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86-612: The organization has been outspoken on a range of issues, with a particular focus on arts and media. For example, the CSF said that " The Da Vinci Code is offensive as it hit certain basic foundations of the religion." In 2006, the group opposed the cover artwork of the American thrash metal band Slayer 's album, Christ Illusion . In 2012, the group opposed the Hindi film Kyaa Super Kool Hain Hum over

172-664: A blasphemy law of India. Other Christian organizations in India disagreed with the Catholic Secular Forum's actions. The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Bombay asked for the prosecution to drop the charges. The All India Catholic Union said the law was being applied incorrectly. Colin Gonsalves , the founder of the India Center for Human Rights and Law, stated that in his opinion no criminal offence had been committed. As of 2014,

258-428: A "potboiler written with little grace and style", although he added it did "supply an intriguing plot". In his review of the film National Treasure , whose plot also involves ancient conspiracies and treasure hunts, he wrote: "I should read a potboiler like The Da Vinci Code every once in a while, just to remind myself that life is too short to read books like The Da Vinci Code ." While interviewing Umberto Eco in

344-460: 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." 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 . One of the books that influenced

430-508: A 2008 issue of The Paris Review , Lila Azam Zanganeh characterized The Da Vinci Code as "a bizarre little offshoot" of Eco's novel, Foucault's Pendulum . In response, Eco remarked, "Dan Brown is a character from Foucault's Pendulum! I invented him. He shares my characters' fascinations—the world conspiracy of Rosicrucians , Masons , and Jesuits . The role of the Knights Templar. The hermetic secret . The principle that everything

516-411: A claim disputed by numerous academic scholars and experts in numerous areas. Brown addressed the idea of some of the more controversial aspects being fact on his website, stating that the page at the beginning of the novel mentions only "documents, rituals, organization, artwork and architecture" but not any of the ancient theories discussed by fictional characters, stating that "Interpreting those ideas

602-402: A critical evaluation of the main arguments of Baigent, Leigh and Lincoln (and subsequently Dan Brown). The programme included 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

688-399: A cylindrical, hand-held vault with five concentric, rotating dials labeled with letters. When they are lined up correctly, they unlock the device, but if the cryptex is forced open, an enclosed vial of vinegar breaks and dissolves the message inside the cryptex, which was written on papyrus . The box containing the cryptex contains clues to its password. Langdon and Neveu take the keystone to

774-579: A dispute between the Priory of Sion and Opus Dei over the possibility of Jesus and Mary Magdalene having had a child together. The novel explores an alternative religious history, whose central plot point is that the Merovingian kings of France were descended from the bloodline of Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalene, ideas derived from Clive Prince's The Templar Revelation (1997) and books by Margaret Starbird . The book also refers to The Holy Blood and

860-453: A dynastic marriage. 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 is harm in strings of lurid falsehoods and distorted reasoning. The method bends

946-456: A friend Anikin granted the request on condition that he be credited in any book using his interpretation. Anikin eventually compiled his research into Leonardo da Vinci or Theology on Canvas , a book published in 2000, but The Da Vinci Code , published three years later, makes no mention of Anikin and instead asserts that the idea in question is a "well-known opinion of a number of scientists". Brown has been sued twice in U.S. Federal courts by

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1032-436: A massive worldwide bestseller , selling 80 million copies as of 2009 , and has been translated into 44 languages. In November 2004, Random House published a Special Illustrated Edition with 160 illustrations. In 2006, a film adaptation was released by Columbia Pictures . Louvre curator and Priory of Sion grand master Jacques Saunière is fatally shot one night at the museum by an albino Catholic monk named Silas, who

1118-469: A mere illusion ( docetism ). Gnostic sects saw Christ this way because they regarded matter as evil, and therefore believed that a divine spirit would never have taken on a material body. The book received both positive and negative reviews from critics, and it has been the subject of negative appraisals concerning its portrayal of history. Its writing and historical accuracy were reviewed negatively by The New Yorker , Salon.com , and Maclean's . On

1204-428: A real organization", whereas the Priory of Sion is a hoax created in 1956 by Pierre Plantard , which Plantard admitted under oath in 1994, well before the publication of The Da Vinci Code . The fact page itself is part of the novel as a fictional piece, but is not presented as such. The page also states that "all descriptions of artwork, architecture, documents   ... and secret rituals in this novel are accurate",

1290-522: A sin to reveal too much of the plot in advance. Let's just say that if this novel doesn't get your pulse racing, you need to check your meds." The book appeared at number 43 on a 2010 list of 101 best books ever written, which was derived from a survey of more than 15,000 Australian readers. Stephen King likened Brown's work to "Jokes for the John", calling such literature the "intellectual equivalent of Kraft Macaroni and Cheese ". Roger Ebert described it as

1376-457: A spring fertility rite conducted in the secret basement of her grandfather's country estate. From her hiding place, she was shocked to see her grandfather with a woman at the center of a ritual attended by men and women who were wearing masks and chanting praise to the goddess. She fled the house and broke off all contact with Saunière. Langdon explains that what she witnessed was an ancient ceremony known as hieros gamos or "sacred marriage". By

1462-453: 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, and claims it as the major contributor to his hypothesis. Perhaps as a result of this mention, Baigent and Leigh sued Dan Brown for copyright infringement . They claimed that the central framework of their plot had been stolen for

1548-696: A unifying religion for the Roman Empire , thinking that Christianity would appeal to pagans only if it featured a demigod similar to pagan heroes. According to the Gnostic Gospels , Jesus was merely a human prophet, not a demigod. Therefore, to change Jesus' image, Constantine destroyed the Gnostic Gospels and promoted the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, which portray Jesus as divine or semi-divine; however, most scholars agree that all Gnostic writings depict Christ as purely divine, his human body being

1634-456: Is Saunière's estranged granddaughter and that Fache thinks Langdon is the murderer because the last line in her grandfather's message, which was meant for Neveu, said "P.S. Find Robert Langdon", which Fache had erased prior to Langdon's arrival. However, "P.S." does not refer to " postscript ", but rather to Sophie — the nickname given to her by her grandfather was "Princess Sophie". She understands that her grandfather intended Langdon to decipher

1720-536: Is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . The Da Vinci Code The Da Vinci Code is a 2003 mystery thriller novel by Dan Brown . It is Brown's second novel to include the character Robert Langdon : the first was his 2000 novel Angels & Demons . The Da Vinci Code follows symbologist Langdon and cryptologist Sophie Neveu after a murder in the Louvre Museum in Paris entangles them in

1806-532: Is a better filmmaker than Dan Brown is a novelist; he follows Brown's formula (exotic location, startling revelation, desperate chase scene, repeat as needed) and elevates it into a superior entertainment, with Tom Hanks as a theo-intellectual Indiana Jones... it's involving, intriguing and constantly seems on the edge of startling revelations." The film received two sequels: Angels & Demons , released in 2009, and Inferno , released in 2016. Ron Howard returned to direct both sequels. The Holy Blood and

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1892-403: 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 The Real Da Vinci Code , shown on Channel 4 ,

1978-519: Is a good book, but one must say that there is 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 have 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

2064-621: 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

2150-626: Is connected. I suspect Dan Brown might not even exist." Salman Rushdie said during a lecture, "Do not start me on The Da Vinci Code . A novel so bad that it gives bad novels a bad name." Stephen Fry has referred to Brown's writings as "complete loose stool-water" and "arse gravy of the worst kind". In a live chat on June 14, 2006, he clarified, "I just loathe all those book[s] about the Holy Grail and Masons and Catholic conspiracies and all that botty-dribble. I mean, there's so much more that's interesting and exciting in art and in history. It plays to

2236-413: Is going today... 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. 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

2322-415: Is informed that Silas was found dead later from a gunshot wound. The final message inside the second keystone leads Neveu and Langdon to Rosslyn Chapel , whose docent turns out to be Neveu's long-lost brother, whom Neveu had been told died as a child in the car accident that killed her parents. The guardian of Rosslyn Chapel, Marie Chauvel Saint Clair, is Neveu's long-lost grandmother and Saunière's wife who

2408-419: Is largely fanciful, which means he and his publisher have violated a long-held if unspoken agreement with the reader: Fiction that purports to present historical facts should be researched as carefully as a nonfiction book would be. Richard Abanes wrote: The most flagrant aspect   ... is not that Dan Brown disagrees with Christianity but that he utterly warps it in order to disagree with it   ... to

2494-496: Is left to the reader". Brown also says, "It is my belief that some of the theories discussed by these characters may have merit" and "the secret behind The Da Vinci Code was too well documented and significant for me to dismiss." In 2003, while promoting the novel, Brown was asked in interviews what parts of the history in his novel actually happened. He replied "Absolutely all of it." In a 2003 interview with CNN's Martin Savidge he

2580-567: Is working on behalf of someone he knows only as the Teacher, who wishes to discover the location of the "keystone", an item crucial in the search for the Holy Grail . After Saunière's body is discovered in the pose of the Vitruvian Man by Leonardo da Vinci , the police summon Harvard professor Robert Langdon, who is in town on business. Police captain Bezu Fache tells him that he was summoned to help

2666-614: The Court of Appeal , unsuccessfully. In April 2006 Mikhail Anikin, a Russian scientist and art historian working as a senior researcher at the Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg, stated the intention to bring a lawsuit against Brown, maintaining that he was the one who coined the phrase used as the book's title and one of the ideas regarding the Mona Lisa used in its plot. Anikin interprets

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2752-501: The Jesus bloodline theory: "frankly, it was piffle", noting that the concept of a descendant of Jesus was also an element of the 1999 Kevin Smith film Dogma . The earliest appearance of this theory is due to the 13th-century Cistercian monk and chronicler Peter of Vaux de Cernay who reported that Cathars believed that the 'evil' and 'earthly' Jesus Christ had a relationship with Mary Magdalene, described as his concubine (and that

2838-607: The Mona Lisa to be a Christian allegory consisting of two images, one of Jesus Christ that comprises the image's right half, and one of the Virgin Mary that forms its left half. According to Anikin, he expressed this idea to a group of experts from the Museum of Houston during a 1988 René Magritte exhibit at the Hermitage, and when one of the Americans requested permission to pass it along to

2924-466: The Scottish Rite which incorporated the word " Zion " in its name. Per Baigent et al , the text was not intended to be released publicly, but was a program for gaining control of Freemasonry as part of a strategy to infiltrate and reorganise church and state according to esoteric Christian principles. After a failed attempt to gain influence in the court of Tsar Nicholas II of Russia , Sergei Nilus

3010-450: The episcopal throne through the apostolic succession 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 authors incorporated the antisemitic and anti-Masonic tract known as The Protocols of the Elders of Zion into their story, concluding that it

3096-419: The historical method – and if you look around the shelves of bookshops there is 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 are a kind of parody of history. Alas, though, I think that one has to say that this is the direction that history

3182-407: 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

3268-455: 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 pseudonym 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 (one of which is allegedly Mary Magdalene ) in three underground tombs created by

3354-695: The 'good Christ' was incorporeal and existed spiritually in the body of Paul). The program The Real Da Vinci Code also cast doubt on the Rosslyn Chapel association with the Grail and on other related stories, such as the alleged landing of Mary Magdalene in France. According to The Da Vinci Code , the Roman Emperor Constantine I suppressed Gnosticism because it portrayed Jesus as purely human. The novel portrays Constantine as wanting Christianity to act as

3440-706: The CSF's call for a ban. During the Weeping crucifix in Mumbai , Sanal Edamaruku provided evidence that the water stemmed from a faulty sewage system and accused Latin Christian priests of regularly scamming devotees and defrauding miracles to make money in order to build bigger and newer churches or convents, and mocked the Pope as "anti-science" . In response to these statements, the Catholic Secular Forum filed 17 first information reports (FIRs) against Edamaruku under IPC section 295-A,

3526-516: The Catholic Secular Forum still held the position that they would call for Edamaruku's prosecution if he ever returned to India. In 2014, Joseph Dias was charged by the Economic Offences Wing (EOW) of Mumbai police for misusing INR 2.2 crore of funds that were donated to build an old age home. This article about an organisation in India is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . This Catholic Church –related article

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3612-667: The Holy Grail The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail , published as Holy Blood, Holy Grail in the United States, 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

3698-554: The Holy Grail (1982), although Brown stated that it was not used as research material. The Da Vinci Code provoked a popular interest in speculation concerning the Holy Grail legend and Mary Magdalene's role in the history of Christianity . The book has, however, been extensively denounced by many Christian denominations as an attack on the Catholic Church , and also consistently criticized by scholars for its historical and scientific inaccuracies . The novel nonetheless became

3784-472: 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 . Historian Richard Barber called the book "the most notorious of all the Grail pseudo-histories ... which proceeds by innuendo, not by refutable scholarly debate." In

3870-570: The Louvre. It also lies beneath the "Rose Line", an allusion to "Rosslyn". Langdon figures out this final piece to the puzzle; he follows the Rose Line ( prime meridian ) to La Pyramide Inversée , where he kneels to pray before the hidden sarcophagus of Mary Magdalene, as the Templar knights did before. The Da Vinci Code was a major success in 2003, outsold only by J. K. Rowling 's Harry Potter and

3956-510: The May/June 2003 issue of Bookmarks , a magazine that aggregates critic reviews of books, the book received a [REDACTED] [REDACTED] [REDACTED] [REDACTED] [REDACTED] (4.0 out of 5) based on critic reviews with the critical summary stating, "Overall, this breezy, entertaining thriller will take you on an ingeniously conceived ride through history." Janet Maslin of The New York Times said that one word "concisely conveys

4042-502: The Order of the Phoenix . As of 2016, it had sold 80 million copies worldwide. The Da Vinci Code generated criticism when it was first published for the fictitious description of the core aspects of Christianity and descriptions of European art , history, and architecture. The book has received negative reviews mostly from Catholic and other Christian communities. Many critics took issue with

4128-404: The Priory of Sion hoax contribute to the problem of unfounded conspiracy theories becoming mainstream; while others are troubled by how these works romanticize the reactionary ideologies of the far right . Quoting Robert McCrum , literary editor of The Observer newspaper, about The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail : There is something called historical evidence – there is something called

4214-523: The author Jack Dunn who claims Brown copied a huge part of his book The Vatican Boys to write The Da Vinci Code and Angels & Demons . Neither lawsuit was allowed to go to a jury trial. In 2017, in London, another claim was begun against Brown by Jack Dunn who claimed that justice was not served in the U.S. lawsuits. Possibly the largest reaction occurred in Kolkata , India, where a group of around 25 protesters "stormed" Crossword bookstore, pulled copies of

4300-514: The book Holy Blood, Holy Grail , in the program The Real Da Vinci Code , shown on British TV Channel 4 . The program featured lengthy interviews with many of the main protagonists cited by Brown as "absolute fact" in The Da Vinci Code . 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 , the cornerstone of

4386-535: The book and film. However, Judge George Daniels of the US District Court in New York ruled against Perdue in 2005, saying that "A reasonable average lay observer would not conclude that The Da Vinci Code is substantially similar to Daughter of God " and that "Any slightly similar elements are on the level of generalized or otherwise unprotectable ideas." Perdue appealed; the 2nd US Circuit Court of Appeals upheld

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4472-555: The book from the racks, and threw them to the ground. On the same day, a group of 50–60 protesters successfully made the Oxford Bookstore on Park Street decide to stop selling the book "until the controversy sparked by the film's release was resolved". Thus in 2006, seven Indian states ( Nagaland , Punjab , Goa , Tamil Nadu , Andhra Pradesh ) banned the release or exhibition of the Hollywood movie The Da Vinci Code (as well as

4558-795: The book). Later, two states, Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh, lifted the ban under high court order. The book has been translated into over 44 languages, primarily hardcover. Major English-language (hardcover) editions include: Columbia Pictures adapted the novel to film, with a screenplay written by Akiva Goldsman , and Academy Award winner Ron Howard directing. The film was released on May 19, 2006, and stars Tom Hanks as Robert Langdon , Audrey Tautou as Sophie Neveu, and Sir Ian McKellen as Sir Leigh Teabing. During its opening weekend, moviegoers spent an estimated $ 77 million in America, and $ 224 million worldwide. The movie received mixed reviews. Roger Ebert in its review wrote that "Ron Howard

4644-458: 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

4730-565: The code, which leads to Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa , which in turn leads to his painting Madonna of the Rocks . They find a pendant that holds the address of the Paris branch of the Depository Bank of Zurich. Neveu and Langdon escape from the police and visit the bank. In the safe deposit box, which is unlocked with the Fibonacci sequence, they find a box containing the keystone: a cryptex ,

4816-602: 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: 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 –

4902-521: The cryptex and removes its contents before tossing the empty cryptex in the air. Teabing is arrested by Fache, who by now realizes that Langdon is innocent. Bishop Aringarosa, head of religious sect Opus Dei and Silas' mentor, realizing that Silas has been used to murder innocent people, rushes to help the police find him. When the police find Silas hiding in an Opus Dei Center, Silas assumes that they are there to kill him and he rushes out, accidentally shooting Bishop Aringarosa. Bishop Aringarosa survives but

4988-464: 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 restoring the Merovingian dynasty , which ruled the Franks from 457 to 751, on the thrones of France and the rest of Europe. The Priory

5074-614: The genealogies led to Christ's descendants. 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

5160-455: The home of Langdon's friend, Sir Leigh Teabing, an expert on the Holy Grail, the legend of which is heavily connected to the Priory. There, Teabing explains that the Grail is not a cup but connected to Mary Magdalene , and that she was Jesus Christ's wife and is the person to his right in The Last Supper . The trio then flee the country on Teabing's private plane, on which they conclude that

5246-508: The kind of extreme enthusiasm with which this riddle-filled, code-breaking, exhilaratingly brainy thriller can be recommended. That word is wow. The author is Dan Brown (a name you will want to remember). In this gleefully erudite suspense novel, Mr. Brown takes the format he has been developing through three earlier novels and fine-tunes it to blockbuster perfection." David Lazarus of The San Francisco Chronicle said, "This story has so many twists—all satisfying, most unexpected—that it would be

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5332-598: The level of research Brown did when writing the story. The New York Times writer Laura Miller characterized the novel as "based on a notorious hoax", "rank nonsense", and "bogus", saying the book is heavily based on the fabrications of Pierre Plantard , who is asserted to have created the Priory of Sion in 1956. Critics accuse Brown of distorting and fabricating history. Theological author Marcia Ford considered that novels should be judged not on their literary merit, but on their conclusions: Regardless of whether you agree with Brown's conclusions, it's clear that his history

5418-581: 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

5504-466: The mind the wrong way, an insidious and real corruption. Historian Ken Mondschein ridiculed the idea of a Jesus bloodline, writing: The idea of keeping the family tree pruned to bonsai-like proportions is also completely fallacious. Infant mortality in pre-modern times was ridiculously high, and you'd only need one childhood accident or disease in 2000 years to wipe out the bloodline; if, however, even one extra sibling per generation survived to reproduce,

5590-407: The numbers of descendants would increase at an exponential rate; keep the children of Christ marrying each other, on the other hand, and eventually they'd be so inbred that the sons of God would have flippers for feet. 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

5676-415: The opinion of the presenter and researchers, the claims of Holy Blood were based on little more than a series of guesses. Despite the "Priory of Sion mysteries" having been exhaustively debunked by journalists and scholars as France's greatest 20th-century literary hoax , some commentators express concern that the proliferation and popularity of pseudohistorical books, websites and films inspired by

5762-473: The original decision, saying Mr. Perdue's arguments were "without merit". In early 2006, Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh filed suit against Brown's publisher, Random House. They alleged that significant portions of The Da Vinci Code were plagiarized from The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail , violating their copyright. Brown confirmed during the court case that he named the principal Grail expert of his story Leigh Teabing, an anagram of "Baigent Leigh", after

5848-474: The point of completely rewriting a vast number of historical events. And making the matter worse has been Brown's willingness to pass off his distortions as 'facts' with which innumerable scholars and historians agree. Much of the controversy generated by The Da Vinci Code was due to the fact that the book was marketed as being historically accurate; the novel opens with a "fact" page that states that "The Priory of Sion—a French secret society founded in 1099—is

5934-448: The police decode the cryptic message Saunière left during the final minutes of his life. The message includes a Fibonacci sequence out of order and an anagram: "O, draconian devil! Oh, lame saint!" Langdon explains to Fache that the pentacle Saunière drew on his chest in his own blood represents an allusion to the goddess and not devil worship, as Fache believes. Sophie Neveu, a police cryptographer , secretly explains to Langdon that she

6020-453: 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 . After reading it, Henry Lincoln persuaded BBC Two to produce a series of documentaries for their Chronicle series, 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

6106-492: The proper combination of letters spells out Neveu's given name, Sofia. Opening the cryptex, they discover a smaller cryptex inside it, along with another riddle that ultimately leads the group to the tomb of Isaac Newton in Westminster Abbey . During the flight to Britain, Neveu reveals the source of her estrangement from her grandfather ten years earlier: arriving home unexpectedly from university, Neveu secretly witnessed

6192-479: 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

6278-464: 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." In The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail , Baigent, Leigh and Lincoln posit

6364-529: The style". Linguist Geoffrey Pullum and others posted several entries critical of Brown's writing, at Language Log , calling Brown one of the "worst prose stylists in the history of literature" and saying Brown's "writing is not just bad; it is staggeringly, clumsily, thoughtlessly, almost ingeniously bad". Author Lewis Perdue alleged that Brown plagiarized two of his novels, The Da Vinci Legacy , originally published in 1983, and Daughter of God , originally published in 2000. He sought to block distribution of

6450-479: The time they arrive at Westminster Abbey , Teabing is revealed to be the Teacher for whom Silas is working. Teabing wishes to use the Holy Grail, which he believes is a series of documents establishing that Jesus Christ married Mary Magdalene and fathered children, in order to ruin the Vatican . He compels Langdon at gunpoint to solve the second cryptex's password, which Langdon realizes is "apple". Langdon secretly opens

6536-503: The trial, deemed that a novelist must be free to use these ideas in a fictional context, and ruled against Baigent and Leigh. Smith also hid his own secret code in his written judgment, in the form of seemingly random italicized letters in the 71-page document, which apparently spell out a message. Smith indicated he would confirm the code if someone broke it. After losing before the High Court on July 12, 2006, Baigent and Leigh appealed to

6622-428: The two plaintiffs. In reply to the suggestion that Henry Lincoln was also referred to in the book, since he has medical problems resulting in a severe limp, like the character of Leigh Teabing, Brown stated he was unaware of Lincoln's illness and the correspondence was a coincidence. Since Baigent and Leigh had presented their conclusions as historical research, not as fiction, Mr Justice Peter Smith , who presided over

6708-513: The use of the name "Rosemary Maarlo", which translates from the Hindi "रोज़ मेरी मार लो" to "screw me every day please". In 2015, the group opposed a play called Agnes of God in Mumbai. The play is a story of a novice nun called Agnes who gives birth and then insists the child is the result of a virgin conception. It was written by American playwright John Pielmeier in 1979. A letter signed by 70 prominent Indian citizens, including Christians, condemned

6794-429: The worst and laziest in humanity, the desire to think the worst of the past and the desire to feel superior to it in some fatuous way." A. O. Scott , reviewing the movie based on the book for The New York Times , called the book "Dan Brown's best-selling primer on how not to write an English sentence". The New Yorker reviewer Anthony Lane refers to it as "unmitigated junk" and decries "the crumbling coarseness of

6880-449: The writing of The Da Vinci Code . The claim was rejected 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 (according to figures provided by Nielsen BookScan and The Bookseller ). The court ruled that, in effect, because it

6966-503: 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: I admit that The Sacred Enigma (French title for The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail )

7052-412: Was actually based on the master plan of the Priory of Sion. They presented it as the most persuasive piece of evidence for the existence and activities of the Priory of Sion by arguing that the original text on which the published version of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion was based had nothing to do with Judaism or an " international Jewish conspiracy ", as it issued from a Masonic body practicing

7138-490: Was again asked how much of the historical background was true. He replied, "99% is true... the background is all true". Asked by Elizabeth Vargas in an ABC News special if the book would have been different if he had written it as non-fiction he replied, "I don't think it would have." In 2005, UK TV personality Tony Robinson edited and narrated a detailed rebuttal of the main arguments of Brown and those of Michael Baigent , Richard Leigh and Henry Lincoln , who authored

7224-436: Was published as a work of alleged history, its premises legally could be freely interpreted in any subsequent fictional work without any copyright infringement. Stewart Copeland , former drummer for the rock band The Police , composed the opera Holy Blood, Crescent Moon , heavily inspired by this book. The 2008 documentary film Bloodline by Bruce Burgess , a filmmaker with an interest in paranormal claims, expands on

7310-430: Was supposed to have changed the original text to forge an inflammatory tract in 1903 in order to discredit the esoteric clique around Papus by implying they were Judaeo-Masonic conspirators but ignored some esoteric Christian elements, which hence remained unchanged in the published antisemitic canard . The claims made in The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail have been the source of much investigation and criticism over

7396-409: Was the woman who participated with him in the "sacred marriage". It is revealed that Neveu and her brother are descendants of Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalene. The Priory of Sion hid her identity to protect her from possible threats to her life. The real meaning of the last message is that the Grail is buried beneath the small pyramid directly below La Pyramide Inversée , the inverted glass pyramid of

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