The leader, or instigator, of the insurrection is not specifically named as Sigisbert VI. But there are references to an individual known as “Prince Ursus”. Moreover, “Prince Ursus” is known to have been involved in a curious and elaborate ceremony in Nimes, at which five hundred assembled ecclesiastics chanted the Te Deum. From all accounts of it, this ceremony would seem to have been a coronation. It may well have been the coronation to which the “Prieure documents” alluded—the proclamation of “Prince Ursus” as king.

Once again, the “Prieure documents” received independent support. Once again, they seemed to draw on information unobtainable elsewhere—information which supplemented and sometimes even helped explain caesuras in accepted history. In this case, they had apparently told us who the elusive “Prince Ursus” actually was—the lineal descendant, through Sigisbert IV, of the murdered Dagobert II. And the insurrection, of which historians had hitherto made no sense, could now be seen as a perfectly comprehensible attempt by the deposed Merovingian dynasty to regain its heritage—the heritage conferred upon it by Rome through the pact with Clovis, and then subsequently betrayed.

According to both the “Prieure documents” and independent sources, the insurrection failed, “Prince Ursus” and his supporters being defeated at a battle near Poitiers in 881. With this setback, the Plantard family is said to have lost its possessions in the south of France—although it still clung to the now purely titular status of duke of Rhedae and count of Razes. “Prince Ursus” is said to have died in Brittany, while his line became allied by marriage with the Breton ducal house. By the late ninth century, then, the Merovingian blood had flowed into the duchies of both Brittany and Aquitaine.

In the years that followed, the family—including Alain, later duke of Brittany—is said to have sought refuge in England, establishing an English branch called “Planta”. Independent authorities again confirm that Alain, his family and entourage, fled from the Vikings to England. According to the “Prieure documents”, one of the English branch of the family, listed as Bera VI, was nicknamed ’the Architect’. He and his descendants, having found a haven in England under King Athelstan, are said to have practised ’the art of building’—a seemingly enigmatic reference. Interestingly enough, Masonic sources date the origin of Freemasonry in England from the reign of King Athelstan.

Could the Merovingian bloodline, we wondered, in addition to its claim to the French throne, be in some way connected with something at the core of Freemasonry?

The Grail Family

The Middle Ages abound with a mythology as rich and resonant as those of ancient Greece and Rome. Some of this mythology pertains, although wildly exaggerated in form, to actual historical personages—to Arthur, to Roland and Charlemagne, to Rodrigo Diaz of Vivar, popularly known as El Cid. Other myths—like those relating to the Grail, for example—would seem at first to rest on a more tenuous foundation.

Among the most popular and evocative of medieval myths is that of Lohengrin, the “Swan Knight”. On the one hand it is closely linked with the fabulous Grail romances; on the other it cites specific historical personages. In its mingling of fact and fantasy it may well be unique. And through such works as Wagner’s opera it continues to exert its archetypal appeal even today.

According to medieval accounts, Lohengrin—sometimes called Helias, implying solar associations—was a scion of the elusive and mysterious “Grail family”. In Wolfram von Eschenbach’s poem, he is in fact the son of Parzival, the supreme Knight of the Grail. One day, in the sacred temple or castle of the Grail at Munsalvaesche, Lohengrin is said to have heard the chapel bell tolling without the intervention of human hands—a signal that his aid was urgently required somewhere in the world. It was required, predictably enough, by a damsel in distress—the duchess of Brabant according to some sources, the duchess of Bouillon according to others. The lady desperately needed a champion, and Lohengrin hastened to her rescue in a boat drawn by heraldic swans. In single combat he defeated the duchess’s persecutor, then married the lady. At their nuptials, however, he issued a stringent warning. Never was his bride to query him about his origins or ancestry, his background or the place whence he came. And for some years the lady obeyed her husband’s edict. At last, however, goaded to fatal curiosity by the scurrilous insinuations of rivals, she presumed to ask the forbidden question. Thereupon, Lohengrin was compelled to depart, vanishing in his swan-drawn boat into the sunset. And behind him, with his wife, he left a child of uncertain lineage. According to the various accounts, this child was either the father or the grandfather of Godfroi de Bouillon.

It is difficult for the modern mind to appreciate the magnitude of Godfroi’s status in popular consciousness—not only in his own time but even as late as the seventeenth century. Today, when one thinks of the Crusades, one thinks of Richard Coeur de Lion, King John, perhaps Louis IX (Saint Louis) or Frederick Barbarossa. But until relatively recently, none of these individuals enjoyed Godfroi’s prestige or acclaim. Godfroi, leader of the First Crusade, was the supreme popular hero, the hero par excellence. It was Godfroi who inaugurated the Crusades. It was Godfroi who captured Jerusalem from the Saracens. It was Godfroi who rescued Christ’s sepulchre from infidel hands. It was Godfroi, above all others, who, in people’s imaginations, reconciled the ideals of high chivalric enterprise and fervent Christian piety. Not surprisingly, therefore, Godfroi became the object of a cult which persisted long after his death.

Given this exalted status, it is understandable that Godfroi should be credited with all manner of illustrious mythical pedigrees. It is even understandable that Wolfram von Eschenbach, and other medieval romanciers, should link him directly with the Grail—should depict him as a lineal descendant of the mysterious “Grail family”. And such fabulous pedigrees are rendered even more comprehensible by the fact that Godfroi’s true lineage is obscure. History remains uncomfortably uncertain about his ancestry.

The “Prieure documents” furnished us with the most plausible—perhaps, indeed, the first plausible—genealogy of Godfroi de Bouillon that has yet come to light. As far as this genealogy could be checked—and much of it could be—it proved accurate. We found no evidence to contradict it, much to support it; and it convincingly bridged a number of perplexing historical gaps.

According to the genealogy in the “Prieure documents”, Godfroi de Bouillon—by virtue of his great-grandmother, who married Hugues de Plantard in 1009—was a lineal descendant of the Plantard family. In other words Godfroi was of Merovingian blood, directly descended from Dagobert II, Sigisbert IV and the line of Merovingian “lost kings”—“les rois perdus”.

For four centuries the Merovingian blood royal appears to have flowed through gnarled and numerous family trees. At last, through a process analogous to the grafting of vines in viticulture, it would seem to have borne fruit in Godfroi de Bouillon, Duke of Lorraine. And here, in the house of Lorraine, it established a new patrimony.

This revelation cast a significant new light on the Crusades. We could now perceive the Crusades from a new perspective, and discern in them something more than the symbolic gesture of reclaiming Christ’s sepulchre from the Saracens. In his own eyes, as well as those of his supporters, Godfroi would have been more than duke of Lorraine. He would, in fact, have been a rightful king—a legitimate claimant of the dynasty deposed with Dagobert II in 679. But if Godfroi was a rightful king, he was also a king without a kingdom; and the Capetian dynasty in France, supported by the Roman Church, was by then too well entrenched to be dethroned. What can one do if one is a king without a kingdom? Perhaps find a kingdom. Or create a kingdom. The most precious kingdom in the entire world—Palestine, the Holy Land, the soil trodden by Jesus himself. Would not the ruler of such a kingdom be comparable to any in Europe? And would he not, in presiding over that most sacred of earthly sites, obtain sweet revenge on the Church which betrayed his ancestors four centuries before?