1 Church of St. Mary Magdalene
2 Sacristie
3 Calvaire
4 Grotto
5 Reposoir
6 Cemetry Gate
7 Ossarium
8 Original tombs of Bérenger Saunière and Marie Dénarnaud
9 Notre Dame de Lourdes, jardin de Vierge
10 Presbytery
11 Villa Bethania
12 House Chapel / Winter Garden
13 current tomb of Bérenger Saunière
14 Orangerie
15 Belvédère
16 Tour Magdala
17 Parc
18 Villa Gardens

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In January of 1890, the Rennes-le-Château Municipal Council approved Abbé Saunière’s request to refrubish the public square in front of the Church. After a year of gardening, the first bit was completed and officially opened by the placement of a statue of Notre Dame de Lourdes on the upside-down Visigoth pillar, Saunière had saved from the old altar. At the ocassion, in the presence of the bishop Monseigneur Billard of Carcassonne, 24 children of the village made First Communion. They did a Tour de Mission, carrying the statue of the Virgin around the entire village in a procession involving all parishioners. At the end of this procession, the statue was installed on the pillar.

 The design of the garden is very explicit, combining geometrical shapes that remind of Sacred Geometry. Closer inspection shows that the layout of the garden perfectly mirrors the layout of the Church.

1. The circle around the Calvaire (16) matches the outline of the back of the Church.
2. The Calvaire (16) in the garden matches the position of the Altar (20) inside the Church
3. The position of ths statue of Notre Dame de Lourdes (7) matches the position of the confessional (19) in the church. Was this the reason that Saunière had the words “‘PENITENCE, PENITENCE” inscribed on the pillar?
4. The Knight’s Stone was found straight in front of the Altar. Saunière later used it as a stepping stone towards the Calvaire (16)  in the exact same position.
5. The Grotto (13) in the garden is in the same position as the “Isoloir” (9), the Secret Room adjacent to the Sacristie. It is generally assumed, Saunière has this room built in 1892 to cover the entrance to the Church’s crypt. What does that say about the Grotto of Mary Magdalene?

Map of the Church Gardens in Rennes-le-Château (Paul Saussez)
1. Church
2. Cemetery (1831 enclosure)
3. Presbytery (12th century)
4. Stable
5. Courtyard
6. Low Walls (1891)
7. Notre Dame de Lourdes (June 1891)
8 Porch (November 1891)
9. Isoloir (Secret Room) (January 1892)
10. Gateway (1894)
11. Reposoir (1894-1895)
12. Gardens (1890-1897)
13. Grotto (1894)
14. Ancient Baptismal Font
15. Ossuary (1895)
16. Calvary (1897)
17. Villa Bethania (1901-1905)
18. Veranda / House Chapel
19. Confessional
20. Altar

©2007-2008 rlcresearch.com, all rights reserved. Drawing copyright Paul Saussez, taken from the book Rennes-le-Château, Saunière’s Secret by Jean-Luc Robin.

In 1897 Saunière finished the works on the church gardens. On the 6th of June the gardens were inaugurated by Monseigneur Billard, the Bishop of Carcasonne on a visit to Rennes-le-Château. The commemorative plaque can still be seen on the Calvaire today.

The stone piedestal and the large cross form the centerpiece of the gardens. The exact placement of the Calvaire must have been very important to Sauniere for he had it erected and broken down again twice at a considerable cost before he was satisfied with the result.

The Dalle des Chevaliers (the Knight’s Stone) that he had discovered lying upside down in his church was used as a stepping stone for the stairs of the Calvaire. He must not have realised what the historic importance was of the stone and it was already greatly worn out when it was re-discovered and salvaged by a local in 1926. An inscription at the top of the piedestal reads:

CHRISTUS AB OMNI MALO PLEBEM SUAM DEFENDIT,
which is a well-known phrase meaning: ‘May Christ protect his people from all evil.

Around the piedestal the inscriptions read: IN CRUCE VITA, IN CRUCE SALUS, AIMONS, SALUONS, RESPECTONS NOTRE CROIX.

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In 1900, the municipal council of Rennes-le-Château’s approved Abbé Saunière’s request to dig a caveau in the cemetery to serve as the last resting place for him and all future village priests. Construction was started in 1901. The caveau consisted of two adjacent separate burial chambers that could each contain 6 coffins. They were dug out in the western wall of the cemetery. Bérenger Saunière was laid to rest in this vault, that he himself had built. The place was marked with a simple concrete tombstone and a cross. Some time later, a stone relief would added with a portrait of Saunière. The portrait however was wrongly copied from a photo of his brother. The two brothers, that were mixed up many times during their lives were now even mixed up in death.

Marie Dénarnaud died in 1953 at the age of 85. She was buried in the same vault, next to the man she had served for so long.

One last ride

In the early morning of 14th September 2004, a substantial police force sealed off the village of Rennes-le-Château. Around 7 o’clock, the remains of Bérenger Saunière where moved to a new tomb where he was laid to rest for the last time below 5 tons of concrete. The decision was taken by Major Jean-François L’Huilier of Rennes-le-Château and Saunière’s descendants, as he explains in this interview and in a French article in regional newspaper La Depêche du Midi (bottom of the page). It’s remarkable L’Huillier talks about descendants. It is well known the Abbé didn’t live like a saint, but this is the first indirect evidence that he actually produced offspring with someone. As a reason for moving his grave, the mayor mentioned “the family and myself could no longer allow the hordes of treasure seekers and tourists to swarm the small village cemetery and violate the graves”. There is now a sturdy lock on the iron gate that, oh irony, Saunière put there himself to keep any spectators away from his own private grave digging. The remains of Marie Dénarnaud still remain in the caveau. The cemetery is opened for all public in the month of November.

One last riddle

Saunière left us with a riddle on the top of the Cross that marked his original grave. There is an inscription reading : INRI with an inversed ‘N”. The inscription refers to the almost identical inscription on the cross at Jesus’ crucifixion: INRI, Iesu Nazarenus Rex Iudeorum (Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews). One person has pointed out that NAZARETH backwards is HTERAZAN, in Hebrew HA TE RATZ AN, which means ‘where is the mysterious room’ So Iesu Nazareth Rex Iudeorum becomes ‘I knew where the king of the world’s mysterious (or secret) room (or place) was’.

©2007-2008 rlcresearch.com, all rights reserved, wills shown with kind permission from Antoine Captier

In 1906, Saunière started construction of the Tour Magdala. The word ‘Magdala’ carries an appropriate double meaning. The gospels mention a village called Magdala in Galilee as the birthplace of Mary Magdalene. In Aramaic, the native tongue of Jesus, the word Magdala means ‘tower’ or ‘fortress’ (Migdal in Hebrew). On the original plans for the tower that Saunière made, he called the tower ‘Tour d’Horloge’. Some say the Tour Magdala looks like a Knight’s tower on a chessboard that needs to be moved in a straight line horizontally or vertically.

The Tour Magdala is a neo-gothic tower that sits on the far west corner of Saunière’s estate. If you climb the narrow spiral staircase to the top of this strange building an exit the little ‘Tourelle’ on the top deck, you are rewarded with an incredibly wide view of the surrounding countryside. It is hard to capture it here in photos or mere words. Many of the places that play a part in the enigma and legends of treasure are visible.

The Tour Magdala served as Saunière’s personal study and library and as such replaced the reposoir after it’s completion in 1906. The wooden housing for his books on the ground floor were made to measure and took a month to complete. In 1907 he seriously started collecting stamps, postcards and books. He sent all his correspondents little metal boxes and asked them to fill them with stamps and send them back to him. From 1908 onwards he directed his attention fully to his vast collection of books. To create order in the stacks of papers, magazines, pamphlets and books he hired Henri Baret a librarian from Castelnaudary, who stayed with him for three months. No receipts or records survive of the colelctions of books and stamps. Most were sold by Marie Dénarnaud after Saunière’s death and we know very little of their content. When the Derain-Raclet bookshop in Lyon went bankrupt around 1950, three books were found that were marked ‘François Béranger Saunière, Priest at: Aude, town of Rennes.’ These works were entitled: ‘the Prophecy of the Popes allotted to St. Malachy’ by Abbé Joseph Maitre, 2) ‘History of the Large Forests of Gaule and Old France’ by L.F. Alfred Maury and 3) “Celtic Monuments, or Research on the Worship of the Stones, Preceded by a note on the Celts and Druids, and followed Celtic etymologies’ by Mr. Camby.

Although the Tour Magdala doesn’t appear to an illustrated treasure map like the church, there are some peculiarities about it. In the last tile, in the extreme west corner of the floor there is a red dot. Though many will argue it’s just a fault in the tile, it does point up to the staircase to the window that points straight into the direction of a ancient grotto, about a mile in the distance called ‘Grotte du Fournet, dite de la Magdeleine’, which translates as ‘The Burial Site of the Magdalene’. The spiral staircase has 22 steps, 22nd July being the feast day of Mary Magdalene. Andrew Gough has an article about this feature.

There is a little chimney on the roof of the tower, connected to the stove at ground level. The exhaust is beautifully modeled in a traditional opening representing the holy trinity. In a straight line through the holy trinity of the chimney lies the mountaintop of Pech Cerda.

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