On 17th January 1781 the noble Marie de Negri d'Ables, Marquise d'Hautpoul-Blanchefort, on her death bed, entrusted her “secret” giving a parchment to her confessor, abbé Antoine Bigou, priest of Rennes-le-Château since 1774.

On the indications of his penitent, the abbé visited the ruins of the ancient church of St. Peter, situated on the south side of the village. Near a south wall of the sacristy were found a slab that swivelled round to reveal a "passage" and in this passage a small hiding place in which were two wooden rollers sealed with wax. The abbé was eager to climb this secret staircase, which was littered with bits of bone. Inside the rollers he discovered four parchments which had the litanies of Notre Dame and two passages from the Gospels, one from St. Luke (chapter VI) and the other from St. John (chapter XII) written on them. Certain anomalies in the lettering indicated a “coded message”. After translating them with the aid of the parchment left to him by the deceased marquise, abbé Bigou decided it should no longer be transmitted from hand to hand or from mouth to ear. With the political situation becoming more and more uncertain, he decided on a public message, which he engraved on the stone and whose complement for decoding would be hidden as in the past. Thus he undertook to draft the “funerary” inscription of the marquise.

It was 1790. Eight years of work had amounted to thirteen lines of text with a double meaning. The hidden text was the anagram of the visible text, which contained in itself the means of its decipherment. A funerary slab was engraved and set up in the cemetery. This was the message.

Seeing its ruinous state, the ancient church of Saint Peter threatened to be entirely destroyed. So, abbé Bigou decided to place the parchments in the church of Saint Madeleine. To this effect, he emptied the right-hand pillar of the Visigothic altar, which would be the receptacle for the wooden rollers. He turned the tombstone, which was found in front of the altar, face down on the ground. Thus the secret entrusted by the last marquise d'Hautpoul-Blanchefort was shared between a funerary inscription and some hidden parchments.

This secret of Rennes-le-Château was not completely unknown to some people of the Revolution such as Sieyes or Ruhl, and not a great deal is known except that – he was a genealogist devoted to Sieyes and Bonaparte; – he was a friend of the Counts of Fleury In any case, abbé Bigou was interrogated; then, on the order of J.P. Lacroix, on implementation of the law especially the mysterious abbé Pichon, of whom of 26 August 1792, regarded as a refractory priest. So he left Rennes-le-Château at the beginning of September 1792, and went into exile to Sabadell, near Barcelona (Spain), where he died on 2 March 1794.

After the Revolution the Fleury family, owners of part of the village of Bains (which became Rennes-les-Bains), tried to establish a station for thermal cures. The remarkable springs, which had already been in use for rheumatism of all kinds since remote antiquity, could become workable again with considerable development. The constructions in this friendly village would cost important sums of money, incompatible with the revenues of the Fleury family. Suddenly, for no valid reason, (officially it was given as phylloxera), ruin! A rumour – which nowadays is still unverifiable – ran throughout the region: “the Fleury family knew the secret of Blanchefort” ...

In 1872 a holy man became the priest of Rennes-les-Bains. His name is still remembered by all: abbé Henri Boudet, modest of origins and of conditions. This priest was well loved in his parish. However, he attracted the attention of the bishopric of Carcassonne by the countless gifts that he made to the poor who came to his door. A first work of abbé Boudet, entitled: “La vraie langue celtique”, must have intrigued Mgr. Billard, the bishop of Carcassonne, and also a doctor of Rennes-les-Bains, Paul Courrent, But a new book published in 1914 by this same priest: “Lazare, veni foras” was to signal his expulsion. His last work was withdrawn from the public and a dark affair of the presbytery made him change his parish. Unable to do any more good around him, abbé Boudet died of sorrow a year after his departure, in spite of the attentive cares and the visits of Dr. Courrent.

Abbé Saunière was born into a poor family at Montazels, five kilometres from Rennes-le-Château. In front of the house where he was born there is still a fountain of dolphins sculpted by an XVIIIth century ecclesiastic.

On 1st June 1886 he arrived at Rennes-le-Château where he had been appointed. Lodging at the presbytery, he took his meals with the Denarnaud family at the bottom of the village. Soon the Denarnauds came and settled in the presbytery. Marie, their 18-year-old daughter, a hat worker at Esperaza, became the priest's servant. She never left him again. However, it was a miserable existence at the presbytery. The carefully kept accounts book is a litany of debts where “bread = 0,40 Fr”, tolls like a great bell. The income column is empty...

In 1891, abbé Saunière received two foreign visitors declaring themselves to be representatives of a mysterious society: The Prieure de Sion. They made him aware of the existence in his parish of a “secret” and the extraordinary legend of a “treasure”, the strange inscription existing in the cemetery indicating the way to it. Being a good priest, the poor cure did not fail to inform his bishop, Mgr. Billard, who was quick to honor him with a visit the same month. His Highness carelessly slipped a word on the exemplary life and extreme generosity of abbé Boudet into the conversation, then said a few words about a tradition of “parchment in the church of Saint Madeleine”. Finally, on leaving, Mgr. lent abbé Saunière the Rennes-les-Bains priest's book, “La vraie langue celtique”.

Abbé Saunière read the book left by Mgr. Billard, and did not really know what to think. Disturbed by a group of facts, “meanwhile, he looked for” . . . After a month of fruitless digging, the priest concluded that a hiding place did exist: it ought to be found in the foundations of the church of Saint Madeleine. Realizing that diggings of this nature would be impossible to carry out in a discreet manner, and they could be very expensive, he announced to the local council that a treasure of the Revolution was to be found hidden in the church.

Some members of the local council then remembered having heard their parents talk of the strange case of abbé Bigou. So, a sum of 1400 francs (a considerable amount for a village of 100 or 110 inhabitants) was assigned for this research under the official pretext of “repairs” to the church. M. Babou, a mason from Couiza, received the double mission of directing the works and “supervising all discoveries”. At the beginning of February 1891, the mason, together with abbé Saunière, who almost never left the works, discovered the parchments in the hollow pillar of the altar. There were mixed reactions to this “treasure of the Revolution” from the local council, who were hoping for something else. The abbé must have emphasized the extreme care with which the documents had been hidden, thus indicating that they were of some value. Impossible to trade them in the district, he offered to get a good price for them in Paris. The mayor, keen to recover the sum of 1400 francs, let himself be convinced. However, he set down two conditions to the priest: that this sale would return at least the sum advanced for the church; – that a copy of the documents would be taken, So abbé Saunière went to Carcassonne to Mgr. Billard, who, faced with the documents, advised his priest to make this agreement with the mayor. Even so, the bishop advanced abbé Saunière the money for the trip, so that he could go to Paris to meet someone called abbé Hoffet, a very young priest and a remarkable cryptographer of religious manuscripts. Before the 1939 war, the genealogist Henri Lobineau went to abbé Hoffet, a free priest at the church of the Trinity, at his home at 7, rue Blanche, Paris:

“. . . abbé Hoffet did not seem to be personally interested in the research for hidden treasures, wrote Lobineau, so it is surprising that his name should be involved with the enterprises at Rennes and Gisors. It was he who allowed abbé Saunière to find the secret of Rennes. It was he also who, visiting Gisors fifty years later, gave the keeper, Roger Lhomoy, the information regarding the famous 30 coffers deposited in a chapel of Saint Catherine. Abbé Hoffet was also very alert, despite being over 80 years old, and all his life he had tried to establish a legitimate descendancy of Dagobert II, the saint, that is to say a Merovingian line up to the present day. So the reason for these facts might be understood, if it was known that Rennes and Gisors hinge on one name: Blanchefort, formerly Blancafort or Blanquefort. Thus the Rennes affair is opened by the last marquise of Blanchefort and the presence of the Templars.”

Thus, in bringing the parchments of Rennes-le-Château to abbé Hoffet, abbé Saunière had released the “enigma of the Razes”, the terror of the kings of France since Blanche of Castille, and all that rested on four parchments of the Litanies to Notre Dame and of the coded Gospels of Luke, then John. The text was decoded by abbé Hoffet, who claimed in return to receive as payment “the two parchments of the Litanies”. What could abbé Saunière, who went “to Paris to sell the parchments”, say? In the final count, these two documents stayed in the hands of abbé Hoffet and remained there until his death. The library of the deceased was then broken up. Some people think that today the documents can be found in the possession of the Marist fathers, others that they were given to the Merovingian descendants Rennes-le-Château.

On the advice of abbé Hoffet, the priest of Rennes went to the Louvre Museum to look at the works of Poussin and Teniers for, after decoding, the text clearly delivered the following message:

BERGERE PAS DE TENTATION, QUE POUSSIN TENIERS GARDE LE CLEF – PAX DCLXXXI – PAR LA CROIX ET CE CHEVAL DE DIEU – J'ACHEVE CE DAEMON DE GARDIEN A MIDI – POMMES BLEUES.

After having consulted specialists on the life of the two painters as well, assured of keeping the secret and above all, the treasure of Rennes in his possession, he decided to return to his parish. Passing through Carcassonne at the end of February 1891, abbé Saunière stopped at his bishop's to give him an account of his journey and also to borrow, against the value of the treasure, a sum of 2,000 francs that the local council would receive as being the product of the sale of the parchments.

Assisted by Marie Denarnaud, his first preoccupation was to hammer out the tombstone of the Marquise de Blanchefort. Then he travelled the countryside of the “Patiaces” and the “Pla de la Coste” by himself. After several days he found signs pointing in the right direction: the famous standing stone called “the horse of God” and the cross on the ridge 681 toises (4086 feet) from the “bergère” of the church at Rennes-les-Bains. Then he went to abbé Boudet to ask his advice about this “guardian spirit”, for in March 1891, abbé Saunière's life changed completely.

During the next two years, the priest of Rennes travelled to Spain, Switzerland, Germany and Belgium. But it is not known to which towns he went or the identity of his contacts. In fact all the letters that he sent to Rennes were always posted from the French frontier. It was to Marie that he posted his money orders; it was she who collected the money from the post office at Couiza, From whom did he subsequently receive his orders to transform the church of Saint Madeleine? No-one has ever been able to say that. The shadow of the mysterious Prieure de Sion hovered over Rennes and the abbé obeyed faithfully. He took on the responsibility of the renovation of the church, the architecture of which he modified profoundly (moving and adding windows, adding a rear sacristy which was reached via secret room, putting a spiral staircase in a niche in the wall to climb up to the pulpit, etc.) finally, the interior decor was completely renewed. All the signs which marked the trail made by abbé Bigou were destroyed.

These works were finished in 1897 for the second visit of Mgr. Billard. His Highness received a sum of money (not counted) a small part of which came as reimbursement for the amount advanced in 1891. Following this visit, abbé Saunière erected the Calvary on the esplanade (cost: 11,000 gold francs) and got started with the verandah, the ring road, the villa Bethanie and the tour Magdala (cost: 1,000,000 gold francs). The enormity of the expenses is attributable to the requirements of the priest, who resumed the works until the buildings and grounds, placed at the correct orientation, conveyed the right symbol, the one laid down by the secret masters.

Perched at the end of the ring road, the Magdala tower dominates a vast landscape. The abbé established his library here, above which is a low floor where he installed his bedroom. The abbé did not entertain in this room, but he did invite in. Magdala is an ivory tower twice over. In the uproar of the world that the ignoramus returns to his sciences and the fisherman to his net.

By contrast, the doors of the villa Bethania were always open. It was the royal court. Above the building a Christ had his arms wide open. Welcoming all who passed by, with its fresh beds and table always furnished, the villa very quickly became a house of jubilation. Personalities of all kinds followed one another: Emma Calvé, the great singer, the pretty Viscountess B. Artois, as well as other ladies whose wealthy families still live in the region.

The lavish life of abbé Saunière began in 1902. He kept rare animals, monkeys, parakeets, etc, ducks fed on sponge fingers. Consumption of various alcohols among which were: a monthly 70-litre cask of rum. At the end of 1902, reimbursement to Mgr. Billard of a sum (counted) of one million two hundred thousand gold francs. But, soon, everything was to change, for Mgr. Billard died the following year. Mgr. Beausejour was placed at the head of the diocese of Carcassonne. At the same time at Rennes-les-Bains, a certain doctor Paul Courrent took an interest in the strange life of abbé Boudet. First clash of arms between the priest of Rennes-le-Chateau and his bishop. Ordered to go on a sacerdotal retreat, abbé Saunière obeyed. He was also subjected to some close questioning the result of which was never in doubt seeing that in January 1908, Mgr. Beausejour intended to place his subordinate in the parish of Coustouge (deanery of Durban). Abbé Saunière refused with some cynicism: “My interests keep me here.”

Repeated summons by the bishop of Carcassonne to which the priest replied by presenting doctor's certificates, some dispensed by Dr Courrent, others by the doctor from Couiza, Dr Roche.

Finally, war weary, Mgr. Beausejour asked him to justify where the money came from. The priest's response: “Those from whom I received these sums have not given me permission to divulge their names.” The interpretation of this rejoinder has been the subject of several hypotheses. The source of the money he used was:

- maybe in reparation for past faults on the part of the sinners;

- maybe from an amicable agreement with a secret society

Unable to examine the receipts, Mgr. Beausejour asked him for his expenses. The priest sent some falsified accounts, which brought the cost of the works to the sum of 193,000 gold francs.

Convinced he was “trafficking in masses at 0.25 Fr.”, in 1911 abbé Saunière was declared suspens a divinis. A new priest appointed in his place had to lodge at Couiza. Since the separation of Church and State in France, the presbytery was the property of the village. Now, Marie Denarnaud had the tenancy. Moreover, abbé Saunière organized a chapel in the verandah of the villa Bethania, where the people remained faithful to his offices. The new priest whose role was reduced to celebrating baptisms, marriages and burials, lost courage and left.

Abbé Saunière lodged an appeal at the Court of Rome by the intervention of Canon Huguet, an ecclesiastical lawyer. The appeal was favourable to the priest of Rennes, whose rights were re-established. This period, which extended from 1906 to 1912, marked a time of relative austerity for abbé Saunière. His expenses were curbed for three reasons: he had exhausted the treasure of gold pieces and small objects; he had to sell some large pieces, to get them out of the water and of the vase where they were found, that being in a dangerous place far away from his parish. The most practical way was that of a raised stone. Descent by a rope became the only way possible following a cave-in. The passage became impracticable without danger of death. To remedy this, he had to open a way through a ventilation shaft (Spes una poenitentiam). Sensing that lie was the object of surveillance by the Bishopric and the doctor of Rennes-les-Bains made him redouble his caution.

With regard to the passage of gold to foreign lands, sensitive business dealings can be traced with the Petitjean bank of 12 rue Faubourg, Montmartre in Paris. The local council of Rennes-le-Chateau, which considered itself to be the victim of a fraud after the affair of the “treasure of the Revolution”, could not say anything as the hiding place was not on its estate. In exchange, at the Separation of Church and State it got its own back. Each year, from 1906, abbé Saunière secretly sent a sum of 5000 gold francs in reparation for the damages caused to the tombstone of the deceased Marquise and the harm done to the church of Saint Madeleine by his transformations.

In 1906, some secret diggers exhumed the slab, which covered the tomb of Sigebert IV, which the abbé had taken from the church and, with caution, had placed face down on the ground in front of the Calvary (the stone with the two horses).

In 1915 abbé Boudet died after his transfer from Rennes-les-Bains, required by the Bishopric of Carcassonne, who in its disagreement with abbé Saunière, did not consider itself to be beaten, Mgr. Beausejour re-opened the affair again at the Court of Rome. It was only in 1916 that the pontifical judgement, suddenly establishing the connection between this miserable affair of “trafficking masses” and the history of the “secret” of abbé Bigou in 1790, pronounced its verdict. Abbé Saunière was punished with a suspens a divinis the reasons being defined as follows: “revolt against the religious authority” and “insubordination towards his superiors”.

Against all expectation, this condemnation marked a return high living. At the end of 1916 the priest of Rennes took a big decision: he wanted to preach “a new religion” and “to undertake a crusade in the departement”. He dismissed the representative of the Order of Sion, who had come to pay him a visit. He claimed that he would acknowledge no other orders except those of Jean XXIII, the last Merovingian descendant. He began to assemble 8,000,000 gold francs in bank notes. Panic reigned at the Bishopric in Carcassonne while the prelates at the Vatican worried about this situation. The Prieure de Sion welcomed the affair coldly and the political circles, in the middle of war, considered this maneouver was undesirable.

Abbé Saunière took no notice of the warnings, and on 5 January he signed the order for:

- putting a road across the mountain in the direction of Couiza to take the automobile that he planned to buy;

- the piping of water to all the inhabitants of the village at the same time as supplying a pool for the “baptisms of his religion”;

- the construction of a chapel of his design in the village, and of a tower more than 50 meters high from where he would speak to the faithful.

Twelve days later, on 17 January, the feast day of Saint Anthony the Hermit, abbé Saunière, suffering from cirrhosis of the liver, had a stroke. He was cared for by doctor Paul Courrent, who even slept at the villa Bethania. The priest asked for Jean XXIII the Merovingian to be near him. But he could not get there. Surrounded by the veneration or the curiosity of his parishioners, he died on 22 January. His body was displayed on the ring road as he had requested. On coming to meditate at the remains, everyone then – no one really knows why – took a red pompom from the cover that protected the body.

High-ranking prelates, grand initiates and political men gave the same sigh of relief; “it was the lesser evil” said one of the assistants at the interment. And Bethania closed its doors.

Since then, with commando-like stealth, the dragoons came to sniff out the trail of the “rebellious priest”. Some wore a soutane, other's the shield of a rose and a Cross on their signet ring. Finally some with various degrees. They pillaged the library, stealing a good part of the correspondence, tearing out pages from the accounts books; helped themselves to the stamps and broke the shield-plate of the presbytery which had a message on the back. Although its content was known, its interpretation has always defied sagacity. And then what? His tombstone was broken in three.

The name of Bérenger Saunière was cursed and expelled from memories. Marie let things go. From being a coquette, she became austere. She was never seen to leave Rennes-le-Château again, not even to go to Couiza . . . However, could not the 8,000,000 francs in bank notes, that abbé Saunière had left her, have allowed her to live in opulence until the end of her days? She was happy to stay on, waiting for the visit of this famous Jean XXIII, who never came!

Twenty eight years waiting with millions in a travelling bag . . . to end up at the catastrophe of 1945. For the drama was there: in order to flush out suspect fortunes which had been built during the Occupation, the Bidault government had decreed the exchange of bank notes. Marie refused to change anything; so she burnt nearly 8,000,000 francs in notes in her garden. From then on she was poor and her only fortune was in the tour Magdala and the villa Bethania, which she traded for a life with M. Noël Corbu. Between 1946 and 1952, all the sums paid amounted to 950,000 old francs. On 12 January 1952, Marie Denarnaud was suddenly paralyzed and unable to speak. Leaning over her, M. Noël Corbu saw Marie's lips move. Had she made an effort to reveal the secret of the Razes and its treasure? Did she even know it? A priest from Carcassonne has revealed that he had these three words from Marie: “Bread, Salt, Vase”. It seems that this summed up everything and the wait for a “visitor”.

As her only heir, M. Noël Corbu transformed the villa Bethania into a hotel-restaurant. Visitors found a better welcome with him. He noted with a watchful eye the numerous researchers who came to Rennes-le-Château each year to drill, pick, dig up his property with no logic or method.

There is no doubt that there is a treasure of the Razes. Even its size is known; it is constituted of two parts, one of 19,500,000 gold francs and the other of 25,000,000 of large objects and unrefined gold. Despite the numerous penitents who have tasted the manna, it is believed, from a well authorized source, that some millions of gold still remain.

Everyone asks the same question: where did this mysterious deposit come from? Those who don't know reply: Queen Blanche of Castille. The few initiates know well that this Blanche of Castille had no rights over the treasure of the Razes, no more than the Saint King Louis, and that neither one nor the other could succeed in laying siege to this manna. However, there is one part of the truth in this version for this queen certainly did attempt an action to make away with the legendary treasure.

As to the origin of the treasure, a head answers this question. It had formerly been sculpted in a menhir at Rennes-les-Bains, at the place called Pla de la Coste or Cap des Bruyeres. Nowadays this figure is visible henceforth on the wall of the parish presbytery. It represents Saint Dagobert II, King of Austrasia.

One part of this treasure would be that of this king; another part would be that of the capital of the Razes: Rhedae or Rennes at the time of the Visigoths. Thus 25,000,000 gold francs constituted the treasure of King Dagobert II, and 19,500,000 gold francs that of the treasure of Rennes. The secret of the Razes is linked to that of a treasure of which the Blancheforts were the guardians. The history is given by the decoding of the “parchments of the church of Saint Madeleine” with a genealogy of the descendants up to 11 July 1659. A genealogy and a complementary history were found in the hand of abbé Bigou. There were added some notes of abbé Hoffet who gave us the descendancy of Francois III, through his son Jean XX, born 28 July 1784, until the outbreak of the Great War.

The history of the Razes has been drawn up already by Henri Lobineau, in 1956. We will go over it again below according to the full decoding. Today it is still asked how Adrien de Valois and abbé Pichon could have known about it. It is true that the same question could be asked about Poussin and Teniers?

Sigebert III, son of Dagobert I and his 3rd wife, Ragnetrude, became king of Austrasia in 632. In 646, he married Immachilde who, a year later, gave him a daughter by the name of Blichilde. It was only later that a son was to be born of this union: Dagobert II.

On the death of Sigebert III, in 656, Dagobert II was shorn and sent to exile in Ireland, by Grimoald, his mayor of the Palace, who coveted the throne for his own son. Raised in a monastery and married in Ireland to Mathilde, great niece of Saint Bridget, he had three daughters: Irmine, Bridget and Ragnetrude. Widowed, he was sent by Saint Wilfrid to the Visigothic Razes to marry the goddaughter of whom the saint was the tutor. Her name was Gisele. Three children were to be born of this second union Rathilde, Adele and Sigebert IV.

Thanks to Saint Wilfrid, Dagobert I retrieved his kingdom. Made king of Austrasia in 674, he prepared a war to conquer the Aquitaine. Beforehand he had a large part of his treasure transported to the Razes. At that time the comte was his wife's apanage. Soon, in 676, she died, giving birth to Sigebert IV. Meanwhile, Pepin le Gros who coveted the crown, had Dagobert II assassinated in 679. The little Sigebert IV was saved by his sister Irmine, and brought to the Razes In 681 by his great uncle Levis known as Bellison (the warrior). Sigebert IV was surnamed Plant-Ard (Burning Offshoot) and on the death of his grandfather, Bera II, became the 3rd count of the Razes. He then barely escaped the attempts of Charles Martel to take him again and make him... “king”.

He was never king. However, by rights it was to him that the crown of Austrasia belonged, as well as that of the Franks after the death of Childeric III in 755, deposed by Pepin le Bref, who usurped the throne. The invasion of the Franks, then the Saracens, into the Razes made Sigebert IV, his son Sigebert V and his grandson Bera III into prince-hermits living in caves in a hillside near Rhedae. Six floors of galleries and huge rooms still exist. Henri Lobineau said he had been through them in 1920 with Dr. Paul Courrent. In all, more than 670m of one gallery flooded with between 70cm to 1 m I0em of water. Our prince-hermits were also buried in the church of Saint Madeleine in Rhedae. A tombstone was placed over their communal grave. It was the stone known as “to the two horses” commemorating the flight in 681, of Sigebert IV, the offspring of the new line.

Bera III, known as Trounko (the Strong) married to Olba, had two sons: Guillemon called Braou (Young bull), married twice; Oliba. who became priest of Alet in 810.

Guillemin became the 5th Count of Razes. He founded a line: Bera IV le Bolo (the Fat), married Rornille, 6th Count of Razes, founder of the abbéy at Alet. Oba, a daughter married to Regnier de Gennes, children: Olivier and Aude. Oliba, who by his two marriages started the family line of Carcassonne, four sons: Arnulf, Louis, Oliba and Acfred.

Bera IV was the father of Argila known as Rocko (the Hard), 7th Count of Razes, married to Reverga. He was father of a daughter: Rataude, who received as her dowry by her marriage to Alaric, the estate of Blancafort, family of the House of Blanchefort. It was this line from which came the famous Bertrand de Blanchefort, Grand Master of the Order of the Temple, as well as the Marquise de Blanchefort from whom abb6 Bigou received the “secret” on 17 January 1781, at Rennes-le-Château.

Bera V, 8th Count of Razes, was son of Argila and in his turn father of two children: Hilderic 1st, 9th count of Razes and of Rhedae; Bernard known as Pilu (the Hairy), 11th Count of Razes.

The Carolingian Kings had made various attempts to control the Razes, which remained independent. But Sigebert VI, known as Ursus, or the Bear, 10th Count of Razes, was proclaimed Count of Rhedae and Duke of the Razes. He obtained Rotilde la Belle, one of the daughters of Charles II, known as the Bald, and made her his wife. Then, on the death of Charles II, he prepared a plot with Bernard de Gothie and Bernard d'Auvergne against Louis II, known as the Stammerer, his son-in-law. Proclaimed “King Ursus”, he found he was faced with the opposition of the Catholic Church because, since Sigebert IV, all the descendants were Arians, and the Papacy had not pardoned them of their interdict against them “taking a king outside the Carolingian branch”. Vanquished at Poitiers, in 881, Sigebert VI found refuge in independent Brittany, where he died in 884. He was buried there in a monastery at Redon. All his wealth in the Razes was lost, but his son, Guillemon II, kept the fictitious title of Count of Rhedae and Duke of Razes.

This stifled Merovingian revolt also sounded the salvo of the reign of the Carolingians and it seeded trouble in the conscience of the prelates.

Guillemon II, married to Idoine, had three children: Guillemon III, who took refuge in England in 914, known as Plant-Ard, Duke of Razes; Bera called the Young, stock of the English branch of the Plantas. Finally, a daughter, Gemege, married to Arnaud, Duke of Poher in 894. From this marriage was born Wathuedoi, who, in 916, married Havoire, daughter of Alain III the Great, the stock that was to give Alain IV the Matted Beard, who became Duke of Brittany. Then Melusine, who married Raymondin de Poitiers (the Lusignan branch).

Guillemon III died in England in 936. Little is known about his son Arnaud. His grandson Bera VI became “Architect” in England and ten of his descendants practised this “Art of Building”. The return to Brittany was not made until 939. The three children of Bera VI were: Sigebert VII, the first to bear the whole name of Plantan Duke of Razes. He died after his son Arnaud, known as Amor or the Amorous, stock I the Plant-Amor of Geneva (Switzerland). And finally, Bernard, a priest. The children of Sigebert VII appear thus: Hugues 1st, who married a young Greek, Anne, daughter of a ship owner. From this marriage came two twins: Jean 1st and Hugues (who died young). Anne, widowed, returned to her country where she founded monastery with the aid of her son Jean. She was thought of as a saint, whose feast day was celebrated on 13 June outside the Church. The three daughters of Sigebert VII Claudia, married an Hautpoul; Ides, who became a nun in Greece; Agnes married Hugues II of Lusignan, known as the Well Loved.

Jean 1st married Isabel, by whom he had two sons: Jean II, married Anne and died.

1054; Hugh known as Long Nose, married Agnes la Belle, daughter of Eustache, Sgr Jumieges in 1009. From this union was born one son, Eustache, adopted by Emicul Agnes' second husband. Her first husband, Hugues, was assassinated in 1015. Thus Ernicule became Count of Boulogne. Eustache 1st inherited the title and marred Mahan de Louvain, from whom was descended Godefroy VI the Valiant, who became King of Jerusalem. From his marriage to Beatrix, 7th child of Gozelon the Great, Jean III, son of Jean II, had four children: Hugues II Beau Clerc, Beatrix, Isabel and Pierre, Sgr de Planta, who had eight children.

Hugues II had only two children; Jean IV, married to Ermende (sister of Eudi Gouyon), and Beatrix, married to Eudes Gouyon. The son who was born from the union started the stock of the Gouyon-Matignon, who would be the Princes of Monaco in the XVIIIth century.

Of the three children of Jean IV, only Pierre 1st married. Of his two sisters, Jeanne died at a year old and Isabel became a nun in 1109. From the marriage of Pierre 1st so Jean V with Marguerite Leufroy, sister of Henry Leufroy and daughter of Chary Leufroy, the architect of Gisors and also father-in-law of Robert de Belesme, there was only a son: Jean VI, who married Idoine de Gisors in 1156. From this union was to be born Pierre II, who married Marguerite; Louis, married to Guilete d'Eix or d'ES (Bresse); Jean, abbé of the Prieure de Sion from 1220 to 1239.

Jean VII, son of Pierre II, made his first marriage with Richilde de Rueil in 1228. had a daughter Marguerite, who married Roncelin de Fos, a knight from Provence.

1240 he made a second marriage with Elisende de Gisors with whom he had three song Jean VIII, Robert, who died at Abbéville in 1309, and Pierre, a monk at Saint-Den from 1268 to 1311.

At the time of Jean VII, Queen Blanche of Castille tried to make away with the treasure of Rhedae over which she claimed to have rights.

Jean VIII married to Isabel in 1270, had eight children: Richilde, Isabel, married in 1318 to Jean de Beaumarchais, whose grandson, Guillaume, was married in 1390 to Marguerite de Bourges; Alice, Agnes, Jean IX, Gisele, Louis, born in 1328. He was Lord of Fenetrange and abbe of the monastery of Gorze from 1360 to 1377. Pierre known as I'Ancien or Avitus, who died in 1389 in the Languedoc, was also called “Plantavitus”.

Of the marriage of Jean IX with Rosa or Rosemonde de Guildet, two sons are known (a daughter died young): Jean X, born in 1338 and died at the age of 11; Louis 1st born in 1341 and married in 1386, who had only one son, Jean XI, born in 1389 and died in 1446.

Jean XI married twice. The first time in 1411, but this union was sterile; the second time in 1428, which saw the birth of Jean XII.

Jean XII, born in 1430, died in 1501, from his marriage, contracted in 1458, left three children: Agnes, married to Francois de Montlezun, had a daughter, Marie; Jean XIII, known as the lame; Isabel, married to Philippe de Lizarzu, and who saw the birth of a son, Galiot de Liseras..

Jean XIII, born in 1460 and died between 1546 and 1548, was married twice.

- to Perette Le Bourgoing, by whom he had Anne, married to d'Igny, and a son, Philippe, born in 1510 and married in 1530 to Anne de Bressay; Sophie, married to Henri de Bellancourt (family: a daughter, Marie, who married Charles de Fresneau); Gisele, married to Robert de Fesche, who saw the birth of one daughter, Charlotte, who in her turn married Jean de Boulan;

- to Marguerite de Biche de Clery with whom he had: Jean XIV in 1514, then two twins, Isabel and Hugues, called Ades or even Plantades, who returned to the Languedoc in 1533. Finally, Louis, who became a Protestant in 1556, and who emigrated to Geneva with his cousin Frangois Le Bourgoing.

Jean XIV married the young Marie de Saint-Clair-sur-Epte in 1546. She was married to Jean XIV by her tutor Jacques, Count of Saint-Clair, who had squandered her dowry. Then Jean XIV came to Nivernais, in 1560; he was almost ruined and was only to be assured of his living by the goodwill of his Le Bourgoing relatives. Jean XIV had one son, Jean XV, and a daughter, Isabel.

After having been architects, the Plantards cultivated vines from Jerusalem to Saint-John Le Blanc for the Prieure de Sion. Then, from 1560, partially ruined, they took refuge at Nivernais. Finally, during the course of July 1560, Mazarin stripped them completely.

At this date the text of the first manuscript of Rennes-le-Château stops. The second manuscript was made by abbé Bigou around 1790. He gives a genealogy which begins in 1548 and finishes in 1789. He enumerates the descendants from Jean XV to Jean XX (born 28 July 1784 from Francois and Benoite Martin).

The following genealogy, from 1780 to 1915, that is to say from Jean XXI to Jean XXIll, was made by Henri Lobineau. Nevertheless, there is a deed of 1871 where Pierre IV withdrew from his marriage in favour of his bother Charles 1st, born in 1841.

Such was the secret of the Razes, a genealogy and a treasure that made a millionaire priest of abbé Bérenger Saunière.