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In the heart of the “Da Vinci Code”
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The best-seller "Da Vinci Code" is based on a mystery: The enigmatic "treasure" found at the end of the XIXth century by the "abbé Saunière" priest of a little village in the Corbières, Rennes-le-Château.
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Rennes-le-Château
January 24, 1917: A few people are standing in the small churchyard in Rennes-le-Chateau, watching silently as the coffin of Berenger Sauniere is lowered into his grave. Of these people, how many truly know the secret that is being buried with this charismatic priest ?This question was not of much interest to anyone for the 50 years that followed the burial; yet when the story was rediscovered in the 1960s, it awoke the curiosity of many people both in France and abroad.From then on the phenomenon only increased, and led to the writing of many books (some more reliable than others), but unfortunately no solution has ever been found to explain the mystery of Sauniere's sudden wealth
The mysteries of Bérenger Saunière
The life of Bérenger Saunière :
Although good number of enthusiasts of the Rennes-Le-Château affair perfectly knows the life of his famous vicar, Bérenger Saunière, it was necessary to present the life of this outstanding vicar quickly. This page proposes you to discover this fascinating character as well as the essential elements of his life. Thereafter, different pages will allow" you to enter" in the details of his/her/its tumultuous life.
His works and his constructions :
These are the constructions and the realizations of Bérenger Saunière that have the struckest the mind of his contemporaries and the one of the present visitors of the Rennes-Le-Château village.
Of the" Tower Magdala" to the" Béthanie villa ", while passing by the gardens of the church and the domain, one can only wonder about the necessities of his realizations. The survey of the symbolic of these constructions dives us in a surprising world.
Henri Boudet, the vicar of below :
Decidedly, the vicars of the Rennes-Le-Château region didn't finish to surprise us. Henri Boudet cleaned of Rennes-Les-Bains, village neighboring of the one of Rennes-Le-Château and contemporary of Bérenger Sauniere, was also a curious character. It seems unthinkable that the vicar of the "Rennes" of below, didn't have any relations with the vicar of the "Rennes" of in top. This page is going to present you this strange character and, to the picture of sound during Rennes-Le-Château, surpenant.
The Da Vinci Code
is a mystery/ detectivenovel by American author Dan Brown, published in 2003 by Doubleday.
The novel is based on the controversial premise that there is a conspiracy within the Roman Catholic Church to cover up the true story of Jesus. According to this premise, the Vatican knows it is living a lie, but continues to do so to keep itself in power. The novel has helped generate popular interest in speculation concerning the Holy Grail legend and the role of Mary Magdalene in the history of Christianity. Fans have lauded the book as a creative, action-packed and thought-provoking work. Critics, whilst often praising the quality of the storytelling, have described the book as being inaccurate on a number of points, both large and small, and claim that most of the information on the "Fact" page at the front of the book is in fact completely untrue and creates confusion between speculation and fact. From a religious point of view, many critics, citing Dan Brown's own comments in various media interviews, claim that the book is a deliberate attempt to undermine Christianity in favour of a feminist/pagan agenda, and decry the many negative implications about the Roman Catholic Church and Opus Dei. Dan Brown's novel was a smash hit in 2003, even rivaling the sales of the highly popular Harry Potter series [1]. It spawned a number of offspring books and drew glowing reviews from the New York Times, People Magazine and the Washington Post[2]. It also re-ignited interest in the history of the Roman Catholic Church. As well as re-invigorating interest in the church, The Da Vinci Code has also spawned numerous "knockoffs" (as they are referred to by Publishers Weekly) [3], or novels that have a striking resemblance to The Da Vinci Code, including Raymond Khoury's The Last Templar, and The Templar Legacy by Steve Berry.It is a worldwide bestseller with more than 60.5 million copies in print (as of May 2006) and has been translated into 44 languages. It is thought to be the eighth best-selling book of all time.
This book concerns the attempts of Robert Langdon, Professor of Religious Symbology at Harvard University, to solve the murder of renowned curator Jacques Saunière ( seeBérenger Saunière) of the Louvre Museum in Paris. The title of the novel refers, among other things, to the fact that Saunière's body is found in the Denon Wing of the Louvre naked and posed like Leonardo da Vinci's famous drawing, the Vitruvian Man, with a cryptic message written beside his body and a Pentagram drawn on his stomach in his own blood. The interpretation of hidden messages inside Leonardo's famous works, (which relate to the concept of the Sacred feminine) including the Mona Lisa and The Last Supper, figure prominently in the solution to the mystery.
The main conflict in the novel revolves around the solution to two mysteries:
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What secret was Saunière protecting that led to his murder?
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Who is the mastermind behind his murder and the murder of the three other sénéchaux?
The novel has several concurrent storylines that follow different characters throughout different parts of the book. Eventually all the storylines and characters are brought together and resolved in its denouement.
The unraveling of the mystery requires the solution to a series of brain-teasers, including anagrams and number puzzles. The solution itself is found to be intimately connected with the possible location of the Holy Grail and to a mysterious society called the Priory of Sion, as well as to the Knights Templar. The story also involves an exaggerated rendition of the Catholic organization Opus Dei.
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