Michael Baigent, Henry Lincoln, and Richard Leigh, authors of The Messianic Legacy, spent over 10 years on their own kind of quest for the Holy Grail, into the secretive history of early France. What they found, researched with the tenacity and attention to detail which befits any great quest, is a tangled and intricate story of politics and faith that reads like a mystery novel. It is the story of the Knights Templar, and a behind-the-scenes society called the Prieure de Sion, and its involvement in reinstating descendants of the Merovingian bloodline into political power. Why? The authors of Holy Blood, Holy Grail assert that their explorations into early history ultimately reveal that Jesus may not have died on the cross, but lived to marry and father children whose bloodline continues today. According to the authors, their point here is not to compromise or to demean Jesus, but to offer another, more complete perspective of Jesus as God's incarnation in man. They claim that the power of this secret, which has, they say, been carefully guarded for hundreds of years, has sparked much controversy. For all the sensationalism and hoopla surrounding The Holy Blood and The Holy Grail and the alternative history which it outlines, the authors are careful to keep their perspective and sense of scepticism alive in its pages, explaining carefully and clearly how they came to draw such combustible conclusions. --Jodie Buller

A vast number of people have become enthralled with the story of the nineteenth-century French priest who, in his mountain village at the foot of the Pyrenees, discovered something which enabled him to amass and spend a fortune of millions of pounds. The tale seems to begin with buried treasure and then turns into an unprecedented historical detective story - a modern Grail quest leading back through cryptically coded parchments, secret societies, the Knights Templar, the Cathar heretics of the 12th and 13th centuries and a dynasty of obscure French kings deposed more than 1,300 years ago. Now, after more than ten years of research, Henry Lincoln and his co-authors, Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh, publish the results of their inquiry into this taunting enigma. What really lies at the core of this discovery of Rennes-le-Chateau is not material riches, but a secret - a secret of explosive and controversial proportions, which radiates out from the little Pyrenees village to encompass the whole of Western civilisation. The secret is no mere historical curiosity. Its repercussions stretch all the way to the contemporary politics and the entire edice of the Christian faith.

It involves nothing less than the Holy Grail - not as a mystical chalice of medieval legend but as something more tangible which has played a vital role in the shaping of Western history. The enigma extends to our own day, implicating such men as de Gaulle and Malraux. It also casts an astonishing new light on such events as the Renaissance and the Crusades. Most startlingly it pertains to the origins of Christianity and the very identity of Jesus.

2008-03-05 Alas, it all turned out to be a hoax

I read this book in the early 90's when I was a student and it's adventurous musings completely blew me away.

UNFORTUNATELY...

BBC2's Chronicle, if memory serves the programme the author's worked on when they unearthed the books 'mysteries' and hit the big time, did a follow up programme years later and discovered that Baigent, Leigh and Lincoln (and Chronical for that matter) had been had big time. The creepy little French bloke claiming to lead the Prieure De Sion (or however it's spelt) - and therefore by extension was a blood relative of Jesus Christ himself - was actually a professional con man who saw Baigent and Leigh coming a mile off and fed them just enough information to string them along for years!!!

Baigent and Leigh refused to accept the evidence (and well they might because it made them look like complete pratts, not to mention threatening their cash cow) but the evidence was pretty damning. As for all their subsequent speculations concerning the Dead Sea scrolls and their radical reinterpretations of the bible, that mostly turned out to be the result of inept research combined with three extremely vivid imaginations.

Oh well, it was fun while it lasted! And at least they made a lot more money out of it than the conman!!!