Headscratchers / The Da Vinci Code

• "Oh noes! Unless I do something, the secret will be lost!" That's Sauniere's thing at the beginning, isn't it? That's why he sets all those clues. Except... his wife knows the secret too, and she isn't dead.
  • He didn't know whether she was still alive or not. Better safe than sorry.
  • Of course, according to the long expository bit at Teabing's place, practically everyone who's studied the subject apparently knows the "secret".
  • The wife didn't know where the chalice was kept and given that he had just found out the four others were offed before him without him knowing, its probably best not to assume his wife was still around
• Oh god, even the title is full of fail. 'Da Vinci' is not Leonardo's surname. 'Da' means 'of', meaning that Leonardo was 'of Vinci' because he was born in Vinci. His full name thus translates to 'Leonardo di ser Piero of Vinci'. So the full title of this book is 'The Of Vinci Code'. Facepalm.
  • Ah, but you forget that everyone knows him as "Leonardo da Vinci". This works almost like a "pen name" given to him by the media, etc, so, in that case, it makes your point moot, as it is used more as a reference to this pen name than to his real moniker.
    • Uh, forgotten no such thing. Yes, everyone knows him by that title, but that does not make it a 'pen name'. We always refer Alexander III of Macedon as 'Alexander the Great' but we don't call that a 'pen name'. Just because popular culture is more familiar with that version of his name does not make 'Da Vinci' a surname and so it's still wrong. This is especially bad in a book that is about history, however loose, and would've taken the quickest google search to figure out. (And besides, if someone wants to be extra nitpicky, they called him Leonardo Da Vinci even back when he was alive. It's just that we don't know/forgot what 'da' means, which still doesn't make it a 'pen name'.)
    • The the Great Code? Hmm... could be a hit.
    • ...Uh, , how about The Leonardo Code?
    • That is ambiguous, it COULD refer to one of four mutated reptile ninjas in their adolescent years.
    • That sounds like a pretty cool premise actually!
    • Wait, if we "don't know/forgot what 'da' means" then why'd the first guy say it means 'of' at the top? Contradiction much? More importantly, what would you have called the book? It seems like nice helping of Complaining About Shows You Don't Like but no suggestions as to make it better...
    • Probably, he meant "We english speaker don't know what "da" means". In Italian, Vinci is a city, and "da" means "from". The name is "Leonardo from Vinci", and the book, in Italy, means "The code from Vinci". Yes, confusing, but to be honest, an horrible number of italians don't know that "da Vinci" is not a surname.
    • The above poster is correct - it would have meant 'english speaker', sorry for the mistake. As for Complaining About Shows You Don't Like, to anyone who has never read the book nor have ever had the urge to, and pointing out an obvious error that anyone with a knowledge of the Renaissance would know is not a personal vendetta. Also, the Headscratching is for pointing out errors, not 'suggestions to make it better'.
    • Not everyone is an expert on Leonardo da Vinci, and the common person has probably grown up hearing him being referred to as "da Vinci." TV shows and movies aimed at children refer to him as such. While it's true it's inaccurate, the average person will look at it and know they're talking about Leonard da Vinci. If it were something politically correct like "The Leonardo Code" people would probably be more likely to walk past it.
    • Even if the etymology derives from "from Vinci", who's to say the phrase hasn't evolved into a de facto surname over time? How many widely-used surnames already come from phrases? Nitpickers don't complain if a person surnamed "McDonald" didn't actually have a dad named Donald. You don't stop calling a family "Smith" just because none of them have been blacksmiths for a hundred years. Most surnames originate from phrases, titles, or nicknames whose meanings have become moot, and that's happened to Leonardo's name over time. Or do we need to start calling the director of Scarface "Brian of Palma", just to be consistent with outdated naming conventions?
    • If anyone could provide with an example of someone else having 'Da Vinci' as a surname. But even if they did, the point would be moot - Leonardo has a surname and it is not 'Da Vinci'. Ergo, using his title instead of his surname is incorrect.
    • As the original poster of this Headscratcher, apologies for nor understanding that just because Leonardo is most well-known as Leonardo Da Vinci that it's perfectly okay to make a big obvious inaccuracy in the very title of a book about history. There's no rule saying that it had to be called 'The Da Vinci Code' instead of something accurate. What the public does or doesn't know about Leonardo is completely irrelevent; it's still a ridiculous error, and since when does pop-culture dictate what is and isn't correct?
    • Since, um, forever ? That's how language evolves. Awesome used to mean what it says literally, "something that prompts awe (reverence, fear) in onlookers". "Terrible" used to mean "something that incites terror". These days, awesome means cool (heh, another example), and terrible means crap. Both meanings have evolved through countless writers and songs (not to mention "the public) progressively twisting the meaning of the original words. It's neither a good thing nor a bad thing, it just is. Beyond that semantical digression, what the public does or doesn't know about Leonardo is absolutely relevant when you want to sell them a book about him in terms they can comprehend. When the average American hears "The Da Vinci Code", they immediately understand it's a book about a secret held by that gay Yuropian who painted The Mona Lisa. That's all that fucking matters, where publishers are concerned.
    • While you are correct that the meaning of words can alter over time thanks to cultural usage, this doesn't apply to this error. The term 'Da Vinci' hasn't changed over time to suddenly become Leonardo's real name; people have made the mistake of assuming that it's his name. And Tv Tropes has multiple tropes all about viewers making incorrect assumptions. By what you're saying, every example on those pages must now retroactively be true because cultural assumptions have changed. But as those tropes demonstrate, people make mistakes all the time, either from ignorance or from expectations, but that does not make them right. And even if most people assume that Da Vinci is Leonardo's surname, that doesn't make it right either. Unless someone figures out a way to legally change a dead man's name.
    • While you are correct that this is a case of mistaken assumptions and Pop-Cultural Osmosis rather than actual etymological change, you note yourself that "this happens all the time". I.e., it's always been going on, and it will always go on. It may not be right, but as the poster above you noted, it's just a fact that cannot be changed, any more than Leonardo's surname. Even if you held a press conference tomorrow announcing Leonardo's true name, people would ignore it or continue to misunderstand; if you made sure every history book or school book had his name right, kids would still learn it wrong. So instead of fighting something that is absolutely futile to fight, perhaps you could focus on something that actually can be changed. Or just keep letting it annoy and upset you, of course.
    • Is there anybody *else* who hails from Vinci and is world-famous? Certainly not anyone of Leonardo's stature! If he's the only superstar "from Vinci," why shouldn't he lay claim to that appellation? Now, "from Paris," "from London," "from Brooklyn" et al. are still contested.
  • Or maybe it's just because he wanted to capitalize the title for a neater layout?
  • Everyone chill, it's a case of Aluminum Christmas Trees. Leonardo's surname was "Da Vinci": his family (on his father's side) held the name for more than a century before Leonardo was born and even had a coat of arms. Of course, in this case the surname sprung from the place of residence, so it goes both ways.
• Why does everyone (looking at you, Moral Guardians) take this seriously?! People, the Da Vinci Code is Fiction!
  • 1) Because the author claimed it was factually based, irritating many people who actually know about this stuff and realise that Dan Brown was actually speaking out of his arse most of the time.
    • Not only that, but the folk who read that schlock and didn't know better believed Dan Brown saying it was all 100% fact. To the point that the historical landmarks mentioned in the book all had to put up signs saying in essence : "don't bother looking for the shit mentionned in the DVC, it's bull. Sorry for ruining your trip.". It's one thing to sell glitter for a living, and another to seriously pretend it's gold.
  • 2) Because the the novel takes a number of swipes at the Catholic Church (that it basically made up lies about Jesus to bolster its own position, that it slaughtered anyone who opposed it, that it killed over 6 million free-thinking women and called them witches) that are, bluntly speaking, bollocks. (God knows, there's enough real material to take the Catholic Church to task over). The fact that Dan Brown put this is in a book marked 'fiction' is largely irrelevant, if one wrote a book about your mother which accused her of being a drug-dealing terrorist rapist, would it still be alright if it's marked as 'fiction'
    • As a pedantic history point, witch burning was not really a Catholic thing, it was the Protestants that really really got into it. Catholics tended to burn heretics (people who taught religion differently than what the church said).
  • 3) Just because an author writes a book that's found in the fiction section, does not mean that they intend it to be taken as all made-up. See also Schindler's List, The Last King of Scotland and ''Arthur & George'. Unless you think that Idi Amin, Oskar Schindler and Arthur Conan Doyle are all made up characters of course.
    • Actually, The Last King of Scotland was very historically inaccurate.
    • But the fact that you can say it was historically inaccurate shows that it is possible to judge a book on this factor and not just shout 'It's just fiction.'
    • But just because something can be judged as historically inaccurate doesn't mean it's real as opposed to fiction either; it means it is based on reality. Except the inaccurate part means they didn't base it on it very well. Calling something fiction, even if it has a historical basis, means people will know that by definition not everything in it is real, even apart from its accuracy to the real facts; but claiming it as real means people will assume everything in it is both real and accurate. So combine Dan Brown's claim with there being people who wanted to believe such things about the Catholic Church and you can see why the Moral Guardians got up in arms (not that they had anything to worry about, since anyone with any intelligence and an ability to do research can find out exactly how much and how little in the book was true, and the ones who couldn't do that would be credulous enough to believe it regardless any claims Brown made).
  • Another problem is that this is yet another case of the anti-Christian Double Standard prevalent in society today. The grievances leveled at the Catholic church (lies from members, violent persecution of people with different beliefs) can be leveled at non-Catholic Christians, the non-Christian religious and non-religious/atheistic people, institutions and ideologies. There's also the problem that it ignores the good the Catholic Church has done throughout history.
• Why did Leigh tell Langdon to pray when he found the tomb, if he didn't believe in Christ's divinity?
  • It's probably a figure of speech, as in "start begging for mercy".
  • There are plenty of people who believe in God, and that Jesus was a great religious teacher, but not that he was a God incarnate.
    • That's one of the points the book emphasizes in fact.
• Wouldn't Fache get in serious trouble for completely disregarding police procedure, altering evidence, assault, etc.? What's his justification? "A priest told me to do it, but he lied." That would get him kicked off the force very quickly, if not worse.
  • The implication seems to be that he's a particularly ambitious officer who's especially passionate about this case, which causes poor judgement on his part. Though that doesn't gel very well with his apparently solid reputation as a lawman.
• First, a quick disclaimer: this is based on the movie and may be better explained in the book. Alright, so everyone on both sides of the conflict seem to assume that if you have both the sarcophagus of Mary Magdalene and the Heir, you could use a DNA test to prove that Jesus Christ sired descendants. But there are no less than four major reasons why that wouldn't work:
  • First, it's been millennia since Mary's death. The chances that enough of her DNA for a test remained intact that long seems slim.
  • Second, there are dozens upon dozens of generations between Mary and the current Heir, and in each generation the Heir's DNA was mixed and recombined with someone else's. After all those generations, Mary Magdalene's DNA will bear no closer match to that of the Heir than it does to anyone else's.
  • Third, how would you even prove that the body in the sarcophagus is Mary Magdelene? It could just as easily be any random woman's body that some cult claimed was the body of Mary Magdelene.
  • Fourth, even if you could prove that the body in the sarcophagus was that of Mary Magdelene, and even if you could prove a DNA match between that body and the Heir, all that proves is that the heir is descended from Mary Magdelene. It does nothing to prove that her child was the child of Jesus Christ.
• This may also be better explained in the book but why does Saunier bother leading them to the Mona Lisa? Why not just write "Oh Draconian Devil, So dark the con of man" next to his body and lead them directly to the Madonna of the Rocks? Isn't he wasting time by using the Mona Lisa as the middle man?
• Why would the police think a dying man would bother writing some bullshit and then at the end identify his murderer as a post script? If he were trying to identify the murderer, wouldn't he have written "Robert Landon did this" and then everything else he wrote? Would the most important information not be written first?
• Proving a woman has living descendants means precisely that said woman, at one point, had, at least, one child and that her child(ren) also reproduced. There is absolutely no way to prove paternity through maternity testing. If Mary Magdalene had any children, that just makes her one of the many saints, both male and female, who have done so. It doesn't tell you whether she was married, or to whom, and without a male to test for paternity, it can't tell whether the father is Jesus or some random Tom, Dick, or Harry from down the street.
  • In fact, you can't even say that the bones in the Priory's possession are those of Mary Magdalene. The most you can say is that they belonged to woman of Hebrew descent who lived approximately 2000 years ago.
    • Which would be why the Priory preserved an enormous amount of historical records corroborating her identity.
    • Still, a woman can claim any man is the father of her child(ren). Other people can claim that the man is the father of her child(ren). Unless the man's DNA is tested against that of the child(ren) and paternity is established, someone saying that the man isn't the father is just as valid. Many saints have borne or fathered children; Mary Magdalene would be no different, and in this day and age, the Catholic Church wouldn't need some giant conspiracy. Maternity testing would establish Mary Magdalene's bloodline, but with no known remains of Jesus to prove or disprove, it wouldn't matter if people believed that it was also his. They couldn't prove he was the father of the bloodline, and the Catholic Church couldn't prove he wasn't unless they were able to successfully establish paternity to a different man proven not to be Jesus.
• The Priory of Scion is a society that celebrates the sexual union between man and woman, and includes rituals involving heterosexual intercourse. But the book says one of their leaders was Leonardo Da Vinci. Who was quite well known to be gay.
  • Well, maybe. No heterosexual or homosexual relationships have been confirmed, and the sodomy charges against him were dropped due to lack of evidence.
  • And just because he was gay doesn't mean he couldn't have had heterosexual sex just for the ceremonies.
  • Or in this case, Leonardo Da Vinci could have been bisexual. Admittedly, those charges should have been brought up by the book.

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