Rennes le Chateau is a tiny village in the south of France with an incredibly rich history.  Because of this, the remote hilltop, and the surrounding area, is full of fantastic tales of lost treasure, dangerous secrets, and hidden messages.  To what degree Truth rests in these accounts is not easily discerned.  For it seems there is a basis of fact that has cultivated into a garden of legitimate questions and mystery. The answers grown and picked from this colorful assortment leads a person on more entwining paths than he may have initially wanted.

In 2003, Dan Brown published the bestselling novel, The Da Vinci Code, which plucked certain notions from this fertile soil and caused Rennes le Chateau to fully blossom.  Brown’s book highlighted one of the secrets which had already been proposed for the area; the suggestion that Jesus, not only married, but had children who located here. This Royal Blood was allegedly protected by a secret society called the Priory of Sion.  They guarded the ‘Holy Grail’ (the bloodline). His fictional story directed attention to many other previous known mysteries of the area and encouraged further exploration into some real-life accounts.

Noel Corbu- the business owner

It appears large awareness of a possible lost treasure in Rennes le Chateau was first promoted by Noel Corbu in the 1950’s.  After acquiring an estate once owned by the village priest Berenger Sauniere (1852-1917), and turning parts of the property into a hotel and restaurant in 1955, Corbu started sharing stories with his customers; stories of coded parchments, hidden gold, and lost secrets of the past.

These extraordinary tales were supported by a friendship he developed with Marie Denarnaud. Denarnaud had been Berenger Sauniere’s housekeeper and confidant. Mr. Corbu was promised by her that she would reveal to him a powerful secret learned by Sauniere before she died.  Unfortunately, she passed before she was ever able to share her knowledge with him and the treasure remained hidden.

Berenger Sauniere- the village priest

Delving into the life of Berenger Sauniere raises countless more questions. After becoming priest of Rennes le Chateau in 1885, reports he discovered an exceptional treasure of some kind while renovating his church surfaced.  These accounts were advanced by his lifelong activities, provoking ever deeper suspicion.  He is known to have spent unexplainable amounts of money, excavated parts of the graveyard, defaced tombstones, travelled extensively, and entertained prominent guests.

Addition to these unusual behaviors for a small village priest, Sauniere continued to renovate and create.  Up to the time of his death in 1917, he planned and changed the landscape of Rennes le Chateau.  What he left behind in these designs and constructs may hold clues to his presumed wealth and a valuable lost treasure.

Gerard de Sede-the author

As the saga of Rennes le Chateau developed over time, more details of incredible knowledge, supposed riches, secret societies, and more were exposed.   As an author, Gerard de Sede (1921-2004) was inspired to write a book on the mystery of Berenger Sauniere and Rennes le Chateau entitled L’or de Rennes.  This book, later translated into English from the original French by Bill Kersey, would bring into play the secret society of The Priory of Sion and Pierre Plantard.

Pierre Plantard-Grand Master

Many have contemplated whether Pierre Plantard (1920-2000) was actual Grand Master of a secret society called The Priory of Sion or the Grand Master of a complex scheme to claim personal connection to a royal bloodline with Merovingian Kings. Through documents, allegedly discovered by Berenger Sauniere, the assertion was fostered.

As more confounding documents appeared in the Bibliotheque Nationale de France the whole enigma surrounding Rennes le Chateau expanded.  Now, one may get lost in exploring all the different ideas, notions, and theories pertaining to a lost treasure located there.  The field of inquiry has overgrown with speculation, making the search more entangled, and yet, all the more irresistible.

The Holy Grail

Since history has been partially unearthed and proven to hold unexplained circumstances, it will not be silenced.  With real places, real people, real events involved, the truth of the matter patiently summons those who seek real answers.  The paths of discovery wait.  For those who are willing to dig deeper, journey further into history, the treasure may actually turn out to be The Holy Grail.

14 Comments

  1. I know I had mentioned about doing a post on Rennes le Chateau books, and I will have to do this. I would include many you have suggested Nate, and add:

    The Fool’s Coat by VI Marriott

    The Treasure of Rennes le Chateau: A Mystery Solved by Putnam and Wood

    I probably would also add Ben Hammott’s book Lost Tomb of the Knights Templar that I have on my Kindle for his account and images of the church.

    Jenny Kile
  2. Treasure of Rennes-le-Chateau
    When Berenger Sauniere discovered the Parchments in the Altar pillar he saw that the symbol at the bottom of P2 was the monogram of Nicolas Poussin … ‘N Povsin’. He further recognised that the symbol on P1 … the ‘triangle with tails’ could be drawn through the heads of the shepherds on Poussin’s painting of the Arcadian Shepherds. The heads were in fact hills. The second shepherd is pointing at the ‘R’ that is followed by the ‘C’ in the word ‘aRCadia’ … R–le-C. The first shepherd is Rennes-le-Chateau; the tall female with the white headband is Cardou with the chalky crest. Not only do the heads correspond to the hills on plan, they reflect the heights of the hills in elevation. The painting is a detailed map. The lower ‘tail’ of the symbol points directly to Rennes les Bains. Poussin’s symbol on P2 also doubles to name the place of the treasure … st NAZ … the Church of St Nazaire Et Celse. If one follows Sauniere’s Stations of the Cross they too will lead to the Church in Rennes les Bains.
    Geoffrey Morgan

  3. Response to Nate … Sauniere knew the tomb in Poussin’s painting well and he recognised that the shadows in the painting were ‘impossible’. When one stands on the road bridge at Pontils and looks across at the old tomb site one is facing south – even in Poussin’s day shadows did not fall on the north face of the edifice. The emphasis of the shadows is on the heads of the shepherds – the hills, which pointed him to Rennes les Bains. This is confirmed in the Sauniere’s ‘Stations of the Cross’, which are easy to read if one follows the hills – they take one to the old Sacristy in St Nazaire Et Celse.
    Geoffrey

  4. Nate …
    Question 1
    The Treasure of Rennes-le-Chateau is actually King Dagobert 11’s treasure, which is part of the Visigoths hoard when they ransacked Rome. Its place of concealment was in a cave on the bank of the River Sals at Rennes les Bains. It was the Templar who built the Church of St Nazaire Et Celse over the cave. Amongst the treasure is the Menorah, seven stemmed candlestick that was taken from Herod’s Temple.
    In the sacristy was (is) a stone altar with the relief of a head on the side panel, that panel was (is) a small door which led to the vault (cave) beneath the church. On Sauniere’s original grave was a relief of a head. – You will appreciate I have not been in the Sacristy it is sealed, but I believe my assumptions are accurate.
    The Abbe Boudet who was priest of St Nazaire had found his way to the gold years before Sauniere guessed where it was.
    Question 2
    Henry Lincoln has decoded part of the Parchments Sauniere had found in his Altar Pillar … ‘This treasure belongs to Dagobert 11 King and to Sion and he is there dead’.
    Dagobert was murdered and his headless remains placed with his treasure. The head together with the crossed bones is a Templar symbol – the crossed bones are the lines through the hills – as in Poussin’s painting.
    Regards
    Geoffrey
    hungerfordian@hotmail.co.uk

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  8. With the stories of people renouncing their faith, plus the extraordinary claim made by an Anglican priest (according to the book “Holy Grail, Holy Blood”) that what Sauniere found was incontrovertible proof that Jesus didn’t die on the cross, the only easy explanation I can think of is that there is, actually, a Bible code. I don’t think that anything could be “incontrovertible proof” unless it was found on the Bible itself.

  9. Any person looking into the mystery of Rennes le Chateau should begin by answering those questions, simply so people can band together by affinity, if nothing else.

    My answers:
    1. I think the treasure is spiritual. Though I don’t entirely rule out the possibility that actual transmutation of mercury into gold is possible with methods available to the ancients, but I consider this low probability.
    2. I’ve been thinking about this question of sacred places. I think Jerusalem was definitely chosen for its latitude, and when Moses was looking for the Promised Land, he was after a specific latitude. Lately I’ve been thinking whether it’s possible that there are specific significant longitudes, that could have been identified by the ancients. This longitude might shift through the centuries, due to the precesion of the equinox. In that case, it’s conceivable that the Middle East was at the right longitude 3000 years ago, but it shifted to Southern France by the time of the Middle Ages. In that case, presumably it continued shifting, and maybe for a while it was in Great Britain, and by now it’s lost in the middle of the Atlantic, or perhaps now Iceland is the sacred place.

  10. I’m pretty sure that the treasure that Sauniere found was the Holy Grail itself. Duncan said that the answer to Maranatha was the Holy Grail, and Maranatha had a number of connections to the mystery of Rennes le Chateau.

    There are a couple more indications: A Royal Arch Mason once showed up on the Maranatha forums and explained that the Royal Arch Mason ritual was actually bought from somebody. I think Sauniere was the seller. There is also a Victorian horror story, “The codex of Canon Alberic” that is reputed to be about Sauniere. In it a priest of a French village sells an ancient codex to the author of the story. I’m fairly sure that Sauniere sold the Holy Grail to the Grand Lodge of England.

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