W. Ward Gasque
THE
DA VINCI CODE
Harmless Thriller or Dangerous Hoax?
(Page 3 of 7)
According to Brown, however, a few cognoscenti down through the ages knew the secret. Among them were the descendants of Jesus (who in the fifth century married into the French royal bloodline and created the Merovingian dynasty) and the Knights Templar (who discovered secret documents underneath Solomon’s Temple in Jerusalem that gave them leverage with the Catholic hierarchy). There was also a shadowy secret society called “The Priory of Sion,” founded in 1099, including such illustrious Grand Masters as Sir Isaac Newton, Botticelli, Victor Hugo, and Leonardo da Vinci. Oh yes, and there was the 20th-century Catholic organization, Opus Dei, which somehow happened onto this information and sought to eradicate (a) the documentary evidence, (b) the leadership of the Priory of Sion, and (c) the bloodline of Jesus.
Further, we are told, the secret story of Christian origins lies hidden in art for those who have imaginative eyes to see. “The Grail story is everywhere,” Harvard professor Robert Langdon informs Sophie Neveu. “When the Church outlawed speaking of the shunned Mary Magdalene, her story and importance had to be passed on through more discreet channels . . . channels that supported metaphor and symbolism.”
People like Leonardo, Botticelli, Poussin, Bernini, Mozart, Victor Hugo, and even Walt Disney made it their life’s work to pass on the Grail story to future generations. Leonardo (whom Brown consistently dubs, incorrectly, “Di Vinci,” indicating the place he came from rather than the equivalent of a modern surname) documented the truth of the originally pagan origins of earliest Christianity though esoteric symbols and hints in his paintings and also in encoded comments in his notebooks. Mona Lisa is smiling because she (or is it Leonardo?) knows the secret. It’s even revealed in her name (an anagram for an Egyptian god and goddess, Amon and L’isa, an unusual French version of Isis). And then there’s Leonardo’s Last Supper, where one of Jesus’ 12 apostles is a woman. Guess who? (Look for the one without a beard!)
And there are Tarot Cards, originally “devised as a secret means to pass along ideologies banned by the Church,” and some ancient documents thought destroyed but turning up in our time, such as the Nag Hammadi documents and the Dead Sea Scrolls. Meanwhile, the Knights Templar invented gothic architecture and built originally pagan ideas into the symbolism of the medieval cathedrals; further, their historic successors, the Masons, bear symbolic witness to the true historical origins of Christianity in their rituals, traditions, and shrines. And so on.
None of these ideas originated with to Dan Brown. Most of the “research” that went into his book was dependent on the now discredited pseudo-history embedded in a 1982 bestseller, Holy Blood, Holy Grail, by Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh, and Henry Lincoln. That book became the subject of a BBC documentary, but was later debunked by subsequent documentaries and by virtually all historians who were willing to read it. Soon it was relegated to its publisher’s backlist—until it was mentioned in DVC.
Brown gets a few other ideas from two equally unreliable and professionally discredited sources: Margaret Starbird (especially her The Woman With The Alabaster Jar: Mary Magdalene and the Holy Grail [Bear]) and Lynn Picknet and Clive Prince (The Templar Revelation: Secret Guardians of the True Identity of Christ [Simon & Schuster]). Brown’s website lists some 30 references, only a couple of which are works of serious scholarship.
Reviews of the book during most of the first year of its life were positive, even enthusiastic. “An exhilaratingly brainy thriller,” wrote a reviewer in the New York Times. “This is pure genius,” commented Nelson DeMille. “Dan Brown has to be one of the best, smartest, and most accomplished writers in the country.” “A compelling blend of history and page-turning suspense,” noted the Library Journal.