Secret Societies: Inside the World's Most Notorious Organizations (12 page)

Francois Berenger Saunière. Keeper of the Holy Grail or ecclesiastical swindler?

To make things worse, Saunière inherited not a parish church but a pitiful ruin. Much of the chapel roof was missing, permitting rain to pour directly onto the altar. The windows were covered not with stained glass but with rough boards, the presbytery was virtually uninhabitable, no housekeeper had been assigned to him, and his monthly salary of 75 francs was barely enough to buy bread for his table. The only thing more surprising than the state of Saunière's church was his decision to remain.

At least part of this decision may have been inspired by carnal rather than ecclesiastical notions. While priests were permitted to recruit women as housekeepers, the Church suggested that thirty years or more separate their ages, indicating that Saunière's live-in housekeeper should be in her sixties. But Saunière swung the age compass in the other direction, and soon sixteen-year-old Marie Denarnaud began sharing the rundown presbytery with him. Over time, it became accepted that the couple shared both the building and its bed, a situation that the community and Saunière's superior, the lenient and amiable Bishop of Carcassonne, appear to have tolerated.

Marie Denarnaud may have been attracted to the priest for reasons other than his handsome appearance. Perhaps it was
Saunière's passionate nature, which he demonstrated within a few months of arriving at his new posting. During state elections held in October 1885, Father Saunière became a rabid opponent of the ruling Republican party, haranguing and practically ordering his parishioners to vote against it. His scolding sermons made little difference to the outcome; the Republicans won, and when stories of Saunière's rabid sermons against them became known, they pressed for revenge and got it. As punishment for his political indiscretion, Saunière's small salary was suspended. He appealed to the bishop who, having forgiven the priest's unapproved living arrangements with his nubile housekeeper, extended his charity by appointing Saunière to a professor's post at the nearby Petit Seminaire de Narbonne, where the fiery priest stalked the halls and classrooms for six months until his suspension was lifted.

Marie Denarnaud. As housekeeper/mistress to the mysterious Father Saunière, how many secrets did she keep?

If Church leaders believed they had slapped Saunière down, they were mistaken. In fact, Saunière returned to the village and his dilapidated structures, this time with the backing of a wealthy supporter and plans to improve the fortunes of his parish and himself.

Perhaps in admiration for his political stand, which may have coincided with her own, the influential Countess of Chambord bestowed 3000 francs on Saunière upon his return to his parish. The figure is significant, because Saunière had reportedly obtained an estimate of 2800 francs to make repairs to the church. To his credit, he appears to have dedicated all of the countess's largesse towards rebuilding and restoring it.

Somewhere along the way, Saunière grew fascinated by the legend surrounding his church's supposed historical significance. A few sources claim the tale of the church was already
well known among the local citizens; others say no one was aware of its historical importance until the restoration work was well advanced. As things turned out, neither explanation is significant.

Saunière's church, dedicated to Mary Magdalene, had been constructed on the site of the marriage between Dagobert ii and Giselle de Razes, the story went, and Saunière made an amazing discovery while assisting in its reconstruction. A heavy stone that had served as an altar in the original edifice was mounted on four pillars. Saunière himself moved the slab to discover that one of the pillars was hollow. From within that space he gently removed four ancient parchments, keeping them hidden from the eyes of others working around him. Two of the parchments traced a genealogical line, while the other two were written in a mysterious code that took experts in Paris some time to decipher. When they did, the words were electrifying.
A Dagobert II
Roi et à Sion est ce tresor et il est là mort
, the message came back. To King Dagobert ii and to Sion belongs this treasure, and he is dead there.

Treasure? What treasure? The answer appeared when a second stone slab was unearthed. Something was concealed behind it, something only Father Saunière saw. One glance told him his dreams of being assigned to Bordeaux or Paris or even Rome were nothing compared with the wealth that lay before him. Soon Saunière and two trusted helpers were busy as gophers, unearthing sites all around the church and on the outskirts of the village.

Father Saunière may have had to beg for funds to repair his old church in the beginning, but from that point forward the building activity at Saunière's church was intense and extravagant enough to generate envy in every prelate from the Bishop of Paris down. The little church was rebuilt to magnificence, decorated with paintings and sculptures purchased by Saunière on expeditions to Paris. Some were traditional, like
The Shepherds of Arcadia
, illustrating a group of people gathered around a sarcophagus in a landscape eerily similar to Rennes-le-Chateau.
Others were obscure in style and meaning, including a statue near the church entrance that bore the Latin inscription
Terribilis est locus iste
—This place is terrible.

The priest accumulated enough riches to purchase more than artifacts for his church. He bought several acres of land adjacent to the property, and began construction of the Tower of Magdala in honor of Mary Magdalene, and a multi-roomed mansion named Villa Bethania for himself and Marie. The expenditure was enormous—40,000 francs for the tower, 90,000 francs for the mansion and 20,000 francs for an adjoining garden. In total, Saunière spent an estimated 200,000 francs, paid out by a man who a few years earlier had received a pitiful monthly salary of 75 francs. In contemporary terms, 200,000 francs in 1900 would equal almost 7 million francs or about 1.25 million U.S. dollars.
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Saunière may have been dispatched to a backwater location in an uninspiring corner of France, but he was living like a combination of Vatican cardinal and eastern potentate, a man whose every desire—material, spiritual, cultural and carnal—appeared satisfied thanks to an apparently endless source of funds. He fed special biscuits to his flock of ducks to produce a milder flavor when they were roasted, boasted a well-stocked wine cellar, and had seventy liters of rum brought in each month from Jamaica. In June 1891 Saunière staged a procession through the village to display a newly acquired statue of the Virgin of Lourdes, which he installed on a pillar in the elegant new church gardens. The following year, he added a new confessional and pulpit, and mysteriously designed Stations of the Cross set in an unusual circular pattern that was believed to represent a coded message. The water stoup soon boasted an elaborate guardian devil, a commissioned statue of Mary Magdalene and numerous other items that elevated his tiny church far above the expected level of taste and culture for such an otherwise insipid community.

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Other estimates of the value of Saunière's expenses range up to 250 million francs (over $50 million), a figure that strains credulity to the extreme.

The ambitious priest began decorating more than his beloved church. The villagers delighted in his plans to construct
a grotto near a life-sized image of Christ on the cross in the town square. Marie Denarnaud took equal delight in wearing the latest Paris fashions in her strolls through the marketplace, sometimes carrying a purse containing deeds to property that Saunière had purchased in her name.

In addition to an elaborate restoration of its dilapidated church, Rennes-le-Chateau soon boasted an impressive tower dedicated to Mary Magdalene.

Local citizens were curious about the source of Saunière's riches, but not especially so. After all, he was providing employment for local artisans, and adding a measure of distinction that the community had been sorely lacking. Besides, their interest was sufficiently satisfied with a tale that explained things reasonably while appealing to their somewhat rebellious nature. Here is what the local folk believed:

Saunière had unearthed something more valuable than gold and jewels during his excavations. The treasure of Dagobert, and the identity of the buried man (“… and he is dead there”) was not the long-deceased Merovingian king himself but the body of Christ, its location pinpointed by a coded parchment hidden in the pillar beneath the altar.

Consider the import of that discovery. The existence of Christ's body in an insignificant French village would destroy every tenet of Christianity, scatter every foundation of its faith, and demolish every institution from the Vatican down. Either Christ had not died on the cross, or he had not arisen from the dead and been elevated to heaven three days later. Each theological principle of Christianity would have to be rethought and rewritten or discarded entirely, along with 2000 years of piety and sacrifice.

What was Saunière to do? A deeply religious man might have kept the secret forever, clinging to the faith he had lived by and refusing to shatter the spirituality of millions. A rationalist
would have made his discovery public, challenging old ideologies and assisting to replace them, and the faith they represented, with a new order.

Saunière was neither of these. He was a materialist who, quietly disclosing his discovery to a small group of selected Church leaders, promised to conceal the facts in exchange for a generous stipend, paid by the Church while they plotted their next move. In effect, Christianity was being blackmailed by an obscure French priest living openly with his young house-keeper/mistress.

If this were the case, the Church's ultimate response after several years of meeting his demands might be first to discredit Saunière, and later slap him down and be done with it. Which is what happened, but not before various mysterious events occurred, the kind that set small-town tongues wagging and conspiracy fans salivating.

The process began dramatically with the strange deaths of two local church officials. On the eve of All Saint's Day 1897 Abbé Gelis, a reclusive priest in the nearby village of Coustaussa, was found brutally murdered in the kitchen of his presbytery. Beaten with a pair of fire tongs and an ax, the priest had been reverently positioned on the floor with his hands neatly placed on his chest. While the residence had been ransacked, robbery appeared not to be the motive because 800 francs were found in an easily accessible drawer. The murder was never solved.

Five years later, the placid Bishop Billard of Carcassonne was also murdered. Billard, who not only failed to question Saunière regarding his wealth and extravagant lifestyle but appears to have encouraged it, suffered a fate as brutal as Abbé Gelis. His murder also remains unsolved.

Bishop Billard's successor, Abbé de Beauséjour, was not as forgiving to Saunière as Billard had been, especially after delving into the priest's background. Accusing Saunière of unspecified outrageous acts, the new bishop demanded explanations for Saunière's actions and an audit of the parish's income and
expenses, demands Saunière ignored before attempting to placate his superior with faked and incomplete records.

By 1909, the bishop had had enough. He ordered Saunière to leave his post at Rennes-le-Chateau. When Saunière refused, he was promptly defrocked. For eight years, the disgraced priest remained in the village, cared for by the faithful Marie Denarnaud to whom he willed all of his earthly possessions when he died in 1917. Saunière's estate consisted of a few books and a handful of worthless trinkets, but Marie was assured of a reasonably comfortable existence because Saunière had transferred Villa Bethania to her. She survived for the next thirty years by renting rooms within the mansion, finally passing ownership of the property her lover priest had acquired in her name to a local businessman in exchange for a lifetime annuity. This income source supported her for the rest of her uneventful life until her passing in January 1953. The man who purchased the land and provided the annuity was Noel Corbu, a local entrepreneur. Mark that name.