Yet beginning in the early 1890s, Sauniere began to spend enormous amounts of cash. First he renovated the crumbling Church of the Magdalene, built in 1059, rendering its interior marginally less tacky than Graceland. Just inside the entrance he installed a benitier (holy water stoup) graced by an unsettling, blood-red statue of a demon said to be Asmodeus (some researchers have claimed it represented Republicanism). The Stations of the Cross were painted strangely, in bright candy colours. Bizarre imagery abounded: Station Eight depicted a young boy wearing a Scottish tartan, Station Fourteen showed Christ being carried into his tomb after nightfall (in the Bible, Christ died and was entombed in daylight), and a three-dimensional mural over the altar featured a bag of coins at the feet of Jesus as he delivered his Sermon on the Mount.