PRIORY OF SION

ESSENTIAL BOOKS

Factually reliable books on the Priory of Sion – the organisation lying at the very heart of Dan Brown’s best-selling novel The Da Vinci Code (which the author maintains "exists") – are listed below: providing the accurate historical facts to this subject matter.

The version of the "Priory of Sion" involving Godfrey de Bouillon, the Knights Templars and the Merovingians was a figment of Pierre Plantard’s imagination dating from the early 1960s when he first met Gérard de Sède and began collaborating with him on the Gisors story, that was first begun by Roger Lhomoy (Lhomoy was Gérard de Sède’s pig-farmer at the time). This romantic fabrication was concocted by Plantard at that time in order to make money and nothing else – no "hidden esoteric secrets" were involved. The Rennes-le-Château "connection" was introduced sometime later.

The real Priory of Sion was formed in 1956, and it terminated during the same year. It was named after the Col du Mont Sion located outside the town of Annemasse where Plantard lived during the 1950s. It was an organisation devoted to the promotion of Low-Cost Housing, attacking the property developers of Annemasse and supporting the local opposition candidate to the local Government authority as outlined in the pages of its journal, Circuit.

Every French group, club and organisation must register itself with the French Authorities to comply with the 1901 French Law of Associations, and Pierre Plantard and André Bonhomme were joint signatories to the 1956 Priory of Sion Registration Documents and Statutes that were deposited on 7 May 1956 at the Sub Prefecture of St Julien-en-Genevois.

Paul Smith

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