The Da Vinci Code

FACT:

The Priory of Sion—a European secret society founded in 1099—is a real organization. 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, Botticelli, Victor Hugo, and Leonardo da Vinci.

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 World Headquarters at 243 Lexington Avenue in New York City.

All descriptions of artwork, architecture, documents, and secret rituals in this novel are accurate.

§Note from the The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown

Savidge: Obviously, you were just looking at the Last Supper there. When we talk about da Vinci and your book, how much is true and how much is fabricated in your storyline?

Brown: 99 percent of it is true. All of the architecture, the art, the secret rituals, the history, all of that is true, the Gnostic gospels. All of that is—all that is fiction, of course, is that there's a Harvard symbologist named Robert Langdon, and all of his action is fictionalized. But the background is all true.

§From a CNN interview on 25^th May 2003:

I'm quite tired of reading book reviewers' descriptions of their subject matter as "X meets Y", which is why I'm reluctant to write anything like that now. If I did, I think X would stand, in this case, for Raiders of the Lost Ark and Y would stand for Scooby Doo. In fact, even that description is generous because Indiana Jones and Scooby Doo are at least quite good fun and do not take themselves seriously—two qualities that could not be accredited to the Da Vinci Code. It's Mr Brown's constant insistence that his story is basically fact that has exposed his book to so much criticism. If the author acknowledged its fictitious nature it might constitute a mediocre airport novel. Mr Brown has instead produced a discordant pseudo-history in which accepted hoaxes, poorly researched and bizarre theories, misunderstandings and wilful misrepresentations, not all of them closely related, are bound together rather unconvincingly by a plot that has not only made his ideas readable but has also allowed him to bypass mainstream academic criticism, and so has found an audience that might take the claims seriously.

The book contains scores of errors. Most of them would have been picked up by a competent editor ; some of them are minor ; quite a few are so primitive, so preposterous and so superficial that any claim to thorough research on Mr Brown's part must stretch credulity.

The author's ineptitude is evident even in the book's title. The phrase "da Vinci" means of Vinci—a reference to a place of birth. "Leonardo" is the short form used by real scholars. This is a bit like referring to Diana Princess of Wales as "of Wales" or Henry VIII as "the Eighth". Mr Brown appears to believe Leonardo's surname was "da Vinci".

There are many codes in da Vinci's works. I first learned about them while I was studying art history at the University of Seville in Spain. Later, I married an art historian who happens to be a da Vinci fanatic. And from there, there was no escape. I ended up studying it for many years… Leonardo da Vinci was a man centuries head of his time. He was fascinated with secrets. He was one of the first cryptologists, and he devised many ways to keep information secret, and portray it in ways that most people, when you look at a painting, don't really see. That's really what the book is about. When you look at paintings like the Mona Lisa, the Last Supper, that there is really more there than meets the eye.

§From the CNN interview on 25^th May 2003

So So the Da Vinci Code is really about codes in Leonardo's works ("like the Mona Lisa and the Last Supper"). The "code" contained in the Mona Lisa is apparently a reference to Amon and Isis:

Langdon finished writing and stepped back from the projector.

Amon L'isa

"Ring any bells?" he asked.

"Mona Lisa... holy crap," somebody gasped.

Langdon nodded. "Gentlemen, not only does the face of Mona Lisa look androgynous, but her name is an anagram of the divine union of male and female. And that, my friends, is Da Vinci's [Mr Brown seems unsure whether "Da Vinci" has a capital D] little secret, and the reason for Mona Lisa's knowing smile."

§The Da Vinci Code, Chapter 26

It's not very convincing is it? Is L'Isa supposed to be French? Much more importantly, Mona Lisa isn't the real name of the painting—in fact it's the English name that's only really been used since the nineteenth century. Leonardo did not use it, or even know about it. If there is a code hidden in the Mona Lisa, Mr Brown certainly hasn't discovered it. Is "code" even the right word for a bad anagram?

What of the other "code" mentioned by Mr Brown?

"Venturing into the more bizarre," Teabing said, "note that Jesus and His bride appear to be joined at the hip and are leaning away from one another as if to create this clearly delineated negative space between them."

Even before Teabing traced the contour for her, Sophie saw it—the indisputable V shape at the focal point of the painting. It was the same symbol Langdon had drawn earlier for the Grail, the chalice, and the female womb.

"Finally," Teabing said, "if you view Jesus and Magdalene as compositional elements rather than as people, you will see another obvious shape leap out at you." He paused. "A letter of the alphabet."

Sophie saw it at once. To say the letter leapt out at her was an understatement. The letter was suddenly all Sophie could see. Glaring in the center of the painting was the unquestionable outline of an enormous, flawlessly formed letter M.

"A bit too perfect for coincidence, wouldn't you say?" Teabing asked.

§Chapter 58

There's one big problem with this theory and it isn't one that Mr Brown addresses. There are only thirteen figures in Leonardo's painting of the Last Supper. One of them is Jesus and the other twelve are His disciples. Mary Magdalene isn’t present in the painting. The youth with the shoulder-length blond hair is St John and not Mary. Jesus and John do form a V. Well, sort of. A letter M is very difficult to see, try looking for it in the picture above and you'll probably be disappointed : the left-most stroke is missing and the next two strokes are also part of the V. Even if the M is there, it doesn't really demonstrate anything because Mr Brown has no idea what M is supposed to represent:

"Conspiracy theorists will tell you it stands for Matrimonio or Mary Magdalene. To be honest, nobody is certain. The only certainty is that the hidden M is no mistake…"

But why on earth would Leonardo wish to portray Mary Magdalene, a figure who, according to the Gospels, wasn't present at the Last Supper? According to Mr Brown, it's because he was a member of a secret society called the Priory of Sion, set up to conceal evidence of Jesus's relationship with Mary Magdalene. The Priory of Sion is a well-documented hoax. (See here for a CBS story on the subject). Pierre Plantard, who invented it, was a fantasist attempting to establish his claim to the French throne. He would later admit that he had written the Dossiers Secrets under the influence of LSD and that the Priory of Sion was a fabrication. His Wikipedia article makes interesting reading.

In fact Mr Brown says nothing about Leonardo that's very accurate.

It can't just be a coincidence

This assertion is a staple of Mr Brown's story ; arguments from disbelief are used far too often and nearly everything is made to depend on them. This is a selection of the sort of thing I'm talking about ; in fact this type of argument appears in nearly every chapter:

The Little Mermaid was a spellbinding tapestry of spiritual symbols so specifically goddess-related that they could not be coincidence.

"...Their agreement was too great for coincidence."

"It's far too coincidental that this supposedly random account number could be rearranged to form the Fibonacci sequence."

The Star of David, Langdon thought. No coincidence there.

Langdon knew it was no coincidence that the word [sic] minstrel and minister shared an etymological root...

In the previous example Mr Brown is perhaps trying to say that it's no coincidence that the words minstrel and minister look the same since they do in fact have the same root. What he actually writes is reminiscent of: Langdon knew it was no coincidence the two men shared the same parents since they were in fact brothers.

Finally a rather garbled example:

"What!" Langdon was thunderstruck. Three more murders? The coincidental number hit him harder than the fact that he was the prime suspect. It seemed too unlikely to be a coincidence.

Mr Brown's plot acts as a vehicle for his peculiar theories. His undeveloped characters exist to recite large chunks of his research. One of them is a sinister "Opus Dei monk". Apparently Mr Brown is not aware that Opus Dei is a lay organisation—i.e. it does not have any members who are monks. This "monk" is working hard to hinder the investigations of a Harvard University "symbologist" and a member of the "Cryptography Department" of the French Direction Centrale Police Judiciaire. These job titles are equally ridiculous. "Symbology" is not an academic discipline and real life criminals don't tend to leave behind clues in secret code form for their pursuers, which means "Cryptography Departments" only exist in the minds of lazy authors of bad novels. And this one is very bad—its tedious stream of consciousness style reads so much like parody that it will tend to amuse rather than immerse its readers. This is on top of poor grammar, irritating tautology and monotonous clichés, so rich a collection of which will be yielded by a cursory reading of even a short section as to make elaboration in these paragraphs unnecessary. Nevertheless, the following selection of some of the writer's character introductions provides an illustration of his awkward, clumsy prose style:

Prominent New York editor Jonas Faukman tugged nervously at his goatee.

Renowned curator Jacques Saunière staggered through the vaulted archway of the museum's Grand Gallery.

…the hulking albino named Silas limped through the front gate of the luxurious brownstone residence on Rue La Bruyère.

"My God, one of these books was written by Sir Leigh Teabing—a British Royal Historian."

• A note: I just noticed this. It's a complaint about a similarity between Anthony Lane's wonderful review of TDVC and an equally wonderful Geoffrey Pullum review. Oh dear. I thought my list was original. After noticing this book's horrible beginning I had looked for the first mention of each character. Even worse for me, Language Log also has this. The complaint about the title is a well-known one, perhaps because it is so obvious. I think I may have read it first in this article by Christopher Howse of the Daily Telegraph.

On grammar

Today I was reading a book called What not to write by Kay Sayce. It's a short guide to correct English usage and a very enjoyable one too, although I wonder if it is the sort of thing that would appeal mainly to people who care very much about correct English anyway, and so wouldn't make the sorts of mistakes that are discouraged. Such guides, and there are several of them, remind me of Nancy Mitford's Noblesse Oblige; I suspect they function as a sort of check-list for those who fear becoming whatever the editorial equivalent of non-U is. I'm certainly not immune myself: upon reading each new point, I congratulate myself on my good English, or make a mental note not to do something again, or even decide I disagree.

I wonder how much shorter the book would be if all the controversial points - the bits people might disagree with - were taken out; certainly I doubt the remnants would be long enough to fill a book. I suspect most people do not remember all of the rules about apostrophe use that they were taught at school and a lot of those people will regard such rules as unnecessarily complicated and therefore pedantic. Some rules appear never to have had much consensus, indeed I wonder if a few are entirely fictitious; a good example is the rule prohibiting prepositions at the ends of sentences. Certainly, throughout the history of English prose, constructions that seem more Latinate have been regarded as especially elegant; one might say:
"This is the man about whom we were speaking."
rather than:
"This is the man we were speaking about".
Later I shall say why I think Latin does this. For now I want to point out that I haven't yet come across a manual that prohibits the sentence-final preposition, although I've come across many that refute that prohibition. I'm not even sure it's possible to avoid; how exactly does one say "I looked up" without putting a preposition at the end of the sentence? And when exactly was the golden age of zero-tolerance for the sentence-final preposition? Certainly the Victorians littered their novels with the construction, and I don't believe Dickens could even have been aware of such a rule. Furthermore, as the decades passed, it became even more common. The same goes for the rule about not beginning sentences with "and", "but" or "nor"; has any author ever consciously obeyed this rule?

What not to write includes one rule that looks very odd to me:

before / previous
'Before' should always be followed by a noun, so don't put it at the end of a sentence. Use 'previous' instead. -The Trainees had applied in the previous year (not The trainees had applied the year before).

For some reason I found the author's alternative bulky and inelegant and I thought of one of the most memorable sentences of Brideshead Revisited:
"This was my third term since matriculation, but I date my Oxford life from my first meeting with Sebastian, which had happened, by chance, in the middle of the term before."
It's a delightful introduction, filled with nostalgia; a perfect opening to "those distant, Arcadian days" in Oxford. How dull and matter-of-fact it would sound if it read:
"This was my third term since matriculation, but I date my Oxford life from my first meeting with Sebastian, which had happened, by chance, in the middle of the previous term."

I don't know where this rule came from but I can't possibly accept it. I can't accept either that one should prefer the active voice. What seems coarse to one person might be acceptable to others and what seems elegant to that person might seem pedantic to most. Nevertheless, I think prescriptive rules are absolutely essential. Pupils in schools should be taught about split infinitives and even sentence-final prepositions; they should be discouraged from writing "the reason is because" and "there's lots of people" and "the other alternative"; their written work should suffer merciless underlining and they should be made to write out corrections where anything objectionable is found.

I remember reading a friend's job application and noticing a missing apostrophe. I thought it best to point out the mistake but his response was to laugh at my pedantry and to ask if I really thought anyone would care about something so minor. Fair enough. He knew that the mistake was there and could make his own decision, though I suspect he might have cared more if he knew how to punctuate. Being able to write good prose, like learning to dress well, requires informed judgement. When someone goes for a job a interview he needs to know how to dress appropriately. He might decide he doesn't need to wear a tie but he will at least know how to tie it. Before that he needs to write a covering letter and his writing needs to be appropriate too. It may be that he thinks the rule about split infinitives is dated and he therefore has little regard for it; he may hold the same opinion about the apostrophe rules, which are far more prescriptive. Denying him the opportunity to make the decision is like not teaching him to knot his tie and it means that he will never be able to write the most formal prose.

As a final note, the case of Latin prepositions is an interesting one. Not only does each Latin preposition require a noun complement, it must also be the complement of a verb. It's not possible to say "the man in the moon came down", not literally anyway. A Roman would not write homen in luna descendit but homen qui erat in luna descendit. Incidentally this is in contrast to Greek, where such constructions are a staple of the language, ὁ ἐν τῇ σελήνῃ ἄνθρωπος κατῆλθε, in this case. The preposition in the sentence, "this is the man we were talking about," is a special type of preposition called a preverb, which means that it's part of the verb, like "stand up", "put down", "go out" and so on. Such items in Latin are always expressed by single words (sto, depono, exeo). If there is a preverb in Latin it must be a prefix to the verb, but verbs with preverbs are not readily coined. Often constructions with relative pronouns must be used, though examples seem far easier to find among works of neo-Latin, the following is from Descartes: nec idcirco hic recenseo varias illas quaestiones de quibus etiam in ipsis ex occasione tractatur. I suppose the Romans were more imaginative with their limited vocabulary; might a Roman perhaps have written iactatas instead of de quibus and tractatur?