Rennes Le Chateau
Until early 1993 I'd never heard of Rennes Le Chateau. This despite the publicity which had surrounded it for many years. There had even been documentaries about it on TV in the UK, but it had all passed me by.
I was staying with some friends in Moussan, where I have a holiday home. It was my practice to go there each spring to give the house a pre season paint and clean. I usually managed to rope in friends to help me. On this particular trip, after having been there for a few days and having completed the most arduous chores, we decided to go for a day long drive. Our first planned port of call was going to be Montsegur, the most famous of the Cathar fortresses.
We chose a scenic route down the D613 from Narbonne. Occasionally we made little detours off the main road, where the map indicated there were areas of outstanding natural beauty. From time to time I would stop the car so we could photograph the lovely countryside. The picture below was taken looking across the village and chateau of Arques towards Couiza.
As we continued Westwards towards Couiza, we noticed that the banks of the river had been damaged and various pieces of debris, including uprooted trees and large boulders, littered the river bed. When I spotted a sign to Rennes-les-Bains, I recalled having recently seen a TV news item in the UK, about serious floods in Italy and Southern France, Rennes-les-Bains having been one of the places experiencing a dramatic flash flood.
Within a few minutes, one of my companions started getting excited, having spotted a sign pointing to 'Rennes-le-Chateau'. I'd never heard of it and it wasn't on any agenda I was aware of. Eventually I was persuaded to reluctantly make a small detour to the village.
Much of the mystery surrounding Rennes-le-Chateau stems from it's priest, Berenger Sauniere (Died 1917 aged 65), who became unaccountably rich after taking up residence in 1885. The best selling book 'Holy Blood and the Holy Grail' by authors Baigent, Leigh and Lincoln, describes his life and offers a number of theories about how he came by his wealth.
One of the more exciting theories put forward is that he discovered the Cathar treasure, smuggled out of Montsegur shortly before it's fall to hostile forces in 1244. This of course is just one of the theories and another set of theories revolves around what exactly the Cathar treasure was.
Regardless of the theories Sauniere certainly did pretty well for a Parish priest (of a very small Parish). He constructed the 'Villa Bethania' and the 'Tower Magdala', in which he housed his extensive and apparently expensive library.
After visiting the Church and it's cemetery we had a general walk around the village, before heading off to Montsegur.
By the time we got to Montsegur, I had just one untaken picture on the film in my camera. One of my companions wanted to be photographed with the fortress in the background. As you can see, had my hand shaken just a millimeter, the picture would not have included the fortress. As for my friend, I've cut the bottom 70% of the original photograph off for this page, since I'm sure you are not interested in which brand of beer he was drinking when I snapped him.
At this time I was still very ignorant as to why my companions were so excited, about these mountain top ruins and Rennes le Chateau. As soon as I returned to England I purchased a copy of 'Holy Blood, Holy Grail' and have been hooked ever since.
| USA | Holy Blood, Holy Grail |
UK |
 |
Since 'Holy Blood, Holy Grail' opened up the floodgates of interest in the Rennes le Chateau mystery, to the English speaking world, numerous other books on the subject have been written. Read this one before you read any of the others. There are very few modern day books, on the subjects of the searches for traces of 'Jesus', 'God', 'Knights Templar', 'Holy Grail', 'Cathar Treasure', 'Papal conspiracies', etc. which fail to mention the mystery of Rennes le Chateau somewhere in their text. The authors Baigent, Leigh and Lincoln have also since published other related works. |
 |
Since creating this page, I have been informed of an extensive site covering 'Catharism'. It will help if you can read French, but if you can't never mind since there are photos, illustrations and a map of the region. There are many pictures of Cathar fortresses including Montsegur.
http://www.cathares.org/sommaire.html
I have not seen it, but a video documentary about the mystery is available at
I guess most people reading this will have some familiarity with the links between the research described in Holy Blood & Holy Grail and the story in the novel Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown. Personally I much preferred Holy Blood, Holy Grail, but I was rather surprised when two of it's authors tried to sue the publisher of Da Vinci code for copying of central themes. To my mind Holy Blood, Holy Grail was not presented as fiction, so surely it should be reasonable for a novelist to use it as a research document?