Holy Blood, Holy Grail (35 page)

And the Stuarts themselves were deposed forcibly by the houses of Orange and

Hanover.

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

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

According to both the leading Frankish chronicler and to subsequent tradition, Merovee was born of two fathers. When already pregnant by her husband, King Clodio, Merovee’s mother supposedly went swimming in the ocean. In the water she is said to have been seduced and/or raped by an unidentified marine creature from beyond the sea bes tea Neptuni

Quinotauri similis’, a “beast of Neptune similar to a Quinotaur’, whatever a Quinotaur may have been. This creature apparently impregnated the lady a second time. And when Merovee was born, there allegedly flowed in his veins a commingling of two different bloods the blood of a Frankish ruler and of a mysterious aquatic creature.

Such fantastic legends are quite common, of course, not only in the

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

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

Templar blazon or between the shoulder blades.

The Merovingians were also frequently called ‘the longhaired kings’.

Like

Samson in the Old Testament, they were loath to cut their hair. Like Samson’s, their hair supposedly contained their vertu the essence and secret of their power. Whatever the basis for this belief in the power

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of the Merovingians’ hair, it seems to have been taken quite seriously, and as late as A.D. 754. When Childeric III was deposed in that year and imprisoned, his hair was ritually shorn at the pope’s express command.

However extravagant the legends surrounding the Merovingians, they would seem to rest on some concrete basis, some status enjoyed by the Merovingian monarchs during their own lifetime. In fact the Merovingians were not regarded as kings in the modern sense of that word. They were regarded as priest-kings embodiments of the divine, in other words, not unlike, say, the ancient Egyptian pharaohs. They did not rule simply by God’s grace. On the contrary they were apparently deemed the living embodiment and incarnation of God’s grace a status usually reserved exclusively for

Jesus. And they seem to have engaged in ritual practices which partook, if anything, more of priesthood than of kingship. Skulls found of Merovingian monarchs, for example, bear what appears to be a ritual incision or hole in the crown. Similar incisions can be found in the skulls of high priests of early Tibetan Buddhism to allow the soul to escape on death, and to open direct contact with the divine. There is reason to suppose that the clerical tonsure is a residue of the Merovingian practice.

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

One of the most sacred of Merovingian symbols was the bee; and King Childeric’s tomb contained no less than three hundred miniature bees made of solid gold. Along with the tomb’s other contents, these bees were entrusted to Leopold Wilhelm von Habsburg, military governor of the

Austrian Netherlands at the time and brother of the Emperor Ferdinand 111.2

Eventually most of Childeric’s treasure was returned to France. And when he was crowned emperor in 1804 Napoleon made a special point of having the golden bees affixed to his coronation robes.

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This incident was not the only manifestation of Napoleon’s interest in the Merovingians. He commissioned a compilation of genealogies by one Abbe Pichon, to determine whether or not the Merovingian bloodline had survived the fall of the dynasty. It was on these genealogies, commissioned by Napoleon, that the genealogies in the “Prieure documents’ were in large part based .3

The Bear from Arcadia

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

We could find little verifiable information about the true origins of the

Merovingians. They themselves claimed descent from Noah, whom they regarded, even more than Moses, as the source of all Biblical wisdom an interesting position, which surfaced again a thousand years later in European Freemasonry. The Merovingians also claimed direct descent from ancient Troy which, whether true or not, would serve to explain the occurrence in France of Trojan names like Troyes and Paris. More contemporary writers including the authors of the

“Prieure documents’ have endeavoured to trace the Merovingians to ancient Greece, and specifically to the region known as Arcadia. According to these documents, the ancestors of the Merovingians were connected with Arcadia’s royal house. At some unspecified date towards the advent of the Christian era they supposedly migrated up the Danube, then up the Rhine, and established themselves in what is now western Germany.

Whether the Merovingians derived ultimately from Troy or from Arcadia would now seem to be academic, and there is not necessarily a conflict between the two claims. According to Homer a substantial contingent of

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Arcadians was present at the siege of Troy. According to early Greek histories, Troy was in fact founded by settlers from Arcadia. It is also worth noting in passing that the bear, in ancient Arcadia, was a sacred animal a totem on which mystery cults were based and to which ritual sacrifice was made.” Indeed, the very name “Arcadia’ derives from

“Arkades’, which means “People of the Bear’. The ancient Arcadians claimed descent from Arkas, the patron deity of the land, whose name also means ‘bear’. According to Greek myth, Arkas was the son of Kallisto, a nymph connected with Artemis, the Huntress. To the modern mind Kallisto is most familiar as the constellation Ursa Major the Great Bear.

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

Given the magical, mythic and totemic status of the bear in the Merovingian heartland of the Ardennes, it is not surprising that the name “Ursus’ Latin for “bear’ should be associated in the “Prieure documents’ with the

Merovingian royal line. Rather more surprising is the fact that the Welsh word for bear is

“arth’ from whence the name “Arthur’ derives. Although we did not pursue the matter at this point, the coincidence intrigued us that Arthur should not only be contemporary with the Merovingians, but also, like them, associated with the bear.

The Sicambrians Enter Gaul

In the early fifth century the invasion of the Huns provoked large-scale migrations of almost all European tribes. It was at this time that the Merovingians or, more accurately, the Sicambrian ancestors of the Merovingians crossed the Rhine and moved en masse into

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Gaul, establishing themselves in what is now Belgium and northern France, in the vicinity of the Ardennes. A century later this region came to be called the kingdom of Austrasie. And the core of the kingdom of Austrasie was what is now known as Lorraine.

The Sicambrian influx into Gaul did not consist of a horde of wild unkempt barbarians tumultuously overrunning the land. On the contrary it was a placid and civilised affair. For centuries the Sicambrians had maintained close contact with the Romans; and though they were pagans, they were rlot savages. Indeed they were well versed in Roman customs and administration, and followed Roman fashions. Some Sicambrians had become high-ranking officers in the imperial army. Some had even become Roman consuls. Thus, the Sicambrian influx was less an onslaught or an invasion than a kind of peaceful absorption.

And when, towards the end of the fifth century, the

Roman empire collapsed, the Sicambrians filled the vacuum. They did not do so violently or by force. They retained the old customs and altered very little. With no upheaval whatever; they assumed control of the already existing but vacant administrative apparatus. The regime of the early

Merovingians thus conformed fairly closely to the model of the old Roman empire.

Merovee and His Descendants

Our research exhumed mention of at least two historical figures named Merovee, and it is not altogether clear which of them legend credits with descent from a sea creature One Merovee was a Sicambrian chieftain, alive in 417, who fought under the Romans and died in 438.

It has been suggested by at least one modern expert on the period that this Merovee actually visited

Rome and caused something of a sensation. There is certainly a record of a visit by an imposing Frankish leader, conspicuous for his flowing yellow hair.

In 448 the son of this first Merovee, bearing the same name as his father, was proclaimed king of the Franks at Tournai and reigned until his death ten years later. He may have been the first official king of

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the Franks as united people. By virtue of this perhaps, or of whatever was symbolised by his fabulous dual birth, the dynasty which succeeded him has since been called Merovingian.

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

Under Merovingian rule the Franks were often brutal, but they were not really a warlike people by nature or disposition. They were not like the

Vikings, for instance, or the Vandals, Visigoths or Huns. Their main activities were farming and commerce. Much attention was devoted to maritime trade, especially in the Mediterranean. And the artefacts of the

Merovingian epoch reflect a quality of workmanship which is truly amazing as the Sutton Hoo treasure ship attests.

The wealth accumulated by the Merovingian kings was enormous, even by later standards. Much of this wealth was in gold coins of superb quality, produced by royal mints at certain important sites including what is now