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Archiver > GEN-MEDIEVAL > 1999-03 > 0920410408


From: Luke Stevens <>
Subject: Re: Bloodline of the Holy Grail
Date: Tue, 02 Mar 1999 16:33:28 -0500


> I'm curious what this group's opinion is of the book "Bloodline of the
> Holy Grail" by Sir Lawrence Gardner. His main thesis is that Jesus
> was actually married to Mary Magdalene and they had 3 children (2
> boys). He claims that "secret" Vatican data show this line to have
> led to the Merovingian dynasty in France and the Stewarts in Scotland.
> Any comments?

I can't speak for the main thrust of the book, that Jesus had
descendants whose secret lineage extended to the Merovingians and many
others, but I have had some time to examine the genealogical charts
closely. There is almost a total lack of documentation, so it is
difficult. The bibliography shows a few of the sources used, but,
especially for the first millennium, it is clear to me that this
accounts for less than half the information shown. What was used was
almost invariably misunderstood and distorted. I am convinced that many
of the links were forged ad hoc by the author. For example, the
genealogies from the grail romances have been seized and put into odd
places that form otherwise undocumented connections between the
dynasties he seeks to connect, with no discussion in the text and no
identification of the source, as far as I could find. The quality of the
generally accepted genealogies is so horribly bad compared to what is
readly available in other sources that it is hard to have any confidence
in the rest of it. Unless you're a specialist with a solid grounding
already in the material treated, or reading just for fun, you're much
better off trashing the whole thing.

Luke Stevens

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