In 1885 "the Catholic church assigned Saunière, thirty-three years old, handsome, well-educated--if provincial--to the parish at Rennes-le-Château. [Bérenger] Saunière set about restoring the town's tiny church, which sat atop a sacred site dating back to the sixth-century Visigoths."

"The village parish church had been dedicated to the Magdalene in 1059; during the restoration, he found the mysterious parchment (supposedly) in a hollow Visigothic pillar underneath the altar stone."
     - Steve Mizrach, "The Mysteries of Rennes-le-Château and the Prieure du Sion"

The find, which occurred in 1886 or 1887, consisted of either a single paper or four parchments according to differing accounts of the event. After reading the document(s), Saunière immediately set about excavating the aisle, nave and transcript. He then moved his attention to the graveyard outside and found an encrypted inscription on a tombstone, reputedly that of Marie de Nègre d'Ablès, Lady of Blanchfort, who had died on 17 January 1781. After deciphering the inscription, traveled to Carcassonne and talked to the deputy of the Bishop who resided there. After his visit Saunière experienced a remarkable turn-around in his fortunes.

"Saunière received "vast sums of money [an estimated 200,000 gold francs] to refurbish the local church and also to build many structures in the area, such as his Tower of the Magdalene (Tour Magdala). (Saunière was originally so poor that he relied on the generosity of parishioners to survive in 1885.) He also built many structures in the area, such as his Tower of the Magdalene (Tour Magdala)."
     - Steve Mizrach, "The Mysteries of Rennes-le-Château and the Prieure du Sion"

Saunière decorated the village parish church in the ornate almost garish style that was popular in the late ninteenth century.

"Over the porch lintel is a bizarre inscription, 'THIS PLACE IS TERRIBLE'. A statue of the demon Asmodeus 'guards' near the door. The plaques depicting the Stations of the Cross contain bizarre inconsistencies. One shows a child swathed in Scottish plaid. Another has Pontius Pilate wearing a veil. Sts. Joseph and Mary are each depicted holding a Christ child, as if to allude to the old legend that Christ had a twin. Other statues are of rather esoteric saints in unusual postures: St. Roch displays his wounded thigh (like the Grail King Anfortas), St. Anthony the Hermit holds a closed book, St. Germaine releases a bevy of roses from her apron, and the Magdalene is shown holding a vase."
     - Steve Mizrach, "The Mysteries of Rennes-le-Château and the Prieure du Sion"

Saunière "spent a fortune refurbishing the town and developed extravagant tastes for rare china, antiques, and other pricey artifacts. Yet how Saunièreacquired this apparent windfall remained a mystery--he stubbornly refused to explain the secret of his success to the church authorities."
     - 50 Greatest Conspiracies of All Time

"Saunière died in 1917, leaving the 'secret' of where he got his fabulous wealth to his housekeeper, Marie Dernaud, who promised to reveal it on her deathbed - but sadly she had a stroke which left her paralyzed and unable to speak before her death in 1953. Speculation was rife on the source of the parish priest's money. Was it the lost treasure of the Templars or the Cathars in the area? Might it have been buried Visigothic gold? Was he being paid by the Hapsburgs or some other government for his services? Did he know the lost goldmaking secrets of alchemy? Or was he blackmailing the Church with some terrible secret? The evidence that points to the last possibility is that Saunière's confession before his death was so shocking that the priest who heard it denied him absolution and last rites."
     - Steve Mizrach, "The Mysteries of Rennes-le-Château and the Prieure du Sion"

(2) The Secret Codes

A mysterious set of transcripts and photographs entitled Dossiers Secrets was deposited in the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris (although the little book was never authenticated by the library). The Dossiers Secrets contained two genealogies dating from 1244 C.E. and 1644 C.E., a quasi-Masonic charter and a sketch of the inscription on the tomb of the Countess of Blanchfort. Of even greater interest were two documents which were purported to be of the parchments found in the pillar at the church at Rennes-le-Château.

Click on the parchments to view

"They were apparently written by his predecessor, Abbé Antoine Bigou, confessor to Marie d'Hautpoul [Lady of Blanchfort], in 1781. (The same cypher appears on her tombstone.)"
     - Steve Mizrach, "The Mysteries of Rennes-le-Château and the Prieure du Sion"

"According to Henry Lincoln and historians Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh (The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail) "these more recent papers contained a series of ciphers and codes, some of them 'fantastically complex, defying even a computer' to unlock their secrets.
"Saunière took his discovery to the bishop in nearby Carcassonne, who dispatched the priest to Paris, where clerical scholars studied the parchments. One of the simpler ciphers, when translated, read: TO DAGOBERT II KING AND TO SION BELONGS THIS TREASURE AND HE IS THERE DEAD."
(The person to whom "HE IS THERE DEAD" was not identified.)
     - 50 Greatest Conspiracies of All Time

"The parchments were, on the face of it, Latin transcriptions of passages from the Gospels; but they contained deeper mysteries."
     - Steve Mizrach, "The Mysteries of Rennes-le-Château and the Prieure du Sion"

The first code was easily broken when letters higher than the rest of the text were identified by Henry Lincoln and arranged in order. The code in the second parchment was more complex and yielded an even stranger message.

"The code in the parchment is only decipherable through the use of the knight's tour - a logic puzzle wherein one 'jumps' a knight to every square on a chess board, once and only once. It is a puzzle which has only one solution - as does the code, clearly."
     - Steve Mizrach, "The Mysteries of Rennes-le-Château and the Prieure du Sion"

Richard Andrews and Paul Schellenberger, authors of the The Tomb of God, write that many of the words are keys to landmarks in the Rennes-le-Château area and claim that they have been able to identify the location of these landmarks. For example LA CROIX is a cross by the railway line north of Alet-les-Bains. When a person visits these sites in the order given on the parchment that person will have traversed a complete square

"Saunière also appears to have left certain other 'clues' in the highly unusual redesign of his church and of the other structures in the area."
"A third cypher that appears, not in the documents, but at Shugborough Hall's Shepherd Monument, is the curious 'D.O.U.O.S.V.A.V.V.M' which has never been translated."
     - Steve Mizrach, "The Mysteries of Rennes-le-Château and the Prieure du Sion"

(3) Poussin's Enigmatic Painting

According to Gerard de Sede, L'Or de Rennes-le-Château, the enigmatic reference to "shepherdess no temptation that Poussin Teniers hold the key" in the second parchment refers to the the works of Nicolas Poussin (1593-1665) and David Teniers the Younger (1610-1694), who had painted The Temptation of St Antony.

Poussin reportedly travelled to Paris to verify his discovery and while there visited the Louvre to obtain copies of Poussin's Les Bergers D'Arcadie, Tenier's The Temptation of St Antony and a third painting, a portrait of Pope Celestine V, artist unknown.

"There is a famous painting by Poussin entitled Les Bergers D'Arcadie (the Arcadian shepherds) which shows them around a tomb containing the mysterious inscription 'Et in Arcadia Ego...'"
"This tomb appears to be a virtual replica of one not too dissimilar to it right outside of Rennes-le-Château. Saunière 's church indeed contains a 'daemon guardian' which is a representation of the Biblical Asmodeus, who helped Solomon build his Temple; and some say the rays of the sun at midday passing through the glass create an optical effect they call 'blue apples'."
     - Steve Mizrach, "The Mysteries of Rennes-le-Château and the Prieure du Sion"

Th phrase "Et in Arcadia Ego" translated into English has been interpreted to mean "Even in earthly paradise, I (death) exist."

"The theme of 'Arcadia' was prominent in Elizabethan literature, and it appears in the works of writers such as Edmund Spenser, Sir Phillip Sidney, and even Shakespeare, for whom the word was synonymous with the Golden Age."
"The word Arcadia comes from Arkas, patron god of that area of Greece, the son of the nymph Callisto, sister of the huntress Artemis....In legend, the Merovingians were said to be descended from the Trojans; and Homer reports that Troy was founded by a colony of Arcadians. The 'Prieure documents' claim that the Arcadians were descended from Benjamites driven out of Palestine by their fellow Israelites for idolatry. 'Arcadia' was also known to as the source of the River Alphaeus, the 'underground stream' which figures so prominently in Coleridge's poetry and in esoteric literature. The Merovingians were 'sacred kings' who reigned but did not rule, leaving the secular governing function to chancellors known as the Mayors of the Palace. It was the one of the Mayors, Pepin the Fat, who founded the dynasty that came to supplant them - the Carolingians."
     - Steve Mizrach, "The Mysteries of Rennes-le-Château and the Prieure du Sion"

Art expert Prof. Christopher Cornford, of the Royal College of Art, analyzed the painting and found a complex underlying geometry based on the pentagon. Andrews and Schellenberger (The Tomb of God) were able to draw an equilateral triangle between a symbol and key characters on Parchment. In addition, they constructed a square tilted at 75 degrees on Parchment 2 which contained the triangle on the first parchment. These two shapes can be superimposed on a map of the Rennes-le-Château area using the Paris Zero Meridian, appear to make a remarkable alignment with key chateaux and churches and towns. Andrews and Paul Schellenbergere were also able to discern the same geometric shapes in the three paintings above as well as several related paintings. If the secret that Saunière had stumbled onto was indeed a map, what was its significance?

(4) An Amazing Geometry

The castles of Templar Château of Bezu, the Château of Blanchefort and Rennes-le-Château are each located on a mountain top. Together, with the high spots of two other peaks, the locations form a perfect pentagon (five equal sides) some fifteen miles in circumference.. "At night, a fire lit upon each peak would easily be seen." Like Rennes-le-Château "the village church dates back to at least the time of the Visigoths, some thirteen centuries ago. The church is dedicated to Saint Magdalene..."

"The early astronomers saw the earth as the center of the universe, around which the Sun, the stars and the planets revolved. Each planet forms its own pattern of movement around the Sun as seen from the Earth. For the ancient watchers of the heavens, those differing patterns of movement allowed them to draw geometric shapes based on the positions of each planet when it was aligned with the Sun."
"Only one planet describes a precise and regular geometric pattern in the sky - and that planet is Venus, the heavenly counterpart of the earthly Mary Magdalene - and the pattern that she draws as regular as clockwork every eight years is a pentacle."
"There can be no doubt that churches, calvaires, castles and obscure ruins - almost every structure of note upon the map -form an intricate web of alignments which intersect with perfect regularity on the zero [Paris] meridian...The distance covered by three of those division is the circle radius measure. Each point is separated from the next by exactly one third of 933.586 poles!"

"The accepted definition of a pole [also known as the Rod or Perch] is now 5.5 yards - one 320th part of a mile, i.e., 198 inches...The kilometer - one thousand meters or one then-thousandth of a quadrant of the earth's surface - when translated into English measure is 39,370 inches, and the square toot of 39,370 is 198.41874!"
"There is an ancient Chinese measure called the Kung (or official) Ch'ih, the length of which is given as 14.14 inches - or, to within about one twentieth of an inch, the square toot of 198.41874!"
"The suggested origin of Professor Thom's Megalithic yard is the ancient Sumerian Shusi, given as 2.75 feet. This is 33 inches, or exactly the one sixth division of a Pole.
"Therefore:
     the SHUSI times 6 equals the POLE;
     the KUNG CH'IH equals the square root of the POLE
     and the POLE is the square root of the KILOMETER....a measure apparently not established until the late 18th century!"
     - Henry Lincoln, The Holy Place

Near Rennes-le-Château, above the village of Coustaussa, are the 'Capitelles' and 'Camp Grand'. "We were not prepared for the astonishing sight which we found on the hillside. Not just a few, but hundreds - perhaps thousands - of bee-hive shaped stone structures were scattered across the countryside as far as the eye could see....Some were in remarkably good repair, perhaps built and re-built over centuries. Others were little more than collapsed heaps of stones. Most, however, were clearly and easily identifiable as solid buildings, erected to last, each containing one small room with a doorway and, invariably, a narrow window. Some were square, some rectangular, some curricular, some ovoid. Each had a beautifully and skillfully constructed dry-stone roof. A very few of the structures seemed to be completely solid, with no interior chamber, which makes it difficult to relate them to the idea of 'shelters'. An historian who has examined my photographs described them as reminiscent of Neolithic bee-hive burial chambers."
Many "are in such fine condition that it is difficult to assign them a very great age in their present state. Indeed, it has been suggested that such structures were still being erected (or re-erected) as late as the 18th century."
At a higher elevation "we found a great stretch of double wall with traces of buttressing, giving the appearance of nothing so much as defensive ramparts...most reminiscent of Ancient Mycenae in Greece/"
Could this "'city'...be Reddis/Aereda, the ancient and legendary city of the Visigoths, of which Rennes-le-Château is supposed to be the sole remaining trace. Certainly, Rennes-le-Château is little more than a mile and a half away and, equally certainly, no other trace of Aereda has so far come to light."
     - Henry Lincoln, The Holy Place 

"The Visigoths were adherents of the Aryan heresy which denied the divinity of Jesus. Their descendants founded the Merovingian dynasty which ruled Gaul until the death of Dagobert II."
     - Steve Mizrach, "The Mysteries of Rennes-le-Château and the Prieure du Sion"

"The Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris contains a facsimile (produced by the monk Lucerius) of the highly reputed Fredegar's Chronicle - an exhaustive 7th-century historical work of which the original took 35 years to compile. A special edition of Fredegar's manuscript was presented to the illustrious Nebelungen court and was recognized by the state authorities as a comprehensive, official history. Fredegar (who died in 660) was a Burgundian scribe, and his Chronicle covered the period from the earliest days of the Hebrew patriarchs to the era of the Merovingian kings. It cited numerous sources of information of cross-reference, including the writings of St Jerome (translator of the Old Testament into Latin), Archbishop Isidore of Seville (author of the Encyclopedia of Knowledge), and Bishop Gregory of Tours (author of The History of the Franks)."
     - Laurence Gardner, Bloodline of the Holy Grail, pp. 17 

Lincoln and his co-authors fashioned a theory that Christ had descendents who "legged it to the south of France where they intermarried with the royal Franks to found what eventually became the mystical Merovingian Dynasty. Ergo, the real mission of the Templars and Priory of Zion: to safeguard not just the treasure of the Crusades, but to preserve the Grail, which appeared in medieval texts as 'Sangraal' or 'Sang réal', and which Lincoln et al. translated to mean sang réal, or 'royal blood'. In other words: the dynastic legacy of Christ, literally."
     - Jonathan Vankin and John Whalen, "Descendants of Jesus? Or Scam Artistes Extraordinaire?"

"'Sang réal' has been traditionally interpreted as the 'holy grail' which, according to legend, Mary Magdalene carried to the Jewish kingdom of southern Gaul (including Rennes-le-Château. It may have been believed by adherents of a secret tradition that Mary Magdalene was the wife of Jesus and that what she brought was not a vessel but the royal seed of David in her womb."
     - Steve Mizrach, "The Mysteries of Rennes-le-Château and the Prieure du Sion"

"...The Merovingians were considered in their day to be quasi-mystical warrior-kings vested with supernatural powers."
     - Jonathan Vankin and John Whalen, "Descendants of Jesus? Or Scam Artistes Extraordinaire?"

"Up until recently, little was known about these long-haired kings, as they inhabited that historical epoch derided as the 'Dark Ages'. The founder of the royal line, Merovech, was said to be of two fathers - his mother, already pregnant by King Chlodio, was seduced while swimming in the ocean by a 'Quinotaur,' whatever that was, and Merovech was formed somehow by the commingling of Frankish blood and that of the mysterious aquatic creature. Like the Nazoreans of old, the Merovingian monarchs never cut their hair, and bore a distinctive birthmark - said to be a red cross over the shoulder blades. Their robes were fringed with tassels which were said to carry magical curative powers. They were known as occult adepts, and in one Merovingian tomb was found such items as a golden bull's head, a crystal ball, and several golden miniature bees. And strangely, many skulls of these monarchs appear to have been ritually incised - i.e. trephanned."
"The Merovingians were 'sacred kings' who reigned but did not rule, leaving the secular governing function to chancellors known as the Mayors of the Palace. It was the one of the Mayors, Pepin the Fat, who founded the dynasty that came to supplant them - the Carolingians."
     - Steve Mizrach, "The Mysteries of Rennes-le-Château and the Prieure du Sion"

The Merovingians traced their ancestry back to the Benjamites who, according to legend, has fled from Israel to Arcadia in Greece.

"One of the more mysterious footnotes in history is the story of the Principality of Septimania. Granted by Peppin III to the large Jewish population in the south of France, its first king, Theodoric, claimed descent not only from the Merovingian Kings, but lineal descent from King David himself. Both the king and the Pope acknowledged this pedigree. His son, Guillem de Gellone, was a great, almost legendary hero about whom no less than six medieval epics were written, including Wilehalm by Wolfram von Eschenbach. He is closely linked with the Grail family. .His descendant, 17 generations later, was Godfroi de Bouillon, leader of the First Crusade who was, by the Pope, made King of Jerusalem."
      - J.J. Collins, "Sangraal, The Mystery of the Holy Grail"

(2) An Ancient Secret Society?

"Pierre Plantard de Saint-Clair [was] apparently the source behind much of the recent literature devoted to the hilltown and its enigmatic priest. Shepherded to Paris's Bibliotheque Nationale, our trio of historical investigators [Baigent, Leigh & Lincoln] discovered there a provocative genealogy purporting to link Pierre Plantard to King Dagobert II and the Merovingian dynasty.
"Throughout these Dossiers Secrets at Paris's national library were tantalizing historical references to a mysterious and ancient secret society called Prieure de Sion, or Priory of Zion."
"Lincoln and company checked with the French authorities and discovered that there was indeed a contemporary organization calling itself Priory of Zion. And who do you think was registered as the group's secretary-general but Pierre Plantard."
     - Jonathan Vankin and John Whalen, "Descendants of Jesus? Or Scam Artistes Extraordinaire?" 

"According to Baigent, Leigh and Lincoln, the Order of Sion was founded in the 1090s by Godfroide Bouillon, one of the leaders of the First Crusade who had recaptured Jerusalem. They claim that it was this Order that lay behind Hugues of Champagne and the founding of the Templars."
     - Lynn Picknett & Clive Prince, Turin Shroud - In Whose Image? The Shocking Truth Unveiled

"The earliest roots of the Prieure de Sion are in some sort of Hermetic or Gnostic society led by a man named Ormus. This individual is said to have reconciled paganism and Christianity. The story of Sion only comes into focus in the Middle Ages. In 1070, a group of monks from Calabria, Italy, led by one Prince Ursus, founded the Abbey of Orval in France near Stenay, in the Ardennes. These monks are said to have formed the basis for the the Order de Sion, into which they were 'folded' in 1099 by Godfroi de Bouillion."
     - Jonathan Vankin and John Whalen, "Descendants of Jesus? Or Scam Artistes Extraordinaire?"

"The avowed and declared objective of the Prieure de Sion is the restoration of the Merovingian dynasty and bloodline - to the throne not only of France, but to the thrones of other European nations as well."
"By dint of dynastic alliances and intermarriages, this line came to include Godfroi de Bouillion, who captured Jerusalem in 1099, and various other noble and royal families, past and present."
     - Baigent, Leigh & Lincoln, The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail 

"Godfroi was, by legend, a member of the Grail Family, and by lineage a Merovingian and apparently, rightful King of Jerusalem by his descent from David. It is clear that he was aware of this. When he left for the first crusade, he sold all of his property. He intended to stay in Jerusalem. Godfroi was close to de Payen and the count of Champagne, and Baudoin [his brother] was integral to the founding of the Templars."
      - J.J. Collins, "Sangraal, The Mystery of the Holy Grail"

"One might therefore term Godfroi de Bouillon as a sort of 'king of kings', or at least a maker of kings, since he founded the Order of Sion that could crown Kings of Jerusalem."
     - Michael Bradley, Holy Grail Across the Atlantic

"To the south of Jerusalem looms the 'high hill' of Mount Sion." By 1099 an abbey had been built on the ruins of an old Byzantine basilica at the express command of Godfroi de Buoillon.
"According to one chronicler, writing in 1172, it was extremely well fortified, with its own walls, towers and battlements. And this structure was called the Abbey of Notre Dame du Mont de Sion."
     - Baigent, Leigh & Lincoln, The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail

"In 1979, M. Plantard had said to us, quite categorically, that the Prieure was in possession of the treasure of the Temple of Jerusalem, plundered by the Romans during the revolt of A.D. 66 and subsequently carried to the south of France, in the vicinity of Rennes-le-Château. The treasure, M. Plantard stated, would be returned to Israel 'when the time is right.'"
     - Baigent, Leigh & Lincoln, The Messianic Legacy

"At some point, according to Lincoln et al., the treasure had passed from the Merovingians to the Priory of Zion, whose Templar operatives later hustled the precious hoard from the Holy Land to the French Cathars, who, on the eve of their destruction by the church, squirreled the lucre away in the Pyrenees."

But what if the "treasure" was something other than gold? After all, legend had it that the Cathar heretics possessed a valuable, even sacred relic, 'which according to a number of legends, was the Holy Grail, itself."
     - Jonathan Vankin and John Whalen, "Descendants of Jesus? Or Scam Artistes Extraordinaire?"

"By 19 July 1116, the name of the Ordre de Sion was already appearing on official charters and documents. We found another charter, dated 1152 and bearing the seal of King Louis VII of France, which conferred upon the Order it first major seat in Europe, at Orleans. We found a later charter, dated 1178 and bearing the seal of Pope Alexander III, which confirmed certain land holdings of the Order not only in the Holy Land, but in France, Spain and throughout the Italian peninsula - in Sicily, in Naples, in Calabria, In Lombardy."
     - Baigent, Leigh & Lincoln, The Messianic Legacy

"For about one hundred years, the Order of the Temple (Knights Templar) and Sion were apparently unified under one leadership, though they are said to have separated at the 'cutting of the elm' at Gisors in 1188."
     - Steve Mizrach, "The Mysteries of Rennes-le-Château and the Prieure du Sion"

"Near the end of the thirteenth Century a separate detachment of Templars was sent from the Aragonese province of Rossillon to the Rennes-le-Château area in southern France [the old Cathar stronghold]." This fresh detachment established itself on the summit of the mountain of Bezu, erecting a lookout post and a chapel.
"Alone of all the Templars in France, they were left unmolested by Philippe le Bel's seneschals on October 13, 1307. On that fateful day the commander of the Templar contingent at Bezu was a Seigneur de Goth. And before taking the name of Pope Clement V, the archbishop of Bordeaux - King Philippe's vacillating pawn - was Bertrand de Goth. Moreover, the new pontiff's mother was Ida de Blanchefort, of the same family as Bertrand de Blanchefort [the fourth Grand Master of the Order of the Temple]. Was the pope then privy to some secret entrusted to the custody of his family?"
     - Baigent, Leigh & Lincoln, The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail

In The Tomb of God, authors Richard Andrews and Paul Schellenberger have drawn their own controversial conclusion as to what the secret might have been: The bearings of the site, based on the parchments, paintings and drawings of the de Negre gravestones (that reportedly had been found by Saunière), intersect on one point - a rocky outcropping on Mount Cardou, five kilometers from Rennes-le-Château.

"The secret itself is the Tomb Of Jesus, in where the remains of Jesus are kept. They have checked and double checked and triple checked every new discovered hint and answer, and they have come to the conclusion that the different hints all point to the same location. After a search in the given location, there are indications that a tunnel has been excavated in early middle ages. Unfortunately, the entrance to the possible tunnel is blocked by thousands of tons of stone and rock. Only a official extensive excavation with modern gear will probably give an answer."
     - Sander van der Linden (private correspondence)

"Whether is was the intrigues and the Wars of Religion in the sixteenth century, the insurrection known as the Fronde in the seventeenth century or the Masonic conspiracies of the eighteenth century, successive generations of precisely the same families were implicated, operating in accordance with a single consistent pattern."
     - Baigent, Leigh & Lincoln, The Messianic Legacy

(1) The Grades

Contained in the Dossiers Secrets was a series of names and dates ranging from the founding of the Knights Templar to modern times, which purported to be a list of the Grand Masters of the Priory of Sion.

"Themes such as Arcadia, the number 58, Black Madonnas and Mary Magdalene are found in noticeable profusion where the Priory is supposed to have had influence, and in the works of artists, writers and poets who are said to be connected with that organization. These recurring themes would seem to indicated an 'underground stream' of esoteric belief."
     - Lynn Picknett & Clive Prince, Turin Shroud - In Whose Image? The Shocking Truth Unveiled

"Depending on what statutes one considers, Sion either has 9,841 members in nine grades, or 1,093 members in seven, with the supreme member, the 'Nautonnier' or Grand Master of the Order being, till 1963, Jean Cocteau. While it is believed the head has been Pierre Plantard de St.-Clair up until recent times, he claims to have left that post in 1984, so it is not clear who runs the organization at this time."
     - Steve Mizrach, "The Mysteries of Rennes-le-Château and the Prieure du Sion"

The members of the Order of the Priory of Sion is divided into two effective groups:
     (a) The Legion, charged with the apostolate.
     (b) The Phalange, guardian of the tradition

The hierarchy of nine grades consists of:

(a) in the 729 provinces
	1 Novices:	6,561 members
	2 Croices:	2,187 members
(b) in the 27 commanderies
	3 Preux:	729 members
	4 Ecuyers:	243 members
	5 Chevaliers:	81 members
	6 Commandeurs:	27 members
(c) in the Arch 'Kyria'
	7 Connetables:	9 members
	8 Senechaux:	3 members
	9 Nautonier:	1 member

The office of Nautonnier or Navigator,is symbolised by the boat of Isis.

"Isis holds in her right hand a small sailing ship with the spindle of a spinning wheel for its mast. From the top of the mast projects a water jug, its handle shaped like a serpent swelled with venom. This indicates that Isis steers the bark of life, full of troubles and miseries, on the stormy ocean of Time. The spindle symbolizes the fact that she spins and cuts the thread of life."
     - Manly P. Hall, Masonic, Hermetic, Quabbalistic & Rosicrucian Symbolical Philosophy

The boat of Isis "was positioned in the constellation of Argo. Specifically, in Egypt this constellation was named Sothis or Soth-Isis, the Star of Isis. Furthermore, in the Egyptian legends this vessel represented the female organ of generation."
     - David Wood, Genisis

The Ark of the Covenant of the ancient Israelites is believed to have been modelled after the ceremonial ark of Isis.

(2) The Grand Masters

"...It would seem that Sion's Grand Mastership has recurrently shifted between two essentially distinct groups of individuals. On the one hand there are figures of monumental stature who - through esoterica, the arts or sciences - have produced some impact on Western tradition, history and culture. On the other hand, there are members of a specific and interlinked network of families - noble, and sometimes royal."
     - Baigent, Leigh and Lincoln, The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail

"...The first Grand Master, the twelfth-century Norman knight Jean de Gisors, took the name Jean II and pose the question: 'Who, then was Jean I?' They offer a few suggestions - John the Baptist, John the Evangelist and John the Divine - before dropping the subject."
     - Lynn Picknett & Clive Prince, Turin Shroud - In Whose Image? The Shocking Truth Unveiled

"This succession was clearly intended to imply an esoteric and Hermetic papacy based on John, in contrast (and perhaps opposition) to the exoteric one based on Peter."
     - Baigent, Leigh and Lincoln, The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail

It has been alleged that Hughes de Payens, first Grand Master of the Knights Templar, had been inducted into the Johannites, a sect which chose John the Baptist as their prophet. According to the Dossiers Secrets, each of the alleged Grand Masters of the Prieure de Sion took the name Jean in succession (supposedly influencing the name chosen by Pope John XXIII). One of the Grand Masters on the list, Leonardo da Vinci, displayed a strong interest in John the Baptist. Another, Sir Isaac Newton, became preoccupied with the writings of the Apocalypse, then attributed to John the Evangelist.

According to the Dossiers Secrets, the following individuals were amongst the Grand Masters:

René d'Anjou (1418-80) - a major impetus behind the Renaissance through his literacy and influence on Cosimo de'Medici setting up bastions of esoteric, Hermetic principles - the 'underground stream'. Legend records that the d'Anjous were descended from Ann the Jew, daughter of Joseph of Arimathea, who supposedly carried the Davidic blood line and settled in western France. Later, the D'Anjou branched into the Houses of De Guise and De Lorraine.

René d'Anjou "was related to the king of France by marriage and remained a trusted ally during the war with England. On paper, René was one of the most powerful men in Europe. Unfortunately, after the failure of his Italian campaign, he was nothing more than a patron of the arts and collector of books. René was co-sponsor of the Arcadia revival in the late 15th century."
     - enoch@execulink.com

"Through his patronage of art, literature and the advancement of knowledge René is one of the most important figures of the formative years of the Renaissance....It was directly as a result of René's influence that Cosimo de Medici sent agents out to look for ancient texts, which resulted in the revival of Neoplatonic and Hermetic thought..."
     - Lynn Picknett & Clive Prince, Turin Shroud - In Whose Image? The Shocking Truth Unveiled

Nicholas Flamel (1330-1418) - Most famous of the alchemists, "the Paris notary Nicolas Flamel...claimed that he dreamed of an occult book, subsequently found it, and succeeded in deciphering it with the aid of a Jewish scholar learned in the mystic Hebrew writings known as the Kabbala. In 1382 Flamel claimed to have succeeded in the 'Great Work' (gold making); certainly he became rich and made donations to churches."
     - Encyclopaedia Britannica

"...One alchemical symbol that is widely acknowledged by modern scholars is that of an old bearded man, the back of whose head shows a young woman looking into a mirror. A statue with this image graces the exterior of Nantes cathedral, as does a bearded king with the body of a woman, in the porch at Chartres that depicts the Queen of Sheba."
"The hermaphrodite is a pure alchemical symbol, representing the perfect balance achieved in the Great Work, and the perfect being, in which the alchemist himself is transformed and transmuted spiritually - and, as many believe, physically as well. It was a 'consummation devoutly to be wished' and had little, if anything, to do with sexuality as we understand it today. The Great Work was an explosion of the potential into the actual, where they mystical quest takes on concrete form. As the alchemists said, 'as above, so below' - this process was believed to make spirit into matter and transmute one sort of matter into another. It made a man into a god."
     - Lynn Picknett & Clive Prince, Turin Shroud - In Whose Image? The Shocking Truth Unveiled

Revered by men like Newton, Flamel was the discoverer of The Sacred Book of Abraham the Jew, Prince, Priest, Levite, Astrologer and Philosopher to that Tribe of Jews who by the Wrath of God were Dispersed amongst the Gauls which became one of the most famous works in Western esoteric tradition.

Sandro Filipepi (1483-1510) - better known as Botticelli, the renowned Renaissance painter.
Botticelli's Primavera "is a complex Neo-Platonic allegory, drawing on some verses by Politian. Mercury, who is Reason, is plucking fruit from a tree; so young Lorenzo's reason will come to fruition if united with humane culture. The Three Graces are dancing: they are Splendor, Youth, happiness, or Grace. Beauty, Faith. Their threeness speaks of Christian mystery. At the same time they are associated with Venus; Pico speaks of the division of the unity of Venus into the Three Graces. Over Venus's head Cupid aims at these three; they too must aspire to God through love. On the other side Zephyrus, the West Wind, comes from the sun's setting with the nymph Flora, who is transformed into the serene goddess with the flowery dress. A picture of spring, then, but symbolizing the awakening of the love of God through humane culture."
     - John Ferguson, An Illustrated Encyclopaedia of Mysticism and the Mystery Religions
Other famous Botticeli paintings include The Birth of Venus and Mars and Venus. 

Leonardo de Vinci (1510-19) - "Having little formal education, Leonardo enthusiastically accepted Nicholas's [of Cusa] new worldview [of an universe with no limits in space, no beginning or ending in time] as a justification for rejecing the outmoded authority of the 'pharisees - the 'holy friars' and of his 'adversaries' Plato and Aristotole."
"For the first time since the Ionians, he put forward a conception of science that was wholly secular, in no way based on religious doctrines or philosophy....In Leonardo the craftsman, scientist, and inventor are merged into one."
     - Eric Lerner, The Big Bang Never Happened

"Leonardo was left-handed; he was a strict vegetarian; he dissected dead bodies, he sought the company of alchemists and necromancers; he worked on a Sunday and only attended Mass when at court."
"The only surviving sculpture that involved Leonardo in its making is the statue of John the Baptist in the Baptistry in Florence, on which he collaborated with the utmost secrecy with Giovan Francesco Rustici, a known necromancer and alchemist. And Leonardo's last painting was 'John the Baptist', showing him with the same half-smile as 'The Mona Lisa', and pointing straight upwards with the index finger of his right hand. This in Leonardo's work is a sign always associated with John: in the 'Adoration of the Magi' a person stands by the elevated roots of a carob tree - John's tree, symbol of sacrifical blood - while making this gesture. In his famous cartoon of St. Anne the subject also does this, warning an oblivious Virgin...The disciple whose face is perhaps accusingly close to Jesus' in 'The Last Supper' is also making this gesture. All these gestures are saying 'remember John'."
     - Lynn Picknett & Clive Prince, Turin Shroud - In Whose Image? The Shocking Truth Unveiled

Robert Fludd (1595-1637) - "inherited John Dee's mantle as England's leading exponent of esoteric thought" who consorted with Andrea, amongst others involved in the 'Rosicrucian' movement.
"Historian Frances Yates, in her book The Rosicrucian Enlightenment, in a chapter entitled 'Rosicrucianism and Freemasonry', quotes one De Quincey, who states, 'Freemasonry is neither more nor less than Rosicrucianism as modified by those who transplanted it in England, whence it was re-exported to the other countries of Europe.' De Quincey states that Robert Fludd was the person most responsible for bringing Rosicrucianism to England and giving it its new name."
     - Gerry Rose ,"The Venetian Takeover of England and Its Creation of Freemasonry"

Johann Valenin Andrea (1637-54) - "the creator of the semi-secret Christian unions and author of the Rosicrucian manifestos, a Hermetic allegory which also evokes resonances with the Grail Romances and the Knights Templar. At this time, with the eclipse of the House of Lorraine, the Priory transferred its allegiance to the more influential Stuarts after Frederick of the Palatinate married Elizabeth Stuart, daughter of James I of England. Frederick "created a culture, a 'Rosicrucian' state with its court centered on Heidelberg." [Francis Yates]
     - Baigent & Leigh, The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail

"Through the historical detective work of Frances Yates, we now know that this era was a time when many 'Rosicrucian' ideas were moving to the Continent, and esoteric thinkers were confluencing around Frederick, Elector of the Palatinate of Bohemia, as the figure who would usher in the reforms of Church and State many expected."
     - Steve Mizrach, "The Mysteries of Rennes-le-Château and the Prieure du Sion" 

Robert Boyle (1654-91) - part of the "Invisible College" of dynamic English and European minds which became the Royal Society after the restoration of the monarch in 1160 with the Stuart ruler, Charles II as its patron and sponsor. His two closest friends were Isaac Newton and John Locke who met regularly with him to study alchemical works.

"In the ancient world alchemy was referred to simply as 'the sacred art'. It flourished in the first three centuries A.D. in Alexandria, where it was the combined product of glass and metal technology, a Hellenistic philosophy of the unity of all things through the four elements (earth, air, water, fire), and 'occult' religion and astrology....The essential principle was that all things, both animate and inanimate, were permeated by spirit, and that the substances of the lower world could, through a synthesis of chemical operations and imaginative reasoning, be transmuted into higher things of the spiritual world - things not subject to decay."
     - David Maybury-Lewis, Millenium

"The central idea of Gnosticism is that the material of which 'soul and true being' is composed is trapped through a series of cosmic misfortunes in a low-level universe that is alien to it. And the alchemists literalized these ideas to suggest that the spirit could somehow be distilled or coaxed from the dense matrix of matter."
     - Terence McKenna, The Archaic Revival 

Isaac Newton (1691-1727) - "believed alchemy might enable human beings to shape and control the world by understanding and participating in its God-given vitality. He conducted alchemical experiments with great secrecy at Trinity College, Cambridge, working alone, even building his own furnaces without the aid of a bricklayer. He made a pact with the chemist John Boyle not to communicate their shared alchemical knowledge to others, because the 'subtle' and 'noble' powers of matter and the means of controlling them should be kept secret by those chosen by God to be entrusted with them."
     - David Maybury Lewis, Millenium

"He had been obsessed...with the notion that a secret wisdom lay concealed within the pages of the Scriptures: Daniel of the Old Testament and John of the New particularly attracted him because 'the language of the prophetic writings was symbolic and hieroglyphical and their comprehension required a radically different method of interpretation'."
"He had learned Hebrew to do the job properly and had then carried out a...meticulous exercise on the book of Ezekiel...to produce a painstaking reconstruction of the floor plan of the Temple of Solomon...He had been convinced that the great edifice built to house the Ark of the Covenant had been a kind of cryptogram of the universe; if he could decipher this cryptogram, he had believed, then he would know the mind of God."
     - Graham Hancock, The Sign and the Seal

"Newton was not the first of the age of reason. He was the last of the magicians, the last of the Babylonians and Sumerians, the last great mind which looked out on the world with the same eyes as those who began to build our intellectual inheritance rather less than ten thousand years ago."
Newton "saw the whole universe and all that is in it as a riddle, as a secret which could be read by applying pure thought to certain evidence, certain mystic clues which God had hid about the world to allow a sort of philosopher's treasure hunt to the esoteric brotherhood. He believed that these clues were to be found partly in the evidence of the heavens and in the constitution of elements, but also partly in certain papers and traditions handed down by the brethren in an unbroken chain back to the original cryptic revelation."
     - John Maynard Keynes, Newton the Man

"Just as the world was created from dark chaos through the bringing forth of the light and through the separation of the aery firmament and of the waters from the earth, so our work brings forth the beginning out of black chaos and its first matter through the separation of the elements and the illumination of matter."
     - Sir Isaac Newton

Charles Radclyffe (1727-46) - personal secretary to Bonnie Prince Charlie; promulgated, if not devised the "Scottish Rite" Freemasonry. Radclyffe worked through Chevalier Andrew Ramsay, a member of a quasi Masonic, quasi-"Rosicrucian" society called the Philadelphians. Ramsay, a close friend of Isaac Newton, was prominent in disseminating Freemasonry to the continent.

Charles de Lorraine (1746-80) - the brother of Francois, Duke of Lorraine who was the Holy Roman emperor who married Maria Theresa of Austria in 1735. The first European prince to become a mason, Francois' court at Vienna became Europe's Masonic capital. 

Charles Nodier (1801-44) - the flamboyant mentor for an entire generation including young Victor Hugo, Balzac, Dalcroix, Dumas pere, Lamartine, Musset, Theophile Gautier, Gerard de Nerval and Alfred de Vigny - all who drew upon esoteric and Hermetic tradition. "Around 1793 he created another group - or perhaps an inner circle of the first [the Philadephes]- which included one of the subsequent plotters against Napoleon."
     - William T. Still, New World Order

Victor Hugo (1844-85) "prophesied that in the Twentieth Century, war would die, frontier boundaries would die, dogma would die...and Man would live. 'He will possess something higher than these...a great country, the Whole Earth...and a great hope, the Whole Heaven'."
     - Marilyn Ferguson, The Aquarian Conspiracy

Claude Debussy (1885-1918)- an integral member of the symbolist circles which included Oscar Wilde, W. B. Yeats, Stefan George, Paul Valery, the young Andre Gide and Marcel Proust. He also consorted with the Marquis Stanislas de Guaita, founder of the so-called Cabalistic Order of the Rose-Croix, and Jules Boise, a notorious Satanist who prompted MacGregor Mathers to found the Order of the Golden Dawn.

Jean Cocteau (1918-) - an associate of Jacques Maritain and Andre Malraux, he was made a Chevalier of the Legion of Honor (for his quiet work in the Resistance?). Although associated with royalist Catholic circles, Cocteau's Catholicism was highly unorthodox and his redecorations of churches reflected Rosicrucian themes.

     - List from Baigent & Leigh, The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail

"Sion appears to have been at the nexus of two French anti-monarchical movements, the Compagnie du St.-Sacrament of the 17th century (acting on behalf on the Guise-Lorraine families) and the Fronde of the 18th, as well as an attempt to make the Hapsburgs emperors of all Europe in the 19th- the Hieron du Val d'Or."
     - Steve Mizrach, "The Mysteries of Rennes-le-Château and the Prieure du Sion"

"...In 1740, the Grand Master of the Order of Malta caused the Bull of Pope Clement XII, to be published in that island, and forbade the meetings of the Freemasons. On this occasion several Knights and many citizens left the island; and in 1741, the Inquisition persecuted the Freemasons at Malta. The Grand Master proscribed their assemblies under severe penalties, and six Knights were banished from the island in perpetuity for having assisted at a meeting."
     - Commander Gourdin (from A Sketch of the Knight Templars and the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem by Richard Woof)

"In 1796 Napoleon was one of three revolutionary 'Directors' heading the government. Another 'Director' was Abbe Sieyes, who knew of certain genealogical researches that had been undertaken by one Abbe Pichon. Pichon had access to the royal archives captured by the revolutionary government, where some important genealogies had been hidden away, and he discovered that a direct descent from Dagobert II had been maintained up to then."
"...Abbe Seiyes urged Napoleon to marry Josephine Beauhamais because she was a Merovingian descendant, and to adopt her two children by a previous marriage who were of this anciently royal stock." In 1798 "on the way to Egypt, Bonaparte detoured to capture Malta and the treasure held by the Knights of Malta."
     - Michael Bradley, Holy Grail Across the Atlantic

"It was fortunate for the French that there was little fight left in the Knights of St. John...the last Grand Master, the apathetic von Hompesch, made only a show of resistance before accepting Bonaparte's terms...For the cost of three men killed, the French secured an invaluable naval base and a great deal of treasure..."
"Over the five days following the island's capture, Bonaparte tore apart and refashioned every aspect of Maltese life. The Order of St. John was abolished and its members departed, apart from a handful who were persuaded to join the Army of Egypt...The treasures of the Order, amassed over 500 years, were promptly sequestered... and seven million francs' worth was diverted to the military chest."
     - David G. Chandler, The Campaigns of Napoleon

"...At his coronation as Emperor in 1804 he adorned his imperial robe with the gold bee figurines which had been discovered in the tomb of Childeric I, father of Clovis. Napoleon styled himself Emperor of the Franks, not 'Emperor of the French'..."
     - Michael Bradley, Holy Grail Across the Atlantic

A clue to the gold bee figurines on Napoleon's imperial robe may be the Sarmoung Society.

(2) Vichy France

"To Saint-Yves d'Alveydre the Templars stood for a policy of federation and universal peace which went back to the Carolingians of the early Middle Ages. Like many French conservative thinkers, including (many years after him) Charles de Gaulle, he felt that the ancien rŽgime in France had take a wrong turning, responsible for its later catastrophe, which he could identify. Unfortunately his choice of the Templars as a solution to the supposed riddle of the French monarchy was wrong; they had performed none of the functions that he attributed to them, and his speculations about them were daydreams added to the old fantasies of Aroux. [who had portrayed the Middle Ages as having been penetrated by a vast Manichaean conspiracy]."

"The Vichy regime legislated against Freemasonry, and co-operated with the Germans in identifying and acting against Masons. But, even within the regime itself, people were very doubtful that Freemasonry had genuinely been banished. In the so-called 'Chavin Report', which seems to have originated from within or near government circles, allegations were made that large number of people in responsible positions belonged to Masonic political groups called 'synarchist' which had been in existence since the 1920s. These synarchists were supposed to have been inspired in part by the doctrine of Saint-Yves d'Alveydre. They were represented as a group of influential politicians, businessmen, and so-called 'technocrats' who had been plotting to seize power ever since a reputed 'Synarchist Revolutionary Pact' of 1922."
     - Peter Partner, The Murdered Magicians 

During second world war in France, self--proclaimed grand master of the Prieure de Sion, M. Plantard, was grand master of Alpha Galantes. Jew and Masons were not welcome and Vaincre, the journal of Alpha Galantes, warned Hitler about plot by Freemasons. After the war Plantard dissociated himself with the French collaborators and said that he was actually working for the French Resistance.

"He hinted that beneath its pro-Vichy and Petainist patina, Vaincre [the journal of Alpha Galantes] contained coded messages and instruction which would have been decipherable only to the Resistance....Vaincre had been printed by Poirier Murat, Chevalier of the Legion d'Honneur, holder of the Medaille Militaire and officer in the French Resistance."
"According to Vaincre and Alpha Galantes, chivalry was to be the instrument of national renewal for France: '...a chivalry is indispensable because our country cannot be reborn except through its knights.'"

In the fifth issue of Vaincre, dated 21 January 1943, "a great German, one of the Masters in our Order" is quoted as saying: "It is therefore with total confidence that I depart to perform my mission; for while not deluding myself about the perils I run in discharging my duty, I know that until my last breath my watchword will consist in recognition of Alpha and fidelity to its chief."
"This statement is ascribed to Hans von Moltke, a career diplomat" and "also a cousin of Claus von Stauffenberg.... Helmut James von Moltke, together with Peter Yorck von Wartenburg, was the leader of the so-called Kreisau Circle, the civilian wing of the German Resistance to Hitler."
Both Alpha Galantes and the Kreisau Circle "were intent on youth movements and on mobilizing the resources of European youth. Both insisted on a moral and spiritual renewal - an opposition, in Moltke's words, 'based on fundamental principles'. Both were essentially chivalric in their orientation. And both were dedicated to the eventual creation of a United States of Europe."
     - Baigent and Leigh, Holy Blood and Holy Grail

(3) Heroes of the Resistance

On February 13, 1973 the Midi Libre "suggested that the Merovingian descendants included 'a true pretender to the throne of France', whom it identified as M. Alain Poher....During the Second World War he won the Resistance Medal and the Croix de Guierre. Following the resignation of de Gaulle, he was provisional President of France from April 28th to June 19th, 1969. He occupied the same position on the death of Georges Pompidou, from April 2nd to May 27th, 1974. In 1973...M. Poher was President of the French Senate."
     - Baigent and Leigh, Holy Blood and Holy Grail

"During the Second World War, while Poher was doing something heroic in the Resistance to win the Resistance Medal and the Croix de Guerre, and while Plantard [future Nautonnier of the Priory of Sion] defied the Nazis and suffered torture for it, the Cross of Lorraine was adopted as the symbol of the Free French forces under Charles de Gaulle. This cross, having two cross-bars instead of one, originated with the ancient French house of Anjou, where Guiot found his tale about Percival. It was later adopted by the Merovingian-descended rulers of Lorraine in the old Sicambrian heartland on the Rhine."
     - Michael Bradley, Holy Grail Across the Atlantic

"Invited in 1947 by the Federal Government of Switzerland, he [Pierre Plantard de Saint-Clair) resided for several years there, near Lake Leman, where numerous charges de missions and delegates from the entire world are gathered."
     - Anne Lea Hisler (Plantard's wife)

"The Marshall Plan, the financial and political plan for the reconstruction of Europe, was thrashed out at Lake Leman in Switzerland. The American President, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, had approved this plan, and two of his closest friends and advisors had backgrounds and interests as disreputable as Pierre Plantard's. One such advisor, the financial wizard, Bernard Baruch, was a graduate of a French 'hermetic' school and was the financial architect of the so-called Marshall Plan. He visited Lake Leman frequently in the immediate post-war years."
"Baruch had been a disciple of George Gurdjieff, a Cathar-like mystic who had founded the 'Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man' in Fontainbleu, France during the 1920's and 1930s."
     - Michael Bradley, Holy Grail Across the Atlantic

(4) De Gaulle's Rise to Power

In 1957 the specter of a civil war loomed in France. "In Algeria, a network of semi-secret societies began to appear, the Comites de Salut Public (Committees of Public Safety). Modeled on the Committees of Public Safety during the French Revolution, the Algerian network undertook to weld French interests, the French Army and the French population of North Africa into a cohesive and unified force which would constitute a bulwark against Algerian independence and keep the colony permanently attached to France....They received support from a number of high-ranking military men, including Marshal Alphonse Juin, who is alleged to have been an important member of the Prieure de Sion."

"In April, 1958, the newly elected French government signaled a desire to resolve the Algerian crisis by granting independence to the colony." In reaction the Committees of Public Safety staged a coup d'Žtat in Algeria and Committees established in France helped to sweep de Gaulle into power. "For at least some of the French Committees...the primary objective seems to have been installing de Gaulle in the Presidency, and Algeria may have been wholly incidental, if not irrelevant. It is difficult to be certain about this, however, simply because the Committees themselves, especially in France, were so shadowy. They were obviously widespread, obviously very well organized - a true 'secret army', with many links with the regular army. But firm information about them is virtually impossible to obtain, and reliable documentation is virtually non-existent."

When de Gaulle began to negotiate with Algerian nationalist leaders for the country's independence, the Algerian Committees formed the "OAS, the Organization de l'Armee Secrete, or secret Army Organization, which pledged itself to avenge what it saw as de Gaulle's treason." In order to dissolve the mainland French Committees and leave the Algerian Committees isolated, "M. Plantard established the Central Paris Committee, which imposed itself as a kind of ad hoc authority over the other committees already in existence and proceeded in effect to hijack them. De Gaulle, in the meantime, was able to maintain a serene Olympian aloofness from the apparently 'grass-roots' movement which swept him to power - as well as from the potentially awkward process of having personally to dismantle the organizational apparatus of that movement before it could be turned against him."
Andre Malraux, who "by 1947... had mobilized a private army, the RPF, or Ressemblement du Peuple Francais - to secure de Gaulle's position and thwart Communist attempts to seize power in France" was also claimed as a member of the Prieure de Sion.
     - Baigent and Leigh, Holy Blood and Holy Grail

Royal Blood?
TThe confusion of "Holy Grail" le saint graal as Sang réal' or "royal blood" originated with Sir Thomas Malory's misspelling in his Le Morte D'Arthur (15th C). There is no valid etymological basis for Baigent, Leigh & Lincoln's contention that "holy grail" means "holy blood".

Confusion Over the Parchments
According to Antoine Captier, a resident of Rennes-le-Château, his great-grandfather, who been Saunière's bell ringer, made the original find in a stone alter pillar where the top had come off. What the bell ringer discovered protruding from the pillar was not four parchments, however, but a glass vial with a scrap of paper rolled up inside. Now on display in the Saunière museum at Rennes-le-Château, the stone pillar does have a small recess set into it, but it is much too small to have held the parchments. There is a secret cavity with a sliding panel in a second column in the museum, but this is a baluster made of solid oak not of stone. It is in this column, according to the museum, that the glass vial was actually found. The actual contents of the paper inside the vial were never disclosed by Saunière.

Saunière's Trip to Paris
Saunière supposedly visited Paris for five days in March, 1892 to follow-up his discovery. While there, he was said to have celebrated Mass at St. Sulpice. It was also on this trip that the authors of The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail allege that Saunière acquired a reproduction of Poussin's painting (along with the two others). The Louvre, however, records that no copies were made of "Les Bergers D'Arcadie" before 1901.

"In fact there is no evidence that Saunière ever visited St. Sulpice or celebrated Mass there, according to a letter from the seminary's archivist....What's more, most art historians [like Martin Kemp, Professor of Art History, Oxford University] reject the whole idea of occult geometry in Poussin's paintings."
     - "The History of a Mystery", TimeWatch, BBC (1996)

Saunière's Wealth
"But Saunière did have his own secret: he traded in saying private Masses, advertising his services throughout France and abroad, far beyond the official limit of three per day. His fees amounted to thousands of francs, representing so many Masses that he never caught up with a huge backlog. He was called to account by the Bishop of Carcassonne and suspended, but by that time his church had been restored and his presbytery and tower had been built out of his illicit earnings."
Saunière's presbytery, library, "an unusual circular tower of dressed stone, with a spectacular view over the surrounding countryside...and the now very overgrown garden between them indicated a man of fairly solid means rather than fabulous wealth."
According to Abbé Quatrefages, a well-known church archaeologist, Saunière quite unwittingly "discovered two or three tombs underneath his church while the altar was being renewed. They contained a few jewels [a Visigoth necklace and bracelet and some old coins], a gold chalice of no great antiquity [14th C?]. He gave most away, to his housekeeper and colleagues, whose descendants still have them. No coded parchments. The hollow pillar in which the legend-merchants claim he found them is rock-solid. No secrets about the decoration of his church. Most of the items came from church suppliers' catalogues and can be found throughout France."
     - Christopher Campbell-Howes, "Rennes le Château Revisited"

The Mystery of the Tomb
Many years after his discovery, Saunière reportedly destroyed the tomb (which consisted of a headstone and horizontal grave marker) bearing the mysterious inscription so that others would not follow the same lead. Although the tomb was identified in Gerard de Sede's L'Or de Rennes-le-Château as belonging to the Lady of Blanchfort, Saunière himself never revealed whose tomb it was.

"The headstone is quite well documented; a drawing of it was made by the Society for Scientific Studies of the Ande during a field trip to the area in 1905 and printed, with a report on the trip, in the Society's journal."
     - Richard Andrews and Paul Schellenberger, The Tomb of God (1996) p. 231

L'Or de Rennes-le-Château (which Gerard de Sede produced in collaboration with Plantard) cited Eugene Stublein's Engraved Stones of the Languedoc as the source of the two drawings of the grave. Stublein was noted for an illustrated travel guide to thermal baths in the region, called Établissements Thermal. The signatures on the drawings in Engraved Stones of the Languedoc do not match those in the travel guide, however, and the drawings of the tomb have been declared forgeries. Andrews and Schellenberger dismiss this criticism by stating that the drawings are not central to their thesis since there also the proofs in the paintings and parchments. Besides, they add, the forgers themselves could have been members of the Prieure de Sion and privy to real secrets.

Origins of the Prieure du Sion
Plantard previously had established a pro-Vichy organisation called Alpha Galantes, dedicated to renewing France through the principles of chivalry, and had appointed himself Grand Master. The Prieure de Sion was an association with a similar agenda.

"...This mysterious secret society brought itself to light in 1956, and is listed with the French directory of organizations under the subtitle 'Chivalry of Catholic Rules and Institutions of the Independent and Traditionalist Union', which in French abbreviates to CIRCUIT - the name of the magazine distributed internally among members."
     - Steve Mizrach, "The Mysteries of Rennes-le-Château and the Prieure du Sion"

Although an Order of Sion did exist in the Middle Ages, there is no historical evidence that Plantard's association is descended from it.
"In fact the orders and the charters record an abbey of Sion, but never a priory."
     - "The History of a Mystery", TimeWatch, BBC (1996)

"...In documents dating from 1619, it [the Order of Sion] was stated to have incurred the displeasure of King Louis XIII of France, who evicted them from their seat at Orleans and turned the premises over to the Jesuits. After that, the Prieure de Sion [the Order of Sion] seemed to vanish from the historical record, at least under that name, until 1956, when it appeared again, registered in the French Journal officiel."
     - Baigent, Leigh & Lincoln, The Messianic Legacy

Plantard registered the Prieure de Sion in St. Julien. There he drew the name for his order from nearby Mont Sion, not the ancient abbey. Andrews and Schellenberger write that the original Order de Sion apparently had a secondary title "The Order of the Rose Cross Veritas" and linked it with the Rosicrucian movement in the seventeenth century. The original Order of Sion, however, had disappeared from history.
     - "The History of a Mystery", TimeWatch, BBC (1996)

Plantard's Genealogy
Plantard presented a genealogy which showed that the Merovingian king, Dagobert, was a direct ancestor of his, convincing both de Sede and Henry Lincoln.
"In fact Plantard's royal lineage rests on another forgery. His name was inserted into a genealogy copied word for word from a popular history magazine. His real ancestor was a 16th century peasant who grew walnuts."
     - "The History of a Mystery", TimeWatch, BBC (1996)

Although Plantard cannot legitimately claim to be the heir to the throne of France, he was assisted in his endeavors by a real, although dissolute, aristocrat the Marquis Phillipe de Cherissy. It was he, along with Plantard, who deposited the Dossiers Secrets into the Bibliotheque Nationale according to library records. Eventually Plantard, de Cherissy and Gerard de Sede had a falling out over money.

The Secret Behind the Codes
"After their quarrel Plantard made it known that the parchments in de Sede's book were fakes. In 1971 I received a letter from Phillipe de Cherissy implying that he was the author of the two parchments published by Gerard de Sede."
"Plantard trusted me because I was writing a book about him and he gave me the original documents."
     - Pierre Jarnac, author of The Archives of the Treasure of Rennes-le-Château

Jarnac produced the documents for the BBC camera. A note on Parchment 1 in Plantard's handwriting stated "This is the original document faked by Phillipe de Cherissy which Gerard de Sede reproduced in his book L'Or de Rennes-le-Château."

In a forty-four page unpublished paper called "Stone and Paper" de Cherissy "describes how the documents were fabricated, how the ciphers were set and how they can be decoded."
     - Pierre Jarnac, author of The Archives of the Treasure of Rennes-le-Château

According to the "Stone and Paper" the solution for the ciphers in Parchment 2 is as follows:

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