St. Mary Magdalene in the village church of Rennes-le-Chateau.Last Sunday was the Feast of St. Mary Magdalene. A little over three years ago, I found myself in the southwest of France for the marriage of two friends. In the days leading up to the wedding, four of us made a day trip to Rennes-le-Chateau, the Roswell of France, which, in recent years, has become linked the revived interest in the Magdalene. St. Mary Magdalene is patroness of the village church and its supposedly curious interior has been fodder for innumerable conspiracy theories following the publication of books such as Holy Blood, Holy Grail and, later, The Da Vinci Code.
I read Holy Blood, Holy Grail in the eighth grade and was taken by the idea of Templars and Cathars and hidden secrets. (Yes, I was playing Dungeons and Dragons every weekend then too.) I wanted to see this mysterious town with its ancient church and surrounding ruins.
The main door of the tiny Romanesque church.After 25 years, I at last found myself climbing up the hill from the car park with two retired academics, a medical anthropologist, and a digital camera ready to be wowed. What I found was a charming little village so small that it might better be called a bled, a few crystal shops, and a tiny church crammed with objects of blasphemously poor taste ordered up from 19th Century church supply catalogues by a rogue priest who thought of himself as an artistic soul.
