Le Monde des religions, May-June 2006 —
After the novel, the film. The French release of The Da Vinci Code on May 17th is sure to reignite speculation about the reasons for the global success of Dan Brown's novel. The question is interesting, perhaps even more so than the novel itself. For fans of historical thrillers – and I count myself among them – are fairly unanimous: The Da Vinci Code is not a vintage work. Constructed like a page-turner, it certainly grabs you from the first pages, and the first two-thirds of the book are a pleasure to read, despite the rushed style and the lack of credibility and psychological depth of the characters. Then the plot loses steam before collapsing in a ludicrous ending. The more than 40 million copies sold and the incredible passion this book inspires in many of its readers are therefore more a matter of sociological explanation than literary analysis.
I've always thought the key to this enthusiasm lies in the short preface by the American writer, who specifies that his novel is based on certain real events, including the existence of Opus Dei (which is common knowledge) and the famous Priory of Sion, the secret society supposedly founded in Jerusalem in 1099, with Leonardo da Vinci as its Grand Master. Even more remarkably, "parchments" deposited at the National Library are said to prove the existence of this famous priory. The entire plot of the novel revolves around this occult brotherhood, which is said to have guarded an explosive secret that the Church has been trying to conceal since its origins: the marriage of Jesus and Mary Magdalene and the central role of women in the early Church.
This thesis is nothing new. But Dan Brown has managed to take it out of feminist and esoteric circles and present it to the general public in the form of a whodunit that claims to be based on historical facts unknown to almost everyone. The method is clever, but deceitful. The Priory of Sion was founded in 1956 by Pierre Plantard, an anti-Semitic fabulist who believed himself to be a descendant of the Merovingian kings. As for the famous "parchments" deposited at the National Library, they are in fact ordinary typewritten pages written in the late 1960s by this same man and his cronies. Nevertheless, for millions of readers, and perhaps soon viewers, The Da Vinci Code constitutes a true revelation: that of the central role of women in early Christianity and of the conspiracy orchestrated by the Church in the 4th century to restore power to men. Conspiracy theories, however abhorrent—think of the infamous Protocols of the Elders of Zion—unfortunately still resonate with a public increasingly distrustful of official institutions, both religious and academic.
But however flawed its historical demonstration and questionable its conspiratorial veneer, the thesis of Church sexism is all the more appealing because it also rests on an undeniable fact: only men hold power within the Catholic Church, and since Paul and Augustine, sexuality has been devalued. It is therefore understandable that many Christians, often religiously asocial, have been seduced by Dan Brown's iconoclastic thesis and have embarked on this new quest for the Holy Grail of modern times: the rediscovery of Mary Magdalene and the proper place of sexuality and femininity in the Christian religion. Once the Brownian nonsense is set aside, isn't it a beautiful quest after all?
Le Monde des religions, May-June 2006.