The Da Vinci Con: 
    Fact and Fiction in The Da Vinci Code

It's Just a Novel (Movie)

2. Story of The Da Vinci Code: Historical Secret

3. Leonardo’s Last Supper 

4. Derivation of 'Holy Grail'

5. Mary Magdalene in the Bible

6. Priory of Sion

6a. Opus Dei

7. Questions of Jesus’s True Identity

8. Non-Christian Sources

9. Christian Sources: Biblical Texts

10. Other Apostolic Texts

11. St. Ignatius  of Antioch – AD 110

12. "Alternate" Gospels: Gospel of Peter (c. AD 130)

13. St. Justin, Martyr – AD 151

14. St. Irenaeus of Lyon – AD189

15. "Alternate" Christianities

16. Gnostic Scriptures

17. The ‘Muratorian’ Canon – c. AD 200

18. Constantine

19. Council of Nicaea - AD 325

20. St. Eusebius, Bishop of Caesarea (c. AD 330)

21. Constantine’s Bibles

22. Codex Sinaiticus

23. Closing the Canon

24. Philosophical Issues: Diversity of Christianities

25. Philosophical Issues: Subjectivism of Belief

26. Theological Issue: Was Jesus married?

27. Other Historical Claims

Priory of Sion: DVC

"The Priory of Sion," he began, "was founded in Jerusalem in 1099 by a French king named Godefroi de Bouillon, immediately after he had conquered the city."
Sophie nodded, her eyes riveted on him.
"King Godefroi was allegedly the possessor of a powerful secret -- a secret that had been in the family since the time of Christ. Fearing his secret might be lost when he died, he founded a secret brotherhood -- the Priory of Sion -- and charged them with protecting his secret by quietly passing it on from generation to generation. . . ." (p. 157-8)

Priory of Sion: Truth

• Originally founded in 1956 in France by four friends as a social club
  
• Pierre Plantard revived it as a supposed secret society dating to 1099, and with connection to the Merovingian royal dynasty.
  
• Plantard, with other associates forged the documents known as Les Dossiers Secrets and placed them in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris.
  
• Invented solely to further Plantards claims to be the true King of France.
  
• In the 1980's, Plantard claimed to have been replaced as Grand Master by a man named Roger Patrice Pelat.
  
• In 1993, after his (Pelat’s) death, Pelat was being investigated by the French courts for his involvement in a corruption scandal.
  
• Plantard claimed Pelat had been Grand Master of the Priory of Sion, but as a result of court interrogation, Plantard finally swore under oath that he had made the whole thing up.
  
• This has been reported by the BBC and more recently by 60 Minutes and tirelessly documented since at least 1985 by Paul Smith and is available at priory-of-sion.com.

Nota Bene: 

• Pierre Plantard never associate the Priory of Sion with Jesus/Mary Magdalene, and in fact, denied any such connection during the time he was still claiming the Priory's real existence!  Plantard only hoped to show that he himself had descended from the Merovingian kings -- that was the only idea the Priory was supposed to provide evidence for.  The connection with Jesus/Mary Magdalene was invented by the authors of Holy Blood, Holy Grail (from whom Dan Brown derived his 'history').

• The only alleged connection between Leonardo da Vinci and Jesus/Mary Magdalene, according to The Da Vinci Code, is the Priory of Sion.  Since this 'secret organization' is not older than 1956, Leonardo could not have been its Grand Master, so all the speculation about hidden messages in the renaissance master's art work is complete fantasy.  In Leonardo's time there just was no Priory of Sion for the artist to be its Grand Master, and so he could not hide their secrets in his art work (nor would there be any reason for him to do so, supposing there were such secrets)!

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