Rennes le Chateau

By TempleofMysteries.com

It is the hiding place of the Holy Grail, or a great secret that will rock the Church. It is a place of hidden treasure and dark knowledge. It is the place where Jesus is buried... These are just some of the many theories now current about the village where a Victorian priest became strangely - and massively - rich, and where he left clues to a great mystery in the very fabric of his church. What is the truth about Father Sauniere and the now-famous village of Rennes-le-Château?

This eBook is the complete and ad-free written work on Rennes le Château from TempleofMysteries.com

• Language: English
• Publisher: TempleofMysteries.com
• Release date: Jan 25, 2012
• ISBN: 9781465807335

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Rennes le Château

by

TempleofMysteries.com

Copyright 2012 TempleofMysteries.com

Smashwords Edition

The Mystery

The Setting

Saunière's Find

Inside Saunière's Church

Saunière's Story

The Parchments

The Stones

History of a Mystery

The Dossiers Secrets

The Powers That Be

The Kaleidoscope Quest

The Locality

A Secret Brotherhood

The Dark Web

The Solution?

The London Connection

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The Mystery

THE PRIEST, THE DEMON AND A MOST CURIOUS FRENCH VILLAGE

It is the hiding place of the Holy Grail, or a great secret that will rock the Church. It is a place of hidden treasure and dark knowledge. It is the place where Jesus is buried... These are just some of the many theories now current about the village where a Victorian priest became strangely - and massively - rich, and where he left clues to a great mystery in the very fabric of his church. What is the truth about Father Sauniere and the now-famous village of Rennes-le-Château?

THE SAUNIERE STORY

François Bérenger Saunière - he preferred to use his middle name - was born in 1852 in the village of Montazels, just 3 miles (5km) as the crow flies from the place with which the priest is now synonymous: the remote hilltop village of Rennes-le-Château, in the Languedoc area of south-west France.

Sauniere was the eldest of seven children - one of his brothers, Alfred, also became a priest. His father was the estate manager for the Marquis de Cazemajou, who was related to the former lords of Rennes-le-Château, the Hautpoul family.

In that impoverished region of France, there were only two ways for a young man of intelligence to make a living - clerical work, such as becoming a notary or an official in the local prefecture, or the priesthood. As Saunière preferred the outdoor life - walking, hunting and fishing - becoming a priest offered more opportunity than office work.

Although strong and very physical, he was also intelligent and well-read. In addition to the Latin that all priests learn, he also knew ancient Greek and, since he later subscribed to a German newspaper, presumably he spoke that language too. Later he assembled an eclectic collection of books that he housed in his curious custom-built library, the Tour Magdala (Magdala Tower).

Saunière was ordained a Catholic priest in 1879 and then was for three years parish priest of the small mountain village of Le Clat. (Perhaps significantly, his predecessor as priest of Rennes-le-Château a hundred years earlier, Abbé Antoine Bigou - who appears to have played his own part in this drama - was also its priest.) But on 1 June 1885 Saunière took up his new post in the parish of Rennes-le-Château, by his day only a small and insignificant village, although one with a long and chequered history. In the foothills of the Pyrennees, Rennes-le-Château is in the Languedoc, a region with a colourful and turbulent past, many chapters of which may have a bearing on the discoveries that changed Saunière's life.

A TROUBLED START

Home to a mere 300 villagers - now just 100 - Saunière found himself master of the ancient and run-down church of St Mary Magdalene and a presbytery so derelict as to be virtually uninhabitable. He took up lodgings instead with the Dénarnaud family. Their young daughter, 18-year-old Marie, was to give up her job in a nearby hatmakers to become his housekeeper - and perhaps the sole confidante of his secret.

St Mary Magdalene's church was originally the private chapel of the lords of Rennes-le-Château, whose castle, which gives the village its name, stands nearby. The last noble family to inhabit it were the Hautpouls, the last of whom, Marie de Nègre d'Ables, Dame d'Hautpoul-Blanchefort, died on 17 January 1781, a few years before the French Revolution, and during the tenure of Abbé Bigou.

Within a few months of arriving in Rennes-le-Château, Saunière was in trouble.

The burning political issue in France at that time was whether it should continue as a republic or return to a monarchy. The monarchists were pro-Catholic and supported the Church, whereas the Republicans wanted the separation of Church and state - in which they were successful in 1905.

The elections of October 1885 saw this inflame the public as the major issue. In one of his sermons, Saunière delivered a stridently anti-Republican speech, urging his flock to vote against it, declaring 'all our forces must be employed against our adversaries.' For this, the local authorities wanted him dismissed, but the Bishop of Carcassone compromised by sending him to a seminary at Narbonne for some months.

Back in his parish, Saunière received a gift of 3000 francs from Marie-Thérèse, the Countess of Chambord, the widow of the main claimant to the French throne, presumably for supporting her husband's cause. He used this to undertake some renovations in his old and decrepit church, installing a new altar and replacing some of the stained glass windows.

What exactly happened next has been the subject of debate ever since. What is clear is that, at some point in the following years, something happened that made him an immensely wealthy man. It is generally assumed that he found something, either a horde of treasure or a secret of great value. But exactly what he found - and when - is the core of the mystery.

DEEPER INTO DARKNESS

Whatever Saunière found or discovered, it changed his life and created a mystery that has become one of the most famous in the world. Over the years many claims - some based on fact, others on rumour and sometimes blatant fabrication - have been made about the subsequent events of Saunière's life.

According to the most widely-known version of the Saunière story - thanks mainly to the success of the 1982 bestseller The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail by Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh and Henry Lincoln - what he actually found was not gold or jewels, but parchments containing coded messages.

According to this version, he took the documents to show to his bishop, Félix-Arsène Billard, at Carcassone, only to be despatched to Paris to consult an expert in codes, Émile Hoffet. This is where the story begins to take on a dark and even occult character.

It is said that while in Paris Saunière made contacts in the burgeoning occult scene, particularly with the world-renowned opera singer Emma Calvé, who was also deeply interested in the occult. They are even supposed to have become lovers. The whole Paris episode is, however, very controversial. If it happened at all, it is uncertain when - although 1891 is the date most researchers favour.

It was in that year that Saunière's inexplicable expenditure started. Although his salary was just 900 francs a year, his accounts show that in some months he spent as much as 160,000 francs - a huge sum. The work he undertook in the church, and the building of his lavish domaine cost in the region of 200,000 francs. His surviving - but incomplete - papers and accounts record expenses of around 660,000 francs. Between 1897 and 1899, his monthly outgoings averaged almost 47,000 francs.

Although changes in and revaluation of the French currency, as well as inflation, make it difficult to give an exact modern equivalent, his total known expenditure equates, conservatively, to around 25 million francs, or about £2.5 million.

Saunière was not afraid of splashing money around: his housekeeper Marie Dénarnaud dressed in the latest Paris fashions - for which the villagers nicknamed her 'the Madonna' - while they also spent immense sums on entertaining, eating the best and quaffing large amounts of the finest wines.

He and Marie got up to some very strange activities in the village. In 1895, the villagers complained to the prefecture about their nocturnal activities in the graveyard, saying that they were digging and disturbing the graves - but why, no one knew. Saunière seems to have shown a particular interest in the grave of the Dame d'Hautpoul-Blanchefort, Marie de Nègre d'Ables. Her gravestone, which bore a curious inscription, is one of many enigmatic monuments and stones that are connected with the mystery.

INSIDE SAUNIÈRE'S DOMAIN

The legacy left by Saunière - which fuels a tourist attraction that brings some 25,000 visitors a year and from which has risen a veritable publishing industry in France - are the strange statues and images with which he decorated his church. Superficially the decor may seem like that of any Catholic church of its time and place, but a closer look reveals strangely disturbing - and perhaps even unChristian - imagery that can unsettle the soul, including a hideous grimacing plaster demon crouched just inside the door, and had the words 'This Is A Terrible Place' inscribed over the porch.

And Saunière's plans did not end there: he had an ambitious vision of how he would transform the village, making it a suitable setting for his increasingly lavish lifestyle as virtually lord of the manor.

Saunière bought up land in the village - although everything was put in Marie Dénarnaud's name - and then, in the early 1900s, built himself an extravagant and ostentatious domaine, the centrepiece of which was a grand house, the Villa Bethania (Bethany Villa). Saunière claimed that this was intended as a home for retired priests, although it was never used for such a purpose. Strangely, he chose not to live in it, preferring instead the run-down presbytery that he shared with Marie, although he did use the Villa for their lavish entertaining. His visitors included local notables and others from further afield, some say as far as Paris.

Saunière also had an ornate garden laid out, and built ramparts along the edge of the village, at one end of which is his most enigmatic creation, the Tour Magdala (Magdala