Pierre Plantard

Pierre Athanase Marie Plantard (March 18, 1920 – February 3, 2000) was a French draughtsman, [Jean-Luc Chaumeil, "Les Archives du Prieuré de Sion" ("Le Charivari", N°18, 1973)] best known for being the principal perpetrator of the Priory of Sion hoax, which he developed to manufacture evidence that he was a Merovingian dynast and the "Grand Monarch" prophesied by Nostradamus. [Marie-France Etchegoin & Frédéric Lenoir, "Code Da Vinci: L'Enquête", p.61 (Robert Laffont, 2004).] 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.

urname

Plantard used an altered surname, "Plantard de Saint-Clair", described as an epithet by Jean-Luc Chaumeil. [Jean-Luc Chaumeil, "Rennes-le-Château – Gisors – Le Testament du Prieuré de Sion (Le Crépuscule d’une Ténebreuse Affaire)", Editions Pégase, 2006, page 143.] The "Saint-Clair" part of his surname was added to his real surname on the basis that this was the family name associated with the area of Gisors, a city in Normandy associated with his hoax - according to the mythology of the Priory of Sion "Jean VI des Plantard" married a member of the House of Gisors during the 12th century. [Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh and Henry Lincoln, "The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail", (Jonathan Cape, 1982); Genealogy V: The families of Gisors, Payen and Saint-Clair, page 374 (a simplified version of "Les Dossiers Secrets d'Henri Lobineau"(1967).]

Early life

Plantard was born in 1920, in Paris, the son of a butler and a concierge (described as a cook for wealthy families in police reports of the 1940s).Jean-Luc Chaumeil, "La Table d'Isis ou Le Secret de la Lumière", Editions Guy Trédaniel, 1994, p. 121-124. ISBN 2-85-707-622-3] Massimo Introvigne, " [http://www.cesnur.org/2005/pa_introvigne.htm Beyond The Da Vinci Code: History and Myth of the Priory of Sion] ".] Starting in 1937, he began forming mystical ultranationalist associations in Vichy France to support a "National Revolution" based upon antisemitism and anti-Masonry, following Marshal Pétain's dissolution of Grand Orient Freemasonry when he came to power.Robert Richardson, [http://www.alpheus.org/html/articles/esoteric_history/richardson1_print.html The Priory of Sion Hoax] in "Gnosis" (No. 51, Spring 1999), p. 49-55.] On December 16, 1940 Plantard wrote a letter to Marshal Pétain offering his services to the collaborationist government. His offer was investigated by both the French and German police. Claude Charlot of the Paris Prefecture of Police stated on a CBS News '60 Minutes' documentary that the Alpha Galates "had only four regular members". [http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/04/27/60minutes/main1552009.shtml "The Secret of the Priory of Sion", CBS News '60 Minutes' (CBS Worldwide Inc.), 30 April 2006, Presented by CBS Correspondent Ed Bradley, Produced By Jeanne Langley] ] According to a police report on the Alpha Galates dated 13 February 1945 the organisation was only composed of at most 50 members, who resigned one after the other as soon as they sized up the president of the association (Pierre Plantard) and figured out that it was not a serious enterprise.

Plantard's small associations included the French Union (1937), the French National Renewal (1941) and the Alpha Galates (1942). The German authorities refused permission for Plantard to form the French National Renewal and the Alpha Galates. Alpha Galates published a periodical called "Vaincre" (Conquer). which was frequently laced with anti-Semitic and anti-Masonic views; when Plantard disregarded the prohibition by the German authorities of the formation of the Alpha Galates, he was given a four-month sentence in Fresnes Prison. [Jean-Jacques Bedu, "Les sources secrètes du Da Vinci Code" (2005)]

In 1951, Plantard married Anne Léa Hisler (1930–1970). They moved to the town of Annemasse in south-east France, near the border with Switzerland. In 1953 according to Robert Amadou, Pierre Plantard was accused of selling degrees of esoteric orders for exorbitant sums. According to a more reliable source, given in a letter in the subprefecture of Saint-Julien-en-Genevois, ["The History of a Mystery", BBC 2, transmitted on 17 September 1996.] Plantard was given a six-month sentence for fraud, relating to other crimes. French researchers dispute the connection between Robert Amadou and Pierre Plantard. [ Laurent 'Octonovo' Buccholtzer, "Rennes-le-Château, une Affaire Paradoxale" (Oeil-du-Sphinx; 2008).]

Priory of Sion

On May 7, 1956, Plantard and others legally registered in the town of St Julien-en-Genevois a new group called the "Priory of Sion" based in Annemasse close to the French border near Geneva. The group was devoted to the support of politicians working to build low-cost housing in Annemasse. and published a magazine named "Circuit". The "Sion" in the name did not refer to the Land of Israel and its capital, Jerusalem but rather to a local mountain, Montagne de Sion, where the order intended to establish a retreat center.

Plantard was influenced by the story of hotelier Noel Corbu, who claimed in 1956 that a treasure had been discovered in the area of Rennes-le-Chateau by a previous occupant of his property, Father Bérenger Saunière, whilst renovating his church in 1891. Plantard met Corbu in the early 1960s and embellished the story with the claim that Saunière had discovered medieval parchments along with the treasure that made Plantard the last surviving Merovingian claimant to the throne of France, descended from King Dagobert II.

Robert Richardson detects many of the themes found in Priory documents, e.g. the king as a sacred being or the special quality of the blood in a royal family, admiration for Godfrey of Bouillon, originating in the ideas of radical traditionalist Julius Evola, although Plantard nowhere mentioned Evola in his writings. Such superficial themes were common traits in the history of reactionary Western esotericism. [e.g. Albert G. Mackey, 33°, in "Encyclopedia of Freemasonry" (1909), stated that "The Order of Freemasonry was instituted by Godfrey of Bouillon in Palestine."]

Plantard, together with his friend Philippe de Chérisey, produced a number of false documents, including one which attached Plantard's family tree to an actual genealogy from an article by Louis Saurel in the French magazine "Les Cahiers de l'Histoire" No. 1 (1960). Between 1965 and 1967 these documents, known as the "Dossiers Secrets" (Secret Files), were planted in the Bibliothèque nationale de France in Paris. A third co-conspirator, French author Gérard de Sède (1921–2004), based his 1967 book "L'Or de Rennes" on these documents, "revealing" the Priory of Sion Rennes story to the world.

Jean-Luc Chaumeil, Franck Marie, [Franck Marie, "Rennes-le-Château: Etude Critique" (SRES, 1978)] Pierre Jarnac, [Pierre Jarnac, "Histoire du Trèsor de Rennes-le-Château"(Editions Belisane, 1985).] Massimo Introvigne and other researchers state that Plantard and de Chérisey planted documents in the Bibliothèque nationale between 1965 and 1985 and were a "brilliant" hoax. Bill Putnam and John Edwin Wood, authors of "The Treasure of Rennes-le-Chateau: A Mystery Solved", agree. When asked where to rank the Priory of Sion hoax among other hoaxes throughout history, both placed it "at the top."

French writer Jean-Luc Chaumeil inherited many of the papers of Plantard and de Chérisey. Among these papers were the Saunière parchments, which Chaumeil had analyzed by two experts, who found them to be around 40 years old. He also says that he has a handwritten document signed by de Chérisey calling the parchments "a good hoax."

Later life

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 story. The book added a new element to the story, that the Merovingian line of kings had actually been descended from the historical Jesus and Mary Magdalene, and that the purpose of the Priory (and its military arm, the Knights Templar) was to protect the secret of the Jesus bloodline.

Plantard played along with this story for a while, but in 1986 parted ways with Lincoln, dismissing "Holy Blood, Holy Grail" and even the 1960s documents as false and irrelevant. He revised his Priory of Sion story, dropping his earlier Merovingian claims and instead basing his main secret on the mystical power of ley lines and Rocco Negro, a mountain near Rennes-le-Chateau where he owned substantial property. Lincoln maintains that the story about Jesus, Mary Magdalene and the Merovingians might still be true even if Plantard's story was a fraud.

In a 1989 issue of "Vaincre", ["Les Cahiers de Rennes-le-Chateau" Nr IX, 1989.] Roger-Patrice Pelat was named as a Grand Master 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. In October 1993, the judge investigating the Pelat scandal had Pierre Plantard's house searched. The search failed to find any documents related to Pelat. ["Le Point", no. 1112 (dated 8-14 January 1994).] [Philippe Laprévôte, "Note sur l’actualité du Prieuré de Sion", in: "Politica Hermetica" Nr. 10 (1996), p. 140-151.]

Pierre Plantard died in Paris on 3 February 2000.

Quoting Jean-Luc Chaumeil:

He died a beautiful death, surrounded by devoted followers who acted as his courtiers, but he had lost all his real friends, those who had listened to him attentively, those who had stopped him from going off the rails on more than one occasion. He had forgotten that, in the world of fictional heroes, there are masters of manipulation who can take advantage of a lie to develop an even bigger untruth. He should already have met that in the bedtime story “The Robber Robbed” (to which one should perhaps add, "the Lost King found and re-orientated"). Through his death Pierre Plantard left behind a dangerous void that those who admired him in his last years would hasten to fill in their own way. Quite recently anonymous tracts were still being sent to bookshops on a regular basis, tracts that are an incoherent as their authors are contemptible. [Jean-Luc Chaumeil, "Rennes-le-Château – Gisors – Le Testament du Prieuré de Sion (Le Crépuscule d’une Ténébreuse Affaire)", Editions Pégase, 2006.]

References

External links

* [http://www.portail-rennes-le-chateau.com/chaumeil_plantard_english.htm Chaumeil - Plantard] , second part of an 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, Gérard de Sède and Mathieu Paoli