The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail: Difference between revisions

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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 [[Jesus bloodline|those children or their descendants]] emigrated to what is now [[southern France]]. Once there, they intermarried with the [[nobility|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 descent|royal bloodline]] she gave birth to.<ref name="CBS">{{cite AV media |url=http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/04/27/60minutes/main1552009.shtml |title=The Secret of the Priory of Sion |series=[[60 Minutes]] |date=30 April 2006 |people=Ed Bradley (presenter); Jeanne Langley (producer) |publisher=CBS News}}</ref>
 
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]].<ref>{{cite book |first=Damian |last=Thompson |title=[[Counterknowledge|Counterknowledge. How We Surrendered to Conspiracy Theories, Quack Medicine, Bogus Science and Fake History]] |publisher=Atlantic Books |year=2008 |isbn=1-84354-675-2}}</ref><ref name="Miller2004">{{cite news |last=Miller |first=Laura |title=The Last Word; The Da Vinci Con |url=https://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B07E0DD103AF931A15751C0A9629C8B63 |access-date=16 July 2008 |date=22 February 2004 |newspaper=The New York Times}}</ref> The book's ideas were considered [[blasphemous]] enough for the book to be banned in some [[Roman Catholicism by country|Catholic countries]].<ref>{{Cite news|work=[[The Guardian]]|location=London|title=Michael Baigent obituary|first=Peter|last=Stanford|date=30 June 2013|url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/jun/30/michael-baigent|access-date=17 June 2018}}</ref>
 
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]]''.<ref name="Brown 2003">{{cite book |first=Dan |last=Brown |author-link=Dan Brown |title=[[The Da Vinci Code]] |publisher=[[Doubleday (publisher)|Doubleday]] |year=2003 |isbn=0-385-50420-9}}</ref><ref>Quoting Dan Brown from [[NBC Today]], 3 June 2003: "Robert Langdon is fictional, but all of the art, architecture, secret rituals, secret societies, all of that is historical fact" (found in {{cite book |first1=Carl E. |last1=Olson |author-link1=Carl E. Olson |first2=Sandra |last2=Miesel |author-link2=Sandra Miesel |title=The Da Vinci Hoax: Exposing The Errors In The Da Vinci Code |page=242 |publisher=Ignatius Press |year=2004 |isbn=1-58617-034-1}})</ref>