7/29/2019 2-A Concise History Step Into History

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A C o n c i s e H i s t o r y o f R e n n e s - l e - C h t e a u i n L a n g u e d o c

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Step into History...WELCOME Is it by chance you came to Rennes-le-Chteau ? Probably not !

Perhaps have you read The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail , seen the

movieDa Vinc i Code or visited websites and shared ideas on discussion

forums about the Mystery ?

Maybe do you expect to unravel the Enigma ? Or perhaps even share in

the Treasure ?

Go ahead, but please brush the legend aside and step into history !

THE LEGEND The Legend started at the end of the 19th century with Abb Brenger

Saunire discovering a so-called "treasure". In the Aude backwater at the

time, nothing else could reasonably explain the apparently sudden fortune

of a simple country priest.

It has now been largely demonstrated that Abb Saunire owed his wealth

to a methodically organised and large-scale traffic in Mass honoraria. His

meticulously kept ledgers testify to this.

As for the "treasure", whether it be money, documents or artefacts andwhether or not it carried some secret whose divulgence or concealment was

profitable, it has fed some of the wildest speculations for over 50 years.

THE HISTORY The Mystery would have been unveiled long ago had a flurry of pseudo-

historical and dubious esoteric litterature -swollen to cosmic proportions

in recent years- not drowned any scientific approach and routed all serious

historians and archeologists.

No wonder that Abb Saunire's discovery of the burial vault of the lords

of Rennes - the existence of which is proven by an 18 th century document

found in the priest's papers - has been completely overlooked although it

was revealed almost 30 years ago.

Apart from amateur excavations carried out in the fifties and sixties by

treasure hunters and some more promising ground-penetrating radar

soundings in recent years, the revelation of this portentous discovery hasfailed to yield any scientific follow-up.

The only serious academical study of Rennes, its church, chteau and

fortifications, is an essay submitted in 1978 by Brigitte Lescure, today a

reputed archaeologist, for her master's degree in history of art at theuniversity of Toulouse-le-Mirail.

Only professional archeological excavations will allow Rennes-le-Chteau

to showcase its historical heritage and shed some light on still obscure

corners of Languedoc's history.

There lay the real treasure !

THE BOOK My purpose is to put Rennes-le-Chteau on the map of history, that of

Languedoc and the former county of Razs, pages of which still need to

be written.

What follows is therefore not yet another esoteric essay about the Priory

of Sion, Secret Dossiers, Plantard and Chrisey, Jesus and Mary

Magdalene, the Bloodline of Christ, suppressed church secrets, hidden

gold troves, pentacles or sacred geometry !

My sincere hope is that you may leave Rennes-le-Chteau knowing who

were the lords of the manor, that their resting place lies beneath the church

and that it probably shelters one of the most ancient, yet to be unearthed,

crypts in France.

MY ADVICE "It is true that the philosphers stone cannot be found, but it is good to

keep looking. In so doing, you shall uncover quite wonderful secrets you

had not been looking for."

Bernard le Bovier de Fontene lle (1657-1757).