Rennes-le-Château: Difference between revisions

Rennes-le-Château
Tour Magdala
Coat of arms
Location of Rennes-le-Château
Country	France
Region	Occitania
Department	Aude
Arrondissement	Limoux
Canton	Couiza
Government
• Mayor (2008–2014)	Alexandre Painco
Area 1	14.68 km2 (5.67 sq mi)
Population  (2008)	91
• Density	6.2/km2 (16/sq mi)
Time zone	UTC+01:00 (CET)
• Summer (DST)	UTC+02:00 (CEST)
INSEE/Postal code	11309 /11190
Elevation	272–568 m (892–1,864 ft) (avg. 435 m or 1,427 ft)
1 French Land Register data, which excludes lakes, ponds, glaciers > 1 km2 (0.386 sq mi or 247 acres) and river estuaries.

Rennes-le-Château (Rènnas del Castèl in Occitan) is a commune in the Aude department in Languedoc in southern France.

It is known internationally, and receives tens of thousands of visitors per year, for being at the center of various conspiracy theories.

Starting in the 1950s, a local restaurant owner, claimed that the 19th century priest Bérenger Saunière had discovered the treasure of Blanche of Castile.^[1] The story achieved national fame in France, and was then enhanced and expanded by various hoaxsters, who added that the priest, Father Bérenger Saunière had found proof of a secret society known as the Priory of Sion. The story became the origin for hypotheses in documentaries and bestselling books such as The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail (1982) and the fiction thriller The Da Vinci Code (2003).

Mountains frame both ends of the region — the Cevennes to the northeast and the Pyrenees to the south. The area is known for beautiful scenery, with jagged ridges, deep river canyons and rocky limestone plateaus, with large caves underneath.

Like many European villages, Rennes-le-Château has a complex history. It is the site of a prehistoric encampment, and later a Roman colony (or at least Roman villa or temple, such as is confirmed to have been built at Fa, 5 km (3.1 mi) west of Couiza).

Rennes-le-Château was a Visigoth site during the 6th and 7th centuries, during the trying period when the Visigoths had been defeated by the Frankish King Clovis I and had been reduced to Septimania. It was the center of the county of Razès.

It was the site of a medieval castle around 1002,^[2] though nothing remains above ground of this medieval structure – the present ruin is from the 17th or 18th century.

Several castles situated in the surrounding region in the Languedoc were central to the battle between the Catholic church and the Cathars at the beginning of the 13th century. Other castles guarded the volatile border with Spain. Whole communities were wiped out during the campaigns of the Catholic authorities to rid the area of the Cathar heretics during the Albigensian Crusades and again when Protestants fought for religious freedom against the French monarchy two centuries before the French Revolution.

A church in the town also has an extremely complex history, having been rebuilt several times. The earliest church of which there is any evidence on the site may date to the 8th century. However, this original church was almost certainly in ruins during the 10th or 11th century, when another church was built upon the site - remnants of which can be seen in Romanesque pillared arcades on the north side of the apse. This survived in poor repair until the 19th century,^[3] when it was renovated by the local priest, Bérenger Saunière.

The source of Saunière's funds at the time was controversial (see below) and some of the additions to the church appear unusual to modern eyes. One of the new features was an inscription above the front door, taken from the Common Dedication of a Church,^[4] which in full reads: "This is a place of awe; this is God's house, the gate of heaven, and it shall be called the royal court of God." The first part of the passage is situated in the entrance of the church – the rest of the passage is actually inscribed on the arches over the two doors of the church.

Inside the church, one of the added figures was of a devil holding up the holy water stoup, a rare, though not unheard of addition found in French churches in this particular style. The new figures and statues in the church were not specially made,^[5] but were chosen by Saunière from a catalogue published by Giscard, sculptor and painter in Toulouse who - among other things - offered statues and sculptural features for church refurbishment.^[6][7]

Saunière also funded the construction of another structure dedicated to Mary Magdalene. Named after his church, he built a tower on the side of a nearby mountain which he used as his library. The tower has a promenade linking it to the Villa Bethania, which was not actually used by the priest. He stated during his trial that it was intended for retired priests.^[8]

Following Sauniere's renovations and redecoratations, the church was re-dedicated in 1897 by his bishop, Monsigor Billard.^[9][10]

Despite the village's tiny size, as of 2011, the area receives around 100,000 tourists each year. Much of the modern reputation of Rennes-le-Château rises from rumours dating from the mid-1950s concerning the local 19th-century priest. Father Bérenger Saunière had arrived in the village in 1885, and had acquired and spent large sums of money during his tenure from selling masses and receiving donations. He funded several building projects, including an extensive renovation of the Church of Mary Magdalene (see above).^[11][12][13]

During the 1950s, Noël Corbu, a local man who had opened a restaurant in Saunière's former estate (called L'Hotel de la Tour), began circulating stories that Father Saunière had, in 1891 while dismantling his old Main Altar while renovating his church, discovered "parchments" in a hollow pillar that were connected to the treasure of Queen Blanche of Castile, to attract business.^[14]

Corbu also claimed that Rennes-le-Château was the capital of the Visigoths, but this was another exaggeration: it was Narbonne that held that position. His claim can be traced back to an anonymous document - actually written by Nöel Corbu himself - entitled L'histoire de Rennes-le-Château, which was deposited at the Departmental Archives at Carcassonne on 14 June 1962. His assertion of the Visigothic importance of Rennes-le-Château was drawn from one source: a book by Louis Fédié, entitled Le comté de Razès et le diocèse d'Alet (1880), that contained a chapter on the history of Rennes-le-Château. ^[15] Fédié's assertions concerning the population and importance of Rennes-le-Château have since been contradicted by archaeology and the work of more recent historians.^[16][17]

Corbu's story inspired author Robert Charroux to develop an active interest and in 1958, with his wife Yvette and other members of The Treasure Seekers' Club (that he founded in 1951), scanned the village and its church looking for treasure using a metal detector.^[18]

Because of the claims, primarily by restaurant-owner Noël Corbu, Rennes-le-Château became the centre of conspiracy theories about the source of Saunière's wealth. The story grew in the telling, from the initial claims that perhaps he had discovered the hidden treasure of Blanche of Castile, to speculation that he had discovered secrets about the history of the Church, which could potentially threaten the foundations of Catholicism. The entire area around Rennes-le-Chateau has thus become the focus of increasingly sensational claims involving the Knights Templar, the Priory of Sion, the Rex Deus, the Holy Grail, the treasures of the Temple of Solomon, the Ark of the Covenant, ley lines, sacred geometry alignments, and even Flying saucers.

However, this also attracted a number of persons such as Pierre Plantard. His childhood dream was to play a vital role in the history of France, so he and some friends concocted an elaborate hoax. It involved planting fabricated documents in France's Bibliothèque Nationale, to imply that Plantard was a descendant of the French Merovingian dynasty, which would somehow mean that he was supposed to be declared King of France. The fabricated documents also mention the ancient Priory of Sion, which was supposedly a thousand years old, but was in fact the name of an organisation that Plantard founded himself in 1956 with three of his friends.^[13]

No serious journalists who investigated the story found it plausible enough to write about, so Plantard asked his friend, Gérard de Sède, to write a book to give more credence to the story.^[19] They chose the already rumour-rich area of Rennes-le-Chateau as their setting, and L’Or de Rennes (The Gold of Rennes, later published as Le Trésor Maudit de Rennes-le-Château) was published in 1967 and was an instant success. The book presented Latin documents forged by Plantard's friend Philippe de Chérisey, alleging that these were the actual medieval documents that had been found by Saunière during the 19th century. One of the documents had multiple encrypted references to the Priory of Sion, thereby attempting to prove that the society was older than its actual creation date of 1956.

In 1969, a British actor and science-fiction writer by the name of Henry Lincoln read the book, dug deeper, and wrote his own books on the subject, pointing out his discovery of hidden codes in the parchments. One of the codes involved a series of raised letters in the Latin text, which when read off separately, spelled out in French: À Dagobert II Roi et à Sion est ce trésor et il est lâ mort (translation: This treasure belongs to Dagobert II and to Sion, and it is death). However, the message existed in modern French, not medieval French.

Henry Lincoln created a series of BBC Two Chronicle documentaries about his theories during the 1970s, and then in 1982, co-wrote The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail with Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh. Their book expanded upon the Rennes-le-Château story to further imply that Bérenger Saunière could possibly have discovered the Marriage certificate of Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalene, and that their descendants created the Merovingian Dynasty, as perpetuated through the Priory of Sion. This torch was then picked up and carried further in 2003 in Dan Brown's bestselling novel The Da Vinci Code. Brown's book never specifically mentioned Rennes-le-Château, but some key characters in the book had related names, such as Sauniere, named after the priest, and "Leigh Teabing", whose first name was derived from Richard Leigh, and last name, Teabing, was an anagram of Baigent.

The extraordinary popularity of The Da Vinci Code reignited the interest of tourists, who come to the village to see sites associated with Saunière and Rennes-le-Château. The "Visigothic pillar" where Sauniere was said to have found the documents is on display in the village's Saunière Museum. The pillar was set up by Saunière outside his church in 1891 as part of his shrine to Our Lady of Lourdes, though there is some dispute as to whether the pillar actually originated from Saunière's church.

When investigated more rigorously, the stories of Saunière's activities were based on little more than a minor scandal involving the sale of masses, which eventually led to the disgrace of Bérenger Saunière. Or as Ed Bradley said on a 2006 episode of the American news program 60 Minutes: "The source of the wealth of the priest of Rennes-le-Chateau was not some ancient mysterious treasure, but good old fashioned fraud."^[20]

Saunière's wealth was short-lived, and he died relatively poor. Official records of a trial against Saunière in 1910-1911 showed he claimed that he spent some 193,000 francs on his parish works. Yet, in order to have gained this wealth through the selling of masses, the priest would have had to sell over 20 masses per day for the 25 years prior to the trial, more than he could have performed. Sauniere claimed that he performed masses for which he was paid and that other funds came from local donations.^[21][22][23]

As for the relationship with the fictional Priory of Sion and Plantard's hoax, multiple factors disproved those theories as well. Philippe de Chérisey – who helped Plantard with his fraud – admitted having fabricated the historical documents. Gérard de Sède, another of the conspirators who had written the book Le Trésor Maudit, also wrote a book denouncing the fraud, and this was further confirmed by his son.^[24]

The sudden interest in Saunière's church generated by the stories circulated by Noël Corbu during the 1950s inspired two excavations of the church of St Mary Magdalene. The first was conducted by Dr André Malacan in May 1956, who, after excavating the subsoil of the church at the depth of approxiamtely one metre, discovered some bones that included a skull bearing an incision, but they failed to discover "anything of any interest". ^[25] Dr Malacan died in 1997, and the skull is currently in the possession of his family. Between 1959-1963 Jacques Cholet, an engineer from Paris, also conducted several digs in the church, and also failed to discover anything of interest.^[26]

In more recent times, a much-publicised 2003 excavation of the floor of the Tour Magdala by the Mayor of the village produced a stone, and not any anticipated treasure,^[27] following-up claims made by a Canadian who said he was related to one of the foremen who supervised Saunière's works. Another request, at the same time, was also made to excavate the church, but permission was refused by the "Directions Régionales des Affaires Culturelles" (or DRAC), the archaeological body of France.

Archaeologist Dr Paul Bahn^[28] considered the various allegations surrounding the village of Rennes-le-Château as pure myth "so beloved of occultists and 'aficionados' of the "Unexplained". He ranks the stories among those of the Bermuda Triangle, Atlantis and ancient astronauts as a source of "ill-informed and lunatic books".^[29] Likewise another archaeologist Bill Putnam, co-author with John Edwin Wood of The Treasure of Rennes-le-Château, A Mystery Solved (2003, 2005) has dismissed all of the popular allegations as pseudo-history.

Laura Miller, contributor to the New York Times books section, commented how the village of Rennes-le-Château had become "a town that had become the French equivalent of Roswell or Loch Ness as a result of popular books by Gérard de Sède."^[30]

• Gérard de Sède, Le Trésor maudit de Rennes-le-Château, 1967
• René Descadeillas, Mythologie du Trésor de Rennes: Histoire Veritable de L'Abbé Saunière, Curé de Rennes-Le-Château (Mémoires de la Société des Arts et des Sciences de Carcassonne, Annees 1971-1972, 4me série, Tome VII, 2me partie; 1974). [Reprinted in 1991 by Editions Collot, Carcassonne.]
• Bill Putnam, John Edwin Wood. The Treasure of Rennes-le-Chateau, A Mystery Solved (Sutton Publishing Limited, Gloucestershire GL5 2BU, England, 2003.)
• Jean-Jacques Bedu, Rennes-Le-Château: Autopsie d'un mythe (Ed. Loubatières; 31120 Portet-sur-Garonne; 1990 — recently reprinted in 2003.)
• Abbé Bruno de Monts, Bérenger Sauniére curé à Rennes-le-Château 1885-1909, Editions Belisane (2000; Collection les amis de Bérenger Sauniére)
• Jacques Rivière, Le Fabuleux trésor de Rennes-le-Château, Editions Belisane (1983). Reproduces Saunière's receipts and the Carcassonne Trial correspondence/reports 1910-1911. Not translated into English.
• Christian Doumergue, L'Affaire de Rennes-le-Château, Ed. Arqa, 2006. A lot of a new documents about Saunière's life. And a surprising analysis about the writing of Pierre Plantard. This book is not translated into English.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Rennes-le-Château.

• Village's official website
• Photos of Rennes-Le-Chateau
• The Secret of the Priory of Sion, CBS News '60 Minutes' (CBS Worldwide Inc.), 30 April 2006, presented by CBS correspondent Ed Bradley, produced by Jeanne Langley

• Noel Corbu
• Villa Bethania
• Gabriel Knight 3: Blood of the Sacred, Blood of the Damned, 1999 computer game which takes place in the town.
• Beale ciphers for a somewhat similar lost treasure story in Virginia.