GéRARD DE SèDE

'Gérard de Sède' (5 June 1921 – 29 May 2004) (full name 'Géraud Marie de Sède de Liéoux') was a French author and member of various surrealist organizations. He created more than 40 works on "alternative history", and is best-known for being part of the Priory of Sion hoax, and writing the book ''Le Tresor Maudit de Rennes-le-Chateau'' which introduced various (forged) documents into the public consciousness.

Contents

Biography

Confirmation of the hoax

References

Biography

He was born in Paris in 1921. His initial writing was as a Surrealist. In 1941, he was a member of the Surrealist group known as "La Main à Plume", which De Sede named after a phrase by Rimbaud, "La main à plume vaut la main à charrue" ("The hand that writes is equal to the hand that ploughs").
The group published a newsletter. Its third issue, in 1943, included de Sede's ''L'Incendie habitable'' ("The Inhabitable Fire")
He was active in the war, during the German occupation of Paris, and worked with the Forces Françaises de l'Intérieur (FFI), for which he received two citations.
After war, he worked in a variety of jobs, including selling newspapers, digging tunnels, and working as a journalist during the 1950s and 1960s. In 1956, he became an "agriculteur".
Several of his publications, from the 1960s onwards, were written with his wife, Sophie. In 1962, he published the pseudohistorical, ''Les Templiers sont parmi nous, ou, L'Enigme de Gisors'' ("The Templars are Amongst Us, or The Enigma of Gisors"). It was the first book which hinted at the existence of the Priory of Sion. In 1967, he wrote his most famous book, ''L'Or de Rennes, ou La Vie insolite de Bérenger Saunière, curé de Rennes-le-Chateau'' ("The Gold of Rennes, or The Strange Life of Bérenger Saunière, Priest of Rennes-le-Château"). It was a rewrite of a manuscript by Pierre Plantard which had failed to find a publisher.
''L'Or de Rennes'' (later republished under various titles such as ''Le Trésor Maudit de Rennes-le-Chateau'' and ''Signe Rose+Croix'') became hugely popular in France, and reinforced the intensity level of conspiracy theories around the tiny village of Rennes-le-Chateau.
One of those who read the book was British script-writer Henry Lincoln, who created a series of BBC Two documentaries on the subject of Rennes-le-Chateau, as well as working some of its material into the 1982 bestseller ''Holy Blood, Holy Grail'' which itself was used as source material by the bestselling 2003 novel, ''The Da Vinci Code''.
In his later years, de Sède looked critically at the mystery of Rennes-le-Château. In ''Rennes-le-Château: le dossier, les impostures, les phantasmes, les hypothèses'' (1988) he surveyed some of the publications which had appeared over the previous 20 years, analysing the theories and their proponents.

Confirmation of the hoax

In a 2005 TV documentary [1], de Sede's son Arnaud stated categorically that his father and Plantard had made up the existence of the Priory of Sion — to quote Arnaud de Sède in the programme, "frankly, it was piffle".

References

★ Historian of the mystery of Rennes-le-Château

★ ''Da Vinci Declassified'', 2006 TLC video documentary

★ "Priory of Sion", 60 Minutes, April 30, 2006, produced by Jeanne Langley, hosted by Ed Bradley