Crash Goes The Da Vinci Code - Dr. Ron Rhodes:
Brown makes the following assertion regarding this organization on page one of The Da Vinci Code: "The Priory of Sion—a European secret society founded in 1099—is a real organization. In 1975 Paris's Bibliotheque Nationale discovered parchments known as Les Dossiers Secrets, identifying numerous members of the Priory of Sion, including Sir Isaac Newton, Botticelli, Victor Hugo, and Leonardo da Vinci." The question is: Are these parchments reliable?
As a backdrop to answering this question, allow me to point out that Brown obtained much of his information on the Priory of Sion from a book entitled Holy Blood, Holy Grail, by Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh, and Henry Lincoln. In this book we find a dependency on the above–mentioned parchments which allegedly prove that Jesus married Mary Magdalene, had a baby named Sarah, and, following Jesus' death on the cross, Mary relocated to a Jewish community in France. Their descendents were French allegedly royalty.
Now, here is the big problem with all this. These parchments are completely bogus. Historically, in 1953, a Frenchman named Pierre Plantard spent time in jail for fraud. In 1954 he founded a small social club named the Priory of Sion. The purpose of the club was to call for low–income housing in France. The organization dissolved in 1957, but Plantard held on to the name. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, Plantard put together a number of bogus documents which "proved" the Jesus–Mary Magdalene theory, with French royalty being their descendants. Plantard claimed that he himself was one of the descendents of this couple.
Some time later, a friend of the French president found himself in legal trouble and Plantard ended up being called to testify in the case. While under oath, the judge asked him about these documents about Jesus and Mary Magdalene, and he admitted he made the whole thing up. An associate of Plantard's also conceded that Plantard made the whole thing up. All this has been thoroughly documented by several French books and a BBC special.2
What all this means for The Da Vinci Code is that the Priory of Sion—and the accompanying Jesus–Mary Magdalene theory—is based on bogus information with a capital "B." Hence, Dan Brown's claim that his book is based on historical secret societies is flat wrong.
And I'm passing the info along to everyone I know.