The Da Vinci Code

DAN BROWN
2003

INTRODUCTION

The Da Vinci Code became one of the first notable international literary events of the twenty-first century as soon as it was published in early 2003. It is a fast-paced thriller involving Harvard professor of religious symbology Robert Langdon, who must solve a murder mystery before he is arrested for the murder himself. While the plot moves along rapidly, the narrative and dialogue slow down briefly at times to explore weighty issues and consider controversial questions. Was Jesus married to Mary Magdalene? Did early Christian leaders attempt to suppress her significance? Did Constantine the Great and the Council of Nicaea establish the divinity of Jesus Christ in 325 a.d.? Was Leonardo da Vinci one of the "keepers of the secret of the Holy Grail," as Leigh Teabing, the historian scholar, declares? Did he encode his art with symbols that suggested a Christian history far different from the one with which we are familiar? Though fictional characters raise these questions, Brown, in interviews about his novel, generated much debate by defending the possibility that Christian history has been carefully and artificially constructed. When asked in an interview what he would change if he were writing the book as nonfiction rather than fiction, for example, Brown replied he would change nothing.

Religious leaders, Christian scholars, historians, and media figures reacted strongly to Brown's novel. In 2004, it was banned from Lebanon when Catholic leaders protested against its content. In 2005, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone publicly responded to the claims of the novel, which he called "a castle of lies." A series of reactionary books bent on disproving the novel's theories emerged, and documentaries exploring the controversies it brings out were aired on networks from ABC to the History Channel. As of 2005, Columbia Pictures was developing the film adaptation, directed by Ron Howard and starring Tom Hanks, Audrey Tautou, and Ian McKellen, to be released in 2006.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Dan Brown was born on June 22, 1964 in Exeter, New Hampshire. His mother was a professional musician who specialized in sacred works, and his father, Richard Brown, was a Presidential Award-winning math teacher at Phillips Exeter Academy. After attending Exeter himself and graduating in 1982, Brown went to Amherst College, where he received a bachelor's degree in English Literature in 1986. He returned to teach at Phillips as an English instructor.

While teaching in 1996, Brown began generating ideas for his first novel when he learned that the U.S. Secret Service had detained one of his students for composing an e-mail message that appeared to threaten the president of the United States. The novel, titled Digital Fortress (1998), explores the tension between privacy and national security. His second novel, Angels and Demons (2000), introduces a character that would become the hero of his future works, Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon, and concerns the Illuminati, a secret society that plots to bomb the Vatican. Deception Point (2001), his third novel, is a political thriller that begins with the NASA discovery of a meteor believed to verify the existence of extraterrestrial life.

If Brown's first three novels moderately interested reviewers and readers, his fourth novel, The Da Vinci Code, a thriller exploring the possibility of a radically alternative Christian history, made him a worldwide celebrity. In fact, Brown became as famous for the controversies he incites in this novel about Christian history, Arthurian legend, and Leonardo da Vinci as he was for the number of novels he sold. During the two years after its release in early 2003, The Da Vinci Code sold an estimated twenty-five million copies worldwide in forty-four languages in its hardcover edition. In 2005, Brown was named one of the "world's 100 most influential people" in a special issue of Time magazine. In that feature, Michele Orecklin dubbed The Da Vinci Code "The Novel That Ate The World" and noted that the Bible was one of the few books to sell more copies since the debut of Brown's novel at the top of the New York Times bestseller list. The novel was named Britain's Book of the Year at the British Book Awards in London in 2005. Accepting the award via telecast from his home in New Hampshire, Brown was already at work on his next highly anticipated novel, The Solomon Key, a sequel to The Da Vinci Code set in Washington, D.C. with Robert Langdon investigating the secret world of the Freemasons. As of 2005, Brown was living in New Hampshire with his wife, Blythe.

PLOT SUMMARY

Fact

The Da Vinci Code begins with a page titled "Fact," a term that sets the stage for the novel's notoriety. The three brief paragraphs that follow are carefully phrased assertions: there is a secret society called the Priory of Sion to which figures from Sir Isaac Newton to Leonardo da Vinci may have belonged; an organization affiliated with the Vatican called Opus Dei has been accused of using cultish techniques to attract and keep members and has just spent $47 million building its headquarters in New York City; and finally, "all descriptions of artwork, architecture, documents, and secret rituals in this novel are accurate."

Prologue

The narrative opens with Louvre curator Jacques Saunière held at gunpoint by an albino man who demands the location of something extremely valuable. After surrendering the location, which the narrative later reveals is false, Saunière is shot and left to die in his museum's Grand Gallery. Just after his murderer departs, and with only minutes to live, Saunière, "the sole guardian of one of the most powerful secrets ever kept," struggles to somehow communicate the real secret in his own crime scene.

Chapters 1-9

The first nine chapters introduce all the major characters that the narrative will follow to the novel's conclusion just a few hours later. Harvard professor Robert Langdon, who was to meet Saunière that night, is summoned to the Louvre to help French detective Bazu Fache interpret the strange series of clues at the crime scene. The narrative interrupts their meeting to introduce two other characters: Silas, the murderer, and Bishop Manuel Aringarosa, president-general of Opus Dei, both of whom are acting under orders from a character known only as the Teacher. Back at the crime scene, Langdon learns that Saunière has drawn a series of images and cryptic messages not only with his own blood but also with a watermark stylus, a pen whose markings can only be detected by black light. Fache's colleague Lieutenant Collet listens intently from a concealed room to the conversation between Fache and Langdon, the primary suspect. Cryptologist Sophie Neveu arrives at the crime scene with a message for Langdon to contact the U.S. Embassy immediately. When Langdon retrieves the message with Fache's cell phone under Sophie's directions, he hears a message from Sophie herself to listen carefully because he is in grave danger. Meanwhile, Sister Sandrine Bieil, caretaker of the Church of Saint-Sulpice, is notified that Bishop Aringarosa has requested a special tour of her church for one of his numeraries.

Chapters 10-25

Silas visits the Church of Saint-Sulpice, possessing what he believes to be Saunière's great secret, the location of a keystone that leads to the Holy Grail. A narrative flashback shows his tortured past as a victim of abuse. Back at the Louvre, Sophie departs quickly after declaring that one of Saunière's clues is a numeric joke. Langdon requests a few minutes alone in the restroom, pretending that he has received devastating news of an accident back home. Fache grants his request, and joins Collet in his concealed office. Sophie meets Langdon in the restroom and alerts him that he is Fache's primary suspect, and that Fache is tracking him with a small device he has slipped into his pocket. She helps him stage his escape by lodging the device into a bar of soap and hurling it out the window. The device falls onto a truck, and Fache and Collet watch their monitor in horror, believing that Langdon has jumped from the window. They conclude that because it looks as though he has escaped, he is indeed guilty. The device leads Fache and Collet on what they believe to be a wild chase after Langdon through the streets of Paris. Back in the restroom, Sophie tells Langdon that Saunière is her grandfather, and that he raised her after her family died in a car accident. She also shows him a copy of the crime scene Fache sent out to agents at the Central Directorate Judicial Police. The crime scene in the photo looks slightly different: at the end of Saunière's message is the request, "P.S. Find Robert Langdon." Sophie concludes that Fache, who seems unnaturally determined to implicate Langdon, erased the last line from Saunière's message. When Langdon asks Sophie if the initials mean anything to her, she remembers a golden key with the same initials she had found once hidden in her grandfather's room. When she confronted him, Saunière had told her the initials refer to her secret name, Princess Sophie. Hearing her describe the key, however, Langdon comes to a different conclusion: the initials stand for a secret society known as the Priory of Sion, and her grandfather was a member. He claims that the Priory, a pagan goddess-worship cult, has existed for a thousand years, and has attracted prominent historical figures from Sir Isaac Newton to Leonardo da Vinci. Believing Saunière had meant to bring them together, the pair begin a frantic search for the meaning behind the series of clues he left behind.

Chapters 26-39

With Fache and his team across town, Langdon and Sophie are free to further investigate the crime scene. The clues Saunière left on and around his body lead them to the Mona Lisa, one of the many da Vinci works allegedly containing secret codes that suggest the Church's suppression of the sacred feminine. They find another message written with the invisible stylus on the Plexiglas front of the famous painting. The message prompts Langdon to conclude that Saunière was a member of the secret Priory of Sion. Interpreting it differently, Sophie finds another clue behind the painting directly across from it, da Vinci's Madonna of the Rocks: the gold key she remembers finding as a child. At the Church of Saint-Sulpice, Silas attempts to unearth what he believes to be the keystone, and finds that he has been tricked. Sandrine looks on from a concealed position, and realizes that the members of the Priory have sent a silent alarm for her to warn its leaders, the sénéchaux. Silas discovers her frantically attempting to reach them, and when she insults Opus Dei, he murders her in a moment of rage. Langdon and Sophie barely escape Fache's guards and race to the address Saunière has left on the back of their key. On the way, Sophie remembers seeing her grandfather engaged in a ritual that disgusted her so much she ceased communication with him completely, though the details of the ritual are left out of the narrative. Langdon reveals that the main oath of the Priory of Sion is to keep secret the real meaning behind the Holy Grail.

Chapters 40-51

Pursued by the police, Langdon and Sophie reach the Bank of Zurich. They use Saunière's key and a passcode they decipher from a series of numbers he wrote at his crime scene to open his safe. Inside is a device Saunière built, using da Vinci's blueprints, called a cryptex, a cylindrical vessel containing a secret message that can only be opened by a passcode. This cryptex, they believe, is the key to finding the Holy Grail. Meanwhile, Aringarosa visits Castel Gandolfo, the Pope's summer residence, where he meets members of the Vatican who pay him twenty million euros for a reason not disclosed to the reader. Back at the bank, Langdon and Sophie meet André Vernet, president of the branch, who helps them escape in a van to avoid negative publicity. Vernet stops the van in a nearby field and attempts to retrieve the cryptex, holding Langdon and Sophie at gunpoint. They outwit him, and escape in his van with the cryptex. Langdon decides they must visit the one person who might be able to help them open it, British Royal Historian Leigh Teabing.

Chapters 52-65

Langdon and Sophie arrive at Teabing's lavish estate, where they are greeted by Rémy Legaludec, Teabing's servant, and led into a drawing room. While they wait for Teabing, they decide to hide the cryptex under a divan. When Teabing enters, Langdon explains that they have information about the Priory of Sion, and that he would like Teabing to explain the "true nature" of the Holy Grail to Sophie. Teabing, who has devoted his life to researching theories about the Holy Grail, is delighted to present the story. Most ask about the location of the Holy Grail, Teabing says, when they should be asking what is the Holy Grail. Teabing's version of the story involves a number of surprising claims that are woven together. The Bible in its present form omits several other gospels, and was "collated" by Constantine the Great, the Roman emperor who presided over the Council of Nicaea in 325. Early Christians believed Jesus was mortal, and that his divine status was decided by a "relatively close vote" held at this fourth-century gathering. Jesus was actually married to Mary Magdalene and had a child by her. According to this alternative history, Teabing declares, the Holy Grail is actually Mary Magdalene and the set of Sangreal texts buried with her that prove her marriage to Jesus. Leonardo da Vinci knew all of this, Teabing claims, and painted clues to the story in his famous painting, The Last Supper. The Da Vinci Code, then, is the set of symbols in Leonardo da Vinci's art that represent this other radically different Christian history. Teabing's lecture is interrupted by Silas, who breaks in and attempts unsuccessfully to retrieve the cryptex just before Lieutenant Collet and a team of police storm the estate.

Chapters 66-84

Langdon, Sophie, Teabing, and his servant Rémy slip away undetected with Silas as their prisoner while Collet and his colleagues search the estate. They escape to London in Teabing's private plane to follow the latest clue. During their flight, Sophie finally tells Langdon the reason she shut her grandfather out of her life. She had seen him engaging in a sexual ritual called Hieros Gamos with a woman she did not recognize. Langdon explains that Hieros Gamos, or sacred marriage, is an ancient rite that is performed to achieve spiritual enlightenment. He reassures her that this is an ancient spiritual ritual, and implores her to try to understand Saunière's act as a means to the end of achieving a kind of spiritual nirvana. Sophie begins to regret that she had judged her grandfather so harshly. Turning their attention to the cryptex, Langdon, Sophie, and Teabing decipher the latest clue, and open it. Rather than yielding the location of the Grail, the cryptex opens to reveal a scroll that conceals a smaller cryptex requiring another password. When they land at the Kent airport in England, Fache and his team arrive just in time to see Teabing exit the plane with his butler, ignorant that Langdon, Sophie, and Silas are already hidden in his limousine. Fache searches the plane for clues. Teabing leads Langdon and Sophie to London's Temple Church, where they believe the next clue will appear.

Chapters 85-97

While Langdon, Sophie, and Teabing search the church, Rémy frees Silas and reveals himself to be an employee of the Teacher as well. Together, they force the keystone from Langdon and take Teabing hostage. On a mission to recover both the cryptex and Teabing, Langdon and Sophie visit the library at King's College to research the latest clue further. The Teacher directs Rémy to drop Silas off at London's Opus Dei headquarters and notifies the police that he is there. When the police arrive, Silas opens fire and is shot, just before learning that one of his bullets has hit Bishop Aringarosa, who has come to help him. Meanwhile, Langdon and Sophie deduce from their research that they must visit Sir Isaac Newton's grave in Westminster Abbey for the clue to opening the cryptex. As they approach the headstone, the Teacher watches them from a distance.

Chapters 98-105

Langdon and Sophie discover a note on the grave directing them to meet the Teacher in a public garden by way of Chapter House. When they arrive at Chapter House, they reach a dead end, and are stunned to find Teabing standing in front of it with a loaded revolver pointed at them. In a dramatic standoff, Langdon throws the cryptex into the air, and Teabing, dropping his gun, leaps for it only to discover it has already been opened. Fache storms the room along with the British police to arrest Teabing, leaving Langdon and Sophie free to interpret the final clue. Meanwhile, Bishop Aringarosa awakes and finds himself carried by an injured Silas. He remembers the event that drove him to seek the Holy Grail. Five months earlier, he learned that the Vatican had decided to revoke their association with Opus Dei. The twenty million euros they gave him was meant to settle the debt they owed to Opus Dei, which loaned money to the Vatican Bank twenty years earlier. Desperate to save Opus Dei, Aringarosa jumps at the chance to retrieve the Holy Grail when he gets a call from the Teacher, a title used often in the prelature. Thinking the Teacher is a member of the Vatican who wants to save his organization, Aringarosa obeys his commands. When he learns that the Teacher is Teabing, who has attempted to implicate the Vatican and manipulate him, he decides to distribute the Vatican money among the families of those who were killed during his operation. Meanwhile, Saunière's final clue takes Langdon and Sophie to Rosslyn Chapel, a magnificent display of religious and pagan symbols that was believed to have been the site of the Grail long ago. While there, Sophie feels she has been there before, and learns not only that her grandmother and brother have been living there in secrecy to protect her grandfather's identity, but also that she is a descendant of Mary Magdalene.

Epilogue

Two days later, Langdon experiences an epiphany about Saunière's final clue, which leads him back to a small pyramid in the Louvre. He believes that Saunière's secret was that this pyramid houses Mary Magdalene's bones and is thus the site of the Holy Grail. He kneels down in reverential awe, imagining that he can hear Mary Magdalene's whispering voice.

CHARACTERS

Bishop Manuel Aringarosa

Bishop Aringarosa is the president-general of Opus Dei, a prelature of the Vatican that has come under scrutiny for its unorthodox methods of worship. Aringarosa criticizes the liberal actions of the Catholic Church and its reforms during Vatican II. Introduced at the site of the lavish Opus Dei headquarters in New York with an elaborate and expensive bishop's ring, Aringarosa is portrayed as a man motivated by money. He works with Silas to recover the legendary keystone to discover the location of the Holy Grail under the direction of the Teacher. Ultimately, his main goal is to save Opus Dei: five months before the action in the novel, he had learned that his organization would lose its association with the Vatican in six months. Retrieving the Holy Grail for the Catholic Church, he thinks, might solidify his support from the Vatican.

MEDIA ADAPTATIONS

• The Da Vinci Code was released in 2003 as an unabridged version on audiocassette and audio CD. It is narrated by Paul Michael and is available from Random House Audio.
• The film version of The Da Vinci Code stars Tom Hanks as Robert Langdon, Audrey Tatou as Sophie Neveu, and Ian McKellen as Leigh Teabing. It is directed by Ron Howard, produced by Columbia Pictures, and is set for release in 2006.
• The official website written and updated by Dan Brown himself, www.danbrown.com, is an interesting and interactive website, but it is also primarily geared toward promoting sales of his novels.
• ABC News Presents: Jesus, Mary and Da Vinci is an hour-long documentary hosted by Elizabeth Vargas, produced by Koch Vision, 2004. Vargas interviews Dan Brown himself, as well as Karen King and Elaine Pagels, both Gnostic Gospel scholars, and Richard McBrien and Darrell Bock, both Christian scholars. It presents competing views of the novel's controversial claims about Christian history, and is available on DVD from Koch Vision Studios.
• Breaking the "Da Vinci Code" is an hour-long documentary featuring authors of books disproving the theories put forth in the novel, including Darrell Bock. It is produced by Grizzly Adams Family, 2005, and is available on DVD.
• Cracking the "Da Vinci Code" is a documentary that runs an hour and a half and was produced by Ardustry Home Entertainment in 2004. Host and author Simon Cox defends the legend of the Holy Grail. It is available on DVD from Ardustry Home Entertainment.
• "Da Vinci Code" Decoded is a three-hour documentary introduced by Dan Brown, produced by The Disinformation Company, 2004. It features interviews with the authors of books Brown used when researching for his novel and is available on DVD.
• Exploring the "Da Vinci Code" is a video tour of the famous locations to which the novel refers, hosted by Henry Lincoln, one of the authors of Holy Blood, Holy Grail, and released in 2005 by The Disinformation Company. It is available on DVD.

Sister Sandrine Bieil

Sister Sandrine manages the Church of Saint-Sulpice, the site Saunière names in his last words to Silas. She critiques what she perceives as misogyny in Opus Dei's practices, and she is connected to the Priory of Sion. For several years, she has held instructions to contact the sénéchaux and the Grand Master if the seal in her church is ever broken, a silent alarm that indicates that the secrets of the Priory are threatened. When she sees Silas unwittingly send this silent alarm, she attempts to warn Priory members and is murdered in the process.

Marie Chauvel

Marie Chauvel is caretaker of Rosslyn Chapel and Sophie Neveu's grandmother. She has been living in secrecy with her grandson, Neveu's brother, under the protection of the Priory for twenty-eight years. A direct descendant of the Merovingian families, Chauvel followed the orders of the Priory to go into hiding after the car accident that killed Neveu's family. Since the accident, she has had to arrange secret meetings with her husband to protect her grand-children and their true identities.

Lieutenant Collet

Lieutenant Collet works under Captain Fache, whom he admires for his professional insight. He echoes the feelings of his colleagues, who see Fache as a heroic leader and example. He assists Fache on his hunt for Langdon and Neveu through the streets of Paris. Collet watches Fache alter his strategy a number of times but remains loyal to him to the end. When Fache captures the real villain, Leigh Teabing, Collet defends him in an interview with the BBC, declaring that Fache used Langdon and Neveu to "lure out the real killer."

Simon Edwards

Simon Edwards is Executive Services Officer at Biggin Hill Airport. He is dismayed when he is summoned to help arrest his client, Leigh Teabing, as soon as his private plane lands.

Captain Bezu Fache

Bezu Fache is Captain of the Central Directorate Judicial Police in Paris. An ominous figure with dark hair and features, nicknamed le Taureau, the Bull, Fache is initially intent on proving Langdon's involvement in Saunière's murder. He dresses formally, and wears a tie clip that features a crux gemmata, a crucifix decorated with thirteen gems that represent Christ and his apostles. He carries an enormous amount of power as Captain and is greatly admired by his assistant, Lieutenant Collet. Though he seems unusually focused on Langdon at first, in the end, Fache is only interested in finding the real murderer. When he arrests Leigh Teabing, he lets Langdon and Neveu go, in spite of Teabing's frantic declarations that they know the location of the Holy Grail.

Claude Grouard

Claude Grouard is a security warden in the Louvre. He regards Saunière as a paternal figure, and is determined to keep Langdon in the Louvre when he finds him just after Fache and his team have left to chase the tracking device that is no longer on him. He is outwitted by Neveu when she uses the Madonna of the Rocks as a shield to escape the museum with Langdon.

Robert Langdon

Robert Langdon is Professor of Religious Symbology at Harvard University. In the year before the novel takes place, Langdon became a celebrity for his role in a scandal at the Vatican involving a secret society known as the Illuminati. He has just completed a three-hundred-page manuscript tentatively titled Symbols of the Lost Sacred Feminine, and is in Paris to present a lecture about pagan symbols hidden in Chartres Cathedral. At the moment of his lecture, which takes place just before the novel opens, this bachelor professor is as famous for his research as he is for his charming and stylish appearance. He is dismayed to learn that he has been called "Harrison Ford in Harris tweed," and that his female students refer to his alluring voice as "chocolate for the ears." Author of several books on symbols, icons, and secret societies, with titles such as The Symbology of Secret Sects, The Art of the Illuminati, and Religious Iconography, Langdon was featured in Boston Magazine as one of the top ten most intriguing people in the city. He is recruited to help solve the mystery of Saunière's death.

Rémy Legaludec

Rémy Legaludec is Leigh Teabing's butler. A fifty-something Frenchman, Legaludec dons a formal white tie and tuxedo when he receives Langdon and Neveu in the middle of the night. He is the only one who has seen the Teacher face to face, and works under him to gather intelligence using a vast network of surveillance equipment. The Teacher motivates Legaludec by promising a life of luxury upon his retirement, but ultimately poisons him when his job is complete.

Sophie Neveu

Sophie Neveu is a young, attractive cryptologer for the Central Directorate Judicial Police in Paris, and the granddaughter of Saunière. When she was only four, her parents, grandmother, and younger brother were killed in a car accident. She had a happy childhood living with Saunière, whose passion for mathematical mysteries and codes inspired her to study cryptography, the science of decoding secret messages, at the Royal Holloway in England. She had stopped communicating with him ten years earlier, when she witnessed him engaging in a disturbing ritual. The afternoon before Saunière is murdered, Neveu receives a call from him warning her of danger and promising to divulge the secret of her family. She helps Langdon to discover the meaning behind her grandfather's clues, and also on his quest to find the Holy Grail. In the end, she learns that she belongs to the Merovingian families, believed to be descendants of Mary Magdalene and Jesus Christ.

Jacques Saunière

Jacques Saunière has been a curator at the Louvre museum for twenty years. A highly respected and reclusive scholar of art, Saunière has published books on goddesses and pagan symbols in art. As the Grand Master of the Priory of Sion, Saunière possesses the secret of the Holy Grail, and devotes his life to concealing both his identity and the location of the Grail. For many years, he had been a gentle and loving grandfather to Sophie Neveu after she had lost her family in a car accident. He shared his passions for mathematical symbols, puzzles, and secret codes with his granddaughter to the extent that she eventually chose to study cryptology. He had been estranged from Neveu for ten years, after she witnessed him engaged in a ritual so disturbing that she refused to speak to him. Though he is murdered at the opening of the novel, he haunts the remainder of the narrative in the form of a series of clues he leaves behind at his murder scene, and in the form of his grand-daughter's memories.

Silas

Silas is the albino monk who murders Saunière. He has no last name, and cannot remember his real name in the midst of repressing his abusive childhood. What he does remember is stabbing his father to death at the age of seven, after witnessing him beat his mother to death. His childhood act of rage precipitates further acts of violence that eventually land him in prison. While in prison, he suffers a tortured existence. When an earthquake destroys the prison and frees him, he wanders aimlessly until he meets Bishop Aringarosa. The Bishop names him Silas after reading him a passage of the Bible that refers to a prisoner with that name who prays to God in spite of being beaten regularly, and is eventually freed by an earthquake. Aringarosa converts Silas to Catholicism and recruits him to help build his church. A devout Christian, he wears a spiked cilice around his thigh and whips himself with a discipline, devices used to remind him of Christ's suffering. He struggles with his role as an assassin of the three sénéchaux, Saunière, and Sister Sandrine.

Sir Leigh Teabing

See The Teacher

The Teacher

The Teacher is the anonymous mastermind behind the plan to find the Holy Grail. Until his identity is revealed at the end of the novel, he is never seen but only heard, primarily through telephone conversations with Silas and Bishop Aringarosa. He has access to a staggering amount of information, and seems to be able to see all that is happening in the novel. He obtains the names of the three sénéchaux and the Grand Master of the Priory of Sion, commands Silas to kill them, and informs Bishop Aringarosa of the status of their quest to retrieve the Holy Grail. Because of his close ties to Silas and the Bishop, the infinite fortune he seems to have, and references he makes to doing God's work, he initially appears to be associated in some way with the Catholic Church. But he actually works only for himself, and reveals his identity at the climax of the novel as Leigh Teabing. As Teabing, he helps Langdon and Neveu interpret the clues left by Saunière, as he summarizes some of the more controversial ideas of the novel. His eagerness to aid Langdon and Sophie in decoding the cryptex and discovering the Grail is interpreted by them as scholarly interest, but his true motives are soon revealed. At the climax of the novel, he finally identifies himself as the Teacher, the one responsible for the murders, the one who has manipulated Silas and Aringarosa, and the architect behind the entire plan to find the Holy Grail.

André Vernet

President of the Paris Depository Bank of Zurich, André Vernet is eager to keep his name out of the headlines. He helps Langdon and Neveu escape his bank, which has never been the subject of scandal. He turns out to have been a very close friend of Saunière's, entrusted to guard the safety box the Grand Master had stored in his bank.

THEMES

Sacrifice

The Da Vinci Code opens with a dramatic personal sacrifice—Saunière's death to protect the secret of the Priory of Scion—but theme of sacrifice appears repeatedly throughout the novel. It does not always require a death, however; a sacrifice can be any type of loss, from loss of integrity or freedom to the loss of a physical item. A sacrifice entails the giving up of something in exchange for something else. It is a circumstance that does not allow for two competing needs to exist together. For example, Saunière makes the ultimate sacrifice—death—that hundreds in the Priory throughout history, according to Brown, have been willing to make. Likewise, Sister Sandrine Bieil sacrifices her life to warn the Priory when Silas attempts to unearth the keystone in the Church of Saint-Sulpice. Sophie's grandmother and brother, whom she had long thought dead, sacrifice their freedom—and time with their family—to go into hiding in order to protect her grandfather's identity. Leigh Teabing, the long-time scholar of the Sacred Feminine, sacrifices his integrity and conscience in exchange for the possibility of gain; he is willing to stop at nothing in order to procure the Holy Grail. But perhaps the greatest sacrifice in the novel is not made by one of the characters, but by, according to Teabing and Langdon, the Catholic Church. They believe that in order to keep the knowledge of Christ's earthly wife and child a secret, the Catholic Church, in essence, sacrificed Mary Magdalene. Teabing and Langdon's theory is that the Church designated her a prostitute to discredit any rumor of Christ's involvement with her, in fear that knowledge of a marriage with Mary would affect Christ's divine status.

Quest

At the heart of Brown's novel is the quest, not only as a long adventurous journey in search of something, but also as one of the most archetypal elements in literature, the pursuit of the Holy Grail. Several characters are on quests in the novel for different reasons. Silas looks for the keystone that will lead to the Holy Grail for his savior, Bishop Aringarosa. Detective Fache searches for the murderer of Saunière. Langdon explores the meaning behind Leonardo da Vinci's symbols to greater understand the subject to which he has devoted his studies. Sophie seeks answers to truths about her family. In the novel, these fictional pursuits merge with the quintessential quest for the Holy Grail, a tale represented in Christian tradition literally as the search for the goblet that Christ drank from during the Last Supper and that Joseph of Arimathea used to catch Christ's blood as he hung from the cross, and figuratively as the search for Christ within one's soul. The tale of the quest actually surfaced in the twelfth century as a poem by Chrétien de Troyes, and the legend took different forms as others rewrote it. The most famous of those to invoke the legend in their art are thirteenth-century German epic poet Wolfram von Eschenbach, fifteenth-century English writer Sir Thomas Malory, English poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson, and composer Richard Wagner in the nineteenth century. Brown's novel changes the quest considerably in proposing that the Grail is not a chalice at all, but rather Mary Magdalene herself and the texts that tell the secret of her marriage to Jesus.

Christianity

Though The Da Vinci Code appears to implicate Catholic institutions in a conspiracy to wipe out alternative Christian histories, its suggestions that Jesus was not divine, that Mary Magdalene had children by him, that she, rather than the apostle Peter, was intended to be the first leader of Christianity, and that Constantine the Great suppressed all of this and assembled the Bible at the Council of Nicaea in 325 a.d., all relate to Christians of any denomination. Of course, history, which the narrative declares is written by those who are victorious, does not support any of these suggestions. The gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John repeatedly refer to the divinity of Christ, and there is no evidence that Mary Magdalene was married to Jesus. The major texts of Gnosticism—the belief in the gnosis (intuitive knowledge) of the human soul, surfaced in the second and third centuries, well after early Christians deemed the four gospels authoritative, though they are said in the novel to be suppressed by Constantine. Christianity, moreover, is portrayed in the novel as a patriarchal religion built on conspiracies authored by those who want to suppress information. The Christian characters in the novel delight in masochism and thirst for power. Nevertheless, Brown carefully phrases his page of facts to state simply that the Priory of Sion exists, that Opus Dei has built an elaborate and expansive headquarters in New York and has been the subject of controversy, and that descriptions of art, architecture, rituals, and documents are accurate. Most of the claims about an alternative Christian history, furthermore, are spoken authoritatively by the novel's villain, Leigh Teabing.

STYLE

Fact in Fiction

The Da Vinci Code is striking in the way the fictional plot is woven into several other intriguing historical plots. References to actual historical figures such as Jesus, Mary Magdalene, Constantine the Great, and Leonardo da Vinci have prompted scholars to write articles and books responding to claims about them made by the fictional Saunière, Langdon, and Teabing. References to existing locations such as the Louvre and Rosslyn Chapel have generated so much interest that tour guides developed the "Da Vinci Code Walking Tour" in Paris and the number of tourists to Rosslyn Chapel doubled in the few years following the novel's publication. Further, references to real organizations such as Opus Dei and the Vatican have inspired many readers to question Christianity in general, and Catholicism in particular.

TOPICS FOR FURTHER STUDY

• With a partner, research the claims made in the novel about Leonardo da Vinci's paintings Madonna of the Rocks and The Last Supper. Prepare presentations that present different interpretations of the paintings, using evidence from your research.
• Leigh Teabing makes a number of declarations regarding the Council of Nicaea in 325. After conducting historical research on that event, stage a reenactment with other classmates of a debate that is likely to have taken place there. Conclude with your views on the authenticity of Teabing's statements.
• Though the first word in the novel is "Fact," Brown carefully words the claims he makes in the narrative. Using his statements on the first page, compose a list that indicates only what Brown claims is true in the novel, especially "descriptions of artwork, architecture, documents, and secret rituals." Conduct research on one of those elements, such as The Last Supper or Rosslyn Chapel, to measure his accuracy. Prepare a presentation that lists each claim, followed by what you found in your research.
• Research one of the figures named in Les Dossiers Secrets. What information can you find to suggest that the person you choose was a member of the Priory of Sion? What symbols and codes are left behind to show a connection to the secret society? Write a brief biography of that person, detailing what you found in your research.

Though the novel follows its fictional characters during the course of only a few days, the search for the answers to symbols, clues, and riddles Saunière leaves behind is related to the search for answers to mysteries in the Bible as well as the history of the quest for the Holy Grail. It also invokes the history of the Council of Nicaea and its role in shaping Christianity, the history of the Priory of Sion, and speculation about Leonardo da Vinci's artwork. Though the narrative raises several questions about history, the fictional plot in The Da Vinci Code ends with most of its questions answered and its conflicts resolved.

Suspense

Any description of this novel would not be complete without mentioning suspense, or the literary technique of creating excitement, apprehension, and expectation. The final sentences of the Prologue give nothing away as they describe how Saunière sets the scene that will preoccupy characters during the first half of the novel: "Wincing in pain, he summoned all of his faculties and strength. The desperate task before him, he knew, would require every remaining second of his life." When a clue is left on the glass covering the Mona Lisa, the last sentence of the chapter indicates only that "six words glowed in purple, scrawled directly across the Mona Lisa's face," and the narrative shifts to another scene in the following chapter before showing readers what those words are. Curious omissions, changing interpretations of symbols and riddles, and plot twists in the narrative drive the reader to seek further for more complete descriptions and definitive interpretations, and to rush to the end of the novel.

Mystery

The major appeal of Brown's novel is its construction of profound mysteries, both fictional and historical. It deploys one of the most conventional elements of the classic mystery genre only to dismiss it immediately: the novel begins with a murder, but reveals the identity of the murderer in the second chapter. The central mysteries in the novel are the reasons behind Saunière's murder and the possible organizations involved, the meaning of various clues and riddles he leaves behind, and the truth about Sophie's family. Equally important is the novel's introduction to real historical mysteries. What role did Mary Magdalene play in Jesus' life? What was the real role of Constantine in shaping Christianity's future? How credible are the Gnostic gospels? What is the history of the Priory of Sion and who were its members? Was Leonardo da Vinci trying to communicate hidden messages in his paintings? What is the meaning of the number of Divine Proportion? Because the answers to these historical questions depend on historical evidence, or texts written by those who were victorious, the book plays upon the plausible idea that what is called history may be an artificial construction of true events. While the fictional mysteries in the novel entertain readers, the historical mysteries it interprets made it an international phenomenon.

HISTORICAL CONTEXT

Though there is no explicit reference to the year in which it takes place, The Da Vinci Code is set in a time contemporaneous with its publication in 2003. The narrative refers to several recent events, from the construction of the New York headquarters of Opus Dei in 2000 to the scandalous public indictment of Opus Dei member and FBI spy Robert Hanssen in April of 2001. Brown's contentious portrayal of Opus Dei appeared as the organization struggled to redeem its reputation after being accused by former members of using cultish techniques. The novel's suggestion that widely accepted histories are simply works constructed by those in power has motivated historians to critique its liberal interpretations of the past. Its equally strong claims about an alternative history of Christianity have provoked many biblical scholars to counter in a growing number of books written explicitly to discredit the novel. Its portrayal of religious fanaticism plays into readers' fears of spiritual politics, especially in the wake of recent terrorist acts committed by religious fundamentalists. In depicting Mary Magdalene as one of the most important early Christian leaders, the novel also brings out the debate about the role of women in Christianity, a highly charged issue as the Catholic Church elected a new Pope after the death of John Paul II in 2005, the Church's leader for almost a quarter century. The novel's female critic of the Church, Sister Sandrine, feels that "most of the Catholic Church was gradually moving in the right direction with respect to women's rights," but objects to Opus Dei, which "threatened to reverse the progress." Feminist scholars praised the novel's assertions that Mary Magdalene played a more important role than the official Bible indicates, and that femininity has been suppressed by Christian leaders throughout history.

While the novel is obviously fiction as a thriller that follows its protagonists through some extremely narrow escapes and ends with complete resolution, it does make interpretations of two historical events worth mentioning here: the origin of the Priory of Sion in the eleventh century, and the Council of Nicaea in 325 a.d.

As a secret society, the Priory of Sion is shrouded in mystery. On the first page of the novel, unambiguously titled "Fact," Brown claims it is a "European secret society founded in 1099," and writes that in 1975, documents were found that identify figures from Sir Isaac Newton to Leonardo da Vinci as Priory members. Scholars have pointed out that Brown takes this claim from another international bestseller titled The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail (1982) by Henry Lincoln, Richard Leigh, and Michael Baigent. Brown uses the last names of the two latter authors as straightforward and anagrammatic sources for his fictional historian, Leigh Teabing. Their book refers to the true story of a priest appointed in 1885 named Bèrenger Saunière, who mysteriously acquires great wealth in a short period of time, and eventually purchases a lavish estate. Though the story of Bèrenger Saunière is widely accepted as fact, The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail assumes that Saunière's wealth is a direct result of his finding secret papers that prove the existence of Jesus' and Mary Magdalene's lineage. It also suggests that the real Saunière is a member of the Priory, which has existed since the eleventh century. But these myths were perpetuated by his housekeeper, Marie Dénarnaud, and the next owner of his estate, Noël Corbu, who turned the estate into a resort to maximize public interest, thus increasing his profit. When the eccentric Parisian Pierre Plantard heard of the story in the mid-twentieth century, he created a series of documents including false genealogical records that suggested his relation to the Merovingian line. With the help of his friend Phillipe de Chérisey, Plantard crafted fake parchments containing coded messages, all of which were introduced under pseudonyms into the Bibliothèque Nationale in the 1960s. But these "dossiers secrets" were exposed as forgeries, and historians agree that there is no proof that the Priory has existed since the eleventh century. A French journalist uncovered the hoax in the 1980s, and a BBC documentary titled "The History of a Mystery" reiterated its falsity in 1996.

Brown's historian, Leigh Teabing, brings out the second relevant historical event when he discusses the Council of Nicaea, a gathering called by Roman Emperor Constantine the Great to unite the government with the Catholic Church. During this meeting, the Bible was officially canonized and Jesus' divinity was made concrete. Teabing argues that Constantine the Great "collated" the Bible and suppressed the Gnostic gospels, and that Jesus' divinity was debated and eventually accepted by a "relatively close vote." While making these controversial claims, he asserts that "everything you need to know about the Bible can be summed up by the great canon doctor Martyn Percy." Percy, a British theologian and the only living scholar Brown quotes, has responded to this reference in Brown's novel by discrediting the idea that Constantine could have divinized Jesus. Most of what Teabing says about Constantine comes from the same book of speculations Brown uses as evidence of Priory history, The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail. Religious scholars point out that the council was called to address the "Arian heresy," or the unconventional belief that Jesus was not divine, that the gospels were considered authoritative as early as the first century a.d. Most historians, moreover, note that the "relatively close vote" to which Teabing refers was actually not close at all, and that Jesus' divinity was widely accepted among the early Christians. In fact, many scholars have invalidated the claims the novel makes about Christian history. Brown's theories are most convincing to those who see history as a conspiracy, not as a factual account of the past.

CRITICAL OVERVIEW

The Da Vinci Code debuted at number one on the New York Times bestseller list, and generated high praise from many critics for its entertainment value. Reviewing the novel for the New York Times, Janet Maslin declares, "In this gleefully erudite suspense novel, Mr. Brown takes the format he has been developing through three earlier novels and fine-tunes it to blockbuster proportion." On the other side of the Atlantic—and indeed, on the other side of the critical spectrum—Peter Millar writes in his review for the Times (London) that the novel "is without doubt, the silliest, most inaccurate, ill-informed, stereotype-driven, cloth-eared, cardboard-cutout-populated piece of pulp fiction that I have read." Whatever the reaction, reviewers most often took polarized views of the book initially. Whatever the reason, sales of the novel increased exponentially. As of 2005, the novel had been listed in the New York Times bestseller list for ninety-six weeks, even though it had not yet been released in paperback. Over twenty-five million copies had been purchased in the two years following its publication to generate more than $210 million in sales. Its world-wide success and controversial claims were deemed so dangerous that Lebanese religious leaders had it banned from the country, and Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone urged Catholics to boycott it.

The year after it was published, some critics began analyzing the reasons behind its success. Writing for the New Statesman, Jason Cowley notes that the novel brings out "many of the most urgent political themes of our time—religious extremism, the idea that history itself is a vast conspiracy, the power of secret networks and societies over our lives, the global reach of the internet, the omnipresence of satellite surveillance and other new technologies." More specifically, Cowley argues that "In the aftermath of the events of September 2001 and the invasion of Iraq, in a world where a mysterious and opaque global network of religious terrorists called al-Queda threatens the west as well as, it is believed, communicating via encoded messages," the novel "carries a powerful political charge."

Capitalizing on the novel's widespread success, networks produced a number of programs exploring its subjects. ABC sent reporter Elizabeth Vargas on an international journey to interview scholars about the novel's claims. The special, titled "Jesus, Mary and Da Vinci," aired in the fall of 2003. "Da Vinci Code: The Full Story," another program to explore the novel's issues, aired on the National Geographic Channel, attracted more viewers than the channel had for any other program in its history. As a summary of Christian scholars' critiques of the novel, PAX aired "Breaking The Da Vinci Code" in early May of 2005, taking its title from Darrel Bock's critical book. The History Channel produced a two-hour special titled "Beyond The Da Vinci Code," which aired in late May of 2005.

Many religious scholars published critical books of their own, taking issue with Brown's sensational assertions, voiced in interviews, that he believes in his novel's theories; they also took exception to the novel's astounding market success. Among those to debunk the novel are Carl E. Olson and Sandra Miesel in The Da Vinci Hoax: Exposing the Errors in "The Da Vinci Code" (2004). The Archbishop of Chicago, Cardinal Francis George, speaking in Ignatuis Books, calls The Da Vinci Hoax: Exposing the Errors in "The Da Vinci Code" "the definitive debunking" of The Da Vinci Code. In a pamphlet for Our Sunday Visitor, Amy Welbourn excerpts from her book, De-Coding Da Vinci: The Facts Behind the Fiction of "The Da Vinci Code" (2004). In it, she calls The Da Vinci Code "logically and historically flawed," and cites that Brown holds "no advanced degrees in religion." Other scholars and critics take more objective historical perspectives, with an aim of providing historical information that is sometimes at odds with the facts in Brown's novel. These books include Simon Cox's Cracking the "Da Vinci Code": The Unauthorized Guide to the Facts behind Dan Brown's Bestselling Novel, and Sharan Newman's The Real History Behind the "Da Vinci Code" (2005).

CRITICISM

Kathleen Helal

Dr. Helal has taught courses on writing and English literature for several years, and has presented and published many papers and articles on women's writing. In this essay, Helal analyzes the curious discrepancy between the feminist message of the novel's theories about Christian history and the misogynist portrayal of its heroine, Sophie Neveu.

Mary Magdalene is arguably the true hero of The Da Vinci Code. She is the Holy Grail, the secret kept by the Priory of Sion, the figure to whom the main character bows in reverence in the final chapter, the "woman's voice … the wisdom of the ages … whispering up from the chasms of the earth" in the final sentence. Indeed, the success of The Da Vinci Code in seducing readers to believe her role is more central in Christianity than it seems is due in part to Brown's reverence for this forgotten female figure. Leigh Teabing interprets the Christian misrepresentation of Mary Magdalene as a conspiracy to suppress her importance: "That unfortunate misconception is the legacy of a smear campaign launched by the early Church. The Church needed to defame Mary Magdalene in order to cover up her dangerous secret—her role as the Holy Grail." Indeed, since Pope Gregory delivered a series of sermons in 591 that simplified her identity as a sinner in contrast to the other famous Mary, revered as Jesus' mother, Mary Magdalene has been depicted as a prostitute. Though historians generally do not "ascribe malicious intent to Gregory … who most likely wanted to use the story to assure converts that their sins would be forgiven," as Heidi Schlumpf argues in U.S. Catholic, Mary Magdalene's reputation has been tarnished for centuries. The Vatican did vindicate her in 1969, and many biblical scholars such as Jane Schaberg and Susan Haskins have reconstructed her image. Schlumpf hopes that "with the prostitute baggage properly disposed of, Mary of Magdala can emerge as a model of a faithful, devoted follower of the Lord, as well as a strong, independent leader in the early Church."

For many, the appeal of The Da Vinci Code is its seemingly feminist celebration of Mary Magdalene as one of the most heroic figures in Christian history. Surely the fictional heroine of Brown's novel is just as honorable. The attractive and accomplished Sophie Neveu is a cryptologist for the Central Directorate Judicial Police in Paris; however, though she initially appears as an assertive and intelligent character, Neveu regresses as the novel progresses. Any feminist message is further undermined when Brown presents his revision of Mary Magdalene's story by staging a conversation between two male teachers and a female student that replicates the very patriarchal system he seems to critique. Though the novel overtly engages Christian history to critique it from a feminist perspective, Sophie Neveu functions disturbingly as the passive vessel into which Leigh Teabing and Robert Langdon pour their theories about the lost sacred feminine.

Neveu, who is oddly called "Sophie" throughout a narrative that refers only to the surnames of the male characters, first appears as a "young Parisian déchiffreuse," or one who decodes complex messages. She has "studied cryptology in England at the Royal Holloway," an actual school internationally acclaimed for its academic research of cryptography—the science of enciphering and deciphering messages in secret code. She is defiant, fearless, and, of course, beautiful, to the dismay of her enemy Bazu Fache:

At thirty-two years old, she had a dogged determination that bordered on obstinate. Her eager espousal of Britain's new cryptologic methodology continually exasperated the veteran French cryptographers above her. And by far the most troubling to Fache was the inescapable universal truth that in an office of middle-aged men, an attractive young woman always drew eyes away from the work at hand.

Framing the heroine as a sort of rival to the misogynist Fache is one strategy Brown uses to present her favorably. He continues by shifting from Fache's perspective to Langdon's, emphasizing the contrast in the way she is seen differently by each male character:

Langdon turned to see a young woman approaching. She was moving down the corridor toward them with long, fluid strides … a haunting certainty to her gait. Dressed casually in a knee-length, cream-colored Irish sweater over black leggings, she was attractive and looked to be about thirty. Her thick burgundy hair fell unstyled to her shoulders, framing the warmth of her face. Unlike the waifish, cookie-cutter blondes that adorned Harvard dorm room walls, this woman was healthy with an unembellished beauty and genuineness that radiated a striking personal confidence.

If Fache's description of Neveu is meant to reveal more about his insecurity than her character, Langdon's description functions as the more definitive one. Yet, it is as remarkable that one's hair could be associated with the term "burgundy" as that her "unembellished beauty and genuineness" could be immediately perceived by a perfect stranger. Nevertheless, initially Neveu is meant to be a highly intelligent and benevolent character. When she helps Langdon escape the museum with a clever plan that fools Detective Fache and his entire team, Langdon concludes: "Sophie Neveu was clearly a hell of a lot smarter than he was." Brown's portrayal of her seems at first to be consistent with the feminist message of the alternative Christian history he will develop.

As the novel continues, however, Neveu seems inexplicably to lose her faculties. It is the symbologist, Langdon, who first interprets the cipher Saunière leaves, and when he declares that "It's the simplest kind of code!" Neveu "was stopped on the stairs below him, staring up in confusion. A code? She had been pondering the words all night and had not seen a code. Especially a simple one." Brown justifies her ignorance by declaring that her intelligence causes her to seek complexity. But even the narrative seems to reveal this interpretation as ridiculous:

Her shock over the anagram was matched only by her embarrassment at not having deciphered the message herself. Sophie's expertise in complex cryptanalysis had caused her to overlook simplistic word games, and yet she knew she should have seen it. After all, she was no stranger to anagrams—especially in English.

Neveu's inability to decode the simple anagram is followed by a narrative flashback in which she is a six-year-old girl, her "tiny hand" in her grandfather's as he leads her through the Louvre. As her memories of herself as a girl continue intermittently in the narrative, her adult self seems to regress into childhood. When Neveu learns about the Holy Grail from Langdon and Teabing, she is depicted as an innocent child:

Langdon sighed. 'I was hoping you would be kind enough to explain to Ms. Neveu the true nature of the Holy Grail.'

Teabing looked stunned. 'She doesn't know?'

Langdon shook his head.

The smile that grew on Teabing's face was almost obscene. 'Robert, you've brought me a virgin?… You are a Grail virgin, my dear. And trust me, you will never forget your first time.'

Of course, as Langdon relates, anyone unfamiliar with the Grail legend is traditionally called a virgin by those familiar with the story. But the repeated characterization of Neveu as virgin and the pleasure Teabing takes in flaunting his knowledge and superior position seems extremely odd because he will tell her that women have been subordinated in Christian history. Teabing's message is feminist; his demeanor is quite the opposite.

In fact, the entire section of Brown's novel that delves into the alternative Christian history that celebrates femininity has Langdon and Teabing lecturing a wide-eyed, ignorant Neveu. The feminist claims that Mary Magdalene was meant to be the first priest and that Christian leaders have demonized femininity contrast with the antifeminist portrayal of Neveu's character. The association of Sophie Neveu's name with wisdom does very little to counter terms used to describe her as she learns that the Holy Grail is a woman and can only stare in awe and ask simple questions. As Teabing declares that the Council of Nicaea established Jesus' divinity in 325 by a "relatively close vote," "Sophie's head was spinning…. Sophie glanced at Langdon, and he gave her a soft nod of concurrence." Strangely, it takes a long time for this accomplished cryptologist to grasp fully what Teabing and Langdon suggest: "The Holy Grail is a woman, Sophie thought, her mind a collage of interrelated ideas that seemed to make no sense." When she is told that the female Holy Grail appears in Leonardo da Vinci's The Last Supper, she "was certain she had missed something" in looking for her in the painting, and "turned to Langdon for help. 'I'm lost.'"

As Langdon and Teabing race through their revisionist theories, Neveu always remains one step behind them. The divergence between Teabing's message and Brown's portrayal of Neveu having a hard time following him is striking:

'Peter expresses his discontent over playing second fiddle to a woman. I daresay Peter was something of a sexist.'

Sophie was trying to keep up. 'This is Saint Peter. The rock on which Jesus built his Church.'

'The same, except for one catch. According to these unaltered gospels, it was not Peter to whom Christ gave directions with which to establish the Christian Church. It was Mary Magdalene.'

Sophie looked at him. "You're saying the Christian Church was to be carried on by a woman?"

During this exchange, the feminist message of this alternative version of Christianity is given to and interpreted for the bewildered, "surprised," incredulous Neveu, who glances back to Langdon for his reassuring nods as Teabing relates the controversial claims. Teabing eventually addresses her as "my dear child," as he answers her questions, and his "words seemed to echo across the ballroom and back before they fully registered in Sophie's mind." The ideas that seem incredulous to Neveu are markedly simple. When she is told that "history is always written by the winners…. By its very nature, history is always a one-sided account," Brown writes, "Sophie had never thought of it that way." That an educated cryptologist would not have deduced that history could be manipulated seems quite astonishing, to say the least.

Ultimately, while the novel attempts to proclaim the feminist secret at the heart of the "greatest cover-up in human history," it conceals its own subordination of femininity in a narrative that moves so quickly readers hardly pause to actually consider what it suggests about its female characters in particular, and femininity in general.

Source: Kathleen Helal, Critical Essay on The Da Vinci Code, in Literary Newsmakers for Students, Thomson Gale, 2006.

WHAT DO I READ NEXT?

• Digital Fortress (1998), Dan Brown's first novel, explores the secret world of the National Security Agency. The title refers to an unbreakable code that former programmer Ensei Tankado uses to paralyze TRNSLTR, a computer used to monitor private terrorist communications.
• Professor Robert Langdon makes his first appearance in Dan Brown's second novel, Angels and Demons (2000). Already a famous symbologist, Langdon is recruited to interpret a symbol that has been branded on a murdered scientist. As the novel progresses, he is called to interpret further murder scenes and comes to discover the symbols that connect them are all related to a group known as the Illuminati, an ancient secret society formed in opposition against the Catholic Church.
• Brown's third novel, Deception Point (2001), is a political thriller that begins with the NASA discovery of an object in the Arctic that would solidify the status of the space agency. Intelligence analyst Rachel Sexton is sent to verify its authenticity, but when she finds the discovery has been staged, she and her academic colleague Michael Tolland are hunted by assassins before they can notify the president of the United States of their find. The book follows them as they work to learn the truth behind the scientific deception.
• Holy Blood, Holy Grail (1983), by Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh, and Henry Lincoln, is the bestseller from which Brown draws many of his theories. The book combines history and speculation about the Knights Templar and the Priory of Sion.
• Margaret Starbird examines the evidence of the idea that Mary Magdalene played a central role in Jesus' ministry in The Woman with the Alabaster Jar: Mary Magdalene and the Holy Grail (1993). Most strikingly, Starbird argues that Mary Magdalene was married to Jesus and that the Holy Grail is the secret of their relationship.
• In The Templar Revelation: Secret Guardians of the True Identity of Christ (1998), Lynn Picknett and Clive Prince present their view of what secret societies such as the Freemasons, the Cathars, and the Knights Templar believed about the roles of Jesus, Mary Magdalene, and John the Baptist.
• In The Gnostic Gospels (1989), Elaine Pagels imagines what Christianity would be like if the Gnostic texts were included in the Bible. Her book is considered one of the most accessible guides to the philosophies of Gnosticism and its implications for Christianity.
• Marvin Meyer, Professor of Bible and Christian Studies, summarizes the history of Mary Magdalene's changing reputation and explores his theory that she had an intimate relationship with Jesus in The Gospels of Mary: The Secret Tradition of Mary Magdalene, the Companion of Jesus (2004).
• The Gnostic Gospels of Jesus (2005), compiled and translated by Marvin Meyer, is a complete collection of the Nag Hammadi library, the set of ancient papyrus manuscripts found in the 1940s. These fragments include many of the Gnostic texts to which Brown's novel refers, from the Gospel of Thomas and the Gospel of Mary to the Gospel of Philip, and the Gospel of Truth.

Norris J. Lacy

In the following except, Lacy questions the validity of Brown's research in The Da Vinci Code, and whether or not accuracy is important in a work of fiction such as this.

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Source: Norris J Lacy, "The Da Vinci Code: Dan Brown and The Grail That Never Was," in Arthuriana, Vol. 14, No. 3, 2004, pp. 81-89.

SOURCES

Brown, Dan, The Da Vinci Code, Doubleday, 2003.

Cowley, Jason, "The Author of the Bestselling Da Vinci Code Has Tapped into our Post-9/11 Anxieties and Fear of Fundamentalism," in New Statesman, December 13, 2004, pp. 18-21.

George, Cardinal Francis, Ignatuis Books, www.ignatius.com/books/davincihoax (July 28, 2005).

Maslin, Janet, "Spinning a Thriller from a Gallery at the Louvre," in the New York Times, March 17, 2003, p. E8.

Millar, Peter, "Holy Humbug: Book of the Week," in the Times (London), June 21, 2003, p. 15.

Schlumpf, Heidi, "Who Framed Mary Magdalene?" in U.S. Catholic, Vol. 65, No. 4, April 2000, pp. 12-16.

Welbourn, Amy, "The Da Vinci Code": The Facts Behind the Fiction, Catholic Educator's Resource Center, www.catholiceducation.org/articles/facts/fm0035.html (July 28, 2005); originally published in Our Sunday Visitor, May 2004.

FURTHER READING

Bock, Darrell L., Breaking the "Da Vinci Code": Answers to the Questions Everybody's Asking, Nelson Books, 2004.

This guide focuses on the three centuries following the birth of Christ to examine the suggestions the novel makes about early Christian history. It largely discredits the theories Brown puts forth in the novel.

Burstein, Dan, Secrets of the Code: The Unauthorized Guide to the Mysteries Behind "The Da Vinci Code," CDS Books, 2004.

In a study almost as long as the novel itself, Burstein collects interviews and essays from historians, scientists, archeologists, and theologians, some of whom have contrasting views about the questions the novel raises. This is considered one of the most comprehensive guides to the topics the novel engages, such as what is known about Jesus, Mary Magdalene, the Gnostic gospels, and secret societies.

Ehrman, Bart D, Truth and Fiction in the "Da Vinci Code": A Historian Reveals What We Really Know about Jesus, Mary Magdalene, and Constantine, Oxford University Press, 2004.

A Professor of Religious Studies, Bart Ehrman uses the novel not only to explore Christian history, but also to show what a religious historian does to uncover the truth about the past. Rather than attempting to invalidate the theories of the novel or delving into theological issues, Ehrman cites inaccuracies in the fiction to show how historians interpret topics such as the significance of the Gnostic gospels, the role Constantine played in shaping Christianity, and the relation between Jesus and Mary Magdalene.

Morris, David, The Art and Mythology of "The Da Vinci Code," Lamar Publishing, 2004.

Morris presents the artistic complement to Brown's novel in this comprehensive collection of photographs and illustrations of art and locations to which the novel refers, from da Vinci's paintings to the mythological images mentioned in the narrative. Each image is presented in the order in which it appears in the novel.

Welborn, Amy, De-Coding Da Vinci: The Facts Behind the Fiction of "The Da Vinci Code," Our Sunday Visitor, 2004.

Though it is not the most comprehensive guide, Welborn's rebuttal of Brown's novel is extremely easy to read and concise. She systematically refutes many of the sensational claims Brown's characters make about Christian history from a Catholic point of view.