Secret Societies: Inside the World's Most Notorious Organizations (13 page)

Through the period between the two world wars, while Marie Denarnaud lived quietly with her memories and secrets, France was jostled by two competing political factions. Royalists, who supported a return to a monarchist government and enjoyed open support from the Catholic Church, were opposed by republicans, who favored democratically elected governments. Many leaders of the republican movement were Masons, who had dominated French politics since the 1880s.

The conflict remained relatively benign until France encountered the upheaval of the late 1920s that brought Hitler to power in neighboring Germany. Assuming many of the postures that characterized the Nazis, groups composing the French far right grew more racist. Along with the wave of anti-Semitism sweeping Europe, French right-wing extremists added Masons to their list of likely traitors and subversives. Given the turmoil of Europe and the global economic crisis produced by the Great Depression, scapegoats were found everywhere, and coalitions congealed whenever a common enemy was identified. Extreme monarchists joined forces, presenting themselves as knightly orders assigned to redeem a lost society now dominated by Jews and Masons. The election of Leon Blum, a Jew, as the country's first socialist prime minister, drove monarchists and the far right into a coalition that paved the way for the Vichy regime and France's collaboration with occupying Nazis during World War ii.

By 1900, Rennes-le-Chateau and the Bethania Mansion shown on this postcard had begun to grow in fame and notoriety.

Among the monarchist/fascist groups shaped during this swirl of political commotion was Alpha Galates (The First Gauls). The organization generated little interest and made even less impact until its members elected, as its titular head, a teenager named Pierre Plantard. Either very precocious or well connected, Plantard achieved fame and notoriety exceeding both his working-class origins and his mediocre intellect.

Plantard sometimes assumed the clichéd manner and appearance of French underworld characters: gaunt and dark, with a perpetual sneer and a Gauloise hanging from his lips. At other times, he posed as an intellectual, an existentialist comfortable in the company of a Malraux or Sartre. The best depiction of Plantard, who identified himself variously as Pierre de France and Plantard de St. Clair, is chameleon-like; he altered whatever aspect of his life and values necessary to achieve whatever goal happened to fall within his vision at the time. Other descriptions of the man are less neutral, including charlatan, fraud artist and convicted criminal. The latter is easily confirmed via French police archives revealing he had been found guilty of extortion and embezzlement, and sentenced to six months in prison.

Pierre Plantard (with his son Thomas in 1979) was a convicted con man whose most successful hoax spawned a best-selling novel.

During the Vichy regime that ruled Nazi-occupied France from 1940 to 1944, Plantard and his Alpha Galates group published
Vaincre
(To Conquer), a magazine dedicated to French nationalism and restoration of the monarchy. Many of the publication's articles were openly anti-Semitic and anti-Masonic, an accusation that Plantard later justified by claiming it avoided censure by the Gestapo. If that were indeed the strategy, it failed miserably;
Vaincre
was shut down and Plantard imprisoned in 1943 because, according to Nazi records, he was too openly supportive of French fascist views over those of Germany. Plantard, in later years, had a more flattering explanation: The Nazis discovered that his articles in
Vaincre
contained secret codes for French Resistance fighters.

Whichever side Plantard was on, he was clearly a firebrand when it came to French nationalism, a role he pursued with even greater vigor after hostilities ended in 1945. Two years later, Plantard created The Latin Academy, whose avowed purpose was to conduct historical research but whose more apparent goal was to continue the right-wing activities of Alpha Galates. As a mark of the group's questionable success, documents incorporating the “academy” listed Plantard's mother as its titular head.

Plantard became a familiar figure among certain Catholic leaders in Paris, particularly the seminary of St. Sulpice, and it was there in the mid-1950s that he began claiming to be the Merovingian pretender to the French throne. Later, in 1956,he extended that identity by proclaiming himself leader of a divinely guided organization founded by Godfrey de Bouillon during the time of the Crusades, and whose members had been influencing world events since the days of Christ. It was called The Priory of Sion.

The organization's title may have changed, borrowed from the medieval monastery that began as Our Lady of Mount Zion, but in most ways it remained Alpha Galates attached to a new face and a new magazine, this one titled
Circuit
. Plantard's publication soon began carrying stories of Father Saunière, hinting at secrets the priest uncovered in the remote Pyrenees village. The articles eventually formed the basis of a book by Plantard detailing Saunière's discoveries, implications that Christ's body had been buried near the little church dedicated to Mary Magdalene, the uniting of Christ's descendants and French gothic blood with the marriage of Dagobert and Giselle, and the astounding secret that had been maintained through the lives of great men of history.

It was an intriguing story, but Plantard's writing style was less than gripping because no one appeared interested in publishing his book. In an effort to generate support for his literary work, Plantard announced that he had obtained two of the parchments discovered by Saunière in the hollow pillar supporting the altar, and with some fanfare he bestowed them on the Bibliothèque Nationale, the French National Library. The existence of these parchments represented a vital link between Saunière's strange behavior and the existence of the Priory of Sion. Suddenly there were a few believers where only skeptics had stood smiling and shaking their heads.

Both parchments provided by Plantard contained hidden messages, one honoring Dagobert's marriage to Giselle and the other, more cryptic, referring to the Priory of Sion. Once their contents, if not their authenticity, were confirmed, Plantard stunned scholars and historians by announcing that the documents proved he was a direct descendant of Dagobert and Giselle, thus explaining his role as Grand Master of the Priory of Sion.

The clue to the truth behind the Priory of Sion lies within this complex code on parchment, but not in the manner you might expect.

The parchments were followed by a revised version of the book, now made publishable thanks to the parchments and some serious rewriting by co-author Gerard de Sède. Titled
L'Or de Rennes
and published in 1967, the book detailed the story of the Priory's beginnings with Mary Magdalene and Christ's children, accompanied either by Christ or his corpse, escaping across the Mediterranean to Gaul. From there it traced the bloodline through Giselle de Razes, tracked her descendants across 1300 years of world history, and ended with the discovery of the parchments and other paraphernalia by Saunière.

The book's revelations generated two distinct and equally fervent points of view. One found the story indisputable, relying on various sources for its authenticity including the mysterious wealth accumulated by Saunière, the existence of the parchments, historical references to Dagobert and the Merovingian line, and Plantard's own convincing accounts. The imaginations of these believers galloped towards conviction that a secret society had carried one of mankind's greatest mysteries through generations of descendants whose intellectual superiority and creativity could be explained through a direct connection with the Creator. These adherents scurried to locate historical references that supported Plantard's claims. Inevitably they found some, and with each apparent confirmation, momentum grew among the believers.

The other side remained skeptical, and over time they discovered a few realities of their own.

The first speed bump on the Priory road occurred when two of Plantard's associates, Gerard de Sède and Philippe de Chérisy, sued Plantard to recover royalties promised them from the book's sale. De Sède's role as co-author was acknowledged, but who was de Chérisy? He was revealed as a well-educated academic with a reputation as something of a prankster. By the
time
L'Or de Rennes
was published, he had acquired a drinking habit that would later kill him. More important, de Chérisy claimed that the parchments submitted to the Bibliothèque Nationale were forgeries. He knew they were, because he had produced them as a means of generating publicity and authenticity for Plantard's book.

Plantard, by now riding a wave of publicity and sales from
L'Or de Rennes
, quickly agreed with de Chérisy. The parchments were not authentic, he admitted, but they were not forgeries either. They were meticulous copies of the original parchments which, due to their value, Plantard was storing in a safe place whose location he refused to reveal. He also announced that his family had suppressed the fact that their origins were not entirely French. Plantard's ancestors, he declared, included a distinct lineage with the St. Clairs, anglicized as Sinclair, who had founded Scottish Rite Freemasonry. This alleged link explained the means of maintaining the secrecy of the Priory of Sion's existence down through the centuries. The revelation satisfied believers, but prompted skeptics to dig deeper into the tale, with remarkable results.

The first discovery involved a close examination of the pillars that had supported the altar in Saunière's church, easily located in Rennes-le-Chateau, where they were displayed as part of the town's heritage. None of the pillars was hollow. In fact, all three were quite solid, with the exception of a crack in one that may have concealed a postcard or two but nothing more. An even more disturbing revelation was to follow.

Remember Noel Corbu? He purchased Villa Bethania, the mansion Saunière had built with money earned from his supposed discovery of either bones or treasure. Following Saunière's death, Marie Denarnaud converted the mansion into a rooming house before exchanging it for the lifetime annuity from Corbu. After Marie died in 1953, Corbu transformed Villa Bethania into a small hotel and restaurant. With nothing to attract tourists to Rennes-le-Chateau beyond tales of Saunière's eccentricities and his mysterious wealth, Corbu's investment in his operation
would never amount to much. He solved the problem with nothing less than a marketing tool, a device that owed everything to entrepreneurial strategy and almost nothing to the truth.

Corbu concocted a dramatic tale of the legend behind Saunière's mysterious accumulation of riches, populated with characters who would be quite at home in a Harry Potter novel and delivered with the flair of a campfire ghost story. Recording the narrative in his own voice, he played it in his restaurant as a diversion for diners, later publishing it in pamphlet form as a souvenir of their visit.

The story of Saunière and Rennes-le-Chateau was hardly Joseph Conrad quality, but it amused visitors dining on their
pol au pot
and
cassoulet
. They absorbed facts about the town's Roman and gothic roots, its destruction during various battles with Spain, the arrival of Berenger Saunière in 1885, his poverty-stricken early years and his sudden, unexplained accumulation of wealth.