This section deals with the small manuscript (Ms. 1) and the mysterious text it contains. Later on I will introduce you to Ms. 2, which is the larger and by far the more complex one.

Note Ms1 is quite large (298K) and may take 20-30 Seconds to load

At first glance the manuscript looks like chicken scrawl. The author seems to have paid little attention to style and in fact has made a deliberate attempt to create a text that is somewhat difficult to read.

Special Note on Script 

The style of writing is an ancient one known as ‘Uncial’, derived from the Latin ‘Uncia’ meaning an Inch. This was the common height of the earliest letters. The Uncial script dates back as far as the 4th century BC and was used almost continuously throughout Europe until about the 8th Century AD when other types of script superseded it. Its attraction lay in the fact that it was both decorative and could be written quite quickly, a great advantage when books could only be created by hand.  Although the script used in both parchments is decidedly Uncial, there are characteristics in some letters that indicate a slightly different style. The letters ‘b’, ‘d’, ‘q’ and ‘l’ for example are rather upright whereas the true Uncial ‘q’, for example, is rather like our modern Capital Q and not at all like its lower case counterpart. The ‘t’ and ‘d’ lack the curling strokes to the left that so typify true Uncial. The following is an example of an early 8th C. Psalter known as the Vespasian Psalter:

These letters seem to be derived from a style that became popular from the 8th Century Onwards and was much favoured in England. It was called Half-Uncial and sometimes English Half Uncial. Another throwback to those ancient times is the lack of spaces between words, a practice known as Scriptura Continua. Although it is not confirmation in itself, the author must have had considerable exposure to Uncial, Half Uncial and the ancient manuscripts in general in order to be able to create this work. For anyone who has tried calligraphy it takes quite some time to master the strokes of a particular hand and even greater mastery to be able to write a long text accurately, legibly and consistently in such a style. Simply controlling the pen and ink flow is an art in itself. The job is of course, made doubly difficult when the text you are writing contains innumerable codes. The author of this text was obviously accustomed to using both styles and it follows that he must have been involved in writing texts in this script on a regular basis. Then again if this is truly an early manuscript, it may simply have been the writing he learned at school. Whatever the true story may have been we can be fairly sure that he was a scholar, intellectual, or member of the church, perhaps even a monk at a monastery. It is almost unanimously believed that the manuscripts were the work of a previous priest of Rennes-le-Château, The Abbé Antoine Bigou who served from 1774 to 1790. I caution you however to take all such assumptions with a large pinch of salt. We know very little with any certainty about the origins of these documents.

The Manuscript

The text is in Latin and has been drawn from the gospels, Luke 6 Vs 1-4 inclusive.  I have transcribed the text from the parchment and placed the Latin bible text below  for comparison. The bible I used was the Biblia Sacra Latina which was derived from the Biblia Sacra Vulgatae Editionis attributed to Sixtus the sixth and Clement the eighth (circa 1590-92). This or something very similar would have been in use at the time of Bigou.

If you compare the text of the manuscript to that of the bible you will immediately see that it is full of errors. Words have been left out, others have been added and the order of words has been jumbled about. In fact simply trying to follow the text of the manuscript to that of the Bible is really quite difficult.  It's almost as though the author was working from a completely different version or possibly his own interpretation. It is plain that this is no ordinary document but one carefully constructed with the intention of passing on a message and indeed it contains not just one but many.

Peculiarities to be found in the Text

The following sections take a brief look at the major peculiarities to be found in this parchment:-

Raised slightly above the lines can be seen numerous letters. By reading through the text and extracting each in turn the following short sentence is formed:-

a dagobert II roi et a sion est ce tresor et il est la mort

As straight forward French it can be translated in one of two ways.

To Dagobert 2, King and to Sion belongs this treasure, and it is death.

For King Dagobert 2 and for Sion is this treasure and it (or he) is there, dead.

When you consider that the author had 426 letters to play around with in the manuscript, you wonder why the message he created is so stilted, difficult to read and ambiguous in its meaning. It is also surprising, to me at any rate, that a person who has gone to some trouble to conceal a message in a parchment has made it so plainly visible and what’s even more surprising has made it clearly legible. The whole point of a secret message is to prevent the wrong people from getting hold of it. There are several interpretations as to the author's intentions:-

The message is merely a red herring designed to waste people’s time by forcing them to try to solve a little code which is no more than a meaningless tract of text.

The message is a key to be used in the decipherment of something else which is a good deal more complicated.

The message was inserted for the specific purpose of gaining the reader’s attention and in so doing making sure he continues to look for the real message concealed within the parchment/s.

The message contains some small fragment of information to inform the reader that he is the true recipient. Rather like a name on an envelope.

The last possibility is that all the letters of this message form an anagram making up either a whole or partial alternate message.

Placed Below the lines can be found a Theta, an S and a T. In French you would read these letters as OST a word meaning a Host or an Army. It could also be derived from the Latin HOSTIS meaning an enemy. There is also a second Theta located on line 13 although this one is embedded within the text.

The pictogram at the top of the page is unfortunately not clear in the sample provided but in better reproductions the small letter within the triangular enclosure is actually an A (Alpha) while the letter outside is an M. If you invert the diagram the two letters then become Alpha and Omega. To be sure they are not inserted here to denote their Christian meaning. The same letters also appear on the large manuscript as well as on the cover stone of the Blanchefort Tomb. One interesting observation with this pictogram is that its shape forms the exact series of moves made by a person making the sign of the cross. Head to heart, diagonal up to the shoulder, across to the other shoulder. This sign did not escape the attention of Saunière nor presumably did its significance. During the course of the restoration of the church at Rennes-le-Château, Saunière designed and had constructed a small statuary group of four angels. Each angel is in the process of carrying out one of the motions that form the sign of the cross. On the plinth he had inscribed "Par ce signe tu le vaincras", 'By  this sign you will defeat him' or it can be translated as 'By this sign you will win it'. The angels, incidentally, have been placed strategically slightly to the rear, to the right and above a hideous carving of the Devil. The inference is that the message refers to the devil but it may also have another meaning in terms of the puzzle. For all we know it is the very sign that helped Saunière discover his fortune. Since the Blanchefort  tomb is intimately connected with this mystery you can review the information on it by clicking this button.

The 3 Crosses on the parchment are carefully placed. Currently held opinion is that by connecting them up in conjunction with the lines of the pictogram you will obtain lines which when scaled up appropriately can be used as bearings on a map of the region. On the following page I provide my own theory as to how the parchment itself provides information on how such bearings can be created.

Greek Words have also been interspersed in the text, although at first glance their existence is not immediately apparent.  They can be found on lines 10 and 13. The examples illustrated show the letters as they appear in the text and then as they appear rotated through 180 degrees.

End of Line 10 - +INTROIBITINDOMUM. (Note only the last part of the word is shown UMUM)

The word Domum is actually written DUMUM. If you chop off the D and then invert and reverse the word, it then appears as the Greek letters wlenh (Oleni) meaning the fore-arm. L’Avant Bras in French.

Line 13 - CUMERANTUXUQQUIBUSNO.

The letters UXUO inverted and reversed become the Greek letters qhch (Thiki) a word meaning a chest or strongbox.

The Inscription P-S at the base of the manuscript is also a direct reference to the Blanchefort tombstone where it appears at the very top of the cover stone in an identical format.

Additional Words have been inserted. The reason for doing so is not clear. It could have been done simply to make the text more illegible or the words are significant in some other way. The additional words are marked in red:-

Et factum est eum in sabbato secundo primo abire per secetes discipuli autem illiris coeperunt vellere spicas et fricantes manibus manducabant quidam autem de farisaeis dicebant et ecce quia faciunt discipuli tui sabbatis quod non licet resopondens autem inss etxit ad eos numquam hoc lecistis quod fecit d autem quando esurut ipse et qui cum eo erat intro ibit in domum dei et panes propositionis redis manducavit et dedit et qui bles cum erant uxuo quibus non licebat manducare si non solis sacerdotibus.

Combined together in continuous form these additional words and letters are:-

abire per secetes illiris de autem inss etxit intro ibit et uxuo quibus  non

It is clear that that no recognizable sentence can be formed by extracting the words from the text. Also the fact that some words are not wholly proper Latin would seem to indicate that the author was more interested in providing the reader with  the letters themselves. This seems to add yet another dimension to all the mysterious elements that form part of this manuscript. It is my opinion that one way or another a message can be extrapolated from these letters. There are 62 of them all together, only 2 short of 64 which would make them ideal candidates for use on a chess board. It may or may not be a coincidence but the small message found in amongst Saunière's private papers just after his death (Sot pecheur a l'embouchure du Rhone...) happens to have exactly 64 letters encircling the main text.