IX.   ABOUT THE BARON HRVOTLAND BELS INDELIBLE TRACES BEFORE THE FIRST MILLENIUM TURNOVER AND

THE KNIGHT BELS OF VACARISSES (Spain)

 

“…Il est vrai qu’on ne peut trouver la Pierre philosophale, mais il est bon qu’on la cherche.

En la cherchant, on trouve de forts beaux secrets qu´on ne cherchait pas !…”.

 

Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle (1657-1757)

 

“…It is true that the philosopher’s stone cannot be found, yet it is right to seek it.

Whilst seeking, wonderful secrets may be uncovered that were not sought after...”.

 

Info: If the forename “Hruoland” is of pure Frankish origin, the forename Hrvotland may seem to sound more of Vikings origin. It is however very unlikely that Hrvotland´s father, being also a politically involved person, acting at the court of the Carolingians and coming over from the Merovingians, would have given his son a Viking name knowing that these people were literally their biggest enemies. They were perpetrating permanent murderous raids with acts of indescribable savagery, terrorizing the country, launching their huge Dane dogs against their helpless victims, murdering them, mutilating them, sacking villages, plundering, and finally burning them to ashes.

 

The name Robert, a typical Frankish forename, is issued from Hrodbert. So, will against all appearances Hrvotland be also a Frankish forename!

 

Before closing the chapter on the Bels from the South of France, let we come back on another mystery constituted by a Knight Bels. He undersigned a document for the Count Guillem de Muntanyola, in the year 1014, in Vacarisses, some 30 km northwest of Barcelona, close to the foothills of the Pyrenean Mountain range that separates France from Spain. Hereunder the signatories of the first group attending the trial:

 

 “...Sig†num Guillelmus vicarious, sig†num Indalecius, sig†num Barone, sig†num Geriberto, sig†num Guillelmo Ato, sig†num Arnaldo Sayoni, sig†num Marcucius nos et alii quam plurimi qui adpresens adfuimus…“.

 

And the signatories of the second group, with the mention of a Knight Bels.

 

"Sig†num Sanfredus levita qui et iudex, sig†num Bels, sig†num Borrellus gratia Dei episcopus ac si indignus, Salla sig†num, sig†num Raimundus archilevita, sig†num Roderandus sacerdos, sig†num Gaucerfredus presbiter, sig†num Oliva Sajo, Guislara presbiter epanavit die et anno quo supra.". Sources : John C. Shideler.

 

In his early career, Guillem I^st was a vicar of Vacarisses and Muntanyola who exercised committal authority in the localities under his charge. By the time of his death in 1040, he had assembled a patrimony that was becoming a territorial ship. This was centred on the castle of Montcada, the namesake of the lineage for centuries to come.

 

The castle of Montcada, perched on a mountaintop, overlooked looked settlements located near the confluence of the Beses and its tributaries as they funneled through a narrow pass from the Vallès into the territory of Barcelona. The castle's strategic location made it especially important to Countess Ermessenda of Barcelona who probably installed in there, in the mid-1020s, her protégé Guillem I^st de Muntanyola. The first time that Guillem I^st is called "de Montcada" is in a document dated 1032, attesting him possessing the castle of the same name.

 

Guillem´s acquisition of Montcada followed his marriage to Adelaide, Fa. Bonucio de Claramunt x Senegundis, It brought the Castellar domain to Guillem de Montcada as a wedding gift. The marriage of Guillem and Adelaide merged two vicarial lineages into one!

 

We said that the Bels from Albi, Ambels and Baillessats were present in these regions, some time before, during and after the crusade against the Cathars that happened around the year 1225.

 

I open here a parenthesis: There is no proof that some Knights from our Lineage went down to The South of France with the crusades against the Cathars and participated actively at them. As a work hypothesis, this option is unlikely, as it does not align with the broader historical context. Such involvements do not fit with our overall Dynastic diplomatic policy.

 

The permanency and the everlastingness that characterizes our Dynasty, for over twelve centuries, speaks for an overall clever and well-balanced diplomatic response to the events that triggered them, being them political, religious of financial. The Lineages that constitute our Dynasty seems to have understood the full extent of the adage: “Stay out of trouble“.

 

Every extreme position, being it too far left or too far right, should unavoidably have brought its counter effects, endangering seriously our security, discrediting our secular good reputation, and mining the continuity of the seemingly unique social statute we harvested through the centuries and beyond the millennium. For every logical outside observer, it is quite evident that, to outlive at least 1731 years (as of 2017) of severe historical turmoil, the several lineages constituting the Bels-Belle-Balliol Dynasty needed, indeed, a unique and never to underestimate ability of adaptability.

 

The nobility of the time knew perfectly well that these expeditions against the Cathars, were nothing else than a dirty Church business. They were very well aware of the very opportunistic and hegemonic policy course the Church was heading on, for it was the nobility who endured its most severe damages. Emperors and Kings were no longer the only rulers on Earth. Their power was counteracted and seriously endangered by the power of the Church.

 

A very vicious power indeed, based on superstition and the belief in divine orders and expectancies! For free thinkers, pure non-sense, and brainwashing! But how long will a free thinker and his opinion survive in an environment wherein the rest of society and its consolidated institutions, are either firmly convinced of the truth of the legitimacy and of the legality of their belief or just pretend to be convinced and play, tactfully and deftly, the game of the Church, only to benefit from the situation, or to save their heads!

 

“You agree, you keep your estates, you disagree, and you simply lose everything”. How would you react ? And this situation does not even consider the Damocles Sword that hung upon everybody, from peasant to King, which was constituted by the Holy Inquisition! Very clever and most dexterous was the one who could get through these hard times without being dispossessed of his personal estates, without losing its integrity and reliability and even without being mutilated by the Inquisition!

 

One writing “Le Besant de Dieu” from anno 1230, tells us in very cautious terms:

 

Quant Franceis vont sor Tolosans          When men of France attack the men of Toulouse,

Qu´il tienent a popelicans                        Whom they consider heretics,

E la legacie romaine                                And the Roman Legate

Les i conduit et les i maine,                     Leads them and drive them on,

N´est mie bien, ceo m´est avis.               In my opinion, it is not at all a good thing

Bons e mals sont en toz pais.                 There are good and bad men in every country.

 

What if the Bels, from the South of France, were already in these regions, more than two centuries before that cruel crusade actually took place?

 

The patronymic of this Knight Bels is 166 years older than the first (re)mention of the patronymic Bels in Flanders and is 211 years anterior to the crusade against the Cathars. Questions: Who was this Knight, where did he come from and what was he doing in Northern Spain?

 

Was he over there on a short mission before returning to his estates in the Albi region, was he living in Vacarisses or in one of the neighboring castle districts of Olesa de Monserrat and Pierola? Was he serving the Count of Guillem de Montcada or the powerful Count of Barcelona? And, if he lived in Spain, was he down there with his wife and children and/or with his brother(s) and sister(s) or was he just on his own? Did he have a blazon and how did it look like?

 

We know from history books that Charlemagne (*748 - †814) fought several campaigns against the Arabs in southern France and in Northern Spain. It was in 711 that the Muslims marched in Spain coming from North Africa. They marched all the way up, crossed the Pyrenean Mountains and attacked the French city of Tours, which was deep inside the Frankish kingdom. To counter them required several big military campaigns.

 

The one of Tours in 732, headed by Charles Martel, made heavy losses among the Muslims. It forced them to retreat over the Pyrenean Mountains, in Spain. The one of anno 778 captured Pamplona and made the siege of Saragossa. In anno 793, Charlemagne is again in Narbonne. In anno 801, Barcelona is freed from the Arabs after a siege of two years. Charlemagne also helped, in anno 812, the Spanish Catholics by their “Reconquista”. With the help of the Kingdoms of Navarre and of Barcelona, he repulsed the Arabs until the Ebre River.

 

We know that Charlemagne undertook no less than 53 military campaigns during his reign. Here a short overview of them:

 

18 against the Saxons, 7 against the Arabs in the south of France, 1 against the Basques, 5 against the Lombard, 5 against the Arabs in Italy, 2 against the Byzantines, 4 against the Avares, 2 against the Britons, 1 against the Thüringians, 1 against the Bavarians, 3 against the Scandinavians, etc.

 

If one of the ancestors of this Knight Bels participated with Charlemagne in one of his numerous campaigns and remained in the area after Charlemagne’s troops left the operations´ scene (which is highly probable if not bordering certainty), the probability that the Knight Bels and our mysterious Hrvotland (Roland) Bels, the man who was quoted in a text relative to the Treaty of Verdun, 11 August anno 843, were parents, becomes extremely high!

 

What is very interesting to note is that both Office Holders, Hrvotland Bels and the Knight Bels of Vacarisses, ancestors originated from Flanders. Since Flanders was the kingdom of King Charles (Karolus) and since his kingdom also encompassed this part of the South of France, we may conclude that both Office Holders were attached to the court of the same King Charles.

 

Therefore, was the distance from Flanders to northern Spain only geographical but not functional. They were both “Administration People” in Charles’s kingdom and were at home as well in Flanders as in the North of Spain. This may explain the presence of the Bels (Bayles, Beilles, etc.) in the South of France and the Northern Spain.

 

“…Westwards of the Rhone delta, all Septimania was included in Charles’s kingdom, giving him the Spanish March with the county of Barcelona in the far southwest…”. Source: Janet L. Nelson.

 

As we have seen, some Knights from our Lineage might also have stranded in the south of France at the time of the crusade against the Cathars. However, there were several other campaigns. For example, in 1276, the campaign to northern Spain that was headed by Philippe III, King of France and Gwijde (Guy) de Dampiere, Count of Flanders. There are therefore enough reasons to expect to find some Knights from our Lineage in these, from Flanders, very remote regions.

 

A new wind blows now on this remote chapter of our Dynasty. I recently found out that the Count of Barcelona, of Gerona and of Ausona at the time of the Knight Bels was Count Ramon Borrell (*972 †1018) x Ermesinde (Emerssende) de Carcassonne and de Razes (Rennes-le-Château). They had three children. The Count’s son, Berenguer Raimond I^st “el Curvo”, (°1005 - †1035) succeeded him to the County on 25 February 1018.

 

The Counts of Barcelona increased their power during the XI^th and the XII^th century. They soon implemented a feudal system on the emerging nobility and aristocracy in their country. It is in anno 1137 that the Counts became Kings of Aragon. Their Kingdom encompassed Catalonia and spread out to regions far across the Pyrenean Mountain range such as the Counties of Béarn, Béziers, Bigorre, Carlat (next to Aurillac), Carcassonne, Comminges, Foix, Gevaudan, Millau, Monpellier and the Provence as far as Monaco and Nice that were also attached to the Crown. Distance Nice - Barcelona, some 700 km!

 

The Kingdom of Aragon was bordered to the South, by the Muslim State of Valencia itself bordered with the Almohad Territory. South-easterly was the Kingdom of Castille and North-westerly the Kingdom of Navarre.

 

What is more interesting for the Essay is that:

 

• The Count Ramon Borrell was a son of Borell II (*before 940 and †993) Count of Barcelona, of Gerona and of Ausona and of Luitgarde (Letgarda) de Rouergue and of Toulouse. This is nothing special!
• The Count Borrel II was himself a son of Sunifred II d´Urgell (*after 897 †953 other dates given are *880 †948) Count of Barcelona, of Gerona and of Ausona and of Richilda. This is still nothing special neither!

• The Count Sunifred II d´Urgell was a son of Wilfredo (Guifred) “el Velloso” (*Abt. 840 †897), Count of Barcelona and of Winihilde (Guinedilde) van Vlaanderen. (*860).

 

Here we go again with... Flanders. “Vlaanderen” is the Dutch toponym for Flanders.

 

I open here a parenthese:

 

Important to note for subsequent developments in this Essay, are the names of the direct ascendants from Wilfredo: His father was Sunifred I^st d’Urgell-Cerdanya (†848) Count of Barcelona, himself fs. of Raoul (Borrell) de Ansona (Osona), etc. The latest is also mentioned as Ramon Borrell, Marquis of Spain x Ermesende? All these Lords were of Visigoths origin!

 

It is, therefore, absolutely not by stroke of luck that this Knight Bels from Flanders was hanging around in the south of France because there was thus a precedent: Winidilde (Guinidilda) (*864) from Flanders (fa. of Boudewijn I^st “Iron Arm” (840-879), Marquis of Flanders and of Judith, Queen of England, and later princess of France. She was fa. of Charles II “the Bald” x Hermantrude d’Orléans) settled over there some 140 years earlier after she married Wilfred I^st d´Ursel “the Hairy” (*848 - †898). We remember the strong links between the Counts of Flanders and the Bels-Belle and Balliol lineages.

 

• Did one or more ancestors of the Knight Bels, among a few others Flemish knights, escorted/accompanied Winidilde when she went down to Spain to marry Count Borrel II and stayed at his court ? The mighty Count of Flanders, at the time called Marquis, would definitively not let his daughter alone browsing up hill and dawn dale more than 1250 km from his castle, without a strong escort. Pure common sense! Or did some Bels Knights most probably escorted/accompanied Winidilde and her husband back to Spain - after - they married in Flanders? Because, at this point, I do not know with certainty where they married!

 

• Another reason to have at her disposal a kind of mini-Flemish court is the fact that Winidilde spoke Diets, which was an ancient form of German and not Spanish. As everybody knows, in Spain one speaks Spanish (Lapalissade). How would Winidilde feel at the court of her husband and in a country where people speak a language, she does not understand? Remember, in those times there were no modern communications means, that would have made her life easier so far away from home, from her parents, friends and from her culture.

 

• We have seen that the Bels were Office holders (baronobis) at the Merovingian courts. When Dagobert II left England for Rennes-le-Château, historians agree that some Knights from trusted “Leudes” families, were ready to help him. When he later secretly returned from captivity in England, where he had received a very good education, they welcomed him at the main port of the time (and since the Roman times): Boulogne-sur-Mer.

 

The “Life of St. Wilfrid” or “Vita Sancti Wilfrithi”, written by the monk Stephen of Ripon (*abt. 650 - † after 710, probably in Ripon), soon after Wilfrid's death, does not specify who was responsible for recalling Dagobert II, only that it was "friends" (amici) and "relatives" (proximi). The relatives may have been on his mother's side. There is little consensus on who the friends could have been, but one thing is sure, only a few families of the time came into consideration.

 

The return of King Dagobert II to France was an undertaking fraught with danger. His long journey could not have been accomplished alone, and the need for secrecy was paramount, for his enemies were vigilant and numerous. His survival depended on surrounding himself with loyal knights from old, friendly Flemish families (Leudes) who could be trusted without reservation.

 

It is plausible that a small escort of Flemish knights, quite possibly including members of the Bels family, accompanied him. Such a group would likely have included a guide familiar with safe routes and sympathetic monasteries or estates. A viable escort might have numbered four to eight loyal knights, arranged by trusted families with long-standing ties to the Merovingian court.

 

By all indications, the party rode without incident and unnoticed along the roughly 1,250 km from Flanders to Rennes-le-Château. At an average pace of 30-40 km per day on horseback, the journey would have taken at least a month, perhaps longer, especially if avoiding main roads and passing through hostile territories. Neustria and Burgundy, in particular, were perilous due to entrenched political opposition.

 

Dagobert II did not travel as an anonymous wayfarer. As a Merovingian royal, he remained a potential rival to factions in Neustria and Burgundy, especially to Ebroin, the Neustrian mayor of the palace, who had once arranged his exile and could just as easily have engineered his capture or assassination.

 

We can only speculate under what guise he and his escort, his own “A-Team,” so to speak, travelled. They may have posed as merchants, pilgrims bound for Santiago de Compostela, or envoys, to avoid attracting suspicion. Noble and monastic waypoints along the route could have provided cover, fresh horses, and essential supplies.

 

Travel in the late 7th century was arduous. Since the Roman withdrawal, roads were often neglected, if not impassable. Banditry and extortion by local lords were constant threats. Such dangers help explain why a similarly discreet and well-organized operation must have been mounted shortly after Dagobert’s assassination in 679, to secure the escape of his daughter and son.

• We know than Dagobert II married in 671, Giselle de Razes (second marriage), in Rennes-le-Château. Did some of our family members travel all the way down to attend the marriage, as they did on several other occasions or did, they remain in the region since the time of the secret escort of King Dagobert II?

 

I describe in the French part of this Essay, that the Bels (Beils, Bellis) of Limburg (Belgium) and of the Netherlands, left Flanders not only for socio-economic reasons (trade, marriage, wars, famine, military expeditions) but also mainly due to the religious persecution prevailing at the time toward the new Protestantism movement.

 

Could the reason for the appearance, in the south of France, of the Bels (Bayle, Beile, etc.) lineages also be linked to these new religious persecutions which succeeded to the Catharism and the Inquisition?

 

The germ of an answer was already given to me by the story of the two Cathars, Sybille Baille (also Bayle) and her son Pons. Originating from Flanders and knowing that the most powerful guild in Flanders, the Weavers corporation, was under direct control of a very few but very rich, powerful, and influential Flemish families, with on the top the Bels (Belle, Baille, Bayle, etc.) lineages, I asked myself the question as to know if the Catharism was not also present in Flanders? I soon realised that there has been indeed an infiltration of Manicheans (Cathars) in the mighty Weavers Corporation of Flanders.

 

Manicheans are called as such because a certain Mani (Manes) (*216 - †276), founded the religion, in Abrumya (Babylon). He was Persian by his mother Maryam and linked to the ruling dynasty of the Arsacides. King Shahpur I^st protected him. Later the religion moved to Bulgaria.

 

Mani cleverly adapted his doctrine to the ritualistic forms of the Zoroastrian religion and united all the diverse religious ideas that have ever been effective in the Near East. His religion reflects thoughts of the gnosis of Alexandria, early Christian ideas, the teachings of the Buddha and Jainas as well as Hindu and Old Persian ideas. Mani teaching renunciation of property and demanding universal equality found a strong positive response among the lawless, oppressed masses. Over the centuries, Manichaeism has spread to Spain and Gaul, leaving behind its traces in later China and Mongolia. Also, in the Islam are found some elements of the Manichean doctrine.

 

In Flanders, the heresy, which first took root in the upper class of the society, quickly stretched out down the social ladder, to reach the common people.

 

In 1162, Catholic prelates complained about the big money that circulated, in Flanders, among the Cathar movement. When the Archbishop of Reims, Henri, visited Flanders in 1162, which was part of his ecclesiastical province, he found the Manicheans (Cathars) dogma disquieting if not alarming widely spread.

 

Since the Count of Flanders considered the Catharism as a Heresy, their adepts called “Piffles, Tesserants or Textores” (from their trade which link them with absolute certainty to Flanders), could not remain in Flanders or in its sphere of influence.

 

Persecutions were on the daily program. It is recorded that, in 1183, the Count of Flanders Philippe I and the Archbishop of Reims Guillaume de Champagne were religious hard-liners. They quickly condemned the new adepts with penalties ranging from confiscation (to their own benefits), to exile and death. Actually, the same procedures in force in the south of France. Remember the story of Sybille Baille and her son.

 

So was the exodus of some of our family members unavoidable. To the question: where they went with their unorthodox and heretic belief, comes the quite logic answer: To the south of France. There were the Cathars were at home!

 

Even after the Church’s mid XIII^th century murderous expedition against the Cathars, they were still active in the region. Historical records show people from Flanders arriving around the year 1400, near the city of Perpignan. Their leader was a certain man called Ferrer!

 

There were finally many other reasons for members of our lineages to settle in the south of France. Flanders knights “accompanying travellers” and their subsequent settlements in the final destination area, were quite a normal happening in the Middle Ages. Examples:

 

• Robert de Bruges (later called Robert the Bruce, King of Scotland) is said to have accompanied to Normandy, Lady Mathilde of Flanders, after she married William, the Duke of Normandy, in anno 1053. So did a branch of the “de Bruges” from Flanders settled in Normandy exactly as did the “Bels”, almost two centuries earlier, in Spain, and four centuries earlier in Rennes-le-Château. There is thus really “nothing new under the Sun” (sic).

 

• The same phenomenon happened with the epic of the Duke of Normandy who later became King of England. We just saw that he married Mathilde, fa of Henricus, the second son of the Count of Flanders Balduinus V (de Lille or le Débonnaire 1036-1077). Henricus had two daughters: Mathilde and Judith. The latest had also something to do with England since she was the wife of Toston, brother of Harold, King of England. She married subsequently Guelf, the Duke of Bavaria!

 

The direct consequences of this happening, as with Robert de Bruges and the Knight Bels, were that several lords Balliol and Bels found themselves each time attached to the daughters of the Counts of Flanders.

 

So was the presence of the Knight Bels in north of Spain not an isolated case but rather the result of a “Service en Cours” or “Service to the Court” (aliquo officio fungi in curia familiaria). A procedure that commanded, respected and trustful Lords, to render pro Deo, the secular “Auxilium et Concilium” or “Help and Council” to their Upper Lords.

 

And there is of course, as seen earlier, the presence in the south of France of our Lineage, brought down there by the severe turmoil, which hit the Merovingians Dynasty. When, in 679, Dagobert´s II daughter needed a strong protective escort on her escape journey to Rennes-le-Château, here again Flemish Knights from a few selected Flemish families, constituted her secret and close protection force. No other knights could be trusted.

 

Whatever the alternatives, they all fit very well the attempt to explain the presence of this/these Knight(s) Bels so far away from Flanders and give us an important indirect hint: the Bels Knights were already very active in Flanders around that time, that is to say, around the year 840. Also, around that time must have been the birth year of the ancestor of the Knight(s) Bels who escorted or accompanied Winidilde, the Count of Flanders daughter, to Spain. In other words, this/these Knight(s) Bels lived at the time of the Marquis of Flanders, Boudewijn I^st.

 

More recent studies show their presence at the time of the Merovingian Dynasty, as far as the time when Clodion, ca. anno 431, thanks to a seemingly forced “foedus” (Roman Treaty), “allowed” them to settle in Tournai !

 

There is also another theory that may explain the presence of the Bels/Bayle in the South of France. It wants these knights remaining captives, by some of these Catalan beauties, while most of their companions returned to Flanders after their “mini trips” to the south of France and to the north of Spain. Trips that would later, during the reign of the emperor Charlemagne, become serious military campaigns.

 

These kinds of happenings were very frequent in those times and concerned our Knights as well! They happened, for instance, to the Knights Bels and Balliol from Flanders when they went to the “War of the Caw” (1273-1275) in the country of Liège. Some came back home, but some other, more sensible to the beauty and to the charms of the woman of East Belgium, got stuck.

 

And so was our mystery less a mystery than a lack of a certain realism of quite natural human happenings. This kind of coupling is indeed a constant of History. A beautiful example is the one of the roman Julius Caesar and, after his death, of Marcus Antonius who got stuck and “struck” by the reported staggering beauty of Cleopatra!

 

If the triple theory of escorting Dagobert II, his daughter (to hide her brother Sigisbert IV) and Winidilde from Flanders, holds the wall side of the pavement, the mystery surrounding another Knight Bels: Hrvotland Bels, one of the Knights who signed the Treaty of Verdun in anno 843, becomes a little less mysterious.

 

My “escorting” thesis is sound. I found in “La chronique de Saint-Denis” a passage that describes a particularity of the trip Clotilde, the future wife of Clovis, undertook to rejoin him. At least one “Leude,” which is even named, was assigned to protect her during the trip.

 

“…Gondebaud, King of the Burgundian, uncle of Clotilde, did not fancy the idea to give her to Clovis, but he did not dare to resist to the Francs, a valiant and vindictive nation. They had invaded the lands of the Burgundians. Clotilde received the ring and the presents from Clovis. The maiden set off under the protection of the Leude Aurelien..:”.

 

Hrvotland Bels is now no longer lost alone in time and space but become part of a seemingly very active Bels family whose members were already High Barons (baronobis) and Knights at the time of Charlemagne. And maybe even before that time!

 

Not only the time frame fits: anno 803 for the presumed year of birth of Hrvotland Bels and around 843 for the presumed birth year of the ancestor of the Knight Bels (in Spain) who accompanied Winidilde, but also the geographical epicenter: Flanders.

 

Then I made a much-unexpected discovery! In fact, the information has been there, right for my eyes, for several years but it never caught my attention! It is in the text of the Chart from Baudouin VII (also called “à la Hache”), Count of Flanders (1111-1119), dated 1116. Of course, I noticed (underlined in red), the name of the Office holder (Baron) Lord Balduinus de Belle (S. Baldeum de bella), among the witnesses who undersigned the decree.

 

What I totally overviewed is the mention of another Office holder (underlined in blue) : the Lord Balduinus Borel (S. Baldeuuim borel). Taken out of the general context of my Essay, this patronymic does not catch any particular attention.

 

However, this changes drastically as soon as I compared the data of the two charters, the one of Baudouin VII (Flanders, 1116) and the one of Vacarisses (Spain, 1014).

 

In these Chartas, we find two Lords belonging to two “recurrent” families:

Both were officials at countal courts, one in Flanders and one in Spain. The distance between the two courts is ca. 1250 km. Is this again a coincidence?

 

We encountered the “Borrell” patronymics in the Dynasty of the Counts of Barcelona with Ramon Borrel, Borrell II and Borrell d´Osona. As we have seen, one of these Counts, Wilfredo “el Velloso” (*845 - †897), married Winidilde van Vlaanderen (*860), fa. of Boudewijn I^st “Iron Arm” (840-879), Marquis of Flanders and of Judith, Queen of England! We set their probable marriage year at ca. 874 because their first son called “Borell I^st” is reported born in 874 and dead in 911.

 

Above, the Chart from Baudouin VII, Count of Flanders, dated 1116. Below, the Chart of Vacarisses, dated 1014.

 

• First family             : The Bels, de Belle.
• Second family         : The Borel, Borrellus.

 

• Present, in Flanders  :  Lord Balduinus de Belle and  Lord Balduuim Borel.         Anno 1116
• Present, in Spain       :  Lord (sig†num)  Bels and  Bishop (sig†num)   Borrellus.   Anno 1014

 

Therefore, the signature on the Spanish document (1014) must have taken place some 140 years after the marriage (874) and the second signature, in Flanders (1116), some 242 years later. This indicates us that minimum of four, up to eight generations may have passed, in which the Bels were active in Spain.

 

This allows us also to affirm that the Baron Bels effectively settled in Spain, was still there in 1116 and went to Flanders with the Baron Borel (Borrellus), or that they were both still hanging in Flanders, at that time, together with other Bels, some 242 years later.

 

Given the presence in Flanders of the Bels and the Counts of Barcelona, it's highly probable that “el Velloso” also attended the great assembly where the Treaty of Verdun (Diedenhofen, Yutz) was signed in 843, and met there the Bels.

 

More than two centuries of presence, in Flanders and Spain, advocates the allegations that these people were not at these courts, as Office Holders, just by chance. They were hereditary officials, living in the area where they were active as Lawmen and that they were part of these, through time and space, important interconnected families of the Merovingian and Carolingian times, called “Leudes”. More about them subsequently.

 

Described here above is my attempt to find out from where this Knight Bels came from. The answer is: from Flanders. There is one more question I would like to have answered: Where did he settle?

 

We know the Knight Bels was active in Vacarisses. A place much too far away from Villardebelle and Belcastel-et-Buc (238 km), Baillessats (259 km) and Ambels (383 km) for a “Man of Law” working either for the Count of Barcelona or for the Count Guillem de Muntanyola. Actually, for who he was working is irrelevant. What is relevant is the fact that our Knight Bels could not carry out properly his court functions unless he permanently settled in the region.

 

Travellers covered an average of 40 km a day. Trained courier, on light and fast horses, could reach 80 km. However, a Knight carrying even the half of his equipment, on his heavy Palfrey and in good weather conditions, would need from Belcastel-et-Buc (the closest place) to Vacarisses, up to 6 days.

 

Therefore, there was a real need for an Office holder to settle in the region where he was working, close to the Seigneurial court. And if he settled there, he must have done it with his whole family. The question is, where?

 

We might expect our Knight Bels to have chosen a place not too far away from a Benedictine Abbey or Monastery and not too far away from a place of cult for the Madonna and her Child. The link we had with the Monasteries has never been satisfactorily elucidated. However, the lack of explanation does not prevent us from facing, once more, the historical permanency that seems to stick to our Lineages.

 

A closer look at the map gave me an overwhelming answer. Less than 10 km north-west of Vacarisses is a village called “Castellbell”. That is exactly the same name and the same meaning as the “Belcastel-et-Buc” from the South of France.

 

From the area where the Bels and Bayles settled on the Northern slopes of the Pyrenean Chain, there is a direct route 8or trail) to Castellbell. It goes from Foix, to Tarascon, to Ax-les-Thermes following then the ridges to cross the Pyrenean range at the “El Pas de la Casa”, at an altitude of 2.408m. From there on, in Spanish territory, the route goes down to Berga and Manresa. This route is 205 km long from Ax-les-Thermes to Castellbell.

 

And even more! The map gives the full name of this place: “Castellbell i el Vilar”, what literally means: “The Bell Castle and the village”.

 

In the South of France, we had “Villardebelle” for the village of the Belle and “Belcastel-et-Buc” for their castle. In Spain we have “Castellbell” for the castle and the mention “i el Vilar” for the village of the Belle. This means that the castle and the village were located at the same place and not separated, as in Belcastel-et-Buc and Villardebelle, in the Corbières.

 

1.  In the south of France

    Bel-castel                 =  Castle of the Bel  (Belle)

    Villar                         =  Village

    Villar de Belle            =  Village of the Belle

 

2.  In the north of Spain

    Castell-bell                =  Castle of the Bell  (Belle)

    Vilar                         =  Village

    i el Vilar                    =  and the Village

 

3.  In Flanders  (Latin)                  

    Castillo de                =  Castle of the

    Bello                         =  Belle

 

The overall meaning of § 1 is =  The Castle of the Belle and the Village of the Belle.

The overall meaning of § 2 is =  The Castle of the Belle and the Village (of the Belle).

The overall meaning of § 3 is =  The Castle of the Belle (Belle city or Belle, the lineage?).

 

There is absolutely no difference in the meaning of both toponyms! They both referrers to Patronymics!

 

1. In Ambels (The South of France), the message was easier to understand. The main village, on the Tarn River shore, was called Ambialet. What brought the Bels to call their estates and their castle, built upon the heights south of Ambialet: “Ambels” !
2. Some places in the Pyrenean Mountain range, were literally called after the inhabitants Patronymics. So do we encounter (among plenty of other) the localities called “Les Bels” and “Les Bayles”.
3. In the Corbières we have:  “Baille-sats”     =  “The Baille “Belle” know”.
4. Still in the Pyrenees:          “Carla-Bayle”   =   “From Bayle, the patronymic of Pierre Bayle”.
5. In England, we have:         “Bell-asis“        =   “The Seat of the Belle. The word “seat” is synonym for “settlement, village” of the Belle.

 

There are still other very strange “Intern Correlations”: Wherever the Bels (Belle) were active (Flanders, England, Scotland, the South of France and so on), they were always very close, geographically spoken, to a :

 

1.  Place where they settled down (sic).

2.  Benedictine Monastery abbey.

3.  Place dedicated to the cult of “a” Madonna and her Child.

4.  Place where the Templar Order was active.

 

For these strange singularities to be also applicable to the discovery I just made with “Castellbell i el Vilar” in Spain, I needed at least two more elements out of the four.

 

On 17 September 2011, wandering in the monthly Flea market of Zweibrücken (Germany), I spotted a small statuette with, engraved on the plinth, the following text: “Santa Maria de Montserrat”. This Madonna is also called the “Holy Image” or "Little Dark Lady of Montserrat". Seized by the beauty of the statuette, I bought it. The statuette must be in pewter, I suppose!

 

Please note that the Black Madonna statue was one of the most important objects of devotion of the Order of Sion and probably also of the Priory of Sion. The Knight Templars spiritual leader, Saint Bernard (de Clairvaux), is known for having been irresistibly and mysteriously attracted to her.

 

I quickly found out that the original Holy Sculpture, of Romanesque style, is dated later XII^th century. However, the origin of the legend and its subsequent history are lost in conjecture. As often, the irremovable clockwork of time has, here also, erased the memory of events.

 

Having absolutely no clue where Montserrat was, I searched for it and quickly found it to be in Catalonia, Northern Spain. And this time again the “Intern Correlation”, we encountered previously, was operational!

 

1. A place where we settled down. Match!

We settled down in “Castellbell I el Vilar” that lies 5 km from Monistrol de Montserrat, the village to whom belongs the Monastery. The Monastery itself is lost in the mountains, some 16 km from Castellbell I el Vilar.

2. A Benedictine Monastery. Match!

The Statue of the Madonna is kept in the Benedictine Monastery of Montserrat (Catalonia, Spain).

3. A place dedicated to the cult of “a” Madonna and her Child. Match!

The black Madonna and Child from Montserrat.

4. This has not been researched for the moment.

 

I wrote earlier “a” Madonna and her Child, on purpose, because it is evident that the Madonna painted in the Belle Huis, in Ypres, is neither the Virgin Mary nor her child Jesus! It is also evident that the Madonna of Montserrat is neither the Virgin Mary nor her child Jesus!

 

“…Holding “a” child in her arms, she is shown as being black-skinned. She is one of the legendary ”Black Madonnas”…

 

This is the dialectic used by Lynn Picknett and Clive Prince in their “The Templar Revelation” concerning the thirteenth-century statue of Notre-Dame de Confession, kept in the cave-like chapel of the crypt of the Abbey of St. Victor (France). Indeed, “a” is an “indefinite article used as a function word before singular nouns when the referent is unspecified”. (Webster’s Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary, Merriam-Webster Inc. Springfield, MA. USA1990).

 

In other words “a” is used here as a euphemism for... “the child is not Jesus” ! We find the same strange discrepancies, as seen previously, on the Belle Huis Madonna.

 

1. If on the Montserrat Madonna, the golden colour of the Statuette prevents us to know what the Madonna’s Cape colour was, it is evident that, since the Madonna is Black, we are not in the presence of a representation of the Virgin Mary but of Mary Magdalene.
2. The Virgin Mary’s Kingdom is the one of heaven. She is, most of the time, represented surrounded by Stars which represent the Kingdom of Heaven.

 

3. On the Statuette of Montserrat, the Madonna carries the Sphere of the Universe! Is her Child a boy or a girl? Unclear on the Belle Huis painting, the Child of the Statuette however seems to be a boy!

 

4. Is the Child representing Jesus? On the Belle Huis it is not. Neither it is on the statuette!

The Child is not white but black. The Child of Montserrat has in his hand, neither the Sphere of the Universe nor a Sceptre, the classical symbols of Jesus´ status. On the contrary, his right hand makes the Blessing Sign also called the sign of the Holy Spirit (3) or of the Soul that detaches itself from the Matter (4) (Earth, Water, Air, Fire) and his left hand holds a Pinecone which is the sacred symbol for the Human Enlightenment, the “Third Eye” (*).

 

(*) The “Third Eye” is supposed to be activated by the Pineal gland (Epiphyses), a small gland located about the centre of the Brain, and which resembles a Pinecone. It is a very archaic part of our Brain, already present in the brains of the very early reptilians on Earth (sic). The gland, which produces the Melatonin, is thought throughout the span of recorded human history, to be the seat of the Soul. Every big civilisation on Earth : Hindus, Assyrians, Aztecs, Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, etc., considered it as such and made it a sacred symbol.

 

The Roman Catholic Church also appropriated it for their purposes. A roman famous bronze sculpture, surmounted by a Pinecone, cast in the 1^st or 2^nd century by Publius Cincius Salvius, rest nowadays in the Cortile della Pigna, the large courtyard within the Vatican Museums. It is also to be found at the base of the sacred papal cross (ferula) and tops, as the triple Tiara, the Coat of Arms (Emblem) of the Papacy (here from Jean Paul II). Even the Mitre, the traditional ceremonial headdress of Bishops, has the Pinecone form. Freemasons are known to use this eternal symbol on the ceilings of their Lodges (Octagons).

 

5. Why is this “Maria” keeping the Sphere of the Universe and not her Child as it should be if the child was Jesus? Does the message tell us that “She” is the Mother, the legitimated source of The Kingdom of the Kingdoms, on Earth? The Kingdom she inherited, as spouse, from Jesus!

 

Paraphrasing the Prof. Fra. Jerome Murphy O´Connor who stated in a BBC radio broadcast: “Marriage was not a matter of choice for Jews. (Jesus) must have been married because this was a social obligation whose social fulfilment was obvious”.

 

Is it not Jesus´ own wedding that is described in the wedding feast at Cana? One should here also very seriously study the case. Only one fact, among others: In the Gospel of Luke. Chapt. 10. v.39. (Version Louis Second) we read: “And she had a sister called Mary, which sat at Jesus feet and heard his word”. That ”Maria” was the sister of nobody else present on the scene, but Maria of Bethany, better known as Mary Magdalene. Jewish rules and traditions only permit a woman to sit at a man’s feet, his wife!

 

Imagine the shockwave produced by the recognition that Jesus has been married to Mary Magdalene and had children. If Jesus is divine, then his offspring’s are ipso facto divine. Who then would have “the” authority on Earth ? Jesus´ heirs or the pope and his congeners? Jesus´ teachings or the first multinational power on our planet, the Holy (with all the hypocritical perversity the word contains when brought in relation to the Church) Roman Catholic Church, who built its empire upon more than 2000 years of shameful manipulations (grand larcenies, fraudulent acquisitions, lies, calumnies, corruptions, inquisitional tortures, murders) and hundred million of deaths?

 

Or is there yet another mystery? How to handle, for instance, the very confusing documents and intern correlations relative to John the Baptist and Mary Magdalene?

 

 

Back to our subject.

 

The place “Vacarisses” in Spain is ca. 15 km away from the Black Madonna of Montserrat´s cave. Now, there is a place, in France, called “Vaccares”. This place is also ca. 15 km away from the Black Madonna (St. Sarah) kept in the crypt of the church of “Les Saintes Maries de la Mer”. Vaccares is the name given to a lake, “L´Etang de Vaccares”, midst of the Regional Natural Park of the Camargue.

 

• Vacarisses   (Spain)    and the  Black Madonna of Montserrat.
• Vaccares     (France)   and the  Black Madonna of Les Saintes Maries de la Mer.

 

And last but not least … Why was Saint Bernard (de Clairvaux), son of Tescelin de Fontaine and of Aleth de Montbard, mysteriously attracted to the Black Madonna?

 

One day, praying in the church of Saint-Vorles (F), St. Bernard asked the Madonna for a sign. He said: “Monstra te esse Matrem”. Immediately three drops of milk sprayed from her right brest and landed on his lips. The loss of his mother, on 16 April 1105, and the miracle, changed Bernard´s life. From then on he was sure of his destiny: He would become a monk.

 

Bernard de Fontaine (alias of Clairvaux) was born in 1090 in Fontaines-les-Dijon, and died August 20, 1153, at Clairvaux. At the age of 21 he enters in Citeaux under the Abbatiat of Etienne Harding. By order of his Abbot, he founded in 1125, with twelve of his companions, the Abbey of Clairvaux (Beaujolais) which will quickly become the lighthouse of the Christian West. He was considered as the greatest mystic after Jesus.

 

The favourite book of Bernard of Clairvaux, his inspiration for his sermons was “The Song of Songs”. However, it is almost certain that this book was addressed to Astarte (the Phoenician Goddess mother, Queen of Heaven), the Black Queen and main opponent of Yahweh, the patriarchal pseudo-God of Abraham and Moses! The prophet Jeremiah blames very severely his compatriots to return to the cult of Astarte, which indicates that this worship was, previously, well established! The “Song of Songs” is included in the Old Testament. This unique document was composed ten centuries before our era, on one of the countless marriages of King Solomon. Here is an excerpt from the text:

 

 “…Dark I am, yet lovely. O daughters of Jerusalem, dark like the Tents of Kedar, like the tent curtains of Solomon. Do not stare at me because I am dark, because I am darkened by the sun…”. Bible. Old Testament. Songs of Songs 1.5-6.

 

There is an extraordinary internal coherence between these three “Madonna’s” the two of the Belle Huis, in Ypres and the one of Montserrat:

 

• All three represent a Madonna that is not the Holy Virgin Mary.
• All three represent a Madonna having on her knees a baby that does not fit, either by his attitude or by the objects he carries, with the classical representations of the Redeemer.
• All three were made by artists who remained anonym.

 

Was the risk to be exposed and confronted to the Roman Catholic Inquisition’s tribunals too big?

 

In the painting “The Three Marys at the Tomb” (in 1410 or 1420), either Hubert or Jan van Eyck (unsure who painted it) left clear messages. Of course, it is only a picture, a simple vivid representation of an image created in the painter’s mind. But then, how comes and how explain that so many painters and sculptors create in their minds such unorthodox images which definitively follow identical patterns, through time and space?

 

From the three Mary’s (see picture), only one is kneeling at the tomb, only one is directly “addressed” by an Angel (*), only one is looking straight at the Angel and the Angel at her, only one is having a non-verbal dialogue with the Angel and vice versa. The Angel is pointing one finger only to one Mary, not in a sign of blessing (the blessing sign is with three fingers) but in telling her something or giving her instructions. Could it be: “you are the first Apostle” as the heretical and apocryphal Gnostic Gospels told us?

 

By the position of her left hand, the Mary seems to question the Angel : “how comes” but also “why me” and/or “what next” ? Her facial expression does not show sorrow, pain or compassion, as the two other Mary’s do. Hers is more factual, pragmatic, actual, active, in the present and determinate, ready for the future while the other two are passive, hopelessly bound to the past.

 

Of course, these traits are subjective elements imagined by the painter and materialised on their paintings. Anyhow, one may ask the question to which source the painters drew their information. How is it that they seem to follow a single but coherent directive and that they stick to a sort of “Red Line”, a single thread that aims to transmit to future generations, messages that for an unknown hidden "Source", seems to be extremely important!

 

(*) I use the name “Angel” to describe a nonhuman being. In the Gospels, Mathew (28.2) speaks about “an Angel”, Marc (16.5) about a “Jung Man”, Luc (24.4) about “two Men” and John (20.12) about “two Angels” !

 

There is even more… Mary’s left-hand palm is bloodstained. The bean-shaped stain and the three trickles of blood do not match Jesus` crucifixion marks, which were located at the base of the wrist. What does this representation means?

 

From the three Marys present, the one selected with her red cape and her “concocted” symbol, the Alabaster Unguent Jar (box of ointment or containing the expensive perfume), is indeed Mary Magdalene.

 

It is interesting to note the continuity of the transmission of “the code” through paintings, bas-reliefs, and other means. Idem for the crescendo of unorthodoxy of these hidden messages! It always starts with depicting Mary Magdalene’s unique bond to Jesus (present at his side), as his most important follower, when she is pregnant, when she gives birth and with her child.

 

The first Madonna, in the foreground, is Mary Magdalene (red cape), undeniably the key subject of the painting. To her right, which is significant in the symbolism, and in the foreground of the painting, is a flowerpot! Isn’t it strange that this object, which has no connection with the image, is placed right there in the middle of the room. Is it a flowerpot or something else? A jar perhaps?

 

Some will say that flowerpot symbolizes the garden in which the angel Gabriel appeared to Mary. In the end, we see what we want to see. But behind all this, we must recognize that there are still a lot of rather very disturbing coincidences.

 

The second Madonna, lost in the background, in a medallion, at the top of the stained-glass window of the church’s porch, part of the painting’s “details” (sic), is the Virgin Mary (blue cape), surrounded by Jesus (left) and may be Joseph (right). It is interesting to note that Petrus Christus is also a Flemish painter of the early fifteenth century. Everything seems to be linked.

 

But not all paintings or carvings bearing some cryptic messages were anonym. For Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) who, since the beginning of his career, worked mainly for some very powerful Italians patrician families as well as for the highest aristocracy and nobility, the best known of all, being the de Medici, the exposition risk was really minimised.

 

So did Leonardo not have to use to the anonymity subterfuge. These families ruled Florence at the time when this city was one of the two poles of banking and culture in Europe, together with Flanders’s Bruges. Leonardo as some other big painters, backed up by such heavy weighted families, could take “some” risks, their northern colleges would not even dare thinking about!

 

However, it is known that even Leonardo encountered some problems with his particular ways to represent biblical scenes, not to speak about his controversial and world known “Last Supper” painting, he very cleverly encoded. On it, Mary Magdalene should have been at his left side (as I worked it out on the second picture) leaving the pretended “father” of the Roman Catholic Church, the follower Petrus, alone and isolated from Jesus. Note the very significant gap, which suddenly occurs in the composition of the painting. Was this premeditated?

 

Peter is said to be “the stone” upon which rests the Church institution, a metaphor for a very strong position indeed. However, what about Peter himself searching for an invisible support, to rest upon with his left hand? As a human cannot be supported by air alone, does an invisible stone occupy the empty space? What if the message wants us to inverse the roles?

 

The foundation of Christianity was based upon Jesus and Mary Magdalene alone, and not on Peter and the Church´s rock story. The latest being the result of a Gospel manipulation, probably at the time of the Concilium of Nicaea!

 

Note that Jesus is represented without “his” halo of holiness, as if he was an ordinary man.

 

At the table, Jesus´ followers express themselves through the non-verbal communication on how they personally experience this “flagrant injustice” !

 

Left, the longhaired person is definitively a woman. Doubting that will be a proof of blindness or bad faith! It is not a secret that the apostle Peter detested Mary Magdalene as a woman, but more than this, he could not bear the sight of a rival who enjoyed intimacy with his Master. It is evident that he could not harm her as long as Jesus protected her.

 

Nevertheless, Mary Magdalene took Peters threats very seriously. This may have been one of the reasons why, after she lost Jesus´ protection, she decided to escape Palestine for the South of France, together with some close relatives.

 

Peter’s aggression against Mary Magdalene is clear on Leonardo’s painting. Whoever the painters, the positions of the knives, they painted, certainly does not suggest their culinary uses.

 

However, Leonardo was not the only one who used his paintings to transmit the message about Peter’s aggressive attitude. At least three others did. In the copy here above (right) made in 1520 by Giovanni Pietro Rizzoli (Giampietrino), of the Leonardo’s original painting (1495-1498), Peter is hiding a knife behind the back of Judas Iscariot and seems ready to strike.

 

The position of Peters left hand at the basis of Mary Magdalene’s throat, leaves no doubt about his intention. It unmistakably suggests the non-verbal communication: “I will cut your throat” or: “one day, I will get you”.

 

Fifteen years before Leonardo started his huge Last Supper painting (4,6 m x 8,8 m), another Italian painter Domenico Ghirlandaio painted, in 1480, the same aggressive attitude of Peter against Mary Magdalene (size 4,0 m x 8,8 m).

         

Pietro Perugino followed the same pattern in 1493-1496 (size 4,4 m x 8,0 m) and the last painter who transmitted the message was Jacopo Bassano (1542) as well as Domenico Ghirlandaio, in another painting, in San Marco (Italy).

 

It is really worth to spend some time looking at this painting, seeing it from a different perspective as the one we are used to and to meditate on the real messages these genius painters wanted to pass to the future generations.

 

Other examples of such secret messages are those concealed in the next painting.

 

The Brussels painter Philippe de Champaigne (1602-1674) also deliberately accentuated the feminine aspect of one of his figures, in his painting "The Last Supper" (80 x 149 cm). The person to Jesus' right, is unmistakably female. Her features could not be more feminine. To emphasize the message, the person is painted without a beard, while all the others have beards. An unthinkable thing for a man, in the customs and habits of Palestine, to have no beard. Is this another coincidence?

 

There is even more: There's only one wine cup on the long table, and it stands between Jesus and Mary Magdalene. Why not in front of Jesus? And is it really a wine cup, or could it be a camouflaged jar, the distinctive sign of Mary Magdalene?

 

The fact that the woman is placed at Jesus' right, indicates that she is the most important person at the table. And this woman can be none other than Mary Magdalene, Jesus' first declared follower, to say the least. It was she who infuriated Peter because: "The Lord loved Mary more than any of the disciples, and often kissed her on the mouth...", and "Sister, we know that the Master loved you differently from other women".

 

And what does coincidence have to do with the fact that the painter, Philippe, worked as early as 1621, together with his best friend, who was none other than the famous Nicolas Poussin, the painter of "Les Bergers d'Arcadie"? And to make it even more incredible, they had a common and close friend named Louis Fouquet, the King Louis XIV´s chaplain, and brother of the Marquis Nicolas Fouquet, the Superintendent of Finances in France under Louis XIV? Remember what we described page 321 :

 

“ Louis Fouquet, Nicolas Fouquet´s brother, sent his brother a letter dated Rome 17 April 1656, in which he confirmed the handed-over of his letter to Nicolas Poussin. The content of the letter mentioned that he, Louis, spoke with Poussin about an “immeasurable fortune, that will not be equalled on earth” and about “a great secret”! What did the trio, Nicolas Fouquet, Louis Fouquet, and Nicolas Poussin concoct together?”

 

The painter Philippe de Champaigne may not have known the whole secret, but it is quite evident that he knew something, as did Leonard da Vinci and other initiated, that transpired in his painting of the “La petite Cène”? A knowledge of something he wanted discretely to pass to future generations by means of an innocent painting.

 

I found out that Champaigne and another of his friends, Charles Perrault (1628-1703) were initiates of the abbey of Port-Royal des Champs, an abbey of the Cistercian nuns southwest of Versailles. What could a painter and a man of letters be initiated into in a Cistercian abbey? Perrault was a brilliant writer, author, and member of the Académie française. Did he also bristle all his works, as did his friends, with secret messages for the initiated? Solis sacerdotibus.

 

If this way of thinking is accepted, we can continue our momentum. In front of the Lady, is a kind of recipient, the only one on the table, and this recipient is not a cup to drink wine from. If it was the case, there should have been eleven more on the table! It resembles more a Jar. A container of this type is, by definition, something intended to hold something liquid. If not wine, what could it have been? An ointment?

 

Since at a diner nobody is ever going to drink an ointment, the presence of this object must therefore be symbolic. And it is. This object represents indisputably the ointment jar of Mary Madeleine.

 

Some may retort that this container does not resemble a jar. Well, sometimes we find on paintings such type of objects. On the following picture, dated about 1523, we have a Marie Magdalena and her symbol, the jar, painted by Domenico Puligo.

 

Nicolas Poussin, Louis Fouquet and most probably Philippe de Champaigne were, as we shall see below, the keeper of a secret of the highest importance according to the letter written to Louis' brother Nicolas Fouquet. An imbroglio which does not seem to have come about simply by chance.

 

One day, I wondered if a painter or an engraver would ever take the risk to put on his work, Mary Magdalene at the Jesus left side, as it must have been the case. Then, on the following next Flea Market, in my residence´s town, just across the street, I experienced another incredible “accidental” discovery.

 

There I found a bas-relief, I called the “Bipontina”, from the Latin name of the city of Zweibrücken, that represents exactly what I wanted to see and to possess. It lied just there, amidst pots and pans, waiting for me. This piece of art is also anonymous!

 

Note also the hidden symbolic letter M, for Mary Magdalene, formed by the line running from the bottom left to the bottom right of the bas-relief, peaking on the three highest heads after having descended back twice to the table level. The person at the left side of Jesus (right on the picture) is clearly the Mary Magdalene.

 

On this bas-relief, we notice also something strange and highly unusual. Mary Magdalene is on Jesus' left side, with her head pressed to his heart, rather than on his right side, somewhat distanced from him. The message here is made far more powerful, leaving no doubt as to its deeper meaning. "He who has ears, let him hear; he who has eyes, let him see."

 

More recently (April 2018), I felt another unexplained and sudden surge to go to the Homburg (Saar, Germany) Flea Market, one of the biggest in Germany and only a few kilometers from my home.

 

There, I was kind-of remote-controlled and directed to another Bas-relief (picture below) which turned out to be, once more, placed there right for me. Is this another coincidence? I called it “Hohenburg” from the old city name of Homburg.

 

Although the size of this art object is far smaller than the Bipontina one, it has very interesting details.

 

If on the above Bipontina Bas-relief, one of the hidden messages, in addition to the female sitting at Jesus´ left hand, is the “M” form, the Hohenburg one shows without any doubt the female traits of the woman next to Jesus.

 

 

Another detail, all Jesus´ followers coats are draped except the one of Mary Magdalene! A very clear message to the ones who can see behind the curtain. “...He that has ears to hear let him hear...” M´t 11:15 and M´r 4:9.

 

The aggressiveness of Peter toward MM is here also represented. He is not menacing with a knife but has a facial expression and his finger pointed to Mary that says more than words!

 

During the more than thirty years of research for my Essay, I have experienced several dozens of these incredible “accidental” discoveries. Debating on how they happen and who is behind such unexplained phenomena is definitely out of the frame of my Essay and certainly light-years away from my humble comprehension of these occurrences.

 

It is however not forbidden, and it should even be advised, to take some time to meditate about them. We must become conscious of their miraculous nature. Who is at the controls? All we can observe is that they appear to respond to some of our wishes but not to our requests!

 

Another major problem for Leonardo da Vinci arose after he painted: ”The Virgin of the Rocks”, ordered by the Confraternity of the Immaculate Conception. Although the problem was limited (sic) to an “order” to repaint the scene… this time in a more orthodox way, Leonardo had nevertheless to cope with a rather complicated lawsuit that lasted more than 20 years.

 

Somehow, somebody protected him from much more severe problems with the omnipresent Church authorities and the quite vigilant Inquisition because both, Leonardo and his paintings, survived!  The version form 1478 is kept in the Louvre (Paris) and the version of 1508 is kept in the National Gallery (London).

 

At this point, I would like to insert a few sentences Lynn Picknett and Clive Prince wrote about Leonardo:

 

“…Leonardo must have been a non-believer, an atheist rather than a heretic…He was virtually obsessed with St. John the Baptist and wherever possible, he included John in his paintings. Clearly the Baptist was overwhelmingly important to him for some secret but very special reason…”.

 

It is clear that something very important happened in the south of France that, if made public, would shake the very foundations of both Church and State, whatever we may think about the authenticity of the Abbé Bérenger Saunière stories, his fortune, his secret documents, his treasures, his church, and his graveyard stories.

 

At first glance and without trained eyes, these works seem quite normal. That was also the goal!

 

However, with good observation, critical analyse, scrutiny, perspicacity and intellectual curiosity, strange anomalies quickly appear. These did not happen at random, by mere chance or as a product of some mentally detracted minds.

 

Quite the contrary, their striking synchronicity are definitively the results of a very clever and well-conceived plan. A remarkable plan, whose common denominator presents such an impressive consistency that, although the phenomenon started nearly two thousand years ago, it is still very present today.

 

The paintings of the Belle family almshouse in Ypres, made at the end of the XV^th century or begin of the XVI^th century, are contemporary to those of Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519), in his “Virgin and Child with St. Anne” (1501) and “The Virgin of the Rock” (Louvre’s version), to the ones of Raphael, in his “The school of Athens” (1509) and to the frescos in the Cathedral of Albi.

 

Were all these painters really “detracted minds“? Were they all village idiots, psychopaths, or drunkards?

 

Would it be not more logical to assume that all these people, through space (Flanders, France, Italy, Spain, etc.) and time (for about two millennium), knew exactly what they did? Were all these “initiated” people part of a behind-the-scene power that seems, by all evidence, firmly determined to protect its knowledge of something extremely important but, at the same time, to divulge it sparingly, encoded into some masterpieces pieces of art, to the scrutiny of future generations?

 

There is absolutely no doubt that there is, particularly in History and since centuries, a ”parallel knowledge” only accessible to a few people.

 

• What is it for an organisation?
• Where is it located?
• Who is directing it?
• What is the common plan and what is its outcome?
• What is for mankind, the deep significance behind all its actions?
• What exactly does it want to tell us?
• Why are their messages encoded?
• Who would be the big loser(s) if the true ever would surface?

 

The grand question is of course: What is this super-secret organisation?

 

What we know for sure is that:

 

• They survived all the vicissitudes of History, for nearly 2.000 years.
• They succeeded to remain incognito, despite all the efforts of the Church and, more recently, of some Government Intelligence Agencies of the West, on the Jews´payroll.

 

How do we know that this organisation has been active for nearly 2.000 years?

We know of a Christian community living in Asia Minor. After being increasingly persecuted by the new created Islam ideology, a new mystical game for the credulity of most people, the community took refuge in Sicily (Italy) and Calabria (Italy). There, they settled under the protection of the Byzantine Empire and later, under the Norman new rulers. We know that these people came from Asia Minor, but we do not know exactly from where. It is speculated that they came either from Egypt, Syria, Palestine or from Jerusalem itself.

 

Were they in possession of Top-Secret information about the Saint Family? If yes, where did they get them? From the Holy Land itself, from members of the Merovingian dynasty or were some of them, themselves heirs of the Merovingian dynasty who escaped France after the usurpation, in Flanders and France, by the Mayors of the Palace?

 

In Italy, during the centuries that followed the arrival, in Calabria, of these Christians, the community became a religious Order. It is in the year 1070 that an Italian noblewoman, Mathilde de Toscane, granted them land in her husband’s fiefdom of the Ardennes. Coincidentally, Lady Mathilde happened to be the Duchess of Lorraine and the aunt (and foster-mother) of the Lord Godefroid van Boonen (Godefroid de Boulogne-sur-Mer), later called Godefroid de Bouillon, the leader of the first crusade (Crusade of the Barons) to the Holy Land.

 

These Cistercian monks of Calabria (Italy), accepted the offer and, headed by an abbot called “Ursus”, arrived in 1070, in the deep forests of the Belgian Ardennes. There, the monks received, not far away from Stenay (an old Merovingian place and at the centre of Austrasia), a tract of wilderness where they built an abbey called “Abbey du Val d´Or”, later “Abbaie d´Orval”, some 8 km south of the small city of Florenville (Belgium).

 

However, in 1108, and quite unique in the history of the Monastic Institutions, they all abandoned their abbey and mysteriously disappeared. Not a single trace has ever been found of them! Authorities of the time thought they returned to Calabria. Wrong assumption! Not a single record of their whereabouts was ever found in Calabria nor at any other place in Italy. They simply vanished!

Then, as mysterious as the disappearance of the first, is the mysterious appearance of the second.

 

There are some reports informing us of a settlement, in Jerusalem, in an old abbey that became later known as the “Abbey of Notre Dame de Sion”. The abbey is said to have been occupied “some time” before the first crusade, by “some” monks. Years later, the abbey changed its appellation, into “Ordre de Notre Dame de Sion”, the forerunner of the later “Prieuré de Sion”. in 1188. Two charters attest of the existence of this Priory :

 

The first one, dated 19^th July 1116, is sealed, and signed by a Prior called Arnaldus:

 

“…Hugo, abbas de valle Josaphat, Arnaldus, prior de Monte Sion, Petrus et Guillelmus, canonici S. Sepulchri, se patriarcham communi voto ac rite elegisse, juraverint, et dictus Arnulfus, se omnium criminum dictorum immunem esse…”. (Source: Röhricht).

 

The second one, dated 2^nd May 1125, has the above-mentioned Prior’s authentications plus the seal and the signature of Hugues de Payen, the first Grand Master of the Temple. Source: Jeantin.

 

Where did these monks come from?

 

We know that prior to the appearance of the crusaders, in Jerusalem, there was a monk called Pierre d´Amiens, later known as “Peter the Hermit”. This monk is said to have been Godefroid de Bouillon’s tutor.

 

• Pierre was native of the later county of Amiens (Flanders), which belonged to Godefroid de Bouillon’s father estates!
• Pierre was a Cistercian monk at the Abbey of Orval, built on some ground offered by Mathilde de Toscane who was no one else than the aunt and foster-mother of Lord Godefroid!

 

The historian Hagenmeyer writes that Pierre, before becoming a monk, was a small vassal of the fief of Achères, near Amiens. So was he indeed a vassal of the Count Eustachius de Boulogne-sur-Mer. Hagenmeyer pretend that Pierre has never been the preceptor of Godefroid de Bouillon!

 

Whatever, is it not a coincidence that from the first nine Templar Knights, four were from Flanders, two from Champagne, one of Burgundy and two unknown?

 

Is it not another coincidence that we are finding all the key families of the time, always present and instrumental in all the big historical events of Western Europe? It looks like a carousel on which, the big majority of the horses were cavalcaded by the heirs of the most important families of Europe, predominantly coming from Flanders.

 

Peter the Hermit is the one who preached for a crusade to deliver the Holy Land from the Seljuk Turks (Moslims). He was the leader of the first People’s crusade that departed from Köln (Germany) in April 1096.

 

It is in this Abbey of Notre Dame de Sion, in Jerusalem, that the crusaders held a conclave to choose the future King of Jerusalem. It is practically certain that among the head of the crusaders, the monks, and knights of the Order of Notre Dame de Sion, had the heaviest weight in the decisions of the conclave, which was brought together, to confer a throne!

 

It is very important to know, how the Church masterfully reacted to the brand-new Kingdom of Jerusalem.

 

We have seen that the Church broke shamefully several agreements they had made in the course of its History. To quote only one, the agreement made with the Merovingian Dynasty (anno 496) broken in favour of the Carolingian Dynasty (anno 751), which was more inclined to expand their kingdom, which in turn, would be beneficial for the extension of the Church estates.

 

We have seen that, after the fall of Jerusalem, Messire Godefroid de Bouillon was offered the kingdom of Jerusalem. We know that he refused the title of “King of Jerusalem”, for the noble reason that he did not want to carry a crown of gold where his Saviour had worn a crown of thorns! This gives us the real Grandeur of this personage. He took the Title of “Advocatus Sancti Sepulchri” (Defender of the Holy Sepulchre).

 

But there is more in the bush. As King of Jerusalem, Godefroid would become ipso facto, King of Palestine, of Israel and of the whole Christian world. No one has ever been King of Jerusalem except the heirs of the House of David and the heirs of the first King of Jerusalem and of Israel (United Monarchy), Saul (1080-1012 BCE), of the House of Benjamin. And that is precisely what Godefroid was, an heir of the Merovingian Dynasty, which in turn was an heir of the House of David and of Benjamin by Jesus and Mary Magdalene! The Church pontiffs knew it all too well.

 

So, the Church had to react promptly, what it did. It sent the Pontifical Legates, Daimbert de Pise, and had him elected Patriarch of Jerusalem and of Jaffa. What is strange is that Daimbert immediately ordered from Godefroid de Bouillon, the “Serment de Vassalité” or “Vassality Oath. Lord Godefroid accepted!

 

However, the Legate knew very well that, if Godefroid was in the area, he could only count on a nominal power and not on a real power. Godfroid´s reputation was too famous and known over the whole Christianity world, as the saviour of Christianity by delivering the Holy Places from the Muslims. The legate was also perfectly aware that, as long as Godefroid was alive, he would only be no more than his shadow, seen as an opportunistic usurper and considered as an opportunistic intruding instrument of the Church.

 

Then, as a thunderbolt coming out of the blue came the bad news: Godefroid de Bouillon died in Jerusalem on the 18^th July 1100. This invincible Knight, the sublime defender of the Western Civilisation and of Christianity, full of strength and in an excellent physical condition, mysteriously died in Jerusalem, at the age of 40 !

 

Very quickly, the information that Godefroid has been poisoned by the entourage of the Legate Daimbert, and on his orders, passed from Knight to Knight, from Crusader to Crusader and even from Emir to Emir. Godefroid´s remains are said to rest, for eternity, in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, in Jerusalem.

 

From then on, any new King of Jerusalem will be a “simple” king, as any other in Western Europe, and a docile vassal of the Church! By this coup, the Roman Catholic Church brilliantly reinforced its power position after having feared the worst, losing its existence, and its “raison d´être” by a new “authentic” King of Jerusalem, King of Palestine, King of Israel, and Heir of Jesus!

 

Jesus was an heir of the House of David (tribe of Judah) and as such had a legal pretension on the throne of Palestine. Forget the story of the son of a poor carpenter!

 

Jesus might have encountered serious political difficulties to reign over Palestine and more precisely over Jerusalem, because the area belonged to the House (tribe) of the Benjamin, (clan of Matri), since the partition done by Samuel. Not to speak of the problems Jesus may have encountered with the Romans, and Herode in particular, which would have seen in this new King-priest, a real danger emanating from a united Jewish people.

 

Jesus might also have encountered other problems coming from the House of Benjamin. This Jewish Tribe that ruled over the Jerusalem, Judah and Israel gave, Jerusalem, its first king, Saul! Jesus skilfully solved the problem by marrying, in Cana, Mary Magdalene, which was an heir of the House of Benjamin. Unfortunately, he did not find the way to rally all the Jews to his cause. We all know the consequences.

 

So was, thousand years later, Godefroid de Bouillon, as King of Jerusalem, ipso facto King of whole Palestine and of Israel, and the sole true and legal representative of Jesus´ lineage. Godefroid would have become the authentic keeper of Christianity! In such a scenario, the Church only had to put the key under the mat. End of its story!

 

The Madonna de Montserrat has also a small detail in peto. It has the two “M” of Mary Magdalene, as if somebody wanted to pass secretly a message. And she is a Black Madonna, like the one of Bernard de Clairvaux and the “Lady” of the Templars!

 

Slowly, however, the puzzle starts to give us hints of the total significance.

 

Just a reminder: The name of Christopher Columbus´ (Cristoforo Colombo) ship, with which he discovered San Salvador (Bahamas), in October 1492, was called the “Santa Maria”.

 

In 1484, the king of Portugal John II^d refused to lend him money for the expedition. Columbus left Portugal for Spain where his project was also rejected, in 1490, by the Spanish king Ferdinand d'Aragon and Isabelle de Castille.

 

With the help of a councillor of the king, in convincing the Spanish sovereigns of the interest of his project, Columbus finally gets the needed financial support. On the 17^th April 1492, he signed the “Capitulations of Santa Fe”, which is the legal act by which Queen Isabella of Castile agrees to finance half the expenses. Genoese bankers of Seville are said to have lent the balance to Columbus.

 

If the money came from the above-mentioned sources, why had Columbus his ship bearing the Templar knights cross, and why calling it the “Santa Maria”, the patron Saint of the Templars?

 

Today one knows the implications of the Templars in this expedition. What we always knew is that this expedition was made possible thanks to Templars money! Did the Templar lend money to Queen Isabelle de Castille, whose money was needed to deliver Spain from the Muslims to the Italian bankers, or did they financially caution the transaction?

 

Columbus´ project was also made possible thanks to Templar´s navigation maps, drawn 200 years earlier. There are plenty of proofs of the presence of the Templars in North America. Among others, the Newport Tower (Rhode Island), its astonishing astronomical particularities and its “calculated” architecture, which permitted to pinpoint, from the Newport Tower, the Kensington rune-stone (Minnesota), some 2.000 km away inland?

 

Columbus was in close contact with the “heirs” of the Templars, which escaped to Spain and Portugal and entered their Knight Orders. Columbus married Felipa, fa. of Batholomew Perestrello x Guimar Teixerra. Bartholomew happened to be the Master of the Portuguese Knight Order of St. James of the Sword and the Grand Master of the Order of Christ.

 

Columbus was by his father-in-law linked, at the fourth generation, to the Templars Prince Henry Sinclair x Janet Halyburten. Some Templars knowledge was so directly accessible to him! There seem really to be nothing new under sun!

 

Question: Was it really by pure chance that Columbus discovered America? Or was he the first person recorded in “official” History to have done so. Others acted in secret, behind the scenes of history, for two centuries!

 

Was Columbus` ship really named after Santa Maria, Jesus´ mother or after the Santa Maria, the Magdalene, which was the patron Saint of the Templars, the Black Madonna of Bernard de Clairvaux? What makes more sense?

 

Did (one of) the Treasure of the Templars mentioned by the Templar Jean de Châlon, the 46^th knight interrogated end of June 1308 in the presence of the pope, went to Spain? Is it with that money that Columbus expedition(s) were, later, secretly financed?

 

We have seen earlier that Jean de Châlon mentioned that the day before the King’s coup of 12 October 1308, he saw at nightfall, three chariots loaded with straw quitting Paris under the supervision of Gerard de Villers. With him were 50 horses and Huge de Châlon (sic). In these chariots were hidden the safes containing the treasure of the Visitor of France, Hugues de Pairaud (totum thesaurum Hugonis Peraldi). They went to the coast and boarded 18 ships of the Order, at the seaport of La Rochelle. Source: Secret Archives of Vatican Register Aven. Nr.48. Benedict XII, tome 1, folios 448-451.

 

It is also known that Fra. Jacques de Molay arrived in France with a serious amount of gold and silver. Here follows what Mr Raynouard wrote in 1813 :

 

“…Jacques de Molay, on the other hand, immediately decided to respond to the Pope's calls, which were so welcome to him, for he was ready to go to France, where the Pope now had his residence. He left the Marshal of the Order in Cyprus as administrator and, although Clement had thought only of a small company, he took with him the whole convent, consisting of sixty of the most respected and most prudent knights, with whom, not without a rich treasure, he set off on the fateful journey which led him to the stake with most of his companions…”.

 

The original text says:

 

“…Il (Jacques de Molay) arriva suivi de soixante Chevaliers vieillis dans les combats, éprouvé par l´adversité, toujours prêts à donner leur vie pour la défense de la religion et la gloire de l´Ordre. Outre l´immense trésor que l´Ordre conservait dans le palais du Temple à Paris, le chef apporta de l´Orient cent cinquante mille florins d´or et une grande quantité de gros tournois d´argent, qui formaient la charge de douze chevaux (1), sommes considérables pour le temps, mais faible portion du numéraire que les croisades avaient exporté de la France. (1). Cette circonstance est attestée par la déposition de Jean de Folhac, que le pape interrogea lui-même sur cet objet, le 29 juin 1308…”:

 

M. Raynouard paraphrased:

 

“…First, the Grand Master went to Paris on his arrival in France. Here he laid down the treasure of the Order in the temple house, 150,000 gold solidi and so many silver pennies that they made up a burden of twelve horses.”

 

This fact, and the fact that Jacques de Molay brought the whole convent with him against the Pope's wishes, more than anything else indicates the intention of the Order to concentrate in France and to move its headquarters here.

 

Nothing caused more the eruption of the storm over the Temperate League than this imprudence of Jacques de Molay, who does not seem to have known the volcano on which he and his brothers stood so that the Pope's instructions to come alone and in silence had to be more appropriate to the circumstances, but Jacques de Molay saw neither warning nor prediction in this advice…”. Source: M. Raynouard.

 

The Grand Master should have been far more careful. He was not unaware that an ex-Knight of the Temple, expelled from the Order, had spread slanderous rumours about certain practices of the Order. This former Templar in the name of Esquieu de Floryan had tried to convince the King of Aragon Jaime II. Without success, he then turned to the court of the King of France.

 

However, many other warning signs should have prompted the Grand Master to be very careful. The greatest is the fact that the Temple Order was a huge multi-national military force, that it was immensely rich, more than all the other European monarchs combined but that, since the debacle in the Holy Land, it had become useless.

 

What would become of its tens of thousands of the best-trained, disciplined, seasoned, and equipped Knights in the world at that time? What was to become of its hundreds of castles, commanderies (called temples in Scotland), abbeys, churches, and chapels? Where was the Order going to settle? The Templars' favourite land was the south of France they used to share with the Cathars, but also elsewhere in France and abroad...!  Fra. Jacques de Molay should have put himself mentally in the place of the King of France to understand that his Order was not only a thorn in the king’s foot but also an oak beam in his eye!

 

Did the treasure Frater Hugues de Châlon spoke about go to Portugal? The famous Portuguese navigator Vasco de Gama, who pioneered the Cape route to India in 1497, was a Knight of Christ. Earlier, the Prince Henry the Navigator (1394-1464) was the Order’s Grand Master. Source: Michel Lafosse (alias Michel Albany). There is definitively something in the wind!

 

Or was the big Treasure of the Templars hidden in the wild and deserted region of the south of France (Rennes-le-Château region)? This seems very improbable due to the anti-Templar political climate under king Philippe le Bel. But, we never know !

 

It is known that the Templars, to avoid the Straits of Gibraltar, usually controlled by the Saracens, sometimes offloaded their ships, coming from England, at La Rochelle, their Atlantic seaport. The goods then crossed overland the South of France, from East to West, to be reloaded in their ships anchored in the Mediterranean seaport of Collioure, just to name one. Rennes-le-Château is even 120 km closer than Collioure and practically on the same route, heading south at Carcassonne toward Quillan.

 

However, this procedure was in use in quite other times. At times when the Templars were the sovereign masters of their own territories and not tracked by Church and State.

 

The Treasure may also have been brought in security, in Scotland or thousands of kilometers away, somewhere on the east coast of North America, which the Templar had discovered some two centuries before the “official” discovery? There is even the new theory wanting Sir Henry Sinclair, Earl of Orkney, together with the Venetian explorer Antonio Zeno, to have reached the New World and Mexico as soon as 1395. That is a hundred years before Columbus!

 

“...This would explain why Cortés, in 1520, was identified by the Aztecs not only with their god Quetzalcoatl but also with a blond-haired blue-eyed white man who had allegedly precede him long in the past...”. Source: Mr. Baigent & Mr. R. Leigh.

 

The Lord Bernard Balliol, between 1112 and 1132, built the parish church of St. Mary that still stands in Barnard Castle (North England). Knowing the implication of our Dynasty in some southern France events, we just went through, can we be sure that this church was really called after St. Mary, Jesus´ mother and not after St. Mary Magdalene?

 

Nobody can measure the real impact on History, of the works done by serious writers such as: Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh, Henry Lincoln, Lynn Picknett, Clive Prince, and a dozen others. With all the honours, of course, to Henry Lincoln, the man who made the whole world aware of one of its biggest mystery!

 

This ends the Knight Bels development. We now go back to our Hrvotland Bels without forgetting that the statuette “Santa Maria de Montserrat” was the key to the discovery of the village of Castellbell i el Vilar! Furthermore, this statuette showed several real miraculous particularities whose description is far beyond the scope of this Essay.

 

The Treaty, signed by Hrvotland Bels, was written in Verdun (but signed in Thionville (Diedenhofen) on 16 March of anno 843. To be more precise, the Treaty was not undersigned in Thionville (Diedenhofen) but in a small village called Yutz, close to Thionville, on 11 August 843. Thionville is some 350 km east from the city of Bailleul (Belle) but only some 185 km from Flanders south-eastern border (Bergues-sur-Sambre) and some 65 km east of Verdun.

 

The Treaty of Verdun was supposed to end several wars that started as early as anno 817 and that originated in the sharing of the Kingdoms of Louis I^st (*778 - †840) with his sons Pepin II, Louis II and Lothaire (Hlotar). Louis I^st, was an illegal but natural son of Charlemagne with a maid.

 

“…As we have seen, the Treaty of Verdun is a treaty concluded in August 843, by the three surviving sons of Louis the Pious, grandsons of Charlemagne, who divided his territories called the Carolingian Empire, into three kingdoms. It is often presented as the beginning of the dissolution of Charlemagne's unitary Empire, thus consecrating its division, which would in fact prove to be definitive, and at the same time one of the main founding acts of what would become France.

 

This treaty is the consequence of the application of the Frankish custom which is based on the sharing of the inheritance between all the heir sons rather than its attribution only to the eldest son, in spite of the rule of male primogeniture (agnatic) applied among the Romans.

 

Each of the brothers was already established in one Kingdom - Lothair in Italy, Louis the German in Bavaria, and Charles the Bald in Aquitaine.

 

• Lothair I^st received the central portion of the empire - what later became the Low Countries, Lorraine, Alsace, Burgundy, Provence, and Italy, and the imperial title as an honour without more than nominal ownership.

The signature of the Treaty of Verdun, in Thionville (Diedenhofen) on 11 August anno 843,

(Assembly of Coulaines) seen by Carl von Haeberlin (anno 1873).

The Emperor Charles Lothair I^st divides the empire with his brothers Louis the German and Charles the Bald.

The scribe, right of Emperor, could very well represent our Dynast Hrvotland Bels who undersigned the Treaty,

most probably as a Lawman or as an Office Holder!

 

• Louis the German received the eastern portion, much of what later became Today's Germany through the intermediate collection of states, the Holy Roman Empire.
• Charles the Bald received the western portion, much of what later became France.
• Lothair I^st received the Imperial title, the Kingship of Italy, and the territory between the Rhine and Rhone Rivers, collectively called [the Central Frankish Realm].
• Louis was guaranteed the Kingship of all lands to the east of the Rhine and to the north and east of Italy, which was called [the Eastern Frankish Realm] which was the precursor to the medieval conglomeration of disparate states known as [the Holy Roman Empire] and thence to modern Germany.
• Charles received all lands west of the Rhone, which was called [the Western Frankish Realm]”

 

Pepin II, nephew of Lothair I^st, was granted the Kingdom of Aquitaine, but only under the authority of Charles…”. Unquote.

 

It is following this treaty that the geographical area called "Gaul" for more than a thousand years is now referred to as "West Francia", which will give the term "France" later.

 

For this Hrvotland Bels to have participated in such a top Treaty dealing, also called “Placita” solely composed of the king’s more trusted advisers and closest counselors, as well with private Dynastic matters as with public ones, because they concerned the attribution of Kingdoms, indicate us that he must have been a high-ranking person attached to the court of King Charles (Karolus) the Bald.

 

Since Flanders was Charles´ domain and since the Bels lineages originated from Flanders, we can logically draw the conclusion that Hrvotland Bels was an Office Holder at King Charles` court.

 

In fact, the probability for a Bels “lawman” to have contributed to the redaction of another very important document, the “Ordinato imperii” (Ordinance of the Empire), enacted in Aachen, in July 817, by the Carolingian Emperor Louis le Pieux (son and heir of Charlemagne), is seen by historians, as very high. We will see the validity of this probability subsequently.

 

 People attached to a court were called either “Office holders” - “High Barons” - “baronobis” (°1 *2) or “Leudes”, referring to their unique family social status.

 

Historically, the old French noun “Baron” comes from the Late Latin “baro” and stands for a man attached to a court (nobleman, servant, or soldier). These officials were the right hands of the Merovingians and of the Carolingians Kings and Emperors. Centuries later, we still find them as the right hands of the powerful Counts of Flanders, of the Counts of Barcelona, of the Dukes of Normandy and of the Kings of England.

 

(°1) The substantive “baronobis” has been introduced by Fra. Robert Adelsohn Bels. Some old dictionaries, such as the Latin French dictionary from Félix Gaffiot, dated 1934, only explain the Latin noun “Baro” as used by the Roman Consul Tullius Cicero, (43 BCE) and by Isidorus, Bishop of Sevilla (6-7^th century CE). The noun was however very current in the Salic law (Lex Salis, the Alemanic Law) as “Barus”. In old English, it became “Beorn” meaning “warrior, nobleman”.

 

Professor E. Habel describes, in 1959, in his “Mittellateinisches Glossar” and in only a few words, a more precise definition of the word. He defines the “baro” as a Vassal, a Great of the Empire (Vassal, Grosser des Reiches). Another linguist, Prof. A. Walde, defines “baro” as “Freeborn man” and “Freeman” (freigeborener Mann und freier Mann). We are here far away from the old Latin acceptations of the term „baro“, which described a clumsy, an oafish or a mercenary!

 

Fra. Robert Adelsohn Bels, 1173 years after the signature of his very distant relative in time, the baronobis Hrvotland Bels, at an important European historical place.

 

This small river, called Wallhalb (in Wallhalben. Rheinland-Pfalz), marked the separation of the kingdom west of the river that went to Lothar, and that became today's "Lothringen" (Loraine), in neighbouring France. The eastern part of the kingdom went to Ludwig the German, which became today’s Germany. Pictured on 9^th of July 2022. Fra. Robert is standing on Lothringian side.

 

Documents of the tenth and early eleventh centuries also attest the existence of persons with titles such as “saios” -“centenaries” and “tribunus”. The word “saio” means a “judicial bailiff”, this is how they called an Office Holder at that time, in northern Spain. The word centenaries is explained in “Glossarium mediae lainitatis Cataloniae, col.478.”. However, the meaning of the word tribunes is unknown and purely conjectural! These words disappeared as well from our dictionnaries.

 

(*2) Today, we have the title of “baronobis”, brought to life by the Dynastic Knight Order “Ordo Balliolensis. Here is an excerpt from the Ordo Balliolensis Statutory Document. Chapter 1. Sub §: Souverain. Art. 11b.

 

“… 11b. There is one very important point to bear in mind. While the High Baron and baronobis are included under the heading "Historical titles" in our texts, it should nevertheless be emphasized that the title baronobis did not exist in dictionaries, glossaries, and vocabularies, regardless of the international languages and periods in which they were written, prior to its introduction by our Fra. Robert Adelsohn Bels.

 

“Baronobis” is a composite noun made by “baro” (baron) and “nobis” (our) meaning “our baron”. The origins of the word date back to 1994, when Fra. Robert Adelsohn Bels inserted it in his book “Seigneur et Chevalier”. The book was subsequently translated into Dutch, in 1997 by H.E Fra. Alfonsius Morret, Sire de Beauchamp^*, Knight (OSMTH), and in 2024, by H.E Fra. Herbert Class, Knight (OStS). Both Knights of honour Ordinis Balliolensis.

 

The original version of the book, in French, was deposited in the Archives of the Kingdom of Belgium, under the number D/A 1997-1.917/N° DB 877249/Robert Adelsohn Bels/Auteur/Editeur. The third version of the book dates from 2020, with prefaces by Baron Fra. André-Louis Saumier d'Albis and Mgr Fra. Roland Jean Maroteaux, was also deposited on May 30, 2024, at the above-mentioned Archives.

 

So was the title, office, and function of "baronobis" created to define, by an appropriate term, a personage attached to a royal court. Prior to its "invention", nowhere in the nomenclature of ancient historical texts was there a term to describe a "learned person", an "administrative officer", a "medieval jurisconsult" or a "holder of administrative, legal and juridical functions" at the Merovingian court, or even earlier. They were called "Scriba" in Roman times and "Sesh" in Pharaonic Egypt.

 

It's worth noting that the term "baronobis" means much more than a mere cleric, capable of writing and reading. They were the right-hand men of the Kings and other overlords who could neither read nor write, and in whom the kings therefore placed all their trust.

 

This confirms the hypothesis that these functions must have been hereditary. However, this opinion is not shared by all historians, who follow a rather more conservative methodology.

 

With the purpose to reignite, by its Knights, the flame of the Dynastic and Lineages consciousness and to assure its continuity, the Order may, under certain circumstances, honour a Knight Ordinis Balliolensis, by giving him the qualifying title of “baronobis”.

 

Grammatically, this personal title is a qualifying adjective. It is a non-hereditary and not transmissible historical and honorific title. To be eligible, the Knight must count at least 14 years of uninterrupted Knighthood in the Order.

 

* H.E. Messire Fra. Alfonsius Morret († 22 June 2007) expressed his wish to receive the feudal fief of Beauchamp, which once belonged to the Balliols of Scotland. Fra. Robert Adelsohn Bels, as overlord, granted his consent. The act of feudal homage was performed at the Castle of Horst*, in 1989.

 

Historically, around the mid-14th century, the Balliol family's castle in Scotland, known as Barnard Castle, passed into the hands of the Beauchamp family, likely to Thomas de Beauchamp, 11th Earl of Warwick (1313-1369). Later, in the 15th century, Richard Neville (1428-1471), Earl of Salisbury, became the 16th Earl of Warwick through his marriage to Anne Beauchamp and thereby inherited Barnard Castle.

 

In issue no. 131 of the Flemish comic series De Rode Ridder (De Heeren van Rode), published in late 1990, artist Karel Biddeloo, Sire Karel de Montabour, introduced the character Fra. Alfonsius Morret, Sire de Beauchamp, as a central figure. His distinct and recognizable features suggest that he was modeled after a personal friend of the artist.

 

 

The character reappears in issue no. 134-135, though in a less prominent role, likely as an homage to Biddeloo’s earlier work. This reflects Biddeloo’s fondness for integrating symbolically rich or historically inspired characters into his storytelling, adding personal depth and continuity to the “De Rode Ridder” saga.

 

The “Château de Horst”, whose origins probably date back to the year 1200, became a central point in the feudal history of the region when Chev. Jean de Thunnen adopted, around 1263-1268, the name "Jean de Horst". He thus became the first Lord of the estate, marking the emergence of a noble lineage durably linked to this medieval stronghold.

 

The prerogative exercised by this knight in adopting the title "de Horst" falls within a well-established tradition, already encountered with the title "de Réthy", to name but one example. The creation and attribution of previously non-existent fiefs, notably by the Ordo Balliolensis, constitute a recurring phenomenon, observable from the Middle Ages through to the 20th century. This represents the exercise of a profective right, that is, the right to establish a noble domain and to associate a title with it, outside the strictly hereditary or royal feudal frameworks.

 

The profective right (from Latin proficisci, “to set out”) is an often-overlooked noble prerogative. It refers, within the feudal and nobilitary context, to the right to create a fief “ex nihilo”, in other words, to found a noble domain where none had previously existed. This prerogative also implied the possibility of assigning a title to the fief, such as baron, viscount, count, or marquis, independently of traditional royal or imperial jurisdictions.

 

This right was exercised by certain sovereign houses, but also by chivalric orders enjoying historical and symbolic recognition, notably during times of political vacuum, territorial reconfiguration, or subsequent legitimation (for instance, in the modern or contemporary periods).

 

Functional titles are, of course, very ancient. That of baron, for example, is believed to go back to the Frankish era (4th century), where it would have designated a noble warrior. Today, it is often suggested that the word “baro” may derive from an even older Celtic root, which suggests an origin at the intersection of Germanic and Celtic linguistic influences.

 

The Oxford English Dictionary describes the term baron as an "invention", which is, in itself, a statement of the obvious (a truism, a lapalissade which is a French rhetorical term). All words are human inventions at some point in history: none were present in the vocabulary of Homo neanderthalensis. This observation, however trivial it may seem, remains unavoidably true.

 

Among the standard reference dictionaries in the English language, the Webster’s Third New International Dictionary stands out as a more rigorous and nuanced source.

 

In 1922, the Château of Horst came into the hands of Guillaume‑Charles‑Hubert, Count of Hemricourt de Grunne, thereby ensuring the continuity of a centuries-old aristocratic tradition.

 

Moreover, the Ordo Balliolensis took part in several investitures of the Sovereign Military Order of the Temple of Jerusalem (OSMTH). The Sire de Beauchamp played a leading role within an independent branch of the contemporary Templar Order, which was still legally recognised at the time, as it remained under the Grand Mastership of the 91st Grand Master of the OSMTH, Count dom Fernando Pinto de Sousa Fontes. This was no longer the case after the passing of Sire Alfonsius on 22 June 2007. As a result, the Ordo Balliolensis publicly declared, urbi et orbi, that it did not recognize the newly self-created OSMTH.MCO organization.

 

The active presence of our Order in such traditional chivalric ceremonies, both symbolic and meaningful, underscores the spiritual and knightly continuity between ancient noble houses and contemporary commitments, which remain ever nourished by the Templar Ideal, unchanged through the centuries.

 

“…The Kingdom (of Charlemagne) was divided into about one hundred and fifty domains which were called “Great Fiefs of the Crown” and which were possessed in hereditary right by the members of the highest nobility, placed immediately under the royal sovereignty and dependence. Vassals emanating directly from the King were then generally designated by the title of “Barons” and mostly possessed strongholds. The other nobles indiscriminately ranked as Chevaliers or Knights, a generic title, to which was added that of “Banneret…”. (France in the Middle Ages, by Paul Lacroix. Frederick Ungar Publ. CP^oP. New York, 1963. Pg 17).

 

Even at the time of the Battle of Hastings (anno 1066), the Barons were still the most important people at the court of the Duke of Normandy. On a question asked by the Count of Flanders Baudouin V, about the returns he might expect from the conquered English territories, by sending troops into the Battle, the reporter writes:

 

«…E li Dus dist k´il s´en ireit, à sez Barunz en parlereit et à els s´en cunseillereit, e ço ke l´en li loerreit par son bref li remandereit...».

 

“…And the Duke said that he would go and speak about it to his Barons and ask for their council…”.

 

There are plenty examples of such happenings involving members of our Dynasty. They acted as witnesses or representatives and undersigned treaties, bilateral agreements, contracts, etc. They may even have participated at their elaborations.

 

Therefore, if Hrvotland signed as witness, together with very few other personalities, the Treaty of Verdun that is considered as one of the most important Treaty of European history, he must have been a High Baron issued from a no less important Lineage.

 

The informative text concerning Hrvotland Bels, I found on an Internet site, was written by Prof. Dr Timothy Alan Reuter (1947-2002), a brilliant historian on West European history, specialized in the study of medieval Germany, particularly the social, military, and ecclesiastical institutions of the Ottonian and Salian periods (10^th-12^th centuries). As mentioned earlier, he was the scientific heir of the Belgian historian Godefroid Kurth (1847-1916).

 

When some six months later, I tried to relocate the text, for quoting its references, it had disappeared. The text has been removed.

 

I then wrote the following message to a Medieval History specialised Website called “Sources Médiévales”:

 

• Robert Adelsohn Bels, says: August 31, 2008 at 15:51 :

Sir, Madam, If I remember correctly, I found the signatories of the Treaty of Verdun (843) on the Internet. One of them was a certain Hrvotland or Hrvotland Bels. At the time (less than a year ago), I did not find it useful to note where I found this information, telling me that if I found it without difficulty, everyone will do the same. Since, the need of proof as for my sources being felt, it is necessary me to relocate this document. Alas, I cannot put my hand on it. Do you have any idea where I could find this text ? Thank you very much.

• Medieval Sources says: August 31st, 2008 at 23:08 :

Good evening, having searched in my sources, I have not found the signatories of the Treaty, other than the three main protagonists. It seems indeed that Hrvotland or Roland Bels participated and signed this treaty. Yours, The Moderator.

• Robert Adelsohn Bels replied September 1, 2008 at 17:59 :

Mr moderator, Thank you for your quick intervention. If ever you should “meet” this Hrvotland Bels, may I ask you to inform me as soon as possible. Your effort will be greatly appreciated. Do you have a mailing address for the case where your Website came to disappear also? Sincerely Yours.

 

The following information was attached to the correspondence.

 

Le traité de Verdun selon les annales de Saint-Bertin (843)

 

This entry was posted by medieval sources on Saturday, April 12th, 2008, at 10:02 am and is filed under Occident IXe.

 

" (842). In October, Charles, having left Metz for Worms, met his brother Louis in that city. They remained there for quite a long time and envoys ran alternately between them and Lothaire; and having discussed the division much and for a long time, it was finally agreed to have all the regions subjected to the authority of each one traversed by delegates charged to proceed with care to an inventory according to which, at the fixed time, a very equal division of the kingdom between the three brothers would be accomplished irrevocably [...].

 

(843). Charles coming to meet them to treat, the brothers met at Verdun. There, the division was made: Louis received all that is beyond the Rhine, and below the Rhine the cities of Spire, Worms, Mayence and their pagi; Lothair, what is between the Rhine and the Scheldt up to the sea, and on the other side by Cambrésis, Hainaut, the countries of Lomme and Mézières and the counties which border the Meuse, up to the confluence of the Saône and the Rhône and along the Rhône up to the sea, with the counties which in the same way are contiguous to him. Outside these limits, Lothaire only obtained Arras from the humanity of his brother Charles. The rest up to Spain was left to Charles. After having made the oaths, they separated on both sides.”  Source : Hincmar, Annales Bertiniani, éd. F. Gras, J. Viellard, S. Clémencet, Paris, 1964, p. 42-44.

 

Le traité de Verdun selon Nithard (843)

 

This entry was posted by medieval sources on Saturday, April 12th, 2008, at 10:02 am and is filed under Occident IXe.

 

"So, in the middle of June, on a Thursday, Lothaire, Louis and Charles met, each accompanied by an equal number of great men, not far from Macon, in an island called Ansilla, and they swore mutually to keep peace between them from that day on, to divide under the faith of the oath as equally as possible, in a plea which their faithful had just fixed, all the empire, except Lombardy, Bavaria and Aquitaine; it was decided in addition that the choice of the shares would belong to Lothaire; that each of the three brothers should guarantee to each of the others the share which it would accept, its life, with the proviso that these would make as much on their side. That made, after having exchanged peaceful words, they separated in agreement and returned to their camps, putting back to the following day the remainder of the deliberations.

 

And although this could only be concluded with great difficulty, it was nevertheless established that each one would reside in peace in his lot, where he wanted, until the meeting which they had fixed for the calendars of October. Then finally, it appeared good on both sides, for the advantage of all, that their envoys, to the number of one hundred and twenty, meet in Coblence without exchanging hostages, and that there they divide the empire most equitably possible.

 

Meeting there on the 14th of the calendars of November and taking the precaution to prevent that no quarrel came to rise between their men, for some reason that it was, to make camp the part of them which was with Louis and Charles on the Eastern bank of the Rhine and that which was with Lothaire on the Western bank, they met together every day, for the conference, in Saint Castor. And as those who had been sent by Louis and Charles for the division of the empire had come to make various complaints, it was asked whether any of them had a clear knowledge of the whole empire. And when none was found, they asked why envoys had not gone through it in the time that had been left to them and had not drawn up an account of it themselves."  Source : Nithard, Histoire des fils de Louis le Pieux, éd. Ph. Lauer, Paris, 1926, p. 130-137.

 

The combination of scribes, scholars, and noble councilors created a well-organized court that allowed Charlemagne to effectively rule an empire stretching from Spain to Germany. Their work laid the foundation for medieval European administration, legal systems, and education.

 

Historians found out that important relations between Flanders and Scotland already existed during the reign of Charlemagne. They pretend that there was an Alliance Treaty signed between King Eochaid IV of Dalriada and the Emperor Charlemagne who was at that time, Emperor of the Franks. It is extremely probable that Bels Knights, who were at that time, Flemish High Barons at the court of the emperor, undersigned this treaty as well.

 

Thanks to Hrvotland, we know that the Bels had, as far back in time as the time of Charlemagne, high positions, as they will have, all over Europe, for centuries to come.

 

The official functions they had, may be the origin of these invisible but omnipresent links they had with other big lineages such as for instance the “van Bonen” and the “Counts of Flanders”. It is no longer by pure chance that these lineages developed strong links among them. Links that became a constant of history and that lasted almost two thousand years!

 

These links were based on their common past: as officials serving at the court of the emperor Charlemagne and/or at the courts of his successively heirs but also, for most of them, because they descended from Charlemagne. For instance, the links of the “van Bonen” and of the “Counts of Flanders”. They were not only, as said previously, based on their common past, but on their common origin.

 

The small picture right: Charlemagne receiving the Oath of Fidelity and Homage from one of his Great Feudatories or High Baron (baronobis). Fac-simile of a Miniature in Cameo, of the “Chronicles of St. Denis”. Manuscript of the XIV^th century (Librairie de l´Arsenal. Paris. France).

 

The Lineage of the Boulogne-sur-Mer, for instance, descends from Charlemagne via the lords: Eustache I^st de Boulogne-sur-Mer, Baudouin I^st, de Boulogne-sur-Mer, Arnoulf I^st, de Boulogne-sur-Mer, and Aethelwulf de Boulogne-sur-Mer. Aethelwulf (*897 - †933) was son of Balduinus II (*864 - †917), Count of Flanders.

 

More detailed: The youngest daughter of Alfred the Great, the Saxon King of England x Ealhswith was the princess Aelfthryth (877-929). She belonged to the House of Wessex. She married Balduinus II (†918), Count of Flanders and had with him: Arnulf I^st of Flanders (890-964) (married to Adela de Vermandois), Adalulf, Count of Boulogne-sur-Mer (891-933), Ealswid and Ermentrud!

 

Becoming Countess consort of Flanders, Aelftryth was an ancestor of Mathilde of Flanders who married William the Conqueror, the first monarch of the House of Normandy. So, it is proven that the House of Boulogne (van Boonen) was related to the one of the Count of Flanders.

 

Mathieu (°1135 - †1173), Count of Boulogne (Matheus Comes Boloniensium) was also a son of a Count of Flanders: Diederik von Alsace x Lady Sibyle d´Anjou. Therefore, it proved that the “de Boulogne” and the “Counts of Flanders” were several times, in history, related through marriage.

 

And there was still another link to old and big lineages. The House of Boulogne was also related to the House of Scotland. David I, King of Scotland (1084-1153) and son of Malcolm III (1031-1093) x Margaret of Wessex (1045-1093), had two sisters: Edith of Scotland (Mathilda) (1080-1118) who married Henry I, King of England (1068-1135) and Mary (Marie) (1082-1116) of Scotland who married Eustache III de Boulogne (bef. 1058-1125), the brother of Godefroid de Boulogne (also de Bouillon).

 

These last (Henry I and Mary) had for descendant Mathilda de Boulogne (1103-1152) by marriage also countess de Mortain, Duchess of Normandy and Queen consort of England who married Etienne de Blois (Stephen of England), Lord of Eye and of Lancaster, Count de Mortain, Count de Boulogne (by marriage to Mathilda) and King of England from 1135 to 1154.

 

The Counts of Flanders, the Boulogne and the Balliol were related since Lady Isabelle de Varenne married, in 1281, John II of Balliol.

 

Here comes next: Another Lady Isabelle de Varennes x in 1153 Guillaume de Blois (*ab 1137 †1159). This Isabelle was fa. of Guillaume III de Varennes, 3^rd Count of Surrey (England) and Lady Hélène d´Alençon. Guillaume de Blois was fs. of Etienne, King of England and of Queen Mathilde de Boulogne (°1103) who was fa. of Count Eustache III de Boulogne (*Boulogne 1170) x Princess Mary of Scotland (°1080 in Scotland and †31 May 1116 in Bermondsey, London, England). Princess Mary of Scotland was fa. of King Malcolm III Mac Duncan of Scotland x Saint Margaret Atheling.

 

The Boulogne being the same family as the Count of Flanders, the Balliols are therefore ipso facto linked to both lineages via Guillaume´s mother. One last proof of these ancestral links, already briefly mentioned, is:

 

“…The duchess of Lorraine, Mathilde de Toscane, Lord Godefroid de Bouillon’s aunt and adoptive mother, is known as the founder of the Abbay of Orval (Ardennes, Belgium), called at that time: the Abbey of the Golden Valley (Abbaye du Val d´Or). She was the protector of the Monks of Orval. She is also the direct proof of the close links between the Counts of Flanders and the Counts of Boulogne: The Count of Flanders Arnoul II x Rozala de Toscane (about 950-1003) which belonged to the same Dynasty as Mathilde de Toscane…”.

 

Mathilde was fa. of Boniface III, Marquis de Toscane x Béatrice de Bar (de Lorraine). This Béatrice was fa. of Frederic II, Duke from Higher Lorraine x Mathilde de Souabe.

 

“…Between 1076 and 1080, Matilda travelled to Lorraine to lay claim to her husband's estate in Verdun, which he had willed (along with the rest of his patrimony) to his sister Ida´s son, Godefroid de Bouillon. Godefroid also disputed her right to Stenay and Mosay, which her mother had received as dowry. The quarrel between aunt and nephew over the episcopal county of Verdun was eventually settled by Theoderic, Bishop of Verdun, who enjoyed the right to nominate the counts. He easily found in favor of Margravine Matilda, as such verdict happened to please both Pope Gregory and King Henry. Matilda then proceeded to enfeoff Verdun to her pro-reform relative, Albert III de Namur. The deep animosity between Matilda and her nephew Godefroid is thought to have prevented her from travelling to Jerusalem during the First Crusade, led by him in the late 1090s…^”. Source: Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matilda_of_Tuscany.

 

The Arms of Guillaume de Blois are composed of: Gules, three palets vair, on a chief or, an eagle displayed gules membered azure. Please compare them to the Arms of the Balliol of Flanders to find out that they have exactly the same key elements: Palets vair Azure (Blue) placed upon a Gules (Red) background. The upper part of the blazon is Or (Yellow) which is the colour of the Arms of the Count of Flanders. For the eagle in Gules (Red) I have no explanation yet!

 

To the question why Guillaume de Blois took the same heraldic elements as the Balliol of Flanders, I have no answer. There is however a trace to Flanders:  Guillaume de Blois was fs. of Stephen II (Etienne) Count of Blois x Adela of Normandy. And Lady Adela was fa. of William I^st, King of England and of… Mathilde of Flanders (fa. of Balduinus V, Count of Flanders x Adèle de France).

Please note that Mathieu, Count of Boulogne x Lady Marie de Blois. She was fa. of Etienne, King of England and of Mathilde de Boulogne, in 1160.

 

It is very interesting to note that the Counts of Boulogne are said to descend from the “de Thérouanne” Lineage through Blesinde de Thérouanne. This very old location happened to be a fief of the Balliols of Flanders.

 

Thanks to the discovery of this Knight Bels, in the North of Spain, our Hrvotland Bels becomes a more realistic figure than a mythical one, brought to life either by a hypothetical wrong spelling of the name or by a simple transcription mistake. The Knight Bels “in between” position in space and time makes Hrvotland Bels no longer an isolated patronymic lost somewhere in Middle Age Europe, but an important link of an uninterrupted chain linking the past to the future!

 

After very serious considerations, Hrvotland must be linked to the Bels of Flanders (there were no other) and of course to the Knight Bels of the South of France and The Northern Spain.

 

This all gives us a total new look at the origin of our Dynasty which before these discoveries, was supposed to go back to anno 960 with Arnoldus Grameninis and Gertrui van Valkenberghe!