Gilles de Rais

Gilles de Rais
Baron de Retz

Gilles de Rais by Éloi Firmin Féron (1835) (artist's impression since no contemporary portrait has survived).
Birth name Gilles de Montmorency-Laval
Born prob. c. September 1405
Champtocé-sur-Loire, Anjou
Died 26 October 1440(1440-10-26) (aged 35)
Nantes, Brittany
Buried church of the monastery of Notre-Dame des Carmes in Nantes
Allegiance Kingdom of France
Duchy of Brittany
Years of service 1420–1435
Rank Marshal of France
Battles/wars

Hundred Years War

Signature
Gilles de Rais
Cause of death Execution by hanging
Criminal penalty Death
Spouse(s) Catherine de Thouars of Brittany (1420–1440) (his death)
Children Marie (1429–1457) (left no children)
Parent(s) Guy II de Montmorency-Laval
Marie de Craon
Killings
Victims 140 ?
Span of killings
 1431–1440
Date apprehended
 15 September 1440

Gilles de Montmorency-Laval (French: [də ʁɛ]; prob. c. September 1405 – 26 October 1440),[1] Baron de Rais, was a knight and lord from Brittany, Anjou and Poitou,[2] a leader in the French army, and a companion-in-arms of Joan of Arc. He is best known for his reputation and later conviction as a confessed serial killer of children.

A member of the House of Montmorency-Laval, Gilles de Rais grew up under the tutelage of his maternal grandfather and increased his fortune by marriage. He earned the favour of the Duke of Brittany and was admitted to the French court. From 1427 to 1435, Gilles served as a commander in the Royal Army, and fought alongside Joan of Arc against the English and their Burgundian allies during the Hundred Years' War, for which he was appointed Marshal of France.

In 1434/1435, he retired from military life, depleted his wealth by staging an extravagant theatrical spectacle of his own composition, and was accused of dabbling in the occult. After 1432 Gilles was accused of engaging in a series of child murders, with victims possibly numbering in the hundreds. The killings came to an end in 1440, when a violent dispute with a clergyman led to an ecclesiastical investigation which brought the crimes to light, and attributed them to Gilles. At his trial the parents of missing children in the surrounding area and Gilles' own confederates in crime testified against him. Gilles was condemned to death and hanged at Nantes on 26 October 1440.

Gilles de Rais is believed to be the inspiration for the 1697 fairy tale "Bluebeard" ("Barbe bleue") by Charles Perrault.

Early life

Gilles de Rais was probably born in late 1405[3] to Guy II de Montmorency-Laval and Marie de Craon in the family castle at Champtocé-sur-Loire.[4] He was an intelligent child, speaking fluent Latin, illuminating manuscripts, and dividing his education between military discipline and moral and intellectual development.[5][6] Following the deaths of his father and mother in 1415, Gilles and his younger brother René de La Suze were placed under the tutelage of Jean de Craon, their maternal grandfather.[7] Jean de Craon was a schemer who attempted to arrange a marriage for twelve-year-old Gilles with four-year-old Jeanne Paynel, one of the richest heiresses in Normandy, and, when the plan failed, attempted unsuccessfully to unite the boy with Béatrice de Rohan, the niece to the Duke of Brittany.[8] On 30 November 1420, however, Craon substantially increased his grandson's fortune by marrying him to Catherine de Thouars of Brittany, heiress of La Vendée and Poitou.[9] Their only child Marie was born in 1429.[10]

Military career

Coat of arms of Gilles de Rais

In the decades following the Breton War of Succession (1341–64), the defeated faction led by Olivier de Blois, Count of Penthièvre, continued to plot against the Dukes of the House of Montfort.[11] The Blois faction, who still refused to relinquish their claim to rule over the Duchy of Brittany, had taken Duke John VI prisoner in violation of the Treaty of Guérande (1365).[12] The sixteen-year-old Gilles took the side of the House of Montfort. Rais was able to secure the Duke's release, and was rewarded with generous land grants which were converted to monetary gifts.[13]

In 1425, Rais was introduced to the court of Charles VII at Saumur and learned courtly manners by studying the Dauphin.[14]
At the battle for the Château du Lude he took prisoner the English captain Blackburn.[15][16]

From 1427 to 1435, Rais served as a commander in the Royal Army, distinguishing himself by displaying reckless bravery on the battlefield during the renewal of the Hundred Years War.[17] In 1429, he fought along with Joan of Arc in some of the campaigns waged against the English and their Burgundian allies.[18] He was present with Joan when the Siege of Orléans ended.[19]

On Sunday 17 July 1429, Gilles was chosen as one of four lords for the honor of bringing the Holy Ampulla from the Abbey of Saint-Remy to Notre-Dame de Reims for the consecration of Charles VII as King of France.[20] On the same day, he was officially created a Marshal of France.[18]

Following the Siege of Orléans, Rais was granted the right to add a border of the royal arms, the fleur-de-lys on an azure ground, to his own. The letters patent authorizing the display cited Gilles’ "high and commendable services", the "great perils and dangers" he had confronted, and "many other brave feats".[21]

In May 1431, Joan of Arc was burned at the stake; Gilles was not present. His grandfather died 15 November 1432, and, in a public gesture to mark his displeasure with Gilles' reckless spending of a carefully amassed fortune, left his sword and his breastplate to Gilles' younger brother René de La Suze.[22]

Private life

In 1434/5, Rais gradually withdrew from military and public life in order to pursue his own interests: the construction of a splendid Chapel of the Holy Innocents (where he officiated in robes of his own design),[23] and the production of a theatrical spectacle called Le Mistère du Siège d'Orléans. The play consisted of more than 20,000 lines of verse, requiring 140 speaking parts and 500 extras. Gilles was almost bankrupt at the time of the production and began selling property as early as 1432 to support his extravagant lifestyle. By March 1433, he had sold all his estates in Poitou (except those of his wife) and all his property in Maine. Only two castles in Anjou, Champtocé-sur-Loire and Ingrandes, remained in his possession. Half of the total sales and mortgages were spent on the production of his play. The spectacle was first performed in Orléans on 8 May 1435. Six hundred costumes were constructed, worn once, discarded, and constructed afresh for subsequent performances. Unlimited supplies of food and drink were made available to spectators at Gilles' expense.[24]

In June 1435, family members gathered to put a curb on Gilles. They appealed to Pope Eugene IV to disavow the Chapel of the Holy Innocents (which he refused to do) and carried their concerns to the king. On 2 July 1435, a royal edict was proclaimed in Orléans, Tours, Angers, Pouzauges and Champtocé-sur-Loire denouncing Gilles as a spendthrift and forbidding him from selling any further property. No subject of Charles VII was allowed to enter into any contract with him, and those in command of his castles were forbidden to dispose of them. Gilles' credit fell immediately and his creditors pressed upon him. He borrowed heavily, using his objets d'art, manuscripts, books and clothing as security. When he left Orléans in late August or early September 1435, the town was littered with precious objects he was forced to leave behind. The edict did not apply to Brittany, and the family was unable to persuade the Duchy of Brittany to enforce it.[25]

Occult involvement

In 1438, according to testimony at his trial from the priest Eustache Blanchet and the cleric François Prelati, de Rais sent out Blanchet to seek individuals who knew alchemy and demon summoning. Blanchet contacted Prelati in Florence and convinced him to take service with his Master. Having reviewed the magical books of Prelati and a traveling Breton, de Rais chose to initiate experiments, the first taking place in the lower hall of his castle at Tiffauges, attempting to summon a demon named Barron. De Rais provided a contract with the demon for riches that Prelati was to give to the demon at a later time.

As no demon manifested after three tries, the Marshal grew frustrated with the lack of results. Prelati responded that the demon Barron was angry and required the offering of parts of a child. De Rais provided these remnants in a glass vessel at a future evocation. All of this was to no avail, and the occult experiments left him bitter and with his wealth severely depleted.[26]

Child killer

In his confession, Gilles mentioned the first assaults on children occurred between spring 1432 and spring 1433.[27] The first murders occurred at Champtocé-sur-Loire; however, no account of these murders survived.[28] Shortly after, Gilles moved to Machecoul where, as the record of his confession states, he killed, or ordered to be killed, a great but uncertain number of children after he sodomized them.[28] Forty naked bodies of children were discovered in Machecoul in 1437.[28]

The first documented case of child-snatching and murder concerns a boy of twelve called Jeudon (first name unknown), an apprentice to the furrier Guillaume Hilairet.[29] Gilles de Rais' cousins, Gilles de Sillé and Roger de Briqueville, asked the furrier to lend them the boy to take a message to Machecoul, and, when Jeudon did not return, the two noblemen told the inquiring furrier that they were ignorant of the boy's whereabouts and suggested he had been carried off by thieves at Tiffauges to be made into a page.[29] In Gilles de Rais' trial, the events were testified to by Hillairet and his wife, the boy's father Jean Jeudon, and five others from Machecoul.

In his 1971 biography of Gilles de Rais, Jean Benedetti tells how the children who fell into Rais's hands were put to death:

[The boy] was pampered and dressed in better clothes than he had ever known. The evening began with a large meal and heavy drinking, particularly hippocras, which acted as a stimulant. The boy was then taken to an upper room to which only Gilles and his immediate circle were admitted. There he was confronted with the true nature of his situation. The shock thus produced on the boy was an initial source of pleasure for Gilles.[29]

Gilles' bodyservant Étienne Corrillaut, known as Poitou, was an accomplice in many of the crimes and testified that his master stripped the child naked and hung him with ropes from a hook to prevent him from crying out, then masturbated upon the child's belly or thighs. If the victim was a boy he would touch his genitals (particularly testicles) and buttocks. Taking the victim down, Rais comforted the child and assured him he only wanted to play with him. Gilles then either killed the child himself or had the child killed by his cousin Gilles de Sillé, Poitou or another bodyservant called Henriet.[30] The victims were killed by decapitation, cutting of their throats, dismemberment, or breaking of their necks with a stick. A short, thick, double-edged sword called a braquemard was kept at hand for the murders.[30] Poitou further testified that Rais sometimes abused the victims (whether boys or girls) before wounding them and at other times after the victim had been slashed in the throat or decapitated. According to Poitou, Rais disdained the victim's sexual organs, and took "infinitely more pleasure in debauching himself in this manner ... than in using their natural orifice, in the normal manner."[30]

In his own confession, Gilles testified that “when the said 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 children were dying he sat on their stomachs and took pleasure in seeing them die and laughed”.[31]

Poitou testified that he and Henriet burned the bodies in the fireplace in Gilles' room. The clothes of the victim were placed into the fire piece by piece so they burned slowly and the smell was minimized. The ashes were then thrown into the cesspit, the moat, or other hiding places.[31] The last recorded murder was of the son of Éonnet de Villeblanche and his wife Macée. Poitou paid 20 sous to have a page's doublet made for the victim, who was then assaulted, murdered and incinerated in August 1440.[32]

Trial and execution

On 15 May 1440, Rais kidnapped a cleric during a dispute at the Church of Saint-Étienne-de-Mer-Morte.[33][34] The act prompted an investigation by the Bishop of Nantes, during which evidence of Gilles' crimes was uncovered.[33] On 29 July, the Bishop released his findings,[35] and subsequently obtained the prosecutorial cooperation of Rais's former protector, John VI, Duke of Brittany. Rais and his bodyservants Poitou and Henriet were arrested on 15 September 1440,[36][37] following a secular investigation which paralleled the findings of the investigation from the Bishop of Nantes. Rais's prosecution would likewise be conducted by both secular and ecclesiastical courts, on charges which included murder, sodomy and heresy.[38]

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 21 October,[39] the court canceled a plan to torture him into confessing.[40] Peasants of the neighboring villages had earlier begun to make accusations that their children had entered Gilles' castle begging for food and 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 Gilles' accomplices, was said to be so lurid that the judges ordered the worst portions to be stricken from the record.

The precise number of Gilles' 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, but were predominantly boys.

On 23 October 1440, the secular court heard the confessions of Poitou and Henriet and condemned them both to death,[41] followed by Gilles' death sentence on 25 October.[41] Gilles was allowed to make confession,[41] and his request to be buried in the church of the monastery of Notre-Dame des Carmes in Nantes was granted.[42]

Execution by hanging and burning was set for Wednesday 26 October. At nine o‘clock, Gilles and his two accomplices made their way in procession to the place of execution on the Ile de Biesse.[43] Gilles is said to have addressed the crowd with contrite piety and exhorted Henriet and Poitou to die bravely and think only of salvation.[42] Gilles' request to be the first to die had been granted the day before.[41] At eleven o'clock, the brush at the platform was set afire and Rais was hanged. His body was cut down before being consumed by the flames and claimed by "four ladies of high rank" for burial.[note 1][42][44] Henriet and Poitou were executed in similar fashion but their bodies were reduced to ashes in the flames and then scattered.[42][44][45]

Descendants and Barony of Rais

Marie de Rais (died 1457) was married first to Prigent VII de Coëtivy (1399–20 July 1450 Cherbourg, France), second to André de Laval-Montmorency (1408–1486) and had no children from either marriage. After her death the Barony de Rais passed to her uncle René de Rais (1414–1473) and from him to his daughter, Jeanne de Retz (1456–1473), married to Francois de Chauvigny (1430–1491). Their son was André III de Chauvigny (died 1503), who was married to Louise de Bourbon, Duchess of Montpensier (1482–1561) and had no children. Louise de Bourbon, Duchess of Montpensier, later married Louis, Prince of La Roche-sur-Yon.

Question of guilt

Although Gilles de Rais was convicted of murdering many children by his confessions and the detailed eyewitness accounts of his own confederates and victims' parents,[46] doubts have persisted about the court's verdict. Counterarguments are based on the theory de Rais was himself a victim of an ecclesiastic plot or act of revenge by the Catholic Church or French state. Doubts on Gilles de Rais' guilt have long persisted because the Duke of Brittany, who was given the authority to prosecute, received all the titles to Gilles' former lands after his conviction. The Duke then divided the land among his own nobles. Writers such as secret societies specialist Jean-Pierre Bayard, in his book Plaidoyer pour Gilles de Rais, contend he was a victim of the Inquisition.

In the early 20th century, anthropologist Margaret Murray and occultist Aleister Crowley are among those who questioned the involvement of the ecclesiastic and secular authorities in the case. Murray, who propagated the witch-cult hypothesis, speculated in her book The Witch-Cult in Western Europe that Gilles de Rais was really a witch and adherent of a fertility cult centered on the pagan goddess, Diana.[47][48] However, most historians reject Murray's theory.[49][50][51][52][53][54] Norman Cohn argues that her theory does not agree with what is known of Gilles' crimes and trial.[55][56] Historians do not regard Gilles as a martyr to a pre-Christian religion; other scholars tend to view him as a lapsed Catholic who descended into crime and depravity, whose real crimes caused the land forfeitures.[57][58][59]

Gilles was retried during a media event in his home country of France, without any official involvement of the public authorities and the judicial body.[60][61] In 1992, Freemason Jean-Yves Goëau-Brissonnière, the Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of France, organized a self-proclaimed "court" consisting of former French ministers, parliament members and UNESCO experts to re-examine the source material and evidence available at the medieval trial. A team of lawyers, writers and politicians led by Gilbert Prouteau and presided over by Judge Henri Juramy found him not guilty, although none of the initiators was a medieval historian by profession. In addition, none of them sought professional advice from certified medievalists.[62][63]

The hearing, which concluded Gilles de Rais was not guilty of the crimes, was partially turned into a fictionalized biography called Gilles de Rais ou la Gueule du loup, narrated by the writer Gilbert Prouteau. "The case for Gilles de Rais's innocence is very strong," Prouteau said. "No child's corpse was ever found at his castle at Tiffauges and he appears to have confessed to escape excommunication...The accusations appear to be false charges made up by powerful rival lords to benefit from the confiscation of his lands."[64] However, the journalist Gilbert Philippe from the newspaper Ouest-France, said that Prouteau was being "facetious and provocative".[65] He also claimed that Prouteau thought the retrial was basically "an absolute joke". Historians continue to believe him guilty of the crimes, mainly differing as to his motivation.[66]

References

Notes

  1. ↑ Several years after Gilles' death, his daughter Marie had a stone memorial erected at the site of his execution. Over the years, the structure came to be regarded as a holy altar under the protection of Saint Anne. Generations of pregnant women flocked there to pray for an abundance of breast milk. The memorial was destroyed by rioting Jacobins during the French Revolution in the late 18th century.

Footnotes

  1. ↑ (in French) Matei Cazacu, Gilles de Rais, Paris: Tallandier, 2005, pp.11 ; pp. 23–25
  2. ↑ (in French) François Macé, Gilles de Rais, Nantes: Centre régional de documentation pédagogique de Nantes, 1988, pp. 95–98.
  3. ↑ (in French) Matei Cazacu, Gilles de Rais, Paris: Tallandier, 2005, p.11 ; 23–25.
  4. ↑ (in French) Ambroise Ledru, "Gilles de Rais dit Barbe-Bleue, maréchal de France. Sa jeunesse, 1404–1424", L'union historique et littéraire du Maine, vol. I, 1893, pp. 270–284; (in French) Matei Cazacu, Gilles de Rais, 2005, p.11.
  5. ↑ Benedetti 1971, p. 33
  6. ↑ Wolf 1980, p. 13
  7. ↑ Benedetti 1971, p. 35
  8. ↑ Benedetti 1971, pp. 37–38
  9. ↑ Wolf 1980, p. 28
  10. ↑ Benedetti 1971, pp. 45,102
  11. ↑ Wolf 1980, pp. 22,24
  12. ↑ Wolf 1980, p. 23
  13. ↑ Wolf 1980, p. 26
  14. ↑ Wolf 1980, p. 37
  15. ↑ Jean de Bueil, Le Jouvencel, Paris, Librairie Renouard, Part 1, 1887, pp.XV-XVII ; Part 2 II, 1889, pp.273–275
  16. ↑ Matei Cazacu, Gilles de Rais, Taillandier, 2005, pp.79
  17. ↑ Benedetti 1971, pp. 63–64
  18. 1 2 Benedetti 1971, p. 198
  19. ↑ Benedetti 1971, pp. 83–84
  20. ↑ Benedetti 1971, p. 93
  21. ↑ Benedetti 1971, p. 101
  22. ↑ Benedetti 1971, pp. 106,123
  23. ↑ Benedetti 1971, p. 123
  24. ↑ Benedetti 1971, pp. 128–133
  25. ↑ Benedetti 1971, p. 135
  26. ↑ Bataille, Georges. The Trial of Gilles de Rais. Los Angeles: AMOK, 1991.
  27. ↑ Benedetti 1971, p. 109
  28. 1 2 3 Benedetti 1971, p. 112
  29. 1 2 3 Benedetti 1971, p. 113
  30. 1 2 3 Benedetti 1971, p. 114
  31. 1 2 Benedetti 1971, p. 115
  32. ↑ Benedetti 1971, p. 171
  33. 1 2 Benedetti 1971, p. 168
  34. ↑ Wolf 1980, p. 173
  35. ↑ Benedetti 1971, p. 169
  36. ↑ Benedetti 1971, pp. 176–177
  37. ↑ Wolf 1980, p. 178
  38. ↑ Benedetti 1971, pp. 177, 179
  39. ↑ Benedetti 1971, pp. 182–183
  40. ↑ Benedetti 1971, p. 184
  41. 1 2 3 4 Benedetti 1971, p. 189
  42. 1 2 3 4 Benedetti 1971, p. 190
  43. ↑ Wolf 1980, p. 213
  44. 1 2 Wolf 1980, p. 215
  45. ↑ Wolf 1980, p. 223
  46. ↑ "Gilles de Rais: The Pious Monster". The Crime Library. Retrieved 17 November 2011.
  47. ↑ Murray, Margaret (1921). The Witch-Cult in Western Europe. Oxford: Clarendon Press. pp. 173–174. 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
  48. ↑ "Historical Association for Joan of Arc Studies."
  49. ↑ Trevor-Roper, Hugh. The European Witch-craze of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, 1969.
  50. ↑ Russell, Jeffrey. A History of Witchcraft: Sorcerers, Heretics, and Pagans, 1970.
  51. ↑ Simpson, Jacqueline. "Margaret Murray: Who Believed Her and Why?" Folkrealllore 105, 1994, pp. 89–96.
  52. ↑ Hutton, Ronald. The Pagan Religions of the Ancient British Isles: Their Nature and Legacy. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1991.
  53. ↑ Hutton, Ronald. The Triumph of the Moon: A History of Modern Pagan Witchcraft. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999
  54. ↑ Kitteredge, G. L. Witchcraft in Old and New England. 1951. pp. 275, 421, 565.
  55. ↑ Cohn, Norman. Europe's Inner Demons. London: Pimlico, 1973.
  56. ↑ Thomas, Keith. Religion and the Decline of Magic, 1971 and 1997, pp. 514–517.
  57. ↑ Barett, W.P. The Trial of Joan of Arc. 1932.
  58. ↑ Pernoud, Regine and Marie Veronique Clin. Joan of Arc, Her Story. 1966
  59. ↑ Meltzer, Françoise. For Fear of the Fire: Joan of Arc and the Limits of Subjectivity. 2001.
  60. ↑ Alain Jost, Gilles de Rais, Marabout, 1995, pp. 152
  61. ↑ "The Tuscaloosa News – Google News Archive Search". November 11, 1992. Retrieved 16 February 2017.
  62. ↑ Jean Kerhervé, « L'histoire ou le roman ? », in Le Peuple breton, n° 347, November 1992, pp. 6–8
  63. ↑ Michel Fleury, "Gilles de Rais ou les malheurs de l'Histoire", Bulletin de la Société d'études et de recherches historiques du pays de Retz, Paimbœuf, Éditions du pays de Retz, n° 13, 1993, pp. 4–7
  64. ↑ Webster, By Paul (17 June 2013). "From the archive, 17 June 1992: Rehabilitation of France's Bluebeard". Retrieved 16 February 2017 – via The Guardian.
  65. ↑ Gilbert Philippe, « L'écrivain Gilbert Prouteau s'est éteint à 95 ans – Vendée », in Ouest-France, Friday August 2012.
  66. ↑ Jean de Raigniac, book review of Gilbert Prouteau's Roman de la Vendée, in Lire en Vendée, June–December 2010, pp.5

Bibliography

Historical studies and literary scholarship

Literature

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