Father Kleppner - January 30th 2005
Given the ongoing interest in (The DaVinci Code) I share with you the critique of Father Gerald O’Collins, SJ, professor of systematic and fundamental theology at the Gregorian University in Rome.
Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code continues to be the talk of the town and has been on the best-seller list for over 90 weeks. First of all, a word about the genre to which it belongs. For the last two centuries, every few years a sensational book is published which promises to tell you who Jesus really was and how the official church concealed the real Jesus for 20 centuries. To spice up the story, these books often introduce a hidden document which will reveal at long last the sensational, ancient truth about Jesus. Often enough these books bring in the theme of a cover-up, with bureaucrats, at times officials in the Vatican, desperately engaged in a conspiracy to suppress the embarrassing document, which could bring to the world’s attention the explosive ancient truth about Jesus. At times such books introduce another astonishing “face,” a sexual relationship between Jesus and Mary Magdalene, either with or without the benefit of marriage. I’m thinking here of Holy Blood, Holy Grail, by Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh and Henry Lincoln, which appeared in 1982 and which supplied Dan Brown with much of his material. Baigent, Leigh and Lincoln argued that Jesus survived crucifixion, retired with Mary Magdalene to France. Their offspring became the ancestors of various European dynasties like the Hapsburgs and the House of Lorraine. There were so many historical mistakes in Holy Land, Holy Grail that I suggested in an article that Baigent, Leigh and Lincoln should publish an errata slip in the shape of a companion volume. Privately I was hoping that they might sue me, as I would have cherished a day in court listing all their errors. Baigent, Leigh and Lincoln have brought a case, but it is against the publishers of The Da Vinci Code for plagiarism. Well, what of Dan Brown’s book? It’s a murder mystery, a religious exposé and a romance novel all in one. Many have found it a gripping read, a real page-turner, which manages to maintain suspense about the identity of the mysterious teacher and about the nature of the Holy Grail. But when you compare The Da Vinci Code with earlier works in the field, the only new item is Brown’s claim about Leonardo’s Last Supper. Brown proposes that the figure to the right of Christ is not John the beloved disciple, but Mary Magdalene. She bore Jesus a child and was the Holy Grail for his blood. According to Brown, in the most dramatic cover-up in history, the official church suppressed the truth about Mary’s relationship with Jesus and did its best to belittle and discredit Mary and all that she represented, or at least all that she represented in the gospel according to Dan Brown: the sacred feminine, fertility cults and even goddess worship. But a secret society, the Priory of Sion, maintained the truth about Mary and Jesus. Some European royals belonged to their bloodline. Two youngish people in Brown’s story turn out to be the current descendants carrying the precious bloodline. As I said, Brown goes beyond earlier books of this kind in only one point—by using or rather misusing Leonardo’s painting of the Last Supper to support his thesis of a liaison between Mary Magdalene and Jesus. What do art experts think of Brown’s reading of Leonardo’s fresco? Professor Bruce Boucher of the Art Institute in Chicago wrote an article for The New York Times (Aug. 3, 2003) in which he dismissed Brown’s interpretation as “extremely eccentric.” When Florentine painters before and after Leonardo depicted the Last Supper, they represented St. John as a handsome young man seated at the right side of Jesus. This figure in Leonardo’s painting is John, not the bride of Jesus. Brown finds it highly significant that there are glasses and no central chalice on the table for Leonardo’s Last Supper. But, as Boucher pointed out, that is exactly what we find in earlier Italian representations of the Last Supper—glasses and no chalice. Boucher has much more to say about Brown’s stunning ignorance in the field of art. The Da Vinci Code refers to Leonardo’s “enormous output of Christian art” and “hundreds of lucrative Vatican commissions.” But Leonardo was notorious for his meager production, finishing few works and spending very little time in Rome. In fact, there seems to be only one work by Leonardo in Rome, a picture of St. Jerome in one of the Vatican museums. Michelangelo did spend many years in Rome and left many wonderful paintings and sculptures there, not to mention the cupola of St. Peter’s. I wonder whether Dan Brown confused Leonardo with Michelangelo. He is capable of such breathtaking confusion and mistakes. His earlier book Angels and Demons has the hero slipping on coins in the central fountain of the Piazza Navona. Wrong fountain, old chap; you find the coins half a mile away in the Trevi Fountain. But let’s leave Leonardo’s Last Supper for other false details in The Da Vinci Code. The book teems with historical misinformation. The claim that the Emperor Constantine shifted the Christian day of worship to Sunday is simply false. We know from St. Paul and other new Testament writers that soon after the resurrection of Jesus Christians replaced Saturday with Sunday as their day of worship. What Constantine did in March 321 was to decree Sunday to be a day of rest from work. He did not make Sunday the day of worship for Christians; it already was that from the first century. Brown also tells us that, under pressure from Constantine, the bishops at the Council of Nicea in 325 declared Christ to be divine: “Until that moment in his history Jesus was viewed by his followers as a mortal prophet, a great and powerful man, but a man nonetheless.” Would Brown please read St. John’s Gospel, which has St. Thomas calling Jesus “my Lord and my God”? Decades before John’s Gospel was finished, St. Paul’s letters repeatedly affirm faith in Christ as divine. The Council of Nicea in 325 did not invent faith in Christ’s divinity, but reaffirmed it once again in the creed which we still use every Sunday. |
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