The Da Vinci code

Q: What do these women have in commen?
A: They are all St John the Evangelist!

Dan Brown's novel, the Da Vinci Code, has received a certain amount of attention recently. Some of it is deserved; for an action thriller, it is in my view better than the majority of the genre. However, I wonder how many of its fans have read any of his other work? I tried to read Digital Fortress, in which cryptography plays a significant role. I know a little bit about cryptography, and I found the book intolerable, partly for its technical incompetance, but also for the standard of writing.

It is surprising then that the Da Vinci Code should be by comparison so competent. It has its flaws: the plot is a repetitive cycle of code breaking, capture, escape, and pursuit. But the subject material captures the interest in an unusual way.

In my view the strength of the book is that material which comes not from Dan Brown, but rather the material borrowed from 'The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail'. For those of you who don't know it, this book constructs an elaborate conspiracy theory around the history of Christianity from the life of Christ to the present day. It cleverly weaves in elements of history which people think they know, to construct a plausible and pleasing whole. But it doesn't have much root in reality.

The disturbing thing about the Da Vinci Code is that some of its fans seem to accept this material as fact, and are encouraged in part by the foreword on the factual origins of some of the material.

Hang on, let's go back and read that section. It tells us that the Priory of Sion and Opus Dei are real organisations, and that the buildings in the story are real. It is interestingly silent on the rest of the material in the book. Might this be a clue?

The Last Supper

The Da Vinci Code makes a lot of the fact that Da Vinci painted Mary Magdalene next to Jesus in 'The Last Supper' (see the picture here). However, in Da Vinci's painting the effeminate figure to the left of Jesus is not Mary Magdalene, but the apostle John. Why does the figure look like a woman? There have always been certain conventions in portraying biblical figures in western art. The young St John is typically portrayed as young, clean shaven, and 'of angelic countenance'. When he is old, he is portrayed as bald and bearded. He typically wears a red robe, and may be accompanied by a book, an eagle, or sometimes a chalice and snakes. Some artists, in trying to capture an angelic appearance, simply made him look effeminate.

Let me give you some examples. Here is a picture of an attractive young woman in a red dress. Who is she? St John on Patmos, painted by Hans Baldung Grien around 1515.
(These images are fragments from the pictures at the Web Gallery of Art, presented here for educational purposes in accordance with the legal restrictions for that site. Follow the links for the full images).

Here is a painting of a statue, from the Ghent alterpiece. The figure is St John the evangelist, and the painting is by Jan van Eyck, painted in 1432. The statue is clearly marked 'Johes Ewan' (John, Evangelist).

Here is an older painting of two women weeping under the cross. Who are they? Mary and John. This one is by Antonio da Firenza around 1400-1450. Mary and John are portrayed together, and named in their halos, so there can be no doubt of their identities. You can find many more examples online or in your local art museum.

Other figures are portrayed similarly, see for example pictures of St Sebastian here and here.

Perhaps all these people were painting John as a woman? Then why when John is old is he bald and bearded?
Did Da Vinci know something which others didn't? No, because he wasn't head of the priory of Sion, because it didn't exist yet. Indeed, subsequent archeological finds and other advances mean that we have a clearer picture of the early church than he could possibly have done.
Did he express this in his interpretation of the last supper? No, because he was painting according to the same conventions as many of his contemporaries.
Has the Catholic church been trying to suppress the idea that Mary Magdalene was the disciple Jesus loved? No, because otherwise they would have destroyed all these paintings, instead of preserving them.

Historical events

To save you the work, I've made a list of other elements from the book which are non-historical. I'll start from the present, and work backwards.
  1. Jacques Saunière was not the head of the Louvre, and was not murdered in the year 2002. It's a story. I know that should be obvious, but it needed to be said.
  2. The Priory of Sion was created in 1956 by Pierre Plantard. It did not exist in any of the centuries between the first and the 20th, although there was a monastic order of that name for some of that period.
  3. Newton was not head of the Priory of Sion, because it didn't exist then.
  4. Da Vinci was not head of the Priory of Sion, also because it didn't exist then.
  5. The Spanish inquisition did not burn 5 million women as witches. More supportable estimates of the number of people killed are around 125,000, and more men than women.
  6. The Council of Nicea did not 'pick and choose' from a selection of writings to create the modern New Testament. It was more concerned with obscure theological points relating to the trinity and Greek philosophy which seem irrelevent to most Christians today. In fact, the New Testament was already being established in the second century: Irenaeus identifies the 4 canonical gospels as inspired, and cites all but 4 books of the modern cannon and two non-cannonical books. The Muratorian fragment probably dates from then and gives a canonical list of books differing from the modern one by only two books. Irenaeus predates the council of Nicea by 150 years, and writes against the contemporary 'gnosis' movement, on which the 'Mary Magdalene' conspiracy depends.
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