Ever one to play the Devils advocate!

Ever one to play the Devils advocate, a fellow researcher discussed with me the possibility of Saunière faking the list of donors to essentially 'cover-up' where his money was coming from. Viz read the comments below:

French researcher Buchholtzer said:

"It is true that the diaries of Saunière cover the "request for Masses", "Sending masses", "acknowledgment", "no longer masses," and "promises of Masses". I counted 4660 "mass mailings" from 1896 to 1908, an average of one per day. That's a lot but it is far from the reported "hundreds of orders he received every day."

&:

"The number of "donors" of the Abbe's amounts to tens or hundreds. That's a lot, but at the same time, it is less than what I initially feared. How has Saunière got in touch with them, and how did he convince [them to send money] ..."

&:

"The same people finance Saunière - largely from beginning to end ."

Researcher Corjan de Raaf wrote:

"Did anyone ever wonder why Saunière received all his mass requests in alphabetical order? Rather odd don't you think? The priest literally copied an annuaire (the Yellow Pages of the age) to fake a justification for all the money he received. Yes Saunière put adverts in papers, but not the hundreds or thousands that are claimed. I have been a fanatical document searcher for many years and never have I come across one of these adverts".

There are only a handful of so-called donor requests on the Priory-of-Sion.com as 'proof' for the thousands and thousands of supposed mass requests from the world over.

But no-one has ever found hundreds and thousands of mass request letter examples to prove Saunière wrote hundreds and thousands of requests for masses. 

"On December 11, number 13 of the local magazine The veilles des Chaumières, there appears an advertisement signed by Saunière in which he is advertising for a mass for 1 franc. The priest will deny ever having sent the ad to the magazine  - and in fact the operation has the air of a maneuver of libel against Saunière".

Corjan de Raaf also reported: 

"Curiously enough, although hords of researchers have been looking for it for a long time, no-one has ever found an advert in any magazine or paper from Saunière in which he requests money to say mass. Nor has there been found one written request to any of his benefactors".

But the main witness is Saunière himself. Had he lied and prepared fake documents in the past? 

On some websites it is reported that: In February 1903, the Mayor of Rennes-le-Château wrote an official complaint to the Prefect of the Aude saying Estieu was a very bad teacher – the Sub-Prefect later suspected (on 15 February) whether or not that letter, not in the Mayor's handwriting, had really been written by Saunière."

If Sauniere did fake that complaint letter - one must ask, if he has done it once, could he have done it again?

Of course we know he did. He conspired with Marie Denarnaud, his right hand woman, his accomplice, to have her send out pre-prepared fake letters in answer to enquiries to Saunière to cover up his mysterious absences from the village to who knows where!