Experts dismiss theories in popular book
By GARY STERN
THE JOURNAL NEWS
(Original publication: November 2, 2003)
"The Da Vinci Code" is more than a literary phenomenon, the summer's top beach read that's still flying out of bookstores and has been tabbed to get the full Hollywood treatment from the team that made "A Beautiful Mind."
The Code is also a novel that implies that it is more, a story that pulls together bits of history and assorted facts in making what appears to be a quite serious assertion: that 2,000 years of Christian belief is based on lies, and that the Vatican has directed the Greatest Conspiracy Ever Concocted.
A growing chorus of critics, particularly in the Roman Catholic community, is taking aim at the Code and its author, Dan Brown. They say that Brown presents half-baked, discredited theories and plots about church history as revelations, all the while hiding behind the literary freedom given a novelist.
"In making phony claims of scholarship, Brown's book infects readers with a virulent hostility toward Catholicism," read a recent feature in the conservative Catholic magazine, Crisis.
Joseph De Feo, policy analyst for the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, insists that Brown has taken advantage of the church's sex-abuse scandal to sell 3.5 million copies.
"We don't want to say that it's outright anti-Catholic, because it is a work of fiction," De Feo said. "But it is exploitative because Brown is capitalizing on an atmosphere when people will believe anything about the church."
What's for certain is that "The Da Vinci Code" has been a knock-out success since it made its debut 31 weeks ago as the best-selling novel in the country. A page-turner in the John Grisham style, built on breathless, short chapters ending with mini-cliffhangers, the Code is still ranked in the top five.
Sony Pictures picked up the rights to the book in June and has since announced that Ron Howard will direct the big-screen adaptation. The plot — and here's a warning to stop reading or skim a few paragraphs if you don't want to know — is complex, intriguing on several levels and utterly blasphemous if you are a more or less traditional Christian. Very broadly, the main characters make these discoveries: Jesus and Mary Magdalene were married and had a child; Magdalene was chosen by Jesus to lead an early, heavily feminist Christian church; Roman Emperor Constantine invented Jesus' divinity and created the New Testament; and Leonardo Da Vinci left codes in his artwork to preserve the truth (which happens to be the Holy Grail).
The evil and conniving villain is the Vatican, which has stopped at nothing to remove the feminine heart of Christianity from the church. Opus Dei, the conservative Catholic order favored by Pope John Paul II, is depicted as pathetically foolish, not to mention murderous.
"The worst part of the book is its claim that Christianity is a hoax, which is much more troublesome than anything said about Opus Dei," said Brian Finnerty, Opus Dei's spokesman in America.
But can a work of fiction make a claim? Brown doesn't say so directly, but declares at the start of the book: "All descriptions of artwork, architecture, documents, and secret rituals in this novel are accurate." He also describes his extensive research.
Brown does not do interviews. His editor at Doubleday, Jason Kaufman, could not be reached for comment.
Lynn Garrett, religion editor for the trade journal Publishers Weekly, said she doubted that most people bought "The Da Vinci Code" to study church conspiracies. But after they read it, they want to know more.
"People are looking for a good read," Garrett said. "The guy is a novelist. But it's been having an interesting effect on a variety of topics, what we're calling the 'Da Vinci Code' effect. It's bumped up sales on books about agnosticism, Mary Magdalene, the Holy Grail and other topics in the book."
The plot has been taken seriously enough that ABC News is airing a special about it, "Jesus, Mary and Da Vinci," at 8 p.m. tomorrow.
Renaissance scholars and church historians, meanwhile, see "The Da Vinci Code" as something between harmless pulp fiction and an embarrassing mess that may lead readers astray.
"I think the idea that Leonardo da Vinci had secret information passed down for 40 generations that Jesus and Mary Magdalene were married and had a child is entertaining, but it is not history," said John Martin, a professor at Trinity University in San Antonio and head of church history for the Renaissance Society of America.
Church historian Christopher Bellitto, academic editor at Paulist Press, said he enjoyed "The Da Vinci Code" as a light, summer read. But he said that Brown simply took some kernels of historical truth and popped them into fantasy.
"Women did play influential roles in the early church," he said. "Can we say that Catholicism hasn't been as open to women as some might hope? Sure. But to come up with an Oliver Stone theory on getting rid of women goes way too far."
As for Leonardo's intention to leave coded messages — the Code contends that the person to Jesus' right in "The Last Supper" is not an apostle but Mary Magdalene — art historians say they are used to wild theories about one of history's most famous artists.
Joseph Forte, an art historian at Sarah Lawrence College in Yonkers, said that there has long been speculation about sexual messages in Leonardo's art, about his reputation as a "court master" of riddles and games, about inconsistencies in various gospels, and other factors that Brown may have seized on in "marrying" Jesus and Magdalene.
"I know of no serious scholar who has proposed this notion," Forte said.
J.V. Field, an art historian at the University of London and president of the Leonardo da Vinci Society, said that real history requires proof, and the Code offers none that scholars would recognize.
"As a historian, I can only say that, for me, everything I know about how pictures were used to communicate indicates that the theory is absurd," Field wrote in an e-mail from London. "This means that I should require very strong evidence indeed to make me take it seriously — such as a document written by Leonardo himself giving an explanation of the procedure he followed; and the authority of the document would need to be established by unassailable provenance. In the present case, that is clearly an unattainable standard of proof."
In the end, "The Da Vinci Code" simply appeals to a culture that's increasingly skeptical of claims to religious truth, said Philip Jenkins, professor of history and religious studies at Penn State University and the author of a new book, "The New Anti-Catholicism."
"I think anti-Catholicism is a contributory factor, but the main reason for the book's popularity is deeper, a fundamental suspicion of traditional claims to authority, where they conflict with contemporary ideas and standards, especially over sex and gender," he said. "It mainly illustrates a broader suspicion about orthodoxy generally, and the idea that the truth is out there."
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