The Da Vinci Code Was Too Tame: What the Beloved Disciple Actually Is

The Da Vinci Code sold 80 million copies on the claim that the figure to Jesus's right in Leonardo's Last Supper is Mary Magdalena. The reading is wrong, and the actual answer is much weirder. The Beloved Disciple has been depicted as androgynous since the 4th century. The convention reaches its full devotional weight in 14th-century German nuns' convents, where John leaning on Christ's chest is the soul-bride of bridal mysticism. Leonardo amplifies the convention through Florentine Neoplatonism. Lévi and Péladan turn it into Hermetic occult ritual in 1850s and 1890s Paris. The conspiracy version is the tame one.