Read Trial of Gilles De Rais Online
Authors: George Bataille
Tags: #Non-Fiction, #Cultural Anthropology, #Psychology, #True Crime, #European History, #France, #Social History, #v.5, #Literary Studies, #Medieval History, #Amazon.com, #Criminology, #Retail, #History
Trial of Gilles De Rais (11 page)
Not only did Gilles de Rais strike out against Jean V’s treasurer, but this high officer was undoubtedly only a signatory for the Duke himself. Whatever his reasons were, there was a sort of dementia in the obstinacy of Gilles who, bearing arms, burst screaming into the village church where the treasurer’s brother was attending to the Divine Office.
Threatened with having his head immediately cut off, the clergyman saw himself reduced to opening the doors of the castle for the energumen, who thereupon had him put in irons.
This impulse of rage pitched him violently against those who were going to bring him down, provoking at the same time the reactions of the Duke of Brittany and the Bishop of Nantes.
He struggled; he hoped to save himself by taking advantage of the multiplicity of powers. He transferred his prisoner Jean Le Ferron, who was answerable to the Duke of Brittany, from Saint-Étienne to Tiffauges, which was independent of the Crown.
He strove to negotiate with Jean V But four months were enough. On the one hand, Jean V held an interview with Rais that made him believe in a possibility of appeasement. At just about the same time, the Duke got his brother, Charles VII’s constable, to seize Tiffauges and liberate Jean Le Ferron, whom Rais was counting on as a hostage. On September 15th, Jean V’s men seized Lord de Rais at Machecoul. They arrested him in order to lead him to the prison at Nantes at the same time as Prelati, Eustache Blanchet, Henriet, and Poitou.
Already the inquest into the murders of children was well advanced. It had been ordered on July 30th by the Bishop of Nantes, Jean Malestroit, Jean V’s chancellor and right-hand man.
The absurd Saint-Étienne affair had set off legal proceedings that the starvelings, whose throats so great a lord had cut, would not have roused for a long time still.
The Spectacular DeathIt is only recently that the judicial execution of men ceased to be a spectacle intended for the entertainment and anguish of the crowd. There was no corporal punishment in the Middle Ages that was not spectacular. Death by corporal punishment was then, in the same capacity as tragedy is on the stage, an exalting and significant moment in human life. Wars and massacres, stately or religious parades, and corporal punishments dominated the crowds in the same capacity as churches and fortresses: thence was dictated the moral sense and generally the profound sense of every aspect of life (but maybe at the same time its little moral sense and, finally, its little sense). Before being judged and consequently executed, Gilles de Rais was thus destined for the crowd at the instant of his arrest; he was promised to them as is a choice spectacle on a theater bill.
Likewise, ten years earlier, Joan of Arc had been promised to the same anonymous crowd, the noise and fury of which continues to reach us through the ages …
Of all the victims offered to this crowd, Joan of Arc and Gilles de Rais, these companions in arms, are opposed to each other in the same way as are derided innocence and the crime that exhibits in the same breath the horror and tears of the criminal! In the case of both these victims, a single aspect lends itself to comparison: the
emotion
that this thundering mass could have had, before which Joan died in flames; the
emotion
that was evidently attached to this same anonymous thundering at the moment that Gilles, in his turn, appeared in the flames. As strange as it sounds to us, the fright that his crimes inspired (the innumerable children whose throats the assassin cut, spilling his seed on them, according to his confession) contributed, with the spectacle of tears, to the crowd’s compassion. It contributed to it because in excessive social commotions it is always possible to obtain the best as well as to expect the worst; on this day the crowd had been invited to show up early in procession to the place of execution, praying to God for Gilles and his accomplices, who were being led to their death. Thus, that day the crowd could discover in their tears that this great lord who was to die, being the most infamous criminal, was like everyone in the crowd.
emotion
that this thundering mass could have had, before which Joan died in flames; the
emotion
that was evidently attached to this same anonymous thundering at the moment that Gilles, in his turn, appeared in the flames. As strange as it sounds to us, the fright that his crimes inspired (the innumerable children whose throats the assassin cut, spilling his seed on them, according to his confession) contributed, with the spectacle of tears, to the crowd’s compassion. It contributed to it because in excessive social commotions it is always possible to obtain the best as well as to expect the worst; on this day the crowd had been invited to show up early in procession to the place of execution, praying to God for Gilles and his accomplices, who were being led to their death. Thus, that day the crowd could discover in their tears that this great lord who was to die, being the most infamous criminal, was like everyone in the crowd.
We know nothing of the reaction that Gilles de Rais must have had at the moment of his arrest.
It is possible that at first he believed in the possibility of extricating himself from the bad move that the Saint-Étienne affair had been. Initially he is the object of regard appropriate to his rank. He is given a high room in the castle that has nothing in common with the dungeons in which one locks the wretched (so little in common that an interrogation of the accused was done there in front of ten or fifteen people). Proceedings were begun before the ecclesiastical tribunal, over which the Bishop of Nantes and the Inquisitor of the Faith presided. The ecclesiastical proceedings alone had a dramatic aspect that gave the trial of Gilles de Rais the eminent place that it occupies among all criminal trials. (The secular trial proceedings were less important; the ecclesiastical proceedings are, on the other hand, the only ones of which a detailed record has come down to us.)
Of all the executions in the Middle Ages, as spectacular as they were, that of Gilles de Rais seems to have been theatrically the most moving. Likewise it appears that, in the beginning, his trial was at least one of the most animated and pathetic of all time.
This was a man accustomed to making men tremble who confronted the judges, a far more difficult accused party than those in our criminal courts.
Far from being a rake, Gilles de Rais had, as I have said, a genuine foolishness. It showed clearly in his first reaction, his insults, which were followed by his breakdown, his tears, and his inadmissible confession. Whatever fearfulness he still possessed beforehand inclined the judges to no less prudence. With his first appearance they avoided approaching the essential; doubtlessly they wanted the accused to acknowledge their competence before measuring the gravity of the accusation. This appearance took place on September 28th. Abandoning him to the depression of solitude, they waited until October 8th before making him appear again. But the accusation this time appeared in its true light: inexpiable. Gilles was no longer accused simply of having violated the immunity of the Church at Saint-Étienne; he had conjured the Devil, he had cut the throats of children and violated them, he had offered the hand, eyes, and heart of a child to the demon. Gilles understood and his anger was unleashed. He must have known from the beginning that he was lost. He exploded, challenging his judges. Evidently he thought of dragging the trial out, hoping for an intervention. But he immediately came up against the resolute firmness of the judges, who revealed their decision: they wanted to do away with him at once. When Gilles appeared again on the 13th, his powerless rage was unleashed; he insulted his judges as outrageously as he could, addressing them as ribalds and simoniacs, trying in vain to oppose them to the president of the secular tribunal, present at the proceedings. The judges reacted coldly; they excommunicated the madman at once.
In this day, excommunication had an overwhelming impact. Gilles de Rais managed, on the surface, to place himself above his judges. But the superstitious devotee — that he had not ceased being in spite of his crimes and satanic pursuits — broke down. Returned to the solitude of his room, he discovered again, more terrible than ever, the nightmare in which he raved.
One frightening way out remained, however, which suited the madman. To make a blaze of the disaster! An unquestionably disastrous but spectacular blaze, ultimately a delirious blaze; the crowd that would approach its glare would be fascinated …
In the course of the lengthy hallucination that he was living, the vain man that he had been came to a point where the violent movement of his thought exceeded its shabby limits. Succumbing definitively, his only authentic glory clung to his crimes. But he could only boast of these crimes under one condition:
He was going — crying, desperate, already nearly dying — to confess them, but, at the same time, to revel in their horrible grandeur, a grandeur that would make men tremble!
He was going to do what the Christian path had taught him, the path that, despite everything, he had always wanted to follow. While moaning, he would implore the forgiveness of God and all those who had suffered from the prodigious disdain that he had for others. He would implore while moaning, he would implore while dying; his tears, in this heavy apotheosis, would be authentic tears of blood!
But we have, however, only a remote understanding of what goes on in a fragile mind at the moment when the possibility of making a stand is stripped away, before our comprehending or divining, if possible, what leads it from one point to another. Likewise when we can discern nothing on a stormy night, the traces of lightning that escape us are dazzling … provided they escape us; and what is forced upon us, more than a comprehensible aspect, is the dizzying mobility wherein the possible aspects succeed one another. We must no less illustrate — or try to illustrate — by beginning with some trifling thing, what the documents inform us could have happened. We cannot to any extent forget that Gilles de Rais could never, unless vaguely — could not, in any case, but differently — have had the reactions which we impart to him. In their indecent precision what the statements suggest is the
turmoil
from which emanated these tears, these confessions, these entreaties that we are familiar with. But without the statements to suggest it, we would be no more familiar with the turmoil than we would be, asleep, with the storm that dazzled us. It is in this sense — only in this sense — that the commentaries add to the statement of facts. But need Lord de Rais’ theatrical death appear, conclusively, limited by the poverty of these facts? Could the facts be separated from the incomprehensible lightning storm of the possible?
turmoil
from which emanated these tears, these confessions, these entreaties that we are familiar with. But without the statements to suggest it, we would be no more familiar with the turmoil than we would be, asleep, with the storm that dazzled us. It is in this sense — only in this sense — that the commentaries add to the statement of facts. But need Lord de Rais’ theatrical death appear, conclusively, limited by the poverty of these facts? Could the facts be separated from the incomprehensible lightning storm of the possible?
When on October 15, 1440, Gilles de Rais appeared again, the change that he had undergone in two days time in the solitude of his room was so great that it was comparable to death; only death might have brought about a more profound havoc … He was resigned; to his judges he came asking forgiveness for his insults; he was crying. He did not confess everything the first day, but if he denied what was the most serious thing to the clergymen, he immediately acknowledged the inadmissible: he had put children to death!
On his knees, in tears, “with great sighs,” he pleaded to be absolved of the sentence of excommunication that the judges had pronounced against him. The judges, who had already forgiven him for the insults, absolved him as he requested. The hesitation of his first confessions is not necessarily significant. Doubtlessly, it is not unbelievable that at the outset profound reservations still stalled him. Would he have thought that a repentant great lord could be forgiven for putting to death poor children, whereas the conjury of demons warranted fire? It is possible.
It is difficult to believe, however, that the first leap, the most difficult, was superficial. I believe that the deep turmoil in which he struggled abandoned him again to tortuous thoughts. Though dimly, he must have been from the beginning no less open to the dizzying possibility that the confession of his repugnant crimes would fascinate those who heard them. Could he live without fascinating? Live without fascinating? Live without breathing! Whatever there was convulsing in him aspired to the moment when those who heard him would tremble. Fascinated, in their horror, they would tremble! The exhibitionism of criminals, compensating for the anxiety of dissimulation, generally has this aspect; it is on account of this that confession is the temptation of the guilty party who always, beginning from the disaster of crime,
has the possibility of a blaze, disastrous in itself.
has the possibility of a blaze, disastrous in itself.
The decisive confessions, Gilles de Rais’ inadmissible confessions, did not take place until October 21st, the date on which torture had been decided upon. These confessions could therefore have been the result of the threat. It seems to me less risky to believe that the threat facilitated what was a response to passion, but was not the cause of it. Threatened, Gilles de Rais beseeched the judges to grant him a postponement. He would reflect but, in advance, he promised to speak spontaneously in a manner that would satisfy them. He secured a hearing not by the ecclesiastical judges, but by the president of the secular tribunal — to whom the Bishop of Saint-Brieuc would be united. Torture deferred, Gilles entered upon the path of these unprecedented confessions, after which it became unthinkable to insist. The session of October 22nd was decisive: before the ecclesiastical judges, assembled in numerous attendance, Gilles exposed his depravities at length. He recalled the most dreadful thing. The decapitated heads that his accomplices and he himself examined in order to pick the most beautiful, which he then kissed. Finally the bursts of laughter that they had together on seeing the grimaces of the dying.
This violent exhibitionism was itself only possible under the condition of an ambiguity. Would it have been imaginable without the great lord’s sobs? Or if the criminal who was crying had not been this great lord? In the moments of his confessions, there was a peak … They appeared in a sovereign, unusual light, from the fact of the criminal’s grandeur (doesn’t tragedy demand the criminal’s sovereignty); at the same time he is offered for the horror, the criminal is offered for the terrified sympathy, for the compassion of those who see him cry, who cry with him.
What grips us in Gilles de Rais’ death is the compassion. It seems that this criminal moved his audience to compassion; in part by reason of his atrocity, in part by virtue of his nobility and the fact that he was crying.
Other books
Peter Pan Must Die by John Verdon
Journals of the Secret Keeper by Jennifer L Ray
My Salvation by Michelle Dare
Blindman's Bluff by Faye Kellerman
Freedom Saga 3: The Dawn of Liberty by Marcus Johnson
Win a Filthy Bad Boy: A Bad Boy Romance by Lacy Carter
Be Not Afraid by Cecilia Galante
Sinners by Collins, Jackie
Shiver Sweet by H Elliston