Part of the
popularity of Dan Brown's "The Da Vinci Code" came from the
possibility that much of the novel was based on truth. At the beginning of the
novel, Brown lays out a number of "facts" upon which the book is
based. Many sources, however, contend that some of Brown's facts are actually
based on a hoax. The Priory of Sion, the secret society in Brown's book, was
actually invented in the 1950's by Pierre Plantard. Plantard created false
documents that connected him to the supposed illustrious secret society and then
planted those documents in the French national library. The authors of the book
"Holy Blood, Holy Grail" used the documents as part of the research
for their book; Dan Brown based his research for "The Da Vinci Code"
on "Holy Blood, Holy Grail."
Historical Background
The trail to the "Priory of Sion" fraud begins in
mid-nineteenth-century France. A resurgent interest in the occult led to the
creation of many esoteric groups. Members of these groups often belonged to
several organizations. Their leaders often broke away to form competing
factions. At the same time, constant turmoil in the French government drew
France into two increasingly hostile camps jousting for political supremacy.
The royalists, composed of the Catholic Church, the far right, and the
supporters of the old system of royalty, vied for power with the republicans,
composed of Freemasons and other supporters of democratically elected
governments. From 1877 to the eve of the Second World War, Freemasons dominated
French government. Their domination earned them bitter enemies.
In the 1880's, at the height of this political conflict,
Joseph Alexandre St. Yves d'Alveydre, "the supreme Hermeticist of his
epoch," proposed a new idea for injecting moral values into governing
society. He called it "synarchy" and claimed it was the method used
by the Knights Templar to change medieval society. An elect band of initiates
would influence groups representing different aspects of society. Those groups
would influence their spheres and ultimately the entire social order.
By the turn of the century, the royalist faction came to
fear synarchy, whose influence had spread beyond esoteric groups. By the 1920s,
Masonic groups with distinctly synarchist policies were a reality in France. In
the 1930s, even a leftist group, called the X-Cruise Club, advocated a
technocracy with synarchist ideas.
In this era, the French far right formed its own seemingly
esoteric groups. But they were actually front organizations, pretending to have
Masonic and esoteric affiliations in order to draw support away from the
Masons. As anti-Semitism spread across Europe in the 1930s, the French far
right denounced Masons and Jews in the same breath. When fourteen initiatic
orders created a federation called FUDOSI to promote peace and positive ideals,
the far right increased its formation of pseudo-Masonic groups.
During the war, Nazi occupation policy was to arrest leaders
of esoteric organizations, put them in concentration camps, and seize their
groups' records and membership rolls, which were placed in a central
depository. In France this depository was called the Centre d'Action
Maconnique, and the French occupation government at Vichy actively aided the
Gestapo in its persecution of Masonic and esoteric orders. So great was the far
right's fear of Masonic influence that an unknown source even issued a document
called the "Chauvin Report," alleging Masonic involvement in Vichy. While
these events were taking place, the individuals who later formed the
"Priory of Sion" were being gathered into two groups. One group,
known to have been in existence as early as 1934, was called Alpha Galates.
Toward the end of the 1930s Alpha Galates utilized a young man named Pierre
Plantard, born March 18, 1920, as its titular head.
In 1937, at the age of only seventeen, Plantard attempted to
found an anti-Semitic and anti-Masonic group to engage "purifying and
renewing France" and sought official permission to publish a periodical
called "The Renewal of France." This theme Would constantly appear in
association with Alpha Galates and later with the "Priory of Sion."
Under the collaborationist Vichy regime, the group behind
Plantard and Alpha Galates sought influence with the government. On December
16, 1940, Plantard wrote to Marshal Petain, head of the Vichy regime,
denouncing a vast Jewish-Masonic plot. But he failed to receive any attention
beyond routine entries in police files. In 1941, Plantard applied to found an
organization called "French National Renewal" but was denied official
permission in September of that year. Finally in 1942, Plantard and his
superiors again sought public visibility, now openly using the name Alpha
Galates and promoting a publication called Vaincre ("Conquer").
Vaincre, which commenced publication in September 1942, was
filled with anti-Semitic, fawningly pro-Vichy articles and sprinkled with
shallow, superficial esoterica on Celtic traditions and chivalry. Nonetheless
Alpha Galates tried to present this journal as the clearinghouse of a
relatively sizable and cohesive body of young people. After six issues it ceased
publication. But it earned Plantard some recognition. He was periodically
observed by the police. As late as February 1945, the police were still
investigating Alpha Galates and its revolving-door membership of 50 or so, and
concluded it had no serious purpose. But at least one serious seeker, Robert
Amadou, who joined Alpha Galates believing it was a genuine esoteric group,
suggests that its focus was political. Later a Freemason and Martinist, after
40 years Amadou refused to discuss Alpha Galates, only saying, "For my
part, I have never been involved in political activity, before or since."
In 1947, while a revived FUDOSI met in Paris, Pierre
Plantard filed the legal papers necessary to create another organization,
called the Latin Academy. Its titular head was his own mother. Its ostensible
purpose was "historical research." Its real purpose was to carry on
the right-wing program of its predecessor. By the mid-1950s Plantard began
promoting himself in Catholic circles as the Merovingian pretender to the
throne of France. One place where he engaged in these activities was the Paris
church and seminary of St. Sulpice.
The Priory of Sion
Pierre Plantard founded the Priory of Sion in 1956, almost a
nine hundred years after it was to have allegedly been formed.
Plantard decided to travel to the small town of
Rennes-Le-Chateau to have lunch with his friend, Noel Corbu. Noel Corbu’s
restaurant was attached to a stone tower that was built by a priest named
Sauniere Beranger. To promote his restaurant, Corbu made up a story about how
this priest had found a hidden treasure in the local church.
The story had Plantard’s wheels turning and he decided to
take it back home with him and use it to establish the mythical origins of his
newly founded Priory of Sion. Plantard tied in the ancient Merovigian Kings and
then created a fake family line making himself the only surviving descendant of
King Dagobert. He even changed his last name to St. Clair to sound as if he was
related to the Sinclair family of Scotland, said to be descendants of the
Knights Templar and ancestors to the Freemasons.
As if this wasn’t enough, Plantard even created a fake list
of past grand masters of the Priory of Sion, and made sure to include Leonardo
da Vinci and Sir Isaac Newton. To top it off he created fake historical
documents and inserted them into archives in places such as the Bibliothèque
Nationale de France.
Plantard then wrote a book about the Priory of Sion but he
couldn’t find a publisher. He gave his book to a friend, and had him rewrite
the book and publish it in his friend’s name. He also forged the documents that
Sauniere was allegedly to have found and planted them in Rennes-Le-Chateau.
What was to happen next, no one could have guessed.
A British actor named Henry Lincoln stumbled upon Plantard’s
book and created two documentaries that were aired on BBC. He then urged authors
Michael Baigant and Richard Leigh to join him on an expedition to uncover the
secret of Rennes-Le-Chateau.
No one knows how long it took them to realize they had been
duped. One can assume it was when they linked up with Plantard who helped them
stumble upon documents linking himself to the Merovingian Dynasty. Either way
they sniffed out Pierre Plantard’s fakery, but they decided to make the most of
their wasted time and partake in a bit of tom foolery of their own.
They took Plantard’s story and added a bit about the origins
of Christianity and wrote a book about how Plantard St. Clair was not only the
descendant of the Merovingian Dynasty, but of Jesus of Nazareth himself. The
rest is history. Lincoln, Baigent, and Leigh’s book, “Holy Blood Holy Grail”
blazed the path Dan Brown’s novel “The Da Vinci Code.” The small lie had
spiraled out of control and turned into a grand conspiracy that landed Plantard
in court, not only fighting for royalties of the book he had his friend
publish, but also admitting that he invented the Priory of Sion, forged
documents, and caused the largest religious uproar of the twentieth century.
Aftermath
Pierre Plantard made an attempted comeback in 1989 following
his resignation from the Priory of Sion in 1984, the details of which were
outlined in three 1989 issues of Vaincre - dated April, June and
September of that year. The comeback involved revising the whole structure of
the myth of the Priory of Sion - creating a whole new system of belief with a
brand new agenda - the old material as contained in the previous Priory
Documents was discarded and rejected with Philippe Toscan, the author of the Dossiers
Secrets being lampooned as a sad individual who had written his works under
the influence of LSD and was arrested on 11 April 1967 for that! Indeed, the
works of Mathieu Paoli, Henry Lincoln, Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh were
criticised as products of "the imagination and the novel". The
parchments were no longer genuine - again - but the fabrications of Philippe de
Cherisey. Genuine parchments "did exist", but they were inaccessible.
So, Plantard came storming back to a completely disinterested French Public
having regained his position as the Grand Master of the Priory of Sion at the
"Convent of Avignon" on 9 March 1989 following the death of the
previous Grand Master, Patrice Pelat.
But involving in
this story Pelat, a friend of the then-President of France François Mitterrand and
centre of a scandal involving French Prime Minister Pierre Bérégovoy, put a
last nail in a coffin of the story. In October 1993, the judge investigating
the Pelat scandal had Pierre Plantard's house searched. The search failed to
find any documents related to Pelat, but turned up a hoard of false documents,
including some proclaiming Plantard the true king of France. Plantard admitted
under oath he had fabricated everything, including Pelat's involvement with the
Priory of Sion. Plantard was threatened with legal action by the Pelat family
and therefore disappeared to his house in southern France. He was 74 years old
at the time. Nothing more was heard of him until he died in Paris on 3 February
2000.
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