[Cooper:] So back to the controversy over "The Da Vinci Code." When the movie opens nationwide Friday, finally, it will not have a disclaimer at the top. Director Ron Howard refused to include one, despite demands from some Catholics. Their concern is that moviegoers will not be able to tell fact from fiction. And the truth is, Author Dan brown, often blurs the line between fact and fiction in his book. We asked CNN's Delia Gallagher for a fact check.
[Unidentified Male:] Witness the biggest cover-up in human history.
[Delia Gallagher, Cnn Faith And Values Correspondent:] "The Da Vinci Code" is, first and foremost, a mystery. But the enduring mystery seems stuck somewhere between fact and fiction, about the people and secrets that populate the novel.
[Unidentified Male:] Dear God.
[Gallagher:] The story begins with a murder. The victim, revealed to be the grandmaster of a secret society, the Priory of Sion, just one of the shadowy groups the characters encounter on their hunt for the Holy Grail. The question is was the Priory of Sion real? According to the Author Dan Brown, it was. Founded in Europe in 1099, Leonardo Da Vinci, himself, was said to be one of the group's grandmasters. And according to the book, the priory had to be shrouded in secrecy because it was charged with protecting the Catholic Church's great secret, that Mary Magdalene was the wife of Jesus and bore his children. A secret so big that if ever revealed, the very foundations on which the church was built would crumble. But the weight of historical research is that the priory itself was a hoax, created by a man in France in the 1950s, the subject of a "60 Minutes" expose, a group with grand ideas, but little power. Other groups that play a more or less prominent role in "The Da Vinci Code," most definitely do exist. Like the Free Masons, organized in 18th century England, now famous for their secret rituals, their secret handshake, and the air of mystery that surrounds their ceremony. But the Masons say there's nothing mysterious about them. They're simply out to take good men and make them better.
[John Hammill, United Grand Lodge Of England:] You learn a great deal, as you progress through, about yourself and as you start to study the ritual and the meaning behind the ritual. For a lot of people, it gives them confidence.
[Gallagher:] But perhaps the most mysterious and ancient society found in the pages of "The Da Vinci Code," is the Knights Templar, and there's no doubt they existed. Founded in the 12th century, the knights, both monks and military men, guarded pilgrims on their trips to the Holy Land. In the churches they built, guided the characters in the book on the trail of the Holy Grail. Remember the clue, "in London lies a knight of pope interred?" More than a clue, it's also a fact. That knight was interred here in the temple church, built by the templars in the 12th and 13th centuries. It houses nine life-sized effigies of knights who died in battle. They were holy men, crusaders, accumulating enormous wealth along the way, making themselves indispensable to Europe's royalty.
[Robin Griffith-jones, Master Of The Temple Church:] It became clear that they could look after their own resources, so before long, they were looking after other people's as well. Kings and popes used them as treasurers, as bankers, as credit agents all over Europe and in the Middle East.
[Gallagher:] They were respected and reviled. But in the end, it was their mastery of money, not their pursuit of the Holy Grail, that would prove their undoing. And on Friday the 13th of October, 1307, the knights were rounded up, their homes occupied, their possessions seized. And they were nearly all tortured and burned to death. But the legend they left behind, part of a very distant past, clearly still resonates today. Delia Gallagher, CNN, New York.
[Cooper:] Well, in "The Da Vinci Code," the novel's main characters follow a string of clues to an ancient church in London, the temple church. In real life, Robin Griffith-Jones is master of that church. He's also the author of "The Da Vinci Code and the Secrets of the Temple." We appreciate you joining us tonight. You've seen the results of this British poll, which is just that people who have read this book, or I guess soon people will see this movie, are more likely to believe a lot of the fictions in this are fact. Does that concern you? I mean that Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene?
[Griffith-jones:] I'm not surprised. I think for many such people it's the first time they really actually bothered to read anything about such history, and it's it comes across a really compelling in the novel. It's beautifully done, very cleverly done. So it's not surprising that people are really captivated by it. Whether that belief will actually turn into a long-term settled conviction of these truths, well, that's up to people like me to try and disabuse them of the mistakes.
[Cooper:] Do you think it's a good thing that so many people are reading this book and at least it gets a conversation going. I mean, there are some Catholics that say, look, this should be boycotted, you should never read this. Others will say, look, you know, this starts a conversation, and that's not a bad thing.
[Griffith-jones:] I am all in favor of the conversation. I think that there are questions that people have been harboring for years. Actually not least of Jesus and marriage and sex. Jesus being God. What does all this mean? People have asked these questions for years, but they've thought that they might feel a bit stupid or blasphemous or rude or offensive if they really add to them. I'm pleased they are.
[Cooper:] You're actually a character in the book, the master of the temple church.
[Griffith-jones:] I'm afraid so.
[Cooper:] Yes, you're described as scowling and foul tempered. Wow.
[Griffith-jones:] Wow. I do certainly worry that Dan Brown might have come around one day and asked what I thought was a really stupid question, and I might have been slightly brisk.
[Cooper:] What is the Knights Templar?
[Griffith-jones:] There was a Knights Templar. Well, they were founded in the 12th century to protect pilgrims in the Holy Land. A really strange hybrid of both monks and soldiers. They prayed for people and killed them. This was really strange then, as it would be now. They did become hugely important. Your last excerpt showed our own temple church in London, built by the templars at the height of their wealth and their power, with the effigies of knights spirita. They were an enormous power in Europe.
[Cooper:] There's also I mean, there are so many shadowy groups in this book. The Priory of Sion, was it real?
[Griffith-jones:] It was. In the 12th century there really was some Augustinian canons, who protected a holy site in Jerusalem, and they were called the Abby of our Lady of Mount Zion and of Pentecost. They disappeared centuries ago. The modern Priory of Sion, it's a hoax. It's a pure hoax.
[Cooper:] OK. Also, the Dan Brown content in "The Da Vinci Code," that the painting of the last supper is proof that Mary Magdalene was married to Jesus. You've studied the painting. Does it show Mary Magdalene at the right...
[Griffith-jones:] I'm afraid it doesn't. It shows the beloved disciple, a young man, always shown beardless, almost always shown leaning on the breast of Jesus. But in Leonardo's painting, he's raised himself from the breast of Jesus to hear the question of Simon Peter. All of this is absolutely biblical, straight out of the Gospel of John, has absolutely nothing to do with Mary Magdalene.
[Cooper:] Is there any evidence that they were married?
[Griffith-jones:] No.
[Cooper:] No? Or they had children?
[Griffith-jones:] No.
[Cooper:] No?
[Griffith-jones:] I'm afraid not. The real story, for what it's worth, the real story of Jesus and Mary Magdalene, which Dan Brown never even mentions, but the core foundational story out of which all these later stories have emerged is the story that we hear in church on Easter morning, the Easter story in John's gospel when Mary Magdalene and Jesus meet on Easter day. It's a terrifically romantic sensuous story, but John has told it like that for his own reasons. It is not about a married couple meeting in a garden.
[Cooper:] Was there ever such a thing as the Holy Grail?
[Griffith-jones:] Invented in the 12th century. It was.
[Cooper:] Man, what an invention that was.
[Griffith-jones:] Yes, it was, by a man who was the best seller of the time. He wrote the equivalent to "The Da Vinci Code," in the 12th century, and it swept Europe. It didn't quite sell 60 million copies, but it was a very, very popular book.
[Cooper:] The book, "The Da Vinci Code and the Secrets of the Temple." Thanks for coming.
[Griffith-jones:] Thank you.
[Cooper:] Yes, very it's like, do you lecture? You have a great speaking voice there.
[Griffith-jones:] I hate to admit, but yes.
[Cooper:] Yes, all right, it shows. Coming up, it is dangerous microscopic super bug. We're going to show you how one woman's life changed and so did her young son's when a drug-resistant bacteria struck them. 360 M.D. Sanjay Gupta will tell you what you need to know. And the case of mistaken identity that landed one guy on live TV. Did you see this guy on the BBC? He was supposedly one of those expert talking heads. He actually wasn't. He was a cab driver. But he played along gamely. It was great fun.
[Griffith-jones:] Maybe like me.
[Cooper:] We've been had. We've been had. We'll be right back.