Maurice Maeterlinck's Merovingian Play of Orval

The abbey of Orval, in Belgium's Ardennes Forest, is truly a place of mystery. The name "Orval" means "Valley of Gold", Nostradamus seems to have written a number of his prophecies here, and it is possible that once there were no less than two treasures hidden: the Treasure of the Knights Templar and the War Chest of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette...

In the international bestseller The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail (Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh & Henry Lincoln) we are told that in 1070, 29 years before the First Crusade, some monks from Calabria, southern Italy, arrived in the Ardennes Forest that belonged to Geoffrey of Bouillon. The monks were led by and individual named Ursus, who - according to the so-called "Priory Documents" - was consistently associated with the Merovingian bloodline, or in other words: with the descendants of Jesus Christ.

The monks were welcomed by Count Arnould of Chiny and by Geoffrey's aunt and foster-mother Mathilde of Tuscany, Duchess of Lorraine. From Mathilde they received the land that is now known as Orval, not far from Stenay, where once King Dagobert II was assassinated. Before these monks settled in Orval, there wasn't any human habitation, although there were some Merovingian tombs discovered near the well.

A well-known legend says that the monastery was born out of gratitude. Mathilde, a widow, had lost her golden wedding ring, which was accidentally fallen into the fountain. She prayed to the Lord and suddenly a trout rose out of the water with the precious ring in its mouth.

"Truly," Mathilde exclaimed, "this place is a Val d'Or, a Valley of Gold!"

You still can visit this well, where she established a monastery.

Interestingly, the theme of the wedding ring which fell into the water also shows up in the play Pelléas and Mélisande (1892) by the Belgian Nobel Prize Winner (1911) Maurice Maeterlinck. His work, characterized by fatalism and mysticism, forms an important part of the Symbolist Movement.

Pelléas and Mélisande was called a fairy tale and "a Merovingian play". Prince Golaud finds Mélisande by a river in the woods, weeping because she has lost her crown in the water. She does not wish to retrieve it, marries Golaud in a hurry and wins the favour of the old King Arkel, who is very ill. But then she falls in love with Pelléas. They meet at a fountain and Mélisande now loses her wedding ring in the water...

The play was first performed in 1893 and several composers made music for it. Claude Debussy's impressionist opera is perhaps the best known adaptation. It is said that Debussy was Grand Master of the Priory of Sion - the keepers of the Bloodline Secret - and this in the period the parish priest of Rennes-le-Château, Bérénger Saunière, found "something" in his church, that sent him to the occultist and even satanist circles of Paris. These secret societies included other "renegade priests" such as Louis Van Haecke, Chaplain of the Holy Blood Chapel of Bruges, the famous opera singer Emma Calvé, and writers such as Oscar Wilde, André Gide, W.B. Yeats or... Maurice Maeterlinck.

The main theme of the work is the cycle of creation and destruction. The prologue - servants can't wash the dirt from the steps of the castle - and the illness of Arkel, the famine in his kingdom, the foul-smelling waters under Arkel's slowly disintegrating castle, remind us of the Grail romances, the Fisher King, the Waste Land.

And what about the Treasure of the Knights Templar and the War Chest of Marie Antoinette?

Full story here!