The DaVinci Myth vs. The Gospel Truth - Online Christian Library

ERRORS IN THE DA VINCI CODE
their purposes, which is to energize Catholic lay people.
Error: The Priory of Sion, which looms large in the
novel, was created in 1099 by the Knights Templar,
whom the Catholic Church later tried to exterminate in
order to keep the secret they had buried—the secret
which could undermine the foundation of the Church—
the secret revealed in The Da Vinci Code.
Rebuttal: The Priory of Sion was created out of
whole cloth in 1956 by a French anti-Semite con man,
Pierre Plantard. In 1975, documents were found in the
Biblioteque Nationale in Paris 24 that allegedly proved the
Priory is as old as 1099, and that Leonardo da Vinci and
Isaac Newton and other luminaries secretly presided
over it. These documents were proved to be fakes. Paul
Maier notes, “In fact, one of Plantard’s henchmen admitted
to assisting him in the fabrication of these materials,
including the genealogical tables and lists of the Priory’s
grand masters—all trumpeted as truth in The Da Vinci
Code.” 25 Yet this is one of the pillars Brown rests his case
on. Brown states on p. 1, before getting into the novel:
FACT:
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. 26
Historian Paul Maier makes a great point about the
Internet. He says if you go into any reputable library and
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