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| symbols Chinon |
PAUL RUMIZ
CHINON
is invisible on the hill, the prison of the knights of God has engulfed the rain, and a layer of clouds Atlantic dall'imbrunire that stagnates above the river compact. No trace, in Chinon, and the left wall behind which seven centuries ago, the Grand Master of the Templars, Jacques de Molay was closed and tortured, along with other dignitaries before being burned at the stake. It is the epicenter of a terrible story, and a black legend that still arouses furious passions.
At nine in the evening, under the manor, the silence is so complete that it seems to hear the clocks in their homes. At that triggered a curfew on the old France, Chinon and time stops. Palaces in yellow tuff, old hotel delightfully Fane, the smell of river silt, old cobblestones and a fog where you can get lost as in a glass of Pernod. On the streets, only a drunk, that speaks for itself in a terrifying monument to Joan of Arc riding a horse demon in hell that seems to drag more than the sight of God
"But she goes there to do in Chinon? Templar is not nothing left, "he warned in Paris. To listen to the scholars of France seems to be the least suitable place in Europe to find the warrior monks. Everything seems to be blown away by persecution, which here had its epicenter deadly. But we also put half a revolution that shattered what was left. From "temple" of Paris, turned into a prison dall'ancien regime and later demolished as the Bastille.
Everything in the trip, it seemed to throw off this cursed place. The rain, the Paris ring road of hell, the endless ups and downs of France deep in the woods after labyrinthine Orleans, as well as the Loire, where I finished at the gates of a nuclear power plant, and then on the way - wrong - to Laudun, the city of "devils" and the stake for witchcraft. After all, this village in the rain that seems to head in the world.
In places like sleeping seven centuries are nothing, and maybe it all started on a night like this, October 13, 1307, when the henchmen of the king - unleashed at the same time in all of France - came out on the streets to stop thousands of monks warriors charged with heresy, usury, sodomy, and more. "A crime horrible complain, detestable, execrable, abominable and inhuman, "so Philip the Fair in the apocalyptic secret in order that he take the first large-scale raid in history. Took them all to get their hands on their treasure. They separated in different prisons, tortured them with fire and forced them to confess the same things.
The next morning the sound of me ripping the bolts fantasies while I wait in the rain, under the fortress. It is Madame Esnard, the guide, who apologizes for the enormous amount of locks to open. He announced that the tower of Coudray, where he was imprisoned the grand master, has been closed for months - I felt it - and you need a permit to visit from Tours. Explain Chinon triumphs that the legend of Joan of Arc, that his mission here was invested by the King of France. For the Knights Templar is almost none.
is strange, he says, because there are graffiti of prisoners. Mani, radiant with light hearts, shields and crosses, which have made a fool seekers symbols like the great Louis Charbonneau and Rene Guenon. A Chinon, it is true, there's nothing left. It is the place that there is less Templar. But the walls, ones yes, they speak and how, overlooking the Vienne, on a hill riddled with caves, jaw decayed over the vineyards of Touraine.
We enter a maze of tunnels, bridges and scaffolding workers swarming: Chinon is an ongoing restoration of a the largest in Europe, an operation of fourteen million euro, and the prison is there in the middle of the Templars, sealed by a fence, forgotten in the rain. A cylindrical Dentone tuff that sinks into the gum of the hill to a depth that seems to connect it to another world. Meanwhile
Tours comes from the go-ahead: open the tower just for us. We enter with flashlights, many of the graffiti can be read only in this way. Under a ceiling hexagonal form a puzzle on the walls, follow the sequence of Pietroni tuff like the pages of a book. The best known are the entrance on the left, protected by a glass case. "In there," smiled Madame Esnard, "a female bat came to the shelter last season. " The torch lights lilies, shields, axes, constellations, figures of saints, crosses the basis of steps. But once the eyes adjust to the dark cobwebs of entries here appear less deep, dense in the three slots open on the south side of the tower.
In the outline of a ship is written: "Command eis Philipe King, Pope Clemens et quintus diabolis dragonibus. That would mean: Pope Clement and King Philip of France, you were sent by the devil and the dragon. Philip is known as "the forger." Nothing esoteric: it is the curse of ordinary men, with their anger and their fears. Finely engraved the names of possible progionieri: Jehan Galubia, Geoffroy Verceil, Philippe Besançon, Pierre Safet cook the master of the Temple.
"Somewhere in the western end of the slot," says the guide, "there was the signing of Jacques de Molay, but now no longer able to read it." He says that the graffiti were inventoried only thirty years ago by a certain Yvon Roy, who saw them when they fell the first renders. But historians do not trust, because the discoverer "was left alone for months to work in the tower" and is feared to have handled something to add evidence in favor of the Templars. The problem is that no one yet has found no evidence "against" the authenticity of the extraordinary graffiti Chinon.
In the bottom of the central window, over a carpet of bat droppings, "Nous sommes devant amenes the Inquisiteur Humbert de france paris les freres torture here," we are brought before the inquisitor Umberto, who has tortured the brothers. And again, a bit 'higher up, as well as a horseshoe, "We have received whiplash from Robert Fribault that the Executioner is the king ...." And finally, on a stone at the top left of the slot East, "Robert Talmont, the preceptor of France, died at Chinon infertegli for torture." To read, you have to put the flashlight sideways, to enhance the shadow in the cracks. But everything is fantastically clear, and it is perhaps for this reason that historians still do not trust and Superintendence preferred to leave the graffiti in the shadows.
still raining outside, from the top of the wall of the small islands of Vienna seems to climb the barges as a lazy ocean current. The walls talk? "The reality is that after all the fuss about the Templars, there is still much to know and a lot of documents to sift through," grumbles Alain Demurger, maxi-French expert on the subject, before you recommend a good wine cellar. It is skeptical about the graffiti of Chinon, prefers to work on the records of the trial, a record more than enough. But the conclusion does not change: the knights of God were "ordinary people", not "aliens." Military and monks, novices and recruits together, had the their inevitable "hazing", and those vices who has clung to the king for his accusations. Guilty or innocent? France - swear here - is still split in two.
Source - La Repubblica, 07 October 2007, page 32 section: CULTURE, article by Paul Rumiz
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