The Stone Puzzle of Rosslyn Chapel
Philip Coppens
© Philip Coppens 2011
All rights reserved. No part of this ebook may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic, magical, or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages of no longer than fifty words at a time in a review.
Before Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code, Rosslyn Chapel was described as Britain’s answer to Rennes-le-Château, a small French village in the Languedoc that is the focus of ever-continuing mystery. Like its French counterpart, Rosslyn Chapel had become the dumping ground for various sacred treasures – as if an earthquake somehow shifted all sacred relics towards Roslin valley. Dan Brown added one more relic to it, featuring it as the climax of the most successful novel ever.
Nevertheless, Rosslyn Chapel is a genuine treasure, both for the mystic traveller and the ordinary tourist. The French organisation Michelin, publisher of The Green Guide series, has awarded Rosslyn Chapel two stars (“worth a detour”) and the Apprentice Pillar inside the Chapel three stars (“worth a journey”), the highest classification in their grading system. This it attains on its historical and architectural merits. But over the past two decades, the chapel has attained an even higher, almost mythical classification. The central question posed is this: does Rosslyn Chapel hold a secret that could radically re-interpret accepted history?
The nature of the secret is different from one publication to the next. To some, the secret is that Rosslyn Chapel is a “Grail chapel”. To others, it is the hiding place of a religious treasure, which for some means the head of Jesus Christ, for others a piece of the True Cross on which Jesus was crucified, or the Grail cup or scrolls detailing a history of Christianity that is radically different from the currently accepted one. As an added bonus, the chapel is also supposed to contain evidence that America may have been discovered one hundred years before Columbus. In the end, it might almost be forgotten that the chapel is also a site of pilgrimage for Freemasons from all over the world – American tourists often visit the chapel on their way to or from Edinburgh airport, their luggage sitting in the cab, waiting outside during their visit. In short, this small chapel has attained more mystery than Scotland’s nearby capital Edinburgh.
The chapel is some five miles South of Edinburgh, in the small village of Roslin. For a very long time, the area of Roslin was owned by the Sinclairs, one of the oldest and most prominent Scottish families. It were they who in the 15th century built Rosslyn Chapel, as well as nearby Rosslyn Castle. In the 1990s, the village itself acquired international and lasting media fame when the Roslin Institute cloned the first animal, “Dolly the Sheep”. It is, however, only the most recent claim to fame for this small village. Its little church has captured the imagination of many – sometimes causing people to leave all reason and logic outside its walls.
Some people have chained themselves inside, others have used power tools to penetrate parts of the chapel where they believe treasure is hidden. So far, dynamite has not been used, but who knows what the future will bring? Some more conspiratorially minded researchers have even argued that it was “no coincidence” that the first cloned animal came from the laboratories at Roslin, rather than anywhere else in the world. It underlines the cultural role the chapel has assumed: a small chapel that seems to hold the answer to all the big questions in the universe.
But what about the “real” chapel? That chapel is a small gem. Niven Sinclair has described how different it is from many other chapels and churches: “If you go to St Paul’s Cathedral, you can take it in in a single visit. If you go to Rosslyn Chapel you can’t. I must count the number of times I’ve been there in hundreds, and every time I go I find something new. This is the beauty of the place.”
Others have noticed how remarkably “un-Christian” the church is. Some have even decided not to attend mass there, once they have come to the conclusion that the church was not Christian in concept at all. Nevertheless, weekly services are held.
It was on an early Monday morning in October 1998 that I entered the chapel for the first time. After only four hours sleep the previous night, having engaged in discussions with John Ritchie, then press secretary for the modern Scottish Knights Templar, physically I was somewhat unprepared for the mental ecstasy of finally being there. The year before, the full Grand Council of John’s order had taken part in a film-shoot by the Arts and Entertainment’s Ancient Mysteries series, with the help of the Rosslyn Chapel Trust. They filmed the investiture of a knight into the Order. John now played “host” to our small group, which included the authors Lynn Picknett, Clive Prince and Alan Butler and his partner Kate. By the time we arrived, the four hours of sleep had caught up with me and it was only after some time that I could free my thoughts from a headache, enough to admire both the interior and, with the wind-chill factor in full swing, the exterior of the chapel.
Just like Professor Philip Davies, I felt this building was not like any chapel I had seen. It had nothing Christian about it. Back then, tour guides and like noted that children quite often go “mad” when inside the chapel; this is attributed by some to a strange energy going around it. But rather than any form of bizarre energy, the building has an “atmosphere”; it is a big play garden… or at least more so than a Christian chapel. And no doubt it is the absence of Christianity that drives “the devil” into the children… On one occasion I spent more time chasing after a child, who had gone berserk, than I did chasing after any secret inside or outside the chapel.
In recent years, largely due to the success of The Da Vinci Code, annual visitor numbers have risen from 30,000 to 180,000. Royal visitors have included King George V and Queen Mary, who came in 1931, Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip, who came in 1961, Princess Margaret, who came in 1988 and Prince Charles, who came in 1998, to open the then new visitor centre – which has since been replaced.
When Queen Victoria entered the building during one of her many visits to Scotland, she proposed its re-dedication as a place of worship.
Two of Scotland’s best-known sons also visited the building – and fell in love with it. Both Sir Walter Scott and Robert Burns were freemasons and this might have stimulated them even more in singing the chapel’s praise. Sir Walter Scott spoke of the ancient Barons of Rosslyn who were buried in the chapel crypt in his famous poem, The Lay of the Last Minstrel. In 1812, he bought the small farmhouse of Cartley Hall, which he renamed Abottsford, on the banks of the Tweed, in the Scottish Borders. He had the ceiling of the Library moulded as a copy of the ceiling of Rosslyn Chapel.
In 1787, Robert Burns, who is recognised as the Poet Laureate of both Scotland and Masonry, visited the chapel with his friend, the artist Alexander Nasmyth, and insisted that he paint his portrait while at Rosslyn. In 2005, filming for The Da Vinci Code brought stars like Tom Hanks to the chapel. Apparently, “Indiana Jones” Harrison Ford too visited the chapel. In fiction, Robert Langdon was not the first superhero to arrive in the chapel; Batman arrived in 1998 in a special edition; he discovered a hypnotic amulet in a secret vault.
Today, Rosslyn Chapel has become a veritable Grail Chapel: people enter it with the hope of finding far more than “a” church. They know of the mystery and hope to bathe in it, if not find enlightenment through it. We visit it, to become transformed.
Rosslyn, or Roslin, that is the question. Both spellings are accepted, as well as various others, which have been used in previous centuries. It is often claimed that the village was constructed to house the stoneworkers labouring on the construction of the chapel, but recent research does not support this suggestion.
Archaeologists believe that the village was founded in Pictish times (3rd century AD). Some believe it was founded by Asterius, whose daughter Panthioria, a Pictish lady, married Donald I, who lived about 193 AD. At that time, Rosslyn was a great forest with deer, hinds, roe and other wild beasts.
Many centuries later, a large labour-force was brought into the area to work on the chapel and the castle. With the resulting economic change in the region, in the 15th century, Roslin became the third town of the Lothians, after nearby Edinburgh and Haddington. In 1456, while the chapel was slowly rising from the ground, the town was created a burgh. Its major industry at the time was mining, an industry dating back to the 12th century.
According to Chambers’ Scottish Place Names, the translation of the name is “morass at a pool”, but if there was ever any evidence of either such feature in the landscape, there is none now. Forbes, in the 18th century, believed the original name was Roskelyn, and felt it was Gaelic or Erse for a hill in a glen. Some believe the name is composed of “ros”, meaning a ridge or promontory, and “lin”, a waterfall. There is a site known now as “linn”, which is at the end of the promontory. It is quite likely that this feature was indeed responsible for the origins of the name: the waterfall at the end of the promontory is a distinctive marker, set deep inside the valley, the place where the river turns backwards on its path, creating the peninsula on which the castle is built, with the chapel itself above.
Certain authors have pointed out that the choice of the word “ros” for “promontory” in Gaelic seems an odd one. According to Knight and Lomas, in Scottish Gaelic, “ros” means ancient knowledge, and “linn” means generation. So Roslinn, they believe, might also mean “ancient knowledge of the generations, or passed down the generations.” Author Keith Laidler has pointed out that the name is similar to Rose-Line, the line of the rose. This is a popular name for the Paris Meridian, France’s Zero Meridian until 1884 when the world agreed on a single global zero meridian set at Greenwich.
The theme of the “Roseline” and Rosslyn was picked up by the American novelist Dan Brown, who worked it into his bestselling book, The Da Vinci Code. To make Brown’s line work, we would need to move the North Pole dramatically, before Paris, Rosslyn and the North Pole fall on the same line. Author Andrew Sinclair believes the name comes from rose, making it Rosy Stream or Fall. This is possible, as the town closest to Roslin is called Rosewell, the well of Roses.
Some wonder whether the family who owned the land before the Sinclairs, the de Rosceline have given their name to the place. This seems possible – if not likely. As they brought that name with them from France, it seems unlikely they were named after the local feature of a waterfall at the end of the promontory. But as happens so often with place names, one name has various levels of interpretation – and Rosslyn seems to be no different.
Whereas Rosslyn Chapel features as the apotheosis of The Da Vinci Code, Kathleen McGowan’s series on Mary Magdalene, starting with The Expected One, created the name Bérenger Sinclair, a Scottish billionaire who is one of two protagonists in solving a series of historical enigmas.
According to several non-fiction books and the theories put forward in them, including the world famous best-selling book The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail, the Sinclair family do not need to solve secrets; they possess the secrets, as they are deemed to be part of a group whose members call themselves the “Rex Deus” families. This term describes a group of people who, it is claimed, have tried throughout the centuries to propel descendants of the Merovingian dynasty to the forefront of European politics – to re-instate kingship over a unified Europe. Fifteen hundred years ago, this dynasty ruled over large sections of France and members of the “Rex Deus” families are believed to possess the royal Merovingian blood within their veins.
What is a fact, rather than fiction or speculation, is that the Sinclairs are one of the most important Scottish families – or at least they were from the 14th till the 18th century. Throughout Scotland’s drive for independence, including the heroic efforts of Robert the Bruce in proclaiming Scottish independence, the family was one of the driving forces of this movement. As such, they have always had an affinity with that “quirk” that in essence turns ordinary though wealthy people into legends. For example, Sir Walter Scott described the twenty Sinclair knights buried in full armour in the vaults of Rosslyn Chapel as if they were “everlasting Knights of the Grail, on sentry duty over the mysteries entrusted to their keeping.
”
The shield of the Sinclairs is the engrailed cross. It can be found throughout the chapel, particularly crowning the ceilings of the aisles.
According to the Rex Deus mythology, the Sinclairs trace their ancestry in an unbroken line back to Rognvald the Mighty, the Earl of Møre, near Trondheim (Norway). His second son, Rollo, invaded France and established his own personal fiefdom in Normandy. It was there that they received their name, for the name Sinclair is said to come indirectly from the hermit William St. Clare, or variously St. Clere, or St. Clair, from the Latin: Sanctus Clarus, “Holy Light”. He lived near the town that is now called St. Clair sur l’Epte, northwest of Paris, and the French home of the family. Apparently he was scandalised by the loose morals of a lady and prophesied that she would come to a bad end. In return for this dire prediction, she had him murdered, by beheading. This harsh end was the reason for his depiction as a headless figure, holding his severed head in his hands.
The family’s patron saint was St. Catherine of Alexandria, who was also beheaded. According to the legend, Catherine of Alexandria converted large numbers of Alexandrian inhabitants to Christianity, for which she was put to death. Her body was said to have been taken to Mount Sinai, where some centuries later the now famous St. Catherine’s Monastery was built.
The Rex Deus mythology does not end there. It states that King Charles the Simple of France acknowledged Rollo’s status and gave him his daughter Giwelle as his wife. William the Conqueror, who seized the English throne in 1066, was a direct descendant of this Rollo.
The first St. Clair said to have arrived in Roslin was William the Seemly St. Clair. In 1057, he allegedly arrived with the knight Ladislaus Leslyn as escort to Princess Margaret, who was to marry King Malcolm of Canmore in Scotland. William was granted the land at Roslin and he also became the queen’s cupbearer. A carving on the South wall of the chapel, often referred to as “two brothers on one horse”, is said to show this scene: the knight Leslyn – the ancestor of the Leslie family – with the future queen riding pillion. The queen is carrying the symbolic representation of the relic known as the Holy Rood of Scotland, which was part of her dowry. This “Holy Rood” was believed to be a piece of the True Cross, on which Jesus Christ was crucified. The precious relic was contained within a golden cruciform casket, i.e. an actual Holy Grail, and some believe that this relic is hidden inside Rosslyn Chapel.
One esoteric author, Lewis Spence, referred to Rosslyn Chapel as the Chapel of the Grail: “Nothing can shake my conviction that Rosslyn was built according to the pattern of the Chapel of the Grail as pictured in Norman romance, and that William St. Clair had in his poet’s mind a vision of the Chapel Perilous when he set hand to the work.”
The first Sinclair said to be born in Scotland was one Henri de St. Clair, who accompanied Godfroi de Bouillon on his Crusade to the Holy Land in 1096. After the Crusaders’ successful capture of Jerusalem, the site of the Temple of Solomon would see the foundation of a new order of Knights, the so-called Knights Templar, named after the Temple of Solomon, as it was on these ruins that their Priory was situated.
Popular legend has it that Hugues de Payens, the first grand master of the Templars, was actually married to Catherine de Saint-Clair, and that Hugues paid a visit to Rosslyn sometime around 1120, but no evidence has been put forward to back these allegations up. According to a recent biography, Hugues de Payns, Chevalier Champenoise, Fondateur de l’Ordre des Templiers (Troyes: Editions de la Maison Boulanger, 1997) his wife was Elisabeth de Chappes. This statement is based on local church charters, where the earliest mention of Elisabeth as his wife is in 1113. She is mentioned several times over the course of Hugues’ lifetime, also during the period following his death, and finally with her own death in 1170.
Researchers who have studied Burke’s Peerage, Cokayne’s General Peerage, and Debrett’s Peerage, have all stated that Guillaume de Saint-Clair, a Norman knight who was born in Normandy and accompanied his cousin Yolande de Dreux to Scotland for her marriage to King Alexander III, was the first of his family to become “laird” of Rosslyn. He obtained this title by marrying its heiress, Amecia de Roskelyn, around 1280 – a century and a half too late for the Templar Knight Hugues de Payens to have visited his Saint-Clair “in-laws” there – and a much later arrival on the scene than the “Rex Deus” mythology would have us believe.
Most of the “Rex Deus” researchers have blindly adopted the Sinclair family history that was compiled by Father Hay, a Sinclair biographer of the 17th century. Father Hay was born in 1661, ordained at Chartres on 22 September 1685 and died in 1736. Hay examined historical records and charters of the Sinclairs and in 1700, completed a three volume study, parts of which were published in 1835 as A geneologie of the Sainteclaires of Rosslyn. His original manuscript is in the National Library of Scotland. Only twelve large paper copies and 108 small paper ones were printed. Since the papers on which Father Hay supposedly based his research were allegedly destroyed in a fire shortly afterwards, there was little possibility of double checking his version. However, in a guide to Rosslyn Chapel that was published at the end of the 19th century, its author, a local Reverend Thompson, went out of his way to find supporting documentation.
Thompson was unable to find evidence that backed up the claims of Father Hay, who was himself a member of the Sinclair family. As Thompson diplomatically describes it: “I must confess that I have been totally unable to reconcile the succession of names as given by Father Hay with those which appear in the ‘Genealogical Chart’ at Dysart House”, this being where the archives of the Sinclair family are housed. Thompson came to the conclusion that the founding family of Rosslyn was not the Sinclair family, but a family called “of Roslyn” or “of Roskelyn”, long before the Sinclairs arrived on the scene. “For we find some charters witnessed by a Thomas de Roslyn; several others by a Roger de Roselyn: and another by Henry de Roskelyn.”
As mentioned, Father Hay, despite being named Richard Augustine Hay and being Canon of St. Geneviève in Paris and Prior of St. Piermont, was actually a Sinclair himself. So it seems that by virtue of his blood ties, he could not help but succumb to some mythmaking and heroicising of his family origins.
Several researchers believe that Hay was not the only one to do this and that, in recent years, the Sinclairs have made several claims regarding their ancestors, none of which are backed up by publicly available documents, and that therefore such extravagant claims should be taken with the required dosage of salt.
The evidence presented by Thompson contradicts claims by, amongst others, author Robert Lomas. According to Lomas, Rosslyn was built “to house artefacts brought by the Knights Templar to Scotland in 1126. Between 1118 and 1128 the Templars excavated the ruins of Herod’s Temple in Jerusalem. Hugues de Payens, first Grand Master of the Knights Templar, served on the First Crusade with Henri St. Clair, First Earl of Roslin and Hugues visited Roslin in 1126 where he was given land to build the first Templar Preceptory outside the Holy Land.” It is true that the first Templar Preceptory was built within spitting distance of the chapel, but there was no trace of a “Sinclair” on the scene. At that time, the land was owned by the “Roscelins”. The land for the Preceptory was donated to the order by King David I, just as Roslin was given to the Roscelin family at about the same time by the same king.
Using this new research, some have pointed to Father Hay as being responsible for inventing the descent from the Norwegian Rognvald. But the story is more complex. For one thing, their origins from France are not in doubt. It is only their arrival in Rosslyn that is dubious. But where there is one lie, there might be more, and hence their Norwegian origins have also been scrutinised. It was claimed that most of the Sinclair documents relating to the first two Earl Henrys of Orkney were lost at sea during a transfer of the archives to the newly-built Roslin library. This “loss” included documents attesting to the verification of the claims made upon the Orkney Islands by the Sinclairs. The islands were the object of fierce fighting between Norway and Scotland and the Sinclairs claimed these lands were theirs, on the grounds of their Norwegian ancestry. This is a claim they were unable to prove, as they claimed that this evidence also had been lost at sea during the transfer of the archives.
In the absence of the evidence, Bishop Tulloch wrote documents on the history of the Orkney islands, the Genealogy or Deduction of the Earls of Orkney, in 1446, which traced the claim of William, the Chapel builder and the third St. Clair Earl of Orkney, to Rognvald of Møre. This document was contrived to assume that the St. Clair’s claim to the islands was legitimate. But this was debated – most likely because it was widely agreed that the claim was invented. It was not until later, under strong pressure from the Scottish crown, that King Erik formally granted the earldom to William St. Clair. Interestingly, soon afterwards, it was that same Scottish crown that ordered the Sinclairs to surrender the Orkney Islands to the crown. It was a clever move on the part of the Scottish king first of all to remove the disputed land from a Scandinavian and possibly hostile presence so close to Scottish borders, then giving it to a leading Scottish family hired to co-operate in the trick, and finally bringing it under the king’s own control.
Returning to the previous century, shortly after their marriage into the Scottish Roscelin family, the Sinclairs reached the forefront of Scottish politics. William St. Clair (William being a very popular name in the family) was one of five leading Scottish ecclesiastics to rally around Robert the Bruce and his cause: Scottish independence from England. His nephew, another William St. Clair, had been one of the Bruce’s closest friends and retainers. On Bruce’s death in 1329, it was this Sir William St. Clair, along with Sir James Douglas and four other knights, who would embark with Bruce’s heart on a quest to the Holy Land. Setting off from Berwick by boat, they arrived without incident at Sluys in Flanders. However, crossing Continental Europe over land was less fortunate: in Teba, Spain, they were attacked by a group of Moors. Thrusting Bruce’s heart into the enemy ranks, all but one were killed, though they did gain the respect of their opponents, who must have classed their actions as “foolish bravery”. The heart of the Bruce therefore never reached the Holy Land. The sole surviving knight was allowed to return the bodies to Scotland. Robert the Bruce’s heart was buried in Melrose Abbey; William St. Clair was buried in Rosslyn.