- Sion-les-Mines
Sion-les-Mines is a
commune in France .References in popular culture
It has been mistakenly believed to have been the inspiration for the name of the association
Priory of Sion , created in 1956 by con-manPierre Plantard . A photograph of Jean-Luc Chaumeil pointing to a roadsign name of Sion-les-Mines in one of his books has mistakenly been misinterpreted.According to the 1956 Statutes of the Priory of Sion lodged in the sub Prefecture of St Julien-en-Genevois (Article III, section c), Pierre Plantard named the Priory of Sion after a local mountain near to Annemasse (where he was living during the 1950s), called Montagne-de-Sion.
The Priory of Sion was alleged to have been a thousand-year-old secret society, but was later proven to be a fraud. It became the subject of international attention though when it was listed as a "factual" society by the 2003 bestselling novel "
The Da Vinci Code ".References
* (French Wikipedia article) http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sion-les-Mines
* "Da Vinci Declassified", 2006 TLC video documentary
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