Rennes-le-Château

Coordinates: {{#if:{{{lat_long|}}}|{{{lat_long}}}|02° 15' 48 E, 42° 55' 41" N}}

Rennes-le-Château is a medieval castle village and a commune in the Aude département, in the Languedoc area in southern France, an area known for its towering mountains, deep gorges, forests, caves, wild remote plateaus and access to the Mediterranean. Starting in the 1950s, the area also became famous for local rumours about the existence of a hidden treasure discovered in a church. This story, though since proven false, was enhanced and expanded by various hoaxsters, captured the public imagination, and has grown over the decades to the point where the area is now most famous for being cited in a number of conspiracy theories, including a hoax involving the fraudulent Priory of Sion, which formed the basis for hypotheses in such bestselling books as Holy Blood Holy Grail and The Da Vinci Code.

History of the village

This predominantly rural area has a very rich history, as evidenced by its castles, cathedrals, vineyards and museums. Mountains frame both ends of the region — the Cevennes to the northeast and the Pyrenees to the south. Jagged ridges, deep river canyons and rocky limestone plateaus, with vast caves beneath, make it a highly scenic spot.

Over the centuries religious and political conflicts have caused much havoc in the area. The ruined castles which cling precariously to hilltops played a leading role in the struggles between the Catholic church and the Cathars at the beginning of the 13th century. Others 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 later, when Protestants fought for religious freedom against the French monarchy.

Modern fame

Though initially a tiny unknown village, as of 2006 the area received 100,000 tourists each year. Much of the modern reputation of Rennes-le-Château rises from rumours dating from the mid-1950s concerning a local 19th-century priest Bérenger Saunière, who was alleged to have mysteriously acquired and spent large sums of money. These rumours were given wide local circulation in the 1950s by Noel Corbu, a local man who had opened a restaurant in Saunière's former estate, and hoped to attract business. The rumours moved from local to national importance when they were incorporated by Pierre Plantard into his mythology of the Priory of Sion, which influenced the authors of the popular 1982 book The Holy Blood and The Holy Grail.

From this point on Rennes-le-Château became the centre of conspiracy theories claiming that Saunière uncovered hidden treasure and/or secrets about the history of the Church that threatened the foundations of Catholicism. Since the mid-1950s, the area has 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 others. Elements of these ideas were later incorporated into multiple books and documentaries such as a series of BBC Two documentaries in the 1970s by Henry Lincoln, the bestselling 1982 non-fiction book The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail, and Dan Brown's bestselling 2003 novel The Da Vinci Code. As a result, the tiny village of only a few score residents now attracts tens of thousands of visitors who look for hidden treasures and evidence of conspiracy.

The Saunière story

The fraud began when Noël Corbu wanted to attract visitors to his local hotel in Rennes-le-Château by spreading the story that Saunière became rich when he found a royal treasure inside one of the pillars in his church. In 1956, the first newspapers started printing this fictional story. This ignited a flame: visitors with shovels flooded the town and Corbu got what he wanted. 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 including fabricated documents which were planted in France's Bibliothèque Nationale de Paris, all to imply that Plantard was a descendant of a French royal 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 organization that Plantard founded himself in 1956 with three of his friends.

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 about it. L’Or de Rennes (the Gold of Rennes, later published as Le Trésor Maudit de Rennes-le-Château) came out in 1967 and was an instant success. The book presented (forged) Latin documents by Plantard's group, alleging that these were medieval documents which had been found by Sauniere in 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, an 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 message, which when read off separately, spelled out in French: a dagobert ii roi et a sion est ce tresor et il est la mort. (translation: This treasure belongs to King Dagobert II and to Sion, and he is there dead.). Lincoln created a series of BBC Two documentaries in the 1970s about the subject, and then in 1982, also co-wrote Holy Blood – Holy Grail with Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh, which expanded upon the Rennes-le-Château story to further imply that Plantard was connected not just to royal ancestry, but actually descended from Jesus Christ. This torch was then picked up and expanded in 2003 in Dan Brown's bestselling novel The Da Vinci Code, though Brown's book never mentioned Rennes-le-Château by name.

Skeptical views

Almost all historians reject the conspiracies as nothing more than fantasy. The stories of Saunière's "mysteries" were based on nothing more than a minor scandal involving the sale of masses, which eventually led to the disgrace of both Saunière and his bishop. His 'wealth' was short-lived and he died relatively poor. Published by French Editions Belisane from the early 1980s onwards, the evidence for this ranged from the archives in the possession of Antoine Captier, which includes Saunière's correspondence and notebooks, and the minutes of the ecumenical trial between Saunière and his bishop between 1910–1911 which are located in the Carcassonne Bishopric.

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. Plus the supposed "medieval" documents were shown to have been written in modern French, and all created on two different typewriters. Gérard de Sède, another of the conspirators who had written the book Le Tresor Maudit, also wrote a book denouncing the fraud, and this was further confirmed by his son.

Rennes-le-Château in fiction

• Foucault's Pendulum, 1989

German novels

Die Ketzerin vom Montségur (The Heretic of Montsegur) and Die Erbin des Grals (The Grail's Heiress) by the German author Helene Luise Köppel relate the Rennes-le-Château myth. The first tells the tale of the Cathars and the discovery of the Grail in Rennes-le-Château. The sequel tells the fictional tale of Bérenger Saunière's housekeeper and lover, Marie Dénarnaud, who knows the secret of the treasure he found in Rennes-le-Chateau.

Video game

In 1999, Sierra released the third instalment of the Gabriel Knight series: Gabriel Knight: Blood of the Sacred, Blood of the Damned. Written by Jane Jensen, the game takes place in Rennes-le-Chateau, and is centred around the 'Rennes-le-Chateau mysteries.' [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0138458/

Music

In 2000 King Diamond released a concept album entitled House of God which centred on Rennes le Chateau.

See also

• Beale Ciphers — A similar but older story in the United States, about a series of encrypted documents which appeared in a town in Bedford, Virginia in the 19th Century, and allegedly point out the location of a local hidden treasure

References

• Gerard de Sede, Le Tresor maudit de Rennes-le-Chateau, 1967 (The accursed treasure of the Rennes Castle)
• 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.]
• Jean-Jacques Bedu, Rennes-Le-Château: Autopsie d'un mythe (Ed. Loubatières; 31120 Portet-sur-Garonne; 1990 — recently reprinted in 2003.)
• Henry Lincoln, The Holy Place: Saunière and the Decoding of the Mystery of Rennes-le-Château, 1991
• Henry Lincoln, Key to the Sacred Pattern: The Untold Story of Rennes-le-Château, 2002
• Bill Putnam, John Edwin Wood The Treasure of Rennes-le-Chateau, A Mystery Solved (Sutton Publishing Limited, Gloucestershire GL5 2BU, England, 2003.)
• The life astonishing of Berenger Sauniere abbot of Rennes Le Chateau in the XIX eme century
• Portal of Rennes-le-Chateau Bérenger Sauniere
• Rennes le Château Homepage
• Official Rennes-le-Château website
• Perillos & Rennes-le-Château Homepage
• Paul Smith. Information about Bérenger Saunière and Rennes-le-Château 1885-2003
• Rennes-le-Château: and its connection with Saunière, the Priory of Sion, Troubadours, Cathars, Templars, Holy Grail, the Kabbalah, the da Vinci Code and sacred geometry.
• CSICOP article: "The Secrets of Rennes-le-Château"
• Codex Bezae and the Da Vinci Code Parchment 1 has been copied from Codex Bezae
• Photos of Rennes Le Chateau
• Behind the Da Vinci Code, 2006, History Channel documentary, produced and directed by Ian Bremner — documentary about Lincoln's research and writing
• The Mystery of Rennes-le-Chateau (DVD) New DVD investigating the source of Saunière's wealth, containing interviews with Henry Lincoln.