The Door Vinci Code Trivia Quiz

Answer: A door was enlarged, cutting off the feet of Jesus and shaking loose already damaged paint and plaster on the wall.

While the amputation of the feet of Christ occurred in 1652, the painting was damaged at many other times, beginning within Leonardo's lifetime. Because Leonardo did not use traditional fresco techniques that would have required him to work quickly, the painting began to deteriorate immediately, and steam from a nearby kitchen made matters worse.

In 1796, the troops of Napoleon's army used the room as a barracks or a prison, although it may be a myth that dung was thrown at the painting. The convent was bombed in 1943, and although the painting wasn't directly hit, vibrations may have added to its deterioration. Attempts to move or restore the work before the 20th century caused more problems than they cured, and final restorations finished in 1999 failed to meet with universal approval. "Ecce Homo" - restored so horribly by Cecilia Gimenez that it came to be called the "Monkey Jesus" - is a fresco located in Spain. Dan Brown's misinterpretations of Jesus's image are not quite as ludicrous and unintentionally sacrilegious as those of Senora Gimenez, but their impact upon naive readers is frustrating to many serious historians, writers, artists, and theologians.

Answer: False

"Da Vinci" simply means "from Vinci" - the small Tuscan village closest to the smaller village of Anchiano, where Leonardo was born. Because surnames were not used at the time as they are today, and other people from Leonardo's home town of Vinci were ALL from Vinci, they would have simply called him by his first name or referred to him as Leonardo di ser Piero, because his father's given name was Piero. (Although Leonardo was illegitimate, his noble father acknowledged paternity and allowed Leonardo to use his name.) When Leonardo left his place of birth, it was useful to be identified as the Leonardo who came from Vinci, and that tag stuck over the years.

However, a real Harvard professor would be unlikely to refer to Leonardo simply as "Da Vinci" as Robert Langdon does in Dan Brown's novel. Tim O'Neill points out in his website "History versus The Da Vinci Code" that calling Leonardo simply "Da Vinci" is like calling St. Joan simply "Of Arc"!

Answer: John

In his notebooks, Leonardo identified each of the disciples in order, placing them in groups of three. From left to right as we look at the painting are Bartholomew, James the Lesser, and Andrew; Judas Iscariot, Simon Peter, and John; Jesus, as the central, largest figure of the painting; Thomas, James the Great, and Philip; Matthew, Jude Thaddeus, and Simon the Zealot. If the figure of John is identified as Mary, where is the missing member of the twelve disciples? The moment in time is when Jesus tells the disciples that one of them is going to betray him (Matthew 26:21-22; Mark 14:18-19; Luke 22:21-23; and John 13:21-22), and it is this powerful human narrative - rather than an abstract, Freudian use of lines and space to represent the vagina - that is the subject of the painting. Leonardo follows (and influences)the tradition of painting John as very young and girlish, as is evident in other paintings by Leonardo in which John appears.

Answer: False

The issues discussed at the Council of Nicea are well documented in primary sources from the time and from the century immediately following this conference of bishops and other church leaders, sponsored in 325 A.D. by the first Christian Roman Emperor, Constantine.

The council addressed specific theological differences within the church spurred by the Arian controversy, considered matters of ordination and the acceptance of Christians who had fallen, and determined how what we now call Easter would be calculated. Most historians agree that Constantine's part was a small but influential one. (You can look up Eusebius and Athanasius, who provide eyewitness accounts.) There is no evidence that the canon of the Bible was even discussed at the Council of Nicea, and - while the books to be included in the New Testament were debated over a long period of time - the lists are fairly consistent, from at least a century before Constantine. Nor is Gnosticism discussed, because this also would have been a dead issue by 325 A.D., even if the definitely non-carnal early Gnostics were the sort of sexy, female-empowering believers Dan Brown romantically imagines them to have been.

The major issue of the Council was not to declare Jesus Christ to be divine, because virtually all Christians of the time believed that to be the case; however, the bishops and elders sought to articulate the exact nature and significance of that divinity - whether Christ was created by God from nothing (as Arius was arguing all over the marketplaces of North Africa) or was eternally of one substance ("homousios") with God - and the "Nicene Creed" expresses their conclusions that the Lord Jesus Christ was "Very God of Very God" and thus one with God the Father Almighty and "the Holy Spirit, the Lord and Giver of Life, who proceedeth from the Father and the Son" (phrasing and capital letters as in most versions of "The Book of Common Prayer"). The point was how to believe in one God and have Jesus and the Holy Spirit still be one with that God - i.e., the Trinity - a difficult enough concept, even if you already believe Jesus is the person portrayed in the canonical gospels. Dan Brown's contention that up until 325 A.D. "Jesus was viewed by His followers as a mortal prophet" and that a vast conspiracy changed the very nature of a Christianity already three hundred years in the making requires a great deal of faith in political power over strongly-held, heart-felt beliefs.

Answer: La Giaconda

Leonardo didn't give his painting a name that we know of, and it was Giorgio Vasari who came up with the title of the work and the story behind its subject, around 1550, almost 50 years after it was painted. While art historians have proposed other possibilities, most agree with Vasari that the famous face in Leonardo's painting represents that of Lisa Gherardini, who was married to Frencesco del Giacondo, who commissioned Leonardo to do the portrait of his wife; therefore, the painting is called "La Giaconda" in Italy.

The title "Mona" would have meant something like "My Lady" in Italian, and "Lisa" is the lady's name. It is true, however, that Leonardo was not willing to let the picture go and that the features somewhat resemble the artist's own, IF the painting of an old man usually identified as a self-portrait really is the image of Leonardo.

The connection to Amon and Isis is a long stretch.

Answer: Zeus

The origins of the Olympic Games, said to have begun in 776 B.C., are shrouded in prehistory, but Venus (or the Greek Aphrodite) had little or nothing to do with them. The ancient Olympics were a strictly male affair, open only to freeborn men and boys who were citizens and who were not guilty of murder or disrespect to the gods.

The priestess of the matronly goddess Demeter was the only female allowed to attend. While other gods and goddesses received sacrifices, all athletes took their oaths at the great altar of Zeus on the first day and paraded in procession to the temple of Zeus on the fifth day, where winners received recognition. Brown's contention that the modern Olympic symbol of five intertwined rings is an adaptation of the pentacle of Venus runs counter to the facts, although he is correct that the pattern of a pentacle (though not a "perfect" one) can be roughly drawn onto the pathway of the planet Venus through the sky.

Answer: Baigent's degree is in psychology, Lincoln is an actor and science fiction scriptwriter, and Leigh writes fiction.

When Dan Brown gets around to citing his "experts" and "historians" in Chapter 60 of "The Da Vinci Code", it turns out that they are not scholarly sources but poorly researched pseudo-histories that build speculative theories based on bits and pieces of occult legends and hoaxes.

While it is possible for independent scholars to do good research, one would expect their results to jibe with the thinking of at least a few scholars with credentials in the fields being discussed. Two of the authors of "Holy Blood Holy Grail" sued Dan Brown for plagiarism in 2006 but lost the law suit because the court found that, even though Dan Brown's novel leaned heavily on their ideas, it wasn't plagiarism because the plaintiffs claimed their book to be based on facts, and facts are open to everyone to use.

It would have been more lucrative (and more accurate) had they called their work folklore rather than history. Readers familiar with Jessie Weston's 1920 "From Ritual to Romance" or Sir James George Frazer's 1890 "The Golden Bough" might recognize a methodology that was bold in its time but would never pass for scholarship today because of its sweeping generalizations and vague documentation. (By the way, there's no such profession as "symbologist"; a person who studies signs and symbols - like the REAL novelist and thinker Umberto Eco - is called a "semiologist"!)

Answer: He breaks it up into the words "sang" and "real" (translated "blood" and "royal").

The tradition that Dan Brown borrows, first seen in England in the 15th century some 300 years after the legends of the Holy Grail began to be written down, is considered to be a faulty translation of the French, because the noun "grael" (for a "vessel") was used alone before the adjective "san" (for "holy") was added.

The adjective was added to indicate the object's holiness as the cup Christ used to institute Holy Communion and (in some versions of the story) the cup used to collect his blood as he suffered on the cross.

The idea of the grail as the cup of Christ was an evolving one, but Brown's etymology of "Sangrael" to mean "Royal Blood" does not agree with documentary or linguistic evidence.

Answer: The Church

In some Jewish traditions, the Sabbath is a bride who reflects the Shekinah, or the glory of God, becoming present to God's people every seventh day. Christian theology takes the whole "body of believers" throughout the world and throughout time to collectively and symbolically be the "Bride of Christ" in some mystical fashion that will work itself out in the final Day of the Lord.

Much of this imagery is derived from Hebrew scripture in which God is shown to love Israel as a man loves his wife, seeking her out and forgiving her even when she is repeatedly unfaithful. For this to be so, many Christians envision a strong but celibate Jesus, of one substance with God the Father, who is not married to one woman or even to a goddess but is fully available to all human beings through his Holy Spirit.

Answer: Rosslyn Chapel

A BBC Religion article by Michael TRB Turnbull outlines the history of Rosslyn Chapel. He points out that the name "Rosslyn" refers in Gaelic to the "rock" and "foaming water" of the North Esk River rather than deriving from the "Rose Line" as Dan Brown's book would have it.

The solid geological foundation of the chapel makes it unlikely that any chamber exists underneath, and drilling conducted to investigate was stopped because "sand flowed in" and the foundation was threatened. No connection to the Temple of Solomon exists beyond those common to any Christian place of worship.