Bérenger Saunière
Abbé François Bérenger Saunière (1852-1917)
François Bérenger Saunière was born on 11th April 1852 in Montazels, a small village not far from Rennes-le-Château in the department of the Aude in the South of France. The house of his birth is still there today on the village square (La Place) behind an 18th century dolphin fountain. He was the eldest of the 7 children of Marguerite Hugues and Joseph Saunière. He had two brothers (Alfred, Martial and Joseph jr.) and three sisters (Mathilde, Adeline, and Marie-Louise). His father Joseph, nicknamed le Cubié, was the mayor of Montazels, manager of the local flour mill and steward to the Marquis de Cazemajou. Joseph was a quick-tempered man and his marriage to Marguerite wasn’t always a happy one.
Bérenger was a healthy and athletic child of the country and spent much time playing in the fields and mountains of the region. He went to the school of St. Louis in Limoux. Being the eldest son almost automatically meant that young Bérenger was destined for a career in the clergy. So in 1870, at the age of 18 he entered the Grand Seminary of the city of Narbonne. His brother Alfred would follow in his footsteps some time later. Bérenger was ordained priest in july of 1879. After having served as a curate in Alet-les-Bains for three years, he became the parish priest (Abbé) in the humble village of Le Clat in June 1882. Le Clat was situated on the lands of the De Negre d’Ables family that would come to play a big part in his later life. After two months he was asked by his old professor in Narbonne to become a teacher at the Seminary of Narbonne. It was there that he got a reputation for being a headstrong insolent man. On June 1st 1885 it resulted in him being assigned to the tiny and utterly unimportant parish of Rennes-le-Château, a community of not more than 300 souls. He was to succeed Abbé Croc, who had died after just a year of service. In his journal the new priest wrote: ‘La croix du milieu existe, mais il n’y a pas d’allées’. He was 33 years old and effectively exiled.
The first suspension
It took Saunière only three months to attract the attention of his superiors again by making a fierce anti-Republican speech on the eve of the 1885 French elections. He urged his parishioners to vote for the ‘Union of the Right’, dedicated to the reversal of the anticlerical legislations of the Republican Government and towards the restoration of the French Monarchy. When three more priests in the region did the same, René Goblet, the French minister for Religion wrote a letter to Bishop Billard of Carcassonne on 30th October, complaining about the ‘reprehensible behaviour’ of four clerics during the electoral period of 1885 and asking for their transfers. Billard took up for his priests and made specific reference to Saunière in his reply to the minister: stating that he had had no intention of attacking the Government, but had the right as the Defender of Religion to read an article from the 
clerical magazine ‘La Semaine Religieuse de Carcassonne’, to give advice to the voters of his parish in the presence of anti-Christian anti-Concordat programmes of several candidates of the deputation. Goblet apparently didn’t like that answer very much which resulted in the suspension of the four priests involved. (B. Saunière, curate at Rennes-le-Château; Tailhan, curate at Roullens; Jean, curate at Bourriège and Delmas, vicar at Alet-les-Bains ). Early December ‘La Semaine Religieuse de Carcassonne’ strongly criticised the suspension of the four priests by the Minister of Religion, mentioning: ‘To the long list of priests who became victim of a systematic persecution since the last electoral period, are to be added the names of four priests of the diocese: Jean - Tailhan - Delmas- Saunière. M. the Prefect of the Aude has notified them a Ministerial decision that suppresses their salary, from 1st December 1885. Their Bishop opposed in vain a firm and dignified justification to the accusations carried against them; there was sorrow to see that M. the Minister of Religion didn’t take any account of it. The blabbers triumphed. Can they understand the gravity of their fault, seeing the consequences in their respective dioceses of their malevolent denouncement…?‘
Rennes-le-Château
The suspension meant returning to Narbonne to teach at the Seminary. The villagers of Rennes-le-Château were unhappy with the decision. In the short time they had known Saunière they had grown to like him. Surviving accounts describe him as a tall, broad shouldered and goodlooking man that they affectionately called ‘le bel homme’. The Municipal Council urged the prefect to let the priest return. This request was eventually satisfied in July 1886 when he was re-instated by Bishop Billard. The priest would entertain excellent relations with Billard until the bishop’s death in 1901. By then Billard himself was a man in the middle of much controversy, perhaps the same one, Saunière would find himself into.
The priest must have had mixed feelings. to once again follow the long dirt road up the mountain back to the tiny village, far away from everywhere else. The village wasn’t a shadow of the important place it once held in the area of the Razès as it was called in earlier days. The history of Rennes-le-Château or Rhedae goes back all the way to prehistoric times and is drenched in the blood and legends of Romans, Visigoths, Knights Templar, Cathars and the Inquisition. The small village 
church, in which he had to say mass, had practically fallen into ruins and the presbytery was in no state to live in. Since Saunière was now classified as a militant reactionary, the French state didn’t pay his stipend for a long time, forcing the priest from an already humble existence into poverty. He stayed with the Dénarnaud family, who lived close to the village church. He lived from the small gifts his parishioners gave him and the gain he brought back from his many hunting and fishing trips.
Saunière wasn’t completely empty handed though. During his time in Narbonne he must have attracted the attention of some important people because on his return he had brought 1.000 francs that had been given to him by the Comtesse de Chambord. She was the widow of Henry V, the last French throne pretender of the Bourbon family. It is thought he received the money by intervention of his brother Alfred who, being a Jesuit priest, was teacher to the important Chefdebien family enabling him to move in the better circles. The money was intended for restoration of the village church of Rennes-le-Château.
The village church, the église Sainte Marie-Madeleine, or Church of Saint Mary-Magdalene probably dates from the 8th or 9th century. It was destroyed and rebuilt several times in its history. In 1209 the city of Rhedae was completely levelled by the crusader army of Simon the Montfort in what has become known as the Albigensean crusade. He gave all that was left of it to on of his Lieutenants, Pierre de Voisins who moved into the local Château and founded a dynasty there. In 1380 the church that had now become the private chapel of the Château was dedicated to Mary Magdalene for reasons we don’t know. Already in 1853, mr Cals, a local architect had concluded that it would be a better idea to re-build the village church from scratch rather than to try and restore it. In 1422 the bloodline of the Voisins ended and their possessions went over to Pierre-Raymond d’Hautpoul when he married Blanche de Marquefave. The powerful and rich Hautpoul family had the church completely restored in 1646, supported by Monseigneur Nicolas Pavillon, bishop of Carcassonne. It is assumed that from that time onwards, the noblemen of the region were buried in the crypt beneath the church.
With the money from the Comtesse and a small loan from the village council, Saunière had enough money to restore the church. He started straight after he had returned. There were urgent repairs to be done on the badly leaking roof and the open windows. In 1887 he installed a new altar and stained-glass windows that he ordered from 
Feur in Bordeaux. The old altar was a very rudimentary construction consisting of two pillars, one blank the other one sculpted, supporting a heavy marble slab. The money for the new altar was donated to him by the rich Marie de Cavailhé of Coursan. The stories about Saunière having discovered parchments in the sculpted altar support pillar have never been confirmed and seem very unlikely given the fact that there was no cavity in it large enough to hold anything larger than a golden ring. The support pillar was sculpted with, what is called a Visigoth design even though today it’s argued that the carving more likely dates from the Carolingian period. judging by it’s Christian depiction of a cross with jewels and branches.
Somewhere between July 1887 and 1890, Antoine Captier, the bellringer of the church, just when he wanted to close the church and go home, noticed a small glass vial, sticking out of the Wooden Baluster that supported the old pulpit. It had been taken down to be removed. He gave it to the priest, who allegedly discovered some parchments in it that either held a secret or led to parchments with a secret. The accounts don’t agree. The only thing that is beyond doubt here is that in Antoine Captier’s family it is told that Abbé Saunière found a treasure and that it all started with this finding.
Soon after this, Saunière requests permission from the village council to refurbish the public square in front of his church. As one of the first things he has a stone wall and fence with lock installed. In June 1891, the gardens in the square are finished and inaugurated by Bishop Billard and 24 children of the village celebrating First Communion. A statue of the Virgin of Lourdes is carried around the village in a Tour de Mission. At the end the statue is receted on top of the pillar of the old altar, be it upside down and inscribed Mission 1891, Pénitence! Pénitence!.
In September 1891, Saunière writes in his journal: “Découverte d’un tombeau, le soir pluie” (discovery of a tomb, rain in the evening). One day later, during the work in the church a pot is found containing golden coins. Saunière tells the workmen that it’s just some worthless Lourdes Medals but locks the church and sends the workmen home. Straight after the priest travels to Carcassonne and visits some confrères (colleague priests), four of which return the visit in Rennes-le-Château on 6th October. Work on the church remains suspended until October 14th, when we read in his journal that new(!) masons have started.
From this moment onwards, Saunière’s spending starts to increase considerably. At the same time he is seen digging in the graveyard with his maid Marie Dénarnaud at night to such extent that the villagers complain with the community council. It will take until March 1895 until Saunière is officially summoned by the authorities to end his nightly adventures in the cemetery.
According to Gérard de Sède, but impossible to confirm, in 1892 Saunière travels to Paris to have his parchments decoded by Emile Hoffet, the young nephew of Abbé Bieil who then leads Saint Sulpice. He allegedly returns armed with three copies of paintings from the Louvre Les Bergers d’Arcadie, the Temptation of St. Anthony and a portrait of Pope Celestine V.
to be continued
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