72 pages • 2 hours read
Dan BrownAngels and Demons
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2000A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
The Church of Illumination
The Church of Illumination, located inside the Castle of the Angel, symbolizes the determination, ingenuity, and boldness of the 16th-century Illuminati scientists, who valued scientific illumination above all else. They disguised their meeting place in a Vatican building and laid out a series of clues that lead the prospective Illuminatus through Rome. Deciphering the clues require knowledge from various fields, including art, Catholic religion, and pagan religions, which alludes to the breadth of knowledge valued by the Illuminati.
This Church’s location near the Vatican was a brazen choice given the murder of four Illuminati scientists. Its location is an open secret, in plain sight of Vatican headquarters, establishing the perseverance of science even in the face of theocratic oppression. The organization hid its lair at the end of a complex map that requires ingenuity and curiosity to solve, illustrating their preference for these qualities above all others.
Antimatter
Antimatter symbolizes the pinnacle of scientific achievement. It can be harnessed for immense power and lends itself to the support of both scientific and religious theories, but it also has the potential to cause mass destruction. The Camerlengo warns against unbridled progress without considering moral implications. To prove his point—and to symbolize the triumph of religion over science—he hides the canister of antimatter underneath the Vatican and then successfully removes it. This plot—although fake—symbolizes science being utilized to destroy religion, which many, including the Illuminati, perceive as the enemy of science. In Leonardo Vetra’s and Robert Langdon’s victory, antimatter ultimately endures as a symbol of science and religion's compatibility, in which science can be considered a miracle.
Leonardo Vetra
Leonardo Vetra, the Catholic priest and particle physicist, symbolizes the union of science and religion. He also represents that faith is best represented by moral actions rather than adherence to dogma; he becomes a father by adopting Vittoria Vetra, even though Catholic priests are not permitted to have children. Many more enlightened individuals, such as Vittoria, the late Pope, and Cardinal Mortati, hope that science and religion can coexist, even though they have traditionally been at odds. Vetra hopes to prove that creationism and the Big Bang theory can both be proven through the same scientific process, in which both matter and antimatter are produced from nothing but beams of concentrated light. Vetra is killed for his beliefs, indicating that such a stance threatens the entrenched power of the Catholic Church.
