Académie Royale de Danse other documents, however, it is clear the number is correctly stated. The identity of the omitted thirteenth member has long been a point of disagreement among dance historians. Gaston Vuillier forwarded Beauchamp as the missing member, while Régine Astier (Kunzel) unabashedly claimed it was Henri Prévost. Both were wrong. The original document signed by King Louis XIV was preserved in the French National Archives, and upon its close inspection in 1997 by scholar Maureen Needham, the thirteenth name was revealed to be “Molière.” Not to be confused with Jean-Baptiste Poquelin Molière (1622-73), the famous playwright of King Louis’ reign responsible
Jean-Baptiste Botul Jean-Baptiste Botul Jean-Baptiste Botul is a fictional French philosopher created in 1995 by the journalist Frédéric Pagès and other members of a group calling itself the Association of the Friends of Jean-Baptiste Botul. Originating as a literary hoax, the names of both Botul and his philosophy of "botulism" derive from botulism, an illness caused by the bacterium "Clostridium botulinum". References to Botul were first made in publications by members of the association and later turned up in texts by writers who were not party to the hoax and thought Botul was a real person, notably the French philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy.