Jean Pierre Jacques Auguste de Labouïsse-Rochefort was born in Saverdun (Ariège) on 4th July 1778 and died in Castelnaudery (Aude) on 22nd February 1852. He was a French historian. In 1832 he published a book entitled ‘Voyage à Rennes-les-Bains’ in which he described a treasure, guarded by the devil close to the Château de Blanchefort. According to the locals, he recounts, it concerned nineteen and a half million pieces of gold.

Once a nice sunny day, the devil put the gold on display where it was spotted by a young sheperdess who lived close to the site. When she returned with her parents, the treasure had disappeared. A sorcerer was called in for help. The sourcerer tells the villagers he is prepared to help if he gets half of the treasure and the help of the villagers in catching the devil.

The sorcerer went on a search for the devil. When the villagers heared a great noise they got afraid and fled. The sorcerer left for Limoux, disappointed and angry.

Labouisse-Rochefort then describes that the Marquis de Fleury, who owned the ruins of Blanchefort, threatened to sue the villagers for violating his terrains, linking this tale to actual facts.

Labouisse-Rochefort ends with a little poem about the treasure:

Comme un misérable nu
Avec sa mine hagarde
Le front chauve et biscornu
Armé d’une hallebarde
Au pied de ce mont chénu
L’ange de race bâtarde
Au ton sec et saugrenu
Tient constamment sous sa garde
Cet immense revenu
Que de ce roc je regarde
Comme si j’étais venu
Pour lui monter une garde
Et voler ce contenu
Que de céder il n’a garde

Labouisse-Rochefort’s description of this local legend demonstrated that the historical roots of the Mystery of Rennes-le-Château are much older than the story of Abbé Saunìère. There was talk of a local treasure long before he surfaced.

Noel Corbu was clearly inspired by this book. In the tape recording he made to entertain the guests of his hotel he too spoke of nineteen-and-a-half million pieces of gold.

,©2007-2009 rlcresearch.com, all rights reserved. Book cover of ‘Voyage à Rennes-les-Bains copyright Morgan Roussel

In 1906, Saunière started construction of the Tour Magdala. The word ‘Magdala’ carries an appropriate double meaning. The gospels mention a village called Magdala in Galilee as the birthplace of Mary Magdalene. In Aramaic, the native tongue of Jesus, the word Magdala means ‘tower’ or ‘fortress’ (Migdal in Hebrew). On the original plans for the tower that Saunière made, he called the tower ‘Tour d’Horloge’. Some say the Tour Magdala looks like a Knight’s tower on a chessboard that needs to be moved in a straight line horizontally or vertically.

The Tour Magdala is a neo-gothic tower that sits on the far west corner of Saunière’s estate. If you climb the narrow spiral staircase to the top of this strange building an exit the little tower (échauguette) on the top deck, you are rewarded with an incredibly wide view of the surrounding countryside. It is hard to capture it here in photos or mere words. Many of the places that play a part in the enigma and legends of treasure are visible.

The Tour Magdala served as Saunière’s personal study and library and as such replaced the, reposoir after it’s completion in 1906. The wooden housing for his books on the ground floor was made to measure and took a month to complete. In 1907 he seriously started collecting stamps, postcards and books. He sent all his correspondents little metal boxes and asked them to fill them with stamps and send them back to him.

From 1908 onwards, Saunière directed his attention fully to his vast collection of books. To create order in the stacks of papers, magazines, pamphlets and books, he hired Henri Baret a librarian from Castelnaudary, who stayed with him for three months. No receipts or records survive of the collections of books and stamps. Most were sold or given away by Marie Dénarnaud after Saunière’s death and we know very little of their content. When the Derain-Raclet bookshop in Lyon went bankrupt around 1950, three books were found that were marked ‘François Béranger Saunière, Priest at: Aude, town of Rennes.’ These works were entitled: ‘the Prophecy of the Popes allotted to St. Malachy’ by Abbé Joseph Maitre, 2) ‘History of the Large Forests of Gaule and Old France’ by L.F. Alfred Maury and 3) “Celtic Monuments, or Research on the Worship of the Stones, Preceded by a note on the Celts and Druids, and followed Celtic etymologies’ by Mr. Camby.

Although the Tour Magdala doesn’t appear to an illustrated treasure map like the church, there are some peculiarities about it. In the last tile, in the extreme west corner of the floor there is a red dot. Though many will argue it’s just a fault in the tile, it does point up to the staircase to the window that points straight into the direction of a ancient grotto, about a mile in the distance called ‘Grotte du Fournet, dite de la Magdeleine’, which translates as ‘The Burial Site of, the Magdalene’.

The spiral staircase inside the tower has 22 steps, 22nd July being the feast day of Mary Magdalene. Andrew Gough has an article about this feature.

There is a little chimney on the roof of the tower, connected to the stove at ground level. The exhaust is beautifully modeled in a traditional opening representing the holy trinity. In a straight line through the holy trinity of the chimney lies the mountaintop of Pech Cerda.

,©2007-2009 rlcresearch.com, all rights reserved. Panorama copyright Gilles Vidal.

This panorama gives an excellent impression of the entrance of the Church of St. Mary Magdalene in Rennes-le-Château. It was in this church, Abbé Saunière is alleged discoveries, kicking off the mystery of Rennes-le-Château.

To the left is the statue of what is believed to be the demon Asmodeus, guardian of the Treasure of King Solomon. In the far corner at the end of the checkered floor is the statue of St. John the Baptist, baptizing Jesus. Also notice there are four locks on the door to keep out treasure hunters during he night.

,©2007-2009 rlcresearch.com, all rights reserved. Panorama copyright Gilles Vidal

In 1996, an episode of the BBC show Timewatch was dedicated to Paul Schellenberger’s and Richard Andrew’s book the Tomb of God. In this controversial book, the authors claimed that they had found a tilted square on the three paintings that play a role in the Mystery of Rennes-le-Château. It concerns the reproductions Abbé Saunière allegedly bought in Paris in the 1890′s: the Shepherds of Arcadia by Poussin, St. Anthony by Teniers and a portrait of Pope Celestine V by an unknown painter.

By projecting the discovered geometry on the map of Rennes-le-Château and its surroundings they found a spot on Mount Cardou, in which they claimed the body of Christ had been entombed.

It was during this documentary that French author and researcher Jean-Luc Chaumeil introduced Philippe de Chérisey’s manuscript Stone and Paper, that had been unpublished until that moment and in which the Marquis de Chérisey claims that he was in fact the creator of Saunière’s famous parchments.

You can watch the video by clicking on it.

,©2007-2009 rlcresearch.com, all rights reserved. Video shown here under Creative Commons Non-commercial No Derivatives Licence. Video copyright BBC

‘On the name of Narbonne and examples of how to interpret Gaul words through the Saxon origins of English’. 19 handwritten pages, written by Abbé Henri Boudet. It is uncertain when he wrote this manuscript, which appears to be a step towards his better known work ‘La Vraie Langue Celtique et le Cromleck de Rennes-les-Bains‘.

,©2007-2009 rlcresearch.com, all rights reserved, photo’s shown here with kind permission of Société Perillos