The Da Vinci Code:
A Blasphemous Distortion of History

by Bishop Mark A. Pivarunas, CMRI

* Originally published in The Reign of Mary, Issue No. 123, Spring-Summer 2006

It is not often that an article in The Reign of Mary addresses particular issues in a bestselling novel and recently-released movie such as The Da Vinci Code by the author Dan Brown. This has become necessary, however, in order to defend our Faith with historical facts and objective evidence against the blasphemous fabrications attacking our Divine Savior Jesus Christ and His Church.

The major objection to this book is that, although the author has written an exciting fiction, he states that “All descriptions of artwork, architecture, documents, and secret rituals in this novel are accurate” and have been “thoroughly researched.” Herein lies the main problem: Dan Brown has grossly distorted history and has completely fabricated historical events, interweaving them into his fiction so that many will be easily misled to believe his blasphemous attacks on Our Lord and His Church.

The story begins with a murder in the Louvre Museum in Paris. Throughout the novel the two main characters — Robert Langdon, a symbologist, and Sophie Neveu, a cryptographer — try to solve the mystery behind this crime. In their investigation, they supposedly discover ancient secret societies within the Catholic Church which are involved in a massive cover-up to hide the “real facts” about Jesus Christ in order for the Church to retain her control and power.

Let us carefully identify and analyze Dan Brown’s claims in The Da Vinci Code and see how “thoroughly researched” and “accurate” they are. In his story, Brown claims:

• that Jesus Christ was married to St. Mary Magdalene;
• that they supposedly had children who formed one of the bloodlines of the kings of France;
• that a secret society, the Priory of Sion, protected this secret in order for the Church to retain its power;
• that the Roman Emperor Constan­tine declared Christ Divine by royal decree, as if prior to that Christians did not believe in His Divinity;
• that Constantine determined which books were to be included in the New Testament and which were to be excluded;
• that Leonardo Da Vinci was a member of the secret society, the Priory of Sion;
• and finally, that when Da Vinci painted “The Last Supper” he covertly depicted St. Mary Magdalene to the right of Jesus Christ at “the moment of consecration,” and that supposedly her womb is the “Holy Grail” or the chalice of the Last Supper.

Let us consider these claims in reverse order.

1. Did Leonardo Da Vinci belong to the Priory of Sion?

Absolutely not. The Priory of Sion was founded in 1956 by Pierre Plantard — not in 1099 by one of the kings of France as Dan Brown erroneously claims.

Leonardo Da Vinci lived from 1452 - 1519, and could not have belonged to a secret society founded nearly five hundred years later.

Furthermore, in 1975, Pierre Plantard, the founder of the Priory of Sion, had deceitfully deposited in Paris’ Bibleo­theque Nationale spurious parchments known as “Les Dossiers Secrets,” which supposedly identified numerous luminaries who were members of his secret society, including Sir Isaac Newton, Botticelli, Victor Hugo, and Leonardo Da Vinci. Unfortunately for Brown, the BBC exposed this fraud of Pierre Plantard and his bogus “Les Dossiers Secrets.”

On his deathbed, Da Vinci publicly stated, “I commend my soul to the mercy of God, the intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary, to St. Michael the Archangel, and to all the angels and saints in Heaven.” These are not the words of a member of a secret society. He died having received the Last Rites and was given ecclesiastical burial.

2. Did Leonardo Da Vinci covertly depict St. Mary Magdalene at the right side of Jesus at the “moment of consecration” in his Last Supper painting?

This is a complete fabrication on the part of Brown. As a matter of historical fact, Leonardo Da Vinci made preliminary sketches of each of the individuals represented in this painting. The preliminary sketches make it completely clear that St. John the Evangelist — not St. Mary Magdalene — is depicted at the right of Jesus.

Art historians can verify, based on what is pictured on the table, that Da Vinci’s Last Supper is not a depiction of the “moment of consecration.” What can be plainly seen is that the painting depicts the reaction of the Apostles to Jesus’ words, “One of you is about to betray Me.” Da Vinci intentionally placed Judas, St. Peter, and St. John in close proximity to represent the three reactions to the words of Christ.

This blasphemous claim of Dan Brown that Da Vinci depicted St. Mary Magdalene at the right of Jesus is a complete fabrication and utter nonsense.

3. Did the early Church not believe in the Divinity of Christ until the Roman Emperor Constantine declared His Divinity at the Council of Nicaea in 325?

On this issue Brown completely distorts history. The Gospels according to St. Matthew, St. Mark, St. Luke, and St. John were written within 40 years of the Ascension of Our Lord and clearly proclaim the Divinity of Christ. To quote just a few of the many references to the Divinity of Christ, we list:

• In the Gospel of St. John, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God... and the Word was made flesh” (John 1:1,14).
• In the Gospel of St. Matthew, “And the high priest said to Him, ‘I adjure Thee by the living God, that Thou tellest us if Thou art the Christ the Son of God.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Thou hast said it’” (Matt. 26:63).
• Again in the Gospel of St. John, Jesus said, “Before Abraham was, I am” (John 8:58), and, “I and the Father are one” (John 10:30); St. Thomas the Apostle in the Gospel of St. John said to Jesus, “My Lord and my God.”

Long before the time of Constantine, the early Christian writers and apologists who explained and defended the Faith extensively quoted the four Gospels and vigorously defended the Divinity of Christ. For a few examples of their references to the Gospels of Sts. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John we find:

• St. Irenaeus (202 A.D.) quotes the Gospels 1,038 times;
• Clement of Alexandria (d. 217), quotes them 1,017 times;
• Origen (d. 254 A.D.) — 9,231 times;
• Tertullian (d. 220 A.D.) — 3,822 times;
• St. Justin, Martyr, (about the year 150 A.D.) — 268 times;
• Hippolytus — 735 times;
• Eusebius — 3,258 times;

The total number of quotations of the four Gospels of these writers alone is 19,369.

St. Polycarp, the disciple of St. John the Apostle, in a letter written about the year 107 A.D. quotes the Gospels as genuine documents.

Theophilus of Antioch wrote a commentary on the Gospels about the year 170 and witnesses to them as genuine documents.

Datian, the disciple of St. Justin, Martyr, as well as Papias (140 A.D.), bear witness to the authenticity of the Gospels.

As for references from early Christian writers professing the Divinity of Christ, we find:

• St. Clement of Rome (about the year 96) says, “The scepter of the majesty of God, Our Lord Jesus Christ, did not appear in pomp and state, although He might have, but in humanity,” and, “Through Our Lord Jesus Christ to Whom be all honor and glory from eternity to eternity. Amen.”
• St. Polycarp: “This One we adore because He is the Son of God.”
• St. Ignatius of Antioch (about 107 A.D.) in his writings, frequently refers to Christ as God.
• St. Irenaeus and St. Justin Martyr also refer to the Divinity of Christ.

Did the early Church not believe in the Divinity of Christ until the Roman Emperor Constantine declared His Divinity at the Council of Nicaea in 325?On this issue Brown completely distorts history. The Gospels according to St. Matthew, St. Mark, St. Luke, and St. John were written within 40 years of the Ascension of Our Lord and clearly proclaim the Divinity of Christ. To quote just a few of the many references to the Divinity of Christ, we list:

These Christian writers predate Constantine and the Council of Nicaea by more than two hundred years!

Even the pagan Romans have testified in their writings long before the time of Constantine that the Christians worshipped Jesus as God. In the second century, the governor Pliny, writing on the state of affairs in the Roman Empire, stated, “...they (the Christians) recite a hymn antiphonally to Christ, as to God.” Pliny was not an interested party with an agenda to make such a statement. He merely stated a historical fact. This was nearly two hundred years before Constantine.

These historical facts completely refute Dan Brown’s fabrication in his Da Vinci Code that the early Christians did not recognize the Divinity of Christ until Constantine.

4. Did Constantine have anything to do with the 27 books of the New Testament?

Constantine had nothing to do with the New Testament. Long after him in the year 382, in the acts of the Roman Synod under Pope St. Damasus I, we find for the first time the Canon of Sacred Scripture with the list of the 27 books of the New Testament.

Furthermore, Dan Brown erroneously claims that some of the books that Con­stantine kept out of the Bible have fortunately survived, as, for example, the Dead Sea Scrolls, found in the caves of Qumram in the 1950’s. Here Brown mani­fests his lack of thoroughness in his supposed research; the Dead Sea Scrolls have nothing to do with the New Testament and were not discovered in the 1950’s but in 1947.

So what research led Brown to come up with some of his preposterous ideas about Christ and St. Mary Magdalene? Some of his ideas came from the Gnostic gospels, which were written by heretics and had been rejected from the beginning by the early Church. None of the early Christian writers and apologists quoted from these apocryphal books. There is, furthermore, no reference in the Gospels nor in the writings of the early Christians to such a blasphemous claim.

Time does not permit us to cover each and every fabrication and outright distortion of history found in The Da Vinci Code, and there are many. For Catholics, however, his attack on the Divinity of Christ and his blasphemous fabrication of what Da Vinci’s Last Supper supposedly depicts should be sufficient reason not only to refrain from reading his book or seeing the movie, but also to speak out against it and bear witness to our Divine Savior Jesus Christ and our holy Catholic Faith.

There is a Latin saying that provides a very appropriate response for The Da Vinci Code: “Gratis asseritus; gratis negatur” — “What is freely asserted [that is, without proof], is freely denied.”