THE TREASURE OF RENNES-LE-CHATEAU
A MYSTERY SOLVED

In 1885 Bérenger Saunière was appointed priest at Rennes-le-Château, a small village in the south of France, not far from Carcassonne. The parish was very poor, the buildings in disrepair, and the only access to the village was by a track unsuitable for vehicles. Even the church was dilapidated. Straight away the priest set about repairing the church, beginning with the restoration of the altar. It is said that in the course of this work he discovered several parchments hidden in one of the supporting stones of the altar. They were written in Latin and contained coded messages.

After the priest had deciphered the strange texts, the parchments led him to a treasure of immense value. Whether this story is true or not, there is no doubt that from this moment the priest had a lot of money for the restoration of the church, in which he put a new pulpit, statues and paintings. In addition he had a fine new house built, as well as a pretty garden, and a tower where he kept his library and collection of postage stamps and a terrace giving panoramic views of the mountains.

The priest died in 1917. He left his house to his faithful servant, Marie Dénarnaud. When she was old, and no longer able to maintain the property, she sold it to M. Noël Corbu, who converted the house to a hotel, the Tower Hotel. There he used to tell the story of priest and the treasure to the clientele, and as a result the village was invaded by a horde of treasure hunters who dug holes all over the place.

The author Gérard de Sède was the first to write a book about Rennes-le-Château. (The Gold of Rennes, or the Strange Life of Bérenger Saunière, published in 1967). In this book he related how the priest went to Paris, where he consulted the abbé of the church of Saint Sulpice about the parchments, and where he bought a copy of Poussin's painting The Shepherds of Arcadia, and much else besides.

Since then the story has become well known and more than 300 books have been written on the subject. With each recapitulation, new aspects have been added to the story and now the Saunière affair is linked with the Merovingian kings, the Cathars, the Priory of Sion and even Mary Magdalen. In the novel The Da Vinci Code the writer Dan Brown has used several of these ideas.

Bill Putnam and John Edwin Wood have carefully studied the original documents and have discovered that there are many errors in the majority of the published books. The Treasure of Rennes-le-Château is the first book published in English which gives a rigorous account of the events surrounding the mystery of Rennes-le-Château.

In addition they have examined the claims for alignments in the landscape around the village. They give a critical analysis of the methods used by the writers who assert that the churches, castles etc are located in such a way as to make geometric figures.

£10.99 Revised paperback edition (ISBN:0 7509 4216 9)
available from all good bookshops or direct
from Haynes Publishing (01963 442030)
or on line from Amazon.co.uk