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The
Story so Far
Poor
Berenger Sauniere probably had no idea what kind of chaos he
was going to cause (or maybe it was deliberate!). In 1885, the
young, educated priest was assigned to the tiny parish of Rennes-le-Château,
an ancient Church reportedly dedicated to Mary Magdalen in 1059.
Shortly after his arrival, while making repairs (some say he was
deliberately snooping), he was to discover a set of hidden documents
hidden in the ancient altar stone of the church. This was the beginning
of a mystery which persists to this day.
After
discovering these documents, Sauniere began a bizarre treasure hunt...the
coded parchments gave up clues that led to more puzzles, ciphers,
and mysteries, including hidden symbols in paintings, messages on
tombstones, and more.
Something
that Sauniere found in his diggings made him fabulously wealthy by
some accounts (by others, simply much better off than he had been),
and this discovery has been speculated upon endlessly. He was able
to spend a fortune renovating his small church, decorating it bizarrely-
with statues of colorful saints and demons, and a life-sized chess
board laid out on the floor. He also undertook a number of other
building projects, including the Mysterious Tour Magdala, a
tower filled with kabbalistic symbolism and dedicated to Mary Magdalen,
who seems to have become Sauniere's mascot.
Hypotheses
of the nature of Sauniere's "treasure" include:
- Treasure
robbed from a tomb under the church
- The
lost treasure of the Cathars of Montsegur or of the Templars
- Documents
or maps to the burial place of Christ, or other proof that Christ
was not resurrected
- Scriptures
or other religious texts challenging the legitimacy of the Church
- Proof
that a married Jesus and Mary Magdalen had descendents, namely,
the Merovingians of France
The
Ciphers
Clues
on the coded parchments are tantalizing, and their meanings largely
unsolved. One decoded message reads "TO DAGOBERT II KING AND
TO SION BELONGS THIS TREASURE AND HE IS THERE DEAD." Dagobert
was a murdered King of the Merovingian line, a family who claimed
to be descended from Christ.
Poussin
and the Great Secret
Another
cipher alludes to the artists David Teniers and Nicholas Poussin,
and it is known that paintings by these artists were sought by Sauniere.
The Teniers painting is lost, but the Poussin
painting adds fuel
to the mystery. The painting of a group of shepherds investigating
an ancient tomb seems innocent enough, however, this painting has
already been implicated in a previous mystery! The painting itself
seems to be linked to a similarly themed painting by the Renaissance
Master Il Guercino, an image of shepherds contemplating a damaged
skull. Both paintings share the motto: In Arcadia Ego (even in Arcadia
am I), a phrase repeated on an encoded tombstone found in the Rennes
church cemetery (and later destroyed by Sauniere). The phrase is
believed to be a reference to the persistence of death; Arcadia was
a mythological Greek Paradise.
Guercino's
works are often Masonic in theme (even as they supposedly predate
Freemasonry), and some have claimed that his version hints at the
identity of the murdered Hiram Abiff of Masonic legend. (To add another
layer of mystery, the skull of Dagobert himself bears a similar head
wound!)
Poussin
is another mystery. Of him, the brother of Louis Fouquet, accountant
to King Louis XIV, was known to have written:
"He
and I discussed certain things, which I shall with ease be able
to explain to you in detail - things which will give you, through
Monsieur Poussin, advantages which even kings would have great
pains to draw from him, and which, according to him, it is possible
that nobody else will ever discover in the centuries to come.
And what is more, these are things so difficult to discover that
nothing now on this earth can prove of better fortune nor be
their equal.”
This
oddity has never been explained, although it is known that Louis
later went out of his way to acquire Poussin's painting after locking
Fouquet away. To make things weirder, a tomb resembling Poussin's
was later discovered in Arqes, within view of the Rennes church.
Bizzarely, a copy of Poussin's painting in stone, located in Staffordshire,
England, contains yet another cipher- this one unsolved (it does,
however, contain the same letter frequency as the Masonic Arch cipher).
The same scene appears in stone on Poussin's
tomb.
Unfortunately,
Sauniere died without revealing his secrets, and although clues seem
to be under every stone in France, nobody has since figured out the
big secret. He did, however, pepper his diaries with enigmatic clues,
and his rebuilt Church is rife with intentional symbolism, including
images from Masonic legend, kabbalistic puzzles, and hints of Johannite
heresy. He had strange visitors, and his activities eventually came
to the dismayed attention of the Church. Locals complained that he
was disturbing graves, and indeed, some unusual grave markers vanished.
He also made numerous long trips away from town which have never
been explained.
Sauniere
was eventually suspended and prosecuted by the ecclesiatical courts
for various infractions for a number of years. His lavish spending
all but ceased, and he died at the age of 65. The priest who administered
his last rites was reported to have emerged a changed man- according
to associates, he had apparently recieved some shocking information-
information he never shared. Rumors circulated for years, but the
answer to the many mysteries surrounding Rennes remained buried.
The "Dossiers
Secrets"
In
the 1960s, the mystery took a weirder turn. An unknown person deposited
a collection of documents in the Bibliothèque Nationale in
Paris. These documents, called the "Dossiers Secrets," included
a genealogy of Merovingian royalty, documents claiming to tell Sauniere's
story in great detail, and supposed reproductions of Sauniere's mysterious
documents, as well as letters, magazine articles, and a very unusual poem.
These papers, many in code, appear to point to a bloodline of French
royalty, supposedly descendents of Christ, and their protectors,
the mysterious Priory of Sion, whose Grand Masters, according to
the documents, include such literary and artistic luminaries as Leonardo
Da Vinci, .
Most
of these documents are forgeries, or altered. Some, however, point
to some kind of inside knowledge of the activities of Sauniere, and
their careful crafting leads to another mystery- why would anyone
go through so much trouble?
The
Prieure de Sion is (or was) a real organization. It was founded in
1070 and folded into the Knights Templar (Order of the Temple) about
thirty years later. They appear to have been formally seperated from
the Order of the Temple about a hundred years later, and have surfaced
on occasion over the years in connection with various political movements.
The true purpose (or even the continued existence) of the Priory
is unknown, although they have been linked to the seventeenth century
Rosicrucian brotherhood..
According
to the "Dossiers Secrets," past Masters of the Priory range
from Templar Martyr Jaques DeMolay to Leonardo Da Vinci, and finally,
Pierre Plantard, a figure who figures prominently in the book "Holy
Blood, Holy Grail." In the seventies, an associate of Pierre
Plantard, the so-called Grand Master of the Priory, admitted to aiding
Plantard in creating the Dossiers Secret. Many of the claims in the
documents, including Plantard's supposed Merovingian ancestry, have
been proven fraudulent, yet no real motive for a hoax of such great
magnitude has yet been discovered.
If
there is a "Priory of Sion" existing today, it is still
a secret.
Images
of Berenger Sauniere, Rennes, and elements of the mystery
Et in Arcadia Ego, Guercino |
Et in Arcadia Ego, Poussin |
Shepherd's Monument |
The Skull of Dagobert |
Articles
and Essays:
Le
serpent Rouge:
images:
Miscellanious:
Related
Links:
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