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France: Undiscovered is a nice looking site that reports on unusual Fortean
style events, and takea a particular interest in a 19th century priest in France who built a lavish church, Rennes le Chateau, which is full of still-undeciphered symbols.
Basically there is a lot of lunacy out there (but where isn't there these days?) and there does seem to be quite a lot of persuasive evidence that the subject itself inspires a kind of madness, but once you get beyond the lunacy that has grown up around the subject the facts are quite straightforward.
In the late 19th C a priest called Bérenger Saunière was dispatched by the church to a parish in the middle of nowhere down south of France in Languedoc. This parish, Rennes le Chateau, had very few people and was isolated on the top of a remote hill. Speculation is that Saunière had committed some sort of faux pas and been exiled there by the church but that may not be the case.
Anyway, Sauniàre was apparently very poor, as parish priests often are, but within a short period of time he started spending inordinately large sums of money on renovating the church, building an extravagant tower and houses and generally living a lavish lifestyle apperently beyond his means.
So, essentially in its original form the mystery is: what was the source of this money?
This is just the beginiing of the issue. The matter is further complicated by the decorations of the church itself which are strange to say the least and undoubtedly contain some element of enciphered code, as do gravestones in the churchyard. Unfortunately, as yet there are only theories (some extremely wild) and no actual decodings. It is generally believed that either the code points to heterodox beliefs of Sauniàre's or else point to the source of his wealth. But it could be neither.
One theory (which I don't believe) is that he had discovered evidence that Jesus had not died on the cross but survived and lived the remainder of his life in Languedoc where he died after fathering children with Mary Magdalene (the church is dedicated to her). This theory states that Saunière was blackmailing the church with this evidence and they shunted him off to Rennes to shut him up and pay him off.
So basically that is it — the launch pad of reality. From here on in it's a hall of mirrors and a procession of the damned with the odd light of reason along the way. Saunière had inscribedThis Place is Terribleacroos the lintel of the entrance to the church but he might just as well have inscribedabandon hope (reason ?) all ye who enter here.
An Introduction - Undiscovered, 18th January 2004 (via Boing Boing).
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at 06:25. Last modified on September 28 2006 at 23:42.
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Comments
1: Posted by: A Voice of Sanity | September 5, 2008 6:31 AM
It seems he was actually selling indulgences by mail and that was the source of the money! IIRC he was later removed for that.
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