Wooden Candle Holders of Bérenger Saunière

Wooden Candle Holders of Bérenger Saunière
 
These are not mere candle holders—they are ritual columns, carved from wood and silence, that have crossed time to reach me. Once belonging to Bérenger Saunière, the enigmatic priest of Rennes-le-Château, they stood not in the church, but in his private quarters—objects of intimacy, not liturgy.
Saunière transformed a forgotten village into a vortex of heresy, symbolism, and whispered legend. His unexplained wealth gave rise to theories of Templar treasure, secret manuscripts, and hidden tombs. Yet the truth remains elusive. What endures is the magnetism of the unknown—and these candle holders are part of that gravitational field.
Upon Saunière’s death, the objects were entrusted to his housekeeper, the silent guardian of gestures and secrets. Her family preserved them for decades, as one keeps an object too charged to explain. Now they are mine. But they do not belong to me—they are on loan from a mystery that refuses to be possessed.
These candle holders are not devotional—they are dimensional. I regard them as relics of spiritual ambiguity, carved from the tension between faith and secrecy. To preserve them is to honor the architecture of the unsaid.
 
Doktor Lazarus Archaeologist, Historian, Collector, Independent Curator