The material is distributed under a Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 4.0 license. From Mariano Tomatis.
With many thanks for Mariano in giving me permission to reproduce his excellent researches!
The situation of Saunière is so desperate that in August 1910 he decided to sell all the properties; the operation was entrusted to an agent of Bèziers, Louis Auran. In a letter of August 5, the agreement between the priest and the agent is signed, which will retain – when the sale is concluded – 5% of the figure1. However, the operation will not be successful. Saunière's intentions can be guessed in a letter that Don Gazel will write to him on September 12, 1910, in which his friend suggests that he move to Lourdes after selling all the possessions of Rennes2.
On September 9, 1910 Saunière decided to communicate to lawyer Mis his intention to entrust his case to another lawyer, Dr. Jean Eugène Huguet (1845-1927); he is probably very undecided about the tone to be used in this communication: a first draft is heavily corrected and rewritten from scratch. In the first draft we read:
I have received, for some time now, your letter of August 29th but with great regret I was not able to answer, please excuse me. My situation has changed in appearance, entering a new phase, and an eminent character has intervened who has distinguished himself for his intelligence and his knowledge, so please do not worry about this cause anymore. If I still need your services later, I will not fail to turn to you.3
The tone is softened in the beautiful copy4 of the letter that will then be sent: the "character" becomes "a priest who has distinguished himself with eminence for his knowledge and his eloquence, an elderly professor of the University of Paris, parish priest of Espiens".
Saunière goes on to thank lawyer Mis for his availability and trusting in the fact that he will not take it badly for the fact that he has entrusted his case to another. Several friends of the priest support his choice: the new designated lawyer, the canon Huguet, is best suited to face the upcoming trial. In fact, as early as October 11, 1910, Huguet wrote to Saunière that he had consulted with a legal adviser in Rome and that he learned that the Bishop cannot force him to reveal the names of the donors. As agreed, the trial resumed on 15 October 1910. In the courtroom there is only Don Huguet, who entrusts the memorial written by Saunière to the judge. There are three charges that are notified to the lawyer:
[the] Mr. Promoter of Justice [...] sets out three charges against Mr Bérengere Saunière:1.
that he has been dealing with mass fees for many years and especially since 1896;
he has demanded fees everywhere and has obtained a large amount of them for which he is not able to certify payment;2
that it has used these fees either in whole or in part to make up for construction and repairs carried out in Rennes-le-Château;3
to have disobeyed Monsignor the Bishop who, in February 1909, had forbidden him to claim fees by offering to procure them himself, a prohibition that Mr. Saunière had promised to observe and which he contravened.6
As a defensive line, Saunière admits the repeated request and subsequent receipt of fees for a large number of masses, but the justification that he advances – that of having entrusted to other priests the honoraries relating to the masses that he would not have been able to celebrate – does not convince the court: He argues in his defence that these honoraries were intended for a number of priests of which he names, but for the most part – young or old – are deceased, while some of them still alive are unknown, which is quite suspicious. [...] It is strange that if Mr Saunière gave such fees to other priests, in his requests for masses he stressed his own poverty, and argued that he lacked the fees and that he was ready to immediately give up even those he would have received; all falsehoods, if we refer to the statements of Mr Saunière himself. [...] There is a lact of oral and written testimonies of the payments of the masses, indeed Mr Saunière cannot present any register of masses. The fact that, in his opinion, he has never kept a register for the masses, could be considered a small lack: what makes it more serious is the fact that he has not fulfilled the compilation of any register to manage the flow of masses and capital in and outgoing to the alleged priests who would have used it:
It is unacceptable that a curate who has received such fees for others – according to his deposition – has not bothered to keep the slightest trace of the income and expenses of the masses8
The court fails to prove the improper appropriation of fees for the masses by Saunière, but the circumstantial scenario seems to be leant to this hypothesis; commenting on the account of the figures provided by Saunière in his memorial, according to the court:
A simple reading of this account is enough to convince himself that most of the huge sums for a small parish (about 200,000 francs), which he used for the restorations of the church and for several buildings, come from the offerings of the faithful of other parishes.9 In reality, the priest had specified the reason for just over 70 thousand francs, and had spoken of a total expenditure of between 150 and 160 thousand francs, excluding the work carried out personally. The court finds suspicious that the project to transform Villa Bethania into a shelter for elderly priests has not been communicated to the bishop in the procedural phase, since – according to Saunière – the property had been explicitly built for this purpose since 1901; the money to build it, in fact, would have been received by rich and anonymous donors invited to contribute precisely to the construction of a retirement home. Since the intention expressed by Saunière is purely hypothetical, the court points out that it is permissible to advance the doubt that the priest spent for himself and not for the Church the money received for entirely different intentions: The various spontaneous and solicited donations were not made to Mr. Saunière, but to the parish priest of Rennes-le-Château for the works of the parish and equally – according to his deposition – for a retirement home for the elderly priests. [...] Here it is neither the case to examine whether Mr Saunière has really fulfilled the indications of his donors in his initiatives, nor to decide recklessly on his good or bad faith with regard to the authority he has held in administering the use of the funds. [...] Mr Saunière makes any control impossible, providing a list of missing or unknown persons; but that from another point of view it does not matter to know the names of donors that Mr Saunière cannot name, saying he is kept to discretion; that it is enough to take the statements and figures reported by Mr Saunière to the letter to convince himself that he has received too large sums for pious works. [...] The sums were spent with utility only in the opinion of Mr. Saunière.10 The intention to offer the bishop the villa expressed by the old parish priest of Rennes does not convince the court, which believes that Saunière's expenses have nothing to do with ecclesiastical assets:[The sums] are represented by goods and objects other than the indisputable characteristics of ecclesiastical goods. [...] It is somewhat immoral to see a collector spend the product of his collection at his liking and give himself the title of sole owner and sovereign administrator of the works that derive from it.11 The burden of demonstrating that, instead, these works were of close interest to the Church falls on Saunière, and the bishop, "legitimate protector, controller, overseer of the assets derived from the different revenues, whose administration has the right to know", wishes not only to know the amount of the sums received as fees of the masses and as simple donations, but above all to be able to analyse the invoices and receipts of expenses made by the priest, in order to verify their lawfulness. Saunière, therefore has a duty to appear before his Bishop to justify the use of the funds, their past destination and the one he intends to give him in the future.12
The sentence is announced for November 5, 1910; this time Saunière also appears in the courtroom. The priest is found guilty of the first and third charges:
After a careful examination of the memorial presented by the defender, having taken advice with the councilors of the Court, regarding the first and third accusation: considering that Mr. Saunière is not sufficiently or legally convinced of having trafficked with mass fees; that it is also necessary to take note and punish his guilty negligence with regard to the accounting of the masses; considering that we must also punish the serious disobedience of which we find him guilty towards Monsignor the Bishop of Carcassonne, continuing to request masses despite the ban that had been made to him, we condemn Mr Bérenger Saunière to go to a priestly retreat house or to a monastery of his choice to carry out spiritual exercises lasting ten days, ordering him to present us with a certificate attesting to the completion of the exercises within two months.13 The penalty is therefore that of ten days of spiritual exercises. The judicial process does not close here, because the second accusation remains pending, and it is Saunière's task to prove that he has not made expenses foreign to ecclesiastical interests. The court, therefore, imposes on him: concerning the second accusation [...] of appearing before Monsignor the Bishop of Carcassonne or his delegate within one month to make him a part of the accounts he presented to us through his lawyer during the hearing and the supporting documents.14
The sentence was officially communicated to Saunière on November 17, 1910 by Don Bonnades who reached him in Rennes-le-Château, then drawing up a notification report15:
Minutes of service of the judgment against Mr Saunière.
On 17 November 1910, I, the undersigned, curate of Couiza and delegated by the officer Mr Cantegril, went to Rennes-le-Château to notify Mr Saunière of the judgment handed down against him by the Court of the Court of Carcassonne. After reading the aforementioned judgment to Mr Saunière, he was provided with a copy with the signature of the President, the Councillors and the Chancellor. As a result, this report was drawn up and signed by us, curated dean of Couiza, on 17 November. Saunière is granted 10 days from receipt of the judgment to appeal (so by 27 November) and one month for the delivery of accounting invoices (by 17 December).
1. Reproduced in Claire Corbu, Antoine Captier, L'héritage de l'Abbé Saunière, Bélisane, Nice 1995, p. 228.
2. Pierre Jarnac (cura di), Les Archives de l'abbé Saunière * 101 Documents reproduits d'après les originaux, Pégase, Perpignan 2002, documento 89.
3. Jarnac 2002, document 87.
4. Jarnac 2002, document 88.
5. Christian Doumergue, Bérenger Saunière, prêtre libre à Rennes-le-Château, C. Lacour, Nimes 2000, pp. 249-250.
6. From the sentence of 5 November 1910 transcribed in Jacques Rivière, Le fabuleux trésor de Rennes-le-Château, Bélisane, Nice 1983, pp. 193-198, here translated by Sabina Marineo.
7. Judgment of 5 November 1910.
8. Ibidem.
9. Judgment of 5 November 1910.
10. Ibidem.
11. Judgment of 5 November 1910.
12. Ibidem.
13. Judgment of 5 November 1910
14. Ibidem.
15. Transcribed in Rivière 1983, p. 199 here translated by Sabina Marineo.