Rennes-le-Château
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Commune of Rennes-le-Château | |
| Location | |
| Longitude | 02° 15' 48 E |
| Latitude | 42° 55' 41" N |
| Administration | |
|---|---|
| Country | France |
| Region | Languedoc-Roussillon |
| Department | Aude |
| Arrondissement | Limoux |
| Canton | Couiza |
| Mayor | Jean-François Lhuilier (2001-2008) |
| Statistics | |
| Altitude | 272 m–568 m (avg. 435 m) |
| Land area¹ | 14.68 km² |
| Population² (1999) |
111 |
| - Density (1999) | 8/km² |
| Miscellaneous | |
| INSEE/Postal code | 11309/ 11190 |
| ¹ French Land Register data, which excludes lakes, ponds, glaciers > 1 km² (0.386 mi² or 247 acres) and river estuaries. | |
| ² Population sans doubles comptes: single count of residents of multiple communes (e.g. students and military personnel). | |
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Rennes-le-Château is a small medieval castle village and a commune in the Aude département, in the Languedoc area in southern France. It is known internationally, and receives tens of thousands of visitors per year, for being at the center of various conspiracy theories. Starting in the 1950s, a local restaurant owner, in order to increase business, had spread rumors of a hidden treasure found by a 19th century priest. The story achieved national fame in France, and was then enhanced and expanded by various hoaxsters, who claimed that the priest, Father Berenger Sauniere, had found proof of a secret society known as the Priory of Sion. The story and society were later proven to be a hoax, but became the origin for hypotheses in documentaries and bestselling books such as Holy Blood Holy Grail andThe Da Vinci Code, and the village is now often cited in various elements of popular culture as the center of many mysterious happenings.
Contents |
[edit] History
Mountains frame both ends of the region — the Cevennes to the northeast and the Pyrenees to the south. The area is known for beautiful scenery, with jagged ridges, deep river canyons and rocky limestone plateaus, with large caves underneath.
Like many European villages, it has a complex history. It is the site of a prehistoric encampment, a Roman colony, and a medieval fortress. It was an important site during the era of Charlemagne, and was a Visigoth site during the 6th and 7th centuries. Some of the area's castles were central to the battle between the Catholic church and the Cathars at the beginning of the 13th century. Other castles guarded the volatile border with Spain. Whole communities were wiped out during the campaigns of the Catholic authorities to rid the area of the Cathar heretics during the Albigensian Crusades and again when Protestants fought for religious freedom against the French monarchy during the French Revolution.
[edit] Church of Mary Magdalene
Some architecture in the area dates back a thousand years, such as the church in the Rennes-le-Chateau parish, which was dedicated to Mary Magdalene in 1059. It was renovated in the late 1800s by the local priest, Berenger Sauniere, though the source of his funds at the time was controversial (see below) and some of the additions to the church appeared unusual. One of the new features added to the church was an inscription above the front door, which said, Teribilis es locus iste. Inside the church, one of the added figures was of the demon Asmodeus. Sauniere also funded the construction of another structure dedicated to Mary Magdalene, a tower on the side of a nearby mountain.
One speculative translation of the church's latin inscription is that the church contains something dreadful. However, another translation of Terribilis est locus iste would read: "Awesome is this place," based on the first part of the introit of the mass Terribilis for the dedication of a church, which is itself based on Gen. 28:17.[1] The word Terribilis would be used not in the context of describing something dreadful, but rather as something awesome or great. The Latin phrase continues as :hic domus Dei est, et porta coeli, translated to English as: "This is the House of God, and the gate of Heaven." It tells the visitor to be awed and tremble before the presence of this house of God.
[edit] Modern fame
Though initially a tiny unknown village, as of 2006 the area received 100,000 tourists each year. Much of the modern reputation of Rennes-le-Château rises from rumours dating from the mid-1950s concerning a local 19th-century priest. Father Bérenger Saunière had arrived in the village in 1885, and mysteriously acquired and spent large sums of money during his tenure, funding several building projects including the Church of Mary Magdalene. The source of the wealth had long been a topic of conversation and rumour within the village. In the 1950s, these rumours were given wide local circulation by Noël Corbu, a local man who had opened a restaurant in Saunière's former estate (L'Hotel de la Tour), and hoped to use the stories to attract business.
From that point on Rennes-le-Château became the centre of conspiracy theories claiming that Saunière uncovered hidden treasure and/or secrets about the history of the Church, which could potentially threaten the foundations of Catholicism. The area has become the focus of increasingly sensational claims including the Knights Templar, the Priory of Sion, the Rex Deus, the Holy Grail, the treasures of the Temple of Solomon, the Ark of the Covenant, ley lines, and sacred geometry alignments.
[edit] The Saunière story
The story began when Noël Corbu wanted to attract visitors to his local hotel in Rennes-le-Château, by spreading the claim that Saunière had become rich by finding a royal treasure inside one of the pillars in his church in the late 1800s. The first newspapers started printing Corbu's story in 1956. This ignited a flame: visitors with shovels flooded the town and Corbu got what he wanted. However, this also attracted a number of persons such as Pierre Plantard. His childhood dream was to play a vital role in the history of France, so he and some friends concocted an elaborate hoax. It involved planting fabricated documents in France's Bibliothèque nationale de France, to imply that Plantard was a descendant of a French royal dynasty, which would somehow mean that he was supposed to be declared King of France. The fabricated documents also mention the ancient "Priory of Sion", which was supposedly a thousand years old, but was in fact the name of an organisation that Plantard founded himself in 1956 with three of his friends.
No serious journalists who investigated the story found it plausible enough to write about, so Plantard asked his friend, Gérard de Sède, to write a book to give more credence to the story. They chose the already rumour-rich area of Rennes-le-Chateau as their setting, and L’Or de Rennes (the Gold of Rennes, later published as Le Trésor Maudit de Rennes-le-Château) came out in 1967 and was an instant success. The book presented (forged) Latin documents by Plantard's group, alleging that these were medieval documents which had been found by Saunière in the 19th century. One of the documents had multiple encrypted references to the Priory of Sion, thereby attempting to "prove" that the society was older than its actual creation date of 1956.
In 1969, a British actor and science-fiction writer by the name of Henry Lincoln read the book, dug deeper, and wrote his own books on the subject, pointing out his "discovery" of hidden codes in the parchments. One of the codes involved a series of raised letters in the Latin message, which when read off separately, spelled out in French: a dagobert ii roi et a sion est ce tresor et il est la mort. (translation: This treasure belongs to King Dagobert II and to Sion, and he is there dead.). Lincoln created a series of BBC Two documentaries about his theories in the 1970s, and then in 1982, co-wrote Holy Blood – Holy Grail with Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh. Their book expanded upon the Rennes-le-Château story to further imply that Plantard was connected not just to royal ancestry, but actually descended from Jesus Christ. This torch was then picked up and carried further in 2003 in Dan Brown's bestselling novel The Da Vinci Code, though Brown's book never mentioned Rennes-le-Château by name.
[edit] Saunière's renovations
The extraordinary popularity of The Da Vinci Code has reignited the interest of tourists, who come to the village to see sites associated with Saunière and Rennes-le-Château, even though the village is officially not part of "The Da Vinci Code trail". The pillar where Sauniere was said to have found the documents is on display in the village's "Sauniere Museum," where visitors are told that the "visigothic pillar" was never hollow, nor can it be established that the pillar was actually "visigothic". Instead, the pillar was set up by Saunière in 1891 as part of his Shrine to Our Lady of Lourdes.
Even the claim that the pillar originated from Saunière's church cannot be substantiated.
[edit] Skeptical views
Almost all historians reject the conspiracies as nothing more than fantasy.[citation needed] The stories of Saunière's "mysteries" were based on nothing more than a minor scandal involving the sale of masses, which eventually led to the disgrace of both Saunière and his bishop. His "wealth" was short-lived and he died relatively poor. Published by French Editions Belisane from the early 1980s onwards, the evidence for this ranged from the archives in the possession of Antoine Captier, which includes Saunière's correspondence and notebooks, and the minutes of the ecumenical trial between Saunière and his bishop between 1910–1911 which are located in the Carcassonne Bishopric.
As for the relationship with the fictional Priory of Sion and Plantard's hoax, multiple factors disproved those theories as well. Philippe de Chérisey – who helped Plantard with his fraud – admitted having fabricated the historical documents. The supposed "medieval" documents were shown to have been written in modern French. Gérard de Sède, another of the conspirators who had written the book Le Tresor Maudit, also wrote a book denouncing the fraud, and this was further confirmed by his son.
[edit] Rennes-le-Château in fiction
[edit] Novels
- Foucault's Pendulum, by Umberto Eco, 1989
- The Templar Legacy by Steve Berry, 2006, Random House
[edit] Video games
- Gabriel Knight: Blood of the Sacred, Blood of the Damned, 1999, Sierra. Written by Jane Jensen, the game takes place in Rennes-le-Chateau, and revolves around the 'Rennes-le-Chateau mysteries.' [2]
- Xenosaga Episode III: Also sprach Zarathustra, 2006, Monolith Soft. In the game, Rennes-le-Château - which mysteriously had disappeared earlier - re-appears floating in space, cleanly dislodged from the surface of the planet.
[edit] Music
- House of God, 2000, by King Diamond. A concept album centred on Rennes le Chateau
[edit] See also
- Beale Ciphers — A similar but older story in the United States, about a series of encrypted documents which appeared in a town in Bedford, Virginia in the 19th Century, and allegedly point out the location of a local hidden treasure
- Cathar castles
[edit] Notes
[edit] References
- Gerard de Sede, Le Tresor maudit de Rennes-le-Chateau, 1967
- René Descadeillas, Mythologie du Trésor de Rennes: Histoire Veritable de L'Abbé Saunière, Curé de Rennes-Le-Château (Mémoires de la Société des Arts et des Sciences de Carcassonne, Annees 1971-1972, 4me série, Tome VII, 2me partie; 1974). [Reprinted in 1991 by Editions Collot, Carcassonne.]
- Henry Lincoln, The Holy Place: Saunière and the Decoding of the Mystery of Rennes-le-Château, 1991
- Henry Lincoln. Key to the Sacred Pattern: The Untold Story of Rennes-le-Château, 2002
- Bill Putnam, John Edwin Wood. The Treasure of Rennes-le-Chateau, A Mystery Solved (Sutton Publishing Limited, Gloucestershire GL5 2BU, England, 2003.)
- History Channel, Behind the Da Vinci Code, 2006, video documentary produced and directed by Ian Bremner — documentary about Lincoln's research and writing
- History Channel, Is It Real? Da Vinci's Code, 2006, video documentary produced and written by Amy Doyle
- Jean-Jacques Bedu, Rennes-Le-Château: Autopsie d'un mythe (Ed. Loubatières; 31120 Portet-sur-Garonne; 1990 — recently reprinted in 2003.)
