Maybe there is something about this Priory of Sion. I hope not. Any Priory story ends in...

Sophie Neveu: Maybe there is something about this Priory of Sion. Robert Langdon: I hope not. Any Priory story ends in bloodshed. They were butchered by the Church. It all started over a thousand years ago when a French king conquered the holy city of Jerusalem. This crusade, one of the most massive and sweeping in history, was actually orchestrated by a secret brotherhood, the Priory of Sion and their military arm, the Knights Templar. Sophie Neveu: But the Templars were created to protect the Holy Land. Robert Langdon: That was a cover to hide their true goal, according to this myth. Supposedly the invasion was to find an artifact lost since the time of Christ. An artifact, it was said, the Church would kill to possess. Sophie Neveu: Did they find it, this buried treasure? Robert Langdon: Put it this way: One day the Templars simply stopped searching. They quit the Holy Land and traveled directly to Rome. Whether they blackmailed the papacy or the Church bought their silence, no one knows. But it is a fact the papacy declared these Priory knights, these Knights Templar, of limitless power. By the 1300s, the Templars had grown *too* powerful. Too threatening. So the Vatican issued secret orders to be opened simultaneously all across Europe. The Pope had declared the Knights Templar Satan worshipers and said God had charged *him* with cleansing the earth of these heretics. The plan went off like clockwork. The Templars were all but exterminated. The date was October 13th, 1307. A Friday. Sophie Neveu: Friday the 13th. Robert Langdon: The Pope sent troops to claim the Priory's treasure, but they found nothing. The few surviving Knights of the Priory had vanished, and the search for their sacred artifact began again. Sophie Neveu: What artifact? I've never heard about any of this. Robert Langdon: Yes, you have. Almost everyone on earth has. You just know it as the Holy Grail.