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Priory of Sion

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The official emblem of the Priory of Sion is partly based on the fleur-de-lis, which was a symbol particularly associated with the French monarchy.^[1]

The Prieuré de Sion, translated from French as Priory of Sion, is a name given to multiple groups, both real and fictitious. The most notorious is a fringe fraternal organisation, founded and dissolved in France in 1956 by Pierre Plantard. In the 1960s, Plantard created a fictitious history for that organisation, describing it as a secret society founded by Godfrey of Bouillon on Mount Zion in the Kingdom of Jerusalem in 1099, which is devoted to installing a secret bloodline of the Merovingian dynasty on the thrones of France and the rest of Europe.^[2] This myth was expanded upon and popularised by the 1982 pseudohistorical book The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail,^[1] and later claimed as factual in the preface of the 2003 conspiracy fiction novel The Da Vinci Code.^[3]
After becoming a cause célèbre from the late 1960s to the 1980s, the mythical Priory of Sion was exposed as a ludibrium created by Plantard as a framework for his false pretension to the French throne.^[4] Evidence presented in support of its historical existence and activities before 1956 was discovered to have been forged and then planted in various locations around France by Plantard and his accomplices. Nevertheless, many conspiracy theorists still persist in believing that the Priory of Sion is an age-old cabal that conceals a subversive secret.^[5]
The Priory of Sion myth has been exhaustively debunked by journalists and scholars as one of the great hoaxes of the 20th century.^[6] Some skeptics have expressed concern that the proliferation and popularity of books, websites and films inspired by this hoax have contributed to the problem of conspiracy theories, pseudohistory and other confusions becoming more mainstream.^[7] Others are troubled by the romantic reactionary ideology unwittingly promoted in these works.^[8]