The Secret History of Lucifer: And the Meaning of the True Da Vinci Code (16 page)

St John the Baptist almost appears to be `camping it up', while raising his right index finger across his body to heaven, in what Clive and myself had dubbed `the John gesture'. Although this appears in many medieval and Renaissance works to indicate the significance of heaven or generally the `higher things' of spirituality, in Leonardo's works it always indicates, or is actually made by, John the Baptist - whom he clearly appears to revere intensely. Leonardo's devotion to the Baptist is promoted through sly allusions and half-hidden symbols, even at the expense of the Holy Family. . Although Clive and I have detailed Leonardo's heretical - `Johannite' - symbolism elsewhere," I shall provide a summary here to illustrate my argument.

In The Last Supper a disciple is thrusting a finger raised in the unmistakable `John gesture' into Jesus' face with a rough intensity, although Christ ignores him and stares serenely down at his outspread hands - between which there is no chalice of wine, as one might expect, no `Holy Grail'. What does the gesture mean here? Is it, as Clive and I suggest, a terse and even hostile `Remember John ...'? But why should Jesus need reminding of his forerunner, the wild man from the desert - his cousin - who apparently fell down at his feet and declared him to be `the Lamb of God'? And why is there the implicit warning in the gesture? Should you think that we are reading too much into this, our examination of Leonardo's other works proved surprising, even shocking.

The `Cartoon' (or preliminary drawing) of the Virgin and Child with St Anne and John the Baptist, which is now displayed in London's National Gallery" shows an apparently masculine St Anne raising a massive John gesture at her daughter, the Virgin, who smiles slightly, totally oblivious. (It has been suggested that St Anne is really intended to depict St Elizabeth, the Baptist's mother.) The young St John gazes up without expression at the baby Jesus, who seems almost to writhe forward in his mother's arms, in order, apparently, to bless him. Yet the infant Christ has a strangely serpentine or maggot-like body (complete with sectioned torso) and appears to be an extension of his mother's arm, almost like a glove puppet. And although supposedly chucking John under the chin with one hand while blessing him with the other, it takes no stretch of imagination to notice that the one hand could equally well be steadying the boy's head to take a blow. To those who are impatient with this sort of heretical interpretation, may I advise caution, an open mind, and an open book - as large as possible - of Leonardo reproductions. It is surprising what the `uneducated', non-art historian will find - such as the following, a new revelation.

With a mind cleared as far as possible of preconceptions, look with a child's unsophisticated clarity at the Cartoon, specifically at the tree-covered hill in the top right-hand corner, above John's curly head. Actually, the `hill' serves a double purpose, for its elaborate foliage also forms the distinct outline of the severed head of a bearded man, with closed eyes. (Once seen, he can never be unseen: some friends admit that they continually expect the man in their reproduction suddenly to open his eyes any day now.) Why would Leonardo depict a severed head? A clue lies in its position over young John - according to the biblical account, John the Baptist was beheaded while in King Herod's jail. He had been arrested for denouncing the Roman puppet's illegal marriage, and suffered death because Herod's wife Herodias had persuaded her daughter - who remains anonymous in the New Testament - to ask the king for John's head.

The astonishing, half-hidden theme of the Cartoon is also played out in Leonardo's other works, as we shall see - even in the finished painting based on the Cartoon, although the hovering head disappears in the transition. Even a cursory glance reveals that The Virgin and Child with St Anne has changed considerably since its haunting preliminary sketch was created. Mary is still sitting somewhat awkwardly on her mother's lap, but John the Baptist has completely disappeared, to be replaced by a lamb. Yet in the New Testament it is Jesus, not John, who is symbolized by the Lamb, and it is the Baptist who memorably hails him as such. In Leonardo's painting the lamb seems in imminent danger, for baby Jesus boisterously hangs on to its ears - almost as if intent on pulling its head off - while a chubby limb cuts across the lamb's neck, creating the visual illusion of decapitation. But why would Jesus at any point in his life want to harm the saint who proclaimed his divinity to the world?

There are other, considerably more offensive examples of this Johannite sub-text in Leonardo's works. In his unfinished Adoration of the Magi, the Virgin and child occupy the lower foreground, where they are honoured by the visit of the Wise Men, as the title indicates. Yet, like all the great Florentine heretic's works, it repays closer scrutiny. The worshippers adoring the Holy Family are hideous, so gaunt, ugly and ancient - with their shrunken eyes and skull-like heads - that they appear to be like ghouls or vampires from the grave clawing at Mary and Jesus. And of the three famed gifts, only frankincense and myrrh are being proffered: gold, symbol of sacred kingship and perfection, is missing.

A second group of worshippers occupy the top half of the picture, beyond the Virgin's head. These are in marked contrast to the `undead' around her and the infant Christ - vigorous, youthful, attractive, they appear to be adoring the roots of a tree. Bizarre though this may seem, there is a message here: the tree is a carob, traditionally associated in Catholic iconography with John the Baptist - and as if to reinforce the point, a young man raises the John gesture close to its trunk. Another man lurks at the bottom right of the picture, turning almost brutally away from Mary and Jesus. This is acknowledged to be a self-portrait of the artist, and here he is blasphemously turning his back on God incarnate and the Immaculate Conception. And as the model for Saint Jude in his Last Supper, Leonardo also has his back to Christ. There is a wry joke here - Jude is patron saint of lost causes!

There is considerably worse blasphemy in The Virgin of the Rocks (the Louvre version: the painting in London's National Gallery is less obviously heretical), which was originally commissioned by a religious organization, who certainly got more than they bargained for, although they seem not to have realized quite what they did get. The painting shows a scene from Church fable, in which the baby Jesus meets the equally infant John in Egypt specifically to confer on him the authority with which to baptize him in later life. The fact that to perform any rite on Jesus Christ implies greater authority than his had to be explained away in this cumbersome manner (although of course in the case of the anointing Magdalene the Gospel writers simply edited out her identity and made her act random, virtually meaningless).

The painting shows the Virgin apparently with her arm round John, who is kneeling submissively to Jesus, who in turn blesses him. Christ appears to be in the care of the archangel Uriel. Yet there is something wrong here: Uriel is traditionally the protector of John, not Jesus, and obviously Mary should be holding her son, not John. But suppose the children are with really their usual guardians, everything suddenly makes sense and Leonardo's fervent Johannitism shines through once again. For then it is John (now properly with Uriel) who is blessing Jesus (now with Mary), who in turn kneels submissively ...

Leonardo also made his feelings about Mary's status very clear. The reason this painting is called The Virgin of the Rocks is because almost the whole of the top half is given over to apparently random shapes of dark, looming stones. But nothing is truly random in Leonardo's works, especially when he has the opportunity to pour ridicule on Christ and his mother. For rearing up out of the rocks virtually out of the Virgin's head is a remarkable pair of testicles topped by a huge upright phallus - right to the skyline - complete with tumescent central vein and impudent spurt of weeds. Clearly, once seen in this light, The Virgin of the Rocks will never quite have that pious aura again. This astonishing interpolation was presumably intended to be a savage attack on the alleged virginal status of Mary the mother, possibly inspired by the organization that commissioned the painting - the Confraternity of the Immaculate Conception.

But why did Leonardo so clearly adore the Baptist, while despising Jesus and his mother? What is it about John that inspired so much devotion - and why should it be heretical?

The Baptist: behind the myth

It is curious that John the Baptist is not celebrated as the first Christian martyr - that honour fell to the young Saint Stephen. Even when John was arrested by Herod and then beheaded on the wishes of Herodias and her unnamed daughter, the New Testament is silent about whether he cited Jesus Christ as his inspiration and Saviour with his last breath. Nor are we told in whose name John baptized ...

This odd but implicit reticence on the part of John to acknowledge Jesus' superiority is dramatically at odds with the explicit scene in the New Testament where John apparently makes sense of his entire life by falling at Christ's feet, declaring him to be the chosen Lamb of God, whose sandals he is unworthy to untie. Jesus is baptized in the Jordan, and God appears in the form of a dove, announcing his Son's divinity. This is splendid, inspirational stuff, but unfortunately it is almost certainly complete and utter nonsense.

If John had really been so overcome at the very sight of Jesus, it was a passing phase, because not long afterwards, as he languished in jail he sent a message to him asking `Are you the one who was to come, or should we expect someone else?"' But while the scene at the side of the Jordan is enthusiastically read out from the world's pulpits, the clergy keep tactically silent on the matter of John's subsequent doubts.

In fact, we now know that although Jesus must have been baptized by John - because thousands flocked to join the movement to repent and be baptized - in reality there never could have been any of that rather sickening `Gosh, you're so wonderful and I'm so unworthy' declaimed by the Baptist. For it is now acknowledged that Jesus and John were rivals, and so were their respective cult members. In fact, despite the biblical depiction of John as a sort of mad desert hermit who enters the story briefly to bolster Jesus' image but apart from that hardly makes a wave, he and his movement were huge. The Baptist's following extended from Egypt, where he had his headquarters at the port of Alexandria, as far as Ephesus in Turkey. In fact, it might more properly be called a church. Indeed, its very existence startled Paul on his first visit to Ephesus and Corinth, especially when some of the Johannites told him they had never heard that John had prophesied the coming of any Messiah, let alone this Christ. It was Jesus' group that more closely resembled a cult, most probably a breakaway movement from the Johannites. And it was Jesus who was never mentioned in the only secular chronicles of the day, by the Romanized Jew Flavius Josephus in his Antiquities of the Jews, whereas the Baptist's celebrity is given a glowing report. In fact, there is now a rather gushing passage that celebrates Jesus in the Antiquities, but it was a medieval insertion by a monk, specifically invented to cover the embarrassing non-appearance of Christ.

Clearly, John would never have grovelled at Jesus' feet: the New Testament being really little more than propaganda on behalf of the triumphant Jesus sect, this was an audacious fabrication. But as the Gospel writers had no wish to waste too much effort on John or build him up in any way, they stopped short of actually making him a Christian martyr, or, even given his fulsome welcome to Jesus, any kind of Christian at all.

Yet they did go to some trouble in rewriting the Baptist, but unfortunately causing a lasting confusion in the process: scholars are now convinced that certain passages from the New Testament originated in Gospels dedicated to John, not Jesus at all. They have isolated, for example, the opening passage of the Gospel of John (although the name is probably a coincidence) as belonging to the `John literature'. And the Virgin Mary's famous hymn of praise to God when she discovers she is pregnant with Christ known as the Magnificat was originally Elizabeth's song - John the Baptist's mother. Similarly, Herod's massacre of the Innocents was originally intended to rid himself of the threat of a blue-blooded John growing up and challenging his authority (although even so it was only ever fictitious - no chronicler reported such an atrocity). In other words, the late first-century followers of Jesus took over the Baptist's gospels and basically just changed the name of the hero. But the Gospel of John is also the one about which it is claimed that the Magdalene was its author ...

Let us revisit that strangely disturbing village, Bethany, where Jesus' two `Beloveds' - the Magdalene and Lazarus/young John lived with their sister Martha. Although Martha is usually associated with mundane household chores, the compromising letter found by Professor Morton Smith at Mar Saba in 1958 states that the Carpocratians believed that the sacred sex rites were secrets practised and handed down by `Mary, Martha and Salome'. Clement of Alexandria, who fulminated against the filthy heretics, also, however, implied strongly that he knew Jesus and his circle had indeed practised these rites. Clement was in the business of sweeping all that under the carpet and deliberately changing the basic tenets of Christianity to accord with his own view of what it should have been, and therefore must be for ever - even if that meant actually transforming both the Christian message and the character of Jesus himself.

There was something else about Bethany that the gospel writers sought to obscure. It was where John the Baptist's mass baptisms took place, although the New Testament tries hard to imply that of the two Judaean Bethanys John's base was at the other one, `Bethany across the Jordan.'90 Was this an attempt to dissociate `Jesus" Bethany from his rival, the Baptist?

But was the Baptist in some way affiliated with the Bethany family? Such an association would hardly have endeared the place to Jesus' disciples, who were constantly at loggerheads with John's followers, although Christ himself was obviously drawn to the place like a magnet, if only because his two Beloveds lived there. However, the biblical accounts of the raising of Lazarus and the anointing take place well after John's death, when Jesus had taken over a large part of his following. Had Christ also appropriated the initiating Magdalene and Lazarus/John for his own cult?