Are the book’s claims about the Holy Grail, the Priory of Sion, and the Knights Templar historical?
According to The Da Vinci Code, the legendary Holy Grail is not the chalice used at the Last Supper of Christ. Instead, Brown uses his “experts” to suggest that the real Holy Grail is a person, Mary Magdalene, who carried the bloodline of Jesus Christ by having His child. The book also treats as fact the existence of a secret society called the Priory of Sion, which for centuries has kept the secret of Jesus’ relationship to Mary. Mary Magdalene, according to this bestselling novel, represents the feminine aspect of God (the “divine feminine”)—loved by Jesus but denied by the church for hundreds of years. The Knights Templar are also included as protectors of the secret but were all but wiped out by the church. The Holy Grail and the Priory of Sion are only two of the many “facts” that need to be subjected to a historical “reality check.” The Holy Grail is a medieval legend about the cup of the Last Supper. The first appearance of the term “Holy Grail” was in 1170 in Perceval, a romant
