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The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail

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Book cover of The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail 2005 illustrated hardcover edition
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Book cover of The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail 2005 illustrated hardcover edition

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 hoax.

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. There was a sequel to the book called The Messianic Legacy, in 1987. It 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 summary, the authors argue that there is evidence 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, which 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 nearly 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 then be fictionalized by Dan Brown in 2003 in his runaway best-seller novel The Da Vinci Code, even using Richard Leigh’s last name for the character Leigh Teabing’s first name, and Michael Baigent’s last name, scrambled, for Leigh Teabing’s last name.

Contents

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 1800s, a pastor of the village had became mysteriously wealthy, and the authors sought to determine why.

After over a decade of research and speculation, Baigent, Leigh, and Lincoln came to the following conclusions:

Poussin’s Et in Arcadia ego features prominently in the authors’ quest
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Poussin’s Et in Arcadia ego features prominently in the authors’ quest

These authors further asserted that the ultimate goals of the Priory of Sion are:

It is generally presumed the authors knew these claims to be, at best, unprovable. In fact, Richard Leigh has stated on television that they only set out to offer a plausible hypothesis, but “never believed it to be true.” However, the wording in HBHG clearly stated that though some elements were only a hypothesis, that the existence of the Priory of Sion was a "proven fact".

Influence and similarities

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 listed as “fact” in Holy Blood Holy Grail, never actually existed. Far from having a “history (that) spanned more than a millennium,” the Priory was a hoax created by an anti-Semitic French pretender to France’s throne, 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 Tresor Maudit de Rennes-le-Chateau. (For more details, see The Priory of Sion, Rennes-le-Chateau, and Pierre Plantard). The documents were taken as factual by the authors of Holy Blood Holy Grail, which led to many of the false claims in the book.

Other critics have argued that the bold revisionist claim of the book; that Jesus and Mary Magdalene were married, was not in fact original to Holy Blood. It has 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. [link][link]

In 2005, UK TV archaeologist 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 Prieuré de 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 authors of the book itself have also backpedaled in recent interviews, claiming that they were only presenting a “hypothesis.”

The reaction of the various churches to The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail was a combination of outrage and exasperation, for whilst parts of the book could not be considered entirely factual, professional historians rejected its theory overall.

Quotations

References

External links

Notable reviews

 

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