The idea that Jesus might not have died on the Cross, but was buried alive in some kind of narcotic trance, would have been a fatal heresy in the 12th century. But Gloria Moss has found some literary and herbal hints of this ‘secret’ among mediæval writers of classical romances.

Mysteries turn up in the strangest places. Buried in a story by the 12th-century writer Chrétien de Troyes is the tale of a beautiful woman who decides to escape an arranged marriage and elope with a young, handsome knight. Her motives are understandable enough, but the way she sets about it is strange indeed. Instead of simply eloping – an act that would tarnish her reputation – she decides to feign death and then run off in secret with her lover. To simulate her own death, she takes a narcotic potion and, three days after burial in a new tomb, is resurrected.

Parts of Chrétien’s story are strikingly familiar. There are elements not only of Romeo and Juliet – the potion, the tomb and the awakening – but also of the crucifixion story. Consider the parallels. The woman, like Jesus and Juliet, dies after taking a drink; she, like Jesus, is buried in a new tomb and restored to life three days later; even the heroine’s name, Fénice – the French for phœnix – serves as a reminder of Jesus, since the phœnix was used as a symbol of Christ and his resurrection in mediæval times. These and other allusions to the New Testament crucifixion story suggested that Chrétien was making a point. He was getting as near as he could to questioning a fundamental tenet of Christianity – Jesus’ resurrection.

Both Chrétien and Shakespeare were sailing close to the wind. The 12th century was not a time when it was possible overtly to question Christian orthodoxy, since state and church were closely linked. However, Chrétien was writing for the court of Champagne, a court with links to the Templars and notable for producing translations of the Bible; he might have calculated that with such backing, it was safe enough to criticise Christianity through the medium of a story. He may have been right, but with the few details we have of his life, nothing is certain. All that we know is that his last work, Perceval – the earliest version of the Grail story – was never completed. Gerbert de Montreuil, one of the writers who continued it, claimed that death prevented Chrétien from completing his work. Was this a natural end, or could he have been pushed? It seemed to me that an investigation was called for.

Many questions suggest themselves. If Chrétien had reason to believe, for example, that Jesus took a narcotic potion on the cross, what could it have been? And are there any other traces in his work of a belief that Jesus survived the crucifixion?

Various people have suggested in the past that Jesus may have survived the crucifixion, citing as proof the fact that blood flowed from the lance wound after he was declared dead. (It is medical opinion that blood cannot flow from a corpse.) Two of the more recent books – The Jesus Conspiracy and The Holy Blood and The Holy Grail – suggest that he owed his survival to a potion containing opium and vinegar. The inclusion of vinegar should come as no surprise, since all the Gospel accounts, except Luke’s, refer to the fact that Jesus’ death followed his being offered a sponge soaked with vinegar.

The idea that the sponge contained opium might appear superficially attractive – even the first-century master of herbalism, Dioscorides (above, c. AD 60–75), refers to the sleep-inducing qualities of opium – but there are several arguments against it. First, the largest component in the opium, morphine, produces rapid breathing, a very different effect from the “giving up of the breath” reported of Jesus. Then, morphine is absorbed only slowly by the body, arguing against the sudden reaction reported after Jesus took the vinegar. Last but not least is the fact that vinegar, according to Dioscorides, counteracts every poison "and in particular opium." This would not be disputed today, since the effect of combining acetic acid (vinegar) with morphine sulphate (the narcotic component of opium) is to produce a substance – morphine acetate – which is less effective as a narcotic than the original morphine sulphate.

The idea that a vinegar-based potion contained opium can therefore be scotched. Ninth- and 12th-century sources point to another possibility. According to the Antidotarium of Nicolai of Salerno, a soporific sponge could be applied to patients’ nostrils to create a state of anæsthesia. He suggests that one of the substances in the sponge was mandrake.

According to Dioscorides, touching or eating the apple-like fruit of the plant could bring on tiredness, and the root and bark were even more potent. Cooked in vinegar, the root could leave a person unconscious for up to three or four hours, leading Dioscorides to recommend its use for “people about to be cut or cauterised (who) wish to become insensible to the pain.” The bark could produce a "dead sleep", and a whiff of it was enough to produce a death-like stupor.

In the 1890s, a doctor, Benjamin Ward Richardson, carried out experiments with mandrake. He administered a mixture of alcohol and mandrake root to pigeons and rabbits, and found that not only did it act as a "general anæsthetic of the most potent quality," but the "animals’ hearts continued to beat after their respiration had ceased." Interestingly, New Testament accounts describe Jesus as having "given up the breath." We now know that mandrake contains a mydriatic alkaloid, mandragorine (C17 H27 O3 N), which interferes with the transmission of nerve impulses across pathways. You only need to block a few pathways to produce a devastating effect and stop all sensation or control of movement.

There are references to mandrake in the Old Testament, showing that it grew in biblical lands (Genesis 30:14; Song of Songs 7:11–13). There also appear to be references to mandrake in the work of the first-century historian Josephus. Josephus refers to a plant ba’ar (a word meaning to burn) as having characteristics which are associated only with mandrake. He also says that it shines brightly at night – a feature of mandrake described elsewhere. Further, the root of mandrake came to be valued as a talisman, believed to confer on people their every wish.

So, if Chrétien de Troyes imagined that Jesus had taken a narcotic, there is a fair chance that he might have thought the substance in question to be mandrake. Is there any more tangible evidence that he had this in mind? His last, unfinished work, Perceval, provides a clue.

Perceval was written some time before 1188 and describes an extraordinary encounter between its hero, Perceval, and an object referred to as the Grail. He first glimpses this in a procession in which a squire grasps a lance dripping with blood. The description of the Grail does not, on the face of it, give much away about its true nature. According to Chrétien, it shines so brightly that it eclipses the stars and maintains the life of a man (the Fisher King’s father) who had sustained a serious wound in years past. Perceval’s big mistake, the story tells us, was not to ask why the lance bled. Had he done so, we are told, the man’s suffering would have come to an end.

The emphasis on the bleeding lance directs one back to the crucifixion (see The Holy Spear, FT140:66). An escape of blood is not generally consistent with death, a fact which was acknowledged by the church father Origen in the second century AD. The existence of a bleeding lance would remind doubting minds of these facts, and further poignancy would be created by the knowledge that Perceval was reluctant to ask why the lance bled. The answer was unorthodox.

That is not all. The descriptions of the Grail also lead back to the crucifixion since – and this has not been remarked on before – descriptions of it are reminiscent of mandrake. In fact, the Grail was imputed with all the characteristics of mandrake. It supplied people with whatever they wanted (the mandrake’s talismanic qualities) and it shone brightly at night (as did the mandrake). Moreover, its third attribute – of forestalling death – was linked to mandrake’s anæsthetic qualities insofar as the apparent death induced by mandrake is followed by a resurrection, showing, by inference, that mandrake prevents lasting death.

The realisation that the Grail stands for mandrake is an indication that the story is a cipher for Chrétien’s heretical beliefs about the crucifixion. This shows that Chrétien’s purpose may have been far from innocent, and that he may have intended an attack on Christian orthodoxy. Perhaps, then, the death that prevented his completion of Perceval was no accident. This would not be surprising; his patron for Perceval, the Count of Flanders (the man credited with giving Chrétien the book on which the story is based) was related to a founder member of the Templars, and his other patron, the Countess of Champagne, was related by marriage to another founder member. In another hundred years the Templars would be the target of an Inquisition which accused them of blasphemy and heresy, and denying and spitting on the cross.



Quite clearly, Templar beliefs did not coincide with Christian orthodoxy. Some say that the Templars looked for and discovered secret scrolls under the Temple in Jerusalem, and it is possible that the Templars communicated their findings to the court of Champagne, and thence to Chrétien. Thereafter, these heterodox ideas survived intact in the pages of other, apparently innocent, literary texts, including a story in Boccaccio’s Decameron, Romeo and Juliet, and Snow White, and are worthy of some consideration.

Boccaccio’s story tells of an abbot who uses an anæsthetic potion to send a husband, his rival in love, to purgatory (he is given enough powder to put him to sleep for three days). The abbot keeps him in a darkened cell for several months, and then only allows him to be ‘resurrected’ as the man’s wife falls pregnant by the abbot. The husband is convinced that he has "risen from the dead" and is universally believed.

Then there is Romeo and Juliet, in which another man of the church, a friar, provides a narcotic potion. All three elements of the crucifixion story are here – death after taking liquid, burial in a tomb, and resurrection three days later. One of Shakespeare’s sources – Da Porto’s tale of Romeo e Giulietta (1530) – even appears to offer an ironic allusion to Jesus’ "I thirst" in the fact that Giulietta feigns thirst as she prepares to take the potion.

Finally, we have Giovanni Battista’s 17th-century story of Snow White. The apparently innocent story of a young girl who eats an apple and enters a deep sleep is yet another allusion to mandrake, for its fruit – a whiff of which could knock you out – was often likened to apples.

The mystery has come full circle. Chrétien in the 12th century dared to question orthodox beliefs. He may have sacrificed his life as a consequence.