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town might have constituted a sort of royal treasury; and there are documents which speak of great wealth amassed by Dagobert for military conquest and concealed in the environs of Rennes-leChateau. If Sauniere discovered some such depository, it would explain the reference in the codes to Dagobert.

    The Cathars. The Templars. Dagobert II. And there was yet another possible treasure the vast booty accumulated by the Visigoths during their tempestuous advance through Europe. This might have included something more than conventional booty, possibly items of immense relevance both symbolic and literal to Western religious tradition. It might, in short, have included the legendary treasure of the Temple of Jerusalem which, even more than the Knights Templar, would warrant the references to “Sion’.
    In A.D. 66 Palestine rose in revolt against the Roman yoke. Four years later, in A.D. 70, Jerusalem was razed by the legions of the emperor, under the command of his son, Titus. The Temple itself was sacked and the contents of the Holy of Holies carried back to Rome. As they are

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    depicted on Titus’s triumphal arch, these included the immense gold seven-branched candelabrum so sacred to Judaism, and possibly even the Ark of the Covenant.
    Three and a half centuries later, in A.D. 410, Rome in her turn was sacked by the invading Visigoths under Alaric the Great, who pillaged virtually the entire wealth of the Eternal City. As the historian Procopius tells us,
    Alaric made off with “the treasures of Solomon, the King of the Hebrews, a sight most worthy to be seen, for they were adorned in the most part with emeralds and in the olden time they had been taken from Jerusalem by the
    Romans.”5
    Treasure, then, may well have been the source of Sauniere’s unexplained wealth. The priest may have discovered any of several treasures, or he may have discovered a single treasure which repeatedly changed hands through the centuries passing perhaps from the Temple of Jerusalem, to the
    Romans, to the Visigoths, eventually to the Cathars and/or the Knights
    Templar. If this were so, it would explain why the treasure in question “belonged’ both to Dagobert II and to Sion.
    Thus far our story seemed to be essentially a treasure story. And a treasure story even one involving the treasure of the Temple of Jerusalem is ultimately of limited relevance and significance. People are constantly discovering treasures of one kind or another.
    Such discoveries are often exciting, dramatic and mysterious, and many of them cast important illumination on the past. Few of them, however, exercise any direct influence, political or otherwise, on the present unless, of course, the treasure in question includes a secret of some sort, and possibly an explosive one.
    We did not discount the argument that Sauniere discovered treasure. At the same time it seemed clear to us that, whatever else he discovered, he also discovered a secret an historical secret of immense import to his own time and perhaps to our own as well. Mere money, gold or jewels would not, in themselves, explain a number of facets to his story. They would not account for his introduction to Hoffet’s circle, for instance, his association with Debussy and his liaison with Emma Calve. They would not explain the Church’s intense interest in the matter, the impunity with which Sauniere defied his bishop or his subsequent exoneration by the

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    Vatican, which seemed to have displayed an urgent concern of its own.
    They would not explain a priest’s refusal to administer the last rites to a dying man, or the visit of a Habsburg archduke to a remote little village in the Pyrenees. The Habsburg archduke in question has since been revealed as Johann Salvator von Habsburg, known by the pseudonym of Jean
    Orth. He renounced all his rights and titles in 1889 and within two months had been banished from all the territories of the Empire. It was shortly after this that he first appeared