The Priory of Sion

The Priory of Sion is a secret society purportedly founded in the 11th century, its alleged purpose to preserve and protect the original precepts of Christianity while also acting as the guardian of Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalene’s sacred bloodline.

The Priory was initially brought to mass public awareness in both BBC documentaries and books by writers Henry Lincoln, Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh.

From the moment of its release "The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail" caused a great deal of controversy. In this provocative book the authors stated “There was a secret order behind the Knights Templar, which created the Templars as its military and administrative arm. This order, which has functioned under a variety of names, is most frequently known as the Prieure de Sion (Priory of Sion). The Prieure de Sion has been directed by a sequence of Grand Masters whose names are amongst the most illustrious in Western history and culture. Although the Knights Templar were destroyed and dissolved between 1307 and 1314 the Prieure de Sion remained unscathed.”

Other assertions include: The Priory of Sion was founded in 1099 AD and is sworn to return the Merovingian dynasty whom they believe to be the descendants of Jesus and Mary Magdalene to power, that its leaders or Grand Masters have included the likes of Isaac Newton and Leonardo da Vinci, that the Priory is dedicated to a united Europe and new world order and that the Catholic Church has been engaged historically in a war to destroy the dynasty and its protectors the Cathars [1] and Knights Templar in order to retain authority afforded it through a patriarchal line of Popes beginning with Peter instead of the legitimate hereditary succession that began with Mary Magdalene.

The unfortunate problem with all this is that although the Knights Templar and the Cathars are an historical fact, all evidence pertaining to the Priory of Sion and offered as truth by the aforementioned authors was unintentionally based on false information from fraudulent sources. The Priory, at least in the form of an 11th century secret society is a hoax. It was actually established a mere half century ago by con man and would be pretender to the French throne Pierre Plantard.

In 1956 Pierre Plantard founded an association in the French town of Annemasse the original purpose of which seems to have been a relatively benign involvement in the affairs of the local community, but Plantard for whatever his reasons (suggestions are he hoped to re-establish the French monarchy with himself on the throne) soon embarked on a course of action that would result in a hoax of monumental proportions.

Co-conspirators were enlisted, the first was Plantard’s friend Philippe de Cherisey, together they deposited a series of fake documents called the "Dossiers Secrets d’Henri Lobineau" ("Secret Dossiers of Henri Lobineau") at the Bibliotheque national de France, in Paris, in order to give credence to Plantard’s royal pedigree. Later a series of “medieval parchments” were forged containing encrypted messages pertaining to the Priory of Sion, the story being that a Father Berenger Sauniere had found them in 1891 while renovating his church, thus giving credence to claims that the Priory is a thousand year old secret society. A second conspirator Gerard de Sede then wrote "L’Or de Rennes" ("The Gold of Rennes") and "Le Tresor Maudit de Rennes-le-Chateau" ("The Accursed Treasure of Rennes Castle") a further embellishment based on the forged material. It was this fictitious data that Lincoln, Baigent and Leigh used and expanded on in their books and documentaries.

To those that missed the documentaries and books of Lincoln, Baigent and Leigh their first exposure to both the Priory of Sion and the Knights Templar was probably either Dan Brown’s best selling fictional book "The Da Vinci Code" or the blockbuster movie that followed it.

Brown’s source concerning messages hidden in the works of Leonardo da Vinci was the book "The Templar Revelation" to which authors Lynn Picknett and Clive Price in a later book "The Sion Revelation: The Truth About the Guardians of Christ’s Bloodline" add a new twist, acknowledging that while the Priory is a hoax the rest is part of an intricate bluff, that the divine bloodline is a reality and that secret organizations are behind the creation of a United States of Europe.

As for Pierre Plantard, he died in obscurity on the 3rd of February in the year 2000 after admitting in a French court and under oath that he had fabricated everything, but was he a con-man finally repentant, his admission true, or did he go to his grave determined to protect a great secret?

Perhaps author Lionel Fanthorpe sums things up best when he states “The Priory of Sion may be one of the most ancient, powerful and remarkable secret societies in the world or it may be the last vestigial trace of an inner group of Knights Templars or it could be a perfectly innocent, respectable and prosaic friendly society or it may not exist at all.”

[1] The Cathars (from the Latin for pure ones) also known as Albigensians first appeared in Germany around 1143 AD later spreading to Southern France and Northern Italy. Like the Bogomils and Manichaeans before them they were Gnostics believing in a good spirit trapped within an evil body and that Christ was a spiritual being whose purpose on Earth was to show how that spirit might be freed. By the end of the twelfth century they had become a fully-fledged alternative to the Catholic Church (whom they considered idolatrous and corrupt) complete with bishops and a competing hierarchical infrastructure. The papacy, for its part, considered them heretical and a threat to both their temporal and spiritual power.

In 1209 a crusade was declared against all Christian heretics by Pope Innocent the Third; it was to become one of the most disgraceful periods in the Church’s history and result in the slaughter of tens of thousands of men women and children. One of the last Albigensian strongholds, Montsegur a fortress in the Pyrenees Mountains, surrendered in 1244 after a lengthy siege many of the survivors tortured then burned alive by the victorious crusaders (although local legend has it that four escaped taking with them a mysterious treasure that some believe was the Holy Grail). The final stronghold Queribus fell in 1255 and though the event officially spelled the end of Catharism a small number of Cathars purportedly fled to the Alps and northern Italy where they avoided the papacy’s wrath by blending into the local populace.

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