In the course of their investigations into Leonardo da Vinci & the Turin Shroud Lynn Picknett & Clive Prince found clues in the work of the great Renaissance artist that pointed to the existence of a secret underground religion. More clues were found in a twentieth-century London church. These were the beginnings of a quest through time & space that led the authors into the mysterious world of secret societies & such bodies as the Freemasons the Knights Templar & the Cathars & finally back to the ideas & beliefs of the first century AD & a devastating new view of the real character & motives of the founder of Christianity & the roles of John the Baptist & Mary Magdalene. They reveal nothing less than a secret history preserved through the centuries but encoded in works of art & even in the great Gothic cathedrals whose revelation could shake the foundations of the Church.