Robert Bauval - The Vatican Heresy: Bernini and the Building of the Hermetic Temple of the Sun

To Alexandria, my city of memories...

ROBERT BAUVAL

To my mother...

CHIARA HOHENZOLLERN

Ninety percent, perhaps even more, of history is not documented. And as for the little that is documented or recorded, much of it may not be history at all but the warped perception, dissimulation, cover-ups, and bias of those documenting or recording it. The task of the true historian is to detect the history that is not told, much like a cosmologist detects the structure of the universe that is not seen. To read between the lines or see between the empty spaces, that is the exciting challenge...

THE VATICAN HERESY

With his usual care and attention to detail, Robert Bauval spins out the thread that joins the solar religion of pharaonic Egypt to the utopian hopes of the fading Renaissance. His theory climaxes with the dramatic and dangerous project of a pope (Urban VIII), a polymath (Kircher), an architect (Bernini), and an exiled queen (Christina). Their dream was of a united Christendom orbiting around Rome; their method, the marriage of Hermetic philosophy with the new astronomy, through symbolic architecture. Like Bauvals other books about times and places when science and magic were one, The Vatican Heresy arouses curiosity, disbelief, nostalgia, and finally hope. JOSCELYN GODWIN, PH.D., AUTHOR OF THE PAGAN DREAM OF THE RENAISSANCE AND ATHANASIUS KIRCHERS THEATRE OF THE WORLD In this enchanting book, Robert Bauval and Chiara Hohenzollern reveal an astonishing fact hiding in plain sight. Surely thousands of visitors to the Vaticans Saint Peters Square over the past three centuries have been puzzled by the gigantic ancient Egyptian obelisk featured in its center. Through meticulous research, The Vatican Heresy illuminates the profoundly evolutionary adventurers who employed deep symbolic insights and astute political maneuvering to construct a talismanic Hermetic City of the Sun in the heart of the citadel of Christendom. Read The Vatican Heresy.... I couldnt put it down. THOMAS BROPHY, PH.D., COAUTHOR OF BLACK GENESIS: THE PREHISTORIC ORIGINS OF ANCIENT EGYPT AND IMHOTEP THE AFRICAN: ARCHITECT OF THE COSMOS, AUTHOR OF THE MECHANISM DEMANDS A MYSTICISM: AN EXPLORATION OF SPIRIT, MATTER AND PHYSICS, THE ORIGIN MAP, AND THE CHRISTMAS CODE: A NEW ASTRONOMY OF CHRISTMAS AND HOW IT CAME FROM ANCIENT EGYPT It looks like Robert Bauval (now with coauthor Chiara Hohenzollern) has done it again, revealing that not just the pyramids but the Vatican itself is a celebration of sacred architecture. A fascinating theory and very timely. ADRIAN G. GILBERT, COAUTHOR OF THE ORION MYSTERY AND AUTHOR OF SECRETS OF THE STONE OF DESTINY Robert Bauval is a brilliant investigator of the hidden corners of history, and he has surpassed himself with The Vatican Heresy . It is a true time bomb of a book revealing stunning intrigues that have shaped the modern world and that call into question our most fundamental perceptions of the role of the Church of Rome. GRAHAM HANCOCK, AUTHOR OF WAR GOD AND FINGERPRINTS OF THE GODS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I first would like to thank Dr. Sandro Zicari of Sapienza University of Rome for his collaboration and helpful advice on this project. Also and as always, I am eternally grateful to my wife, Michele. This is my tenth book, and she has endured yet again with true grit and patience the long, solitary hours and the ups and downs of a temperamental author. Michele is the real, unnamed, and unspoken heroine of my intellectual journeys into the mysteries of the past. I also thank my pleonastic but very lovable big brother, Jean-Paul. His never-ending support, even though disguised in typical Alexandrian cynical humor, is always appreciated. My warm gratitude also is extended to my many friends, old and new: Vicky Metafora from Naples, Laura Salvucci from Le Marche, Dr. Maria Pia Tocco from Rome, Pino Morelli from Pescara, Richard Fusniak from Cambridge, Father Nicola Mapelli and Katherine Aigner of the Vatican Museums Ethnological Collection, Graham and Satha Hancock from Bath, and Adriana Dainelli from Rome. Thanks to Ed and Barbara Mattis for sharing their Sunday Special pizza with me! Thank you dear Mindy Branstetter, my very professional, very efficient, and very gentle editor at Inner Traditions. Special thanks also to Jon Graham and John Hays, who quickly saw the importance of this project. Thank you dear Manzanita Carpenter, Kelly Bowen, and superhero-operator Cindy Marcotte, also at Inner Traditions. Last but not least, and from the bottom of my heart, I send genuine thanks to all my readers around the world for your support and affection. It is you, after all, who make all the effort from authors and publishers worthwhile.

ROBERT BAUVAL,
TORREMOLINOS, SOUTHERN SPAIN

I wish to thank Massimo, a dear friend who, in recent years, has always prompted me to believe in myself and my work and never give up even in the hardest and most difficult moments.

CHIARA HOHENZOLLERN

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

HIDING THE TRUTH IN PLAIN SIGHT

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena. THEODORE ROOSEVELT

This book was a very ambitious project, and I readily admit that researching and writing it was not only a thrilling experience but also a very daunting one, as well. The complexity of the topic and the sheer volume of research material made it feel like I was recklessly challenging a bookish Goliath with only a reed twig in my hand to bring him down! Yet the temptation to quest and sleuth a historical mystery of this scale was too tantalizing to pass over. There was, certainly, the initial apprehension that all authors have when taking on such a task. A long, dark tunnel must be crossed solo, and then at the other end await the inevitable lashes by experts whose feathers you are bound to have ruffled. But such qualms are then quickly dismissed by a weirdalmost perversegladiatorial thrill of marching into the arena to do battle again with that old foe: academic consensus.

A decade ago I wrote with Graham Hancock Talisman: Sacred Cities, Secret Faith. In this book we explored the Hermetic tradition and tracked its journey out of Egypt and its influence on the design of major capital cities of the Western world. Academics, needless to say, ignored it. And the only academic who didnt ignore it ended up repaying us by blatantly plagiarizing a discovery we made regarding the layout of ancient Alexandria. I bring this up because there was also a tinyalthough immensely importantcity that Graham and I barely touched in our book: the Vatican City in Rome. With hindsight I can say that we had thus overlooked the most important piece of that huge historical puzzle we had set about to solve. After much deliberation I finally decided to reopen the case for the Vatican City in late 2011. It was at this point that I invited the Italian author Chiara Hohenzollern and also Dr. Sandro Zicari to join me.

Let me quickly get to the point: it is often stated by historians of art and architecture that the Piazza St. Peters at the Vatican was designed to represent the open arms of Mother Church. This, in fact, is indeed claimed by Gian Lorenzo Bernini himself, the architect responsible for the design. We believe it to be a truth, but not the whole truth. Truth often comes in many layers. Revealing only one layer yet dissimulating another will make this partial truth seem to be something very different indeed. This is why today a person on the stand in a court of law will be sworn in to tell not only the truth, but rather the whole truth. We believe that there is another, far more important layer in which rests the whole truth behind Berninis grandiose design. This whole truth he, nonetheless, took to his grave, for it was such an unspeakable truth, such a taboo, such a forbidden fruit in his time that the mere mention of it might have brought down the whole edifice of Mother Churchthat is to say, the Vatican itself. Yet the amazing daringness of Berninis ploy was to hide the truth in plain sight for all to see. Indeed, so well did he do this that everyone who lookedand there have been millions sincedid not see it all. And when finally some did see it, so out rageous, so fantastic was its implication that they simply preferred to dismiss it as mere coincidence. Bernini clearly intended it to be a sort of intellectual time bomb meant to be detonated not in his time but when the time was right, when its revelation would not bring down the Vatican, but do, instead, the opposite. To fully appreciate the magnitude of this revelation, and to make our case worthy of the most serious consideration, we had to undertake a chase across nearly two millennia of history, from Greco-Roman Alexandria to Renaissance Rome, sometimes moving at breakneck speed, making Dan Browns Angels & Demons seem like a Sunday stroll in the park. It was a thrilling undertaking and, most of all, an amazing eye-opener. No matter what one may think of it, one thing is certain: Christianity and Western culture will never seem the same again.