L’Île des Veilleurs and the Jabron Cryptogram…

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I think it’s fair to say that even though the French love books in general, there’s one category in particular they adore – anything revealing the long-lost secrets of the Knights Templar. To a relative outsider (such as me), the 1309 suppression of Les Templiers by the French king comes across as a wound to the national psyche that has required a mile-high Band-aid of literary retribution to attempt to heal.

Of course, the not-so-subtle questions that pretty much everyone actually wants answered are:
(a) “where was the Templar treasure hidden?“, and
(b) “can I have some of it?”

Admittedly, there is a fairly strong case to be made that by 1309 the Templars were probably close to bankrupt. Following the Seventh Crusade (1248-1254), there was effectively no Jerusalem for pilgrims to go on pilgrimage to: and so the whole raison d’etre for the Knights Templar (i.e. protecting pilgrims) had basically vanished. Hence Templar historians I’ve talked with believe that, after 1254, the Order pretty much ‘withered on the vine’, not really taking any new recruits. By 1309, it was an old man’s order, and I suspect its cash reserves had dwindled to close to nothing.

All the same, the romance of secret caches of gold- and jewel-filled barrels remains: and so French armchair treasure-hunters continue to wave their virtual metal detectors over the scantiest morsels of Templar-related texts, hoping that this might just uncover the ultimate secret history haul. Really, Rudy Cambier’s biggest insult against this établissement is his idea that the Templars might deign to bury their precious cargo in Hainaut of all places – when of course, it could only genuinely have be buried in La France! (And let’s not wake up the Sinclair and Oak Island factions here, OK? *sigh*)

Compiling a list of hopeful French Templier-trésor authors would consume decades of anyone’s life: but there’s one whose cycle helmet, in my opinion, is several wheels ahead of the pack. For me the maillot jaune of Templar authors is Alfred Weysen, author of (1972) “L’Île des Veilleurs” (The Island of the Watchers).

Unfortunately, second-hand copies of this are £60+, and the best modern treatment of the same evidence seems to be Paul Amoros, Richard Buadès et Thierry-Emmanuel Garnier’s (2007) “L’Île des Veilleurs, Contre-Enquête sur le Mystère du Verdon et le Trésor de l’Ordre du Temple”, which is currently being reissued (but copies of this also go for £60+). For the moment, these remain only for researchers with particularly deep pockets.

The rest of us will have to make do with this nice French website dedicated to the whole “L’Île des Veilleurs” enigma, which I’ll briefly summarize.

“The Isle of the Watchers” denotes a 66 square kilometre area in Provence, bounded by the towns of Castellane, Le Bourguet, Jabron, Trigance, Soleils and Taloire, and containing Veydon; and by the D252 road to the east and the D955 to the west. The term was coined by Alfred Weysen, though the claim linking the area to Templar treasure first appeared in print in Robert Charroux’s (1962) “Trésors du Monde: Enterrés, Emmurés, Engloutis” [Éditions J’ai Lu].

All the same, Weysen’s book goes far beyond this, by linking all manner of local sites with Templars and other historical narratives. He asserts:
* that Veydon was the subject of Goethe’s 1795 story Das Märchen (Le Conte), or The Green Snake, with Goethe’s having previously been initiated into a centuries-spanning secret society (naturally).
* that a passage connecting La Baume Jardin (The Hermit Cave) to another cave beneath the chapel of St. Trophimus, a Templar church located (unusually) on the side of a mountain.
* that numerous authors support the notion that this area hold Templar treasure.
* that his argument is undoubtedly correct because of various numerological justifications etc etc.

Personally, I have no great interest in unearthing the fabulous wealth of the Templar hoard: anyway, it’ll already take me the rest of my lifetime to spend my share of the Beale treasure. (Ha! As if!) But what does interest me is that Weysen discusses what seems to be a genuine cipher mystery, somewhere in the gorges by Jabron (much loved by canoeists), though it would be somewhat… premature for us to agree that it’s a Templar message just yet, let’s say. And I found a passable picture of the cryptogram here:

jabron-cryptogram

What message do these scratchy glyphs hold? Weysen believed that he was able to decrypt them, and that they said…

Salut! Tu es ici dans les terres de la Vraie Croix. Céleste dominant l’éternité, baille aux languissants la clarté.

Well… I’m going to stick my neck out and say that I don’t think this makes a great deal of sense. But if we can get a better picture of this to work with, I reckon we probably can decrypt it between us…

…Is anyone here going on holiday in Provence this summer who would like to take up this challenge? Just asking! 🙂

1908 Archaeologia article on Temple Bruer…

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Here’s something a bit different that Cipher Mysteries buffs with an interest in the history of the Knights Templar might well enjoy: a 20MB PDF scan of a 1908 article on Temple Bruer, one of the few Knights Templar buildings in the UK still standing.

You see, one summer nearly a decade ago I had a picnic with my friend Charles Cecil and his family at a Lincolnshire local history open day at Temple Bruer, complete with a swordfight between a Templar and an Hospitaller (I think it was a draw). Just for a bit of historian fun, I decided to buy the copy of Archaeologia that contained the definitive article on the site to bring along. Fast forward to 2009… and a few days ago I thought that I really ought to get round to scanning it in, for the benefit of anyone else out there with an interest in Templar history in the UK. (Well, Charles will like it, anyway.) 

The article is entitled “The Round Church of the Knights Templars at Templr Bruer, Lincolnshire. By W. H. St John Hope, Esq., M.A.” (from Archaeologia LXI (1908), pp.177-198), and commences:-

One is sorely tempted in writing upon matters connected with the Knights Templars to say something about the monstrous persecution and terrible sufferings which the unhappy brethren of the Order endured, during the opening years of the fourteenth century, at the hands of an infamous King of France, a more wicked Pope, and even of a King of England, as an excuse for bringing about their suppresssion.

But the subject has already received the attention of abler hands than mine, and the purpose of this paper is not to lay before the Society any new facts about the Order, but some notes upon a curious church of the Knights Templars at Temple Bruer which I have lately had an opportunity of investigating.

It’s an easy read, and includes some nice plates, plans, maps and photos (most of which I scanned at 600dpi). If you ever find yourself between Lincoln and Sleaford and fancy having a look for yourself, here’s Rod Collins’ nice page which tells you how to find Temple Bruer (though remember that it’s on private property, so you must ask before you go in). Enjoy!

The Turin Shroud and Jesus’ haircut…?

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Following some interesting off-blog email exchanges triggered by my recent post on the Knights Templar and the Turin Shroud, I’ve taken a fresh look at the evidence, and have a new suggestion… 

The document that Barbara Frale turned up in 2003 appears to confirm a long-standing suspicion among a number of sindonologists (i.e. Shroud researchers, not people who study Donald Sinden) – that the Image of Edessa is the same thing as the Turin Shroud – and that it was secretly held & venerated by the Knights Templar between times (presumably giving rise to confused talk of kissing bearded idols, etc).

Just so you know, the Image of Edessa’s basic timeline looks like this…

  • 525AD – 544AD: first appearance in Edessa – possibly hidden in a wall above a city gate
  • 609: captured by the Sassanians
  • 944: returned to Edessa and moved to Constantinople
  • 1204: disappeared during the Sack of Constantinople

…whereas the Turin Shroud’s timeline looks like this…

  • 1357: displayed in a church at Lirey by the widow of the knight Geoffroi de Charny
  • 1390: Pope Clement VI allowed the shroud to be displayed
  • 1418: the “Winding Sheet” entrusted to Humbert, Count de La Roche, Lord of Lirey
  • 1452: given to the Duke of Savoy by Humbert’s widow Margaret

Yet there is something rather incongruous about the idea that the image on the shroud is actually of Jesus. Glen Claston points out (by email) that while early images depict Jesus much as you would expect Jews of the period to be depicted (i.e. short-haired, because nobody was allowed into temples with long hair), after 600AD images start to appear with long hair and a beard.

turin-shroud-face-enhanced

Glen’s understanding is that the only people at the time who had long hair were Nazirites (who took a vow not to shave their hair and abstain from grapes, wine and vinegar). In fact, probably because of the surfeit of “Da Vinci Code”-style novels and “H0ly Blood Holy Grail”-style books, the (formerly very marginal) issue of whether Jesus was a Nazirite has now become much debated.

(Incidentally, the most famous Old Testament Nazirite was Samson, which is why it was such a big deal to cut his “seven locks” – and modern Rastafarians have a creed which is apparently derived from the Nazirite vow, which is why they value herbs over alcohol. Hence one surprising issue with the Turin Shroud is whether the squiggles around the face [above] are actually proto-dreadlocks!)

That is, the culturally agreed image of Jesus started out as a mainstream Jew but around 600AD began to transform into something more like a Nazirite. But why should this be so?

My art historical suggestion (which has doubtless been made numerous times before, but what the hey, here it is again) is simply whether it was the appearance of the Image of Edessa in the sixth century which caused this change in the iconography of Jesus’ haircut. That is, rather than any subtle textual misunderstanding of “Nazarene” vs “Nazarite” (as is so often proposed), might it be that artists saw (or heard about) the ‘miraculous’ Image of Edessa and decided to use that as a visual basis for what Jesus looked like?

(Note that this is merely an hypothesis about the cultural reception of the Image of Edessa from 600AD onwards, rather than about any forensic / physical analysis of the object itself – it makes no difference whether the Shroud is genuinely miraculous or some 6th century craftsman’s subterfuge.)

Incidentally, one Turin Shroud-related issue that crops up again and again concerns the apparent height of the person wrapped in it: it is frequently asserted that this person would have been too tall to have been a Jew living two millennia ago. Yet what isn’t widely known is that there is a body of evidence that seems to imply that the Turin Shroud spent some time suspended on a kind of hanging wooden frame (probably for display in Edessa and Constantinople, it would now appear).

And so… why is the suggestion not then made that the herringbone linen of the Turin Shroud might simply have stretched lengthways under its own weight while being displayed? This might well have yielded a pervasive 10%-15% stretch, which (as I understand it) is broadly the kind of height difference in question. If you look once more at the face above, can you not see (as I do) an image that has been slightly vertically stretched? As a guide, here’s what it would look like at 85% of height:-

turin-shroud-face-enhanced-squashed
Turin Shroud, contrast-enhanced negative, 85% of height

Something to think about, anyway! 🙂

PS: as far as the haircut goes, I suspect that artists subsequently evolved Jesus’ haircut to a kind of worst-of-both-worlds middle-length trim – too long to be allowed in a Jewish temple, but too short to qualify as a proper Nazirite’s uncut hair. Might this be some kind of metaphor for the evolution of religion in general? I’m afraid you’ll have to work out your own moral narrative for this – I’m too busy looking at the evidence. 😉