I hope Valhall doesn’t mind, but I though I would add a bit more to her post as I know something about Rennes-le-Chateau.
Rennes-le-Chateau, is a medieval castle village and a commune in the Aude département, in the Languedoc area in southern France. It is best known for
its beauty, with towering mountains, deep gorges, forests, caves, wild remote plateaus and access to the Mediterranean. It is also likely one way that
crusaders would have travelled to the Holy Land in times gone by.
In recent years, Rennes-le-Chateau, began to become increasingly famous primarily after Bérenger Saunière began to amass a large wealth yet only
having control of a small Church in a remote village. there are three main areas of speculation on how he amassed his wealth.
- Money
trafficking in Spain.
- Spying for Germany.
- The Catholic Church buying his silence.
Now, before you can judge each of the three theories you have to look at the logicality of them all.
He is rumoured to have amassed nearly
one million Francs and was described by Prefet de l'Aude as a "Militant Reactionary" and was highly
involved in the separation between Church and State in France in the later part of the 1800’s.
He was an active Anti-Republican and due to this, it is highly unlikely he would have been involved with Germany as they also had a limited Church
involvement in the period. However, the last one is highly problematic also - Pierre Plantard, an author along with Philippe de Cherisey, created many
manuscripts to help prove his own points about the Priory of Sion. The real task is to figure out which of the manuscripts are real and which are
fakes. An interesting site on the issue is this one:
here.
One of the most important but highly overlooked actions of this man, is his ordering of statues. In recent years, it is claimed that he ordered a
statue of Asmodeus the chief of all demons, to be built to over-look the entrance to his Church. Something, which I have yet to be able to explain in
my own studies on the subject.
Anotehr further imporant piece of information is the cipher that appears in Shugborough Hall's Shepherd Monument, with the letters
"D.O.U.O.S.V.A.V.V.M" which has yet to be translated. Although most likely it would be written in latin like many of his works were. More
information on that can be found
here
An interesting book on the topic is "Bloodline of the Holy Grail" by Laurence Gardner, which makes the Da Vinci Code look like the mis-informed
piece of tripe that it is. In fact, the Da Vinci Code is pretty much a rip off of that book, with less resarch done on the area.