Abbé Jean-Jacques-Henri Boudet (16 November 1837 — 30 March 1915), 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 (since 1967, when he became associated with the alleged mystery of Rennes-le-Château).The alleged mystery of Rennes-le-Château has been challenged for as long as it has been promoted. Notably by René Descadeillas, Mythologie du trésor de Rennes (Mémoires de la Société des Arts et des Sciences de Carcassonne, 1974), Abbé Bruno de Monts, Bérenger Saunière, curé à Rennes-le-Château 1885-1909 (Editions Bélisane, 1989), Jean-Jacques Bedu, Rennes-le-Château: Autopsie d’un Mythe (Ed. Loubatières, 1990), Bill Putnam and John Edwin Wood, Rennes-le-Château: A Mystery Solved (Sutton Publishing, 2003, 2005), Marie-France Etchegoin and Frédéric Lenoir, Code Da Vinci: L’Enquête (Éditions Robert Laffont,, 2004) and more recently by David Rossoni, L’Histoire Rêvée de Rennes-le-Château: Eclairages sur un Récit Collectif Contemporain (Books on Demand Editions, 2010).
Biography Boudet was born on 16 November 1837 in the house of Mrs Zoé (Angélique-Zoé-Caroline née Saurel) Pinet-Laval (Boudet's neighbour),"Dénombrement de 1836, liste nominative communale de Quillan", Archives Départementales de l'Aude, Carcasonne, p.9 a widow in Quillan in the department of Aude and died on 30 MarchCourrier de l'Aude 13 avril 1915 , page 2 (58me Année, N° 12479). 1915 in Axat. He was the third of four children, the second of three sons, of Pierre-Auguste Boudet (died on 10 February 1841"Tables décennales des registres de l'Etat civil du canton de Quillan, Aude (1833–1842)", Archives Départementales de l'Aude, Carcasonne and Jeanne-Adélaide-Elizabeth Huillet. Boudet's father was the manager of the forges of Quillan who had been authorized (1837)"Bulletin des lois de la République franc̜aise, Numéros 297 à 337", Bulletin des lois du Royaume de France, régne de Louis-Philippe, Roi des Français, Ordonnance du Roi portant autorisation de la société anonyme des Forges et Usines d'Axat (Aude), Au Palais de Saint-Cloud, le 19 Septembre 1837 by François-Denis-Henry-Albert, Count de La Rochefoucauld-Bayers (1799–1854), a member of a prominent French aristocratic family, the De la Rochefoucault to act as his sole representative to constitute a joint venture, la societé des forges et fonderies d'Axat, a Forge and casting plant, the partnership was also composed of controlling shareholder, Ange-Jean-Michel-Bonaventure (1767–1847), 4th Marquess of Dax d'Axat, once Mayor of Montpellier and his son Barthélémy-Léon-François-Xavîer de Dax. Nothing is known about Boudet's early years following his father death and how his family managed to survive financially is not documented either; Gérard de Sède claimed – without citing any evidence – that Boudet entered holy orders through the patronage of Abbé Emile-Francois-Henri Géraud de Cayron (1807–1897).Gérard de Sède, L'Or de Rennes, page 138 (René Julliard, 1967). After completing his seminary studies in Carcassonne, where he also earned his degree in English language and literature, Boudet was ordained to the priesthood on Christmas Day 1861,Rémy Cazals, Daniel Fabre, Les Audois Dictionnaire biographique, p.74, Association des Amis des Archives de l'Aude, Fédération Audoise des Oeuvres Laïques, Société d'études scientifiques de l'Aude, Carcassonne, (1990). he spent the first year of his priesthood in Durban-Corbières until 16 June 1862 when he was assigned to Caunes-Minervois up to 30 October 1866. On 1 November 1866, Boudet was appointed parish priest of Festes-et-Saint-André, next to the town of Limoux. In 1872, Boudet was transferred to Rennes-les-Bains (succeeding L'abbé Jean Vié who had died a short time earlier) until 1914 when he was discharged from his duty by the Bishop of Carcassonne, Mgr Paul-Félix Beuvain de Beauséjour (1839–1930), due to serious illness. 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 (Jean-Baptiste-Edmond), who died on 5 May 1907, once worked as a notary.
The two Boudet brothers are buried in the same grave. It features two epitaph inscriptions, engraved horizontally and on the lower part of the gravestone, a small rectangular shaped figure on its surface, engraved vertically with the following inscription ΙΧΟΥΣ which stand for Jesus Christ, Son of God, Saviour.
The name of Henri Boudet's successor was published in the regional Catholic periodical Semaine Religieuse de Carcassonne of 2 May 1914. Abbé Joseph Rescanières died suddenly at the age of 37 on 1 February 1915 from a suspected heart attack.
A final tribute to Boudet's character was published in the same periodical mentioned above on 10 April 1915.
Boudet's interests and La Vraie langue celtique
Beside his priestly responsibilities, Boudet's interests extended to the fields of local history, archaeology, toponymy, linguistics and photography. He was made a member of the following learned societies, the Société des Arts et des Sciences de Carcassonne (1888) and of the Société de Linguistique de Paris (1897).
In the preface to his 1886 book, La Vraie langue celtique et le cromleck de Rennes-les-Bains, Boudet stated that his "cromleck" was "intimately linked to the resurrection" (trouve intimement lié à la résurrection) and in turn cognate to the revival of the Celtic language (ou, si l'on veut, au réveil inattendu de la langue celtique) and therefore to his etymological arguments."C'est ainsi que le Cromleck de Rennes-les-Bains se trouve intimement lié à la résurrection, ou, si l'on veut, au réveil inattendu de la langue celtique" ("Thus the Cromleck of Rennes-les-Bains is intimately linked to the resurrection, or, if you will, the unexpected revival of the Celtic language"). Avant-Propos, La Vraie langue celtique et le cromleck de Rennes-les-Bains, 1886. The first five of the eight chapters in Boudet's 1886 book consist of an argument that ancient languages such as Basque, Celtic, Punic and Hebrew are derived from a more ancient mother language that was identical to Modern English. For example, when Boudet referred to the location known as The Realsès (today called "la Realsesse") he claimed it was derived from two English words: real (i.e., effective), and cess (tax),Putnam and Wood, page 234. when commenting how "The Realsès runs in a valley whose fertile earth enables the inhabitants to pay their taxes and where the Celts till their ground for easy produce".Boudet, La Vraie langue celtique, page 227. 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.Umberto Eco, The Search for the Perfect Language (Oxford: Blackwell's, UK; Cambridge, Mass., USA, 1997).The French Catholic esoterist Paul Le Cour (1871–1954) gave a potted history of the search for a primitive language in his article The French Revolution and the searchers for Atlantis (reprinted in Atlantis Number 356, pages 109-130, Winter 1989), where he cited as examples Charles de Brosses, Traité de la formation mecanique des langues et des principes physiques de l'etymologie (1765) and Antoine Court de Gébelin, Monde primitif (9 volumes, 1773). The article was originally entitled The 18th Century and The Primitive World and was published in Atlantis Number 46, March–April 1933.The book by Godfrey Higgins, Anacalypsis, was posthumously published in 1836, part of which read: "the megalithic remains scattered across the world had been the works of a great nation unknown to history, which had discovered religion and writing" (cited by Ronald Hutton, in The Triumph of the Moon, page 18, Oxford University Press, Oxford, England, 1999).
Philippe Schrauben, in his introduction to the 1984 re-published edition of Boudet's book, commented: "...we notice that La Vraie langue celtique... is a huge mosaic of extracts of 19th-century works carefully chosen to make them more or less coherent. There are not only detailed quotations but whole pages transcribed word for word and put end to end." Schrauben considered that to understand Boudet's book one would have to research his sources and read them in the context of their time.Philippe Schrauben introduction in, Henri Boudet, La Vraie langue celtique et le cromleck de Rennes-les-Bains (Éditions Belisane, Cazilhac, 1984; ).Bill Putnam, John Edwin Wood, Rennes-le-Château: A Mystery Solved, page 237 (2005 edition).Article: La Vraie Lanque Celtique, pages 649-650, in, Patrick Berlier, Daniel Dugès, Christian Doumergue, etc, editors, L'ABC de RLC: l'Encyclopédie de Rennes-le-Château (Arqa éditions, 2009).
Boudet also made historical claims, like for example that the Tectosages (mainly known about from Strabo, that he called "Volkes 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, La Vraie langue celtique, pages 12-17.