Nicholas Flamel, the most successful alchemist, was born in early 1330 in France. Little is known about his life. According to legend, he was a Parisian bookseller until one day, a stranger entered his shop. The stranger sold a 21-page book on alchemy written in a foreign language. Flamel tried to translate it on his own and around 1378, he travelled to Spain where he finally had the book translated. It gave him instructions on how to create the Philosopher's Stone.
Flamel and his wife Perenelle became famous for their generosity, using a seemingly endless amount of gold for hospitals and public works which survive today. As well, they appear to have created the Elixer of Life, as although Perenelle died in 1402 and Nicholas in 1418, their tombs are empty. Numerous reports have since risen of them appearing long after their deaths, including an emissary of King Louis XIV of France seeing them in India and a 1761 appearance at the Paris Opera.
Flamel was named as a Grand Master of the Priory of Sion in the Dossiers Secrets d'Henri Lobineau (Secret Files of Henri Lobineau), and has been mentioned in books about the Priory and about the Holy Grail, such as Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code, albeit in passing. However, the Dossiers Secrets were created in 1967 by Pierre Plantard, the founder of the historical Priory of Sion, which was created in 1956.
