Les Dossiers Secrets Part 2: The Search for Meaning

 

Purpose?

“What did this all mean? What were the documents trying to accomplish? We should note that these depositions predate the publication, in November 1967, of Gérard de Sède’s book on Rennes-le-Château: "L’Or de Rennes, ou la vie insolite de Bérenger Saunière". The book was actually dedicated to Courtaly, the colleague of Saunière, whom we can trace as the true source of de Sède’s and Plantard’s interest in the story of Saunière.
In “Le Vrai Dossier de l’énigme de Rennes. Réponse à M. Descadeillas", Gérard de Sède begins his reply to criticism by pointing out that he did not begin his research not in 1965, as Descadeillas alleges, but in 1962. De Sède writes: “Why make such a travesty of the facts? Simply to insinuate that I know nothing about the country, that I have written my book in two years and especially – especially – that I could not have known and spoken to certain people that were witnesses and agents in the affair – and not the least – that still lived in 1962 but who were, because of their old age, dead in 1965.”
This “witness” is none other than Courtaly – but who is also described as “an agent”. Later, de Sède repeats the story that appeared in his first book, where he did an interview with Courtaly. Courtaly, in that interview, states that Saunière found a treasure, and that Saunière gave him a part of this, which was Visigothic and Merovingian pieces of money. Courtaly showed this to de Sède.

What, then, is the purpose of the deposition in the Bibliothèque Nationale of these documents? In my opinion, the documents were intended to be deposited in the library before the publication of the book. They were “preparation”, so that once the book was published, other things could be set in motion.
We should note that de Sède knew Plantard, as the two had co-operated in 1961 for the publication of a book on Gisors. We know that they both knew, spoke and interviewed Courtaly. According to some researchers, Plantard was also to receive a percentage of de Sède’s revenues from the first edition of the book, suggesting that Plantard was at the very least closely involved with the creation of the book, if not one of his co-authors.

Pieces of a puzzle

Several pieces chronologically fit and allow us to create a theoretical scenario. After 1958, Plantard is known to have come to the region of Rennes-le-Château and Rennes-les-Bains. In 1961, he co-operates with de Sède on a book on a possible Templar treasure in Gisors. Between 1961 and 1964, Plantard speaks to Courtaly. And here is where we begin to extrapolate: Plantard talks to de Sède about a new book, on a new mystery, that of Rennes-le-Château. De Sède interviews Courtaly for the book, so they can quote him. Courtaly dies. Over the next few years, Les Dossiers Secrets are deposited in the national library, coinciding more or less with the timeframe in which de Sède hands in his manuscript and the book is published. The book is then dedicated to Courtaly, as he was a major source of information for the book.

False parchments

Whereas the Secret Dossiers spoke about parchments, namely the genealogy of the Hautpoul family, which was linked with the presence of Merovingian descendents in France, de Sède spoke about two other parchments, which have since become extremely famous – in fact, too famous.
These are two Latin texts, copies from sections of the Gospels, which were the ones believed to be discovered by Saunière – dixit de Sède. Five years after the publication of de Sède’s book, an English actor-writer Henry Lincoln read de Sède’s book and was apparently able to realise that the parchments incorporated a series of ciphers. When he confronted de Sède with his reasoning, de Sède stated that he knew that the parchments contained ciphers and the two together went on to explain to the rest of the world this exciting – yet totally fabricated – revelation: that the parchments at the heart of the mystery contained a secret message.

Without going in too much detail, a cipher is there to protect a core message. “Tuo kool” is nonsense as such, but when we read it backwards, it reads “Look out”. The key would thus be to read messages backward. That is what ciphers are: messages that are gobbledygook are turned, via the application of a key, into a meaningful message, without people not in possession of the key unaware of what the message means.
In the case of the parchments, the coding was fivefold, using a series of two techniques, the so-called Vigenère Square and the Knight’s Tour. The keyword was no less than 128 letters long, and was the inscription of the tombstone of Marie de Nègre (in the cemetery of Rennes-le-Château). The result of applying the key to the code gives a message which in itself is a series of enigmatic references to “Dagobert II”, which we will not go into. In short, the “decoded message” is not clear at all and provides more questions than answers. Experts have also stated that the message itself is a useless piece of material to be decoded, for the techniques and keys involved mean that the recipient must already have known the message that he was about to decode – making the entire exercise pointless, begging the question why it was sent in the first place. Experts also stated that the mechanism used in the cipher was useless, as it was only able to decode this single message.

Expert coders

But that is not all. De Sède claimed he had not created this document. De Sède discovered, before Lincoln arrived, that the parchments that he had shown in his book contained a cipher. De Sède claimed that the decodation had been given to him by an expert code-breaker in the military. But expert code breakers make it clear that this is extremely unlikely. For one, the method is so complex and requires certain specific knowledge, that the code is virtually unbreakable. Furthermore, in my opinion, even if an expert code breaker was able to come up with a decodation that lead to the enigmatic “decoded message”, he would think he has gone wrong somewhere, as the final result still does not make sense, suggesting a further cipher needs to be applied, or the used methods and keys were wrong.
How it is possible that Lincoln deciphered the message is a key question that few have asked, though it is clear that de Sède’s book provided all the clues and material necessary. That in itself is an intriguing coincidence… In short, it is extremely unlikely that De Sède could not have known about the cipher when he placed all the pieces of the puzzle in his book.

The pillar in which the parchments were allegedly found

So: here we have parchments, which de Sède claims are genuine, the ones Saunière allegedly found, that contain a cipher, which somehow just “happen” to talk about lost Merovingians. Lincoln would go on to write “Holy Blood, Holy Grail”. The book is a wholesale buy-in of the claims of Plantard, who between 1972 and 1982 (date of publication) would continue to play the “Merovingian descent” card. Lincoln and co. bought this – and added a Jesus and Mary Magdalene element to the mixture – because of the “decipherment”.
So: on the one hand, documents about Merovingians and Rennes-le-Château were placed in the Bibliothèque. On the other hand, a book was written about Rennes-le-Château which discussed some of the documents, but was initially not endorsing them. It is a matter of record that the Merovingian line is a minor part of De Sède’s book. Nevertheless, the book does contain two parchments that are then decoded and – miraculously – speak of a Merovingian connection. But we then find out De Sède had been aware of this “coded message” before Lincoln arrived on the scene, and when asked to explain how he knew, he claims “military codebreakers” helped him.

True origins?

Later, de Cherisey would state – some argue he “admitted” – that he was the one who created the parchments and then created the cipher. Though in my opinion the parchments were fabricated as part of the “Dossiers Secrets” exercise and were purposefully not deposited in the library, but instead included in De Sède’s publication, I do not believe that de Chérisey was the sole creator of them – though he may definitely have been involved, e.g. he may have “requested” these documents to be fabricated.
Why do I not wholesale accept de Chérisey? The ciphers and methodology used suggest we are in the presence of an expert code breaker. Not only did the parchments need to be created, the other ingredients, such as the key, needed to be created too.

It is my conviction that one person, or a small group of people working together, created all known ingredients of the Dossiers, plus cipher. This work was done at the same time as De Sède’s book, which formed an integral part of the entire “exercise”.
The creation of the Dossiers leads us to consider a German-Swiss person as its author. So, the “real author” of this material is a person or group of people, involving at least one German-Swiss person, knowledgeable of and able to work with ciphers. Secondly, he or they have access to Plantard and via Plantard to de Sède – though it is of course entirely possible that de Sède was a core member of this group, which we will label the “DSC”, the Dossiers Secrets Coders.

Rumours

There is ample evidence – too much to list here – that leads to the conclusion that the parchments are fakes. We have one person, de Chérisey, a friend of Plantard, who claims to have fabricated them. We have no known motive, though one member of Plantard’s circle, Gino Sandri, had this to say: the parchments were created as a means “of diverting attention in order to protect other documents”. It was a real campaign “aimed at an individual or a society active in the field of the occult” and from our analysis, it seems that the intended target was a Swiss freemason. Logic would suggest that the documents that needed to be protected were the Hautpoul genealogic documents – or documents that were somehow related to these genealogic documents.
Those documents are the only documents that make sense in light of what the Dossiers Secrets tried to do: they zoomed in on these documents, but then presented three alternative scenarios. It suggests that the DSC did not know what had happened to the documents, but offered scenarios, in the hope that someone would either come forward with additional information regarding the whereabouts of the documents, or someone would have sufficient knowledge or evidence to invalidate at least one scenario. By eliminating possibilities and receiving further information, someone seemed to hope he or they could arrive at finding the fate and whereabouts of these documents.
The cipher, appearing in de Sède’s book, was exactly the “diversionary tactic”, but also a great stake in the ground, which de Sède and Plantard may have hoped would bring people out of the woods, claiming that the cipher was not the real document at the core of the controversy.

Let us add that there is a genuine and intriguing mystery about these Hautpoul genealogies – annex wills. The genealogy is known to have been deposited in 1644 by notary Captier in Esperaza. Upon the death of Marie de Nègre, her eldest daughter Elisabeth forbade the family access to certain family documents. Before, a notary had consulted the notarised material and had stated he was unwilling to return these documents to the family, because of their immense importance – and danger, the latter a sentiment that was equally used by Elisabeth in her argument why her sisters or anyone else was not allowed to have certain family material.

If true, the purpose of the Dossiers Secrets was a campaign, involving de Sède’s publication, directed against a person, believed to be involved in a secret society, i.e. a Swiss freemason, and “smoking that person out”, in order to establish the truth – or more evidence – about the whereabouts of the Hautpoul documents. This conclusion coincides with a statement made by Sandri as to the purpose of the campaign, as well as the available evidence. I suggest that the story of these documents was told by Courtaly to Plantard and/or de Sède, but that neither got to know Courtaly well enough before the priest died. As a consequence, our duo knew some of the story at the core of the mystery, but not all. As such, they devised a method as to how they could get their hands on the missing documents, or learn their real whereabouts. This involved three potential scenarios, which were worked into three secret dossiers, as well as a new “cipher”, worked into de Sède’s book, which would be used as a public address system, hoping that those with genuine information would make contact with the authors. If – though I am sure they hoped it would be “when” – this happened, their mission would be accomplished.

Filip Coppens