Concept Clarifications: Symbology, Sarcophagus, Merovingian Dynasty, Opus Dei, Priory of Sion, Constantine in ‘The Vinci Code’

TOPIC: - Concept Clarifications: Symbology, Sarcophagus, Merovingian Dynasty,

Opus Dei, Priory of Sion, Constantine in ‘The Vinci Code’

PAPER 13:- The New Literatures

STUDENT'S NAME : - Gohil Yashpalsinh Baldevsinh

CLASS: - M.A. SEM-4

ROLL NO.:-15

YEAR: - 2014

Concept Clarifications:-
Symbology, Sarcophagus, Merovingian dynasty, Opus Dei, Priory Of Sion, Constantine.

            ‘The Vinci Code’ is a very well known book by the writer Dan Brown. It mainly speaks about the past of Christianity and also the life of Jesus Christ. This book has been very controversial as it deconstructs the whole idea of Christianity and also tries to reveal some untold stories which might be hidden by the religious people of Christianity. This book comes with some questions related to the lives of Jesus and Mary Magdalene. Whether Jesus Christ was married to Mary Magdalena or not? It deconstructs so many things with the help of the paintings of very famous painter ‘Leonardo Da Vinci’. Although religious scholars sincerely doubt some of the research Dan Brown employs in The Da Vinci Code, more than a few intriguing questions remain at the heart of The Da Vinci Code controversy. 

Although religious scholars sincerely doubt some of the research Dan Brown employs in The Da Vinci Code, more than a few intriguing questions remain at the heart of The Da Vinci Code controversy.

The novel tells the story of Harvard professor and symbologist Robert Langdon who is called to the Louvre Museum in Paris to examine cryptic symbols found in Leonardo Da Vinci's artwork. In decrypting these symbols, Langdon uncovers a plot by the church to suppress the information and almost immediately becomes a hunted fugitive.

Eventually, Langdon comes up with answers to some of the most dangerous questions posed in the novel. Was Mary Magdalene the wife of Jesus Christ? Was she relegated to the role of "fallen woman" by early Church fathers to conceal her real identity? Did she give birth to a daughter, Sara, who was later protected by a secret society known as the Priory of Sion? And what role exactly did Leonardo Da Vinci play in the Priory of Sion during the Renaissance? In masterful storytelling, author Dan Brown leads his readers on a journey that explains the "real" story of Jesus and Mary Magdalene, and the final whereabouts of the Holy Grail, with intriguing clues and symbols found in some of da Vinci's most famous paintings.

A symbology is a protocol for arranging the bars and spaces that make up a particular kind of bar code.

There is not just one standard bar code; instead, there are over 400 barcode symbologies that serve different uses, industries and geographic needs. Symbologies can be designed to encode numbers, letters and special characters. There are generally two kinds of barcode symbologies -- discrete and continuous. In a discrete symbology, every character in the bar code can be interpreted individually without referencing the rest of the bar code. In a continuous symbology, individual characters in the bar code cannot be interpreted individually.

Most barcode readers have a feature called "auto-discrimination," which allows them to be configured to automatically recognize and read different barcode symbologies, much the same way a human reader can interpret and read different font types. 

There are so many symbols like Vitruvian Man, Da Vinci’s Paintings, Fibonacci Sequence; are used in ‘The Da Vinci code’.

The Last Supper:-

           

At the heart of Brown's novel is the story that Da Vinci hid a major clue in his masterpiece, The Last Supper.

On reexamining the painting, it's discovered that sitting at Jesus' right hand is Mary Magdalene, not as is commonly believed, the apostle John.In addition, the famous cup from which Christ drank, the Holy Grail, is conspicuously left out of the painting. Here is where Brown cleverly weaves medieval legends with high Renaissance art to suggest that the Holy Grail - which became the subject of endless search by medieval knights - was not a cup at all but Mary Magdalene herself, the human receptacle for Jesus' blood.

Mona Lisa:-

Another clue in the novel is seen in one of Da Vinci's Mona Lisa which Langdon states is an expression of the artist's belief in the "sacred feminine." 

The conclusion drawn is that Mona Lisa is not any particular person, but a cryptic reference to the Egyptian gods Amon and Isis. "Mona" is an anagram of Amon and "Lisa" a contraction of l'Isa, meaning Isis.

In the novel, Professor Langdon discovers that Da Vinci painted the Mona Lisa in opposition to the Church's suppression of Mary Magdalene's true identity.

Vitruvian Man:-

Leonardo Da Vinci's most famous drawings is based upon the work of ancient Roman architect Vitruvius who was a proponent of using human proportion in building.  

In the novel's opening scene, Sauniere's body is found in the Louvre naked and posed like the Vitruvian Man, with a cryptic message written beside his body. It is the first clue that Professor Langdon receives that prods him to delve more deeply into other works of Da Vinci that helps solve the mystery. 

Fibonacci Sequence:-

Another symbol of proportion, unrelated to Leonardo da Vinci, is the novel's use of the ancient number sequence created by 13th-century mathematician Fibonacci.

He suggested a sequence in which all life grows in a common progression, with each number equaling the sum of the two preceding ones. 

1 - 1 - 2 - 3 - 5 - 8 - 13 - 21

Dan Brown features the Fibonacci sequence as one of the many clues left behind by Jacques Sauniere, the Louvre curator. The puzzle is instantly recognized and unscrambled by his cryptologist granddaughter.

It's only later discovered that Sauniere's deposit box account number at the Zurich bank is the Fibonacci sequence numbers, arranged in the correct order. This way symbology becomes very important part of ‘The Da Vinci Code’.

Sarcophagus

Sarcophagus is a stone coffin. The original term is of doubtful meaning. Pliny explains that the word denotes a coffin of limestone from the Troad (the region around Troy) which had the property of dissolving the body quickly (Greek sarx, “flesh,” and phagein, “to eat”), but this explanation is questionable; religious and folkloristic ideas may have been involved in calling a coffin a body eater. The word came into general use as the name for a large coffin in imperial Rome and is now used as an archaeological term.

The earliest stone coffins in use among the Egyptians of the 3rd dynasty (c. 2650–2575 bce) were designed to represent palaces of mud-brick architecture, with an ornamental arrangement of false doors and windows. Beginning in the 11th dynasty (c. 2081 bce), boxlike sarcophagi of wood or limestone were in use in Egypt and on the Lebanese coast at Byblos. In the 17th dynasty (c. 1630–1540 bce), anthropoid coffins (shaped to resemble the human form with a carved portrait head) of pasted papyrus sheets and, later, of wood, pottery, or stone were used. In the case of royalty, some were made of solid gold or silver. In the 18th–20th dynasties (c. 1539–1075 bce), the upper classes enclosed inner coffins of wood or metal in stone outer sarcophagi, a practice that continued into the Ptolemaic period.

In the Aegean area, although not on the Greek mainland, rectangular terra-cotta coffins (larnakes) with elaborate painted designs came into general use in Middle Minoan times.

Sometimes these coffins resembled houses or bathtubs with large handles. The Phoenicians developed a white marble anthropoid sarcophagus of the Egyptian type in the 5th century bce, and in Hellenistic times they specialized in making leaden coffins and elaborately carved marble sarcophagi. In Italy from about 600 bce onward the Etruscans used both stone and terra-cotta sarcophagi, and after 300 bce sculptured sarcophagi were used by the Romans. These often had carved figures of the deceased reclining on the couch-shaped lids.

Merovingian dynasty

Merovingian dynasty, Frankish dynasty (ad 476–750) traditionally reckoned as the “first race” of the kings of France.A brief treatment of the Merovingians follows. For full treatment, see France: The Merovingians. 

The name Merovingian derives from that of Merovech, of whom nothing is known except that he was the father of Childeric I, who ruled a tribe of Salian Franks from his capital at Tournai. Childeric was succeeded by his son Clovis I in 481 or 482. Clovis I extended his rule over all the Salian Franks, conquered or annexed the territories of the Ripuarian Franks and the Alemanni, and united nearly all of Gaul except for Burgundy and what is now Provence. Of equal importance, he was converted to Christianity in either 496 or 506. At Clovis I’s death in 511, his realm was divided among his four sons, Theuderic I, Chlodomir, Childebert I, and Chlotar I. Despite the frequently bloody competition between the brothers, they managed among them to extend Frankish rule over Thuringia in approximately 531 and Burgundy in 534 and to gain sway over, if not possession of, Septimania on the Mediterranean coast, Bavaria, and the lands of the Saxons to the north. By 558 Chlotar I was the last surviving son of Clovis I, and until his death in 561 the Frankish realm was once again united.

In 561 the realm was again divided between brothers—Charibert I, Guntram, Sigebert, and Chilperic I—and again family strife and intrigue ensued, particularly between Chilperic and his wife, Fredegund, in the northwest of Gaul and Sigebert and his wife, Brunhild, in the northeast. Dynastic struggles and increasing pressures exerted on the realm by neighbouring peoples—Bretons and Gascons in the west, Lombards in the southeast, Avars in the east—prompted a reorganization of the Frankish kingdoms. Several eastern regions were merged into the kingdom of Austrasia, with its capital at Metz; in the west Neustria emerged, with its capital first at Soissons and later at Paris; to the south was the enlarged kingdom of Burgundy, with its capital at Chalon-sur-Saône. Overall Frankish unity was again achieved in 613, when Chlotar II, son of Chilperic I and king of Neustria, inherited the other two kingdoms as well. On the death of Chlotar’s son Dagobert I in 639, the realm was divided yet again, but by that time the kings of the two regions, Neustria and Burgundy on the one hand and Austrasia on the other, had been forced to yield much of their power to household officials known as mayors of the palace. The later Merovingian kings were little more than puppets and were enthroned and deposed at will by powerful mayors of the palace. The last Merovingian, Childeric III, was deposed in 750 by Pippin III the Short, one of a line of Austrasian mayors of the palace who finally usurped the throne itself to establish the Carolingian dynasty.

Opus Dei

Opus Dei is a Roman Catholic organization. Opus Dei ( Latin: “Work of God”)  in full Prelature of the Holy Cross and Opus Dei,  Roman Catholic lay and clerical organization whose members seek personal Christian perfection and strive to implement Christian ideals and values in their occupations and in society as a whole. Theologically conservative, Opus Dei accepts the teaching authority of the church without question and has long been the subject of controversy; it has been accused of secrecy, cult like practices, and political ambitions. With separate branches for men and women, the organization has been headed since 1982 by a prelate elected by its members. Priests constitute only a tiny percentage of the organization, numbering some 1,900 of the 85,000 members worldwide.

Founded in 1928 in Spain by Josemaría Escrivá de Balaguer y Albás (canonized in 2002), a priest trained in law, Opus Dei was formally approved by the Holy See in 1950 as a secular institute (i.e., a new form of religious association whose members “profess the evangelical counsels in secular life”). On Nov. 28, 1982, Pope John Paul II, a staunch supporter of Opus Dei, established it as the first and only personal prelature in the church, with jurisdiction over people rather than a geographic area. The prelate can establish seminaries and promote students to holy orders, but the organization remains subject to some oversight by local bishops.

Opus Dei originally required new members to take a vow of obedience and chastity. Since the organization became a prelature, however, it has required only a contractual commitment to receive spiritual formation, which includes weekly classes (“circles”) and an annual religious retreat, among other activities. New members serve a period of probation, which lasts at least five years, before they are fully admitted. Some members of Opus Dei, called numeraries, devote much of their time to the organization. Like priests, they are required to remain unmarried, but they live in the world and pursue secular occupations. They commonly practice self-sacrifice and self-mortification, which can include fasting, abstinence from certain pleasures, and the wearing of a cilice (which often takes the form of a spiked chain worn around the upper thigh). The majority of members, however, are the supernumeraries, who are free to marry, contribute financially to Opus Dei, and demonstrate Christian virtue in their daily activities. The group is assisted by cooperators, who are not members and, by permission of the Holy See, need not even be Christians.

Because Opus Dei included many highly educated people, Spain’s leader Generalissimo Francisco Franco involved several of its members in instituting economic reform in 1956, and among his ministers were members of Opus Dei. After Franco’s death in 1975, Opus Dei’s influence waned in Spain as other groups entered the political arena.Aggressive recruiting practices, the brainwashing of new recruits, and the isolation of members from their families are among the charges often leveled against the organization. Pointing to its continued growth, Opus Dei denies these accusations. 

Priory of Sion

The Priory of Sion is a secret society purportedly founded in the 11th century, its alleged purpose to preserve and protect the original precepts of Christianity while also acting as the guardian of Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalene’s sacred bloodline.

The Priory was initially brought to mass public awareness in both BBC documentaries and books by writers Henry Lincoln, Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh. From the moment of its release "The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail" caused a great deal of controversy. In this provocative book the authors stated “There was a secret order behind the Knights Templar, which created the Templars as its military and administrative arm. This order, which has functioned under a variety of names, is most frequently known as the Prieure de Sion (Priory of Sion). The Prieure de Sion has been directed by a sequence of Grand Masters whose names are amongst the most illustrious in Western history and culture. Although the Knights Templar were destroyed and dissolved between 1307 and 1314 the Prieure de Sion remained unscathed.” 

                                                       fleur-de-lis

Other assertions include: The Priory of Sion was founded in 1099 CE and is sworn to return the Merovingian dynasty whom they believe to be the descendants of Jesus and Mary Magdalene to power, that its leaders or Grand Masters have included the likes of Isaac Newton and Leonardo Da Vinci, that the Priory is dedicated to a united Europe and new world order and that the Catholic Church has been engaged historically in a war to destroy the dynasty and its protectors the Cathars [1] and Knights Templar in order to retain authority afforded it through a patriarchal line of Popes beginning with Peter instead of the legitimate hereditary succession that began with Mary Magdalene.

Constantine

Constantine I, byname Constantine the Great, Latin in full Flavius Valerius Constantinus   (born February 27, after ad 280?, Naissus, Moesia [now Niš, Serbia]—died May 22, 337, Ancyrona, near Nicomedia, Bithynia [now İzmit, Turkey]), the first Roman emperor to profess Christianity. He not only initiated the evolution of the empire into a Christian state but also provided the impulse for a distinctively Christian culture that prepared the way for the growth of Byzantine and Western medieval culture.

Constantine was born probably in the later ad 280s. A typical product of the military governing class of the later 3rd century, he was the son of Flavius Valerius Constantius, an army officer, and his wife (or concubine) Helena. In ad 293 his father was raised to the rank of Caesar, or deputy emperor (as Constantius I Chlorus), and was sent to serve under Augustus (emperor) Maximian in the West. In 289 Constantius had separated from Helena in order to marry a stepdaughter of Maximian, and Constantine was brought up in the Eastern Empire at the court of the senior emperor Diocletian at Nicomedia (modern İzmit, Turkey). Constantine was seen as a youth by his future panegyrist, Eusebius, bishop of Caesarea, passing with Diocletian through Palestine on the way to a war in Egypt. 

Throughout his life, Constantine ascribed his success to his conversion to Christianity and the support of the Christian God. The triumphal arch erected in his honour at Rome after the defeat of Maxentius ascribed the victory to the “inspiration of the Divinity” as well as to Constantine’s own genius. A statue set up at the same time showed Constantine himself holding aloft a cross and the legend “By this saving sign I have delivered your city from the tyrant and restored liberty to the Senate and people of Rome.” After his victory over Licinius in 324, Constantine wrote that he had come from the farthest shores of Britain as God’s chosen instrument for the suppression of impiety, and in a letter to the Persian king Shāpūr II he proclaimed that, aided by the divine power of God, he had come to bring peace and prosperity to all lands.

Constantine’s adherence to Christianity was closely associated with his rise to power. He fought the Battle of the Milvian Bridge in the name of the Christian God, having received instructions in a dream to paint the Christian monogram on his troops’ shields. This is the account given by the Christian apologist Lactantius; a somewhat different version, offered by Eusebius, tells of a vision seen by Constantine during the campaign against Maxentius, in which the Christian sign appeared in the sky with the legend “In this sign, conquer.” Despite the emperor’s own authority for the account, given late in life to Eusebius, it is in general more problematic than the other; but a religious experience on the march from Gaul is suggested also by a pagan orator, who in a speech of 310 referred to a vision of Apollo received by Constantine at a shrine in Gaul.

Yet to suggest that Constantine’s conversion was “politically motivated” means little in an age in which every Greek or Roman expected that political success followed from religious piety. The civil war itself fostered religious competition, each side enlisting its divine support, and it would be thought in no way unusual that Constantine should have sought divine help for his claim for power and divine justification for his acquisition of it. What is remarkable is Constantine’s subsequent development of his new religious allegiance to a strong personal commitment.

Thank You.