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, a popular suspense novel by , generated criticism and controversy after its publication in 2003. Many of the complaints centered on the book's speculations and alleged misrepresentations of core aspects of Christianity and the history of the Roman Catholic Church. Additional criticisms were directed towards the book's inaccurate descriptions of , history, architecture, and .
Charges of copyright infringement were also leveled by the novelist
and by the authors of the 1982 book , which puts forward the hypothesis that the historical Jesus married Mary Magdalene, and that their children or their descendants emigrated to what is now southern France, and married into families that became the , whose claim to the throne of France is championed today by the . Brown was cleared of these charges in a 2006 trial.
A woman protesting against The Da Vinci Code film outside a movie theater in . The TFP acronym in the banner stands for the .
Brown prefaces his novel with a page titled "Fact" asserting that certain elements in the novel are true in reality, and a page at his website repeats these ideas and others. In the early publicity for the novel, Dan Brown made repeated assertions that, while the novel is a work of fiction, the historical information in it is all accurate and well-researched. For example:
Martin Savidge: When we talk about da Vinci and your book, how much is true and how much is fabricated in your storyline?
Dan 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.
Matt Lauer: How much of this is based on reality in terms of things that actually occurred?
Dan Brown: Absolutely all of it. Obviously, there are—Robert Langdon is fictional, but all of the art, architecture, secret rituals, secret societies, all of that is historical fact.
These claims in the book and by the author, combined with the presentation of religious ideas that some Christians regard as offensive, led to a great deal of controversy and debate, which found its way into political discourse in the media. For example, a front-page article in
on May 10, 2006 stated that , a senior British Government Minister, was questioned about her affiliations: "Ms Kelly's early days as Education Secretary were dogged with questions about her religion, and her membership of the conservative
organization which features in the best-selling novel The Da Vinci Code."
A display featuring a vandalized poster of the film protesting the release of the film The Da Vinci Code outside a movie theater in .
Criticism has been leveled at the book regarding what have been characterized as antiquated Protestant slanders against Catholicism, such as on the 's Sunday program on July 24, 2005.
The novel asserts that
was of the , but historians dispute this claim, and there is no mention of this in the Bible or in other ancient sources. According to Sandra Miesel and Carl E. Olson, writing in their 2004 book, , the fact that
was located in , whereas the tribe of Benjamin resided in the south, weighs against it.
In Chapter 58 it is suggested that the marriage of Jesus and Mary Magdalene created a "potent political union with the potential of making a legitimate claim to the throne." Olson and Meisel not only state that this assertion is without any historical basis, but question why Solomon's kingship would have any purpose or meaning today that would motivate a large-scale conspiracy. The authors also question why if Jesus were merely a "mortal prophet", as the novel suggests, a royal goddess would have any interest in him. Olson and Meisel quote Chicago archbishop , who remarked, "Jesus isn't God but Mary Magdalene is a goddess? I mean, what does that mean? If he's not God, why is he married to a goddess?" They are of course, wrong in perspective as a frequently reoccurring theme in the book is to interpret c Mary Magdalene was not a literal goddess just as Jesus wasn't either but was a mortal like him who had similar rights of nobility. Olson and Meisel also argued that having Davidic blood in Jesus' time would not have been unique, since all of his stepfather Joseph's relatives, which included twenty generations of kings of Judah, had it as well. The authors also state that the Benjamites were not considered "rightful" heirs to the throne, and that the New Testament does not mention Mary Magdalene's tribal affiliation, and that she was likely not from the tribe of Benjamin, and that her connection with that tribe is traced to the 1982 book , which does not substantiate the idea.
Characters in the book also claim that Mary Magdalene was labeled a prostitute by the Church. While Catholic tradition in the past, in contrast to other Christian traditions, defended these imputations, these claims are now rejected by the majority of biblical scholars, Catholic and non-Catholic alike, according to Carol Ann Morrow of AmericanCatholic.org. Also, Gregory I's teaching about Mary Magdalene, though popular throughout much of the Church's history, was never formally integrated into C nor was he speaking
at the time, so his speech is not seen as . Whatever weight is given to this tradition, however, there is no evidence that it was used to defame Mary, who was considered a saint to whose honor churches were built. She is also respected as a witness to Christ's resurrection as written in the Gospels.
The story claims the "" is not a
sprung from the marital union of
and . This idea is not original to B it was previously hypothesized by others, including
in Holy Blood and the Holy Grail. Many textual and historical scholars have characterized this claim as being without evidence.
Women in the Gospels were usually identified with husbands or male relatives, especially if they shared their names with others. For example, there are many mentions of women called "Mary," all designated differently (any possible identification with each other nonwithstanding). There is Mary "the mother of Jesus," Mary Magdalene, Mary "the mother of James and Joses", Mary "[the mother] of James," "the other" Mary, Mary "the wife of Cl[e]opas" and Mary of Bethany, the sister of Lazarus and Martha. Mary Magdalene stands out from most of the other Marys as she is not directly associated with any man. Mary "Magdalene" means "Mary of ", just as Jesus "the Nazarene" means "Jesus of ." Some researchers have claimed that, if indeed she was married to Jesus, she would have been designated, following custom, Mary "the wife of Jesus" instead.
According to , the use of the term "bride of Christ" for the Church in some of the letters of Paul (Ephesians 5:25–27, 2 Corinthians 11:2–3) and the
suggests that Jesus was not married. The authors of that work also speculate that the recorded words of Jesus that "those people who can remain celibate, for the 's sake should do so" (Matt. 19:12) were made in response to criticisms of his own celibacy.
In the novel, a line of the
is quoted where
is referred to as Jesus's "companion", and a character of The Da Vinci Code says that
scholars know that this means "wife." , an authority on the gnostic gospels, has responded to this passage by pointing out that "companion" was not necessarily a sex-related term. In addition, "the Gospel of Philip is in , translated from Greek, so there is no word in the text for Aramaic scholars to consider. The Gospel of Philip depicts Mary as Jesus's koinonos, a Greek term indicating a 'close friend', 'companion' or, potentially, a lover. In context of Gnostic beliefs, Gnostic writings use Mary to illustrate a disciple's spiritual relationship with Jesus, making any physical relationship irrelevant.
Most art historians dispute that Leonardo's famous
depicts Mary Magdalene beside Jesus.
According to Sir Leigh Teabing in Chapter 55 of the novel, the early Church consolidated its power by suppressing ideas about the sacred feminine and elevating the mortal prophet Jesus into a divine being. According to Religion Facts, the questions discussed by the Council were not whether he was divine, as the New Testament authors already believe that he was, but what his precise relationship to God was. In particular, the Council decided upon the question of whether Jesus was , "of one substance" with God the Father, or whether instead Jesus was the first created being, inferior to the Father but like him, but still superior to all other beings (see ), or whether he was merely of like substance to the father, or .
The novel claims
wanted Christianity to unify the Roman Empire but thought it would appeal to pagans only if it featured a
similar to pagan heroes, so he destroyed the Gnostic Gospels that said Jesus was a human prophet and promoted the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, which portray Jesus as divine.
Historically, however,
did not portray Jesus as merely human. In fact, the Gnostic Jesus was less human than the Jesus of orthodox Christianity. While orthodox Christianity generally considered Christ both divine and human, many Gnostic sects considered Christ purely divine, his human body being a mere illusion (see ). Many Gnostics saw matter as evil, and believed that a divine spirit would never have taken on a material body. Some varieties of Gnosticism went so far as to hold that the
who has trapped humanity and that Christ is an emanation of the true God, sent to free humanity from that bondage to the flesh. (See , , ).[]
Characters in the book claim Christianity has suppressed the , the representation of the earth or mother 's mystic power that's often linked to symbols of fertility and reproduction, such as
Early Christian devotion to female martyrs (such as ) and the apocryphal writings about figures like
seem to indicate that women did play a role in the early Church, far more than either Brown or some modern critics of Christianity acknowledge, though historical evidence does not suggest men and women shared all roles of office. The
Churches particularly venerate the , who gave birth to Jesus, but the book deems this a desexualised aspect of femininity that suppresses the sacred feminine. Brown echoes scholars such as
in saying this image of Mary derives from . Meisel and Olson counters that the "Mother and " symbol, as a universal part of the general human experience, can be f so Christianity did not copy this element from .
Christian documents and traditions tend to stress the virtues of chaste womanhood in keeping with general Christian encouragement of chastity for both genders. The Gnostics expressed anti-female views, for example, in the 's famous ending verse where Jesus says he will make Mary into a male to make her worthy to enter the Kingdom.
While the character
claims in the book that early Israelites worshipped the goddess
as 's equal, this is contradictory to Jewish ideology. Judaism is and was a monotheistic religion, and belief in a goddess counterpart to God is both illogical and expressly forbidden. In fact, the term Shekinah (derived from
for "dwelling") does not appear in early Judaism at all, but later Talmudic Judaism used it to refer to the God's "dwelling" or presence among his people. The term describes a spiritual radiance. Critics argue that this comes from a distorted understanding of , which speaks of God as having "male" and "female" attributes in the . See also .
The character Teabing states in the story that "the Church
five million women" as . Researcher Mark Hansard states that most modern scholars believe that between 50,000 to 200,000 were killed in this manner, and argues that many of these were men as well as women, as the primary motivation for these persecutions was religious, and was not gender-specific, even if gender was a related aspect of them, as women were thought to be more susceptible to the temptation of witchcraft.
Carl Olson and Sandra Miesel state that contrary to the book's claims, the
(e.g. the Gospels of , , , and the ) also do not focus more on Jesus' humanity. The other Gospels we are aware of, for the most part, treat Jesus as more otherworldly and lack the humanizing detail of the Biblical accounts. The assertion of "more than eighty gospels" written, with only the familiar four chosen as canonical, greatly exaggerates the number of Gnostic Gospels written.
The assertions that the , discovered in 1947 (not the 1950s as Brown predicates), contain lost or hidden Gospels is also false. The scrolls contain books of the ,
books, and manuals used by the Jewish community at . No definite Christian documents—orthodox, Gnostic, or otherwise—have ever been found at this site (but see ).
The depiction of
as a monastic order which is the Pope's "personal prelature" is inaccurate. In fact, there are no monks in Opus Dei, which has primarily lay membership and whose celibate lay members are called . But it may be explained by the fact that
is referred to as a monk mostly by the protagonists, Langdon and Neveu, who are shown to have little knowledge of Opus Dei. The word numerary is used to refer to Silas, by actual Opus Dei members such as the person at Opus Dei centre in London. Moreover, Opus Dei encourages its lay members to avoid practices that are perceived as fundamentalist to the outside world. The term
does not refer to a special relationship to the P it means an institution in which the jurisdiction of the prelate is not linked to a territory but over persons, wherever they be.
, the murderous "Opus Dei monk", uses a
and flagellates himself. Some members of Opus Dei do practice voluntary , as has been a Christian tradition since at least
in the third century, and it has also been practiced by , , and slain archbishop .
and , Queen of England both wore
in the Tudor era.
Critics have accused the book of depicting the order as misogynistic, a claim which the order's defenders say has no basis in reality because half of the leadership positions in Opus Dei are held by women.
Critics also say that the novel's allegations of dealings between John Paul II and the order concerning the Vatican Bank also have no basis in reality. Allegedly due to these dealings, Opus Dei's founder was declared a Saint just 20 years after his death. In real life,
was canonized 27 y admittedly faster than some others—but this is attributed to streamlining of the whole process and 's decision to make Escriva's sanctity and message known.
In the novel, the head of Opus Dei travels alone and makes momentous decisions on his own. In real life, the head of Opus Dei is usually accompanied by two other priests called custodes or guardians. Decision making in Opus Dei is "collegial": i.e., the head has only one vote.
The contention that the
was painted by Leonardo as an androgynous "whole" humanity that represented both genders is contested by Olson and Meisel's book, in which they state that reputable art historians have explained that it is simply a masterful portrait of a woman. Olson and Meisel also take issue with the idea that Leonardo painted the Mona Lisa as a self-portrait, and that this idea is based on the fact that points of congruency are found between Leonardo's face and the Mona Lisa's. Olson and Meisel respond that points of congruency can be found among many faces, which is how computer morphing of faces is facilitated.
One of the characters in The Da Vinci Code matter-of-factly states that Leonardo da Vinci was a "flamboyant homosexual." While there are clues about Leonardo's personal life that could suggest he was homosexual, these are by no means conclusive, nor is there scholarly agreement on the matter. If Leonardo were homosexual, he must have been rather discreet and certainly not flamboyant. In any event it would have been dangerous to be "flamboyant", as
was then usually punishable by death.
The title of the book is not consistent with naming conventions, because "Da Vinci" was not Leonardo's surname. As Tom Chivers of
comments, "[Leonardo] was from Vinci, or of Vinci. As many critics have pointed out, calling it The Da Vinci Code is like saying Mr Of Arabia or asking What Would Of Nazareth Do?".
The allegation that
burned to ashes of the Templars and threw them into the
in Rome is false. The last leaders of the Knights Templar were killed in France in 1314 by King , being burned at the stake on a small island in the . Pope Clement's administration was not in Rome, as he had moved the papal headquarters to .
Main article:
The legend of the
alleged that a sacred relic (in many versions, either the cup used at the Last Supper, or the cup said to have been used by
to collect blood of Christ – or both) existed, which would bring untold blessings to any pure knight who found it. The story appeared around the time of the Crusades and is featured in 's . In Old French, the Holy Grail was written as San Graal. However The Da Vinci Code, taking cues from The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail, interprets this as "Sang Réal" and translated this as "royal blood". In early Grail romances, graal in fact denotes a large dish for fish, itself a Christian religious symbol, but clearly removed from the traditional cup. The idea of a cup seems to have developed quickly during the late 12th and early 13th centuries, influenced both by apocryphal religious stories, such as that of Joseph of Arimathea, and pagan stories involving magic containers that, for example, produced endless food (itself a useful parallel to the Christian belief of the 'Bread of Life' produced at the Last Supper). The cup therefore presented a convenient fusion, like many of the stories we now associate with the Quest for the Holy Grail and King Arthur, of (albeit apocryphal) Christian teachings, and pagan traditions.
Several claims about the
in Paris are disputed. While there is a brass line running north-south through the church, it is not a part of the . The line is instead more of a
or sundial/calendar, meant to mark the
and . Further, there is no evidence that there was ever a temple of
on the site. This note has been on display in the church:
Contrary to fanciful allegations in a recent best-selling novel, this [the line in the floor] is not a vestige of a pagan temple. No such temple ever existed in this place. It was never called a Rose-Line. It does not coincide with the
traced through the middle of the
which serves as a reference for maps where longitudes are measured in degrees East or West of Paris. Please also note that the letters P and S in the small round windows at both ends of the transept can also refer to
and , the patron saints of the church.
The reference to Paris having been founded by the
(Chapter 55) in fact, the city was settled by
by the 3rd century BC. The , who knew it as , captured it in 52 BC under , and left substantial ruins in the city, including an
and . The Merovingians did not rule in France until the 5th century AD, by which time Paris was at least 800 years old.
Brown characterized the cycle of Venus as "trac[ing] a perfect
across the ecliptic sky every four years".[] This was corrected to "eight years" in some later editions, such as the British paperback and the April 2003 printing of the US hardback.
Steve Olson, author of Mapping Human History: Genes, Race, and Our Common Origins, writing in an article in Nature, says that the notion that a small number of people living today could be the only descendants from any particular person who lived millennia ago, such as Jesus and Mary, is statistically flawed. According to Olson, "If anyone living today is descended from Jesus, so are most of us on the planet."
Near the end of the novel, Sophie and Langdon are standing outside Roslyn Chapel in the evening, Brown describes them looking to the east watching Venus rise above the horizon in the twilight. Astronomically, due to the location of its orbit between the earth and the sun, Venus is only visible rising in the east early in the morning shortly before sunrise or setting in the evening toward the west shortly after sunset. It is not possible to see Venus rising above the eastern horizon in the evening.
Two lawsuits have been brought alleging
in The Da Vinci Code.
On April 11, 2005, novelist
sued Brown and his publisher
for plagiarizing his novels The Da Vinci Legacy (1983) and Daughter of God (2000), claiming "there are far too many parallels between my books and The Da Vinci Code for it to be an accident." On August 4, 2005, District Judge George B. Daniels granted a motion for summary judgment and dismissed the suit, ruling that "a reasonable average lay observer would not conclude that The Da Vinci Code is substantially similar to Daughter of God. Any slightly similar elements are on the level of generalized or otherwise unprotectable ideas." He affirmed that The Da Vinci Code does not infringe upon copyrights held by Perdue.
In February 2006,
and , two of the three authors of Holy Blood, Holy Grail, took the UK publisher of The Da Vinci Code to court for breach of , alleging . Some sources suggested the lawsuit was a
intended to boost sales of The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail (a boost which did in fact occur). However, the projected court costs of over 1 million pounds outweigh or at least substantially reduce the financial benefit of the lawsuit.
Dan Brown repeatedly said in his defense that history cannot be plagiarized and therefore the accusations of the two authors were false. Leigh stated, "It's not that Dan Brown has lifted certain ideas because a number of people have done that before. It's rather that he's lifted the whole architecture – the whole jigsaw puzzle – and hung it on to the peg of a fictional thriller". Dan Brown has admitted some of the ideas taken from Baigent and Leigh's work were indispensable to the book but stated that there were many other sources also behind it. However, he claimed that neither he nor his wife had read Baigent and Leigh's book when he produced his original "synopsis" of the novel. Among Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh's arguments were that the given name of the character Sir 's is the same of Richard Leigh's surname, and that "Teabing" is an anagram of "Baigent".
On April 7, 2006,
rejected the copyright-infringement claim by Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh, and Random House won the court case. However, in the published extracts of his judgement the judge criticised the non-appearance of
and the vagueness of Dan Brown's evidence, saying, "He has presented himself as being a deep and thorough researcher...evidence in this case demonstrates that as regards DVC [The Da Vinci Code] that is simply not correct with respect to historical lectures...The reality of his research is that it is superficial."
The judge also included a code in his judgment. Throughout the judgment, apparently random letters are italicised and these form the message. The letters in the first paragraphs spell
and the rest appear as follows "jaeiextostgpsacgreamqwfkadpmqzv". This was subsequently decoded to read "Smithy Code
who are you ", referring to the British admiral whom Judge Smith admires. As with the book, this secret message made use of
for its encoding.
At a conference on April 28, 2006 Archbishop Angelo Amato, the secretary of the , a Vatican
department, specifically called for a boycott of the film version of The Da Vinci Code, characterizing the film as "full of calumnies, offenses, and historical and theological errors." The film was rated as "morally offensive" by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.
In contrast, some Catholic groups sought to use interest in this book and film as a means to educate Catholics and non-Catholics on the history of the , and what it teaches regarding .
Other Christians have looked to use the film as a tool for evangelism.
In India, home to 18 million Catholics (1.8% of the population), the Central Board of Film Certification gave the film an adult rating on condition that disclaimers saying it was a work of fiction were inserted at the beginning and end of the film.
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, The Truth Behind the Da Vinci Code (Harvest House Publishers, 2004).
, Breaking The Da Vinci Code: Answers to the Questions Everybody's Asking (Nelson Books, 2004).
Dan Burstein (ed), Secrets of the Code (CDS Books, 2004).
, Truth and Fiction in The Da Vinci Code (Oxford University Press, 2004).
, The Da Vinci Code: a response (Alpha International).
Michael Haag and Veronica Haag, The Rough Guide to The Da Vinci Code.
Hank Hanegraaff and , Da Vinci Code: Fact or Fiction? (Tyndale House Publishers, 2004).
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Martin Lunn, Da Vinci Code Decoded (The Disinformation Company, 2004).
(Ignatius Press, 2004).
a non-religious analysis of The Da Vinci Code's errors of fact
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