The Church of Saint-Sulpice, it is said, has the most eccentric history of any building in Paris. Built over the ruins of an ancient temple to the Egyptian goddess Isis, the church possesses an architectural footprint matching that of Notre Dame to within inches. The sanctuary has played host to the baptisms of the Marquis de Sade and Baudelaire, as well as the marriage of Victor Hugo. The attached seminary has a well-documented history of unorthodoxy and was once the clandestine meeting hall for numerous secret societies.
Embedded in the grey granite floor, a thin polished strip of brass glistened in the stone... a golden line slanting across the church's floor. The line bore graduated markings, like a ruler. It was a gnomon, Silas had been told, a pagan astronomical device like a sundial. Tourists, scientists, historians and pagans from around the world come to gaze upon this famous line.
...Slowly, Silas let his eyes trace the path of the brass strip as it made its way across the floor from his right to left, slanting in front of him at an awkward angle, entirely at odds with the symmetry of the church. ...The strip cleaved the communion rail in two and then crossed the entire width of the church, finally reaching the corner of the north transept, where it arrived at the base of a most unexpected structure. A colossal Egyptian obelisk.
...The Teacher [had] told Silas of Saint-Sulpice's famed architectural oddity - a strip of brass that segmented the sanctuary on a perfect north-south axis. It was an ancient sundial of sorts, a vestige of the pagan temple that had once stood on this very spot. The sun's rays, shining through the oculus on the south wall, moved farther down the line every day, indicating the passage of time, from solstice to solstice.
The north-south stripe had been known as the Rose Line. For centuries, the symbol of the Rose had been associated with maps and guiding souls in the proper direction. The Compass Rose - drawn on almost every map - indicated North, East, South and West.
The book goes on to explain that the original zero-longitude line passed through Paris, along this Rose Line, before being moved to Greenwich, England.
Silas follows the line to the obelisk, and gets an unpleasant surprise - the instructions were actually a well-rehearsed lie designed the guard the secret of the Grail. In the designated spot, Silas finds only a reference to a verse in the Book of Job which reads "Hitherto shalt thou go and no further." Silas attacks the sole occupant of the church, Sister Sandrine, as she attempts to phone for help.
In the wake of the popularity of The Da Vinci Code, the church of Saint-Sulpice posted the following note in English:
The "meridien" line materialized by a brass inlay in the pavement of this church is part of a scientific instrument built here during the 18th century. This was done in full agreement with Church authorities by the astronomers in charge of the newly-built Paris Observatory. They used it for defining various parameters of the earth's orbit. Similar arrangements have been made, for the sake of convenience, in other large churches like the Bologna cathedral, where Pope Gregory XIII had preparatory studies made for the enactment of the present, "Gregorian" calendar.
Contrary to fanciful allegations in a recent bestselling novel, this is not the vestige of a pagan temple. No such temple ever existed in this place. It was never called a "Rose Line." It does not coincide with the meridian traced through the middle of the Paris Observatory which serves as a reference for maps where longitudes are measured in degrees East or West of Paris. No mystical notion can be derived from this instrument of astronomy except to acknowledge that God the Creator is the master of time.
Please also note that the letters "P" and "S" in the small round windows at both ends of the transept refer to Peter and Sulpice, the patron saints of the church, not an imaginary "Priory of Sion."
Well, The Da Vinci Code version makes a good story. But even the facts are not without interest, in providing an example of the cooperation of science and religion. It would not be unreasonable to expect the church was built on a pagan temple; this was a regular practice. However, it seems unlikely that the sundial, especially if known to be pagan, would have been preserved or reconstructed in the new church building.
