From Wikipedia:
Holy Blood, Holy Grail is a work of pseudohistory and New York Times bestseller written by authors Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh, and Henry Lincoln and published in 1982 by Dell (ISBN 055212138).
It details their own quest for the Holy Grail by investigating the concocted mysteries of the village of Rennes-le-Château dating from the 1950s in southern France and constructing a conspiratorial view of the history of the Western world.
After a decade of research, Baigent, Leigh, and Lincoln came to the following controversial conclusions:
- There is a secret society known as Priory of Sion that has a long and illustrious history dating back to the First Crusade starting with the creation of the Knights Templar as its military and financial front.
- It had a large role in partaking in and promoting the "underground river of esotericism", the Alph, in Medieval Europe.
- It is devoted to returning the Merovingian dynasty, that ruled the Frankish kingdom from 447 to 751 C.E., to the thrones of Europe and Jerusalem.
- It protects these royal claimants because they are the literal descendants of Jesus and his alleged wife Mary Magdalene.
- The Roman Catholic Church tried to kill off all remnants of this dynasty and their guardians, the Cathars and the Templars, during the Inquisition, in order to gain power through the apostolic succession of Peter instead of the hereditary succession of Mary Magdalene.
Sound familiar to Dan Brown's "The Da Vinci Code"? It should, and thats why the authors of "Holy Blood, Holy Grail" are suing Dan Brown!
Full story at BoingBoing