I first read the Holy Blood and the Holy Grail, published in 1982, written by Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh, and Henry Lincoln, almost thirty years ago. My interest in French and esoteric Christian history started in earnest after reading their book. It was the most fascinating story I’d ever come across. Only problem, it was all based on a hoax, the Holy Hoax.
When Dan Brown wrote the Da Vinci Code In 2003 he was fully aware that the legend was created by three French gentlemen during the 1960’s. Of the three, Pierre Plantard was by far the most infamous. They created fake genealogies that were deposited in a library purporting to show a secret lineage that could be traced all the way back to the Merovingian kings of France, 457-751. Pierre Plantard claimed that he was in fact a direct descendent of the Merovingians via the Tribe of Benjamin. The Dossier Secrets also contained a list of the supposed Grand Masters of a mysterious organization called the Priory of Sion.
The authors of the HB HG took these lists and other information at face value and even went a step further. They claimed that Jesus and Mary Magdalene were married with children, and that this Holy Bloodline intermarried with the Visigoths, whom in turn intermarried with the Merovingians. The Priory of Sion was created in 1099 to protect this bloodline and shared a Grand Master with the Knights Templar until the ‘cutting of the Elm’ in 1188. The two orders split after this event and the Priory took over the responsibility of protecting the bloodline.
Leonardo da Vinci and Sir Isaac Newton were listed amongst the Grand Masters of the Priory of Sion. The Cathars of Southern France also played a role as did the mysterious priest, Berenger Sauniere, of the now world famous Rennes-le-Chateau. He supposedly discovered a hidden treasure linked to the Cathars that were said to have escaped the siege of Montségur in 1244.
In most accounts this secret treasure had something to do with documents that could prove the bloodline of Jesus and Mary. Two conflicting discoveries of secret treasures converge. The treasures that the Romans stole from the Temple in Jerusalem, which the Visigoths stole from the Romans and brought to the Languedoc in southern France. Treasures that somehow ended up in the hands of the Cathars hundreds of years later, and hundreds of years after that, in the hands of the priest at RLC.
A different angle is that the Knights Templar discovered secret treasures or knowledge while occupying the Temple Mount from 1099-1187. Some even suggest that the Cathar treasures were given to the Templars for safe keeping after the calamity of Montségur in 1244.
The real question we have to ask ourselves, what are the secrets if not the bloodline? Yes of course Mary and Jesus could have been married and had children, but did they? And did those children really intermarry with the Visigoths, what happened in the four hundred years between those events? Too much focus on the bloodline distracts seekers from the real secrets that remain hidden amongst the noise.
Dan Brown was accused of plagiarism and copyright infringement by the authors of the HB HG. They also published the Messianic Legacy in 1986, claiming that this hidden bloodline was set on reinstating the Merovingian dynasty in France and ruling a united Europe under a new Holy Blood type Roman Empire. Pierre Plantard never claimed to be a descendant of Jesus and Mary, he never even claimed that there was a holy bloodline, merely a hidden lineage linked to the Merovingians.
The tourist board of southern France must be eternally grateful to the authors of these books. They literally put Rennes-le-Château on the map. Rosslyn Chapel in Scotland is another tourist destination linked to the bloodline myth, as is Glastonbury. The legends of Mary Magdalene traveling to France started one thousand years after the fact, 1000 years.
As they say, THE REST IS PSEUDO-HISTORY.
Nicolas Poussin The Arcadian Shepherds 1630