Saunière’s wealth
I think that I can clarify some of the points raised in Geoff Clifton’s letter [ FT348:69], using information provided by Luc Farin-Gélis in his 2011 book Le trésor du diable de Rennes-le-Château.
Firstly, Saunière did not come from “a very impoverished background”. His father was the manager of a factory and a landowner, and some of Saunière’s income was from a family vineyard. Among his other sources of income were grants from the municipality, funding from far-flung royalist sources, the sale of (very expensive) postcards, and – yes – the sale of Masses.
Secondly, the sale of Masses was not forbidden by the Church, but recognised as a legitimate source of income for poorer priests. However, the maximum permitted was three Masses per day. Anything above that was supposed to be passed on for other priests to say. What Saunière appears to have done is to have sold Masses by mail order on an industrial scale and then not have said them or to have had them said.
From the point of view of Catholic theology, this was a scandal. Masses were said for the forgiveness of the purchaser’s sins, or for those of a dead relative. By not saying them, Saunière was placing souls in jeopardy. It was for this reason that he was finally charged with simony.
Saunière effectively defied his condemnation for simony and returned to Rennes where, on 5 January 1917, he signed the order for public works totalling eight million francs (the equivalent of two billion francs at the end of the 20th century). It was not clear whether he signed contracts or merely approved quotations; but in any case he died on 22 January.
He had previously carried out various works in the village; but he had always placed these in the name of his housekeeper, who was also his heir. She lived the rest of her life in poverty, unable even to keep up the gardens that Saunière had commissioned. This suggests to me that Saunière was never as rich as he claimed to be; that the funding for his previous works had been hand-to-mouth; and that he knew that, in the event of default on the funding, his housekeeper, not himself, would be legally liable. Far from being a multi-millionaire, when he signed in January 1917 he did not have the money to pay for his grandiose schemes.
There is little doubt that Saunière was a con artist. His most successful con may have been that after his death he convinced a number of researchers that he was many times wealthier than he actually was. Martin Jenkins London