The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail
- "Holy Blood" redirects here. For the folk metal band, see
Holy Blood (band) .
The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail (retitled Holy Blood, Holy Grail in the United States) is a controversial book by Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh, and Henry Lincoln, which was based in large part on Pierre Plantard’s Priory of Sion.
The book was first published in 1982 by Jonathan Cape in London, as a follow-up to a BBC TV documentary on the series Chronicle. A sequel to the book, called The Messianic Legacy, was published in 1987. The original work was reissued in an illustrated hardcover version in 2005. One of the books, according to the authors, which influenced the project was L’Or de Rennes (later re-published as Le Trésor Maudit), a 1967 book by Gérard de Sède.
In this book, the authors do not make an argument as such. Rather, they put forth a historical hypothesis, one which they repeatedly stress as having limited or inconclusive (but nonetheless significant) evidence. The hypothesis, put simply, is that Jesus married Mary Magdalene, had one or more children, and that those children or their descendants emigrated to what is now southern France. Once there, they intermarried with the noble families that would eventually become the Merovingian dynasty, whose special claim to the throne of France is championed today by a secret society called the Priory of Sion.
An international bestseller upon its release, The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail spurred interest in a number of ideas related to its central thesis. Response from mainstream historians and academics, however, was almost universally negative. Professional historians argued that the bulk of the claims, ancient mysteries and conspiracy theories presented as fact, are pseudohistorical. Nevertheless, these ideas would be very successfully fictionalised by Dan Brown in 2003 in his runaway best-seller novel The Da Vinci Code, even using Richard Leigh’s and Michael Baigent’s last names (Baigent's scrambled) for the character Leigh Teabing.
Content
The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail details the authors’ investigation (starting in the 1960s) of the alleged mysteries of the village of Rennes-le-Château in southern France. In the late 19th century, a pastor of the village, Bérenger Saunière, decorated his church with bizarre images, became mysteriously wealthy, and was refused absolution by the priest who came to his death bed. The authors sought to determine why.
After over a decade of research and speculation, Baigent, Leigh, and Lincoln came to the following hypotheses:
- That there is a secret society known as Priory of Sion that has a long and illustrious history dating back to the First Crusade. The order is led by a Grand Master or Nautonnier.
- That the Priory of Sion created the Knights Templar as its military and financial front.
- That the Priory is devoted to returning the Merovingian dynasty, that ruled the Franks until 751 AD, to the thrones of Europe and Jerusalem.
- That the order protects these royal claimants because they may be the literal descendants of Jesus and his wife, Mary Magdalene, or, at the very least, of King David.
- That the Roman Catholic Church tried to kill off all remnants of this dynasty and their guardians, the Cathars and the Templars, in order to maintain power through the apostolic succession of Peter, instead of the hereditary succession of Mary Magdalene.
These authors further mused that the ultimate goals of the Priory of Sion are:
- The founding of a “Holy European Empire” that would become the next hyperpower and usher in a new world order of peace and prosperity;
- the establishment of a messianic mystery state religion by revealing the Holy Grail;
- The grooming and installing of a “Rex Deus” pretender on the throne of a Greater Israel.
Influence and similarities
- The Jesus Scroll, written by Australian Donovan Joyce and first published in 1972, was an early attempt by an author to claim that Jesus and Mary Magdalene had been married and had a son together.
- Umberto Eco’s novel Foucault’s Pendulum (1988) mentions the Jesus-Mary Magdalene idea in passing (a quote from the book is in fact one of the chapter headings). However, Eco the rational humanist takes a negative stance on such conspiracy theories. The resurgence of interest in the topic has recently sparked the colourful description “a thinking man’s Da Vinci Code” for Eco’s book.
- The novel The Children of the Grail (1996) by Peter Berling incorporates the bloodline of Jesus and Mary Magdalene as a central part of the plot.
- The third installment of the Gabriel Knight series Blood of the Sacred, Blood of the Damned (1999) used the idea that Jesus and Mary Magdalene had children as one of the basic structures of the storyline, however tying it together with a number of other myths in an original story. “Et in Arcadia ego” is also an important object, with the characters finding important clues in the picture.
- Elements from the book are used as background in the time-travel novels Arthur War Lord and Far Beyond the Wave, by Dafydd ab Hugh.
- Most recently, author Dan Brown in his bestseller The Da Vinci Code (2003), makes reference to this book, also liberally using most of the above claims as key plot elements; indeed, in 2005 Baigent and Leigh unsuccessfully sued Brown’s publisher, Random House, for plagiarism, on the grounds that Brown's book makes extensive use of their research and that one of the characters is named Leigh, has a surname (Teabing) which is an anagram of Baigent, and has a physical description strongly resembling Henry Lincoln. In his novel, Brown also mentions Holy Blood, Holy Grail as an acclaimed international bestseller (chapter 60) and claims it as the major contributor to his hypothesis. Perhaps as a result of this mention, the authors (minus Henry Lincoln) of Holy Blood sued Dan Brown for copyright infringement. They claimed that the central framework of their plot had been stolen for the writing of The Da Vinci Code. The claim was overturned by High Court Judge Peter Smith on 6 April 2006, who ruled that “their argument was vague and shifted course during the trial and was always based on a weak foundation.” In fact, it was found that the publicity of the trial had significantly boosted sales of Holy Blood. The court ruled that, in effect, because it was published as a work of (alleged) history, its premises legally could be freely interpreted in any subsequent fictional work without any copyright infringement.
- The Dead Sea Scrolls Deception.
- The video game Broken Sword: The Shadow of the Templars references this book as well, in the form of dialogue when the player asks what a character knows of the Templars.
- Allusions are to be found also in T.S. Eliot, and by Philip Johnson, Glass House.
Criticism
The claims made in The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail have been the source of much investigation and criticism over the years, with many independent investigators such as 60 Minutes, Time Magazine, and the BBC claiming that many of the book’s claims are not credible or verifiable.
The “Priory of Sion”, which was central to the authors' hypothesis in Holy Blood Holy Grail, never actually existed as described. Far from having a “history (that) spanned more than a millennium,” the Priory was a hoax created by a pretender to the throne of France, Pierre Plantard, a convicted con-man, in 1956. As part of his hoax, Plantard had planted two sets of forged medieval documents: one in the French National Library, and another in the 1967 book Le Trésor Maudit de Rennes-le-Chateau. (For more details, see The Priory of Sion, Rennes-le-Chateau, and Pierre Plantard). The authors' hypothesis in The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail was significantly premised on the veracity of these documents. As a result, the revelation that the Priory documents were indeed fabricated serves to detract from much of the book's impact and plausibility.
Other critics have argued that one of the book's hypotheses — that Jesus and Mary Magdalene were married — was not original to Holy Blood, but had in fact been proposed previously many times. For example, in a 1971 article in The Observer, it was proposed by theologian Charles Davis, who also pointed to the implications in the Gospel of Philip, the Gnostic Gospel written over a thousand years ago. [1][2]
In 2005,
Some scholars of esoteric history consider the controversial Sicilian Traditionalist Julius Evola's (1898-1974) ideas on the Holy Grail as sources for Pierre Plantard's claims ([3]).
Quotations
- It is typical of my unregenerable soul that I can only see this as a marvellous theme for a novel.—Anthony Burgess, writing about The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail in The Observer.
- It would be quite wrong if fictional writers were to have their writings pored over in the way DVC has been pored over in this case by authors of pretend historical books to make an allegation of infringement of copyright.—Judge Peter Smith, in his ruling that the Da Vinci Code lawsuit was “based on a contrived and selective number of facts and ideas.” [4]
- The Templar-Grail myth... is at the heart of the most notorious of all the Grail pseudo-histories, The Holy Blood and The Holy Grail, which is a classic example of the conspiracy theory of history... It is essentially a text which proceeds by innuendo, not by refutable scholarly debate... Essentially, the whole argument is an ingeniously constructed series of suppositions combined with forced readings of such tangible facts as are offered.” Richard Barber (2004). The Holy Grail, The History of a Legend. (ISBN 0-14026-765-4)
References
- Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh, and Henry Lincoln (1982). The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail. (ISBN 0-385-33859-7)
- Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh and Henry Lincoln. The Messianic Legacy, 1987 (1989 reissue: ISBN 0-440-20319-8)
- Smith, Paul. Priory-of-Sion
See also
External links
Notable reviews
- O'Neill, Tim. (2006) 'The Priory of Sion' Myth and Holy Blood, Holy Grail. History vs The Da Vinci Code
- Burns, Alex. (2000) Holy Blood, Holy Grail. Disinfo
- Mondschein, Ken. (2004) Holy Blood, Holy Grail. New York Press
- Mader, Eric. (2005) “At First We Were Skeptical”: The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail
- Miller, Laura. (2004) The Da Vinci crock.
salon.com - Telegraph editors. (2004) Da Vinci Code bestseller is plagiarism, authors claim. The Daily Telegraph
- Simon Raikes. (2005) The Real Da Vinci Code. Channel 4
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