French researcher Jean Brunelin has made some astonishing discoveries on the big bas relief in the church of Abbé Saunière in Rennes-le-Château. This enormous fresco on the west wall of the church was made-to-order for the priest and has puzzled researchers for almost 100 years now. Jean, with the help of friend and researcher Jean-Pierre Garcia, managed to get approval from the community council to make a series of extremely close-up photos of the fresco using special lights, revealing every little detail of the paintings on both sides of the relief.

Jean Brunelin has been investigating ever since Robert Charoux’s book guided him to the little village 40 years ago. Having worked as a professional journalist and photographer for many years, Jean has a huge photo library and is an expert on the terrain around Rennes-le-Château and Rennes-les-Bains.

In 2006 he did a series of close-up photographs of the bas-relief on Saunière’s altar with Marie-Madeleine. In the paintwork he revealed a hidden miniature station of the cross and a miniature book. It was this discovery that gave him the idea that Saunière might have applied a similar technique in his biggest work.

It seems Saunière personally signed his work. Brunelin was puzzled by a little box painted behind the head of the baluster. Some have referred to this as depicting the Ark of the Covenant but Brunelin wasn’t convinced. A search for old French farmer funrniture taught him that this box most probably represents a box with a slide in the middle in which people used to keep salt in Saunière’s time. The very object was in fact even called a ‘Saunière’ in French, making it probable the priest introduced this feature as a gimmick referring to his own name. Anyone who uses an automatic translator to turn French texts on Rennes-le-Château into English, will have noticed that Saunière, consistenly turns out as ’saltbox’.

According to Brunelin, a cartoon story is told on this fresco, hidden in plain sight. Some of the images he discovered are really remarkable, like this serpent, that has been painted in great detail. There are many other animals and artefacts displayed on the fresco. Features from the region feature in small miniature paintings, like the peculiar rock displayed in the background of the large painting of the Crucifixion in Abbé Boudet’s church in Rennes-les-Bains. There are also famliar stories on display here. Jean mentions the example of Charlot, the hero from Philippe de Chérisey’s ‘Circuit’. Charlot follows a tunnel underground until he reaches a fork. He decides to take the left tunnel to discover a treasure and a tomb. The hole, the fork and the tomb at the end of the left tunnel appear to have been painted in miniatures on the fresco.

Jean Brunelin has only just started his quest to uncover all the miniatures left to us by Abbé Saunière. No doubt, many interesting discoveries will follow in the next couple of months. The big photo of the elbow-shaped rock, taken near Rennes-le-Château, might be proof that Saunière painted an actual landscape within walking distance of his church.

Continuing research of Jean Brunelin on Jean-Pierre Garcia’s forum
French interview with Jean Brunelin on Terre de Rhedae

©2007-2008 rlcresearch.com, all rights reserved. Photos copyright Jean Brunelin, displayed here with kind permission.

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 tower (échauguette) 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 was 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, Saunière 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 collections of books and stamps. Most were sold or given away 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 inside the tower 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.

©2007-2008 rlcresearch.com, all rights reserved. Panorama copyright Gilles Vidal.

One of the many Banks that Saunière corresponded with was the Bank Fritz Dörge, 4 Kossuth Lajos Utca in Budapest. It has led to much speculation about his dealings with the Habsburgs, that had there base in Hungary. It is claimed by some that Saunière travelled to Hungary during some of the many documented times the priest was away from his parish.

Italian researcher Mariano Tomatis went to Budapest and took these pictures of what used to be the Bank Fritz Dörge.

©2007-2008 rlcresearch.com, all rights reserved, photos copyright Mariano Tomatis, reproduced here with kind permisson

In 1995, French researcher André Douzet discovered a topographical model of the Holy Places from the beginning of the 20th century. In an envelope, taped to the bottom of the model he found a number of letters and specifications, allegedly written by Bérenger Saunière to the model maker. In one letter Saunière talks about the specifications for the model. In a second letter that was recently published he talks about a second copy of the model intended for another priest in an unknown location.

The Model illustrates the primary sites associated with the biblical Passion of Christ in Jerusalem, including the location of two notable tombs; that of Jesus Christ and his uncle, Joseph of Armathea. The model is a clay pre-production copy, intended to be made in brass. The correspondence suggests that the end product was never finished. Saunière died before it could be produced. Douzet suspected Saunière had wanted to leave a last clue. The topography didn’t match the sites in the Holy Land the model said to depict. For years he fruitlessly tried to place the model in the Rennes-le-Château region. It was only when he wanted to make a copy of the model for exposition at the Villa Bethania that he recognised a feature on the negative plastic mould: the Roc Redon, near the ruined village of Perillos.

The village of Perillos was once occupied by the Lords of Perillos, who counted among them the illustrous Ramon de Perillos, Grandmaster of the Order of the Knights of Malta. Perillos was part of the parish of Durban-Corbières. A number of familiar priests headed that parish. Both Antoine Gélis and Henri Boudet were once priest in Durban. Locals of the village remember Saunière visiting certain families and having an interest in their archives.

Today Perillos lies abandoned in one of the roughest and most barren landscapes in France. The closest inhabited place is Opoul-Perillos. In search of what it could be Saunière had wanted to tell about Perillos, Douzet stumbled upon a notary register from the 1632, in which the royal notary Courtade described the transfer of land from Spain to France as a result of Mazarin’s Treaty of the Pyrenees. On one of its pages, it mentioned in a small paragraph a ground that contained a piece of land which, administratively, was untouchable, non-transmissible, on which it was forbidden to cut or collect wood, stones or remove anything else from it. Even the lords of Perillos were subject to this law. Furthermore, the land couldn’t be sold. It was a closed enclave, without access, within the grounds of the lords of Perillos. They had to guard it, but weren’t allowed to manage it. It didn’t belong to them and in no manner were they to intervene or make use of it. It has been documented that also Cassini had a more than average interest in the area. This hero of France, known for his famous Cassini-map did the first ever topographical survey of France. He spent almost 1½ years in Opoul, which is an extraordinary amount of time for a small territory, relative to the rest of France that he had to map. He lived in modest conditions in Opoul, despite the fact that he normally lived in luxury. Despite all the time he spent there, he did not provide a detailed survey of Perillos. According to Douzet, he left the area where the tombs are empty on his Cassini map. Armed with the Courtade document and the model, Douzet claims he found the two tombs indicated on the model. He visited the tomb, described as ‘Tomb of Joseph of Arimathea’ and found some coins, nails and cups inside. He found the ‘Tomb of Christ’ sealed shut with a round stone of 2 metres in diameter.

In August 2008, a French researcher came forward with evidence that the claims proves that the two tombs are a hoax.

Perillos on Google Maps

The landscape of Perillos is impressive regardless of any possibly hidden secret there. The plains are overlooked by the magnificent plateau of Opoul, that once housed a castle with a garisson and a small community. It’s not hard to imagine why anyone would hide a secret here. The area is ridden with caves and cravasses. It would take years to systematically search this piece of land. The history of Perillos and any possible links to the Mystery of Rennes-le-Château are investigated in incredible detail by Société Perillos, the research society of André Douzet and Philip Coppens.
©2007-2008 rlcresearch.com, all rights reserved

Photos of Perillos

This week, Société Perillos finally published one of the letters that were found with the famous Saunière Model. This concludes 13 years of uncertainty about the authenticity of this model.

The letter contains general comments about the model and the implementation of certain requested details. Intriguingly at the very end of the letter, Saunière names an unknown priest in an unknown town who would be the receiver of the second model:

                          Rennes-le-Château le…..

Cher monsieur,

Je vous remercie de votre dernière lettre.
Voici les renseignements que je vous
donne en pièces séparées. Ce sont les
cartes et les vues conformes à mes
explications précédentes pour le moulage.
Vous voudrez bien me faire savoir si
ma commande est susceptible d’être
agrée puisque ces détails obligent à
modifier ce projet et son devis.
Je compte que vous veillerez à ce que
ceci améliore l’aspect et les
informations attendues sur le relief des
terrains, mesures et dimensions totales.
Je vous demande de faire
parvenir, comme convenu à la
commande, l’autre modèle à
mon confrère Monsieur l’abbé
….. curé doyen de……

The model is pivotal in the theory involving Saunière’s dealings in the ruined village of Perillos.

Read the full article about this on Société Perillos. 

©2007-2008 rlcresearch.com, all rights reserved, photo of the letter copyright Société Perillos