The Magdalene Deception - Ch 12
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Chapter 12
Michael Dominic’s cell phone vibrated in his pocket during his run through the Suburra the next morning. It was an incoming text message from Simon Ginzberg: Meet me at Pergamino 0800.
Perfect, Dominic thought. He was about ten minutes away from Pergamino Caffè, giving him time to cool down and change his clothes before the meeting.
Approaching the coffee shop early, Dominic was surprised to find that Ginzberg had already arrived and was sitting at a table on the sidewalk, deep in thought. After ordering his usual caffè freddo, he nudged his way back out through the throng of patrons and took a chair opposite the old man. Simon’s face was somber, he noted, looking somehow older than he had the day before.
“Well, Michael,” he said pensively, “you’ve certainly come across something of striking interest here. I did not get much sleep last night after reading what you sent. I’m not even sure where to begin. How much do you know about Bérenger Saunière?”
“Not much, really, apart from what little I’d read on the internet and what Cardinal Petrini told me over dinner.”
Staring into his coffee, Ginzberg took a deep breath and settled back into his chair. He closed his eyes as if to recall a memory, then began relating what he knew of the enigmatic history of the southern French settlement and its eccentric abbé.
“It all started in June of 1885…” he began.
Dominic leaned forward, sipped his iced coffee, and listened intently as Ginzberg told the tale.
At the top of a steep mountain in the Languedoc region of France, between Montségur and Carcassonne, lies the tiny commune of Rennes-le-Château, an obscure but historically rich village at the base of the eastern Pyrenees.
The first day of June marked the arrival of Abbé Bérenger Saunière, the new village priest for the Church of St. Mary Magdalene, an ancient sanctuary consecrated in 1059, but whose Visigothic foundations dated from the sixth century.
A thousand years of weather and war had taken its toll on the run-down church, and the ambitious young priest set about on a modest restoration project that would span several years. With the help of his eighteen-year-old assistant and housekeeper, Marie Dénarnaud, Saunière began remodeling and reinforcing the structure where it was needed most, using a portion of the meager subsistence he received—an annual stipend of less than 60 francs, plus various small donations—to carry out his mission. Most men in their early thirties, especially those possessing the youth, handsome looks, and athletic vigor of Bérenger Saunière, might have quickly tired of the provincial existence such a poor outpost afforded them. But Saunière was born and raised in a village not far from Rennes-le-Château, and he was quite content to spend his time on such a worthwhile project in the familiar environs of his childhood.
In the early days of autumn, Saunière had commenced reconstruction work on the altar inside the church and in the process removed an altar stone straddling two ancient marble support columns from the Visigoth period. He was surprised to discover that one of the columns was partially hollow—but even more astonished when he found several cracked wooden tubes inside, each preserved with sealing wax. Carefully removing the wax seals, Saunière extracted several sturdy but aged parchment and papyrus scrolls. Two of the manuscripts were dated four hundred years apart, one from 1244 and the second dated 1644; both depicted ancestral lineage of some sort, genealogies extending back a thousand years or more. Two other documents, apparently composed in the late eighteenth century by an earlier abbé, appeared to contain a complex series of meaningless references—possibly codes or ciphers.
Excited by his discoveries, in March 1892, Saunière took the scrolls to eminent Church authorities in Paris, who then referred him to local specialists in ancient texts. The following three weeks changed Bérenger Saunière’s life virtually overnight.
During his brief time in Paris, the simple village priest from Rennes-le-Château suddenly became a central figure among the city’s social elite and its celebrated esoteric subculture. He was toasted by some of the most famous luminaries in Paris, including composer Claude Debussy, the opera singer Emma Calvé—even the French secretary of state for culture.
Little else is known of those three weeks in Paris, but shortly after returning to Rennes-le-Château, Saunière plunged into his restoration project with renewed vigor—only now there seemed to be no limit to his resources. He began spending extravagantly on village road improvements, a new tower for the church, a lavish house for his assistant Marie Dénarnaud, fabulous gardens, imported china, and more.
He began a vigorous but puzzling correspondence with many people in other countries throughout Europe, and he entertained a diverse assortment of notable visitors in his humble French rectory—among them Archduke Johann von Habsburg, cousin of Austrian emperor Franz Josef. Later, the Archduke unaccountably transferred substantial sums of money into Saunière’s personal bank account.
The local bishop, alerted to Saunière’s unusual prosperity, demanded that the priest account for his newfound wealth or face charges of corruption, then suspended him when he refused. Saunière promptly appealed to the Vatican and, astonishingly, was immediately vindicated of all charges and returned to lead his parish.
By the time of his death in 1917, Bérenger Saunière had spent tens of millions of francs on rebuilding his humble church and village. But his Last Will and Testament revealed that he was destitute. Just prior to his death, it was learned that Saunière had left everything he owned to his loyal housekeeper, Marie Dénarnaud.
For the next forty years, Marie lived a quiet but comfortable life, and made a promise that before her own death she would reveal a “secret” that would make its bearer not only rich but also powerful—the same secret that had made Bérenger Saunière an exceptionally wealthy man.
In 1953, however, Marie suffered a crippling stroke that left her incapable of speech or writing and she died a few days afterward, presumably taking the secrets of Rennes-le-Château with her….
“It’s quite possible, Michael,” Ginzberg said, finishing his story, “that your letter may be connected to the considerable funding Saunière received from unknown sources. But to think he may have been blackmailing the Vatican is inconceivable! Still, many have tried for years to get to the bottom of what the abbé’s secrets might have been—without apparent success—and that those in the Church might have been involved would not surprise me at all.”
Engrossed in the story without having said a word, questions now swarmed through Dominic’s mind—especially the last thing Ginzberg had mentioned.
“What did you mean by ‘many have tried for years’ to get to the bottom of this?” he asked. “Who, for instance?”
“The Nazis, for one,” Ginzberg said without hesitation, prepared for the question. “Many of the highest officials of the Third Reich were deeply involved in the occult and all manner of mystical practices. Adolf Hitler himself believed the roots of his Aryan master race stemmed from the ancient civilization of Atlantis. Joseph Goebbels was mesmerized by the prophecies of Nostradamus, convincing Hitler that the mystic astrologer had seen the defeat of the British in their coming war plans. By 1943, Nazi headquarters in Berlin even had some three thousand tarot card readers working on troop deployment strategies, hinging their own efforts on what the cards told them about Allied operations.
“Not only were the Allies aware of this, but Britain’s MI6 actually hired teams of astrologers to work up Hitler’s natal chart and submit reports to the war office, estimating how the Führer’s own astrologers might be advising him in terms of tactical planning. It’s even believed Churchill ordered that knowledge of the Nazis’ occult interests be kept top secret, in the event criminals appearing before the Nuremberg trials be declared insane, thus escaping prosecution.
“But then we come to Heinrich Himmler,” Ginzberg added, a far-off look in his eyes. “Himmler had invested heavily in a peculiar mix of pseudo-science and the occult. As architect of the Schutzstaffel, or what was known as the SS, Himmler had accumulated unimaginable powers and by 1944, nearly a million soldiers were placed under his command. But it was his determined ambition to possess the Holy Grail that brings him into our story.
“As a medievalist yourself, Michael, you’re aware of the Knights Templar and the Cathars of southern France, yes?”
Dominic nodded mutely, entranced by Ginzberg’s retelling of history.
“Well,” the scholar continued, “in the thirteenth century the Cathars were reputed to be in possession of a great treasure. Many believe that to be the Holy Grail itself, or some variation of earthly riches and mystical knowledge of profound religious significance.
“It’s also worth noting that the Cathars conferred great importance to the role of Mary Magdalene, certainly much more than the Church did. She was a prominent teacher in her time, which affirmed the Cathars’ belief that women could serve equally as spiritual leaders. And though they venerated Jesus Christ, they flatly rejected the Resurrection, believing it to be more along the lines of reincarnation. One must assume they had some basis of understanding for taking these positions.
“When the Cathars were wiped out at the end of the Albigensian Crusade in the thirteenth century, several Cathar priest-soldiers known as parfaits descended in secret from their hilltop fortress at Montségur and are believed to have buried their treasure in one of the many nearby caves of the region.
“Indeed,” Ginzberg continued, “the Grail legend has even been linked to the Nazis and Rennes-le-Château, which is about fifty kilometers from Montségur. The Nazi party held in high regard the disciplines of the Cathar movement: their sophisticated way of life, the stringency of their diet regimen and physical prowess, their innovative gnostic beliefs—all elements of Nazi goals and aspirations toward the ideal Aryan race.
“During the Nazis’ occupation of France, Himmler sent an ambitious young SS lieutenant named Otto Rahn to the Languedoc region in a frenzied search for religious artifacts, first and foremost the Holy Grail. Rahn was a capable and published historian, deeply immersed in Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Parzival legend, and he spent several years exploring the whole region in and around those two key villages. Nazi soldiers who assisted in the excavations were even billeted at Villa Bethania in Rennes-le-Château, the lavish home Bérenger Saunière had built for Dénarnaud, and where she lived for many years.”
Dominic was overwhelmed with the rich and complex history that was somehow connected to the simple letter he had found. He glanced at his watch.
“Simon, I have so many questions now, but Brother Mendoza will be looking for me. Will you have more time this afternoon? I assume you’ll be in the reading room?”
“Of course, Michael, my apologies for going on like this. Yes, find me this afternoon. There are a few more things I must yet explain.”
The two men rose and shook hands. Dominic went inside to retrieve his cassock from Signora Palazzolo, changed, and left the café, his mind racing with theories.