The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail Totally Explained

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The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail (retitled Holy Blood, Holy Grail in the United States) is a controversial non-fiction book by Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh, and Henry Lincoln.
   The book was first published in 1982 by Jonathan Cape in London, as an unofficial follow-up to three BBC TV documentaries being part of the Chronicle series. A sequel to the book, called The Messianic Legacy, was published in 1986. 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, with the collaboration of Pierre Plantard.
   In this book, the authors put forward a hypothesis that the historical 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 universally negative. Academic 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 conspiracy fiction novel The Da Vinci Code, even using Richard Leigh’s and Michael Baigent’s last names (Baigent's scrambled) for the character Leigh Teabing.

Background

After reading Le Tresor Maudit, Henry Lincoln persuaded BBC Two's factual television series of the 1970s, Chronicle, to make a series of documentaries, which became quite popular and generated thousands of responses. Lincoln then joined forces with Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh for further research. This led them to the pseudohistorical Dossiers Secrets at the Bibliothèque nationale de France, which though alleging to portray hundreds of years of medieval history, were actually all written by Pierre Plantard and Philippe de Chérisey under the pseudonym of "Philippe Toscan du Plantier". Unaware that the documents had been forged, Baigent, Leigh, and Lincoln used them as a major source for their 1982 non-fiction book The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail.

there's a secret society known as the Priory of Sion, which has a long history starting in 1099, and had illustrious Grand Masters including Leonardo da Vinci, Victor Hugo and Jean Cocteau;
it created the Knights Templar as its military and financial front; and
it's devoted to installing the Merovingian dynasty, that ruled the Franks from 457 to 751, on the thrones of France and the rest of Europe.

However, the authors re-interpreted the Dossiers Secrets in the light of their own interest in undermining the Roman Catholic Church's institutional reading of Judeo-Christian history. Contrary to Plantard's initial "Franco-Israelist" claims that the Merovingians were only descended from the Tribe of Benjamin, they asserted that:

the Priory of Sion protects Merovingian dynasts as the literal descendants of the historical Jesus and his alleged wife, Mary Magdalene, traced further back to King David; and

the Church tried to kill off all remnants of this dynasty and their supposed guardians, the Cathars and the Templars, in order to maintain her power through the apostolic succession of Peter instead of the hereditary succession of Mary Magdalene. The authors therefore concluded that the modern goals of the Priory of Sion are:

the public revelation of secret treasures hidden in Rennes-le-Château which would facilitate Merovingian restoration in France.

the establishment of a theocratic "United States of Europe" as an interlocking network of Merovingian popular monarchies, morally sustained through the restoration of chivalry, and unified through an imperial cult centered on a Merovingian sacred king, occupying the throne of Europe and possibly the Holy See; and

the transfer of the governance of Europe to the Priory of Sion possibly through a federal parliament. The authors also incorporated the anti-semitic and anti-Masonic tract known as The Protocols of the Elders of Zion into their story, concluding that it actually referred to the activities of the Priory of Sion. They viewed the Protocols as the most persuasive piece of evidence for the existence and activities of the Priory of Sion by arguing that:

the original version emanated from a Masonic body of the Rite of Strict Observance, which had nothing to do with a "Judaeo-Masonic conspiracy";

the original version wasn't intended to be inflammatory or released publicly, but was a program for gaining control of Freemasonry;

the document's publisher Sergei Nilus changed the text in about 1903 after a failed attempt to gain influence in the court of Tsar Nicholas II of Russia, in order to discredit the esoteric clique around Papus; and

some esoteric Christian elements were undetected by Nilus and hence remained unchanged.

Influence and similarities

The 1973 book The Jesus Scroll by Donovan Joyce was an early attempt by an author to claim that Jesus and Mary Magdalene had been married and had a son together.

The 1988 novel Foucault’s Pendulum by Umberto Eco 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. Foucault's Pendulum was a strong debunking of themes found in The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail through the medium of satire.

The 1991 controversial non-fiction book The Dead Sea Scrolls Deception by Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh promotes a conspiracy theory accusing the Roman Catholic Church of having suppressed the content of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

The 1994 novel Arthur War Lord and its sequel Far Beyond the Wave by Dafydd ab Hugh use elements from the book as background for the time-travel story.

The 1996 novel The Children of the Grail by Peter Berling incorporates the bloodline of Jesus and Mary Magdalene as a central part of the plot.

The 1996 video game references this book as well, in the form of dialogue when the player asks what a character knows of the Templars.

The 1999 third installment of the Gabriel Knight series,, 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.

The 2003 conspiracy fiction novel The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown makes reference to this book, also liberally using most of the above claims as key plot elements; Accepting as valid the testimony of an amateur archaeologist codenamed "Ben Hammott" relating to his discoveries made in the vicinity of Rennes-le-Château since 1999; Burgess claims to have found the treasure of Bérenger Saunière: several mummified corpses (one of which is allegedly Mary Magdalene) in three underground tombs created by the Knights Templar under the orders of the Priory of Sion.

Commentary

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, 21 years before Dan Brown would write his best-selling 2003 conspiracy fiction novel The Da Vinci Code.

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.”

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, Channel 4, Discovery Channel, Time Magazine, and the BBC claiming that many of the book’s claims are not credible or verifiable.
Pierre Plantard stated on the Jacques Pradel radio interview on 'France-Inter', 18 February 1982:

I admit that 'The Sacred Enigma' (French title for 'The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail') is a good book, but one must say that there's a part that owes more to fiction than to fact, especially in the part that deals with the lineage of Jesus. How can you prove a lineage of four centuries from Jesus to the Merovingians? I've never put myself forward as a descendant of Jesus Christ.

There are no references to the Jesus bloodline in the Priory of Sion Documents and the link exists only within the context of a thesis made by the authors of The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail. From the Conspiracies On Trial: The Da Vinci Code documentary:

"The authors of the 1980s bestseller The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail re-interpreted the Dossiers in the light of their own Biblical obsessions - the secret buried in the documents ceased to be the Merovingian bloodline and became the bloodline of Christ - the genealogies led to Christ's descendants".

Pierre Plantard claimed that the Merovingians were descended from the Tribe of Benjamin. Claiming that the Merovingians were descended from the Tribe of Benjamin contradicts the Jesus bloodline theory found in The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail since the Line of David was associated with the Tribe of Judah, not the Tribe of Benjamin.
Historian Marina Warner commented on The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail when it was first published:

"Of course there's not much harm in thinking that Jesus was married (nor are these authors the first to suggest it), or that his descendants were King Pippin and Charles Martel. But there's harm in strings of lurid falsehoods and distorted reasoning. The method bends the mind the wrong way, an insidious and real corruption".

Prominent British historian Richard Barber, wrote:

*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.

In 2005, Tony Robinson narrated a critical evaluation of the main arguments of Dan Brown and those of Baigent, Leigh and Lincoln, The Real Da Vinci Code, shown on Channel 4. The programme featured lengthy interviews with many of the main protagonists. Arnaud de Sède, son of Gérard de Sède, stated categorically that his father and Plantard had made up the existence of the Priory of Sion, and described the story as “piffle.” The programme concluded that, in the opinion of the presenter and researchers, the claims of Holy Blood were based on little more than a series of guesses.
The Priory of Sion myth was exhaustively debunked by journalists and scholars as one the great hoaxes of the 20th century. However, some skeptics have expressed concern that the proliferation and popularity of books, websites and films inspired by this hoax have contributed to the problem of conspiracy theories, pseudohistory, superstition and other confusions becoming more mainstream. Others are troubled by the romantic reactionary ideology unwittingly promoted in these works.
Quoting Robert McCrum, literary editor of The Observer newspaper, about The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail:

"There is something called historical evidence - there's something called the historical method - and if you look around the shelves of bookshops there's a lot of history being published, and people mistake this type of history for the real thing. These kinds of books do appeal to an enormous audience who believe them to be 'history', but actually they aren't history, they're a kind of parody of history. Alas, though, I think that one has to say that this is the direction that history is going today..."

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