The Thirteenth Apostle (28 page)

“Did you find anything relating to the thirteenth apostle?”

“The words ‘thirteenth apostle' or ‘apostolic epistle' don't appear in any interrogation. But now I know what we are looking for, there are two details that have drawn my attention, and I can't understand them. Philippe le Bel himself drew up the accusation of the Templars in a letter addressed to the royal commissioners on 14th September 1307, one month before the big round-up of all the members of the Order. It's kept in the stacks, I copied it out this morning.”

He bent down and picked a sheet of paper out of his bag.

“I'll read you his first accusation: ‘Here is a bitter thing, a deplorable thing, most assuredly horrible, a detestable crime…' What was it? ‘That the Templars, when they enter their order, deny Christ three times and spit on his face as many times.'”

“Oho!”

“Then, from Friday 13th October 1307, until the final interrogation of Jacques de Molay on the stake on 19th March 1314, one question is asked again and again: ‘Is it true that you deny Christ?' All the Templars, however great the severity of the tortures inflicted on them, acknowledge that, yes, they reject Christ. But that no, they do not reject Jesus, and that it is in the name of Jesus that they joined the militia.”

“So?”

“So that's exactly what the Nazoreans said – the same ones whose texts Origen was able to consult in Alexandria. We
know that this was the teaching of their master, the thirteenth apostle: if his epistle is capable, all by itself, of destroying the Church, if it must be
everywhere destroyed
as the Coptic manuscript demands, it is not only because it denies the divinity of Jesus – many others did the same after it – but because, according to Origen, it contains
proof
that he was not God.

“Might the Templars have been aware of the vanished letter of the thirteenth apostle?”

“I don't know, but I will say that in the fourteenth century Templars get themselves tortured and killed because they proclaim the same doctrine as the Nazoreans, and they confirm this choice by a ritual gesture – spitting at Christ. There is perhaps a second hypothesis” – Nil rubbed his forehead. “These men were for a long time in close contact with Muslims. The rejection of any god other than Allah recurs again and again in the Koran, and don't forget that Muhammad himself knew the Nazoreans and quotes them on several occasions…”

“What does that mean? You're mixing everything up!”

“No, I'm linking disparate elements together. It has often been said that the Templars had been influenced by Islam: perhaps, but their rejection of Jesus's divinity does not originate from the Koran. It's more serious than that: if you look through the accounts of the interrogations, some of them admit that the authority of Peter and the twelve apostles has, in their view, been transferred to the person of the Grand Master of the Temple.”

“The Grand Master? So is he a sort of successor of the thirteenth apostle?”

“They don't say it in so many words, but state that their rejection of Christ is based on the person of their Grand Master, whom they consider to be an authority superior to
the Twelve and the Church. It's just as if a hidden apostolic succession had been transmitted down the centuries, parallel with that of Peter. It originated with the thirteenth apostle and was then based on his Nazoreans, and then, after their extinction, on this mysterious epistle.”

Nil took another swig of bourbon.

“Philippe le Bel levelled a second serious accusation against the Templars: ‘When they enter their order, they kiss the man who receives them – the Grand Master – at first at the bottom of his back, then on his belly.'”

Leeland burst out laughing.

“Gosh! Queer Templars!”

“No, the Templars were not homosexuals, they took a vow of chastity and everything indicates that they respected it. This was a ritual gesture that took place in the course of a religious ceremony, a solemn and public affair. This gesture allowed Philippe le Bel to accuse them of sodomy, since he didn't understand it – while it certainly had a highly symbolic meaning.”

“Kissing the backside of the Grand Master and then going round and kissing his belly – a symbolic ritual, in a church?”

“A solemn rite to which they attached great importance. So what meaning did this gesture have for them? At first I thought they were venerating the chakras of the Grand Master, those crossroads of spiritual energy that the Hindus locate in the belly and… the backside, as you put it. But the Templars did not know about Hindu philosophy. So I have no explanation, except this one: a gesture of veneration towards the person of the Grand Master, the apostle whose authority in their eyes supplanted that of Peter and his successors. Thus they seem to have attached themselves to another tradition, that of the thirteenth apostle. But why a kiss on that precise spot? I don't know.”

* * *

That evening, Father Nil could not go to sleep. Questions spun round and round in his head. What did that sacrilegious gesture, which had sullied the memory of the Knights Templar for ever, actually mean? And above all, what relation was there with the letter of the thirteenth apostle?

Again, he turned over in his bed, and the springs of the mattress creaked. The next day he would be going to a concert. A welcome change.

66

Paris, 18th March 1314

“One last time, we adjure you to confess: have you rejected the divinity of Christ? Will you tell us the meaning of the impious ritual of admission into your Order?”

At the tip of the Île de la Cité, the Grand Master of the Temple, Jacques de Molay, had been hoisted onto a heap of faggots. His hands were bound under his white mantle bearing the red cross. Opposite him was Guillaume de Nogaret, the Chancellor and partner in crime of King Philippe le Bel. The people of Paris had amassed on both banks of the Seine: was the Grand Master about to recant at the last minute, thereby depriving the curious of a choice spectacle? The executioner, legs apart, was holding a flaming torch in his right hand, and had only one small move still to make.

Jacques de Molay closed his eyes and recalled the whole memory of his Order. It had begun almost two centuries earlier, in 1149. Not far from this stake where he was about to die.

* * *

The day following the trip to Paris of the knight Esquieu de Floyran, Grand Master Robert de Craon had urgently summoned an extraordinary chapter of the Order of the Temple.

In front of the assembled brothers, he had read aloud the letter of the thirteenth apostle, in the copy that had just miraculously reached him. It contained the undeniable proof that Jesus was not God. His body had never risen, but had been buried by the Essenes, somewhere on the edge of the desert of Idumaea. The author of this letter said that he rejected the testimony of the Twelve and the authority of Peter, whom he accused of having accepted that Jesus be deified in order to seize power.

The Templars were transfixed, and listened to him in a deathly silence. One of them stood up and said in a hoarse voice:

“Brothers, all of here have lived for several years in contact with our Muslim enemies. Everyone knows that their Koran rejects the divinity of Jesus, in terms exactly similar to this apostolic letter, and that this is the main reason for their fierce hostility to Christians. We need to bring this letter to the knowledge of Christendom, so that Jesus's true identity can finally be revealed: this will for ever put an end to the pitiless war that sets Muhammad's successors against Peter's successor. Only then will the two groups be able to live peacefully together, proclaiming as one that Jesus, the son of Joseph, was not a god but an exceptional man and an inspired guide!

Robert de Craon weighed the terms of his reply with care: never, he told the assembled brothers, never would the Church renounce its founding dogma, the source of its universal power. He had another plan; it was adopted after lengthy deliberation.

* * *

In the following decades, the wealth of the Templars grew amazingly. It was enough for the Grand Master to meet a prince or a bishop, and donations in land and precious metal would immediately come flowing in. This was because the successors of Robert de Craon had an unassailable argument at their disposal.

“Give us the means to fulfil our mission,” they said, “or we will publish an apostolic document in our possession that will destroy you by totally undermining the Christianity from which you derive your power and all your wealth.”

The kings and even the popes themselves paid up, and opulent Templar commanderies sprung up everywhere. A century later, the Templars were acting as bankers for the whole of Europe: the letter of the thirteenth apostle had become the sluice gate of a river of gold, flowing into the coffers of the Knights.

But the source of such wealth, the object of every covetous desire, was at the mercy of a theft: that fragile piece of fabric needed to be put somewhere safe. The physical person of the Grand Master, the continuer of the thirteenth apostle, one who like him held his ground against the Christianity founded by Peter, had become untouchable. One of them remembered the way prisoners from the East concealed their money by placing it in a metal tube that they slipped into their entrails and thus kept on their bodies, safe from every theft. He had a golden case made, placed in it the copy of the epistle, carefully rolled up, inserted it in himself, and from then on carried it around within his very body, that was now doubly sacred.

So that nobody would suspect the secret attached to the epistle, all trace of it, even the smallest, had to be effaced. The seneschal of the commandery of Patay heard of an inscription
that had been carved in the church of Germigny, which was at that time on land belonging to him. A scholarly monk claimed that this inscription contained a hidden meaning that lurked in the remarkable way the text of the
Symbolon
of Nicaea had been transcribed. He said he was capable of deciphering this code.

The seneschal summoned the monk and shut himself away with him in the church of Germigny. When he came out, his face was grave, and he immediately had the monk taken under escort to his commandery at Patay.

The scholarly monk died there the next day. The slab was immediately covered with a layer of coating, and its mysterious inscription vanished from people's eyes as well as from their memory.

The ritual of admission to the Order of the Templars now included a curious gesture, which novices accomplished religiously: during the mass and before receiving their great white mantle, each of them had to kneel before the Grand Master and kiss first the bottom of his back, and then his belly.

Without knowing it, the new brother was in this way venerating the letter of the thirteenth apostle, that was pursued by the hatred of the Church whose existence it imperilled. Now it was contained in the entrails of the Grand Master, who would extract it from its precious case only to obtain, by threat, even more land and even more gold.

The treasure of the Templars lay in the cellars of several commanderies. But the source of this treasure, its inexhaustible source, was transmitted by each Grand Master to his successor, who protected it with the rampart of his own body.

* * *

On the stake, Jacques de Molay lifted his head. They had inflicted the torture of water and fire on him, and had put him on the rack, but they had not searched his entrails. With a mere contraction he could feel in the most intimate part of himself the presence of the gold case: the epistle would disappear with him, the sole weapon of the Templars against the kings and prelates of a Church that had become unworthy of Jesus. In an astonishingly strong voice, he replied to Guillaume de Nogaret:

“It was under torture that some of our brothers confessed to the horror of which you accuse me. In the face of heaven and earth I now swear that everything you have just said about the crimes and the impiety of the Templars is pure slander. And we deserve death for not having managed to resist the suffering inflicted by the Inquisitors.”

With a smile of triumph, Nogaret turned to the King. Standing in his royal loggia that looked out over the Seine, Philippe raised his hand: at that very moment the executioner lowered his arm, plunging the lighted torch into the faggots of the stake.

The sparks flew into the air, right up to the towers of Notre-Dame. Jacques de Molay still had the strength to cry:

“Pope Clement, King Philippe! Before one year is up, I summons you to appear before the tribunal of God to receive your just punishment! Be accursed, you and those who will come after you!”

The stake collapsed in on itself, in an explosion of sparks. The heat was so great that it reached the banks of the Seine.

At the end of the day, the priest from Notre-Dame came to pray on the smoking remnants of the pyre. The archers had deserted the spot; he was alone and he kneeled down. Then he jumped in amazement: in front of him, amidst the hot ashes,
an object was gleaming in the light from the setting sun. With the help of a branch, he pulled it towards him: it was a nugget of gold, gold melted by the heat of the brazier, gleaming and tear-shaped.

It was all that remained of the case that had contained the letter of the thirteenth apostle; all that remained of the last Grand Master of the Temple; all that remained of the real treasure of the Templars.

Like many other people, the priest knew that the Templars were innocent, that their terrible death was in fact a martyrdom: devoutly, he pressed his lips to the golden teardrop, which seemed to him to be still burning even though it was only tepid. It was the relic of a saint, the equal of all those who have given their lives for Jesus's memory. He entrusted it to the envoy of Pope Clement, who died within the year.

After many perilous adventures, the teardrop later fell into the hands of a Rector of the Society of St Pius V – who managed to discover its meaning, since not all the Templars had perished at the start of the fourteenth century. Nothing is more difficult to suppress than memory.