Da Vinci's The Last Supper Really The'sacred Feminine?

Mary Magdalene as His successor, that His message was about the celebra- tion of the "sacred feminine," that Jesus and Mary Magdalene were

married and had children and that the Holy Grail of legend and lore is

really Mary Magdalene, the "sacred feminine," the vessel who carried Jesus'

Sounds like an intriguing bit of lost history. Is it? Long story short: No.

million copies (ed: now over 40 million) are in print.

children.

Is the Holy Grail really the "sacred feminine?"

The legend of the Holy Grail has taken many frms throughout history, but

it has always identified the Grail as the cup Jesus used at the Last Supper.

The idea of identifying it as the "sacred feminine" and tying it into a

supposed bloodline emanating from a

No. Brown begins his book with a statement, under the title "Fact," that

there are documents supporting the existence of the Priory in the Biblio- theque Nationale. These documents havelong been understood to be

forgeries, placed in the archives by an anti-Semitic supporter of the Vichy

government named Pierre Plantard.

Does Da Vinci's The Last Supper really contain a

code?

No. First, the idea that Da Vinci used any kind of code pertaining to any

issue Dan Brown raises is unsupported by art historians.

Brown says that in this painting Da Vinci is telling us that the figure always

identified as John the Evangelist is really Mary Magdalene, and that these

two figures together form an "M," and that, because there is no grail in the

picture, Da Vinci is telling us the "grail" is the sacred feminine of Mary

Unfortunately for Brown, art historians tell us that the effeminate-looking

John is quite a typical representation for the time, as is a Last Supper

portrayal emphasizing betrayal rather than the insttution of the Eucharist.

In addition, the Last Supper is a dramatization of a scene from the Gospel

of John, in which the institution narrative is not even described.