The Da Vinci Code


The Da Vinci Code is a 2003 mystery thriller novel by Dan Brown. It is one of the best-selling American novels of all time.
Brown's second novel to include the character Robert Langdon—the first was his 2000 novel Angels & Demons—''The Da Vinci Code follows symbologist Langdon and cryptologist Sophie Neveu after a murder in the Louvre Museum in Paris entangles them in a dispute between the Priory of Sion and Opus Dei over the possibility of Jesus and Mary Magdalene having had a child together.
The novel explores an alternative religious history, whose central plot point is that the Merovingian kings of France were descended from the bloodline of Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalene, ideas derived from Clive Prince's The Templar Revelation and books by Margaret Starbird. The book also refers to Holy Blood, Holy Grail, although Brown stated that it was not used as research material.
The Da Vinci Code'' provoked a popular interest in speculation concerning the Holy Grail legend and Mary Magdalene's role in the history of Christianity. The book has been extensively denounced by many Christian denominations as an attack on the Catholic Church, and also consistently criticized by scholars for its historical and scientific inaccuracies. The novel became a massive worldwide bestseller, selling 80 million copies, and has been translated into 44 languages. In November 2004, Random House published a Special Illustrated Edition with 160 illustrations. In 2006, a film adaptation was released by Columbia Pictures.

Plot

curator and Priory of Sion grand master Jacques Saunière is fatally shot one night at the museum by an albino Catholic monk named Silas, who is working on behalf of someone he knows only as the Teacher, who wishes to discover the location of the "keystone", an item crucial in the search for the Holy Grail. After Saunière's body is discovered in the pose of the Vitruvian Man by Leonardo da Vinci, the police summon Harvard professor Robert Langdon, who is in town on business. Police captain Bezu Fache tells him that he was summoned to help the police decode the cryptic message Saunière left during the final minutes of his life. The message includes a Fibonacci sequence out of order and an anagram: "O, draconian devil! Oh, lame saint!" Langdon explains to Fache that the pentacle Saunière drew on his chest in his own blood represents an allusion to the goddess and not devil worship, as Fache believes.
Sophie Neveu, a police cryptographer, secretly explains to Langdon that she is Saunière's estranged granddaughter and that Fache thinks Langdon is the murderer because the last line in her grandfather's message, which was meant for Neveu, said "P.S. Find Robert Langdon", which Fache had erased prior to Langdon's arrival. However, "P.S." does not refer to "postscript", but rather to Sophie — the nickname given to her by her grandfather was "Princess Sophie". She understands that her grandfather intended Langdon to decipher the code, which leads to Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa, which in turn leads to his painting Madonna of the Rocks. They find a pendant that holds the address of the Paris branch of the Depository Bank of Zurich.
Image:Davincicryptex01wiki1.jpg|thumb|upright=1.2|Replica cryptex: prize from Google Da Vinci Code Quest Contest
Neveu and Langdon escape from the police and visit the bank. In the safe deposit box, which is unlocked with the Fibonacci sequence, they find a box containing the keystone: a cryptex, a cylindrical, hand-held vault with five concentric, rotating dials labeled with letters. When they are lined up correctly, they unlock the device, but if the cryptex is forced open, an enclosed vial of vinegar breaks and dissolves the message inside the cryptex, which was written on papyrus. The box containing the cryptex contains clues to its password.
Langdon and Neveu take the keystone to the home of Langdon's friend, Sir Leigh Teabing, an expert on the Holy Grail, the legend of which is heavily connected to the Priory. There, Teabing explains that the Grail is not a cup but connected to Mary Magdalene, and that she was Jesus Christ's wife and is the person to his right in The Last Supper. The trio then flee the country on Teabing's private plane, on which they conclude that the proper combination of letters spells out Neveu's given name, Sofia. Opening the cryptex, they discover a smaller cryptex inside it, along with another riddle that ultimately leads the group to the tomb of Isaac Newton in Westminster Abbey.
During the flight to Britain, Neveu reveals the source of her estrangement from her grandfather ten years earlier: arriving home unexpectedly from university, Neveu secretly witnessed a spring fertility rite conducted in the secret basement of her grandfather's country estate. From her hiding place, she was shocked to see her grandfather having sex with a woman at the center of a ritual attended by men and women who were wearing masks and chanting praise to the goddess. She fled the house and broke off all contact with Saunière. Langdon explains that what she witnessed was an ancient ceremony known as hieros gamos or "sacred marriage".
By the time they arrive at Westminster Abbey, Teabing is revealed to be the Teacher for whom Silas is working. Teabing wishes to use the Holy Grail, which he believes is a series of documents establishing that Jesus Christ married Mary Magdalene and fathered children, in order to ruin the Vatican. He compels Langdon at gunpoint to solve the second cryptex's password, which Langdon realizes is "apple". Langdon secretly opens the cryptex and removes its contents before tossing the empty cryptex in the air. Teabing is arrested by Fache, who by now realizes that Langdon is innocent. Bishop Aringarosa, head of religious sect Opus Dei and Silas' mentor, realizing that Silas has been used to murder innocent people, rushes to help the police find him. When the police find Silas hiding in an Opus Dei Center, Silas assumes that they are there to kill him and he rushes out, accidentally shooting Bishop Aringarosa. Bishop Aringarosa survives but is informed that Silas was found dead later from a gunshot wound.
The final message inside the second keystone leads Neveu and Langdon to Rosslyn Chapel, whose docent turns out to be Neveu's long-lost brother, who Neveu had been told died as a child in the car accident that killed her parents. The guardian of Rosslyn Chapel, Marie Chauvel Saint Clair, is Neveu's long-lost grandmother and Saunière's wife, who was the woman who participated with him in the "sacred marriage". It is revealed that Neveu and her brother are descendants of Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalene. The Priory of Sion hid her identity to protect her from possible threats to her life. The real meaning of the last message is that the Grail is buried beneath the small pyramid directly below La Pyramide Inversée, the inverted glass pyramid of the Louvre. It also lies beneath the "Rose Line", an allusion to "Rosslyn". Langdon figures out this final piece to the puzzle; he follows the Rose Line to La Pyramide Inversée, where he kneels to pray before the hidden sarcophagus of Mary Magdalene, as the Templar knights did before.

Characters

  • Robert Langdon: A professor of symbology at Harvard University and the protagonist of the novel.
  • Jacques Saunière: The grandmaster of the Priory of Sion, Curator of Louvre Museum.
  • Sophie Neveu: A cryptologist of the French police and granddaughter of Saunière.
  • Bezu Fache: A member of Opus Dei and a French police captain.
  • Silas / The Monk: A member of Opus Dei who murders Saunière and the secondary antagonist of the novel.
  • Manuel Aringarosa: A bishop of the Vatican and member of Opus Dei.
  • Sister Sandrine: A Seneschal of the Priory of Sion and nun of St. Sulpice.
  • André Vernet: A guard of Zurich bank.
  • Sir Leigh Teabing / The Teacher: A Grail scholar and British expatriate living in Paris, and the main antagonist of the novel.
  • Rémy Legaludec: A servant who assists Teabing.
  • Jérôme Collet: A French police lieutenant and Fache's deputy.
  • Marie Chauvel Saint-Clair: Sophie's grandmother.

    Reaction

Sales

The Da Vinci Code was a major success in 2003, outsold only by J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. As of 2016, it had sold 80 million copies worldwide.

Historical inaccuracies

The Da Vinci Code generated criticism when it was first published for the fictitious description of the core aspects of Christianity and descriptions of European art, history, and architecture. The book has received negative reviews mostly from Catholic and other Christian communities. Many critics took issue with the level of research Brown did when writing the story. The New York Times writer Laura Miller characterized the novel as "based on a notorious hoax", "rank nonsense", and "bogus", saying the book is heavily based on the fabrications of Pierre Plantard, who is asserted to have created the Priory of Sion in 1956.
Critics accuse Brown of distorting and fabricating history. Theological author Marcia Ford considered that novels should be judged not on their literary merit, but on their conclusions:
Richard Abanes wrote:
Much of the controversy generated by The Da Vinci Code was due to the fact that the book was marketed as being historically accurate; the novel opens with a "fact" page that states that "The Priory of Sion—a French secret society founded in 1099—is a real organization", which is disputed. The fact page itself is part of the novel as a fictional piece, but is not presented as such. The page also states that "all descriptions of artwork, architecture, documents... and secret rituals in this novel are accurate", a claim disputed by numerous academic scholars and experts in numerous areas.
Brown addressed the idea of some of the more controversial aspects being fact on his website, stating that the page at the beginning of the novel mentions only "documents, rituals, organization, artwork and architecture" but not any of the ancient theories discussed by fictional characters, stating that "Interpreting those ideas is left to the reader". Brown also says, "It is my belief that some of the theories discussed by these characters may have merit" and "the secret behind The Da Vinci Code was too well documented and significant for me to dismiss."
In 2003, while promoting the novel, Brown was asked in interviews what parts of the history in his novel actually happened. He replied "Absolutely all of it." In a 2003 interview with CNN's Martin Savidge he was again asked how much of the historical background was true. He replied, "99% is true... the background is all true". Asked by Elizabeth Vargas in an ABC News special if the book would have been different if he had written it as non-fiction he replied, "I don't think it would have."
In 2005, UK TV personality Tony Robinson edited and narrated a detailed rebuttal of the main arguments of Brown and those of Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh and Henry Lincoln, who authored the book Holy Blood, Holy Grail, in the program The Real Da Vinci Code, shown on British TV Channel 4. The program featured lengthy interviews with many of the main protagonists cited by Brown as "absolute fact" in The Da Vinci Code. Arnaud de Sède, son of Gérard de Sède, stated categorically that his father and Plantard had made up the existence of the Prieuré de Sion, the cornerstone of the Jesus bloodline theory: "frankly, it was piffle", noting that the concept of a descendant of Jesus was also an element of the 1999 Kevin Smith film Dogma.
The earliest appearance of this theory is due to the 13th-century Cistercian monk and chronicler Peter of Vaux de Cernay who reported that Cathars believed that the 'evil' and 'earthly' Jesus Christ had a relationship with Mary Magdalene, described as his concubine. The program The Real Da Vinci Code also cast doubt on the Rosslyn Chapel association with the Grail and on other related stories, such as the alleged landing of Mary Magdalene in France.
According to The Da Vinci Code, the Roman Emperor Constantine I suppressed Gnosticism because it portrayed Jesus as purely human. The novel portrays Constantine as wanting Christianity to act as a unifying religion for the Roman Empire, thinking that Christianity would appeal to pagans only if it featured a demigod similar to pagan heroes. According to the Gnostic Gospels, Jesus was merely a human prophet, not a demigod. Therefore, to change Jesus' image, Constantine destroyed the Gnostic Gospels and promoted the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, which portray Jesus as divine or semi-divine; however, most scholars agree that all Gnostic writings depict Christ as purely divine, his human body being a mere illusion. Gnostic sects saw Christ this way because they regarded matter as evil, and therefore believed that a divine spirit would never have taken on a material body.