The heavily forested park known as the Bois de Boulogne was called many things, but the Parisian
cognoscenti knew it as "the Garden of Earthly Delights." The epithet, despite sounding flattering,
was quite to the contrary. Anyone who had seen the lurid Bosch painting of the same name
understood the jab; the painting, like the forest, was dark and twisted, a purgatory for freaks and
fetishists. At night, the forest's winding lanes were lined with hundreds of glistening bodies for
hire, earthly delights to satisfy one's deepest unspoken desires—male, female, and everything in
between.
"布劳涅森林"是一个树荫浓密的公园，它有许多绰号，巴黎人把它叫做"尘世乐土"。
实际上，它与这样的溢美之辞毫不相符。大凡看过波希的同名油画的人，就会理解这颇具讽刺意味的命名原由：那幅颓废的油画就像这片树林一样，是一片黑暗而扭曲的景象，里面尽是些畸形变态和装神弄鬼的人。夜晚，树林里蜿蜒的小径上聚集着上百个全裸或半裸的人等待着满足肉体最深处难以言表的欲望--他们中有男人，有女人，也有非男非女的人。
As Langdon gathered his thoughts to tell Sophie about the Priory of Sion, their taxi passed through
the wooded entrance to the park and began heading west on the cobblestone crossfare. Langdon
was having trouble concentrating as a scattering of the park's nocturnal residents were already
emerging from the shadows and flaunting their wares in the glare of the headlights. Ahead, two
topless teenage girls shot smoldering gazes into the taxi. Beyond them, a well-oiled black man in a
G-string turned and flexed his buttocks. Beside him, a gorgeous blond woman lifted her miniskirt
to reveal that she was not, in fact, a woman.
正当兰登凝神要向索菲讲述郇山隐修会的情况时，出租车驶入了公园的木门，开始在鹅卵石铺成的小径上向西行驶。此时，兰登无法再集中注意力了，因为一群公园里的"夜游鬼"从树丛里跳了出来，在车灯的光亮下展示他们的把戏。前方，有两个袒胸露乳的女孩正向车内投来挑逗的目光。在她们后面，一个满身抹油只用一根布条系在裆下的黑人男子转身扭动着臀部。在他身边，有一个迷人的金发女郎掀起了她的迷你裙，向人展示她实际上并不是一个女人。
Heaven help me!Langdon turned his gaze back inside the cab and took a deep breath.
"Tell me about the Priory of Sion," Sophie said.
Langdon nodded, unable to imagine a less congruous a backdrop for the legend he was about to
tell. He wondered where to begin. The brotherhood's history spanned more than a millennium... an
astonishing chronicle of secrets, blackmail, betrayal, and even brutal torture at the hands of an
angry Pope.
我的天呀！兰登急忙将目光转进车内，深深地吸了口气。
"说说郇山隐修会。"索菲催促道。
兰登点点头，心想：这样的背景真是再合适不过了。他一时不知从何说起。隐修会有长达一个多世纪的历史……那里面有秘密、有敲诈、有背叛，甚至还有教皇一怒之下实施的酷刑。
"The Priory of Sion," he began, "was founded in Jerusalem in 1099 by a French king named
Godefroi de Bouillon, immediately after he had conquered the city."
Sophie nodded, her eyes riveted on him.
"King Godefroi was allegedly the possessor of a powerful secret—a secret that had been in his
family since the time of Christ. Fearing his secret might be lost when he died, he founded a secret
brotherhood—the Priory of Sion—and charged them with protecting his secret by quietly passing it
on from generation to generation. During their years in Jerusalem, the Priory learned of a stash of
hidden documents buried beneath the ruins of Herod's temple, which had been built atop the earlier
ruins of Solomon's Temple. These documents, they believed, corroborated Godefroi's powerful
secret and were so explosive in nature that the Church would stop at nothing to get them." Sophie
looked uncertain.
他开始说道："1099 年，一个叫戈弗提的国王攻占了耶路撒冷，并在那里创建了郇山隐修会。"索菲点了点头，聚精会神地听着。
"据说，戈弗提国王继承了一个具有极大威力的秘密--从基督时代起这个秘密就在他的家族中世代流传。国王怕他死后秘密失传，就指定了一个秘密的教会组织--郇山隐修会--来保守这个秘密。在耶路撒冷的时候，隐修会得知希律神庙的废墟下埋藏着一些文件，而希律神庙则是在索罗门神庙的废墟上建立起来的。据他们所知，这些文件可以用来确认戈弗提国王的那个威力极大的秘密，正因如此，天主教会将不遗余力地要把它弄到手。"索菲将信将疑。
"The Priory vowed that no matter how long it took, these documents must be recovered from the
rubble beneath the temple and protected forever, so the truth would never die. In order to retrieve
the documents from within the ruins, the Priory created a military arm—a group of nine knights
called the Order of the Poor Knights of Christ and the Temple of Solomon." Langdon paused.
"More commonly known as the Knights Templar."
"隐修会发誓无论过多久也要将这些文件挖掘出来，让它们永远流传下去。为了保护废墟中的文件，他们成立了一支武装队伍--由九名骑士组成的‘基督和所罗门神庙的骑士团’。"兰登停了停，接着说。"就是众所周知的‘圣殿武士团’。"
Sophie glanced up with a surprised look of recognition. Langdon had lectured often enough on the
Knights Templar to know that almost everyone on earth had heard of them, at least abstractedly.
For academics, the Templars' history was a precarious world where fact, lore, and misinformation
had become so intertwined that extracting a pristine truth was almost impossible. Nowadays,
Langdon hesitated even to mention the Knights Templar while lecturing because it invariably led to
a barrage of convoluted inquiries into assorted conspiracy theories.
索菲用惊异的眼光看了看兰登，确实曾对此有所耳闻。
兰登经常做关于"圣殿"的讲座，所以他知道几乎每个人都会对此有所耳闻。在学术界。"圣殿武士团"的历史几乎是研究的禁区，因为这方面的事实、理论和讹传交织在一起，使人无法弄清真相。现在，兰登甚至不怎么想在讲座中提及"圣殿武土团"，因为那势必会诱导听众围绕那些别有用心的理论展开无休止的提问。
Sophie already looked troubled. "You're saying the Knights Templar were founded by the Priory of
Sion to retrieve a collection of secret documents? I thought the Templars were created to protect
the Holy Land."
"A common misconception. The idea of protection of pilgrims was the guise under which the
Templars ran their mission. Their true goal in the Holy Land was to retrieve the documents from
beneath the ruins of the temple."
"And did they find them?"
索菲看上去很困惑："你是说郇山隐修会成立了‘圣殿武士团’来保护秘密文件？我原本以为‘圣殿武士团’是保护圣地的。""这是一个普遍存在的误解。‘圣殿武士团’打着保护朝圣者的旗号，实则在完成他们的使命。他们的真正目标是取出埋藏在神庙废墟下的文件。""他们找到文件了吗？"
Langdon grinned. "Nobody knows for sure, but the one thing on which all academics agree is this:
The Knights discovered somethingdown there in the ruins... something that made them wealthy
and powerful beyond anyone's wildest imagination."
Langdon quickly gave Sophie the standard academic sketch of the accepted Knights Templar
history, explaining how the Knights were in the Holy Land during the Second Crusade and told
King Baldwin II that they were there to protect Christian pilgrims on the roadways. Although
unpaid and sworn to poverty, the Knights told the king they required basic shelter and requested his
permission to take up residence in the stables under the ruins of the temple.
兰登冷笑道："没有人知道，但学者们一致认为：武士团在废墟下发现了些什么……这一发现使他们变得极为富有，极为有权势。"兰登开始快速地用标准的学术观点向索菲介绍"圣殿武士团"的历史。他解释道，武士团参与了第二次圣战，他们告诉国王鲍德温二世说他们是为了保护赶路的朝圣者。他们分文不取，但却向国王提出基本的驻扎要求，请求国王允许他们住在神庙废墟的马厩中。鲍德温国王答应了他们的要求，于是武士团就住进了荒废的神殿中。
King Baldwin granted
the soldiers' request, and the Knights took up their meager residence inside the devastated shrine.
The odd choice of lodging, Langdon explained, had been anything but random. The Knights
believed the documents the Priory sought were buried deep under the ruins—beneath the Holy of
Holies, a sacred chamber where God Himself was believed to reside. Literally, the very center of
the Jewish faith. For almost a decade, the nine Knights lived in the ruins, excavating in total
secrecy through solid rock.
兰登解释道，武士团选择这样奇怪的驻扎地绝非偶然。武士团相信隐修会所追寻的文件就深深地埋藏在废墟下面--在圣地下面一个神圣的密室内，这个密室既是上帝所在的地方，也是犹太教的中心圣地。九名骑士在废墟中住了将近十年，秘密地在坚硬的石块中发掘文件。
Sophie looked over. "And you said they discovered something?"
"They certainly did," Langdon said, explaining how it had taken nine years, but the Knights had
finally found what they had been searching for. They took the treasure from the temple and
traveled to Europe, where their influence seemed to solidify overnight.
Nobody was certain whether the Knights had blackmailed the Vatican or whether the Church
simply tried to buy the Knights' silence, but Pope Innocent II immediately issued an unprecedented
papal bull that afforded the Knights Templar limitless power and declared them "a law unto
themselves"—an autonomous army independent of all interference from kings and prelates, both
religious and political.
索菲望着兰登。"你说过他们发现了些什么？"
"他们确实有所发现。"兰登说完又继续解释道，骑士们花了九年时间终于找到了他们所要搜寻的东西。他们带着发现的珍宝去了欧洲，在那里他们一夜之间就声名远扬。
不知是武士团敲诈了梵蒂冈城邦，还是天主教会想买通他们，伊诺森八世教皇立即下达了一个通告，赋予"圣殿武士团"至高无上的权力，宣布"他们的意志就是法律"，国王、教士都不得以宗教或政治手段干涉这支独立自主的军队。这样的通告是史无前例的。
With their new carte blanche from the Vatican, the Knights Templar expanded at a staggering rate,
both in numbers and political force, amassing vast estates in over a dozen countries. They began
extending credit to bankrupt royals and charging interest in return, thereby establishing modern
banking and broadening their wealth and influence still further.
By the 1300s, the Vatican sanction had helped the Knights amass so much power that Pope
Clement V decided that something had to be done. Working in concert with France's King Philippe
IV, the Pope devised an ingeniously planned sting operation to quash the Templars and seize their
treasure, thus taking control of the secrets held over the Vatican. In a military maneuver worthy of
the CIA, Pope Clement issued secret sealed orders to be opened simultaneously by his soldiers all
across Europe on Friday, October 13 of 1307.
有了这样的新通告，武士团的人员迅速增加，政治势力急剧膨胀，在许多国家都有数量惊人的财产。他们开始向破产的王室贵族借贷，从中渔利。这样他们不仅创建了现代银行业，而且进一步增强了自身实力。
到13 世纪的时候，梵蒂冈的通告已经为武士团的扩张提供了极大的帮助，这让克莱蒙五世教皇下定决心对此采取一些遏制措施。他与法国国王菲利浦四世联手策划了镇压武士团、限制其财富扩张的一系列行动，以便将秘密控制在梵蒂冈城邦的手中。在一次秘密的军事演习中，克莱蒙五世教皇下达了一个命令。这个命令被事先密封了起来，欧洲各地的士兵必须等到1307 年10 月13 日--星期五--才能拆封这个命令。
At dawn on the thirteenth, the documents were unsealed and their appalling contents revealed.
Clement's letter claimed that God had visited him in a vision and warned him that the Knights
Templar were heretics guilty of devil worship, homosexuality, defiling the cross, sodomy, and
other blasphemous behavior. Pope Clement had been asked by God to cleanse the earth by
rounding up all the Knights and torturing them until they confessed their crimes against God.
Clement's Machiavellian operation came off with clockwork precision. On that day, countless
Knights were captured, tortured mercilessly, and finally burned at the stake as heretics. Echoes of
the tragedy still resonated in modern culture; to this day, Friday the thirteenth was considered
unlucky.
十三号的清晨，士兵们拆封了命令，读到了可怕的内容。克莱蒙教皇声称他梦见了上帝，上帝警告他说"圣殿武士团"是崇拜魔鬼的异教徒，同性恋者，他们玷污了十字架，并有鸡奸和其他渎神行为。上帝让克莱蒙教皇清理世界，围歼武士团并严刑逼供他们亵渎上帝的罪行。克莱蒙教皇的阴谋按计划顺利进展。那一天，无数的武士团成员被逮捕，被施以酷刑，而后又作为异端分子被绑在柱子上烧死。那场悲剧在现代文化中还留有印记：时至今日，人们还认为星期五和十三很晦气。
Sophie looked confused. "The Knights Templar were obliterated? I thought fraternities of Templars
still exist today?"
"They do, under a variety of names. Despite Clement's false charges and best efforts to eradicate
them, the Knights had powerful allies, and some managed to escape the Vatican purges. The
Templars' potent treasure trove of documents, which had apparently been their source of power,
was Clement's true objective, but it slipped through his fingers. The documents had long since been
entrusted to the Templars' shadowy architects, the Priory of Sion, whose veil of secrecy had kept
them safely out of range of the Vatican's onslaught. As the Vatican closed in, the Priory smuggled
their documents from a Paris preceptory by night onto Templar ships in La Rochelle."
"Where did the documents go?"
索菲满脸疑惑："‘圣殿武士团’被撤销了吗？现在不是还有武士团的兄弟会吗？"
"是的，他们还以各种名义存在着。虽然克莱蒙教皇捏造了他们的罪行，并竭力要斩草除根，但武士团有强大的同盟者，其中的一些成员逃过了梵蒂冈的屠杀。武士团拥有的威力无比的文件--也是他们的力量之源--是克莱蒙教皇真正想要得到的东西，但这些文件却从他的指缝中溜走了。长期以来，那些文件由武士团的缔造者一一郇山隐修会--保管着，而郇山隐修会的神秘面纱使得它在梵蒂冈的屠杀中安然无恙。梵蒂冈封城的时候，隐修会偷偷用船将其运往了拉罗舍尔。""后来文件到哪里去了？"
Langdon shrugged. "That mystery's answer is known only to the Priory of Sion. Because the
documents remain the source of constant investigation and speculation even today, they are
believed to have been moved and rehidden several times. Current speculation places the documents
somewhere in the United Kingdom."
Sophie looked uneasy.
"For a thousand years," Langdon continued, "legends of this secret have been passed on. The entire
collection of documents, its power, and the secret it reveals have become known by a single
name—Sangreal. Hundreds of books have been written about it, and few mysteries have caused as
much interest among historians as the Sangreal."
"The Sangreal? Does the word have anything to do with the French word sangor Spanish
sangre—meaning 'blood'?"
兰登耸了耸肩说道："只有郇山隐修会知道这个神秘的答案。因为时至今日，人们还在调查、揣测这些文件的下落，并普遍认为这些文件已被转移，并被重新隐藏多次。现在它们可能被藏在英国的某个地方。"索菲看上去有点儿不安。
兰登继续说道："有关这个秘密的传说已经流传了千年。所有的文件，以及它们所具有的威力，所包含的秘密都与一样东西有关--圣杯（Sangreal）。有关圣杯的书成百上千，历史学家们对其也抱有极大的兴趣。""圣杯？这个单词与法语和西班牙语中表示"鲜血"的词"sang"和"sangre"有关吗？"
Langdon nodded. Blood was the backbone of the Sangreal, and yet not in the way Sophie probably
imagined. "The legend is complicated, but the important thing to remember is that the Priory
guards the proof, and is purportedly awaiting the right moment in history to reveal the truth."
"What truth? What secret could possibly be that powerful?"
Langdon took a deep breath and gazed out at the underbelly of Paris leering in the shadows.
"Sophie, the word Sangrealis an ancient word. It has evolved over the years into another term... a
more modern name." He paused. "When I tell you its modern name, you'll realize you already
know a lot about it. In fact, almost everyone on earth has heard the story of the Sangreal."
Sophie looked skeptical. "I've never heard of it."
"Sure you have." Langdon smiled. "You're just used to hearing it called by the name 'Holy Grail.' "
兰登点了点头。圣杯与鲜血密不可分，不过那倒不是索菲想象中的那种关系。"这个传说很复杂，但最重要的是隐修会守护着这个秘密，并等待着一个恰当的历史时机来公布真相。""什么真相？那个秘密真的威力无比吗？"
兰登深吸了一口气，看着窗外巴黎最难堪的景象。"索菲，圣杯（Sangreal）是个古语词。随着时间的推移，它演变成了另外一个词--一个更加现代的名称。"他停了一下。"如果我告诉你它的现代名称，你就会意识到其实你很熟悉它。实际上，几乎所有的人都听说过圣杯的故事。"索菲不相信："我就从来都没有听说过。"
"你一定听说过。"兰登微笑着说。"你习惯听到的叫法是圣杯（HolyGrail）。"
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