Jean Markale (May 23, 1928 in
Paris
Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), ma ...
– November 23, 2008) was the pen name of Jean Bertrand, a
French writer, poet, radio show host, lecturer and high school
French teacher who lived in
Brittany
Brittany (; french: link=no, Bretagne ; br, Breizh, or ; Gallo: ''Bertaèyn'' ) is a peninsula, historical country and cultural area in the west of modern France, covering the western part of what was known as Armorica during the period ...
. As a former specialist in Celtic studies at the Sorbonne, he researched pre-Christian and medieval culture and spirituality. He published numerous books about Celtic civilization, particularly the place of women in Celtic culture, and
Arthurian
King Arthur ( cy, Brenin Arthur, kw, Arthur Gernow, br, Roue Arzhur) is a legendary king of Britain, and a central figure in the medieval literary tradition known as the Matter of Britain.
In the earliest traditions, Arthur appears as a ...
literature.
Works
His many works deal with subjects as varied as summations of various myths, their relationships with subjects like the
Templars
, colors = White mantle with a red cross
, colors_label = Attire
, march =
, mascot = Two knights riding a single horse
, equipment ...
, the
Cathar
Catharism (; from the grc, καθαροί, katharoi, "the pure ones") was a Christian dualist or Gnostic movement between the 12th and 14th centuries which thrived in Southern Europe, particularly in northern Italy and southern France. Follo ...
s and the
Rennes le Château mystery,
Atlantis
Atlantis ( grc, Ἀτλαντὶς νῆσος, , island of Atlas) is a fictional island mentioned in an allegory on the hubris of nations in Plato's works '' Timaeus'' and '' Critias'', wherein it represents the antagonist naval power that b ...
, the
megalith
A megalith is a large stone that has been used to construct a prehistoric structure or monument, either alone or together with other stones. There are over 35,000 in Europe alone, located widely from Sweden to the Mediterranean sea.
The ...
building civilisations, Druidism and the biography of
Saint Columba
Columba or Colmcille; gd, Calum Cille; gv, Colum Keeilley; non, Kolban or at least partly reinterpreted as (7 December 521 – 9 June 597 AD) was an Irish abbot and missionary evangelist credited with spreading Christianity in what is tod ...
.
*''The Celts: Uncovering the Mythic and Historic Origins of Western Culture'' ()
*''Montségur and the Mystery of the Cathars'' ()
*''Women of the Celts'' (1972)
*''The Druids: Celtic Priests of Nature'' ()
*''Cathedral of the Black Madonna: The Druids and the Mysteries of Chartres''
*''King of the Celts: Arthurian Legends and Celtic Tradition''
*''Merlin: Priest of Nature''
*''The Epics of Celtic Ireland: Ancient Tales of Mystery and Magic''
*''The Great Goddess: Reverence Of The Divine Feminine From The Paleolithic To The Present''
*''The Church of Mary Magdalene: The Sacred Feminine and the Treasure of Rennes-le-Chateau''
Controversy
While Markale presents himself as widely read on the subjects about which he writes, the value of his work is controversial. His 'creative' use of scholarship and his tendency to make great leaps in reasoning cause scholars following more normative and conservative methods to balk and his interest in subjects that his critics consider questionable, including various branches of the
occult, have gained him at least as many detractors as admirers. Another source of controversy is his use of
Carl Jung
Carl Gustav Jung ( ; ; 26 July 1875 – 6 June 1961) was a Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst who founded analytical psychology. Jung's work has been influential in the fields of psychiatry, anthropology, archaeology, literature, phi ...
's concept of "
collective unconscious" as an explanatory device, since the vast majority of psychologists outside Jungian depth psychology do not accept the concept.
His already weakened reputation was further tarnished in 1989, when he became involved in a
plagiarism case after he published under his own name a serious and well-documented guide to the oddities and antiquities of
Brittany
Brittany (; french: link=no, Bretagne ; br, Breizh, or ; Gallo: ''Bertaèyn'' ) is a peninsula, historical country and cultural area in the west of modern France, covering the western part of what was known as Armorica during the period ...
, the text of which had already been published, twenty years before by a different writer, through the very same publisher.
The Breton scholar
Christian-Joseph Guyonvarc'h dismissed Markale as follows; "Mr Jean Bertrand, a.k.a. Jean Markale, styles himself as a professor of classical literature. He never says where he teaches; but
..he cannot properly accentuate
Greek
Greek may refer to:
Greece
Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe:
*Greeks, an ethnic group.
*Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family.
**Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...
, knows nothing of
Latin
Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...
..he doesn't know how many cases there are in
Irish
Irish may refer to:
Common meanings
* Someone or something of, from, or related to:
** Ireland, an island situated off the north-western coast of continental Europe
***Éire, Irish language name for the isle
** Northern Ireland, a constituent unit ...
declension (sometimes he says two, at other times three)
..Jean Markale very complacently quotes his own works in his later publications and, every time an Irish text is mentioned, he refers the reader to his 'Celtic Epics' as though that book included actual translations or constituted the most basic and essential reference on the matter. All this is, at best, a joke."
However, for others, his loose scholarly presentation is balanced by "the insightful points Markale does make about various texts, clever interpretations of certain scenes and thought-provoking parallels to other traditions".
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Markale, Jean
1928 births
2008 deaths
Writers from Paris
French folklorists
French occultists
20th-century French writers
Writers from Brittany
Breton nationalists
Arthurian legend
20th-century occultists
French male writers
20th-century French historians
Winners of the Prix Broquette-Gonin (literature)