Council of Shadows

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The Council of Shadows is a secret organization in the 2006 film adaptation of The Da Vinci Code. It is not in the original novel by Dan Brown.

The Council members are high-ranking officials in the Catholic Church, but operate underground, without the knowledge of the Vatican. The Council seeks to find and destroy the Holy Grail, and with it the evidence of Jesus's marriage to Mary Magdalene and the survival of their descendants. At least one member also suggests murdering the descendants. Bishop Aringarosa, the leader of Opus Dei, is a member, and involves the council in the plot instigated by 'The Teacher,' a shadowy figure who informs Aringarosa in a plan to find the Grail, and sends Silas to kill the top leaders of the Priory of Sion.

The Council of Shadows may have been created in response to protests by Catholic conservatives and Opus Dei members who objected to the portrayal of the Church and Opus Dei in the novel, and had called on the filmmakers to change the content. While the novel implies that the Church had engaged in a destructive, centuries-long campaign to wipe out the Priory of Sion and the bloodline of Jesus, the Council of Shadows is used as an alternative antagonist, allowing the film to water down the novel's sinister portrayal of the Church. One of the members tells Aringarosa in the movie that if the Vatican found out about the council, the members would be excommunicated.

Opus Dei as an organization is also distanced from the position of villain in this way. Aringarosa and Silas, the Opus Dei characters in the novel, are ultimately victims of the Teacher, who turns out to be a Grail historian attempting to publicly reveal the secret of Jesus and Mary Magdalene. However, Aringarosa's apparent motivation for joining the Teacher's plan to find the Grail is to use it to blackmail the liberal pope (whose election was portrayed in Dan Brown's previous novel, Angels and Demons), who is on the brink of disowning Opus Dei. By making Aringarosa an agent of the Council of Shadows, the movie avoids attributing such devious intentions to Opus Dei. It also helps keep the movie from running longer, and eliminates the allusions to Angels and Demons, which might be confusing to viewers unfamiliar with the first novel.