Rennes-le-Château: Father Saunière and the making of a mystery

Perched on a hill in the Aude, in the south of France, Rennes-le-Château has only a few dozen inhabitants, yet its name is known all over the world. Books, documentaries and novels have described it as the guardian of a fabulous treasure, of a Templar secret or even of truths capable of overturning the history of Christianity. Behind this fame lies the story of a country priest and, above all, a narrative construction developed in the twentieth century that is worth knowing in order to separate facts from inventions.

A priest and his church

Bérenger Saunière became parish priest of Rennes-le-Château in 1885. In the following years he restored the church dedicated to Saint Mary Magdalene and had a villa built, called Villa Bethania, together with a garden and a small neo-Gothic tower, the Tour Magdala, which he used as a library. The expense, far beyond the means of a village priest, attracted the attention of the bishop of Carcassonne.

Church investigations established that Saunière received by post large numbers of offerings for the celebration of masses, many more than he could possibly say. For this trafficking he was suspended from his duties. He died in 1917, and his housekeeper Marie Dénarnaud inherited his property. The documents therefore suggest a concrete, if hardly edifying, explanation for his sudden wealth.

The devil at the door and the inscriptions

The interior of the church, decorated in the devotional taste of the period with mass-produced statues and bright colours, has fuelled many interpretations. Beside the entrance a figure of a devil supports the holy-water stoup, surmounted by angels making the sign of the cross. Above the door is a phrase from Genesis, “Terribilis est locus iste”, meaning “this place is awesome”, traditionally used in the liturgy for the dedication of churches.

Those seeking hidden messages have seen coded clues in these elements; art historians, however, recognise a Catholic repertoire common at the end of the nineteenth century. The devil subdued beneath the holy water, for instance, expresses the theme of victory over evil through baptism, a traditional motif that requires no secret keys.

How the treasure legend was born

The myth took shape in the 1950s, when Noël Corbu, who had turned Saunière's villa into a hotel and restaurant, began telling the story of a hidden treasure, which also helped to attract customers. In the 1960s the writer Gérard de Sède, with the contribution of Pierre Plantard, published a book linking Rennes-le-Château to an alleged secret society, the Priory of Sion.

The papers of the so-called Priory, deposited at the National Library of France, have turned out to be modern forgeries, and Plantard himself later admitted that they were invented. Later theories, from the Templars to the Cathars and on to best-selling novels, have nonetheless kept piling up, turning the village into a magnet for mystery hunters, so much so that unauthorised digging has been banned by the municipality.

Rennes-le-Château thus offers a valuable lesson for anyone approaching esoteric history. It shows how a real place, with a documented story, can become the centre of a modern myth constructed at a desk, and it reminds us how important it is always to go back to the sources before accepting a mystery. Visits to the church, the small museum and Saunière's garden nonetheless remain interesting as evidence of late nineteenth-century religious taste.