Summary

Legend
In 1885, a handsome young priest by the name of Bérenger Saunière came to the isolated village of Rennes-le-Château to find a dilapidated church and a poor municipality. He made it his mission to restore the church and eventually, over the following ten years, he did, transforming it into a respectable place of worship. Nor did he stop there. After buying several parcels of adjoining land, he built his incongruous estate: a large villa and grounds, a tower overlooking the valley and the distant Pyrenees, a promenade, and a conservatory that housed a collection of orange trees and exotic pets. He stocked the cellar of the villa with wines and liquors, fitted out himself and his lifelong housekeeper, Marie Dénarnaud, with imported Parisian clothing, and generally behaved as if he were a landed aristocrat rather than a country priest.

Where did a country priest get so much wealth? Speculations range from the practical to the outlandish. Some believe he may have stumbled upon a lost treasure of the Knights Templar, who once occupied the region. An even more tantalizing possibility is that he discovered coded documents hidden in the structure of his church, documents so threatening to the Catholic Church that he was paid to keep silent. Others insist his wealth came solely from the honoraria he received from his own enterprising solicitation of masses. At his death in 1917, his secrets died with him.

Yet there is one other person who may have known everything—Marie Dénarnaud, his housekeeper and, some say, his lover.