Página principal  |  Contacto  

Correo electrónico:

Contraseña:

Registrarse ahora!

¿Has olvidado tu contraseña?

FORO LIBREPENSADOR SIN CENSURA
 
Novedades
  Únete ahora
  Panel de mensajes 
  Galería de imágenes 
 Archivos y documentos 
 Encuestas y Test 
  Lista de Participantes
 GENERAL 
 REGLAS DE ESTE FORO LIBRE 
 Panel de quejas 
 CONCORDANCIAS BIBLICAS 
 PANEL DEL ADMINISTRADOR BARILOCHENSE 6999 
 
 
  Herramientas
 
General: INVESTIGATING THE PRIORY OF SION AND THE KINIGHTS TEMPLAR RENNES LE CHATEAU ZION
Elegir otro panel de mensajes
Tema anterior  Tema siguiente
Respuesta  Mensaje 1 de 4 en el tema 
De: BARILOCHENSE6999  (Mensaje original) Enviado: 15/03/2025 16:39

Investigating the Priory of Sion and the Knights Templar

SPECIAL INVESTIGATION: THE PRIORY OF SION

One of the great mysteries and contentious discussion points about the Knights Templar is whether the order was established by an already existing secret society called the Priory of Sion. This, as you will know, underlies the plot behind Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code.

The story goes that the Priory of Sion was formed to protect the sacred bloodline of Jesus Christ from the Catholic church, which feared the threat to its power and the terrible truth that would fatally undermine the papacy’s authority and fabulous wealth.

The Messiah had conceived at least one child with Mary Magdalene, who had fled to France after the crucifixion. Her descendants were the Merovingian kings overthrown in the eighth century CE who ruled over a large part of modern France, Germany and Switzerland.

The priory’s aim was to reinstate the dynasty and establish a Christian theocracy over Europe ruled by the descendants of Jesus. The Knights Templar had been formed by the priory to achieve this objective, whatever the official reasons given for their creation.

Subsequent centuries had seen a secret battle played out between different forces including the priory, the Templars, the church and Freemasons. They were fighting and scheming for control of the Holy Grail. But what exactly was the Grail? A physical object like a cup used at the Last Supper or the bloodline of Jesus Christ? The so-called Sang Real?

This is all of course discounted by mainstream medieval historians as hokum. The history of the Knights Templar, in their view, does not require additional layers of fantasy to be fascinating. The Priory of Sion is utter nonsense invented by con artists and spread by the credulous. Well, below, we’re going to examine the case for the existence of the Priory of Sion and the case for the prosecution.

First – let’s hear from the defence – those who believe the Priory of Sion was very real.

Case for the Defence

  • The Priory of Sion was founded in Jerusalem after the First Crusade resulted in the capture of the city by Christian forces in 1099. It was based on the site of the Byzantine Hagia Sion, which subsequently housed a monastic order called the Abbey of Our Lady of Mount Zion. The Priory and Abbey were one and the same thing. This church was the site of the bodily and spiritual “assumption” of the Virgin Mary into heaven (in Catholic dogma). It’s now under the control of the Benedictines.
  • The Priory of Sion founded the Knights Templar to achieve its hidden objectives. This was to protect the bloodline of Jesus – the real Holy Grail. The term Holy Grail means “Sang Real” or Royal Blood. The Templars were the Grail Knights spoken of in legend. It was their role and destiny to defend the Grail, the bloodline, at all costs. This they would do until the time came to make the bloodline known to humanity.
  • A 19th century French priest François-Bérenger Saunière (pictured above) discovered the truth about the Priory of Sion after being sent to run a church in the French village of Rennes-le-Chteau. The church was dedicated to Mary Magdalene, wife of Jesus Christ, who had fled to France after the crucifixion. While in this role, Saunière installed the statue of the Virgin Mary at Lourdes, the hugely popular pilgrimage site. He was a pious cleric who believed he had stumbled on a great truth.
  • Saunière seemed to become very rich, very quickly. He built a large estate between 1898 and 1905 that included the Rococo-style edifice, Villa Bethania and the Tour Magdala with an orangery. The 1998 novel Menorah conjectures that Saunière had found the seven-branched candelabra of the Temple of Jerusalem, destroyed and sacked by the Romans.
  • In the 1982 book The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail it was pointed out that Rennes-le-Chateau was located close to the ancestral home of Bertrand de Blanchefort, fourth Grand Master of the Knights Templar. The three authors of the book wondered if Blanchefort had buried Templar treasure in the vicinity. They believed that during the second world war, German soldiers had very likely excavated the area. Why? Because the Nazis, obsessed with the occult, were aware that their favourite composer Richard Wagner had visited Rennes-le-Chteau and shortly afterwards written his opera Parsifal, based on a medieval Grail quest story of the same name. Wagner knew that Rennes-le-Chteau was concealing a Grail mystery.
  • The book detailed how in 1891, Saunière had the altar stone removed in his church and inside one of two Visigothic pillars supporting it, discovered four parchments in sealed wooden tubes dating from between 1244 to the 1780s.
  • The 1780s parchments were the most interesting authored by a priest called Antoine Bigou who was the chaplain to the Blanchefort family just before the 1789 French Revolution. They appeared to be texts from the New Testament in Latin but were written rather oddly and clearly contained coded messages. They became the subject of three documentaries made for the BBC in the 1970s by one of the authors of The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail, Henry Lincoln. It referred to the last Merovingian king, Dagobert II, as follows once decoded: “To Dagobert II, king, and to Sion belongs this treasure and he is there dead.”
  • Another parchment contained the enigmatic message: “Shepherdess, no temptation. That Poussin, Teniers hold the key. Peace 681. By the cross and this horse of God. I complete this daemon of the guardian at noon. Blue apples.”
  • Saunière made the discovery of the parchments known to the bishop of Carcassonne who, realising their importance, sent him to Paris straight away. While there, visiting clerics and mixing with society people, he went to the Louvre to acquaint himself with the Poussin painting The Shepherds of Arcadia, long believed to include a Templar related secret message.
  • Saunière returned to Rennes-le-Chteau and embarked on a bizarre redecoration of his church that included a representation of the demon Asmodeus who, in Talmudic legends, built the Temple of Solomon. In Kabbalistic circles, Asmodeus was the offspring of King David and the queen of the demons, Agrat bat Mahlat.
  • On 22 January, 1917, Saunière suffered a stroke and died. The huge estate he had built was passed to his long serving housekeeper Marie Denarnaud. Gradually sliding in to genteel poverty after the second world war, Denarnaud sold the estate to a businessman called Noël Corbu (1912-1968). She promised to confide a secret to Corbu that would make him rich and powerful but tantalisingly died before she could impart this knowledge.
  • The author Dan Brown took the story of these hidden parchments and brought the story of the Priory of Sion back to public prominence with his book The Da Vinci Code. The adventure starts with the murder of a curator at the Louvre called Jacques Saunière (same name as the priest who served at Rennes-le-Chteau) , who also happens to be the Grand Master of the Priory of Sion. His killer is a Catholic monk under the direction of a “teacher” who wants to use the secret of the Holy Grail to destroy the Vatican. The real meaning of the Holy Grail is the bloodline of Christ and it leads the book’s hero to the sarcophagus of Mary Magdalene, located under the Louvre.
  • Dan Brown has asserted strongly that the Priory of Sion is fact and not fiction.

Case for the Prosecution

  • The Prioriy of Sion was an invention of a French convicted fraudster called Pierre Athanase Marie Plantard (1920-2000 and pictured above). In 1953, he served a six-month prison sentence for fraud. This was revealed in a BBC2 programme called The History of a Mystery, part of the “Timewatch” documentary series. Timewatch was the successor to an earlier documentary strand called “Chronicles”, which in the 1970s had promoted the whole Priory of Sion thesis.
  • Three years after his prison sentence, with an accomplice called André Bonhomme, Plantard created an organisation called The Priory of Sion in 1956. Bonhomme was president and Plantard was secretary general. Initially, it was not intended to be viewed as an ancient sect pre-dating the Templars, but just a pressure group campaigning for better local housing. It also took a traditionalist Catholic line and wanted to work with the local church on things like running a school bus service. Sion refers to a hill near the town of Annemasse where Plantard lived in the Auvergne region of France. The priory folded later the same year.
  • Enter Robert Charroux, a man who believed that aliens had visited humanity in ancient history and imparted wondrous knowledge. A very similar theory was popularised in the 60s and 70s by the Swiss author Erich Von Däniken with his book Chariot of the Gods. In 1962, Charroux wrote a book Trésors du monde. It gave details of hidden treasures all over the world. Charroux had come across the aforementioned Noël Corbu who had bought the estate built by the priest Saunière. Corbu had serialised a story in the local paper claiming that the priest Saunière had discovered all or part of a 28.5 million gold pieces fortune gathered by Blanche of Castile to pay the ransom on King Louis of France during the Crusades, when he was being held prisoner by the Saracens in Egypt. This was detailed, he claimed, in the parchments found in the pillar of the altar in his church by Saunière. Cynics countered that Corbu was just trying to drum up business at his restaurant.
  • A great deal is made of the sudden wealth acquired by Saunière as proof that he had indeed found part of the wealth of Blanche of Castile and possibly other treasure. The reality, as evidenced by several church disciplinary hearings and the stripping of his priesthood, is that he was utterly corrupt, selling masses which was against church law. This view was corroborated by a local historian, René Descadeillas, in 1974 as well as a Channel 4 documentary in the UK called The Real Da Vinci Code broadcast in 2005 and a CBS 60 Minutes investigation, Priory of Sion, aired the following year. All came to the conclusion that Saunière’s wealth did not derive from discovering secret treasure but by exploiting his gullible parishioners.
  • CBS also questioned the veracity of the discovered parchments and revealed that Plantard had been investigated by the French secret services during the second world war and described as a “fantasist”. He had come to their attention as an extreme right-wing activist.
  • Plantard seems to have latched on to the Corbu story and developed it. In fact, all the protagonists in this conspiracy theory grabbed the Priory of Sion story baton and ran with it awhile – developing new angles before handing it on to another author.
  • Plantard and others then developed a lineage for the Priory of Sion transporting it back way beyond 1956 into the mists of history. It was linked by Plantard to an abbey in Jerusalem, the Hagia Sion or Church of Zion. This was originally built in the early 5th century, then destroyed by invading Persians and later occupied by a monastic order called the Abbey of Our Lady of Mount Zion. As Plantard rightly pointed out, they were absorbed into the Jesuits in 1617. But experts say that order had nothing to do with Plantard’s Priory of Sion.
  • Plantard hooked up with an author called Gérard de Sède (1921-2004) who was the Baron de Lieoux and a man heavily influenced by surrealism. The result was a tome called L’Or de Rennes, the gold of Rennes, published in 1967. The two of them concocted the yarn that the last Merovingian king was buried at Rennes-le-Chteau in the eighth century and that the Priory of Sion had been working clandestinely ever since to bring the Merovingians back to power.
  • Plantard had taken his Priory of Sion organisation from a defunct housing pressure group to an ancient brotherhood protecting the Merovingian line of which he now decided he was a descendant. The central proposition was that a Merovingian monarch would rule France, and possible Europe, fulfilling a prophecy of Nostradamus. Plantard styled himself “Chyren”, a pseudonym referring to “Chren Selin”, an anagram used by Nostradamus to refer to this future king.
  • Enter Philippe de Chérisey, another aristocrat influenced by surrealism, who became buddies with Plantard in the early 1960s. He undoubtedly forged medieval parchments, allegedly found by Saunière, to back up the idea of the Priory of Sion being an ancient organisation. With Plantard, he created a load of allegedly secret documents, which they placed in the Bibliothèque Nationale de France (bit like the Library of Congress or the British Library) De Cherisey seems to have viewed these forgeries as a bit of a hoot. In later confessions, he conceded that he enjoyed setting false trails.
  • Henry Lincoln, author of Holy Blood Holy Grail, admitted that Plantard had told him De Cherisey had created the documents on which the whole Priory of Sion hoax rests.
  • The Italian author and academic Umberto Eco was fascinated by the Knights Templar and the fantasy that surrounds them. He satirised people like Plantard in his book Foucault’s Pendulum where three publishers develop a fraudulent conspiracy theory only to be sucked in to a real one. This is surely a post-modern chuckle at the fantasists and hucksters.
  • What we have with the Priory of Sion is a total fabrication half-believed by all those involved.
davis

It sounds pretty damning for Plantard and his Priory of Sion. But then there’s another hypothesis put forward by Templar historian and fantasy writer Graeme Davis in his book Knights Templar A Secret HistoryShould mention that he also co-designed Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay. Davis argues that the whole point of the Plantard hoax was to throw people off the scent of the real location of the Holy Grail.

In 2007 Davis met an academic who had taught at the University of Toulouse called Dr Émile Fouchet. They were at the International Congress on Medieval Studies. Fouchet shared his notes on the foundation of the Knights Templar with Davis three days before he was killed in a car accident in 2012 just outside Troyes, a town in France with strong Templar connections. Accident? Suicide? Murder? Who knows.

Fouchet developed a complicated account of the Holy Grail being fought over down the centuries by Freemasons, the Inquisition and a secret continuation of the Knights Templar in various guises. One of the Templar tools was none other than Napoleon Bonaparte who they allowed to demolish the Paris Temple to cover his tracks.

The Holy Grail was hidden by the Templars at Rennes-le-Chteau where Saunière, an Inquisition agent, set about trying to find it. The Templars created false trails to confuse both the Inquisition and Freemasons who desperately tried to locate the Grail in Rennes-le-Chteau even though it had already gone. The Templars had whisked it out of the country. Eventually, the Inquisition realised Saunière’s efforts had come to nothing and they hung him out to dry with charges of corruption.

Fast forward to the Second World War and the Templars had got an ultra-right-wing nationalist called Plantard to start writing a load of baloney about secret documents and his connection to the Merovingian dynasty and Mary Magdalene. All of which, Fouchet asserted, was another false trail created by the Templars. They wanted the Inquisition and Freemasons to believe the Grail was still in Rennes-le-Chteau when it had left in around 1897. Where was it now? A town called Sion in Switzerland is one possibility.

One nagging problem I have with this hypothesis is that I can’t find anything about Emile Fouchet except in this book. And there’s a reason for that – he is entirely fictional!! The author Graeme Davis has contacted me since this blog post first went live to say that Fouchet was his own invention and he is not a scholar but a master of fantasy. See his comment below.

So back to the drawing board again when it comes to proving the Priory of Sion!

I hope you have enjoyed this investigation of the Priory of Sion!

To find out more about the Knights Templar – read my very comprehensive history of the Templars: The Knights Templar – History & Mystery – published by Pen & Sword. It’s available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, WHSmith, Waterstones, and other online bookstores.

https://thetemplarknight.com/2017/09/29/priory-of-sion/


Primer  Anterior  2 a 4 de 4  Siguiente   Último  
Respuesta  Mensaje 2 de 4 en el tema 
De: BARILOCHENSE6999 Enviado: 15/03/2025 16:42

Templars in Switserland – then and now

As we have argued in an earlier post, certain historians and conspiracists alike suggest that the Knights Templar did in fact form Switzerland.  The evidence and likelihood seem pretty plausible. At the same time hard evidence is scarce and circumstantial at best. Historical fact is that the Order of the Temple counted on the current Swiss territory only two commanderies: La Chaux and Geneva.

 La Chaux in Cossonay is attested in 1223 and Geneva (district of Rive) is quoted in 1277. These had other dependent houses, particularly in Cologny, Bénex (commune of Prangins) and Entremont (commune of Yvonand). All these establishments belonged to the baillie (or preceptory) of Burgundy, subdivision of the Templar province of France.

La Chaux Commanderie was given by the lords of Cossonay to the Knights Templar before 1223. This commandery does not seem to have been particularly profitable, because in 1277 part of the possessions was sold to the Franciscan order to pay debts. After the dissolution of the Order, it passed in 1315 to the Knights of the Order of St. John of Jerusalem. The commandery depended the hospices of Orbe, Villars-Sainte-Croix and Montbrelloz.

After the Protestant Reformation in the 16th Century, the commandery was secularized, subordinated to the last commander, then in 1539 to the brothers of the reformer Guillaume Farel, finally sold in 1540 to Robert du Gard.

In Geneva there is a Ruelle de Templiers. This name comes from a house and a chapel of the Knights Templar who were there. At the suppression of this order, in 1312, they passed, as everywhere, to the Hospitallers of Saint John. This establishment was destroyed in 1534 with the suburbs of the left bank.

Modern Swiss Knights Templar (probably part of the OSMTH.net branch, though this Order is not referred to directly on the website) are organized in the Commandery Bertrand de Blanquefort, situated in the hart of Geneva, and the Commandery André de Montbard at Kanton Vaud (no town mentioned).

https://templarsnow.wordpress.com/tag/switserland/

Respuesta  Mensaje 3 de 4 en el tema 
De: BARILOCHENSE6999 Enviado: 15/03/2025 16:44

Knights Templar and Switserland

 
"
The current Knights Templar Headquarters are in Geneva.  This country befits and holds similar many of the most common and closely guarded values of the original Knights Templar.

The oldest abbey established in Switzerland is Sion, in the Valais Canton. There is a twin peaks overlooking the town, meaning new Jerusalem or holy place in the Alps.  The twin mountains house the cathedral of Sion and the Castle Tourbillion.  These date back to the beginning times of Swiss Confederation formation around 1291.  A time when the Templars were known to be looking to establish a European mainland stronghold outside of the Holy Land as they were being pushed out of the Levant by the Muslims and the Christians had lost their stomach to fight on any longer.

These are suggestions that certain historians and conspiracists alike deem to be true that suggest that the Knights Templar did in fact form Switzerland.  The evidence and likelihood seem pretty plausible to me. The county of Valais in the city of Sion has a particular Templar tie in the founding history. Rumors have always floated that this is where the Templars originally set up shop after their flight from France.
  • In the history of the first Swiss Cantons there are tales of white coated knights mysteriously appearing and helping the locals to gain their independence against foreign domination.
  • The founding of the early Switzerland pinpoints exactly to the period when the Templars were being persecuted in France by King Philip IV of France.
  • Switzerland is directly to the east of France and would have been particularly easy for fleeing Templar brothers from the whole region of France to get to.
  • The Templars were one of the earliest known banking systems in early day Europe. King Phillip in fact was deeply in debt to the Templars.
  • Not only were the Templars big into banking, but also in farming, engineering, and clock making (of an early type). These same aspects can be seen as importance to the commencement and gradual forming of the separate states that would eventually be Switzerland.
  • The Swiss don’t really know the ins and outs of their earliest history (or suggest that they don’t.)
  • They are famous for being secretive and independent as were the Templars.
  • The famous Templar Cross is incorporated into the flags of many of the Swiss Cantons. As are other emblems, such as keys and lambs, that were particularly important to the Knights Templar.
  • The Swiss were and are famous for their religious tolerance – and so were the Templars"
https://www.templarsnow.com/2015/01/knights-templar-and-switserland.html

Respuesta  Mensaje 4 de 4 en el tema 
De: BARILOCHENSE6999 Enviado: 16/03/2025 04:38

Are you ready to discover the history and geography of Sion in Switzerland?
This city, founded several centuries ago, is a place rich in history that has influenced Swiss and European cultures. Embark on an exciting adventure in the Valais region.

 

On your journey through these cultural wonders, you’ll explore the castles of Valère and Tourbillon, one of the town’s historic gems. You will also learn all about the emergence of the canton’s most important city and its evolution.

History of Sion in Switzerland

Sion is a town in the canton of Valais, Switzerland, and is the administrative capital of the canton. It was founded at the turn of the century and is considered an important place for historical and geographical research.

The first written mention of Sion as a town dates back to the year 1160, and in 1189 the county became the episcopal principality of Sion. By this time, the town had already prospered to become a politically important and strategic site.

Over the centuries, through destruction, fire and regional power struggles, its population gradually grew and it experienced several periods of development.

Integrated into the Germanic Holy Roman Empire at the beginning of the 11th century, the principality of Sion was at the centre of conflicts between Switzerland and Savoy, between counts, episcopates and local communities, until the creation of the Republic of the Seven Tithings*.

In 1798, the Upper Valais, including Sion, united with the Lower Valais to create a single canton and join the Helvetic Republic.

The construction of the Valère and Tourbillon castles between the 11th and 13th centuries also played a major role in the history of the town and its establishment as the central place of the region.

Origins and development of the town

Sion is an ancient Roman city built around the Castrum Sedunum by Roman legionaries around the year 40. The Latin name is said to have originated with the Seduni a Celtic people who had settled in the Valais since the 1st century BC.

Until the seat of the episcopate was moved to Sion in the 5th century, the town remained in the shadow of the present-day towns of Martigny and Massongex, both of which were located on the axis of the Great St Bernard Pass, a passageway between the Valais and the Aosta Valley since the Neolithic period.

Development and expansion of the town

The arrival of the train in the Rhone Valley from the Lake Geneva port of Bouveret in the 19th century stimulated the development of the town, as it did for Martigny and the other towns on the railway axis. A provisional station was built in 1860 and the final version was completed in 1873.

The establishment and gradual improvement of rail and road links between neighbouring towns and in the valley from Geneva facilitated trade and travel throughout the region.

Since then, Sion has steadily developed its tertiary sector and its tourist capacities, to the detriment of the agricultural sector and in particular the dairy industry, which has seen its importance decline for several decades. Only the wine industry has been able to survive this agricultural decline.

Geography and heritage of Sion in Switzerland

Sion is located in the heart of the Valais, in the southwest of Switzerland. The town is situated at an altitude of 512 metres on the right bank of the river Rhône, for the historic centre, and shares the two banks over the whole of the commune.

Geographical location and climate

Nestled in the valley of the nascent Rhone and protected from the influences of the high peaks of the Alps, the climate is generally temperate throughout the year, with average temperatures varying between 6°C in winter and 19°C in summer.

Where is Sion?

Location map of the city of Sion in the Swiss Valais:

 
 
 
 
 

Physical and natural characteristics

The surrounding landscape is mostly composed of mountains covered by alpine forest, offering an unimaginable variety to admire: impressive rocks and peaks, limpid bodies of water with turquoise reflections, magical valleys invaded by daffodils and thousand-year-old glaciers like the Aletsch.

Important places and monuments

The most visible and most important site of the town is located on the heights of the town, with the castle of Tourbillon and the fortified basilica of Valère.

The castle, dating from the 13th century, is built on the ramparts of the lower town and its magnificent towers dominate the town.

The basilica dates from the 12th century and has been undergoing a complete restoration since 1987.

The Tourbillon and Valère castles, the Sorcerers’ Tower, Notre-Dame de Sion Cathedral with the old town, the Town Hall and the Rue du Grand-Pont, are the places not to be missed during a visit to the town’s heritage.

Culture in Sion, Switzerland

Spoken languages and dialects

The spoken language is French and the regional language, Valaisan, is used. German and Romansh are also spoken in a minority.

Cuisine and gastronomy

Sion offers a wide variety of culinary delights from all over the Valais and Switzerland.
Local specialities include rösti potatoes, tartiflettes, fondue of course, but also game (rabbit, venison, etc.), dried meat or Valais rye bread.

As the most important wine-producing region in Switzerland, it is difficult to escape from one of the 60 grape varieties that the Valais has to offer and which the Sion region has been able to take advantage of, for example with the wine tour of the region starting from the city.

Arts, music and entertainment

The artistic culture is very present in Sion. The town has several museums to discover, such as the Valais Art Museum, the History Museum, the Nature Museum and the Fellini Foundation.

The music scene has also developed rapidly in recent years, with numerous concerts and festivals throughout the year, from classical music at PALP to Opéra Viva under the stars.

Discovering the city is an enriching experience thanks to its prolific past and its current dynamics: passing through Sion on a journey along the Rhône River will delight travellers, whether for a short time or for a longer stay.

Along the Rhône

https://ontherhone.com/en/history-geography-sion-valais-switzerland/


Primer  Anterior  2 a 4 de 4  Siguiente   Último  
Tema anterior  Tema siguiente
 
©2025 - Gabitos - Todos los derechos reservados