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Archiver > GEN-MEDIEVAL > 2001-05 > 0990003180


From: "Chris Phillips" <>
Subject: Re: Holy Blood, Holy Grail
Date: Wed, 16 May 2001 09:53:00 +0100


Todd Farmerie wrote:
> > The only work I specified by name was _Bloodline of the Holy
> > Grail_. Now in the subject line you talk about _Holy Blood, Holy
> > Grail_, and here the entire BBC. If you are going to incorrectly
> > label critical evaluation and generalized discussion as slander,
> > perhaps you could at least get right who it is that I have
> > supposedly slandered.
> >

Adrian Channing replied:
> In fact there was a subsequent BBC programme on he "Holy Blood and The Holy
> Grail" where deep throat, or whatever the guy suppling the Sion information
> was called, was exposed as a well known fraudster - sorry, its too long ago
> to remember his name.


There is some interesting information on the background of those who perpetrated the hoax online at:
http://www.mastermason.com/mstilwell/library/miscp-t/prioryofsionhoax.txt
This gives quite a lot of detail on one of the hoaxers, Pierre Plantard, allegedly a descendant of the Merovingians.

I think the BBC programme you are thinking of was a "Timewatch" documentary, entitled "The History of a Mystery", broadcast in September 1996, according to which the coded parchments that play a central role in the story were forged by Philippe de Cherisey, an associate of Plantard.

As far as medieval genealogy is concerned, the important thing is that the crucial links in the alleged Merovingian descent - that Dagobert II married a woman called Giselle de Razes, that he had by her a son Sigebert, and that a line of "Counts of Razes" were descended from this Sigebert - are found only in a series of documents deposited pseudonymously in the Bibliotheque Nationale from the 1950s onwards (presumably by Plantard and/or de Cherisey). As far as I know there is no earlier evidence for any of these claims.

Chris Phillips


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