The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail
The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail is a 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 Two TV documentaries that were part of the Chronicle series. The paperback version was first published in 1983 by Corgi books. A sequel to the book, called The Messianic Legacy, was originally published in 1986. The original work was reissued in an illustrated hardcover version with new material in 2005.
In The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail, 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. They concluded that the legendary Holy Grail is simultaneously the womb of Mary Magdalene and the sacred royal bloodline she gave birth to.
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 professional historians and scholars from related fields was negative. They argued that the bulk of the claims, ancient mysteries, and conspiracy theories presented as facts are pseudohistorical. The book's ideas were considered blasphemous enough for the book to be banned in some Catholic countries.
In a 1982 review of the book for The Observer, novelist and literary critic Anthony Burgess wrote: "It is typical of my unregenerable soul that I can only see this as a marvellous theme for a novel." Indeed, the theme was later used by Margaret Starbird in her 1993 book The Woman with the Alabaster Jar, and by Dan Brown in his 2003 novel The Da Vinci Code.
Background
One of the books that the authors claim influenced the project was L'Or de Rennes, a 1967 book by Gérard de Sède, with the collaboration of Pierre Plantard. After reading it, 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 book.Comparing themselves to the reporters who uncovered the Watergate scandal, the authors maintain that only through speculative "synthesis can one discern the underlying continuity, the unified and coherent fabric, which lies at the core of any historical problem." To do so, one must realize that "it is not sufficient to confine oneself exclusively to facts."
Content
In The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail, Baigent, Leigh and Lincoln posit the existence of a secret society known as the Priory of Sion, which is supposed to have a long history starting in 1099 and had illustrious Grand Masters including Leonardo da Vinci and Isaac Newton. According to the authors' claims, the Priory of Sion is devoted to installing the Merovingian dynasty, which ruled the Franks from 457 to 751, on the thrones of France and the rest of Europe. It is also said to have created the Knights Templar as its military arm and financial branch.The authors re-interpreted the Dossiers Secrets "in the light of their own Biblical obsessions." Contrary to Plantard's initial Franco-Israelist claim that the Merovingians were only descended from the Tribe of Benjamin, they asserted that the Priory of Sion protects Merovingian dynasts because they are the lineal descendants of the historical Jesus and his alleged wife, Mary Magdalene, traced further back to King David. According to them, the legendary Holy Grail is simultaneously the womb of saint Mary Magdalene and the sacred royal bloodline she gave birth to, and the Church tried to kill off all remnants of this bloodline and their supposed guardians, the Cathars and the Templars, in order for popes to hold the episcopal throne through the apostolic succession of Peter without fear of it ever being usurped by an antipope from the hereditary succession of Mary Magdalene.
The authors therefore concluded that the modern goals of the Priory of Sion are:
- the public revelation of the tomb and shrine of Sigebert IV as well as the lost treasure of the Temple in Jerusalem, which supposedly contains genealogical records that prove the Merovingian dynasty was of the Davidic line, to facilitate Merovingian restoration in France;
- the re-institutionalization of chivalry and the promotion of pan-European nationalism;
- the establishment of a theocratic "United States of Europe": a Holy European Empire politically and religiously unified through the imperial cult of a Merovingian Great Monarch who occupies both the throne of Europe and the Holy See; and
- the actual governance of Europe residing with the Priory of Sion through a one-party European Parliament.
Influence and similarities
''The Da Vinci Code''
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; 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 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 and claims it as the major contributor to his hypothesis. Perhaps as a result of this mention, the authors 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 April 6, 2006, who ruled that "their argument was vague and shifted course during the trial and was always based on a weak foundation." 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 history, its premises legally could be freely interpreted in any subsequent fictional work without any copyright infringement.Other influences
The 2008 documentary film Bloodline by Bruce Burgess, a filmmaker with an interest in paranormal claims, expands on the "Jesus bloodline" hypothesis and other elements of The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail. Accepting as valid the testimony of an amateur archaeologist going under the pseoudonym of "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 in three underground tombs created by the Knights Templar under the orders of the Priory of Sion. During an interview on 21 March 2012, "Hammott", going by his real name of Bill Wilkinson, made an apologetic confession stating that everything to do with the tomb and related artifacts was a hoax, and revealed that the tomb was now destroyed, having been part of a set located in a warehouse in England.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 concluding 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:
There are no references to the Jesus bloodline in the "Priory of Sion documents" and the link exists only within the context of a hypothesis made by the authors of The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail. From the Conspiracies On Trial: The Da Vinci Code documentary:
While Pierre Plantard claimed that the Merovingians were descended from the Tribe of Benjamin, the Jesus bloodline hypothesis found in The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail instead hypothesized that the Merovingians were descended from both the Benjamin line and the Davidic line of the Tribe of Judah, as embodied in the child of Mary Magdalen by virtue of a dynastic marriage.
Historian Marina Warner commented on The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail when it was first published:
Prominent British historian Richard Barber, wrote:
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 protagonists. Arnaud de Sède, son of Gérard de Sède, stated categorically that his father and Plantard had made up the existence of a 1,000-year-old 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 of the great hoaxes of the 20th century. Some writers 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 and other confusions becoming more mainstream. Others are troubled by the romantic reactionary ideology unwittingly promoted in these works.
Historian Ken Mondschein ridiculed the idea of a Jesus bloodline, writing:
Quoting Robert McCrum, literary editor of The Observer newspaper, about The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail: