The Holy Grail and its heirs

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The Holy Grail and its heirs ( English original title The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail ) is a 1982 book by Henry Lincoln , Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh , on Pierre Plantard's Prieuré de Sion .

Although the book was an international bestseller immediately after its publication, the theses of the book are rejected by serious historians. With its mixture of myths, assumptions and (often eccentrically interpreted) facts, it is considered a prime example of pseudoscience and conspiracy theory .

Emergence

The original source of inspiration was the book L'Or de Rennes (1967) by Gérard de Sède , which Henry Lincoln read on a holiday in France in the late 1960s. Based on this, Lincoln processed further research in two documentaries for the BBC , where he met Baigent and Leigh, with whom he further developed his theories and finally published them in book form.

content

Lincoln, Baigent and Leigh see in Nicolas Poussin's painting The Arcadian Shepherds a clue to a secret to be deciphered. In a tomb near Rennes-le-Château , the authors see the real counterpart to Poussin's painting.

The starting point of the authors are the puzzles that entwine around the place Rennes-le-Château in southern France and its local pastor Bérenger Saunière , who suddenly became rich shortly before 1900. They present the following theses:

  • Saunière's wealth comes from a find below the altar of his church . This possibly contained not only references to a treasure, but also writings that put him in a position to blackmail the Catholic Church . These writings were encrypted. One read after deciphering: A DAGOBERT II ROI ET A SION EST CE TRESOR ET IL EST LA MORT ( This treasure belongs to King Dagobert II as well as Zion and it is dead here / it is death ). Another is cryptic, even after the deciphering: BERGERE PAS DE QUE TENTATION POUSSIN TENIERS gardent LA CLEF PAX DCLXXXI PAR LA CROIX ET CE CHEVAL DE DIEU J'ACHEVE CE DEMON DE GARDIEN MIDI FRENCH BLEUES ( Shepherdess, no temptation that. Poussin , Teniers have the key; peace 681. Through the cross and this horse of God I overcome this guardian demon at noon. Blue apples. )
  • The village church renovated by Saunière , his newly built Villa Béthania and the Tour Magdala give evidence of an unorthodox view of the figure of Jesus and the story of the crucifixion.
  • There is a secret society called Prieuré de Sion that dates back to the time of the First Crusade . It is run by a grand master called a nautonnier . This office was held by personalities such as Leonardo da Vinci , Isaac Newton and Jean Cocteau . At the time of writing, it was Pierre Plantard .
  • The Knights Templar were the military (and economic) arm of this society.
  • The task of the Prieuré is to bring the descendants of the Merovingians back to the thrones in Europe and Jerusalem , since they represent the only legitimate dynasty.
  • These pretenders are protected by society because they are the physical descendants of Jesus and Mary Magdalene - and, through Jesus, of King David .
  • The Holy Grail - that word lead the authors of Sang réal (royal blood) from which to San Greal verballhornt had been - is nothing but an allegory of this bloodline of Jesus.
  • The murder of the Merovingian king Dagobert II and the assumption of power by the Carolingians was a deliberate game of the Catholic Church, which in this way reached for power in Europe. All institutions that protect the Merovingians have been persecuted by her ever since, including the Knights Templar. Dagobert II plays a role in the book insofar as Plantard traces his genealogy back to a (historically unproven) son of Dagobert, Sigibert IV .
  • The Protocols of the Elders of Zion , an anti-Semitic forgery of the early 20th century, with which the thesis of a Jewish world conspiracy was to be substantiated, is reinterpreted as evidence of a conspiracy in favor of the Merovingians.

The book also contains interview passages with Pierre Plantard, who is portrayed as the reigning Grand Master of the Prieuré de Sion, and all kinds of speculations about the political goal of the organization. According to the authors, it seems to be about the establishment of a theocratic order with socialist features, which at the same time brings about a kind of reunification between Christianity and Judaism , since this reinterpretation of the person of Jesus removes an essential theological difference.

It is not entirely clear to what extent the authors themselves are convinced of their theses. In a follow-up volume ( Das Vermächtnis des Messias , Engl. The Messianic Legacy ), the authors provide further material that in their eyes indicates the existence of a dynasty descended from Jesus, but express themselves much more skeptically about the Prieuré de Sion and its political background. Some time ago Richard Leigh stated in a television interview that they only wanted to deliver hypotheses whose truth one does not necessarily believe.

Pierre Plantard distanced himself from the authors' conclusions. He declared that he had resigned as Grand Master and moved the beginnings of the Priory to the 17th century. In 1993, during a search of the Plantard house in the wake of a corruption scandal in which the alleged Grand Master of the Priory Roger-Patrice Pelat was involved, papers of the Priory were seized in which Plantard was described as the "real King of France". Plantard then admitted under oath that he had concocted all of this himself. In 2005, Gérard de Sède's son confirmed in a TV documentary that the Prieuré was an invention of Plantard and that his father had written the book L'Or de Rennes in collaboration with him.

Influences

  • These theses are briefly mentioned in Umberto Eco's Das Foucault Pendulum , where they are generated randomly by a computer. They have no meaning for the plot of the book - which also deals with fictional Templar conspiracies.
  • In 2003 the theses were used as a template for Dan Brown's novel The Da Vinci Code. The name of one of the characters in the book - the manic Grail researcher Leigh Teabing - is an anagram composed of the names of Baigent and Leigh . Brown's novel was called plagiarism by Baigent and Leigh, thereby implicitly admitting the fictional character of their book. A lawsuit in a London court failed, but the book was able to provide additional publicity.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Michael Hagemeister, The 'Protocols of the Wise Men of Zion' and the Basel Zionist Congress of 1897. In: Heiko Haumann (ed.), The dream of Israel. The origins of modern Zionism , Beltz Athenaeum, Weinheim 1998, p. 269 f.

literature

  • Henry Lincoln, Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh: The Holy Grail and Its Heirs. Origin and Presence of a Secret Order. His knowledge and his power . Lübbe , Bergisch Gladbach 1984, ISBN 3-7857-0370-8 .
  • Henry Lincoln, Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh: The Legacy of the Messiah. Mission and secret work of the Brotherhood of the Holy Grail . Lübbe, Bergisch Gladbach 1987, ISBN 3-7857-0460-7 .