The various investigations into the source of Sauniers wealth received a sudden boost from the involvement of Henry Lincoln. Here he is seen in Jean Luc Robin’s restaurant which used to be called “The Blue Apples” but is now known as “Le Jardin de Marie”, presumably after Saunier’s housekeeper. Jean Luc himself was accused of inventing many of the stories about Rennes le Château to encourage people to visit the village and therefore drum up business for the restaurant. Sadly Jean Luc died in 2008.

Sacred Geometry

It was Henry Lincoln who called the pattern of hills around Rennes Le Château, “sacred geometry”, maintaining that their peaks formed a “perfect pentacle”.

He might have been inspired by the fact that one valley on the plain is identified on the French ordinance survey map(IGN) as La Val Dieu, the valley of God.Lincoln was an actor turned scriptwriter who wrote early episodes of the UK TV series “Dr Who”. Whilst on holiday local to Rennes read the book “Le Trésor Maudit” by Géraude de Sède, which explored the various legends about Sauniers wealth.

The documents

The book contained copies of three documents which were purported to the ones found by Saunier. The book also gave details of the Haupol gravestones.

In Lincoln’s own words he had finished reading the book and was retrospectively scanning the documents when he noticed that some letters were marginally raised above others. The documents were written in Latin.
Lincoln apparently needed to use a ruler to identify all the raised letters.

What he discovered was phrase not in Latin but in French.

“a dagobert II roi est ce tresor et il est la mort”

The best translation of this into english is probably “King Dagobert II has this treasure and it is death” which is not particularly helpful, but it was enough to grab Lincoln’s attention.

What it did do was demand an enquiry into the identity of King Dagobert II. Did such a King exist? What was his story?

The Triangle

Lincoln also became interested in several alignments he detected on the document.

The alignments came from the tiny triangle at the top of the document and three crosses (marked in yellow).

The pentangle

Lincoln then went on to surmise that the alignments suggested that there was a pentagon hidden in the diagram. It was the only way he could make sense of the third cross.

The holiday was no longer a holiday. Using his contacts in british television and his ability to tell a good story Lincoln decided to create a series of tv programmes which screened in the 1980’s and made this tiny village a tourist attraction.

In preparation for the programmes Lincoln studied every factor of the gravestones and copies of parchments. Even at this early stage he came to the conclusion that the treasure was something which undermined orthodox Christian beliefs. He speculated on the fact that it could be a genealogy which showed the Jesus had children, that identified Jesus’ burial place, thereby proving that the new testament stories were false or that Jesus never existed, a theme which has been picked up by many others.

Interpretations

He examined both headstone and the gravestone of Marie de Negre.

The most important conclusion he made was based on the gravestone. the central potion REDDIS REGIS CELLIS ARCIS, though it is in ungrammatical latin it can be interpreted as “At Royal Rhedae in the Storerooms of the Fortress”. Lincoln made no mention of the use of accents which as far as I know do not exist in latin, perhaps because the only word having any meaning in french is regis (Governs).

Far more interesting are the inscriptions down the side of the stone. If the greek letters are replaced by their latin equivalents the message becomes Et in a✠rkad✠ia ego. Again there was no mention of the meaning of the crosses even though crosses played such a big part in the analysis of the first document. To me it is significant that the crosses are in a similar location to two of the crosses on the document and suggests that full account should be taken of these two crosses.

“Et in Arcaia Ego” is the title of a famous painting by Nicholas Poussin, a possession of the French royal family and a copy of which had been purchased by Saunier during his trip to Paris.

Gerade De Sade

He directly contacted Géraude de Sède, the author of the book which had attracted his interest. Unknown to Lincoln, de Séde had another life as a right wing activist and used the publicity created by Lincoln to promote a secret society called the “Priory of Sion”. The organisation supposedly sought to protect the possessors of the “holy blood”, descendants of King Dagobert who they claimed was the last of the Merovingians.

It has never been firmly established whether or not this organisation does in fact exist and if so so what its objectives might be.

The activities of de Séde and his associate Pierre Plantard have complicated the story ever since and Plantard ultimately was discredited by a French government investigation which declared everything he was associated with as fraudulent. Obliquely this condemnation included the “Saunier” documents and everything de Séde wrote about Rennes le Château This has ultimately reflected on the credibility of Henry Lincoln’s work.