Pope Clement IX lamented after the death of Poussin that he had not survived long enough to be honored adequately with the benediction of the Golden Rose which was a gift to be had of the Pope only. With such esteemed testimony concerning the hidden wisdom in the work of Poussin, the famous The Shepherds of Arcadia II bears looking into more closely.
"Les Bergers d'Arcadia" (The Shepherds of Arcadia II")
by Nicolas Poussin, c. 1638-1640
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Nicolas Poussin was born in Normandy but made his way to Italy to pursue his career as a painter. Italy was a perfect location for him since he painted in the classical style and the ancient ruins were all around him there. For a time he studied with the Venetian artists, which shows in the bright Venetian colors he used for a time. His figures were clothed in bright golden orange, scarlet, and midnight blue. Classical painters of the 17th century used statuary as models which accounts for their statuesque poses. The enigmatic female figure in The Shepherds of Arcadia II looks like the statue of a goddess herself and indeed she is.
The reason this painting is so famous is because Poussin is implicated in the deciphered message encoded in the parchments discovered by the Abbey Saunière, There were two encoded parchments and an encoded tombstone made by the previous priest, Abbe Bigou, before he fled to Spain during the French Revolution. The tombstone was made for Marie de Negre d'Ables, the daughter of the last surviving Hautpoul patriarch in the Languedoc. Abbe Bigou was Marie's confessor and had preserved the papers left to her by her father, protecting them from her husband and saving them for her only.
It had taken Abbe Bigou two years to invent the code that he encrypted into the parchments and onto the flat stone that covered Marie's grave. By using the raised letters on the first pace the code reads: "THIS BELONGS TO DAGOBERT II KING AND SION AND HE IS THERE DEAD."" The parchment itself contains three versions of the scripture about Jesus picking corn while traveling through a field on the Sabbath day, and how he ate of-the showbread in the Temple meant only for the priests. The message is made up of extra letters added and raised a little bit above the level of the scriptural passages.
The second parchment was more difficult to decipher because it uses a code called the Knights' Tour, which is indecipherable even by computer. It is hidden within the story of' Lazarus and it reads: "SHEPARDESS NO TEMPTATION THAT POUSSIN TENIERS HOLD THE KEY PEACE 68 l BY THE HORSE OF GOD l COMPLETE (or DESTROY) THIS DEMON GUARDIAN AT MIDDAY BLUE APPLES."
When Saunière found the parchments, he consulted his fellow priests in the area and took the parchments to St. Sulpice church in Paris to be deciphered. Along with the encoded pages were two genealogies of the Merovingian king Dagobert II. The Merovingians claimed the Davidic bloodline through Jesus and Mary Magdalene. Saunière returned to Rennes-le-Cháteau with the parchments which now rest in the archives of the Knights of Malta.
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