Antoine Bigou
Abbé Antoine Bigou (1719-1794)
Saunière’s predecessor as prête of Rennes-le-Château from 1776 to 1792. Bigou was the priest and confidant of the family Hautpoul de Blanchefort. On her deathbed, Marie d’Hautpoul confided her family’s secrets to him since she represented the last member of the main branch of the Hautpoul family. Bigou is believed to be responsible for the enigmatic engraving of her horizontal (arcadia stone) and vertical tombstone and allegedly hid parchments with clues to her secret in the church at Rennes-le-Château, where Saunière later found them.
In August 1792, as a result of the French Revolution, a law was passed dictating that the clergy were to be made employees of the state, elected by their parish or bishopric, and the number of bishoprics was to be reduced. All priests and bishops were to swear an oath of fidelity to the new order or face dismissal, deportation or death. A group of some 20 priests from the region of Alet-les-Bains fled to Spain headed by Charles de la Cropte de Chanterac, the last bishop of Alet. At least 5 of them arrived in 
Terrassa, close to Sabadell and one in Llorena, both villages in northern Spain. Bigou was probably accompanied by François-Pierre Caneuille, priest of Rennes-les-Bains. It is unclear what happened to the successor of Marie de Nègre Hautpoul as lord of Rennes, the Marquis Paul François-Vincent de Fleury. Some stories say he fled to northern Spain as well.
It is in this climate of unrest and revolt that Bigou had to hide his secret. He was 73 when he left Rennes-le-Château and knew it was unlikely he would return. It is believed he covered the external entry of the church crypt with Marie de Nègre’s tomb and encoded a message in her tombstones. Additionally he left a parchment in the wooden baluster supporting the pulpit on which he indicated the location of the tomb and its special significance. It was this parchment, Saunière retrieved almost 100 years later.
Before he left to Spain, Bigou left a mysterious page in the parish registry reading multiple time “Jesus de Gallilée n’est point icy” (Jesus of Galilee is not here). This phrase has led to much speculation as to what the priest meant. Veteran French researcher André Douzet has written some interesting articles about this.
A religious Spanish group claims to have Bigou’s diary in their possesion. Patrice Chaplin, in her book City of Secrets, claims that Bigou lived his last years and was buried in a forest near Bésalu in northern Spain.
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