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THE TOMB AT LES PONTILS – THE REAL TRUTH Paul Smith It is still uncritically claimed today by many people that the tomb that once existed at Les Pontils was depicted in a painting by the French artist Nicolas Poussin - in his 'Shepherds of Arcadia' (the second version painted sometime around 1640). Those who make this claim usually state that the landscape at Les Pontils behind where the tomb once stood matched the landscape depicted in Poussin's painting (the tomb was destroyed by its owner Mr Roussett on 9 April 1988, with the agreement of the Peyrolles Municipal Council, unable to tolerate any longer the trespassing on his property from unwelcome treasure seekers). So what is the real truth? Having visited the spot in 1993, I can categorically state that the landscape at Les Pontils does not match the one depicted in Poussin's painting, and those who make such a claim are seriously wrong - the landscape at Les Pontils situated behind the spot where the tomb once stood features the hills of Grand Bergue, Las Tostonas, Cardaussel and Quirautier; not Bezil Grand or Blanchefort. What is more, this claim is usually made by people who have never visited the area in the first place. Certain claims made in certain books are also plainly wrong and can be considered as being downright dishonest. To put the record straight on this matter: no serious French researcher on Rennes-le-Château accepts that the landscape at Les Pontils matches the one depicted in Poussin’s painting. The very first person to make the link between the tomb at Les Pontils with the one in Poussin’s painting was Pierre Plantard during the early 1960s as part of his ‘Priory of Sion’ mythology. In 1878, the scholar Louis Fédié wrote an article about the folklore and mythology of the Peyrolles area (Étude Historique sur le des Haut-Razès, in Mémoires de la Société des Arts et des Sciences de Carcassonne, Vol. 4 pp. 42-92), and his starting point in his article was the area of Les Pontils itself, because it contained a menhir – the oldest man-made structure found in the area – and he failed to mention the existence of any tomb (incidentally the tomb was located in the Peyrolles area and not in Arques, another common mistake). So what was the real origin of the tomb? The French author Pierre Jarnac has investigated this most thoroughly and has published his findings. In ‘Histoire du Trésor de Rennes-le-Château’, published in 1985, Pierre Jarnac wrote: "This tomb, which is almost hidden by trees, was erected on the edge of a cliff, up by a little bridge that passes over the bed of a stream (now dried up) known as 'Le Cruce'. It can be seen quite clearly from the road to Arques. It takes the form of a parallelepiped [geometric solid whose six faces are parallelograms], surmounted by a truncated pyramid. The story of how it came to be there, a story that people have felt it necessary to falsify for their own murky reasons, is actually quite simple. Set back from the site of the tomb we find the Moulin des Pontils ('Les Pontils Mill'). In 1880 this property was purchased by Louis Galibert, who came to live there with his wife Elisabeth. He had a plan: to transform this large house into a factory for the manufacture of epaulettes and braid for the use of military tailors. As this little factory was located close to a watercourse, which was at that time in full flow, he constructed a barrage and placed there a dynamo to provide power for his factory and his several machines. In 1903 the grandson of M. Galibert had a grave dug and a tomb [sépulture = burial place] constructed there by the stonemason Bourrel, from Rennes-les-Bains, on a hillock located some fifty metres from the road. The following year the remains of his grandmother were transferred there. Twenty years passed before the Galibert family left for Limoux and sold their little estate. In 1921, Louis Galibert had the remains of the bodies that had been laid in the tomb of Les Pontils removed, since his wife Elisabeth, who had died several years before, had been buried there in her turn. A new tomb in the cemetery of Limoux would soon provide a home to the two bodies. The gate and the facings in freestone of the tomb of Les Pontils were removed and used to cover the tomb in Limoux. Shortly afterwards, the buildings of Les Pontils were put up for sale. They were bought by Madame Emily Rivarès, a French woman born in Paterson in the United States and her son, Louis Bertram Lawrence, born on 25 October 1884 in Hartford (Connecticut). His father had been born in Amsterdam in the Netherlands." In ‘Les Archives de Rennes-le-Château’, published in 1988, Pierre Jarnac wrote: "His – Louis Lawrence’s – grandmother, Marie Rivarès, died on 28 November 1922, the year after moving to Les Pontils. In accordance with the wishes of the deceased, the body was…embalmed! It was there in the tomb [sépulture = burial place] prepared originally by the Galibert family that Louis Lawrence buried the body. Some time later, in 1931 or 1932, he did the same thing upon the death of his mother, Emily Rivarès, whom he laid to rest in the tomb [tombeau = tomb] with the remains of two cats, also mummified! It was then that there was erected, on this site, a tomb [tombeau = tomb] in parallelepiped form, surmounted by a truncated pyramid. The whole structure was covered by a screed of cement. Nothing therefore served to distinguish it from those numerous funerary monuments that, at this time, one could still see in large numbers along the roadside." So the tomb that once existed in Les Pontils was only built in 1933 by Louis Lawrence to contain the dead bodies of his mother, grandmother, and two mummified cats. Previously it had been a grave containing the corpses of the Galibert family. Pierre Jarnac obtained his information from Adrien Bourrel, the second son of Louis Lawrence. And the stonemason Bourrel who dug the first grave in 1903 was related to the common-law wife of Louis Lawrence. Quoting Pierre Jarnac from private correspondence: "As for the year 1903 it was not the 'tomb' strictly speaking that was constructed in that year but only the 'basic' tombstone [dalle funéraire] covering a grave. The actual tomb - in other words the parallelepiped that bore so much resemblance to the tomb of Poussin - was only built around 1933".
Priory of Sion Archives of Paul Smith
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