Jesus Decoded

The Da Vinci Code :

 

 

Introduction :

 

The Da Vinci Code is a very successful politico-religious thriller, published in the US in March 2003 and in France one year later. This novel has also been translated in more than 40 languages, which is a proof of the worldwide success of this thriller.

The author, Dan Brown, is a former English teacher, interested in code-breaking and covert government agencies. He published his first novel, Digital Fortress, in 1998, in which he explored the fine line between civilian privacy and national security. He then published two other books, Angels and Demons in 2000 and Deception Point in 2001. Even if these novels have been quite popular in the US, Dan Brown is now reaching a worldwide success thanks to the Da Vinci Code.

But we will see that behind this success, there is also a big controversy. A lot of people indeed have been criticising historical facts and artistic interpretations Dan Brown makes of the work of Leonardo Da Vinci for instance.

So I’m going to present you the reasons of such a success and then we’re gonna see why this thriller became the centre of such a polemic.

 

 

 

 

1. I.              What made of the Da Vinci Code a worldwide success…

 

1°/ The story of the Da Vinci Code

 

The story begins with the murder of Jacques Saunière, curator (conservateur) of the Louvre Museum. Just before he died, he found the energy to undress, to draw a pentacle on his abdomen with his blood and a circle on the floor in the middle of which he laid down, with his arms and legs wide apart, like in Leonardo Da Vinci’s famous drawing, The Vitruvian Man.

But Jacques Saunière is much more than just the famous curator of the Louvre Museum. The reader quickly learns that he was also one of the members of the secret society, The Priory of Sion, which also included among its members famous people like Isaac Newton, Botticelli and Leonardo da Vinci.

According to the novel, this secret society has been created centuries ago to protect a big secret. Jacques Saunière was the last one to know it, so before he died he let some clues to his granddaughter, Sophie Neveu, and to Robert Langdon, a Harvard professor of art history and religious symbology, so that they can avoid the secret being lost.

So the whole novel is a race against the clock. By breaking numerous of codes, they have to discover what this secret is. But several characters are also trying to discover it before them, while the police is convinced that professor Langdon is the murderer of Mr. Saunière and want to arrest him.

 

2°/ A worldwide success

 

Very quickly, this novel has become a worldwide success :

• translated in more than 40 languages
• 12 millions of books have already been sold around the world, 500 000 in France and more than 6 millions in the US
• a movie is going to be made from the novel (director : Ron Howard)

The Da Vinci Code has also become a big business of many people :

• on Amazon.com, more than 10 books pretending to explain the Da Vinci Code and to reveal the secrets of the code

ex : Secrets of the Code : the unauthorized guide to the mysteries behind the Da Vinci Code

ex 2 : The Da Vinci Hoax : exposing the errors in the Da Vinci Code

ex 3 : Fact and Fiction in the Da Vinci Code

• several tours for tourists have been created

Like in the novel, tour operators are offering you to visit Paris, the Louvre Museum, the Saint-Sulpice Church, followed by a special trip in the countryside of Paris in Smart cars (!!!). Then they are bringing tourists to London, where a special talk to an expert on the subject of codes and cryptology is supposed to help them to understand the clues given in the novel. And then they are going to Scotland, where the Da Vinci Code story ends.

Special price for a 9-day tour (without the plane tickets to go to Paris) : 3000 dollars / person

And this summer, 20 000 people have visited the Saint-Sulpice church (which is part of the story) to check the signs spread in the book. And the priest was so upset that he put a sign saying that everything in the book concerning his church was wrong.

So, in more than one year, the Da Vinci Code has become a worldwide success and business

 

3°/ Reasons of such a success

 

• the Da Vinci Code is a page-turning thriller

chapters are short, each two pages something new happens, so you can’t stop reading it

although the book is about 500 pages, it’s difficult to make it last more than 5 days

• the author is using the plot theory, which is very popular among people

indeed, in the Da Vinci Code, he is suggesting that through centuries, the Catholic Church has kept something secret to keep its hegemony on the society. And it is this secret that the Priory of Sion, the secret society of which Leonardo da Vinci and Jacques Saunière were members, protected through all these years.

• he is satisfying American feminists in taking up the sacred feminine theory

while gods and goddesses were equal 2000 years ago, the author writes that women have been dispossessed of their spiritual power, partly because of the action of the Catholic Church

also linked with the plot theory

• the author included riddles (énigmes), coded messages and anagrams in all this novel

the reader is then part of the story because he tries to decode the riddles before the two characters

It’s like in the Bernard Weber’s novel, Les Fourmis, in which the reader also has to discover solutions to the riddles proposed

• during all the story, the reader has the impression to learn something about art history and symbolic

ex : why the date of birth of Jesus has been chosen on December 25 ?

p 232 : “Teabing groaned. “Don’t get a symbologist started on Christian icons. Nothing in Christianity is original. The pre-Christian God Mithras – called the Son of God and the Light of the World – was born on December 25… By the way, December 25 is also the birthday of Osiris, Adonis and Dionysus. Even Christianity’s weekly holy day was stolen from the pagans”

+ the reader learns about Leonardo Da Vinci’s work

 

But I just said “the reader has the impression to learn” because in fact all the facts and symbols used in this book are not true. That’s also why this book created a big controversy and has been criticised a lot, by the Catholic Church for instance.

 

 

1. II.            …but that also launched a huge controversy

 

There are two kinds of critics addressed to Dan Brown’s novel. According to some detractors, he is giving wrong interpretations of some Leonardo Da Vinci’s paintings. But the biggest scandal sparked off (suscité) by this book concerns religion, especially the Catholic Church, which is accused of having hidden a part of the reality for centuries to keep its hegemony on the society.

 

 

1°/ A religious scandal

 

The Da Vinci Code is indeed denouncing the secret the Vatican has hidden for centuries about the true life of Jesus. It says that members of the Catholic Church even murdered some people to protect the secret.

Numerous responses from the Catholic Church, especially in the US.

Ex : on a catholic website : “Catholics should be concerned about the book because it not only misrepresents their Church as a murderous institution but also implies that the Christian faith itself is utterly false” (www.catholic.com)

Ex 2 : on the website of the Catholic Distance University (www.cdu.edu), there is the presentation of a seminar titled “the catholic response to the Da Vinci Code”. 3 weeks of programs for $100

Ex 3 : publication of a book : The Da Vinci Code : A Catholic Response by Amy Welborn

But no official response from the Catholic church, I think because of the high number of small churches in the US

In France, the Bishop Conference prepared arguments to respond to the book. “We prepared a list of theologians ready to respond. But nobody asked us anything and for the moment the book hasn’t sparked off a real debate”

But in Lebanon, the Church would have stopped the sale of the book and make it forbidden

 

On the contrary, Opus Dei, which is also part of the story, made an official response.

In the novel indeed, some of their members are trying to discover the secret of the Priory of Sion, which could discredit the Catholic Church. They are then expected to increase the number of faithful to the church. But in addition to these intentions, the Da Vinci Code is also giving to Opus Dei a very bad image. For instance, in the introduction, Dan Brown is speaking of “brainwashing, coercion, and corporal mortification”.

Like the Catholic Church, Opus Dei didn’t really like this book. On the website of the church, we can find the official response made to the book by the Prelature of Opus Dei in the United States :

“We also want to point out that The Da Vinci Code’s bizarre depiction of Opus Dei is inaccurate, both in the overall impression and in many details, and it would be irresponsible to form any opinion of Opus Dei based on reading The Da Vinci Code”

Same message on the French version of the website.

 

2°/ The reinterpretation of Da Vinci’s work

 

According to the novel, Leonardo da Vinci would have been a member of the Priory of Sion, maybe the chief. The author is then suggesting that Da Vinci would have hidden secret messages within much of his artwork linked with the big secret of the Catholic Church the secret society is protecting.

Ex 1 : among the codes hidden by the painter would be one in the famous Last Supper (la Cène). According to Dan Brown, the character on the right of Jesus would not be John as it is always said but a woman, one Jesus really liked :

“Sophie examined the figure to Jesus’ immediate right, focusing in. As she studied the person’s face and body, a wave of astonishment rose within her. The individual had flowing red hair, delicate folded hands, and the hint of a bosom. It was without a doubt… female”

Ex 2 : in the Mona Lisa painting (La Joconde), Da Vinci would have drawn a higher line of the horizon on the left, the side often associated to women, in order to glorify women.

For lots of art specialists, the interpretation Dan Brown gives to Da Vinci’s paintings is not true, but whatever the reality is, it worked among readers because lots of tourists checked the paintings last summer at the Louvre Museum

 

3°/ The problem of mixing fiction and reality

 

All this controversy has been created by the fact that Dan Brown is mixing fiction and reality, making readers believe that everything is true.

• the book begins with a page entitled “Fact”

First, present the Priory of Sion :

“The Priory of Sion – a European secret society founded in 1099 – is a real organisation. In 1975 Paris’s Bibliothèque Nationale discovered parchments known as Les dossiers secrets, identifying numerous members of the Priory of Sion, including Sir Isaac Newton, Botticelli, Victor Hugo, and Leonardo da Vinci”

In fact, the Priory of Sion is just a basic organization, founded in 1956 by Pierre Plantard, whose goal was to defend rights and liberties of people who lived in low-cost housing (HLM) in a town of the Alps. Several years later, Pierre Plantard – a bit crazy – created false parchments proving he had royal ancestors. He also created a document about the creation of the Priory of Sion in 1099 and a list of all the former members of the supposed-to-be secret society. He then brought these documents to the National Library in the mid-60s. And that is the secret documents Dan Brown is talking about.

So, thanks to what Dan Brown writes in this Fact section, the readers start reading the novel thinking that this secret society really exists, while it is just the creation of a crank (un illuminé)

Then, Dan Brown writes :

“all descriptions of artwork, architecture, documents, and secret rituals in this novel are accurate”

This continues to make the readers believe that the novel is true, and not really a fiction.

• Finally, the author thanks people and organizations that helped him in the researches needed to write the book

He writes :

“For their generous assistance in the research of the book, I would like to acknowledge the Louvre Museum, the French Ministry of Culture…. and the five members of Opus Dei who recounted their stories, both positive and negative, regarding their experiences inside Opus Dei”

So by reading this book, people had the impression to learn real facts about art history, religion and culture, while it’s just a fiction from the beginning til the end.

 

 

Conclusion :

 

So we can say that Dan Brown found the best ingredients to make of the Da Vinci Code such a best-seller. And it worked really good. By mixing fiction and reality, he made the readers believe that they are now part of the biggest secret of the history. In addition of being a good page-turning thriller, the Da Vinci Code is also a good novel satisfying the interest of people for plot and religious conspiracy theories. And the controversy created by the book among the Catholic Church and Opus Dei, related by the media, also contributed to the popularity of the book, which has already been sold to 22 million people around the world.