October 26th is Gilles de Rais Day

Light a candle, 
drain a glass, 
mark the moment.




(Original artwork by Paul Gillon)

Les Très Riches Heures de Gilles de Rais

The leather binding is curious,
soft and pale, of no known provenance.

Its silver clasps have tarnished into blackness,
grim as coffin furbishments.

The key is rusted red, like Bluebeard's key
indelibly stained with blood.

Inside, the pigments glow from the page
in formal miniatures: vermilion, gold.

Argent on a ground of sable
a unicorn rampant rears its horn.

Here is a serpent the size of a dog
and there a leopard with human eyes.

A heap of gold transmuting into leaves,
the heart of a child in a jewelled monstrance.

A black stake and a pile of kindling,
the white face of a virgin martyr burning.

A crowd looks on, as blank as playing cards.
The licking flames seem cool, like amber.

A human figure is split down its axis;
half gilded girl, half crowned and bearded male.

A hawk-faced Herod in his purple watches
the scarlet tableau of innocents slaughtered.

There are geometrical fountains of blood.
From the sky, blond angels look down, impassive.

A grey river crawls through a watery landscape;
three gibbets, tenanted, stand framed by fire.

A phoenix in his crimson glory poises
resurgent above a pyre of blackened bone.

Margot K Juby

Holy Innocents

In Rama was there a voice heard, lamentation, and weeping, and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children, and would not be comforted, because they are not.

Matthew 2:18 King James Bible Authorized Version

The Chapel of the Holy Innocents has always been a rich source of the mythology that surrounds Gilles de Rais. Why, commentators ask, did Gilles name his private chapel after a group of murdered infants? Was it not a sign of guilt, or defiance? Why, in fact, did he have a private chapel at all, and go to such crazy lengths to ensure that his family could not dissolve it after his death? Surely that was extravagant at best, a bit mad at worst?

To ask these questions is to try and lift Gilles out of his context.

The story of the Massacre of the Innocents is based on a few verses in one gospel, Matthew 2: 16-18, which relates how King Herod attempted to kill his newborn rival as King of the Jews by having all the boy children born at the right time and place put to death: Then Herod, when he saw that he was mocked of the wise men, was exceeding wroth, and sent forth, and slew all the children that were in Bethlehem, and in all the coasts thereof, from two years old and under, according to the time which he had diligently enquired of the wise men. There is no further evidence for this massacre and it is almost certainly folklore.

From about 1400 onwards, the Holy Innocents were very much in vogue all over Europe. The brief account of Herod's massacre of the babies, coupled with the "Rachel weeping" verse from Jeremiah which the evangelist quoted, was widely used in sermons and mystery plays. The motif was particularly affecting in the context of a country embroiled in a seemingly endless war, which may explain its ubiquity. Many churches and chapels were dedicated to the child saints,  including one of the first churches built on the Rive Droite in Paris, and in following suit Gilles was merely indicating that he was a modern and fashionable man even in his spiritual tastes.

And the private chapel? Not as uncommon as you might suppose. The rich liked to have mortuary masses said for the repose of their souls after death. Some achieved this by bequeathing money to churches or monasteries, the wealthier ones founded their own chapels. The fact that Gilles took extreme measures to guarantee the continuation of his chapel merely shows that he had an astute and justifiable distrust for his family.

The Massacre of the Innocents at Bethlehem

by Matteo di Giovanni (c 1430-1495)

Listen to the chillingly beautiful Coventry Carol for a 16th century musical rendering of the Holy Innocents theme

A vexing, perplexing, vital book: my review of Gilles de Rais ou la gueule du loup

On June 17th 1992, The Guardian put a story headlined Second chance for Bluebeard on its front page. "More than 550 years after he was hanged and then burned" it began, with typical inaccuracy, "for offences ranging from sodomy to heresy, Gilles de Rais, Joan of Arc's companion in arms, is to be retried in an official process of rehabilitation." This came as a pleasant shock to those of us who had long believed that Gilles was the victim of a miscarriage of justice. A few months later, the verdict was announced: Not guilty. This made news worldwide; the account in The Guardian, and also The New York Times, can be read online. Gilles de Rais' sudden return to the limelight, and rehabilitation, can be put down to one man, Vendéen novelist Gilbert Prouteau, and one book: this one.

Prouteau's masterpiece of revisionist literature has been cruelly treated by history, through no fault of his. It is easily the most influential book about Gilles de Rais ever published, as it is essentially the case for the defence which was put to a special court of appeal under the auspices of UNESCO and led to his sensational acquittal. But the book and the retrial were in 1992, before the internet, and both are mostly forgotten today. Prouteau's book, which I understand was a best-seller in France, has never been translated into English and I have been unable to find any detailed online reviews.

It is a strange book, not obviously a "biography" in the usual sense, and not at all what the tourist board of Brittany expected when they commissioned it. It opens with a recalled rant by Prouteau's late mentor, the lawyer Maurice Garçon, who memorably claims that if he had to defend Gilles de Rais in court he would get him off with "six months with remission". Prouteau then goes on to relate how a local dignitary asked him to write a biography of Gilles de Rais to tie in with a new tourist trail. By implication, Prouteau jumped at the chance.

The resulting book is a curious mish-mash of fact and fiction. Some, including the spectacularly parti pris Jacques Heers , have accused him of writing a romantic novel. It is that, in part, but it is also a lot more.

The biographical/romanesque section of the book proceeds in an eccentric fashion, opening with a character assassination of Rais's nemesis, Bishop of Nantes Jean de Malestroit, an outline of the bad feeling between the two and the trap that the bishop set for his foe. This section ends with Gilles' arrest and Malestroit arranging to have the heavy-drinking nobleman deprived of alcohol in order to weaken his resistance to interrogation.

The book then segues into a romanticised sketch of Gilles' life, written by Gilles himself as he languishes in the Tour Neuve at Nantes. In a way, this is the book the tourist board wanted for their wretched "circuit touristique" - we have the lonely boy wandering the grim castle, the parental neglect, the mother who abandons him (although it is more probable that she predeceased her husband) and, above all, the fallacy of the two young fianceés who both die, thus adding an atmosphere of doom and nodding to the spurious Bluebeard myth.

In the next section, Gilles is still writing, this time long letters to Pierre de l'Hôpital, President of Brittany and representative of the civil court. With much justification, Prouteau felt that Hôpital was sympathetic to Gilles and unconvinced of his guilt. These passages are intercut with extracts from the trial, which Gilles comments on. The final letter is followed by the words "Fin du journal apocryphe de Gilles de Rais" and a few pages describe his execution.

This is not, however, the end of the book. The most interesting section is still to come: it is titled "J'Accuse", in a very clear reference to the Dreyfus case, and it deals with Prouteau's attempt to have Gilles de Rais' name cleared. He sought out the aid of a barrister friend, Jean-Yves Goeau-Brissonnière, who agreed to represent Gilles in court at a specially-arranged tribunal, the details of which are frustratingly vague, and the next sixty or so pages record the peroration that Goeau-Brissonnière delivered before the court. Touchingly, we are not given the verdict; if the book had been held back from the publishers for a few months, it could have included the spectacular triumph of Gilles' acquittal. It seems that Prouteau did not really expect this result and wished to market the book on the sensation of the retrial, believing that the verdict would be a damp squib.

For all its dramatic effect in the real world, this is an imperfect work: Prouteau does, in the romanesque section, print the legend and to some extent play into the hands of the Vendéen tourist board, with their accursed son et lumière and "Sur les Traces de Gilles de Rais" nonsense. He does not cite his sources, so his extraordinary claim that Gilles was an alcoholic who was deprived of his drug in prison in order to extract a false confession from him can neither be challenged nor confirmed. And he does make the mistake of accepting certain parts of extorted evidence as gospel truth, which puts him in the unnecessary position of having to pen a defence of paedophilia.

Still, this is the book that forced France, if not the rest of the world, to look at her prodigal son in a new light. In this new century, one sees its influence on web sites and coffee table books even in the anglophone world. Few books have had such a resounding effect as this one, and it is worth the read, even for those of us who struggle with French as a second language. A translation seems unlikely so long after the original publication, but if one were forthcoming it would certainly repeat its success in a new market.

Gilbert Prouteau lived till the advanced age of ninety-five and died on August 2nd 2012, a round twenty years after La Gueule du Loup was published and Gilles de Rais acquitted. Shamefully, his death barely caused a ripple outside France. Let this book and its reverberations in the real world be his memorial.

Click here to see this review on Amazon.

Le Mistère du Siège d'Orléans

For the full text of the verse drama, click this link: Le Mistère du Siège d'Orléans. This is the start of the  Mistère itself; earlier pages have a dramatis personae, a summary and a lengthy introduction in French.

Google gets it right

(Click on the picture to enlarge) 

An attentive reading of the trial records turns up any number of  contradictions, discrepancies, and suspicious similarities. It is apparent at many points that these are not spontaneous statements but responses to set questions. The text is a deliberately repellent combination of ugly images and tedious repetition; hardly anybody reads it thoroughly, it begs to be skimmed over.

Perhaps somebody at Google actually read it and categorized it accordingly.

Sadly, the likelihood is that it is merely a happy error.

An Overview:The Truth About Gilles de Rais

People ask why I am so convinced that Gilles de Rais was the victim of a miscarriage of justice. This is why.

The myth of Gilles de Rais has lasted over five hundred years. In this myth, the wealthiest man in France, who happened also to be one of his country´s greatest warriors, suddenly went mad and commenced the wholesale abuse and butchery of children. No real explanation has ever been given for this, apart from trauma caused by the execution of Jehanne d´Arc.

The biographers who believe that he was guilty argue that there was overwhelming proof, human remains were discovered in his castles, the trial was fair and the judges above reproach, a host of bereaved parents came forward with evidence against him, he and his accomplices confessed freely and without torture...

None of these statements is true.

Not one piece of solid forensic evidence was found, not one single bone. Tradition speaks of suspicious ashes in a hearth and a child´s bloodied shirt - but ashes are what you expect to find in a fireplace, and both the ashes and the shirt were found, not at Machecoul, but at the lodging-house of Gilles´ chief alchemist some distance away from the castle.

The court alleged that Gilles had committed around a hundred and forty murders in fourteen years - ten a year. In his confession, Gilles insisted on eight hundred murders over eight years - a hundred a year, almost two per week.

In spite of these huge numbers, and a lengthy enquiry by the Bishop of Nantes, only forty-odd cases could be found. Of these, several were anonymous and only a dozen have a full name given. The hosts of parents amounted to sixteen - the number of missing children who were attested to in court by a mother, father or both. A couple more were represented by aunts or uncles.

I repeat that this was after a full enquiry by the Bishop, another by the civil authorities, and a further appeal for witnesses while the trial was in progress. Many of the cases produced in court were hearsay, anecdotes that had no relation to Gilles at all, and were clearly introduced only to bulk up the numbers. There is no indication whatsoever that more children vanished in this particular area and time than anywhere else in Brittany during this period.

Nor was the trial remotely fair. Gilles was not originally told all of the charges he faced; believing that he was arraigned solely for heresy, he was thus duped into accepting the Vice Inquisitor Jean Blouyn as one of his judges. His anger when he realised how he had been deceived was perfectly understandable - up to this point he had been a model of politeness and calm. Moreover, as he pointed out to Pierre de l´Hôpital, President of Brittany, the ecclesiastical court was acting beyond its remit; it was wholly inappropriate for charges of abduction and murder to be heard there rather than in the civil court. De l´Hôpital seems to have had grave misgivings about the legality of the proceedings and Gilles´ culpability; not only did he allow the condemned man several unheard-of favours at the end, he also neglected to sign the pages of the transcript that contained Gilles´ confession, as he was obliged by law to do.

The judges, too, were not as impartial as they ought to have been in a capital case. Jean de Malestroit had engaged in numerous business deals with the accused, buying his estates at knockdown prices. He was the cousin of Jean V, Duke of Brittany, who had also illegally bought properties from his vassal, including the strategic border castles of Champtocé and Ingrandes. These fortified castles were vital to Brittany´s defence and Jean V´s father had coveted them before him.  Although the Duke finally obtained them, when Gilles´ finances were on the verge of collapse and he could no longer hold on to them, they were sold on condition that Gilles could repurchase them within six years if he wished. Neither Jean V nor de Malestroit was willing to risk such an eventuality, and they knew that Gilles was attempting to restore his fortune by means of alchemy.

As well as this financial motive, there was a political one. Gilles was the pre-eminent warrior of the Loire campaign, after the Pucelle. He was tried in Brittany, which was an independent duchy, allied sometimes with France and at others with England at the whim of the Duke´s politique de bascule. Although Jean V vacillated constantly, de Malestroit consistently favoured alliance with England, which he correctly supposed to offer the best chance of Brittany maintaining its independence from France. Jehanne had already been disgraced and burned, but the charges of heresy against her had failed to stick and she was still regarded as a quasi saint in France and especially in Orléans. If her protector, the brave Marshal of France, could be thoroughly smeared, found guilty not only of heresy but also of black magic, sodomy, murder and offences too disgusting to be described, then her memory might be tainted by association.

Gilles´ confession was not, as the Inquisition formula has it, given freely and without torture. His two servants produced evidence so consistent, and so outlandish, that it could only have been extracted by means of torture. Gilles´ evidence follows theirs exactly - we do not know if he was tortured, though he may have been, but he was excommunicated, which terrified him, and explicitly threatened with torture.

Finally, the reaction of the crowd to Gilles´ condemnation was not to exult and jeer. There was a solemn procession to the gallows and the people wept and prayed for his soul. Those who insist on his guilt claim that the fifteenth century was a more Christian time and a more forgiving one; so forgiving, evidently, that Gilles was buried in a cathedral and the expiatory monument commissioned by his daughter was a place of pilgrimage for three hundred years, until it was destroyed in the Terror. Women would pray there for abundant milk to feed their babies and their prayers, apparently, were answered. All this seems a very strange reaction if they really believed that the dead man had preyed on local children and, among other things, eviscerated them and masturbated over their entrails.