Reviewed by Brigitte Weeks
Sunday, April 30, 2006; BW03
THE SECRET SUPPER
A Novel
By Javier Sierra. Translated from the Spanish by Alberto Manguel
Atria. 329 pp. $25.95
THE PRIEST'S MADONNA
A Novel
By Amy Hassinger
Putnam. 319 pp. $24.95
What should we call a large group of conspiracy theorists? A British reviewer wryly suggests "a connivance." There are certainly enough writers in pursuit of Mary Magdalene's supposed French descendants to make up a large connivance. Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code has sold more than 40 million hardcover copies in 44 languages, and conspiracy mavens will be hard-put to imagine it is coincidence that two related novels are appearing in the same season that finally sees the paperback publication of The Da Vinci Code and the premiere of a movie version. So the billion-dollar question here is whether or not these two candidates for the brotherhood of connivers will challenge Brown, who sits securely on a mile-high stack of bestsellers.
The quick answer is "no." The Priest's Madonna , written by Iowa Writers' Workshop graduate Amy Hassinger, stands shyly in the clubhouse doorway, unlikely to be admitted. Javier Sierra's The Secret Supper , with more than 300,000 sold in Spain already, mounts a more serious challenge, but it lacks the contemporary pizzazz and love interest.
Explanations for why The Da Vinci Code has become the holy grail of publishing are legion, but essentially Brown brings to life a titillating alternative version of the underpinnings of Christianity. His fast-moving thriller invites readers to feel smart, enlightened and perhaps vindicated in their feelings that the established Church teeters on the boundaries of myth and greed. But the fundamental difference between The Da Vinci Code and The Secret Supper is that Robert Langdon, Brown's protagonist, lives very much in the 21st century. Sierra's narrative, on the other hand, plays out its intrigues against a background of 15th-century Milan: the powerful Sforza family, their patronage of the artistic and military genius Leonardo da Vinci and the despotic, sometimes violent rule of the Catholic Church.
Sierra's narrator, Father Agostino Leyre, a former ecclesiastical inquisitor, is now a hermit living in exile in an Egyptian desert. In his old age, he seems a little cuddly for an inquisitor who once had the power to torture and kill anyone rash enough to argue with the Church, but he is now seeking to ease his conscience by leaving behind a full account of a story never told: of art, religion and murder, played out years before.
In January 1497, Father Agostino was sent to Milan by the Vatican to investigate accusations of heresy surfacing in anonymous, mysteriously encoded messages signed only "The Soothsayer." The messages included a Latin riddle that Agostino felt would identify the sender. He suspected the heretics might be descendants of the Cathars, a Gnostic sect that had threatened the very heart of Vatican rule a century earlier. For the Cathars, true faith meant establishing a direct relationship with God, without the need for the Church. Smelling a profound threat, Pope Innocent III ordered the massacre of more than 200 Cathars in 1244. The Vatican was prepared to go to any lengths to exterminate secret survivors.
When Agostino reaches Milan, mysterious murders occur, and he gains access to the incomplete mural of "The Last Supper" being painting by da Vinci. Here Sierra claims one advantage over Brown: The Secret Supper 's fictional decoding of the famous painting relies on details uncovered by the 10-year restoration completed in 1997. The apostle Peter was revealed to be holding a dagger, and Sierra claims that Leonardo portrayed himself as Judas Thaddeus (St. Jude). Tellingly, the Leonardo/apostle has his back turned to Jesus and is talking to Simon -- modeled, according to Sierra, from a bust of no less a skeptic than Plato. So "The Last Supper" being painted in the heart of a Milanese Catholic monastery is in effect a poster proclaiming a Christian church radically different from the church founded by St. Peter.
Hassinger's The Priest's Madonna is not well-served by comparison with The Secret Supper . She has carefully created a story based on an actual Catholic priest who served in the French village of Rennes-le-Château. Father Bérenger Saunière became mysteriously rich while serving his rural and impoverished parish. He also was rumored to have taken a mistress from the village, Marie Dénarnaud, to live with him in an ornate villa he built surrounded by landscaped gardens.
The adjective that springs uncomfortably to mind when reading this novel is "earnest." The life of the villagers is meticulously documented, but the mystery of the hidden tomb and the missing book that is to shake the Church to its foundations never becomes compelling.
The clear choice here for fans of religious conspiracy and reinterpretations of religious history is The Secret Supper . Its atmosphere of intrigue and the closed life of the monastery feel authentic, and the lonely old narrator in a desert cave is a good companion. His final explication of the secret message in da Vinci's "Last Supper" requires a good head for games (Sudoku and crossword skills will come in handy), but here's one hint: According to Sierra, Leonardo's painting clearly tells us that Judas Iscariot did not betray Jesus. ·
Brigitte Weeks is a former editor of Book World.