Priory of Sion

File:Priory of Sion.gif

The Priory of Sion symbol

Prieuré de Sion, usually rendered in English translation as Priory of Sion or even Priory of Zion, is an elusive protagonist in many works of both non-fiction and fiction. Although it has been characterized as anything from the most influential secret society in Western history to a modern Rosicrucian-esque ludibrium, it is generally accepted that the Priory of Sion is, in large part, a hoax.

History

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, Andre Bonhomme known as Stanis Bellas, Jean Deleaval and Armand Defago. The purpose of the association according to its Statutes deposited at St Julien was entered as, “études et entraide des members (education and mutual aid of the members”. In effect, the originator of the association and its key protagonist was most probably Pierre Plantard, the General Secretary of the association although in practice its President was Andre 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 was experiencing a tumultuous political situation, these were the years of the French Fourth Republic; in Paris, governments were succeeding each other 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 this out of the way provincial town, his part in the creation of an association (of any association) aroused suspicions. 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 everyone. We also find an accompanying title to the name which reads as: ‘Chevalerie d’Institutions et Règles Catholiques, d’Union Independante et Traditionaliste’ – this forms the acronym C.I.R.C.U.I.T 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, whilst the first issue of its journal 'Circuit' is dated 27 May 1956 (in total, there appeared 12 numbers of the journal Circuit). Its objective was indicated as a, "Bulletin d’Information et Défense des Droits et de la Liberté des Foyers H.L.M." (News Bulletin for the Defence of the Rights and the Freedom of Low Cost Housing). Some of the articles took a political position in the local Council elections. Others attacked and criticised 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 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 (this textual documentation exists in its archives, comprised of observations and correspondence written by officials that were required to monitor this situation, and this material is available for public inspection). 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 - an article written by Father Saud in issue 12 of 'Circuit' (headed as a Special Edition') outlined the aims of creating a bus service to the local Nursery and Primary School of the town of Annemasse. In the same issue J Cailleboite criticised the local authority for not tarmacading a local road that was being used as a local playground by the children. The association was dissoved 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 confidence man.

From the 1960s, a series of hypothesis and unproven historical associations were to become 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 signarories are entitled to use its name in an official capacity (though A.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 lodge (similar to the P2 cabal), but dedicated to the restoration of chivalry and monarchy, and to promote Plantard's own claim to be the rightful king in 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. 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 Gerard 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 Gerard 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 they deposited a series of forged documents at the Bibliotheque Nationale (BN), in Paris, during the 1960s. Therefore, people who set out to research the 'Priory of Sion' would come across these fake documents at the BN. One of those researchers was Henry Lincoln. With such 'evidence' in hand, he 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 pseudonyme of "Philippe Toscan du Plantier"; the three authors also met up with Plantard and de Sede. Such 'evidence' became the source for their book, Holy Blood, Holy Grail, in which they reported claims that:

• with a list of illustrious grand masters (see below), the Priory of Sion has a long history starting with the creation of the Knights Templar 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 may be the literal descendants of Jesus and his 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 Masonic 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 hypotheses as facts, 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 Holy Blood, 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. In September, 1993, he approached of his own volition an investigative judge (not by writing any letter), claiming that Roger-Patrice Pelat had once been grandmaster of the Priory of Sion. That was a serious mistake and it led to Plantard's eventual isolation. Pelat was a friend of the then-President of France François Mitterrand and center of a scandal involving French Prime Minister Pierre Bérégovoy. A French court ordered a search of Plantard's home, turning up many forged documents, including some proclaiming Plantard the true king of France. Under oath, Plantard admitted that he had fabricated everything, including Pelat's involvement with the Priory of Sion.[1] 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.

Most recently, due to Dan Brown's bestselling novel The Da Vinci Code, there has been a new level of public interest in the Priory of Sion.

Cryptic motto

File:Poussinorig.jpg

Poussin's Arcadian Shepherds

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". 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." However, Latin grammar is highly inflected, and would not use the pronoun "ego" with the verb-form "sum": for the proposed meaning, the motto would have to be Et in Arcadia sum.

Richard Andrews and Paul Schellenberger 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 in fact incomplete,
• b) that the extrapolation as to the missing words is correct,
• c) that the sentence, once completed, is in fact intended to be an anagram,
• and d) that Andrews and Schellenberger selected the proper anagram out of the thousands of possibilities,
  

they then concluded that the tomb contains the ossuary of Jesus. Regardless of this extraordinary claim, it is not considered part of the official history of the painting by Poussin that contains the phrase, which is well-documented. Richard Andrews and Paul Schellenberger's hypotheses in their book "The Tomb of God" were 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.

Adrien Bourrell describes witnessing, as a young boy during the early 1930s, the building of the tomb at Les Pontils - constructed to contain the bodies of the mother and grandmother of Louis Lawrence, an American from Connecticut who had emigrated to the area. Bourrell provided this information to two French authors: Franck Marie in 1974 and Michel Vallet (Pierre Jarnac) in 1985. Plantard had tried to argue that the Louis Lawrence tomb at Les Pontils was a "prototype" for Poussin's painting. The Louis Lawrence tomb was situated directly opposite a farmhouse (behind the foliage) and was not situated 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.

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, portrayed as more of a Goddess mystery religion, plays a large part in Dan Brown's novel The Da Vinci Code.
• 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).

Alleged Grand Masters of the Priory of Sion

The Priory of Sion was supposedly led by a Grand Master or Nautonnier. The list below is derived from "Les Dossiers Secrets d'Henri Lobineau" compiled by Philippe Toscan du Plantier (1967):

1. Jean de Gisors (1188-1220)
2. Marie de Saint-Clair (1220-1266)
3. Guillaume de Gisors (1266-1307)
4. Edouard de Bar (1307-1336)
5. Jeanne de Bar (1336-1351)
6. Jean de Saint-Clair (1351-1366)
7. Blanche d'Evreux (1366-1398)
8. Nicolas Flamel (1398-1418)
9. Rene d'Anjou (1418-1480)
10. Yolande de Bar (1480-1483)
11. Sandro Filipepi (1483-1510)
12. Leonardo da Vinci (1510-1519)
13. Connetable de Bourbon (1519-1527)
14. Ferdinand de Gonzague (1527-1575)
15. Louis de Nevers (1575-1595)
16. Robert Fludd (1595-1637)
17. Johann Valentin Andrea (1637-1654)
18. Robert Boyle (1654-1691)
19. Isaac Newton (1691-1727)
20. Charles Radclyffe (1727-1746)
21. Charles de Lorraine (1746-1780)
22. Maximillian de Lorraine (1780-1801)
23. Charles Nodier (1801-1844)
24. Victor Hugo (1844-1885)
25. Claude Debussy (1885-1918)
26. Jean Cocteau (1918-1963)
27. Francois Ducaud-Bourget (1963-1981)
28. Pierre Plantard (1981-1984)

A second List of the Grand Masters of the Priory of Sion that included the names of Roger Patrice Pelat and Thomas Plantard appeared in 1989, but it should not be confused with the above list that belonged to a version of the Priory of Sion that Plantard rejected. When Plantard tried to make a comeback and a revival of the Priory of Sion in 1989 following his retirement in 1984 he claimed that the above list was bogus and a part of the "Secret Files", which by then had been exposed as a fraud by French researchers and authors.

This 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)

1. Jean-Tim. Negri d'Albes (1681)
2. François d'Hautpoul (1703)
3. André Hercule de Rosset (1726)
4. Charles de Lorraine (1766)
5. Maximilien de Lorraine (1780)
6. Charles Nodier (1801)
7. Victor Hugo (1844)
8. Claude Debussy (1885)
9. Jean Cocteau (1918)
10. François Balphangon (1963)
11. John Drick (1969)
12. Pierre Plantard de Saint-Clair (1981)
13. Philippe de Cherisey (1984)
14. Patrice Pelat (1985)
15. Pierre Plantard de Saint-Clair (1989)
16. Thomas Plantard de Saint-Clair (1989)

External links and references

• . ISBN 055212138X. {{cite book}}: Missing or empty |title= (help); Unknown parameter |Author= ignored (|author= suggested) (help); Unknown parameter |Publisher= ignored (|publisher= suggested) (help); Unknown parameter |Title= ignored (|title= suggested) (help); Unknown parameter |Year= ignored (|year= suggested) (help)
• . ISBN 0440203198 (1989 reissue). {{cite book}}: Missing or empty |title= (help); Unknown parameter |Author= ignored (|author= suggested) (help); Unknown parameter |Publisher= ignored (|publisher= suggested) (help); Unknown parameter |Title= ignored (|title= suggested) (help); Unknown parameter |Year= ignored (|year= suggested) (help) The sequel to Holy Blood, Holy Grail.
• . ISBN 0316879975. {{cite book}}: Missing or empty |title= (help); Unknown parameter |Author= ignored (|author= suggested) (help); Unknown parameter |Publisher= ignored (|publisher= suggested) (help); Unknown parameter |Title= ignored (|title= suggested) (help); Unknown parameter |Year= ignored (|year= suggested) (help)
• Paul Smith. Priory of Sion: The Pierre Plantard Archives 1937-1993 which includes how Wikipedia treats this subject matter.
• Miriam Ibbotson The Priory of Sion Hoax: an A-Z
• About.com Priory of Sion Resource Guide
• The Current Grand Master of the Priory of Sion a claimant's page
• Steven Mizrach. Priory of Sion: the Facts, the Theories, the Mystery
• Massimo Introvigne. Beyond "The Da Vinci Code": What is the Priory of Sion?
• Wieland Willker. Codex Bezae and the Da Vinci Code: A textcritical look at the Rennes-le-Chateau hoax
• Laura Miller. The Da Vinci crock - [Subscription required]