JESUS ETERNAL VIRGIN

JESUS ETERNAL VIRGIN



Analysis of Martino Gerber and Guliano Lattes, biblical scholars

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In recent times many write books and novels which insist that Jesus was married or that He could do.
The Holy Bible, however, teaches that Jesus is the Eternal Virgin.

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In the Gospel, Jesus teaches us that in the resurrected life the elected saints will live in the Kingdom of God,
and they will live like angels and do not take a wife or husband;

Luke 20: 34-37
34 Jesus replied, 'The children of this world take wives and husbands,
35 but those who are judged worthy of a place in the other world and in the resurrection from the dead do not marry
36 because they can no longer die, for they are the same as the angels, and being childenof the resurrection they are children of God.
37 And Moses himself implies that the dead rise again, in the passage about the bush where he calls the Lord the God of Abraham, the Godof Isaac and the God of Jacob


Now we see that both the angels and the elected saints resurrected, are children of God, they can not take a wife or husband, they can not have sex, but they live most chaste and pure.

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Jesus before being born into this world, lived with God was the Word and the Son of God;

John 1: 1

1 In the beginning was the Word: the Word was with God and the Word was God.

John 1: 14


14 The Word became flesh, he lived among us, and we saw his glory, the glory that he has from the Father as only Son of the Father, full of grace and truth.

So Jesus existed before being born into this world, and He taught this;

John 3: 13


13 No one has gone up to heaven except the one who came down from heaven, the Son of man;

John 6: 51

51 I am the living bread which has come down from heaven. Anyone who eats this bread will live for ever;
and the bread that I shall give is my flesh, for the life of the world.'

Jesus explains His eternal existence very clearly;

John 8: 58

58 Jesus replied: In all truth I tell you, before Abraham ever was, I am.


John 17: 5

5 Now, Father, glorify me with that gloryI had with you before ever the world existed.

John 17: 24

24 Father, I want those you have given me to be with me where I am, so that they may always see my glory which you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world.

So Jesus is God, and being in the world He can not get married, but He was like an angel.

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We see that Jesus was not born from a marriage union, but through the Holy Spirit;

Matthew 1: 20-21


20 He had made up his mind to do this when suddenly the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said,
'Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because she has conceived what is in her by the Holy Spirit.
21 She will give birth to a son and you must name him Jesus, because he is the one who is to save his people from their sins.'

Luke 1: 26-35


26 In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth,
27 to a virgin betrothed to a man named Joseph, of the House of David; and the virgin's name was Mary.
28 He went in and said to her, 'Rejoice, you who enjoy God's favour! The Lord is with you.'
29 She was deeply disturbed by these words and asked herself what this greeting could mean,
30 but the angel said to her, 'Mary, do not be afraid; you have won God's favour.
31 Look! You are to conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you must name him Jesus.
32 He willbe great and will be called Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his ancestor David;
33 he will rule over the House of Jacob for ever and his reign will have no end.'
34 Mary said to the angel, 'But how can this come about, since I have no Knowledge of man?'
35 The angel answered, 'The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will cover you with its shadow.
And so the child will be holy and will be called Son of God.


Jesus was born as God incarnate, He can not marry, even if He takes human nature, He retains His divine nature.

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John the Baptist called Jesus the Lamb of God, to show His purity and holiness;

John 1: 35-36


35 The next day as John stood there again with two of his disciples, Jesus went past,
36 and John looked towards him and said, 'Look, there is the lamb of God.'


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Jesus makes His divine nature to be known by His Apostles, before the resurrection, in the transfiguration;
Matthew 17: 1-5

1 Six days later, Jesus took with him Peter and James and his brother John and led them up a high mountain by themselves.
2 There in their presence he was transfigured: his face shone like the sun and his clothes became as dazzling as light.
3 And suddenly Moses and Elijah appeared to them; they were talking with him.
4 Then Peter spoke to Jesus. 'Lord,' he said, 'it is wonderful for us to be here; if you want me to, I will make three shelters here, one for you, one for Moses and one for Elijah.'
5 He was still speaking when suddenly a bright cloud covered them with shadow, and suddenly from the cloud there came a voice which said, 'This is my Son, the Beloved; he enjoys my favour. Listen to him.'

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Jesus appeared as the third person of the Holy Trinity, He is the Son of God, God is his Father, and with them is the Holy Spirit;


Matthew 3: 16-17

16 And when Jesus had been baptised He at once came up from the water, and suddenly the heavens opened and he saw the Spiritof God descending like a dove and coming down on him.
17 And suddenly there was a voice from heaven, 'This is my Son, the Beloved; my favour rests on him.'

Matthew 28: 18-20


18 Jesus came up and spoke to them. He said, 'All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.
19 Go, therefore, make disciples of all nations; baptise them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,
20 and teach them to observe all the commands I gave you. And look, I am with you always; yes, to the end of time.'

So Jesus being the third person of the Holy Trinity, He can not get married.

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Jesus reveals His divine qualities, He teaches that He is the Bread that came down from heaven;

John 6: 51

51 I am the living bread which has come down from heaven.
Anyone who eats this bread will live for ever; and the bread that I shall give is my flesh, for the l life of the world.'

Jesus explains this well at the Last Supper;

Matthew 26: 26-28


26 Now as they were eating, Jesus took bread, and when he had said the blessing he broke it and gave it to the disciples. 'Take it and eat,' he said, 'this is my body.'
27 Then he took a cup, and when he had given thanks he handed it to them saying, 'Drink from this, all of you,
28 for this is my blood, the blood of the covenant, poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.



Now Jesus the Bread of heaven can not get married.

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Jesus teaches that He is the Light;

John 8: 12


12 When Jesusspoke to the people again, he said: I am the light of the world; anyone who follows me will not be walking in the dark, but will have the light of life.

Now Jesus the divine Light can not get married.

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Jesus claims to be the Son of God;

John 10: 30


30 The Father and I are one.

Jesus the Son of God can not take a wife.


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Jesus declares that He is the Resurrection;

John 11:25

25 Jesus said: I am the resurrection. Anyone who believes in me, even though that person dies, will live.

Jesus is the divine resurrection and the eternal life, He can not get married.


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Jesus claims to be the Way, Truth and Life:

John 14: 6

6 Jesus said: I am the Way; I am Truth and Life. No one can come to the Father except through me.


Jesus is the divine Way, Truth and Life, He can not get married.

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Jesus reveals that who sees Him sees the Father;

John 14: 7-11
7 If you know me, you willknow my Father too. From this moment you know him and have seen him.
8 Philip said, 'Lord, show us the Father and then we shall be satisfied.' Jesussaid to him,
9 'Have I been with you all this time, Philip, and you still do not know me? 'Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father, so how can you say, "Show us the Father"?
10 Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? What I say to you I do not speak of my own accord: it is the Father, living in me, who is doing his works.
11 You must believe me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; or at least believe it on the evidence of these works.

Jesus is God and He can not get married.

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Then Jesus lived virgin and He is virgin forever. Jesus also advised his followers to remain virgin for the kingdom of heaven;

Matthew 19: 12


12 There are eunuchs born so from their mother's womb,
there are eunuchs made so by human agency and there are eunuchs who have made themselves so for the sake of the kingdom of Heaven.
Let anyone accept this who can.'

Now if Jesus asks to His followers to remain virgin, He virgin certainly.

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Even St. Paul advises believers to virginity;

1 Corinthians 7: 7-8


7 I should still like everyone to be as I am myself; but everyone has his own gift from God, one this kind and the next something different.
8 To the unmarried and to widows I say: it is good for them to stay as they are, like me.

1 Corinthias 7: 32-34

32 I should like you to have your minds free from all worry. The unmarried man gives his mind to the Lord's affairs and to how he can please the Lord;
33 but the man who is married gives his mind to the affairs of this world and to how he can please his wife, and he is divided in mind.
34 So, too, the unmarried woman, and the virgin, gives her mind to the Lord's affairs and to being holy in body and spirit;
but the married woman gives her mind to the affairs of this world and to how she can please her husband.

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St. Paul imitates Jesus, then he is unmarried;

1 Corinthias 11: 1

1 Take me as your pattern, just as I take Christ for mine.


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Jesus has His bride anyway, the church;

Ephesians 5: 21-33



21 Be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ.
22 Wives should be subject to their husbands as to the Lord,
23 since, as Christ is head of the Church and saves the whole body, so is a husband the head of his wife;
24 and as the Church is subject to Christ, so should wives be to their husbands, in everything.
25 Husbands should love their wives, just as Christ loved the Church and sacrificed himself for her
26 to make her holy by washing her in cleansing water with a form of words,
27 so that when he took the Church to himself she would be glorious, with no speck or wrinkle or anything like that, but holy and faultless.
28 In the same way, husbands must love their wives as they love their own bodies; for a manto love his wife is for him to love himself.
29 A mannever hates his own body, but he feeds it and looks after it; and that is the way Christtreats the Church,
30 because we are parts of his Body.
31 This is why a manleaves his father and mother and becomes attached to his wife, and the two become one flesh.
32 This mystery has great significance, but I am applying it to Christ and the Church.
33 To sum up: you also, each one of you, must love his wife as he loves himself; and let every wife respect her husband.

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Conclusion: Jesus is divine and heaven nature, He was like an angel, He could not and did not want to marry.

Jesus loved the virginity and advised the virginity to those who could, for the Kingdom of Heaven.


Jesus taught us to pray that is the Rhine of Heaven soon, where all the angels and the elect saints will live holy and pure.

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Biblical quotations

New Jerusalem Bible

http://www.catholic.org/bible/


http://groups.google.com/group/christianbiblestudies?hl=it

The Life of Saint Mary Magdalen

The Golden Legend
The Life of Saint Mary Magdalen
ere followeth the life of Saint Mary Magdalene, and first of her name.

Mary is as much to say as bitter, or a lighter, or lighted. By this be understood three things that be three, the best parts that she chose. That is to say, part of penance, part of contemplation within forth, and part of heavenly glory. And of this treble part is understood that is said by our Lord: Mary hath chosen the best part, which shall not be taken from her. The first part shall not be taken from her because of the end, which is the following of blessedness; the second because of continuance, for the continuance of her life is continued with the contemplation of her country. The third by reason of perdurableness; and forasmuch as she chose the best part of penance, she is said: a bitter sea, for therein she had much bitterness. And that appeared in that she wept so many tears that she washed therewith the feet of our Lord. And for so much as she chose the part of contemplation withinforth, she is a lighter, for there she took so largely that she spread it abundantly. She took the light there, with which after she enlumined other, and in that she chose the best part of the heavenly glory, she is called the light. For then she was enlumined of perfect knowledge in thought, and with the light in clearness of body. Magdalene is as much as to say as abiding culpable. Or Magdalene is interpreted as closed or shut, or not to be overcome. Or full of magnificence, by which is showed what she was tofore her conversion, and what in her conversion, and what after her conversion. For tofore her conversion she was abiding guilty by obligation to everlasting pain. In the conversion she was garnished by armour of penance. She was in the best wise garnished with penance. For as many delices as she had in her, so many sacrifices were found in her. And after her conversion she was praised by overabundance of grace. For whereas sin abounded, grace overabounded, and was more, etc.

Of Mary Magdalene.

Mary Magdalene had her surname of Magdalo, a castle, and was born of right noble lineage and parents, which were descended of the lineage of kings. And her father was named Cyrus, and her mother Eucharis. She with her brother Lazarus, and her sister Martha, possessed the castle of Magdalo, which is two miles from Nazareth, and Bethany, the castle which is nigh to Jerusalem, and also a great part of Jerusalem, which, all these things they departed among them. In such wise that Mary had the castle Magdalo, whereof she had her name Magdalene. And Lazarus had the part of the city of Jerusalem, and Martha had to her part Bethany. And when Mary gave herself to all delights of the body, and Lazarus entended all to knighthood, Martha, which was wise, governed nobly her brother's part and also her sister's, and also her own, and administered to knights, and her servants, and to poor men, such necessities as they needed. Nevertheless, after the ascension of our Lord, they sold all these things, and brought the value thereof, and laid it at the feet of the apostles. Then when Magdalene abounded in riches, and because delight is fellow to riches and abundance of things; and for so much as she shone in beauty greatly, and in riches, so much the more she submitted her body to delight, and therefore she lost her right name, and was called customably a sinner. And when our Lord Jesu Christ preached there and in other places, she was inspired with the Holy Ghost, and went into the house of Simon leprous, whereas our Lord dined. Then she durst not, because she was a sinner, appear tofore the just and good people, but remained behind at the feet of our Lord, and washed his feet with the tears of her eyes and dryed them with the hair of her head, and anointed them with precious ointments. For the inhabitants of that region used baths and ointments for the overgreat burning and heat of the sun. And because that Simon the Pharisee thought in himself that, if our Lord had been a very prophet, he would not have suffered a sinful woman to have touched him, then our Lord reproved him of his presumption, and forgave the woman all her sins. And this is she, that same Mary Magdalene to whom our Lord gave so many great gifts. And showed so great signs of love, that he took from her seven devils. He embraced her all in his love, and made her right familiar with him. He would that she should be his hostess, and his procuress on his journey, and he ofttimes excused her sweetly; for he excused her against the Pharisee which said that she was not clean, and unto her sister that said she was idle, unto Judas, who said that she was a wastresse of goods. And when he saw her weep he could not withhold his tears. And for the love of her he raised Lazarus which had been four days dead, and healed her sister from the flux of blood which had held her seven years. And by the merits of her he made Martelle, chamberer of her sister Martha, to say that sweet word: Blessed be the womb that bare thee, and the paps that gave thee suck. But, after Saint Ambrose, it was Martha that said so, and this was her chamberer. This Mary Magdalene is she that washed the feet of our Lord and dried them with the hair of her head, and anointed them with precious ointment, and did solemn penance in the time of grace, and was the first that chose the best part, which was at the feet of our Lord, and heard his preaching. Which anointed his head; at his passion was nigh unto the cross; which made ready ointments, and would anoint his body, and would not depart from the monument when his disciples departed. To whom Jesu Christ appeared first after his resurrection, and was fellow to the apostles, and made of our Lord apostolesse of the apostles, then after the ascension of our Lord, the fourteenth year from his passion, long after that the Jews had slain Saint Stephen, and had cast out the other disciples out of the Jewry, which went into divers countries, and preached the word of God. There was that time with the apostles Saint Maximin, which was one of the seventy-two disciples of our Lord, to whom the blessed Mary Magdalene was committed by Saint Peter, and then, when the disciples were departed, Saint Maximin, Mary Magdalene, and Lazarus her brother, Martha her sister, Marcelle, chamberer of Martha, and Saint Cedony which was born blind, and after enlumined of our Lord; all these together, and many other christian men were taken of the miscreants and put in a ship in the sea, without any tackle or rudder, for to be drowned. But by the purveyance of Almighty God they came all to Marseilles, where, as none would receive them to be lodged, they dwelled and abode under a porch tofore a temple of the people of that country. And when the blessed Mary Magdalene saw the people assembled at this temple for to do sacrifice to the idols, she arose up peaceably with a glad visage, a discreet tongue and well speaking, and began to preach the faith and law of Jesu Christ, and withdrew from the worshipping of the idols. Then were they amarvelled of the beauty, of the reason, and of the fair speaking of her. And it was no marvel that the mouth that had kissed the feet of our Lord so debonairly and so goodly, should be inspired with the word of God more than the other. And after that, it happed that the prince of the province and his wife made sacrifice to the idols for to have a child. And Mary Magdalene preached to them Jesu Christ and forbade them those sacrifices. And after that a little while, Mary Magdalene appeared in a vision to that lady, saying: Wherefore hast thou so much riches and sufferest the poor people our Lord to die for hunger and for cold? And she doubted, and was afraid to show this vision to her lord. And then the second night she appeared to her again and said in likewise and adjousted thereto menaces, if she warned not her husband for to comfort the poor and needy, and yet she said nothing thereof to her husband. And then she appeared to her the third night, when it was dark, and to her husband also, with a frowning and angry visage like fire, like as all the house had burned, and said: Thou tyrant and member of thy father the devil, with that serpent thy wife, that will not say to thee my words, thou restest now enemy of the cross, which hast filled thy belly by gluttony, with divers manner of meats and sufferest to perish for hunger the holy saints of our Lord. Liest thou not in a palace wrapped with clothes of silk. And thou seest them without harbour, discomforted, and goest forth and takest no regard to them. Thou shalt not escape so ne depart without punishment, thou tyrant and felon because thou hast so long tarried. And when Mary Magdalene had said thus she departed away. Then the lady awoke and sighed. And the husband sighed strongly also for the same cause, and trembled.

And then she said: Sir, hast thou seen the sweven that I have seen? I have seen, said he, that I am greatly amarvelled of, and am sore afraid what we shall do. And his wife said: It is more profitable for us to obey her, than to run into the ire of her God, whom she preacheth. For which cause they received them into their house, and ministered to them all that was necessary and needful to them. Then as Mary Magdalene preached on a time, the said prince said to her: Weenest thou that thou mayst defend the law that thou preachest? And she answered: Certainly, I am ready to defend it, as she that is confirmed every day by miracles, and by the predication of our master, Saint Peter, which now sitteth in the see at Rome. To whom then the prince said: I and my wife be ready to obey thee in all things, if thou mayst get of thy god whom thou preachest, that we might have a child. And then Mary Magdalene said that it should not be left, and then prayed unto our Lord that he would vouchsafe of his grace to give to them a son. And our Lord heard her prayers, and the lady conceived. Then her husband would go to Saint Peter for to wit if it were true that Mary Magdalene had preached of Jesu Christ. Then his wife said to him: What will ye do sir, ween ye to go without me? Nay, when thou shalt depart, I shall depart with thee, and when thou shalt return again I shall return, and when thou shalt rest and tarry, I shall rest and tarry. To whom her husband answered, and said: Dame, it shall not be so, for thou art great, and the perils of the sea be without number. Thou mightest lightly perish, thou shalt abide at home and take heed to our possessions. And this lady for nothing would not change her purpose, but fell down on her knees at his feet sore weeping, requiring him to take her with him. And so at last he consented, and granted her request. Then Mary Magdalene set the sign of the cross on their shoulders, to the end that the fiend might not empesh ne let them in their journey. Then charged they a ship abundantly of all that was necessary to them, and left all their things in the keeping of Mary Magdalene, and went forth on their pilgrimage. And when they had made their course, and sailed a day and a night, there arose a great tempest and orage. And the wind increased and grew over hideous, in such wise that this lady, which was great, and nigh the time of her childing, began to wax feeble, and had great anguishes for the great waves and troubling of the sea, and soon after began to travail, and was delivered of a fair son, by occasion of the storm and tempest, and in her childing died. And when the child was born he cried for to have comfort of the teats of his mother, and made a piteous noise. Alas! what sorrow was this to the father, to have a son born which was the cause of the death of his mother, and he might not live, for there was none to nourish him. Alas! what shall this pilgrim do, that seeth his wife dead, and his son crying after the breast of his mother? And the pilgrim wept strongly and said: Alas! caitiff, alas! What shall I do? I desired to have a son, and I have lost both the mother and the son. And the mariners then said: This dead body must be cast mto the sea, or else we all shall perish, for as long as she shall abide with us, this tempest shall not cease. And when they had taken the body for to cast it into the sea, the husband said: Abide and suffer a little, and if ye will not spare to me my wife, yet at least spare the little child that cryeth, I pray you to tarry a while, for to know if the mother be aswoon of the pain, and that she might revive. And whilst he thus spake to them, the shipmen espied a mountain not far from the ship. And then they said that it was best to set the ship toward the land and to bury it there, and so to save it from devouring of the fishes of the sea. And the good man did so much with the mariners, what for prayers and for money, that they brought the body to the mountain. And when they should have digged for to make a pit to lay the body in, they found it so hard a rock that they might not enter for hardness of the stone. And they left the body there Iying, and covered it with a mantle; and the father laid his little son at the breast of the dead mother and said weeping: O Mary Magdalene, why camest thou to Marseilles to my great loss and evil adventure? Why have I at thine instance enterprised this journey? Hast thou required of God that my wife should conceive and should die at the childing of her son? For now it behoveth that the child that she hath conceived and borne, perish because it hath no nurse. This have I had by thy prayer, and to thee I commend them, to whom I have commended all my goods. And also I commend to thy God, if he be mighty, that he remember the soul of the mother, that he by thy prayer have pity on the child that he perish not. Then covered he the body all about with the mantle, and the child also, and then returned to the ship, and held forth his journey. And when he came to Saint Peter, Saint Peter came against him, and when he saw the sign of the cross upon his shoulder, he demanded him what he was, and wherefore he came, and he told to him all by order. To whom Peter said: Peace be to thee, thou art welcome, and hast believed good counsel. And be thou not heavy if thy wife sleep, and the little child rest with her, for our Lord is almighty for to give to whom he will, and to take away that he hath given, and to reestablish and give again that he hath taken, and to turn all heaviness and weeping into joy. Then Peter led him into Jerusalem, and showed to him all the places where Jesu Christ preached and did miracles, and the place where he suffered death, and where he ascended into heaven. And when he was well-informed of Saint Peter in the faith, and that two years were passed sith he departed from Marseilles, he took his ship for to return again into his country. And as they sailed by the sea, they came, by the ordinance of God, by the rock where the body of his wife was left, and his son. Then by prayers and gifts he did so much that they arrived thereon. And the little child, whom Mary Magdalene had kept, went oft sithes to the seaside, and, like small children, took small stones and threw them into the sea. And when they came they saw the little child playing with stones on the seaside, as he was wont to do. And then they marvelled much what he was. And when the child saw them, which never had seen people tofore, he was afraid, and ran secretly to his mother's breast and hid him under the mantle. And then the father of the child went for to see more appertly, and took the mantle, and found the child, which was right fair, sucking his mother's breast. Then he took the child in his arms and said: O blessed Mary Magdalene, I were well happy and blessed if my wife were now alive, and might live, and come again with me into my country. I know verily and believe that thou who hast given to me my son, and hast fed and kept him two years in this rock, mayst well re-establish his mother to her first health. And with these words the woman respired, and took life, and said, like as she had been waked of her sleep: O blessed Mary Magdalene thou art of great merit and glorious, for in the pains of my deliverance thou wert my midwife, and in all my necessities thou hast accomplished to me the service of a chamberer. And when her husband heard that thing he amarvelled much, and said: Livest thou my right dear and best beloved wife? To whom she said: Yea, certainly I live, and am now first come from the pilgrimage from whence thou art come, and all in like wise as Saint Peter led thee in Jerusalem, and showed to thee all the places where our Lord suffered death, was buried and ascended to heaven, and many other places, I was with you, with Mary Magdalene, which led and accompanied me, and showed to me all the places which I well remember and have in mind. And there recounted to him all the miracles that her husband had seen, and never failed of one article, ne went out of the way from the sooth. And then the good pilgrim received his wife and his child and went to ship. And soon after they came to the port of Marseilles. And they found the blessed Mary Magdalene preaching with her disciples. And then they kneeled down to her feet, and recounted to her all that had happened to them, and received baptism of Saint Maximin. And then they destroyed all the temples of the idols in the city of Marseilles, and made churches of Jesu Christ. And with one accord they chose the blessed Saint Lazarus for to be bishop of that city. And afterward they came to the city of Aix, and by great miracles and preaching they brought the people there to the faith of Jesu Christ. And there Saint Maximin was ordained to be bishop. In this meanwhile the blessed Mary Magdalene, desirous of sovereign contemplation, sought a right sharp desert, and took a place which was ordained by the angel of God, and abode there by the space of thirty years without knowledge of anybody. In which place she had no comfort of running water, ne solace of trees, ne of herbs. And that was because our Redeemer did do show it openly, that he had ordained for her refection celestial, and no bodily meats. And every day at every hour canonical she was lifted up in the air of angels, and heard the glorious song of the heavenly companies with her bodily ears. Of which she was fed and filled with right sweet meats, and then was brought again by the angels unto her proper place, in such wise as she had no need of corporal nourishing. It happed that a priest, which desired to lead a solitary life, took a cell for himself a twelve-furlong from the place of Mary Magdalene. On a day our Lord opened the eyes of that priest, and he saw with his bodily eyes in what manner the angels descended into the place where the blessed Magdalene dwelt, and how they lifted her in the air, and after by the space of an hour brought her again with divine praisings to the same place. And then the priest desired greatly to know the truth of this marvellous vision, and made his prayers to Almighty God, and went with great devotion unto the place. And when he approached nigh to it a stone's cast, his thighs began to swell and wax feeble, and his entrails began within him to lack breath and sigh for fear. And as soon as he returned he had his thighs all whole, and ready for to go. And when he enforced him to go to the place, all his body was in languor, and might not move. And then he understood that it was a secret celestial place where no man human might come, and then he called the name of Jesu, and said: I conjure thee by our Lord, that if thou be a man or other creature reasonable, that dwellest in this cave, that thou answer me, and tell me the truth of thee. And when he had said this three times, the blessed Mary Magdalene answered: Come more near, and thou shalt know that thou desirest. And then he came trembling unto the half way, and she said to him: Rememberest thou not of the gospel of Mary Magdalene, the renowned sinful woman, which washed the feet of our Saviour with her tears, and dried them with the hair of her head, and desired to have forgiveness of her sins? And the priest said to her: I remember it well, that is more than thirty years that holy church believeth and confesseth that it was done. And then she said: I am she that by the space of thirty years have been here without witting of any person, and like as it was suffered to thee yesterday to see me, in like wise I am every day lift up by the hands of the angels into the air, and have deserved to hear with my bodily ears the right sweet song of the company celestial. And because it is showed to me of our Lord that I shall depart out of this world, go to Maximin, and say to him that the next day after the resurrection of our lord, in the same time that he is accustomed to arise and go to matins, that he alone enter into his oratory, and that by the ministry and service of angels he shall find me there. And the priest heard the voice of her, like as it had been the voice of an angel, but he saw nothing; and then anon he went to Saint Maximin, and told to him all by order. Then Saint Maximin was replenished of great joy, and thanked greatly our Lord. And on the said day and hour, as is aforesaid, he entered into his oratory, and saw the blessed Mary Magdalene standing in the quire or choir yet among the angels that brought her, and was lift up from the earth the space of two or three cubits. And praying to our Lord she held up her hands, and when Saint Maximin saw her, he was afraid to approach to her. And she returned to him, and said: Come hither mine own father, and flee not thy daughter. And when he approached and came to her, as it is read in the books of the said Saint Maximin, for the customable vision that she had of angels every day, the cheer and visage of her shone as clear as it had been the rays of the sun. And then all the clerks and the priests aforesaid were called, and Mary Magdalene received the body and blood of our Lord of the hands of the bishop with great abundance of tears, and after, she stretched her body tofore the altar, and her right blessed soul departed from the body and went to our Lord. And after it was departed, there issued out of the body an odour so sweet-smelling that it remained there by the space of seven days to all them that entered in. And the blessed Maximin anointed the body of her with divers precious ointments, and buried it honourably, and after commanded that his body should be buried by hers after his death.

Hegesippus, with other books of Josephus accord enough with the said story, and Josephus saith in his treatise that the blessed Mary Magdalene, after the ascension of our Lord, for the burning love that she had to Jesu Christ and for the grief and discomfort that she had for the absence of her master our Lord, she would never see man. But after when she came into the country of Aix, she went into desert, and dwelt there thirty years without knowing of any man or woman. And he saith that, every day at the seven hours canonical she was lifted in the air of the angels. But he saith that, when the priest came to her, he found her enclosed in her cell; and she required of him a vestment, and he delivered to her one, which she clothed and covered her with. And she went with him to the church and received the communion, and then made her prayers with joined hands, and rested in peace.

In the time of Charles the great, in the year of our Lord seven hundred and seventy-one, Gerard, duke of Burgundy might have no child by his wife, wherefore he gave largely alms to the poor people, and founded many churches, and many monasteries. And when he had made the abbey of Vesoul, he and the abbot of the monastery sent a monk with a good reasonable fellowship into Aix, for to bring thither if they might of the relics of Saint Mary Magdalene. And when the monk came to the said city, he found it all destroyed of paynims. Then by adventure he found the sepulchre, for the writing upon the sepulchre of marble showed well that the blessed lady Mary Magdalene rested and lay there, and the history of her was marvellously entailed and carved in the sepulchre. And then this monk opened it by night and took the relics, and bare them to his lodging. And that same night Mary Magdalene appeared to that monk, saying: Doubt thee nothing, make an end of the work. Then he returned homeward until he came half a mile from the monastery. But he might in no wise remove the relics from thence, till that the abbot and monks came with procession, and received them honestly. And soon after the duke had a child by his wife.

There was a knight that had a custom every year to go a pilgrimage unto the body of Saint Mary Magdalene, which knight was slain in battle. And as his friends wept for him Iying on his bier, they said with sweet and devout quarrels, why she suffered her devout servant to die without confession and penance. Then suddenly he that was dead arose, all they being sore abashed, and made one to call a priest to him, and confessed him with great devotion, and received the blessed sacrament, and then rested in peace.

There was a ship charged with men and women that was perished and all to-brake, and there was among them a woman with child, which saw herself in peril to be drowned, and cried fast on Mary Magdalene for succour and help, making her avow that if she might be saved by her merits, and escape that peril, if she had a son she should give him to the monastery. And anon as she had so avowed, a woman of honourable habit and beauty appeared to her, and took her by the chin and brought her to the rivage all safe, and the other perished and were drowned. And after, she was delivered and had a son, and accomplished her avow like as she had promised.

Some say that Saint Mary Magdalene was wedded to Saint John the Evangelist when Christ called him from the wedding, and when he was called from her, she had thereof indignation that her husband was taken from her, and went and gave herself to all delight, but because it was not convenable that the calling of Saint John should be occasion of her damnation, therefore our Lord converted her mercifully to penance, and because he had taken from her sovereign delight of the flesh, he replenished her with sovereign delight spiritual tofore all other, that is the love of God. And it is said that he ennobled Saint John tofore all other with the sweetness of his familiarity, because he had taken him from the delight aforesaid.

There was a man which was blind on both his eyes, and did him to be led to the monastery of the blessed Mary Magdalene for to visit her body. His leader said to him that he saw the church. And then the blind man escried and said with a high voice: O blessed Mary Magdalene, help me that I may deserve once to see thy church. And anon his eyes were opened, and saw clearly all things about him.

There was another man that wrote his sins in a schedule and laid it under the coverture of the altar of Mary Magdalene, meekly praying her that she should get for him pardon and forgiveness, and a while after, he took the schedule again, and found all his sins effaced and struck out. Another man was holden in prison for debt of money, in irons. And he called unto his help ofttimes Mary Magdalene. And on a night a fair woman appeared to him and brake all his irons, and opened the door, and commanded him to go his way; and when he saw himself loose he fled away anon.

There was a clerk of Flanders named Stephen Rysen, and mounted in so great and disordinate felony, that he haunted all manner sins. And such thing as appertained to his health he would not hear. Nevertheless he had great devotion in the blessed Mary Magdalene and fasted her vigil, and honoured her feast. And on a time as he visited her tomb, he was not all asleep nor well awaked, when Mary Magdalene appeared to him Iike a much fair woman, sustained with two angels, one on the right side, and another on the left side, and said to him, looking on him despitously: Stephen, why reputest thou the deeds of my merits to be unworthy? Wherefore mayst not thou at the instance of my merits and prayers be moved to penance? For sith the time that thou begannest to have devotion in me, I have alway prayed God for thee firmly. Arise up therefore and repent thee, and I shall not leave thee till thou be reconciled to God. And then forthwith he felt so great grace shed in him, that he forsook and renounced the world and entered into religion, and was after of right perfect life. And at the death of him was seen Mary Magdalene, standing beside the bier with angels which bare the soul up to heaven with heavenly song in likeness of a white dove. Then let us pray to this blessed Mary Magdalene that she get us grace to do penance here for our sins, that after this life we may come to her in everlasting bliss in heaven. Amen.
http://www.catholic-forum.com/saints/golden230.htm

DISMANTLING THE DA VINCI CODE-BY SANDRA MIESEL

Dismantling The Da Vinci Code SANDRA MIESEL


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In the end, Dan Brown has penned a poorly written, atrociously researched mess. So, why bother with such a close reading of a worthless novel? The answer is simple: The Da Vinci Code takes esoterica mainstream.
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Christ's Head
by Leonardo da Vinci

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“The Grail,” Langdon said, “is symbolic of the lost goddess. When Christianity came along, the old pagan religions did not die easily. Legends of chivalric quests for the Holy Grail were in fact stories of forbidden quests to find the lost sacred feminine. Knights who claimed to be “searching for the chalice” were speaking in code as a way to protect themselves from a Church that had subjugated women, banished the Goddess, burned non-believers, and forbidden the pagan reverence for the sacred feminine.” The Da Vinci Code, pages 238-239)
The Holy Grail is a favorite metaphor for a desirable but difficult-to-attain goal, from the map of the human genome to Lord Stanley's Cup. While the original Grail — the cup Jesus allegedly used at the Last Supper — normally inhabits the pages of Arthurian romance, Dan Brown's recent mega–best-seller, The Da Vinci Code, rips it away to the realm of esoteric history.

But his book is more than just the story of a quest for the Grail — he wholly reinterprets the Grail legend. In doing so, Brown inverts the insight that a woman's body is symbolically a container and makes a container symbolically a woman's body. And that container has a name every Christian will recognize, for Brown claims that the Holy Grail was actually Mary Magdalene. She was the vessel that held the blood of Jesus Christ in her womb while bearing his children.

Over the centuries, the Grail-keepers have been guarding the true (and continuing) bloodline of Christ and the relics of the Magdalen, not a material vessel. Therefore Brown claims that “the quest for the Holy Grail is the quest to kneel before the bones of Mary Magdalene," a conclusion that would surely have surprised Sir Galahad and the other Grail knights who thought they were searching for the Chalice of the Last Supper.

The Da Vinci Code opens with the grisly murder of the Louvre's curator inside the museum. The crime enmeshes hero Robert Langdon, a tweedy professor of symbolism from Harvard, and the victim's granddaughter, burgundy-haired cryptologist Sophie Nevue. Together with crippled millionaire historian Leigh Teabing, they flee Paris for London one step ahead of the police and a mad albino Opus Dei "monk" named Silas who will stop at nothing to prevent them from finding the "Grail."

But despite the frenetic pacing, at no point is action allowed to interfere with a good lecture. Before the story comes full circle back to the Louvre, readers face a barrage of codes, puzzles, mysteries, and conspiracies.

With his twice-stated principle, "Everybody loves a conspiracy," Brown is reminiscent of the famous author who crafted her product by studying the features of ten earlier best-sellers. It would be too easy to criticize him for characters thin as plastic wrap, undistinguished prose, and improbable action. But Brown isn't so much writing badly as writing in a particular way best calculated to attract a female audience. (Women, after all, buy most of the nation's books.) He has married a thriller plot to a romance-novel technique. Notice how each character is an extreme type…effortlessly brilliant, smarmy, sinister, or psychotic as needed, moving against luxurious but curiously flat backdrops. Avoiding gore and bedroom gymnastics, he shows only one brief kiss and a sexual ritual performed by a married couple. The risqué allusions are fleeting although the text lingers over some bloody Opus Dei mortifications. In short, Brown has fabricated a novel perfect for a ladies' book club.

Brown's lack of seriousness shows in the games he plays with his character names — Robert Langdon, "bright fame long don" (distinguished and virile); Sophie Nevue, "wisdom New Eve"; the irascible taurine detective Bezu Fache, "zebu anger."; The servant who leads the police to them is Legaludec, "legal duce." The murdered curator takes his surname, Saunière, from a real Catholic priest whose occult antics sparked interest in the Grail secret. As an inside joke, Brown even writes in his real-life editor (Faukman is Kaufman).

While his extensive use of fictional formulas may be the secret to Brown's stardom, his anti-Christian message can't have hurt him in publishing circles: The Da Vinci Code debuted atop the New York Times best-seller list. By manipulating his audience through the conventions of romance-writing, Brown invites readers to identify with his smart, glamorous characters who've seen through the impostures of the clerics who hide the "truth&"; about Jesus and his wife. Blasphemy is delivered in a soft voice with a knowing chuckle: "[E]very faith in the world is based on fabrication."

But even Brown has his limits. To dodge charges of outright bigotry, he includes a climactic twist in the story that absolves the Church of assassination. And although he presents Christianity as a false root and branch, he's willing to tolerate it for its charitable works.

(Of course, Catholic Christianity will become even more tolerable once the new liberal pope elected in Brown's previous Langdon novel, Angels & Demons, abandons outmoded teachings. "Third-century laws cannot be applied to the modern followers of Christ," says one of the book's progressive cardinals.)



Where Is He Getting All of This?

Brown actually cites his principal sources within the text of his novel. One is a specimen of academic feminist scholarship: The Gnostic Gospels by Elaine Pagels. The others are popular esoteric histories: The Templar Revelation: Secret Guardians of the True Identity of Christ by Lynn Picknett and Clive Prince; Holy Blood, Holy Grail by Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh, and Henry Lincoln; The Goddess in the Gospels: Reclaiming the Sacred Feminine and The Woman with the Alabaster Jar: Mary Magdalen and the Holy Grail, both by Margaret Starbird. (Starbird, a self-identified Catholic, has her books published by Matthew Fox's outfit, Bear & Co.) Another influence, at least at second remove, is The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets by Barbara G. Walker.

The use of such unreliable sources belies Brown's pretensions to intellectuality. But the act has apparently fooled at least some of his readers — the New York Daily News book reviewer trumpeted, "His research is impeccable."

But despite Brown's scholarly airs, a writer who thinks the Merovingians founded Paris and forgets that the popes once lived in Avignon is hardly a model researcher. And for him to state that the Church burned five million women as witches shows a willful — and malicious—ignorance of the historical record. The latest figures for deaths during the European witch craze are between 30,000 to 50,000 victims. Not all were executed by the Church, not all were women, and not all were burned. Brown’s claim that educated women, priestesses, and midwives were singled out by witch-hunters is not only false, it betrays his goddess-friendly sources.



A Multitude of Errors
So error-laden is The Da Vinci Code that the educated reader actually applauds those rare occasions where Brown stumbles (despite himself) into the truth. A few examples of his "impeccable" research: He claims that the motions of the planet Venus trace a pentacle (the so-called Ishtar pentagram) symbolizing the goddess. But it isn't a perfect figure and has nothing to do with the length of the Olympiad. The ancient Olympic games were celebrated in honor of Zeus Olympias, not Aphrodite, and occurred every four years.

Brown's contention that the five linked rings of the modern Olympic Games are a secret tribute to the goddess is also wrong — each set of games was supposed to add a ring to the design but the organizers stopped at five. And his efforts to read goddess propaganda into art, literature, and even Disney cartoons are simply ridiculous.

No datum is too dubious for inclusion, and reality falls quickly by the wayside. For instance, the Opus Dei bishop encourages his albino assassin by telling him that Noah was also an albino (a notion drawn from the non-canonical 1 Enoch 106:2). Yet albinism somehow fails to interfere with the man's eyesight as it physiologically would.

But a far more important example is Brown's treatment of Gothic architecture as a style full of goddess-worshipping symbols and coded messages to confound the uninitiated. Building on Barbara Walker's claim that "like a pagan temple, the Gothic cathedral represented the body of the Goddess," The Templar Revelation asserts: "Sexual symbolism is found in the great Gothic cathedrals which were masterminded by the Knights Templar...both of which represent intimate female anatomy: the arch, which draws the worshipper into the body of Mother Church, evokes the vulva." In The Da Vinci Code, these sentiments are transformed into a character's description of "a cathedral's long hollow nave as a secret tribute to a woman's womb...complete with receding labial ridges and a nice little cinquefoil clitoris above the doorway."

These remarks cannot be brushed aside as opinions of the villain; Langdon, the book's hero, refers to his own lectures about goddess-symbolism at Chartres.

These bizarre interpretations betray no acquaintance with the actual development or construction of Gothic architecture, and correcting the countless errors becomes a tiresome exercise: The Templars had nothing to do with the cathedrals of their time, which were commissioned by bishops and their canons throughout Europe. They were unlettered men with no arcane knowledge of "sacred geometry" passed down from the pyramid builders. They did not wield tools themselves on their own projects, nor did they found masons' guilds to build for others. Not all their churches were round, nor was roundness a defiant insult to the Church. Rather than being a tribute to the divine feminine, their round churches honored the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.

Actually looking at Gothic churches and their predecessors deflates the idea of female symbolism. Large medieval churches typically had three front doors on the west plus triple entrances to their transepts on the north and south. (What part of a woman's anatomy does a transept represent? Or the kink in Chartres's main aisle?) Romanesque churches — including ones that predate the founding of the Templars — have similar bands of decoration arching over their entrances. Both Gothic and Romanesque churches have the long, rectangular nave inherited from Late Antique basilicas, ultimately derived from Roman public buildings. Neither Brown nor his sources consider what symbolism medieval churchmen such as Suger of St.-Denis or William Durandus read in church design. It certainly wasn't goddess-worship.



False Claims
If the above seems like a pile driver applied to a gnat, the blows are necessary to demonstrate the utter falseness of Brown's material. His willful distortions of documented history are more than matched by his outlandish claims about controversial subjects. But to a postmodernist, one construct of reality is as good as any other.

Brown's approach seems to consist of grabbing large chunks of his stated sources and tossing them together in a salad of a story. From Holy Blood, Holy Grail, Brown lifts the concept of the Grail as a metaphor for a sacred lineage by arbitrarily breaking a medieval French term, Sangraal (Holy Grail), into sang (blood) and raal (royal). This holy blood, according to Brown, descended from Jesus and his wife, Mary Magdalene, to the Merovingian dynasty in Dark Ages France, surviving its fall to persist in several modern French families, including that of Pierre Plantard, a leader of the mysterious Priory of Sion. The Priory — an actual organization officially registered with the French government in 1956 — makes extraordinary claims of antiquity as the "real" power behind the Knights Templar. It most likely originated after World War II and was first brought to public notice in 1962. With the exception of filmmaker Jean Cocteau, its illustrious list of Grand Masters — which include Leonardo da Vinci, Issac Newton, and Victor Hugo — is not credible, although it's presented as true by Brown.

Brown doesn't accept a political motivation for the Priory's activities. Instead he picks up The Templar Revelation’s view of the organization as a cult of secret goddess-worshippers who have preserved ancient Gnostic wisdom and records of Christ’s true mission, which would completely overturn Christianity if released. Significantly, Brown omits the rest of the book’s thesis that makes Christ and Mary Magdalene unmarried sex partners performing the erotic mysteries of Isis. Perhaps even a gullible mass-market audience has its limits.

From both Holy Blood, Holy Grail and The Templar Revelation, Brown takes a negative view of the Bible and a grossly distorted image of Jesus. He's neither the Messiah nor a humble carpenter but a wealthy, trained religious teacher bent on regaining the throne of David. His credentials are amplified by his relationship with the rich Magdalen who carries the royal blood of Benjamin: "Almost everything our fathers taught us about Christ is false," laments one of Brown's characters.

Yet it's Brown's Christology that's false — and blindingly so. He requires the present New Testament to be a post-Constantinian fabrication that displaced true accounts now represented only by surviving Gnostic texts. He claims that Christ wasn't considered divine until the Council of Nicea voted him so in 325 at the behest of the emperor. Then Constantine — a lifelong sun worshipper — ordered all older scriptural texts destroyed, which is why no complete set of Gospels predates the fourth century. Christians somehow failed to notice the sudden and drastic change in their doctrine.

But by Brown's specious reasoning, the Old Testament can't be authentic either because complete Hebrew Scriptures are no more than a thousand years old. And yet the texts were transmitted so accurately that they do match well with the Dead Sea Scrolls from a thousand years earlier. Analysis of textual families, comparison with fragments and quotations, plus historical correlations securely date the orthodox Gospels to the first century and indicate that they're earlier than the Gnostic forgeries. (The Epistles of St. Paul are, of course, even earlier than the Gospels.)

Primitive Church documents and the testimony of the ante-Nicean Fathers confirm that Christians have always believed Jesus to be Lord, God, and Savior — even when that faith meant death. The earliest partial canon of Scripture dates from the late second century and already rejected Gnostic writings. For Brown, it isn't enough to credit Constantine with the divinization of Jesus. The emperor's old adherence to the cult of the Invincible Sun also meant repackaging sun worship as the new faith. Brown drags out old (and long-discredited) charges by virulent anti-Catholics like Alexander Hislop who accused the Church of perpetuating Babylonian mysteries, as well as 19th-century rationalists who regarded Christ as just another dying savior-god.

Unsurprisingly, Brown misses no opportunity to criticize Christianity and its pitiable adherents. (The church in question is always the Catholic Church, though his villain does sneer once at Anglicans — for their grimness, of all things.) He routinely and anachronistically refers to the Church as "the Vatican," even when popes weren't in residence there. He systematically portrays it throughout history as deceitful, power-crazed, crafty, and murderous: "The Church may no longer employ crusades to slaughter, but their influence is no less persuasive. No less insidious."



Goddess Worship and the Magdalen
Worst of all, in Brown's eyes, is the fact that the pleasure-hating, sex-hating, woman-hating Church suppressed goddess worship and eliminated the divine feminine. He claims that goddess worship universally dominated pre-Christian paganism with the hieros gamos (sacred marriage) as its central rite. His enthusiasm for fertility rites is enthusiasm for sexuality, not procreation. What else would one expect of a Cathar sympathizer?

Astonishingly, Brown claims that Jews in Solomon's Temple adored Yahweh and his feminine counterpart, the Shekinah, via the services of sacred prostitutes — possibly a twisted version of the Temple's corruption after Solomon (1 Kings 14:24 and 2 Kings 23:4-15). Moreover, he says that the tetragrammaton YHWH derives from "Jehovah, an androgynous physical union between the masculine Jah and the pre-Hebraic name for Eve, Havah."

But as any first-year Scripture student could tell you, Jehovah is actually a 16th-century rendering of Yahweh using the vowels of Adonai ("Lord"). In fact, goddesses did not dominate the pre-Christian world — not in the religions of Rome, her barbarian subjects, Egypt, or even Semitic lands where the hieros gamos was an ancient practice. Nor did the Hellenized cult of Isis appear to have included sex in its secret rites.

Contrary to yet another of Brown's claims, Tarot cards do not teach goddess doctrine. They were invented for innocent gaming purposes in the 15th century and didn't acquire occult associations until the late 18th. Playing-card suites carry no Grail symbolism. The notion of diamonds symbolizing pentacles is a deliberate misrepresentation by British occultist A. E. Waite. And the number five — so crucial to Brown's puzzles — has some connections with the protective goddess but myriad others besides, including human life, the five senses, and the Five Wounds of Christ.

Brown's treatment of Mary Magdalene is sheer delusion. In The Da Vinci Code, she's no penitent whore but Christ's royal consort and the intended head of His Church, supplanted by Peter and defamed by churchmen. She fled west with her offspring to Provence, where medieval Cathars would keep the original teachings of Jesus alive. The Priory of Sion still guards her relics and records, excavated by the Templars from the subterranean Holy of Holies. It also protects her descendants — including Brown's heroine.

Although many people still picture the Magdalen as a sinful woman who anointed Jesus and equate her with Mary of Bethany, that conflation is actually the later work of Pope St. Gregory the Great. The East has always kept them separate and said that the Magdalen, "apostle to the apostles," died in Ephesus. The legend of her voyage to Provence is no earlier than the ninth century, and her relics weren't reported there until the 13th. Catholic critics, including the Bollandists, have been debunking the legend and distinguishing the three ladies since the 17th century.

Brown uses two Gnostic documents, the Gospel of Philip and the Gospel of Mary, to prove that the Magdalen was Christ's "companion," meaning sexual partner. The apostles were jealous that Jesus used to "kiss her on the mouth" and favored her over them. He cites exactly the same passages quoted in Holy Blood, Holy Grail and The Templar Revelation and even picks up the latter's reference to The Last Temptation of Christ. What these books neglect to mention is the infamous final verse of the Gospel of Thomas. When Peter sneers that "women are not worthy of Life," Jesus responds, "I myself shall lead her in order to make her male.... For every woman who will make herself male will enter the Kingdom of Heaven."

That's certainly an odd way to "honor" one's spouse or exalt the status of women.



The Knights Templar
Brown likewise misrepresents the history of the Knights Templar. The oldest of the military-religious orders, the Knights were founded in 1118 to protect pilgrims in the Holy Land. Their rule, attributed to St. Bernard of Clairvaux, was approved in 1128 and generous donors granted them numerous properties in Europe for support. Rendered redundant after the last Crusader stronghold fell in 1291, the Templars' pride and wealth — they were also bankers — earned them keen hostility.

Brown maliciously ascribes the suppression of the Templars to “Machiavellian” Pope Clement V, whom they were blackmailing with the Grail secret. His "ingeniously planned sting operation" had his soldiers suddenly arrest all Templars. Charged with Satanism, sodomy, and blasphemy, they were tortured into confessing and burned as heretics, their ashes "tossed unceremoniously into the Tiber."

But in reality, the initiative for crushing the Templars came from King Philip the Fair of France, whose royal officials did the arresting in 1307. About 120 Templars were burned by local Inquisitorial courts in France for not confessing or retracting a confession, as happened with Grand Master Jacques de Molay. Few Templars suffered death elsewhere although their order was abolished in 1312. Clement, a weak, sickly Frenchman manipulated by his king, burned no one in Rome inasmuch as he was the first pope to reign from Avignon (so much for the ashes in the Tiber).

Moreover, the mysterious stone idol that the Templars were accused of worshiping is associated with fertility in only one of more than a hundred confessions. Sodomy was the scandalous — and possibly true — charge against the order, not ritual fornication. The Templars have been darlings of occultism since their myth as masters of secret wisdom and fabulous treasure began to coalesce in the late 18th century. Freemasons and even Nazis have hailed them as brothers. Now it's the turn of neo-Gnostics.



Twisting da Vinci

Leonardo da Vinci
(1452-1519)

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Brown's revisionist interpretations of da Vinci are as distorted as the rest of his information. He claims to have first run across these views "while I was studying art history in Seville," but they correspond point for point to material in The Templar Revelation. A writer who sees a pointed finger as a throat-cutting gesture, who says the Madonna of the Rocks was painted for nuns instead of a lay confraternity of men, who claims that da Vinci received "hundreds of lucrative Vatican commissions" (actually, it was just one…and it was never executed) is simply unreliable.
Brown's analysis of da Vinci's work is just as ridiculous. He presents the Mona Lisa as an androgynous self-portrait when it's widely known to portray a real woman, Madonna Lisa, wife of Francesco di Bartolomeo del Giocondo. The name is certainly not — as Brown claims — a mocking anagram of two Egyptian fertility deities Amon and L'Isa (Italian for Isis). How did he miss the theory, propounded by the authors of The Templar Revelation, that the Shroud of Turin is a photographed self-portrait of da Vinci?

Much of Brown's argument centers around da Vinci's Last Supper, a painting the author considers a coded message that reveals the truth about Jesus and the Grail. Brown points to the lack of a central chalice on the table as proof that the Grail isn't a material vessel. But da Vinci's painting specifically dramatizes the moment when Jesus warns, "One of you will betray me" (John 13:21). There is no Institution Narrative in St. John's Gospel. The Eucharist is not shown there. And the person sitting next to Jesus is not Mary Magdalene (as Brown claims) but St. John, portrayed as the usual effeminate da Vinci youth, comparable to his St. John the Baptist. Jesus is in the exact center of the painting, with two pyramidal groups of three apostles on each side. Although da Vinci was a spiritually troubled homosexual, Brown's contention that he coded his paintings with anti-Christian messages simply can't be sustained.



Brown's Mess
In the end, Dan Brown has penned a poorly written, atrociously researched mess. So, why bother with such a close reading of a worthless novel? The answer is simple: The Da Vinci Code takes esoterica mainstream. It may well do for Gnosticism what The Mists of Avalon did for paganism — gain it popular acceptance. After all, how many lay readers will see the blazing inaccuracies put forward as buried truths?

What's more, in making phony claims of scholarship, Brown's book infects readers with a virulent hostility toward Catholicism. Dozens of occult history books, conveniently cross-linked by Amazon.com, are following in its wake. And booksellers' shelves now bulge with falsehoods few would be buying without The Da Vinci Code connection. While Brown's assault on the Catholic Church may be a backhanded compliment, it's one we would have happily done without.



ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

Sandra Miesel. "Dismantling The Da Vinci Code." Crisis (September 2003).

This article is reprinted with permission from the Morley Institute a non-profit education organization. To subscribe to Crisis magazine call 1-800-852-9962.

THE AUTHOR

Sandra Miesel, medievalist and Catholic journalist, writes from Indianapolis.

Copyright © 2003 Crisis



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http://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/persecution/pch0058.html

INDIA-FORUM:SILENCING THE DA VINCI CODE=HINDU ARE HAPPY FOR THE BLASPHEMOUS DA VINCI CODE

Silencing The Da Vinci Code

By Kalavai Venkat | Published 05/29/2006 INDIA-FORUM


By Kalavai Venkat


Christian groups want The Da Vinci Code banned. A pliant Censor Board of India insists on a disclaimer at the beginning and end saying the film is ?a work of pure fiction and has no correspondence to historical facts of the Christian religion.? The Censor Board did not insist on any such disclaimer when Mel Gibson?s The Passion of the Christ, with its vividly anti-Semitic libels, was released. So, the Censor Board considers the story the Christian Bible peddles as historically accurate, and Dan Brown?s story as a fiction. For either version of the Jesus story to be true or false, there must be historical evidence that Jesus existed. As Professor G. A. Wells demonstrates, there is none.[i] Historians of that period have recorded events in detail, yet they are unaware of Jesus Christ, who remains an elusive and shadowy figure.



Is the Christian story credible?



How credible is the Jesus story the Christian Bible tells? It claims:



Jesus was born and lived in Palestine.
He was crucified. He died for our sins and was resurrected. So, we must accept him as our savior.


This is the outline of the story the canonical gospels tell. Luke (2:2) claims that Jesus was born when Quirinius carried out the census in 6 CE. Matthew (2:1) claims that Jesus was born during the reign of Herod, who had died in 4 BCE. Should we believe Luke or Matthew?



The canonical gospel writers pretend to be eyewitnesses to what Jesus supposedly did. But they are unfamiliar with Palestine or the Hebrew language. This is illustrated by the title they bestow upon Jesus: Jesus of Nazareth (Matthew 2:23). Josephus wrote extensively about every city and town of Palestine but does not mention a place called Nazareth. As the Gnostic Gospel of Philip shows, in those days, there was a sect of Gnostics called Nazarenes, meaning those who reveal inner secrets.[ii] Ignorant gospel writers mistook that for a place name, and made it Jesus? hometown!



Until after the time of Justin Martyr (~150 CE), no Christian writer even used the word gospel.[iii] Only the Gnostics did. Martyr does not mention the four canonical gospels. The celebrated philosopher, Celsus (~ 170 CE), mentions the gospels of Helen, Mariamme, Salome etc, but is completely unaware of the four canonical gospels.[iv] A little later, Irenaeus declares, ?It is not possible that the gospels can be either more or fewer than in number than they are, for there are four zones of the world and four principal winds.?[v] This illustrates the shaky foundations upon which the four ?authentic? gospels were built. From there on, the Church systematically suppressed all the other gospels as heresy. For example, Clement of Alexandria (150-215 CE) tells us that originally three gospels of Mark existed. Only one of those made it to the Christian Bible. The four canonical gospels themselves were repeatedly edited, and attained their current shape only in the fourth century CE. The oldest, fairly complete manuscript of the Christian Bible is also from the fourth century CE.[vi]



It is evident that the early Gnostic Christians practised the ritual of symbolic death by crucifixion. It was meant to destroy one?s identification with the body and realize the true self within. Gnostics considered Christ allegoric and not as a historical person. Paul, a Gnostic later appropriated by the Church, declares, ?The secret is this: Christ in you (Colossians 1:25-28.)? Paul makes it clear that Jesus was merely an allegory when he declares, ?If Jesus had been on earth, he wouldn?t have been a priest.(Hebrews 8:4)? As Freke and Gandy point out, had Paul considered Jesus historical, he would have said, ?When Jesus was on earth, he was not a priest.? This explains why Paul never quotes the words of Jesus which he should have had there been a historical Jesus.



Paul further confirms that he considered Jesus? crucifixion symbolic where he declares, ?I have shared Christ?s crucifixion. The person we once were has been crucified with Christ. (Colossians 1:24, Galatians 2:20, Romans 6:7)? He also tells Galatians, a community that lived hundreds of miles away from Palestine, that they too witnessed Jesus? crucifixion (Galatians 3:1). Since Paul had never met Jesus, the crucifixion his audience in Galatia witnessed could not have been an historical event. It has to be allegorical. Ptolemy (~140 CE), disciple of Valentinus, reveals that Pilate merely made an image of Jesus and crucified it instead of crucifying Jesus himself.[vii] Basilides (116-161 CE), a Gnostic saint, writes that those who believe Jesus was physically crucified are enslaved to myths, and those who treat it as symbolic are liberated.[viii]



All of these illustrate that the Gnostics considered crucifixion and the subsequent resurrection as symbolic acts leading to liberation, and Christ allegorical. The canonical gospel writers misappropriated those profound teachings and created the libelous fiction that Jesus was physically crucified!



Even the ubiquitous image of Jesus with his flowing locks is an eighth century CE Roman Church fabrication. Paul says, ?Flowing locks disgrace a man (1 Corinthians 11:14).? He couldn?t have said that had Jesus sported flowing locks. Flowing locks became popular after the second century CE Roman Emperor Hadrian wore them in imitation of Greek philosophers. Ironically, that makes Jesus the first god ever created in the image of man!



Minucius Felix (160-215 CE), an early Church father, unequivocally rejects the claim that Jesus was crucified. He tells his opponents, ?When you attribute to us the worship of a criminal and his cross you wander far from the truth.?[ix] This shows that even until the second century CE, Christians did not believe in the crucifixion of Jesus as a historical event.



Discussing several such examples of fraud, Freke and Gandy conclude that the Christian Bible is the product of the Holy Forgery Mill.[x] In summary, the Christian Bible?s account of Jesus is neither contemporary nor truthful. This should not be surprising because Tertullian (160-220 CE) best summarized the Church position: ?Thirst for knowledge is a vice.?[xi]



Is the Dan Brown story credible?



How credible is the Jesus story that Dan Brown tells? His premises, the ones that the Church fears, are:



Jesus did not die crucified.
Jesus married Mary Magdalene and created a lineage.


We have seen that the Christian story is one of fiction because their sources have been forged. What do the sources that were not forged, and which the Christian Church suppressed as heresy, tell?



Professor Alvar Ellegard demonstrates that the original schools of Christianity were those of the Essenes and Gnostics. The Gnostic collection of the Nag Hammadi Library, whose oldest texts date back to the first century CE and the youngest to the third, helps us understand what early Christians thought of Jesus. These texts are older than the Christian Bible as the early Church writers themselves confirm. Justin Martyr confirms that Simon Magus, a Gnostic teacher, was a contemporary of Emperor Claudius (10 BCE ? 54 CE).[xii] While several Gnostic texts treat Jesus as allegorical, some tell a story quite different from what the Christian Bible tells. Interestingly, despite all efforts at suppression, some of these facts have survived in the canonical gospels too.



The Gospel of the Beloved Disciple (John 13:23) portrays Jesus and Mary Magdalene as so intimate that during the Last Supper Mary is lying in the lap of Jesus. The Gospel of Philip (2:3:63-64) confirms that Jesus often kissed Mary on her lips, arousing jealousy in his other disciples. Even Luke (7:38) admits that Mary wiped Jesus? feet with her hair. Discussing this episode, Freke and Gandy point out that according to Jewish customs a wife could untie her hair only in the presence of her husband. Untying it in the presence of other men would result in divorce.[xiii] This too confirms that Jesus and Mary were either married or were rebellious lovers.



Some schools of Gnostics practised ritualistic nudity and indulged in sacred sexuality, at times even violating social norms. In the Gospel of Thomas (37), disciples ask Jesus, ?When will you appear to us? When will we see you?? He replies:



?When you strip without being ashamed, and you take your clothes and put them under your feet like little children and trample them, then you will see the son of the living one and you will not be afraid.?



Augustine (354-430 CE) too confirms that Adamites celebrate the Eucharist naked and because of this their church is paradise.[xiv] Paul (1 Corinthians 5:1) confirms that ritualistic incestuous sex and excessive fornication were frequently practised by early Christians. Another ancient text, Genna Marias, reveals that Jesus himself had participated in sacred sexuality. He takes Mary Magdalene to the Mount of Olives, prays, produces another woman from his side, and has sex with her. Shocked at this sight, Mary Magdalene faints. Jesus chastises her for her lack of faith.[xv]



So, it is evident from these accounts that Jesus and Mary were very intimate as lovers. It is not known whether they married, though one could argue that intimate couples often do. In summary, we can conclude that textual evidence discredits the Church story but does not confirm Dan Brown?s in its entirety. The most pertinent question to ask is how someone could subject Dan Brown?s story to scrutiny while uncritically absorbing the Christian fiction as history.



Why does the Church fear The Da Vinci Code?



Not only does it demolish the very premise on which Christianity has been built, it also does so in a fashion the masses can relate to. Over the last hundred years, countless academic scholars have debunked the Christian myths. But their writings remain confined to the academy. So, the Church did not have to worry about losing its stranglehold on its flocks. But Dan Brown?s work, and the movie, packaged as fiction, directly challenges the Church.



The Church has another reason to worry as well. There are several other skeletons in its closet the Church would not want the public to know. One such is its collaboration with the Nazis. The Christian Church willfully supported Hitler. After Hitler committed suicide, Cardinal Adolf Bertram ordered that in all churches of his archdiocese a special requiem, namely, ?a solemn requiem mass be held in commemoration of the Fuhrer, where prayers to the Almighty that His son, Hitler, be admitted to paradise, be offered.?[xvi]



The Church also operated the notorious Ratline, which helped the Nazi fugitives escape after WWII ended.[xvii] Naturally, the Church would not want these truths to be made into popular movies. The Da Vinci Code potentially paves the path to the exposure and destruction of the Christian Church. So, it has to be suppressed. What better climate could be there to stifle the truth than the one with a devout Catholic Sonia Maino as the de facto PM, and a pliant Censor Board?



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[i] Wells, G.A.: The Jesus Myth.

[ii] Robinson, J.M.: The Nag Hammadi Library, The Gospel of Philip 2:3:56.

[iii] Ellegard, A.: Jesus ? One Hundred Years Before Christ, p. 187.

[iv] Freke, T. and Gandy, P.: Jesus and the Lost Goddess ? the Secret Teachings of the Original Christians, p. 21, fn. 75.

[v] Stevenson, J.: A New Eusebius, p. 117.

[vi] Ellegard, A.: Jesus ? One Hundred Years Before Christ, p. 187.

[vii] Irenaeus: Against All Heresies 1:5:2.

[viii] Barnstone W.: The Other Bible, p. 626.

[ix] Doherty, Earl: The Jesus Puzzle ? Did Christianity Begin With a Mythical Christ? p. 287, citing Octavius chapter 9.

[x] Freke, T. and Gandy, P.: Jesus and the Lost Goddess ? the Secret Teachings of the Original Christians, p. 218.

[xi] Tertullian: The Prescription Against Heretics 43.

[xii] Ellegard, A.: Jesus ? One Hundred Years Before Christ, pp. 31-79, 87-93.

[xiii] Freke, T. and Gandy, P.: Jesus and the Lost Goddess ? the Secret Teachings of the Original Christians, p. 95.

[xiv] Ibid, p. 231.

[xv] Jordan, M.: The Historical Mary ? Revealing the Pagan Identity of the Virgin Mother, p. 161, citing Panarion 2:26 8:1.

[xvi] Goldhagen, D.J.: A Moral Reckoning, the Role of the Catholic Church in the Holocaust and Its Unfulfilled Duty of Repair, p. 200.

[xvii] Aarons, M. and Loftus, J.: Unholy Trinity, the Vatican, the Nazis and the Swiss Banks.

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BREAKING THE DA VINCI CODE-THE LEGEND OF HOLY GRAIL

PART VI
The Legend of the Holy Grail


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The Da Vinci Deception - pp. 238, 249, 257

“‘Sophie, legend tells us the Holy Grail is a chalice - a cup. But the Grail’s description as a chalice is actually an allegory to protect the true nature of the Holy Grail. That is to say, the legend uses the chalice as a metaphor for something far more important...The Grail is literally the ancient symbol for womanhood, and the Holy Grail represents the sacred feminine and the goddess, which, of course, has now been lost, virtually eliminated by the Church. The power of the female, and her ability to produce life was once very sacred, but it posed a threat to the and so the sacred feminine was demonized and called unclean...The Grail is symbolic of the lost goddess. When Christianity came along, the old pagan legends did not die easily. Legends of chilvalric quests for the lost Grail were, in fact stories of forbidden quests to find the lost sacred feminine’... ‘The legend of the Holy Grail is a legend about royal blood. When Grail legends speak about the chalice that held the blood of Christ it speaks, in fact of Mary Magdalene - the female womb that carried Jesus’ royal bloodline...The royal bloodline of Jesus Christ is the source of the most enduring legend of all time - the Holy Grail’... ‘At its heart, the quest for the Holy Grail has always been a quest for the Magdalene - the wronged queen, entombed with proof of her family’s rightful claim to power...Christ’s lineage was in perpetual danger. The early Church feared that if the lineage were permitted to grow, the secret of Jesus and Magdalene would eventually surface and challenge the fundamental Catholic doctrine - that of a divine Messiah who did not consort with women or engage in sexual union.’”


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Dan Brown weaves his tangled web of conspiracy around the popular legend of the Holy Grail which he grandiosely describes as “the most enduring legend of all time.” (DVC, p. 249) In his complex scenario, the Grail becomes the symbol of the sacred feminine, the lost goddess, Mary Magdalen as the wife of Christ and mother of His children, and the royal bloodline of Jesus descendants. The novel reports that the actual artifacts protected by the Grail guardians are the bones of Mary Magdalen and four huge chests of documents which certify the continuation of the descendants of Christ. All of this is an ungainly combination of the conspiracy theories of Brown’s favorite occult and feminist writers. “To this degree Brown fuses the principle tenets of Holy Blood , Holy Grail with The Templar Revelation’s emphasis on the goddess and the mystical feminism of Margaret Starbird.” (Olsen/Miesel, p. 179) The actual legend of the Holy Grail, while genuinely fascinating, is considerably less dramatic than The Da Vinci Code’s revision of it. The legend seems to have been based upon Irish Celtic tales of magical vessels which provided endless bounty. The English word “grail” is derived from the Latin noun “gradale” which refers to a deep platter or tray upon which food was served. In the novel, Professor Teabing performs a bit of etymological sleight of hand as he transforms the Old French words “San Greal” (Holy Grail) into the words “Sang Real” (Royal Blood). The shift of this single letter, he contends, is of enormous significance and provides the key to understanding the Grail legend. Teabing argues that”Sang Real” is “the most ancient form of the word” (DVC, p. 250). This is simply not true. The term “Greal” first appears in conjunction with the myth of the Grail in a French romantic poem by Chretien de Troyes written in the second half of the 12th century ( c. A.D. 1175). In this original text, the noun “Greal” (Grail) is used without the adjective “San” (Holy) so that there can be no doubt whatsoever as to the author’s intent. The mistaken identification of Holy Grail (“San Greal”) as Royal Blood (“Sang Real”) originated in England in the 15th Century - in all probability the result of “the misreading or whim of an English writer perhaps not entirely at ease with French.” (Barber, p. 311) But for Dan Brown, this 500 year old scribal error becomes the single crucial key to the entire mystery of the Grail.


In Chretien de Troyes unfinished medieval epic, the Grail is a large jeweled serving dish containing a single Communion Wafer which is presented at the royal banquet of a maimed King. The King cannot be healed until a hero knight named Percival releases the magical powers of the Grail by posing the correct questions about its origin. In the decades which followed the tale was retold many times, amended and expanded over and over again. The jeweled bowl became a golden chalice. The chalice became the cup with which Christ celebrated the Last Supper. The chalice, we are then told, was also present on Calvary to catch the sacred blood which poured from the Savior’s side. Joseph of Arimathea became the custodian of the Grail. According to the legend, the Jews walled Joseph up in a prison cell in Jerusalem for his role in the burial of Jesus. Throughout the years of his entombment, the Grail provided the food and drink that he needed to survive. He was finally released from his confinement in A.D. 70 by the Roman emperor Vespasian. Joseph of Arimathea carried the Grail with him on his journeys across the ancient world. That pilgrimage ended in England and the quest for the Holy Grail was linked to King Arthur and his knights of the Round Table. Sir Galahad, the purest and most noble of Arthur’s knights, was privileged to stand before the Grail and receive communion from the hand of Christ Himself. The Arthurian version of the Grail legend was preserved and elaborated in the English speaking world by writers like Thomas Mallory (“Le Morte D’ Arthur”) and Alfred Lord Tennyson (“The Idylls of the King”). In Germany, the story followed a different path. The legend was retold by the medieval poet Wolfram von Eschenbach (c. 1210). His hero was the noble knight Parzifal, and the Grail became a magical white stone placed on earth by the angels at the time of the great War in Heaven. The stone was kept within the Grail Fortress and guarded by the noble knights of the Holy Grail. This variation of the tale was immortalized in the operas of Richard Wagner (“Parsifal” and “Lohingrin”) and led to bizarre occult ceremonies held by Heinrich Himmler and the elite inner circle of his Nazi SS. Himmler constructed a massive mountaintop castle at Wewelsburg with the “Führershalle” - the Leader’s Hall - at its heart built around a huge oak roundtable where the “Reichsführer” and his elite could gather in Arthurian splendor. Special SS teams scoured Europe and the globe in search of the Holy Grail which Himmler was convinced would give him the power to destroy Christianity once and for all and replace it with a Teutonic religion fit for the Master Race. Peter Levenda, author of Unholy Alliance - A History of Nazi Involvement with the Occult, describes Heinrich Himmler’s quest for the Holy Grail as “one of the most outlandish - yet somehow oddly grand, strangely cosmic - endeavors of the Third Reich in general, and of the SS in particular.” (Levenda, p. 203) These efforts, which most people dismiss as purely fictional, were immortalized in the first and third movies of Steven Spielberg’s “Indiana Jones” trilogy.


There is considerable variety in the different versions of the legend of the Holy Grail. But in all of them, the Grail is a mystical, magical object - a golden platter, a jeweled chalice, or a sacred stone. In every case, the stories encourage the knightly virtues of bravery, selflessness, and purity. In most instances, the empowerment of or reward for such virtues is bestowed through a relic that is somehow linked to the Passion of Jesus Christ and His presence in the Sacrament of Holy Communion. Grail historian Norma Lorre Goodrich is correct when she concludes that every major aspect of the legend “derives from Jesus, His life and His death.” (Goodrich, p. 329)


This pattern can be seen most emphatically in a scene from one of the earliest versions of the story, “The Quest for the Holy Grail,” written around A.D. 1220. The worthy knights who have achieved their quest, and have come into presence the Grail - a beautiful golden serving dish (“the platter in which Jesus partook of the pascal lamb with His disciples”(Matarasso, p. 276) - take part in a celebration of communion with Bishop Josephus, the son of Joseph of Arimathea. As the Words of Institution are pronounced, “He took from the Vessel a host made in the likeness of bread. As he raised it aloft, there descended from above a figure like unto a child, whose countenance glowed and blazed a bright as a fire; and he entered the bread which quite distinctly took on human form before the eyes of those assembled there.” (Matarasso, p. 275) The service continues, and the knights behold “the figure of a man appear from out of the Holy Vessel, unclothed, and bleeding from his hands and feet and side.” (Matarasso, p. 276) This man, the Lord Jesus, distributes the Sacrament to the assembled knights and “it seemed that the host placed on his tongue was made of bread. But when they had all received the holy food, which they found so honeyed and delectable, it seemed as though the essence of all sweetness was housed within their bodies.” (Matarasso, p. 276). The progression from the small child to the man who bears the wounds of the cross signifies the incarnation and the passion of our Lord. The fact that Christ enters and proceeds from the consecrated Host within the Grail indicates His gracious presence in the Sacrament. Grail Historian P. M. Maratasso correctly summarizes the significance of the timeless legend in this way: “The Grail itself is the symbol of God’s grace. At once, the dish of the Last Supper, the vessel which received the effusion of Christ’s blood when His side was pierced, and in the text both chalice and ciborium, its secrets are the mystery of the Eucharist unveiled.” (Maratasso, p.15)


This unmistakably clear Christian symbolism notwithstanding, the legend of the Holy Grail has proven to be fertile ground for occult speculators of every stripe and description. For feminist mystic Margaret Starbird, the Grail became the key in her quest to rediscover the lost goddess:


“It was clear that the ‘Grail Heresy’ - that Jesus had been married and that Mary Magdalene had brought a child of his to Gaul- existed and had existed in Europe for a long time...Everywhere I was finding confirmation of the basic tenet of the heresy of the Holy Grail - that Mary Magdalene was the Beloved of Christ. I sometime felt as if my hair had caught fire...I now realize that I am charged not only with restoring the Bride to Christianity - the Goddess in the Gospels - but also with restoring the partnership paradigm...This Grail spirituality has been neglected...the doctrine of the sacred partnership of humanity and divinity in each human individual.” (Starbird, pp. 77-78,153)


Alan Butler, author of The Goddess, The Grail, And The Lodge, is a bit more colorful in making the same point as he asserts “that the Holy Grail represents every vagina on earth.” (Butler, p. 334) Princeton scholar Roger Sherman Loomis, in his intriguing study The Grail - From Celtic Myth to Christian Symbol, dismisses all such speculation as “preposterous.” (Loomis, p. 197). The Da Vinci Code’s outlandish manipulation of the Grail legend transcends these and the abundance of other occult fantasies on this topic. In Brown’s hyper-active imagination, the Grail is transformed into a metaphor for every one of his numerous grievances against historic Christianity. According to this all encompassing scenario, the Grail represents the denial of the deity of Christ and the marriage of Jesus to Mary Magdalen. At the same time it is a symbol for the religion of the goddess and the principle of the divine feminine. In addition to all of this, Brown also subscribes to the view that the Grail symbolizes the ongoing royal bloodline of Jesus Christ which has a host of far reaching implications all its own. In Bloodline of the Holy Grail - The Hidden Lineage of Jesus Revealed, popular occult writer Laurence Gardner details and applies the bloodline argument in this way:

“In the original Grail legends there were constant references to the Grail family, the Grail dynasty and the custodians (or guardians) of the Grail. Quite apart from legend, the Knights Templars of Jerusalem were indeed the guardians of the Sangreal...- the Blood Royal, carried in the uterine chalice of Mary Magdalene...As detailed in medieval literature, the Grail was identified with a family and a dynasty. It was the desposynic Vine of Judah, perpetuated in the West through the blood of Jesus...It descended to the Merovingian kings of France and the Stuart kings of Scots...In descent from Jesus’ brother James/Joseph of Arimathea, the Grail family founded the princely house of Camulod and the Princely House of Wales. Notable in these lines were King Lucius, Coel Hen, Empress Helena, Ceredig Gwledig and King Arthur. The divine legacy of the Sangreal was perpetuated in the sovereign and most noble houses of Britain and Europe and is still extent today.” (Gardner, pp. 201-202)

These, The Da Vinci Code ominously informs us, are the dark secrets which Christianity generally and the Roman Catholic Church specifically have conspired for centuries to conceal and deny. The evil minions of Rome will stop at nothing , we are told, to prevent the disclosure of the ancient truths which would bring about the collapse of Christianity. Brown contends that the Church has been guilty of countless murders over the years to suppress the secrets of the Holy Grail. Professor Teabing sums up the Church’s pattern of brutal repression in this way: “My dear, the Church has two thousand years of experience pressuring those who threaten to unveil its lies. Since the days of Constantine, the Church has successfully hidden the truth about Mary Magdalene and Jesus. We should not be surprised that now, once again, they have found a way to keep the world in the dark. The Church may no longer employ crusaders to slaughter non-believers, but their influence is no less pervasive. No less insidious...History repeats itself. The Church has a precedent of murder when it comes to silencing the Sangreal.”(DVC, p. 409) For this reason, The Da Vinci Code insists, the guardians of the Grail legend, the Knights Templar and geniuses like Leonardo da Vinci, Botticelli, and Sir Isaac Newton, risked their very lives to protect and preserve the truths which the legend conveyed.


All of this nonsense is nothing more than a house of cards built upon suspicion, innuendo, and allegation. When The Da Vinci Code’s theory is subjected to honest historical scrutiny, it quickly disintegrates, revealing its total lack of substance or basis in fact. Medieval historian Richard Barber is the author of The Holy Grail - Imagination and Belief - a work considered by many to be the most comprehensive and authoritative modern assessment of the Grail legend. Barber offers a devastating critique of the conspiracy approach to the history of the Holy Grail. He uses Holy Blood, Holy Grail - The Secret History of Christ - The Shocking History of the Grail by Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh, and Henry Lincoln as the prime example of such “pseudo-history.” As previously noted, Holy Blood, Holy Grail is one of the foundational sources for The Da Vinci Code, specifically endorsed by Dan Brown as the book which “finally brought the idea of Christ’s bloodline into the mainstream.” (DVC, p. 253). This is Dr. Barber’s analysis:

“The Templar-Grail myth was not seriously revived until the last two decades of the 20th Century. It is at the heart of the most notorious of all the Grail pseudo-histories Holy Blood, Holy Grail which is a classic example of the conspiracy theory of history. For ‘conspirators’ history is not bunk, as Henry Ford famously described it, but its orthodox form is a vast deception, practiced by those in power to cover up the truth...It would take a book as long as the original to refute and dissect Holy Blood, Holy Grail point by point; it is essentially a text which proceeds by innuendo not by refutable scholarly debate... Essentially, the whole argument is an ingeniously constructed serious of suppositions combined with forced readings of such tangible facts as are offered....And it is not sufficient to confine oneself exclusively to facts. This is carte blanche to create an imaginary network of previously invisible links...Once again, the Grail’s chief function seems to be as a lodestar for imaginative creation, in this case disguised as history but in truth imaginative indeed.” (Barber, pp. 310-311)


In the world of conspiracy buffs, those who are in on the secret are the only ones who know the truth, and anyone who disagrees with them is either ignorant or a part of the evil conspiracy. It is a world filled with delusions and paranoia. It is the world of The Da Vinci Code.


There is a tragic irony in the modern transformation of the legend of the Holy Grail. That which was once a profoundly Christian symbol has mutated into just one more emblem of our contemporary obsession with self. That which was once the means of expressing Christian truth and encouraging Christian piety has become instead one more weapon in the arsenal of those who would attack and destroy historic Christianity. Dr. Barber notes the substance of this change:

“The Grail looms large as a non-specific symbol of the quest for interior truth, stripped of its Christian overtones, and, given the New Age fondness for a return to a more primitive religious state on the grounds that it leads us closer to the natural world and therefore brings us into harmony with our environment...For this is in many ways, a new faith based on belief in the overriding importance of the self...The Western idealization of the individual is taken to its extreme, and the Grail, once a symbol of universal redemption, is the means only to individual self-fulfillment...Ironically, a symbol with a very precise Christian origin and context has become a means of escaping from established religion and into a world where everything has a voice.” (Barber, pp. 319-320)
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