Templars and Cathedrals tour to medieval France

August 31-September 14, 2003

Early Booking Price, before April 30, 2003: $3825

Regular Price, from April 30, 2003: $4275

Single Supplement $515, Deposit $600

Tour Director: Professor Peter Gravgaard

Introduction

The Order of the Knights Templar or, more precisely, the Order of the Poor Brothers-in-Arms of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon, was founded by the Church Council of Troyes in 1128, and promoted by Saint Bernard of Clairvaux.

Around 1270 the Templars possessed in France about one thousand commanderies (Manors) with dependant properties, farms and granges.

By 1307 their possessions had increased to two thousand commanderies through the generosity of Christian believers who wanted to support them and their fight for the Church in the Holy Land.

During the lifetime of the order about two thousand churches were built for French parishes, as opposed to monastic buildings. The order provided excellent soldiers for the Frankish kings of Jerusalem, and it established itself all over Europe: France, Portugal, Castile and Leon, Aragon, Majorca, Germany, Italy, Apulia, Sicily, England and Ireland.

In 1291 St Jean d'Acre in the Holy Land was conquered by the Arabs, and the kingdom of Jerusalem ceased to exist.

In 1305 the King of France, Philip the Fair, had his man, Bertrand de Got, elected pope and installed him in Avignon as Pope Clement V. With his assistance, Philip the Fair could now attack and put an end to the Order of the Temple. In 1307 the King arrested all templars in France, indicted them on more or less trumped-up charges, tortured them, executed them, confiscated the property of the Temple and burnt at the stake the Grand Master, Jacques de Molay, having, it seems, crucified him first.

Jules Michelet, the great French historian, described the fall of the Order of the Temple as "the greatest cataclysm of the civilization of the West in the Middle Ages".

Itinerary

Day 1 (August 31, 2003)

You fly to Paris, France. (Please ask your travel agent for a flight arriving at Charles-de-Gaulle Airport on Day 2, between 09:00 hours and 12:00 noon.)

Day 2 (September 1, 2003)

You arrive at Charles-de-Gaulle Airport where your tour director will meet you. (Look for a man carrying the PLANTAGENET FLYER in his hand). If you don't see him, please go to the MEETING POINT on the Arrivals Floor and wait for him there. He will take you to your hotel near Senlis. WELCOME DINNER.

Day 3 (September 2, 2003)

Senlis has been a royal city since the time of the Merovingian kings (Clovis, 482-511). Royal, ecclesiastical and conservative, it had at some time seven churches and three great abbeys; the Knights Templar established an important commanderie here, and when Abbot Suger began promoting a new kind of church with the building of St Denis, he and his royal master (and pupil-King Louis VII) promoted the construction of Notre Dame de Senlis. It is the first cathedral in France to be dedicated to Mary, Our Lady, the Mother of God.

Senlis is a lovely little town with old cobbled streets and an atmosphere fitting for the setting of Jean Anouilh's romantic play, The Lovers of Senlis.

From Senlis we will take you to Amiens where you will see another Notre Dame cathedral, this one built between 1220 and 1236, and the largest cathedral in France. It is striking by the fine sculptures on the west gable, among them the 'Beautiful Christ' and Saint Firmin, and by the remarkable screen; it is also outstanding for connoisseurs of religious relics by possessing the skull of John the Baptist.

From Amiens we will drive you to St-Quentin where we will spend the night.

Day 4 (September 3, 2003)

Today you will see not less than three major churches: the first one is the Notre Dame Cathedral of Laon in Picardy; Laon - like Senlis - is a town Time has forgotten (and Tourism has not yet discovered). From the eighth to the tenth century Laon was the capital of France; Hugh Capet then moved the capital to Paris. That Laon was the capital of France during the time when the Vikings attacked France fiercely - they besieged Paris from 885 to 886 - is due to Laon's excellent defensive position on a spur of rock; also it is far away from the coast and from the river Seine where the longships of the Vikings had access. From the fifth century the city got a bishop; in the tenth century it acquired excellent schools; in the eleventh century the best school of theology in France was located in Laon, and Peter Abelard (the philosopher who wrote Sic et Non, and who became the lover of Heloise) travelled here to study under Anselm of Canterbury.

This was a tumultuous period: in 1112 the bishop was murdered, the city burned, and ten churches went up in flames. After this catastrophe another cathedral was called for, and the present masterpiece was finally built over a period which stretched from 1160 to 1310. The cathedral has seven towers of which the two on the facade are populated with huge statues of oxen, the beasts of burden that hauled the stones up the steep hill. Legend has it that two oxen that died under their labor were replaced by two white celestial beasts who finished the task and then winged back to heaven.

We will visit the cathedral, walk through the old city and see the chapel of the Knights Templar in the Museum Gardens. It is an octagonal building in the Templar tradition, going back to the shape of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem.

From Laon we continue to Reims. There was an important Roman city here which the Emperor Hadrian honored by calling it the 'Athens of the North'. Even more important for Reims was that Clovis, King of the Franks, after his victory over the Allemani and probably inspired by his wife, was baptized by Bishop Remigius (Saint Remi) at Reims on Christmas Day 497. Henceforth almost all French kings were crowned in Reims Cathedral which was built between 1210 and 1310. It was here that Joan of Arc brought her Dauphin in 1429 to be anointed and crowned.

Because of its ritual importance for the French national identity Notre Dame of Reims receives a special consideration (together with Chartres, Notre Dame de Paris and Amiens). It was spared by the Men of the French Revolution in 1793, but badly damaged by German gunfire during the First World War; later it was, however, completely restored by the patient efforts of the French architect, Henri Desneux.

The remaining major church of Reims is the great Basilica of Saint Remi which we will also visit to see the tomb of St Remi who baptized Clovis in the cathedral.

From Reims we drive to Coulommiers to see our first Templar commanderie, before we drive to Nogent-sur-Seine and our hotel.

Day 5 (September 4, 2003)

You may remember Chapter 18 of Umberto Eco's Foucault's Pendulum, where Colonel Ardenti enthuses over Provins:

"Have you ever been to Provins? A magic place; you can feel it even today. Go there. A magic place, still redolent of secrets. In the eleventh century it was the seat of the Comte de Champagne, a free zone, where the central government couldn't come snooping. The Templars were at home there; even today a street is named after them. There were churches, palaces, a castle overlooking the whole plain. And a lot of money, merchants doing business, fairs, confusion, where it was easy to pass unnoticed. But most important, something that has been there since prehistoric times: tunnels. A network of tunnels - real catacombs - extends beneath the hill." (Umberto Eco, Foucault's Pendulum, p. 125.)

Ardenti's enthusiasm comes, I think, via Eco, from his source, Louis Charpentier's book about Les Mysteres templiers, (see Bibliography). Charpentier suggests the theory that when Benedict of Nurcia founded his monastery of Monte Casino in Italy (he died in 547), he already knew that this civilizing process would ultimately produce Chartres Cathedral. According to this theory the Crusades were planned; the Normans had been educated in the cathedral schools of the great Norman monasteries to be sent out to conquer Italy; the sons of Tancred of Hauteville, Robert Guiscard and Roger, the future Great Count of Sicily, had been groomed for their future role as conquerors of Apulia and Sicily, so that their conquests would be stepping-stones for a future conquest of the Holy Land, enacted by the Western Powers during the Crusades. In this theory the Knights Templar are the spearhead of History, reaching for Palestine to search the ruins of King Solomon's Temple for the Ark of the Covenant and the Tables of the Law.

This is a history of communications and missions, preferably secret ones, secret societies, executing secret missions of great importance, reaching over long distances in space and time. The Templars were officially the servants of the pope and of the church; during the Crusades their public function was to guard the roads for the pilgrims to the Holy Land; in this history the function of protection is only a trivial camouflage: their real mission is to find in the ruins of Solomon's temple what Charpentier calls 'the formula of the Universe'. They are to search for that knowledge, that wisdom, that power which Moses had acquired from the Egyptians, and which had constituted the superiority of Islam, and which Christianity now hoped to acquire. This knowledge, comparable to that of Faust - the grip that holds the thousand forms - is to be found in the Ark of the Covenant, written on the Tables of the Law.

The Faust of this mythology is St Bernard of Clairvaux, the Templars are the Pretorian Guard which he is giving to the Christian Church. Ardenti's 'tunnels in Provins' is a symbolic geography which expresses their secret actions in the dark, the political threats of the hidden organisation which suddenly might surface in a decisive and definitive strike against all common values of democracy and civilization. Notice that it is our fear of being exposed to a pre-emptive strike by the forces of 'Terrorism', creating a fait accompli, which is the major danger of being exposed to the hidden threats of the forces of secrecy; our fear might cause in us, the defenders of democracy and civilization, a McCarthyite lack of generosity which, creating injustice, will strengthen the enemy. The Templars are the forerunners of all modern secret services, and a mirror-image of all political secret organizations, Communist, Fascist, and others. They are images of our fears and of the instruments we create to combat those fears.

The importance of Provins in the story of the Templars is not only that it holds the symbolic geography of the tunnels, but that, because of its wealth - the Fairs of Champagne made Provins the third most prosperous city in France, after Paris and Rouen - the Count of Champagne was thus one of the most powerful men in France and most unlikely to abandon his country, his wife and his children to join the men who would become the core of the organization of the Templars and who were at this moment excavating the stables of Solomon's temple in Jerusalem, but that is what he did.

Count Hugh of Champagne and Hugh of Payns, the future chief of the Templars, had been together in the Holy Land in 1104 or 1105; on returning to France, Count Hugh contacted Etienne Harding, the abbot of the Citeaux Monastery, the mother house of St Bernard's Clairvaux, and Etienne Harding then began to organize the study of the holy Hebrew texts with the help of rabbis recruited in Burgundy. Finally, in 1118, Hugh of Payns, Andre of Montbard (the uncle of Bernard of Clairvaux) and seven other knights travelled to Jerusalem where they presented themselves to the king, Baudouin II, and were granted permission to reside in the ruins of King Solomon's Temple, officially to help keep the peace in Jerusalem. Hugh of Payns had participated in the First Crusade and already knew the king who raised no objections when, from 1118 to 1125, it seems that the knights excavated the basements of the Temple.

Then, in 1125, Count Hugh of Champagne abandoned country, wife, and children to join the nine knights in Jerusalem. Here the ten knights remained until ordered back to Champagne by Bernard of Clairvaux who seemed to be in charge. It was he who had a Church Council convened in Troyes for the purpose of establishing the Order of the Knights Templar.

The Preliminaries to the Templar Rule are sensational: "Bien a oeuvre Damedieu avec nous et notre Sauveur Jesus-Christ, lequel a mande ses amis de la Sainte Cite de Jerusalem en la Marche de France et de Bourgogne, lesquels, pour notre salut et l'accroisance de la vraie Foi ne cessent d'offrir leurs ames a Dieu."

"Well has worked our Lord-God with us and our Savior Jesus-Christ, who has ordered his friends from the Holy City of Jerusalem to the March of France and Burgundy who, for our salvation and the increase of the true Faith do not cease to offer their souls to God."

So God and we and our Savior - in that order- have worked well - so we have succeeded in doing what we set our to do. Much speculation has been devoted to this text. Did the Templars find the Ark of the Covenant and the Tables of the Law or the Holy Grail? If they did find the Ark, then it seems later to have disappeared to Ethiopia (see Graham Hancock, The Sign and the Seal). Saint Bernard's Preliminaries seem to testify to some important achievement, to retrieving some lost knowledge or science. Louis Charpentier compares the mathematics of the Great Pyramid of Cheops with that of Chartres Cathedral and concludes that Chartres was not copied from Cheops, but that the two monuments testify to there being two applications of the same science. The same key has been used; a transfer of knowledge has taken place. From the Pyramids to Moses, who has engraved it on his tables; from Moses to David, then to his son, Solomon ('informed about all the wisdom of the Egyptians', Kings), who built the Temple. Here the Nine First Templars found the knowledge and brought it to the Order of Citeaux who was then able to cause Chartres to be built.

The Templars used their new knowledge in different fields. They promoted peaceful, non-feudal endeavors: commerce, agriculture, communication, road-building, bridge-building. Their temple was not only church-building; it was also building a new society, educating a new humanity. They educated craftsmen, the Companions of the Tour de France. They promoted justice; they fought against slavery: one prior of the Temple counselled King Henry III of England, "You will rule as long as you are just", and Saint Bernard warned Count Thibaud of Champagne, "The sword has only been given you to defend the weak and the poor." Against this background one can well believe the story that the Templars helped the citizens of Courtrai to win the Battle of the Golden Spurs against the army of King Philip the Fair in 1302.

Today when we drive from Nogent-sur-Seine we will start with a visit to La Saulsotte to see the remains of the Templar commanderie in the hamlet of Resson: there is a St Magdalen chapel from the twelfth century. From this Templar place to another: we drive to Provins to see the old city with its fortifications, its great Tour de Cesar, Templar-style with central tower and four small spires (like the pictures of the Paris temple), also the Grange-aux-dimes (the tithe-barn) and - if you feel adventurous - we might explore the maze of underground tunnels, so dear to Umberto Eco's Colonel Ardenti.

From Provins we drive to Troyes where we will find our hotel. The rest of the day will be spent exploring the medieval half-timbered town of Troyes.

A few words about Troyes: Troyes, Champagne (and Navarre) became part of the Crown of France when Jeanne de Navarre, the last countess of Champagne, married Philip the Fair, future king of France. Until this happened Troyes was the capital of a major French land and a prominent urban center with an inportant intellectual life. Count Henri I, the Liberal, married Marie de France, the daughter of Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine. Marie de France (or de Champagne) lived from 1145 to 1198 and introduced the courtly manners of her mother and the troubadour literature of her grandfather, William IX of Poitou, to the court of Champagne. She wrote fables and lais (short narrative poems). Other major writers are Chretien de Troyes, 1135-1183, who wrote the novels about Percival and Lancelot, the historians Villehardouin (who wrote the History of the Conquest of Constantinople - the fourth crusade - and Joinville who wrote the History of Saint Louis (King Louis IX. Theology: Solomon Rachi, ca 1040-1105, interpreted and translated the Bible and the Talmud. There is now a Rachi Institute and Memorial.

In 1119 Hugues de Payns created the Knights Templar, perhaps inspired or ordered by Bernard of Clairvaux who had the rules of the Order approved by the Church Council of Troyes in 1128. Bernard also founded the monastery of Clairvaux. There are important churches in Troyes: we will visit the Cathedral of St Peter and St Paul, the Church of St Magdalen, the St Urban's Basilica.

If the Knights Templar can still be said to be present in modern French society, it is through their disciples, the Companions of the Tour de France, the still-existing organisation of craftsmen. In Troyes they have organized the impressive Musee de l'Outil et de la Pensee Ouvriere (the Tool and Social Philosophy Museum).

Day 6 (September 5, 2003)

From Troyes we will drive via the motorways and Sens and Auxerre to Vezelay where we visit the great Saint Mary Magdalen Basilica. The monk Baidilon stole Mary Magdalen's relics in Aix-en-Provence and brought them to Vezelay where the great basilica was initiated in 1120. It was here at Vezelay that St Bernard of Clairvaux in 1146 preached the Second Crusade in which Louis VII of France and his queen, Eleanor of Aquitaine, participated.

In this church several themes of this tour come together: St Bernard who can be said to be the godfather of the Order of the Knights Templar preached the crusade here in which they played such a prominent role, and in the narthex you will find representations of all the nations to which the Holy Spirit descended on the day of the Pentecost, among whom can be found all manner of people, real and fictional, - the question is to deternine to which of these two categories belong such people as the Panotii, men with huge ears who have been interpreted as Native Americans. If that is what they are, then their presence here might point to the possibility that somebody, the Norsemen, the Normans or the Templars, had been to Vinland, North America, had continued from there to South America, had met with Native Americans there, and had perhaps found silver in Brazil or Argentina (Silver Land) by sailing up the Rio de la Plata (the Silver River). From Vezelay we will drive to Beaune where we will find our hotel.

Day 7 (September 6, 2003)

This day we will begin with a visit to the Hotel Dieu, the exquisite late Gothic building which houses a charitable hospital. You will see here a celebrated polyptych, showing the Last Judgment by Roger van der Weyden. (Glorious in itself, but also interesting because it provides us with with the possible solution to a problem we will face later on the tour, i.e. when we visit the Sainte-Cecile Cathedral in Albi, where you will see a grand painting of the Last Judgment which, unfortunately, has been vandalized when they installed the organ; it is reasonable to assume that the Albi painting treated the same motif as the Beaune painting, so keep the van der Weyden picture in mind.

This day's program will consist in visits to three major churches - and time permitting - to one Templar castle. We begin driving from Beaune, west to Autun to see the cathedrale Saint Lazare. This church was built to house the relics of St Lazarus which were brought here ca 1000 from Provence - except his skull which somehow was aquired by the Eglise Saint-Lazare in Avallon around the year 1000. (There seems to have been a chaotic and undignified competition for the bodyparts of Mary Magdalen and her brother, Lazarus, who were then partitioned between some four different churches.)

The St Lazarus Cathedral in Autun possesses some of the finest sculptures of its period, often mentioned as the works of the Master of Autun; you must, in particular, be sure to see his tympanum depicting the Resurrection on the Last Day. The master whose name may be Gislebertus (or Gilbert) seems also to have created an "Eve taking the apple" (part of a door frame), an "The Angel waking up the sleeping Three Magi", and a "Virgin and Child fleeing to Egypt" (capitals).

From Autun we drive south to Paray-le-Monial to see the Basilica of Sacre-Coeur (which has nothing in common with the Paris phenomenon of the same name). The attraction of the Paray-le-Monial church is that this basilica was a smaller copy of the great abbey church of Cluny, as one writer has it: "the illustrious Romanesque abbey that was the religious, intellectual and artistic center of the Middle Ages". Paray was built by the same builders, artists and workers who built Cluny, at the same time. Paray-le-Monial is still there, while French demolition contractors have been making money from the time of the French Revolution to the nineteen-twenties by tearing down (dynamiting!) the grandest building of Christianity.

To arrive at the Abbatiale Saint Philibert (the Abbey Church of Saint-Philibert) we will take you to Tournus. The Saint Philibert is a Romanesque church rather more simple than Paray and Autun; it was built by the monks of Noirmoutier who had escaped first from the Vikings and then from the Hungarians, much like the English monks from Lindisfarne who carried the relics of Saint Cuthbert all over England until they finally found peace for him in the Durham Cathedral. From Tournus we will drive via Macon to Lyon. On the way - time permitting - we will stop to visit the castle of Arginy in Charantay where - according to J. Aubarbier & M. Binet - the major Templar treasure is hidden. Whatever we find here, we will stay the night in Lyon.

Day 8 (September 7, 2003)

We drive from Lyon via St-Etienne to le Puy-en-Velay to visit the Cathedrale Notre Dame. In this place there seems to have beeen from time immemorial a black stone which has been prayed to as God in a similar fashion to that of the Kabah of the Muslim in Mecca. At some time, and it is not clear when precisely, this stone has been replaced with a Black Madonna, the origin of which is also unclear. She might have been brought from the East by Louis VII or by Saint Louis, that is during the twelfth or thirteenth centuries. The statue was made of cedarwood which points to an Eastern origin; this became clear when, during the Revolution, on June 8, 1794, the Black Madonna was carted, like some counter-revolutionary reactionary, to cityhall where she had her nose cut off, before she was burned on the stake.

A first church was built here in the fifth century; a second church followed it ; the present church dates from the twelfth century. After the Crimean War a giant statue of Our Lady, Notre Dame de France, was cast from the bronze of conquered Russian guns from Sebastopol; it is twentythree meters high.

From le Puy we drive via Issoire to the Saint-Nectaire Church in the Auvergne. This is the most conservative type of church you are likely to see, at lest on this tour, born of a culture far away from all roads and invasions. South of here we will find another fascinating Templar hide-out: the grottoes of Jonas, near Saint-Pierre-Colamine. This is a cave-city, where the Templars sought refuge from the soldiers of Philip the Fair after 1307. From Saint-Pierre-de-Colamine we drive south to our hotel in Millau.

Day 9 (September 8, 2003)

Our program today will start with a visit to the plain of the Larzac which may correctly be described as the greatest Templar commanderie in France. This is a rocky and infertile area south of Millau, north of the Mediterranean, west of the Cevennes Mountains and east of Albi. An infertile area surrounded by other arid landscapes, the Badlands of France you might call it. The Templars seem to have moved into the Larzac soon after the founding of the order in the early twelfth century, and they might have had an early mission here, providing protection for the early pilgrims from France to Palestine who here had to traverse dangerous robber-infested areas on their way to the Mediterranean. The existence of la Couvertoirade (which we will visit) bears witness to this early function of the Templars here.

It is interesting to speculate on what the Templar possessions in and around Larzac might have led to, if Philip the Fair had not destroyed the Order of the Temple in 1307. In northeast Europe a similar historical drama was performed, when the Order of the Teutonic Knights acquired the territories between Pomerania and Novgorod, the present Baltic States of Esthonia, Latvia and Lithuania. These lands later became West Prussia and East Prussia, lands which would ultimately play a leading role in the unification of Germany in 1871 under Bismarck's leadership. It is conceivable that a similar absorption of France into a Templar state to that which actually happened when Prussia finally absorbed Germany in 1871, might have taken place, if Philip the Fair had not destroyed the Templars; however, there is room for a more optimistic scenario: if Jules Michelet, the great French historian, was right in saying that the destruction of the Order of the Temple was "the greatest cataclysm of the civilization of the West in the Middle Ages" then he must have thought that if the Templars had taken France in hand then a civilization that somehow synthesized the best aspects of Christianity, Islam and Judaism would have emerged: perhaps an idea of such a synthesis might be glimpsed from a study of Sicily under the Normans, but the utopian philosophies of the Freemasons should also be incorporated.

Another idea arises, if you remember that in the world of nations not all the possible players have necessarily arrived on the scene: Prussia would not have existed without the Teutonic Knights, but neither would Russia which is a creation of the Northern Crusades with the Teutonics and the Knights of the Sword as brutal midwives. And, considering Southern Europe, one might have imagined the Templars promoting a Southern France centred on Toulouse without the horrors of the Albigensian Crusade; and an Eastern Spain based on Barcelona might also have come into being.

This morning I hope we will be able to visit three Templar towns on the Larzac plain: la Cavalerie and Sainte-Eulalie-de-Cernon, and, finally la Couvertoirade. There are moments here - climbing up the 'rustic stone staircase' leading to the church in la Couvertoirade - when the feeling of having returned to the thirteenth century becomes overpowering. From the Templar towns of the Larzac we drive west to Albi to see the city which gave its name to the Albigensian crusade against the Cathar or Albigensian Heresy (who believed that the world was created by the devil, that salvation would be achieved by denying the present world, and by concentrationg on the future heavenly life after death. The Church of Rome was seen as an invention by the devil. The leader of the Crusade was Simon of Montford who proved, if it is possible, that the world in his version was indeed created by the devil. - I shall refrain entirely from giving examples of Simon of Montfort's cruelties which are unbelievable.

During our short stay in Albi we will visit the formidable Sainte Cecile Cathedral, built by the detested bishop, Bernard de Castanet, who taxed the blood out of the population to such an extent that the king himself interfered to stop him. Besides the church we hope to visit the Toulouse-Lautrec Collection in the Palais de la Berbie. From Albi we will drive to Toulouse where we will spend the night.

Day 10 (September 9, 2003)

This morning in Toulouse we will visit the greatest and most majestic of the churches in the South of France: the basilica of Saint-Sernin; this church is so grand, that, having seen it, we might leave the city; however, I think we must go and see the Eglise des Jacobins which has, at long last, been restored in the 1970s after a period of misuse (as a horse stable) which goes back to the time of the Revolution. Since this period of degradation has been terminated and remedied, one should be thankful. You will here find the tomb of St Thomas Aquinas, the great medieval philosopher.

From Toulouse we drive north to Moissac (via Castelsarrasin) where we will visit the extraordinary abbey church of Saint-Pierre. Two of the finest works of church art in the whole of France must here be admired: the cloisters and the southern gateway. These two pieces of ecclesiastic art date from about 1100, this is the time of Cluny, and it is possible to interpret this perfection of Romanesque sculpture together with the conquest of Jerusalem in the First Crusade as the two phenomena which together manifest a new spirit of Western self-confirmation.

This portal, this gateway, is not only meaningful, it is apocalyptic: the meaning is that of the Last Judgment; who passes through this gate is submitting himself to The Last Judgment. This is Jesus Christ as the Gate and the Way. And this is probably the first time that this moral acceptance of judgment is expressed in Architecture.

From Moissac we drive via Montauban and Villefranche-de-Rouergue to Decazeville and Conques where we will spend the night.

Day 11 (September 10, 2003)

Like Moissac which you saw yesterday Conques goes back to the time of the Merovingian kings, Clovis ruled 482-511. There was an early church here, but it was not until 866 that an enterprising monk, Ariviscus, transferred (stole) the remains of Sainte Foi from Agen to Conques where they can still be seen in the museum. This really put Conques on the map, and it became a stage on the Compostella Road and attracted many pilgrims and much money, so that the present church could be built between 1050 and 1133. The abbey and the church were in different dangers during the Wars of Religion, and during the Revolution when citizens from the town simulated a break-in, aided and abetted by a few ecclesiastics, thus hiding away the amazing treasures which the Revolutionaries would not have approved of. Especially the continued existence of the gold-clad Sainte-Foi statue is astonishing. But in terms of the state of the buildings serious losses began to take place: in the beginning of the 19th century the cloisters which had been erected by the great abbot, Begon III, 1087-1107, and which were, preumably, just as good as those in Moissac, these cloisters disappeared for lack of maintenance - after seven hundred years this is hardly surprising - still one would like to know if the antique dealers of France who at this moment had just despoiled the Manoir d'Ango in Normandy had known of the parlous state of the cloisters of Conques? The reason for this suspicion is that the antique dealers might have found out about Conques the same way they seem to have found out about Ango, by following what the new inspector of the "Monuments Historiques" reported about his new finds: Prosper Merimee was the first inspector of the institution and might not have known that he was leading the predators to his "trouvailles". Prosper Merimee did save Conques by writing a strong recommendation to his minister, so that works of consolidation were started, this was in 1837. My theory is that the antique dealer also read Merimee's recommendations - he was also the author of a successful historical novel: La Jeunesse de Charles IX, and a friend of other well-known writers such as Victor Hugo and George Sand.

This morning we will visit the church with its tympanon with the Last Judgment, the museum with the amazing Sainte-Foi- doll-reliquiry and lovely little ecclesiastical village. If la Couvertoirade is a container holding a breath of un-contaminated air from the crusades, then Conques, in a similar fashion, holds an atmosphere of the Cluny monastery which formulated the plans for those same crusades.

From Conques I will take you via Figeac, Gramat, Martel, Souillac to Domme (where we will see the 13th century Porte des Tours, two round guardhouse towers flanking the archway. This is where the Templars from the Perigord were imprisoned by the king's men from 1307 to 1318, and where they left most important grafitti, depicting crucifictions, battle scenes, a grail, and Joseph of Arimathea collecting the blood of Christ, an Ouroboros, and curses of Pope Clement V and of King Philip the Fair, the two destroyers of the Order of the Temple.

From Domme we will drive - time permitting -to Beynac to see the interesting castle which King Richard Lionheart seems to have occupied for a while. And after Beynac - again time permitting - we will drive to the commanderie of Andrivaux, northwest of Chancelade, west of Perigueux. I hope to have the time to explore Andrivaux with you. - Our next stop will be our attactive hotel in Brantome.

Day 12 (September 11, 2003)

This day will begin with a pleasant walk in the lovely little town of Brantome which is surrounded by the oxbow of the river Dronne, next to the ancient Benedictine abbey. There is a charming water park with a weir and a dog-legged bridge, a watermill, terraces and restaurants facing the river; on the weir ducks inspect the happenings. Brantome was founded about 780 by Charlemagne, the emperor, but the main building of the monastery was rebuilt in the eighteenth century: it is now the townhall. The ruling spirit here is Pierre de Bourdeilles, abbot of Brantome, who, when after a fall with a horse, he could no longer be a soldier, a courtier, and a lover, retired here as the abbot of the monastery and wrote such informed memoirs as The Life of the Galant Ladies and The Life of the Great Captains. The first of these, especially, is a French classic, an insider's view of the love life of the court of the Valois kings of France. A forerunner of the Kinsey report, perhaps, but a very much better read.

One would want to spend days and days here, but you will have to come back here to do that: today we will first drive to Bourdeilles to see the outside of the abbot's family castle. After that we will take you to the Templar chapel of Cressac, near Blanzac, south of Angouleme. Here you will be surprised to find a small chapel decorated with frescoes showing scenes from the Battle of la Bocquee, near the castle of Krak des Chevaliers, 1163. This battle saw Muslim forces under Nour el Din fighting a Frankish force composed of Byzantine soldiers, Templars, and Hospitallers; it is described by the chronicle-writer, Guillaume de Tyr.

From Cressac we drive to La Rochelle where we will find our hotel.

Day 13 (September 12, 2003)

La Rochelle is the place where History and Mythology collide hard: according to some this is a small fishing village which was founded in the 10th century, and which gradually developed into a port on the French west coast; according to others this is the port which the Knights Templar developed as the landing place for the transport of silver they imported to France from Brazil in Latin America. This is fascinating, but cannot be proved: according to this theory (see especially Louis Charpentier's Les Mysteres Templiers) the port of La Rochelle is the meeting place for seven major Templar roads beaming out from La Rochelle to Barfleur on the Cotentin peninsula; to Abbeville in the Bay of the Somme; to Angers and to Paris; to Troyes and the Lorraine; to Geneva and Switzerland; to le Puy and Valence on the Rhone; to Bordeaux and Narbonne on the Mediterranean. If it can be proved that these roads did exist at the time of the construction of the harbor or even were built to serve the trafic to and from the harbor, then it would be easier to believe that the Templars did import silver from mines in South America. The argument that Columbus had not yet discovered America has no importance any longer; we know that the Norse Vikings (i.e. Leif Erikson) had been to Newfoundland around 1000 - Helge Ingstad established the presence of the Norse buildings at l'Anse-aux-Meadows in 1962. If the Vikings had found Vinland, there is no reason why they should not have followed the coast all the way to Brazil. The Vikings came from Scandinavia as did the Normans who occupied Normandy (mostly Danes and Norwegians), and many Templars were Normans so what Leif Erikson knew would be known to the Templars.

It is interesting that if you consider the place names of Northern Latin America, then the name Guyana appears in British Guyana, Dutch Guiana and French Guiana. This name comes from French Guyenne which is a derivation from Aquitaine, i.e. the coastal area of southwest France. This would fit in with a presence in this part of South America of French speakers from Southwest France, so possibly Templars. And looking at place names, Latin America is full of names associated with silver: Argentina means the Silver Land, and the Rio de la Plata means the Silver River.

That the Templars should search for silver fits in with their role as pioneers in banking: Europe lacked silver at the time of the Templars, and would look for it wherever it could be found.

The fascinating aspect of these speculations is that due to their skills in building, finance and management the Templars might have been able to provide a much needed support in building the French cathedrals. There is a striking discrepancy between the often very small communities and the grand building projects they were capable of completing - the knowhow of the Templars might explain that within relatively few years the grandest and finest buildings in Europe could be built, and that the necessary manpower could be found or trained.

This takes us to another major Templar achievement: that they trained the class of craftsmen in France: the creation of the Companions of the Tour de France or of the Duty of Liberty and ultimately the coming of the Freemasons is due to Templar initiatives. Remember the Tool and Social Philosophy Museum in Troyes.

We will go for a walk through La Rochelle, visit the harbor and see the beautiful townhall where in 1627 the mayor, Jean Guiton, directed the resistance against Cardinal Richelieu (once more: remember Alexandre Dunas, The Three Musqueteers).

From La Rochelle we drive to Chinon to see the great castle where the Templars were imprisoned for years, and where they have left enigmatic inscriptions behind them. Jacques de Molay, the Grandmaster, was imprisoned here - his signature can be found on a wall -before he was sent to Paris to be burned on the stake at the Ile de la Cite. Later on Joan of Arc slept one night in the same tower at Chinon before she met the Dauphin and was trusted with fighting for France against the English.

From Chinon we drive via Tours to our hotel near the commanderie of Arville.

Day 14 (September 13, 2003)

Today we drive to Arville to see one of the best preserved commanderies in France. Next we drive to Chartres Cathedral to visit the church which many consider to be the most beautiful church in the world. (There is a fascinating book on Chartres by Louis Charpentier who has also written on the Templars, see our Bibliography.) From Chartres we drive via Anet where you will have a glimpse of the glorious renaissance chateau, built for Diane de Poitiers by Philibert Delorme who also built the Chenonceax "Grande Galerie" for her. Now he is a magnificent architect! Anet was badly molested by the vultures of the Revolution.

If there is time we will take you to Giverny to see the Claude Monet Museum with Park and Water Garden. And if, a great IF, there is time we wil take you to see Gisors with another famous Templar Castle. Next we will drive to our hotel where we will have our FAREWELL DINNER.

Day 15 (September 14, 2003)

It is the last day. We will take you to the Charles-de-Gaulle Airport for your return to the USA. Remember that when you make your flight reservation before the beginning of the tour to ask your travel agent for a flight departing no earlier than 2 PM (or 14.00 hours).

BON VOYAGE!

Bibliography

René Alleau, Les Sources occultes de nazisme, Paris 1969
William Andersen, The Rise of the Gothic, London, 1985
M.Baigent, R.Leigh, H.Lincoln, The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail, London 1982
Georges Bordonove, Les Templiers
Edward Burman, The Templars
John Charpentier, The Templars
Louis Charpentier, Les Mystères templiers, Paris, 1967
Henri Corbin, Temple et contemplation, Paris, 1980
Daniel-Rops, St Bernard
Umberto Eco, Foucault's Pendulum
Wolfram von Eschenbach, Parzival
Fulcanelli, Le Mystère des Cathédrales
René Grousset, Histoire des Croisades
Graham Hancock, The Sign and the Seal
John James, Medieval France; a Guide to the Sacred
Architecture of Medieval France, London, 1987
Emma Jung & M.L.von Franz, The Grail Legend, London, 1986
Christopher Knight & Robert Lomas, The Hiram Key
Jacques de Mahieu, Les Templiers en Amérique, 1981
Marion Melville, Life of the Templars
Jules Michelet, Le Procés des Templiers
Louis Pauwels & Jacques Bergier, Le matin des magiciens, Paris, 1960
Jules Piquet, Des Banquiers au Moyen-Age: les Templiers
Steven Runciman, A History of the Crusades
George Sand, Le Compagnon du Tour de France
Gérard de Sede, Les Templiers sont entre nous, Paris, 1962
Chrétien de Troyes, Le Roman de Percéval ou le Conte du Graal
Jean de la Varende, Les Gentilhommes