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Gilles de Rais

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For the video game character named after Rais, see Gilles de Rais (Castlevania).
Gilles de Rais
Gilles de Rais
Gilles de Rais (also spelled Retz) (autumn of 1404 – October 26, 1440) was a French aristocrat, soldier, and at one time, a national hero. He was later accused and ultimately convicted of torturing, raping and murdering a large number of children, potentially in the hundreds. Along with Erzsébet Báthory, another sadistic aristocrat acting more than a century later, he is considered by some historians to be a precursor to the modern serial killer.

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Early years

Rais was born in 1404 at Machecoul, in the area on the border of Brittany and Poitou. His father was Guy de Montmorency-Laval who himself had inherited, via adoption, the fortunes of Jeanne de Rais and Marie de Craon. Gilles de Rais inherited the barony of Rais in the peerage-duchy of Rais (now spelled Retz). He was an intelligent child, learning fluent Latin.

Rais took the side of the Montfort Dukes of Brittany, against a rival house led by Olivier de Blois, count of Penthievre, who took John VI, Duke of Brittany prisoner. He was able to secure his release, and was rewarded for this act by generous land grants which the Breton parliament commuted to monetary ones.

After the death of his parents c. 1415, he was placed in the "care" of his godfather, Jean de Craon.

In 1420 he found himself at the court of the Dauphin, pretender to crown of France. Jean de Craon tried to marry de Rais off to the heiress Jeanne de Paynol; this was unsuccessful. Jean de Craon then pitched Rais at Beatrice de Rohan, niece of the Duke of Brittany, again with no success. Eventually he substantially increased de Rais's fortune by marrying him off to Catherine de Thouars from Brittany, La Vendee and Poitou after kidnapping her. The legend connecting de Rais with the fictitious wife-murderer Bluebeard may have stemmed from the fact that out of several previous marriage plans two were thwarted by death of the putative bride.

Military career

The coat of arms of Gilles de Rais.
Enlarge
The coat of arms of Gilles de Rais.

From 1427 to 1435, Rais served as a commander in the Royal Army, including service during Joan of Arc's campaigns in 1429. Although a few popular authors have chosen to inflate the position he held during the latter campaigns, it is known from the surviving financial records that he commanded a rather modest personal contingent of some twenty-five men-at-arms and eleven archers, and was one of many dozens of such commanders rather than the chief. Nor did he serve as Joan of Arc's bodyguard, a position actually held by a man named Jean d'Aulon. Rais's greatest honor during these campaigns came when he joined the other three commanders holding the quasi-ceremonial title of "Maréchal", a subordinate position under the Royal "Connétable". This honor was granted to him at the coronation of Charles VII on July 17, 1429. In 1435 Rais retired from military service to indulge himself in his estates, promoting theatrical performances and spending the large fortune he had inherited. It was also during this period that, according to the later testimony of himself and his accomplices, he began to experiment with the occult under the direction of a man named Francesco Prelati, who told Rais that he could regain the wealth he had squandered by sacrificing children to a demon named "Barron."

Investigation and execution

On May 15, 1440, Rais kidnapped a clergyman named Jean le Ferron during a dispute at the Church of . This prompted an investigation by the Bishop of Nantes, during which the Bishop uncovered evidence of Rais's crimes over the years. On July 29, the Bishop released his findings, and subsequently obtained the cooperation of Rais's former supporter, the Duke of Brittany. Action was now finally taken against Rais: on 24 August, Jean le Ferron was freed by Royal troops led by Arthur de Richemont. Rais himself and his accomplices were arrested on 15 September, after a secular investigation reached the same conclusions as the earlier investigation by the Bishop of Nantes. Rais's trials would likewise be conducted by both secular and ecclesiastic courts, on charges of murder, sodomy, and heresy.

The extensive witness testimony convinced the judges that there was adequate grounds for establishing the guilt of the accused. Rais confessed voluntarily to the charges on October 21, and the court therefore canceled a plan to have him tortured. The transcript, which included testimony from the parents of many of the missing children as well as graphic descriptions of the murders provided by Rais's accomplices, was so lurid that the judges ordered the worst portions to be stricken from the record.

According to these accounts, Rais had lured young boys to his residences, where he would rape, torture and mutilate them, often masturbating while sitting upon the dying body. He and his accomplices would set up the severed heads of the children afterwards, in order to judge which was the most beautiful. How many victims Rais killed is not known exactly, as most of the bodies were burned or buried. It is thought to be between 80 and 200; estimates of up to 600 are almost certainly exaggerated. The victims were aged between six and eighteen and were of both sexes; although Rais preferred boys, he would settle for young girls if they were all that his servants could manage to kidnap.

On October 23, the secular court condemned Rais's accomplices, Henriet and Poitou; on the 25th the ecclesiastical court handed down a sentence of excommunication against de Rais, followed by condemnation by the secular court on the same day. After tearfully expressing remorse for his crimes, de Rais was freed of the sentence of excommunication and granted a request to confess to a priest, although the secular penalty still remained in effect. Rais, Henriet, and Poitou were executed by hanging at Nantes on October 26, 1440.

Controversy

Some authors have alleged that Rais was framed for murder and heresy by the Roman Catholic Church as part of a plot to acquire his lands, although other historians dispute this theory by pointing out that the Church did not in fact gain his lands, as these instead devolved to the Duke of Brittany, who then doled them out to nobles such as the Count of Richemont. Rais was convicted by the ecclesiastic court first, and then shortly aftwards the secular court (handing down a similar verdict) [link], based upon eyewitness accounts from his accomplices describing the murders in precise detail, and the testimony from the parents of missing children in villages near Rais's estate. A conspiracy to frame him would have had to involve numerous individuals and the cooperation of both Ducal and Church officials. Most historians similarly regard the Duke of Brittany (the chief beneficiary) as an unlikely suspect in such a plot, as he had long been an ally and protector of Rais, and only consented to the prosecution after two investigations had uncovered damning evidence.

Anthropologist Margaret Murray and occultist Aleister Crowley are among those who have questioned the traditional account given by the ecclesiastic and secular courts which were involved in de Rais's case. Murray, in her book The Witch-Cult of Western Europe (pp. 173-74), theorized that Rais was a practicing witch adhering to a pre-Christian fertility cult which worshipped the Roman goddess Diana, and that he was also part of a traditional "Coven of thirteen." According to Murray, "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." [link]

Mainstream historians reject Murray's theory; as Hugh Trevor-Roper put it Hugh Trevor-Roper, The European Witch-craze of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, 1969 "The fancies of the late Margaret Murray need not detain us. They were justly, if irritably, dismissed by a real scholar as ‘vapid balderdash’ (C.L. Ewen, Some Witchcraft Criticisms, (1938)." Other historians taking issue with Murray's claims include Jeffrey Russell (who said Murray's claims were "riddled with fallacies" Jeffrey Russell, A History of Witchcraft: Sorcerers, Heretics, and Pagans, 1970.), Jacqueline Simpson Jacqueline Simpson, Margaret Murray: Who Believed Her and Why?, Folklore 105, 1994, pp. 89–96, Ronald Hutton, Ronald Hutton, The Pagan Religions of the Ancient British Isles: Their Nature and Legacy, Oxford: Blackwell Publishers Ltd, 1991, and The Triumph of the Moon: A History of Modern Pagan Witchcraft, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999, G. L. Kitteredge, G. L. Kitteredge, Witchcraft in Old and New England, 1951. pp. 275, 421, 565 Norman Cohn, Norman Cohn, Europe's Inner Demons, London: Pimlico, 1973 Keith Thomas Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic, 1971 and 1997, pp. 514–517 and Georges Bataille (e.g., The Trial of Gilles de Rais). They point out that Murray's representation of the Dianic Cult theory in general bears little resemblance to the evidence contained in the many historical documents concerning these matters. Murray's theory having been rejected by professional historians, its application to Rais is not commonly accepted; where Murray saw Joan of Arc and Gilles de Rais as martyrs to an old religion, historians and recent scholars have tended to analyze their deaths within the spectrum of Catholic practices.W.P. Barrett, The Trial of Joan of Arc, 1932; Regine Pernoud & Marie Veronique Clin, Joan of Arc, Her Story, 1966; Françoise Meltzer, For Fear of the Fire: Joan of Arc and the Limits of Subjectivity, 2001.

Undoubtedly, though, the most controversial source of information on Rais remains a yet-to-be thoroughly authenticated cache of fragmentary documents believed to date from 1440 and finally published along with the trial proceedings in 1965 under the title Le procès de Gilles de Rais (translation by Klossowski, edition by Bataille). The salvaged documents purport to bear witness to Rais's own mind as the moment of his execution neared. Evidence from other sources suggests that Rais was able to write sufficiently well in Latin to have composed the document himself. It is also possible, though less likely, (considering the intimately confessional nature of the largest of the fragments) for them to have been redacted by a scribe at the request of Rais.

Fictional appearances

Rais's profile and notoriety inspired many modern French thinkers and authors, such as Michel Tournier, Pierre Klossowski and one-time Surrealist Georges Bataille.

Rais appears by name as a character in the play Saint Joan by George Bernard Shaw, as a young man of 25 who is set up to impersonate the Dauphin, in which such an attempt is unsuccessful. Gilles de Rais is also represented as a major plot device in the novel Là-bas ("Down There") by the French novelist J.K. Huysmans.

Nathanael West alludes to Rais' morbid sexual practices, along with the Marquis de Sade, in his novella, The Dream Life of Balso Snell.

Gilles de Rais also appears as a vampire and one of the coconspirators involved in Dracula's resurrection in Castlevania and its special edition, .

Gilles de Rais was a minor villain in the manga series S & M no Sekai by Chiho Saito.

Gilles de Rais is a character in the novel 'Thief of Souls' by Ann Benson, which parallels the story of Gilles de Rais and that of a modern day serial killer.

Gilles de Rais brief makes a brief appearance in the opening section of Anne Golons Angélique series, as the subject of horror stories told to children. Also he may be partly the basis for the book's romantic lead, Joffrey Peyrac.

Gilles de Rais is the villain in The Dead Boy Detectives (by Ed Brubaker), a spin-off of the graphic novel The Sandman (by Neil Gaiman). The Dead Boy Detectives are published by DC Comic's Vertigo imprint.

Gilles de Rais is a villain in the 2000 Summer and 2001 Winter Sailor Moon Musicals, which are commonly called "The Forest of Transylvania" and its revision.

Trivia

References

Notes

External links

 

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