[SHOOT THE MOON bat]

I know people who really believe this is true. They are people that are looking for anything to justify within themselves a reason to not have faith. If this is what they need then I guess they will have to go to their grave with it. But I have to say that I have never met a faithless person that is truly happy. They will rally around this movie, point to it and somehow convince themselves that Jesus fathered French royalty. How pathetic.

[MeanWestTexan]

"They are people that are looking for anything to justify within themselves a reason to not have faith."

Bingo.

Called a "hard heart," I believe.

Only the Holy Spirit can fix that, and sometimes maybe not even Him (It? Never used a pronoun re: the HS before).

[sine_nomine]

Considering how the French have fared in warfare, divine paternity would be hard to prove.

[JasonC]

It is a very old heresy. We can trace when it started, over 800 years ago. The modern version cares mostly about the feminist and sexuality angle, but in the original that wasn't the main point. Instead it was an attempt to ground French royal exceptionalism against papal claims, without simply subscribing to a dominance of secular authority or of all kings (which would benefit e.g. German emperors too much).

It belongs to the pre-history of Gallicanism and to the wide variety of heresies that sprung up in southern France around the time of the divided papacy (popes in Avignon under French control, other claimants in Rome, etc). There is no reality to it, going back to truly biblical times. But the historical existence of such a heresy provides Brown all the cultural references he might require - though he stretches things ridiculously, conflates entirely separate heretical views, etc.