'The Last Supper'

Being sick only has one advantage - one has to lie still in bed for hours on end. This means that, in order to avoid complete boredom, one must either read a book, watch TV or listen to radio. My preference is reading.

I haven't read a book cover to cover like I did today for far too long. It was glorious, and a wonderfully guilty pleasure. Of course, I have piles of marking to do, and should probably have done it, but I think the break from routine has been delicious.

What did I read? An interesting book. There has been a lot of speculation about Leonardo da Vinci's painting 'The Last Supper', not least because of the way that Dan Brown has used it in his book 'The Da Vinci Code'. The novel I read today, 'The Secret Supper' by Javier Sierra, is another in the same line. It seeks to pin Leonardo as a Catharist.

Catharism, I learnt today, is an heretical Christian cult of the 11th and 12th centuries. Very similar to Gnosticism, the followers of this cult mostly believed in a dualism of nature - that the earth was created by an evil god (the God of the Old Testament) and that real enlightenment comes by believing in the true God, who is a being of light, of whom Jesus was a messenger. They rejected the crucifixion, and abhorred anything to do with copulation (as it was seen to trap you in the earthly, evil world). As a result, they were celibate (the 'priests' were the only ones who had to abide by this - no doubt because otherwise their cult would have died out in one generation!), and ate nothing that was the product of copulation - no eggs, no dairy, no meat. Fish was tolerated only because fish were thought not to copulate to produce offspring. They also refused to take any vows (including marriage) and lived lives of humility. All possessions were given to the community, so that they would not be enslaved in this world by material things.

They also held some rather odd beliefs about Mary Magdalene (e.g. that she hid Jesus' body after he revealed himself to her in his body of light following his burial), and the church in general. Consequently, they believed that the only sacrament possible was a 'consolamentum' in which some say the Gospel of John was placed upon the head, and the spirit/ content thereof baptised, absolved & ordained all those who received it.

Anyway, poor Leonardo is once again roped in to provide a background for telling a story of one poor inquisitor monk's role in rooting out an evil and finding a murderer. The story itself is gripping - full of little puzzles and riddles to tempt anyone with more brain power than poor, sick me - and the conclusion is certainly a fitting one for the way the story has been woven together. Certainly, there is a plausibility to the story - the author has done his research (although I wish the same could be said for Dan Brown) - and the author has worked very hard at making it so. As with all conspiracy theory stories, one is left feeling a bit deflated by the whole thing. However, one thing the blurb does get right - you will never look at 'The Last Supper' in the same light again. It is impossible now to look at the painting and not think about Catharism, whether or not Leonardo was secretly a member of the cult or not.