Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
fact based on the tapered pillars erected by surveyors in many places in France to
mark key measuring locations for the Paris Meridian project. The pillars are pointed
because the narrowing to the top well-defines the centre of the pillar as seen
through a surveyor's telescope.
In the wall opposite the gnomon there is a high window where the lens of the
meridiana was mounted. Nearby is a smaller window containing the letters P and S. In
The Da Vinci Code
, the organization that seeks the Holy Grail of the bloodline of Jesus
is the Priory of Sion. In a foreward to the topic, Dan Brown says that this “is a real
organization” and “a European secret society founded in 1099… In 1975 Paris's
Bibliothèque Nationale discovered parchments known as Les Dossiers Secrets, identi-
fying numerous members of the Priory of Sion, including Sir Isaac Newton, Botticelli,
Victor Hugo, and Leonardo da Vinci.” In reality this organization was founded in
the middle of the twentieth century and is a hoax. A notice in the church says that “the
letters P and S in the small windows at both ends of the transept refer to Peter and
Sulpice, the Patron Saint of the church, not an imaginary 'Priory of Sion'.”
The brass strip is a meridian line, accurately running north-south and laid out on
the floor of the church by Le Monnier. In
The Da Vinci Code,
Silas learns from his
Teacher to call the line “the Rose Line”.
The Da Vinci Code
gives as an explanation
that the name is based on the symbol found on maps used to mark north and, in its
full form, representing the 32 directions of the wind - of course north, south, east
and west, but also north-east, north-north-east and so on. The simplified version of
the symbol is an arrow-head or fleur-de-lis, which marks the north-south direction,
but when fully diagrammed inside a circle, the 32 points resemble a traditional
thirty-two petal rose flower. The symbol is known as a Compass Rose - hence the
name that Dan Brown gives to the meridian line identified by the brass strip in St
Sulpice. The name used in this way is an invention of the novel, and is not known
to French usage.
The meridian strip in St Sulpice is the location for one of the key scenes of the
novel. Silas breaks the tiles at the base of the obelisk to search for a keystone whose
markings, he thinks, are the clue to the location of the Holy Grail. In a room above
the Church he murders a nun, who has been assigned by a secret society called the
Priory of Sion to protect the keystone. In the novel, Silas has been deliberately misled
by agents of the Priory of Sion, like the art curator, about the location of the clue to
the Holy Grail, in order to protect the secret. However, the hero of the novel, Robert
Langdon, a tall, athletic, lean-jawed, knowledgeable and intelligent professor (per-
haps a model for how the author would like to be…), searching for the hidden treas-
ure, finds his way by many adventures to the Palais Royal, just north of the centre of
Paris. In the royal arcade he searches out several bronze medallions (
Fig. 38
), each 12
cm (5 inches) in diameter and marked with the letters
N
and
S
, for
Nord
(north) and
Sud
(south), and uses them as a pointer to the treasure that he seeks.
THESE MEDALLIONS also actually exist. According to reference works there
are 135 of them across Paris, running from Montmartre in the north to the Paris
Observatory in the south, and beyond to the Cité Universitaire. They mark, says Brown,
the “Rose Line” and they cross the courtyard of the Louvre. To suit his purposes to
imply historical, religious conspiracy, and just as with the Church of St Sulpice,
