Het Heilige Bloed, Heilige Graal|Lincoln,Baigent 9043907618

||boek: Het Heilige Bloed en de Heilige Graal|vertaling: Minze bij de Weg|Jan Smit|Knack

||door: Henry Lincoln, Michael Baigent Meehan, Richard Leigh

||taal: nl
||jaar: 2005
||druk: licentie Roularta Books
||pag.: 448p
||opm.: paperback|zo goed als nieuw

||isbn: 90-4390-761-8
||code: 1:000355

--- Over het boek (foto 1): Het Heilige Bloed en de Heilige Graal ---

Het heilige bloed en de heilige graal is een boek uit 1982 geschreven door een medewerker van de BBC, Henry Lincoln, samen met Michael Baigent en Richard Leigh, over het mysterie van Rennes-le-Château. De schrijvers baseren zich op documenten, speculatie en analyses van schilderijen (van onder andere Nicolas Poussin) en topografische kenmerken in het landschap rond Rennes-le-Château en Montsegur.

Hoewel het boek vele claims en "onthullingen" bevat, is het centrale idee dat er een geheime organisatie bestaat, de Priorij van Sion, die opgericht is door Godfried van Bouillon tijdens de Eerste Kruistocht. Het doel van deze organisatie is het veiligstellen van de heilige graal. Volgens de auteurs is de graal niets anders dan een symbool voor het nageslacht van Jezus Christus. Ze stellen dat Jezus tijdens zijn leven getrouwd was met Maria Magdalena en dat ze ook kinderen hebben gekregen. Na de kruisiging zou zij met deze kinderen naar Zuid Frankrijk zijn gevlucht, alwaar haar nageslacht de basis vormde van de eerste koninklijke dynastie van Frankrijk, de Merovingen.

De heilige graal (in het Oudfrans Sangreal) zou de aanduiding zijn voor het nageslacht van Jezus: Sangreal is niet San Greal (heilige graal), maar Sang Real (koninklijk bloed).

Hoewel de Merovingen door de Karolingen zijn afgezet, zou het "koninklijke bloed" toch doorgegeven zijn, met als een directe afstammeling Godfried van Bouillon. Deze zou in Jeruzalem de Tempeliers en de Priorij van Sion hebben opgericht om het geheim van de graal te bewaren. Volgens Lincoln, Baigent en Leigh is deze priorij door de eeuwen heen blijven bestaan, met illustere grootmeesters als Leonardo da Vinci en Isaac Newton.

De bewijzen die de auteurs hadden voor het bestaan van deze priorij bestonden uit een serie pamfletten en documenten uit de Bibliothèque Nationale te Parijs. Later bleek echter dat al deze zogenaamde dossiers secrets vervalsingen waren, gemaakt door een zekere Pierre Plantard. De stelling dat er een priorij is die sinds de Middeleeuwen heeft bestaan en het geheim van heilige graal bewaart, blijkt dus op onwaarheden te zijn gestoeld. Lincoln c.s. maken in Het heilige bloed (...) en in het vervolg De tweede messias overigens al uitgebreid melding van deze Plantard, waarbij ze laten doorschemeren dat diens verhalen met een korreltje zout moeten worden genomen. Henry Lincoln heeft er in interviews altijd de nadruk op gelegd dat hij zelf niet noodzakelijk gelooft in de beweringen die in Het heilige bloed (...) worden gedaan maar dat hij ze als een fascinerende hypothese beschouwt.

Serieuze historici hebben over het algemeen minder geduld met de materie uit het boek. Het wordt door hen als onzin afgedaan.

Het boek heeft veel stof doen opwaaien door het gevoelige onderwerp en is in sommige landen verboden. Het heilige bloed en de heilige graal is de inspiratiebron geweest van vele schatzoekers, die de vermeende schatten van de Katharen of de tempeliers probeerden te vinden.

De plot van de bestseller De Da Vinci Code van Dan Brown is een bijna exacte kopie van het centrale idee van Het heilige bloed (...). Dit wil niet zeggen dat Brown het idee van deze schrijvers heeft "gestolen", want het idee is al tientallen jaren oud en er zijn al tientallen verhalen over dit thema geschreven. Niettemin vormde het aanleiding tot een rechtszaak, waarbij Brown werd vrijgesproken van de plagiaatbeschuldiging.

Literatuur

• Ethel Portnoy, "De geschiedenis als samenzwering of Hoe het bloed van de graal kruipt waar het niet gaan kan", in: Dromomania. Amsterdam: Meulenhoff, 1987, p. 103-119. ISBN 90-290-2054-7.

[bron: wikipedia]

Het boek doet verslag van drie fasen van onderzoek: mysterieuze feiten uit Rennes-le-Château, gegevens over een mysterieuze Orde van Sion (dit alles intussen ook door anderen beschreven) en de speculatieve conclusie dat ondergronds gewerkt wordt aan herstel van het Merovingische vorstenhuis, dat terug zou gaan op een verbintenis tussen Jezus en Maria Magdalena. Dan Browns 'De Da Vinci code' is voor een belangrijk deel gebaseerd op deze gegevens. Met deze luxe editie in groot formaat brengt de uitgever dit boek opnieuw onder de aandacht. Vergeleken met de (minstens) tien eerdere drukken bevat deze herdruk geen 'nieuwe onthullingen' en is ze tekstueel zelfs nauwelijks gewijzigd. Wel nieuw zijn een kort naschrift en enkele op kleurige ondergrond gedrukte toevoegingen. In de appendices en het register is evenwel vrij veel veranderd.

[bron: https--antwerpen.bibliotheek.be]

De Da Vinci Code

Verwijzingen naar Rennes-le-Château

Rennes-le-Château wordt als onderwerp niet één keer genoemd in het boek De Da Vinci Code van Dan Brown, maar toch bevat het boek allerlei verwijzingen naar het mysterie van het dorp.

De grootvader van het personage Sophie Neveu heet in de roman Jacques Saunière. Elke Rennes-le-Château-ingewijde weet dat dit personage genoemd is naar Bérenger Saunière, de beroemde pastoor van Rennes-le-Château. Het romanpersonage Jacques Saunière is in De Da Vinci Code de beroemde conservator van het Louvre, en de pastoor Bérenger Saunière heeft in maart 1892 een bezoek gebracht aan het Louvre om er reproducties van schilderijen te kopen. Misschien heeft Brown op grond van deze overeenkomst zijn personage deze naam gegeven.

Het is niet ondenkbaar dat de voornaam van de Parijse politiecommissaris Bezu Fache ontleend is aan de naam van een berg enkele kilometers ten zuidoosten van Rennes-le-Château. Op le Bézu bevond zich ooit een vesting die aan de Tempeliers zou hebben toebehoord.

De naam van het Engelse Lord-personage Leigh Teabing is vermoedelijk gecreëerd met de namen van twee auteurs van Het Heilige Bloed en de Heilige Graal in gedachten. Waarschijnlijk komt Leigh van de familienaam van Richard Leigh en is Teabing een anagram van de familienaam van Michael Baigent.

De familienaam van zuster Sandrine Bieil, die in de woonruimte van de Saint-Sulpicekerk woonde, heeft Dan Brown overgenomen van abbé Bieil, de directeur-generaal van het seminarie van Saint-Sulpice. Na de ontdekking van de perkamenten zou Saunière namelijk naar Parijs zijn gestuurd door zijn overste bisschop Billard om de perkamenten daar door abbé Bieil en diens neef Emile Hoffet te laten ontcijferen.

Het Heilige Bloed en de Heilige Graal

Tijdens het lezen van De Da Vinci Code en zoals blijkt uit het proces dat tegen de uitgeverij van Dan Brown liep, kan men afleiden dat Brown en zijn vrouw tijdens de research voor hun boek zich voornamelijk hebben gebaseerd op The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail (Het Heilige Bloed en de Heilige Graal) van Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh en Henry Lincoln.

Dat boek verscheen voor het eerst in het jaar 1982 en omvat in de eerste plaats het speurwerk dat BBC-journalist Henry Licoln had verricht in verband met het mysterie van Rennes-le-Château.

Het tweede deel van Het Heilige Bloed en de Heilige Graal behelst een mogelijke verklaring voor de plotse rijkdom van de priester van Rennes-le-Château. Die verklaring bestaat eruit dat Saunière via oude documenten, ontdekt in zijn kerk, op de hoogte was gekomen dat Jezus Christus en Maria Magdalena getrouwd waren en dat hun huwelijk kinderen had voortgebracht. Volgens Het Heilige Bloed en de Heilige Graal zouden er tot op de dag van vandaag nog steeds afstammelingen van Jezus rondlopen, die worden beschermd door een geheim genootschap de Prieuré de Sion. Deze in Het Heilige Bloed en de Heilige Graal geformuleerde hypothese was voornamelijk gebaseerd op de fantasierijke ideeën van de co-auteurs Baigent en Leigh.

Het Heilige Bloed en de Heilige Graal wordt samen met nog enkele andere relevante boeken zelfs genoemd door Brown.

...

[bron: http--www.renneslechateaumysterie.be/davincicode.php]

De Da Vinci Code heeft heel wat losgemaakt. Schrijvers worden geïnspireerd vergelijkbare boeken te produceren, om mee te deinen in het kielzog van Dan Brown, terwijl anderen vroegere publicaties afstoffen en opnieuw uitgeven. Tot die laatste categorie horen Baigent, Leigh en Lincoln. Hun boek verscheen al in 1982 en was een voorname bron waaruit de heer Brown putte voor het schrijven van het controversiële De Da Vinci code. Een belangrijk verschil is dat Baigent c.s. een informatief boek schreven, niet een roman. Deze uitgave bevat ook diverse foto's en geslachtsregisters die de theorie die de schrijvers uiteenzetten moeten illustreren. Met hun theorie beweren zij dat Jezus niet aan het kruis stierf en dat hij getrouwd was met Maria Magdalena. Het vorstenhuis van de Merovingers zou van hem afstammen en zelfs tot op de dag van vandaag zou er een troonpretendent en afstammeling van Jezus zijn. De bloedlijn wordt bewaakt door de orde Prieuré de Sion.

In hun boek worstelen de schrijvers door theologische en geschiedkundige informatie, legendes, mythes en bouwen daarmee hun theorie op. Overal menen zij mystificaties en rookgordijnen te zien, die moeten voorkomen dat het nieuws van de troonpretendent te vroeg uitlekt. De auteurs laten zich bij hun onderzoek leiden door de zogeheten 'Prieuré-documenten'. Die vormen de as waar alles om draait. 'Het heilige bloed en de heilige graal' loopt over van opmerkingen als: 'Het zou kunnen dat...', 'als dat waar is, dan is het mogelijk dat...', 'naar het schijnt...' en 'het lijkt erop dat...'. De redenaties zijn afwisselend fascinerend en - door de vele zijpaden die bewandeld worden - langdradig. Soms zijn ze regelrecht paranoïde. Zoals de reactie van de schrijvers op de ontkenning van een publiek persoon dat hij iets met de Prieuré te maken heeft. Dit wordt uitgelegd als een duidelijke aanwijzing dat er een groot geheim is en dat de persoon in kwestie daarom ontkent.

De enorme hoeveelheid informatie waarmee de lezer overspoeld wordt, is duizelingwekkend. Vermoeiend is de opeenstapeling van gezochte vooronderstellingen, terwijl de naïviteit van de schrijvers bij het beoordelen van sommige gegevens bij tijd en wijle lachwekkend of tenenkrommend is. In feite hebben Baigent c.s. een theorie en zoeken ze alleen naar informatie die haar bevestigt. Hiermee bouwen ze een kaartenhuisconstructie, opgebouwd uit speculaties, gissingen, suggestieve opmerkingen en gedateerde informatie. Trek één kaart weg, en het hele bouwsel stort in. Inmiddels is bekend dat de 'Prieuré-documenten' een ingenieuze hoax zijn, waarbij de veroorzakers hiervan handig gebruik hebben gemaakt van hiaten in de geschiedschrijving.

Het heilige bloed en de heilige graal werd ook in 1996 opnieuw uitgegeven. Uit die tijd stammen de inleiding en de appendix die in deze uitgave terug te vinden zijn. Het is jammer dat die inleiding en de appendix niet herschreven zijn met de inzichten van nu. Juist in de inleiding blazen de auteurs hoog van de toren. Zelfs het zwijgen van de Rooms-katholieke kerk leggen zij uit alsof het Vaticaan hun theorie niet kán ontkennen. De reactie van Rome op De Da Vinci code toont aan dat dit geenszins het geval is. In dezelfde inleiding maken Baigent c.s. een blunder op pagina 20, waar beweerd wordt dat Paulus in de evangeliën voorkomt. De schrijvers hebben evenwel geen wetenschappelijke achtergrond. Ze hebben geschiedenisfeitjes verweven met informatie uit besmette bronnen. Het resultaat is een fascinerende theorie, maar niet meer dan dat.

[bron: http--www.mpobooks.nl/recensies/baigent-hetheiligebloed.htm]

--- Over (foto 2): Henry Lincoln ---

Henry Lincoln (born Henry Soskin; 12 February 1930) is a British author, television presenter, scriptwriter, and actor. He co-wrote three Doctor Who multi-part serials in the 1960s, and - starting in the 1970s - inspired three Chronicle BBC Two documentaries on the alleged mysteries surrounding the French village of Rennes-le-Château (on which he was writer and presenter) - and, from the 1980s, co-authored and authored a series of books of which The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail was the most popular, becoming the inspiration for Dan Brown's 2003 best-selling novel, The Da Vinci Code. He is now the last living person to have written Doctor Who in the 1960s.

Lincoln was born in London in 1930 and studied acting at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. Under his original name of Henry Soskin, he worked as both screenwriter and supporting actor. In 1964 he wrote one of the episodes of The Barnstormers (Associated-Rediffusion), as well as starring in two of the episodes. Lincoln also appeared in other television series such as The Avengers (1961, 1963), The Saint (1967), Man in a Suitcase (1968), and The Champions (1969); as well as in the 1968 film Don't Raise the Bridge, Lower the River.

He was co-writer, with Mervyn Haisman, of three Doctor Who stories starring Patrick Troughton: The Abominable Snowmen (1967), The Web of Fear (1968) and The Dominators (1968) and retained the rights to the recurring character Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart. He is now the sole-surviving writer from the 1960s era of Doctor Who, following the death of Donald Tosh in December 2019.

Lincoln wrote and presented documentaries on other subjects such as The Man in the Iron Mask (Timewatch, 1988), Nostradamus, The Curse of the Pharaohs, and The Cathars (the latter three documentaries formed the television series Mysteries shown on the BBC during the 1980s).

In 1969, while on holiday in the Cévennes, Lincoln happened to read Le Trésor Maudit de Rennes-le-Château (trans: The Accursed Treasure of Rennes-le-Château), a book by Gérard de Sède about an alleged hidden treasure. The book reproduced copies of Latin parchments that had been found by the parish priest of Rennes-le-Château, Bérenger Saunière, within a pillar inside his Romanesque church.

Inspired by what appeared to be secret codes hidden in the Latin text, Lincoln did some research about the parchments and a possible treasure, writing several books presenting his theories about the area. He presented three documentaries in the Chronicle series for BBC2: "The Lost Treasure of Jerusalem", shown in February 1972, "The Priest, the Painter and the Devil", shown in October 1974, and finally "The Shadow of the Templars", shown in November 1979.

One of the parchments (which was later shown to be a forgery, since the writing was written in modern French and not in 18th or 19th century French) involved a series of raised letters throughout its Latin text, spelling out a message: A Dagobert II Roi et à Sion est ce trésor et il est là mort (trans: "This treasure belongs to King Dagobert II and to Sion, and he is there dead"; or, "This treasure belongs to King Dagobert II and to Sion, and it is death").

This referred to the Merovingian king Dagobert II, who had been assassinated without a direct heir in the 7th century, thereby ending his branch of the dynasty. Later research, however, showed that de Sède's book had actually been written at the instigation of Pierre Plantard as part of an elaborate hoax to promote a society known as the Priory of Sion, and Plantard claimed to be descended from Dagobert II. Pierre Plantard died in 2000.

Lincoln is best known for being one of the co-authors of the controversial 1982 best-seller The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail. During the mid-1970s, while Lincoln was lecturing at a summer school, he met Richard Leigh, an American fiction writer.

Leigh introduced him to Michael Baigent, a New Zealand photo-journalist who had been working on a project about the Knights Templar. The three discovered that they shared a common interest in the Knights Templar, and between them later developed a theory that Jesus Christ had started a bloodline that had later intermarried with the Frankish Merovingian royal dynasty.

The three of them took their theory on the road during the 1970s in a series of lectures that later developed into the 1982 book, The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail, which became a best-seller and popularised the hypothesis that Jesus had fathered a still extant and powerful bloodline (the true Holy Grail), and which was tied together by a set of fraudulent documents hinting at the existence of a secret society known as the Priory of Sion. The author Dan Brown later used these ideas as the basis of his novel The Da Vinci Code.

The book has been described as "a work thoroughly debunked by scholars and critics alike". Arthurian scholar Richard Barber has commented, "It would take a book as long as the original to refute and dissect The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail point by point: it is essentially a text which proceeds by innuendo, not by refutable scholarly debate".

Some of the ideas presented in The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail, were incorporated in the best-selling American novel The Da Vinci Code, by Dan Brown. In March 2006, Baigent and Leigh filed a lawsuit in a British court against Brown's publisher, Random House, claiming copyright infringement.

On 7 April, High Court judge Peter Smith rejected the copyright-infringement claim, and Brown won the court case. Lincoln was not involved in the proceedings, reportedly due to illness. However, in the Channel Five documentary (10 May 2006) Revealed... The Man behind the Da Vinci Code, Lincoln stated that he did not wish to take part in the proceedings because the ideas brought forth in Holy Blood were not even original themselves, and Brown's actions could only be described as, "a bit naughty". An earlier novel had already used the theme of a Jesus bloodline: The Dreamer of the Vine, by Liz Greene, published in 1980.

In 1993, Lincoln wrote and presented the four-episode TV-series The Secret which was produced and directed by Erling Haagensen.

The series presented elements of Lincoln's lifelong research on Rennes-le-Château, such as an alleged link between the area and the painting Les Bergers d'Arcadie by 17th century painter Nicolas Poussin. In 2000, Lincoln collaborated with Haagensen to write The Templar's Secret Island, linking their mutual hypotheses about geometry being observed in the placement of medieval churches around both Rennes-le-Château and the Danish island of Bornholm. These speculative findings led them to allege that the Knights Templar had built the churches on Bornholm in a specific pattern, to be used as a series of medieval astronomical observatories.

Sharan Newman, author of The Real History Behind The Templars, has noted that the history given in The Templar's Secret Island "is based on a few pieces of data and several assumptions that rely on inaccurate information", also adding that there are no records of Templar activity in Denmark.

Mainstream historians and specialists in medieval architecture believe that the four central-plan churches in Ny, Nylars, Ols and Osterlars in Bornholm were built as a result of the pilgrimages made by Sigurd I of Norway to the recaptured Jerusalem between 1107 and 1111.

Sharan Newman commented, "The idea of building a church in the form of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem wasn't new. A hundred years before the Templar order was founded, the Benedictine church at Saint-Bénigne at Dijon was built with a round nave in imitation of the Holy Sepulcher. Even the Hospitallers built round churches."

On 8 November 2003, Lincoln was awarded a Honorary Knighthood in the Militi Templi Scotia order, in recognition of his work in the fields of sacred geometry and Templar history.

A description of Lincoln's ceremony of knighthood can be found in Rat Scabies and The Holy Grail by Christopher Dawes, a gonzo-style book about Rennes-le-Château in which Lincoln appears as a central character.

"Militi Templi Scotia ceased to exist in 2006 when a great majority of members left and started the Jacques de Molay 1314 Commandery in 2006, it then due to the membership rising became The Autonomous Grand Priory of Scotland in 2009 as the membership rose to the required numbers allowing it to do so."

Henry Lincoln now lives permanently close to the village of Rennes-le-Château and can often be seen in the village showing visitors around. His son, Hugo Soskin, author of The Cook, the Rat & the Heretic: Living in the Shadow of Rennes-le-Chateau (Summersdale Publishers, 2008), died in 2012.

Works

• 1950s television series:

- Our Mutual Friend (as Bob Gliddery)

• 1960s television series:

- Strange Concealments (as Ambrose Lemmon)
- Sierra Nine (as King Sharifa)
- Maigret (guest actor)
- The Secret of the Nubian Tomb (as The Omda)
- The Avengers (guest actor)
- No Hiding Place (guest actor)
- The Saint (guest actor)
- The Champions (guest actor)
- Man in a Suitcase (guest actor)
- Emergency - Ward 10 (screenwriter)

• 1970s television series

- L'homme sans visage (credited as Henry Soskin, in the role of professeur Pétri, 1975; adaptation of the 1974 film Nuits rouges, also credited as Henry Soskin, with the same cast, released in English called Shadowman, credited as Henry Lincoln; both television series and film directed by Georges Franju)

• Co-writer, with Mervyn Haisman, of three Doctor Who stories

- The Abominable Snowmen
- The Web of Fear
- The Dominators

• Co-writer, with Mervyn Haisman, of the Boris Karloff film, Curse of the Crimson Altar, directed by Vernon Sewell (1968).
• Three BBC2 Chronicle documentaries about Rennes-le-Château, written and presented by Henry Lincoln.

- The Lost Treasure of Jerusalem...?, 31 March 1972 (directed by Andrew Maxwell-Hyslop, produced by Paul Johnstone)
- The Priest, the Painter, and the Devil, 30 October 1974, repeated in 1979 (produced by Roy Davies)
- The Shadow of the Templars, 27 November 1979 (co-written by Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh, Anthony Wall and Jania MacGillivray; produced by Roy Davies)

• 1982: The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail (with Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh)
• 1987: The Messianic Legacy (with Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh)
• 1991: The Holy Place: Discovering the Eighth Wonder of the Ancient World (or The Holy Place: Decoding the Mystery of Rennes-le-Château or The Holy Place: Saunière and the Decoding of the Mystery of Rennes-le-Château)
• 1993: The Secret: 4-part documentary written and presented for Tv2 Danmark (later released on video and DVD)
• 2002: Key to the Sacred Pattern: The Untold Story of Rennes-le-Château
• 2002: The Templars' Secret Island: The Knights, The Priest and The Treasure (with Erling Haagensen)
• 2002: Henry Lincoln's Guide To Rennes-Le-Château And The Aude Valley video
• 2005: Origins of The Da Vinci Code DVD (with Erling Haagensen)

[source: wikipedia]

--- Over (foto 3): Michael Baigent Meehan ---

Michael Baigent (born Michael Barry Meehan, 27 February 1948 - 17 June 2013) was a pseudo-historian, who published a number of popular works questioning traditional perceptions of history and the life of Jesus. He is best known as a co-author of the book Holy Blood, Holy Grail.

Baigent was born on 27 February 1948 in Nelson, New Zealand and spent his childhood in the nearby communities of Motueka and Wakefield. His father was a devout Catholic, and he was tutored in Catholic theology from the age of five years. After his father left the family when Baigent was eight years old, he went to live with his maternal grandfather, Lewis Baigent and took his surname. His great-grandfather, Henry Baigent served as a Nelson city mayor and had founded a forestry firm, H. Baigent and Sons.

His secondary schooling was at Nelson College, and then he moved on to the University of Canterbury, Christchurch, initially intending to study science and continue in the family career of forestry, but switched to studying comparative religion and philosophy.

After graduating in 1972, Baigent made extensive travels to different countries, as a freelancer. He did stints as a war-photographer in Laos and as a fashion-photographer in Spain, before arriving at England in 1976. Whilst working at the BBC photographic department and staking in night shifts at a soft-drinks factory, he came across Richard Leigh via a TV producer who was producing a series on Knights Templar. Leigh was to be his frequent co-author across his entire life, and together they sough to unravel the alleged mystery of Rennes-le-Château in France, whose details were put forward in Holy Blood, Holy Grail.

In 2000, Baigent also earned an MA in Mysticism and Religious Experience at the University of Kent. A Freemason and a Grand Officer (2005) of the United Grand Lodge of England, he was an editor of Freemasonry Today from Spring, 2001 to Summer, 2011 and advocated for a more liberal approach to Freemasonry.

Baigent married Jane, an interior designer in 1982 and had two daughters, Isabelle and Tansy along with two children from her earlier marriage. He died from a brain haemorrhage in Brighton, East Sussex on 18 June 2013.

Published on 18 January 1982, Holy Blood, Holy Grail popularised the hypothesis that the true nature of the quest for the Holy Grail was that Jesus and Mary Magdalene had a child together, the first of a bloodline which later married into a Frankish royal dynasty, the Merovingians, and was all tied together by a society known as the Priory of Sion.

The theory that Jesus and Mary were in a carnal (physical) relationship is based on Baigent's interpretation of the Holy Kiss on the mouth (typically between males in early Christian times, thus signifying Mary's emancipation), and spiritual marriage, as given in the Gospel of Philip. It was earlier perpetuated by authors Laurence Gardner and Margaret Starbird.

The book was a bestseller at the time of publication in America; some Catholic countries chose to ban the work for blasphemy. It regained popularity after the publication of Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code and sold over six million copies.

On the day of publication, historian Marina Warner noted the book to be filled with lurid falsehoods and distorted reasoning. Soon enough, the authors had a public clash on a BBC broadcast with her and the Bishop of Birmingham. In a scathing review of the book for The Observer, critic Anthony Burgess wrote: "It is typical of my unregenerable soul that I can only see this as a marvelous theme for a novel." A Kirkus Review described the work as an intriguing phantasmagoria wherein the authors jumped "perilous heights to reach crazy conclusions". Colin Henderson Roberts, reviewing for London Review of Books, noted that the work advanced a preposterous hypothesis and made major blunders in its quest to get simple reductive answers from complex questions.

In the immediate aftermath of the publication of The Da Vinci Code, The New York Times Book Review deemed Holy Blood, Holy Grail to be among the all-time great works of pop pseudo-history. John J. Doherty, literature librarian at Northern Arizona University, writing in King Arthur in Popular Culture, describes of the work as being "thoroughly debunked by scholars and critics alike". Arthurian scholar Richard Barber commented the work to be a "notorious pseudo-history", which advanced its arguments on innuendo and fertile speculations, and would take a book of equal length to be dissected and refuted in entirety.

In 2005, Tony Robinson critically interrogated the main arguments of Brown, Baigent and Leigh over a program on Channel 4, and termed the entire episode to be a hoax. 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". With increasing proliferation and popularity of books, websites and films centered around Baigent's works, many critics regard the work to have been highly influential in the mainstreaming of conspiracy theories and pseudohistory in public psyche. Damian Thompson noted the book to "employ the rhetoric of authentic history, but not its method, to present myths as fact". Laura Miller writing for Salon (website) described the book to have advanced a preposterous idea in stages - first as a wild guess, then as a tentative hypothesis, and lastly as an undeniable fact - but entirely from within a miasma of bogus authenticity.

Some of the ideas presented in Baigent's earlier book Holy Blood, Holy Grail, were incorporated in the bestselling American novel The Da Vinci Code, by Dan Brown.

In The Da Vinci Code, Dan Brown named the primary antagonist, a British Royal Historian, Knight of the Realm and Grail scholar, Sir Leigh Teabing, KBE, also known as the Teacher, in homage to the authors of Holy Blood, Holy Grail. The name combines Richard Leigh's surname with 'Teabing', an anagram of Baigent.

In March 2006, Baigent and Leigh filed a lawsuit in a British court against Brown's publisher, Random House, claiming copyright infringement.

Concurrent with the plagiarism trial, Baigent released a new book, The Jesus Papers, amid criticism that it was just a reworking of themes from Holy Blood, Holy Grail, and timed to capitalize on the marketing hype around the release of the movie The Da Vinci Code, as well as the attention brought by the trial. In the postscript to the book (p. 355), Baigent points out that the release date had been set by Harper Collins long before.

On 7 April 2006, High Court judge Peter Smith rejected the copyright-infringement claim by Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh, and Dan Brown won the court case. On 28 March 2007, Baigent and Leigh lost their appeal against this decision and were faced with legal bills of about 3 million pounds.

Bernard Hamilton, writing in the English Historical Review, described Baigent's treatment of The Inquisition as pursuing "a very outdated and misleading account", which ignored all modern development in Inquisition Studies and grossly exaggerated its power and influence, to the extent of being polemical. Writing in the Spectator magazine, Piers Paul Read deemed the authors to have penned a misinformed diatribe against Catholicism, with nil interest in "understanding the subtleties and paradoxes in the history of the Inquisition". A review over The Independent noted of it to be mostly drab and uncontroversial, in reiterating facts which were already known for decades but which progressively gave way to hysteria, in its bid to draw a parallel between the ancient institution and current abuse of power by Catholic authorities. Dongwoo Kim, writing over Constellations (journal) noted the book to not be a significant contribution in the field, in that it was an epitome of Whig historiography which sought for a binary categorization of the past between good and evil, whilst locating the Catholic Church as the "antithesis of modernity and liberalism".

Baigent himself conceded that none of his theories yielded any positive results: "I would like to think in due course a lot of this material will be proven," he said, "but it's just a hope of mine."

Later, he and Leigh co-authored several books, including The Dead Sea Scrolls Deception (1991) in which they primarily followed the controversial theories of Robert Eisenman concerning the interpretation of the Scrolls. This was discredited by Otto Betz and Rainer Riesner in their book Jesus, Qumran and The Vatican: Clarifications (1994).

Bibliography

Sole author

• From the Omens of Babylon: Astrology and Ancient Mesopotamia (1994) ISBN 0-14-019480-0. 2nd edition published as Astrology in Ancient Mesopotamia: The Science of Omens and the Knowledge of the Heavens (2015) ISBN 978-1591432210
• Ancient Traces: Mysteries in Ancient and Early History (1998) ISBN 0-670-87454-X
• The Jesus Papers: Exposing the Greatest Cover-Up in History (2006) ISBN 0-06-082713-0
• Racing Toward Armageddon: The Three Great Religions and the Plot to End the World (2009)

Co-written with Richard Leigh and Henry Lincoln

• Holy Blood, Holy Grail, 1982, UK ISBN 0-09-968241-9

U.S. paperback: Holy Blood, Holy Grail, 1983, Dell. ISBN 0-440-13648-2

• The Messianic Legacy, 1986

Co-written with Richard Leigh

• The Temple and the Lodge, 1989, ISBN 0-552-13596-8
• The Dead Sea Scrolls Deception, 1991
• Secret Germany: Claus Von Stauffenberg and the true story of Operation Valkyrie, 1994
• The Elixir and the Stone: The Tradition of Magic and Alchemy, 1997
• The Inquisition. 1999

Co-written with other authors

• The Astrological Journal (Winter 1983-84, Vol. 26, No. 1) with Roy Alexander, Fiona Griffiths, Charles Harvey, Suzi Lilley-Harvey, Esme Williams, David Hamblin, and Zach Mathews, 1983
• Mundane Astrology: Introduction to the Astrology of Nations and Groups (co-written with Nicholas Campion and Charles Harvey) 1984 (reissued expanded edition, 1992)
• Freemasonry Today, (editor) 2001-2011

[source: wikipedia]

--- Over (foto 4): Richard Leigh ---

Richard Harris Leigh (16 August 1943 - 21 November 2007) was a novelist and short story writer born in New Jersey, United States to a British father and an American mother, who spent most of his life in the UK. Leigh earned a BA from Tufts University, a master's degree from the University of Chicago, and a Ph.D. from the State University of New York at Stony Brook.

Leigh met his frequent co-author Michael Baigent while living in the United Kingdom in the 1970s. They subsequently struck a friendship with the writer and British television scriptwriter Henry Lincoln in 1975 and between them developed a conspiracy theory involving the Knights Templar and the alleged mystery of Rennes-le-Château, proposing the existence of a secret that Jesus had not died on the Cross, but had married Mary Magdalene and fathered descendants who continued to exert an influence on European history. This hypothesis was later put forward in their 1982 book, The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail.

The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail achieved enormous commercial success and has been described as "one of the most controversial books of the 1980s". It popularised the idea that the true object of the quest for the Holy Grail was to find secret descendants of Jesus and Mary Magdalene. This bloodline is stated to have later married into a Frankish royal dynasty, the Merovingians, and to be championed and protected by a secret society known as the Priory of Sion. These notions were later used as a basis for Dan Brown's international best-selling novel The Da Vinci Code.

The day after publication, the authors had a public clash on BBC television with the Bishop of Birmingham and Marina Warner. The book rapidly climbed the best-seller charts, and the authors published a sequel, The Messianic Legacy, in 1986.

The book has been described as "a work thoroughly debunked by scholars and critics alike". Arthurian scholar Richard Barber has commented, "It would take a book as long as the original to refute and dissect The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail point by point: it is essentially a text which proceeds by innuendo, not by refutable scholarly debate".

In 1991 Leigh published The Dead Sea Scrolls Deception, co-authored with Baigent. The book follows the controversial theories of Robert Eisenman regarding the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Two books of Leigh's fictional works have been published: Erceldoune & Other Stories (2006), and Grey Magic (2007).

Some of the ideas presented in Baigent's earlier book The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail, were incorporated in the best-selling American novel The Da Vinci Code, by Dan Brown.

In March 2006, Baigent and Leigh filed suit in a British court against Brown's publisher, Random House, claiming copyright infringement. On 7 April 2006 High Court judge Peter Smith rejected the claim. On 28 March 2007, Baigent and Leigh lost their appeal, and were faced with legal bills of about 3m pounds.

Leigh died on 21 November 2007 in London from causes related to a heart condition.

Works

Co-written with Michael Baigent and Henry Lincoln

• The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail, 1982, UK ISBN 0-09-968241-9

U.S. paperback: Holy Blood, Holy Grail, 1983, Dell. ISBN 0-440-13648-2

• The Messianic Legacy, 1986

Co-written with Michael Baigent

• The Dead Sea Scrolls Deception, 1991
• The Temple and the Lodge, 1991, ISBN 0-552-13596-8
• Secret Germany: Claus Von Stauffenberg and the Mystical Crusade Against Hitler, 1994
• The Elixir and the Stone: The Tradition of Magic and Alchemy, 1997
• The Inquisition. 1999

Self published

• Erceldoune & Other Stories (2006, ISBN 978-1-4116-9943-4)
• Grey Magic (2007, ISBN 978-0-615-13733-9).

[source: wikipedia]

Richard Leigh, a writer who filed an unsuccessful lawsuit over the novel "The Da Vinci Code," died on Nov. 21 in London. He was 64.

The causes were related to a heart ailment, said an agent at the Jonathan Clowes Agency, which represents him.

Mr. Leigh was co-author of "The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail," a work of speculative nonfiction that proposed that Jesus Christ fathered a child and that the bloodline continues to this day. A best seller on its release in 1982, the book gained new readers after Dan Brown's "Da Vinci Code," which explores similar themes, was released.

Mr. Leigh and another co-author, Michael Baigent, sued Mr. Brown's publisher, Random House, saying that "The Da Vinci Code" "appropriated the architecture" of their book. A third "Holy Blood" co-author, Henry Lincoln, did not join the lawsuit.

In April 2006, Peter Smith, a High Court judge, threw out the claim, saying the ideas in question were too general to be protected by copyright.

The case sent "Holy Blood" back up the best-seller lists, but Mr. Baigent and Mr. Leigh were left with a bill estimated at about $6.2 million after the judge ordered them to pay 85 percent of Random House's legal costs.

An attempt to appeal the ruling was rejected earlier this year.

Mr. Baigent and Mr. Leigh collaborated on several other books, including "The Messianic Legacy," a sequel to "Holy Blood."

He never married.

[source: https--www.nytimes.com/2007/12/01/arts/01leigh.html]