A likely story #4

Of all the likely stories presented as evidence, this may be the most startling. There is a strong implication in Jean Jenvret’s testimony that Gilles was in two places at once.

In June 1438, Jenvret's nine-year-old son disappeared. Modern writers, taking their cue from Georges Bataille, aver oxymoronically that the boy “sometimes frequented” the Hôtel de la Suze. In fact, the text says that he never at any time went there; the error seems to be with the translator, Klossowski, replacing aucune fois with parfois, an indication of how little respect has ever been shown to the original text. Obviously, if he had been a regular visitor, no intervention would have been necessary; he would simply not have come home one day. As it was, one of the mysterious procuresses was apparently involved.

According to the testimony of the child's parents, the conveniently dead Perrine Martin was supposed to have admitted to leading the child from Nantes to Machecoul; Poitou, on the other hand, said that he “could have” killed him at La Suze. Bataille gamely tries to reconcile the clear contradiction by theorising that perhaps she took the boy's dead body to Machecoul for disposal.

The most glaring error, however, is the suggestion that Gilles was in residence at La Suze when young Jenvret vanished, yet La Meffraye took him to Machecoul where she handed him over to – Gilles. If not bilocation, this is confused and confusing testimony.

Be that as it may, M and Mme Jenvret attested to their son's loss and several local witnesses confirmed that they had heard the couple lamenting and never saw the boy again thereafter.

"History is something that never happened, written by a man who wasn't there."

Now that an increasing number of people know that the case of Gilles de Rais was history's foulest miscarriage of justice, the last resort of the people who need their Bluebeard monster is "but historians say".

(Click to enlarge)

"Others"? Who can they mean?

Who are these historians? We are never told. The only historians who wrote biographies of Gilles were Emile Gabory, Jacques Heers and Thomas Wilson, none of them free of the most egregious errors. Jean Kerhervé wrote a diatribe against Prouteau's Gilles de Rais ou la gueule du loup, and he is a mediaeval historian, but his case was hardly bulletproof and mostly consisted of  nit-picking tiny mistakes that had nothing to do with the central issue. In fact, he seemed less concerned with the enormity of innocence or guilt than the fact that a pesky novelist was intruding on his patch. 

Whoever these hypothetical historians were or are, they must be mediaevalists who have studied all the relevant documents, otherwise their opinions would be of even less value than those of us others who have merely spent nearly a decade studying the subject.

Is it true, then, that "historians are all pretty darned convinced of his guilt, even if others arent"?

Well, this one isn't - “It’s my impression that Gilles’ actual guilt is much held in doubt by historians today,” says John D. Hosler, an Associate Professor of History at Morgan State University who specializes in the European Middle Ages and the history of warfare.

And then, in 2016, Thomas Fudgé pitched into the fray with a scholarly book called Medieval Religion and its Anxieties: History and Mystery in the Other Middle Ages, which includes a chapter on Gilles de Rais. This chapter makes the revisionist case; only as a possibility, but as a very real possibility. Do click on his name and check out his impeccable credentials; Professor Fudgé is the mediaevalist's mediaevalist, with an interest in heresy, which makes him perfect to examine Gilles' trial. His book, sadly, is an academic title with a limited print run, and therefore costly: nearly £70 hardback and not much less as an ebook. This review gives you the taste of it -

Chapter three ("Piety, perversion, and serial killing: the strange case of Gilles de Rais") is a tour de force of historical writing, blending narrative with analysis. Gilles is perhaps best known as the model for Charles Perrault’s Bluebeard, the subject of a book about his trial by Georges Bataille (which Fudgé draws upon) as well as a central figure in J.-K. Huysmans’ novel Là-bas. Fudgé’s foreshadowing is immediately made evident: ‘If the criminal prosecution of animals figures in the other Middle Ages, there are equally disturbing juridical proceedings involving people underscoring social anxiety’. The story of Gilles de Rais is one of infamy; he is, perhaps, one of the better known characters on display here, ‘comrade-in-arms to Joan of Arc’, but Fudge is more concerned with the portrait that emerges from the historical past, the picture that emerges from folk memory, historical sources, legal documents which position Gilles de Rais ‘rather firmly in the shadows of the other Middle Ages and consign him to a type of perpetual infamy’. Fudgé tells how a quarrel over property had unforeseen consequences for the wealthy and outwardly pious Gilles and how the ‘idea, expounded in canon law, that arrest on charges of heresy also implied seizure of property had significant ramifications for Gilles and tremendous advantage for his enemies’. Like all the chapters in this volume, the author’s abundant research is lightly worn throughout the narrative but firmly underpins the whole enterprise, attesting to a careful close reading of the sources as he forensically analyses the trial of Gilles de Rais, and others, on charges of the murder of children and sexual depravity. Controversially to some perhaps, Fudgé asks whether it was all a stitch-up. Was the trial of Gilles and others a travesty of justice, or worse, was there a conspiracy, a land grab? The author highlights the various elements that point in such direction and skilfully extracts the full value of story from the history within. It is a most useful addition to the English language works available on this subject.   

Excerpt taken from this review.

This particular other is no historian. I have never claimed to be any more than a dogged amateur who has read up on the case of Gilles de Rais obsessively over many years. However, "Team Gilles" is no longer a ramshackle band of mischief makers, Satanists, novelists, poets, mystics and lunatics. The historians are getting on board. I am confidently expecting someone with a relevant history degree to produce a book on the subject before too long. 

Postscript: The single chapter Piety, Perversion, and Serial Killing: The Strange Case of Gilles de Rais is available separately as a PDF at a rather more pocket-money price than the whole book.