Interview with Jean Luc Robin

April 2005

Hello Jean-Luc Robin, and thanks for having been so kind as to answer our questions about your next work for www.renneslechateau.com.

WM: You form part of the privileged witnesses, insofar as you reside in Rennes for many years, permanent developments of "the business". Our first question will be thus this one: is your work a book of testimonies or defend there a thesis which is new for you?

JLR: Both! It is a book of testimonies which swarms with lived anecdotes. Through these authentic anecdotes, one is able to have an idea of the psychology of impassioned of Rennes-le-Chateau. I recall the evolution of the business there since my account does not stop with dead Saunière but covers until these last months. The eleven years that I passed to RLC, and mainly the six years of occupation of the field of the abbot placed me at the intersection of a crowd of information of which I unpack in my lines "substantial marrow". It is also the development of a thesis of which I am however not the inventor. Despite everything, and in all modesty, I think of having managed to format it in a clear manner and logic which gives desire for believing in it. This known as I make certainly as many errors as my predecessors and I know that one awaits me the turning.

WM: The foreword is signed by Henry Lincoln. Is this with saying that you are a follower of the "crowned geography"?

JLR: Henry Lincoln, who is a very good friend, nicely agreed to write the foreword of my book from which I extract this sentence: "All the other authors, of which myself, seized only one shade of what true life of Béranger Saunière was it. Jean-Luc, felt to him. He lived it. This is why this book has something moreover to offer." This known as I am not a "follower" of the crowned geometry (unless it does not act of one crowned geometry). Moreover I hate this term "of follower" with all that it transports of sectarian connotation. However work of Henry is sometimes astonishing and in many exact points. Being of a curious naturalness I cannot remain indifferent there. Henry also proposed to me to translate my book into English if an editor of in addition to Manche is interested in it.

WM: In the "good sheets" that you gave us to read, you often reconsider a "dynastic secrecy". Can you say some to us more?

JLR: If by "dynastic secrecy" it is necessary to hear some skeleton in the wall cupboard concerning a great reigning family (in fact Habsbourg) it is not the topic of my book. The theory that I defend attach to show that Habsbourg financed Saunière in exchange of a secrecy. From this postulate it is natural to wonder about the nature of this secrecy. If it relates to documents it could not, obviously, not to act of a note of laundry! The Emperor of Austria being the guard of Rome it is rather in this direction that it would be necessary to seek. Not having unfortunately an evidence to bring I abstain from erecting scaffolding of the assumptions and I leave this care with others.

WM: You see, with length of year, to ravel "hordes" of visitors with Rennes-le-Chateau. Which is your personal "typology" of these visitors?

JLR: There is not single "typology" of the visitors of RLC. The large majority of the public intended to speak about the mystery of a priest and her good which found a treasure and comes by curiosity. Then there is all the fauna of impassioned which generally continues a monologue and are convinced to be alone to know the secrecy. For a long time they were treasure hunters and that I know, to date, none found the beginning of the tail of one louis gold! For a few years, the researchers of a material treasure have seen themselves outdistanced on the ground by the crowd of the mysticos-nutcases. The work of Lincoln, Baigent and Leigh "the crowned enigma" is not foreign there. This phenomenon at known last season a blow of accelerator following the publication of the code da Vinci and of its questioning of teaching of the church. One could observe a clear increase in visitors in source, on the one hand, country where the Catholic Church has, during years, exerted an influence without division (Spain, Italy, Portugal). In addition new "customers" unloaded on the hill inspired. They are in general groups of baited, generally Californian feminists and vegetarians who are in the search of Marie Madeleine of which they made their door standard.

WM: One speaks much about an effect "Da Vinci Code"? Which is it your opinion on this book and had an impact in term of passage?

JLR: What quite naturally brings us to the following question about "the da effect Vinci codes". I already answered it partially. What we saw last summer was only before guard of a true "Tsunami of the Magdaléen type" which will be amplified by the innumerable broadcasts television to come. Chain CBS had been present in September for the emission "sixty minutes" one of the ten programs most looked at the USA for fifteen years. One does not know yet the date of programming, I wait to be informed of it from one day to another. On this subject I must say that they gave the impression to me to prepare a program demystificator which is well in the style of the emission. Japanese television diffused, veiled three weeks, a program in which the director Takeshi Kinato (gigantic high-speed motorboat in its country) played the part of the basic tourist being extasiant in front of the mystery of the Abbé Saunière. Rai2 diffused in Italy several programs on the subject in the last six months. A film was carried out also in September by a Danish or Norwegian team (I do not remember any more). I gave an interview last Sunday has NBC, another American chain, and they return next Sunday with a team of eight people. Meanwhile, I will have received another team which prepares a report for Sky Channel. They are million people who will discover RLC on their screen in the mobility of the code da Vinci. Imagine the result!

WM: You devote, in your work, a passage to the "new forgers of the business"? Is this with saying that the business of Rennes-le-Chateau derives towards a mercenary attitude without scruples? 

JLR: The business of Rennes does not derive more than formerly towards a "mercenary attitude without scruples". There always were the crafty one which tried, by means of false documents, to be made some under with the detriment gogos. It human east. How many works are based on documents miraculeusement found and of which nobody never could establish with certainty which they were authentic. I tell in my books some anecdotes personally lived during which elements appeared maintaining very discussed. I think that my testimony is interesting because I have, undoubtedly, be the first to which one tried of the monnayer. I expect a green heart flight! Who knows if we do not have in prospects some duels in the paddle blafarde for the plate of RLC intended to wash the honour of forgers who ended up believing in their own mystification?

WM: What do you think of the business known as of the transfer of the tomb of the Abbé Saunière and the closing of the cemetery?

JLR: I think that it would have been more judicious and less expensive public monies to restore rather fall it from the abbot in the cemetery than to install it with the site of my old kitchen. This said, I believe that there was an association for the restoration of the tomb of the abbot Saunière (A.R.T.B.S) who, if it had been more active, would have can be able to prevent that. I still will be made friends...

WM: Other projects of writing?

JLR: I have in preparation a work which will be the newspaper apocryphal book (and presented like such) of Marie Dénarnaud. History seen by the small end of the spyglass to some extent. It will act of the "newspaper of good of priest of countryside" (of under-Bernanos!). Between remarks grivoises, receipts of kitchens and councils of housewife, it will act of an amusing exercise which will not claim to leave this diagram. A expensive editor in our hearts is strongly interested and I promised to him of him to keep early product of it. I also have at the head a novel which I will write in English because I intend it for the American northern public under a pseudonym (I do not want to be made assassinate by Monseigneur Aringarosa!)

WM: Your restaurant, "the table of the Abbé", it for many is impassioned your famous conferences of the summer. Can you give us an outline of the next program?

JLR: The program of the conferences of the summer is being prepared. Nothing is still stopped so much it is difficult to fix the dates according to the availability of the speakers here the projects which we at the head with the "Atelier bookshop Impressed" of our friends Nicolas and Céline. * Michel Lamy (who was prevented the last year) promised to us to make his possible to come to speak to us about the relationship between work from Jules Vernes and RLC. In this year of the centenary of Jules Vernes they would be extremely judicious. * Didier Convard, author of the data base "the secret triangle, was approached and is filled with enthusiasm with the idea to come to speak in the gardens from the abbot (abbot D.?)......... * We wish to organize a round table around the topic "Rennes-le-Chateau in the media". * Another round table will be done on the effect of da Vinci codes with RLC. * It would be interesting to invite Franck Daffos to present his book. If it wishes a friendly tournament I want to play the game well. * I do not despair to make reconsider Jean-Jacques Velasco the topic "flying objects not-identified thus have a heart? "* I also think of Serge Guyader which could speak to us about "Prophecies and RLC", like with Richard D. Nolane, highly skilled cryptozoologist and author of an interesting data base on.... Harry Dickson.

WM: Thank you Jean-Luc Robin and good luck with your book.