Pierre Plantard was born in 1920 in Paris, the son of a butler and a concierge.
12 Facts About Pierre Plantard
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On 25 June 1956, Pierre Plantard and Andre Bonhomme legally registered in the town of Saint-Julien-en-Genevois a new association called the Priory of Sion, based in Annemasse close to the French border near Geneva.
3.
In 1959, Pierre Plantard edited a second series of the journal Circuit, subtitled Publication Periodique Culturelle de la Federation des Forces Francaises.
4.
Pierre Plantard read the article and wrote to de Sede, later collaborating with him on the book Les Templiers sont parmi nous, ou, L'Enigme de Gisors, that was published in 1962.
5.
Pierre Plantard originally claimed these genealogies had been compiled by a Doctor Herve and Abbe Pichon, originally at the request of Napoleon Bonaparte, who found out about the Merovingian survival from Abbe Sieyes.
6.
From 1975, Pierre Plantard used the surname Plantard de Saint-Clair, described as an epithet by Jean-Luc Chaumeil, following his interview with Plantard in the magazine l'Ere d'Aquarius.
7.
The "Saint-Clair" part of his surname was added to his real surname on the basis that this was the family name associated with the area of Gisors associated with his hoax - according to the mythology of the Priory of Sion "Jean VI des Pierre Plantard" married a member of the House of Gisors during the 12th century.
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Dagobert II 8.
Pierre Plantard was hypothesised as the direct descendant of Jesus Christ.
9.
In February 1982, Pierre Plantard dismissed The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail as fiction on a French radio interview, and later even dismissed the Priory of Sion documents of the 1960s and 1970s as false and irrelevant.
10.
In 1990, Pierre Plantard revised himself by claiming he was only descended from a cadet branch of the line of Dagobert II, while arguing that the direct descendant was really Otto von Habsburg, actually descended from Sigebert I, different from Sigebert IV, who was the son of Bera II and the grandson of Wamba, the founding father of the House of Habsburg and the builder of Habsburg Castle, drawing on content found in a 1979 book by Jean-Luc Chaumeil.
11.
Pierre Plantard admitted under oath he had fabricated everything, including Pelat's involvement with the Priory of Sion.
12.
Pierre Plantard was later threatened with legal action by the Pelat family and therefore disappeared to his house in southern France.