The Mystery of Rennes-Le-Château
The Mystery of Rennes-Le-Château began on November 6, 1644 when François Pierre, Marquis of Blacheford and Lord of Rennes-le-Château, drew up a will and had it recorded on November 23 of that year by notary Captier of Esperaza. A state secret is mentioned in the will.
Rennes-le Château is a small town, set on a hill, in the Aude department in Languedoc. In ancient times the town was called Rhaede and was a large city. Prehistoric, Roman vestiges have been found in the area, but everyone remembers it as the Visigothic capital of Razés in the 5th century. It had at that time more than 30,000 inhabitants; today it is a tiny town.
In 1781 the curate of Rennes-Le-Château, Antoine Bigou, received, in confession and at the point of death, from the marquise d'Hautpoul, Marie de Negri D'Arlès a family secret, which was to be handed down. The marquise died on January 17, 1781, and the curate had a tombstone placed on her tomb, located under the bell tower, ten years later, in 1791, from another tomb that was located in the area known as Les Pontils in Arques in the Valley de la Sals. A tombstone was used to seal a grave and, if it is removed, the remains of the deceased buried there come out. Where did Bigou hide those remains?
He would also have hidden, in one of the pillars near the altar, some documents and had a slab, the so-called "Dalle des Chevaliers," laid upside down, also near the altar, which we will discuss later.
He was declared, in 1791, an "unsworn" priest and, because of this, fled to Spain, where he died on March 21, 1794.
Antoine Bigou had replaced as curate of Rennes-le-Château his uncle Jean on the same day of his death. Nothing is known about him; no records of his existence can be found. Was his name really Antoine Bigou? Why was he declared an "unsworn priest"? Perhaps because he did not join the Revolution and therefore considered a rebel or perhaps because he had not been ordained a priest?
Another question comes to us: why did Bigou have the Marquise d'Hautpoul buried outside the family tomb in the cemetery? There is the parish register from 1694 that attests that, at that time, there was the d'Hautpoul family crypt and that the entrance was inside the church. In fact, in the register, whenever someone connected with the Blacheford family died, it was noted that "he is interred in the Church in the Lords tomb which is near the balustrade."
We also find the death of the Marquise noted, but the "wording" is not given.
It is unthinkable that a Marquise, in whose family there had been Templars, a family belonging to the Merovingian dynasty, who had revealed a state secret to a priest (Bigou), who had wanted to receive last rites, had not been buried in the family tomb. Everything suggests that she had been buried in that crypt, while Bigou had buried the remains found in the Tomb of Les Pontils in that of the "false" marquise.
The secret, however, had to be passed on. Antoine Bigou also adhered to this "arrangement"; he confided it to Abbot Cauneille, who, in turn, entrusted it to two other abbots, Jean Viè, curate of Rennes Le Bains, and Emile François Cayron, curate of St. Laurent de la Cabreisse.
After Jean Vié at Rennes Le Bains was appointed curate Henri Boudet, who learned of the existence of the secret and who would become close friends with François Bérenger Saunière, appointed curate of Rennes-le-Château by the bishop of Carcassonne Monsignor Billard, who was part of a confraternity that "went back into the mists of time".
François Bérenger Saunière was appointed curate of Rennes-Le-Château on June 1, 1885. The church at that time was in urgent need of restoration. But he had no funds.
At that time the abbot was also interested in politics. In fact, for an anti-Republican speech delivered in October of that year, he was sent into exile from April to July 1986. After that he returned to Rennes-Le-Château.
He went in search of a faithful and safe housekeeper and found her in Marie Dènarnaud.
Needing to repair the church, Saunière asked for contributions. The Marquise de Chambord offered 3,000 francs; the town hall acknowledged him a contribution of 1,400 francs.He could, thus, begin the restoration work.
The first work was carried out on the floor. The workers recounted that, in a cavity, they had recovered a vessel, exactly a cauldron, inside which they had noticed pieces of gold glittering. Saunière said there were some medals depicting Our Lady of Lourdes, without any value. Yet in the same year he gave the abbot Grassaud, curate of Amélie les Bains, a silver-gilt chalice, which can still be admired in all its beauty today.
The chalice given to Grassaud had been found in the church during restoration. On it is engraved ECCE PANIS ANGELORUM FACTUS CIBUS VIATORUM (Here is the bread of the Angels that has become the food of the wayfarers). At the base we find the symbols of the four Evangelists - Winged Lion (Mark), Winged Bull (Matthew), Angel (Luke), Eagle (John) - and further above Jesus, St. Joseph and another unidentified person. Some ask: is this a saint? It is certain that the figure is that of a woman.
In 1891 he asked and obtained from the municipality the use of a piece of land in front of the Church where he had a cave made in which he built a calvary; he had a rose carved into it, the symbol of the Rosicrucians, and had the following inscription engraved on it: Christus A.O.M.P.S. Defendit.
Many assumptions have been made about this inscription.
What would Saunière have meant by the inscription A.O.M.P.S. ?
Some read:
CHRISTUS ANTIQUUS ORDO MYSTICUSQUE PRIORATUS SIONUS DEFENDIT"May Christ defend the ancient mystical order of the Priory of Sion."
Others, however, argue that it is an invocation addressed to God to protect all people:
CHRISTUS AB OMNI MALO POPULUM SUAM DEFENDIT"may Christ defend his people from all evil."
If the first case is true, considering that he had not yet discovered anything important, he certainly belonged to the Order of the Priory of Sion; if, on the other hand, the inscription refers to the second hypothesis, the curate was a simple priest who did nothing more than address an invocation to Jesus Christ.
But I wonder, if it was Saunière's intention to address this kind of invocation, what reason did he have to indicate it with an inscription? Perhaps that, with all the stones gathered in the surrounding countryside for the construction of the cave and Calvary, there was no room to engrave a few words? Besides, wouldn't a curate have left such an invocation available to all the people of the Church? If he used only letters, it is because no one needed to know, only he and a few others.
Work, inside the church, continued briskly. The altar consisted of a marble slab that rested on columns. The slab was removed and a flask was found in one column, inside which some manuscripts with the seal of Queen Blanche de Castille were discovered. It was the bell-ringer Captier who had made the discovery; he immediately notified Saunière, who claimed that these were relics.
On the column, upside down, Saunière had a statue of Our Lady of Lourdes erected and had "PENITENCE-PENITENCE" and MISSION 1891 engraved on it. What mission was he to accomplish?
Under the pillar is a base, with three steps, on which is engraved the phrase: "O Mary conceived without sin, pray for us who have resorted to you", however, the word MARIE is written in a very strange way: MRIE. What did Saunière mean by this? Here we find the "symbol" in place of the A.
In the Gothic cathedral of St. Gervasius and St. Protesus of Soisson we find it alone or in place of the H in JS.
In the Abbey of Orval, near Stenay, built in 1070 to house Calabrian monks, who disappeared after about 30 years without a trace, we see it modified, but this is associated more with the M and A intertwined and engraved under the Visigoth pillar. In the Cercle of Dagobert II we admire it again, but still modified.
Gennaro D'Amato, starting from the legend that from a square divided by two diagonals, which was engraved on Solomon's ring, all numbers derive, drew our symbol, enclosed in a rectangle, and proved that from it the letters of the alphabet used in antiquity can be found. This symbol thus became a cipher.
Let us continue on our path.
Captier will have occasion to say, "It is thanks to me that Saunière became so rich".
The curate would find documents, namely:
Dagobert II's gene tree from 681 to 1244 and from 1244 to 1644 and 2 codified texts from the Gospels (St. John's gospel in the part where it is indicated that Jesus goes to Bethany to Lazarus and Mary anoints his feet with ointment and dries them with her hair and some verses in the part where Jesus answered the Pharisees, who had pointed out to him that his disciples were picking ears of corn on the Sabbath because they were hungry: "... the Son of Man is lord of the Sabbath".
Saunière, the day after the discovery of the manuscripts, had two workers, Rousset and Babon, lift a stone slab in front of the balustrade, turn it over, and found that it was composed of two carved panels, on one there is a figure on horseback playing a horn, on the other a horse on which there is a horseman and a child.
Later, Plantard claims, the Templars made this figure (two horsemen on one horse) their seal. This was the tombstone of Sigebert IV (son of Dagobert II) who died in 758. It was the tombstone that Abbot Antoine Bigou had laid in 1791. Under the tombstone was the entrance to the d'Hautpoul family tomb. Saunière found, probably, in this crypt the real tomb of the Marquise Marie de Negri d'Hautpoul. It was this that made him realize that in the tomb located in the cemetery were not the remains of the marquise, but someone else.
Under the knight's slab was not only the tomb of Sigebert IV, but also those of his successors, Sigibert V and Bera III, as Pierre Plantard de Saint-Clair claimed. If there was only Sigibert IV's tomb, what reason would Bigou have had to have it laid backwards? In Eugene Stublein's book "The Engraved Stones of Languedoc", published in 1884, it had already been described, as can be seen from the letter sent to archaeologist Fatin, which we will examine later.
But how did Stublein, in 1884, know about the Knight's tombstone if Bigou, in 1781, had it placed with the carved figures facing the floor? What is the source from which Stublein had drawn the information? It is certainly a source prior to 1781, and the person who reported it must surely have seen the tombstone, thus the tomb of Sigebert IV.
At this point Saunière suspended the work.The abbot used to record, day by day, everything important he did.
On the date of 9/21/1891 we read "found a tomb. In the evening, it was raining".
In correspondence of 29.9.1891 it reads: "Seen the curate of Névian - near Gélis - near Carrière - seen Cros and Secret"; there is no trace of any person named Secret. Does it mean, then: secret? Did Saunière mean that he had discussed his findings with curate Cros?
On Oct. 6, 1891, we read that he had been visited by some confreres. Who were these brethren?
On 14.10.1891 Saunière had noted: understanding with new masons. Why new masons and what arrangements? One fact isc ertain: no one spoke about the discovery of the crypt.
From 12.4.1892 Saunière stopped taking notes.
After the discovery he went to Bishop Felix Billard, bishop of Carcassonne. To the same he reported the discovery. He reported it to him not only because he was his superior, but especially because Billard was part of that famous Order that was lost in the mists of time. The bishop then authorized him to go to Paris to have the manuscripts deciphered.
Saunière stayed in that city three weeks instead of the authorized five days. He went directly to St. Sulpice where Abbot Bieil was director. There he met young Emile Hoffet who introduced him to cultural and artistic circles, where Saunière got to know the singer Emma Calvé, who was passionate about Hinduism and occultism. Hoffet, a young scholar, later became interested in Freemasonry and directed, together with the esotericist René Guénon, the journal REGNABIT.
He also got to know Claude Debussy, Grand Master of the Priory of Sion from 1885 to 1918, and Charles Plantard, who would visit him often in Rennes-le-Château.
Sauniére, when he left for Paris, already knew where to turn. If he had not, he certainly would not have entrusted the scrolls or copies of them to anyone; he would not have trusted them. Hoffet was a trusted person; perhaps he could be part of that Order to which Billard belonged.
The manuscripts, meanwhile, were deciphered. A copy of them and the family tree remained with Hoffet. Why is this conclusion reached? Abbot Hoffet's library, upon his death, was purchased by the "Lingue de la Librairie ancienne".
On July 2, 1966, the Institute sent a letter to Mr. Fatin, owner of the Rennes chateau and a great archaeologist, which I have translated from the French and quote in full.
Paris, July 2, 1966To Mr. Marius FATIN
Archaeologist
Rennes Castle
RENNES-LE-CHATEAUOf COUIZA
(Aude)Dear Sir,
After our visit last week to your castle of RENNES, and before we leave France, we are pleased to be able to inform you that your castle is indeed historically the most important in France, for this abode was the refuge in 681 of Prince SIGEBERT IV son of King DAGOBERT II, who became Saint Dagobert; their descendants include the Counts of Rhédae and the Dukes of Razès.
Facts ascertained by means of two parchments bearing the seal of Queen Blanche de Castille, with the will of Francois-Pierre d'Hautpoul recorded on November 23, 1644 by Captier, notary in Esperaza (Aude), documents acquired by our Society with a part of the Library of Abbot E.H. Hoffet, 7 Blanche Street, Paris, who held these documents of Abbot SAUNIERE, ancient curate of RENNES-LE-CHATEAU.
The tombstone of SIGEBERT IV, appears in STUBLEIN's book, Limoux edition of 1884, and was in the Church of St. Magdalene of RENNES-LE-CHATEAU, today it is at the museum of tombstones in CARCASSONNE.
Your Castle is therefore doubly historic!
Please Dear Lord receive our most devoted feelings.
Irrefutable proof that Sauniére had found the manuscripts and made copies of them, leaving one in Paris, and that he had also found the will of François Pierre d'Hautpoul dated November 6, 1644.
The curate, in this city, bought reproductions of paintings: the Temptation of St. Anthony by Teniers, the Shepherds of Arcadia by Nicholas Poussin, 3 shepherds observing a tomb inscribed ET IN ARCADIA EGO and a shepherdess observing the three shepherds (but is she a shepherdess?), and a portrait of Pope Celestine V.
The book "In Search of the Grail" mentions a monument that is located in England, at Shugborough Hall, Staffordshire. It is a reproduction of Poussin's painting, seen as in a mirror.
It had been commissioned by Admiral Lord Anson in the 18th century.
At the base is an inscription D O.U.O.S.V.A.V. M, which has never been deciphered.
On his return to Rennes he had the work resumed. He met with Marie Dènarnaud's family; her father and brother, after meeting Saunière, went to work as carpenters in Esperaza, the town of the notary who had received the will of Baron d'Hautpoul.
Certainly, before returning to Rennes, the curate must have informed his bishop of the evolution of things.
Saunière also had a door built in front of the cemetery, on which he put a skull with 22 teeth and crossed metal bones, a Templar symbol, and a structure that the inhabitants called a "library", which was destroyed by fire on 7/14/1895. For some temples he lived in that structure. At night he would dig in the cemetery. Gone was that of Marie de Negri D'Ables. Marie Dénarnaud herself had to declare that they had been caught opening a grave.
The City Hall protested what Saunière was doing. There are at least two letters from City Hall addressed to the Prefect.
One reads:
Mr. Prefect,we have the honor to convey to you the agreement of the Municipal Council of Rennes-le-Château taken at the meeting that took place on Sunday, March 10, at one o'clock after noon in the City Hall:
We, the electors, protest the decision on the said work, which entitles the curate to continue; it is of no use, and we add in support of the first complaint our desire to be free and masters to each take care of the graves of our ancestors resting there, and that Mr. Curate has no right, after we have made embellishments or placed Crosses or wreaths, to remove everything, to move it and put it in a corner.
12/3/1895
Signed
Sauniére had to suspend his night work.
But by then the most was done: he had found the tomb of the Countess d'Hautpoul-Blanchefort (and not only that according to the letter sent to the Prefect), opened it, read what was on the headstone, erased it, and made it disappear. Little did he know that someone had already copied that inscription. In 1905, an article was published, by M. Elie Tisseyre, in the bulletin of the Society for Scientific Studies of l'Aude, which mentioned a tombstone 1.30 m. long and 0.65 m. wide and gave the inscription: it was the marquise's tombstone, which had been transcribed 15 years earlier, during a visit to the cemetery in Rennes-le-Château. But the tombstone had already been drawn by Stulbein in 1884.
The tombstone shows the year of death in Roman letters, but instead of the second "C" an "O" is engraved (MDC OR LXXI instead of MDCCLXXI).
Marie Dénarnaud had stated that they had opened a grave. For what purpose? The Mystery thickens. We need to find out what Sauniére was actually doing in the cemetery, in addition to reading the inscriptions we mentioned. Saunière also made the graves he found in the crypt disappear. In fact, from the parish register going back to 1624, it appears that in the tomb of the Blanchefort family there had been buried Anne Delsal, widow of Marc Antoine Dupoy, lord of Pauligne, former treasurer of France, who died on 3/30/1705, and Henry du Vernet, lieutenant-colonel of cavalry of the Ruftège regiment, who died on 10/24/1724.
On July 6, 1897, the church, on the façade of which he had engraved "This is a terrible place", was inaugurated, and for two years Saunière was to be frequently and systematically absent from Rennes-Le-Château. He would often receive visits from Jean-Stephane d'Hasbourg, whom the people of Rennes knew as Mr. Guillame; he would come to offer him sums of money to research the documents. Together they had opened accounts in a Swiss bank. And if Jean-Stephane d'Hasburg knew of the existence of the documents and of a "secret," he certainly was also part of that Order to which Bishop Billard and Sauniére himself belonged. Saunière's notes show that Jean-Stephane d'Hasburg was in Rennes-le-Château in September 1891. In fact, on the date of September 9 we read "Guillaume ill".
In 1900 the curate purchased 6 pieces of land and deeded them to Marie Dènarnaud. He built the Villa Bethany, which, after Saunière's death, was to become a retirement home for the priests of the diocese.
Inside he had a personal chapel built so that he could have the opportunity to say that many exotic trees were planted in the garden.
A statue of Christ towers at the main entrance, above it the inscription: "Villa Bethanie."
He had a reservoir built for the benefit of the people. He had a connecting road built to Rennes. But above all, he devoted himself to to the building of the famous Magdala Tower. He had designed it to house his study and library, which he had taken care of in great detail and where he had amassed a collection of stamps and postcards.
At the entrance it says "Magdala", but the M resembles an upside-down Omega; in Saunière's inscriptions one will often find upside-down letters. Is this a mistake or is it done on purpose? The name Magdala comes from the Hebrew MIGDAL meaning "Tower".
The work took eight years. Many personalities visited Saunière: among them was a Freemason, Henri Charles Etienne Dujardin-Beaumetz, of the lodge "La Clémente Amitié". Sauniére is thought to have been initiated into that lodge.
In 1906 the curate and Marie Dénarnaud drew up a will, naming each other as universal heirs. They redrew it in 1907. Marie was 38 years old. What reason was there for her to make a will? What about Sauniére? All the assets were not in his name but in Dénarnaud's. Bérenger must have done this to induce Marie to draw it up because he was afraid for his life and did not want the assets to go to others.
We wonder at this point: where did he get the money to accomplish all that he had done and still wanted to do?
Did he find treasure, or rather had someone financed his works for the purpose of searching for the hiding place of the "secret"? Everything points to Boudet, abbot of Rennes-les-Bains. There is an account book of the abbot in which it is recorded that he had paid Saunière, through Marie Dénarnaud, 4,516,691 francs today. This funding was suspended in 1903, since then Saunière was in poor financial condition. In fact, bill payments were made several times, there is a letter from which it appears that Saunière wanted to sell his library, and it was at this time that he began trading in stamps and postcards and starting a mass trade. By 1915, after Boudet's death on March 30, Saunière was no longer experiencing financial difficulties. Boudet, surely, had told him where the treasure was hidden.
Monsignor Billard's successor, Monsignor De Beauséjour, summoned Saunière several times because he wanted to know; the curate made Saunière answer that he was very ill and could not go; once he let it be known, when asked explicitly, that the money for the constructions had been given by people who wished to preserve anonymity. The bishop did not believe him and, in 1909, replaced him with Abbot Marty, appointing him curate of Coustouge.
The townspeople did not accept this decision; in fact, in protest, they no longer attended the masses of the new curate, preferring to go and listen to those of Saunière (who never took over the new parish) at Villa Betania.
The townspeople did not accept this decision; in fact, in protest, they no longer attended the masses of the new curate, preferring to go and listen to those of Saunière (who never took possession of the new parish) at Villa Betania.
Sauniére, considering that the bishop insisted, sent a letter to the Vicar General:
Rennes-le-Château, July 14, 1911Mr. Vicar General,
I wish to reply as exactly as possible to the various questions you put to me; I have taken a few days in order to be able to establish the sums used for the different works I have had done.
Purchase of land 1550 francs.
I believe you know that they were not purchased under my name;
Restoration of the Calvary Church
16.200
Calvary construction
11.200
Construction of Bethany Villa
90.000
Magdala Tower
40.000
Terrace and gardens
19.050
Interior arrangement
5.000
Furnishings
10.000
193.000I hope that this information will make it possible to clarify an affair that has procured me so much solicitude and has truly afflicted me during these past months.In this confidence I have the honor to offer you, Mr. Vicar General, the expression of my most respectful feelings.
François Bérenger Sauniére, priest
In 1911, the bishop, indicted him for trafficking in masses and suspended him. He appealed to Rome and was defended by Canon Huguet. Rehabilitated, he was finally suspended a divinis on April 11, 1915, as he would not explain himself even in Rome.
They let him know that they would be lenient with him if he made amends and explained everything, but Sauniére never did.
On January 5, 1917, he decided to start another construction: a 60-meter tower. An estimate date is January 12, 1917.
The same day he suffered an attack, by unknown persons, on the Magdala Tower. He was frightened. He had Marie Dénarnaud purchase a coffin.
On January 17 he felt ill and called Abbot Riviere to confess. The confession lasted a long time; however, he did not get absolution. He died, from a cerebral hemorrhage, on Jan. 22, 1917.
This death, because of the events that took place, does not seem at all natural to me.
His tomb bears the inscription INRI (Jesus Nazarene King of the Jews); again there is a letter upside down: N.
It must be said, though, that Madgala's M was made to be written by Saunière, while necessarily it was someone else who gave the order to carve the N that way. Was a message intended to be left? Or was it a mistake?
A Catalan scribe, Prudenci Reguanti Torres, explains that the N that means Nazareth, on the reverse is to be interpreted as Hterazan, which in Hebrew means HA TE RATZ AN, "where is the mysterious chamber?" So the Nazarene Jesus King of the Jews would become, I know where the mysterious chamber of the King of the Jews is.
Upon the opening of his will, it was discovered that all his assets were in the name of Marie Dènarnaud. Marie began to live in isolation. She never wanted to sell the properties to the Church, but decided to hand over the assets in 1947 to Noël Corbu, who transformed Villa Bethany into a hotel-restaurant "La Torre". Corbu is said to have bought in order to sell everything back to the Church, but never did; he once asked for assurances from Rome, which sent the papal nuncio to Carcassonne; none other than Angelo Roncalli, who would become Pope John XXIII. It is said of him that, having relatives in a small village near Rennes-le-Château, he often visited them at the turn of the century and got to know Saunière.
Marie Dénarnaud used to say "With what Saunière left behind, one could feed all of Rennes for a hundred years" and continued "I can't touch it". To Corbu she said "One day I will reveal a secret that will make you rich, very rich"; but she did not make it in time because she had a heart attack, was paralyzed and could no longer speak. Corbu never knew the secret, however, she told the abbot's story, indeed she recorded the story on a magnetic tape that she played to her clients.
Among them were some journalists, who wrote it all down in their newspapers. By now everyone knew about Saunière and Rennes-Le-Château. Many hypotheses have been made about how the curate had made his fortune: some speak of trafficking in masses; according to others, he had found the Templar treasure, still others believe he found that of the Visigoths, and again that of the Cathars; there are even those who claim that he had found the Grail or the Ark of the Covenant; some claim that he had found a secret place of worship, considering that there are many Rosicrucian symbols in the decorations of the Church; still others that he blackmailed Rome not to reveal the secret he knew. We saw that the one handling "the money" was Boudet.
At this point I would like to add that:
- Abbot Gélis, Saunière's friend and confidant, was to be murdered on the night of October 31 - November 1, 1897, and found, the following November 2, with his skull crushed in. His grave is the only one in the cemetery to be oriented toward Rennes-le-Château, and a symbol of the Rosicrucians is stamped on it;
- another person who had dealings with Saunière will be found murdered, on August 28, 1974, with a smashed skull; she is the niece of Marie Dénarnaud, who had given her jewellery. These jewels appear to belong to Visigothic goldsmithing. The murderer will be discovered. He was a member of a secret sect.
- three other people involved with Rennes-le-Château were found dead, hanged: Louis Saint-Maxent and Gaston De Koker on March 6, 1967, Pierre Feugere, the next day, March 7. They had written and published, on January 17 of that year, "The Red Snake", which we will analyze later;
- Boudet was buried not in Rennes-les-Bains but in Axet, and on his tomb is carved a closed book inscribed in Greek letters I.C.O.I.S. What is that supposed to mean? The closed book indicates not only that Boudet was an initiate, but also that there are clues in his work "La vraie langue celtique and Le Cromleck de Rennes-les-Bains" that only initiates can understand. In fact, it was customary to place, in front of Churches, a character with an open or closed book. If the book was closed it meant that the place was full of meanings accessible only to the initiated. If we turn the inscription over, however, we read 310XI; 310 are the pages of Boudet's work. What does that XI in Roman letters mean? Some argue that on page 11 of the book there is some clue to the discovery of the secret. Given that Boudet, in my opinion, knew only the hiding place of the treasure and not what the "real" secret of Rennes-le-Château was, he must have wanted to leave a clue to discover that hiding place. Reading page 11, I did not notice anything abnormal nor any clues. The only reference that struck me was the following: "The Celts came from Asia cradle of mankind". What I did notice, however, is the strange numbering of the "preliminary remarks"; in fact it begins with page 2 and then continues with Roman numerals II, III, V. The number IV is missing. It is not missing the page because there is no interruption in the discourse; it was deliberately omitted. If we add up the numbers, considering that 2 refers to page No. 1, we get 11. This means that we must pay close attention to the Preliminary Remarks. Boudet says that the peoples of antiquity left us writings while among the Celts this was not the case. In order to find out anything we need to study proper names of people and places. He goes on to say that one must use the language of the Tectosagi to explain the meanings of megalithic monuments.
Language is applied to the interpretation of names; decisive evidence will be found with this work. Textually it states:
How to penetrate the secret of a local history by the interpretation of a name composed in an unknown language, as the history of ancient Gaul is still hidden in a bleak obscurity ...
and continues:
... Two wobbly stones, placed on a hill, also invite us to persistently interrogate a very gloomy past.
In fact, there are two stones called "shaky", that is, trembling, and they are placed in front of a place called Cap de l'Homme, which we will talk about later. Then the book begins and the numbering resumes with the number 2a and continues again with the number 2. What must Boudet have wanted to indicate? He was a scholar, he knew Greek and Latin, but in his book there are many inaccuracies, nonsensical and seemingly absurd statements. Why did Boudet do this?
