The Rest Is History - 301: The Real Da Vinci Code

Episode Date: February 6, 2023

Secret societies, Jesus' ancient bloodline, Catholic conspirators; all backed up by documents in the Bibliothèque Nationale. It must be true, mustn’t it? Join Tom and Dominic in the first of three episodes on the Cathars, starting off with a deep dive into the Da Vinci code and the story surrounding it. *The Rest Is History Live Tour 2023*: Tom and Dominic are back on tour this autumn! See them live in London, New Zealand, and Australia! Buy your tickets here: restishistorypod.com Twitter:  @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Producer: Theo Young-Smith Executive Producers: Jack Davenport + Tony Pastor Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thank you for listening to The Rest Is History. For weekly bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, and membership of our much-loved chat community, go to therestishistory.com and join the vaulted archway of the museum's grand gallery. He lunged for the nearest painting he could see, a Caravaggio. Grabbing the gilded frame, the 76-year-old man heaved the masterpiece toward himself until it tore from the wall and Sonier collapsed backward in a heap beneath the canvas. As he had anticipated, a thundering iron gate fell nearby, barricading the entrance to the suite. The parquet floor shook. Far off, an alarm began to ring.

The curator lay a moment, gasping for breath, taking stock. I am still alive. He crawled out from under the canvas and scanned the cavernous space for some place to hide. A voice spoke, chillingly close. Do not move. On his hands and knees, the curator froze, turning his head slowly.

And that, renowned historian Tom Holland, is how the Da Vinci Code opened when it was published 20 years ago in 2003. A great literary landmark, Tom. Yeah. One of the great anniversaries.

And Dominic, if I may say. Yes. Hugely enhanced there by your reading. Oh, thank you. Your accents were tip top. Well, I don't know whether, does Dan Brown do his own reading? I don't imagine he does somehow.

I don't know, but I thought the accent you gave to the 76-year-old man was very, very good. Yes. Well, I think that's a lovely bit of description there because there's already, Dan Brown starts that book with the words renowned curator.

Yeah. So he starts with an occupation and the person's level within his profession, which I think I admire. And then the next time he refers to that person, he thinks that the best way to describe him is the 76 year old man. Because the reader knows he's a renowned curator, but the obvious question, how old is he? And Dan Brown sorts that out immediately. And is he a man? I man i mean you think man is the right noun to go for there we've already had he i think his pronouns are clear um but uh yes so he and and the person behind him is an albino monk right yeah it's an albino monk who is working for opus

day so you'll know all about opus day tom opus day it's a very very uh hardcore catholic organization isn't it and they tie kind of spikes around their thighs and tighten them nice yes yeah um you're not doing that right now i can't see i can only see the top half of you you're not wearing spikes on your thighs are you i'm not i'm not a member of opus day um but you have read the da vinci you read it didn't you when did you read it when it came out yes we'd set aside the day to do gardening uh say you've been very strict about this i came in about 11 for you know a cup of tea picked it up read that opening paragraph yeah well it is kind of brilliant. I mean, it's in the Louvre. There's a renowned curator. He's pulling down paintings as an albino monk. He dies as symbols. And before you know it, you're on this incredible adventure that reaches all the way back to the time of Jesus and conspiracy spanning 2000 years. and I found it completely page turning. I mean, obviously, everybody says

the prose is awful and there are huge undigested chunks of Wikipedia scattered everywhere. But it is unbelievably readable. I read it in three hours and ignored all Sadie's importunate demands

that I go out to. Dig the potatoes or whatever. But you haven't read it. No, I have read it now. And what did you think? Did you not find it gripping? I didn't really because I knew where it was going. I knew too much about it.

So there was no sense of mystery. But Dominic. Yeah. As I was reading it, I also knew where it was going. And the reason for that is that it very clearly, I think, draws on a book that I had read when I was maybe 12, 13. So it came out in the early 80s called The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail, which presents this theory that Jesus didn't die on the cross, that he came with Mary Magdalene to the south of France, as one does's retired there, you know, retirement villa. And he established a bloodline, which is being guarded by a sinister organization called the Priory of Zion.

And as I remember, at the beginning, at the opening of the Da Vinci Code, Dan Brown, before he's even got into his narrative, states that the Priory of Zion is a real organization. And he says that it's a secret society

founded very specifically in 1099. Yes, he does. So he has a little section called Facts. And he says, all descriptions of artwork, architecture, documents, and secret rituals in this novel are accurate. And beneath that, it says, the Priory of Zion,

a European secret society founded in 1099, is a real organization. In 1975, Paris's Bibliothèque Nationale discovered parchments known as les dossiers secrets, identifying numerous members of the Priory of Sion, including Sir Isaac Newton, Botticelli,or hugo and leonardo da vinci hence the name and that those documents are what is also inspired the writing of the holy blood and the holy grail well this is there's an amazing detective story here which we should have some fun with i will just say this of course da vinci is not leonardo's surname so um according to da vinci code is slightly questionable but but under sort of lying all this so dan brown Vinci is not Leonardo's surname. No. So calling it the Da Vinci Code is slightly questionable. But under sort of lying all this. So Dan Brown.

Dan Brown is not just anybody, Tom. Dan Brown, you know I'm fascinated by what schools people went to, a running theme. Did he go to your school? He did not. Like the former head of the CIA? Like James Jesus Angleton, the CIA counterintelligence chief. No, he did not, unfortunately for him.

But he did go to probably the, well, one of the two or three most prestigious boarding schools in America. So people always think of boarding schools as uniquely British, but actually there are boarding schools in America on a British model. And when you go through the list of their alumni, you realize what colossal monsters of the American elite actually were not educated in the world of high schools and proms and, you know, sort of people driving to school and all that sort of 1950s white picket fence fantasy of the

American high school. They went to boarding schools. So Dan Brown went to this place called Phillips Exeter Academy. And these boarding schools are like kind of Eton? They're exactly like that. They wear uniforms and boaters and rowing and all that kind of stuff. Lots of rowing. So Phillips Exeter Academy, which is where Dan Brown went, is very much a rowing school. Mark Zuckerberg went to Dan Brown's school. U.S. President Franklin Pierce went to it.

Ulysses Grant sent his son there. Lots of generals, lots of diplomats. So Dan Brown leaves his school. He spends a lot of time. He wears these sort of fawn polo necks, which I don't defend. And he tries to be a composer, and that doesn't work out. And he decides to be a renowned writer. Well, he is a renowned writer.

Well, he is. Yeah. He's in our podcast, Tom. That's the marker of fame. Right. So his first book was Angels and Demons. That's the first book that involves the top Harvard puzzle solver, Robert Langdon. He's a symbologist, isn't he?

A symbologist. Is that a real thing? There are quite a lot of them in the Da Vinci Code. So he wrote the Da Vinci Code in 2003, and it sold 81 million copies. And the only book that outsold it was the latest Harry Potter book. So it's obviously a tremendous hit. And the thread that runs through the story. So it's a Lee Teabing,

who is one of the great characters of the story. He's very proud to say British, isn't he? Yes, he is British. He explains, he explains that Jesus Christ got together with Mary Magdalene. So she's at his right hand,

I think in the last supper, he says, being painted there deliberately because they were a couple and they got married and had children. And Salih Teabing says, the early church feared that if the lineage was permitted to grow, the secret of Jesus and Magdalene would eventually surface and challenge the fundamental Catholic doctrine, that of a divine Messiah who did not consort with women or engage in sexual union. So he says Christ's bloodline is hidden in the south of France when Christ's bloodline

makes a bold move in the fifth century. As bloodlines do. Can a bloodline... Yeah, exactly. The bloodline's attacking me. When intermarried with French royal blood and created a lineage known as the Merovingian bloodline. Now, the Merovingians, Tom, this is absolutely your turf. So who are the Merovingians? So the Merovingians are the dynasty founded by Clovis. So Clovis is a Frankish warlord who, at the end of the 5th century, the Roman Empire in Gaul has imploded.

There are kind of various tribal entities that are emerging. Clovis basically annexes vast swathes of them and he is I mean he's kind of commemorated as the first king of France which is an anachronistic way of putting it but of course the name France comes from the Franks so there's an element of truth in it um and the other key thing that Clovis is remembered for is that at a time where most of the barbarian warlords are Christian but they are not Catholic um They subscribe to a heresy called Arianism, in which the son is inferior to the father rather than being. So it's a different understanding of the Trinity. Clovis subscribes to the Catholic tradition. And so he is commemorated by the Catholic Church as a kind of a model of what a king should be. And he establishes this line of kings, the Merovingians. So they claim descent from, I think, a merman. So a kind of an aquatic entity.

So they don't hold the same view of themselves that Dan Brown holds of them as i remember the merman there's some i think it's waving in somehow i can't remember but um the other thing that characterizes them is that they have a long hair right a bit like samson in the old testament this long hair is a marker of their strength and so when in due course the merovingians become ever more kind of spectral as kings and power passes to the line of men who are serving them as their right-hand man, their court chamberlain. And in due course, this family deposes the Merovingians. And this is the dynasty that historians call the Carolingians, of whom the most famous member is Charlemagne. The last of the Merovingians who gets deposed,

he is a guy called Childeric, Childeric III, and he has his long hair shaved off in a kind of monastic tonsure and he gets put in a monastery and that's him. And that's the end of the Merovingians.

Or is it? Or is it? You see, because the Dan Brown, the arguments of the Da Vinci Code, it just occurred to me, Tom, are we not all descended from mermen, ultimately? I suppose we are

in a manner of speaking. In a manner of speaking. Yes, we are. The Pale the paleozoic with your knowledge of science you'll know all about that um so dan brown's argument is the merovingians did not die out that there was a merovingian called daggerbert ii he was murdered in shady circumstances and became a bit of a martyr bit of a sort of folk hero and he secretly had a son called Sigisbert, and the line of descent goes down and it goes down to the present. And it's been guarded all this time by this organization, the Secret Society. A series of secret societies in some ways,

because there's hints of the Templars, the simps of another group called the Cathars, which we will come to in a second. But the Priory of Sion is the key one. And 1099, because that's when the Crusaders capture Jerusalem. Exactly. And it's kind of associated with all that. Now, and if you have, if listeners who have not read The Da Vinci Code

have any doubts about the factual accuracy of this, Dan Brown is absolutely adamant. So in 2003, he was promoting the novel. He was asked in interviews which parts of the history are actually true. And he said, and I quote, absolutely all of it. Again, CNN, he's asked how much is it true? He said 99% is true. The background is all true.

And actually, you know what? That idea of Jesus and Mary Magdalene having coupled up, as it were, is not unknown in history, is it, Tom? Well, Dominic, so the reason we're doing this is partly because of the anniversary, but also because actually, although, I mean, it will not surprise the listeners to know that we don't believe any of this. Oh, Tom, what a spoiler. You know, there is no secret bloodline. None of this is true.

But the idea of there being some terrible conspiracy, some overarching understanding of history that has been buried and which only certain people have fathomed. And more specifically, yeah, absolutely. The idea that Jesus and convulsive period of medieval history. And so although Dan Brown and all that kind of stuff is wrong, it's wrong in a way that is going with the grain of some very, very fascinating developments in medieval Christendom. And these are the Cathars. That's right, isn't it? They are called the Cathars. So the Templars and the Cathars are very famous. I mean, they would be known by people who otherwise might have no interest in medieval history.

And they're both famous, I think, because there is the idea that they possess a secret wisdom. Yes. And in both cases, it's associated with the Holy Grail. Yeah. So it's thought that the Templars are guarding the Holy Grail, but in other versions, it's the Cathars who are supposedly, they're centered in the South of France. So the Languedoc,

they are a shadowy counterpart to the Catholic church guarding. It is said by those who admire them, a truer understanding of Jesus than the Catholic church ever had. And this is why in the 13th century, they were destroyed and extirpated on the orders of the Pope in a terrible crusade, and then targeted by inquisitors over the course of the 13th and 14th century until they vanished. But it is said that the very last of the Cathar fortresses, which was laid siege to by the crusaders, a place called Montségur.

Before it fell, somebody slipped out. And actually, I mean, this is a thesis that goes back long before Dan Brown, long before the Holy Blood and the Holy Grail, back to a guy called Josephin Paladin in 1906, who actually set up a secret organization called the Order of the Temple of the Rose and the Cross, in which he cast himself as the Imperator, so the emperor. So kind of very modest. And he argued that what the Cathars had taken when they slipped out from Onsiga was the Holy Grail. Oh, my word. And the Holy Grail in Dan Brown's book.

Is Mary Magdalene's bloodline, right? Yes. And also in the Holy Blood and the Holy Grail, this book that was written in the 80s by three people, is that right? Well. And they took Dan Brown to court because they said it had obviously been plagiarised and the case got thrown out on the basis

that this was now so much part of common understanding. So let's unpack. We'll come to the Cathars because this week we really want to talk about the Cathars and this sort of shadowy conspiracy theory style version of medieval history yeah so who were the who were the cathars what did they believe did they even exist yeah exactly so we should come to that but let's just let's just it's an extraordinary story how you get to dan brown's da vinci code from the cathars and i think it would be really fun to to unpick that because

it's actually a great 20th century story. So The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail was published in 1982 in London. Dan Brown undoubtedly read it and freely admitted. I think it's mentioned in the Da Vinci Code, isn't it? He freely admitted reading it. And Salih Tebe, who is the person in the book, what a brilliant name, who explains the story. His name is an anagram of Michael Bajent, who is one of the authors of The Holy Blood and The Holy Grail.

So Dan Brown is giving him a little nod there. Now, two of the authors, as you say, sued him for plagiarism. They didn't win the case. They ended up with colossal costs. The Holy Blood and The Holy Grail, they'd written it in 1982, but the book itself was inspired by three programs that had been on the BBC in the 1970s as part of their chronicle strand that had been trying to solve the mystery of a place called Rennes-le-Chateau. So this is a very small village. We'll come to what the mystery is in a second. That's in the heart of Cathar country

in the southwest of France, down towards the Spanish border in the Languedoc. And the Holy Blood and the Holy Grail has all kinds of different things going on in it. But one of them is this idea of the Priory of Sion, this secret organization that has been protecting the Merovingian bloodline that goes back through Jesus all the way to David from the Old Testament.

And the argument very explicitly made in the Holy Blood and the Holy Grail by these three writers is that the Catholic Church had been fighting this centuries-long war against the Priory of Sion and the Cathars. So as you said, these characters who are in the long dock in the Middle Ages, that these are one of the most formidable guardians of Mary Magdalene's bloodline. They're, as you said, a sort of shadowy counterpart to the Catholic Church, and they were destroyed on papal orders. But they've kind of lived on in the Priory of Sion.

Now, 1982, Britain has only been in the European Union for 10 years. And a lot of people who don't like it think it's a bit weird. And in the Holy Blood and the Holy Grail, they say explicitly that the Priory of Sion is devoted to the idea of a United States of Europe, the Holy European Empire. They are planning to install a Merovingian great monarch who will occupy both the papacy, his rightful inheritance, but also the throne of Europe.

Because if they succeeded in doing that, that could have swung it for Remain, couldn't it? Yes, it could. It could. I mean, this is like Nigel Farage's worst nightmare, because the prior sign of planning a one-party European parliament, Federalist yeah it's run by the merovingians yeah so so this is all there in um but very exciting for early medievalists very well yeah i mean you know you've been toiling away on your charters of late merovingian kings and suddenly suddenly you're in clover yeah your

boys have taken over Europe. So that's good news for the early medievalists, and the people presumably standing against them would have been British Eurosceptics of the early 80s. So Tony Benn. Yes. Barbara Castle. Guardians of the Bloodline of Offa. Right.

So, yeah, it's all good stuff. But the thing is that this is based on, as Dan Brown had said in The Da Vinci Code, this is based on documents, on proper, authentic, historical manuscripts from the Bibliotheque Nationale, no less. It doesn't get more historical or authentic than that. It doesn't. Dominic, do you think we should take a break at this point before you reveal what these documents actually said?

Oh, my word. What a cliffhanger. This is full of cliffhangers, this story. Renowned podcaster, Dominic Sandbrook. How old are you? 50? No, I'm 48. A 48-year-old man.

A 48-year-old man. We'll now have a break. And when we come back... I hate to say this, but I've just spotted an albino monk trudging up the stairs to all three. So whether I do return, you'll have to find out. You fight him off, and we'll be back in a few minutes. I'm Marina Hyde. And I'm Richard Osman. And together we host The Rest Is Entertainment. so whether I do return, you'll have to find out. tickets, head to therestisentertainment.com. That's therestisentertainment.com.

Robert Langdon awoke slowly. A telephone was ringing in the darkness, a tinny, unfamiliar ring. He fumbled for the bedside lamp and turned it on. Squinting at his surroundings, he saw a plush Renaissance bedroom with Louis XVI furniture and frescoed walls, and a colossal mahogany four-poster bed. Where the hell am I? The jacquard bathrobe hanging on his bedpost bore the monogram, Hotel Ritz, Paris. Slowly the fog began to lift. Langdon picked up the receiver. Hello? That was Marcel Proust. I mean, Brad Brown.

That's Probe. Probe. With another thrilling moment in The Da Vinci Code, which we are discussing. And The Da Vinci Code, Dominic, is a novel in which there is a secret conspiracy to guard the bloodline of christ and before the break you were talking about where this whole strange idea came from and you said that there were some manuscripts that had been found in the bibliothèque nationale in paris and what what are they and where they come from so the the manuscripts amazingly they're called the Dossiers Secrets d'Henri Lobineau, the Secret Dossiers of Henri Lobineau. And they contain part of the history of the Priory of Science,

a list of the heads of it and all these sort of documents, correspondence about it and whatnot. So it's very clear that this existed, that the Priory of Science was a real thing because of these documents in the Bibliotheque Nationale. And they were found, Tom. And do these documents have the list of all the, you know? Yes, I think they, I don't know.

I think Dan Brown has slightly, and indeed the authors of The Holy Blood and The Holy Grail, have slightly jazzed it up. Have slightly jazzed up those. So Debussy is one of those people. Virginia Woolf. Robert Boyle. Paul McCartney. Exactly.

The former lead to United manager, Don Revy. Huge list of people. Anyway, Stanley Baldwin. This list, it was great detective work by one of the authors of The Holy Bird and the Holy Grail. It was a man called Henry Lincoln. And he's really the driving force behind that book because he had done the BBC documentaries in the 70s on the mystery from which the book derives. Now, so who was Henry Lincoln? So we've got a line now connecting Dan Brown,

because Dan Brown read this book. Henry Lincoln is a former actor trained at RADA. He was born in 1930, but he's best known, Tom, as a script writer for Doctor Who. Of course he is. So he wrote stories in the Patrick Troughton era of Doctor Who. He wrote a story called The Abominable Snowmen, where they fight Yeti. My uncle was in

that. Wow, no way. My beloved uncle, David Gregory, was in that. He was a homicidal Tibetan monk. Yes, it was set in Tibet. The whole theme of homicidal monks. Monks. It's all connecting. Everything connects. Everything connects. Oh, bless him. bless him so he wrote that

he wrote a story called the web of fear where the uh the yeti the abominable snowmen invaded the london underground yes very exciting and he wrote one called the dominators which was useless so we don't know he's a man for plausible plots yeah yes yeah he's a great craftsman anyway in 1969 so actually the end of patrick troughton's time as the second Doctor in Doctor Who, Henry Lincoln is on holiday in the Cévennes, which is in southwestern France. So it's up in the mountains. It's about an hour and a couple of hours drive from Albi, Carcassonne. Right. And so Albi is a great centre.

It's kind of the southernmost bishopric of the southernmost archbishopric in France. Right. So this is the heart of what is called and what is marketed as Cathar country. It's a land. It's quite poor by the standards of France. Very rural. Very mountainous, isn't it? Very mountainous.

Sun bleached. And it's sort of haunted by the ghosts of the Middle Ages, I would say. Ruined castles, ruined churches, a sense that an enormous amount of blood was spilled here once upon a time. And somehow the ghosts are still lingering. And when Henry Lincoln is there, he reads the paperback version of a book that was originally published as Lord of Wren rennes the gold of rennes and this tells him about a mystery in a place called rennes le chateau which is in the heart of the long dock in occitania in the ode department and the story of rennes le chateau is that it had a priest in the 19th century late 19th century called beranger saunière now remember the name of the renowned curator was jacques

saunière tom so this is a renowned late 19th century priest well not so renowned it's actually quite obscure okay obscure 19th century priest yes the 76 year old man he was put on ecclesiastical trial in 1909 1910 and he was actually booted out. Why? Why? Well, this book, The Gold of Ren, explained. Saunière had come into an enormous amount of money, or so it seemed, and had spent this money putting esoteric sculptures in his church, mysterious sculptures. And no one could understand where the money came from. And the book that Henry Lincoln was reading in 1969 explained the answer to the mystery. Saunière had found secret documents.

And so these are the documents in the Bibliothèque Nationale? Either those documents or ones connected to them. And these secret documents proved that Dagobah II, the Merovingian king, had indeed had children, a secret Merovingian bloodline who had been kept hidden all these years and had been guarded by the Cathars, the Templars, and the Priory of Zion. Saunière, Bérenger Saunière, had probably been blackmailing the Catholic Church. The Pope.

The Pope. That's how he had got all this money to renovate his church. But in which... I mean, I do want to point out the flaw here. Yeah. Well, I do want to point out the flaw. Point it out, Tom. Point it out.

Okay, so if he's blackmailing the Pope. Yeah. Why does the Catholic Church then put him on trial and defrock him? They're running out of money, I expect. It's becoming a very expensive commitment. But how can they do that if he's blackmailing them? He could just say, oh, I'll come out with a secret. Well, he didn't.

They caught his bluff, I suppose, is how I would interpret it. I'll be honest. I haven't read The Treasure of Wren. I'm not even sure it's still in print. Okay. But The Gold of Wren. So Henry Lincoln reads this book about this priest, and he finds this absolutely fascinating and very plausible.

This is what leads him to the idea of the Priory of Zion. It's what leads him to the documents in the Bibliothèque Nationale. And he then adds the extra element that actually it's not just the Merovingian bloodline that's being guarded, but the Merovingian bloodline is the bloodline of Jesus and Mary Magdalene. So he's the guy who comes up with it. He's the guy, exactly.

He and his fellow authors add that element to it. So now we see that there's another book behind the Holy Blood and the Holy Grail, and that book is the Gold of Ren. So who wrote that? So where's this book come from? So this book is written by a man called Gérard de Cèdre. He's from an aristocratic family, born in France in 1921.

He'd been involved with the Surrealists. But after Surrealism sort of fell from fashion after the Second World War, he just became a bit of a hack. And he was writing tons and tons of books. And the theme of these books that comes up again and again is this thing, the Second World War. He just became a bit of a hack, and he was writing tons and tons of books. And the theme of these books that comes up again and again is this thing, the Cathars again. So, Le Trésor Cathar, Le Secret des Cathars, Le Sang des Cathars, L'Occitanie Rebelle du Moyen-Âge, the Occitania in revolt in the Middle Ages.

So, Occitania is south of Medi, like Languedoc. It's the Languedoc. So, Gérard de Sade was obviously obsessed with the Cathars, the middle ages so oxytania is south midi like long dog is the long dog so gerald just said was obviously obsessed with the catholics and this idea that you said that there was this sort of secret occult society group in the south a kind of a shadowy church shadowy church exactly and actually not just in the in the south of france this idea that it it's everywhere but how did he come to to fix on ren ren le chateau how did he come to fix on Ren, Ren Le Chateau? How did he come to write about Sonia? Well, behind him, there is somebody else.

Goodness, it's like Russian dolls. Another, yeah, let's go into the next bit of the Russian doll, the next doll. So this somebody else is the real, so it's taken us half an hour to get to the real protagonist of this episode. And this is an absolutely extraordinary man called Pierre Plantard. And Pierre Plantard was born in 1920.

And his life, it's like a sort of encapsulation of a lot of the themes we've talked about this year in other episodes of The Rest is History. So to start with, we did an episode about servants in the real Downton Abbey with Lucy Lethbridge, Tom. That's our last one. That would last Thursday. And Pierre Ponto is the son of a butler. We talked about butlers in that. He's the son of a butler and a cook. And it's very clear that he was very conscious of being downstairs, the son of downstairs, and he wants to be the son of upstairs. he had a freet on his shoulder he did have a freet on his shoulder yes he is uh he feels very much mr baits when he wants to be the earl of grantham is that right that's the downtown yes very good but then in a nod to another one of them we did a podcast

series about the rise of the nazis he is one of these interwar teenagers who is drawn into ultra-nationalist organizations so in the late by the late 1930s he has got involved with all kinds of wacky far-right groups in france and actually the comparison there is somebody like himmler because heinrich himmler as we talked about before all that stuff love atlantis vikings yeah pierre plantar the young pierre plantar not only does he want to no longer be the son of a butler, but the son of a Lord. He also is fascinated by all this stuff.

When France falls in 1940, he writes to Marshall Pétain and he says, I would like to help out. I would like to help out to fight the Masonic and Jewish conspiracy that has been sapping France's will. You see, he really fancies himself as a knight. I think that's what he really wants to be.

He loves the idea of chivalry and of the Templars and of sort of knightly fraternal organizations. And he sets up his own. So he's just a very young man. So like Palladar had set up his organization. Exactly, exactly. He sets up an organization called Alpha Galatees. And he has a magazine.

The name of the magazine is Vaincre pour une jeune chevalerie. Conquer for a young knighthood, or a knighthood of youth. They have, I think, four members, so not terribly successful. But he's the grandmaster, is he? Yes.

Remember he wanted to fight masonry with Pétain. Pétain didn't take him up on it. So afterward, the war, he becomes a Freemason. He's obviously just fascinated by the idea of societies, secret societies. He also, rather less glamorously, becomes a technical draftsman. That's his day job. But he's always, as time goes on,

through all the sort of ructions of post-war France, he's always trying to set things up, to volunteer, to do things. So, for example, when the crisis with the French war in Algeria blows up in 1958, he sets up his own committee of public safety. And he writes to General de Gaulle, doesn't get any reply. It's kind of offering his sword. His sword. To the general. And then he says to people, well, General de Gaulle and I are tremendous any reply. It's kind of offering his sword. His sword. To the general.

And then he says to people, well, General de Gaulle and I are tremendous pals. He's writing to me all the time. Yeah. He also claims to be clairvoyant. So he would have loved the internet. He would. I mean, he'd be all over. He would.

He'd be. Reddit and all that kind of stuff. He would get on tremendously well with Lawrence Fox, I think it's fair to say. Lawrence Fox would play him. Maybe that's Lawrence Fox's dramatic future. Now, 1956, he set up his own fraternal organization. He's always trying to set up these organizations, not just because he wants to sell knighthoods.

He's like David Lloyd George. He wants to sell peerages and honors. David Lloyd George is prime minister, so he can kind of do that. Pierre Prontar is not. He's a technical craftsman. And do you know what his fraternal organization is called? The Priory of Sion? The Priory of Sion.

This, contra what Dan Brown claims, this is where the Priory of Sion originated. He set it up in the town of Animas in Haute-Savoie. So that's in the east of France. It was called Sion because there was a hill outside the town called Scion,

and he was planning to build a New Age retreat on this hill. So that's why he – it's a money-making venture, Tom. Now, the statutes of the Priory of Scion, all organizations had to be registered with the French government. So we know what the statutes were. The statutes said, and it does sound impressive, its mission was to carry out good deeds, to help the Roman Catholic Church, to teach the truth,

and to defend the weak and the oppressed. So that sounds splendid. But we also know from its records what it actually did. And its involvement seems to have been two things. One, it was trying to run the school buses of their local town, trying to get a contract to run the school buses.

And the other, there was a huge sort of NIMBY-ish controversy about the building of social housing in Animas, and Plantard got involved with that. So he's sort of corresponding about that and having meetings. So this is very much not guarding bloodlines of Christ, is it? There was no guarding of any bloodlines. No, at this stage, they were arguing about flats and planning permission and residents' complaints. I guess anyone who's been involved in that kind of thing would accept that introducing a bloodline of Christ would spice the correspondence up.

Well, this is exactly what happens. So it's very clear that in the early 1960s, so at this point he is in his mid-40s and it hasn't worked out. So he decides he's going to turbocharge it. And I admire him in some ways. He's very entrepreneurial. He decides to do things. First of all, he reboots theots the prior sign as this sort of

esoteric chivalric fellowship and he wants to he thinks he can make more money out of it this way he can basically sell membership if he really bigs up what it's all about it's not just about being kind anymore yeah it's kind of like selling tartan in scotland to american tourists that kind of i guess so yes yes exactly he says um nostradamus predicted the the arrival of a great monarch who will take the throne of france this is what we're all about and we actually know you know when we know loads of secrets about this and who is the great monarch well might it be him unbelievably it's actually himself well who knew um so he says he he creates this sort of pedigree for the priory of zion and he says um

it's actually you know we're actually descended from a secret catholic order um founded in the kingdom of jerusalem in 1099 in the first crusade so this is the that's where dan brown gets gets gets 1099 yeah but pierre pountar is not a fool i mean he he might be a conspiracy theorist but but he's not a fool. He knows that this is all very spurious, and there's no evidence for any of his claims. So what he does that is absolutely brilliant is he just creates the evidence. So he and his mate start working up in their spare time documents,

manuscripts, which they call the Dossierrets d'Henri Lobineau, the Secret Files of Henri Lobineau, the Degeneres and Merovingian Kings, their lists of the heads of the Priory of Sion. They go to the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, and they order files up, and they just sort of stuff these documents. And of course,

you can completely see anyone who's been to an archive can see how that would work. It's quite hard to maybe to steal documents. But easier. But far easier to put them in. Have they written them on kind of faded parchment? Exactly. They're probably putting bits of tea on it and stuff, all that stuff. So not only do they do that, he also gets in touch with that bloke,

Gerard de Ceyde, and says, I think you should write a book called The Gold of Rennes and link this to this mystery of Rennes de Chateau, the Merovingian bloodline. So here's the extraordinary thing. Henry Lincoln read the book that Pierre Pontard had commissioned and then, of his own back, went and did the detective work in the Bibliothèque Nationale. And discovered the documents. And discovered the documents that Pierre Pantard had also... What shocks Pierre Pantard, though, is that Henry Lincoln brings in the stuff about Jesus and Mary Magdalene, because that was not in his initial plan.

And when The Holy Bird and the Holy Grail came out in 1982, Pierre Pantard said, what's all this? This stuff about Jesus is nonsense. And so the idea that Europe in the 80s would come to be ruled by a Merovingian, that Pierre Plantard is offering himself

as his king. But when we say he's offering himself, he thought he'd perhaps make £10,000 a year out of selling to gullible dupes selling knighthoods or books or whatever. But in the end he wasn't

the one making the money. No. It was Henry Lincoln and Dan Brown Right, versions was that. But why has he made that link to Wren? There's a story behind the story behind the story Tom. Of course. So Wren Le Chateau as we said is in Cathar country, there's a, there's a story behind the story behind the story, Tom. Of course. So Ren, the Chateau is in,

as we said, was in, is in Cathar country. It's in the far Southwest of, um, France. And would you believe Pierre Pontard got the idea because he had read yet another book. And this was a book about treasure hunting.

Um, the book was called Tresor du Monde. It was about where, where there's buried treasure. And this book was published in the early 60s and it told the story of a man called Noël Corbu. So yet another bizarre character to add to our story. Noël Corbu is a bit older than all the others. He was born in 1912. He'd been brought up in Morocco. He'd ended up running a pasta factory in Perpignan.

And then he went back to Morocco to try to open a sugar refinery in the 50s. This was a very bad time to be a Frenchman opening sugar refineries in North Africa because Algeria had exploded. North Africa is trying to throw off French overlordship. Noel Corbu comes back to France with his tail between his legs to sort of start again. At about that point in the 50s, he sees for sale a hotel and restaurant in this, you know, obscure kind of fly-blown, windswept, long-dock town called Rennes-le-Château. And it's on sale,

and the person who's trying to get rid of it is a woman called Marie Desnardneau. Marie Desnardneau. And she is the former housekeeper trying to get rid of it is a woman called Marie Denano Marie Denano and she is the former housekeeper of Beranger Sonnier the priest the controversial mysterious priest Noël Corbeau

buys her house and runs it as this hotel and restaurant if you've ever been to the Languedoc, have you been to the Languedoc Tom? Not only have I been to the Languedoc I've been to ren le chateau then you will know that it's a long way from paris i made my parents go did you oh my word the whole way wow where from where were you staying can't remember it's near toulouse okay so not staying outside toulouse but still if you go to the cathar castle so ren le chateau is very close to castles like what's it called Père Pétus

Keribus these amazing I mean some of the best castles you'll ever see these ruined castles on mountains the romance of them is that they are

their last strongholds of the Cathars yeah and so the Montségur which is the most famous of the lot yeah captured in 1244

it's the kind of the Masada the last outpost of the Cathars. And that story of the Holy Grail being taken down, another version of it is that the Cathars are removing their treasure. Ah, right. Well, we'll come to treasure.

So the treasure could be the Holy Grail. Yes. Or it could be, you know, I don't know, the treasure of the Cathars or something. Well, we've got some treasure coming up in a second. But the point is, if you've been to these castles, I mean, we went a few years ago, they're surprisingly untouristed because although they're magnificent,

they're a long way from anywhere. It's very hard to get to them, winding roads, mountain roads, and so on. So, Noel Corbu has this hotel and restaurant, and he's desperate to drum up custom. How on earth is he going to get people there? He makes two claims to the local press. The first claim that he makes in La Depeche du Midi in 1956, he says, that bloke Bérenger Saunière, I know where he got his money. He found treasure in his church.

And the treasure was the treasure of Blanche of Castile, this daughter of the Spanish, the Castilian king, married the French king. She had assembled 28 million gold pieces to pay the ransom of Saint Louis, the French crusader king who had been taken prisoner by the Saracens. And the treasure was buried. Béonger Saunière found half, and half is still there.

Brilliant. Brings in treasure hunters to his restaurant. Superb. So that's superb. So basically this whole thing is about restaurants. Custom. No, but about people trying to make money. Of course.

With various scams. And his second element, which is about hidden manuscripts, he says he's done the treasure, and then he says, actually, you know what, Saunière didn't just find the treasure. It's one of those conspiracy theorists who has multiple elements. He says he also found parchments, manuscripts. And do you know what they were? They were Gnostic gospels.

And why on earth has he picked on this of all things? The answer is obvious. It's the mid-1950s, and the French press is full of the Dead Sea Scrolls, which are even at this point being found and being transcribed and whatnot. So it obviously makes... It's in the air. It's in the air. Now, he eventually sold the hotel and bought a little sort of chateau.

So he must have made a decent amount of money from this sort of scheme. Pure money-making scheme to bring in people to eat steak frites at his restaurants. Noel Corby was killed in a car accident in 1968. And of course, when somebody's killed in a car accident in these kinds of stories, everyone says- Yeah, conspiracy. Opus Dei. That's the Catholic Church acting.

Or possibly the Priory of Zion. Possibly, yes. Who knows? Because he's spilling their secrets. It's very hard to tell, isn't it? Yeah. I mean, who knows? Listeners will have their own views so but their counsel in ren le chateau even though they're a tiny bit dubious they've

encouraged these theories ever since well they would i mean the whole the whole have you been um i've not been to the town i've been the village of ren le chateau is absolute mecca for all of this yeah i mean it's kind of heaving with crystals and yeah of course on the templars and the catholic well of course if you go to this area everywhere you go i mean the branding is you know it's catholic country catholic castles sites of massacres sieges mysterious churches all of this kind of stuff but to go back to the very beginning of the actual conspiracy theory, this priest, Bérenger Saunière, he was a priest in Rennes-le-Château between 1885 and 1909. He was, you know, tending to his flock in this landscape of castles and ghosts and whatnot. He does spend a lot of money renovating his church with mysterious sculptures.

However, the sculptures, people have traced where they came from they all came from a catalog from a kind of job lot weren't they job lot yeah she's carved to lose who was a local sort of sculpture quite sculpted quite well known at the time there's nothing esoteric about them but i'll show you just literally pick them out of the catalog devils i'll have a bit of going to the garden center exactly just like going to the garden so they look very much like garden centre gnomes, I think some of them. And the money, it wasn't treasure.

It wasn't blackmailing the papacy. He was selling masses. And that's why he gets kicked out. Defrocked. Defrocked, exactly. What he actually had done, he got hold of a directory of French clergymen and ecclesiastical organisations.

He just wrote to them all the time saying, do you want me to say a mass for you? Do you got any masses you want doing? And he was actually taking money for masses that he had. He didn't, he got so many requests. He didn't have time, but had money,

which he, which to his credit, he spent on the church, but the church booted him out. So, so that's where it all started. Now, if we stop for a second,

turn the story around, tell it the other way. So let's now, instead of moving backwards, go forwards. So you had a priest in Cathar country in the southwest of France who was flogging all these masses, got this money. The restaurateur exaggerates his story and makes up some stuff about treasure and parchments so that he'll bring custom to his restaurants. Pierre Pontard, the butler's son who wants to be the lord, he's inspired by this to develop all these parchments about his Merovingian lineage,

which he deposits in the Bibliothèque Nationale, and he commissions a hack writer who's fascinated by the Cathars, called Gerard de Cèdre, to write a book about the parchments. Henry Lincoln from Doctor Who reads this book on holiday. In Cathar country. In Cathar country. he writes the holy blood and the holy grail and he adds an extra element that has never been in the story for this point which is also from the history of the cathars because it is claimed that the cathars believed it that jesus and mary magdalene had been a couple and had had children. And old boy of Phillips Exeter Academy and champion fawn polo shirt wearer, Dan Brown,

master of prose, reads the Holy Blood and the Holy Grail and writes his own version, bringing all these elements. And when interviewed is asked if it is true. And he says, absolutely all of it and of course the thing is tom none of this would have lodged in people's minds if they didn't already have a sense that in that part of the world there has been something strange going on something occult and esoteric and hidden and dark and dangerous. And that, of course, is the story of the Cathars that underpins all this. Yes. And I think what is fascinating, so it's fascinating as a story about how myths have evolved over the course of the 20th century. I mean, it's kind of brilliant exemplification of that.

But I think it is also interesting for the fact that it is drawing on something that is mysterious about the Middle Ages. And the way that the Cathars have been understood does hold a mirror up to all kinds of conspiracies and accusations and mysteries that were absolutely authentic within the Middle Ages. So the question is, what is the relationship of the contemporary understanding of the Cathars to what was actually going on in, let's call it, the Languedoc, the Cathar country in the Middle Ages? And I mean, I think it's important to recognize that the Cathars in contemporary culture are not, they're kind of integrated into this idea of a conspiracy of the bloodline of Christ. I mean, that's probably what they're best known for. But there is also a kind of new age vibe. So that's why when you go to Renla Chateau, you have all the crystals and everything. And I guess that there is another

hugely bestselling novel that features the Cathars, which gives it a feminist spin, which was Kate Moss's novel Labyrinth, which came out in 2006. And so she was writing it as Dan Brown was writing The Da Vinci Code. And as in The Da Vinci Code, the Cathars are, in Kate Moss's novel, they're guarding an ancient wisdom. They're hated by the Catholics for being a rival church. They're dualists who believe that God is the God of heaven, the devil is the God of the earth. And the Cathars in Kate Moss's version of it are very feminist. Women can become priests. And this is all part of the reason why the evil Catholic Church orders it to be destroyed. I mean, the question that we will be going on from over the next few episodes, look at what the reality of this, but what is fascinating about this, that in the 70s, 80s, 90s, into the 21st century, when all these novels and these books with the idea of the Cathars as guardians of kind of secret wisdom coming out, this is basically, it's a popularization of the standard history that you will find in academic studies and histories of the period. And these are histories that are coming out at the same time in the 70s, 80s, 90s into the 21st century.

And in these books, and they will have titles like, you know, History of the Cathars. Yeah. Cathars feature in these titles, and they are described by academics, by historians as having been the most formidably organized of all medieval heretics, that effectively they are what the Catholics claim they were, that they were a kind of shadowy

counter church with bishops, with structures, with parishes, all kinds of things. They are dualist, as Kate Moss implies in her novel Labyrinth, that there's an active malign devil on the earth, there's a good God in heaven, that matter is evil, that spirit is good. There were elements within the Cathars who did think that Jesus and Mary had married. That these traditions that you get in, so you mentioned about the Gnostic Gospels and also about the Dead Sea Scrolls, academics argue that these traditions that are found in the medieval Languedoc, they're continuous, that they're living, that they go all they date back to the age of the Gnostic Gospels, to the time before

Constantine, then immediately afterwards, that this tradition arrives in the West from the Byzantine Empire, where these traditions have long, long been underground, that they have come via missionaries from Bulgaria, who are called Bogomils, the Bogomils, who hold these heretical beliefs, that they arrive, that missionaries from Bogomil missionaries arrive in the south of France, and that they set up the Cathar church there, but that the Cathars of L'Encadoc are part of a wider and organized European movement. And all of this you will find in academic studies that are being written at exactly the same time as the Holy Blood and the Holy Grail are being written, and the Denshi code and labyrinth and the history of this is very tragic because by the early 13th century the catholic church understandably is getting alarmed by the you know the discovery that there is this shadowy church

on their doorstep i mean not in their doorstep kind of you know right in the middle of of france the most the most catholic kingdom and so they launch a crusade. And this is the first crusade that is launched not against Saracens, not against infidels, but against supposed Christians, people within the fabric of Western Christendom. And it's incredibly bloody and brutal. It lasts for 20 years. In its wake, there is a kind of continuous program of extirpation, which involves both military campaigns. In Mosegur is the kind of continuous program of extirpation which involves both military campaigns in mosiger is the last of these military campaigns but also inquisitors moving in yeah and this lasts right the way into the 14th century some people have called it a genocide haven't

they i mean they've people have called it a genocide and that by the mid 14th century the cathar church is is pretty much wiped out it vanishes, but that there are shadowy traces of it that kind of reemerge periodically. So in kind of Protestant sects and so on. So that is what scholars until about 15, 20 years ago were pretty much unanimously arguing. However, I want to end this episode by quoting a line from a book called A Most Holy War, The Albigensian Crusade and the Battle for Christendom by a scholar called Mark Gregory Pegg. It's a fantastic book, absolutely thrilling work of history. It's fabulously well written. I mean, very, very kind of exciting. Is it as well written as the Da Vinci Code?

That's the question. It certainly rivals the Da da vinci code it's a masterpiece of prose so everything that i've been describing so he this is what he writes so the story of the cathars what is the cathars a saga of spiritual freedom and religious intolerance a warning and a lesson from the past always worth telling except of course that none of it is true. Oh, what a cliffhanger. the middle ages have believed and so what is what are peg's arguments what is he making what and he's not alone uh there are other historians as well who were making this case that actually the cathars as conventionally understood didn't actually exist if you would like to hear our second and third installments on the cathars right now then tom all they have to do is head to www.restishistorypod.com and sign up to our

members club where you can enjoy ad-free listening and early access to episodes. So we will return to try and solve the mystery of who were the Cathars, what do they believe, where do they come from? And then we will tell the story, or you will tell the story, of the extraordinarily bloody and dark Albigensian crusade against these people who did or didn't exist. The crusade definitely happened and thousands of people were definitely killed. So it's both a fascinating historical detective story and a riveting and blood soaked narrative. But Dominic, the thing, I mean, the thing that makes it so, so fascinating, I think, is that it is a story about conspiracies. It's a story about conspiracy theories. And although the Cathar, there is no Cathar church, in a sense, there are Cathars,

but they're not who you think they are. They're kind of, they're kind of, they're in plain view and they're not at all who you think they are. So, so I hope you'll tune in tomorrow. My mind is boggling. For, for a plunge into the thrilling and dark world of a medieval heresy. With renowned historian Tom Holland. See you tomorrow. Goodbye. Bye-bye. Thanks for listening to The Rest Is History. For bonus episodes, early access, ad-free listening and access to our chat community,

please sign up at restishistorypod.com. That's just launched our Members Club. If you want ad-free listening, bonus episodes and early access to live tickets, head to therestisentertainment.com. That's therestisentertainment.com.