The Trial of Gilles De Rais Read online

  It names the places of the crimes: the Champtocé castle; the house of La Suze at Nantes; the Machecoul and Tiffauges castles; the house of the Frères Mineurs at Bourgneuf-en-Rais; a certain Lemoine’s house at Vannes.

  Moreover, the indictment dates Gilles de Rais’ condemnable heretical activity from 1426, for which he is answerable to the Inquisition. He is accused of associating with the heretics who indoctrinated him; moreover, he is supposed to have read and studied heretical books. In particular, he is accused of having made for himself a dogma of the conclusions and mistakes of diviners and conjurors. He is equally supposed to have practiced and held as dogma the magical, prohibited arts of geomancy and necromancy. Finally, he did not forget to affirm his criminal principles publicly, principles considered as so much dogma.

  But the bill of indictment enumerates much more than thoughts or words; it lists condemnable acts. Essentially, the invocation of demons. In various places Gilles de Rais invoked, and caused to be invoked, various demons: at Orléans (under the sign of the Croix d’Or); at the Machecoul and Tiffauges castles; at the Freres Mineurs house in Bourgneuf-en-Rais; and at Josselin, close by the Duke of Brittany’s castle. Gilles de Rais is equally reproached for the child sacrifices at Tiffauges, offering the hands, heart, and eyes of a child in a glass. The accused hoped to bind himself to the Devil by a pact, to which end he prepared a note or letter of commitment binding himself, but with the exception of his soul and the curtailment of his life. As well the indictment mentions certain rites celebrated for five years, on All Saints’ Day in particular; in the course of which alms were distributed to the poor.

  Violation of the Church’s immunity is the third grievance justifying his appearance before the ecclesiastical tribunal. This is connected to the Saint-Étienne-de-Mermorte affair. The indictment specifies how Gilles de Rais entered the church “furiously and recklessly” waving his offensive arms, threatening the cleric Jean Le Ferron with death; the latter he subsequently keeps bound hand and foot in irons, holding him hostage first in the castle of Saint-Étienne-de-Mermorte, then in that of Tiffauges. This is how the accused “gravely and shamefully violated the jurisdiction of said Reverend Father, Lord Bishop of Nantes.”

  In the conclusion of these forty-nine articles, the prosecutor asks that the accused be recognized by the Bishop and the Vicar of the Inquisitor as guilty of the various crimes reported in the indictment; thus he must incur “excommunication and other lawful punishments”; thus he must be “punished and salubriously corrected, as the law and canonical sanctions demand.”

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  Interrogated, Gilles refuses to respond, and insults his judges

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  At the prosecutor’s request, Gilles is interrogated by the Bishop and the Vicar of the Inquisitor on the topic of the forty-nine articles of the bill of indictment (pp. 165-166); he denies their authority and refuses to recognize them as judges, then he treats them like so many “simoniacs” and “ribalds”: “he would much prefer,” he says, “to be hanged by a rope around his neck than respond to such ecclesiastics and judges.” After several demands, his excommunication is pronounced. Gilles appeals, but his appeal is immediately denied in view of “the nature of the case and the cases of this order, and also on account of the monstrous and enormous crimes” brought against him.

  Thereupon a reading is given of the letters of authority accorded in 1426 by Guillaume Mérici, the Inquisitor of Heresy in the French realm, to his Vice-Inquisitor, Jean Blouyn.

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  October 15 Beginning of the confessions

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  With the same faces reunited in the same hall, there is a decisive turn of events (pp. 180-181): Gilles de Rais recognizes the Bishop and the Vicar of the Inquisitor as competent judges, he owns up to having “maliciously committed and perpetrated” the crimes charged, and “solicited humbly, devoutly, and tearfully” his judges to pardon him for the “insults” and “offensive things” addressed to them. For the love of God, the judges immediately acquiesce. The accused acknowledges the content of Articles 1 through 4 and 8 through 14 (Articles 5 through 7 excepted, they concern Jean Blouyn; but Article 8, which is acknowledged, accepts his authority).

  Gilles de Rais, on the same day, continues to deny one of the chief points of the accusation, the invocation of demons; he only confesses to insignificant facts, for which he even volunteers to undergo a “test of fire.”

  The prosecutor and the accused swear on the Holy Gospels, whereupon the prosecutor produces, by way of witnesses in view of their examinations, the valets Henriet and Poitou, the alchemist Prelati, the priest Blanchet, a certain Tiphaine (Robin Branchu’s widow), and the procuress Perrine Martin, all of whom are admitted to take oaths. (The testimonies of Henriet, Poitou, and Prelati, heard on the following days, were preserved; not so those of Tiphaine and Perrine Martin, which are missing in the documents handed down to us (p. 183).)

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  (1440)

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  October 16 The testimony of Prelati

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  Hearing of the testimony of Francois Prelati, an Italian alchemist and conjuror in the service of Gilles de Rais from May 1439 to September 15, 1440 (p. 209). The place where this testimony was heard is not indicated.

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  October 17 The testimonies of Blanchet, Henriet and Poitou

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  Hearing of the testimonies of the priest Eustache Blanchet and the two valets, Henriet Griart and Étienne Corillaut (called Poitou), all three of them in the service of Gilles de Rais for several years until their arrest (pp. 216, 223 and 233).

  It is possible that the hearing of these three witnesses took place in the morning, seeing that the prosecutor and Gilles de Rais were present — the court sits in the afternoon, at the hour of Vespers — in the great upper hall for the presentation and swearing in of fifty witnesses, soon to be heard, in particular, on the subject of the violation of ecclesiastical immunity: Lenano (the Marquis de Ceva), Bertrand Poulein, Jean Rousseau, Gilles Heaume, and Friar Jean de Lanté (pp. 186, 240-241).

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  October 19

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  At nine o’clock in the morning the court sits, with Gilles de Rais and the prosecutor in attendance, in the great upper hall of the castle, for the presentation and swearing in of fifteen additional witnesses (pp. 187 and 238).

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  October 20 The judges consider torture

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  Still in the great upper hall at nine o’clock in the morning, the prosecutor and Gilles de Rais appear before the Bishop and the Vicar of the Inquisitor (p. 189); these latter, at the prosecutor’s request, want to know what Gilles has to say or object to in the indictment, but the accused responds that he has nothing to say and, upon request, he agrees to the immediate publication of the testimonies that have just been collected. The prosecutor, “in order to shed light on and more thoroughly scrutinize the truth,” nonetheless asks the judges to apply torture; consequently the judges confer with the “experts,” who assist them in deciding that Gilles ought to be submitted to “interrogation and tortures.”

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  October 21

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  Sitting on the bench at nine o‘clock in the morning in the lower hall of La Tour Neuve, the judges send for the accused to have him tortured (p. 190). Gilles, brought forward, humbly begs them to defer the session until the following day: he will force himself to speak without the necessity of “interrogation.” He proposes speaking outside the room where the torture has been prepared to the Bishop of Saint-Brieuc, Jean Prégent, the representative of the ecclesiastical court, and to the President of Brittany, Pierre de L’Hôpital, the representative of the secular court. The judges consent to this proposition and accord the necessary delay.

  At two o‘clock in the afternoon, the Bishop and the Vicar of the Inquisitor appear in the same lower hall (pp. 191-192); they send the Bishop Jean Prégent and Pierre
de L’Hôpital to Gilles de Rais. They send them to the castle’s “high room” where the accused Marshal, who retained the privilege of decent quarters, resides.

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  First confession “Out of court”

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  The interrogation takes place with the attendance of Jean Petit, notary of the ecclesiastical court; Jean Labbé, the captain in the Duke of Brittany’s service who proceeded with the Machecoul arrests; his squire, Yvon de Rocerf, who was also at Machecoul; and finally the cleric Jean de Touscheronde, who leads the secular inquest.

  These are the circumstances in which Gilles first confessed, that is to say “out of court” (pp. 191-195), independent of the ecclesiastical as well as the secular proceedings. It was noted to have been given “voluntarily, freely, and grievously.”

  It is in this first confession that the accused mentions how his first crimes began in the year “his grandfather, Lord de La Suze, died”; in other words, in 1432. He then testifies that, despite Pierre de L’Hôpital’s insistent questioning on this point, he committed his crimes “according to his imagination and idea, without anyone’s counsel and following his own feelings, solely for his pleasure and carnal delight, and not with any other intention or to any other end.”

  The two commissioners then send for Francois Prelati. Gilles and this latter together give a detailed account of the invocations that followed on the arrival of the Italian alchemist, notably the offering of the hand, eyes, and heart of a child, which was prepared but not carried out. Gilles’ farewells to his accomplice follow.

  After this interrogation, the two commissioners return to the lower hall of the castle, where they present the confession that they have obtained (p. 192), which must satisfy the judges since there is no more talk of torture after this.

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  October 22 The great or “in-court confession”

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  At the hour of Vespers, Gilles de Rais and the prosecutor appear again before the Bishop and the Vicar of the Inquisitor (p. 195) (no doubt in the upper hall of the castle).

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  (1440)

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  The judges ask the accused whether he wants to say anything else or object to what has already been said. He says no, but then spontaneously confesses before the judges what he already confessed “out of court.” The records represent him as speaking “with great contrition of heart and great grief, according as it appeared at first sight, and with a great effusion of tears.” Without straying from the first confession, he attempts to complete it, to remedy its faults or insufficiencies. He initially and significantly insists upon the first disorders of his youth, and asks that his confessions be published in French for those present, “the better part of whom did not know Latin.” He urges the strictness of fathers, mothers, and the friends of all children … He specifies the various tortures that he and his accomplices inflicted on their victims. He speaks of choosing the most beautiful heads of the dead children, and goes so far as to say that while watching them die he laughed with his accomplices.

  He adds to that which concerns the murders some details on the invocations and his relations with Prelati. He recalls some of the furders in particular: the one at Bourgneuf, those of Jean Hubert and another page. Finally the murder at Vannes, where the body of the decapitated child was dropped into a cesspool.

  He supplies some details on the attempts at invocation prior to Prelati’s arrival in 1438, and speaks of the intention he sometimes had of renouncing his wicked life and making a pilgrimage to Jerusalem.

  He finally exhorts “the people,” and above all the numerous “ecclesiastics” attending his trial, to venerate our Holy Mother Church. He urges fathers of families to watch over their children, who ought not to be “too finely dressed,” or live in “laziness.” He expressly incriminates the excesses of eating and drinking, declaring that “laziness, an insatiable desire for delicacies, and the frequent consumption of mulled wine, more than anything else, kept him in a state of excitement that led to the perpetration of so many sins and crimes.”

  He implores God’s pardon, then that of the parents and friends of the children whom he “so cruelly massacred … ,” asking all Christ’s faithful and worshipers for the assistance of their devoted prayers.

  After this long confession, the text of which is the only conclusive one we have, the prosecutor asks that a day be fixed for “definitive sentences.” Among others, Jean Prégent and Pierre de L’Hôpital attend that hearing.

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  October 23

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  The secular court, after having heard their confessions — which sometimes followed almost literally, but at other times were complementary to, their depositions as witnesses before the ecclesiastical court (pp. 275 to 276) — condemns to death Gilles de Rais’ two valets, Henriet and Poitou, who are executed on the same day as their master, immediately after him.

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  October 25 The condemnation by the ecclesiastical court

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  The Bishop, Jean de Malestroit, and Friar Jean Blouyn, the Vicar of the Inquisitor, are sitting on the bench in La Tour Neuve castle’s great upper hall at nine o’clock in the morning when the prosecutor asks them for a conclusion of the trial and the promulgation of definitive sentences, with Gilles de Rais “hearing, understanding, and not contradicting” (p. 204). By a double sentence of the ecclesiastical court, the accused is declared, in the first place, “guilty of perfidious apostasy as well as of the dreadful invocation of demons”; in the second place, “guilty of committing and maliciously perpetrating the crime and unnatural vice of sodomy on children of both sexes” (pp. 207-208). He is excommunicated and subject to other lawful punishment. This condemnation of the secular court proceeds from that of the ecclesiastical court, following without delay the same day.

  This promulgation once made, the judges immediately propose to reincorporate Gilles de Rais into the Church; Gilles de Rais thereupon begs them “devoutly, on his knees,” “with sighs and moans.” Reincorporated, he asks to be confessed, and immediately the judges instruct a religious of the Carmelite Order, Jean Jouvenel, to hear his private confession.

  The religious trial is concluded.

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  The secular condemnation

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  Gilles de Rais is then transferred, very close by, to the castle at Bouffay, before the secular court, reunited under the presiding office of Pierre de L‘Hôpital, President of Brittany. Now he confesses to the Saint-Étienne-de-Mermorte affair. Pierre de L’Hôpital, having asked the advice of several assistants, declares that, in this affair, the accused has incurred the previously pronounced fine (50,000 gold crowns), to be appropriated in property and paid to the Duke of Brittany; and that for his other crimes he shall be hanged and burned, the sentence to be carried out on the following day at eleven o’clock (pp. 281-284).

  Gilles de Rais then asks that his servants Henriet and Poitou, also condemned to death, not be executed until after him, who had been the cause of their crimes; he fears that, if not, they might think that he, the principal guilty party, had gone unpunished. Pierre de L’Hôpital accords him this favor and, moreover, decides that the body of the condemned, rescued in time from the flames, shall be buried in a church of his choice. Gilles de Rais finally asks his judge to ask the Bishop to arrange, for the following morning, “a general procession in order to ask God to maintain in him and his said servants the firm hope of salvation.” Pierre de L’Hôpital agrees.

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  (1440)

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  October 26 Death

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  After the procession, followed by an immense crowd, Gilles de Rais is hanged, then delivered to the flames, but soon pulled from the flames. He is then buried “beside four or five ladies or young women of noble lineage.”46

  Henriet and Poitou are executed in turn and reduced to ashes, but Gilles’ remains are carried inside the c
hurch of Notre-Dame-du-Cannel of Nantes. His service is celebrated there, and he is placed in a tomb. He lies buried like this alongside other imposing persons of distinction. But the Revolution wreaked a macabre havoc on this church, which no longer exists.

  Various Problems and Historical Facts

  NUMBER, AGE, AND SEX OF THE VICTIMS

  The question of the number of Gilles de Rais’ victims is unsolvable.

  The civil trial is perhaps being reasonable when it says (p. 250): “the said Lord took many young children, and had them taken, not merely ten, nor twenty, but thirty, forty, fifty, sixty, one hundred, two hundred and more, such that the exact number can not be certified.”