The Da Vinci Code

Teabing and Silas see death as the only acceptable means of dealing with challenges to their beliefs. They are fundamentalists, so myopic in their worldview and so convinced of their righteousness, that any counter belief is heretical and must be eliminated. As Silas kills Sauniére, he does so with the belief that he is doing God’s work. Even the elderly Sister Sandrine must die if she stands in his way. None of these victims are a physical threat to Silas or Teabing; they are a threat ideologically. The prize they seek—the keystone—leads to information. In Silas and Aringarosa’s case, this information must be kept secret; in Teabing’s case, it must be revealed. Either way, for both sides, fundamentalism is so pervasive that murder is simply the price of doing business.

Knowledge, in Brown’s novel, is a commodity. Rather than being exchanged in a free and open marketplace, it is valued and quantified, bought and sold and controlled by the highest bidder. Its worth is immense—the value of a religious dynasty. For Aringarosa and Silas, the value is far greater. Revealing the secrets of the Sangreal documents could not only shake the Vatican to its foundation, but continue a moral disintegration begun with Vatican II (or so Aringarosa believes).

For Teabing, his interest in exposing the Church’s centuries-old lie may be more noble, but his refusal to entertain any idea other than his own makes him little better than Silas. What both sides fail to realize is that, for knowledge to spread and germinate holistically, it must be allowed into the marketplace of ideas. Part of that means accepting the possibility that you might be wrong, something both Silas and Teabing refuse to do.

The ideological battle of The Da Vinci Code is often a battle between the forces of progress and the voices of traditionalism that prefer things just the way they are. Aringarosa, a traditionalist, sees every step forward as a desecration. Simple changes in the liturgical practices of the Church that most people take for granted—performing the Mass in English rather than Latin, recognizing the need for greater unity among the various Christian churches—are seen by Aringarosa as a slippery slope: If he and his Opus Dei adherents don’t stop the slide, the Church will be a mere shadow of its former self. Part of their core doctrine is a literal interpretation of scripture—a divine (and asexual) Jesus, the status of Mary Magdalene as a sinner, and a miraculous virgin birth.

Traditional religious doctrine interposes the institution of the Church squarely between human beings and God: Without the Pope and his subordinates holding their flock by the hand and guiding them toward a moral existence, human beings would devolve into their natural sinfulness. They believe humans cannot become evolved spiritual beings on their own, a tenet challenged by progressives who advocate for a more individual spiritualism. Individual spiritualism more closely follows paganism than organized Christianity. Pagans communed with nature and worshipped the seasonal cycles; they recognized and venerated the power of the divine feminine. Not coincidentally, women have slowly gained greater voice within the Church since Vatican II, a change once decried as a subversion by traditionalists.

The traditionalist/progressivist battle takes another, less human form in the narrative, in the conflict between modern and ancient technology. The Sangreal documents, the papyrus scrolls, the cryptex (not to mention Teabing’s vast library of dusty old tomes) all stand in counterpoint to the cell phones, the GPS tracking devices, and the sophisticated listening equipment installed in Teabing’s barn. They are all forms of technology in that they transmit information; which form is superior is an argument traditionalists and modernists still engage in today. Brown seems to come down on the side of the old-fashioned, hand-written technologies. While the electronic gadgets serve their purpose, they are simply a means to an end, but the ancient documents contain mysterious truths that will upset the current state of the world. It may also be that Brown favors the old merely as an interesting narrative device. Ancient scrolls are far more intriguing than a cell phone.