Henry Lincoln and the Pentagram Over Gaul

Most people have heard of The Da Vinci Code. Far fewer have read the books that Dan Brown drew from — including a small, meticulous, and quietly revolutionary body of work by a British researcher named Henry Lincoln.

Lincoln is best known as one of the three authors of Holy Blood, Holy Grail (1982), the landmark investigation into the sacred bloodline of Christ and the secret history of the Merovingian kings of France. But his deeper, lesser-known work — The Holy Place (1991) and Key to the Sacred Pattern (1997) — is what obsessed me for a month while I planned Merona's journey across Gaul.

What Lincoln found

In the 1970s, Lincoln began investigating an obscure village in the Languedoc region of southern France: Rennes-le-Chateau. A 19th-century priest named Berenger Sauniere had reportedly discovered hidden documents in the church there — documents that seemed to connect the village to a vast ancient secret involving the Merovingian kings, the Knights Templar, and geometry.

What he found was extraordinary: a series of natural and man-made features that form a geometrically perfect pentagram when plotted on a map. Not approximately perfect. Mathematically perfect, to a degree of precision that could not be accidental.

Five points. Connected by lines. Forming a five-pointed star over the ancient sacred landscape of the Languedoc.

Why this mattered to me

When I first encountered Lincoln's work, I was not researching a fantasy novel. I was researching my own family history.

My genealogical research had already taken me deep into the Merovingian dynasty. And when I looked at the map Lincoln had drawn, I recognized the landscape — because the same places kept appearing in my family's history, in the geography of my ancestor Clovis I's kingdom.

The sacred pattern was already in my blood.

When I sat down to write Labyrinth of Shadows, I knew exactly where Merona had to go. Not because I invented it. Because the land itself dictated the path.

In the next post, I'll take you to the first point of the pentagram: Bugarach, the Mountain of God.

— Michaela