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Rennes le Chateau and the mystery of the Cathars

The Cathars were a medieval sect which sought to achieve great spiritual purity and which believed in 'dualism', that God and the Devil reside within each one of us.

Their belief offended the Catholic Church who in 1209 sent Christian Crusaders led by Simon de Montfort to crush the Cathare strongholds and slaughter the Cathare people without mercy.

The city of Rhedae was a major stronghold but was put to blood and fire by the forces of Simon de Montfort and though Rhedae began to recover, it was then pillaged by soldiers of fortune, besieged by Count Henri de Trastamarre of Spain and beset by plague, reduced to almost nothing and leaving the inhabitants of Carcassonne, Rhedae's twin to tell the tail.

Where once the strong and powerful city of Rhedae stood, there remained only a small village - the village of Rennes-le-Chateau.

The account resumes in 1891 when an impoverished village priest discovered two parchments found in a sculptured Visigothic pillar of the altar in Rennes-le-Chateau. It is suspected that these parchments were brought to Rennes-le-Chateau by three Cathare Councillors who had escaped the Christian Crusades. The parchments' secret had been kept and handed down from priest to priest until they were considered too dangerous to carry and were secreted in the pillar with clues left to their whereabouts.

When the village priest found the parchments, they made him fabulously wealthy and were the source of further mysteries. What treasure did these parchments reveal and what great secret did they conceal? Is it the whereabouts of Visigothic gold? Is it an object of great power, such as the Holy Grail? Or even important documents revealing that Christ did not die on the cross, but was still alive as late as 45 AD?

More on the mystery can be found in 'Holy Blood, Holy Grail' & 'Key to the Sacred Pattern, the untold story of Rennes-le-Chateau' by Henry Lincoln and the website The Mystery of Rennes le Chateau. Dan Brown's best seller The Da Vinci Code cleverly mixes fact and fiction to create a terrific thriller. Simon Cox's, Cracking The Da Vinci Code, amongst other things, shows how Rennes-le-Chateau and the historic area around Couiza is tied to its plot through coded links and riddles.

There's also a fantastic board game called The Da Vinci Game with codes, riddles and anagrams. You may be interested in the link below with Research and Discoveries too.