This article, written by Roger Crouquet, Visite a une ville morte: Rennes-le-Château, autrefois Capitale du Comte de Razès, Aujourd'hui bourgade abandonne was published in the Belgian magazine Le Soir illustré (Number 819, March 1948). It is possibly the earliest feature article about Rennes-le-Château. The Original Article.

(from our special report…)

Rennes-le-Château

February ... 1948.

The state of abandonment in which many French towns and villages find themselves is one of the most moving aspects of this veritable drama of the countryside that we have been witnessing now for many a long year.

Each year, French countryfolk in their thousands leave their birthplaces and make their way to the industrial agglomerations or large cities of which they have heard but distant rumours.

There is no doubt that more and more French people are deserting Mother Earth in search of work in the factories and workshops or just a routine job as a police-officer, postman, town hall official or whatever.

Several days ago, while we were crossing the department of the Aude, we took the opportunity of visiting, sixty kilometres south of the walled city of Carcassonne, one of the ‘ghost-villages’ where a handful of inhabitants still wander among the ruins of an opulent past.

One of our compatriots, Monsieur Jean Mauhin, who is originally from Vervier in Belgium, and who had invited us to visit his factory which makes bells and hats [sic] in Quillan, in the smallest foothills of the Pyrenees, told us about a ‘dead’ village with the charming, Olde Worlde name of Rennes-le-Château. He suggested showing us around, even though he himself had never previously set foot inside it. We accepted his invitation with enthusiasm, and certainly neither of us had occasion to regret it.

It is right at the top of a hill overlooking the valley of the Sals that one finds the last houses, most of them in ruins, of the ancient capital of the Counts of Razès. Along a winding road, after we had left Couiza and the old castle of the Dukes of Joyeuse behind us, our car climbed the steep hill upon which Rennes-le-Château is perched. The countryside there is of an exceptional beauty. In the distance, shrouded in a dazzling light, we can see the snow-clad summits of the Pyrenees. In the valley below are a few scattered hamlets, and on a rocky peak directly opposite are the ruins of the castle of Coustassa.

One final turn, a huge wooden signboard bearing the name of the village, and here we are at the gates (if one can call them that) of this ‘twilight’ village. A cart pulled by two oxen which is causing a lot of excitement among a pack of howling dogs bars our way. It is certainly a rare occurrence to see someone arriving by car on this ‘lost summit’. The farmer greets us – it's the Mayor of Rennes-le-Château, Monsieur Delmas, who is returning to the fields.


THE VILLAGE OF SILENCE.

And so we enter this village of silence, which in the Middle Ages had almost 30,000 inhabitants and whose current civil register lists only 70 people. A visit to Rennes-le-Château introduces you to three curiosities. The first is the château, which dates from the Carolingian period, and whose tottering walls seem scarcely capable of holding up the old keep. This ancient manor, only two or three parts of which are still habitable, has been the property for some time now of a former examining magistrate, Monsieur Fatin, who was formerly the director of the Muslim College in Tripoli and President of the League of Human Rights in Beirut and who was, during the last war, one of the closest associates of General de Gaulle. Monsieur Fatin, disgusted with both politics and people, then retired to this abandoned castle, where he spends many hours in meditation. He lives like an ordinary countryman, but a very learned countryman, and one whom one is happy to meet, for if his hands are calloused and rough his eyes shine with an extraordinary brilliance and his conversation is informed by a mind that is at one and the same time both clear and precise. Monsieur Fatin showed us round his ‘fief’ and gave us an excellent lesson in both history and humility.

The second curiosity is the Romanesque church, which like the castle also dates from the time of Charlemagne. To reach it one has to cross the little rock-garden in the middle of which a Cross stretches out its arms. This was raised in 1897 to commemorate the only visit to the commune by the Bishop of Carcassonne.

And did the bishop not come to Rennes-le-Château solely to excommunicate the village priest, whose history the old folk of the village recount to us?

“He was a rather strange priest who preferred wine and women to practising the priesthood. At the end of the last century he had a rather original idea. He placed in foreign newspapers, especially in the United States, an advertisement announcing that the poor priest of Rennes-le-Château lived among heretics and had only the most meagre of resources. He moved the Christians of the whole world to such pity by announcing that the old church, an architectural gem, was heading for unavoidable destruction if urgent restoration work was not undertaken as soon as possible.

“The priest received considerable sums, so considerable indeed that one fine day a whole team of masons and workmen was to be seen arriving in the village. But instead of stopping the worthy old church from falling down they started building a villa in Rococo style flanked by an immense keep, from where one can survey one of the most beautiful landscapes in the entire region. And the gallant priest continued feasting and merrymaking in his new home. He also took the trouble to have carved at the entrance this inscription, which would certainly be rather difficult to put into practice: “The house of the Shepherd is the house of everyone”.

Since then the post of priest of Rennes-le-Château has been abolished, and twice a month a priest from Couiza climbs the hill to say mass in the village.

The stoup which decorates the entrance to the chapel is carried by a horned devil with cloven hooves. An old woman remarked to us: “It's the old priest, changed into a devil.”

The third and final curiosity of the village is a charming little boy about one year old who answers to the name of Jean-Pierre, and who is the only child to be found in Rennes-le-Château. It is hard to see any other births occurring here before Jean-Pierre is old enough to get married and, no doubt, join all the other people who have left the village. And yet in an old dilapidated building which serves simultaneously as the Mairie and the school we found a little class of eight children studiously imbibing geography. The schoolteacher, a young lady from Carcassonne, introduced her pupils to us, who every day travel ten kilometres or so on foot to school. These are the children who live in the small number of hamlets lost in the depths of the valleys.

One little girl was absent. “Well, what do you expect?” the schoolteacher asks us. “It's a big day back at the farm. They've just slaughtered the pig.”

Roger CROUQUET

(Continued on page 22).


VISIT TO A DEAD VILLAGE

(Continued from page 16).

In one of the most derelict parts of Rennes-le-Château we spoke to an old woman who lived alone in the middle of dilapidated houses and barns open to the elements and who evoked, through her attachment to the soil on which she was born, the enduring qualities of France in the midst of all its miseries. She spoke in a strange patois, but we managed to understand that she had never left her village even though her children, who had taken up residence in Toulouse, had invited her to go and live with them. She had refused. ‘I'm too old’, she told us, ‘why should I change things now?’ What a philosophy of life lies in this simple phrase! And we looked at her, this old woman, a little stooped and with a wrinkled face, but with a fresh complexion and a gaze that stopped at the neighbouring mountains. A breeze was blowing and lifting her voluminous dress and there she was, in front of us, anchored like an old boat in the harbour. Several years ago she still had some neighbours with whom she could chat, but everyone had gone now. She remained alone among the ruins. But nothing could persuade her to leave her little hovel and her patch of ground.

We wandered through the deserted streets and came across only a few starving cats and skeletal dogs. Here and there a few chickens pecked at goodness knows what. We experienced a feeling of profound sadness. More cruel even than the war which spared Rennes-le-Château was the human ingratitude which had transformed this ancient town into a pile of ruins.

Les Baux, Rennes-le-Château – names redolent of the old soil of France, names of the towns of the past, of towns that each day are disappearing one by one and of which very soon there will remain nothing but a fleeting memory.

R. C.

© Rossel et Cie SA, Le Soir Magazine, Brussels, 2004.