TRAPPED IN A MASONIC WORLD

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The President of the 1956 Priory of Sion was André Bonhomme who was one of the four founding
members of the Priory of Sion in Annemasse in 1956, along with Pierre Plantard. [7] This was the statement
he made in the BBC2 Timewatch documentary; The History of a Mystery [1996]: - ―The Priory of Sion
doesn‘t exist anymore. We were never involved in any activities of a political nature. It was four friends
who came together to have fun. We called ourselves the Priory of Sion because there was a mountain by
the same name close-by. I haven't seen Pierre Plantard in over 20 years and I don't know what he's up to
but he always had a great imagination. I don‘t know why people try to make such a big thing out of
nothing. – There‘s no evidence for a Priory of Sion until the 1950s; to find it, you go to the little town of St-
Julien. Under French Law every new club or association must register itself with the authorities, and
that's why there‘s a dossier here showing that a Priory of Sion filed the proper forms in 1956. According
to a founding member, this eccentric association took its name not from Jerusalem, but from a nearby
mountain [Col du Mont Sion Alt. 786 m]. The dossier also notes that the Priory‘s self-styled Grand Master
Pierre Plantard, who is central to this story, has done time in jail‖.- Pierre Plantard was sentenced on the
17 th December 1953 by the court of St Julien-en-Genevois to six months in prison for breaking the French
Law relating to Abus de Confiance [fraud and embezzlement].
The Bibliothèque Nationale made exact copies for the 60 Minutes programme to look at and examine,
because they said the originals were far too fragile to handle. One document gives the history of the
Priory of Sion dating back to the 12th Century, and there‘s a list of Grand Masters that includes some
extremely distinguished names such as Sir Isaac Newton and Leonardo Da Vinci. And to the novice such
as I, these kinds of details were as fascinating as they were astounding, until such esteemed scholars like
Jonathan Riley-Smith, the former professor of ecclesiastical history at Cambridge University and a leading
authority on the ―Crusades‖, drops a bombshell and reveals: ―I do know what was going on in Jerusalem in
the 12th Century, I spent 40 years working on it, and what these people say, did not happen‖.
French researchers have also questioned the authenticity of these secret files ever since they were
deposited in the Bibliotheque Nationale in the 1960‘s. Their attention came to focus on Pierre Plantard,
who claimed to be the current Grand Master of the Priory of Sion, yet the evidence at the police
headquarters in Paris revealed quite a different story, as historian Claude Charlot, who was then the
director of police archives, said there was a file on Plantard, who died in 2000, showing that during World
War II he was investigated by the secret services, and they concluded: ―He is a young man whose mind, as
we say in French, is cloudy. He is a fantasist; he is not a serious person‖. Charlot told 60 minutes, and he
goes on to say: ―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 goes onto
to say, that apart from that list, no historian has found any evidence that the Priory of Sion ever 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. The Priory of Sion, - was just another figment of Plantard‘s imagination‖.
The 60 minutes programme goes onto question: ―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?‖ John Edwin Wood and Bill Putnam wrote a book about
the mystery and say the text in one of the parchments excludes 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; ―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, adding that it was all just an elaborate 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, [from Plantard].
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.