RENNES-LE-CHATEAU
Mysterious village in France, near the Pyrenees. Allegedly contains an underground fabulous treasure. In 1885, a cleric named Berenger Sauniere was assigned to the parish. While restoring the church, Sauniere found a series of parchments. There were two genealogies dating from 1244AD and 1644AD and more recent documents containing a series of cyphers and codes, some fantastically complex. Sauniere took his discovery to higher powers, who set about study. One of the simplest codes translated as "To Dagobert II King and to Sion belongs this treasure and he is there dead". As a result of this discovery, Sauniere somehow became involved in both the upper echelons of French society and an increasingly bizarre sequence of restoration of the parish church and the vicinity. After uncovering an underground crypt, supposedly containing skeletons, Sauniere spent a fortune refurbishing the village with garish and outre symbolism to the fore. Yet his money came from a source that has never been established. It has been intimated that the treasure was no less than the Holy Grail itself. Modern theorists have suggested it was not the grail, but secrets protected by the Priory of Zion, whose leaders laid claim to the literal bloodline of Christ himself.
Source: The Giant Book of Conspiracies by Jonathan Vankin and John Whelan

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