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The Da Vinci Code

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Vitruvian man: Leonardo da Vinci

The Da Vinci Code is a novel written by American author Dan Brown and published in 2003 by Random House . It was a New York Times bestseller. Although it is a detective thriller by genre, the novel helped spur widespread popular interest in speculative interpretations of the legend of the Holy Grail and the role of Mary Magdalene in the history of Christianity.

Description

The book concerns the attempts of the protagonist, Dr. Robert Langdon, Professor of Religious Symbology at Harvard University, to solve the murder of Jacques Saunière, the curator of the Louvre Museum in Paris. The title of the novel refers, among other things, to the fact that Saunière's body is found inside the Louvre naked and posed like Leonardo da Vinci's famous drawing, Vitruvian Man. The interpretation of hidden messages inside Da Vinci's famous works, including the Mona Lisa and The Last Supper, figure prominently in the solution to the mystery.

The main conflict in the novel revolves around the solution to two mysteries:

  • What secret was Saunière protecting that led to his murder?
  • Who is the mastermind behind his murder?

The novel has several concurrent story lines that follow different characters. Eventually all the story lines are brought together and resolved at the end of the book.

The unraveling of the mystery requires the solution to a series of brain-teaser puzzles. The solution itself is found to be intimately connected with the possible location of the Holy Grail and to a mysterious society called the Priory of Sion, which itself is connected to the Knights Templar. The Catholic organization Opus Dei also figures prominently in the plot.

The novel is the second book by Brown in which Robert Langdon is the main character. The previous one, Angels and Demons, took place in Rome and concerned the Illuminati.

Template:Spoiler

Characters

These are the principal characters that drive the plot of the story:

  • Robert Langdon, Professor of Religious Symbology at Harvard University. A well-respected scholar. At the beginning of the story, he is in Paris to give a lecture on his work. Having made an appointment to meet with Jacques Saunière, he is startled to find the French police at his hotel room door. They inform him that Saunière has been murdered and they would like his immediate assistance at the Louvre to help them solve the crime. Unbeknownst to Langdon, he is in fact the prime suspect in the murder and has been summoned to scene of the crime in order that the police may extract a confession from him.
  • Jacques Saunière the curator of Louvre, secret head of the Priory of Sion, and grandfather of Sophie Neveu. Before being murdered by Silas in the museum, he reveals false information to Silas about the Priory's keystone, which supposedly contains information about the true location of the Holy Grail. After being shot in the stomach, he uses the last minutes of his life to arrange a series of clues for his estranged granddaughter Sophie to unravel the mystery to his death and preserve the secret kept by the Priory of Sion.
  • Sophie Neveu - the granddaughter of Jacques Saunière. She is a French government cryptographer. She was raised by her grandfather after her parents, grandmother, and brother were killed in an automobile accident when she was a grill. Her grandfather called her "Princess Sophie" and trained her to solve complicated word puzzles. As a girl, she accidentally discovered a strange key with the initials "P.S." in her grandfather's room. Later, as a college student, she made a suprise visit to her grandfather's house in Normandy and observed him participating in an occult sex ritual. The incident led to her estrangement with her grandfather until the night of his murder.
  • Bezu Fache - a captian in the DPCF, the French equivalent of the FBI. Tough, canny, persistent, he is in charge of the investigation of Saunière's murder. From the message left by the dying curator, he is convinced the murderer is Robert Langdon, whom he summons to the Louvre in order to extract a confession. He is thwarted in his early attempt by Sophie Neveu, who surreptiously notifies Langdon that he is in fact the prime suspect, although she knows him to be innocent. He pursues Langdon doggedly throughout the book on the belief that letting get away would be career suicide.
  • Silas - an albino devotee of Opus Dei who practices severe corporal mortification. He was orphaned in Marseille as a young man, fell into a life of crime, and was imprisoned in the Pyrenees until accidentally freed by an earthquake. He finds refuge with a young priest named Aringarosa who gives him the name Silas and who eventually becomes the head of Opus Dei. Before the beginning of the events in the novel, Aringarosa put him in contact with the Teacher and tells him that the mission he will given is of the utmost importance in saving the true Word of God. Under the orders of the Teacher, he murders Jacques Saunière and the other three leaders of the Priory of Sion in order to extract the location of the Priory's keystone. Discovering later that he has been duped with false information, he chases Langdon and Neveu in order to obtain the actual keystone. He does not know the true identity of the Teacher. He is reluctant to commit murder, knowing that it is a sin, and does so only because he is assured his actions will save the Church.
  • Bishop Manuel Aringarosa - the world-wide head of Opus Dei and the patron of the albino monk Silas. Six months before the start of the narrative, he is summoned by the Vatican to a meeting at an astronomical observatory in the Italian Alps and told, to his great surprise, that in six months the Pope will withdraw his support of Opus Dei. Since he believes that Opus Dei is the the force keeping the Church from disintegrating into the corruption of the Modern Era, his faith demands he take action to save Opus Dei. Shortly after the meeting with the Vatican officials, he is contacted by a shadowy figure calling himself the "The Teacher" who somehow has learned of the secret meeting. The Teacher informs him that he can deliver an artifact to Aringarosa so valuable to the Church that it will give Opus Dei extreme leverage over the Vatican.
  • The Teacher - shadowy figure who drives the plot of the story. He has learned not only about the plight of Opus Dei, but also the identities of the four leaders of the Priory of Sion, who in turn the know the location of the keystone. He contacts Aringarosa and agrees to supply him with a fantastic artificact that will give Opus Dei great power, namely documents that, if released, would destroy the Church. Aringarosa, acting out of self interest and piety, agrees to his offer in order to save both Opus Dei and the Church. The Teacher uses Silas, Aringarosa's protectee, to carry out his plans. Neither Silas nor Aringarosa ever learn his real identity.
  • André Vernet - president of the Paris branch of the Depository Bank of Zurich. He is surprised when Neveu and Langdon arrive at the bank and inform him that Jacques Saunière, a long-time acount holder at the bank, has died and that Neveu now possesses the depository key to the account. His suspicions are aroused when Neveu and Langdon, after accessing the bank with the key, do not know the account number, indicating that they have no legitimate business being in the bank. He overhears news reports and realizes that Neveu and Langdon are in fact fugitives, suspected in Saunière's murder. When he returns to where he left them, he finds that they have indeed enterred the correct account number and retrieved the contents of Saunière's deposit box. Realizing they are legitimate clients according to the strict rules of the bank, he feels duty bound to help them escape. Acting as a bank driver, he bluffs his way past the police in one of the bank's trucks with Langdon and Neveu in the back of the truck. He later changes his mind and attempts to turn them in, but is thwarted by Langdon, who steels the truck and drives with Neveu to the nearby chateau of his friend, Sir Joseph Teabing.
  • Sir Leigh Teabing - British Royal Historian, a Knight of Realm, Grail scholar, and friend of Robert Langdon. Independently wealthy, he lives outside Paris in a chateau where Langdon and Neveu take refuge after escaping from the Depository Bank of Zurich with the rosewood box containing the keystone. He reveals to Neveu the "real" interpretation of the Grail (see below). After they are discovered at his home simultaneously by Silas and the French police, the three of them flee with his chauffeur Rémy, flying to England in his private jet. After Neveu solves the combination lock of the keystone, he interprets the enclosed riddle as meaning they should go to the Temple Church in London to find the next hidden clue that will let them unlock the second combination lock of the keystone.
  • Rémy - chauffeur of Leigh Teabing. After flying with Teabing, Langdon, and Neveu to England, he drives them to the Temple Church in London. Unbeknownst to the others, he is in fact working for the Teacher. While they are inside the Temple Church, he meets with Silas, who was tipped off by the Teacher to meet Rémy there. Armed with a gun, he enters the church before the others can locate and solve the riddle supposedly hidden there. He takes his Teabing hostage and demands the keystone from Langdon. When Langdon gives him the keystone, he and Silas flee in his car with Teabing as hostage.
  • Docent at Rosslyn Chapel - he is giving a guided tour of Rosslyn Chapel to Langdon and Neveu when he sees the rosewood box they are carrying and realizes that it seems to be an exactly duplicate of a box owned by his grandmother, who is the head of the trust that oversees the chapel.
  • Guardian of the Rosslyn Trust - she is, in fact, the wife of Jacques Saunière and Sophie Neveu's grandmother. The docent is Sophie's brother. She and her grandson survived car accident that claimed Sophie's parents lives. Believing that they had been targeted for asassination by the Church for knowing the powerful secret of the Priory of Sion, she and Saunière agreed that she and Sophie's brother should live secretly in Scotland. She tells Neveu and Langdon that although the Holy Grail and the secret documents were once buried in the vault of Rosslyn Chapel, they were removed to France by the Priory of Sion only several years ago. Reading the parchment inside the second keystone, she realizes where the Grail is now hidden, but refuses to tell Langdon, saying he will figure it out eventually on his own. According to her, the Priory of Sion never intended to reveal the secret of the Grail according to any set timetable. She believes that such a revelation is unnecessary anyway, since the true nature and spiritual power of the Grail is emerging into the world without the location of the actual artifact being revealed. She also informs Sophie Neveu of the true identity of her bloodline.

Summary of Spoilers

  • Jacques Saunière was the head of the Priory of Sion and therefore possessed the knowledge of the keystone, which in turn reveals the location of the Holy Grail, as well as documents which would shake the foundation of Christianity and the Church. He was killed in order to extract the information from him and eliminate the members of the Priory of Sion.
  • The reason for Sophie Neveu broke off contact with her grandfather is that she witnessed him in a sex ritual in Normandy while she was in college.
  • The message Saunière wrote with his own blood on his body before dying contained the extra line "P.S. Find Robert Langdon", which was the reason Bezu Fache suspected Langdon to be the murder. Fache had erased this line before Langdon arrived so that Langdon would not be aware that the police supsected him. Sophie Neveu sees the real text of the message by accident when it is faxed to her office by the police. When Sophie sees the message, she realizes the it is meant for her, since her grandfather called her "Princess Sophie" when she was a girl. From this she also knows Langdon to be innocent. She inform him of this secretly when they are in the Louvre by telling him to call her personal voice mail box and listen to the message for him that she has left there.
  • The other three lines of Saunière's blood mesage are anagrams. The first line are the digits of the Fibonacci sequence out of order. The second and third lines ("O Draconian Devil!" and "Oh, Lame Saint") are anagrams respectively for "Leonardo da Vinci" and "The Mona Lisa" (in English). These clues were meant to lead to a second set of clues. On the glass over the Mona Lisa, Saunière wrote the message "So Dark the Con of Man" with a curator's pen that can only be read in black light. The second clue is an anagram for Madonna of the Rocks, another Da Vinci painting hanging nearby. Behind this painting, Saunière hid a key. On the key, written with the curator's pen, is an address.
  • The key opens a safety deposit box at the Paris branch of the Depository Bank of Zurich. Saunière's account number at the bank is the Fibonacci sequence digits, arranged in the correct order.
  • The instructions that Saunière revealed to Silas at gunpoint are actually a well-rehearsed lie, namely that the keystone is buried in the Church of Saint-Sulpice beneath an obelisk that lies exactly along the ancient "Rose Line" (the former Prime Meridian which passed through Paris before it was redefined to pass through Greenwich). In reality, the message beneath the obelisk simply contains a reference to a passage in the Book of Job which reads "Hitherto shalt thou go and no further". When Silas reads this, he realizes he has been duped.
  • The keystone is a actually a cryptex, a cylindrical device invented by Da Vinci for transporting secure messages. In order to open it, the combination of rotating components must be arranged in the correct order. If forced open, an enclosed vial of liquid will rupture and dissolve the message. The rosewood box containing the cryptex contains clues to combination of the cryptex, written in backwards script in the same manner as Leonardo's journals. While fleeing to England about Teabing's plane, Langdon solves the riddle and finds the combination to be "S-O-P-H-I-E".
  • The keystone cryptex actually contains a second smaller cryptex with a second riddle that reveals its combination. The riddle, which says to seek the orb above a tomb of "a knight a pope interred" refers not to a medieval knight, but rather to the tomb of Sir Isaac Newton, who was buried in Westminster Abbey, and was eulogized by Alexander Pope (A. Pope). The orb refers to the apple observed by Newton which lead to his discovery of the Universal Law of Gravitation, and thus the combination to the second cryptex is "A-P-P-L-E"
  • The Teacher is actually Sir Joseph Teabing. He learned of the identities of the leaders of the Priory of Sion and bugged their offices with horse statues. Rémy is his collaborator. It is Teabing who contacts Bishop Aringarosa using a phony French accent to hide his identity and dupes him into financing the plan to find the Grail. He never intended to hand the Grail over to Aringarosa but was simply taking advantage of Opus Dei's plight to find it. Instead he believed that Priory of Sion intended to reneg on its vow to reveal the secret of the Grail to the world at the appointed time, and thus he was planning to steal the Grail documents and reveal them to the world himself. It is he who informed Silas that Langdon and Sophie Neveu were at his chateau. He did not seize the keystone from them himself because he did not want to reveal his identity to them. His plan to have Silas break into his house and seize the keystone was thwarted when the police raided the house, having followed the GPS device in the truck Langdon had stolen and having heard Silas' gunshot. Teabing leads Neveu and Langdon to the Temple Church in London knowing full well that it was a blind alley. Rather he wanted to stage the hostage scene with Rémy in order to obtain the keystone without revealing his real plot to Langdon and Neveu. The call Silas receives while riding in the limousine with Rèmy is in fact Teabing, surreptiously calling from the back of the limousine.
  • In order to erase all knowledge of his work, Teabing kills Rémy by giving him cognac laced with peanuts, knowing Rémy has a deadly allergy to peanuts. Teabing also anonymously tells the police that Silas is hiding the London headquarters of Opus Dei.
  • In Westminster Abbey, in the showdown with Teabing, Langdon secretly opens the second cryptex and removes its contents before destroying it in front of Teabing. Teabing is arrested and led away while fruitlessly begging Langdon to tell him the contents of the second cryptex and the secret location of the Grail.
  • Bishop Aringarosa and Silas believed they were saving the Church, not destroying it.
  • Bezu Fache figures out that Neveu and Langdon are innocent after discovering the bugging equipment in Teabing's barn.
  • Silas accidentally shoots Aringarosa outside the London headquarters of Opus Dei while fleeing from the police. Having realized his terrible error and that he has been duped, Aringarosa tells Bezu Fache to give the bearer bonds in his brief case to the families of the murdered leaders of the Priory of Sion.
  • The final message inside the second keystone actually does not refer to Rosslyn Chapel, although the Grail was indeed once buried there, below the Star of David on the floor (the two interlocking triangles are the "blade" and "chalice", i.e., male and female symbols).
  • The docent in Rosslyn Chapel is Sophie's long-lost brother.
  • The guardian of Rosslyn Chapel is Sophie's long-lost grandmother, and the wife of Jacques Saunière.
  • Even though all four of the leaders of the Priory of Sion were killed, the secret is not lost, since there is still a contigency plan (never revealed) which will keep the organization and its secret alive.
  • The real meaning of the last message is that the Grail is buried beneath the small pyramid statue (i.e., the "blade", a male symbol) directly below the inverted glass pyramid of the Louvre (i.e., the "chalice", a female symbol, which Langdon and Sophie ironically almost crash into while making their original escape from Bezu Fache).
  • At the end of the book, Robert Langdon and Sophie Neveu fall in love. They arrange to meet in Florence and spend a week doing nothing but exploring the union of the male and female.

Secret of the Holy Grail

According to the novel, the secrets of the Holy Grail, as kept by the Priory of Sion, are as follows:

  • The Holy Grail is not a physical chalice, but a woman, namely Mary Magdalene, who carried the bloodline of Christ.
  • Mary Magdalene was of royal descent (through the Jewish House of Benjamin) and was the wife of Jesus, of the House of David. That she was a prostitute was a slander invented by the Church to obscure their true relationship. At the time of the Crucifixion, she was pregnant. After the Crucifixion, she fled to Gaul where she was sheltered by the Jewish population in Marseilles. She gave birth to a daughter, named Sarah. The bloodline of Jesus and Mary Magdalene became the Merovingian kings of France.
  • The French expression for the Holy Grail, San gréal, actually is a play on words for Sang réal, which literally means "royal blood".
  • The Grail relics consist of the documents that testify to the bloodline, as well as the actual bones of Mary Magdalene.
  • The Church has suppressed the truth about Mary Magdalene and Jesus' bloodline for 2000 years. This is principally because they fear the power of the sacred feminine, which they have demonized as Satanic.
  • Sophie Neveu and her brother are descendants of the original bloodline of Jesus and Mary Magdalene (their last name was changed to hide their ancestry).

The secrets of the Grail are connected to Leonarado Da Vinci's work as follows:

  • Da Vinci was a member of the Priory of Sion and knew the secret of the Grail. The secret is in fact revealed in The Last Supper, in which no actual chalice is present at the table. The figure seated next to Christ is not a man, but a woman, his wife Mary Magdalene. Most reproductions of the work are from a later alteration that obscured her obvious female characteristics.
  • The Mona Lisa is actually a self-portrait by Leonardo as a woman. The androgony reflects the sacred union of male and female which is implied in the holy union of Jesus and Mary Magdalene. Such parity between the cosmic forces of masculine and feminine has long been a deep threat to the established power of the Church. The name Mona Lisa is actually an anagram for "Amon L'Isa", referring to the father and mother gods of Ancient Egypt (namely Amon and Isis).

Commentary

The interpretation of the Holy Grail as being Mary Magdalene, and that she was the mother of Jesus' child, and that their bloodline became the Merovingian dynasty, is not at all original to the novel but is a common speculative theory discussed in many books on the subject. In this sense, the novel is simply a popularization of these theories, wrapped inside a detective thriller and laced with brain teasers. Likewise, the interpretations of Leonardo's work are not original to the novel as well.

See also

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