On 15th January 2014 i wrote the following;
"It is very often that accidentally i find a snippet of information that slots into place. I may even be doing research unrelated to the 'snippet' i find. In an article i wrote about Cherisey and his utilisation of the Codex Bezae i wrote;
"In hindsight i now see that it isnt really the text that is important ... it is what is going on in the rest of the Small Parchment which is significant. The encoder had wanted to draw attention to a 'key' which arguably has nothing to do with the 'concealed' message. This same key is referred to in the Larger Parchment. So did the encoder start with a blank page - put in the information that would be required to find this 'key' and then copy out the section of the Codex Bezae over the top? It must seem a possibility".
If i read correctly Cherisey later admitted as much. Henry Lincoln was grilling Cherisey for answers - and published the following quote in his book 'Key to the sacred pattern'
"The day is ending, but it is fine. de Cherisey expresses a desire to take a stroll and a lengthy preambulation ends on a bench in the Tuileries Gardens. He is still regaling me with well told - and often very funny - anecdotes. But I have more on my mind than entertainment. We are getting on well and the atmosphere is friendly. At last, with time passing and nothing to lose, I decide to put my request baldly.
'Can I take another look at the parchment photographs?'
With only minimal hesitation, he opens his briefcase and hands them to me.
'Why add the marks?' I ask.
'To amuse the laity' he replied
'But why?' I insist.
He shrugs 'I'm an entertainer.'
It is clear that I am to get no straight answers. But - perhaps simply because it was to hand - he adds another fragment. Picking a few sheets from his case, he says: 'I'm writing an explanation of the codes. I'll send you a copy. You'll be amused' But I am never to see it. Nor am I ever to get any closer to the 'parchment originals'. Sadly Philippe de Cherisey died suddenly in July 1985".
Here Cherisey is not talking about the paragraph he copied out from his source of the 'Secundo Primo' verse, but the marks he added to the documents [not withstanding that Cherisey had phootograpghs, not the originals]. As these marks are important it is clear that they are not just to 'amuse the laity'. And just what does 'amuse the laity mean'? The 'common' people? In religious organizations, the laity consists of all members who are not part of the clergy, usually including any non-ordained members of religious insititutes, e.g. a nun or lay brother. A layperson (also layman or laywoman) is also a person who is not qualified in a given profession and/or does not have specific knowledge of a certain subject.
In fact the Second Vatican Council [1962-1965] said that "the laity, by their very vocation, seek the kingdom of God by engaging in temporal affairs and by ordering them according to the plan of God". The laity are full members of the Church, fully share in Church's purpose of sanctification, of "inner union of men with God", acting with freedom and personal responsibility and not as mere agents of the hierarchy. Due to their baptism, they are members of God's family, the Church, and they grow in intimate union with God, "in" and "by means" of the world. It is not a matter of departing from the world as the monks and the nuns do that they sanctify themselves; it is precisely through the material world sanctified by the coming of the God made flesh, i.e. made material, that they reach God. Doctors, mothers of a family, farmers, bank tellers, drivers, by doing their jobs in the world with a Christian spirit are already extending the Kingdom of God. According to the repeated statements of Popes and lay Catholic leaders, the laity should say "we are the Church," in the same way that the saints said that "Christ lives in me."
We know by now that Cherisey is very careful with the choice of words he used. His words always mean something on many different levels. This is a religious joke, he wanted to amuse the laity. Quite why he thought the laity would be interested in marks he added to a coded parchment are a bit bewildering.
The funny thing is this: René Descadeillas, then a keeper of the municipal library at Carcassonne, known for his erudition regarding local lore and author of a couple of scholarly books on Rennes-le-Château and Saunière (1962, 1964) spoke with De Sède, and he was surprised to hear from Descadeillas that “Saunière was nothing but a swindler, who enjoyed mystifying people. He was artful, but uncultured, almost ignorant. As to the origin of his fortune, there is no mystery about that. It was passed over to him in the form of gifts by rich folk, who preserved their anonymity to avoid upsetting their heirs. In addition, he took part in the traffic in Masses. The manuscripts? He never found any. He put them together himself in order to impress his dupes. As to the decoration of his church, he bought it all ready made in Paris, from near Saint-Sulpice.”
Now what ever would make that bastion of a debunking figure report that Sauniere put the famous manuscripts together himself? As one commentator said: The assertion that Saunière was “uncultured, almost ignorant” is contradicted by the assertion that he created the parchments himself. Some of the codes of the incredibly complex, historically allusive parchments were not created by someone who was “uncultured, almost ignorant.” And even if the "parchment" messages we have today are not the originals, the incredibly precise mathematics everywhere in evidence in the layout of Saunière’s estate and the buildings he constructed there and their mathematically precise relationship to other sites contradicts Descadeillas’ characterisation of Saunière as “almost ignorant.” Even more telling is the fact that Descadeillas’ original debunking idea that Saunière faked the parchments has been contradicted by later debunking “confessions” from de Chérisey that the Priory faked them!
Any person who delves into the life of Sauniere would realise Sauniere was not ignorant ...
