(Fully, Francois Berenger Sauniere, but his first name is almost never used)
Figure at the centre of many of the various Conspiracy Theories concerning the
whereabouts of the Holy Grail
In 1886, Sauniere was appointed to be the curate of the village of
Rennes-le-Chateau in the Languedoc, about halfway between the city of
Carcassonne and the Spanish border. The standard version of the story states
that the church of Mary Magdalene in the village was falling into a state of
disrepair, and Sauniere immediately started a campaign to restore it.
For the first six years of his incumbency Sauniere lived austerely - his
official income was never more than the equivalent of about $10 per year - but
he nevertheless hired a housekeeper, Marie Denarnaud, and struck up a
friendship with the Abbe Henri Boudet, curate of the neighbouring village of
Rennes-les-Bains.
In 1891, a modest donation of money by a local family of aristocrats enabled
Sauniere to start his restoration project. He began by dismantling the altar,
which at the time rested on a pair of ancient Visigothic pillars that had been
part of the church since it was built. One of these pillars proved to be hollow,
and inside it Sauniere found a number of parchments, normally described as two
geneaologies of the Merovingian dynasty of French kings, one dating from 1244
and the second from 1644; the testament of a 16th-century landowner named Henri
d'Haupoul; and either one double-sided parchment or two separate ones that had
been "composed" in the 1780's by the Abbe Antoine Bigou, Sauniere's predecessor
at Rennes.
On Boudet's advice, Sauniere took the parchments to Paris, where he showed them
to senior churchmen at the Seminary of Saint Sulpice. (Sauniere's presence at
Saint Sulpice in late 1891 is confirmed by his name in the register of masses
there, but no official records of the purpose of his visit remain). While in
Paris he is reputed to have moved widely in occult circles, and to have ordered
copies of three paintings from the Louvre - an anonymous portrait of Pope
Celestine V, who reigned briefly at the end of the 13th century, a portrait of
St. Anthony by David Teniers (whether father or son is not recorded,
although St. Anthony and St. Paul in the Desert by Teniers the Younger is
believed by many to be the most likely candidate), and most famously, The
Shepherds of Arcadia by Nicholas Poussin - supposedly based on a tomb that
was until recently to be found in the Rennes vicinity.
Sauniere returned to Rennes in early 1892 and immediatly began spending money in
earnest. The church was completely restored in a bizzarre and garish style - the
font was carved into the shape of a crouching demon, the Stations of the Cross
contain strange details (e.g. station VIII shows a child wearing what is clearly
a Scottish tartan), and the words "Terribilis Est Locus Iste" (This place
is terrible) were inscribed over the door. A large house, the Villa Bethania,
was built for Marie Denarnaud (Sauniere himself never occupied it, preferring
to remain in the official priest-house), and the Magdala library-tower was built
on a precipice overlooking the valley. All in all, Sauniere's expenditure over
the decade 1892-1902 was many millions of francs - and yet his official income
was still no more than $10 per year.
In 1903, the Bishop of Carcassonne died, and his successor began an
investigation into Sauniere's spending. The fact that he had been living above
his means was plain for all to see, but the Bishop could find no proof of where
the money had come from. Lacking any real evidence, Sauniere was charged with
simony - the practise of illegally selling masses - and supended from duty. He
took the unusual (for a country priest) step of appealing straight to the
Vatican, who immediatly re-instated him, and wrote a stern letter to the new
Bishop, saying basically, "Do not bother Sauniere again". The experience left
Sauniere chastened, however, and his spending for the rest of his life was toned
down - yet still far above what would be expected for a turn-of-the-century
priest in rural France. Indeed, evidence suggests that at the height of WWI, a
cousin of the Austrian Emperor travelled behind enemy lines with the apparent
sole intention of giving more money to Sauniere.
On January 17, 1917,
Sauniere suffered a massive stroke which left him bed-ridden. The stroke had
come very suddenly - five days earlier on January 12, the Mayor of Rennes had
been heard to declare that Sauniere had been a picture of health, yet on that
day, according to a reciept in the Rennes museum, Marie Denarnaud ordered a
coffin for her master.
Boudet had died a few years earlier, so a priest from the nearby village of
Couiza was brought in to hear Sauniere's confession. What passed between them is
unknown, but the priest left Sauniere's bedchamber white-faced and ashen, and
according to one observer, never smiled again. He had refused to grant
absolution, and Sauniere died unshriven in the early hours of Jan. 22. He was
buried in the curchyard at Rennes.
When Sauniere's will was opened, it declared him penniless. At some point prior
to his death, all his wealth and property had been transfered into the name of
his housekeeper, Marie Denarnaud.
Since the mid-60's many authors (most notably in the book The Holy Blood & The
Holy Grail) have attempted to link Sauniere's unexplained wealth with the
Priory of Sion, and the supposed Bloodline of Christ. All these theories,
however, rest on two parchments that surfaced around that time, supposedly
facsimilies of the two Bigou documents found by Sauniere. A recent BBC
documentary, however, showed beyond a shadow of a doubt that these documents
were forgeries made in the mid-50's by Pierre Plantard and Phillipe de Cherisey, the archiects of the Priory's recent resurgence. Sauniere's wealth,
therefore, remains unexplained.