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