BLood on the deviL’s Chessboard
A possibly Islamist-inspired attack on Saunière’s famous church is the latest twist in the long-running saga of Rennes-le- Château. RICHARD STANLEY reports from the scene.
The ‘Rennes-le-Château mystery’ was one of the greatest esoteric riddles of the 20th century, an elaborate hoax built on the shadowy outlines of a genuine enigma – the puzzling actions of everyone’s favourite evil clergyman, Bérenger Saunière, whose inexplicable wealth succeeded in putting this remote village on the map (see FT101:28-31, 198:56-59, 343:5253).
It was tremendous fun while it lasted, but in recent years Rennes has lost some of its weird lustre with the passing of many key personalities and the extensive remodelling of the site in a relentless quest for tourist revenues. On Sunday 23 April, the day of the French elections, a bizarre assault was launched on the Church of St Mary Magdalene that may prove to be the final nail in the mystery’s coffin.
Shortly before midday, a raven-haired woman in her late teens or early 20s, asked local restaurateur Morgan Marrot if she could use his bathroom to wash her hands. A few minutes later, she re-emerged from the stall wearing a long white cape and a crimson wolf mask. Retreating into the Lourdes grotto, the masked woman made a long telephone call in Arabic. Then, brandishing an axe, she strode into the church to launch a violent assault on the famous statue of Asmodeus, the guardian of all occult knowledge. After pulverising the demon’s head and severing its arms she placed a Koran beside its dismembered remains. Loudly reciting Surahs in Arabic, she climbed over a railing to furiously attack the altar, decapitating the celebrated basrelief of Mary Magdalene.
The stunned onlookers finally raised the alarm, summoning the mayor, Alexandre Painco, who succeeded in disarming the assailant, before alerting the gendarmerie. As she calmly waited to be placed under formal arrest, the mayor asked the young zealot why she had committed these acts. “The Devil is the representation of evil and it is said that we must not idolise statues,” she insisted. “Today is a day of presidential election, while in Syria the West bombs and kills children. My husband is there! You are all disbelievers! ”
A security perimeter was established around the village and a bomb squad called in as the authorities tried to make up their minds whether they were dealing with a genuine terror attack or an act of religious mania. The authorities seemed to settle on the latter, and the woman, whose name has not been released, was subsequently transferred from police custody to a local psychiatric hospital.
Given Rennes’s propensity for drawing in every conspiracy theory known to mankind, a head-on collision between Asmodeus and militant Islam may have been inevitable, a surreal display of iconoclasm, redolent of all the contradictions and challenges faced by the world beyond this isolated plateau, a location seemingly removed from everyday life, yet which registers and reflects its tensions as surely as the tremors in a spider’s web. Some longterm mystery watchers, however, are suggesting the destruction of Rennes’s iconic demon may mark the final station on the village’s road back to rustic oblivion. This year happens to be the centenary of Saunière’s mysterious death on 17 January 1917, a date still commemorated locally as ‘Blue Apple Day’.