Bérenger Saunière
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François Bérenger Saunière (1852-1917) was a priest in the French village of Rennes-le-Château, in the Aude region, from 1885 to 1909. 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.
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[edit] Life
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.
He had an ambiguous relationship with a local woman, Marie Denarnaud. When he arrived, he lived with Marie's family, as the presbytery, reserved for the priest, was in no fit state to live in. When essential repair works were done, Saunière and Marie moved in, she officially working as his maid. Certain entries in Saunière's diary implied that there was more to their relationship:
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- 4/19/1892 : came back from Carcassonne, drama on the evening, Marie came back home.
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- 4/22/1892 : fine weather, Marie goes on bringing my meals.
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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 1906, 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. [1]
In 1995, André Douzet held a press conference in the former domaine of Saunière, during which he announced that a scale model of a landscape, purporting to be the landscape of Jerusalem, had come in his possession. Douzet claimed and produced documentation that showed that Saunière had placed an order for this model in 1916, but died before the order was completed. He acquired the model from a clearance sale of the firm involved. In 1997, Douzet was able to map the landscape of the model onto a section of Perillos, a small village near Perpignan - where Saunière is known to have visited.
[edit] 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.
[edit] 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, who had survived crucifixion, was buried, and that Saunière had been paid to keep his mouth shut.
[edit] The actual story of Saunière's wealth
Saunière's real story was one of petty church scandal and political intrigue. Or as Ed Bradley said on a 2006 episode of the American news program 60 Minutes: "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 the law, priests were allowed to accept money for up to three masses per day. Saunière, however, had been soliciting and accepting money via the post to say thousands of masses for the dead, charging 1 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 with which Saunière eventually complied.
[edit] 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 extra-ordinary wealth. Corbu's intent was to attract curstomers 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 planed documents, "Les Dossiers Secrets", in the French National Archives, which appeared to corroborate Saunière's alleged find. 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 several authors and resulting bestsellers, such as Lynn Picknett and Clive Prince's The Templar Revelation, and Dan Brown's 2003 novel, The Da Vinci Code. One of the protagonists of the novel is called Jacques Saunière, clearly named after Bérenger Saunière.
[edit] References
- Priory-of-Sion.com Paul Smith's detailed account of the Priory of Sion, providing documentation about Pierre Plantard and his activities, including documents from official French sources, detailing some of Plantard's police records.
- New DVD about the Holy Grail including the story of Rennes-le-Château. André Douzet is a well known French researcher, who studied the mysteries of grail and Rennes-le-Château during the last 40 years.
- Société Perillos André Douzet and the "Société Perillos" has one of the largest websites concerning the mysteries of France, focusing on the Abbé Saunière and his relations to the villages of Rennes-le-Château, Lyon and Perillos.
- DVD about Rennes-le-Château and the source of Saunière's wealth
- Is It Real? Da Vinci's Code, 2006 History Channel video documentary
- "Priory of Sion", 60 Minutes, April 30, 2006, produced by Jeanne Langley, hosted by Ed Bradley
- Die Ketzerin vom Montségur (The Heretic of Montsegur) and Die Erbin des Grals (The Grail's Heiress) by the German author Helene Luise Köppel relate the Rennes-le-Château myth. The first tells the tale the Cathars and the discovery of the Grail in Rennes-le-Château. The sequel tells the fictional tale of Saunière's housekeeper and lover, Marie Dénarnaud, who knows the secret of the treasure he found in Rennes-le-Château.
- The Templar Legacy, published in 2006 by Steve Berry, traces the Templar treasure to Rennes-le-Château and the clues left behind by Saunière
- The Mystery of Rennes-le-Chateau is a sixty-minute documentary on DVD that looks at the clues apparently built by Saunière in and around his church and tries to get to the bottom of the mystery surrounding the source of his wealth. Written and presented by Stewart Ferris, author of The Key to The Da Vinci Code
