The Secret Society Today

The French Journal Officiel is a weekly government publication in which all groups, societies and organisations in the country must declare themselves. In the Journal Officiel for the week of July 20th, 1956 (Issue Number 167), there is the following entry:

(June 25th, 1956. Declaration to the Sub-Prefecture of Saint-Julien-en-Genevois. Prieure de Sion. Objectives: studies and mutual aid to members. Head office: Sous-Cassan, Annemasse, Haute Savoie.)

The Prieure de Sion was officially registered with the police. Here, at any rate, appeared to be definitive proof of its existence in our own age—even though we found it somewhat odd that a supposedly secret society should thus broadcast itself. But perhaps it was not so odd after all. There was no listing for the Prieure de Sion in any French telephone directory. The address proved too vague to allow us to identify a specific office, house, building or even street. And the Sub-Prefecture, when we rang them, were of little help. There had been numerous inquiries, they said, with weary, long-suffering resignation. But they could provide no further information. As far as they knew, the address was untraceable. If nothing else, this gave us pause.

Among other things, it made us wonder how certain individuals had contrived to register a fictitious or nonexistent address with the police and then, apparently, escape all subsequent consequences and prosecution of the matter. Were the police really as insouciant and indifferent as they sounded? Or had Sion somehow enlisted their cooperation and discretion? The Sub-Prefecture, at our request, provided us with a copy of what purported to be the Prieure de Sion’s statutes. This document, which consisted of twenty-one articles, was neither controversial nor particularly illuminating. It did not, for example, clarify the Order’s objectives. It gave no indication of Sion’s possible influence, membership or resources. On the whole, it was rather bland while at the same time compounding our perplexity. At one point, for instance, the statutes declared that admission to the Order was not to be restricted on the basis of language, social origin, class or political ideology. At another point, they stipulated that all Catholics over the age of twenty-one were eligible for candidature.

Indeed the statutes in general appeared to have issued from a piously, even fervently Catholic institution. And yet Sion’s alleged Grand Masters and past history, in so far as we had been able to trace them, hardly attested to any orthodox Catholicism. For that matter, even the modern “Prieure documents”, many of them published at the same time as the statutes, were less Catholic in orientation than Hermetic, even heretically Gnostic. The contradiction seemed to make no sense—unless Sion, like the Knights Templar and the Compagnie du Saint-Sacrement, demanded Catholicism as an exoteric prerequisite, which might then be transcended within the Order. At any rate Sion, like the Temple and the Compagnie du Saint-Sacrement, apparently demanded an obedience which, in its absolute nature, subsumed all other commitments, secular or spiritual. According to Article vii of the statutes, “The candidate must renounce his personality in order to devote himself to the service of a high moral apostolate.”

The statutes further declare that Sion functions under the subtitle of Chevalerie d’Institutions et Regies Catholiques, d’Union Independante et Traditionaliste (“Chivalry of Catholic Rules and Institutions of the Independent and Traditionalist Union”). This abbreviates to CIRCUIT, the name of a magazine which, according to the statutes, is published internally by the Order and circulated within its ranks.

Perhaps the most interesting information in the statutes is that since 1956 the Prieure de Sion would seem to have expanded its membership almost fivefold. According to a page reproduced in the Dossiers secrets, printed sometime before 1956, Sion had a total of 1,093 members ranked in seven grades. The structure was traditionally pyramidal. At the top was the Grand Master, or “Nautonnier”. There were three in the grade below him (“Prince Noachite de Notre Dame”), nine in the grade below that (“Croise de Saint-Jean”). Each grade from here downwards was three times as large as the grade before it—27, 81, 243, 729. The three highest grades—the Grand Master and his twelve immediate subordinates—were said to constitute the thirteen “Rose-Croix”. The number would also, of course, correspond to anything from a satanic coven to Jesus and his twelve disciples.

According to the post-1956 statutes, Sion had a total membership of 9,841, ranked not in seven grades but in nine. The structure seems to have remained essentially the same, although it was clarified, and two new grades had been introduced at the bottom of the hierarchy—thus further insulating the leadership behind a larger network of novices. The Grand Master still retained the title of “Nautonnier”. The three “Princes Noachites de Notre Dame” were simply called “Seneschals”. The nine “Croises de Saint-Jean” were called “Constables”. The organisation of the Order, in the portentously enigmatic jargon of the statutes, was as follows:

The general assembly is composed of all members of the association. It consists of 729 provinces, 27 commanderies and an Arch designated “Kyria”. Each of the commanderies as well as the Arch, must consist of forty members, each province of thirteen members. The members are divided into two effective groups: a) The Legion, charged with the apostolate. b) The Phalange, guardian of the Tradition. The members compose a hierarchy of nine grades.

The hierarchy of nine grades consists of:

a) in the 729 provinces

1. Novices: 6561 members
2. Croises: 2187 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. Nautonnier: 1 member

Apparently for official bureaucratic and legal purposes, four individuals were listed as comprising “The Council”. Three of the names were unfamiliar to us and, quite possibly, pseudonyms—Pierre Bonhomme, born December 7th, 1934, President; Jean Delaval, born March 7th, 1931, Vice-President; Pierre Defagot, born December 11th, 1928, Treasurer. One name, however, we had encountered before—Pierre Plantard, born March 18th, 1920, Secretary-General. According to the research of another writer, M. Plantard’s official title was Secretary General of the Department of Documentation—which implies, of course, that there are other departments as well.

Alain Poher

By the early 1970s the Prieure de Sion had become a modest cause celebre among certain people in France. There were a number of magazine articles and some newspaper coverage. On February 13th, 1973, the Midi Libre published a lengthy feature on Sion, Sauniere and the mystery of Rennes-le-Chateau. This feature specifically linked Sion with a possible survival of the Merovingian bloodline into the twentieth century. It also suggested that the Merovingian descendants included a ’true pretender to the throne of France’, whom it identified as M. Alain Poher.

While not especially well known in Britain or the United States, Alain Poher was (and still is) a household name in France. During the Second World War he won the Resistance Medal and the Croix de Guerre. 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, when the feature in the Midi Libre appeared, M. Poher was President of the French Senate.

As far as we know, M. Poher never commented, one way or the other, on his alleged connections with the Prieure de Sion and/or the Merovingian bloodline. In the genealogies of the “Prieure documents”, however, there is mention of Arnaud, Count of Poher, who, sometime between 894 and 896, intermarried with the Plantard family—the direct descendants supposedly of Dagobert II. Arnaud de Poher’s grandson, Alain, became duke of Brittany in 937. Whether or not M. Poher acknowledges Sion, it would thus seem clear that Sion acknowledges him as being, at the very least, of Merovingian descent.

The Lost King

In the meantime, while we pursued our research and the French media accorded periodic flurries of attention to the whole affair, new “Prieure documents” continued to appear. As before, some appeared in book form, others as privately printed pamphlets or articles deposited in the Bibliotheque Nationale. If anything, they only compounded the mystification.

Someone was obviously producing this material, but their real objective remained unclear. At times we nearly dismissed the whole affair as an elaborate joke, a hoax of extravagant proportions. If this were true, however, it was a hoax that certain people seemed to have been sustaining for centuries—and if one invests so much time, energy and resources in a hoax, can it really be called a hoax at all? In fact the interlocking skeins and the overall fabric of the “Prieure documents” were less a joke than a work of art—a display of ingenuity, suspense, brilliance, intricacy, historical knowledge and architectonic complexity worthy of, say, James Joyce. And while Finnegans Wake may be regarded as a joke of sorts, there is no question that its creator took it very seriously indeed.

It is important to note that the “Prieure documents” did not constitute a conventional ‘bandwagon’—a lucrative fashion which burgeoned into a profitable industry, spawning sequels, ‘prequels’ and assorted other derivatives. They could not be compared, for example, to von Daniken’s Chariots of the Gods, the sundry accounts of the Bermuda Triangle or the works of Carlos Castaneda. Whatever the motivation behind the “Prieure documents”, it was clearly not financial gain. Indeed, money seemed to be only an incidental factor, if a factor at all. Although they would have proved extremely lucrative in book form, the most important “Prieure documents” were not published as such. Despite their commercial potential, they were confined to private printings, limited editions and discreet deposition at the Bibliotheque Nationale—where, for that matter, they were not even always available.

And the information that did appear in conventional book form was not haphazard or arbitrary—and for the most part it was not the work of independent researchers. Most of it seemed to issue from a single source. Most of it was based on the testimony of very specific informants, who measured out precise quantities of new information as if with an eyedropper and according to some prearranged plan. Each new fragment of information added at least one modification, one further piece to the overall jigsaw. Many of these fragments were released under different names. A superficial impression was thus conveyed of an array of separate writers, each of whom confirmed and imparted credibility to the others.

There appeared to us only one plausible motivation for such a procedure—to attract public attention to certain matters, to establish credibility, to engender interest, to create a psychological climate or atmosphere that kept people waiting with bated breath for new revelations. In short, the “Prieure documents” seemed specifically calculated to ‘pave the way’ for some astonishing disclosure. Whatever this disclosure might eventually prove to be, it apparently dictated a prolonged process of ‘softening up’—of preparing people. And whatever this disclosure might eventually prove to be, it somehow involved the Merovingian dynasty, the perpetuation of that dynasty’s bloodline to the present day and a clandestine kingship.

Thus, in a magazine article purportedly written by a member of the Prieure de Sion, we found the following statement, “Without the Merovingians, the Prieure de Sion would not exist, and without the Prieure de Sion, the Merovingian dynasty would be extinct.” The relationship between the Order and the bloodline is partly clarified, partly further confused, by the following elaboration:

The King is shepherd and pastor at the same time. Sometimes he dispatches some brilliant ambassador to his vassal in power, his factotum, one who has the felicity of being subject to death. Thus Rene d’Anjou, Connetable de Bourbon, Nicolas Fouquet… and numerous others for whom astonishing success is followed by inexplicable disgrace—for these emissaries are both terrible and vulnerable. Custodians of a secret, one can only exalt them or destroy them. Thus people like Gilles de Rais, Leonardo da Vinci, Joseph Balsamo, the dukes of Nevers and Gonzaga, whose wake is attended by a perfume of magic in which sulphur is mingled with incense—the perfume of the Magdalene.

If King Charles VII, on the entrance of Jeanne d’Arc into the great hall of his castle at Chinon, hid himself among the throng of his courtiers, it was not for the sake of a frivolous joke—where was the humour in it?—but because he already knew of whom she was the ambassadress. And that, before her, he was scarcely more than one courtier among the others. The secret she delivered to him in private was contained in these words: “Gentle lord, I come on behalf of the King.”

The implications of this passage are provocative and intriguing. One is that the King—the “Lost King”, presumably of the Merovingian bloodline—continues in effect to rule, simply by virtue of who he is. Another, and perhaps even more startling, implication is that temporal sovereigns are aware of his existence, acknowledge him, respect him and fear him. A third implication is that the Grand Master of the Prieure de Sion, or some other member of the Order, acts as ambassador between the “Lost King” and his temporal deputies or surrogates. And such ambassadors, it would seem, are deemed expendable.

Curious Pamphlets in the Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris

In 1966 a curious exchange of letters occurred concerning the death of Leo Schidlof—the man who, under the pseudonym of Henri Lobineau, was at that time alleged to have composed the genealogies in some of the “Prieure documents”. The first letter, which appeared in the Catholic Weekly of Geneva, is dated October 22nd, 1966. It is signed by one Lionel Burrus, who claims to speak on behalf of an organisation called Swiss Christian Youth. M. Burrus announces that Leo Schidlof, alias Henri Lobineau, died in Vienna the week before, on October 17th. He then defends the deceased against a slanderous attack which, he claims, appeared in a recent Roman Catholic bulletin. M. Burrus registers his indignation at this attack. In his eulogy on Schidlof he declares that the latter, under the name of Lobineau, compiled, in 1956, ‘a remarkable study… on the genealogy of the Merovingian kings and the affair of Rennes-le-Chateau’.

Rome, M. Burrus asserts, did not dare asperse Schidlof when he was alive, even though it had a comprehensive dossier on the man and his activities. But even now, despite his death, Merovingian interests continue to be furthered. To support this contention, M. Burrus seems to wax more than a little preposterous. He cites what, in 1966, was the emblem of Antar, one of France’s leading petrol companies. This emblem is said to embody a Merovingian device and depict, albeit in cartoon fashion, a Merovingian king. And this emblem, according to M. Burrus, proves that information and propaganda on behalf of the Merovingians is being effectively disseminated; and even the French clergy, he adds with imperfect relevance, do not always jump at the behest of the Vatican. As for Leo Schidlof, M. Burrus concludes (with echoes of Freemasonry and Cathar thought), “For all those who knew Henri Lobineau, who was a great voyager and a great seeker, a loyal and good man, he remains in our hearts as the symbol of a ‘maitre parfait’, whom one respects and venerates.”

This letter from Lionel Burrus would seem distinctly cranky. Certainly it is extremely curious. More curious still, however, is the alleged attack on Schidlof in a Roman Catholic bulletin, from which M. Burrus quotes liberally. The bulletin, according to M. Burrus, accuses Schidlof of being “pro-Soviet, a notorious Freemason actively preparing the way for a popular monarchy in France”. It is a singular and seemingly contradictory accusation—for one does not usually combine Soviet sympathies with an attempt to establish a monarchy. And yet the bulletin, as M. Burrus claims to quote it, makes charges that are even more extravagant:

The Merovingian descendants have always been behind all heresies, from Arianism, through the Cathars and the Templars, to Freemasonry. At the beginning of the Protestant Reformation, Cardinal Mazarin, in July 1659, had their chateau of Barberie, dating from the twelfth century, destroyed. For the house and family in question, all through the centuries, had spawned nothing but secret agitators against the Church.

M. Burrus does not specifically identify the Roman Catholic bulletin in which this quotation supposedly appeared, so we could not verify its authenticity. If it is authentic, however, it would be of considerable significance. It would constitute independent testimony, from Roman Catholic sources, of the razing of Chateau Barberie in Nevers. It would also seem to suggest at least a partial raison d’etre for the Prieure de Sion. We had already come to see Sion, and the families associated with it, as manoeuvring for power on their own behalf and in the process repeatedly clashing with the Church. According to the above quotation, however, opposition to the Church would not seem to have been a matter of chance, circumstances or even politics. On the contrary it would seem to have been a matter of on-going policy. This confronted us with another contradiction. For the statutes of the Prieure de Sion had issued, at least ostensibly, from a staunchly Catholic institution.

Not long after the publication of this letter, Lionel Burrus was killed in a car accident which claimed six other victims as well. Shortly before his death, however, his letter elicited a response even more curious and provocative than that which he himself had written. This response was published as a privately printed pamphlet under the name of S. Roux.

In certain respects S. Roux’s text would appear to echo the original attack on Schidlof which prompted M. Burrus’s letter. It also chastises M. Burrus for being young, over-zealous, irresponsible and prone to talk too much. But while seeming to condemn M. Burrus’s position, not only does S. Roux’s pamphlet confirm his facts, but it actually elaborates on them. Leo Schidlof, S. Roux affirms, was a dignitary of the Swiss Grande Loge Alpina—the Masonic lodge whose imprint appeared on certain of the “Prieure documents”. According to S. Roux, Schidlof ‘did not conceal his sentiments of friendship for the Eastern Bloc’. As for M. Burrus’s statements about the Church, S. Roux continues:

one cannot say that the Church is ignorant of the line of the Razes, but it must be remembered that all its descendants, since Dagobert, have been secret agitators against both the royal line of France and against the Church and that they have been the source of all heresies. The return of a Merovingian descendant to power would entail for France the proclamation of a popular monarchy allied to the USSR, and the triumph of Freemasonry—in short, the disappearance of religious freedom.

If all of this sounds rather extraordinary, the concluding statements of S. Roux’s pamphlet are even more so:

As for the question of Merovingian propaganda in France, everyone knows that the publicity of Antar Petrol, with a Merovingian king holding a Lily and a Circle, is a popular appeal in favour of returning the Merovingians to power. And one cannot but wonder what Lobineau was preparing at the time of his decease in Vienna, on the eve of profound changes in Germany. Is it not also true that Lobineau prepared in Austria a future reciprocal accord with France? Was not this the basis of the Franco-Russian accord?

Not surprisingly we were utterly bewildered, wondering what the devil S. Roux was talking about; if anything, he appeared to have outdone M. Burrus in nonsense. Like the bulletin M. Burrus had attacked, S. Roux links together political objectives as apparently diverse and discordant as Soviet hegemony and popular monarchy. He goes further than M. Burrus by declaring that “everyone knows” the emblem of a petrol company to be a subtle form of propaganda for an unknown and apparently ludicrous cause. He hints at sweeping changes in France, Germany and Austria as if these changes were already ‘on the cards’, if not indeed faits accomplis. And he speaks of a mysterious “Franco-Russian” accord as if this accord were a matter of public knowledge.

On first reading S. Roux’s pamphlet appeared to make no sense whatever. A closer scrutiny convinced us that it was, in fact, another ingenious “Prieure document”—deliberately calculated to mystify, to confuse, to tease, to sow hints of something portentous and monumental. In any case it offered, in its wildly eccentric way, an intimation of the magnitude of the issues involved. If S. Roux was correct the subject of our inquiry was not confined to the activities of some elusive but innocuous latter-day chivalric order. If S. Roux was correct the subject of our inquiry pertained in some way to the upper echelons of high-level international politics.

The Catholic Traditionalists

In 1977 a new and particularly significant “Prieure document” appeared—a six-page pamphlet entitled Le Cercle d’Ulysse written by one Jean Delaude. In the course of his text the writer addresses himself explicitly to the Prieure de Sion. And although he rehashes much older material, he also furnishes certain new details about the Order:

In March 1117 Baudouin was compelled, at Saint Leonard d’Acre, to negotiate and prepare the constitution of the Order of the Temple, under the directives of the Prieure de Sion. In 1118 the Order of the Temple was then established by Hugues de Payen. From 1118 to 1188 the Prieure de Sion and the Order of the Temple shared the same Grand Masters. Since the separation of the two institutions in 1188, the Prieure de Sion had counted twenty-seven Grand Masters to the present day. The most recent were:

Charles Nodier from 1801 to 1844 Victor Hugo from 1844 to 1885 Claude Debussy from 1885 to 1918 Jean Cocteau from 1918 to 1963 and from 1963 until the advent of the new order, the Abbe Ducaud-Bourget.

For what is the Prieure de Sion preparing? I do not know, but it represents a power capable of confronting the Vatican in the days to come. Monsignor Lefebvre is a most active and redoubtable member, capable of saying: “You make me Pope and I will make you King.”

There are two important new fragments of information in this extract. One is the alleged affiliation with the Prieure de Sion of Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre. Monsignor Lefebvre, of course, represents the extreme conservative wing of the Roman Catholic Church. He was vociferously outspoken against Pope Paul VI, whom he flagrantly and flamboyantly defied. In 1976 and 1977, in fact, he was explicitly threatened with excommunication; and his brazen indifference to this threat nearly precipitated a full-scale ecclesiastical schism. But how could we reconcile a militant ‘hard-line’ Catholic like Monsignor Lefebvre with a movement and an Order that was Hermetic, if not downright heretical, in orientation? There seemed to be no explanation for this contradiction—unless Monsignor Lefebvre was a modern-day representative of the nineteenth-century Freemasonry associated with the Hieron du Val d’Or—the “Christian, aristocratic and Hermetic Freemasonry” which presumed to regard itself as more Catholic than the pope.

The second major point in the extract quoted above is, of course, the identification of the Prieure de Sion’s Grand Master at that time as Abbe Ducaud-Bourget. Francois Ducaud-Bourget was born in 1897 and trained for the priesthood at—predictably enough—the Seminary of Saint Sulpice. He is thus likely to have known many of the Modernists there at the time and, quite possibly, Emile Hoffet. Subsequently he was Conventual Chaplain of the Sovereign Order of Malta. For his activities during the Second World War he received the Resistance Medal and the Croix de Guerre. Today he is recognised as a distinguished man of letters—a member of the Academie Francaise, a biographer of important French Catholic writers like Paul Claudel and Francois Mauriac, and a highly esteemed poet in his own right.

Like Monsignor Lefebvre the Abbe Ducaud-Bourget assumed a stance of militant opposition to Pope Paul VI. Like Monsignor Lefebvre he is an adherent of the Tridentine Mass. Like Monsignor Lefebvre he has proclaimed himself a “traditionalist”, adamantly opposed to ecclesiastical reform or any attempt to “modernise” Roman Catholicism. On May 22nd, 1976 he was forbidden to administer confession or absolution and, like Monsignor Lefebvre, he boldly defied the interdict imposed on him by his superiors. On February 27th, 1977 he led a thousand Catholic traditionalists in their occupation of the Church of Saint-Nicolas-du-Chardonnet in Paris.

If Marcel Lefebvre and Francois Ducaud-Bourget appear to be ‘right-wing’ theologically, they would seem to be equally so politically. Before the Second World War, Monsignor Lefebvre was associated with Action Francaise—the extreme right of French politics at the time, which shared certain attitudes in common with National Socialism in Germany. More recently the “rebel archbishop” attracted considerable notoriety by warmly endorsing the military regime in Argentina. When questioned on this position, he replied that he had made a mistake. He had not meant Argentina, he said, but Chile!

Francois Ducaud-Bourget would not appear to be quite so extreme; and his medals, at any rate, attest to patriotic anti-German activity during the war. Nevertheless he has expressed a high regard for Mussolini, and the hope that France would “recover its sense of values under the guidance of a new Napoleon”.

Our first suspicion was that Marcel Lefebvre and Francois Ducaud-Bourget were not, in fact, affiliated with the Prieure de Sion at all, but that someone had deliberately attempted to embarrass them by aligning them with the very forces they would, in theory, most vigorously oppose. And yet according to the statutes we had obtained from the French police, the subtitle of the Prieure de Sion was Chevalerie d’Institutions et Regies Catholiques; d’Union Independante et Traditionaliste. An institution with such a name might very well accommodate individuals like Marcel Lefebvre and Francois Ducaud-Bourget.

There seemed to us a second possible explanation—a far-fetched explanation admittedly, but one that would at least account for the contradiction confronting us. Perhaps Marcel Lefebvre and Francois Ducaud-Bourget were not what they appeared to be. Perhaps they were something else. Perhaps, in actuality, they were agents provocateurs whose objective was systematically to create turmoil, sow dissent, foment an incipient schism that threatened Pope Paul’s pontificate. Such tactics would be in keeping with the secret societies described by Charles Nodier, as well as with the Protocols of the Elders of Sion. And a number of recent commentators—journalists as well as ecclesiastical authorities—have declared Archbishop Lefebvre to be working for, or manipulated by, someone else.

Far-fetched though our hypothesis might be, there was a coherent logic underlying it. If Pope Paul were regarded as ’the enemy’, and one wished to force him into a more liberal position, how would one go about it? Not by agitating from a liberal point of view. That would only have entrenched the pope more firmly in his conservatism. But what if one publicly adopted a position even more rabidly conservative than Paul’s? Would this not, despite his wishes to the contrary, force him into an increasingly liberal position? And that, certainly, is what Archbishop Lefebvre and his colleagues accomplished—the unprecedented feat of casting the pope as a liberal.

Whether our conclusions were valid or not, it seemed clear that Archbishop Lefebvre, like so many other individuals in our investigation, was privy to some momentous and explosive secret. In 1976, for example, his excommunication seemed imminent. The press, indeed, was expecting it any day, for Pope Paul, confronted by brazen and repeated defiance, seemed to have no alternative. And yet, at the very last minute, the pope backed down. It is still unclear precisely why he did so: but the following excerpt from the Guardian, dated August 30th, 1976, suggests a clue:

The Archbishop’s team of priests in England… believe that their leader still has a powerful ecclesiastical weapon to use in his dispute with the Vatican. No one will give any hint of its nature, but Father Peter Morgan, the group’s leader… describes it as being something “earth-shaking”.

What kind of “earth-shaking” matter or ‘secret weapon’ could thus intimidate the Vatican? What kind of Damoclean sword, invisible to the world at large, could have been held over the pontiff’s head? Whatever it was, it certainly seems to have proved effective. It seems, in fact, to have rendered the archbishop wholly immune to punitive action from Rome. As Jean Delaude wrote, Marcel Lefebvre did indeed seem to ‘represent a power capable of confronting the Vatican’ head-on, if necessary. But to whom did he—or will he—allegedly say: “You make me Pope and I will make you King”?

The Convent of 1981 and Cocteau’s Statutes

More recently, some of the issues surrounding Francois Ducaud-Bourget seem to have been clarified. This clarification has resulted from a sudden glare of publicity which the Prieure de Sion, during late 1980 and early 1981, has received in France. This publicity has made it something of a household name.

In August 1980 the popular magazine Bonne Soiree—a kind of amalgam between a British Sunday supplement and the American TV Guide—published a two-part feature on the mystery of Rennes-le-Chateau and the Prieure de Sion. In this feature both Marcel Lefebvre and Francois Ducaud-Bourget are explicitly linked with Sion. Both are said to have paid a special visit fairly recently to one of Sion’s sacred sites, the village of Sainte-Colombe in Nevers, where the Plantard domain of Chateau Barberie was situated before its destruction by Cardinal Mazarin in 1659.

By this time we ourselves had established both telephone and postal contact with the Abbe Ducaud-Bourget. He proved courteous enough. But his answers to most of our questions were vague, if not evasive; and, not surprisingly, he disavowed all affiliation with the Prieure de Sion. This disavowal was reiterated in a letter which, shortly thereafter, he addressed to Bonne Soiree.

On January 22nd, 1981, a short article appeared in the French press, of which it is worth quoting the greater part:

A veritable secret society of 121 dignitaries, the Prieure de Sion, founded by Godfroi de Bouillon in Jerusalem in 1099, has numbered among its Grand Masters Leonardo da Vinci, Victor Hugo and Jean Cocteau. This Order convened its Convent at Blois on 17 January, 1981 (the previous Convent dating from 5 June 1956, in Paris).

As a result of this recent Convent at Blois, Pierre Plantard de Saint-Clair was elected Grand Master of the Order by 83 out of 92 votes on the third ballot.

This choice of Grand Master marks a decisive step in the evolution of the Order’s conception and spirit in relation to the world; for the 121 dignitaries of the Prieure de Sion are all eminences grises of high finance and of international political or philosophical societies; and Pierre Plantard is the direct descendant, through Dagobert II, of the Merovingian kings. His descent has been proved legally by the parchments of Queen Blanche of Castile, discovered by the Abbe Sauniere in his church at Rennes-le-Chateau (Aude) in 1891.

These documents were sold by the priest’s niece in 1965 to Captain Roland Stanmore and Sir Thomas Frazer, and were deposited in a safe-deposit box of Lloyds Bank Europe Limited of London.

Shortly before this item appeared in the press, we had written to Philippe de Cherisey, with whom we had already established contact and whose name figured as frequently as Pierre Plantard’s as a spokesman for the Prieure de Sion. In reply to one of the questions we asked him, M. de Cherisey declared that Francois Ducaud-Bourget had not been elected Grand Master by a proper quorum. Moreover, he added, the Abbe Ducaud-Bourget had publicly repudiated his affiliation with the Order.

This latter assertion seemed unclear. It made more sense, however, in the context of something M. de Cherisey enclosed in his letter. Some time before, we had obtained, from the Sub-Prefecture of Saint-Julien, the statutes of the Prieure de Sion. A copy of these same statutes had been published in 1973 by a French magazine. However, we had been told in Paris by Jean-Luc Chaumeil that these statutes were fraudulent. In his letter to us M. de Cherisey enclosed a copy of what were said to be the Prieure de Sion’s true statutes—translated from the Latin. These statutes bore the signature of Jean Cocteau; and unless it had been executed by an extremely skilful forger, the signature was authentic. We certainly could not distinguish it from other specimens of Cocteau’s signature. And on this basis, we are inclined to accept the statutes to which the signature is appended as genuine. They are set out below:

ARTICLE ONE There is formed, between the undersigned to this present constitution and those who shall subsequently join and fulfill the following conditions, an initiatory order of chivalry, whose usages and customs rest upon the foundation made by Godfroi VI, called the Pious, Duc de Bouillon, at Jerusalem in 1099 and recognised in 1100.

ARTICLE TWO The Order is called “Sionis Prioratus” or “Prieure de Sion”.

ARTICLE THREE The Prieure de Sion has as its objectives the perpetuation of the traditionalist order of chivalry, its initiatory teaching and the creation between members of mutual assistance, as much moral as material, in all circumstances.

ARTICLE FOUR The duration of the Prieure de Sion is unlimited.

ARTICLE FIVE The Prieure de Sion adopts, as its representative office, the domicile of the Secretary General named by the Convent. The Prieure de Sion is not a secret society. All its decrees, as well as its records and appointments, are available to the public in Latin text.

ARTICLE SIX The Prieure de Sion comprises 121 members. Within these limits, it is open to all adult persons who recognise its aims and accept the obligations specified in this present constitution. Members are admitted without regard to sex, race or philosophical, religious or political ideas.

ARTICLE SEVEN Nevertheless, in the event that a member should designate in writing one of his descendants to succeed him, the Convent shall accede to this request and may, if necessary in the case of minority, undertake the education of the above designated.

ARTICLE EIGHT A future member must provide, for his induction to the first grade, a white robe with cord, at his own expense. From the time of his admission to the first grade, the member holds the right to vote. On admission, the new member must swear to serve the Order in all circumstances, as well as to work for PEACE and the respect of human life.

ARTICLE NINE On his admission, the member must pay a token fee, the amount being discretionary. Each year, he must forward to the Secretariat General a voluntary contribution to the Order of a sum to be decided by himself.

ARTICLE TEN On admission, the member must provide a birth certificate and a specimen of his signature.

ARTICLE ELEVEN A member of the Prieure de Sion against whom a sentence has been pronounced by a tribunal for a common-law offence may be suspended from his duties and titles, as well as his membership.

ARTICLE TWELVE The general assembly of members is designated the Convent. No deliberation of Convent shall be deemed valid if the number of members present is less than eighty-one. The vote is secret and is cast by means of white and black balls. To be adopted, all motions must receive eighty-one white balls. All motions not receiving sixty-one white balls in a vote may not be re-submitted.

ARTICLE THIRTEEN The Convent of the Prieure de Sion alone decides, on a majority of 81 votes out of 121 members, all changes to the constitution and the internal regulation of ceremonial.

ARTICLE FOURTEEN All admissions shall be decided by the “Council of the thirteen Rose-Croix”. Titles and duties shall be conferred by the Grand Master of the Prieure de Sion. Members are admitted to their office for life. Their titles revert by right to one of their children chosen by themselves without consideration of sex. The child thus designated may make an act of renunciation of his rights, but he cannot make this act in favour of a brother, sister, relative or any other person. He may not be readmitted to the Prieure de Sion.

ARTICLE FIFTEEN Within twenty-seven full days, two members shall be required to contact a future member to obtain his assent or his renunciation. In default of a deed of acceptance after a period of reflection of eighty-one full days, renunciation shall be legally assumed.

ARTICLE SIXTEEN By virtue of hereditary right confirmed by the preceding articles, the duties and titles of Grand Master of the Prieure de Sion shall be transmitted to his successor according to the same prerogatives. In the case of a vacancy in the office of Grand Master, and the absence of a direct successor, the Convent must proceed to an election within eighty-one days.

ARTICLE SEVENTEEN All decrees must be voted by Convent and receive validation by the Seal of the Grand Master. The Secretary-General is named by Convent for three years, renewable by tacit consent. The Secretary-General must be of the grade of Commander to undertake his duties. The functions and duties are unpaid.

ARTICLE EIGHTEEN The hierarchy of the Prieure de Sion is composed of five grades: 1st Nautonnier number: 1 Arche of the 2nd Croise number: 3 13 Rose-Croix 3rd Commandeur number: 9 4th Chevalier number: 27 5th Ecuyer number: 81 The nine commanderies total number: 121 of the Temple

ARTICLE NINETEEN There are 243 Free Brothers, called Preux or, since the year 1681, Enfants de Saint Vincent who participate neither in the vote nor in Convents, but to whom the Prieure de Sion accords certain rights and privileges in conformity with the decree of January 17th, 1681.

ARTICLE TWENTY The funds of the Prieure de Sion are composed of gifts and fees of members. A reserve, called the ‘patrimony of the Order’, is settled upon the Council of the thirteen Rose-Croix. This treasure may only be used in case of absolute necessity and grave danger to the Prieure and its members.

ARTICLE TWENTY-ONE The Convent is convoked by the Secretary-General when the Council of the Rose-Croix deems it useful.

ARTICLE TWENTY-TWO Disavowal of membership in the Prieure de Sion, manifested publicly and in writing, without cause or personal danger, shall incur exclusion of the member, which shall be pronounced by the Convent.

Text of the constitution in XXII articles, conforming to the original and to the modifications of the Convent of June 5th, 1956.

Signature of the Grand Master

JEAN COCTEAU

In certain details, these statutes are at odds both with the statutes we received from the French police and with the information relating to Sion in the “Prieure documents”. The latter shows a total membership of 1,093, the former of 9,841. According to the articles quoted above, Sion’s total membership, including the 243 “Children of Saint Vincent”, is only 364. The “Prieure documents”, moreover, establish a hierarchy of seven grades. In the statutes we received from the French police, this hierarchy has been expanded to nine. According to the articles quoted above, there are only five grades in the hierarchy. And the specific appellations of these grades differ from those in the two previous sources as well.

These contradictions might well be evidence of some sort of schism, or incipient schism, within the Prieure de Sion, dating from around 1956 when the “Prieure documents” first began to appear in the Bibliotheque Nationale. And indeed, Philippe de Cherisey alludes to just such a schism in a recent article. It occurred between 1956 and 1958, he says, and threatened to assume the proportions of the rift between Sion and the Order of the Temple in 1188—the rift marked by the “cutting of the elm”. According to M. de Cherisey, the schism was averted by the diplomatic skill of M. Plantard, who brought the potential defectors back into the fold. In any case, and whatever the internal politics of the Prieure de Sion, the Order, as of the January 1981 Convent, would seem to constitute a unified and coherent whole.

If Francois Ducaud-Bourget was the Prieure de Sion’s Grand Master, it would appear clear that he is not so at present. M. de Cherisey declared that he had not been elected by the requisite quorum. This may mean that he was elected by the incipient schismatics. It is uncertain whether he is subject to or in violation of Article Twenty-Two of the statutes. We may assume that his affiliation with Sion—whatever it may have been in the past—no longer exists.

The statutes quoted might seem to clarify the status of Francois Ducaud-Bourget. They make clear, anyway, the principle of selection governing the Prieure de Sion’s Grand Masters. It is now comprehensible why there should have been Grand Masters aged five or eight. It is also comprehensible why the Grand Mastership should move, as it does, in and out of a particular bloodline and network of interlinked genealogies. In principle, the title would seem to be hereditary, transmitted down the centuries through an intertwined cluster of families all claiming Merovingian descent. When there was no eligible claimant, however, or when the designated claimant declined the status offered him, the Grand Mastership, presumably in accordance with the procedures outlined in the statutes, was conferred on a chosen outsider. It would be on this basis that individuals like Leonardo, Newton, Nodier and Cocteau found their way on to the list.

M. Plantard de Saint-Clair

Among the names that figured most prominently and recurrently in the various “Prieure documents” was that of the Plantard family. And among the numerous individuals associated with the mystery of Sauniere and Rennes-le-Chateau, the most authoritative seemed to be Pierre Plantard de Saint-Clair.

According to the genealogies in the “Prieure documents”, M. Plantard is a lineal descendant of King Dagobert II and the Merovingian dynasty. According to the same genealogies, he is also a lineal descendant of the owners of Chateau Barberie, the property destroyed by Cardinal Mazarin in 1659. Throughout the course of the inquiry we had repeatedly encountered M. Plantard’s name. Indeed, so far as release of information during the last twenty-five years or so was concerned, all trails seemed to lead ultimately to him. In 1960, for example, he was interviewed by Gerard de Sede and spoke of an “international secret” concealed at Gisors. During the subsequent decade he seems to have been a major source of information for M. de Sede’s books on both Gisors and Rennes-le-Chateau. According to recent disclosures, M. Plantard’s grandfather was a personal acquaintance of Berenger Sauniere. And M. Plantard himself proved to own a number of tracts of land in the vicinity of Rennes-le-Chateau and Rennes-les-Bains, including the mountain of Blanchefort. When we interviewed the town antiquarian at Stenay, in the Ardennes, we were told that the site of the Old Church of Saint Dagobert was also owned by M. Plantard. And according to the statutes we obtained from the French police, M. Plantard was listed as Secretary General of the Prieure de Sion.

In 1973 a French magazine published what seems to have been the transcript of a telephone interview with M. Plantard. Not surprisingly he did not give very much away. As might be expected, his statements were allusive, cryptic and provocative—raising, in fact, more questions than they answered. Thus, for example, when speaking of the Merovingian bloodline and its royal claims, he declared, “You must explore the origins of certain great French families, and you will then comprehend how a personage named Henri de Montpezat could one day become king.” And when asked the objectives of the Prieure de Sion, M. Plantard replied in a manner whose evasiveness was predictable, “I cannot tell you that. The society to which I am attached is extremely ancient. I merely succeed others, a point in a sequence. We are guardians of certain things. And without publicity.”

The same French magazine also published a character sketch of M. Plantard, written by his first wife, Anne Lea Hisler, who died in 1971. If the magazine is to be believed, this sketch first appeared in Circuit, the Prieure de Sion’s own internal publication for which M. Plantard is said to have written regularly under the pseudonym of “Chyren”:

Let us not forget that this psychologist was the friend of personages as diverse as Comte Israel Monti, one of the brothers of the Holy Vehm, Gabriel Trarieux d’Egmont, one of the thirteen members of the Rose-Croix, Paul Lecour, the philosopher on Atlantis, the Abbe Hoffet of the Service of Documentation of the Vatican, Th. Moreaux, the director of the Conservatory at Bourges, etc. Let us remember that during the Occupation, he was arrested, suffered torture by the Gestapo and was interned as a political prisoner for long months. In his capacity of doctor of arcane sciences, he learned to appreciate the value of secret information, which no doubt led to his receiving the title of honorary member in several hermetic societies.

All this has gone to form a singular personage, a mystic of peace, an apostle of liberty, an ascetic whose ideal is to serve the well-being of humanity. Is it astonishing therefore that he should become one of the eminences grises from whom the great of this world seek counsel?

Invited in 1947 by the Federal Government of Switzerland, he resided for several years there, near Lake Leman, where numerous charges de missions and delegates from the entire world are gathered.

Madame Hisler undoubtedly intended this to be a glowing portrait. What emerges, however, is the sense of an individual more singular than anything else. In some places Madame Hisler’s language becomes both vague and hyperbolic. Moreover, the diverse people listed as M. Plantard’s distinguished acquaintances are, to say the least, a fairly odd lot. On the other hand, M. Plantard’s contretemps with the Gestapo would seem to point to some laudable activity during the Occupation. And our own researches eventually yielded documentary evidence. As early as 1941 Pierre Plantard had begun editing the resistance journal Vaincre, published in a suburb of Paris. He was imprisoned by the Gestapo for more than a year, from October 1943 until the end of 1944.

M. Plantard’s friends and associates proved to include individuals rather better known than those listed by Madame Hisler. They included Andre Malraux and Charles de Gaulle. Indeed M. Plantard’s connections apparently extended well into the corridors of power. In 1958, for example, Algeria rose in revolt and General de Gaulle sought to be returned to the Presidency of France. He seems to have turned specifically to M. Plantard for aid. M. Plantard, together with Andre Malraux and others, seems to have responded by mobilising the so-called “Committees of Public Safety” which played a critical role in returning de Gaulle to the Elysee Palace. In a letter dated July 29th, 1958, de Gaulle personally thanked M. Plantard for his services. In a second letter, dated five days later, the General requested of M. Plantard that the committees, having attained their objective, be disbanded. By an official communique in the press and on the radio, M. Plantard dissolved the committees.

Needless to say, we became increasingly anxious, as our research progressed, to make M. Plantard’s acquaintance. There did not at first seem much likelihood of our doing so, however. M. Plantard appeared to be untraceable, and there seemed no way whereby we, as private individuals, could possibly locate him. Then, during the early spring of 1979, we embarked on another film about Rennes-le-Chateau for the BBC, who placed their resources at our disposal. It was under the auspices of the BBC that we at last managed to establish contact with M. Plantard and the Prieure de Sion.

Initial inquiries were undertaken by an Englishwoman, a journalist living in Paris, who had worked on various projects for the BBC and had acquired an imposing network of connections throughout France, through which she attempted to find the Prieure de Sion. At first, pursuing her quest through Masonic lodges and the Parisian esoteric “sub-culture”, she encountered a predictable smoke-screen of mystification and contradiction. One journalist warned her, for example, that anyone probing Sion too closely sooner or later got killed. Another journalist told her that Sion had indeed existed during the Middle Ages, but no longer did today. An official of Grande Loge Alpina, on the other hand, reported that Sion did exist today but was a modern organisation—it had never, he said, existed in the past.

Threading her way through this welter of confusion, our researcher at last established contact with Jean-Luc Chaumeil who had interviewed M. Plantard for a magazine and written extensively on Sauniere, Rennes-le-Chateau and the Prieure de Sion. He was not himself a member of Sion, M. Chaumeil said, but he could contact M. Plantard and possibly arrange a meeting with us. In the meantime, he provided our researcher with additional fragments of information.

According to M. Chaumeil the Prieure de Sion was not, strictly speaking, a “secret society”. It merely wished to be discreet about its existence, its activities and its membership. The entry in the Journal Officiel, M. Chaumeil declared, was spurious, placed there by certain “defecting members” of the Order. According to M. Chaumeil, the statutes registered with the police were also spurious, issuing from the same ‘defecting members’. M. Chaumeil confirmed our suspicions that Sion entertained ambitious political plans for the near future. Within a few years, he asserted, there would be a dramatic change in the French Government—a change that would pave the way for a popular monarchy with a Merovingian ruler on the throne. And Sion, he asserted further, would be behind this change—as it had been behind numerous other important changes for centuries. According to M. Chaumeil, Sion was anti-materialistic and intent on presiding over a restoration of “true values”—values it would appear, of a spiritual, perhaps esoteric character. These values, M. Chaumeil explained, were ultimately pre-Christian despite Sion’s ostensibly Christian orientation, despite the Catholic emphasis in the statutes. M. Chaumeil also reiterated that Sion’s Grand Master at that time was Francois Ducaud-Bourget. When asked how the latter’s Catholic traditionalism could be reconciled with pre-Christian values, M. Chaumeil replied cryptically that we would have to ask the Abbe Ducaud-Bourget himself.

M. Chaumeil emphasised the antiquity of the Prieure de Sion, as well as the breadth of its membership. It included, he said, members from all spheres of life. Its objectives, he added, were not exclusively confined to restoring the Merovingian bloodline. And at this point, M. Chaumeil made a very curious statement to our researcher. Not all members of the Prieure de Sion, he said, were Jewish. The implication of this apparent non sequitur is obvious—that some members of the Order, if not indeed many, are Jewish. And again we were confronted with a baffling contradiction. Even if the statutes were spurious, how could we reconcile an Order with Jewish membership and a Grand Master who embraced extreme Catholic traditionalism and whose close friends included Marcel Lefebvre, a man known for statements verging on anti-Semitism?

M. Chaumeil made other perplexing statements as well. He spoke, for Merovingian bloodline and whose ‘sacred mission was therefore obvious’. This assertion is all the more baffling in that there is no known Prince of Lorraine today, not even a titular one. Was M. Chaumeil implying that such a Prince did actually exist, living perhaps incognito? Or did he mean ‘prince’ in the broader sense of ‘scion’? In that case, the present prince (as opposed to Prince) of Lorraine is Dr. Otto von Habsburg, who is titular duke of Lorraine.

On the whole, M. Chaumeil’s answers were less answers than they were bases for further questions—and our researcher, in the short time of preparation allowed her, did not know precisely which questions to ask. She made considerable headway, however, by stressing the BBC’s interest in the matter; for the BBC, on the continent, enjoys considerably more prestige than it does in Britain and is still a name to be conjured with. In consequence the prospect of BBC involvement was not to be taken lightly. “Propaganda” is too strong a word, but a BBC film which emphasised and authenticated certain facts would certainly have been attractive—a powerful means of gaining credence and creating a psychological climate or atmosphere, especially in the English-speaking world. If the Merovingians and the Prieure de Sion became accepted as ‘historical givens’ or generally acknowledged facts like, say, the Battle of Hastings or the murder of Thomas a Becket, this would patently have been to Sion’s advantage. It was undoubtedly such considerations that prompted M. Chaumeil to telephone M. Plantard.

Eventually, in March 1979, with our BBC producer, Roy Davies, and his researcher functioning as liaison, a meeting was arranged between M. Plantard and ourselves. When it occurred, it had something of the character of a meeting between Mafia godfathers. It was held on ’neutral ground’ in a Paris cinema rented by the BBC for the occasion, and all parties were accompanied by an entourage.

M. Plantard proved to be a dignified, courteous man of discreetly aristocratic bearing, unostentatious in appearance, with a gracious, volatile but soft-spoken manner. He displayed enormous erudition and impressive nimbleness of mind—a gift for dry, witty, mischievous but not in any way barbed repartee. There was frequently a gently amused, indulgent twinkle in his eyes, an almost avuncular quality. For all his modest, unassertive manner, he exercised an imposing authority over his companions. And there was a marked quality of asceticism and austerity about him. He did not flaunt any wealth. His apparel was conservative, tasteful, insouciantly informal, but neither ostentatiously elegant nor manifestly expensive. As far as we could gather, he did not even drive a car.

At our first, and two subsequent meetings with him, M. Plantard made it clear to us that he would say nothing whatever about the Prieure de Sion’s activities or objectives at the present time. On the other hand he offered to answer any questions we might have about the Order’s past history. And although he refused to discuss the future in any public statements—on film, for example—he did vouchsafe us a few hints in conversation. He declared, for example, that the Prieure de Sion did in fact hold the lost treasure of the Temple of Jerusalem—the booty plundered by Titus’s Roman legions in A.D. 70. These items, he stated, would be returned to Israel ‘when the time is right’. But whatever the historical, archaeological or even political significance of this treasure, M. Plantard dismissed it as incidental. The true treasure, he insisted, was ‘spiritual’. And he implied that this ‘spiritual treasure’ consisted, at least in part, of a secret. In some unspecified way the secret in question would facilitate a major social change. M. Plantard echoed M. Chaumeil in stating that, in the near future, there would be a dramatic upheaval in France—not a revolution, but a radical change in French institutions which would pave the way for the reinstatement of a monarchy. This assertion was not made with any prophetic histrionics. On the contrary, M. Plantard simply assured us of it, very quietly, very matter-of-factly and very definitively.

In M. Plantard’s discourse there were certain curious inconsistencies. At times, for instance, he seemed to be speaking on behalf of the Prieure de Sion—he would say “we” and thereby indicate the Order. At other times, he would seem to dissociate himself from the Order—would speak of himself, alone, as a Merovingian claimant, a rightful king, and Sion as his allies or supporters. We seemed to be hearing two quite distinct voices which were not always compatible. One was the voice of Sion’s Secretary-General. The other was the voice of an incognito king who “rules but does not govern” and who regarded Sion as one might a sort of privy council. This dichotomy between the two voices was never satisfactorily resolved, and M. Plantard could not be prevailed upon to clarify it.

After three meetings with M. Plantard and his associates, we were not significantly wiser than we had been before. Apart from the Committees of Public Safety and the letters from Charles de Gaulle, we received no indication of Sion’s political influence or power, or that the men we had met were in any position to transform the government and institutions of France. And we received no indication of why the Merovingian bloodline should be taken any more seriously than the various attempts to restore any other royal dynasty. There are several Stuart claimants to the British throne, for example—and their claims, at least so far as modern historians are concerned, rest on a more solid basis than that of the Merovingians. For that matter, there are numerous other claimants to vacant crowns and thrones throughout Europe; and there are surviving members of the Bourbon, Habsburg, Hohenzollern and Romanov dynasties. Why should they be accorded any less credibility than the Merovingians? In terms of “absolute legitimacy”, and from a purely technical point of view, the Merovingian claim might indeed take precedence. But the matter would still appear to be academic in the modern world—as academic, say, as a contemporary Irishman proving descent from the High Kings of Tara.

Again we considered dismissing the Prieure de Sion as a minor ’lunatic fringe’ sect, if not an outright hoax. And yet all our own research had indicated that the Order, in the past, had had real power and been involved in matters of high-level international import. Even today there was clearly more to it than met the eye. There was nothing mercenary about it, for example, or exploitative in any way. Had M. Plantard so desired, he could have turned the Prieure de Sion into an extremely lucrative affair—like many other fashionable “new age” cults, sects and institutions. Yet most of the seminal “Prieure documents” remained confined to private printings. And Sion itself did not solicit recruits—not even in the way that a Masonic lodge might. Its membership, as far as we could determine, remained rigorously fixed at a precise number, and new members were admitted only as vacancies occurred. Such ’exclusiveness’ attested, among other things, to an extraordinary self-confidence, a certainty that it simply did not need to enrol swarms of novices for financial gain or any other reason. In other words, it already “had something going for it”—something that seems to have enlisted the allegiance of men like Malraux and de Gaulle. But could we seriously believe that men like Malraux and de Gaulle were intent on restoring the Merovingian bloodline?

The Politics of the Prieure de Sion

In 1973 a book was published entitled Les Dessous d’une ambition politique (“The Undercurrents of a Political Ambition”). This book, written by a Swiss journalist named Mathieu Paoli, recounts the author’s exhaustive attempts to investigate the Prieure de Sion. Like us, M. Paoli eventually established contact with a representative of the Order whom he does not identify by name. But M. Paoli did not have the prestige of the BBC behind him, and the representative he met—if we can gauge by his account—would seem to have been of lesser status than M. Plantard. Nor was this representative as communicative as M. Plantard was with us. At the same time, M. Paoli, being based on the continent and enjoying a greater mobility than we do, was able to pursue certain leads and undertake “on the spot” research in a way that we could not. As a result his book was extremely valuable and contains much new information—so much, in fact, that it appeared to warrant a sequel, and we wondered why M. Paoli had not written one. When we inquired about him, we were told that in 1977 or 1978 he had been shot as a spy by the Israeli government for attempting to sell certain secrets to the Arabs.

M. Paoli’s approach, as he describes it in his book, was in many respects similar to our own. He too contacted the daughter of Leo Schidlof in London; and he too was told by Miss Schidlof that her father, to her knowledge, had no connection whatever with secret societies, Freemasonry or Merovingian genealogies. Like our BBC researcher, M. Paoli also contacted Grande Loge Alpina and met with the Loge’s Chancellor, and each received an ambiguous reply. According to M. Paoli, the Chancellor denied all knowledge of anyone named “Lobineau” or “Schidlof”. As for the various works bearing the Alpina imprint, the Chancellor asserted quite categorically that they did not exist. And yet a personal friend of M. Paoli’s who was also a member of Alpina claimed to have seen the works in the Loge’s library. M. Paoli’s conclusion is as follows:

There is one of two possibilities. Given the specific character of the works of Henri Lobineau, Grande Loge Alpina—which forbids all political activity both within Switzerland and without—does not want known its involvement in the affair. Or another movement has availed itself of the name of the Grande Loge in order to camouflage its own activities.

In the Versailles Annexe of the Bibliotheque Nationale, M. Paoli discovered four issues of Circuit, the magazine mentioned in the Prieure de Sion’s statutes. The first one was dated July 1st, 1959, and its director was listed as Pierre Plantard. But the magazine itself did not purport to be connected with the Prieure de Sion. On the contrary it declared itself the official organ of something called the Federation of French Forces. There was even a seal, which M. Paoli reproduces in his book, and the following data:

Publication periodique culturelle de la Federation des Forces Francaises 116 Rue Pierre Jouhet, 116 Aulnay-sous-Bois (Seine-et-Oise) Tel: 929-72-49

M. Paoli checked the above address. No magazine had ever been published there. The telephone number, too, proved to be false. And all M. Paoli’s attempts to track the Federation of French Forces proved futile. To this day no information on any such organisation has been forthcoming. But it would hardly seem coincidental that the French headquarters of the Committees of Public Safety were also Aulnay-sous-Bois. The Federation of French Forces would thus appear to have been in some way connected with the committees. There would seem to be considerable basis for this assumption. M. Paoli reports that Volume 2 of Circuit alludes to a letter from de Gaulle to Pierre Plantard, thanking the latter for his service. The service in question would seem to have been the work of the Committees of Public Safety.

According to M. Paoli, most of the articles in Circuit dealt with esoteric matters. They were signed by Pierre Plantard under both his own name and the pseudonym “Chyren”, Anne Lea Hisler and others with whom we were already familiar. At the same time, however, there were other articles of a very different kind. Some of them, for example, spoke of a secret science of vines and viticulture—the grafting of vines—which, apparently, had some crucial bearing on politics. This seemed to make no sense unless we assumed that vines and viticulture were to be understood allegorically—a metaphor perhaps for genealogies, for family trees and dynastic alliances.

When the articles in Circuit were not arcane or obscure, they were, according to M. Paoli, fervently nationalistic. In one of them, for instance, signed Adrian Sevrette, the author asserts that no solution for existing problems will be forthcoming except through new methods and new men, for politics are dead. The curious fact remains that men do not wish to recognise this. There exists only one question: economic organisation. But do there still exist men who are capable of thinking France, as during the Occupation, when patriots and resistance fighters did not bother themselves about the political tendencies of their comrades in the fight?

And from Volume 4 of Circuit, M. Paoli quotes the following passage:

We desire that the 1500 copies of Circuit be a contact which kindles a light, we desire that the voice of patriots be able to transcend obstacles as in 1940, when they left invaded France to come and knock on the office door of the leader of Free France. Today, it is the same, before all we are French, we are that force which fights in one way or another to construct a France cleansed and new. This must be done in the same patriotic spirit, with the same will and solidarity of action. Thus we cite here what we declare to be an old philosophy.

There then follows a detailed plan of government to restore to France a lost lustre. It insists, for example, on the dismantling of departments and the restoration of provinces:

The department is but an arbitrary system, created at the time of the Revolution, dictated and determined by the era in accordance with the demands of locomotion (the horse). Today, it no longer represents anything.

In contrast, the province is a living portion of France; it is a whole vestige of our past, the same basis as that which formed the existence of our nation; it has its own folklore, its customs, its monuments, often its local dialects, which we wish to reclaim and promulgate. The province must have its own specific apparatus for defence and administration, adapted to its specific needs, with the national unit.

M. Paoli then quotes eight pages that follow. The material they contain is organised under the following subheadings: Council of the Provinces, Council of State, Parliamentary Council, Taxes, Work and Production, Medical, National Education, Age of Majority, Housing and Schools.

The plan of government proposed under these subheadings is not inordinately controversial, and could probably be instituted with a minimum of upheaval. Nor can the plan be labelled politically. It cannot be called ’left-wing’ or ‘right-wing’, liberal or conservative, radical or reactionary. On the whole, it seems fairly innocuous; and one is at a loss to see how it would necessarily restore any particular lost lustre to France. As M. Paoli says, “The propositions… are not revolutionary. However, they rest on a realistic analysis of the actual structures of the French state, and are impregnated with a solid good sense.” But then the plan of government outlined in Circuit makes no explicit mention of the real basis on which, if implemented, it would presumably ultimately rest—the restoration of a popular monarchy ruled by the Merovingian bloodline. In Circuit there would be no need to state this, for it would constitute an underlying ‘given’, a premise on which everything published in the magazine pivoted. For the magazine’s intended readers the restoration of the Merovingian bloodline was clearly too obvious and accepted an objective to need to be labouring.

At this point in his book M. Paoli poses a crucial question—a question that had haunted us as well:

We have, on the one hand, a concealed descent from the Merovingians and, on the other, a secret movement, the Prieure de Sion, whose goal is to facilitate the restoration of a popular monarchy of the Merovingian line… But it is necessary to know if this movement contents itself with esoterico-political speculations (whose unavowed end is to make much money by exploiting the world’s gullibility and naivete) or whether this movement is genuinely active.

M. Paoli then considers this question, reviewing the evidence at his disposal. His conclusion is as follows:

Unquestionably, the Prieure de Sion seems to possess powerful connections. In actuality, any creation of an association is submitted to a preliminary inquiry by the Minister of the Interior. This obtains as well for a magazine, a publishing house. And yet these people are able to publish, under pseudonyms, at false addresses, through non-existent publishing houses, works which cannot be found in circulation either in Switzerland or in France. There are two possibilities. Either government authorities are not doing their jobs. Or else…

M. Paoli does not spell out the alternative. At the same time it is apparent that he personally regards the unstated alternative as the more probable of the two. M. Paoli’s conclusion, in short, is that government officials, and a great many other powerful people as well, are either members of Sion or obedient to it. If this is so, Sion must be a very influential organisation indeed.

Having conducted extensive research of his own, M. Paoli is satisfied with the Merovingian claim to legitimacy. To that extent, he admits, he can make sense of Sion’s objectives. Beyond this point, however, he confesses himself to be profoundly puzzled. What is the point, he wonders, of restoring the Merovingian bloodline today, 1300 years after it was deposed? Would a modern-day Merovingian regime be different from any other modern-day regime? If so, how and why? What is so special about the Merovingians? Even if their claim is legitimate, it would seem to be irrelevant. Why should so many powerful and intelligent people, both today and in the past, accord it not only their attention, but their allegiance as well?

We, of course, were posing precisely the same questions. Like M. Paoli, we were prepared to acknowledge the Merovingian claim to legitimacy. But what possible significance could such a claim enjoy today? Could the technical legitimacy of a monarchy really be so persuasive and convincing an argument? Why, in the late twentieth century, should any monarchy, legitimate or not, command the kind of allegiance the Merovingians seemed to command?

If we were dealing only with a group of idiosyncratic cranks, we could dismiss the matter out of hand. But we were not. On the contrary, we seemed to be dealing with an extremely influential organisation which included in its ranks some of the most important, most distinguished, most acclaimed and most responsible men of our age. And these men, in many cases, seemed to regard the restoration of the Merovingian dynasty as a sufficiently valid goal to transcend their personal political, social and religious differences. It seemed to make no sense that the restoration of a 1300-year-old bloodline should constitute so vital a cause celebre for so many public and highly esteemed people.

Unless, of course, we were overlooking something. Unless legitimacy was not the only Merovingian claim. Unless there was something else of immense consequence that differentiated the Merovingians from other dynasties. Unless, in short, there was something very special indeed about the Merovingian blood royal.