Ride a White
Swan
The true Celtic presence and the
Cromleck of the Ariège and Rennes
By Eric Michael Tull
The eight special days that makes up the Druidic year
"Before all else, I denounce and contest, that you shall observe no sacrilegious pagan customs. For
no cause or infirmity should you consult magicians, diviners, sorcerers or incantators, or presume
to question them because any man who commits such evil will immediately lose the sacrament of
baptism. Do not observe auguries or violent sneezing or pay attention to any little birds singing
along the road. If you are distracted on the road or at any other work, make the sign of the cross
and say your Sunday prayers with faith and devotion and nothing inimical can hurt you. No
Christian should be concerned about which day he leaves home or which day he returns because
God has made all days. No influence attaches to the first work of the day or the [phase of the]
moon; nothing is ominous or ridiculous about the Calends of January. [Do not] make [figures of?]
vetulas, little deer or iotticos or set tables at night or exchange New Years' gifts or supply
superfluous drinks. No Christian believes impurity or sits in incantation, because the work is
diabolic. No Christian on the feast of Saint John or the solemnity of any other saint performs
solestitia [solstice rites?] or dancing or leaping or diabolical chants. No Christian should presume
to invoke the name of a demon, not Neptune or Orcus or Diana or Minerva or Geniscus or believe
in these inept beings in any way. No one should observe Jove's day in idleness without holy
festivities not in May or any other time, not days of larvae or mice or any day but Sunday. No
Christian should make or render any devotion to the gods of the trivium, where three roads
meet, to the fanes or the rocks, or springs or groves or corners."
The Life of St. Eligius, 588-660
St Eligius, spiritual advisor to the Merovingian kings
La Tour d’Alchemie
The ALCHEMY Tower at the Languedoc village
of Rennes le Chateau.
Part of the Chateau of Marie d’Ables, Countess D’Hautpoul Dame de
Blanchfort.
Complete with its eight wedged openings tapering to a small hole, curved at the
top for making geo-metric star observations.
The Watcher of the Flock
In the 1930s a book was written and in it was described the testimony of the
inhabitants of a French village who spoke of their priest and his treasure.
On September 29th 1891 on the feast of St Michael and All Angels, this village
priest from the Languedoc area of South Western France after a trip to nearby
Carcassonne wrote in his diary;
“Vu Curé de Névian, Chez Géllis, Chez Carrière, Vu Cros et Secret.”
Considering Curé of Névian, saw Géllis; saw Carrière, considering
Cros and SECRET.
The Abbé Géllis from nearby Coustaussa, was later murdered on Halloween, his
killer was never caught.
It is important to note that even today it would be difficult to see all of these
people and places in one day. Eight days earlier he had written that a tomb had
been discovered. From this moment he began spending money as if there was no
limit to his income and this outwardly staunch royalist from this impoverished
parish wrote several letters to the Banque Fritz Dörge in Budapest, the capital of
the, soon to be deposed, Hapsburg Empire and received money and visits from
French royalty.
A
What was this priest’s SECRET?
treasure exists in the foothills of the French Pyrenees; it lies on an
ancient landscape. This treasure lies in the beehive of our intellect for we
beings are perpetual gatherers of knowledge. This treasure is sweetened
by intrigue, fascination and spiritual reverence, honeycombed in
synchronicity and gathered from places oozing with history and prehistory. This gathering place is centred on the flourishing hilltop village of Rennes
Le Chateau, situated some 40km south of the ancient city of Carcassonne in the
Languedoc Region of France overlooking the Haute Vallee d’Aude and situated in
the tragic Cathar country.
My first visit to the village was on a warm spring day, cloudless and still. As I
pulled up into the car park on the western side and alighted from the car I was
immediately enchanted by the spectacular panoramic view and the seemingly
endless sky and the awesome vista of the snow capped mountains of the Pyrennees
in the far distance. Calmness came upon me. Was this due to the aerial display and
the chorus of the birds and insects that flew around me or the subconscious scent
of the spring wild flowers and the spectacular garland gay that adorned the
backdrop of an ancient, almost primeval landscape? Or was this inner peace a
result of some unseen and little understood telluric force known locally as Hautlieu d’energie? This holy place was indeed awesome as one of its former village
priests had described it over the door to his church which he also called “The
Gates of Heaven”
“TERRIBILIS EST LOCUS ESTE” - This place is terrible.
This unique place gave one a feeling, a presence even, of those who had gone
before mapping their mark on the landscape with all the care and design of a
renaissance artist. What tales could the landscape tell? Here was a treasure to
enrich all of the senses. As I gazed west over the escarpment over to my right
erected as precariously close as physically possible to the edge before the ground
dipped away in towards the Aude Valley was a rich man’s folly - the Tour Magdala.
Why was it erected there I thought; the view?
The spectacular view was reason enough to
place it there and this tower and promenade
did formerly have the name Belvedere, but the
tower had apparently once contained the
library of a spectacularly rich man containing
books about history, archaeology and books
with an esoteric theme. There were books on
prophesies and astronomy, including the well
thumbed book by Camille Flammarion shown
left; surely the view would be distraction from
any serious study. Flammarion was a
spiritualist as well as an astronomomer and a
contemporary of Saunière. He was chosen to
speak at the funeral of Allan Kardec, the
founder of Spiritism, on April 2, 1869, when
Flammarion re-affirmed that "spiritism is not a
religion but a science". His spiritualism studies influenced also some of his science
fiction writings. Other than that his writing about other worlds adhered fairly
closely to then current emerging ideas in evolutionary theory and astronomy. The
"Flammarion Woodcut" first appeared in an 1888 Flammarion publication. His
second wife was Gabrielle Renaudot Flammarion, also a noted astronomer. He died
in Juvisy-sur-Orge in 1936, a town on the Paris meridian.
The windows in the library were small with a fireplace indicating that one would
be expected to spend long hours in the cold winter in silent study not peering over
the beautiful river Aude valley that can be sometimes shrouded in mist. I took the
spiral staircase and set foot on the roof of this piece of a rich priest’s seemingly
utter self-indulgence, the moon was in full view rising in the morning early spring
sky. I gazed at the clear cloudless sky and instantly a thought entered my head as
if something had hit me.
If this tower wasn’t an astronomical observatory then it should be I thought.
I would later realise how close to the truth that first instinct was.
From the Tour Magdala – Magdala Tower over to the east and into the heart of the
village was a semi-ruined Chateau that was apparently the former home of a
French noblewoman with a seemingly endless name – Marie de Nègre d'Ables dame
d'Hautpoul Contesse de Blanchefort. In full view was the round tower of La Tour
d’Alchemie (The Alchemy Tower) with its curious wedge-shaped holes rounded at
the top that surely couldn’t be merely windows for the view or indeed slots for
archers or the recesses to hold wooden platforms that I had seen at Carcassonne.
Curiously this prominent noble landlady seemed to have no marked grave except
possibly an unmarked and chiselled stone that earlier TV programmes had shown
placed flat on the ground inside the Ossuary. On this first occasion they were
merely a puzzle, but as I visited this priest’s church I noticed the star littered
dome of the ceiling at the western end and wondered.
Few people visit Rennes-le-Chateau simply for the view, how many more places in
the world are secreted away that hold a similar treasure of nature but do not have
the glint of gold as well to attract the visitors that swarm here. For the attraction
is not the spectacular spring flora of the Languedoc, it’s not even the ancient and
prehistoric rock formations that sometimes trick ones perception into thinking they
are castles or even monsters; it is hint of gold, treasure and the historical and
spiritual, perhaps even political intrigue that fires the imagination of its visitors.
There were legends of underground tunnels, buried treasure and perhaps even the
grave of someone whose identity must remain secret and this identity protected by
a group whose life’s work must be the preservation of that secret.
The unique history of Rennes le Chateau appears to have been known to only
relatively few people around this beautiful wine farming community up until
around 1955 when a local builder called Noel Corbu, an intriguing name which
actually means Christmas Raven in English, decided to record the history of the
village for his visitors to his newly acquired hotel that had been called ‘The Villa
Bethania’ which was named, we are told, after a commanderie of a secret society
called the Prieure de Sion from as far back as 1481. Corbu opened the Villa as a
Hotel on Easter Day 1955 and renamed it Hotel de la Tour and he moved himself
and his family into the presbytery, which was still just as a previous occupier, a
priest, had left it. Subsequently a popular French magazine called La Depeche du
Midi then broke the news to the general French public on January 12 th, 13th & 14th
1956 accompanied with sensational headlines of a priest finding parchments in a
broken altar pillar and known as the Priory documents or Dossier Secrets at the
turn of the twentieth century describing the whereabouts of a treasure. The villa
Bethania had once belonged to this village priest, the Abbé Saunière who had also
made those enigmatic entries into his diary in 1891. The Corbu family had acquired
the building from Saunière’s very close confidant and housemaid Marie Denarnaud
for he had looked after her in her old age in exchange for ownership of this
building. It had been deliberately built in 1905 specifically for the early twentieth
century visitors to this small hilltop village that were clearly expected for some
unexplained reason. Why would they be expected to come to a village with no road
when a good road already existed to the more famous spa waters at Rennes les
Bains and Source de la Madeleine? Noel Corbu was later to die in a road accident.
Corbu had said in his tape recording that this village priest had supposedly found
the treasure of Blanche de Castille or a secret and suddenly began spending money
as if there was no limit to his wealth, living as a sybarite, drinking fine wines. He
had a particular taste for Malmsey wine which he apparently imported into a
region whose whole economy was based on wine making. He dined with influential
guests on exotic food and this priest was alleged to break almost every rule his
office demanded. His parishioners worshipped him and yet at the same time he
was being politically active making sermons against the Republican government.
After Noel Corbu’s story was published in the magazine which enjoyed a large
circulation in France, treasure hunters began to come into the village in the late
1950s and early 1960s but it is clear that the mystery was known to a few long
before Corbu had brought it to the French public’s attention and indeed the church
had been excavated before this in the 1930s.
The priest François Bérenger Saunière was born in the nearby village of Montazels
on the 11th April 1852, apparently at exactly midday. His father had once been the
mayor of Montazels where he had also managed a flourmill and had also been the
steward of the Marquis de Cazemajou’s Castle. One of Saunière’s brothers Alfred
was also to become a priest with a reputation for high living and he too was
eventually to also take a role, albeit minor, in this story.
Reports say that he was not a particularly bright child but did appear to display
extraordinary leadership qualities and could often be seen wandering the plateau
of Rennes le Chateau leading the other children. On the advice of the priest from
nearby Esperaza it was suggested that it would be a good idea for him to enter a
seminary to study for the priesthood. This he did in 1874 and despite financial
problems was ordained as a priest and took his first parish at Alet-les-Bains, just
north of Rennes le Chateau, on 16th July 1879. Alet-les-Bains is a most pretty
village on the river Aude that, it is said, had once been the home of Nostradamus.
On 16th June 1882 he was given the title of curate of the church in the village of
Clat and finally on 1st June 1885 he took office at the church of Sainte MarieMadeleine at Rennes le Chateau, replacing the previous incumbent Antoine Croc
who had only been in the position three years. Saunière’s appointment more or
less coincided with the run up to the French State elections and to the
astonishment of his new parishioners he began campaigning very vigorously against
the Republicans on the side of the Royalists and making sermons against “keen
enemies of Religion and the Fatherland”. Unfortunately for Saunière the
Republicans won the election and the authorities in the region promptly
denounced him and three other priests in the area for inciting public disorder and
trying to influence the electorate. The church authorities ordered that his meagre
salary of 75F per month be withheld and the edict was imposed in December 1885
as punishment. Saunière approached his Bishop Monsignor Billard at Carcasonne
who, seeing his difficulty, gave him 200 Francs and appointed him to the ‘Petit
Seminaire de Narbonne’ where he remained until July 1886 when his suspension
was lifted and he returned to Rennes le Chateau.
Saunière expanded his activities and in May 1890 when he also said mass in
Autugnac Church on Sundays. Eventually and contrary to popular belief although
the authorities had suspended him as a priest he had already resigned as curé on
February 1st 1909 but by 1911 he was officially no longer a priest in the eyes of the
church.
The reason for his suspension was that in 1909 he was accused by his church
masters for trafficking in masses (the saying of masses for money) this had been
bought by the church authorities because his sudden lavish expenditure had drawn
their attention. The Bishop of Carcassonne had tolerated his activities but when he
died the new Bishop had realised that Saunière was up to something and
desperately tried to intimidate him into a confession as from where he was getting
his money. The direct charges of trafficking in masses were dropped against him
after he presented evidence to support his case; however the other charges of
disobedience of the Bishop and failure to keep proper records were upheld and the
latter two of these charges he was undoubtedly guilty. The church gave him some
punishment but as he had already effectively resigned the punishment was
ineffective. We are told that he lived the last
part of his life penniless, selling religious
medals and rosaries to wounded WWI soldiers
who were recovering at the nearby village of
Campagne les Bains. The loss of income due to
the First World War was curtailing his trips
abroad where he seemed to have acquired
much of his wealth, for it seems he had left the
organisation of his affairs to his devoted
housemaid Marie Denarnaud, she apparently
sent out standard letters that Saunière had
written before he had left. He was also accused
at this time of taking in German Spies, no doubt
an attempt to degrade his character in the eyes
of his faithful congregation.
The reports of his personal poverty seem to
have some substance however paradoxically he
is on record that in 1909 he spent over 12000
francs on furniture alone. This is two and half
times the estimate he was given to rebuild the entire church. The story
surrounding his apparent sudden wealth goes that whilst he had been suspended
for his anti-republican activities and shortly after his appointment at Rennes le
Chateau in 1885 he had made the acquaintance of the Countess of Chambord,
widow to the former pretender to the French throne Henry V. In 1887 she gave him
1000 Francs that equated to almost a years salary. This loan was to prove useful
for this indefatigable curé and then at the age of 35 years old he decided that the
church, which had been first consecrated to Saint Mary Magdalene in 1059, had not
been renovated for over century and was badly in need of repair and he had
received an estimate of 2797.97F for these essential repairs. Encouraged by his
friend the Abbé Henry Boudet, curate of the church of Rennes les Bains down in
the River Sals valley, he used this money to make some repairs although the
architect, a man named Cals had given him a quote to build a brand new building
at the cost of 4500F.
The stories later related by Corbu told that during these repairs the altar stone
cracked and the inside was stuffed with dry bracken and there was found three
wooden tubes sealed with wax. Inside these tubes were apparently documents.
Corbu’s story continues that these documents consisted of genealogy of the
bloodline one dated 14th March 1244 and the other from 1200 to 1644 giving six
lines of descent related to the 17th century priest Saint Vincent de Paul and
another was a testament from 1695 invoking five saints that caused Saunière to
erect statues dedicated to them in his church. A later disclosure revealed that
there were other documents that contained some passages from the bible written
in Latin and these carried coded messages. It has been alleged that a previous
Rennes le Chateau priest, Abbé Antoine Bigou, composed these last two coded
passages, in the 1780s. Another suggestion is that they were written by Jean-Paul
de Nègre de Fondargent around 1753. Bigou had been the personal chaplain of the
noble Blanchefort family and the confidant of Marie de Nègre d'Ables dame
d'Hautpoul Countess of Blanchefort. On the death of the noble lady, Bigou
appeared to take an inordinate length of time to compose the gravestone of Marie
de Blanchefort producing at the end of it a headstone full of errors. The words on
this headstone (errors et al) were actually recorded in 1905 during a visit by a
member of the local scientific society. The Blanchefort family, on the eve of the
French Revolution, had been the most prominent local landowners in the area.
Indeed previous members of the Blanchefort family had been associated with some
secret that was apparently too dangerous to even share with siblings. Bertrand de
Blanchefort had been a Knight’s Templar Grand Master and a local mountain that
bears the name Blanchefort can be seen from Rennes le Chateau towards the east.
Bigou had fled to Spain (possibly Girona) during the French
revolution and died there but rumours have it that a priest from
the nearby village of Brenac had fled along with Bigou. Another
curiosity is that Bigou didn’t take the shortest route to Spain
but went via a place very close to Névian, a place mentioned by
Saunière in his enigmatic diary entry.
Whatever the source of his wealth the next thing Saunière
began to spend money as if there was no limit. He built a water
tower to supply the villagers with piped water; he also initiated
the building of a four and a half kilometre road from the nearby
town of Couiza. He built his luxury Villa Bethania; he built his library tower, La
Tour Magdala perhaps echoing the name of the village patron Saint, Mary
Magdalene, but perhaps echoing something that both this tower and Mary
Magdalene had taken both their names. This tower was perched on top of an
esplanade made of fine stone, at the other end was a glasshouse containing exotic
birds and plants. Saunière through the Countess of Chambord was able to draw the
attention of royalty to be interested in Rennes le Chateau and VIP visitors were
clearly expected to walk this esplanade between his library tower and this
glasshouse. These special visitors would be able to admire the view of the Haut
valleé d’Aude to their left as I did and admire the shaded gardens to their right
after enjoying a fine meal in the Villa Bethania, what was so special about this
place that could rank the attention of these people? Though curiously less opulent,
Saunière kept his most enigmatic creations for his church, which he decorated in
the style of the late nineteenth century and where as we shall see he left some
strange icons and puzzles that are largely overlooked by visitors but probably more
significantly it’s what he didn’t put in his church that’s more intriguing.
Shortly after this alleged parchment find related by Corbu some workmen
discovered a large flagstone in front of the altar and a clay pot full of ancient gold
coins, a very fine Visigoth necklace and bracelet and a 13 th Century gold chalice.
This stone, dating from Visigoth or Carolingian times, is known as the ‘Dalle de
Chevalier’ on account of it showing something which some have identified as a
Templar knight (Chevalier) apparently rescuing a child. The stone is much worn
and the details are by no means obvious and open to many interpretations,
however if it is a child then the child could well have a halo, a symbol of holy
status or sainthood. After this find the story continues that Saunière began to dig
further, he dug the Aisle, Nave and the Transept and it is reportedly he even dug
in the graveyard assisted by his housekeeper Marie Denarnaud, at night so as not to
alarm the villagers.
The church is styled in a flamboyant manner and some features are unexpected,
mysterious and even shocking for when you enter the church a statue of the devil
greets you. His body contorted in an awkward crouching position, a look of distress
on his face, he seems to be making some curious gestures with his hands, a circle
with his right hand and unnaturally placing his outspread four fingers of his left
hand on his knee. This figure was Asmodeus, Lord of the Earth and legendary
guardian of Solomon’s Temple. On his shoulders is a water stoop in the shape of a
conch shell, the font above that the initials BS bracketed by two Golden
Salamanders and above them four angels each making the Christian sign of the
cross and the bottom, sitting angel clearly pointing down at Asmodeus with the left
hand and above these four angels, a Celtic cross. In Saunière’s church Asmodeus is
carrying the water on his shoulders and demonologists have associated Asmodeus
with the zodiac sign Aquarius, the water carrier, but only between the dates of
January 30th and February 8th. Intriguingly two bookplates were once placed in the
museum that were purported to be Saunière’s and they feature Asmodeus again
only this time apparently ‘OVERCOME’ (French: Vaincre) and placed in chains by
Archangel Michael – The Angel of the Lord and patron of all mariners.
This ‘devils stoop’ also contains the phrase:
PAR CE SIGNE TU LE VAINCRAS
By this sign you will conquer him
The sign of the cross and the Archangel Michael (or perhaps Raphael) depicted
overcoming the Lord of the Earth here is a massive clue showing two of the
archangels overcoming Asmodeus that makes inroads to this mystery. However the
presence of the devil inside the church is not an uncommon feature in France and
indeed some other examples can be found in Italy.
All around are ‘Stations of the Cross’, statues of Saints and stained glass windows
featuring Jesus and Mary Magdalene and here an inquisitive mind is first aware of
what isn’t there in the church that should be. It is perhaps worth noting that Mary
Magdalene, the saint to whom the church is dedicated, was sainted for her being
the first to discover the risen Christ. This image cannot be found anywhere in this
church and therefore the sole reason for her sainthood is not depicted anywhere, a
very curious omission. However one stained glass window features Mary (of
Bethany) wiping the feet of Jesus with her hair, a story that featured in one of the
parchment texts that is taken from the book of John and by any standard a very
intimate act.
Another painting features a kneeling crying Mary Magdalene her fingers crossed in
an unusual manner, a hand gesture that seems to be a copy of an El Greco painting
of Mary Magdalene in penitence or perhaps crossing her fingers in a manner similar
to the figure to the right of Jesus and leaning away from Jesus in Leonardo Da
Vinci’s Last Supper. In the background there appears just the top of a chateau
appearing over a ridge, moving to the right of this a tower with an esplanade, in
the background an Arch and a blue and white conical hill to the right of this,
although crudely drawn this scene looks familiar. We are told that Saunière did
this particular painting himself apparently assisted by a priest whose name was
later appear in some documents in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris. Another
stained glass window features the raising of Lazarus. Lazarus is said to have been
Mary Magdalene’s brother but perhaps more significantly to our story Lazarus has a
link to another enigmatic church already mentioned at Brenac, some 10km west of
Rennes le Chateau.
At the confessional end of the church Jesus is depicted on a small hillock with
flowers scattered on the hill and the lame and the sick are coming to Jesus.
Flowers are scattered on this hillock and one can call this a flowery landscape or in
French ‘La Terrain Fleury’, is Saunière alluding to a local noble family related
through marriage to Marie de Blanchefort? A sack with gold in it is also depicted,
that so full it is bursting open. Just above this confessional and underneath this
frieze is this pious phrase:
VENEZ A MOI VOUS TOUS QUI SOUFFREZ ET QUI ETES ACCABLES ET JE VOUS
SOULAGERAI
“COME TO ME YOU ALL WHICH SUFFER AND WHICH ARE OVERPOWERED AND I WILL
RELIEVE YOU”
It’s from
"Come unto me all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.
Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me, for I am meek and lowly in heart and
ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light."
(Matthew 11:28-30)
What has been suggested here is that Saunière seems to give a hint that the secret
of his sudden wealth is some kind of treasure. The inclusion of the word ETES
ACCABLES seems to indicate SACC A BLE - bag of Money/Treasure. Is this the bag of
gold at the bottom of the hillock that is being referred to
here perhaps? A bag so full it’s bursting? Always we are
being made to read something into this, would Saunière
make this obvious mistake and not correct it? Perhaps,
because we can gleen a more sinister meaning from this
and other phrases from the bible that have been included
and this will become apparent later.
Also as we shall see later, Pope Pius IX sent this first
sentence from Matthew 11:28-30 to the recently defeated
and imprisoned Confederate President Jefferson Davis along
with a crown of thorns that the Pope had woven with his own hands. The
confederacy was known as the Papal States but many refugees had fled Europe to
the Protestant U.S. Northern States in the mid 19th century and Abraham Lincoln
had supported the liberation of Italy and contributed to the victory with money
and troops, the southern United States received no such help or influx of people. It
was clear that Pope Pius IX was not an admirer of the Union States and had
supported the Confederacy. I should remind readers that Pope Pius IX presided
over the Vatican during the early years of Saunière’s life. Pope Pius IX was
succeeded by Leo XIII in 1878 who became the Catholic Church’s third longest
serving Pope. Leo XIII was the first Pope to come out strongly in favour of the
French Republic which upset many monarchists including Saunière.
One has to take the odd activities of Saunière in this context with the backdrop of
events affecting his own church employer. Pope Leo XIII, who presided over a long
period of Saunière’s life during his priesthood, is somewhat involved in our story. It
was Leo XIII for instance who introduced the prayer of Saint Michael the Archangel
into the Leonine Prayers after a Low Mass. On October 13th 1884 Pope Leo XIII had
just completed Mass in one of the Vatican’s private chapels when his face suddenly
turned ashen and he collapsed to the floor. On his revival he uttered to those
around him “Oh what a horrible picture I was permitted to see!” In this vision he
apparently saw the rise of the power of Satan and it was this that prompted him to
include the Prayer of St Michael in the Leonine Prayers. These prayers were
officially suppressed on the 26th September 1964 by Pope Paul VI. Pope Leo XIII’s
Coat of Arms (shown above left) includes a comet and paradoxically shows the
Fleur de Lys, a symbol of royalty, and decorates the vault of the New Reading
Room of the Vatican Secret Archives. This image of a comet, Lime tree and the
Fleur de Lys is repeated in the central boss in the arch over the door of the church
of Rennes le Chateau. Leo XIII also spoke of the Vatican Observatory in 1891 which
had been started by Gregory XIII who had no doubt used it in order to make
adjustments to the Julien Calendar. Pope Leo XIII had rejuvenated the Gregorian
Observatory with the introduction of a four-inch equatorial telescope, a three-inch
transit instrument, and four pendulum clocks with two chronometers. He also
ordered a thirteen-inch photographic refractor from Gauthier in Paris and placed it
in the western tower. This second tower took over the work of the Gregorian tower
and was officially opened on 26th April 1906. Working on the Gregorian Tower had
been Ignazio Danti Mathematician and cosmographer who died in 1586. Shortly
before his death Sixtus V summoned an aged Ignazio Danti to Rome to assist in the
erection of the Egyptian obelisk in St Peter’s Square.
In the garden is a calvaire that Saunière is supposed to have erected to the visiting
Bishop Billard from Carcasonne in 1897. The calvaire shows the familiar image
Jesus on the cross facing west but with a sunburst around the centre of the cross
which coincides with the head of Jesus.
Around the plinth on which the cross stands are some pious phrases on each of the
faces written in Latin:
CHRISTUS VINGIT –
CHRISTUS IMPERAT –
CHRISTUS REGNAT But on the eastern side at
Christ Conquers
Christ Rules
Christ Reigns
the back we have:
CHRISTUS, A.O.M.P.S.DEFENDIT
This was first interpreted as confirmation that Saunière was involved in a secret
society called the Prieure de Sion (Priory of Sion) that we shall hear more about
and the initial interpreted was:
CHRIST DEFENDS the ANCIENT and MYSTIC ORDER of the PRIORY of SION.
Such secret societies may well use ‘Double Entende’ but this explanation is
unlikely. All of the phrases here are linked directly to St Peter’s Square in Rome
where there stands an obelisk placed there by Pope Sixtus V and this piece of
pagan symbology at the heart of the Vatican acts as a sundial.
It is perhaps worth noting here that inside the church at Rennes le Chateau is a
stained glass window featuring Mary of Bethany anointing the feet of Jesus in the
presence of four disciples. One will notice that although all of Jesus’ disciples
(with the exception of Judas) are sainted, only Mary and Jesus have halos and
Jesus has a Celtic (sunburst) cross whereas Mary doesn’t, more on this later.
Here is the plinth on which the obelisk in St Peter’s Square stands and the face on
the left showing the four pius phrases repeated by Saunière. Once this obelisk was
in place and upright Sixtus V insisted on having it exorcised. With bells and incense
a bishop stood before it and uttered:
“I exorcise you, creature of stone, in the name of the omnipotent God, that you
may become an exorcised stone worthy of supporting the Holy Cross, and be freed
from any vestige of impurity or shred of paganism and from any assault of
spiritual impurity”.
The obelisk was originally from Heliopolis (City of the Sun) and once belonged to
the son of Sesostris (Senwosret) and was originally bought over to Rome via
Alexandria by the Emperor Caligula in 37CE and placed in the Vatican Circus that
became the centre piece for chariot racing and there it remained for the next 1600
years. Later St Peter’s square was built over the Vatican Circus, so named as such
because St Peter is believed to have been martyred on this site in 64CE. The
obelisk was described as being in a dark corner covered in leaves by a 15 th century
visitor to Rome and the idea to move it to the place of honour it enjoys today
came first from Pope Nicolas V but the move was completed by his successor Sixtus
V who placed a cross on the top of it. Inadvertently and most probably by accident
Sixtus V, who had been the Grand Master of the Franciscans, had made the name
Anu-Heliopolis in hieroglyphics by placing a cross on top of the obelisk.
Well almost, he had missed off the elliptical surround that completes the Egyptian
word. However it now gets curious because the obelisk had been in place for
seventy years when this Egyptian word was eventually completed and this time the
coincidence is too precise, the intention to make the word Heliopolis using
Egyptian hieroglyphs was clearly deliberate. The architect was Bernini and he was
commissioned to redesign St Peter’s square and he chose to surround the obelisk
with a huge elliptical space centred on the obelisk now making it a sundial.
Bernini’s work on the project was interrupted in 1665 when he was required to
take a trip to Paris to visit Louis XIV known as The Sun King (in French Le Roi
Soleil). He returned to Rome and completed the work dividing the ellipse into
eight parts. The whole scene now spells the name Anu-Heliopolis (City of the Sun)
from where the obelisk came. The Pope who commissioned Bernini was Pope
Alexander VII and it was this Pope to whom a 17 th century painter Nicolas Poussin
had dedicated his second painting of The Annunciation. Alexander VII was the Pope
whom we shall see had decreed the geocentric doctrine to the world, officially
abandoning the Catholic Church’s acceptance of the emerging heliocentric model
of Copernicus that is accepted by science today. It was not ratified as fact by the
Catholic Church until Pope Pius VII recognised it in 1822 but then only he allowed
its discussion. The heliocentric model is still not officially accepted as fact by the
Roman Catholic Church even today.
Perhaps it should be explained here that the placing of the correct hieroglyph here
is odd to say the least because officially Egyptian writing could not be understood
until Jean François Champollion finally read the Rosetta stone in 1827 and yet the
word is made by this obelisk and its surround in the 17th century.
Many people have noticed the connection of this obelisk with Saunière’s cross in
his church garden but what isn’t normally noticed is that once again we find
Saunière is playing his little games. For the phrase in Vatican City (shown above far
left at the bottom) is:
CHRISTUS AB OMNI MALO PLEBEM SAUM DEFENDAT (Not
DEFENDIT)
This stands for:
‘CHRIST DEFENDS HIS PEOPLE FROM ALL ILL.’
But by using DEFENDIT Saunière has altered the tense of
the phrase which now says:
CHRIST DEFENDED HIS PEOPLE FROM ALL ILL.
Is Saunière suggesting that Christ is no longer defending
his people from all ill? That in fact Christ is dead?
Underneath this particular phrase Saunière has put, in
French.
“Friends please look at our cross”
This cross with the sunburst behind the head of Jesus appears to have some
meaning for Saunière. He is asking us to examine it closely, experience shows that
we should do just that.
The cross in the garden of Rennes le Chateau was dedicated to his Bishop on the
feast of Pentecost and Saunière had good reason to be grateful to Bishop Billard
for it was this Bishop who had defended Saunière again and again and when the
Bishop died life became more uncomfortable for Saunière. What usually gets
unnoticed here is that yes the cross is dedicated to SA GRANDEUR MONSEIGNEUR
Felix-Arsene BILLARD but it is also includes the phrase:
Et De La Mission préchée par le
R.P. MERCIER, Lazariste
En la fete de la Pentecote
6 Juin 1897
The Lazariste movement was started by St Vincent de Paul from 1624 who acquired
the premises of the Collège des Bons Enfants in Paris. The lineage of Vincent de
Paul you will remember was mentioned in the parchments allegedly found by
Saunière. Saint Vincent de Paul was a member of the same organisation as Jean
Jacques Olier – The Compagne du St-Sacrement, indeed Vincent de Paul was Olier’s
teacher. Vincent de Paul was captured by Turkish pirates and taken to Tunis and
worked as a slave for some time. After converting his owner to Christianity he was
freed in 1607. Perhaps more interestingly Vincent de Paul is known to have been
taught occult practices by his owner.
At the back of this sunburst calvaire, to the east of it (possibly to take the shadow
of the cross at sunset) we have a small grotto made with unusual stone apparently
brought up the hill (allegedly by Saunière) from the village of Campagne sur Aude
where a similar grotto exists. On the bench in this grotto are some letters normally
unnoticed by the casual visitor not attuned to nuances of Saunière’s church and
garden. As yet this has so far defied any interpretation:
They are
KXSLX
Here is yet another one of Saunière’s little games. What does this mean? A clue to
the answer may be in the title for this small Grotto in which this is placed is called
the ‘Grotto of Lourdes’.
Saunière’s church and grounds are full of images that question the minds of the
inquisitive; for example, I’ve already mentioned the stained glass windows
depicting Mary of Bethany being intimate with Jesus and according to one female
Doctor of Theology even erotic. It is generally accepted Roman Catholic policy to
have Mary of Bethany and Mary Magdalene as one and the same and Saunière
seems to make this connection twice in his church. But where in the bible is Mary
Magdalene associated with a rugged cross a skull and a chalice, which is the theme
of the statue in the centre of the church? This is a tradition that appears outside of
the dictates of canonical gospel text but to simply say that this is repeated in
other churches in France goes no way to explaining why she is depicted in tis way.
There are other symbols of what appears to echo Gnosticism in this church. Either
side of the altar there are statues of Joseph to the left and Mary, mother of Jesus
to the right. However each statue is holding what apparently is baby Jesus dressed
differently. Two baby Jesus’? – This is almost blasphemy. This is direct from the
suggestion that Jesus had a twin, indeed the name Thomas actually means twin in
Hebrew and Thomas Didymus means ‘Twin-Twin’, Didymus being twin in Greek.
Several saints are represented in the church as statues. St Germaine, St Roch, St
Anthony the Hermit, St Anthony of Padua along with St Mary Magdalene herself. If
you arrange these saints into a letter M centred on The Magdalene, you spell out
the word GRAAL if you use the pulpit to represent Saint Luke as it normally does.
This may of course be a mere coincidence but is an interesting point to make just
the same. These saints were, according to 1960s French writer Gérard de Sède,
mentioned in the parchments allegedly found by Saunière but with the noteable
exception of St Germaine.
In the church garden is a statue of the Virgin Mary stands on top of what was, we
are told, the original cracked pillar in which Saunière allegedly found the
parchments, except it isn’t cracked; Is this broken pillar story allegorical and
symbolic of Solomon’s Temple and freemasonry? – Most likely the answer is yes.
This pillar, dating from the Visigoth period has without doubt been defaced by
Saunière for he has written on it; Curious! Why would Saunière partake in such
vandalism? Underneath the statue of what is clearly the Virgin Mary and called Our
Lady of Lourdes, is the inscription PENITENCE! PENITENCE! it is Mary Magdalene
who is the patron saint of Penitence, not the Virgin Mary. It is possible that
Sauniere is quoting the words apparently uttered by a vision of The Lady at
Lourdes. This Lady is usually interpreted as being the Virgin Mary but this vision
never identified herself as such, more on this later. It is worth noting that a
painting by the 17th century artist Nicolas Poussin featuring Mary of Bethany
anointing the feet of Jesus is called Penitence. At the bottom of the pillar he has
inscribed the words MISSION 1891 with the eight being made up of two circles one
over the other and loosely joined at the centre. Did the stonemason not have a
template for the figure eight or did his template have his eight with a wider
bottom than top so it couldn’t be readily inverted? It seems Saunière was unaware
of Visigoth art and the correct orientation of the well known pendant Alpha and
Omega sign for in altering the pillar has he inadvertently turned the pillar upside
down? Or was this deliberate? The answer is undoubtedly yes, someone, perhaps
Saunière intended this broken pillar to be read upside down and this will prove
pivotal in the solving of the mystery for a broken pillar is symbolic in Masonic
circles and is therefore a clue.
On the stone flooring in front of the broken pillar carrying the statue of the Virgin
there is this phrase:
“OMΔRIE CONCUE SANS PECHE PRIE Z POUR NOUS QUI AVONS
RECOURS A VOUS”
“O Mary Conceived Without Sin
Pray For Us
Who Appeal To You”
This appears to be confirmation that the statue should be the Virgin Mary but even
here there are mistakes yet again.
In the word OMARIE the A and M are overlapped and the stone mason appears to
have yet again made a mistake (shown in the picture), this is another of Saunière’s
little games an absolute confirmation that there was more to the Abbé Bérenger
Saunière than meets the eye. This links this church of St Marie Madeleine to the
church of St Sulpice in Paris, to the Rose Line and to a secret society and to priest
called Jean Jacques Olier, for there is the same logo on Olier’s tomb in St Sulpice.
Jacques Olier is mentioned again with regard to this mystery in a separate
publication, as we shall see later.
Small little games as these are played all around the church and the grounds and in
the graveyard. Superficially to the casual viewer there seems to be nothing out of
the ordinary but one eventually learns that with regard to this mystery it is simply
not sufficient just to look but one also has to see. As you go deeper into the
mindset of the architect(s) of the Rennes Mystery the reader will become gradually
more aware of the meaning of the phrase ‘Hidden in full view’ and come familiar
with something known as ‘The Language of the Birds’. The accusation that
Saunière got his wealth from the practice of selling masses is a simple solution for
simple people who feel uneasy when being asked to think. All of the details used
by people who wish to play this apparent selling of masses down come from a
researcher called Rene Descadeillas who in truth was a very thorough researcher
but a very poor guesser who tended to shoehorn his theories into his research
where there was a gap in his knowledge. In the museum at Rennes le Chateau
there are documents showing some of this enigmatic priest’s expenditure audits.
After some scrutiny one instantly becomes aware that the trafficking in masses
explanation for the whole of Saunière's wealth is palpable nonsense. We have
comprehensive records of Saunière’s income and the totals came nowhere close to
matching up to his expenditure. Most of his income appeared to come from Paris
and a good deal came from other priests, monasteries and nunneries, hardly places
which would require masses to be said by a back woods priest of the Languedoc.
On one occasion even Saunière’s bread bill would be barely covered by such an
income for it seems he must have consistently bought bread for the whole village
and even the most vehement detractors recognise Saunière’s opulent wine bill.
One merely has to look at the exotic food and wines on one of the menus he served
up in his Villa Bethania to realise that this priest was not making his money by
selling masses; he had a much bigger source of income. The stained glass windows
in the church and the Villa Bethania came from Bordeaux and the statue of the
devil came from a specially made mould which would have been a colossal price. A
former resident of the village who passed away in 1998 described how he
witnessed cart after cart brought up building materials to the village at a time
when a proper road had still to be built. The witness also described how much
authority the 45 year old Saunière appeared to have over the local leaders and
dignitaries who seemed to hold him in reverence and even acted subordinate.
Saunière did admit that he sold masses but explained he did no more than any
other priest for the selling of masses was in fact not illegal. Records show that
Sauniere had 3434 masses in ten years from 1899 to 1909 That’s an average of 344
masses per year or just less than one per day, the maximum allowable was
supposedly three a day. That Saunière is to be singled out as the only priest in
France that sold masses is clearly fog put up by those who wish deflect any close
scrutiny of Bérenger Saunière’s other activities. On the arrival of the new Bishop at
Carcassonne Saunière was brought up to account from where he was getting his
money for his lavish expenditure. He was accused of doing 18000 masses per year,
his church superiors initially opting for the simple solution. This amounted to an
income of 180000francs, a colossal sum for the time even if not made by selling
masses. They never took into consideration his salary and the rent he was receiving
from the family of Marie Denarnaud. Saunière kept his own records of his apparent
trafficking in masses, why would he do that if it were illegal? The church
authorities demanded more from him, they demanded he told them from where he
was getting his money but Saunière was to keep silent to his dying day; to his
eternal credit he kept his vow never to reveal the names of any benefactors.
Looking at his accounts it can be seen that Saunière’s wealth increased
immediately after the murder of a colleague at the nearby church of Coustaussa
the Abbé Antoine Géllis. Géllis’ was brutally attacked on Halloween in 1897 his
murderer has never been found but investigations have shown that Géllis obviously
knew his murderer as he and his killer had sat down together when it appeared a
brawl ensued between them. His body was placed in the centre of the room arms
carefully placed in some kind of ritualistic death pose. Large sums of money were
in the drawers of Géllis and were untouched by his attacker so the motive for the
murder was not theft. There is in fact a clue left in this murder and that is a
cigarette carton containing the words “Viva Angelina”. Suspicion fell on the
husband of Géllis’ niece but he had an alibi. What makes this murder more
suspicious is the way the authorities seemed to still want to sweep the whole affair
under the table. Two lawyers Julien Coudy from Paris and Maurice Nogué from
Carcassonne managed, with some difficulty, to unearth the official file on the case
in 1974. The reader is reminded that Saunière saw Géllis the same day he wrote
the word ‘Secret’ in his diary after his visit to Carcassonne. It does appear that
Géllis too had a lot more money in his possession than he can account for.
A judge made an inventory of Géllis’ wealth:
“4.000 F under the tabernacle, 2,000 F under a ratchet this in the sacristy “buried
in the earth in the second cellar” Then in the presbytery were discovered 1,000 F
in jaunets (gold coins) in the fireplace mantelpiece in the bedroom; the same
amount in the prayer stool, the same amount under a stone in the privy, the same
amount under the attic; the same amount in an out building, without mentioning
the various sums in the books in the library. There were 11,400 F all over the
place, napoléons (coins) of 20 and 10 F contained in odd bits of a stovepipe, or in
white iron tubes.”
Although Géllis’ yearly salary was 900 francs per year he had given 1000 francs to a
friend in order to buy railway bonds and little more than a month before his death
he had invested a further 1200 francs in them.
Many detractors cite Saunière as being without any money in his later years; this
can be shown to be a slight of hand in an effort to impose a simple explanation to
this mystery. There is one instance where the ‘there’s-no-mystery’ fraternity shoot
themselves in the foot. They frequently quote a testimony from Rene Espeut, a
former resident of Rennes le Chateau, who states that he looked for treasure from
1925 onwards for five years and didn’t find any. No surprise there, people have
been looking since the 1960s and haven’t found any. But by introducing the
testimony from Espeut these same detractors are admitting that there were
rumours of treasure from 1925 which completely negates their claim that it was all
started by Noel Corbu in the 1950s.
That Saunière appears to have had no money when he died is not a surprise either,
if you are assured of a constant income there is no need to save your money in a
bank account and attract attention to yourself. Saunière spent or gave away his
income as soon as it arrived. His expenditure included many travels away from
Rennes le Chateau, leaving his housemaid in charge of his affairs and he gave a
large amount of money to Marie Denarnaud. For instance it is possible that
Saunière made many trips to Lyon, it is likely he would have travelled through
Paris in order to get there.
On January 17th 1917, exactly 136 years after the death of the noble lady of
Rennes Marie de Negri d’Hautpoul, it is generally said that Saunière had a stroke;
however others say that Saunière took a cold and suffered heart failure. He died
on January 22nd and another hearsay story says that on his burial he was first
placed on his beloved esplanade and clothed in a cloak with tassels sown in and
each of the villagers filed past and removed a tassel ‘en souvenir’. Another
hearsay story is his apparent confession to the curé from Couiza which apparently
left this young priest a broken man. These stories appear meaningless, why would
the villagers do what they did or why would someone (maybe Corbu) make it up
without any explanation. It doesn’t matter to the story if this occurred or not so
why bother making it up? On the premise that truth is often stranger than fiction
one is tempted to believe these accounts.
On Saunière’s death Marie Denarnaud was still of workable age but this housemaid
of a backwoods priest never worked again for another thirty-five years until her
own death in 1952. She was not selling masses but it seems that some unnamed
benefactors still sent her money. This is a more unexplainable scenario than
people sending money to Saunière, at least one could argue that they may have
got something in return, they got nothing in return from Marie Denarnaud, she
carried out no further building or renovation and yet seemingly these shadowy
benefactors kept her for 35 years. She became a recluse and lived an austere life
always wearing black as though she was widowed and only once leaving the
confines of Rennes le Chateau to make one trip to nearby Couiza. The detractors,
desperately clutching at straws in order to play down this mystery, have
interpreted this as her living in poverty but the fact is she never attempted to find
employment, although she did teach children at Sunday school. They also say that
she attempted to sell her property but couldn’t, we only have to look at her
property and its position to realise that this too is palpable nonsense. Are they
saying that on the one hand people gave up large amounts of money to an unknown
priest somewhere in the Languedoc to have mass said on their behalf yet nobody
was interested in buying the very lucrative property with amazing views?
Eventually however the property left to her needed renovation and some of
Saunière’s rare books from his library in the Magdala Tower were being stolen and
relics were being plundered. She decided to give the property to the builder Noel
Corbu in return for his family looking after her in her old age. Saunière’s death left
his devoted housemaid Marie Denarnaud to continue to run things. It has been
suggested that they were living as a married couple and it is clear that she was
utterly devoted to him. After world war two the French Government decided to
completely change the Franc to remove from circulation any counterfeit money
that had been circulated by the Nazis. In order to obtain the new notes the French
people were encouraged to take their old notes to a bank in order to get new ones
but they were required to declare their source of income. Another hearsay story is
that this time Marie Denarnaud was seen burning some old notes in the garden of
the presbytery, choosing to do this rather than explain to the bank from where her
wealth came. This is another unsubstantiated story and it is left to the reader to
decide whether or not these hundreds and hundreds of hearsay stories are all made
up, without anyone coming forward and proving or even saying that they are
untrue. These are mere trivia to the main story anyway and although detractors
usually pick up on them in order to desperately try to suppress the interest in the
story, the bottom line is that if investigation leads to a positive result then all this
is irrelevant.
An interesting story comes from researcher Jean Luc Robin who was a resident of
Rennes le Chateau and has interviewed many of its villagers. This story relates to a
time when Marie Denarnaud used to teach the village children in the Sunday
school. One of the children, now an adult, recalled to Robin that one Sunday when
she had finished her lesson she closed her book and said “my poor children, if only
you knew”.
What was it that Saunière found, for what is undeniable is that this priest’s life
appeared to suddenly change overnight? What was it that warrants the keeping of
a secret for at the very least a century; surely not mere treasure. Many villagers
interviewed seem to back up Corbu’s story about Saunière’s strange activities
although few describe Saunière finding any parchments. Later stories say that the
parchments he found were destroyed in a fire but that the Mayor had made copies,
this however is unconfirmed and this story too may have been made up.
As we’ve seen from Saunière’s diary on September 21st 1891 we find the entry that
says “Letter from Granes, discovery of a Tomb, The evening Rain”. It is somewhat
unremarkable that a person with the responsibility of running a church and the
associated graveyard should find it necessary to record for posterity the fact that a
tomb had been found unless of course it was significant and if was significant why
not more information? However one is also left curious as to the glib way he wrote
this down. If it had been significant then one would think it would subconsciously
precede the phrase ‘letter from Granes’, a nearby village, but then perhaps the
news of the discovery was from Granes or indeed in the area and only reported by
the priest from Granes in the letter Saunière received. Further entries into his
diary we get a hint of perhaps the increasing interest for then he allegedly went to
Carcasonne at a period when he was feeling ill and also that he had borrowed from
church funds in order to buy the ticket, presumably to discuss this apparent
discovery with someone for in his entry he had “considered the Bishop’s deputy”
but not the Bishop of Carcasonne and then on his return he records the visits he
made in a single further entry into his diary along with the word ‘Secret’. Cros was
the Bishop’s deputy why did Saunière ‘consider Cros AND Secret’? Perhaps Bishop
Billard, who we know left Saunière alone, was aware of the secret too but his
deputy wasn’t, the consideration was how to keep this secret from the Bishop’s
deputy. Why too did he consider the Curé at Névian because this church is miles
away almost at Narbonne. Why the sudden urgency to go to Carcasonne after this
bout of illness that was also recorded in his diary?
The speculation of where and how he came to discover his wealth has been talked
about by experts and critics ‘ad infinitum nauseum’ but all this merely served to
do is to move the focus away from the undeniable fact that this priest and also the
priests at Rennes les Bains Abbé Boudet and the priest at Coustaussa, the
murdered Abbé Géllis, were involved in more than your normal activities of priests
holding office in this impoverished grape farming community in Southern France at
the turn of the twentieth century. It really doesn’t matter how they started but
only why they started and to a lesser extent when they started. That Saunière
found code bearing documents in his church or not is nought but a red herring
which distracts the more unaware investigators from asking more important
questions. The validity or otherwise of any documents brought by whatever route
into the public domain must surely lay in our ability to verify their message against
known facts or in our eventual success in finding new as yet undiscovered facts to
which we have been led by these documents and these new facts can be verified.
These facts of the case are still of value to us even if we know that they are being
fed to us by a group or society or even an individual because it may be an attempt
to get information out into the public domain.
In the early days the attraction of hoards visitors to Rennes le Chateau had been
some kind of treasure and when you first drive into the village you are indeed
greeted by a sign that says:
LES FOUILLES SONT INTERDITES
SUR LE TERRITOIRE
DE LA COMMUNE DE
RENNES LE CHATEAU
Arrêté du 28.07.65
Excavations are forbidden
On the common land of
Rennes le Chateau
Stopped as of 28th July 1965
Research for the most part has moved away from the treasure theory but
nevertheless real treasure has indeed been found in this area. In 1830 a man while
out walking in the Garrigue found a gold ingot weighing 20 kilos and not long after
this in 1860 near to Bezu another man found a gold bar made up of partially
smelted Arabic coins and weighing almost 50 kilos. These discoveries are confirmed
and are undisputed and nobody simply drops a heavy gold bar or coins and simply
doesn’t bother to pick it up. Gold has always been a highly prized commutable
commodity that has been mined in this area and the Roman mine workings can be
found throughout the area. A 20 kilo gold bar is unwieldy; it is as heavy as a
suitcase one would normally take on holiday, one would surely know if one had
dropped it. These are likely to have been part of a larger cache and possibly lost
from either a packhorse or perhaps a cart that had cracked a wheel. If fleeing from
an enemy then perhaps the owner was pressed for time to look too long for any
lost bars.
Additionally there is the story of a shepherd boy from the 17th century who had lost
a sheep and found it had fallen down a pit and crawled down to recover it only to
find hoards of treasure there.
There is a legend that may back up the theory of lost treasure. A Roman proconsul
of the name of Cæpion took from “a votive lake” 80 tons of gold and money
around 106BCE and immediately re-melted this into ingots. This apparantly
disappeared during its transport towards the port from Narbonne following an
attack from Volkes tectosages upset by this profanation of their sacred offerings.
They would have then withdrawn to the high valley of the Aude and would have
hidden the treasure in this area which is easy to police. These Volkes tectosages
are interesting and we shall discuss them in more detail later.
But the recent modern view which is at the same time both overstated and underresearched, is the suggestion that the story was all started by three conmen who
were out to make money in the 1960s after indirectly being prompted by Corbu’s
story who was also motivated by personal gain and strived to promote his newly
aquired Villa Bethania. These so-called conmen started a group in Annemasse near
Geneva and who called themselves the Prieure de Sion (Priory of Sion) and wrote
documents mingled with real history and leaving them for chance public scrutiny in
the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris. This is like writing that you know where a
treasure is and then putting it in a bottle and then tossing it into the sea hoping it
will then be found and then you come back and claim it. But there is strong
evidence that treasure hunters abounded in the 1920s and before this modern
version of the Priory of Sion was constituted. Jacques Cholet requested the local
authorities for permission to dig in the church and the grounds as early as 1959.
Cholet reports that a document was found referring to Dominique de Mirepoix and
refers to the “baggage” of Blanche de Castille. Blanche de Castille was the mother
of the king who, legend has it, took the Royal treasury to Razes. She was also one
of the principle driving forces behind the crusade against the Albigensians, also
known as the Cathars.
One can of course speculate forever on what was the source of Saunière’s wealth;
but the fact remains that gold has been found in this area and for two confirmed
findings of this nature to occur within such a small area is quite unusual. This area
has a history of various invaders; Alaric, the Visigoth king and sacker of Rome’s
treasure was indeed in this area and indeed it is true that the treasure of
Solomon’s temple that he apparently took from Rome is still missing. This is the
treasure that the Roman Emperor Titus had previously taken from Jerusalem in
79CE. The Knights Templars, who were also active in this area, were permitted by
the Pope to keep any booty that they took from the Saracen army during the
Crusades, something that may explain the Arabic coins. The Templar’s sudden
demise in 1307 may well have prompted them to bury this treasure around the
area so that French King could not share their wealth. The whole area is riddled
with caves where something of importance can be deposited and mountains where
a military arm can make careful observations on any potential looters of this
treasure or indeed any sensitive religious icons they wished to hide. The possibility
that Saunière took his wealth from buried treasure has fed the imagination and
fired the fervour of unscrupulous treasure hunters in the early 1960s. It does
appear that Saunière’s housemaid, Marie Denarnaud herself fed this myth by
insisting in her later years to some of the residents of Rennes le Chateau that they
were “walking on gold”.
There are legends that the Druids may well have thrown gold into a lake as part of
their rituals and other stories of loot from various campaigns during Celtic times
and of gold and treasure being disposed of here because it was considered to be
cursed. Could this be the same votive lake that Cæpion took his gold from?
These hearsay stories are of course unconfirmed but in the mindset of some the
word ‘unconfirmed’ is automatically taken to mean ‘didn’t happen’. So by the
same rule of logic Darwin’s Theory of man’s evolution by natural selection from
apes is also ‘unconfirmed’ and so therefore, using the same rule of thumb it too
‘didn’t happen’. The Americans landing on the moon has not been confirmed by
anyone other than the Americans and so therefore once again it ‘didn’t happen’.
Can we too use this same thinking premise that they don’t want to believe the
Americans undertook such a difficult project and so therefore they’re not going to
believe it until they get independent confirmation of the moon landings from
another source? Unconfirmed means didn’t happen, is this so? Of course some will
say that the moon rock confirms that they were there and then in the same breath
says that this moon rock is exactly like that on the earth, how can it confirm
anything if it’s identical to that found on earth? In the final analysis it comes down
to a question of faith. So when members of a secretive organisation called the
Priory of Sion say they have these documents they must be false as there is no
independent confirmation to verify them. Clearly all of this is flawed reasoning and
a belief system is at work here and a statement that will become self-evident in
the minds of the believers will require extraordinary evidence to shake these
believers from their blind faith in that nothing exists outside the envelope they
have made for themselves.
Author Gérard de Sède, one of these supposed conmen, has documented
Saunière’s visit to Paris and who can deny it? But this suggestion from de Sède has
no separate confirmation, but we do appear to have the equivalent of the
confirmation moon rock in our possession here and this is found in the Rennes le
Chateau garden in the form of a Society of Saint Sulpice logo and the statue of
Jesus bearing the Sacred Heart adorning the Villa Bethania. If Saunière had visited
Lyon then why not the centre of his affiliations: i.e. the church of Saint Sulpice
and the Sacre Coeur in Paris. I too have been to these places but I can guarantee
that even in the age of information technology no record of my visit exists.
The story goes on to say that after his supposed discovery Saunière, it is reported
he went to the Church at Saint Sulpice in Paris in 1893, oddly a full two years after
the diary entry. Here, according to de Sède, he is supposed to have visited the
Abbe Bieil and Saunière showed him some parchments. A separate and initially
unconnected story that emerged seems to give some credence to this story of
Saunière’s visit. When the book Holy Blood and the Holy Grail was being
researched a vicar from Oxfordshire, England had said that a friend of his had been
detached to Paris to look at some documents at around about this time. He said
that the documents contained incontrovertible proof that Jesus was alive in 47AD,
is this what Saunière had found? According to Gérard de Sède, Bieil then had told
Saunière to return in 8 days whilst the parchments were deciphered. Bieil is then
reported to have given the parchments to Emile Hoffat, a well-known philosopher
and occultist. If Saunière had produced controversial documents confirming the
survival of Jesus then it may be prudent to make up a false trial and make out that
Saunière found encrypted documents that end up with a message that is still
unclear.
The suggestion is that Saunière never went to Saint Sulpice but in the garden there
clearly is a logo of the Society of Saint Sulpice underneath the statue of the Virgin
this is another example of flawed reasoning. This lack of a record is especially
significant when the reason he went there was after the entries in his diary
contained the word ‘Secret’. Are we to expect a list of Saunière’s movements’
chapter and verse after the man had written the word ‘Secret’ in his diary? The
suggestion that this lack of record somehow negates the whole story is banal. The
only thing here which is suspect is the assumption that Bieil, or someone he knew,
could decipher the encoded text in 8 days, for without the key this is extremely
unlikely if not impossible and one must assume that the key had also been found or
indeed concocted by Bieil or Hoffat. Someone clearly knew how to decode the
parchments and the key must have been available, if indeed Saunière found the
coded parchments and took them to Paris at all. For it does seem that the
parchments containing the encrypted messages are either contemporary with or
written after Saunière, I shall discuss this later.
The story goes on to tell us that Saunière was very friendly with the French Opera
singer Emma Calvé during this period and there is now documentary evidence that
Emma Calve was a Superieur Inconnu, the third degree of the Martinist Order. It is
very likely that Saunière spent some time with Martinists and this was the principle
reason he perhaps made regular visits to Lyon for it is now known for certain on
two invoices that an Abbé Saunière hired a vehicle in Lyon on several occasions
and there was a principle Martinist Order headquartered in Lyon which existed
before the official Order began.
The first invoice confirming Saunière’s trip covers the periods in May and June
1898, then in September 1898 and finally from April to July 1899. The second
invoice is for a few days in May 1900, and a day in June of the same year. He hired
the vehicle for these periods. After his death two bookshops in Lyon bought some
of Saunière’s books. The first is the Gacon bookshop. The second is the DerainRaclet bookshop, situated at 81 Rue Bosssuet at that time. With the liquidation of
the Derain stock, a lucky purchaser found several books marked as:
"François Béranger Saunière, Priest at: Aude, town of Rennes." These works were
entitled:
1) "the Prophecy of the Popes allotted to S. Malachy". By Joseph Main.
2) "History of the Large Forests of Gaule and Old France". By L.F. Alfred Maury.
3) "Celtic Monuments. Or Research on the Worship of the Stones. Preceded by a
note on the Celts and Druids, and followed Celtic etymologies ". By Mr. Camby.
Returning to Saunière’s church, on July 9th 2005 Monsieur Paul Saussez, who is an
architect who has studied the church of Sainte Marie Madeleine at Rennes le
Chateau, gave a lecture at Rennes le Chateau. He said that most people try to
read between the lines and this has got them nowhere. However he said we can
read the lines themselves for he has studied Saunière’s personal notes themselves,
the old parish register and the Lescure report, a study of roman and pre roman
churches, the diocesan reports and a personal appraisal of the church itself from
an architect’s point of view. From his studies a computer simulation of the church
when Saunière made his discovery has been made and pictures of this simulation
can be found on the official Rennes le Chateau website. One thing that sprang
from the lecture is that there is today a secret semi circular room accessed
through the sacristy by a door at the back of the cupboard where Saunière would
have kept his robes. This allegedly did not exist when Saunière took over as curé.
Saunière had it put there, why? However by far the most striking thing was when
Mr Saussez explained why and how this tomb that Saunière had supposedly found
and remained a secret, how Saunière found it and then sealed it again. He was
asked at the end of his lecture what was the probability of such a crypt under the
church today on a scale of 1 to 10 and this architect replied 9.99. It is the opinion
of this author that whatever it was that Saunière found immediately before he
wrote ‘Discovery of a tomb’ in his diary he would have required help to deal with
it should it have been in the church environs or even removed from Rennes le
Chateau, perhaps close by Névian one of the places mentioned by Saunière in his
diary. This help is guaranteed to have taken the form of a secret society possibly
from within members the Catholic Church itself. Precisely who is buried there that
requires it to be hidden from scrutiny for all time is of course a matter of
speculation and until this crypt, should it exist, is examined in a scientific (and a
non pre-prejudiced) manner it will remain mere speculation. However it must be
said that one doesn’t normally rebury any corpse without identifying it to the
world, unless the occupant is extremely well known and and his or her death is
contraversial.
The debate has moved away from whether it was some physical treasure that
Saunière found to the more spiritual or to some kind of secret known only to
initiates that has political overtones that clearly may well be relevant even today.
This area is unique having been a trade route from Moorish Spain to Christian
Europe and would have been a place for the cross communication of ideas. The
port of Perpignan was used as part of this trade route from the Middle East. There
was even a breakaway Roman Legion that once settled in the area and tried to
create an autonomous state of its own. The site has many legends that have been
traded for millennia and the question of what it is we are looking for has confused
researchers and the answer may well contain a piece of all of the suggested
solutions. There may well be a physical treasure here, but gold doesn’t really
endure in the same manner, as would a sacred artefact of an earth shattering
importance. Gold can be easily found, recognised, picked up and then melted
down. A sacred artefact or a concept may require a great deal of knowledge to
simply enable it to be recognised as valuable. The whole area known as the Bezu
valley has clearly been a place of reverence since before Christ and it will be
logical to bury something (or someone) of reverence in this area.
But what of the other priests in this mystery, one such that we have already heard
about was the curé of the church of St Vincent in the twin spa village of Rennes
les Bains, a popular site to visitors of the Roman Baths. The Abbé of the church of
Rennes les Bains at the turn of the twentieth century was born Jean-Jacques Henri
Boudet, on 16 November 1837 at Quillan, on the Aude river. His father was the
director of the iron works near Axat, also on the Aude. His mother, Marie Antonia,
died in 1895 and is buried in the cemetery at Rennes-les-Bains along with his sister
Antoinette (also known as Adelaide), who was Henri's housekeeper until she died in
1896. His brother Edmond, who was born in 1840 and died on 5 May 1907, was a
notary in Axat. It was he who produced the maps and sketches which are a vital
part of Henri's enigmatic book La Vraie Langue Celtique et le Cromlech de Rennesles-Bains. According to Gerard de Sede, Henri Boudet may have been educated in
his youth by Abbé Cayron who was the curé of the church Saint-Laurent near
Montferrand and who is also alleged to have renovated his church from obscure
donations from religious groups.
After first working as an English professor in the college of Saint Stanislas in
Carcassonne Boudet studied at the Petit Seminaire then the Grand Seminaire of
Carcasonne and he was ordained a priest on Christmas Day 1861. He became vicar
of Durban on 1 January 1862, and then was transferred to Caunes in the Minervois
on 16 June 1862; here he showed an interest in the Black Virgin of Our Lady of the
Cross. On 1 November 1866 he was sent to Frestes, where he remained until his
transfer to Rennes-les-Bains at the age of 35 on 16 October 1872, replacing the
much revered Abbé Vie, who had died almost two months earlier on 31 August
1872. The Abbé Vie is buried in the cemetery at Rennes les Bains and he has a
tombstone and dedication in the foyer and some have said that he was the “Master
who showed the way”. On this tombstone is a play on words for his name was Jan
Vie which is close to Janvier and close to the French for January and the figures 1
and 7 giving an allusion to January 17th a date that will appear again and again in
this story.
It was during his time as the vicar of Rennes-les-Bains that Henri wrote the book La
Vraie Langue Celtique et le Cromlech de Rennes-les-Bains, which was completed
after eight years as curé in 1880 and published in 1886 by Francois Pomie, the
printer to the Bishop of Carcasonne. At Boudet's own expense, 500 copies were
produced for a fee of 5382 gold francs, no small investment for an impoverished
early twentieth century priest. Of the 500 copies, only 98 were actually sold, a
further 100 being given to libraries and institutions and a further 200 given away
by Boudet as gifts to friends and interested people who visited Rennes-les-Bains to
take the cure of the nearby spa waters. The remaining 102 copies were destroyed,
with Boudet's consent, in 1914. This may have deprived Boudet of his income. This
is said to have been at the insistence of the Bishop de Beausejour, the Bishop who
had also brought the case of mass trafficking against Saunière. Boudet wrote a few
books why did the Bishop single out this particular work of Boudet? Incidentally
there is no record of this book ever being produced, later we shall see that there is
another book (little more than a pamphlet) called Pierre Gravèes du Languedoc by
Eugene Stűblein that also has no record of being produced and people use this as
confirmation that the book never existed. Yet we can see that La Vraie Langue
Celtique clearly exists even though we have no record of it ever being produced,
these records are dependent upon the books circulation, if it didn’t sell much then
it’s unlikely to have been recorded, but this doesn’t mean that it has never
existed.
Boudet also wrote other works on the Languedoc dialect, which was presented to
the Société des Arts et des Sciences de Carcassonne on 5 November 1893 and 3
November 1896, the president of the Société, Louis Fédié, who was born in Couiza,
reviewed these other works. Fédié was the author of Le Comte de Razes et l'Ancien
Diocese d'Alet published in 1880. Despite a lack of recognition of his work, Boudet
continued to contribute material to the Société des Etudes Scientifiques d'Aude
until the end of the nineteenth century.
Boudet's other interests lay in walking the area, archaeology and photography. He
presented a variety of his archaeological finds to the archaeologists of the day. It
should be mentioned that there is an unconfirmed report that is was the Abbé
Boudet who gave 7 million Gold Francs for the restoration of the monastery at
Prouille, to put this amount in context the Eiffel Tower cost 8 million Francs to
build around the same time. This monastery run by the Dominicans and set in the
very heart of Cathar country was originally used to try to convert Cathars (mainly
women) in the early 13th century and one of the early donors was Simon de
Montfort, leader of the Albigensian Crusade.
In 1798 a sculpted head was found in the area known as Pla-de-la-Cote at Rennesles-Bains. It was eventually given to Boudet because of his interest in archaeology
and he had it placed on the garden wall of the presbytery. It became known as the
Tete du Sauveur. In his book Boudet tells an interesting story concerning it and a
local child.
This is also mentioned on the very last two paragraphs of La Vraie langue Celtique;
He says:
“Redones of the south spent a relative time running in the foolish superstitions of
paganism. The proconsul Sergius Paulus, disciple of the apostle St-Paul had come
to carry Evangelism to the MIDI of Gaul and had fixed his seat at Narbonne. The
Christian Missionary envoys of the famous one[?] and holy Bishop came to conquer
with the truth the spirits and the hearts of Gallic of the Narbonnese, understood
while penetrating in the cromlech of Redones, that the respect of which one
surrounded these cut stones or liftings, was a respect that had become idolatry,
and they made engraving of Greek crosses on all the points of this stone circle,
with the entry of Cromleck, Crossés, Roukats, Serbairon, on the peak of Pla de la
Coste and of mow Brugos and in Cugulhou of the setting one.
Then, on the edge of the Cap de ‘l’Hommé on the top of a menhir, opposite the
pagan temple, converted later into Christian church destroyed later by the fire, a
beautiful head of the Saviour looking at the valley, and dominating was carved,
all these Celtic monuments which had lost their meaning”
This head was removed to a wall overlooking the cemetery in Rennes les Bains.
Following the inundation of the Sals River in 1992, the head was removed from the
presbytery for safekeeping and remains in the local museum, where it can still be
seen today. Apparently it has a Templar magic square carved on the back, which is
in Latin but written with Greek letters. The theme of the head and the Magic
Square is repeated in the hermitage in the Gorges de la Pierre Lys, south of the
town of Quillan and north of St Martin Lys and Axat.
Henri remained at Rennes-les-Bains until 30 April 1914, when, unable (or unwilling)
to pay the rent on the presbytery and in poor health, he retired to his family home
at Axat. He died at Axat from intestinal cancer on 30 March 1915.
He was buried at Axat in the grave of his brother Edmond. The tomb has an
unusual headstone bearing the inscription IXOIZ and a carving of a closed book.
This cannot be Jesus or Ixthios which means Fish, it is fundamentally different.
Boudet’s grave also carries a cross similar to the cross in the lobby of the church at
Rennes les Bains except that it only shows Mary and not Mary and Child. It is said
that following Henri's death his books and papers were thrown upon the rubbish
dump at Axat but it is also said that a local family recovered them and they remain
in their possession. Interestingly IXOIZ can be seen on a wall in Ephesus only here it
is also depicted with each letter overlapped forming one complex symbol
resembling the emblem carried by Constantine’s soldiers at the battle of Milvian
Bridge and this symbol will gain in significance as we preceed into the later capters
of this book.
I’ll end this chapter with another little legend if only to place a little worm into
the mind of the reader. We have been told that Saunière’s first assignment after
his ordination had been the church at Alet les Bains. This village is very
picturesque and is located off the main road from Limoux to Couiza. The church
has the seal of Solomon in its stained glass windows and a family called Stublein is
buried in the cemetery. Eugene Stublein has been linked to this story if only
tenuously through documents found in the French National Library in Paris, he is
said to have copied the Hautpoul Tombstone and published it in book called Pierre
Gravèes d’Languedoc (Carved stones of the Languedoc).
There is a ruined Abbey at Alet les Bains called Abbaye Sainte-Marie d’Alet. The
Abbey is considered the most beautiful ruin in France and I agree, it has been the
inspiration for many artists and painters including myself. Founded in 813CE by the
Count de Razès and his wife Romella it is consecrated to the Virgin and was
apparently originally under Benedictine rule. The abbey was attacked in the 11 th
century by the Count of Carcasonne but survived destruction due to its apparent
relics of the true cross (Croix veritas) and during the Cathar Crusade the abbey
became a cathedral. Of the original abbey that remains, two towers can be seen
they are called St Michael’s Tower to the north and Notre Dame Tower to the
south. The significance of these names will become very apparent later.
But the legend starts here for Alet les Bains as already mentioned is reputedly a
former home of one Michel de Notredame better known to the world as
Nostradamus. Nostradamus wrote many quatrains allegedly predicting future
events. Some documents of antiquity written also in quatrain form by an
“unidentified author” have been found mentioning Rennes by name.
In century 8 quatrain 66 we have this from Nostradamus.
VIII.66
Quand l' escriture D.M. trouvee,
Et cave antique a lampe descouverte,
Loy, Roy, & Prince Vlpian esprouvee,
Pavillon Royne & Duc sous la couverte.
When the writing is found,
And ancient cave with a lamp is discovered,
Law, King and Prince Vlpian is proved,
Pavillon Queen and Duke under the setting place.
Whilst of course it is still under question what it is that Nostradamus is actually
saying here, most commentators feel that DM is the Latin for Diis Manibus - ‘Hands
of the Gods’ or Dei Mea (God and I) and Vlpian was the prince of lawyers in ancient
Rome. There had been a Pavillon who was Nicolas Pavillon who had been bishop of
the diocese of Alet le Bains from 1630 to 1677 and was a member of a group we
shall be reading more about called the Compagne de Sainte Sacrement, however
Nostradamus lived a century earlier, but there is evidence that some of
Nostradamus ‘predictions’ may have been written after his death by a group from
Stenay.
Is Nostradamus giving us the identity of who it is in the tomb found by Saunière?
Perhaps, but it must be remembered that Nostradamus talked in riddles and
Double Entendre.
But in Shugborough Hall, England we also have
this:
On the left is a scene taken directly from Nicolas
Poussin’s ‘Les Bergers d’Arcadie’ but featured in
reverse. The coffin is also a feature in Poussin’s
first painting featuring the shepherds of Arcadia.
The inscription ‘Et In Arcadia Ego’ carries the
meaning that even in an ideal world death is still
present and that all will die. The two central
shepherds point at the phrase –
Even in Arcadia I [death] am present.
The Arcadians were the people of the Bear and
Arcadie is an area in Greece that boasts the
birthplace of Zeus.
A frieze at the former home
of Admiral Lord Anson Earl of
Lichfield located at
Shugborough Hall, England.
A man noted for his
navigational skills
This is a message rather contrary to the Christian
promise of everlasting life.
Underneath the frieze is a caption in code:
O.U.O.S.V.A.V.V
D
M
Once again DM appears. Is this the identity of occupant of the grave featured in
the picture written in code?
One solution for D.O.U.O.S.V.A.V.V.M that is certainly worthy of mention, if only
for some perverse amusement indicating that one sees what one wants to see. This
is:
Dei Occultat Urbi Ordo Sionis Visitabit Asportate Vos Vobiscum Mea
“The secrets of God are in this country the Order of Sion will certainly come to
your aid.”
Every bit as good a guess as every other we have seen in the popular press, but this
will not be accepted because it carries controversial baggage.
However the solution is less contrived. Read on.
The 17th century painter Nicolas Poussin and his two paintings of ‘Les Bergers
d’Arcadie’ that will feature prominently in this story and, we are told, are alluded
to in the parchments apparently found by Saunière. One of these paintings can be
found close to Shugborough Hall is in the collection of the Duke of Devonshire at
Chatsworth House and we know that this painting was religiously copied by Lady
Anson of the Shugborough Hall family, after the Duke of Devonshire had leant it to
the Anson family for a short period. On both of these paintings there famously
occurs the phrase Et in Arcadia Ego and this phrase also occurs on a tombstone
that was reported to have once covered the grave of Marie de Negri d’Hautpoul on
the stone was also the phrase PS PRAECUM the missing letters required to make up
the final phrase from the other Marie de Negri tombstone.
Is Nostradamus’ ancient cave with the lamp in England or Scotland; Glastonbury,
centre of the Grail legends perhaps; or perhaps Rosslyn Chapel? Will the Order of
Sion come to our or their (the writers of the code) aid?
But this is fundamentally a French mystery and strange stories and documents
abound from this area that appears to have a distinct richness in this kind of
esoteric and legendary anecdotes and just when you think you’ve heard everything
we get documents like the one I’m about to describe but this may give us a nudge
in the direction of the truth:
It describes a short account written by Guillaume de Mosset, a clerk of the church
of Rieux close to Rennes le Chateau. The following account of this is by Abbé J-M
Vidal. It seems that four monks from the Abbey of Boulbonne in the Ariège,
Raymond Fenouil, Armand Giffre, Bernard Aynier and Bertrand de Cahusac were
“bored in their cloister”. The world they had left no longer held any attraction for
them. They were naïve, curious, avaricious and starved of wealth. They were
superstitious, believed in alchemy, in spells and sorcery. They dreamed of gold
ingots hidden in enchanted caves concealing immense riches. A clerk of Rieux,
Guillaume de Mosset and their accomplice let them know that close to Limoux was
a mysterious mountain covering an infinitely large treasure that was guarded by a
fairy.
Abbé Vidal wrote about this in 1903 and it is clear that he and Abbé Boudet knew
each other very well. Here's an account of what Abbé Vidal actually said in 1903 at
the time of Saunière and Boudet:
Quote:
“Jean-Marie Vidal, found a note devoted to alchemist monks of the abbey of
Boulbonne (1339) published in 1903 tells us of the vexations that tested four
monks of Boulbonne, close to Pamiers, that they were far too naive, dreaming
only of hidden gold ingots and of magic caves, under control of their evil genius,
the clerk of Rieux, Guillaume, (bastard of Mosset), who had taught them that
close to Limoux an infinite treasure was hidden on one mysterious mountain,
under the guardianship of a fairy. They make a clandestine trip to the door of the
monastery; they act in concert, while they commit themselves to the project
whilst concealing themselves from whomever. One agrees to get a wax statuette,
made in the image of the fairy. It will be baptized, and one will force it to speak
by piercing it at the place about the heart. It will reveal the secrecy of the cave.
The plot being underway, the bastard of Mosset acquires a doll. The plotters
hide at the home of Pierre Garaud, a middle-class man of Pamiers. The monk
Raymond Fenouil took it there and carries it to the church of the monastery; he
deposits it on the altar of Saint Catherine, where several masses are celebrated
every day. The strange thing is that no one has discovered this happened there or
does not suspect the sacrilege use for which they intended it. Raymond Fenouil
tries to baptize the fairy. A friend of Bernard Aynié, clerk of the church of
Montaut, lends the ritual of the baptisms to him, but categorically refuses to
deliver the Saint Chrème. This is an unforeseen obstacle and it appears it is
insurmountable. The monk Raymond, discouraged, brings back the voült [I
presume this to be Vault] to Pierre Baraud, of Pamiers. Guillaume de Mosset asks
an imprudent question if the rite has been accomplished to Raymond and his
accomplice. All is lost. Garaud blows out the wick [colloquialism: Blows the gaff]
and gives the box containing the wax image and the nine needles used to sting him
to Durand the abbot of Boulbonne.
The scandal revealed, the pope Benoit XII, intervenes in this business. On
December 2, 1339, he issues orders to the Abbot Durand to throw the culprits in
prison and to seize books, papers and effects of the profaners. And on July 23,
their lawsuit begins. One does not know the exact terms of the sentence, but it is
quite probable that it did not enact less than degradation and the perpetual
imprisonment, with the bread and water, for the principal culprits.”
What are we to make of this?
The story becomes ‘Curiouser and Curiouser’.
However be assured of this, there are two things we can be certain of in the
Saunière saga:
The story of Bérenger Saunière cannot be explained away by a simple theory that
his money was made by mass-trafficking.
Saunière was up to something very much out of the ordinary for a priest and on
this most serious scholars are in complete agreement. If Saunière did sell masses
precisely what kind of masses was he selling? They may not have been Christian
for it true that the area of the Haut Valley de Aude may well not have held
orthodox Christian views or even Christian views at all.
“In the Aude, the peasants rather believe in the malignant spirit, the fairies and
the underground geniuses than with the Virgin and the Angels”
Gaston Jourdanne: Contribution to the Folklore of the Aude, 1900
It seems that perhaps Bérenger Saunière may have been well in tune with the
beliefs of his congregation - Belief in the Faerie Folk.
But lastly let us leave the word of this chapter on The Magdalene; Our Lady to
which the church of Rennes le Chateau is dedicated. In Micah 4:8 it says:
And thou, O tower of the flock, the strong hold of the daughter of Zion (Sion),
unto thee shall it come, even the first dominion; the kingdom shall come to the
daughter of Jerusalem. (KJV)
Tower of the Flock is Migdal-Eder in Hebrew. Is that a corruption of the word
Magdalene?