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This Place Is Terrible

© Sharon K. West

One does not normally pour a fortune into building at a location described as "terrible." But one man did, and he even inscribed "this place is terrible" on the gate of his church. His name was Fr. Berenger Sauniere. The place is the village of Rennes le Chateau in the foothills of the Pyrenees Mountains in France.

This bizarre story begins with Abbe Antoine Bigou who was the priest in the village a century before Fr. Sauniere arrived in 1885. Abbe Bigou was apparently the one who came into possession of two parchments and hid them in a hollow Visigoth pillar under the altar in the church in Rennes le Chateau. Fr. Sauniere found these parchments during restoration of the church in 1891. Their origins and what is written on them have been the subject of mystery and intrigue ever since, including suspicious deaths of those in possession of them.

Were the parchments merely Latin texts of the Gospels or a code? Translated, one parchment reads: "Shepherdess no temptation that Poussin Tenniers hold the key peace 681 by the cross and this horse of God I complete this daemon of the guardian at noon blue apples."

The other parchment says: "To Dagobert II King and to Sion belongs this treasure and he is there dead."

Seeking the meaning of these words, Fr. Sauniere went to the mayor of Rennes Le Chateau and found that he could not decipher the meaning either. The mayor sent him to the Bishop at Carcassone who was just as puzzled. He sent Sauniere on to Paris where he came into contact with a man named Emile Hoffet. Hoffet was a priest in training as well as an expert in cryptography. While in Paris, Sauniere reportedly had an affair with the opera singer, Emma Calve. Calve and Hoffet circulated in the company of various occult organizations in Paris at that time.

Did Hoffet and Sauniere decipher the parchments? No one knows for sure. Yet upon Sauniere's return to Rennes le Chateau, he found a headstone in the churchyard beside the church that had been erected by Abbe Bigou. The cryptic message on the stone related to the writing on the parchments. Sauniere defaced the stone, removing this public display of the writing. Many have speculated that this action and his strange behavior from that time forward indicated that he did, in fact, discover something for Sauniere suddenly became a very wealthy man. Some believe he may have found treasure from the Merovingians or the lost treasure of the Knights Templar. Others think he may gotten his wealth through the secrets of alchemy or might even have been extorting money from his parishioners through blackmail. The source of his wealth has never been brought to light.

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