- Paperback: 530 pages
- Publisher: Touchstone; annotated edition edition (31 Jan 2006)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0743263030
- ISBN-13: 978-0743263030
- Product Dimensions: 21.7 x 14 x 3.3 cm
- Average Customer Review: 1.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 1,475,616 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Description
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 P
About the Author
Lynn Picknett and Clive Prince are writers, researchers, and lecturers on historical and religious mysteries. Their seminal book The Templar Revelation: Secret Guardians of the True Identity of Christ inspired the New York Times
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The Priory of Sion takes center stage in The Da Vinci Code as the underground order whose astounding secrets are threatened by powerful enemies and which the heroic Robert Langdon and Sophie Neveu must prevent from falling into the wrong hands. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
The Priory of Sion takes center stage in The Da Vinci Code as the underground order whose astounding secrets are threatened by powerful enemies and which the heroic Robert Langdon and Sophie Neveu must prevent from falling into the wrong hands. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
6 of 12 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Basically what Picknett and Prince (believers in the Priory of Sion) have tried to do is to absorb all the damning negative evidence about Pierre Plantard and try to come up with all kinds of various excuses to try to make the subject matter sound serious. But their attempt contains significant omissions, sloppy treatment of the facts and hilarious unjustifiable assumptions that only specialists in the subject matter are able to spot - this is just another howler of a book from them. All interest in the Priory of Sion in France was terminated during the mid-1980s because by that time it was generally realised in that country that the whole thing was a Fake (and the books by Baigent, Lincoln and Leigh were never taken seriously in France either). The authors never bothered to contact authorities like Jean-Luc Chaumeil, who can easily prove by providing primary source evidence that the whole thing was a fake from beginning to end. You do not have to be a hyper-sceptic to know that this whole subject matter is fake but you need to be hyper-gullible to take the Priory of Sion seriously.
3 of 10 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Basically what Picknett and Prince (believers in the Priory of Sion) have tried to do is to absorb all the damning negative evidence about Pierre Plantard and try to come up with all kinds of various excuses to try to make the subject matter sound serious. But their attempt contains significant omissions, sloppy treatment of the facts and hilarious unjustifiable assumptions that only specialists in the subject matter are able to spot - this is just another howler of a book from them. All interest in the Priory of Sion in France was terminated during the mid-1980s because by that time it was generally realised in that country that the whole thing was a Fake (and the books by Baigent, Lincoln and Leigh were never taken seriously in France either). The authors never bothered to contact authorities like Jean-Luc Chaumeil, who can easily prove by providing primary source evidence that the whole thing was a fake from beginning to end. You do not have to be a hyper-sceptic to know that this whole subject matter is fake but you need to be hyper-gullible to take the Priory of Sion seriously.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
17 reviews
58 of 71 people found the following review helpful
Shameful mystification
30 Jan 2006
Format: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».
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
Always More Questions Than Answers
12 Feb 2006
Format: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.
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
Finally, some answers that make sense.
1 April 2006
Format: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.
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.
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