The Sauniere 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 became rich when he found a royal treasure inside one of the pillars in his church. In 1956, the first newspapers started printing this story. 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 including fabricated documents which were planted in France's Bibliothèque nationale de France, all 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 organization that Plantard founded himself in 1956 with three of his friends.


Le Tresor Maudit, 1967No 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 about it. 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, an 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 in the 1970s about the subject, and then in 1982, also co-wrote Holy Blood – Holy Grail with Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh, which 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 expanded in 2003 in Dan Brown's bestselling novel The Da Vinci Code, though Brown's book never mentioned Rennes-le-Château by name.


Saunière's Renovations

The extraordinary popularity of The Da Vinci Code has reignited the interest of tourists, who once again come 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 "Sauniere Museum" in Rennes-le-Chateau and visitors there are told that the "visigothic pillar" was never hollow, nor can it be established that the pillar was actually "visigothic". It was set up by Saunière in 1891 as part of his Shrine to Our Lady of Lourdes.


Even the claim that it originated from Saunière's church cannot be substantiated.

One of the new features added to the church was an inscription above the front door, which said, Terribilis est locus iste, which has been interpreted to imply that the church contained something dreadful. Inside the church, one of the added figures was of the demon Asmodeus. Sauniere also funded the construction, on the side of a nearby mountain, of a tower dedicated to Mary Magdalene. However, an accurate 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. The word Terribilis is used here 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 in a way tells the visitor to be awed and tremble before the presence of this house of God.