Mythbusting #2

 

That there was a book so lurid that reading it tempted Gilles de Rais into crime

While sorting out the Gilles de Rais myths that need busting, I decided to give low priority to the Corrupting Book that supposedly triggered his crimes. That particular myth had died out, I thought.  Jacques Heers was peddling it in 1994, but that was thirty years ago and Heers is not as well thought of now as he was then. 

And now, voilà! Up it springs again, undead, complete with a "quote" to support it. 

The story, invented by the Bibliophile Jacob, is that  Gilles possessed an illustrated copy of Suetonius' The Twelve Caesars, which was the inspiration for his depravities.  Lacroix has Henriet, as his librarian, translating it to him and Gilles, aroused, committing his first crimes the same night. Bossard  enthusiastically adopted this narrative 

Anybody who has looked into Suetonius will know that there are some highly lubricious anecdotes about the Emperors, Tiberius especially. Those who claim that the Inquisition could not possibly have imagined the acts attributed to de Rais should note that  there were precedents. And also that Suetonius' claims, too, have been disputed. The human imagination is far more versatile than folks think. 

One can see why someone trying to craft a compelling story out of the trials of Gilles de Rais might want to make up a back story to account for what would otherwise be quite inexplicable atrocities. For there is a gaping hole at the heart of the allegations against Gilles - the little matter of motivation. We are offered three motives, which conflict with each other. So did he kill for pleasure? Or was he sacrificing children to the Devil? Or, as the ever-practical Henriet asserted in a seldom-quoted aside, simply to ensure that his victims could never tell tales? 

Some writers have attempted to square the circle by asserting that Gilles started with child sacrifices and grew to enjoy the bloodshed. Unfortunately, this clashes violently  with the timeline. The murders are alleged to have started in 1432 at the latest; it was Prelati who suggested offering body parts to the Devil, and he only arrived in mid-1439. This offering up of the hand, heart, eyes and blood of an already-dead child is the only example of anything resembling human sacrifices. The whole Satanic Rites of Bluebeard narrative is based on a few headers in the civil trial, and these were almost certainly added at a later date.

This is the confected quote that is suddenly appearing in a number of online articles -

Là-dessus, je décidai d'imiter lesdits Césars, et le même soir, je commençai à le faire en suivant les images reproduites dans le livre... »

[Whereupon I decided to imitate the aforesaid Caesars, and that same evening, I began to do so by following the images reproduced in the book...]

These words do not appear in the trial record or in any other contemporary source. They were written in the mid-1980s by historian Maurice Lever, closely following the myth created by Paul Lacroix, the Bibliophile Jacob. Please note that although Lever was an historian, his period was the 17th and18th centuries, not the 15th. M. Lever had never laid eyes on the trial documents, far less studied them. Why would he? He was merely referencing Gilles in a book, Les Bûchers de Sodome, dealing with the criminalisation of homosexuality. 

 The quote is bogus, as is the whole narrative. It illustrates how little respect even genuine historians have shown for the truth about Gilles de Rais.

Further reading -

The Bibliophile Jacob

The AI image at the top of the page is taken from Reddit, with thanks. 

A Likely Story #7

One of the most spectacular set pieces in the allegations against Gilles de Rais is the ferrying of forty decaying cadavers downriver, from Champtocé to Machecoul, for cremation. Bossard paints a delightful picture of this episode, with the barge waiting under the willows; Prouteau sardonically calls it a barque dantesque. In the prosaic words of the trial record, we merely have Henriet remarking that the remains were transported "by water". 

The reasons for this Gothic journey need not detain us long. Gilles was about to hand the castle of Champtocé over to the Duke of Brittany; for complex political reasons, this could only be done by pretending to take it by force from his brother, who was currently occupying it. The token army of about twenty men was accompanied by the Chancellor of Brittany, Jean de Malestroit, presumably to oversee the handover. So everything that took place happened with Gilles' future judge on the premises, an embarrassing fact that is often glossed over. 

None of this is disputed, although the date is unclear. Most commentators have it as June 1438. So in all probability, the Dantean barge processed down the Loire with its cargo of dead children at the height of summer, when nights are short and days long. Note too that Machecoul was supposedly taken by René de la Suze in November 1437; there is no record of how or when Gilles reclaimed it. 

Now, René de la Suze had been living at Champtocé since October of the preceding year, so obviously the bodies were hidden in a reasonably safe place. For some reason, however, Gilles feared that they would be uncovered by Jean V, so it became necessary to exhume and dispose of them. They could hardly be burned on the spot - remember, the Bishop of Nantes was there and might have noticed. Hence the lengthy process of exhumation and the long journey to Machecoul, which could not be reached by river, so the final part had to be overland. Given the time of year, not all of this process could have been accomplished under cover of darkness.

The bodies were packed in one or two chests (accounts vary) and were burned at Machecoul. Apparently nobody in the castle or the village noticed the stinking smoke that must have resulted. Note that much is made, during the trial, of how the bodies were burned immediately. How a backlog of forty was allowed to build up under a tower at Champtocé, dating back to around 1432 presumably, and nobody ever noticed are questions which are not addressed. 

Gilles de Rais himself was supposed to have accompanied the remains on their final journey, since he was not a man to miss out on inhaling the stench of burning bodies. We are not told how his guest, Jean de Malestroit, felt about being left to entertain himself while his host was mysteriously absent for a period of many hours. Hospitality was important and Gilles' behaviour would have been seen as unspeakably rude. 

The events at Champtocé have an exact parallel at Machecoul in October of the preceding year. When he heard that René had taken Champtocé, Gilles panicked and had (again) around forty bodies exhumed and cremated. None of this is plausible, as Gilles never before or after displayed any fear of the brother who was by far his military inferior, but at least on this occasion there was no need for an excursion by river. The two episodes are so similar that many biographers confuse or deliberately conflate them. 

Gilbert Prouteau boggled at the sheer unlikelihood of the mass transportation of so many decomposed corpses by river and land over a distance of 111.4 kilometres (nearly 70 miles). Nous passons encore une fois les frontières de la vraisemblance [Once more we go beyond the bounds of credibility], he remarked, and it is hard to argue with him. 

The Elephant in the Room (postscript)

Although many witnesses suspected that Gilles de Rais had abducted their children, they did not know for what reason he had seized them. One reads that there were numerous rumors, all false, about the abductions: it was reported that Gilles abducted boys in order to turn them over to the English as ransom for one of his soldiers [sic], Michel de Sillé, that he ate children, and that he was writing a magical book with the blood of infants. There is no evidence in the testimony of witnesses that it was rumored that Gilles sodomized the missing children. Indeed, only a very few of Gilles' chosen servants, sworn to secrecy, were aware of how he abused children. It is surprising, therefore, that the first document relative to the prosecution, dated 30 July, refers specifically to declarations by these same witnesses that Gilles “committed the sodomitical vice” with children. It is apparent that this document and a number of others were emended after the truth of the crimes was divulged by Gilles' accomplices Etienne Corrillaut on 17 October. It is doubtless, too, that the prosecutor's articles of accusation, dated 13 October, were emended after the confessions of Corrillaut and Griart, for the accusations contain many details about the crimes, such as the number of victims, the circumstances of the murders and the secret cremation of the corpses, that only Gilles and his accomplices could have known. It is probable that these articles were emended years after the trial, since they consistently date Gilles de Rais' crimes between one and a half and four years earlier than they occurred. The emendation of the legal documents was a right which the inquisitorial court reserved for itself, as stated in the last paragraph of the articles of accusation. 

Reginald Hyatte, Laughter For The Devil, introduction

When I wrote about this discrepancy in a blog post from 2012, The Elephant in the Room, I put forward various suggestions as to how it might have arisen. Reginald Hyatte, writing in 1984, was more radical, although he may not have realised it. Anxious to avoid any implication that the trial testimony was a tissue of lies from start to finish, he advanced the theory that the minutes of the trial might simply have been altered after the event. This is a highly controversial but plausible theory; it does explain some of the odd chronological errors, such as the misdating of the incident at Saint-Étienne-de-Mer-Morte to 1439.

Professor Thomas Fudgé, a scholar of mediaeval history, feels that it is most unlikely that the records were tampered with in this way - "There is the possibility that notaries or other court officials fraudulently manipulated the legal record of the trial of Gilles de Rais. I can find no grounds for sustaining this possibility." Hyatte differs, and for once I find myself agreeing with him. It is perfectly true that a rubric at the end of the articles of accusation reserves the right to edit the document: in Hyatte's own translation, without violation of of the rights of correction, expansion, emendation, diminution, objection, amelioration and further presentation and proof, if need be, at the opportune place and time. 

It is also true that, if the documents were edited, it poses an enormous problem for the traditionalists. The record of the trial is the only contemporary document we have concerning the supposed crimes of Gilles de Rais. If it was partially rewritten afterwards, that compromises its authority enormously. Put bluntly, if it was altered to update the charges against Gilles, which other sections may have been tinkered with? Which parts, if any, can we trust?

Excellent questions, of course, and ones that revisionists are happy to see asked. Reginald Hyatte, I suspect, not so much. 

Hangin' round...

Page from a French bande dessinée, title unknown.
[Click on the picture to enlarge]

A few details of the so-called confessions, low key in the testimony, have stood out vividly to posterity and are always emphasised and elaborated on by biographers. These are invariably the most Grand Guignol elements. One of the most notorious of these details is the partial hanging of a child before the attack began in earnest. According to Henriet and Poitou's evidence, a child would sometimes be suspended from a hook, either by Gilles or one of his assistants, in order to silence any cries for help. Gilles would then take the boy down and reassure him that it was only a game, a reassurance that one can hardly imagine being effective on a terrified and half-strangled child. Writers have had a field day with this scenario, hypothesising that Gilles got a certain perverse thrill out of calming and caressing a child that he was about to kill. However, the valets are quite clear and prosaic: the hanging was done to silence the child. Of course, this was one way in which the prosecution sought to explain why no member of the household was alerted to the bizarre goings-on in the master's rooms: hanging would damage the vocal cords and make the slightest sound impossible. Gilles himself, in his various confessions, does not even go as far as his servants; he merely mentions hanging from a hook as one of several methods of killing. If the sadistic charade of hanging and rescuing had been a favourite pastime of his, one might reasonably expect him to mention it.

In fact, this is yet another example of the way in which writers have ignored contemporary documents and invented their own ogreish Gilles de Rais.

Note, please, that the cartoonist has placed the potence, or gallows, outside. Obviously nobody would have an instrument of torture in their bed chamber, the idea is ridiculous! In fact, it is the only part of the episode that is supported by the trial records: the children were supposedly hung from a hook in Gilles' room...

The Veiling of the Cross

The one thing that everyone knows about Gilles de Rais is that, at the most lurid moment of his confession, the Bishop of Nantes veiled the crucifix out of shame. It is a set-piece of several biographies and novelisations.

J-K Huysmans describes it thus -

He seemed to see nothing, hear nothing. He continued to tell off the frightful rosary of his crimes. Then his voice became raucous. He was coming to the sepulchral violations, and now to the torture of the little children whom he had cajoled in order to cut their throats as he kissed them.

He divulged every detail. The account was so formidable, so atrocious, that beneath their golden caps the bishops blanched. These priests, tempered in the fires of confessional, these judges who in that time of demonomania and murder had never heard more terrifying confessions, these prelates whom no depravity had ever astonished, made the sign of the Cross, and Jean de Malestroit rose and for very shame veiled the face of the Christ.

                                            (from Là-Bas)


It was a moment of high drama.

And it never happened.

Gilles de Rais is a magnet for myths and this is one of the most persistent. There is no reference in the record of his trial to Jean de Malestroit veiling the cross. The biographies that mention it do not cite their sources - even Emile Gabory, who was a serious historian and gave proper citations for everything except this claim. There is an similar incident in the Bibliophile Jacob, but in his account the cross was covered by Pierre de l'Hôpital so that Henriet could give his testimony without inhibition.

The veiling of the cross is a myth and it seems to have been invented in its usual form by - J-K Huysmans! Who was writing a novel and not a factual work and may be forgiven for adding a little colour to the dry bones of the trial record and playing fast and loose with the Bibliophile's already fictional version.  There is no contemporary account that includes this touching little scene and no reason to suppose that it is anything but a piece of novelettish whimsy. The genuine historians who have slavishly disseminated this fairy tale have no excuse for their gullibility and lack of research.

The Elephant in the Room

On September 13th, 1440, Jean de Malestroit wrote this -
"...we listened repeatedly to the shocking complaints made by as many good and discreet synodic witnesses...as by several other credible people of probity, at the same time as by many parishioners...as well by the oft-repeated public rumor as as by the preceding denunciations, we discovered that the said nobleman, Milord Gilles de Rais, baron of the said lands in our diocese, had killed, cut the throats of, and massacred many innocent children in an inhuman fashion, and with them committed, against nature, the abominable and execrable sin of sodomy, in various fashions and with unheard-of perversions that cannot presently be expounded upon by reason of their horror, but that will be disclosed in Latin at the appropriate time and place; that he had often and repeatedly practised the dreadful invocation of demons and took care that it be practised; that he sacrificed and made offerings to these same demons, contracted with them; and wickedly perpetrated other crimes and offenses, professing doctrinal heresy against Divine Majesty, in the subversion and distortion of our faith, offering a pernicious example unto many."
(The Trial of Gilles de Rais, by Georges Bataille, translated by Richard Robinson, Amok Books)

On October 13th, the Bill of Indictment was read and, as promised, did indeed go into more detail.

The interrogations of François Prelati, Eustache Blanchet, Etienne Corillaut (Poitou), and Henriet Griart took place between the 16th and the 17th of October. At the point when Jean de Malestroit wrote his initial letter, and when the Bill of Indictment was drafted, the only evidence before him was from the "public rumour" that children had gone missing and from his own interviews with parents and other concerned parties. All that they could tell him was that children were allegedly disappearing in the area, not what had happened to them. What de Malestroit writes is inside information and we are not told where it comes from.

Most writers do not address this discrepancy; I suspect that many do not even notice it. Among the ones who do is Frances Winwar, in The Saint and the Devil, who makes the logical assumption that somebody from Gilles's household had informed on him.

It is possible that François Prelati, Eustache Blanchet or André Buchet (who is named in the Bill of Indictment and was working for Jean V when he allegedly procured a child to be murdered) voluntarily gave information because they realised that Gilles de Rais was about to be arrested and sought to save their own skins. It is equally possible that they were tortured or threatened with torture. Or bribed. Or told that they would save their lives if they made a private confession inculpating their master. It is just as likely that the accusations were pure invention.

The only thing we know for certain is that Jean de Malestroit made allegations, later confirmed by confessions under torture, which he seems to have produced out of thin air and chose not to source.