Theological Illiteracy, More Da Vinci Code Silliness

I could spend weeks writing posts on what's wrong within Dan Brown's The Da vinci Code (TDC) but being merciful I'll finish up today with a few more big blunders made by Mr. Brown in his statement of "fact". Our last few postings addressed the Gnostics and the supposed manipulation by Constantine to exclude certain "facts" from the canon. Let's look at another commonly batted about conspiracy player, the Priory of Sion. Here are a few "facts" we are told regarding this organization by Mr. Brown:

• It is one of the oldest surviving secret societies on earth (p.113).


• The Priory learned of hidden documents that told the "true" story of Christ's bloodline (p. 158)


• The existence of the Priory was firmly established when documents were found in the National Library of France in Paris, naming the names of the "Grand Masters of the Priory" which included Botticelli, Newton, and da Vinci (pp. 206, 326).


• The Knights Templar was founded by the Priory and given the mission of finding the documents regarding Jesus and Mary Magdalene's progeny. (p. 158)


• Pope Clement V decided something had to be done to stop the Knights Templar and cospired with France's King Philip IV. Secret orders were supposed issued by Philip to all his soliders all across Europe to be opened simultaneously on October 13, 1307. The orders were to round up and kill all of the knights (p.159, 160).

Okay, that's enough. I could spend pages writing just on these points, but I'll spare you. Let's hit the highlights to see how these "facts" stack up against reality. I'll break the discussion into two broad groupings, The Priory of Sion and The Knights Templar.

The Priory of Sion

There have been at least three organizations called The Priory of Sion. The first was a catholic monastic order founded in Jerusalem in about 1100. This order ceased to exist around 1600 when it was absorbed into the Jesuit order. The other two occurrances are linked to the Frenchman Pierre Plantard who, in 1956 along with three friends formed a social club called the Priory of Sion. This club disolved within a year, only to resurrected by Plantard in the 1960s and used as a mechanism to show himself an occult master and a descendant of the holy, royal bloodline of Christ. But what about the "secret documents" that show the long history of the the Priory's existence and the listings of names of its Grand Masters? Documents planted by Plantard and his associates. For example, papers with titles such as "A Geneaology of the Merovingian Kings" and "The Secret Records of Henri Lobineau" (this one repeatedly named in TDC), were distributed around France and "discovered" to show support of Plantard's claims. Fascinating if they were real, but they have all been shown to be fakes (a pretty good summary can be found here and here. So it appears there is no actual historical evidence for a Priory of Sion as described by Mr. Brown.

The Knights Templar

The Knights Templar were founded as a military religious order around 1100 by Hugh des Payens and Godfrey of Sainte-Omer, two French knights, not the Priory. The move against the Knights was initiated by King Philip IV, not Pope Clement. Philip wanted the lands and the wealth that had been accumulated by the knights and it was Philip who ordered his soldiers to take the knights into custody in a mass arrest on October 13, 1307, not the Pope as TDC states. The knights were rounded up and placed on trial by Philip. Many were found guilty of "charges" and executed, but it was not carried out ala Emperor Palpatine's "Order 66" against the Jedi! In fact, a few months before this, Philip forced about 70 knights to "confess" their sins to the Pope. Clement opened investigations against the Knights Templar but at the trials held throughout Europe the various knights were found innocent... except for those France, the seat of Philip's power, where he secured the execution of 54 knights in 1310, not 1307. In 1312 Clement decided to dissolve the Order of the Knights Templar. The knights were allowed to join other military orders or to retire. Many chose to join the Order of Hospitallers and continued to live and work within the Catholic Church.

So what can we say about TDC and Mr. Brown's "facts"? Let's ignore interpretation for now, but just on simple matters of documented historical facts (dates, places, people) many of what are stated as facts in TDC are just flat out wrong. What Brown is relying on is (1) people enjoy conspiracy theories and (2) people are ignorant of history, particularly religious history and are too lazy to check out things for themselves. And if he cannot get historically documented facts right, what does that say about his interpretation of his facts? If nothing else, it should be enough to give us pause before accepting the allegations as true.

Next up, the last I have to say in this series, the "newly discovered" Gospel of Judas.