Pierre Plantard

Pierre Athanase Marie Plantard (March 18, 1920 – February 3, 2000) was a French draughtsman, best known for being the principal perpetrator of the hoax of the Priory of Sion, which he established to manufacture evidence that he had a legitimate claim to the French throne. This deception later inspired a series of BBC Two documentaries, the 1982 pseudohistory book Holy Blood, Holy Grail and the 2003 novel The Da Vinci Code, among others.

He used an altered surname, Plantard de Saint-Clair, from 1975 onwards. The surname Saint-Clair was added to his own surname on the basis that this was the family name associated with the area of Gisors, a part of France associated with his hoax.

Early life

Plantard was born in 1920, in Paris, the son of a manservant. Starting in 1937, he began forming phantom associations with the aim of "purifying and renewing France," showing his anti-semitic and anti-Masonic inclinations. On December 16, 1940 Plantard wrote a letter to Marshal Pétain expressing his belief in a "terrible ‘Masonic and Jewish’ conspiracy" against France and warned that Pétain should act quickly to counter this threat—with Plantard offering "a hundred reliable men … who are devoted to the cause."

Plantard's phantom associations included the French Union (1937), the French National Renewal (1941) and the Alpha Galates (1942 and 1946). Plantard's group published a periodical called Vaincre (Defeat), which was frequently laced with anti-semitic, anti-Masonic, and mystical nationalist views. The German authorities had refused permission for Plantard to form the French National Renewal, and when Plantard disregarded another prohibition in the case of the Alpha Galates, he was given a four-month sentence in Fresnes Prison. Police Reports (entitled File Ga P7) relating to Plantard's pre-war and wartime activities are contained in the Paris Prefecture of Police, and from this early stage on in Plantard's life it was observed about him that: "Plantard, who boasts of having links with numerous politicians, seems to be one of those dotty, pretentious young men who run more or less fictitious groups in an effort to look important and who are taking advantage of the present trend towards taking a greater interest in young people in order to attract the Government's attention" (Police Report on Plantard's French National Renewal dated 9 May 1941). A Secret Service investigation of him during World War II concluded that his mind was "cloudy", and that he was a fantasist who enjoyed creating right-wing anti-semitic organizations, that were set up like medieval orders of chivalry.

In 1953, Plantard was charged and convicted, and served a six-month sentence for fraud.

1956 version of the Priory

In 1956, Pierre Plantard was working as a draughtsman for a company in the town of Annemasse in south-east France, near the border with Switzerland. It was there that he founded the Priory with Andre Bonhomme, both of them being signatories to the 7 May 1956 Priory of Sion Statutes and Registration Documents that had to be deposited at the sub-prefecture of Saint-Julien-en-Genevois. This action was required by the 1901 French Law of Associations, which stated that all French associations, groups and clubs must register with the authorities. It is believed that Plantard chose the name of the Priory of Sion after a local area of the same name, "Sion-les-Mines", or perhaps simply a local mountain, "Mont-Sion". Devoted to the "defence and liberty of low-cost housing," the Priory association attacked the property developers of Annemasse through its journal Circuit.

Development of the Priory story

During the early 1960s, Plantard put himself forward as a Merovingian claimant to the throne of France, descended from King Dagobert II. This position was apparently influenced by an article that he had read by Louis Saurel in the French magazine Les Cahiers de l'Histoire Number 1 (1960). Louis Saurel's article had argued that Dagobert II was the last effective independent Merovingian King before the "Mayors of the Palace" began taking control. There is no prior evidence that Plantard or his family claimed descent from the Merovingian dynasty, and the format of Louis Saurel's 1960 article in Les Cahiers de l'Histoire was later copied in a 1964 Priory Document ascribed to "Anne Lea Hisler" entitled "Rois et Gouvernants de la France". Plantard in reality was the son of a butler and a cook, who had no recorded links to the Merovingians.

This period of Plantard's activities coincided with his meeting French author Gérard de Sède, who with the collaboration of Plantard published in 1962 the book Les Templiers sont parmi nous, which related to the Gisors story that was begun by Roger Lhomoy (Lhomoy was de Sède's pig-farmer during this time). The book seems to have been the genesis of what was soon to become the popular version of the Priory of Sion, with the well-known ingredients – Godfrey of Bouillon, the Knights Templar, and so on. All of this can be easily proved to be historical fiction because the various claims as found in the Priory Documents never existed before the early 1960s in any shape or form, and cannot be substantiated from the known historical records.

Furthermore, letters in existence dating from the 1960s written by Pierre Plantard, Philippe de Cherisey and Gérard de Sède to each other confirm that the three were engaging in an out-and-out confidence trick. The letters describe 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, and the originals of the forged medieval documents that were reproduced in the book Le Tresor Maudit de Rennes-le-Chateau, a collaboration of Plantard and Gerard de Sede. 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. The Priory, Plantard claimed during the mid-1960s (but not before, and certainly not in 1956), was a secret inner circle of the Templars: It had survived the extinction of the original order, and had been manipulating events in Europe over centuries to keep alive the "rightful" Merovingian royalty.

Influenced by the hotelier Noel Corbu who claimed in 1956 that a treasure had been previously discovered in the area by the 19th century occupant of his property, Father Bérenger Saunière, Plantard further embellished the story by claiming that this treasure included parchments that substantiated Plantard's descent from Dagobert. Plantard began writing manuscripts, and produced forged medieval "parchments" (created by his friend, Philippe de Chérisey) with the claim that Saunière had supposedly discovered these documents whilst renovating his church in 1891. These documents purportedly showed the survival of the Merovingian line of Frankish kings. Plantard manipulated the story of Saunière's activities at Rennes-le-Château in order to "prove" his claims relating to the Priory of Sion. In 1966, he also planted arcane home-made documents in the Bibliothèque nationale in Paris. These documents, the so-called Dossiers Secrets (Secret Files), purported to corroborate the Priory's version of history. They were a remarkable collection of genealogies going back over a thousand years, all painstakingly created by hand over a period of months, with nothing more than a cheap stencil kit to produce the family trees and crests.

Later life

In 1979, Plantard met with Henry Lincoln and others, and claimed that he was the current Grand Master of the Priory of Sion.

In 1982, authors Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh and Henry Lincoln published Holy Blood Holy Grail. It became a bestseller, and publicized Plantard's Priory of Sion as a "real" organization. The book also expanded upon the story though, claiming that the Merovingian line of kings had actually been descended from Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalene, and that the purpose of the Priory (and its military arm, the Knights Templar) was to protect the secret of the holy bloodline.

Plantard was reportedly horrified by this embellishment, saying that it was sacrilegious. He rejected the claims during the late 1980s when he revised the mythological pedigree of the Priory of Sion, claiming it had nothing to do with the Knights Templar, that the "Dossiers Secrets" were written under the influence of LSD, and that the Priory of Sion had in fact been founded in 1681 at Rennes-le-Château by the grandfather of Marie de Negri d'Ables. This revised version of the Priory of Sion had been influenced by the opening of the "Sauniere Museum" in Rennes-le-Chateau in May 1989.

In September 1993, Plantard claimed that Roger-Patrice Pelat had once been grandmaster of the Priory of Sion. 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 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]

After this, Plantard lived in obscurity until his death on 3 February 2000 in Paris. He thus did not live to see the publication of Dan Brown's novel The Da Vinci Code in 2003, an international best-seller drawing heavily on the Priory mythology originally invented by Plantard (and elaborated by various conspiracy theorists). The novel itself can be said to carry on the hoax, since Brown in a preface asserts that the Priory of Sion is an actual secret society that really was founded centuries ago (see The Priory of Sion in the Da Vinci Code). By a strange twist of fate, Dan Brown would derive enormous amounts of money from the Priory myth, something Pierre Plantard himself never achieved during decades of deception.

External links and references

Second part of the interview of Jean-Luc Chaumeil where he mentions his discovery of the bewitched hill and the owner of the abbé's estate, Henri Buthion, as well as his tumultuous relations with Pierre Plantard (Priory of Sion)!

Paul Smith. Priory of Sion: The Pierre Plantard Archives 1937–1993 The most extensive resource for an exposure of Pierre Plantard as a hoaxer.

Massimo Introvigne. Beyond The Da Vinci Code: History and Myth of the Priory of Sion

"Priory of Sion", April 30, 2006 segment on 60 Minutes, produced by Jeanne Langley and narrated by Ed Bradley