Bérenger Saunière, Date of Birth, Place of Birth, Date of Death

Bérenger Saunière

French priest

Date of Birth: 11-Apr-1852

Place of Birth: Montazels, Occitania, France

Date of Death: 22-Jan-1917

Profession: Catholic priest, presbyter

Nationality: France

Zodiac Sign: Aries

François-Bérenger Saunière (11 April 1852 – 22 January 1917) was a Roman Catholic priest in the French village of Rennes-le-Château, in the Aude region; officially from 1885 until he was transferred to another village in 1909 by his bishop, a nomination he declined; he subsequently resigned.
From 1909 until his death in 1917 he was a non-stipendiary Free Priest (an independent priest without a parish, who did not receive any salary from the church because of suspension), and who from 1910 celebrated Mass at an altar constructed in a special conservatory by his Villa Bethania.
Saunière's refusal to leave Rennes-le-Château to continue his priesthood in another parish incurred permanent suspension.
The epitaph on Saunière's original 1917 gravestone read "priest of Rennes-le-Château 1885-1917". He would be virtually unknown today were he not a central figure in the conspiracy theories surrounding Rennes-le-Château which form the basis of several documentaries and books such as the 1982 Holy Blood, Holy Grail by Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh, and Henry Lincoln.
Elements of these theories were later used by Dan Brown in his best-selling 2003 novel The Da Vinci Code, in which the fictional character Jacques Saunière is named after the priest.