Pierre Plantard
Pierre Plantard de Saint-Clair (born Pierre Athanase Marie Plantard, 18 March 1920 – 3 February 2000) was a French technical artist, best known for being the principal fabricator of the Priory of Sion hoax, by which he claimed from the 1960s onwards that he was a male-line Merovingian descendant of Dagobert II and the "Great Monarch" prophesied by Nostradamus. Today in France, he is commonly regarded as a con artist. Early life Pierre Plantard was born in 1920 in Paris, the son of a butler and a concierge (described as a cook for wealthy families in police reports of the 1940s). Leaving school at 17, he became sacristan at the church of Saint-Louis d'Antin, in the 9th Arrondissement of Paris, and from 1937 began forming mystical ultranationalist associations like The French Union (1937) and French National Renewal (1941) to support a "National Revolution" based upon antisemitism and anti-Masonry. Occupation of France Following the dissolution of Grand Orient Freemasonry in Vichy France on 13 August 1940, Plantard wrote a letter dated 16 December 1940 to Marshal Philippe Pétain offering his services to the collaborationist government, referring to a 'terrible Masonic and Jewish conspiracy'. On 21 April 1941, Plantard wrote to the Paris Police Prefecture that his group the French National Renewal was to take possession of the unoccupied premises located at 22 place Malesherbes, 1st floor "which are currently let to an English Jew, Mr. Shapiro, who is presently fighting alongside his fellows in the British armed forces." By 1942, Plantard wanted to form another association, the Alpha Galates, membership prohibited to Jews, but the occupying German authorities refused permission. Alpha Galates The statutes of the Alpha Galates were deposited on 21 September 1942, describing itself as a tripartite order composed of the Temple, la Cité and les Arches. The Alpha Galates published a periodical called Vaincre - Pour une jeune chevalerie ("Conquer - for a young knighthood"), that lasted for six issues between September 1942 and February 1943, containing an anti-Semitic and anti-Masonic agenda; Plantard's disregard of the prohibition by the German authorities of the formation of the Alpha Galates earned him a four-month sentence in Fresnes Prison. The Statutes of the Alpha Galates existed in the German language as well as French. Claude Charlot of the Paris Prefecture of Police stated on a CBS News 60 Minutes documentary that the Alpha Galates "had only four regular members". According to a police report on the Alpha Galates dated 13 February 1945, the organisation was only composed of at most 50 members, who resigned one after the other as soon as they sized up the president of the association (Pierre Plantard) and figured out that it was not a serious enterprise. Post war activities Following the Liberation, Plantard tried to transform the Alpha Galates into a resistance group and in 1947, tried to form "The Latin Academy". On July 8, 1951, he was initiated into Freemasonry in the Grand Orient de France by the lodge L’Avenir du Chablais in Ambilly. In