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[B]THE LAST WORD; The Da Vinci Con
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By LAURA MILLER
Published: February 22, 2004
The ever-rising tide of sales of ''The Da Vinci Code'' has lifted some pretty odd boats, and none odder than the dodgy yet magisterial ''Holy Blood, Holy Grail,'' by Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh and Henry Lincoln. A best seller in the 1980's, ''Grail'' is climbing the paperback charts again on the strength of its relationship to Dan Brown's thriller (which has, in turn, inspired a crop of new nonfiction books coming out this spring, from ''Breaking the Da Vinci Code'' to ''Secrets of the Code: The Unauthorized Guide to the Mysteries Behind The Da Vinci Code''). ''The Da Vinci Code'' is one long chase scene in which the main characters flee a sinister Parisian policeman and an albino monk assassin, but its rudimentary suspense alone couldn't have made it a hit. At regular intervals, the book brings its pell-mell plot to a screeching halt and emits a pellet of information concerning a centuries-old conspiracy that purports to have preserved a tremendous secret about the roots of Christianity itself. This ''nonfiction'' material gives ''The Da Vinci Code'' its frisson of authenticity, and it's lifted from ''Holy Blood, Holy Grail,'' one of the all-time great works of pop pseudohistory. But what seems increasingly clear (to cop a favorite phrase from the authors of ''Grail'') is that ''The Da Vinci Code,'' like ''Holy Blood, Holy Grail,'' is based on a notorious hoax.
The back story to both books, like most conspiracy theories, is devilishly hard to summarize. Both narratives begin with a mystery that leads sleuths to vaster and more sinister intrigues. In Brown's novel, it's the murder of a curator at the Louvre; in ''Grail,'' it's the unusual affluence of a priest in a village in the south of France. In the late 1960's, Henry Lincoln, a British TV writer, became interested in Rennes-le-Château, a town that had become the French equivalent of Roswell or Loch Ness as a result of popular books by Gérard de Sède. De Sède promulgated a story about parchments supposedly found in a hollowed-out pillar by the town priest in the 1890's, parchments containing coded messages that the priest somehow parlayed into oodles of cash. Lincoln worked on several ''Unsolved Mysteries''-style documentaries about Rennes-le-Château, then enlisted Baigent and Leigh for a more in-depth investigation.
What eventually emerges from the welter of names, dates, maps and genealogical tables crammed into ''Holy Blood, Holy Grail'' is a yarn about a secret and hugely influential society called the Priory of Sion, founded in Jerusalem in 1099. This cabal is said to have guarded documents and other proof that Mary Magdalene was the wife of Jesus (who may or may not have died on the Cross) and that she carried his child with her when she fled to what is now France after the Crucifixion, becoming, figuratively, the Holy Grail in whom Jesus' blood was preserved. Their progeny intermarried with the locals, eventually founding the Merovingian dynasty of Frankish monarchs. Although deposed in the eighth century, the Merovingian lineage has not been lost; the Priory has kept watch over its descendants, awaiting an auspicious moment when it will reveal the astonishing truth and return the rightful monarch to the throne of France, or perhaps even a restored Holy Roman Empire.
All the usual suspects and accouterments of paranoid history get caught up in this 1,000-year jaunt: the Cathar heretics, the Knights Templar, the Rosicrucians, the Vatican, the Freemasons, Nazis, the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the Order of the Golden Dawn -- everyone but the Abominable Snowman seems to be in on the game. ''Holy Blood, Holy Grail'' is a masterpiece of insinuation and supposition, employing all the techniques of pseudohistory to symphonic effect, justifying this sleight of hand as an innovative scholarly technique called ''synthesis,'' previously considered too ''speculative'' by those whose thinking has been unduly shaped by the ''so-called Enlightenment of the 18th century.'' Comparing themselves to the reporters who uncovered the Watergate scandal, the authors maintain that ''only by such 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.''
Print Single-Page Save [/B]
By LAURA MILLER
Published: February 22, 2004
The ever-rising tide of sales of ''The Da Vinci Code'' has lifted some pretty odd boats, and none odder than the dodgy yet magisterial ''Holy Blood, Holy Grail,'' by Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh and Henry Lincoln. A best seller in the 1980's, ''Grail'' is climbing the paperback charts again on the strength of its relationship to Dan Brown's thriller (which has, in turn, inspired a crop of new nonfiction books coming out this spring, from ''Breaking the Da Vinci Code'' to ''Secrets of the Code: The Unauthorized Guide to the Mysteries Behind The Da Vinci Code''). ''The Da Vinci Code'' is one long chase scene in which the main characters flee a sinister Parisian policeman and an albino monk assassin, but its rudimentary suspense alone couldn't have made it a hit. At regular intervals, the book brings its pell-mell plot to a screeching halt and emits a pellet of information concerning a centuries-old conspiracy that purports to have preserved a tremendous secret about the roots of Christianity itself. This ''nonfiction'' material gives ''The Da Vinci Code'' its frisson of authenticity, and it's lifted from ''Holy Blood, Holy Grail,'' one of the all-time great works of pop pseudohistory. But what seems increasingly clear (to cop a favorite phrase from the authors of ''Grail'') is that ''The Da Vinci Code,'' like ''Holy Blood, Holy Grail,'' is based on a notorious hoax.
The back story to both books, like most conspiracy theories, is devilishly hard to summarize. Both narratives begin with a mystery that leads sleuths to vaster and more sinister intrigues. In Brown's novel, it's the murder of a curator at the Louvre; in ''Grail,'' it's the unusual affluence of a priest in a village in the south of France. In the late 1960's, Henry Lincoln, a British TV writer, became interested in Rennes-le-Château, a town that had become the French equivalent of Roswell or Loch Ness as a result of popular books by Gérard de Sède. De Sède promulgated a story about parchments supposedly found in a hollowed-out pillar by the town priest in the 1890's, parchments containing coded messages that the priest somehow parlayed into oodles of cash. Lincoln worked on several ''Unsolved Mysteries''-style documentaries about Rennes-le-Château, then enlisted Baigent and Leigh for a more in-depth investigation.
What eventually emerges from the welter of names, dates, maps and genealogical tables crammed into ''Holy Blood, Holy Grail'' is a yarn about a secret and hugely influential society called the Priory of Sion, founded in Jerusalem in 1099. This cabal is said to have guarded documents and other proof that Mary Magdalene was the wife of Jesus (who may or may not have died on the Cross) and that she carried his child with her when she fled to what is now France after the Crucifixion, becoming, figuratively, the Holy Grail in whom Jesus' blood was preserved. Their progeny intermarried with the locals, eventually founding the Merovingian dynasty of Frankish monarchs. Although deposed in the eighth century, the Merovingian lineage has not been lost; the Priory has kept watch over its descendants, awaiting an auspicious moment when it will reveal the astonishing truth and return the rightful monarch to the throne of France, or perhaps even a restored Holy Roman Empire.
All the usual suspects and accouterments of paranoid history get caught up in this 1,000-year jaunt: the Cathar heretics, the Knights Templar, the Rosicrucians, the Vatican, the Freemasons, Nazis, the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the Order of the Golden Dawn -- everyone but the Abominable Snowman seems to be in on the game. ''Holy Blood, Holy Grail'' is a masterpiece of insinuation and supposition, employing all the techniques of pseudohistory to symphonic effect, justifying this sleight of hand as an innovative scholarly technique called ''synthesis,'' previously considered too ''speculative'' by those whose thinking has been unduly shaped by the ''so-called Enlightenment of the 18th century.'' Comparing themselves to the reporters who uncovered the Watergate scandal, the authors maintain that ''only by such 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.''
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