Chris Goes to Rennes-le-Chateau

Resting right in the heart of the Languedoc is the mysterious church at Rennes-le-Chateau. The areas has become a local tourist attraction because of the strange, cryptic nature of the church, and conspiracy theorists from all over the world make pilgrimages to the site just to see if they can get some answers to the strange riddle that has been left there. I'll give a few sentences about it, but there are dozens of books written on the subject, I really suggest that you read one of them if you are interested. Or alternately, there is a very comprehensive web site run by the people there.

Basically, the story goes like this: In 1885 a parish priest (Abbe) named Berenger Sauniere came to the church at Rennes-le-Chateau. At the time it was not in good shape. Over the next decade or so the priest lived a quiet life and used donations to fix up the church. He also spent a lot of time learning codes, corresponding with some very important people, and searching the woods. After a while people started to notice that the Abbe Sauniere was making a lot of very expensive modifications to the church, very expensive modifications. People asked where he got his money from, but he would never tell. They also noticed that some of the things he chose to put in the church were rather odd choices for church.

In 1891, he admitted that he had found a rolled up parchment with something written in code on it inside of a wooden bannister he was replacing. He never said what was on the parchment, but that was about the time money started flowing like water around the church.

There are a lot of theories as to where the Abbe Sauniere was getting his money from. I'll list them here, but I make no claim to their veracity, I just present what I've read elsewhere:

Visigoth Treasure The City of Rennes-le-Chateau was what was left of a big city called Rhedae which was once the size of Carcassonne and was a major Visigoth city. The Visigoths supposedly had control of a large part of Solomon's Treasure from Jerusalem.
Dagobert's Treasure Dagobert was a French king in the Merovingan dynasty. He fought a lot of wars in the area and had a lot of loot to stash. The Abbe may have found it.
Knights Templar Treasure A lot of rich people who went on pilgrimages to Jerusalem in the middle ages hid parts of their treasure in various spots along the way, to be guarded by the Knights Templar. A lot of times, people didn't make it back home from their pilgrimage. It is possible that The Abbe found a cache of Templar gold.
The Cathar Treasure The Cathars ruled this region for a long time, and it is not unreasonable that they would've amassed a fair bit of gold. There is a rumor that when Montsegur fell, the Cathars were able to sneak their treasure out and hide it somewhere. Rennes-le-Chateau is close by and almost as defendable at Montsegur. Remember, the Cathars were supposed to be in possession of the Holy Grail.
Holy Blood In the book, "Holy Blood, Holy Grail", the authors make the claim that Jesus did not die on the cross and actually escaped to southern France where he settled down and married Mary Magdalen. The authors claim that the kids from this union went on to become the Merovingian kings in France. Obviously a lot of people would pay a lot of money to keep this secret, maybe the Abbe was bought off by someone.

And there are dozens of other theories, some nonsensical and some pretty well thought out. The important thing is that there is no way that the Abbe could've paid for all the renovations he made, so there was something going on. It is said that he hid clues to where the treasure is buried in the design of the church, and now lots of people come every day to see if they can decode the mystery.

I wasn't particularly interested in decoding any mysteries, but since I am a fan of conspiracies and such, I felt that I should go and take a look around. There are other web sites you can go to to get much better pictures than the ones I have here.

The first thing that surprised me about the church was that it was so high up. The town of Rennes-le-Chateau is really on the top of a mountain. Here is the view from the graveyard outside the church.

Here is the gate to the graveyard. Skulls and Crossbones are not a typical decoration for a church huh? (Note: The Skull and Crossbones symbol was a symbol of the Knights Templar centuries before it became known as a pirate symbol).

The church is dedicated to Mary Magdalen (another odd choice for a church). This statue of her stands outside the main entrance. The white pillar she is standing on is actually an ancient Visigoth pillar that the Abbe found lying in the forest. (Actually it's just a replica, the real pillar is in the museum inside).

This is the font near inside the church. It has four angels standing on top and the devil holding up the basin of holy water. The Abbe said that it was because the angels were forcing the devil to do their bidding and carry the holy water, which I suppose makes sense, but it is still an odd choice to have a devil in your church (forgive the blurryness of these photos, I didn't want to use a flash in the church).

Here's another blurry picture from the museum. It shows what life was like for the Abbe and his personal servant Marie Denarnaud. There were rumors that the two were lovers.

This is a tombstone from the 1790s that supposedly hold some sort of cryptic key that can unlock some secret knowledge. Some of the words on it are wrong or don't make sense. Perhaps it was carved by an idiot. Perhaps it is a secret code. It may have been used by the Abbe to find the secret treasure. I don't have any more details than that.

View of the countryside from inside the Magdalena Tower. The Abbe built two big towers and a large wall that encircled a park. The other tower is called the Glass Tower.

The Magdalena Tower. It was used as a library and it is filled with books.

The Glass Tower. It was used as a greenhouse or an aviary or something like that.

View from the Tower Magdalena.

This is the entryway to the church. The writing above the doorway translates to, "This is a Terrible Place", but maybe the Abbe meant 'terrible' as in 'strong', not 'bad'.

Here I am standing in front of the main entrance to the church, holding the conspiracy novel I wrote, City of Pillars. It has nothing to do with Rennes-le-Chateau, but I thought that it would give me a bit of credibility in the conspiracy community to have gone there. Unfortunately, Dave didn't step back far enough to capture any details about the church, so as far as you can tell from the picture, I could be standing anywhere!

Go back to Chris Goes to the Languedoc

Visigoth Treasure	The City of Rennes-le-Chateau was what was left of a big city called Rhedae which was once the size of Carcassonne and was a major Visigoth city. The Visigoths supposedly had control of a large part of Solomon's Treasure from Jerusalem.
Dagobert's Treasure	Dagobert was a French king in the Merovingan dynasty. He fought a lot of wars in the area and had a lot of loot to stash. The Abbe may have found it.
Knights Templar Treasure	A lot of rich people who went on pilgrimages to Jerusalem in the middle ages hid parts of their treasure in various spots along the way, to be guarded by the Knights Templar. A lot of times, people didn't make it back home from their pilgrimage. It is possible that The Abbe found a cache of Templar gold.
The Cathar Treasure	The Cathars ruled this region for a long time, and it is not unreasonable that they would've amassed a fair bit of gold. There is a rumor that when Montsegur fell, the Cathars were able to sneak their treasure out and hide it somewhere. Rennes-le-Chateau is close by and almost as defendable at Montsegur. Remember, the Cathars were supposed to be in possession of the Holy Grail.
Holy Blood	In the book, "Holy Blood, Holy Grail", the authors make the claim that Jesus did not die on the cross and actually escaped to southern France where he settled down and married Mary Magdalen. The authors claim that the kids from this union went on to become the Merovingian kings in France. Obviously a lot of people would pay a lot of money to keep this secret, maybe the Abbe was bought off by someone.