Saunière’s Rise to Fame

 

The early years

Saunière was born on April 11, 1852, the eldest son of the seven children of Joseph and Marguerite Saunière. At 29, Joseph was the executor of the Cazemajou estate and a member of the upper middle class. The Cazemajous were co-lords of Niort, together with the Negri-d’Ables, whose tomb in the cemetery of Rennes-le-Château would become a key ingredient of the later mystery.
He entered the Grand Seminary at Carcassonne on June 15, 1874, to begin his training for the priesthood. He was ordained in June 1879, even though his younger brother Alfred had already been ordained as early as 1878, and was now the vicar of Alzonne.
Berenger’s first appointment was in Alet-les-Bains, a town that had once been blessed with a cathedral, as it had once been a bishopric. He must have walked past the anonymous tombstone of Nicolas Pavillon, under the cross in Saint Andrew’s cemetery. He borrowed from Pavillon the idea to use women to instruct the country folk; he also had many lively exchanges with the local radical painter, Henri Dujardin-Beaumetz.
From Alet-les-Bains, he was moved to Le Clat, on June 16, 1882. Le Clat was a tiny village that could only be reached by a small mule track, whose 282 inhabitants raised sheep to survive. Here, he seemed to live in solitary isolation and it must have been a great relief that he was appointed to Rennes-le-Château, close to home.

When the priest came to Rennes-le-Château

He found Rennes-le-Château, but also found the presbytery uninhabitable, forcing him to take up lodgings with the Denarnaud family.
Saunière’s starting salary was 60 francs per month (900 Euro). Saunière was a local and therefore known in the region. Still, he surprised the entire community when, on the eve of the election of 1885, he spoke out against the Republic from the pulpit. With the Republic victorious in next day’s elections, complaints flooded into the bishop, who had to react, resulting in a suspension of his salary. He was not the only priest to have preached in this manner; three other priests befall the same fate at the same time.
But for Saunière, this suspension was a financial problem. Thus, the bishop, Mgr. Billard, intervened and lent him 200 francs, as well as giving him a position as a teacher in the seminary at Narbonne.
On July 1, 1886, he was reinstated as priest of Rennes-le-Château, with a donation of 3000 francs in his pocket by the countess of Chambord, the widow of the legitimate claimant to the throne. His salary was reinstated, now at 900 francs per annum (a rise of 25 percent).

Rebuilding the town

His reappointment began a period of extensive buildings works, which eventually would end with the Villa Bethania, which he apparently saw as a retirement home for priests. He had apparently seen how nearby towns and villages, such as Rennes-les-Bains, but specifically Puivert and Lourdes, were religious goldmines; he hoped to cash in on the influx of tourists to the region, whereby he seemed to consider his village as something of a “Magdalene theme park”. Today, many visitors still fall for the magical spell of the landscape for retirement and it seems that Saunière hoped that those priests who had passed through the region, felt the same.

But that was still two decades in the future. The donation of 3000 francs of the Countess has been seen as a show of appreciation that he tried to speak out in favour of her deceased husband, whose ghost hung over the elections. As to why 3000 francs, the answer may be very simple: in 1879, a quote to carry out essential repair works had given a total of 2798 francs. The money thus allowed him to carry out the first essential step.
It was an intriguing sequence of events: the village could not pay the restoration work, but by being suspended, all of a sudden, Saunière had the necessary money and the building work could begin. It shows either a fortuitous sequence of events, or a carefully planned conspiracy, in an effort to get funding from the countess – who would thus have been courted purely for her money; the “rich widow” syndrome.

There is another option why he received a donation, which is that Saunière was now the priest of Rennes-le-Château, the seat of the Hautpoul family. That family was notorious for its allegiance to the crown. The Marquis d’Hautpoul-Félines had been a tutor of the count when he was a boy, but had always refused any payment for the privilege.
Equally, it seems the countess donated the money because of her interest in the Sacred Heart movement, a movement that would culminate with the building of the Sacré Coeur basilica in Paris. The movement originated when a Sister Margaret-Marie Alacoque saw Christ walking towards her at Paray-le-Monial. His heart was bleeding and he said that France would never be saved from her enemies unless the country was dedicated to his Sacred Heart. The building of the Sacré Coeur cost 30 million francs, raised from various donations. 2 franc postcards were stipends from the faithful, whereas others donated up to 100,000 francs, with the Chambord family donating 500,000 francs.

The mystery begins

In 1887, Saunière tackled the old altar, which was a simple stone slab. The new altar was purchased with a donation from a lady from Coursan, after recovering from a serious illness. The new altar was delivered in July 1887.
From October 1890 to September 1891, he spent 26661.50 fr. With an annual stipend of 900 francs, and him receiving 528.50 francs for saying masses and borrowing 500 francs from parishioners, we can only wonder where the rest came from.
The mystery, in short, begins a year before the accepted beginning of the mystery, which many point to as being September 21, 1891, when he writes that he has discovered a tomb. He stops all work for 20 days and rehires men on October 14. It does suggest that the tomb was of interest to him, but I would suggest it is not the start of the mystery. As just mentioned, his mysterious income was already present before.

Furthermore, it is possible that there were very mundane reasons why the work was stopped at that time: Saunière, as he would do in later times, travelled:
On September 28: he goes on retreat, to Carcassonne.
On September 29: goes to see the priest of Nevian. Went to Gelis. Went to Carriere’s. Saw Cros and Secret. This is nevertheless an interesting sequence of people, and the enormous amount of people he saw in one day, suggests he was doing something other than just visiting friends.
On October 2: he goes once again to visit Gelis and Cros. Cros was the Vicar General of the diocese and was on very good terms with Saunière. That evening, he is back in Rennes-le-Château and receives a visit from four friends.

Saunière’s history lesson

This is where the mystery begins. But what was Saunière searching for? Or finding? There is a hint, as Saunière would later have a small income from lecturing on the history of the village. Like Boudet, he thus shared an interest in the history of the town he was a priest of. It is also important that as he was known to be interested in history, he would have tried to lay as much as possible his hands on historical information. Thus, registers and other documents would have been searched, to satisfy his interest.
Because he lectured, we know what he either believed, or discovered. Saunière believed that Rennes-le-Château had been the fortified Visigothic town of Rhedae. It had been destroyed by the army of the King of Aragon in 1170, but had risen from its ashes under Pierre II de Voisins in the 14th century, only to be razed to the ground again by the Spaniards. This time, the entire village was sacked, except for the church of Mary Magdalene, belonging to the only seigneurial manor and a few dwellings. This means that the church – and possibly anything inside or underneath – would have been the ideal location to safeguard anything that may have been present in the village from a previous era. As we know that Saunière did a lot of digs along the fault line on which the church and cemetery and his estates were erected, was this part of his source of income?

Filip Coppens