The Da Vinci Code, a popular suspense novel by Dan Brown, generated criticism and controversy after its publication in 2003. Many of the complaints centered on the book's speculations and misrepresentations of core aspects of Christianity and the history of the Catholic Church. Additional criticisms were directed toward the book's inaccurate descriptions of European art, history, architecture, and geography.[1]
Charges of copyright infringement were also leveled by the novelist Lewis Perdue and by the authors of the 1982 book The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail, which puts forward the hypothesis that the historical Jesus married Mary Magdalene, and that their children or their descendants emigrated to what is now southern France, and married into families that became the Merovingian dynasty, whose claim to the throne of France is championed today by the Priory of Sion.[2][3] In 2006, a court ruled in Brown's favor, stating that while he did reference the book in parts of his novel, he did not substantially copy it.[4][5] A similar suit was filed in 2007 by author Jack Dunn, who accused Brown of plagiarizing his 1997 novel The Vatican Boys.[6]