Montsalvache

In February 2007, Montserrat Rico Góngora published “The Desecrated Abbey”, in which he claimed that Heinrich Himmler, Hitler’s second-in-command and head of the Nazi SS, had made a secret wartime mission to an abbey in Spain, in search of the Holy Grail. Góngora even interviewed Andreu Ripol Noble, a former monk and the only person that spoke German, who was ordered by his superiors to guide Himmler during the visit in 1940. Ripol related that Himmler came to Montserrat inspired by Richard Wagner’s opera “Parsifal”, which mentions that the Holy Grail could be kept in “the marvellous castle of Montsalvat in the Pyrenees” – the mountain range that marks the border between France and Spain.

Ed Jajko says:_I would be most interested if Christopher Jones could cite his authorities for the Cathar Christology he presents us. What little I have read suggests that the Cathars had different, not entirely coherent views on Jesus Christ, but that they were not quite in consonance with what Mr. Jones has stated. Reference to a couple of scholarly sources would be much appreciated.

RH: Yes, a few precise sources.

Ed Jajko asked Christopher Jones to give sources for his statements about the Cathars. Christopher replies:
The sources for my comments on the Cathari are all from Cruzada contra el Grial [original German, Kreuzzug gegen dem Gral] by Otto Rahn. This particular translation was done by Fernando Acha and published by Hiperión in Madrid. To the best of my knowledge and a fact that was reconfirmed to me by the current copyright holder in Germany, Rahn's book was never translated into English although Spanish, French and Italian versions exist. The book was first published in 1933.

I recently visited the former South of France residence of the legendary Grail hunter Otto Rahn, only to discover that it was scheduled to be demolished, thus ending an era, and prompting this memorial.

I believe Otto Rahn (1904-1939) was a hero; the real Indiana Jones and prototype for Dan Brown’s Robert Langdon character. A tireless explorer, Rahn was a gifted researcher, committed to the quest like no one before, or since. Quite simply, he was a grail hunter extraordinaire.

Rahn was obsessed with the Cathars, and was convinced that their treasure remained hidden in the shadowy crevasses of the Pyrenees. His research led to Montségur, which he believed to be Munsalvaesche, the Mountain of Salvation of Wolfram von Eschenbach’s epic grail romance, Parzival. Not surprisingly, the entire region around Montségur soon became Rahn’s esoteric playground.

Berlin between the wars was a city known throughout Europe for its bohemian subculture of young intellectuals.  Amongst the personalities who hotly debated the many modernist “isms” that were fracturing the old ideological certainties that had glued together the 19th century, few individuals were more colorful or conspicuous than a febrile dark-haired, green-eyed young man called Otto Wilhelm Rahn.

 Rahn was welcomed in the cafes and nightclubs of 1930’s Berlin because he was a hyper-intense intellectual – a brilliant talker with a great deal to say but he was also a conspicuous outsider in that he was unfashionably dismissive of the emergent modernism that so excited his peers. Moreover, he had even less empathy with the cynicism and decadence that colored there lifestyle. Rather, like that of most Germans outside of Berlin, Rahn’s sensibility had been molded by influences wholly incompatible with the café society avante-garde.