What is the Priory of Sion? Does it exist, or is it something Da Vinci Code author Dan Brown created for his book? What, if anything, does this group have to do with Paris and its history?

The Knights Templar

The Priory of Sion is, allegedly, closely tied with the Knights Templar, who are also mentioned and discussed in The Da Vinci Code. Their story is much easier to explain, so we’ll start there.

The Knights Templar was founded by nine French knights as “The Order of The Poor Knights of Christ” in 1118, during the Crusades to the Holy Land. On the way to Jerusalem, numerous pilgrims were being attacked by highway robbers and gangs, and so the Knights Templar volunteered to protect them, watching the roads for evil-doers. A few years after their inception, the knights adopted a long, white tunic with a red cross on it, as their uniform, of sorts.

They later came to be the guardians of the treasure of King Solomon’s temple in Jerusalem, where, Dan Brown and other theorists propose, they discovered, not gold and jewels, but scrolls and information regarding Jesus and Mary Magdalene, information that was quickly suppressed by the powerful Catholic Church. These scrolls contained certain beliefs, such as the true identity and importance of Mary Magdalene and her role as an associate of Jesus. The findings are debatable, and the scrolls, some of which later turned up as the Dead Sea Scrolls, may or may not exist.

Whatever the case, as the centuries went on, the Knights Templar were becoming more and more powerful. Though they themselves took a sacred vow of poverty, they were so trustworthy that pilgrims and others asked them to hold their money, and the Knights became a sort of early modern bank. Even after the Crusades, they were still entrusted with people’s riches, including the wealth of kings and members of the nobility in many countries. They also gave loans. The fortresses where they held money were located throughout Europe and the Holy Land, with major centers in Cyprus, London, and, especially, Paris.

In modern-day Paris’ Marais neighborhood are two streets, the rue du Temple (Temple Street) and the rue Veille du Temple (Old Temple Street). Many people think these names refer to a temple built here by the area’s Jewish community, but in fact, both roads originally led to the Knights Templars’ main fortress, a religious and money-holding complex that towered just outside medieval Paris’ northeastern border.

The Knights Templar weren’t only powerful in the financial world – they were also given the privilege of having to answer to no authority but the Pope himself. Naturally, this didn’t sit well with kings…especially kings who’d taken out massive loans.

There are a few reasons and theories as to why French King Philippe IV (called Philippe le Bel) made his fateful decision to try the Knights Templar for heresy, and then to exterminate them. Most scholars agree that the king probably saw the Templars’ power as a threat, but that ultimately his decision was mostly a question of money. You see, Philippe had borrowed a good deal from the Knights’ bank. The Knights’ Grand Master, Jacques de Molay’s refusal to join the Order to that of the Order of the Knights Hospitaliers, was just the excuse Philippe Le Bel needed to dissolve the order, with the approval of Pope Clement V. Then, the rest of France’s Knights Templars and their associates (a total of around 15,000 men), were hunted down and killed. This massacre happened on Friday, October 13th, 1307, and it’s for this reason that Friday the 13th has been considered an unlucky date in France and many other Western cultures, ever since. The next time you’re in Paris (if you aren’t here already!), ask some natives about this sinister date, and you will see them full of respect and superstition, though they may not know why this date is considered cursed.

Philippe le Bel brought Jacques de Molay to trial, and had the man admit that the Knights Templar committed heresies and crimes such as sodomy, spitting on the cross, and Satanism. De Molay later retracted his claims, saying that the only crime he had committed was lying about committing these acts, because he was under torture. He and Geoffroy de Charnay, another high-ranking Knight Templar, were slowly burned at the stake on an island near the present-day location of Notre-Dame. Philippe le Bel then confiscated the French Templars’ wealth, and the Temple was eventually reopened as a prison. It’s here, most notably, that Louis XVI, Marie-Antoinette, and their children were held after trying to escape from Paris shortly after the Revolution. The Temple was destroyed under Napoleon III, and today there is a pretty park where it once stood.

Many Knights Templar survived in other countries, and the order still exists to this day. The Knights Templar are still shrouded in mystery, and have also been associated with the Freemasons.

The Priory of Sion

The Priory of Sion (Prieuré de Sion), meanwhile, is far harder to define. Some scholars, researchers, and Priory members themselves, of course, will tell you that this religious order was founded in 1099, by a group of Belgian monks. According to Priory-accepted history, the order of the Priory of Sion was first ruled over by Godfroi de Bouillion, who had Merovingian ancestry. The order’s headquarters was supposedly an old abbey on Mount Zion, and initially the Priory and the Knights Templar were the same organization, until the Knights Templar broke away (or their order was just plain founded) in 1118.

According to believers in this theory, the Priory of Sion is an incredibly well-kept secret society that believes that descendants of Christ and Mary Magdalene’s union intermarried with the French Merovingian dynasty of rulers (447-751 AD), and so descendants of that dynasty are part of a sacred bloodline, which Priory members must protect. The Church has tried to suppress and destroy them because the Priory feels that these descendants are rightful leaders of the Church, and not the Popes whose origins go back to Saint Peter. As Dan Brown explains in The Da Vinci Code, at any given time, the Priory has a leader (a Nautonier), and three senechals (Sénéchaux), all of whom supposedly keep carefully guarded secrets about the Merovingian bloodline, and, possibly, other documents and knowledge relating to Mary Magdalene and the Holy Grail. Brown tells us that great men like Sir Isaac Newton, Sandro Botticelli, Jean Cocteau, and Da Vinci himself, were all Nautoniers, and according to Priory members and believers, this is true.

However -- and this is a very big “However” -- a number of other scholars and historians believe the Priory of Sion’s history is nothing more than a very elaborate hoax! A “Prieuré de Sion” does indeed exist – but instead of having the Middle Ages as its starting point, it was officially founded on May 7, 1956, near a hill called Mont Sion, in the town of Annemasse, France. This organization was formed by four men, one named Pierre Plantard. A few years after its creation, Plantard wrote an account and produced old parchments that had been found in had found in a church in the town of Rennes-le-Château by one Father Bérenger Saunière (same last name as the nautonier assassinated at the start of The Da Vinci Code). These documents, and others that would be found -- or, according to some theorists and historians, forged by Plantard and others -- were accounts of the Priory of Sion’s origin during the Crusades, as well as a list of former leaders of the order, and their missions and goals, such as preserving and protecting the Merovingian bloodline. Much of this information was used by Dan Brown in his book.

A simple online search shows just how much argument and debate the Priory of Sion still causes among historians and scholars, as well, maybe, as the general public. In the 1960’s or ‘70’s, a set of documents called the “Dossiers Secrets” (“Secret Dossiers”) emerged in the collection of France’s National Library, the Bibliothèque Nationale. These documents, which seem to date back centuries, contain more clues, details, history, and names relating to the Priory of Sion. They may or may not have been forged by mid-20th century Priory members. Whatever the case, the Dossiers have caught the attention of a number of scholars, including British historians Henry Lincoln, Michael Baigent, and Richard Leigh, who wrote a nonfiction book called The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail. This book was a great influence on The Da Vinci Code, so much so that the authors recently brought Da Vinci author Dan Brown to trial for copyright infringement (Brown won the case).

Real or hoax, the Priory of Sion’s history is certainly intriguing. For better or for worse, the order has captured the public’s imagination, and has been mentioned in pop culture media like comic books, movies, and, of course, best-selling novels. Why not do some investigating of your own to see what you discover?

Start your own investigation: take a look at the list of major key words at the end of this page, intended to help you in your search. Discover some very interesting websites we’ve found. If nothing else, these sites definitely show this frenzy to understand, to reason, to argue, and to try to convince readers of whatever theory they support. And these are only a few examples among the millions, or even tens of millions of sites dedicated to this subject!