Pierre Athanase Marie Plantard (1920-2000) was the mastermind behind the Priory of Sion hoax. The Priory of Sion was originally founded in 1956, when Plantard worked as a draughtsman for a company in the town of Annemasse, in the Haute-Savoie region of south-east France. Devoted to the "Defence and Liberty of Low-Cost Housing", the association attacked the property developers of Annemasse through its journal 'Circuit'.

He became an impostor who claimed to be a Merovingian pretender to the throne of France during the early 1960s, his position being influenced by an article that he had read by Louis Saurel in the French magazine 'Les Cahiers de l'Histoire' Number 1 (1960).

Pierre Plantard died on 3 February, 2000, in Paris.

External links and references

• Paul Smith. Priory of Sion: The Pierre Plantard Archives 1937-1993 The most extensive resource for an exposure of Pierre Plantard as a hoaxer.