The popular pseudohistory Holy Blood, Holy Grail, first published in 1983, suggested and popularized the idea that the Templars were linked to a corporation known as the Priory of Sion, established to guard a secret bloodline of kings descended from Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalene. Dan Brown’s bestselling The Da Vinci Code, published in 2003 and subsequently made into a successful movie, presented broadly similar ideas faux-seriously, adding greatly to the novel’s success but leaving readers to work out for themselves whether or not the author’s hypotheses had some basis in fact.
