Church of Rennes-le-Château

Rennes-le-Château was the setting for a remarkable story. In 1885, Bérenger Saunière became the parish priest in the beautifully situated village in Aude. After about five years, the priest's lifestyle changed from one day to the next. During the restoration of his church, he supposedly found mysterious parchments in a hollow column. Immediately afterward, Saunière began to spend money on a large scale. He had Villa Bethania built, a luxurious mansion for himself and his then eighteen-year-old housekeeper Marie Dénarnaud. At the edge of the garden, he built a library tower with breathtaking views. He decorated the church with strange symbols, and in the portal was a life-sized kneeling devil, with the holy water font on his shoulders and the text Terribilis est locus iste, “this place is fearsome.”

And so we enter the realm of imagination. More is not needed by fabulists. There are countless far-fetched theories about the ‘treasure’. It is even claimed that the priest found the grail. Or even more thrilling: that Jesus Christ did not die on the cross but fled to southern France, where he married Mary Magdalene and left behind a large offspring. In a somewhat more realistic fantasy, Saunière would have found the treasure of the Templars or gold that was hidden before the French Revolution. Conspiracy theorists do not want to hear of the banal assumption that the priest simply pocketed the money he received to say masses.

Mediahuis België