Monday, May 22, 2006
The Da Vinci Decoder
Anyone who has read or now seen the new movie the Da Vinci code may be well served to read this little blub before swallowing the so-called FACTS that the story is based on.
The so-called 'Priory of Sion' was proven to be a hoax by some French researchers long before that - in the 1970s. The whole thing was a weird fantasy created in the late 1950s by a French Monarchist, convicted fraud, former Nazi collaborator and general nutcase called Pierre Plantard.
The original 'Priory of Sion' was a local government pressure group devoted to issues surrounding public housing in a small French town and was formally registered as such in 1956. It fell apart about 18 months later, partly because the other members (there were about five of them) found out about Plantard's criminal past.
Plantard then went on to use the name as part of a fantasy 'secret society' which he created to bolster his increasingly crazy claims that he was the real heir to the French throne. With the help of a friend, Philippe de Cherisey, he faked some documents - the Dossiers Secrets - and planted them in the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris. Cherisey later quarreled with Plantard and revealed that they were fakes. The rest of Plantard's weird claims were exposed as nonsense by French investigative reporters, and he was soon forgotten.
Until, of course, some amateur 'occult researchers' swallowed his story and elaborated on it in their book Holy Blood Holy Grail in 1982. This gave Plantard's fantasies new life amongst readers who didn't realise that the whole thing was a hoax.
In the 1990s Plantard changed his story, said the Dossiers Secrets actually were fakes and came up with a whole new 'history' for this 'Priory of Sion'. Unfortunately for him, he claimed that a French financier called Roger Patrice-Pelat was a 'Grand Master' of this (new version of) the 'Priory'.
Patrice-Pelat was a friend of President Francois Mitterrand and became entangled in a financial scandal involving the French Prime Minister. In the high-level judicial investigation that followed, the investigating judge summoned Plantard to account for his claims about Patrice-Pelat and had Plantard's apartment searched.
Finally Plantard had the media spotlight on him and had his chance to prove his decades of wild claims. Instead, he buckled and admitted, under oath, that the whole thing was a hoax, that there was no 'Priory' and that the documents which 'proved' it were all total fakes. He died in 2000.
The myth of the 'Priory of Sion' would have died with him, except an American high school teacher called Dan Brown wrote a novel called The Da Vinci Code in which he assured readers on a page entitled 'FACT' that the 'Priory' was 'a real organization' and that Leonardo da Vinci was one of its 'Grand Masters'.
The novel has sold over 17 million copies and thousands of people are taking its 'facts' seriously. The whole premise of the novel - which is being marketed as being 'based on fact' by the author and his publishers - rests on the 'Priory of Sion'. And the 'Priory' is a complete hoax.
The only mystery associated with the 'Priory' is why so many people continue to believe in something so patently stupid.
I guess there's a sucker born every minute.
Anyone who has read or now seen the new movie the Da Vinci code may be well served to read this little blub before swallowing the so-called FACTS that the story is based on.
The so-called 'Priory of Sion' was proven to be a hoax by some French researchers long before that - in the 1970s. The whole thing was a weird fantasy created in the late 1950s by a French Monarchist, convicted fraud, former Nazi collaborator and general nutcase called Pierre Plantard.
The original 'Priory of Sion' was a local government pressure group devoted to issues surrounding public housing in a small French town and was formally registered as such in 1956. It fell apart about 18 months later, partly because the other members (there were about five of them) found out about Plantard's criminal past.
Plantard then went on to use the name as part of a fantasy 'secret society' which he created to bolster his increasingly crazy claims that he was the real heir to the French throne. With the help of a friend, Philippe de Cherisey, he faked some documents - the Dossiers Secrets - and planted them in the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris. Cherisey later quarreled with Plantard and revealed that they were fakes. The rest of Plantard's weird claims were exposed as nonsense by French investigative reporters, and he was soon forgotten.
Until, of course, some amateur 'occult researchers' swallowed his story and elaborated on it in their book Holy Blood Holy Grail in 1982. This gave Plantard's fantasies new life amongst readers who didn't realise that the whole thing was a hoax.
In the 1990s Plantard changed his story, said the Dossiers Secrets actually were fakes and came up with a whole new 'history' for this 'Priory of Sion'. Unfortunately for him, he claimed that a French financier called Roger Patrice-Pelat was a 'Grand Master' of this (new version of) the 'Priory'.
Patrice-Pelat was a friend of President Francois Mitterrand and became entangled in a financial scandal involving the French Prime Minister. In the high-level judicial investigation that followed, the investigating judge summoned Plantard to account for his claims about Patrice-Pelat and had Plantard's apartment searched.
Finally Plantard had the media spotlight on him and had his chance to prove his decades of wild claims. Instead, he buckled and admitted, under oath, that the whole thing was a hoax, that there was no 'Priory' and that the documents which 'proved' it were all total fakes. He died in 2000.
The myth of the 'Priory of Sion' would have died with him, except an American high school teacher called Dan Brown wrote a novel called The Da Vinci Code in which he assured readers on a page entitled 'FACT' that the 'Priory' was 'a real organization' and that Leonardo da Vinci was one of its 'Grand Masters'.
The novel has sold over 17 million copies and thousands of people are taking its 'facts' seriously. The whole premise of the novel - which is being marketed as being 'based on fact' by the author and his publishers - rests on the 'Priory of Sion'. And the 'Priory' is a complete hoax.
The only mystery associated with the 'Priory' is why so many people continue to believe in something so patently stupid.
I guess there's a sucker born every minute.
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