The Merovingians and the Holy Grail
The hypothesis of a mythical descent from Jesus and Mary Magdalene, derived from the decipherment of the Holy Grail as Sang Real, was the discovery-revelation of the best-sellers of a few years ago, starting from the famous The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail by M Baigent - G. Leigh - H. Lincoln up to the more recent Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown.
These books and other studies have theorized the survival of a messianic lineage, which arrived in France with the landing of Magdalene and Joseph of Arimathea on the coasts of Provence, which would then merge into the lineage of the ancient Merovingian sovereigns, the main descendants and guardians of this great secret. A compelling interpretation of the meaning of the Grail, which leads it back to the Gnostic and apocryphal nucleus of early Christianity, far from the late identification with the chalice of the Last Supper, later desired by the Church.
A later research seems to prove the historical truth of this theory: this is what emerges from the book 'El grial secreto de los merovingios : la supervivencia de la sangre real' by Spanish researchers C. Cagigal and A. Ros, released in 2005.
The book, a long excavation work on the historical sources of the time, through the registers, documents and archives jealously guarded in the monasteries and libraries of southern France, allowed the two authors to reach incredible discoveries on the story. The Merovingian dynasty, unlike other royal families in the history of Europe, is characterized by the mysterious mists in which its legendary origins are shrouded, as well as its sudden disappearance.
The founder Meroveo (448-58) was considered a hero halfway between human and divine, whose memory was rooted in the sphere of myth rather than that of reality; even subsequent rulers were surrounded by an aura of sacredness, with true priest-king functions which they maintained, despite the conversion of Clovis (481-511) to Christianity. The political end of this house is sadly known: a real conspiracy allowed the palace butlers to usurp its power with the collaboration of the Church, establishing in its place the dynasties of the Pipinids and the Carolingians. What is less known is the historical end of the Merovingian lineage: according to official sources, in fact, in 751, with the deposition of the last king Childeric, it would thus disappear into thin air, with the same nebula with which it appeared, without leaving any more tracks. Or at least that's what we thought. The studies of Ros and Cagigal constituted a breakthrough on this point, revealing that there is actually evidence of the historical continuity of the Merovingians in the kingdom of France. The most important noble families of the south, constituting the most powerful feudal lordships of the Midi in the 10th-13th centuries, such as the Williamite family of Provence and Burgundy, the Raymondine of the county of Toulouse and that of the Trencavel viscounts of Albi, Carcassonne and Béziers, retain traces, in his own dynastic genealogy, of ties of direct descent with members of the Merovingian lineage. A concrete testimony of the survival of this sacred lineage which, again according to the two writers, would reach the present day, since a branch of the Toulouse dynasty has survived to this day: that of the Toulouse-Lautrecs, of which the famous nineteenth-century painter.
The Albigensian Crusade
In the Middle Ages, the geographical area of southern France, from Aquitaine to Provence, included all the lands of the Langue d'Oc in which the splendid Occitan civilization flourished, famous for the great activity of its courts where the lyric poetry of the troubadours developed. Theoretically dependent on the King of France (a Capetian from the end of the 10th century), these regions were in practice autonomous, governed by local powers of a feudal order. The most important lords of the region were the counts of Toulouse, of the house of Saint-Gilles, sovereigns of that area between the Pyrenees to the south-west, the Massif Central to the north, the Jura and the Alps to the east and the Mediterranean Sea South.
In the heart of their territory, within a triangle whose vertices were the cities of Albi, Carcassonne and Béziers, the dominion of another branch of nobles was established, the Trencavels, who became lords of those lands with the title of viscounts. In 1170 the two lineages became related thanks to the marriage between the sister of Count Raymond VI of Toulouse, Adelaide of Burlats and Viscount Roger II Trencavel; from their union Raimondo Ruggero Trencavel was born. Shortly after, between the end of the 12th and the beginning of the 13th century, these two families comitals had to face the most ferocious attack ever launched in Europe by the ecclesiastical institution: the Albigensian Crusade, one of the bloodiest pages in the history of the Church. For the first and only time a crusade took place, that is, a war in the name of Christ, against the Christians themselves: the heretics of southern France, the Cathars, also called Albigenses in reference to the city of Albi, which was the first to see the arrival of Saint Bernard of Clairvaux who came down from the north to preach against them.
The architect of this undertaking was Innocent III, pope from 1198 to 1216; from the very first years of his pontificate he was interested in the question, which he defined as the negotium pacis et fidei of Languedoc: the true meaning, however, of this "affair of peace and faith" implied for the pontiff intentions that were anything but obvious. Contrary to what may commonly be believed, in fact, the main aim of the crusade was not to exterminate the heretics, but to overthrow their "supporters", those who had allowed the public and social existence of the Cathars.
The decretal Vergentis in senium that the Pope issued in 1199 speaks clearly in this, in which the fautores haereticorum were equated with heretics, therefore punishable with the same penalties. But who was it actually? Obviously Languedocian nobles, first and foremost Count Raymond VI of Toulouse and his nephew Viscount Trencavel. Can we then hypothesize that the Pope knew well the secret origins of these families, descendants of the Merovingians, and feared their presence on the political scene of France, more than he actually feared heretics? We cannot know for sure, but we can certainly say that the Albigensian Crusade acted in such a way that, by taking possession of their castles, the Crusader barons replaced the local lords and occupied their command positions. What happened was a real political maneuver to reorganize a ruling class that had become "inconvenient" for the Church for various reasons.
The "armed wing" of Innocent III were precisely the nobles and knights coming from the north of France, belonging to a culture antagonistic to the southern one and different in language - d'oïl - customs and mentality. The first target was not the county of Toulouse, as Raymond VI had initially attempted a last-ditch rescue effort by collaborating with the crusaders, a project he soon abandoned to fight decisively with his people in the resistance. Consequently, the initial attack was launched against the other great political representative of Languedoc and, not surprisingly, equally descendant of the Merovingian lineage: the Viscount of Carcassonne.
Raimondo Ruggero Trencavel
On 22 July 1209 the crusade began with one of the most violent attacks in the military history of the Middle Ages: the so-called "Massacre of Béziers". The chroniclers, from Peter of Vaux-de-Cernay to Caesar of Heisterbach, all underline that that was the day on which the feast of Saint Mary Magdalene occurred; the extermination took place in the city's cathedral church of the same name: strange coincidences of fate! A few months later the army headed to the heart of the Viscontia, to Carcassonne, in whose castle was the residence of Prince Raymond Roger Trencavel. A blond young man with a strong physique and high culture, he embodied the ideal of the perfect courtly knight celebrated by the courtly romances of the time; something more, however, made it particularly unique and special. In his person the two great lineages of Toulouse and the Trencavels converged; therefore according to the results of A. Ros and C. Cagigal, he could have represented the heir par excellence of the Merovingians, the only legitimate rulers of France.
Raised by the perfect Cathar Bertrand of Saissac, he grew up among the principles of the heretical faith. When the Crusaders attacked Carcassonne, he defended his city with extreme courage; he refused to abandon it and resisted together with the inhabitants. After several weeks, however, the siege began to become unsustainable, so the viscount decided to go and parley with the enemies; he left the walls and with a handful of his men reached the crusader camp. As soon as he entered the tent, however, he was treacherously captured and taken prisoner, then locked up in the tower of his castle. There he remained until, on November 10, 1209, he suddenly died at the age of only twenty-four. The cause: dysentery, it was said; but the fact is that, from that day on, rumors did not stop circulating that Raymond Roger Trencavel had actually been killed in his cell by the emissaries of the Pope or Montfort, the military commander of the crusade.
This tragic episode was never clarified, but some interesting details emerge from one of the sources who tells us about it. It deals with the Chanson de la croisade albigeoise, co-written by two authors contemporary to the facts: one a crusader cleric, William of Tudela; the other, on the contrary, a passionate supporter of the Occitan cause, the Anonymous continuer. The capture of Carcassonne is narrated in the first part; here Guglielmo tells us that R.R. Trencavel, after having entered the crusaders' tent, handed himself over to them as a "voluntary hostage": "qu'el se mes en ostatges de grat e de talant" (chap.III, lassa 32), which sounds very unlikely since, a few verses earlier, the poet shows us the worried viscount, who speaks with an intermediary from the enemy army, an acquaintance of his, making him promise to guarantee him safety during this negotiation: «si ieu podia anar en l 'ost segurament» (lassa 31,v.21). Then, mysteriously, there is a gap in the text, precisely in the crucial scene that should narrate what happened inside the tent.
A few verses later is the story of the death: it is said that it was dysentery, but the verse preceding this statement is omitted and there are ellipses to make us doubt whether there was a "copy-paste" in the text (lassa 37, vv. 16-17). In conclusion: out of a total of approximately 2,700 verses, in the first part of the Chanson, the only gaps, omissions and repetitions occur only in the moments of the story of the episodes concerning the disappearance of Trencavel. If the case cannot be believed, there can only be one explanation: an external intervention tampered with the original text, erasing the truth about the killing of the young viscount. This hypothesis is supported by the fact that the cleric-poet, despite being in favor of the crusade, had the merit of never hiding its atrocities, as well as praising the greatness of the Occitan lords. For this reason it is very probable that William, as a meritocratic chronicler, had narrated the killing of Raimondo Ruggero without veils, but that some other ecclesiastical scribe intervened, on orders from Rome, to cover up the story by disguising the text. If this is how things went, there are strong reasons to believe that the houses of Toulouse and Trencavel really kept an important secret, representing a danger for the Church and the monarchy of France that needed to be eliminated.
Early Christianity in France
In all this bloody affair, there is a silent but omnipresent protagonist who has remained in the shadows until now: Catharism. Dualist heresy which spread in Occitania and northern Italy in the mid-12th century, was founded on the myth of the double creation: the spiritual, celestial one of the Good God and the inferior one, of matter, derived from an evil God, the Prince of this world.
Men are half creatures: in their soul they retain the divine essence of the angelic creatures that were in the beginning, but in their body they experience the drama of the fall; the human aspiration must therefore be to free oneself from the yoke of the flesh, through abstinence from everything that is or generates matter (therefore animal foods, sex in marriage, etc.), to return to a condition spiritual purity.
The sources of this doctrine are the New Testament, in particular the Gospel of St. John, and a series of Byzantine apocrypha such as the Vision of Isaiah, the Gospel of Nicodemus and above all the Interrogatio Iohannis (also called Secret Supper), a revelation which Jesus would have done this to John during the Last Supper. Now, in the south of France this heterodox faith first spread within the aristocratic class, starting from the matriarchs (women, in fact, had a leading role in Catharism, being able to also become ministers of the sacraments, or "perfect ”) and first of all in the family of the counts and above all of the viscounts Trencavel.
An important detail is the heraldic coat of arms of the house of Toulouse: the so-called "Occitan cross". It is an ancient symbol that refers to the sacred numbers of three and four, that is, the union of the human plane with the divine one, and together with twelve, another number with many symbolic values. It officially appeared on the seals of Toulouse in 1211, but its origins date back much further, apparently to Raymond IV of Saint-Gilles, who brought it to Languedoc upon returning from his first crusade to the Holy Land, in 1099. It is probable that it was the Templars who suggested the use of this coat of arms to the count; what is certain is that later it was also adopted by heretics, in fact its other name is "Cathar cross". We can assume, then, that there were much deeper links between Catharism and the dynasties of the past than appears on the surface; if these nobles really had Merovingian origins and the Merovingians were the heirs of a messianic lineage, considered as the greatest secret of the Christian tradition of origins, then they may have been the inspirers of the Cathar heresy. Or at least, if we hypothesize an external arrival of Catharism in Languedoc, there must have still been a fusion in solidarity with the comital ideology, in the common denominator of a faith dating back to ancient Gnosticism, that is, to a current that went back to original Christianity.
Here the "treasure" of the Grail, buried for centuries in the mountains of the Midi of France, could have resurfaced in the 12th century thanks to the meeting between these two important spiritual realities, thus giving life to one of the most splendid Western cultures: civilization Occitan. A society of high artistic and literary level, open to freedom of thought, as well as religious tolerance and the cordial hospitality of its courts. A civilization, however, which was quickly erased by the destructive fury of the Church of Rome, first with the Albigensian Crusade and finally with the tribunal of the Inquisition - which was born there for the first time - so that no trace of the Merovingian tradition remained nor in France nor elsewhere.
