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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mark Chance" data-source="post: 1685295" data-attributes="member: 2795">That's not the point. Anyone who's paid attention to Brown knows he claims things to be factual that aren't even at the same time he weaves them into third-rate fiction. Brown even goes so far as to include a "fact sheet" at the beginning of the novel. The problem is this: Many of his facts aren't.The same dissembling occurs in this list of acknowledgements. For example, Brown thanks Catholic World News for helping him with his "research" for the novel. To quote the editor of Catholic World News, Phil Lawler: "Certainly we never did any research for him or answered any questions from him."His bibliography of "reputable scholars" with which he researched his novel includes not a single author with the least bit of academic credibility. To front these pseudo-scholars and the musings of Brown's own rather pedestrian imagination as fact, which Brown does, is intellectual fraud.One example of a "fact" from Brown's writing should suffice. According to Brown's "fact" page, the Priory of Sion-a European secret society founded in 1099-is a real organization. In 1975, Paris's Bibliothèque Nationale discovered parchments known as Les Dossiers Secretes, identifying numerous members of the Priory of Sion, including Sir Isaac Newton, Botticelli, Victor Hugo, and Leonardo da Vinci.None of this is true. The Priory of Sion was a club founded in 1956 by four young Frenchmen. Two of its members were André Bonhomme (who was president of the club when it was founded) and Pierre Plantard (who previously had been sentenced to six months in prison for fraud and embezzlement). The group's name is based on a local mountain in France (Col du Mont Sion), not Mount Zion in Jerusalem. It has no connection with the Crusaders, the Templars, or previous movements incorporating "Sion" into their names.These sorts of lies permeate Brown's recent work, tainting everything from his fanciful stories about the First Council of Nicaea, Constantine, Opus Dei, and the role of Mary Magadalene and Peter in the early Christian Church.It isn't a defense to say that The Da Vinci Code is a work of fiction. Fiction can't change the basic facts about major historical figures and events without being subject to criticism when the book takes great pains to create the appearance of factuality, including placing a "fact page" at the beginning of the novel.Brown has stressed the ostensible accuracy of the book on his web site and in interviews. This is not a case where an author and a publisher have produced an ordinary novel. They have gone to great lengths to mislead people into thinking that the novel has a historical basis. They deserve especially sharp criticism for this, and when criticism is made they cannot hypocritically hide behind the "It's just fiction" allegation after having made such extensive efforts to convince the reader that it is not "just fiction."</blockquote>

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