Around 1965 Henry Buthion (who had just bought the Villa Bethania from Noel Corbu) and his friend Jean Pellet found a piece of paper with some scribblings in Abbé’s Saunière’s handwriting inside his personal altar in the housechapel. It was hidden there in a piece of hollow bamboo sealed with wax behind a loose tile. The little note was wrapped in a newspaper from 1907 and contained a silly poem reading:

Sot Pecheur a l’embouchure du Rhone, son poisson sur le gril deux fois retourna. Un malin survint et XXV fois le gouta. Cuit, il ne lui resta que l’arete. Un ange veillait et en fit un peigne d’or. B.S. Cur.

which translates as:

Stupid fisherman at the mouth of the Rhone, he turned his fish on the grill twice. A devil popped up and tasted it 25 times. Cooked, all that remained was the bone. An angel watched and made a golden comb. B.S. Cur.

The original unfortunately got lost in a fire. The poem seems to link to a local fable called La Légende du Peigne d’Or (Legend of the Golden Comb).

French researcher Patrick Mensior has done an elaborate analysis in his book: l’extrordinaire secret des prêtres de Rennes-le-Château

Researcher Roger Boonaert has come up with an interesting theory that has many followers among his colleagues. He start with the number 17 as indicated by Station of the Cross Number X Jesus Is Divested Of His Clothes. In the first round of decypherment he found the following text:

TRESOR ENFOUI AU LAGASTOUS AVEN 1785
treasure buried at Lagastous aven 1785

In the next round of decyphering he found a sentence of 128 letters, the same number as on the headstone of the Marchioness d’Hautpoul-Blanchefort

OR NATIF ROMAIN HAUTPOUL DEPOTS WISIGOTHIQUE ALARIC ROYAL TEMPLIERS BEZU ACCES KARST SUD AVEN RAYONS LLLLLLXV M POINTS AVEN P CARLA ROI MORT MMLLLLXLV M
native roman gold Hautpoul deposits Visigoth Alaric royal Templars Bezu access karst south aven rays LLLLLLXV M points aven P Carla dead king MMLLLLXLV M

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Dalle de Coumesourde (stone of Coumesourde)

The Dalle de Coumesourde, or simply Coumesourde Stone, is a strange beast. It is a stone with an inscription that a certain Ernest Cros found in 1928 near the hill that gave the stone its name. Mr Cros, besides being an enthusiastic amateur-archaeologist, is said to have been good friends with Bérenger Saunière. He had long been interested in the Aude’s history and settled in the Rennes-le-Château area in 1924 in the village of Ginoles. Being a bit of a stickler for detail he meticulously recorded much of his research and findings in a document with the poetical name: ‘Researches of M. chief engineer Ernest Cros, undertaken in de high valley of the Aude, particularly during the years 1920-43’. With a title like that you can imagine what a joy-to-read the fruits of his labour must have been. In good Rennes-le-Château fashion, all of Cros’ records and documents got lost in a burglary in 1960 and now only a typewritten copy of the report is said to have survived. The stone has been depicted in four variations in four publications:

Ernest Cros, 1928, Les Archives du trésor de Rennes-le-Château

 Gérard de Sède, 1967, L’or de Rennes   

Jacques Cholet, 1967, The Cholet Report  

Robert Charroux 1972, Trésors du monde

As with so many things in the Saunière puzzle book, we know of the stone from Gérard de Sède who published about it in 1967 in his book Le Trésor Maudit de Rennes-le-Château. In his book however, the drawing of the stone was stylized and the letters S and AE were more clearly combined to make one the word ‘SAE’. In the eyes of many a researcher the Coumesourde stone is a tad less suspicious than most of the other puzzles in the Rennes-le-Château enigma since at least it wasn’t in Les Dossiers Secrets. However, its discovery and reliability aren’t exactly undisputed. There is for example the fact that some of its text is identical to the inscription on the horizontal Tombstone of Marie de Negri d’Ables. That stone WAS in the dossiers (engraved stones of the Languedoc by Eugène Stublein, registered in the Bibliothèque Nationale de France in June 1966). The Dalle de Coumesourde is believed to be an important clue in the enigma. It features in many of the standard works on Rennes-le-Château. A plausible and conclusive explanation of its true relevance has never been given. Countless men and women spent countless hours counting the letters, measuring the angles and mapping its triangle on countless maps, parchments and paintings.

In October 2007 it was reported that the original stone had been found back by a group of Spanish researchers. Société Perillos produced an article series in that month about the history of the stone and the remarkable new discovery.

This Pillar supported the original pulpit before Saunière started his restorations. In the top of this wooden pillar, carilloneur (bell ringer) Antoine Captier found a small glass tube with a document that he gave to the priest. Straight after this discovery Saunière started his excavations in the cemetery.

The Baluster was recently re-examined by Société Perillos: article link.

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Called ‘Dalle des Chevaliers’ in French, this engraved stone is said to have been the cover stone of the crypt beneath the church at Rennes-le-Château. According to the legend, Saunière found it lying upside down and had it lifted by Adrien Marre and Féliciean Marceau, two local workmen.

Beneath the stone was a hole in which Saunière allegedly found a small pot containing a couple of goldpieces, a Visigoth necklace and a golden Chalice dating from around the 13th century (that he later gave to his friend Abbé Grassaud). He told the workman that he had only found some worthless Medallions of Lourdes and sent them home. He apparently didn’t recognize or appreciate the value of the cover stone itself for he used it as a stepping stone for the Calvaire where it was ‘re-discovered’ in 1926.

According to Henry Buthion, who ran the Saunière estate for some 40 years after he had bought it from Noel Corbu in 1965, the stone once sealed the mural tomb of Sigebert IV. Buthion was convinced that Saunière discovered this tomb and took jewellery and two golden crowns from it that he gave to friends and relations.

The stone is thought by some to depict the flight of Sigebert IV to Rennes-le-Château in 1681. Others have noticed the resemblances with the official seal of the Knight’s Templar of two men riding one horse. Dutch writer Klaas van Urk recently made a case for the stone to depict the two entrances of the Grail Church Bieta Mariam in Ethiopia, once the place where the Ark of the Covenant was hidden. In his explanation, the left part of the stone depicts the ritual of preparing the Ark of the Covenant, the right image is a Grail Knight carrying the round symbol of the Holy Light. Fact is that the image  engraved over the double entrance of Bieta Mariam bares a striking resemblance to the right tableau of the Dalle des Chevaliers.

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The pillar was on of two that supported the original altar in the church. The second pillar has disappeared, but it is know that it had no inscriptions (Jean-Luc Robin, Rennes-le-Château – Saunière’s secret). It is said that in this pillar, Saunière found four parchments. The first containing Latin text fragments of Luke VI, 1-5 and Matthew XII, 1-8, Mark II, 23-28, the second containing the story in which Jesus visits Lazarus in Bethania from the Gospel of John and two genealogies of Dagobert II, dating from resp. 1244 and 1644. It is sometimes claimed there was a fifth document: the will of Henri d’Hautpoul dated 1695.

On the 21st of June 1891, 24 children of the village received first communion. Since this was a major event for the small village a ‘Mission’ was organized. A statue of Notre Dame de Lourdes was carried around the whole village by four men in a procession that included most of the villagers and their children. At the end of the procession, the statue was placed on a piedestal, consisting of the decorated pillar that once supported the original altar of the Eglise Madeleine. Oddly enough he placed the pillar upside-down and had it engraved ‘Pénitence, pénitense, Mission 1891′.

The placement of the pillar has led to a much speculation. It was a Visigoth custom to bury their kings below an upside-down cross. It is today believed by some researchers that the pillar marks the outer wall of the crypt of the Eglise Madeleine.

Abbé Saunière used a number of inversions while decorating his domain, church and particularly this pillar as attested by this article on Société Perillos.

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