Patrick Mensior published “Le journal de l'abbé Saunière 1901 a 1905: un Trésor à Rennes-le-Château”. The journal had been known about for a few years but the mythomaniacs had decided against publishing it because it was so unremarkable and boring. When it was finally published by Mensior in 2017, it contained multitudinous footnotes containing prime examples of gossip, hypotheses – and yes, numerous examples of retrospective falsification.

The prime evidence concerning Bérenger Saunière, covering his correspondence, Account Books and selling of masses activities still remains unpublished, and can only be accessed by people willing to pay a substantial amount of money to its current owners, Antoine Captier & Claire Corbu.

However, we are fortunate enough to have the partial original notebooks of Bérenger Saunière: 820 pages of correspondence record of letters sent and received by the curé of Rennes-le-Château 1896-1915, existing on microfilm in Archives de l'Aude, Carcassonne (File numbers 1Mi8l/l and IMi8l/2). This was borrowed from the private archives of Antoine Captier and Claire Corbu without being returned, and a copy provided to the Archives de l'Aude. This refers to an expenditure of approximately 250,000 francs.

As we all know, Patrick Mensior, Antoine Captier and Claire Corbu are all very much in the business of “romantic speculation” and it would be unwise to take their accounts seriously!

Jean Fourié is considered to be a serious investigator who has fallen into the trap of taking the imagination of Gérard de Sède seriously – for it was Gérard de Sède who first claimed “Abbé Saunière's shocking deathbed confession to Abbé Rivière”. Gérard de Sède, the admirer of the surrealist André Breton.

Quoting Monsignor Boyer:

- Page 56 (of “L'Or de Rennes”, 1967): “It is inconceivable that Saunière received the sacraments two days after his death. And the statement that the dear old Abbé Rivière, curé of Espéraza, who died in 1929, and who was Dean of Coursan when I knew him, never smiled again after the death of Saunière at which he had administered the sacraments, is very far from the truth, as I myself saw him laughing his head off on more than one occasion.” (“L’Indépendant”, 9 December 1967)

To conclude, what the mythomaniacs rely on are hearsay evidence and retrospective falsification spurred on by the fantasies of the mid-1950s.

Abbé Saunière existed, but not the myths about him and his “treasure”. That Abbé Saunière is a product of fantasy.