The Da Vinci Hoax (4)

The Sources

Dan Brown actually cites what are likely his principal sources within the text of his novel (p. 253). They are popular conspiratorial and esoteric histories: Holy Blood, Holy Grail by Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh, and Henry Lincoln; The Templar Revelation: Secret Guardians of the True Identity of Christ by Lynn Picknett and Clive Prince; and two books by Margaret Starbird, The Goddess in the Gospels: Reclaiming the Sacred Feminine and The Woman with the Alabaster Jar: Mary Magdalen and the Holy Grail. Another source may be Elaine Pagels' The Gnostic Gospels, a work of feminist revisionist scholarship.

In February 2006, Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh, two of the three authors of Holy Blood, Holy Grail (1982), took the UK publisher of The Da Vinci Code to court for breach of copyright, alleging plagiarism. Brown has repeatedly said in his defense that history can't be plagiarized. The authors of Holy Blood, Holy Grail claim their book to be non-fiction. The suit revolves around a claim that "the central theme" is borrowed from their work. Leigh has stated, "It's not that Dan Brown has lifted certain ideas because a number of people have done that before. It's rather that he's lifted the whole architecture - the whole jigsaw puzzle - and hung it on to the peg of a fictional thriller." Brown has admitted some of the ideas taken from Baigent and Leigh's work were indispensable to the book, but claims that there were many other sources behind it. Brown has submitted as research materials 39 books and over 300 other documents. However, one needs go little further than the few books mentioned earlier to find most of his "historical" data and theory.

One of the basic principles of copyright law is that you cannot copyright historical facts or theories of history, though you can own how you express those facts or theories. History is not private property. You can, however, copyright a fictional story. It makes one wonder if something is not being implicitly admitted in this suit by at least the authors of Holy Blood, Holy Grail?



Michael Baigent arrives at London's High Court

Another author, Lewis Perdue, claimed the plot and content of The Da Vinci Code was too close in over thirty "elements" to his 2000 novel Daughter of God and so a copyright infringement. However, in November 2005 a District Court Judge ruled against Perdue and in favour of Brown.

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