As masterstrokes go it was certainly quite a masterstroke. Since it first came out, sales of the novel ‘The Da Vinci Code’ have not dipped once. With a print run of 10 million copies worldwide, the French translation of the novel by American Dan Brown, which has been available in France and Switzerland since March, has already sold 400,000 copies. Behind this incredible literary success lies an esoteric intrigue which is itself a blend of fact and fiction. The book itself is a devilishly effective thriller which begins with the murder of the Curator of the Louvre. The victim is found lying in a strange position, completely naked, with his arms and legs spread out, and surrounded by pictograms. The disposition of the body is reminiscent of the Man of Vitruvius, the famous drawing by Leonardo Da Vinci. Columbia Pictures have already acquired the film rights, announcing that Ron Howard will be the director and that the leading man will be Russell Crowe. While we’re waiting for the film to come out we’ve got the book to be getting on with.

The descendant of Christ

Reviving the familiar theme of plots and conspiracies, Dan Brown has his heroes setting off in search of a forbidden truth, a profound secret of which the Templars were the guardians. To solve the puzzle they have to decode the messages sent by the initiates down the centuries. It’s a treasure hunt that leaves everyone breathless.

The austere walls of Westminster Abbey and the flagstones of the Church of Saint-Sulpice in Paris are presumed to hide precious secrets. In the novel the key to the puzzle is found in one of the paintings of Leonardo Da Vinci. Beneath the master’s brush lies a face, that of Mary Magdalene, the sinner.

For the purposes of his novel, Dan Brown has exhumed the old story of the Priory of Sion, an order of chivalry created in 1099 by Godefroy de Bouillon. Its members alone knew the true story of Christ. If they revealed what they knew to the world then the whole edifice of Christianity would start to totter. It’s a myth that’s setting esoteric circles alight. After his crucifixion, Jesus fathered a child by Mary Magdalene. The Merovingians were their descendants and the last ‘recognised heir’ was a certain Pierre Plantard who died in February 2000. For several months now, tour operators have been organising round-trips between Paris and London to satisfy the curiosity of readers exhilarated by the story. And what if it was all true? The details are certainly disturbing and the reasoning spellbinding. However, Dan Brown’s novel simply reworks a gigantic fraud that’s now already 50 years old.

Plantard, the prisoner of his past

To lift the veil on this mystery it’s not necessary to open the doors of the Vatican archives. The statutes of the famous secret society were actually lodged with the sub-prefecture of Saint-Julien-en-Genevois in June 1956. Pierre Plantard (the descendant of Christ!) created an association under the Law of 1901 (the Swiss equivalent of a non-profit-making organisation) along with a number of friends. A certain Pierre Bonhomme was listed as the President, with Plantard as Treasurer. The only thing is, it’s not a secret society at all, but a tenants’ association set up to defend the interests of council house tenants in Annemasse. The organisation’s title refers not to the Sion of the Bible, but to Mont-Sion between Annecy and Geneva. The association’s organisational structure is reminiscent of the boy scouts. The head of it is called ‘His Druidic Majesty’ and the rank and file are grouped around ‘phalanges’.

The stench of anti-Semitism

Employed as a draughtsman at the Chamorin works in Annemasse, Pierre Plantard, a mythomaniac with a keen interest in esotericism, amused himself by rewriting the history of Christianity and inventing a genealogy implying divine descent. To give some credibility to his story he argued that the treasure discovered by the Abbé Saunière at Rennes-le-Chateau was an apocryphal document precisely establishing the genealogical tree of the Merovingians since the death of Christ. The only thing was, the document he produced to support this claim was actually a forgery.

Author Jean-Luc Chaumeil was the first to uncover the fraud at the end of the 1970s. He found that Plantard was a prisoner of his past.

The grandmaster of the Priory of Sion was also the founder of a much more controversial organisation known as Alpha Galathe [sic]. Its statutes stipulated that Jews were not admitted to membership. Plantard was not just a mythomaniac. During the German Occupation he published, under the name of ‘Pierre de France’, an anti-Semitic periodical called ‘Vaincre’. Some English researchers, fascinated by the myth of the Priory of Sion, discovered during their investigations that on 17 December 1953 Pierre Plantard was sentenced by the magistrate’s court in Saint-Julien-en-Genevois to six months imprisonment for breach of trust. Before the success of the novel, CBS had already broadcast a documentary. The subject is apparently inexhaustible, and certainly promises literary and cinematic success to other people as well. Since the end of the Second World War all the investigations into the Priory of Sion have focused on Switzerland, where the majority of the Neotemplar orders are based.

‘The myth has grown to terrifying proportions’

French journalist and author Jean-Luc Chaumeil (1) is extremely familiar with the story of the Priory of Sion. His books on the secret of the Templars and the mystery of Rennes-le-Château brought him into contact with the mysterious Pierre Plantard on several occasions. Chaumeil was the first to dispel the myth and show it for the lie that it really is. The polemics concerning the authenticity of the documents attesting to the existence of a secret society charged with guarding the secrets of Christianity have had the esoteric world in turmoil for more than 30 years.

The controversy took a new turn in 1982 with the appearance of ‘The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail’ by English authors Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh and Henry Lincoln, a staggering investigation into the presumed links between the Priory of Sion and the Order of Malta, the First National Bank of Chicago, the Vatican, the Masonic Lodge P2, the CIA, President De Gaulle and President Mitterrand! It served only however to deepen the mystery still further. Today there are about a dozen secret societies laying claim to the title of Priory of Sion.

‘A fantasist of genius’

Since the appearance of ‘The Da Vinci Code’ several newspapers have exhumed the troubled past of Pierre Plantard. For Jean-Luc Chaumeil, Pierre Plantard was first and foremost ‘a fantasist of genius’. ‘The truth’, he explains, ‘is that he was a megalomaniac and a mythomaniac. He’s only been overtaken by other people because he started the whole thing. I was the first person to interview him, in 1972. I had been following this affair for a long time to see what lay behind it. This led me to investigate the mystery of Rennes-le-Chateau and the origin of the treasure discovered by the Abbé Saunière. In fact it’s a rather ridiculous story, which only really got off the ground when Plantard met the three English authors of Holy Blood. The lie then assumed quite different proportions. With this new book, Plantard became not just the grandmaster of the Priory of Sion but also the last descendant of the Merovingians, and therefore of Jesus and Mary Magdalene. He protested limply during a programme broadcast on France Inter with Jacques Chancel when I revealed that the statutes of the Priory of Sion lodged in the subprefecture of Saint-Julien-en-Genevois were actually those of a tenants’ association in Annemasse. With ‘The Da Vinci Code’ the myth has assumed even more terrifying proportions – global ones in fact. This guy is now clearly revealed as an accomplished, mischievous and dangerous forger’.

A. J.

(1) Who is about to publish ‘L’énigme de la tête d’or’.

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