Rennes-le-Château: Church of Mary Magdalene

Trip to Aude: Day 4:
The third and final pilgrimage spot for the conspiracy tourist at Rennes-le-Château is the Church of Mary Magdalene. This was a ruined 8th century church which Father Saunière renovated with his secret funds around 1897. This church features prominently in the first few chapters of Holy Blood, Holy Grail, because it was while renovating the ancient alter of this church, and subsequent diggings around the church, that he was supposed to have discovered the awful secret at the heart of Holy Blood, Holy Grail and Da Vinci Code: the secret of how to write a bestseller that takes the world by storm. Too bad the good father was not much of a writer, and it had to wait for Dan Brown to do the needful a century later.

Mary Magdalene, as you may or may not know, depending on how much of the Bible or Da Vinci Code you have read, was the first among all of Jesus's disciples. He is said to have loved her above all others, and revealed teachings to her that he did not to the others. She stood by him in his darkest hours, when all the macho male disciples had fled in terror. After the death of Jesus, she was sidelined by the macho male MCP disciples, particularly St. Peter and St Paul, although ideally she should have been their leader. She was even vilified as a reformed prostitute by the later church, although this has since been overturned by the Vatican. All this is undisputed fact. But DVC and HBHG go even further by claiming that Jesus and Mary Magdalene had actually married and had a baby, and that she had escaped to the South of France after the Crucifixion, carrying the child in her womb. And that the child founded the Merovingian Dynasty. What Saunière was supposed to have found is proof that King Dagobert II of the Merovingian Dynasty claimed his ancestry to Jesus and Mary Magdalene. At least, that is how I remember the plot. I could have mixed it up somewhere. The plots were so convoluted and it's such a long time since I read those books.

Anyhow, here I was at that famous church, which is to one side of the museum.

The first thing that strikes you is this inscription above the church door:  Terribilis est locus iste  - "This is a place of awe"

Rennes-le-Château: Saunière's Home

Trip to Aude: Day4
After you've passed through Saunière Museum (see previous post), you enter the house that Father Saunière built. The one that started off the whole conspiracy theory business. It's a nice, attractive little bourgeois home with a modest garden and an orangery. The only 'extravagant' touch is the slightly fanciful 'Tour Magdala' (Magdalene Tower), a stubby tower and a walkway that he build on the side overlooking the cliff. But still, it is hardly a 19th century French Xanadu. It is the sort of home that a prosperous doctor or lawyer of that epoch might have built himself. But it was possibly a bit too much for the humble folk of this tiny hamlet circa 1905. They wondered where their impecunious padre got the money from. His pay from the church certainly wasn't enough to cover construction costs. It started tongues wagging. And they still haven't stopped wagging, nearly two centuries on. It has funded an enormous conspiracy theory business. Dan Brown has probably constructed several homes in Southern California a great deal more extravagant than this one, from the proceeds of Da Vinci Code, as have his publisher and the producers of the movie version. Heck, even the writers of Holy Blood, Holy Grail must have made a small fortune out of it, despite their small-minded and avaricious lawsuit against Dan Brown (As some sort of a novelist myself, I have strong feelings about it. In my view, Dan Brown went way beyond the demands of normal decency by mentioning HBHG right in the text of the novel, instead of just in the acknowledgements. Millions around the world bought HBHG just because of that. Why, even I bought my copy after reading of it in DVC. Instead of being satisfied with that, M/S  Baigent, Leigh and Lincoln decided they wanted a slice of the DVC millions too, and brought a copyright infringement lawsuit. Luckily, they lost. Otherwise novelists around the world would have been facing the consequences today.)
Besides these two, there have been at the last count over a thousand other conspiracy theory books in English and French, all centered on the little village of Rennes-le-Château and Father Saunière. This village too has done well out its notoriety. This otherwise insignificant village gets hundreds of thousands of tourists each year, all idiots like me, who give a bounce to the local economy.
Indeed, nearly everyone has done well out of this. All except poor old Father Saunière, who died in penury in 1917, harried by the church in ecclesiastical trials.

Anyhow, here are the pics of the infamous Saunière Home:
The first thing you see on leaving the museum is Father Saunière's grave, and the garden.

Rennes-le-Château: The Saunière Museum

Trip to Aude: Day4
We woke up the the sound of birdsong at the Lavaldieu. Blandine was most annoyed. She finds nothing romantic about birdsong. She also finds nothing romantic about waking up in terror, several times at night, to the sound of ivy scraping against the window pane in the wind. She also finds nothing romantic in me finding romantic the things that wake her up. Blandine likes her sleep.
But she did find romantic the leisurely breakfast on the lawns of the Lavaldieu, gazing up at Bugarach enveloped in the clouds, the birds hopping on the lawn, and me hopping in and out of the breakfast room to get her toasts and things from the 100% certified organic breakfast buffet. At least we were agreed on that.
After breakfast, we hopped back into the car to drive over to Rennes-le-Château, to explore it in greater depth than had been possible the previous evening.
What mysteries awaited us, in this most mysterious of places in France?
The very first conundrum hit us right in the car park of the Saunière  Museum. It was this dark, circular stone tower, with an arrow signboard planted in front of it. The signboard carried the enigmatic letters: W C

Rennes le Château at dusk

Trip to Aude: Day 3 (Late Evening)

It was nearing 6 PM when we drove into the town of Couiza, at the foot of the bewitched hill. Fireworks were going off in my head and goosebumps were crawling up and down my skin. This was it, the highlight of the trip to Aude; probably the highlight of my trip to France. I'd been looking forward to this day ever since I read Holy Blood, Holy Grail, many years ago. We were just meters away from the mysterious village of Rennes le Château, and the mystic mountain of Bugarach.

If we turned left and drove up what a French writer has called la collien envoûtée (the bewitched hill), we would land up at the village of Rennes le Château with its dark secrets. If we instead took a fork and drove the other direction, we would land up at that hippy El Dorado, the upside-down mountain of Bugarach.

We did neither. The first thing we do is search for a B&B to stay the night, said Blandine caustically. She seemed distinctly unmoved by the surroundings. I dutifully complied. I popped into a tourist information booth and made inquiries for a suitable place in Couiza. Minutes later, I was running screaming back to the car. There was an amazingly pretty B&B not far off -- and guess what, it was not in Couiza, but in Rennes-la-Château itself. AND it had a magnificent view of Bugarach.

In the event, that proved to be only partly true. We took the winding road up the bewitched hill. Shortly before the village, we came to a fork, pointing left to Buarach. There was also signboard that said 'Lavaldieu'. That was the name of the B&B we were going to. I was a bit disappointed. It seemed it was not in the actual village of Rennes-la-Château, but in the postal district of the same name. But we took the road anyway.

We took a short drive through fairly spectacular countryside. Looking back, we could see the village of Rennes-la-Château perched on its dark hill. Looking ahead, we could see Bugarach gleaming in the sun. Scrubby pastures rolled off on all sides, populated with just the odd cudster.

Rennes-le-Château perched on the bewitched hill