Da Vinci Code author says core theories may be hoaxes

IT GRIPPED millions who read it, causing uproar and profiteering, and now its creator has all but dismissed its factual core.

While always priding himself on the "facts" behind his novel The Da Vinci Code, Dan Brown has made a startling revelation... the Priory of Sion may actually not exist.

Shattering his book's core historical certainty on a National Geographic Channel documentary, Brown said: "I don't think we'll ever know. There's no way to know," when asked whether the Priory and Les Dossiers Secrets were hoaxes.

Content with his millions earned by this global phenomenon, Brown has decided to hang up the "fact card", used all too readily throughout the novel.

And it certainly was used to its full extent, with a "Fact"-headed page tucked away in the book's first pages, immortalising his original stance for eternity.

"The Priory of Sion a European secret society founded in 1099 is a real organisation. In 1975 Paris's Bibliothèque Nationale discovered parchments known as Les Dossiers Secrets, identifying numerous members of the Priory of Sion, including Sir Isaac Newton, Sandro Botticelli, Victor Hugo and Leonardo da Vinci."

What inspired Brown's U-turn, to reveal that his pivotal theory The Priory of Sion, established to protect the holy bloodline is perhaps not factual after all?

The spawning of multiple documentaries, tours and books, all discrediting the book and its theories, could be at the root of the author's bold admission.

Revelations have surfaced over the past year that the Prior of Sion and Les Dossiers are fakes, materialised and forged by Frenchman Pierre Plantard in 1956. There are suggestions that the Priory forgery was filed in the Parisian Bibliothèque Nationale by Plantard in the 1960s.

"In the scheme of things, you can never be quite certain but I believe that the Priory of Sion is most likely a hoax," says lecturer of Early Christianity at Trinity College, Dr David Hutchison Edgar. "The idea that this secret was passed down from generation to generation is one that really doesn't tally with Christian groups."

Despite this widely held opinion and the fact that French journalist Jean-Luc Chaumeil uncovered the hoax in 1980, the story has still evolved into an international phenomenon.

However, Brown's reputation has suffered on a number of levels as a result of this theory. Three British journalists, Henry Lincoln, Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh, who created the original idea of the holy bloodline in their book, Holy Blood, Holy Grail, 1982, were not impressed by Brown's success.

And while one group is calling him a plagiarist, another is labelling him a heretic, as the Vatican took the drastic measure of appointing Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the Archbishop of Genoa to rebut the novel's "shameful" and "unfounded" errors.

The Catholic Church saw it as a blurring of fact and fiction and was offended by the book's theories and its characterisation of the Catholic organisation, Opus Dei, as an extremist cult.

While experts may agree on the Church's stance that the Prior of Sion may be no more than a hoax, many do believe that Rome suppressed early Christian writings that may have differed from the version of events in the Bible.

"Mary Magdalene probably did have a more prominent role than the Church would lead us to believe," says Dr Hutchison Edgar.

"She was discredited and named a prostitute in the fifth century because of a reference that Jesus healed her from several demons.

"Evidence now suggests that this is extreme and probably why the Vatican withdrew this claim in 1969."

Leading into the heart of novel and its namesake, Leonardo da Vinci, Brown suggested the artist scattered secret codes throughout his works, particularly in The Last Supper. Missing from the painting is a cup, the Holy Grail, from which Jesus Christ is believed to have drunk from on the night before his crucifixion.

However, Brown claims that the grail is included in the painting, and lies to the right of Jesus, in the form of Mary Magdalene, who is carrying the "blood of Christ" in her womb.

However, on Brown's own admission that the Priory of Sion may never have existed, this could, in turn, mean that there is no bloodline, ruling out yet another factor of an already diminished novel.

So what inspired Brown's revelation, which only served to cripple his entire novel's authenticity? From a self-proclaimed believer to a self-confessed sceptic, perhaps Brown only quest was not to be forever labelled as "the man who fooled the world".

Unlocking Da Vinci's Code is on the National Geographic Channel on July 17 at 9pm.