The Priory Of Sion

Is The "Secret Organization" Fact Or Fiction?

(CBS) 
After the war, Plantard moved to the small French town of Annemasse. In 1953 he was given a six-month sentence for fraud — but three years later, he was again setting up a new organization. Under French law, it’s necessary to deposit the statutes of every new association with the authorities. That’s how a government official there was able to give us information about it. It was called "The Priory of Sion," named not for 12th-century Jerusalem, but for the local mountain close to where he lived. Ten years later and now back in Paris, Plantard gave the Priory of Sion a fictitious pedigree by drawing up that list of Grand Masters and depositing it in the Bibliotheque Nationale. Charlot says that apart from that list, no historian has found any evidence that the Priory of Sion existed before Plantard set up his version in 1956.

"In other words, all that Plantard tells us, or what other people tell us about the Priory of Sion — that the Grand Master was Victor Hugo or Leonardo Da Vinci — is sheer invention," says Charlot.

The Priory of Sion, says Charlot, was just another figment of Plantard's imagination.

But if the Priory of Sion was just a figment of Pierre Plantard's imagination, what about those parchments that mentioned Sion and were supposedly found by the priest in his church at Rennes Le Chateau? Bill Putnam and John Edwin Wood who have written a book about the mystery say the text in one of the parchments precludes them from being genuine.

"This one uses a Latin version of the Bible, the Vulgate. There are a number of known versions of this at various times in history and by looking exactly at which words are used and which words are not used you can tell which version it is," Putnam explains.

Putnam says this is the version of the Bible used. The only trouble is, it wasn't published until 1889, and Sauniere was supposed to have found these centuries-old parchments well before that date.

"So it could not possibly have been around had these parchments really been discovered by Sauniere prior to that date," says Putnam.

Putnam says it was all just an elaborate hoax.

Putnam and Wood say once again it was Plantard who was responsible for that hoax. Hearing of the story of Rennes Le Chateau, he decided to use it for his own ends and turned to a friend named Philippe de Cherisey for help in creating those parchments.

"Philippe de Cherisey was a different character altogether. He was something of a joker. He’d actually been an actor and had played parts in French television and he was fond of puzzles. And he invented the parchments because he liked puzzles," says John Edwin Wood.

Like Plantard, de Cherisey is now dead. So where are those parchments today? French writer Jean-Luc Chaumeil, who knew both men well and inherited many of their papers, says he has them.