As uproar over “The Da Vinci Code” continues unabated, the question of what is really at stake is becoming increasingly opaque. Critics have protested that the book and movie insult both Christianity and Christians, but in reality they insult only our intelligence.
A British poll recently found that after reading “The Da Vinci Code,” twice as many people were likely to believe Jesus fathered children and that four times the number had come to regard Opus Dei as an evil conspiracy. The poll is alarming only because it discloses how gullible the public really can be.
There is indeed a hidden “code” behind the immeasurable popularity of “The Da Vinci Code.” It might be described mainly as a retro version of the new-age movement in the 1980s, which was almost equal to Dan Brown’s religious pulp fiction in terms of both its hucksterism and the intensity of indignation it provoked among traditionalists.
Remember all the aging ’60s flower children who one day during the Reagan administration started stringing crystals around their necks?
Well, now their grown-up kids are looking for evidence of secret societies and secret bloodlines and mysterious symbols in medieval castles.
One does not have to venture off on some hackneyed “witch hunt” to figure out what is behind the marketing of the Christianity-as-goddess-cult and Mary-Magdalene-as- savior theme that runs throughout the book and movie.
Most of the “facts” cum “fiction” that Brown purveys are really part and parcel neo-pagan beliefs, which have fermented within the fringe community for years and, like Scientology, have become trendy of late among the Hollywood glitterati.
Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh’s “Holy Blood, Holy Grail,” a book that appeared two decades ago, was the original blockbuster that first birthed the burgeoning ranks of true believers concerning Jesus’ unspoken paternity while affording Brown most, if not all, of his inspiration.
A host of other titles followed with virtually the same completely undocumented “theory” about the beginnings of Christianity.
But now that the fictional version has caught the entire world’s attention, these supposedly serious screeds have been miraculously resurrected, even if they contend Christ was not.
The real story in all the present brouhaha is not about the real life of Jesus, but the motivations of the “Da Vinci Code” charlatans.
One clue can be found in Baigent’s “The Temple and the Lodge,” where he rather credibly traces the canard back to the Stuart kings of England in the 17th century.
The Stuart dynasty was twice overthrown in two revolutions, first in 1640 and again during the so-called “Glorious Revolution” of 1689, which ended absolute monarchy once and for all in Britain.
According to Baigent, the disenfranchised Stuarts, as a government-in-exile in France, launched a relentless and well-orchestrated campaign to convince their former subjects that they should be restored to power.
Early during their reign the Stuarts’ argument had been that they were monarchs by “divine right.” There is circumstantial evidence that as their throne tottered in the late 1600s their own covert operatives upped the ante by spreading the rumor among the unlettered peasantry that the sovereign’s divine right to rule was secured by an incredible, holy, guarded secret – the Stuarts were descended from Jesus Christ himself!
After the Stuarts were expelled, their descendants kept alive the rumor and perhaps even began to swallow it hook, line, and sinker. The Stuarts, of course, came from Scotland. It is no accident that so many of the persons, place names and secret societies in the Holy Blood, Holy Grail scenario, such as Roslyn Castle, Robert the Bruce and Scottish Rite Masonry, happen to be connected to Scotland.
One of the “facts” Brown lists on the fly page of his novel is that the Priory of Sion, the mysterious society that in the novel and movie guards the secret of Jesus’ blood line, is a “real organization.”
However, according to multiple sources, the Priory of Sion was a prank perpetrated in 1956 by Pierre Plantard, a French anti-Semite and former Nazi collaborator. Plantard was hauled into court in the 1960s on fraud charges for making up the whole story.
“The Da Vinci Code” is, in short, a ruse based on a hoax based on an historical fraud.
Carl Raschke is chair of the Religious Studies Department at the University of Denver. He is the author of numerous books and published articles on religion, religious thought and popular culture.
