Da Vinci Code

Creating a New Age version of Christianity?

Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code is the most successful best-selling novel of all time – hitting the public pulse in an age of secularism, impersonal scientific objectivity and the growing rise in popular New Age systems of belief.

Dan Brown's supporters argue that there is nothing to worry about because The Da Vinci Code is only a novel and therefore a fiction – but Dan Brown himself argues that the basic element to the plot in his novel is based on suppressed religious history that has been covered up by the Vatican since the beginning of Christianity. Furthermore, Dan Brown is still arguing that an organisation called the Priory of Sion existed in Crusader period Jerusalem and that it later became a part of the Knights Templar – and that the List of Grand Masters found in the 1967 Dossiers Secrets is genuine. Dan Brown also entertains the possibility that there was a marriage between Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalene that produced children, the descendants of which survive to this very day.

These basic elements in the plot to The Da Vinci Code have been lifted by Dan Brown from other books that can only be described as Pseudo-Historical in nature and commonly found on the ‘Mind, Body and Spirit' bookshelves in libraries and bookshops (designated as ‘New Age’ in America).

The success of Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code has inspired the formation of communities of believers on the internet having their own moderated discussion lists, trying to argue the case that the subject matter is both historically and rationally viable – and their sheer inability to produce historical evidence to back-up their desired beliefs does not deter them in the slightest – in fact it inspires them even more. A prominent player in this field is Loretta Kemsley (president of Women Artists and Writers International, which publishes Moondance: Celebrating Creative Women) – so obsessive is Loretta Kemsley's interest in the bogus marriage between Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalene that she writes between 10 and 20 messages per day on the various internet discussion lists that she either manages or belongs to.

The direction these people wish to take remains something of a puzzle. If there is a Jesus Christ Bloodline existing in the present day – does it matter? Do these people wish to turn the direct descendant of Jesus Christ into the King of the World? The idea that Jesus Christ produced offspring automatically produces the acceptance that the Bloodline exists to this very day and the two cannot be easily seperated – it smacks more of Magic than of "historical fact".

The two principal arguments contained in The Da Vinci Code concern the Priory of Sion and the marriage of Jesus Christ to Mary Magdalene that produced children. So popular has been the impact of the basic plot in Dan Brown's novel that it has resulted in the virtual formation of a New Age version of Christianity. So what are the real facts?

The Facts

Dan Brown Argument 1
The Priory of Sion

The history of the Priory of Sion is unexciting and quite bland – originally formed in 1956 by Pierre Plantard and another individual as an organisation devoted to the cause of Low Cost Housing and attacking the planning developers of Annemasse (the town where Pierre Plantard lived during the 1950s), it was named after a local mountain called Mont Sion situated close to Lake Geneva (Col du Mont Sion). And Pierre Plantard, the person involved in the formation of the Priory of Sion served time in prison during 1953 for abuse of trust (the evidence for this is found in a letter written by the Mayor of Annemasse and located in the Sub Prefecture in the town of St Julien-en-Genevois, stemming from an investigation into the Priory of Sion dating from May 1956 carried out by the local Council and the local Police). The Priory of Sion itself terminated sometime after August 1956 when Plantard served another time in prison between December 1956 and December 1957 over allegations relating to "corruption of minors".

During the early 1960s Pierre Plantard made the acquaintance of French author Gérard de Sède, and embarked upon a literary deal with him writing about the castle of Gisors located in the Normandy region of France – it was during this period of time – the early 1960s – that Pierre Plantard began claiming that the Priory of Sion originated in the Crusader period Jerusalem – claiming a link between his Priory of Sion and the religious order of the Abbey de Notre Dame du Mont Sion (the history of this latter religious order is well documented and it had no links with Plantard’s 1956 society, dying-out during the seventeenth century). It was during this period of time onwards that Plantard began creating a false pedigree about the Priory of Sion, later alleging that it was part of the Knights Templar and that it was the Guardian of the Merovingian Bloodline (Plantard also claimed he was descended from the Merovingian King Dagobert II from the early 1960s onwards, but in fact he was really only descended from a 16th century peasant who picked walnuts). Plantard later met and began collaborating with Philippe de Chérisey, a bit-part actor, amateur poet and surrealist who was interested in esoteric puzzles – and this created another aspect to the modern myth of the Priory of Sion that Plantard was involved in creating – de Chérisey’s input inspired by surrealist elements.

As for the 1967 Dossiers Secrets – Plantard first began fabricating bogus genealogies when he first met Gérard de Sède – and these genealogies were included in documents that contained his signature, showing that they were his fabrications. Plantard used the exactly same stencil-kit when he fabricated the Dossiers Secrets – proving that the Dossiers Secrets in the Bibliotheque Nationale were his fabrication. As for the Grand Masters List of the Priory of Sion – that too was an invention – but Plantard copied that list of names for his Dossiers Secrets from another source – during the early 1960s a French Mystic named Raymond Bernard formed a neo-Templar group and he compiled a List of Names that Plantard later simply added into his Dossiers Secrets claiming they were the Grand Masters of the Priory of Sion. One additional name was included in the List that was missing from the one invented by Raymond Bernard – that of surrealist and poet Jean Cocteau – because of Philippe de Chérisey's interest in surrealism.

That the whole original Priory of Sion story was originally a myth fabricated by Pierre Plantard can further be demonstrated by the existence of letters dating from the 1960s and written between Pierre Plantard, Philippe de Chérisey and Gerard de Sede, showing that all three of them were engaged in a confidence trick with the intention of making money. These letters are in the possession of French researcher Jean-Luc Chaumeil.

During the late 1980s Plantard revised his myth of the Priory of Sion – rejecting and repudiating the earlier version he himself fabricated in the 1967 Dossiers Secrets and compiled a brand new List of Grand Masters and devising a new pedigree – claiming it was founded in 1681 in Rennes-le-Château by the Grandfather of Marie de Negri d'Ables.

Plantard also claimed that Roger Patrice Pelat had been a Grand Master of this 1980s revised version of the Priory of Sion, and this later got him into trouble with Judge Thierry Jean Pierre – who led an investigation into a corruption scandal that involved Pelat. In 1993 French Police ransacked Pierre Plantard's home and according to one individual who investigated the matter Plantard swore on oath that everything he claimed about the Priory of Sion was made up. Between 1993 and 2000 when Plantard died, there were no more allegations about the Priory of Sion, no more Priory Documents deposited in the Bibliotheque Nationale, and up to the time of his death Pierre Plantard lived a life of isolation and seclusion – no longer involving himself with any more Priory of Sion activities.

Dan Brown Argument 2
Jesus Christ married Mary Magdalene

In historical reality, Christianity is a 2,000 plus year-old religion that originated in Israel out of Judaism based upon the belief that Jesus Christ was cognate with God and therefore Divine in nature, the central aspect of which is the Resurrection – symbolically enacted in Catholic Churches around the world by the priest at the altar in the form of the Ceremony of the Mass whereby through the process of Transubstantiation the Bread and the Wine become the flesh and blood of Jesus Christ. The early history of Christianity was fraught with many forms of diversities of belief involving struggles between the various factions (as evidenced in the letters of Paul, the earliest Christian writings) – but essentially speaking the most popular version of the religion naturally became the victor and subsequent official version.

One thing stands out when looking through all the historical evidence about Christianity – despite all the diversities of belief in its formative era – all Christian sects were united in one essential thing – believing that Jesus Christ was Divine and believing in the Resurrection – Christians and Gnostics may have disputed over the interpretations – but all were in universal agreement about the Divine in Christianity. To the Christians, Jesus Christ was the Son of God who literally rose from the dead; to the Gnostics Jesus Christ was a Divine Revealer of Sacred Knowledge and the Resurrection to the Gnostics was their intrinsic pathway to achieving their sacred knowledge.

There is not the slightest historical hint in any known text, either in primitive Christianity or in Gnosticism, that an ordinary human being was being worshipped that involved a continuing bloodline – put bluntly, basing a Religion on a Human Being who produced offspring just would never have taken off to become the Christianity it is today.

To underscore this point there is the example of the Jewish Political Revolutionary Simon Bar Kosiba (or Bar Kochba) who believed himself to be of the Line of David – his Jewish rebellion circa AD125-130 against Roman Occupation was instigated by the building of the Roman Temple of Jupiter on the spot where the Jerusalem Temple once stood. His revolt failed miserably and the Romans killed Kosiba. No religion was formed as a result of this.

The idea that there was a marriage between Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalene that produced children only dates back to 1982 in the pseudo-historical book The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail by Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh and Henry Lincoln – none of those authors were willing to accept that Pierre Plantard was a confidence trickster and that the Priory of Sion was a hoax – despite being told these things in advance by French researcher Jean-Luc Chaumeil. Michael Baigent is still obsessed today by the existence of the Line of David, and he merely transposed his personal obsession in the Line of David over Plantard’s fake genealogies contained in the fabricated 1967 Dossiers Secrets in 1982. The authors of The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail never presented any reason, let alone evidence, about why there should have been a marriage between Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalene that produced children in the first place.

A major fault with The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail is that it was all Off-Topic – the Priory of Sion had nothing at all to do with Christian origins. Pierre Plantard merely claimed to be directly descended from a Merovingian King and nothing else. On a France-Inter radio interview dated 18 February 1982, Pierre Plantard told Jacques Pradel: "The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail is a good book, but one must say that there is a part that owes more to fiction than to fact, especially in the part that deals with the lineage of Jesus. How can you prove a lineage of four centuries from Jesus to the Merovingians? I have never put myself forward as a descendant of Jesus Christ".

The popularity of The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail – a bestseller itself in 1982 – later inspired other authors to jump on the same bandwagon – Laurence Gardner, Margaret Starbird, Timothy Wallace-Murphy, Barbara Thiering and Tracy Twyman to name just a few – all of them having the inability to offer any historical evidence to substantiate their belief in the central theory that is found in The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail.

Their "source material" is usually selective in nature and distorted out of context to promote their various arguments. For example, these writers always omit the fact that in The Golden Legend by Jacobus Voraigne Mary Magdalene the traveller to Marseilles is presented as the wife of Saint John. And in the Gnostic Gospel of Philip, Mary Magdalene is depicted as the personification of Fallen Wisdom that is barren in nature.

So, whatever the future holds for the belief in the marriage of Jesus Christ to Mary Magdalene that produced children – taken seriously by Dan Brown – the certainty that exists is that none of this is based on historical fact. It represents desired belief and absolutely nothing else. If a New Age Version of Christianity does evolve out of The Da Vinci Code, it can only be a product of gross human ignorance and gullibility.

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