The Sion Revelation: The Truth About the Guardians of Christ's Sacred Bloodline [Paperback]

Lynn Picknett (Author), Clive Prince (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 3, 2006

An essential notion in the #1 New York Times bestseller The Da Vinci Code is the existence of an age-old French society, the Priory of Sion, whose task it is to protect Christ's sacred bloodline. In The Sion Revelation, Picknett and Prince reveal the story of the Priory, taking readers on a highly significant, disturbing, and even alarming ride through history into an intriguing world where a great many uncomfortable facts will have to be faced, both religious and political.

Drawing on a wealth of astonishing evidence, they answer numerous questions that shroud this society, including:

• Does the Priory actually exist or is the group's entire history an elaborate hoax?

• Was Leonardo da Vinci really one of the Priory's Grand Masters?

• What is the truth behind Pierre Plantard, the enigmatic French aristocrat who claimed to be a Priory Grand Master -- and who some claim was a Nazi sympathizer?

• Could the Priory be a front for other occult societies in Europe with religious or even political agendas?

By carefully untangling centuries of obfuscation, rumor, and documented fact, The Sion Revelation unravels the great intricacies of this secret society and takes us on a historical journey that is as groundbreaking in its explanation as it is riveting in its telling.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The high tide of Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code has lifted many boats, and one of them is the research of Picknett and Prince, self-styled writers on "the paranormal, the occult, and historical mysteries." Authors of The Templar Revelation, a book that helped inspire Brown's novel of hidden descendants of Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalene, Picknett and Prince return to these enticing themes of secrets, treasures, heresy and backroom power brokering with a closer look at the Priory of Sion. In this book, they argue that the Priory is a hoax, but one that is carefully designed in the manner of misinformation leaked by intelligence agencies to achieve specific goals. Behind the hoax, they say, is a network of European esoteric societies driven by the principle of "synarchy" and influencing the coalescence of the European Union, perhaps at the expense of democracy. Like their many other books, this one is cluttered with historical minutiae and sources of varying credibility. Skeptics will shake their heads over this next conspiracy theory, but for Da Vinci Code fans hungry for additional digging behind the fiction, this will be a dense but satisfying read. (Feb. 7)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

The authors' previous book, The Templar Revelation (1998), a primary source for The Da Vinci Code, looked at the symbolism in Da Vinci's art as well as exploring the notion that a secret group, the Priory of Sion, was charged with guarding the secret of Jesus' bloodline. Since then, most researchers have debunked the Priory. Picknett and Prince now argue that the Priory is neither the centuries-old society Brown posited nor a complete hoax but a real group that wants to bring about a United States of Europe. To get to their explanation of that concept (a notion that will be of most interest to Europeans), readers must wade through lots of convoluted logic. So, why bother? Well, for the very asset the authors tout--their connection to The Da Vinci Code. Thanks to Brown's novel, there is great interest in the topics covered here, everything from bloodlines to Merovingian kings to Gnostic gospels. That's enough to spark interest in this wildly speculative book. When the authors write that a presumed assassination of Princess Diana is outside their scope, one can only sigh in relief. Ilene Cooper
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Paperback: 514 pages
• Publisher: Touchstone (January 3, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0743263030
• ISBN-13: 978-0743263030
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.5 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #793,284 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

57 of 70 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Shameful mystification, January 30, 2006

By 

Bernardo Motta (Lisboa, PORTUGAL) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Sion Revelation: The Truth About the Guardians of Christ's Sacred Bloodline (Paperback)

Picknett and Prince are very well known to the trained Priory of Sion researcher. They are prominent members of the famous, and ludicrous, "Rennes generation". They are also known for their anti-scientific and singular approach to historical research. Their works are filled with numerous examples of source truncation and distortion of historical documents. Even if their books are always filled with footnotes, to disguise the lack of intellectuality and historical truth, the trained eye can see clearly the mark of pseudo-history in their books.
The "reviewer" Jeffrey J. Butz must be joking with the readers, by his comment... People are getting sick of the Priory of Sion intoxication. Plantard, dead since 2000, and his friend Chérisey (dead since 1985) must be laughing out loud with all this credulity. In a world that takes Dan Brown seriously, to the untrained eye, Picknett and Prince's footnotes may give the illusion of information. But only for a while... There is a great number of serious historical books on the Priory of Sion, most of all written in the French language. Serious people interested in the truth regarding the Priory of Sion hoax should be reading books by authors like Jacques Rivière, Jean-Jacques Bedu, Pierre Jarnac, Claire Corbu and Antoine Captier, Marie-France Etchegoin, Frédéric Lenoir, and many, many more. Most of these authors are writing about the subject matter since the 70's.
People that cannot read french can now easily grasp the truth regarding this popular hoax through the works of serious authors like italians Mario Arturo Iannaccone or Massimo Introvigne, or the british Bill Putnam and John Edwin Wood.
For almost a decade, british author Paul Smith has given the Internet readers an enormous ammount of historical data providing everyone with the sound truth about the Priory of Sion.
More and more intoxicated readers are getting saturated with distortion and noise like those present in Picknett and Prince's long and painfully fragile literary «opus».

33 of 40 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Always More Questions Than Answers, February 12, 2006

By 

John D. Cofield - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Sion Revelation: The Truth About the Guardians of Christ's Sacred Bloodline (Paperback)

Here is yet another entry into the always fascinating but perplexing genre of "The Mystery of Rennes-le-Chateau and The Priory of Sion", which first leaped onto an unsuspecting world nearly twenty five years ago and has recently gained new life with Dan Brown's ubiquitous thriller "The Da Vinci Code."

The basic story, conveniently summarized by Picknett and Prince, concerns the activities of a poor parish priest in the 1890s who somehow got his hands on a great deal of money and came into contact with a large number of unusual people: royals, occultists, opera singers, and sundry other types. Tracing this priest's career led to the unveiling of a super secret society, the Priory of Sion, and its supposedly explosive secret: the survival of descendants of Jesus Christ and their claim to be the rightful rulers of France. (There's way more to the story than that, but that's the gist of it.)

Picknett and Prince try to sum up the evidence and tie up the loose ends, and they do a pretty good job of it, so far as is possible when dealing with a story that keeps on unfolding and always comes up with strange new twists. They debunk some of the more bizarre aspects, such as the Merovingian Dynasty's "right" to rule France and all of Europe, and prove(so far as anything in this story can be proven) that some of the chief protagonists, like Pierre Plantard, were habitual exagerrators if not downright liars.

However, the most interesting parts of this book deal with the odd coincidences and strange interconnections so many of the events and characters boast. Reading these sections, I was reminded of the game "Six Degrees from Kevin Bacon," because it turns out that nearly everyone in modern French and European politics has ties to people who supposedly have ties to the Priory of Sion. Furthermore, it appears that the Priory, whether or not it really exists, has an interest in European unification which it shares with some less than savory groups, both past and present.

Reading this book will clear up some questions about the whole Priory mystery, but it will leave you with dozens more to ponder.

17 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Finally, some answers that make sense., April 1, 2006

By 

B Wilson - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Sion Revelation: The Truth About the Guardians of Christ's Sacred Bloodline (Paperback)

Kudos to the authors (and shame on those who are addicted to denial and zero-think debunking).

The type of intelligence operation documented in the book was common in the Cold War, and no one would blink an eye if they were told the KGB or CIA had initiated such an operation. Considering the intelligence and special operations backgrounds of some of the Priory characters, their use of such techniques is practically predictable. But it took Picknett and Prince to recognize the pattern.

There are still odd aspects to the interweaved threads of the Priory, the Rennes-le-Chateau mystery, and the Merovingian Legends (such as the book by Jules Vernes), and plenty to speculate about. But as far as what the Priory really is ... the book is well worth the read to answer that question. And yes, it is not a simple answer. But then, reality is often far more complex than we give it credit for.