EXCERPT FROM THE BOOK RENNES-LE-CHÂTEAU: AN INQUIRY, HERA EDITIONS • 2004
Mario Iannaccone is a deep connoisseur of the political movements of France in the early twentieth century. He studied literature at the University of Milan specialising in History of Christianity. Iannaccone has completed a work on the theme of Rennes-le-Château entitled Rennes-le-Château: a decipherment. From Arsène Lupin to the da Vinci Code next published by SugarCo.
With thanks to Mariano Tomatis for permissions to translate articles in the interests of research. Translated by Rhedesium. Following the Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International restrictions placed by author[s]. Publication date 2008 - Usage -Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 InternationalYou are free to: Share — copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format & Adapt — remix, transform, and build upon the material. The licensor cannot revoke these freedoms as long as you follow the license terms. Attribution — You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use. You may not use the material for commercial purposes.
Francesco Garufi: You studied the issue of Rennes-le-Château in all its extension in a book that will be published in the fall, published by Sugarco. Can you talk to me about it?
Mario Iannaccone: Yes, the book will be called Rennes-le-Château: a decipherment. From Arsène Lupin to the Code da Vinci. I am sure it will help to frame this story in a new way. There is a need for clarity. Too many continue to speculate on this story by inventing discoveries that are not there. Fortunately there is a core of authors who do not tiredly repeat the themes of the myth but who have done research: J.J. Bedu, P. Ferté, Mr. B. De Monts and then the researchers of the society of the "Friends of B. Saunière" like Boumedil and the others.
Francesco Garufi: Have you found something new?
Mario Iannaccone: I took a road that gave me a completely different idea of the myth of Rennes-le-Château. I use the word "myth" on purpose. Before reaching conclusions, I verified on serious sources everything that is usually stated about historical events, facts and characters. I had many surprises, I was forced to review many false premises, continuously repeated as if they were true. Finally, further down the road, I discovered that the myth of Rennes-le-Château hides something even more fascinating than I myself thought. Even if it is something "human".
Francesco Garufi: Try to tell us something, then.
Mario Iannaccone: The myth of Rennes is composed of many stories linked in an often artificial way. There is its prehistory, the geographical and nationalist mysticism of France; then the story of Bérenger Saunière; then the story of Alpha Galates; the history of the Priory and finally the current New Age development. They are often independent episodes, linked together through narrative "fittings" based on forcing, omissions, fabrication of false and real lies. The labyrinth of Rennes, the apparent impossibility of getting to anything certain, derives precisely from the forced connection of different stories and an infinity of "signals" in a single narrative. As for the historical facts, we consider the life of Saunière. It has literally been fed with forgery, from the 1950s until today. Even Lincoln's last books present photographs that are clearly the result of forcing, to say the least. I allude to the photograph of the Fontes des Amantes and the photograph of the unknown priest on his deathbed. The church of Rennes, then is constantly the subject of "delirious" interpretations.
Saunière was kind of hot-headed. A difficult man. He arrived in Rennes, quarrelled with the country's republicans. He was noticed by the police because of unclear political activities that included collecting money. It was part of a secret or at least very reserved sodalitium.
Francesco Garufi: Let's stop on this, what activities were they?
Mario Iannaccone: A group of priests and laity was politically engaged in activities that today we would call subversive: support for the nobility that supported a pretender to the throne of France. If you count that these suitors - several succeeded between 1883 and 1909 - resided outside the borders of France, you will immediately understand the delicacy of the matter. It was about supporting the enemies of the Republic. That's not all, of course, the activity of Saunière and his friends, also included the fight against Freemasonry that then engaged a certain part of the French clergy with publishing houses, magazines and a thick cultural activity.
Francesco Garufi: But according to many Saunière was a Freemason.
Mario Iannaccone: In more than forty years no one has managed to produce a single card that proves a Masonic, para-Masonic, Martinist or similar affiliation of Bérenger Saunière. The so-called proofs of the symbolism of the church are childish: the devil, the via crucis, the hermetic symbolism and everything else. In many cases, people who support these things should simply deign to open a few more books. Or take a tour of Catholic churches. Regarding Saunière's alleged affiliation to some "esoteric" order (understood in the common meaning of magical-religious), everything proves exactly the opposite. Bérengere Saunière, his brother Alfred, Èmile Hoffet were passed off as Freemasons, esotericists while in reality everything proves that they fought with conviction against these realities. Strange mockery: today they are remembered for the opposite of what they were. In the book, I clarify the reasons for this mockery, of this deliberate overthrow, of this damnatio memoriae of many characters in the story.
The Church and the French Freemasonry, especially the Great East were then two institutions in open struggle with each other. Not only in France, but also in Italy, Germany and other countries. In France, however, the government men, largely Freemasons of the Great East, advocated a policy totally adverse to the Church and priests, as well as, obviously, to the Monarchy. In those years the Concordat of Napoleon was being dismantled, which had already reduced the prerogatives of the Church. Schools, educational institutions of all kinds, real estate, (such as Villa Betania) entrusted to third-party entities were taken away from it. This caused resistance. The trial lasted from the 1880s until the eve of the First World War. After the First World War, one of the two sides will prevail over the other, and not only on the "material" aspects but on the influence on society; the other will be forced to defend, in retrospect. Not only in France, but throughout Europe, at least. Obviously, at the time of Saunière, the Monarchy was seen as the only brake on this process that a part of the Catholics of the time considered not only unjust but even diabolical. The pope made appeals, dramatic tones were contained in the Nobilissima Gallorum Genus. The priests felt committed to the fight against the Republic and against Freemasonry that then (as today) in France went hand in hand. This is not my yielding to conspiracy, this. It's official history, just read the works published by eminent scholars of Masonicism to realise it. The Chévallier of the monumental Historie de la Franc-Maçonnerie Française, for example, calls the Freemasonry of this period eglise de la Republique, no less, the "church of the Republic", as it inspired ministers and government men.
Bérenger, in short, fought against that Republic that he represented as a devil, as "the" devil, Satan, crushed by the sign of the cross. Asmodeuos has nothing to do with it, he was invited by unshrewd historians.
Francesco Garufi: Many read the devil-four angels complex as an alchemical symbol.
Mario Iannaccone: It should be clarified that alchemical symbology, as a metaphor for internal operations, is not automatically foreign to the Catholic Church. The first generations of Jesuits used it abundantly in their works, especially in France and Bohemia. Above all, I repeat, among the Jesuits. And both Bérenger and Alfred gravitated around centres of Jesuit spirituality, let's not forget it. In addition, the four angels behind the holy water house make the sign of the cross in the way taught to Bernardette Soubirous by the Virgin of Lourdes, recommending wide gestures to her. Exactly the ones that angels do. We cannot go into the merits of the symbolism of the church. In my study I interpret the church of Santa Maria Maddalena and its adjacent as a real legitimist temple. I was careful not to get carried away by the imagination, like many fellow rennologists. I based myself on the use, Scriptures and documents of the Catholic Church.
Francesco Garufi: If I understand correctly, do you rule out that Saunière was an esotericist?
Mario Iannaccone: However, we need to understand the definitions: "esotericism" is a modern word, in a sense an invention of the nineteenth century. If you allude to esoterism as it is properly understood, the one linked to Christian gnosis, Freemasonry or magical traditions yes, I would exclude it. Saunière was a traditionalist Catholic, linked to the cult of the Sacred Heart, the Virgin Mary and the Immaculate Conception. But there has always been a "Catholic esotericism"; with this meaning we can understand what was once called "sacred hermeneutics". So, if it is intended in this sense, this kind of "esoterism" has been part of his culture, albeit in a marginal way. Saunière and the environment of the legitimists close to him were imbued with the monarchical nationalist mysticism, which went back to Saint Hildegarde of Bingen, through Nostradamus, to reach the many Catholic seers - the so-called private prophets - of the nineteenth century. The alleged esoteric symbolism of the church must be understood in an orthodox sense: a symbolic Catholic, with millennial veins. Which has nothing, to be clear, of the "heretical". In fact, it seems that many worshipers of the "myth of Rennes-le-Château" know more about lodges than Christian churches. Hence the false problems they raise.
Francesco Garufi: What about that ex-libris that represents Asmodeus chained by the angel.
Mario Iannaccone: It doesn't appear before the end of the eighties. Where does it come from? Who materialised it? Schellenberger and Andrews, apparently in the book The Tomb of God. The book that claimed that the tomb of Jesus was hidden under Mount Cardou. That ex libris was used to connect the devil of Saunière to the Hermetic Gate of Rome. A hoom to which many tunas have been bit. Nothing connects, in reality, Saunière, to the ex-libris. As well as the famous collage with the figures of the magicians and the Child Jesus: an illustration taken from a course of spiritual exercises, carried out in the year of the 1891 evangelisation mission. The game is tiring: you "find" documents that help raise some interest around books, or you force the interpretation of authentic documents to the point of impossibilty.
Francesco Garufi: We continue to talk about Saunière.
Mario Iannaccone: We know that he was a monarchist, a legitimist of granite faith. On this, I spread out in the book, clarifying historical details that have never been touched until now. The line followed by Saunière had representatives in Austria, then in Spain: every time a suitor died, another was chosen. However, it does not appear - as often said - that Bérenger was linked to a group that supported the candidacy of Naundorff, an alleged son of Louis XVI, around whom marginal movements arose, some of which were rather dark like that of the "Church of Carmel" of Vintras. In the same way, Saunière is linked to the heart of Parisian magical environments through "contacts" with occultists or esotericists such as Jules Bois, Papus, Joséphin Péladan, Emma Calvé, to say just the most famous. When you go to examine documents, period magazines, cards, biographical circumstances, autobiographies, however, these "contacts" vanish, they become unlikely. They are in fact voices created by art, during the editing of the fifties and sixties. Or maybe before. And here lies the great surprise, in fact the alleged presence at the table of Saunière of Emma Calvé, Maurice Leblanc and Henry Dujiardin-Beaumetz, the radical politician and Freemason, in the late nineties or early twentieth century, seems like an extraordinary mockery, a sort of posthumous revenge. Above all, Leblanc's presence is mocking. After a while you can invent any "bond". For combinator games any person can be "tied" to celebrities, through the famous "degrees of separation". It is a well-known fact, which certain writers of popular esotericism make great use of to posthumously bring together people they have never seen in their lives.
Francesco Garufi: What did this political activism lead to?
Mario Iannaccone: Nothing. To a suspicious collection of funds that involved several clergymen of the diocese of Carcassonne. Every dream of bringing a Bourbon back to the throne of France vanished in the aftermath of the First World War. But already around 1900 the prospect was politically very remote. The legitimists had divided into many factions, each with their own suitor. With the war, the last, real, reals of Europe were wiped out (with the only exception of Spain) the legitimacy vanished. The analysis of the symbolism and iconology of the church of Rennes proves that Saunière really believed in the next redemption of the "satanic republic", as the French state was defined in the legitimist newspapers; that the Pope would be returned to the Papal State, and that a Christian King would restore the monarchy and the social Kingdom of Christ.
Francesco Garufi: What role did Alfred Saunière play in this story?
Mario Iannaccone: A much more important role than thought. Let's say he stepped on important people's feet. Also committing crimes. Some conspicuous passes of money between Alfred and Bérenger can be explained in this picture. One can advance, with good documentary and circumstantial support, a certain question regarding Alfred... a question that would explain much of the noise that came after.
Francesco Garufi: What are you referring to?
Mario Iannaccone: To something he did, which has already raised the attention of esoteric scholars. We say a "traffic of documents" related to the history of Freemasonry.
Francesco Garufi: You can't tell us everything yet. All right. But according to your reconstruction, Alfred was an anti-Masonic militant like his brother. I remind you, however, that according to many authors, he was certainly a Martinist and a Freemason.
Mario Iannaccone: Yes, starting from the books of Gérard De Sède to those of André Douzet or the Web of Gold of Guy Patton, this supposed "truth" is repeated. It is based solely on the statements of De Sède and the rumour that Alfred frequented a certain "Marquise Du Borg du Bozas" and the Du Borg family, (always called a "famous "family of martinists"). First of all, the fact that a member of a family enters some so-called "initiated" society does not automatically mean that the whole family is "initiated". For collective initiations we have to wait, a few more years according to what many new agers tell us. Moreover, the Du Borg were Martinists before the Revolution when, to be clear, Joseph de Maistre, the champion of counter-revolutionary traditionalism, was also a Martinist. So the "martinism" of the Du Borg proves nothing. After the Revolution, the members of this family were indeed well-known legitimists. This shows that once again hasty and tendentious reconstructions have been made. Then who says that Alfred was a lover of the marquise? Alfred Saunière was probably a drinker, he had children with a certain Salieres, was suspended from any assignment and it seems that he died an alcoholic. These are aspects of his life. But he was not a Freemason, nor a Martinist. If it had been, something would have already been discovered. The dozens of rennologists who tour France and the surrounding countries (not excluding Italy) as beaters of the wild boar hunt, would have found something. Moreover, no one can know if he was a lover of this marquise. This is a story reduced to concierge, to traffic of rumours. Alfred was an anti-Mason militant and for this he paid dearly. He annoyed high dignitaries, important people. Books related to the story that I'm alluding to came out.
Francesco Garufi: Were there consequences?
Mario Iannaccone: Of course. And that's the point. A group of writers, linked to the Freemasonry of the Great East, the "Egyptian" one of Memphis-Misraïm and other trends, learned - certainly through police reports - of the activity of these activists and began to mock their mysticism of monarchical France. One, in particular, Maurice Leblanc, the author of the cycle of novels dedicated to Arsène Lupin, reasoned more or less this way: "those priests are waiting for the Grand Monarch who will bring the Monarchy to the throne and establish the social Kingdom of Christ? Well, for now they will have to settle for the thief Arsène Lupin as Grand Monarque." And, as a joke, to give an extra level of meaning to his novels, he also put a ciphered joke of French monarchism into it. It is complicated to summarise because it is dozens of novels in which Leblanc foreshadows much of what would have happened in the myth of Rennes-le-Château and exposes the geographical mysticism of France. Leblanc composed a refined, extraordinary tun. He knew the tradition of the Catholic prophetism of the Grand Monarch that attributed to France a messianic value similar to that which the nation had attributed to itself during the French Revolution, but with a Counter-Revolutionary sign.
Francesco Garufi: I need a point. How did Maurice Leblanc know all these things about Saunière and his friends?
Mario Iannaccone: Is it enough for you if I tell you that he was the brother-in-law of a Minister of the Interior? Moreover, all these things were discovered by Patrick Ferté fifteen years ago. For what happened later, there is overabundant evidence (in the book it will be exposed) that Pierre Plantard, born in 1920, was co-opted in the environment of artists, hermetists, freemasons and writers, who contributed to the mockery of Maurice Leblanc against those who claimed to bring the king back to the throne, who had stepped on the feet of eminent Freemasons and who had fooled themselves with the Police. Plantard knew that a number of Catholics, lay people and priests, including Bérenger and Alfred Saunière, Monsignor Arsène Billard, Antoine Gélis, certainly Henry Boudet, had been noticed and had ended up in Leblanc's allusions. During and after the war he began to play with these themes with his light and deep way.
Plantard founded Alpha Galates in 1942, at the age of twenty-two, but behind him there were prestigious characters. Alpha Galates group was neither ultra-Catholic nor Catholic, as we often read. It was a group of the Christian gnosis, one of those preparatory movements of the New Age in a sense. It was inspired by the "Atlantis" movement by Paul le Cour, which had links to the spiritualist Freemasonry of the Lyon line. With the end of the war, Plantard was fine for a while. He was waiting for the opportunity to make himself known. My impression is that, with the anti-Semitic public appeals and in favour of Marshal Pétain, he burned himself. He exposed himself while his mentors remained in the shadows. The meaning of his appeals, the sense of Alpha Galates, is all internal to a split born within the Great East of France and the rebirth of the Rectified Scottish Rite, an issue that would be too long to rebuild here.
Plantard played the classic "straw man", at that time. Very young, he was allowed to act openly, while his inspirers (all identifiable though) remained in the shadows. In a way, after that it became unpresentable. His mentors all died by the 1940s and he found himself alone. He had to start his "career" all over again in neo-chivalric environments. In 1947, when the activity of FUDOSI, a federation of all "initiatory" groups, moved to Paris, Plantard tried to accredit his group of esoteric studies. But he didn't succeed. He was a seer, probably ended up in jail for "abuse of credulity" as Paul Smith discovered. He was still linked to environments of the so-called gnostic-Christian. So the turning point: in 1956 he responded to the appeal of General de Gaulle who called the French to nationalism, to the cross of Lorraine, to Joan of Arc and founded the Priory of Sion.
Francesco Garufi: How important is the politics of those years to understand the story of the Priory of Sion?
Mario Iannaccone: The politics of those years is certainly an important background for the history of the Priory. In those years, France, treated more or less as a losing nation, risked being deprived of part of its sovereignty. The "globalist" (I'm writing this just to make myself understood) who was acting then was Jean Monnet, a Freemason, today considered one of the fathers of the European Union. He was opposed by De Gaulle who was an inspirer of nationalism and who was thundering against the "synarchic projects" that wanted to depress France. De Gaulle rekindled the mysticism of France, the Europe of the Fatherlands against the project of Monnet's supranational structures. And what did Plantard do immediately after De Gaulle's appeals? He founded the Priory of Sion in Annemasse with his friends Du Fagot and Bonhomme. Not far away was the town of Sion, in Switzerland. This messieur Bonhomme, long believed to be a nickname (bonhomme stands for "cathar") revealed himself many years later, saying that he had nothing to do with Plantard for many years. And that his name was Bonhomme. Plantard founded this order (a private association, regulated by the 1901 law, in reality, like all non-canonical "orders") complete with statutes and magazine. While waiting for more companies, he used this association to defend the tenants. He called himself Chyren as the Monarch of the late times of Nostradamus. In short, he got too it. Meanwhile, he earned his living as a technical designer. In 1958 he supported De Gaulle in the committees that had to re-elect him. Elected De Gaulle looked for other ways to give prestige to his "order". Between France and Belgium, it is known, there are many Neo-Templar orders. It was a competitive market, then as now.
Until the intuition came. With his enigmatic style, between the serious and facetous, he began to present himself as the heir of the Merovingians. Being heir to such a dynasty would have given him an advantage over the many Grand Masters of competing orders. Richardson found traces of one of these conferences right at Saint-Sulpice.
Francesco Garufi: Why the Merovingi?
Mario Iannaccone: The Merovingians were a dynasty lost in the mists of history that gave them a wide possibility of manoeuvre. Close to Germanic and Celtic culture. Also very suitable for the "druid spirituality" to which Plantard seemed to be inspired at times. Moreover, as Ferté explained, and as Leblanc and his Arsène Lupin knew well, they were linked in a thousand ways to the geographical mysticism of France. There are other reasons: legends that the Merovingians, the menorah of the Temple of Jerusalem that - according to French newspapers of the time - even interested the Israelis about thirty years ago. Plantard's masterpiece is the fakes. Going back to the origins of the drawings that reproduce most of the engraved stones that fall within this story, it turns out that they are conjectures, hypotheses, drawings composed from memory based on the memories of the old people of the country. Let's not talk about the many "documents", and the Serpent rouge, full of allusions to the nationalist and geographical mysticism of France, attributed to suicides named in crime news. [...]
© 2018 Mariano Tomatis Antoniono