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François Bérenger Saunière (1852-1917) was a priest in the French village of Rennes-le-Château, in the Aude region, officially from 1885 to 1909 (when he was transferred to another village by his bishop, that he declined and subsequently resigned) and after 1909 until his death in 1917 in the role of Free Priest (a priest working independently without a parish). The epitaph on Sauniere's original 1917 gravestone read that he was 'priest of Rennes-le-Château 1885-1917'. From 1909 Bérenger Saunière held masses in an altar constructed in his Villa Bethanie.

He would be unknown today if not for the fact that he is a central figure in many of the conspiracy theories surrounding Rennes-le-Château. These speculations form the basis of several pseudohistorical documentaries and books such as the 1982 Holy Blood, Holy Grail by Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh, and Henry Lincoln, although few, if any, historians subscribe to them. Many elements of these theories were later used by Dan Brown in his best-selling 2003 novel The Da Vinci Code.

Life

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François Bérenger Saunière was born on April 11, 1852 in Montazels, in the Arrondissement of Limoux of the Aude region. He was the eldest of seven children, having three brothers (Alfred, Martial, and Joseph) and three sisters (Mathilde, Adeline, and Marie-Louise). He was the son of Marguerite Hugues and Joseph Saunière (1823-1906), also called "cubié", who was the mayor of Montazels (Aude), managed the local flour mill, and was the steward of Marquis de Cazermajou's castle. Alfred became a priest; Joseph wanted to be a physician but died at 25. Bérenger, for his part, was an athlete and regarded as insolent, independent and fundamentalist, and routinely rebelled against hierarchy.

He went to school at St. Louis in Limoux, entered the seminary in Carcassonne in 1874, and was ordained as a priest in June, 1879. From July 16, 1879 until 1882, he was a vicar in another local village, Alet. From June 1882 to 1885, he was a priest in the deanery of the small village of Clat. He was a teacher in the seminary in Narbonne but, because he was undisciplined, he was appointed to another small village of approximately 300 inhabitants, Rennes-le-Château, on June 1st, 1885. He was anti-republican and he had to leave the diocese from December 1, 1885 to July 1886, to give lessons once more in the seminary of Narbonne. As the villagers wanted him to come back, the prefect changed his mind and called him back. In May 1890, he also said mass in Antugnac on Sundays.

Claims that Bérenger Saunière had an ambiguous relationship with his maidservant, Marie Denarnaud, cannot be justified and are the product of myth and legend. Quoting Sauniere's principles on which he dealt with his maidservant, Marie Denarnaud:

Respect, but not familiarity. Not to permit her to talk about matters of his ministry. What you say to a servant should not be able to be said to other women. She must avoid excesses of language, and he must not trust in her age or her piety too easily. She is not to enter the bedroom when he is in bed, except in case of illnesses.

The presbytery was one of several building projects Saunière launched around the village. He renovated the interior and exterior of the local church, built a grand estate (the Villa Bethania) for himself, a promenade along the end of the village, and a tower on a local hill - a personal library called the 'Tour Magdala' which resembles the Tower of David in Jerusalem, called the 'Migdal David'.

In 1896, according to a Report held in Carcassonne Bishopric, an investigation was started by the bishopric into how he had been able to fund the various building projects, as his salary did not meet the expenses. Saunière, who at age 50 had a glass eye, and was known to often play the lottery (loterie de la maison des artistes), refused to co-operate with the enquiry. The bishopric relocated him to a different parish, but Saunière refused and resigned on February 1, 1909. He was tried for trafficking in masses in 1910. He lived the rest of his life penniless, selling religious medals and rosaries to wounded soldiers who were stationed in Capagne les Bains. There were also accusations that he was taking in German spies.

Saunière had a heart attack on January 17, 1917, and died on January 22nd.

In September 2004, the mayor of Rennes-le-Château exhumed Saunière's corpse from the church graveyard and reburied it in a concrete sarcophagus to protect it from grave-robbers.

One of the protagonists of Dan Brown's novel The Da Vinci Code is called Jacques Saunière, clearly named after Bérenger Saunière.

Controversy

The controversy around Saunière centers on two topics: documents that he is alleged to have found hidden in his church, and his alleged wealth.

The popular story of Saunière's wealth

Supporters of the various conspiracy theories of Rennes-le-Château believe that while renovating his parish church in 1891, Saunière found ancient documents relating to a great historical secret. These theories allege that, through his possession of these documents, Saunière was somehow able to obtain much more wealth than would be expected of a parish priest. The documents were allegedly discovered in a "hollow visigothic pillar" according to the book Le Tresor Maudit by Gerard de Sede.

Following Saunière's death in 1917 a mystique developed about the priest's source of wealth. There was a theory that he was paid vast sums of money by the Catholic Church to buy his silence on a secret that would have seriously undermined the church's power: the most extraordinary claim being that he had discovered the grave in which Christ had been buried, implying that Christ had not ascended to heaven.

The actual source of Saunière's wealth

Saunière's source of wealth is of petty church scandal: "The source of the wealth of the priest of Rennes-le-Chateau was not some ancient mysterious treasure, but good old fashioned fraud." According to canon law, priests were allowed to say up to three masses per day and to accept a fee for requested prayers for the dead. Saunière, however, had been soliciting and accepting money via the post to say thousands of masses, charging one franc per mass. Some clients would send payment for hundreds of masses, which he never actually performed. In 1906, he was summoned before the Bishop's Court in Carcassonne, where the bishopric ordered Saunière to stop advertising for masses, an order which Saunière strained every effort not to obey.

Saunière's account books, detailing how much money he was receiving from the selling of masses that he could not actually perform, run into thousands of pages.

20th century rumors

When, in 1946, Noel Corbu purchased the estate that Saunière had constructed and whose title deeds he had placed in the name of his housekeeper, Marie Dénarnaud, Corbu began to circulate the rumours of the priest's extraordinary wealth. Corbu's intent was to attract customers to the restaurant that he opened there at Easter 1955, since the village was on a hill in a remote area, and needed something to draw business. The story did not take off until January 1956 when a series of articles in a local newspaper publicised Corbu's allegations about Saunière. One interview with Corbu was published with an attention-grabbing headline: "Fabuleuse découverte du curé aux milliards de Rennes le Chateau" (trans: "The Billionaire Priest of Rennes-le-Chateau's Fabulous Discovery"). This story was then picked up by the national press.

Corbu was later to meet a certain Pierre Plantard, who became considerably attracted to the now developing myths surrounding Saunière. Plantard was to add his own myths with the intention of promoting his self-created association, the Priory of Sion, registered in 1956. Pierre Plantard began writing a manuscript and produced "parchments" (forged by his friend, Philippe de Cherisey) that Saunière had supposedly discovered whilst renovating his church. These documents purportedly showed the survival of the Merovingian line of Frankish kings. Plantard himself claimed to be descended from Dagobert II. The documents were reproduced in de Sede's 1967 book Le Tresor Maudit de Rennes-le-Chateau, with the claim that they were actually hundreds of years old, and contained secret messages. Decades later, the conspirators admitted the fraud.

At the time though, the Sion story was accepted by certain researchers, who continued to expand on it. In 1969, the English scriptwriter Henry Lincoln read Le Tresor Maudit, and then between 1970-1979, created three BBC Two documentaries about the subject. Lincoln was also pointed at other of Plantard's planted documents, Les Dossiers Secrets" in the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris. Later, Lincoln teamed up with two other researchers, and co-wrote the 1982 book Holy Blood Holy Grail, in which, unaware they were relying on forged documents as a source, they stated as a "fact" that the Priory of Sion had existed. The book became an international bestseller, inspiring Dan Brown's best-selling novel The Da Vinci Code, also based on the premise that the myths were "fact".

Notes

1. Cited in Corbu & Captier, L'Heritage de l'Abbe Sauniere, 1985, p. 71.
2. Bloomberg.com: Europe
3. Presenter Ed Bradley on the American news program 60 Minutes, episode "Priory of Sion" (April 30, 2006).

References

• René Descadeillas, Mythologie du Trésor de Rennes: Histoire Veritable de L'Abbé Saunière, Curé de Rennes-Le-Château (Mémoires de la Société des Arts et des Sciences de Carcassonne, Annees 1971-1972, 4me série, Tome VII, 2me partie; 1974).
• Bill Putnam, John Edwin Wood. The Treasure of Rennes-le-Château, A Mystery Solved (Sutton Publishing Limited, Gloucestershire GL5 2BU, England, 2003.)
• Jean-Jacques Bedu, Rennes-Le-Château: Autopsie d'un mythe (Ed. Loubatières; 31120 Portet-sur-Garonne; 1990 — recently reprinted in 2003.)
• The Secret of the Priory of Sion, CBS News '60 Minutes' (CBS Worldwide Inc.), 30 April 2006, Presented by CBS Correspondent Ed Bradley, Produced By Jeanne Langley
• Abbé Bruno de Monts, Bérenger Sauniére curé à Rennes-le-Château 1885-1909, Editions Belisane (2000; Collection les amis de Bérenger Sauniére)
• Jacques Rivière, Le Fabuleux trésor de Rennes-le-Château, Editions Belisane (1983). Despite its misleading title, a valuable tome on the subject matter reproducing Saunière's receipts and the Carcassonne Trial correspondence/reports 1910-1911. Sadly not translated into English.

• 1852 births
• 1917 deaths
• Priory of Sion hoax
• French priests