The Da Vinci Code

[b]The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown
a summary and book review[/b]
TheDa Vinci Code is a novel written by American author Dan Brown and firstpublished in 2003 that has become a worldwide bestseller with over nine millioncopies being sold.
Theplot of this book concerns the attempts of Dr. Robert Langdon, Professor ofReligious Zymology at Harvard University, to solve the murder of JacquesSaunière, the curator of the Louvre Museum in Paris, after Saunière's body hadbeen found inside the Louvre naked with a cryptic message written on his torsoin his own blood and posed like Leonardo Da Vinci's famous drawing, VitruvianMan:-
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Theplot continues in ways that combine the detective thriller and conspiracytheory genres with Saunière's murder being attibuted to powerful forces thatwish to preserve ancient secrets relating to Jesus having been married to MaryMagdalene and having been the father of their child.
The interpretation of hidden messages inside Da Vinci's famous works, includingthe Mona Lisa and The Last Supper, figure prominently in the solution to themystery. The solution itself is found to be intimately connected with thepossible location of the Holy Grail and to a mysterious society called thePriory of Sion, as well as to the Knights Templar. The Catholic organizationOpus Dei also figures prominently in the plot. It transpires that Saunière wasin fact the secret head of the Priory of Sion - an organization that wasdevoted to preserving certain secrets about the location of the Holy Grail. Thecryptic messages on his body being his own dying attempts to leave an importantmessage to his grand-daughter, Sophie Neveu, who was employed by the French stateas a cryptologist.
According to the novel, the secrets of the Holy Grail, as kept by the Priory ofSion, are as follows:
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[*]The Holy Grail is not a physical chalice, but a woman, namely Mary Magdalene, who helped to carry the bloodline of Christ into the following ages.
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[*]Mary Magdalene was of royal descent (through the Jewish House of Benjamin) and was the wife of Jesus, of the House of David. That she was a prostitute was a slander invented by the Catholic Church to obscure their true relationship. At the time of the Crucifixion, she was pregnant. After the Crucifixion, she fled to Gaul, where she was sheltered by the Jews of Marseilles. She gave birth to a daughter, named Sarah. The bloodline of Jesus and Mary Magdalene became the Merovingian dynasty of France.
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[*]The French expression for the Holy Grail, [i]San gréal[/i], actually is a play on [i]Sang réal[/i], which literally means "royal blood".
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[*]The Grail relics consist of the documents that testify to the bloodline, as well as the actual bones of Mary Magdalene.
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[*]Sophie Neveu and her brother are descendants of the original bloodline of Jesus and Mary Magdalene (their last name was changed to hide their ancestry).
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[*]The existence of the bloodline was the secret that was contained in the documents discovered by the Crusaders after they conquered Jerusalem in 1099. The Priory of Sion and the Knights Templar were organized to keep the secret.
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TheDa Vinci Code has been criticized by many scholars but it has undoubtedlyhelped to spur widespread popular interest in certain theories concerning thelegend of the Holy Grail and the role of Mary Magdalene in the history ofChristianity.