Priory of Sion

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Image:Dvcpriorylogo.jpg The Prieuré de Sion, usually rendered in English translation as Priory of Sion or Priory of Zion, has, since the 1970s, been an elusive protagonist in many works of non-fiction and fiction. It has been characterized as anything from the most influential secret society in Western history to a modern Rosicrucian-esque ludibrium, but has ultimately been considered a hoax. Most of the evidence presented in support of claims pertaining to its historical existence, let alone significance, has not been considered authentic or persuasive by established historians, academics and universities. There was a very small medieval monastic order known as the Priory of Sion, but it and all its assets were absorbed by the Jesuits in 1617.

1 History
2 Et in Arcadia ego...
3 Cultural influences
4 Alleged Grand Masters of the Priory of Sion
5 References
6 External links

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History

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The Plantard Plot

The Priory of Sion is an association that was founded in 1956, in the French town of Annemasse. As with all associations, French law required the association to be registered with the government. This took place at the Sous-Prefecture of Saint Julien-en-Genevois, in May 1956, and its registration was noted on 20 July 1956 in the Journal Officiel de la République Française. The founders and signatories are inscribed as Pierre Plantard (known as "Chyren"), André Bonhomme (known as "Stanis Bellas"), Jean Delaval and Armand Defago. The purpose of the association according to its Statutes deposited at St Julien was entered as, "études et entraide des membres" ("education and mutual aid of the members"). In practice, the originator of the association and its key protagonist was most probably Pierre Plantard, its General Secretary, although its nominal head ("President") was André Bonhomme.

The choice of the name, 'Sion’ was based on a hill south of Annemasse, known as 'Mont Sion'. Plantard chose a local name for specific reasons. In the 1950s France experienced a tumultuous political situation, as these were the years of the French Fourth Republic; in Paris, governments succeeded each other rapidly and there was great instability. Also, the war in Algeria was in full swing. There existed much suspicion in the country and the fear of coups d’états. Since Plantard was an outsider in Annemasse, his part in the creation of an association (or any association) aroused suspicion. Therefore, the choice of a name associated with a local and well-known landmark gave it a local character.

As with all French Registration Papers and Statutes, those of the Priory of Sion are available to the public. We also find an accompanying title to the name which reads: Chevalerie d’Institutions et Règles Catholiques d'Union Independante et Traditionaliste – this forms the acronym CIRCUIT and translates as "Chivalry of Catholic Rule and Institution and of Independent Traditionalist Union."

The Statutes and Registration Documents of the Priory of Sion were deposited on 7 May 1956, while the first issue of its journal Circuit is dated 27 May 1956 (in total, twelve numbers of the journal appeared). Its objective was indicated as a "Bulletin d’Information et Défense des Droits et de la Liberté des Foyers HLM" ("News Bulletin for the Defence of the Rights and the Freedom of Council Housing"). Some of the articles took a political position in the local Council elections. Others attacked and criticized property developers of Annemasse. It also opposed the gentrification of the area. Therefore, the political contents of the journal had brought it to the attention of the local authorities and any attempt by its editor, Pierre Plantard, to form an association was bound to be received with increased suspicion. The offices of the Priory of Sion and the journal were at Plantard’s council flat.

The articles of the Priory of Sion indicated the desire to create a monastic order—but the activities of the Priory of Sion bore no resemblance whatsoever to the objectives as outlined in its Statutes—these were two entirely different things—as noted by the Sub Prefecture of St Julien-en-Genevois. Article VII says that its members are expected, "to carry out good deeds, to help the Catholic Church, teach the truth, defend the weak and the oppressed". There is ample evidence that it had several members, as indicated by the numerous articles contained in its journal Circuit that were written by numerous different people, and towards the end of 1956 the association had aims to forge links with the local Catholic Church of the area involving a School Bus service run by both the Priory of Sion and the church of St Joseph in Annemasse.

The association was dissolved sometime after October 1956 but intermittently revived for different reasons by Plantard between 1962 and 1993 in name and on paper only. A letter at the Sous-Prefecture of Saint-Julien en Genevois indicates that Plantard had a criminal conviction as a con man.

From the 1960s, a series of hypotheses and unproven historical associations became attached to the name Priory of Sion. These bear no relation to the origins of the 1956 association. The Priory of Sion is considered "dormant" by the Sous-Prefecture because it has indicated no activities since 1956. According to French law, subsequent references to the Priory bear no legal relation to that of 1956 and no one other than the original signatories are entitled to use its name in an official capacity (though André Bonhomme played no part since 1956, he officially resigned in 1973 when he heard that Plantard was linking his name with the association; therefore no one is around to use the name officially).

Plantard originally hoped that the Priory of Sion would become an influential cryptopolitical pseudo-masonic lodge (similar to the P2 cabal) dedicated to the restoration of chivalry and monarchy, which would promote Plantard's own megalomaniacal claim to being a legitimate pretender to the throne of France.

In the 1960s, Pierre Plantard began writing a manuscript and produced "parchments" (created by his friend, Philippe de Cherisey) that Father Bérenger Saunière had supposedly discovered whilst renovating his church in Rennes-le-Château. These forged documents alluded to the survival of the Merovingian line of Frankish kings. Plantard manipulated Saunière's activities at Rennes-le-Château in order to "prove" his claims relating to the Priory of Sion.

Between 1961 and 1984 Plantard contrived a mythical pedigree of the Priory of Sion claiming that it was the offshoot of the "Order of Sion" (its correct historical title being the Abbey de Notre Dame du Mont Sion) which had been founded in the Kingdom of Jerusalem during the First Crusade. Calling his original 1956 group "Priory of Sion" undoubtedly gave Plantard the later idea to claim that his organisation had been historically founded in Jerusalem during the Crusades when meeting Gerard de Sede during the early 1960s - this fabrication by Pierre Plantard was part of his literary deal with the author Gérard de Sede when they both began collaborating together during the early 1960s in a series of published books.

Furthermore, it is reported that letters in existence dating from the 1960s written by Pierre Plantard, Philippe de Cherisey and Gérard de Sede to each other confirm that the three were engaging in an out-and-out confidence trick, describing schemes on how to combat criticisms of their various allegations and how they would make-up new allegations to try and keep the whole thing going. These letters (totalling over 100) are in the possession of French researcher Jean-Luc Chaumeil, who has also retained the original envelopes. Jean-Luc Chaumeil during the 1970s was part of the Priory of Sion cabal, and wrote books and articles about Plantard and the Priory of Sion before splitting from it during the late 1970s and exposing Pierre Plantard's past in French books.

In order to give credibility to the fabricated lineage and pedigree, Plantard and de Cherisey needed to create 'independent evidence'. So during the 1960s, they deposited a series of forged documents, the so-called Dossiers Secrets or "Secret Dossiers", at the Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF), in Paris. Therefore, people who set out to research the 'Priory of Sion' would come across these fake documents at the BnF. One of those researchers was Henry Lincoln.

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The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail

Image:The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail.jpg With such 'evidence' in hand, Henry Lincoln persuaded the BBC's factual program 'Chronicle' to make a series of documentaries. The BBC was very willing to go along with this. The program generated thousands of responses. With such interest, it became inevitable that a book was going to be written. In order to further 'investigate' the Rennes-le-Château mysteries, Lincoln joined forces with Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh. Their research led to the pseudohistorical Secret Files of Henri Lobineau at the BN, compiled by Plantard and de Cherisey under the pseudonym of "Philippe Toscan du Plantier"; the three authors also met up with Plantard and de Sede. Such 'evidence' became the source for their book, The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail, in which they reported claims that:

with illustrious Grand Masters including Isaac Newton and Leonardo da Vinci (see full list below), the Priory of Sion has a long history starting in AD 1099;
the Knights Templar were created as its military and financial front;
it is sworn to returning the Merovingian dynasty, that ruled the Frankish kingdom from 447 to 751 C.E., to the thrones of Europe and Jerusalem;
the order protects these royal claimants because they think they are the literal descendants of Jesus and his alleged wife Mary Magdalene or, at the very least, of king David and high priest Aaron; and
the Roman Catholic Church tried to kill off all remnants of this dynasty and their guardians, the Cathars and the Templars, during the Inquisition, in order to maintain power through the apostolic succession of Peter instead of the hereditary succession of Mary Magdalene.

These authors further asserted that the ultimate goals of the Priory of Sion are:

the founding of a "Holy European Empire" that would become the next hyperpower and usher in a new world order of peace and prosperity;
the establishment of a messianic mystery state religion by revealing the Holy Grail, which would prove Ebionite views and Desposyni claims; and
the grooming and installing of a "Rex Deus" pretender on the throne of a Greater Israel.

Baigent, Leigh, and Lincoln even incorporated the infamous anti-semitic tract known as the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (spelling Zion with an S) into their story, concluding that it actually referred to the activities of the Priory. This they viewed as the most persuasive pieces of evidence for the existence and activities of the Priory of Sion:

The original version emanated from an irregular Masonic organization that used the name "Sion" but had nothing to do with an international Jewish conspiracy.
The original version was not intended to be inflammatory or released publicly, but was a program for gaining control of Freemasonry.
The person responsible for changing the text in about 1903 was Sergei Nilus in the course of his attempt to gain influence in the Court of Tsar Nicholas II of Russia. The presence of esoteric cliques in the royal court led to considerable intrigue. Nilus' publication of the text resulted from his failure to succeed in wresting influence away from Papus and an otherwise unidentified "Monsieur Philippe".
Since Nilus did not recognize a number of references in the text that reflected a background in a Christian cultural context, he did not change them. This fact established that the original version could not possibly have come from the first Zionist Congress in Basel (1897).

Accepting these factoids as the truth, some fringe Christian eschatologists viewed the Priory of Sion as a fulfillment of prophesies found in the Book of Revelation and further proof of an anti-Christian conspiracy of epic proportions.

However, since modern historians do not accept The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail as a serious contribution to scholarship, all these claims are regarded as being part of a dubious conspiracy theory. French authors like Franck Marie (1978), Jean-Luc Chaumeil (1979, 1984, 1992) and Pierre Jarnac (1985, 1988) have never taken Pierre Plantard and the Priory of Sion as seriously as Baigent, Lincoln and Leigh. They eventually concluded that it was all a hoax, outlining in detail the reasons for their verdict, and giving detailed evidence that the Holy Blood authors had not reported comprehensively. They imply that this evidence had been ignored by Baigent, Lincoln and Leigh in order to bolster the mythic version of the Priory's history.

In 1989, Pierre Plantard tried but failed to salvage his reputation and agenda by claiming that the Priory of Sion had actually been founded in 1681 at Rennes-le-Château.

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The Pelat Affair

In September 1993, Plantard approached of his own volition an investigative judge and claimed to him that the man he was investigating, Roger-Patrice Pelat, had once been grandmaster of the Priory of Sion. Indeed, his name had been on Plantard's list of grandmasters since 1989. In fact, Pelat had died in 1989, while he was being indicted for insider trading and, following a long established pattern, Plantard 'recruited' him soon after his death as the most recent Priory of Sion grandmasters.

But Plantard had failed to realise the severity of interfering with the law; he had made his most important mistake and it led to his eventual isolation. Pelat had been a friend of François Mitterrand, then President of France, and at the centre of a scandal involving French Prime Minister Pierre Bérégovoy. The investigative judge, Thierry Jean-Pierre, could not dismiss any information pertaining to his case that was brought to his attention, but since he never considered it worthwhile meeting Plantard, he ordered the search of Plantard's home.

This turned up what has been described as a fantasy-land of harmless, forged documents, including some proclaiming Plantard the true king of France. Under oath, Plantard had to admit that he had fabricated everything, including Pelat's involvement with the Priory of Sion.Template:Ref Plantard was ordered to cease and desist all activities related to the promotion of the Priory of Sion and lived in obscurity until his death on 3 February 2000, in Paris.

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The Da Vinci Code

Template:NPOV Image:Davinci code.jpg Recently, due to Dan Brown's best-selling novel The Da Vinci Code, there has been a new level of public interest in the Priory of Sion. In a short preface, Brown lists a series of "facts" underlying the fiction of the novel. He declares that "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 Secrets, identifying numerous members of the Priory of Sion, including Sir Isaac Newton, Sandro Botticelli, Victor Hugo and Leonardo da Vinci."

If this is not a mere marketing trick, it would seem that Dan Brown takes the fantastic claims of the Secret Dossiers more or less at face value, like the authors of Holy Blood, Holy Grail did before him. In the body of the novel itself (chapter 48), it is said that "the Dossiers Secrets had been authenticated by many specialists and incontrovertibly confirmed" that the famous people listed were indeed former Priory leaders—something "historians had suspected for a long time." It should be understood that this fictionalized treatment completely reverses the judgment of real-world researchers, who (with the exception of dedicated conspiracy theorists) have rather dismissed the Dossiers as obvious forgeries. Nor had any "historians" ever suspected that Newton, Botticelli etc. were members of any "Priory of Sion"; this claim first appeared in the Dossiers themselves.

In the novel, the Priory is portrayed as more of a Goddess mystery religion, something that is hardly true to the character of Plantard's original Priory (he had no particular interest in goddesses). On the other hand, the organizational structure of Brown's version of the Priory is as described in the Dossiers (it has a Nautonnier or Grand Master who has three Sénéchaux below him; as part of the plot, all four are murdered).

In early 2006, Baigent and Leigh filed suit against Brown's publishers, Random House, alleging that significant portions of The Da Vinci Code were taken from Holy Blood, Holy Grail, and are copyright violations. They lost the case. Nevertheless, some still assert that most of what Dan Brown writes about the Priory is based on their book, which in turn is inspired by the Secret Dossiers that Plantard and his companions salted into the French National Archive.

Brown also worked into his plot Baigent, Lincoln and Leigh's theories regarding the ultimate "secret" of the Priory: Jesus and Mary Magdalene were married, their descendants intermarried with the Merovingians, and the sacred bloodline survives into modern times. In the universe of the novel, unlike our own, this scenario seems to be widely accepted among historians and academics (while the general public remains ignorant because of the influence of the Bible and the Church). In short, The Da Vinci Code describes a world where Pierre Plantard's hoax was the truth, where the Secret Dossiers were genuine and not forgeries, and where people who support such ideas are reputable historians rather than conspiracy theorists and fringe researchers.

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Et in Arcadia ego...

Template:Main Image:Poussinorig.jpg Et in Arcadia ego... is supposedly the official motto of both the Plantard family and the Priory of Sion, according to a claim that first appeared in 1964. Et in Arcadia ego is a Latin phrase, that most famously appears as a tomb inscription on the ca. 1640 classical painting, The Arcadian Shepherds, by French painter Nicolas Poussin. It literally means, "And in Arcadia, I". It has been suggested that the cryptic phrase could be an anagram for "I Tego Arcana Dei" which translated into English means "Go! I Conceal the Secrets of God".

However, the addition of the ellipsis (which was not there in the Poussin painting), suggests a missing word. Sum has been proposed as the completion of the phrase, which could then read "And in Arcadia, I am." Richard Andrews and Paul Schellenberger in their book "The Tomb of God" have theorized that the extrapolated phrase Et in Arcadia ego sum could be an anagram for Arcam Dei Tango Iesu, which would mean "I touch the tomb of God – Jesus". Assuming that

a) the Latin phrase is incomplete,
b) that the extrapolation as to the missing words is correct,
c) that the sentence, once completed, is intended to be an anagram,
and d) that Andrews and Schellenberger selected the proper anagram out of the thousands of possibilities,

Image:Poussin1627.jpgThey then concluded that the tomb contains the ossuary of the historical Jesus. Andrews and Schellenberger also claim that the tomb portrayed is one at Les Pontils, near Rennes le Chateau.Template:Ref Regardless of the veracity of this claim, it is not considered part of the official history of the painting by Poussin that contains the phrase, which is well-documented. It has also been argued that Latin grammar is highly inflected, and would not require the addition of "sum" for the sentence to be grammatical or coherent. Furthermore, the phrase was not created by Poussin, but was first used in a painting by Guercino, which Poussin had already imitated in an earlier work, portraying an entirely different tomb, before he created the more famous Louvre painting.

The claim that Poussin could have depicted the Les Pontils tomb was severely discredited in the 1996 BBC2 Timewatch documentary "The History of a Mystery" – which also showed film footage of the two authors unable to correctly answer basic questions about the Priory of Sion. Other research published by Franck Marie in 1974 and Michel Vallet (Pierre Jarnac) in 1985 had already shown that the tomb was constructed in 1903 by the owner of the land, Jean Galibert, who buried his wife and grandmother there. Their bodies were exhumed and reinterred elsewhere after the land was sold to Louis Lawrence, an American from Connecticut who had emigrated to the area. He buried his mother and grandmother in the tomb. Plantard had tried to argue that the Jean Galibert tomb at Les Pontils was a "prototype" for Poussin's painting, however the tomb was situated directly opposite a farmhouse (behind the foliage) and was not in the "middle of nowhere" in the French countryside, as is commonly assumed. The tomb was demolished in 1988 by its then-owner, with the full permission of the local government authority. Template:Ref

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Cultural influences

The Priory of Sion has had several influences on popular culture, not all of them entirely accurate or serious:

The Priory was the template for the Grail order in the Preacher comic book series and, more loosely, the Millennium Group in the Millennium television series.
The Priory also makes an appearance in the third installment of the popular Gabriel Knight adventure game series by author Jane Jensen, Gabriel Knight III: "Blood of the Sacred, Blood of the Damned".
The band 'Priory of Brion' formed by Led Zeppelin's Robert Plant in 1999 is an amalgamation of the name 'Priory of Sion' and 'Life of Brian' (after the Monty Python film).

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Alleged Grand Masters of the Priory of Sion

Image:Leonardo self.jpg The Priory of Sion was supposedly led by a Grand Master or Nautonnier. The following list of Grand Masters is derived from Les Dossiers Secrets d'Henri Lobineau compiled by Pierre Plantard under the pseudonym of "Philippe Toscan du Plantier" in 1967:

Jean de Gisors (1188-1220)
Marie de Saint-Clair (1220-1266)
Guillaume de Gisors (1266-1307)
Edouard de Bar (1307-1336)
Jeanne de Bar (1336-1351)
Jean de Saint-Clair (1351-1366)
Blanche d'Evreux (1366-1398)
Nicolas Flamel (1398-1418)
Rene d'Anjou (1418-1480)
Yolanda of Bar (1480-1483)
Sandro Filipepi (1483-1510)
Leonardo da Vinci (1510-1519)
Connetable de Bourbon (1519-1527)
Ferdinand de Gonzague (1527-1575)
Louis de Nevers (1575-1595)
Robert Fludd (1595-1637)
Johann Valentin Andrea (1637-1654)
Robert Boyle (1654-1691)
Isaac Newton (1691-1727)
Charles Radclyffe (1727-1746)
Prince Charles Alexander of Lorraine (1746-1780)
Archduke Maximilian Franz of Austria (1780-1801)
Charles Nodier (1801-1844)
Victor Hugo (1844-1885)
Claude Debussy (1885-1918)
Jean Cocteau (1918-1963)
Francois Ducaud-Bourget (1963-1981)
Pierre Plantard (1981-1984)

When the "Secret Files" were exposed as a forgery by French researchers and authors, Plantard acknowledged that the above list was a fraud. In 1989, however, he tried to make a comeback and revive the Priory of Sion by publishing a second list of Priory Grand Masters. This second list, which included the names of Roger Patrice Pelat and Thomas Plantard, should not be confused with the first. Post-1989, Plantard sought to distance himself from the first list, which belonged to an older, discredited version of the Priory. Image:Victor Hugo.jpg The second List of the Grand Masters of the Priory of Sion appeared in Vaincre No. 3, September 1989, page 22 (Managing Editor: Thomas Plantard de Saint-Clair)