#davincicode analysis

As Dan Brown claims?

No. No he was not.

This famous painting falls in line with many such paintings from the Italian Renaissance, believe it or not, in that it was painted in a monastic refectory.

This was the place where monks ate in silence. This scene was meant to mirror what they were doing themselves, so that they could achieve a spiritual closeness to this most important episode within the life of Christ.

^ and here's an example of something I've seen in person during our field trip to Florence. (I'll probably use this again in a future post.) Take note of how the physical architecture of the room extends into the canvas in the arches. It is literally painted to be seen as an extension of the refectory the monks sat in. (They also used to have tables on platforms, so they were effectively almost at eye-level with Christ and the Apostles.)

Historians and Catholics alike can just, you know, ignore any topic about a figure they might find awkward, as they have since the dawn of their field/religion.

I don't know how true a bunch of the other things Brown stated in his text are, such as Da Vinci being a "flamboyant homosexual". While he appears to have had some accusations of 'inappropriate' relations with male apprentices (actually falling more into the category of pederastry, which you'll recall is actually a crime now, and not really something I would ever dare dub as "homosexual", since it repeats that old lie about gay people disproportionally tending towards abuse of children – I'd strongly recommend not actually calling people like Da Vinci gay for this very reason, as we have no documented evidence of him exhibiting such behaviour with adult men), we don't have much evidence for the occult mess Brown mentions.

He was accused of such things because of the other thing Brown mentions, which is him using corpses to study anatomy. (Note that this later became standard practice for artists, so clearly the Church wasn't permanently mad about it.) HOWEVER, Da Vinci didn't exhume graves. He worked in hospital crypts. The corpses he used were fresh and he wasn't necessarily not allowed or supposed to be there.

Again, we repeat a bit of truth and morph it into a slanderous lie towards a historical figure, just to get from point A to point B in our mystery, which uses a suspicious amount of bad historical fiction here.

Historical fiction is either very close to the truth, or so blatantly fictional that people can tell you're playing around with it. Generally, there are points between these two extremes, but it's important to make it clear to the audience which things you're doing.

My favourite example is the Steve Jobs biopic from 2015, starring Michael Fassbender, who looks nothing like Steve Jobs. Although I wrote a blog post about this ages ago (long since deleted) and couldn't find the "none of it happened, but it's all true" quote, it does apply to it.

Steve Wozniak, Jobs's longtime friend and business partner who founded Apple with him, said that due to his facial blindness, he wasn't bothered by what people said about Fassbender not looking like Jobs. He said that he acted like him, and it felt like him (paraphrasing).

Basically, he meant that because Fassbender didn't attempt to copy Jobs or really try to look like him, he was seemingly freed from those constraints to capture Jobs's actual vibe. A lot of events are dramatised, but they feel like the real thing in a way that direct copies never could.

We can often experience relatively mundane things as very intense, and if you were to put them to film, they'd look mundane to everyone else, even though we remember them as much more than that. To me, that's what historical fiction should be about.

We don't just randomly tell lies; we embellish to capture the essence of something. We don't just tell people Da Vinci was a weirdo genius, we make people feel it in a way they can understand. Showing his design for flying machines, even though we know that was mad in his day, won't have a dreamlike effect on us, because we've probably been on a plane before.

So we find different ways to showcase how this happens. I've been a huge fan of just drowning the audience in mysticism to show how Catholicism worked, for example. Just show them what we would now identify as magic, because that is how people experienced Mass. A miracle, right in front of their eyes, as the priest raised the Host. There was Christ, in the flesh, right in front of them. Nowadays, we can play all the bold music we like, tell people Catholics see Christ there (or are technically supposed to), and all people will see on a screen is a round cracker.

(I couldn't find a GIF of a host being raised during Mass, so here's a picture of Elwynn Forest in the rain instead, which will mean nothing to you if you've never played this game, but to me it's a pretty representation of something I've loved since I was 10.)

And thus a miracle becomes silly. An occult Da Vinci isn't scary to us, but rather kinda cool, even though that is also a lie. King Francis I of France and his sister thought Da Vinci was so amazing that they practically begged him to come to France and be at their court. Da Vinci was awe inspiring when he was practically completely blind and useless, and THAT is what this narrative should have captured.

But instead, we get some throwaway lines about Da Vinci being an "awkward subject". The reasons as to why are only clear to us if we have no knowledge of how the Church works, or how historians talk about historical figures, and how such talks have evolved over the centuries.

You can imagine, I hope, the actual awkward position this puts me in, because I know that for the most part, Dan Brown is full of it here.

(from the perspective of someone who sort of encountered them, but hasn't been a member)

As I said in my previous post, I knew a guy who lived in an Opus Dei house. His housemates were also quite something (one of them studied art history with us).

In a way, they're your typical conservative Catholic, a pretend goody-two-shoes who are super celibate and pretend to respect women for their "God given role" in the household and society at large. They have the capacity to be very kind.

Doesn't stop them from scoffing at things we'd consider not a big deal, even when seen in light of their conservative values. A Catholic friend of mine (who was not in Opus Dei and never has been) once told me that let's say I, as a woman, happen to be waiting for an elevator. I get in, and on a floor I wasn't supposed to get out yet, a Catholic priest who is part of Opus Dei enters.

I would be expected to leave that elevator.

Women first? Supposedly a traditional value. Not for Opus Dei. The priest is ever more important, even if we got there first. The Virgin Mary herself would be expected to leave that elevator for him, since I quite strongly suspect that this heavily self-absorbed behaviour I've seen Opus Dei foster in all their young men creates a headspace in which they wouldn't recognise the mother of the Saviour herself.

Not to mention the implication that "something" might happen if we spend even a minute in a small space alone with a priest. After all, why else would they have added a physical barrier between priest and faithful in the confessional?

(I need you to read this with a lot of sarcasm. The story actually goes that the barrier exists not to protect the sanctity of the priest, but the believer from priests who could not keep their hands to themselves. Make of it what you will, because as with many things that have long since become common practice, we don't exactly know why they are the way they are.)

My priest is also quite conservative. Still, he would never, I repeat, NEVER scoff at standing in an elevator alone with any of the women and girls (or boys and men for that matter). He'd just have a chat and go on his merry way, as would his colleagues. You know, because he's what I would refer to as a regular thinking human being, who isn't afraid that he's a beast who is not in control of his mental faculties.

In other words, he's normal.

Lastly, I'll tell you about this amazing conversation I was witness to in the middle of church (after Mass) between the Opus Dei guy I knew (who, mind you, had a crush on me at the time) and another guy from our church. Regardless of how you feel about abortion, this is bound to make you roll your eyes.

The other guy was saying that while he doesn't like abortion, he struggled with the idea that condemning a woman to die when she was going through an unviable pregnancy. I'd wager if I'd said a few things, I could've also gotten him to say he struggled with the idea of forcing a woman to carry a pregnancy she got through SA to term, especially if this was a result of incest.

The Opus Dei guy said no, in his opinion that was God's will that the woman died. Needless to say, I was wholly impressed by his attitude and we are obviously married now. 🙄

They like to think of themselves as these highly critical voices, who really think through their beliefs and have put them to the test numerous times in their life. I'm here to dispel any notion you might have had that even an ounce of that is true.

1) He studied Art History and English Literature, somewhat echoing my own academic background and revealing two real life plot holes, and

2) He is engaged to a Dutch woman. He spends time in our country. He has admitted some scenes in a book after this newest one that's about to be released will take place in my country.

Ora pro nobis (pray for us).

Could've just said the Louvre was a vast complex. It's Francis I & Henri II's palace, mate. I get it.

(Considering he accidentally insulted Catherine de' Medici earlier, I feel the need to point out that Henri II was her husband, and Francis I her father-in-law (who'd arranged their marriage)).

On the next page: 'Langdon has once walked the Louvre's entire perimeter, an astonishing three-mile journey.'

> This guy unironically visited Paris as research for his book, took a stroll through the Louvre, was like "DAMN this building is HUGE", and decided it was the biggest building in Europe because Europeans don't make big buildings or something.

In Chapter 10, we get the much-needed backstory for Silas, the novel's antagonist.

Turns out he was despised by his father for being born with albinism, a condition for which he blames Silas's mother. The father is a drunk who often beat his wife, and beat his son when he tried to defend her. Eventually, this father ends up beating her to death, which Silas blames on himself. He then stabs his father to death and runs away from home.

He ends up on the streets, where people treat him like he's a ghost and sometimes give him pitiful looks. He starts fighting with people and is eventually told to leave after he almost beats a girl to death for making fun of him. He then kills two men for real in another town, and is shoved in prison in Andorra for twelve years.

Some mysterious force breaks down a wall (it turns out to be an earthquake) and he manages to escape. He describes what happens to him afterwards as Opus Dei saving him, and he becomes the religious fanatic we see him as throughout the novel.

This is due to the fact that a priest (Aringarosa) nurses him back to health. This same priest eventually lets him read the part in the Book of Acts that speaks of a prison break that helps a person called Silas, who spent his days in prison singing hymns to God, escape due to an earthquake that makes all doors fly open. And therefore, the priest says he'll call Silas by that name, since Silas can't remember the name his parents had given him.

I think it's supposed to give him a somewhat sympathetic backstory, kind of like with Frankenstein's Creature – if the world hadn't rejected him, he may have been good. Granted, I might be reading a little too much into this, as we race through this description in a rather brief chapter (particularly when we compare it to how much time we spent with Langdon already).

Silas's character seems to be designed as foil to Langdon's secularism and his supposed heroism, whereas Silas seems to have stumbled into religious villainy. The issue is that we have another case of "battered people become bad".

It's no different from the childhood neglect Tom Riddle (Voldemort) suffered in Harry Potter, and we all know how nuanced Rowling designs her characters (coughcough). One of the reasons she gives for Voldy being the way he is, is that he was conceived without love. You can imagine how readers who were birthed into this world under similar circumstances felt about that reasoning behind his villainy, especially when he's explicitly stated to know nothing of love, which is what separates him from Harry.

Silas may be suffering from a very similar syndrome. His villainy seems set in stone, as if it just happened because he was abused and rejected by everyone. Realistically, people who end up rejected by absolutely everyone often exacerbate this reality themselves. If you have a nice personality, some people will want to be your friend. Even people who turned to mass murder who see themselves as total outcasts had people in life who loved them; they just didn't appreciate these people enough and often pushed them away in pursuit of that darkness they felt inside.

Hatred can certainly fester, as Silas is described as having hatred within him that he tries to control. Some people who became villains in real life actively had to lean into that darker side of theirs to meet another desire they had (which was to inflict pain on others). I don't think we'll get even halfway as deep with this villain character, as Brown designed him in the early 00s, so this stuff was seen as normal back then.