This sounds like sour grapes but Shugarts’ argument is that Brown should not have stated that almost everything was fact when clearly it isn’t. The book has many technical mistakes, plot problems and a ‘fast and loose approach to calling anything that comes out of research – even from dubious sources – a “fact”.’
‘Reporters have asked whether even a bestselling novel can seriously damage a Church of one billion believers,’ says the Jesus Decoded website. ‘No, in the long run, it cannot. But that is not the point. The pastoral concern of the Church is for each and every person. If only one person were to come away with a distorted impression of Jesus Christ or His Church, our concern is for that person as if he or she were the whole world.’[174]
Tim O’Neil, a religious historian from Sydney, Australia, set up a website to look at the claims in the book from a non-Christian historical objective perspective. He spent more than a year-and-a-half researching Brown’s claims. In his summing up he wonders why Brown, who we know studied art history at Seville, and Blythe, who though not officially an art historian is a fanatic about Da Vinci, would need to ‘use a paperback conspiracy theory by two amateurs with zero expertise in the field of Renaissance art as his main source of “information”, while ignoring what actual experts have to say. Just as it is strange how he consistently refers to Leonardo as “Da Vinci” and incorrectly calls his mural a “fresco”. One would almost assume that he had little knowledge of the subject at all.’[175] The two amateurs he refers to are the authors of The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail (published in the US as Holy Blood, Holy Grail) who would later become a pain in Brown’s backside.
The internet is full of websites from religious organisations detailing the errors in The Da Vinci Code and urging their fellowships to disregard Brown’s claims that almost everything in the book is fact. For example, Catholic Answers published a detailed listing of the main points in Brown’s novel that they claimed were incorrect. Their overriding concern was that Christians would take The Da Vinci Code seriously. The story, Cracking The Da Vinci Code, maintains that Brown implies that current Christian faith is false and that the version he puts forward is more accurate. But, they point out, Catholic World News, one of many entries on the Acknowledgements page of Brown’s official website, had no knowledge of Brown ever contacting them for research. Since the stories they publish on the site are there for anyone to look at, Brown may simply have gone there and pulled off what he needed. ‘The acknowledgements of museums, libraries, and similar institutions may mean no more than that he used their facilities and that they did nothing special to assist his research.’[176]
The same article goes to Brown’s official web page and lists some of the titles he used to research his novel. They include three books by authors Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh and Henry Lincoln: The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail, The Messianic Legacy and The Dead Sea Scrolls Deception. Books by Margaret Starbird are also listed and the article calls these speculative works that focus on ‘alleged secret societies and conspiracy theories, attempt to reinterpret the Christian faith, and are imbued with radical feminist agendas. Historians and religious scholars do not take these works seriously.’ Could that be because most of these religious scholars are men?
Brown was heavily dependent on these books, especially those of Starbird, for the basis of his plot for The Da Vinci Code. ‘Margaret Starbird’s books were a big inspiration,’ he said in his witness statement. ‘This concept of the lost Sacred Feminine became the backbone of The Da Vinci Code and would become the central theme of the novel.’
The fierce criticism of the book continued and some of it was aimed directly at Brown, questioning his Christianity and his faith. Many books have been written by various scholars analysing his novel or trying to explain some of the so-called facts in the text.
One error that his critics have lambasted him for is the Priory of Sion. In the book Brown portrays it as an ancient organisation involved in goddess worship, but the true story is that a con-man named Pierre Plantard, along with Andre Bonhomme and some of their friends, founded the organisation in 1956 for fun. They named the Priory after a nearby French mountain and not the ancient Mount Zion in the Bible. Establishing the authenticity of the Priory were a set of documents called Les Dossiers Secrets which were fakes created for Plantard by Philippe de Cherisey. These documents form the basis of some of the books Brown relied upon for his research, specifically The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail and The Messianic Legacy. But Plantard eventually confessed under oath that the whole thing had been fabricated, and Bonhomme went on record in 1996 saying ‘the whole thing had been a hoax right from the start.’[177]
According to Simon Cox in The Dan Brown Companion, scholars believe that Plantard connived with De Cherisey to place the forged documents in the Bibliothèque nationale in Paris ‘and in one fell swoop the Priory Documents were born. The idea was to create a false trail of evidence that would be stumbled upon by later researchers.’[178]
The documents detailed the Priory of Sion’s pedigree as a secret society. The authors of The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail picked up on these and used them as the basis of their book, as did Brown for The Da Vinci Code. Plantard actually met the authors of The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail and spun them the story, which they ‘accepted in good faith’. The book became a bestseller and turned the Priory of Sion from a ‘French phenomenon to a worldwide sensation and today it is a minor industry all of its own,’ Simon Cox says.
Several books have been published criticising the story of the Priory of Sion as depicted in The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail book, but in Brown’s novel these documents are purported to be real. Another of Brown’s sources, the book The Templar Revelations, also considers the secret dossiers to be complete fabrications.
Yet The Da Vinci Code has art historians and academics agreeing that Les Dossier Secrets confirmed what ‘historians had suspected for a long time.’ Indeed, Brown has Langdon saying that the Priory of Sion was founded in AD 1099 is incontrovertible, ‘that men like Newton and Leonardo da Vinci were members, and that the Priory protects a bloodline descended from Jesus and Mary Magdalene.’
According to the Wikipedia entry on the Priory of Sion, ‘Langdon explains to a sceptic that it is only the influence of the Bible that keeps the public from realising these astounding historical facts. The Church is in denial, but academics and even “educated Christians” realise what the Priory has been guarding down the centuries.’[179]
In addition, Cox writes in The Dan Brown Companion, ‘Certain elements of Dan Brown’s version of the Priory appear to be pure invention by the novelist, quite unconnected to the pre-existing Priory lore he otherwise draws on (and presents as “fact” in his preface).’
One idea that is pure fiction is Brown’s invention of the legend of a ‘keystone’, a kind of coded map that points the way to where the Holy Grail is hidden. This sort of thing goes down very well with Brown and shows us his love of puzzles, treasure hunts, ancient maps and legends. The keystone turns out to be a cryptex that is absolutely central to Brown’s plot.
Further criticism of the novel came when a documentary, narrated by Tony Robinson of Time Team fame, was aired by Channel 4 in 2005. The Real Da Vinci Code featured interviews with people such as Arnaud de Sède, son of Gérard de Sède, one of the people who had perpetrated the hoax along with Plantard, who was adamant that his father and Plantard had created the hoax surrounding the Priory of Sion and that it was all ‘piffle’. ‘The programme also cast severe doubt on the alleged expatriation of Mary Magdalene to France and any connection between the Merovingians and Jesus.’[180]
More pain came for Brown when Baigent and Leigh, two of the authors of the The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail, filed a plagiarism lawsuit against Random House, Brown’s publishing company, claiming he had plagiarised significant parts of their book and so violated their copyright.
Brown was completely taken aback by the lawsuit. ‘Messrs Baigent and Leigh are o
nly two of a number of authors who have written about the bloodline story, and yet I went out of my way to mention them for being the ones who brought the theory to mainstream attention. I have been shocked at their reaction: Furthermore I do not really understand it.’[181]
The case was heard in the Old Bailey and Baigent and Leigh lost. According to the judge, because they had presented their arguments as fact, historically accurate and not as fiction, then any novelist could use those facts in the context of a fictional story. If those facts were spurious to begin with, that made no difference.
Yet in 2007 Brown’s web pages were still saying that Priory of Sion was an ancient order: the same things that the book had claimed on the Fact page of the novel. ‘In 1975, Paris’s Bibliothèque Nationale discovered parchments known as Les Dossiers Secrets, identifying numerous members of the Priory of Sion, including Sir Isaac Newton, Victor Hugo, Botticelli, and Leonardo da Vinci.’[182]
‘This,’ Wikipedia says, ‘would indicate that Dan Brown still ignores the unanimous conclusion of scholars and serious investigators: that the Priory was a 20th-century hoax, and that the famous people listed never had anything to do with it.’
Brown says in his defence that he described the Priory as ‘the pagan goddess worship cult and in order to further steer the emphasis of the novel towards Mary Magdalene and the lost feminine. This portrayal of the role and ideology of the Priory was my personal interpretation.’[183]
Then there is Brown’s depiction of Opus Dei. He describes this real-life religious society as a personal prelature and says it has monks among its members, not least the murderous self-flagellating Silas, an assassin who creates havoc and mayhem while doing the Lord’s work. The truth is that there are no real monks in Opus Dei and while some members have in the past practised self-flagellation or voluntary mortification of the flesh, the society encourages its members to avoid these practices because of the perception it would create to the outside world.
The criticism levelled at Brown over his interpretation of the society accuses him of exaggerating the self-mortification within the membership as well as treating the society as ‘misogynistic, a claim which the society’s defenders say has no basis in reality, because half of the leadership positions in Opus Dei are held by women.’[184]
In November 2006 the US Prelature of Opus Dei sent a letter of protest to Random House complaining about some of the inaccuracies in the book. For example, the ‘allegations of dealings between John Paul II and the society concerning the Vatican Bank also have no basis in reality.’
Brown also misrepresented the hierarchy within the society. His interpretation was that the head of Opus Dei travelled alone and made decisions affecting the society in the same way that a chief executive officer of a large organisation might make decisions – alone. But according to the Wikipedia entry on The Da Vinci Code, the reality is that the head of Opus Dei has one vote and rarely travels alone.
Of course, as a novelist Brown can easily stretch the truth or invent it as he needs to in order to advance the plot. We know that Brown is highly adept at blending fact with fiction so that the border between the two is virtually undetectable. Brown puts the following about Opus Dei in the fact page: ‘The Vatican prelature known as Opus Dei is a deeply devout Catholic sect that has been the topic of recent controversy due to reports of brainwashing, coercion, and a dangerous practice known as “corporal mortification”. Opus Dei has just completed construction of a $47 million National Headquarters at 243 Lexington Avenue in New York City.’
The response from the society itself was straightforward: ‘The Da Vinci Code’s depiction of Opus Dei is inaccurate, both in the overall impression and in many details, and it would be irresponsible to form any opinion of Opus Dei based on The Da Vinci Code.’ And: ‘We would like to remind them that The Da Vinci Code is a work of fiction, and it is not a reliable source of information on these matters.’[185]
In his defence of his depiction of Opus Dei, Brown said in his witness statement that he wanted to show that religion was not as cut and dried as it is made out to be. ‘In The Da Vinci Code I also wanted to include the grey area in religion and did so by including Opus Dei,’ Brown explained. ‘Opus Dei is a very devout Catholic group, which like many fervent religious groups is met with suspicion and mistrust; only some of which is justified.’ Brown went on to say that the society is ‘a very positive force in the lives of many people.’ However, based on interviews he conducted with members and former members of the society he found that some had had profoundly negative experiences while they were part of Opus Dei. ‘Their portrayal in the novel is based on books written about Opus Dei as well as my own personal interviews,’ he said. ‘I wanted to demonstrate that very few things are black and white; all bad or all good.’
As for the practice of self-flagellation, Brown based his portrayal of it from his time in Spain, where he had seen the practice as part of modern Spanish Catholicism. ‘Every year on Easter prominent bankers and lawyers put chains on their legs and march through the streets as their yearly penance. The practice itself is not uncommon.’[186]
Another area where Brown has been severely criticised is in his claim that the Roman Emperor Constantine commissioned a new Bible from which our modern Bibles are derived. In The Da Vinci Code, Leigh Teabing, a religious historian, tells Sophie Neveu that Constantine changed Jesus’ status from mortal man to Son of God four centuries after Christ had died. He explains to Sophie that ‘thousands of documents already existed chronicling His life as a mortal man. To rewrite the history books, Constantine knew he would need a bold stroke. From this sprang the most profound moment in Christian history. … Constantine commissioned and financed a new Bible, which omitted those gospels that spoke of Christ’s human traits and embellished those gospels that made Him godlike. The earlier gospels were outlawed, gathered up, and burned.’[187]
It would appear that Brown got the idea that Constantine had commissioned a new Bible from the fact that he ordered 50 copies of the existing and accepted Christian texts to be created. The man Constantine ordered to produce these 50 copies was Eusebius. ‘Brown totally misrepresents this enterprise as creating “a new Bible”, whereas, in fact, the texts Eusebius oversaw had already been accepted for over 150 years,’ says Tim O’Neill on his excellent website, History vs The Da Vinci Code. ‘These texts included the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, which had long been considered the oldest and most authentic accounts of Jesus’ life. These gospels actually emphasised both Jesus’ human aspects and his supposed supernatural nature and they did not, as Brown claims, emphasise the latter over the former. Many of the books the accepted canon rejected, on the other hand (such as the Gnostic works), portrayed Jesus as purely spiritual and not human at all; despite Brown’s claim that they presented a “more human” Jesus. On the contrary, they were actually rejected largely because they portrayed a Jesus who was not human enough. Once again, Brown gets his history backwards.’[188]
Brown said he did not set out to write the book to ‘stir up a hornet’s nest. I am not the first person to tell this story of Mary Magdalene and the Holy Grail,’ he explained in his High Court witness statement. ‘This idea is centuries old and I am one in a long line of people who have offered up this alternative history. The book describes history as I have come to understand it through many years of research, reading, conducting interviews and exploration.’
Along with the criticism came other books attempting to unravel the secrets within The Da Vinci Code, such as Dan Burstein’s Secrets of the Code, which is an attempt to study the mysteries behind the secrets of the novel. Burstein’s book is a collection of articles, interviews and essays with scholars both for and against Brown’s interpretation of religious history. Another book is The Dan Brown Companion, the Truth Behind The Fiction, by Simon Cox. These two are just the tip of the iceberg.
Back in 2004, Dan Brown had given a talk to the New Hampshire Writer’s Project at the Capitol Centre for the
Arts in Concord, New Hampshire. At the time, he felt the books being written about his novel were ‘absolutely wonderful’ and that the dialogue the book had created was very positive. ‘The more we can debate these topics the better our understanding of our own history. Most theologians will agree that religion really only has one true enemy and it’s not me, it’s apathy,’ he told the 800-strong audience. ‘Apathy has a good antidote and that is passionate debate and I am thrilled to see so much of it. Debate makes us think about what we believe and why we believe it.’
Brown said he felt the debate around religion created by his novel was healthy and invigorating. He assumed his opponents had the best of intentions but cautioned his audience to remember that ‘the same way I was out on the talk shows trying to sell my book, they are now out trying to sell their book and it is in their best interest to generate as much controversy as possible and make as much of my book as possible, oftentimes making inflammatory claims.’
Brown’s response to people who called his own religious beliefs into question was to go into a little detail about his life in a religious family. ‘I was raised Christian, I sang in the choir, I went to Sunday School and I spent summers at church camp. To this day I try to live my life following the basic tenets of the teachings of Christ.’
Being a Christian, Brown said, is different for each individual. ‘If you ask three people what it means to be a Christian you will get three different answers. Some feel it means to be a Christian just to be baptised into a Christian church. Others feel that you must accept the Bible as immutable proof of historical fact, while others require a belief that all those that do not accept Christ as their personal saviour are doomed to Hell.’
The Dan Brown Enigma Page 13