Pierre Plantard
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Pierre Athanase Marie Plantard (March 18,1920 - February 3,2000) was the mastermind behind the Priory of Sion hoax. The Priory of Sion was originally founded in 1956, when Plantard worked as a draughtsman for a company in the town of Annemasse, in the Haute-Savoie region of south-east France. Devoted to the "Defence and Liberty of Low-Cost Housing", the association attacked the property developers of Annemasse through its journal Circuit.
He became an impostor who claimed to be a Merovingian pretender to the throne of France during the early 1960s, his position being influenced by an article that he had read by Louis Saurel in the French magazine Les Cahiers de l'Histoire Number 1 (1960). M Plantard claimed to have been descended from Dagobert II. There is no evidence that Plantard claimed to be a Merovingian descendant prior to the early 1960s, 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" and by Louis Vazart in 1978. Louis Saurel argued that Dagobert II was the last effective independent Merovingian King before the Mayors of the Palace began taking control. This period of Plantard's activities coincided with his meeting French author Gerard de Sede, who with the collaboration of Pierre Plantard published in 1962 the book 'Les Templiers sont parmi nous' - here is the genesis of what was soon to become the popular version of the Priory of Sion - with the well-known ingredients Godfrey de Bouillon, the Knights Templar, and so on: all of which is historical fiction.
Pierre Plantard in reality was the son of a butler, ultimately descended from a 16th-century peasant who picked walnuts, and a cook and worked as a low ranking government paper-pusher.
Influenced by the hotelier Noel Corbu who claimed that a treasure had been discovered by the previous occupant of his hotel, Father Bérenger Saunière. Plantard claimed that this treasure included parchments that substantiated his descent from Dagobert.
Pierre Plantard began writing a manuscript and produced "parchments" (created by his friend, Philippe de Cherisey) that Saunière had supposedly discovered whilst renovating his church. These forged documents purportedly showed the survival of the Merovingian line of Frankish kings. Plantard manipulated Saunière's activities at Rennes-le-Château in order to "prove" his claims relating to the Priory of Sion.
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] (http://priory-of-sion.com/psp/id70.html) Plantard lived in obscurity until his death on 3 February, 2000, in Paris.
External links and references
- Paul Smith. Priory of Sion: The Pierre Plantard Archives 1937-1993 (http://priory-of-sion.com/) The most extensive resource for an exposure of Pierre Plantard as a hoaxer.da:Pierre Plantard