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Living Section of the San Bernardino SUN March 21, 2004 Issue 
The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown 
Secret Messages in the Artworks of Da Vinci? "The Da Vinci Code" by Dan Brown is perhaps the most read and talked about book at the moment. It has been at the top of the national bestseller list from the day of its publication in 2003. Even audacious self-proclaimed nonreaders have been spied glued to that particular book. This is not to say that everyone without exception is so enthralled with it. Occasionally one runs into avid readers on whom the spell of "The Da Vinci Code" has failed to work. The book was the March reading selection of the library's High Noon Literary Salon. It is the perfect reading for a literary salon discussion as its central theme affects the very core on which Western civilization is based. On the most basic level it is a riveting murder mystery. Deftly, the author uses the mystery story to examine a provocative and controversial theory of the origin of Christianity. Much of what Brown brings forth has already been researched and discussed at length in the controversial international bestseller "Holy Blood, Holy Grail." In Brown's novel, Jacques Sauniere, the renowned curator of the Louvre and an authority on codes hidden in famous artworks is murdered. Robert Langdon, a Harvard professor of religious symbology and Sophie Neveu, the curator's estranged granddaughter and a talented cryptographer are inadvertently placed in the situation of solving the murder by following the clues left by the dying man. But these are not ordinary clues, they are layers and layers of codes that test Langdon and Sophie's vast knowledge and at the same time reveal to the reader an alternative story of Christianity. Sauniere had been the Grand Master of the Priory of Sion, an ancient society that is said to be guarding the truth about Jesus Christ. As a member of the society and also a Grand Master, Da Vinci is believed to have left numerous clues in the form of sophisticated codes in many of his paintings about the society's beliefs. According to ancient documents recovered by the Knights Templar and guarded by the Priory of Sion, Jesus Christ was married to Mary of Magdalene. She is the metaphorical Holy Grail, the chalice with the sang real - the royal bloodline of Jesus Christ. As portrayed in the book, the Priory of Sion still reveres the sacred feminine, totally erased at the first Council of Nicaea at which emperor Constantine presided. In a grab for ultimate power and control, by deleting, suppressing, withholding and falsifying information, the Catholic Church had succeeded in creating a type of Christianity entirely different from what it was intended to be. By altering and tarnishing the character of Mary of Magdalene the original Christian Church has stigmatized and devalued women forever. The second rate status of women today is largely due to these distortions of the truth. This is but a skeletal synopsis of the brazen beliefs described in the novel. It is the details, the minutiae and the decoding of codes that lend the book its extraordinary attraction. The murdered curator and the real-life discoverer of the secret parchments at the Rennes-le-Chateau church share the same name - Sauniere. And Bezu Fache, the French agent investigating the murder has the same name - Bezu - as a real peak near Rennes-le-Chateau where the ruins of a Knights Templar castle still stand. Then there is Opus Dei, a sect and now a prelature of the Vatican, on a quest to discover the Priory's secret documents and the mythical Holy Grail in order to obliterate them and thus, put an end to the threat to the Church. "The Da Vinci Code" is packed with bits of knowledge that underscore today's woeful state of learning. How many young kids know that the reason Friday the thirteenth is considered unlucky is because it was on Friday, October 13, 1307 that the Pope tried to destroy the Knights Templar; or that the word "heretic" derives from the Latin and Greek words meaning "to choose;" or about the number PHI - the Divine Proportion. Readers take away from the book different things. Lest I be accused of plagiarizing ideas, Susana Atanasova (one of the Salon's members) expressed best one of my thoughts about this book: It makes us realize poignantly how easily we believe without questioning whatever we are spoon-fed. Ophelia Georgiev Roop Library Director San Bernardino Public Library |
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