Gilles de Rais

Gilles de Rais
Gilles de Rais.jpg
Background information
Born: September 10, 1404(1404-09-10)
Machecoul, France
Died: October 26, 1440 (aged 36)
Cause of death: Hanged
Penalty: Death
Killings
Number of victims: 80-200
Span of killings: 1435–1440
Country: France
Date apprehended: September 15, 1440

Gilles de Rais (also spelled Retz) (September 10, 1404 – October 26, 1440) was a French noble, soldier, and one-time brother-in-arms of Joan of Arc, but is perhaps best known as a prolific serial killer.

Contents

Early years

Gilles de Rais was born in Machecoul, Pays de Retz, just within the border of the Duchy of Brittany. His father was Guy de Montmorency-Laval, who had inherited, via adoption, the fortunes of Jeanne de Rais and Marie de Craon. Gilles inherited the barony of Rais in the peerage-duchy of Rais (now spelled Retz). He was an intelligent child, learning fluent Latin. After the death of his father, circa 1415, his mother remarried and Gilles and his brother René were put under the tutelage of his grandfather, Jean de Craon.[1]

In 1420, he found himself at the court of the Dauphin, claimant to the crown of France. Jean de Craon sought to marry Rais off to the heiress Jeanne de Paynol, but this was unsuccessful. Jean de Craon then attempted to join his young charge with Beatrice de Rohan, niece of the Duke of Brittany, again with no success. Eventually he was able to substantially increase Rais' fortune by marrying him off to Catherine de Thouars of Brittany, heiress of La Vendée and Poitou, but only after first kidnapping her. Later stories connecting Rais with the mythical wife-murderer Bluebeard may have stemmed from the fact that two of several previous marriage schemes were thwarted by the death of the intended bride.

In the Breton War of Succession, Gilles de Rais took the side of the Montfort Dukes of Brittany against a rival house led by Olivier de Blois, Count of Penthievre. The Blois faction had taken the Montfort Duke John V prisoner. He was able to secure the Duke's release, and was rewarded with generous land grants which the Breton parliament converted to monetary gifts.

Military career

The coat of arms of Gilles de Rais.

From 1427 to 1435, Rais served as a commander in the Royal Army, and in 1429 fought along with Joan of Arc in some of the campaigns waged against the English and their Burgundian allies. Although a few authors have tended to exaggerate the position he held during the latter campaigns, surviving bursary records show that he only commanded a personal contingent of some 25 men-at-arms and 11 archers, and was one of many dozens of such commanders.[2] Nor did he serve as Joan of Arc's bodyguard, a position actually held by Jean d'Aulon. Rais' greatest honor during these campaigns came when he joined three other commanders in holding the quasi-ceremonial title of Maréchal, a subordinate position under the Royal Connétable. This honor was granted him at the coronation of Charles VII on July 17, 1429.

In 1435, Rais retired from military service to his estates, promoting theatrical performances and exhausting the large fortune he had inherited. It was during this period that, according to trial testimony given by Rais and his accomplices, he began to experiment with the occult under the direction of a man named Francesco Prelati, who promised Rais that he could help him regain his squandered fortune by sacrificing children to a demon called "Barron." However, this story may have been encouraged at his trial as a contemporary attempt to find a rational explanation for the crimes he committed.

Investigation and execution

On May 15, 1440, Rais kidnapped a clergyman named Jean le Ferron during a dispute at the Church of Saint-Étienne-de-Mer-Morte. This prompted an investigation by the Bishop of Nantes, during which the investigators uncovered evidence of Rais' crimes. On July 29, the Bishop released his findings, and subsequently obtained the prosecutorial cooperation of Rais' former protector, the Duke of Brittany. On August 24, Jean le Ferron was freed by ducal troops led by Arthur de Richemont. Rais and his accomplices were arrested on September 15, following a secular investigation which paralleled the findings from the investigation from the Bishop of Nantes. Rais' prosecution would likewise be conducted by both secular and ecclesiastical courts, on charges which included murder, sodomy, and heresy.

The extensive witness testimony convinced the judges that there were adequate grounds for establishing the guilt of the accused. After Rais admitted to the charges on October 21, the court canceled a plan to torture him into confessing. Peasants of the neighboring villages had earlier begun to offer up accusations that since their children had entered Rais' castle begging for food they had never been seen again. The transcript, which included testimony from the parents of many of these missing children as well as graphic descriptions of the murders provided by Rais' accomplices, was said to be so lurid that the judges ordered the worst portions to be stricken from the record.

The precise number of Rais' victims is not known, as most of the bodies were burned or buried. The number of murders is generally placed between 80 and 200; a few have conjectured numbers upwards of 600. The victims ranged in age from six to eighteen and included both sexes.

On October 23, 1440, the secular court condemned Rais' accomplices, Henriet and Poitou. On October 25, the ecclesiastical court handed down a sentence of excommunication against him, followed on the same day by the secular court's own condemnation of the accused. After tearfully expressing remorse for his crimes, Rais obtained rescindment of the Church's punishment and was allowed confession, but the secular penalty remained in place. Gilles de Rais, Henriet, and Poitou were hanged at Nantes on October 26, 1440.

The Murders

The first child-snatching attributed to Gilles de Rais occurred, historians believe, sometime in 1432, when Gilles de Sille, a cousin of de Rais, reportedly abducted a young apprentice whom de Sille wanted to carry a message to the castle at Machecoul. The anonymous 12-year-old boy, apprenticed to Guillaume Hilairet, a furrier, was the son of Jean Jeudon. When the boy disappeared and Hilairet sought out the nobleman de Sille, he was told the boy had been kidnapped by thieves in the village of Tiffauges. In Gilles’ trial, the events were testified to by Hillairet and his wife, Jean Jeudon and his wife, and five others from Machecoul. There is no evidence linking Gilles de Rais to this kidnapping, but he was charged with the boy’s death.

In Jean Benedetti’s biography of Gilles de Rais, he explains what happened to the children - both boys and girls:

The child was pampered and dressed in better clothes than it had ever known. The evening began with a large meal and heavy drinking, particularly hippocras, which acted as a stimulant. The child was taken to an upper room to which only Gilles (de Rais) and his immediate circle was admitted. The child would then be confronted with the true nature of its situation. The shock thus produced on the child was an initial source of pleasure for Gilles.

An accomplice in many of the crimes, Etienne Corrillaut, known as Poitou, testified that de Rais then raped the child as it was hanged from a hook by the neck. Before the victim died, Gilles took the child down, comforted it, repeated the act and either killed the child himself or had it slain.

Poitou testified that the child victims were murdered “sometimes by decapitating them, sometimes by cutting their throats, sometimes by dismembering them, sometimes by breaking their necks with a stick, and that there was a weapon specifically for their execution, known as a braquemard.”

Gilles de Rais rarely left a child alive for more than one evening’s pleasure, Poitou claimed. Many times they were dealt mortal wounds before de Rais sodomized them. He would then take his pleasure as the child died. Occasionally, he would perform a sex act with a dead child.

In his own confession, Gilles testified that “when the children were dead he kissed them and those who had the most handsome limbs and heads he held up to admire them, and had their bodies cruelly cut open and took delight at the sight of their inner organs; and very often when the said children were dying he sat on their stomachs and took pleasure in seeing them die and laughed…” cremation in the chamber of horrors. The fires burned slowly over time so as to minimize the smell, testified Henriet Griart, another co-conspirator. Poitou also claimed the ashes were then dumped in the cesspool or moat.

Controversy

Some believe that Gilles de Rais was framed for murder and heresy by elements within the Church as part of an ecclesiastic plot to expropriate his lands. This theory is considered highly doubtful by most historians, since the Church itself stood little chance of acquiring the properties. Title to the lands was ultimately transferred to the Duke of Brittany, who in turn divided them among nobles including Arthur de Richemont. Moreover, the guilty verdict was based on the detailed eyewitness accounts of his confederates and the testimony of his victims' parents, which amounted to substantial proof of the final verdict.[3] Any plot to dispossess Rais of his lands would have had to involve a number of his confederates, and the unlikely complicity of many secular and Church officials. In fact, the Duke of Brittany, who had the most to gain from such a plot, was a protector of Rais for a long time; only after the results of two damning investigations did he consent to participate in Rais’ prosecution.

Anthropologist Margaret Murray and occultist Aleister Crowley are among those who have questioned the account of the ecclesiastic and secular authorities involved in the case. Murray, in her book The Witch-Cult in Western Europe (pp. 173-74), speculated that Rais was a witch and adherent of a fertility cult centered on the pagan goddess, Diana. According to Murray, "Gilles de Rais was tried and executed as a witch and, in the same way, much that is mysterious in this trial can also be explained by the Dianic Cult."[4]

Mainstream historians reject Murray's theory. As Hugh Trevor-Roper put it, "The fancies of the late Margaret Murray need not detain us. They were justly, if irritably, dismissed by a real scholar as ‘vapid balderdash’ (C.L. Ewen, Some Witchcraft Criticisms, (1938)."[5] Other historians who have taken issue with Murray's claims include Jeffrey Russell who said her theories were "riddled with fallacies",[6] Jacqueline Simpson,[7] Ronald Hutton,[8][9] G. L. Kitteredge,[10] Norman Cohn,[11] Keith Thomas,[12] and the writer Georges Bataille (e.g., The Trial of Gilles de Rais). They argue that her theory does not agree with what is known of Rais's crimes and trial. Professional historians generally do not regard either Rais or Joan of Arc as martyrs to an antiquated religion; recent scholars tend to view Joan as a devout Catholic convicted on political grounds by a pro-English court, and Rais as a pious Catholic who descended into crime and depravity.[13][14][15]

In popular culture

De Rais was played by Vincent Cassell in Luc Besson's 1999 film The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc.

The Swiss extreme metal band Celtic Frost recorded the song 'Into The Crypts Of Rays' on their 1984 album Morbid Tales, which was a biographical song about Rais (albeit with a slightly mis-translated song title).

British Extreme Metal band Cradle of Filth released Godspeed on the Devil's Thunder, a concept album based on the life of Gilles de Rais, in 2008.

See also

References

  1. ↑ Huysmans, Joris-Karl. Gilles de Rais (1899)
  2. ↑ "Royal Financial Records Concerning Payments for Twenty-Seven Contingents in the Portions of Joan of Arc's Army Which Arrived at Orléans on 4 July 1429." Joan of Arc Primary Sources Series.
  3. ↑ "Gilles de Rais: The Pious Monster." The Crime Library.
  4. ↑ "Historical Association for Joan of Arc Studies."
  5. ↑ Trevor-Roper, Hugh. The European Witch-craze of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, 1969.
  6. ↑ Russell, Jeffrey. A History of Witchcraft: Sorcerers, Heretics, and Pagans, 1970.
  7. ↑ Simpson, Jacqueline. "Margaret Murray: Who Believed Her and Why?." Folklore 105, 1994, pp. 89–96.
  8. ↑ Hutton, Ronald. The Pagan Religions of the Ancient British Isles: Their Nature and Legacy. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers Ltd, 1991.
  9. ↑ Hutton, Ronald. The Triumph of the Moon: A History of Modern Pagan Witchcraft. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999
  10. ↑ Kitteredge, G. L. Witchcraft in Old and New England. 1951. pp. 275, 421, 565.
  11. ↑ Cohn, Norman. Europe's Inner Demons. London: Pimlico, 1973.
  12. ↑ Thomas, Keith. Religion and the Decline of Magic, 1971 and 1997, pp. 514–517.
  13. ↑ Barett, W.P. The Trial of Joan of Arc. 1932.
  14. ↑ Pernoud, Regine and Marie Veronique Clin. Joan of Arc, Her Story. 1966
  15. ↑ Meltzer, Françoise. For Fear of the Fire: Joan of Arc and the Limits of Subjectivity. 2001.

Bibliography

External links

Persondata
NAME Rais, Gilles de
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Retz, Gilles de
SHORT DESCRIPTION Serial killer
DATE OF BIRTH September 10, 1404
PLACE OF BIRTH Machecoul, France
DATE OF DEATH October 26, 1440
PLACE OF DEATH Nantes, France