Bérenger Saunière (1852-1917) was a French preacher, who has become famous among conspiration theorists and Dan Brown readers. A cryptogram he allegedly left behind is said to have led to a treasure.
I have never been a big fan of Dan Brown’s novels. In my view, real codes and ciphers are much more interesting than Brown’s lurid stories. However, it counts in favor of Dan Brown that many of his readers became interested in cryptology and crypto history, which I highly welcome, of course.
Saunière’s cryptogram I
A meanwhile famous story that is connected to Dan Brown’s novel “The Da Vinci Code” is about Bérenger Saunière (1852-1917), a Roman Catholic priest in the French village of Rennes-le-Château. Saunière owned much more money than could be expected from a country priest. When the bishop sent members of his staff to Rennes-le-Château in order to check where the money came from, the explanation found was that Saunière had taken considerable payments for reading masses. He had even advertised his mass reading service in church magazines and newspapers. In order to increase his revenue, Saunière often took money from different clients for the same mass or even renounced reading masses people had paid for. As it seems, Saunière preferred to invest the money he made in an expensive lifestyle instead of spending it for church purposes or helping the poor.
However, there are conspiration theorists, who don’t believe that Saunière became rich just by selling masses. Instead, they think that he found a treasure. Two parchments Saunière allegedly found in his church play an important role in this conspiration theory (these parchments have long been proven fake, but real conspiration theorists don’t let themselves be discouraged by such a fact).
On one of the parchments, the following cryptogram is noted (in the original AD GENESARETH was not highlighted):
VCPSJQROVYMYYDLTPEFRBOXTODJLBK
NJFQUEPAJYNPPBFEIELRGHIIRYBTTCVT
GDADGENESARETHLUCCVMTEJHPNPG
SVQJHGMLFTSVJLZQMTOXANPEMUPHK
ORPKHVJCMCATLVQXGGNDT
With the help of a crypto expert, Saunière allegedly found the following procedure to solve the cryptogram:
- Withdraw AD GENESARETH
- Decrypt the remaining letters with the Vigenère cipher, use MORT EPEE as key
- Replace every letter by its successor in the alphabet
- Decrypt the result with the Vernam cipher, use the inscription of the alleged gravestone of Marie de Blanchefort as key
- Replace every letter by its predecessor in the alphabet
- Write the result into two 8×8 tables and retrieve the cleartext with knight moves
Looks simple, doesn’t it? After this procedure, the following cleartext is obtained:
BERGERE PAS DE TENTATION QUE POUSSIN TENIERS GARDENT LA CLEF PAX DCLXXXI PAR LA CROIX ET CE CHEVAL DE DIEU J’ACHEVE CE DAEMON DE GARDIEN A MIDI POMMES BLEUES
Suposedly, this cleartext explains where a treasure was located. Saunière is said to have understood the message, and this is how he became a rich man. I don’t see any location description in this cleartext. I’m afraid, in contrast to Saunière, I wouldn’t have found the treasure.
Saunière’s cryptogram II
Dave Oranchak recently told me that there is another Saunière cryptogram. It’s described on an archived website. The following scan is taken from Dave’s Facebook post:
I don’t know what the relationship between this cryptogram and the afore-mentioned one is. Maybe, Saunière found even two treasures, solving two different cryptograms. The more likely explanation is that both are fakes. At least, the second cryptogram seems to be still unsolved. I hope that the encryption is less complicated than the one of the first cryptogram.
Can a reader solve the second Saunière cryptogram? Does anybody know, where this scan comes from? If this cryptogram is a fake (which seems very likely to me), who faked it?
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Further reading: Who can break this enciphered letter written by Albrecht von Wallenstein?
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