He decided to remain in Rennes-le-ChГўteau, however, and the ownership of his buildings (Tower of Magdala included) did not pass to the diocese, because SauniГЁre had taken the precaution of transferring their ownership to Marie Denarnaud.ДЄlthough the Bishop had concluded that trafficking in Masses was enough to explain SauniГЁreВ’s suspicious wealth, rumors about buried treasures (and alleged contacts with the Paris esoteric milieu) continued until his death in 1917, and even in the years that followed. In 1909, the Bishop asked SauniГЁre to leave Rennes-le-ChГўteau the priest refused, and was suspended from his priestly duties and privileges (a lesser sanction than excommunication, but a painful sanction nonetheless, which ended SauniГЁreВ’s ecclesiastical career). The Bishop traced advertisements placed by SauniГЁre in Catholic magazines throughout France, and even abroad, and quickly determined that he could not possibly have celebrated all the Masses he had received payments for, thus in fact defrauding his В“clientsВ”.

The matter became even worse, of course, when priests failed to celebrate the Masses requested, despite having received the appropriate stipend.

Advertising in this way was regarded as a kind of unfair competition towards other priests, and was condemned by the Church as illicit. В“Trafficking in MassesВ” meant, in practice, that priests advertised their willingness to celebrate a great number of Masses for both the dead and the living. a fixed amount of money for each Mass they said. Prior to Vatican II, for each Mass, priests received a stipend, i.e. Masses can also be said for a specific aim for the benefit of living persons (for instance, for healing purposes). In the Catholic Church, Masses can be celebrated for the benefit of a specific soul, in the hope of helping a deceased loved one to ascend from Purgatory into Heaven. These rumors could not have failed to attract the attention of the local Catholic Bishop, and having investigated the matter he concluded that, rather than having found a Cathar treasure, SauniГЁre had made his money from В“trafficking in MassesВ”, a not uncommon wrongdoing among 19 th and early 20 th century priests. This obviously did not endear SauniГЁre to the municipality, and some villagers also suspected him of having an affair with his servant, Marie Denarnaud (1868-1953), who was undoubtedly fiercely loyal to the controversial priest. The priest did his excavations at night, in order to remain the sole owner of his findings (which, according to French law, he should have given to the State). The fact that SauniГЁre was also an archeology buff, and had found some old artifacts whilst digging in the vicinity of the parish church, added fuel to the fire of rumors. Rennes-le-ChГўteau lies at the heart of the area once inhabited by the Cathars, and rumors spread that SauniГЁre had found a treasure buried in the Middle Ages by the persecuted heretics. These construction projects obviously cost a good deal of money, while SauniГЁre was known to come from a poor family, and one did not normally become rich in 19 th century France by being a parish priest in a mountain hamlet. SauniГЁre, it seems, was a rather strange character, deeply interested in symbolism he also had a penchant for building a number of constructions around his parish church, including a bizarre neo-gothic В“Tower of MagdalaВ”. The story starts with Father Berenger SauniГЁre (1852-1917), whose last name is also borrowed in The Da Vinci Code, who in 1885 became the parish priest of Rennes-le-ChГўteau, a small village in the French region of Aude, near the Pyrenees Mountains. Legends connected with the Priory of Sion have generated great interest through the years, particularly as a result of the publication in 1982 of The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail by British journalists Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh, and Henry Lincoln. The Priory of Sion is an esoteric order legally established in France in 1956 by Pierre Plantard (1920-2000), yet claiming great antiquity.

Priory da vinci code