The Mystery Of Rennes-le-Château
Location Of Rennes-le-Château Sometimes when we look at something, we are just left with a mystery. Mysteries are all around us. Where is the Holy Grail, how were the pyramids built and how can certain dogs detect people with cancer? In older days there were probably far more mysteries than there are today, because some of the common things that were misunderstood were considered mysterious. If someone was able to perform a good trick, he may have been classified as a warlock. This was not because he did anything that we would consider paranormal today, but in his day it might have been considered the work of the devil. When we look back at those days, many of us have to wonder how people could have been so superstitious that it bordered on paranoia? The answer is that most people in the western world, in the middle ages, were not educated. We modern people still have our mysteries and many of them have nothing to do with superstition They are more of a quest for knowledge than anything else. We may want to know how or why something has happened, or who was really responsible for it. An example of this might be the assassination of President Kennedy. Most of us would love to know who was responsible for his death and who pulled the trigger. We are told that Lee Harvey Oswald was the shooter, but many of us do not believe it and think that he was a patsy of some sort. By this I mean a scapegoat for the real assassinators. There are theories that state that Kennedy was getting too close to the Soviets and that people in our own government had him taken out. There are also photos that seem to indicate that there was a second shooter. The Kennedy assassination is not really the mystery that I am about to go into. It is the mystery of the Rennes-le-Château. Rennes-le-Château is a medieval castle village in France. For a small village it is a very popular place with tourists and it is said that tens of thousands of tourists visit there every year. I bet most are Americans, since most Americans love castles and medieval villages. People say that this is true because our country is so young that we have no equivalent of these towns or castles. A story began to surface in the 1950s, that a priest in the 19th century had found some sort of a hidden treasure in the town. Unfortunately the story was added to by different people, until it said that the priest not only found a treasure, but that he belonged to a secret society known as the Priory of Sion. Books were written on the subject and the story became the basis for The Da Vinci Code.
Father Bérenger Saunière The name of the priest was Father Bérenger Saunière. The priest began work on a renovation of the second church in the town. The first church was in ruins by the 10th or 11th century, but the church built right after it had survived in poor repair. It is said that he authorized certain additions to the church. Some of them seem quite odd, such as a statue of the devil holding up the holy water. Before you get the idea that the priest was some sort of devil worshiper, let me explain that there are a lot of other churches in France that have this same statue and it may have symbolized holiness over evil, or something like that. The priest had arrived in the village in 1885. The mystery is where did the priest get all the money to fund a project as expensive as redoing this early church? Some say that when the priest was digging around in the church, he may have found a treasure that was somehow connected with the original church that they believed was under the new one. Could he have found a cash of gold coins, or perhaps different types of gold items that had been given to the church as offerings in the past? If he did, did he have the right to use it as he saw fit, or should he have notified Rome about the treasure? The tale about the treasure caused thousands of visitors to descend on the town with shovels in hand. They were hoping to either find the rest of the so called treasure, or find another one. Can you imagine what it must be like to live in a small town and have hundreds and maybe thousands of people coming to it to dig it up? Fanning the fires of deceit, books came out that spoke of certain medieval documents that had been found. These documents were forgeries that were created to lead people to believe that one of the townspeople was related to the medieval royal family. Of course this was nonsense. The so called Priory of Sion had not been an ancient order, as a matter of fact it was founded in 1956 by those who wished to deceive. A story was created that said that the priest found a treasure in one of the columns of the old church. A book entitled “L’Or de Rennes ” became very successful. Many of the forged documents were cited in it as genuine documents.
Grave Of Father Bérenger Saunière It is funny how things can get out of hand. A writer reading the forged documents stated that he had found a code in them and wrote a book about the code. He claimed that if some of the Latin letters that began words were listed separately they spelled, “a dagobert ii roi et a sion est ce tresor et il est la mort. ” In English this means,”This treasure belongs to King Dagobert II and to Sion, and it is death. ”Strange, very strange, finding a code in a forgery. Many have wondered how the priest could have rebuilt the old church if he didn't find a treasure to pay for it. The answer seems to have been simple, but was it? Saunière and his bishop were both disgraced for selling masses. He was put on trial in 1910 and court records state that his wealth was estimated at 194,150 francs, which he said was for parish works. Here is the strange part, this was too much wealth to be accounted for by selling masses. The priest said that he also received local donations and that was why he has so much money. So was fraud involved in the building of this fortune, or was there truly a treasure that was found? I don't know, but as one investigator put it, "The source of the wealth of the priest of Rennes-le-Chateau was not some ancient mysterious treasure, but good old fashioned fraud." |
