Medieval & Modern Christianity: Quick Facts

 

The historic Priory of Sion, properly called the Prieure du Notre Dame de Sion, was a religious community founded in Jerusalem in 1099, immediately after the First Crusade. (It had no special relationship with the Knights Templar.) After their church was destroyed during a Muslim attack in 1219, the priests of the Priory withdrew to Sicily. In 1617 they joined the Jesuits and disappeared.

 

Nevertheless, the Priory still flourishes in fantasy. According to theories popularized in "Holy Blood, Holy Grail" by Michael Biagent, Richard Leigh, and Henry Lincoln (1982), a book heavily mined by Dan Brown for "The Da Vinci Code," the Priory had a hidden mission--guarding the secret bloodline descended from Jesus and Mary Magdalene. According to this legend, Jesus' lineage, passed through the Merovingian dynasty of France and the crusader Geoffrey of Bouillon, still exists.

 

The idea of a still-existing Priory with a shocking secret was, in fact, invented by a convicted French conman named Pierre Plantard on the model of a 19th-century esoteric society, the Order of the Rose-Croix of the Temple of the Grail. The only modern Priory of Sion was a short-lived club registered by Plantard in 1956.

 

But Plantard and his accomplices later fabricated false documentation for the Priory, which claimed to have enrolled thousands of important people throughout the world under Grand Master Plantard, heir to the holy blood and the throne of France. These claims wilted under investigation, including a debunking by BBC in 1992. A French court forced Plantard to admit his hoax under oath in 1993.

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According to medieval legend, the Holy Grail is the vessel of the Last Supper, afterwards used to catch drops of Christ's blood at the cross. Different versions depict it as a platter, a cup for the wine (chalice), a container for the bread (ciborium), a dish for the Paschal lamb, or a white stone on which a wafer was laid. Holy Communion is always the focus.

 

The Grail first appears in the 12th-century French poem "Perceval"as a mysterious serving dish containing a single Communion wafer. Robert de Boron rewrote the poem in 1200, turning the dish into a cup called the Holy Grail used at the Last Supper and brought to England by Christ's disciple Joseph of Arimathaea. The most mystical form of the story, the "Queste del Saint Grail" from the early 13th century, has King Arthur's three purest knights finding the precious cup after a long search. Christ himself appears and gives them Communion from the Grail, after which it is taken away to heaven. This account of the Grail quest was incorporated into Thomas Malory's "Morte d'Arthur" (1470), the best version of the Arthurian legends in English.

 

Medieval stories about the Holy Grail reflect contemporary ideas about Eucharistic miracles, such as levitating Communion wafers or appearances of Jesus during Mass. They also appear to draw on pagan Celtic myths about ever-filled vessels of food and drink, cauldrons of regeneration, and adventures in the Happy Otherworld. But the pagan borrowings always serve a Christian purpose. The Grail does not symbolize Mary Magdalene as bearer of Christ's child, although it might possibly stand for the Virgin Mary, whose pregnant body did contain Christ himself.

According to its American website, Opus Dei's mission "is to spread the message that all Christians are called by God to make Jesus Christ known and to seek holiness in and through their daily work, family life, and social relations."

 

Familiarly known as "The Work," Opus Dei provides spiritual direction, classes, talks, and publications. Members attend daily Mass, read the Bible, pray regularly, and do charitable works. About 98 percent of its 85,000 members worldwide are laypeople and the great majority of these are married ("supernumeraries"). Ordained members belong to a special association called the Priestly Society of the Holy Cross. Celibate lay members who live at home are "associates," while celibates who live in Opus Dei residences are "numeraries." "Cooperators" are people of any faith who support Opus Dei's activities or enjoy its guidance.

 

Opus Dei ("Work of God") is what's known as "a personal prelature" of the Catholic Church. This designation denotes an organizational structure that provides Opus Dei with its own non-territorial bishop to oversee its specific activities. Members still remain under the authority of their own local bishops for ordinary matters. Opus Dei is not a religious order: Members make commitments, not vows.

 

Opus Dei was founded by a Spanish priest, St. Josemaria Escriva de Balaguer (1902-75), won papal approval in 1950, and was made a personal prelature in 1982. Escriva was canonized in 2002. Opus Dei has critics who consider it too powerful, controlling, and conservative. It has not quite shaken habits of secrecy acquired during the Spanish Civil War. But Brown's portrait of the group in "The Da Vinci Code" goes beyond these oft-cited criticisms. Unlike the book's description, Opus Dei's members are not monks and do not wear special garb. Their mortifications do not mutilate their bodies. They did not bail out the Church during the Vatican Bank Scandal nor are they in the assassination business.