(dramatic pizzicato orchestral music)
In the Middle Ages the French capital of Paris
had its fair share of centuries-old mysteries and secrets;
among them was the era of the alchemists,
who claimed they could turn base metals into gold.
The best-known of the alchemists
was Nicolas Flamel, and the most fascinating thing
was the idea that an alchemist could use his artistry
to match, if not outdo nature.
(speaking in foreign language)
Did Nicolas Flamel really find a way
of turning lead into gold?
Did he discover the secret of eternal life?
Did he have supernatural powers?
Light needs to be shed on the arcana of alchemy,
and the answer lies here in Paris.
(dark foreboding music)
I'm Jean-Marc Leri.
I've devoted my life to understanding Paris's history,
studying its secrets, and wandering its maze of streets.
The city holds many centuries-old mysteries.
Often, these cases are dismissed as occult phenomena,
myths, legends, or popular beliefs.
Things have happened here, though.
There are facts, consistencies, and bonafide witnesses.
Historians, scientists, and investigators of all sorts
have been unable to solve them.
It is time to reveal the most plausible theories,
and to get as close as possible to the truth.
Here's Paris, as you've never seen it before.
(mysterious dreamy music)
It was a December evening in 1988.
At the time, I was the director of the archives
and libraries of the Louvre and National Museums.
A stranger came to my department,
claiming to be in possession of the Philosopher's Stone,
the secret of alchemy.
Alchemy has always fascinated man.
It promises two extraordinary powers:
the ability to turn metals into silver or gold,
and the discovery of an elixir which prolongs life.
Today, Nicolas Flamel is the most famous of alchemists,
for good reason.
A number of disturbing pieces of evidence
point to this simple Paris scribe and manuscript seller
as having acquired great wealth and immortality.
Over night, this modest middle-class man,
for no apparent reason, suddenly found himself
in possession of a considerable fortune.
And even more astonishing,
several people claimed to have seen him after his death.
The trace of Nicolas Flamel begins here,
close to the belltower of the old
Sanjec de la Buchilee Church, near Chatelet in Paris,
and we're going to follow it.
Did Nicolas Flamel find a way of turning lead into gold?
Did he really discover the secret of eternal life?
To unravel truth from falsehood,
we must first look at the established facts,
to trace the path of his life,
to bring him back from the mists of time.
(pensive stringed music)
Nicolas Flamel is at the heart
of one of Paris's major legends.
He was born between 1330 and 1340, a troubled time,
with strange beliefs on the difference between good and evil
and of age-old secrets;
one of these was alchemy
and its extremely mysterious processes.
By following several steps, it said that man
could turn lead and other base metals into silver or gold.
(man speaking in foreign language)
There are certain number of expressions
in alchemy which are more or less synonymous,
even though they haven't been clarified.
For example, magnum opus, or great work.
This designates the process that would result
in the production of the Philosopher's Stone.
The Philosopher's Stone is, in principle,
the substance that turns metals into gold.
The alchemist sought to discover the basis
on which metals rested, what their structure was,
how they could be reduced to their rawest material.
Because if you could do that, you could recompose them
in order to produce the structure of gold.
So it did mean that they needed
to have a deep knowledge of metallurgy.
Probably the most fascinating thing was the idea
that an alchemist could use his artistry to match,
if not outdo nature.
(pensive mysterious piano music)
Did Nicolas Flamel succeed in outdoing nature?
What do we actually know about the real-life Flamel?
He left us a few clues;
they're in the museums and libraries of Paris.
Our investigation requires us
to retrace the different stages of his life.
With Flamel, we step into Medieval Paris,
a Paris troubled by various epidemics,
such as Bubonic Plague, wars of religion, and revolts.
A noisy, stinking Paris
desperately trying to solve its unhealthiness.
A Paris driven by its growing trade.
Like in the central district of the capital,
with its huge market, Les Halles,
and the vast Holy Innocents' Cemetery.
So it was close to the Place Joachim du Bellay,
once the site of the cemetery,
that Nicolas Flamel began his career.
He started out as a scribe,
doing accounts and performing inventories for tradesmen,
writing up guardianship papers for minors,
death certificates, wills,
documents for inheritances and donations,
and even, perhaps, dictations of love letters.
In 1360 Flamel moved close
to the Sanjec de la Buchilee Church.
All that remains of the church today
is the flamboyant gothic belltower,
which was added later, in the early 16th Century.
Flamel's business was undoubtedly thriving.
His shop was in the city center,
close to the old Chatelet Fort,
where army and police officers
had many acts that needed copying.
The printing press was yet to be invented,
and monasteries and convents were unable to meet the demand
for books, and so scribes made a very decent living.
At the time, Paris was growing fast.
The merchants and craftsmen who moved in
no longer worked exclusively for the nobility or prelates.
As independent workers, they acquired a new status:
that of buergers of Paris.
The royal court, which previously moved from place to place,
settled in Paris, and drew in nobles.
Paris became a modern capital
with a huge administrative setup,
including the Court of Audit for finances;
the parliament building, with its law courts;
the Chatelet, which remained police headquarters;
and, close by, buergers and their families
lived on newly-developed land around the Hotel de Ville,
the Ile de la Cite, the Louvre, and the Chatelet District.
Business was flourishing for Flamel,
who was a member of the corporations of booksellers,
of parchmenters, of illuminators,
of authors, and of bookbinders.
He bought a house on the corner of the Rue de se Crevan
and the Rue de Marivou, which, in the 19th Century
was renamed the Rue Nicola Flamel.
La Fleur de Lys was the sign Flamel chose
to hang above his street door.
In 1370 he married Dane Perenelle.
She was 20 years his senior and twice widowed,
but she had inherited well from her first two husbands,
and was believed to possess quite a fortune.
They wouldn't have any children,
and in 1372 they made themselves mutually sole inheritors,
excluding Perenelle's sister
and their family from their will.
It was then that Flamel's life suddenly changed.
Here's the legend.
Nicolas Flamel had a dream in which an angel told him
he would make a fortune from a manuscript.
A short time after, a stranger entered his shop,
and presented him with the Book of Abraham the Jew,
which contained the secret of turning metals
into silver or gold.
For years, Flamel was unable to decipher the text,
to reveal its secrets.
Around 1378, he went on a pilgrimage
to Santiago de Compostela, a common practice at the time,
and returned two and a half years later.
On his travels, he met a wise old converted Jew,
who gave him the key to deciphering the manuscript.
On April the 25th, 1382,
Flamel and Perenelle turned half a pound of lead into gold.
Flamel had managed to decipher
the book of Abraham the Jew and of alchemy.
And Flamel's sudden wealth seemed to everyone
to have come just like magic.
In 1382 Flamel made donations
to the nine guilds he was a member of,
and then to 14 churches and hospitals.
In 1397, Dane Perenelle died.
Flamel won the lawsuit filed by his wife's family,
and continued donating money to works of charity.
In 1402 he paid for the reconstruction
of the doorway of the church Sanjion Vieve au la Cite.
In 1407 he erected a tomb for Dane Perenelle
in the Holy Innocents' Cemetery,
on which he had engraved an epitaph in verse.
And he paid for a new arcade for the Charnel House
on the Rue Sandiney.
All of this was very expensive.
Nobody knew where the money came from.
But Flamel carried on.
He built houses, providing free accommodation to the poor,
like in 1407, at 51 Rue de Montmorency.
At this address, these days, is a restaurant.
This house, one of the oldest in Paris,
is known worldwide as the home of Nicolas Flamel.
But Flamel never actually lived here.
On the face of the house is an inscription,
indicating that it was built
to take in needy farm laborers coming to Paris.
Flamel is also attributed with founding
and investing other such hostels and assets.
(dreamy mysterious stringed music)
Flamel continued investing until his death in 1418.
His tombstone is kept in Paris, at the Musee de Cluny,
the National Museum of the Middle Ages.
It attracts tourists from across the globe,
and has become an object of fascination.
(speaking in foreign language)
The so-called tombstone of Nicolas Flamel
is both a very ordinary and exceptional object.
The tombstone is just a rectangle
of quite modest dimensions.
In the upper section, in the center,
is the figure of Christ giving His blessing
and holding a celestial globe.
He's surrounded by two figures of saints,
most likely those to whom Nicolas Flamel
was especially devoted: Saint Peter and Saint Paul.
In the lower part, Nicolas Flamel himself
is represented in the form of his cadaver.
It's very realistic; there's no enhancement.
He isn't magnified, at all, merely depicted as a corpse.
There's a short phrase accompanying this depiction:
"From the earth I came; to the earth I return."
This seems to me to be one of the essential points
of the plaque, which testifies
to all of Nicolas Flamel's interest in this philosophy.
We know that the plaque was fitted
beneath a statue of the Virgin Mary
in the choir of the Church of San Jacque de la Buchree.
The church was demolished in 1797,
and his tombstone is the only object from inside it
in the museum's possession.
Legend has it that it was found in a green-grocer's shop.
He had been using it to chop up spinach.
In any case, that's how the legend goes.
(somber piano music)
The legend of Nicolas Flamel
grew even more in amplitude after he had died.
As crazy as it seems, a number of people claim
to have seen him many years after his death.
If he really had managed to turn lead into gold,
why couldn't he have drunk the elixir of immortality?
Rumors about the subject soon began to circulate.
His coffin was opened, and found empty,
or inside there was just a piece of wood.
His wife, Perenelle, hadn't died, either.
She had gone secretly to live in Switzerland,
where Flamel joined her a few months
after his official death.
The legend of his immortality spread around the world,
and has continued down the ages.
In the early 17th Century a stranger presented himself
to Louie the XIII and Cardinal Richelieu.
He swore he had met Flamel, and learned his secret.
He claimed to possess both the Book of Abraham the Jew
and some alchemical powder.
In 1712, Paul Lucas, Louie XIV's antiques dealer
told of how, while traveling in Turkey,
a dervish had confirmed that he had met Flamel
in the Indies, three years earlier.
He was spotted in the French embassy in Turkey in 1747,
and in 1754.
He was seen with Dane Perenelle
at the Versailles Opera in 1761,
more than 350 years after his death.
This first urban myth was fired by more rumors,
pure fabrications, and hearsay.
"I know a man who met a man who told him
"he knew someone who had seen Flamel."
People searched for him in places
he was thought to have frequented.
Generations of alchemists returned
to look in his house for centuries.
In May, 1818, leaflets left on tables in Parisian cafes
and taverns announced the return of Nicolas Flamel.
He would be giving classes in alchemy
at number 22 Rue de Clery.
The list of those who had spotted him was endless.
But another episode tied in
with the search for Flamel and his secrets,
perhaps the most astonishing and disturbing of all.
(somber piano music)
This lead takes us from Paris, across France,
to a place where the mystery of Nicolas Flamel
intertwines with another,
that of the treasure of Rennes-le-Chateau.
In the late 19th Century,
the opera singer Emma Calve was an international star.
She was interested in the occult,
and in 1894, purchased the Chateau de Cabrierre in Artois,
an old province in southwestern France.
It was believed that in this strange castle,
a mecca of the occult and the esoteric in the region,
Flamel's copy of the Book of Abraham was hidden.
Still today, nobody has any idea
of how the manuscript could've ended up there.
At the same time,
in Rennes-le-Chateau in the old department,
a priest, Father Berenger Sauniere,
suddenly became the owner of a vast fortune,
the origin of which nobody knew,
and began lavish restoration work on his church.
(somber piano music)
Rumors spread that the priest was Emma Calve's lover,
that he was in possession of the Book of Abraham the Jew,
and therefore the secret of Nicolas Flamel.
This was surely what was behind his sudden wealth.
During World War II, in their quest
for the Philosopher's Stone and the Holy Grail,
even the Nazis visited Rennes-le-Chateau
to look for the key to the mystery.
The reality is that Father Sauniere
had never met Emma Calve.
What's more, she died in poverty,
and had never had access to the sellers of Cabrielle.
(somber classical music)
Also, Father Sauniere never discovered
the Book of Abraham the Jew, thought to have belonged
to Flamel, containing the secrets of alchemy.
But it was one more episode to feed
the mysterious legend of Nicolas Flamel.
So what about Nicolas Flamel?
Was he truly an alchemist?
(mysterious choral music)
(man speaking in foreign language)
The most famous alchemist in the world,
poor old Nicolas Flamel, never performed alchemy.
But at some point during that time,
somebody made up an entire story,
and it was this story called
"Book of the Hieroglyphical Figures of Nicolas Flamel"
which gave rise to the legend that we all know today.
Another decisive step in the success
of the Flamel-the-alchemist myth
was when people began interpreting the figures
he had painted on one of the arches
of the Holy Innocents' Cemetery.
Because that was one of the practices
of the pious benefactors of the day: to build arcades,
and decorate them in the way
they believed was the most appropriate.
We have solved the first mystery.
Nicolas Flamel was not proficient in alchemy,
and had never even dabbled in it.
All of these writings are untrue.
They helped to build a legend
around a simple beurger of Paris.
But what about his overnight fortune?
(somber piano music)
The reality is much more prosaic.
Flamel was a very successful scribe and manuscript seller,
and his marriage brought him more money.
Dane Perenelle was very wealthy
after inheriting from her first two husbands,
and she left everything to Flamel.
And regarding his real-estate investments,
these were not as costly as many have suggested.
Likewise, the donations he made were small amounts,
but he made them pretty much everywhere,
which gave the impression of him as extremely rich.
The drawn-out lawsuit he fought
to prevent his wife's family from claiming the inheritance,
a trial which was still spoken about 50 years
after his death, along with the long form of his will,
both contributed to people's belief
that this man was filthy rich, when, in fact,
he was just a well-off beurger.
It was also said that Flamel got his hands
on the wealth of certain Jews chased out of Paris
by King Charles VI, but this part of the legend
appeared much later, in the early 17th Century.
Here, too, everything was invented, amplified, and deformed.
(mysterious piano music)
In the late Middle Ages, mysteries were very popular.
It was fun to believe that a pious beurger may have been
taken over by dark forces and the world of alchemy.
Today, the true history of Nicolas Flamel
is muddled with his legend.
Alas, nobody ever has turned lead into gold.
And some people are still searching
for the secret of immortality.
But Paris has other mysteries.
The clues and keys to these enigmas are to be found
in old books lost in the capital's libraries,
in the city's streets, or beneath its buildings,
by the light of a candle or in the dead of night,
by crosschecking documents, archives, and records.
Paris has not yet revealed all of its secrets.
(mysterious haunting music)