The existence of a Seigneurial burial site in the Church of Saint Mary Magdalene in Rennes-le-Château is attested to by historical documents. In their wills, Georges, Antoine, and Henry d'Haupoul, in particular, owners of the site, clearly expressed their wish to be buried in the tomb of their predecessors. In 1705 and 1724, the burials of Anne Delsol and Henry Du Vernet took place in the "tomb of the lords ."
In search of Bérenger Saunière's treasure, several researchers undertook excavation campaigns in the church, including the team of Doctor André Malacan, from Chalabre, in 1956, and, from 1959, Jacques Cholet, public works foreman at the RATP.
In February 1956, the investigations of Dr. Malacan and his team led to the discovery, at the bottom of the choir steps, one meter deep and in a layer of lime, of bones and a skull with a notch in the parietal vault. This skull, kept for many years in the researcher's family, was returned to the town hall of Rennes-le-Château in 2014, then subjected to carbon 14 dating which calibrated its age between 1281 and 1396.1
Jacques Cholet's research was the subject of a detailed written report. The first excavations he carried out, under and behind the altar, along the axis and in front of the altar, yielded no results. Resuming his research a few years later, he had to remove the tiles from the church floor, starting from the pulpit. Once again, he found nothing. Continuing to the back of the church, digging down to the virgin floor, he discovered the shape of numerous empty vaults and, resuming the same work along the south wall, he obtained a roughly similar result, with the only difference being that all the bones which were missing from the other side had been placed there pell-mell.
Let us add the fact that he and Rolland Domergue dug in vain, in search of underground passages, an 18-meter long tunnel, starting from Mr. Domergue's property and ending under the choir of the church. Due to a lack of sufficient support, the ground sagged and the work was interrupted before reaching its goal.
In April 2001 and March 2002, at the request of the mayor of Rennes-Le-Château, Robert Eisenman, professor of Middle Eastern religions at California State University, world-renowned for his work on the Dead Sea Scrolls, undertook research using a non-invasive underground detection system (High Resolution Ground Penetrating Radar). This work showed the presence, under the floor of the church in particular, of anomalies which were not attributed to geological and natural facts but were interpreted as being structures due to human intervention. ("GPR data ... reveal the internal structure of the church floor and a possible burial crypt(s)..."). In 2005, a Belgian specialist laboratory, to which the architect Paul Saussez, author of RENNES-LE-CHATEAU...au tombeau des Seigneurs (ARKXEOS – CD-Rom)] had sent the graphs of three scans of the Ground Penetrating Radar by Robert Eisenman's team in the choir of the church, communicated the following result: "In the central part of the profile, the absence of information below 3 meters depth could indicate, with all reservations, the presence of a cavity".
Since then and to this day, no authorisation for archaeological research in the basement of the church has been granted by the Regional Directorate of Cultural Affairs.
The Tomb of the Lords has still not revealed its secrets and it is therefore only possible to continue to conjecture about the location of its access and its nature.
ITS LOCATION
What information do we have that might help us regain the lost access to it?
So far, the document that provides the most precise geographical clue is that contained in the register of baptisms, marriages and burials of the parish, concerning the burial of Dame Anne Dalsol in 1705 "in the church of this place at the tomb of the lords which is near the baluster...»
On August 1, 1529, noble Georges d'Haupoul, grandfather of François Pierre d'Haupoul, made a will at the Château de Règnes before Me Julien Papilaudi, a notary living in Coustaussa. The lord of the place declared that he would choose his burial place in the chapel of the Church of the Magdalene at the tomb of his predecessors.2
This information is important because it confirms that in 1529, Saint Mary Magdalene Church was no longer a castle chapel but a parish church, with an interior chapel.
The first written document that mentions "Beate Maria de Reddis" is an inventory of the knights of the Order of Saint John of Jerusalem, dated 1185, preserved in the departmental archives of Haute-Garonne. The date of the consecration in 1059 by the Archbishop of Narbonne, Guifred, is notably put forward by Louis Alban Buzairies in his work Notices historiques sur les châteaux de l'arrondissement de Limoux (Aude) published in 1867, on the basis of an extract from the monumental Histoire Générale de Languedoc by the Benedictine fathers Claude Devic and Joseph Vaissète where we can read:
"Guifred, little moved by these offers, secretly removed the relics of Saints Justus and Pastor, and transported them to a simple parish of his diocese, where he transferred at the same time his seat and his chapter, with the silverware, the sacred vessels, and the ornaments of the cathedral, which he thereby deprived of the offerings that the nobles, the people, and the penitents, were accustomed to making there, and which he disposed of in favour of his soldiers. The viscount, very displeased with this conduct, complained to Guifred, and so earnestly requested him to return to Narbonne with the relics that this prelate finally promised to enter into an agreement on the matter. The archbishop soon after withdrew his word; which prompted Viscountess Garsinde, his first cousin, who was piqued by it, to go and find him to summon him to keep her, and to bring him to an end to his differences with her husband. Guifred only responded to this lady's requests with threats accompanied by an oath to take the relics of Saints Justus and Pastor to a foreign country from where they would never return. Garsinde, fearing the effect of these threats, then went secretly to the church where the archbishop had placed the relics, and which was not yet consecrated; and after seizing them, she put them back in the cathedral'.
This account, set in 1058, is far too vague to allow us to deduce that it was in Rennes-le-Château that Guifred took refuge with the relics of Saint-Just and Saint-Pasteur and that he took advantage of this opportunity to consecrate the church there.
Can we assume that "Beate Maria de Reddis" changed its name when it was transformed into a parish church? Although no document has yet been found to establish the date of this event, it could have taken place after the destruction of the church of Saint Peyre by the Aragonese rovers of Henry of Trastamare in 1362.
In his general study of the project for the restoration of the church roofs dated November 1995, the architect Michel Verrot, from the Union in Haute-Garonne, argues that the forms and the apparatus of the chevet are characteristic of the Romanesque architecture of Lombard influence which appeared in Mediterranean Languedoc during the first half of the 11th century. The metrological measurements he carried out allowed him to recognise, in this part of the monument, a single construction campaign encompassing the base of the bell tower (to a height of 5.30m), the straight bay called "of choir", the small trapezoidal bay and the apse. He dates the enlargement of the building to the 17th (or 18th) century, the date 1646, inscribed in the right cartouche located at the entrance to the church, therefore corresponding, in all likelihood, to this construction campaign. [Michel Verrot – 1995 – Cover restoration project General study – p. 8].
It then seems obvious that the chapel mentioned by Georges d'Haupoul, in his will written in 1529, could only have been built in the oldest part of the Saint Mary Magdalene church and more probably on the very site of the pulpit staircase. The interior brick shell, about 7cm thick, itself covered with a thick plaster coating, applied to the old masonry during the work carried out at the request of Bérenger Saunière, very probably concealed niches under the arches. This hypothesis was perfectly developed by Paul Saussez, in his CD rom, RENNES-LE-CHATEAU...au tombeau des seigneurs (ARKXOS), published in 2004.Plan by Paul SAUSSEZ (with his kind permission).
It is therefore highly probable that access to the tomb of the lords of the church of Saint Mary Magdalene in Rennes-le-Château was located near the balustrade of the choir3 which was a fixed landmark, and in front of the altar of the chapel mentioned in the will of Georges d'Haupoul of 1529. Was this altar dismantled in order to install a pulpit, shortly after the decision was taken to permanently close the tomb in the 18th century? By installing his new pulpit to the left of the staircase leading to it, Bérenger Saunière definitively obscured access to the tomb.
NATURE OF THE TOMB OF THE LORDS
In Rennes-le-Château, no indisputable source can attest, to date, to the presence of a crypt under the church. The only testimony that mentions it is that of Antoine Fages, former choirboy of Abbe Bérenger Saunière, reported in 1974 by René Descadeillas on pages 57 and 58 of his Mythologie du trésor de Rennes: "He (Antoine Fages) remembered," he said, "having seen the abbot open the paving of the nave and clear in the central aisle, at the height of the pulpit, the underground entrance to a crypt."
Although the analysis of the church floor has been investigated using ground radar and the results support the presence of a cavity under the choir, no archaeological excavation has been able to determine its nature. Can we, however, speak of a crypt?
Originally intended to hide the tombs of martyrs from the eyes of the profane and, later, to enclose the bodies of saints, crypts were originally located outside city walls, in the cemetery sector. Fragments of relics were then deposited in the churches built inside the cities, this practice spreading widely from the 6th century before becoming generalised in the 8th century. The crypts were most often equipped with two staircases, allowing one to descend on one side and ascend on the other to avoid any disruption to the procession. Their purpose was to allow pilgrims to come and implore the assistance of the saints whose bodies were placed there. In contradiction with Roman law and the Justinian Code, which had confirmed the prohibitions concerning burials in churches, burial ad sanctos in buildings with tombs of martyrs or venerated relics developed between the 4th and 6th centuries. The Church tried to channel, over time, the growing desire of the population to be buried in the sanctuary. Several councils, such as that of Braga (563) supported the prohibition of burial in places of worship. Bishop Theodulf of Orleans4 complained, in 797, of seeing churches transformed into cemeteries:
"In our regions reigns the ancient custom of burying the dead in the church, and most of the places given over to divine worship and prepared to offer sacrifices to God are transformed into cemeteries or polyandriums.3
This textual information, found in several documents relating to burials, is mentioned by Christian Sapin: "... on the left hand when entering", "joining the baluster of the choir", "in front of the large confessional", "in the middle of the chapel" etc." [- Inside or outside the church: what choice for burial? In: Archaeology of the Christian cemetery. Proceedings of the 2nd ARCHEA conference (Orléans, September 29-October 1, 1994)Tours: Federation for the publication of the Archaeological Review of Central France, 1996. (Supplement to the Archaeological Review of Central France).4]
Therefore, we want this practice to be avoided from now on. Let no one be buried in the church, except perhaps a priest or some other just man who, by the merit of his life, has acquired during his lifetime the place of his deceased body. (Mansi, vol. 13, col. 997).
Charlemagne confirmed, a few years later, in canon 14 of the Synod of Aix-la-Chapelle of 809, that no one would be buried in churches. Thus, Carolingian legislation promoted the community of canons who, with their bishops, founded new specific burial sites: cemeteries and community buildings. This development led to a reduction in burials in churches for a short time only. With the decree of Gratian in the 12th century and the Council of Cognac in 1255 which justified the burial of lay faithful in churches, burials then returned to the nave and the side chapels.
Several technical responses to the increase in requests for burial in churches and the lack of space were then provided. The first consisted of "making space" by collecting the oldest bones and placing them on top of the last body that had just been placed in the vault. The second was developed from the end of the 12th century through the use of rotten vaults to accelerate the defleshing process. Michel Colardelle gives the following definition: "The rotter is a device intended, inside a vault, to facilitate the disappearance of organic elements from the burial (coffin, "soft parts" of the body), generally made up of metal, organic (wood) or masonry supports installed to support the burials, or metal or masonry grilles "5
In the active medieval phase of the rotting house, corpses were enclosed in their shrouds. From the 17th century and especially in the 18th century, these vaults began to accommodate coffins6. In the church of Sainte-Mesme, in the Yvelines, built in the village where the saint, converted to Christianity, was killed by her brother Mesmin on the orders of her father, the pagan king Dordanus, in the 4th century, the rotten vault known as the "choir" sheds new light on the enigmatic tomb of the lords of Rennes-le-Château."
The choir vault was accessed via a 0.47m x 0.61m slab on the floor, beneath which is a staircase of eight masonry steps leading to a vestibule. This vertical passage, 1.33m high and 0.97m wide, allows access to the vault itself, which is oriented east-west. A slab was originally intended to block the entrance to this rot pit, 3.18m deep and 3.25m wide, with a hemispherical vault 2.50m high at its summit. It contains two parallel tanks, 3.18m x 1.26m, 0.79m deep, separated by a low wall of limed rubble 0.40m thick, which probably served from the beginning as a central support point for the dead. On the two walls, at the base of the vaults, at the height of a peripheral wall, nine holes constituted the anchor points of the nine cross pieces, now disappeared, on which the bodies were placed.7.[Descriptive terminology of ancient and medieval burials, section: rotten pits, Supplement to the Archaeological Review ofCenter, 1996, vol. 11, p. 309]. 6Philippe Charlier, The medieval rotten pits of the parish church of Sainte-Mesme (Yvelines); architectural and osteo-archaeological study, 2nd international pathography conference, Loches, April 2007.7]. [Funeral rites and the feeling of death: from the rotten vault to the coffin crypt Beauce, Hurepoix and Gâtinais (13th-19th centuries) -Jacques GÉLIS - Jean-Jaques IMMEL - 2017 - Essonne and Hurepoix - SHAEH Bulletin].
Diagram of the choir vault, Sainte-Mesme church - reconstruction by Philippe Charlier
In the church of Rennes-le-Château, the knights' slab, which measures 0.78m wide by 1.34m long, therefore very probably concealed access to the lord's tomb. And because, obviously, the collective memory of the village has preserved no trace of the presence of the tomb of a saint or a martyr under the floor of its church, it is highly probable that the primitive building, as the first count's chapel of the castle of Rennes, was not erected on a sacred hypogeum, existing before the construction of this chapel. The dedication of the Castelrennais sanctuary to Mary and then Mary Magdalene pleads only, in fact, in favour of the deposit of relics of the Saint during the consecration.
Let us recall that in the report of the pastoral visit made by Monseigneur de la Bouillerie on September 12, 1856, Father Barthélémy Pons, to the question: are there relics in the sacred stone? replied: yes,I believe so. It is more likely that it was built on old structures remaining from the original seigneurial residence, which seems to be confirmed by the discoveries of Jacques Cholet: under the pulpit staircase, he discovered another staircase leading down to the cemetery and, under the floor of the sacristy, the beginning of a staircase heading south, with roughly hewn steps, which was the width of the entrance to the sacristy.
For example, the Saint-Baudille chapel of the Château d'Ampuis, built on a stronghold occupied since Roman times in the Rhône department, was erected on the site of an old dovecote, itself founded on an icehouse. Even if archaeological research carried out on certain sites such as that of La Gayole in La Celle (Démians d'Archimbaud et al., 1995) or that of the Church of the Trinity in Callas (Boyer, Février, 1963) have highlighted the establishment of a church in a pagan mausoleum, this development gave rise to the removal of the graves which were previously inside8 .The explanation for this "cleaning" of the places can be found, among other places, in the book Judicia Theodori, Discipulus Umbrensium, penitential from the end of the 8th century, where we can read,8Codou Yann, Colin Marie-Geneviève, Le Nézet-Célestin Monique, Fauduet Isabelle, Odenhardt-Donvez Isa, The Christianization of the countryside (4th-8th centuries). In: Gallia, volume 64, 2007. pp. 57-83].
1 La Dépêche du Midi, article from July 6, 2015: Rennes-le-Château]. [The pierced skull reveals its mystery.
2 [https://www.rennes-le-chateau-doc.fr/Villes%20Villages/ville%20rennes%20le %20chateau/eglise/images/Testament_Georges_dHaupoul_1529.pdf].
Among the poems of Théodulf, bishop of Orléans, delegated in 798 by Charlemagne to visit Narbonne Gaul as Missus Dominicus, is a piece which bears the title of an itinerary which contains the verses concerning Reddae "Inde revisentes te, Carcassona, Redasque Moenibus inferimus nos, cito, Narbo tuis ".1 2.