The "Bill Jackson Documents" Investigation - Part 2
In part 1 of this investigation, we presented Bill Jackson and what little is known about his life. We also examined a page from “the Cremona Document”; the writing in Theban letters was used as substitution for French, we concluded that some of the French words were modern and that in all likelihood the French had not been written before the 20th century. In this 2nd part we will present what is known about the alleged provenance of the “Cremona Document”, we’ll also look at other parts of the document and present some intriguing finds.
Provenance
It is from Zena Halpern’s and Don Ruh’s accounts that we learn how the “Cremona Document” came into Bill Jackson’s hands. It was supposedly on a trip to France with Dan Spartan that Bill Jackson learned of the existence of a document from Cremona in Italy. In the early 1970s, Dr Jackson apparently visited a rare-book dealer in Paris. It is here that he bought a pamphlet which eventually led him to the Cremona Document. Both Don Ruh and Zena Halpern published a letter from a Mr Alex Caron which relates how Dr Jackson found and bought the document.
San Sigismondo, CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons - Supposedly where the Cremona document was kept
From the letter we learn that the bookdealer was called Pierre De Valzac, he lived at “15 rue des Fontaines” in Paris, we have researched this address thinking that such a banal street ("Fountain Street") would believably exist in Paris, but it doesn’t seem to. There are other variants of the name: rue Jean de La Fontaine, rue de la Fontaine du Roi, rue de la Fontaine Mulart, rue des Fontaines du Temple – but we have not found the one we’re looking for. Maybe the street names have changed since the 1970s?
We continued by searching for this Monsieur de Valzac, knowing the date they visited him, it was possible that de Valzac was no longer alive, but there should still be records of his life and maybe descendants to contact. We were greatly surprised to find no record whatsoever of any person named de Valzac in France. The only thing we found with this name was a brand of wine and a brief mention of a man in an English book from 1828. There are no results for any person with that surname on specialised sites like Geneanet, FamilySearch or Ancestry. Strange to say the least…
Screenshot of our search for Mr de Valzac
Forgetting the possibility of finding the bookdealer, we turned our search to the following events that are reported in the letter. Dr Jackson managed to source the Cremona Document, which was to be sold to the Vatican, after negotiating with the latter, Bill somehow secured the purchase for himself and planned to meet a certain Franco Franzetti who worked for the Vatican in the restorations department. This person met with Bill Jackson in the Vatican where he supposedly authenticated the document for 12000 Lire. Franco Franzetti also apparently authenticated Ralph de Sudeley’s signature at this time.
Such an interesting development in the story brought us to contact the Vatican directly. We sent an email to the archives department in February 2023, we asked if they had any record of this event, we also asked more about Franco Franzetti. We received a nice reply from their services, in which they clearly stated that they had never had a Franco Franzetti in their employment in the 70’s. We replied to their email asking if Franco Franzetti had worked at any time for the Vatican. We received a prompt reply from the Vatican, they had searched through their records, Mr Franzetti had never worked for them at all, period. We ran Franco Franzetti’s name in various databases and again we have found no proof of his existence.
The provenance of the document seems doubtful, we have a bookdealer with a surname that does not exist in any database in France, we have an address that again doesn’t seem to exist. The person who supposedly authenticated the document and worked at the Vatican has no record of being employed by the Vatican at all, he is also absent from any regular database.
The clear text French extract
An extract of a French document was also published on the Templar.gold website, though we are not sure where it fits with the rest of the document. The names mentioned in the text are also mentioned in parts of the Cremona Document, so we imagine it belongs to this collection. We do not know if this is supposedly an original, whether it was written in Théban, like many pages of the Cremona, and then “decoded” more recently. The paper it is written on looks old, which seems to imply it is not a recent document.
Firstly, we must say that the French grammar in this document is acceptable, there are no gender mistakes, and the verb and grammar usage is good. It is likely to have been written by someone who has some experience with the French language, though this could probably be done with a decent grammar book and a dictionary. Certain turns of phrase demand good usage of articles, pronouns and at least a mediocre usage of grammar.
There are however certain passages that do not look natural for a native French speaker. The first sentence makes little sense, as you can see in our translation. The usage of the word “ICI” seems slightly strange, the word “RESPIRONS” means to breathe and makes no sense in this context. The spelling of “DOUX” is wrong, we imagine that it should be “DOUZE” (twelve) but spelt in this manner it means “sweet” or “soft”.
The fact that the names mentioned also appear in the "Ralph de Sudeley Journal" (Tama and Cedric) suggests that this extract is supposedly from the 12th century. Yes, it might be a more recent transcription from Theban, but it would have originally been in French, in both cases it should reflect French from de Sudeley’s time.
Concerning the datage of the text, this was certainly not written in the 12th century, there are numerous words in the document that did not exist at this time and there is no doubt at all that this was written much later. We would like to stress that etymological studies of words are very thorough, though they might not be precise to a specific decade or century, the records of word usage in the French language (which was very well documented) can give insights to the rough time that a text was written - or in this case, not written.
Here are a few examples of anachronisms in this text:
· “ETRANGE”: meaning “strange” in English. This would have been written “ESTRANGE” (1) until the 1700s when the letter S was later replaced by an accent. It is written with S in the very official French Academy Dictionaries until 1740 (2).
· “CEDRIC”: This name was unused in France until the mid-20th century, and was first used in the United Kingdom in the 1819 novel Invanhoe by Wolter Scott, who had supposedly invented the name at the time. Various forms were used much earlier but these were spelt differently and stemmed from the Celtic name Cedd, who was a saint in the VII century. In the huge French National Library database, the name Cedric first appears in 1820 (4).
· “SOUTENU”: meaning “supported” or “held up”. This would have been written with a S or even Z in front of the T in medieval French. It appears as “SOUSTENU” in the French Academy Dictionaries until 1740 (5).
· “ILE”: Meaning “island” in English it was written “ISLE” (6) until the replacement of the S with a circumflex accent. The first time this happened was in the mid-16th century but was not generally accepted until the French language reform in the 18th century. Having looked at many old documents (letters, ship logs, publications) from the medieval period until the 18th centuries we think it would be highly unlikely to find it spelt without an S before the 17th Century.
· “Tempête”: Meaning “storm”. As with the previous word, in the 12th century it would have been written with S as “TEMPESTE”. The etymological dictionary records this word first being written without the S in 1638 (7). It is still written “TEMPESTE” in the 1694 and 1718 editions of the French Academy Dictionary. In this text it has a circonflexe accent which is absolutely impossible for a medieval document.
Clearly the datage of the words used does not fit with a 12th century document. Some may argue that it was written later… Maybe? In that case it was transcribed inexactly using more recent vocabulary and accents that did not exist!
More intrigues
In The Scrolls of Onteora, Don Ruh presents a series of photos that were sent to him after William Jackson’s death. These are supposedly photos of pages from the Cremona Document There are 2 photographs that we find very interesting.
One of these is of a letter which is dated 1118 and signed by Bernard de Clairvaux, a very important French abbot who brought many reforms to the Catholic church. He took his name from the abbey he founded, known at the time as the abbey of “Clare Vale or “Clear Vale” in English. His uncle, André de Montbard, was one of the founders of the Order of the Temple and a Grand Master. The date of the signature is quite interesting because in the year 1118 Bernard de Clairvaux retired from his abbatial duties temporarily and went into hermitage (8).
Lettre et Sermons de Bernard de Clairvaux - Written Posthumously in the late 12th Century.
Bernard de Clairvaux wrote many letters and sermons, mostly in Latin and we have yet to see a signature on any papers attributed to him. What we found interesting is the way his name is written. In the document he wrote "Bernadi Abbotis" supposedly latin for Bernard Abbot, he then added “de Clairvaux”, which is in French and means “from Clairvaux”. It is surprising to us that he did not use the Latin form "Claravallensis", which would have been normal in this context. One of the specialists we worked with on this investigation is a French, Latin and Greek teacher, she also pointed this out and found his siganture incoherent. Furthermore, our research suggests that at Bernard’s time the abbey was known as “Clare Vale”, “evolving to Clere Vaux” before its final change to Clairvaux. Actually, we only first find the “Clairvaux” spelling in a 1637 book.
Les Sermons de Sainct Bernard : abbé de Clerevaux 1576
"Clerevaux" on the 18th Century Cassini map
The above are examples of the “Clerevaux” spelling in the 16th and 18th centuries. In all likelihood Bernard de Clairvaux would not have signed his name with a spelling variation that did not exist.
The other photo of interest is on the next page of Don Ruh’s book, there is an interesting list of book/document titles, some of which are in French. Mr Ruh calls it “The decoded list of documents Ralph De Sudeley recovered during his mission to… Hunter Mountain”. We will not go into too much detail, here are a few of the more remarkable French titles:
· La Bibliothèque
· La Chronique de Mananus Scotus (…)
· La Histoire de Cleopatrae (…)
Again there are incoherences with a supposed medieval text. “Chronique” which is first attested in this form in 1536 (9) and “Histoire”, first attested in 1646 (10), were not at all written this way in the medieval period. The word Bibliotheque is attested in the 15th Century (11), 300 years after Ralph de Sudeley’s time. Furthermore, thoughout the list, there are problems with grammar and with gender accords.
But what does this mean for the other documents that Bill Jackson owned? In the next part of this investigation the Compendium will examine one of Bill Jackson's documents that has been connected to the island.
Bonne journée de la part du Compendium! - Good day from the Compendium
8 : « En 1118, l'état de santé de Bernard se dégrade. Il est contraint de vivre loin de sa communauté et des responsabilités de sa charge. Déchargé de l'administration spirituelle et temporelle de sa maison, il passe une année dans un ermitage ». - http://rue-des-9-templiers.eklablog.com/06-bernard-de-clairvaux-templier-a162473066
