The Da Vinci Spode

Porcelain was invented in China, which is why in England porcelain is often referred to as “China.” The secret of making porcelain finally reached European in 1708 when two Germans, Ehrenfried Walther von Tschirnhauser and Johann Friedrich Bottger, succeeded in combining Colditz clay (a type of laolin), calcined alabaster, and quartz, into a hard, white, translucent substance. Their discovery was evidently unaided by any influence from Asia except the inspiration provided by the awareness that such a thing could be done, because the Chinese had already figured out how to do it.

All of this is well known. Less familiar to most of us is the fact that Tschirnhaus and Böttger were members of a secret society dedicated not only to alchemical investigations, but also to preserving a dangerous and remarkable secret—the identity and whereabouts of Jesus Christ's offspring. That secret had been taken to the East by Zoroastrian converts to Christianity in the second century CE, and brought back to Europe by Marco Polo a millennium later. It was passed from generation to generation of macaroni salesman and cult devotees by means of secret signs, codes, and emblems that were plain for all to see but meaningful only to a small and select group of initiates. Eventually one of the most commonly used means of preserving and transmitting this arcane knowledge was through the flowers and animals painted on the sides of porcelain plates and cups.

Therefore, when a director of the Spode Porcelain Company was found dead a few years ago on the floor of the firm's “seconds” shop in Staffordshire, England, clutching a teacup in either hand, red flags went up throughout Europe, and not least within the dark corridors of the Vatican. Was the secret of Christ's paternity about to be exposed to the world? If so, it would shake the Christian world to its very foundations!!!

As millions, and perhaps billions, of people around the world know by now, such is the stuff of which Dan Brown's best-seller The Da Vinci Code is made. The story has nothing to do with porcelain—I was impelled to throw that in by the need for a catchy title—but it does involve matters of similar or even greater historical interest, including Christ and his disciples, the Emperor Constantine, the Crusades, the Knights Templar, Leonardo da Vinci, and Sir Isaac Newton. It seems to me that anyone who can engage a billion people to read a book about such things has done humanity some sort of service.

Some folk have objected to the fact that much of the “history” contained in the book is bunk. Yet unlike a writer like Michael Crichton, who litters his novels with footnotes and attempts to maintain the scientific truth of truly dangerous fictions, Brown's book is a novel. He has defended the “truth” of his material a little too adamantly on talk shows, perhaps. In any case, it's very difficult to get the facts straight when you're writing about a secret society!

Strange as it may seem, while many experts have challenged his facts, others are suing him for having ripped off their historical treatises—the authors of Holy Blood, Holy Grail , for example, a book with similar themes that was ridiculed itself when it rose to the top of the best-seller charts twenty years ago.

Many devout Christians have been outraged by the book. Yet nothing in The Da Vinci Code in any way outstrips the remarkable and far-fetched tales associated with the cult of the Saints that flourished in Christian Europe for more than a thousand years. Without these stories of local men and women who performed wonderful acts of healing, charity, and magic, Christianity would have had little chance of converting to its cause the Gauls, Celts, Slavs, and other folks who populated the continent in the later days of the Roman Empire.

An example? How about Saint Tropez, after whom a lovely village on the French Riviera is named? He was a Pisan martyr of the first century. His body was shoved out to sea along with a rooster and a dog in an old boat. It drifted ashore at the mouth of the Arno—or in the bay of St. Tropez, versions differ. Perhaps the Arno makes more sense, since his head was removed from the boat and paraded around the streets of Pisa. The region had been experiencing a drought, but when this jolly parade commenced the water-level of the Arno began to rise precipitously. This was good news for the city, I guess, though the individuals carrying Saint Tropez's head immediately dropped it and ran for higher ground. Two amphibious Angels appeared, dove under the water to retrieve the head, and brought it to the archbishop.

Such tales may seem far-fetched, but they have a certain naive charm that you don't often find in Roman literature, or in the lewd, down-to-earth fabliaux of a later era.

Needless to say, most of these tales don't appear in the Bible.

Part of the fun of visiting the Old World is to reconnect with such tales by visiting the sites where they allegedly occurred, admiring their representations in stone carvings and stained glass windows, and actually coming face to face with the bones of the individuals who once possesses such remarkable powers, hydrological and otherwise. Similarly, the tourist can admire a Templar chapel in Segovia or a Cathar fortress in Languedoc, and feel both the terror and the mystery of a long-lost era when both physical violence and spiritual ardor were more extreme.

And part of the fun of The Da Vinci Code is to immerse yourself in a story that brings such far-fetched events and feelings right up to the present.

I read the book a few years ago, and enjoyed it quite a bit. People say “It isn't well written.” I didn't notice. I was carried along by the intrigue, the Paris cops, the mysterious safety-deposit boxes, the narrow escapes, the sinister Opus Dei operatives.

The movie, too, was said to be badly made. ‘Punishingly long, dramatically overwrought and fatally short on thrills,” is how the Minneapolis newspaper puts it. I would put it a little differently. “Never a dull moment. Full of beautiful paintings, architecture, and landscapes. Wonderful historical recreations, though the council of Nicea looks a little too raucous to be believed. Intriguing antique devices, perplexing mysteries, breathtaking escapes, surprising twists of fate. The Bourne Identity meets The Name of the Rose . Plus, you get to listen to lovely selections of medieval music along the way.”

The film is not without its flaws. That murderous albino monk is a little hard to take. And Albert Molina as the evil priest lacks the required intensity. On the other hand, Hanks is fine, though he doesn't seem much like a Harvard professor. Ian McKlennan is superb as the eccentric Brit, and Audrei Tautou, though seldom singled out in the reviews, actually seals the success of the film with her portrayal of the cryptologist with deeply personal reasons to crack the mystery left behind by the murder of a curator at the Louvre.

Tautou came to the attention of American audiences in the French comedy Amelie , in which she plays an overly-cute meddler. That film was jumpy and over-wrought, few of the jokes were funny, and Tautou herself was almost excruciating to watch. Though it wasn't intended to be, Amelie is a parody of a foreign film, and New Yorker writer Adam Goptnik astutely observed that the decline in French culture is nowhere more plainly to be seen than in the fact that even they liked it.

On the other hand, Tautou herself seems like an interesting person.

In 2002 she was Ranked #29 in Stuff magazine's "102 Sexiest Women in the World." Yet Ravel, Tristan Tzara, Ingres, and Paul Auster rank among her favorite artists. She once declined to attend a private screening of Amelie with French President Jacque Chirac because she had a previous engagement with her brother. (Or maybe she's planning to enter politics and wanted to disassociate herself from that unpopular figure.)

In any case, Tautou brings elements of beauty, modesty, and mystery to her role, and they become increasingly important as the story develops. She has the unusual gift of being able to look happy, sad, confused, and determined, all at the same time. This makes her reactions interesting to watch. Her sober and thoughtful presence serves as a healthy counterpoint to all the arcane razzle-dazzle and historical fanaticism that moves the story along.

And what of the widespread criticism from conservative quarters that The Da Vinci Code subverts religious feeling and mocks the Church? If so, them it would merely join the list of many such films, from Dreyer's Passion of Joan of Arc to Bunuel's The Exterminating Angel and Godard's Hail Mary . So what?

However, it seems to me that The Da Vinci Code is not that kind of film. In the first place, it makes an effort to distinguish the truly radical perverts from the sincere believers within the Catholic Church. Beyond that, it brings our attention to bear on the central mystery of the Church: how spirit can be flesh. It challenges patriarchal orthodoxies that are almost certainly detrimental to the Church's continued health, while underscoring the significance of conjugal life and family values that are central to the lives of people around the world, whether Christian or not. There are a few bizarre rituals involved, to be sure, but the film also offers us some simple words of wisdom about life, death, love, and forgiveness, that are as likely to have come from Tom Hanks or the film's good-natured director, Ron Howard, as from Jesus himself.