Arcadia Discussion Zone

BS couldn't possibly have derived his illicit income - or even a big chunk of it - from selling masses. The logistics don't allow it. In present-day money, just to make the concept easier, let's assume he needed £1million. (I've seen the equivalent of £1.1million quoted as his total spend.) Allow a 20% hit-rate on his begging letters and £100 per hit - both figures pretty generous, I'd have thought. That's 50,000 letters he'd have had to write: seven a day, seven days a week for 20 years. At 100 words a time (and the one I've seen was twice as long), that's more than Shakespeare wrote. What's more, begging letters (which is what they were in fact, if not in name) are a chancy business; no one in his right mind would kick off one of BS's grandiose projects with neither the money in the bank nor a high probability of getting it.

There are other logistical problems. From his remote village, where would he have got a thousand names and addresses from, let alone fifty thousand? And how would they have got the money to him in the absence of universal banking? A million quid in postal orders? Gold francs through the post?

My figures may be way out, of course. Put in your own and see what you come up with. Nor am I saying he didn't make any money out of selling masses. In fact, it would have been an excellent way to cover up some other bit of skulduggery. After all, where better to hide an elephant than in a herd of elephants?

Read a bit more on the subject mate.

welcome capablanca...

Howdy,

I am the un-official forum gad-fly jester who also took the same approach you do. It is a mine field of sorts yer heading into, but if yer like me, ya got a gallows sense of humor, ya can shrug off most of the side line commentary.

By all means jump into the fray. I hope ya read Richard Dietrichs website RLC Theme Park for Heretics. He really has the whole enigma well outlined. Since nobody has conclusively wrapped it up by all means give it yer best shot.

My start point was Sauniere used the priesthood as a means to get his grubby paws on RLC as if he had a right to own it. That ain't 'zackly keeping to a vow of poverty, well he seems to have skipped over chastity with Marie D, and forget poverty as well. That leaves obesity, er ah obedience, but to whom?

have fun

M T Graves at yer service

Why not look at the evidence before leaping to big assumptions? It was possible, and his own paperwork shows this.

A priest who was selling masses made more money than he should have done for a period of time but died in poverty. Why not use Occam's Razor rather than wild speculation?

I have always had a few questions on this.

Not being Catholic, I don't get the whole idea of saying "masses for the dead". Now, without getting into the whole "Rise" hypothesis here, what I'm wondering is, how common is it? I mean, how often do Catholics want a priest to say masses for a dearly departed? Was it more common in 19th c. France than it is today?

And wouldn't they go to a local priest in the city to do it? I mean, the guy was a country bumpkin priest in an out-of-the-way village in Southern France. Why exactly would people in metropoles like Paris or Toulouse want a priest in some hick town to say a mass for their departed one. Wouldn't they go find a local one nearby?

As I understand it, Sauniere's mass-selling scheme was supposedly on the basis of advertising in magazines throughout France to say these masses for people. OK. I buy it, but I've never seen one of these ads. Can someone point me to a copy or photo of one of these ads he placed? I mean, to be honest, I've never seen an ad by any priest anywhere to say masses for the dead for people, but then I don't read many Catholic magazines, either.

It's true the math doesn't add up; Sauniere couldn't have gotten as wealthy as he did (before he overspent and died broke) saying the necessary number of actual masses. So this is why Descadeillas and others say he simply agreed to say far more masses than he ever actually did - i.e. accepted payment for services he never rendered. He took the checks but never did the deed.

Fine enough. But that often makes me wonder about this whole system. I mean, if you want a priest to say a mass for your dead loved one, you just send off a check to somebody you don't know who lives hundreds of miles away and hope he does it? You don't bother to verify if he ever actually did it after sending him the money? I realize people put more faith in their priests than in roofing contractors, but that's still pretty amazing. Usually most people when they send money want proof they got services for payment.

Sauniere lost his right to hear Confessions, consecrate a host on a consecrated altar, he couldn't dispense validly consecrated hosts as Communion, so how how did he manage to absolve sin, which is his reason to be a priest in the 1st place.

The penitent krowd that expected this absolution were getting conned big time from what I can ascertain. His sponsor Bishop's demise actually sealed his fate, 'cuz now he had no way to launder his ill-gotten gains. WW1 cut off his usual money laundering route to Spain so he was in a desperate bind when he was demised.

I say demised 'cuz he wasn't that old when he kicked off. I am much older and did not have the benefit of clean mountain air, fresh grown food, a steady income, no kids hassling him to go to football games or rock concerts. He led a lifestyle that should have stretched into his 90s like my Irish relatives in impoverished Ireland.

The real mystery is, who did him in, Marie D?, her kin folk? local parishoners? a pissed off penitent who found out he was de-frocked? why did his funds dry up so rapidly?