Philippe de Chérisey

The marquess Philippe de Chérisey (February 13,1923 – July 17, 1985) was a French writer, radio humorist, and actor (under the name of Amédée). He is best known for his involvement in the creation of fake documents concerning the "history" of the Priory of Sion.

Biography

Coming from a wealthy family in the Lorraine, Chérisey decided to become an actor against the family's wishes. He enrolled in the Simon school in 1946 where he started his actor's training, and his most notable film appearance was in "Jeux interdits" in 1952. He was known as a bon viveur and enjoyed wine on a regular basis. He also regularly frequented public libraries where his natural curiosity made him follow up anything that took his fancy.

He is most well-known for being the #2 man in the Priory of Sion hoax, with his most important contribution probably being the forging of a set of medieval documents for his friend Pierre Plantard. The documents "verified" Plantard's alleged descent from the Frankish king Dagobert II, as well as attempting to verify the existence of an alleged 1000-year-old secret society, the Priory of Sion. Some of these documents were planted in the French National Library, the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris during the 1960s. Others were reproduced in the 1967 book "Le Tresor Maudit de Rennes-le-Chateau" by a third associate, Gerard de Sede. The book claimed to be about an alleged hidden treasure found by a 19th century priest in southern France. The two sets of documents were later used as source material for the 1982 pseudohistory book "The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail", which was itself used as a primary source for the 2003 bestselling novel "The Da Vinci Code", which incorrectly stated that the Priory of Sion was a factual society.

Chérisey was a follower of the surrealist movement and a member of the College of Pataphysics, with a desire to subvert the norms of culture, or in other words, create an alternate reality that became more real than reality itself. He was also a joker, with the best example of this being his esoteric novella "Circuit" (1968) which also includes satirical overtones. He was also prone, like his friend Plantard, to adopt the persona of recently deceased persons. In 1976 he penned an attack against the historian Descadeillas who had written a book refuting the fantasies pertaining to the Priory of Sion and Plantard. Chérisey wrote a pamphlet, "Le Cercle d’Ulysse" (a word play for ‘Le Cercle du Lys’), and signed the piece under an 'adopted' name, Jean Delaude - a journalist from the Carcassonne area who had recently died and who, in his lifetime, was a friend of Descadeillas. Cherisey distributed the pamphlet by claiming to have received it anonymously. But in it, he also attacked author de Sede who had just published "Rose+Croix". The text alleged that Sauniere had indeed found those famous parchments and the genealogical documents; it also promoted the fraudulent Priory of Sion [re: Jarnac 2002, 25 and Marlin 2004, 24] .

Philippe de Chérisey died in Paris in 1985, while working to finish an encyclopedia of trema. His funeral was held at the Church of the Holy Trinity in Paris and he was buried in the family plot in Roeux (Pas-de-Calais).

Details of the forgeries

The text of one "parchment" (parchment 1) was copied from "Codex Bezae", an Old Latin/Greek diglot from the 5th century CE contained in the book by Fulcran Grégoire Vigouroux, "Dictionnaire De La Bible" (Letouzey et Ané, Éditeurs, Tome Premier; 1895). Chérisey chose to copy material from Vigouroux because he was a priest connected with the Church of St Sulpice, a location that had been exploited as part of the Priory of Sion myths as created by Plantard and Chérisey, so Chérisey's utilisation of this priest fitted in nicely into these myths. And according to an investigation into the Priory of Sion hoax by the American news program 60 Minutes, one of the documents was from an 1897 version of the Latin Vulgate, and the original forgery is now in the possession of Jean-Luc Chaumeil, a French writer, who states that he had their age analyzed, and it was confirmed that they were merely decades old, not centuries. Chaumeil also has letters from Cherisey, which contain proof that Cherisey was knowingly engaging in a fraud.

That Philippe de Chérisey did not understand Latin is demonstrated in his copying of the Latin Text from the Codex Bezae for one of his "parchments" : for instance, he made several of the most basic errors in copying the Latin uncials, which therefore garbles the spelling of multiple words. This information is frequently omitted by those who promote the "parchments" as being authentic.

Philippe de Cherisey asserted : « parchments have been manufactured by me, whose I have taken the text in uncial to the National Library on the book of Dom Cabrol, the Christian Archaeology » (History of the treasure of RLC, P. Jarnac, éd. Belisane, 1998, p.268.), which further proves that he did not understand Latin, because the volumes edited by Cabrol did not contain the Codex Bezae - but since Philippe de Cherisey was interested in researching a passage found in the Codex Bezae relating to the Sabbath, and this passage is also contained in the Gospel of Luke and consequently in the Diatessaron - it is clear from this that because De Cherisey did not understand Latin he mistakenly ascribed the passage he had copied into one of his "parchments" had really been from the Codex Bezae and not from the Diatessaron as he had inadvertently mistakenly claimed. There are collections of Biblical passages existing in the form of anthologies that Philippe de Cherisey also consulted.

Philippe de Chérisey, who had a fondness for puzzles, is also the one who came up with the embedded codes in the forged documents, which appeared to refer to the "Sion" society. One of the encrypted messages hid a message in modern French, within supposedly medieval Latin text. The decrypted message said, "A Dagobert II Roi et a Sion est ce tresor, et il est la mort." (trans: To King Dagobert II and to Sion does this treasure belong, and he is there dead).

Relationship with Plantard

According to Henry Lincoln, one of the co-authors of "Holy Blood Holy Grail", Plantard admitted to him in person that the various documents had been forged, and identified Chérisey as their creator.

A schism also developed between Plantard and Chérisey during the mid-1980s, when Chérisey began collaborating with Paul Rouelle on a new project which would have incorporated the Priory concepts.

References

* [http://www.lamediatheque.be/documents/fureur/annee2000/TITRESR_2.htm Information about his humorist career]
* "Da Vinci Declassified", 2006 TLC video documentary
* [http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0025523/ actor profile] at the Internet Movie Database
* [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0043686/ "Jeux interdits"] , de Cherisey's most notable film
* "The Priory of Sion", April 30, 2006 segment on 60 Minutes, produced by Jeanne Langley, hosted by Ed Bradley

External links

* [http://lescherisey.free.fr/getperson.php?personID=I457&tree=cherisey "Philippe de Cherisey Biography in French"]
* [http://www-user.uni-bremen.de/~wie/Rennes/ Codex Bezae and the Da Vinci Code] A textcritical look at the Rennes-le-Chateau hoax