Philology Fictionology
Katrina Borthwick - 2nd March 2026
In 2016, Florent Montaclair was the proud recipient of the Gold Medal in Philology, awarded to him by the International Society of Philology. This award is equated with the Fields Medal or a Nobel prize… or so he would have us think.
On the 3rd of February this year, a preliminary criminal investigation was opened in France into the actions of Montaclair. The allegations include forgery, use of forged private documents, and usurpation of title diploma or qualification. This was all reported in L’Est Républicain, which is all in French and so easily missed. But the more I read about it, the wilder the story gets.
In case you were wondering, ‘philology’ is a science that looks at language from historical oral and written sources. It is often used in establishing authenticity, and to determine the meaning of what has been recorded. As such it is distinct from linguistics. Philology focuses on interpreting language through literary, historical, and cultural texts, often focusing on the evolution of specific languages over time. Linguistics is the scientific study of language structure, theory, and cognitive, social, or historical usage in general, at a point in time. Although arguably these may just be two different approaches to linguistics.
On 18th December 2015, L’Est Républicain lauded Montaclair’s achievement in obtaining the award in an article titled “Montbéliard: a literature professor earns the Gold Medal in Philology, the equivalent of the Nobel.” But there wasn’t any mainstream media coverage of this event, which was extremely strange for a ‘Nobel equivalent’ award.
Also, weirdly, this society seems to have ignored an accepted naming convention. There are philological societies that exist, but they all call themselves ‘Philological Societies’, not ‘Societies of Philology’.
Pierre Joxe, who handed over the Prize to Montaclair at the Paris National Assembly on 8 June 2016, is the former Minister of the Interior and Defence, former First President of the Court of Auditors, and former member of the Constitutional Council in France. Three other notable figures in the photo are Claude Bartolone, then President of the Lower Chamber, Luc Montagnier, co-holder of the 2008 Nobel Prize for Physiology/Medicine, and Marita Gilli, honorary professor of literature and German civilisation. There were a number of other very important people in attendance as well.
The ceremony for the awarding of the Gold Medal in Philology, on 8 June 2016, at the National Assembly. From left to right: Luc Montagnier, Pierre Joxe, Florent Montaclair, Claude Bartolone and Marita Gilli.
And because he received the philology award, the Mayor decided to give Montaclair the Montbéliard City Medal. This was awarded a few months before the other ceremony took place.
The ceremony for the awarding of the Montbéliard City Medal on 12 April 2016, at the town hall. Next to Florent Montaclair, Marie-Noëlle Biguinet, mayor of the City of Montbéliard, and Philippe Tissot, deputy for culture.
The unravelling
For some reason the five yearly Philology award became annual, and in 2018 the next award went to Eugen Simion, a Romanian academic who has since died in 2022. This captured the interest of a Romanian journalist who started asking very awkward questions about the award, and discovered some very unsettling facts which went to press in January 2019.
You see, Montaclair wrote his PhD on Jules Verne, and he specialises in Verne’s writings, as well as vampires. But his fictional interests don’t end there. It turns out that he made up not only the “Gold Medal in Philology”, but also the international society that awarded it, the “International Society of Philology”. It gets better, though.
The award committee is chaired by the chancellor of a fictional university, and it has previously been awarded to a bunch of people who are mostly dead - except for one person, who has never heard of the award, or the society. The letter informing others of the award ceremony is signed by both Montaclair himself and another individual, who seems likely to be a pen name that Montaclair uses to write fantasy fiction. The same letter refers to a non-existent UNESCO centre that has a mailbox at the door of Montaclair’s family home. Oh yes, and that UNESCO outfit is also the printer of Montaclair’s aforementioned fantasy novels. Added to all this, it seems a prior investigation had been opened because a French Ministry approached authorities when Montaclair tried to claim a doctorate on the basis of ‘equivalence’ with a qualification he had obtained in an American University. He did this while also admitting he has never set foot in an American University, although he says he did his work by correspondence and received his diploma by post.
We’ve all heard of fake vanity awards before, and people faking their qualifications. This is not that. This is a whole new level. It’s a lot to process, so let’s break it down a bit.
Montaclair and the award
Florent Montaclair is from Montbéliard, and is the Professor of Literature at the University of Franche-Comté (renamed Marie & Louis Pasteur University in January 2025) in Besançon. I had a look and, as far as I can tell at the time of writing, he hasn’t yet been fired.
This fictional award was awarded by the International Society of Philology (INSOP). At the time of writing, the website for that society is still up. Clicking through to the ‘Gold Medal of Philology’ shows a page stating that the committee that decides the award remains secret, with the exception of the chair, until the prize is awarded in congress. There’s an interesting untranslated instance of ‘remarkable’ on that page that I cannot ignore.
Following this intro is a listing of the past recipients of the award, who, as I mentioned before, are now all dead except for one - Noam Chomsky. Chomsky, who supposedly received the medal in 2017, is still very much alive. At the time of writing he is 97 years old. You may have heard of him as he is most famous for developing the theory of universal grammar and innateness, which revolutionised the understanding of language as an innate human cognitive capacity, as is known as the “father of modern linguistics”. He is also widely recognised as a prominent intellectual critic of US foreign policy, capitalism, and media. When questioned about the award 7 years ago, he did not remember it at all. Here’s the email:
[Montaclair] The linguistics society decided, for its fiftieth anniversary, to award the medal to the person who has most distinguished himself in grammatical thought. I’m going to be a little bit official, so—well, Noam, the associative philology society is very proud you have accepted a little laureate, finally he shouts, but of philology, and it can be verified—all I give you today is the gold medal, live and in this audience hall …
Noam Chomsky at the Center Wallonie-Bruxelles in Paris. Photo: Vinciane Lebrun-Verguethen
It appears as more of a surprise token of appreciation to a speaker than a major award. Asked what happened, Chomsky said:
“I know very little about the organisation. They invited me to Paris for several talks. I don’t really recall much about the individuals involved, or the organization. Give a great many talks organised by all sorts of groups.”
The members of INSOP are also listed on a separate page, and at this point it probably won’t surprise you too much to learn that a sample of those contacted by L’Est Républicain deny ever having anything to do with the society, and had never heard of it.
The websites
It turns out that the INSOP website was at one point hosted by a French company, LWS, which also previously hosted the now defunct website for the University of Philology and Education (www.upae-edu.eu), which is supposedly based in the US. That’s the same university that is involved in the awards. It makes no sense for a US university to be hosted in France, and in fact this is not an accredited university – it is entirely fictional. To make things even weirder, that ‘university’ website got taken over by a dating platform at some point and switched its hosting to Cloudfare, but it’s safe to click the link now - at the time of writing it is up for sale again.
Also with the same french hosting by LWS was www.pcub.fr, which is linked to the ‘publications’ page of the INSOP website. That page describes the page linked as “the conferences and studies that have been published by the UNESCO Press Center For Education and Transcutural [sic] Studies”. The site is also now defunct, but apparently mainly had articles written by Montaclair himself, and what appears to be his fantasy pen name Martin Balmont (more on this to follow). The address that was on the UNESCO website was shared with Montaclair. Well, at least his name appears on the mailbox next to UNESCO’s name in Besançon. UNESCO has been clear it has no connection with the Gold Medal in Philology, and has never had an office in Besançon.
Then there’s a weird letter announcing the 2018 award. Ignoring for a moment the complete misspelling of ‘Wednesday’ in the header and insane date format, if you look at the signatures at the bottom it’s Montaclair again, and a fellow called Martin Balmont as ‘Chancellor’ of the fictional university.
According to L’Est Républicain, Martin Balmont shows as having written 4 fantasy books, A search on google scholar for Martin Balmont shows up Le vampire dans la littérature romantique française (1820-1828) (The Vampire in Romantic French Literature), written by Florent Montaclair. It also turns out those fantasy novels were published by the non-existent UNESCO center which Montaclair appears to direct. So it seems very much like Balmont and Montaclair are the same person, and Montaclair uses the Balmont name to write fiction. Thinking back to that UNESCO publications page - it was all his. Montaclair of course denies writing the letter, which I’m not sure helps the situation for him very much.
As for the addresses on the letter, the University of Philology and INSOP have the exact same address. At the time of writing, this is what google maps is throwing up for me at the address:
There is an antique shop if you swivel 180 degrees from this car park on google maps, but again I don’t think that helps Montaclair at all.
The UNESCO address given is the same as the Centre of Education and Intercultural Studies (Centre Etudes Educ et Interculteralite), which appears to be the alleged UNESCO location based on the link made on one webpage, as well as Agnès Gaillard (a foot reflexologist) and the head office of the Associated Group for International Training and Research Studies (Ass Group D’Etude de Formations et de Recherche Internationales) (GEFRI), who have never filed any accounts. The physical address is also Montaclair’s family address, and looks like this:
According to the prosecutor:
the American university “has no other existence than a website created in 2015”, closed in 2025, with no identifiable physical establishment at the address indicated in Delaware. The learned society would also be based solely on a website, also created in 2015. As for the Besançon association, domiciled at Florent Montaclair’s family address, it would have used the term “UNESCO” without official accreditation. The competent services confirmed that no recognition had been granted.
So how did Montaclair get hosted at the National Assembly
Knowing all this, it absolutely blows my mind that Montaclair managed to organise a presentation ceremony at the National Assembly with all those important people. How could that be possible?
Well it turns out that nobody at the national assembly really remembers anything, and apparently they do not keep records of such things. Any bookings there have to go via a parliamentarian, as you can’t just book it like a commercial venue. When the media investigated this and contacted all those who were parliamentarians at the time, they all said they were not the one contacted to organise a ceremony. One of them does remember attending, but nothing else. So how the heck he pulled that one off is a mystery that is yet to be unravelled.