Select bibliography: books in English

There is no one book about Gilles de Rais, either in English or French, that gives all the known facts free of myth and with no agenda. All accept Bossard as an authority, and Bossard knowingly used the forged trial account by "The Bibliophile Jacob", Paul Lacroix, and invented a Bluebeard folklore that simply did not exist at that time. Also, there is no revisionist biography in English.

With these reservations, this mini bibliography may be helpful:

1 Jean Benedetti  This was the first book about Gilles that I read and I still have a soft spot for it. It is a short book, possibly too short, but it does sketch in the background to the life. Its weakness is that it deals too briefly with the trial. Its strength is that it does point out the likelihood of a plot between Jean V and Jean de Malestroit. I would recommend this as a starter book; if, like a few internet commentators, you find it "boring", you should accept that this is not the subject for you.
[My earlier blog post about Benedetti's book can be found here.]

2 E A Vizetelly The nearest to a revisionist biography in English, although not that near. Vizetelly occasionally expresses astonishment at some of his material - "This might be taken almost for the cry of an innocent man..." - but is unable to accept that Gilles might not have been guilty. This puzzled scepticism is the strength of his book; he also gives a detailed account of the other contender to the Bluebeard title, Comorre the Cursed. But it is an older book and not as free from myth as later biographies.

3 Leonard Wolf The most recent biography in English, it is comprehensive but entirely lacking in soul. It does not pretend to be a work of original scholarship, but nor does it bother to hide the author's borrowings from other sources. Wolf simply puts his material on the page unquestioningly and has no truck with dissenters. The book is dedicated "To the victims", which tells you all you need to know about his attitude.

4 Georges Bataille It is essential for anybody who wants to get to the truth about Gilles de Rais to familiarise themselves with the trial record. I have dealt with this book in my French bibliography, but there is also an English version. Kudos to Amok Books for making this crucial text available to us monoglot English speakers, but the translation is poor and in places confusing - that a man who died before his thirty-sixth birthday should be accused of committing unspeakable crimes for forty years is symptomatic either of supernatural precocity or a schoolboy error on the part of the translator...

[Click on the author's name to see the book on Amazon. E A Vizetelly is out of copyright, so the link goes to a free ebook.]

Update: my own biography is now available, paperback only, £12 - 

The Martyrdom of Gilles de Rais

Style and crime, by Quentin Crisp

Quentin Crisp's take on Gilles de Rais was about as un-revisionist as it is possible to get. It does, however, illustrate beautifully the pitfalls of taking your "facts" from Bossard, Huysmans and other myth-mongers. And it is witty and politically incorrect and seems to be unavailable anywhere else on the internet, so it is valuable in itself. It is regrettable that there seems to be no video of Mr Crisp delivering this monologue and that posterity will be deprived of the melodramatic climax of that final pseudo-quote.

The divine Quentin Crisp in 1941, by Angus McBean

In modern life a stylist does not even need virtue. It is no longer necessary to be an object of public veneration or even affection. He can be the focus of contempt or even downright hatred. Illustrations of this abound. As a test of whether you're in touch with somebody, being loved can never be a patch on being murdered. That's when somebody really has risked his life for you. If you have chosen depravity as the fluid in which you will suspend your monstrous ego, then you have the most wonderful examples before you — or rather behind you, because most of the ones we can best identify are in history.

M. Gilles de Rais murdered at least a hundred and forty boys in a lifetime. Numbers are not style, but it's difficult not to be impressed. He was a nobleman, and the projection of his life-style was made easy for him by the fact that, while he was rich and owned more than one castle, most people in France were so poor that whole families of peasants left their homes to wander about the countryside in search of food much as, according to Comrade Boris Pasternak, the Russian bourgeoisie did during the early days of the Revolution. M. de Rais caused it to be known that he was not only wealthy but also an extremely religious man who maintained a large boys’ choir in his castle in Tiffauges. This was a way of luring into his grasp victims of the age that suited his tastes. When the boys arrived, hoping to become part of the choir, he murdered them and ravished them while they were dying or, if they died too quickly, when they were dead.

I expect that rape and murder, either separately or mixed together, fill the fantasies of most men and all stylists. They are the supreme acts of ascendancy over others; they yield the only moments when a man is certain beyond all doubt that his message has been received. Of the few who live out these dreams, some preface rape with murder so as to avoid embracing a partner who might criticize their technique.

M. de Rais was a very different manner of man. He occasionally gave select ravishment parties. He would never have done this if he had been physically inadequate. Orgies are for sexual athletes. 

After a while not even a pinch of exhibitionism could prevent his desire from outrunning his delight. He took to riding into the countryside and hunting down his little friends. (Here once again we see the strong connection between crime and sport.) In these sorties he was accompanied by a certain M. de Sillé, not so much, I feel, because he needed help as in order to have his prowess in the field admired by his peers. 

When he was finally brought to trial, it was for quite another offense, but by this time rumors about his life-style had begun to spread across the land. On a journey through France he had murdered a boy while staying at an inn and this child had parents who noticed his disappearance.

If proof were needed that style engenders style, it could be found in accounts of M. de Rais’s trial. His confession was so long and so lurid that the Bishop of Nantes ordered the face of the crucifix on the wall behind him to be covered. Moreover, style was not confined to the courtroom. People came from far and wide throughout France to pray for his soul. Some of these people were the parents of the children he had murdered. If this is not style, it is at least gesture on a national scale, all brought about by one man.

At the last M. de Rais cried out, ”I am redeemable.” Into what shade is the whole of Mr. Oscar Wilde's De Profundis flung by this single sentence! 

Text taken from The Wit and Wisdom of Quentin Crisp, edited and compiled by Guy Kettelhack and required reading for all.

A curious find

ANCIEN CACHET / SEAU/ EN BRONZE ARGENTE 

 FIGURANT JEANNE D'ARC ET UN COMPAGNON D'ARME

 très probablement Gilles de Rais .. de Montmorency Laval

non chiffré / usure d'age/ légère désargenture / sans casse

 hauteur 11,8 cm environ

This mysterious little object is a seal which may (or may not) depict Gilles de Rais and Jehanne d'Arc. There are no markings and the actual seal has been removed, making it impossible to date or place, although it was bought from vendors in Provence, France. It seems to be reasonably old and to have been used for its intended purpose, judging by the wear.

Looking at the iconography of the piece, it is highly likely that it is meant to represent Gilles and Jehanne. Both figures have fleur de lys markings on their armour. The taller figure is leaning on a double-headed battleaxe in what appears to be a deliberate allusion to Féron's imaginary portrait of 1835. He is bearded; Gilles is almost always depicted with a beard, uniquely among Jehanne's companions. The smaller figure is clinging to him for support; we know that Gilles rescued Jehanne on the battlefield twice and the second time she had a leg injury. This little piece might well represent that moment at the nadir of the Loire campaign when Paris had failed to fall, Jehanne was wounded and the next day Charles VII broke up the army, leaving both Gilles & Jehanne to go on alone to their respective fates. No wonder the male figure has such a solemn, melancholy air.

This would have been a controversial piece to own at any time, since Gilles de Rais is the dominant figure and Jehanne is leaning on him. It might have been made in the 1920s, when Jehanne was canonized and there was much revisionist interest in Gilles, or possibly in the late 1890s when Huysman's Là-Bas had such a succès de scandale. But to speculate further would be to make up fairy stories, like Bossard. 

It is a beautiful object and it is posted here for its beauty and its rarity. 

(The pictures and description were taken from the eBay listing. Obviously this item is now sold, but it was bought from this shop.)

A word about translations

(Taken from Bluebeard by Thomas Wilson, 1899. Click to enlarge.)

Few modern biographers have read the trial records in their original form. Deciphering old manuscripts is a science that has to be taught; so, although Gilbert Prouteau insisted on access to the documents, this was purely token, as he did not have the training to read them. Essentially all Gilles de Rais scholars are dependent on modern translations by Bossard (who did not feel able to render the more lurid passages into French and, indeed, in parts even censored the Latin), Klossowski and Fleuret. 

For the most part these translators agree. However, Fernand Fleuret - a revisionist with an axe to grind - is insistent that the phrase "I will do nothing for you as Bishop of Nantes!" was uttered not by Gilles de Rais but by Jean de Malestroit himself. This places a whole new emphasis on the dialogue and seems plausible. Others dispute this translation hotly. 

Who is correct? Who knows? This is a minor example of the mysteries that surround Gilles de Rais and his trial.  

Gilles de Retz - a poem by Sidney Keyes

Marshall of France. The prancing horses
And banners licking the air. I tell you now,
Standing in pride who have no cuirass,
That was not half the glory, not a jot of it.
Now, velvet-draped like a coffin with nothing inside
But the echo of nails, remembering the hammer's
Talk in an empty vault, all I can do is tell you
God's mercy to me when I was alive.
I have seen angels marching - others also
Armed but all strong as morning, among the trumpets;
Though I am still young, God's anger like a woman
Fought by my side three years, then was extinguished
In flame, the old sign, the old blazon shining.
It comes strange ways, the pure divine anger,
Piercing your safety like a lancet, or perhaps
A flat knife working for years behind the eyes,
Distorting vision. That is the worst of all.
Or a boy's voice flowering out of silence
Rising through choirs to the ear's whorled shrine
And living there, a light.
What if I sought that glory
When, sign forgotten, fire had darkened my image
Of pure bright anger? What if indeed I danced
Another figure, seeking pain's intricate
Movements to weave that holy exultation?
Knife in the head before, now in the hand
Makes little difference. Pain is never personal;
As love or anger unconfined, it takes
Part in each moment & person, unconditioned
By time or identity, like an atmosphere.
There is no giving or receiving, only
Pain and creation coming out of pain.
Now I have made you angry; but think of this -
Which is the stronger, my pain or your love?
Old men like towers separate in the evening.

Six score in a year, I tell you. The high white bed,
Caesar's pleasures and the dry well. See
How I believed in pain, how near I got
To living pain, regaining my lost image
Of hard perfection, sexless and immortal.
Nearer to you than living love, to knowing
The community of love without giving or taking
Or ceasing or or the need of change. At least
I knew this in my commonwealth of pain.
You, knowing neither, burn me and fear my agony
And never learn any better kind of love.
Six score, then raising Lucifer by guile,
I sinned. It was unnecessary; so
It is for you to punish me.But remember
Never a man of you fought as I those years
Beside the incarnation of mortal pride,
The yearning of immortals for the flesh.
Nor will you ever feel God's finger
Probing your soul's anatomy, as I
Have been dissected these five years; for never
Since Christ has any man made pain so glorious
As I, nor dared to seek salvation
Through love with such long diligence as I through pain.

Have mercy, Lord, on misdirected worship.
On this soul dressed for death in hot black velvet.
Bishop of Nantes, cover the Cross.

                              1941

This sub-Eliot poem is far from revisionist, but it is interesting and not easy to come by, so it is included here for the sake of completeness.

 Picture of Sidney Keyes taken from this site.

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