22 Facts About Henri Boudet

Abbe Jean-Jacques-Henri Boudet, is best known for being the French Catholic parish priest of Rennes-les-Bains between 1872 and 1914 and for being the author of the book La Vraie langue celtique et le cromleck de Rennes-les-Bains, first published in 1886.

On 1 November 1866, Henri Boudet was appointed parish priest of Festes-et-Saint-Andre, next to the town of Limoux.

In 1872, Henri Boudet was transferred to Rennes-les-Bains until 1914 when he was discharged from his duty by the Bishop of Carcassonne, Mgr Paul-Felix Beuvain de Beausejour, due to serious illness.

Henri Boudet lived in Rennes-les-Bains with his mother and sister Jeanne, both died the same year in 1896.

Henri Boudet spent the rest of his days in Axat, where his younger brother Edmond, who died on 5 May 1907, once worked as a notary.

The name of Henri Boudet's successor was published in the regional Catholic periodical Semaine Religieuse de Carcassonne of 2 May 1914.

Beside his priestly responsibilities, Henri Boudet's interests extended to the fields of local history, archaeology, toponymy, linguistics and photography.

Henri Boudet was made a member of the following learned societies, the Societe des Arts et des Sciences de Carcassonne and of the Societe de Linguistique de Paris.

The search for a mother language from which all other languages were derived was nothing new and Henri Boudet was not the first author to make such a proposition.

Henri Boudet made historical claims, like for example that the Tectosages, were early inhabitants of the Aude and the ancestors of the Saxons and the Franks, therefore of the English and the French.

Henri Boudet described his "cromleck" in chapter seven of his book, which in essence was a circular tour of the mountain ridges around Rennes-les-Bains: the area in question is illustrated by a map that was drawn by his brother, Edmond.

Henri Boudet claimed this represented the place in society where ancient sages gathered together to think up names for the places they lived in, "to carry out their scientific functions and make up the particular or general nomenclature".

Henri Boudet made an unsuccessful attempt to have his book honoured by the award of the medaille d'or, a prize distributed by the Academie des sciences, inscriptions et belles-lettres de Toulouse.

Jourdanne's harsh criticism went so far as to say that Henri Boudet's study was worthy at most of publication in the British satirical magazine Punch.

Jourdanne's criticism of Henri Boudet's book represented only one out of many.

Henri Boudet claimed that the etymology of "Greffeil" was derived from Grev-fill, meaning Full and Grev translated as a place full of graves.

In 1875 one of Greffeil's inhabitants, Mr Barthe, unearthed an old tomb dating back to either Celtic Gaul or Roman Gaul periods; whether Henri Boudet was aware of this discovery and used it to pen the etymology of "Greffeil" is open to debate.

Henri Boudet donated a copy of La vraie langue celtique to the Cambridge University Library, the book is still in the University of Cambridge's possession as late as 2015, in a letter written and signed by Henri Boudet to the rector of the University of Cambridge, established the date of the donation on 11 December 1886.

Henri Boudet donated another copy of his book to the Bibliotheque de la Societe des Arts et des Sciences de Carcassonne in 1894.

Henri Boudet was credited with the discovery of a water-container embossed with a Christian cross in around 1886 and of a statue of the goddess Venus in around 1900 in the maison Chaluleau in Rennes-les-Bains.

Gerard de Sede, in collaboration with Pierre Plantard, offered a romantic interpretation of La Vraie Langue Celtique et le cromleck de Rennes-les-Bains in his 1967 book L'Or de Rennes, claiming that Henri Boudet wrote his book in a cryptic style that represented a code.

Henri Boudet's book was re-edited in two different editions in 1978: a facsimile edition by Pierre Belfond, Paris, part of les classiques de l'occultisme, containing a foreword by Pierre Plantard and the second one, in a limited edition of 1,000 copies by La demeure Philosophale, Paris, with a foreword by Gerard de Sede.