Trial of Gilles De Rais (2 page)
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
Crime, obviously, calls for night; crime would not be crime without darkness, yet — were it pitch dark — this horror of night aspires to the burst of sunshine.
Something was lacking in the Aztec sacrifices, which took place at the same time as Rais’ murders. The Aztecs did their killing in the sun atop pyramids, and they lacked the consecration that belongs to a hatred of the day, to a longing for the night.
Conversely, there dwells in crime an essentially theatrical capacity, demanding that the criminal be unmasked, wherein the criminal does not delight until finally unmasked. Gilles de Rais had a passion for theater; from the confession of his baseness, from his tears, from his remorse, he wrung the pathos of his execution. The crowd that assembled to see him die appears to have been paralyzed by the remorse and forgiveness that the tearful nobleman humbly begged of his victims’ parents. Gilles de Rais wanted to die in front of his two accomplices; in this way he could display his hanging and burning to the bloody companions who had assisted him in his butcheries, of whom one at least had known his carnal embraces. For a long time they had been able to watch him wallowing in endless horror; for them he had long been the “sacred monster” that he became, in an instant, before the crowd.
During his life, Gilles de Rais’ exhibitionism was appeased before a small number of witnesses, his accomplices: Sillé, Briqueville, Henriet, Poitou, and a few others. However, the spasmodic meaning of his death and confessions emerged when strangled, hanged, he appeared before the crowd through the executioner’s flames.
Gilles de Rais is preeminently a tragic hero, the Shakespearian hero, whom perhaps this sentence from a judicial report evokes no less forcefully than the trial. (Published under the title of
Mémoire des Héritiers,
the text was edited after his death through the efforts of his family, who wanted to prove that he had dilapidated its fortunes lavishly — with reckless extravagance): “Everyone knew that he was notoriously extravagant, having neither sense nor understanding, since in effect his senses were often altered, and often he left very early in the morning and wandered all alone through the streets, and when someone pointed out to him that this was not fitting, he responded more in the manner of a fool and madman than anything else.”
1
He was, moreover, conscious of this monstrous character. He said he had been “born under a constellation such that no one could understand without difficulty the illicit things he committed.” One participant in these horrors heard him say “that there was no man alive who could ever understand what he did.” Now he was moved by his planet to act as he did …
Mémoire des Héritiers,
the text was edited after his death through the efforts of his family, who wanted to prove that he had dilapidated its fortunes lavishly — with reckless extravagance): “Everyone knew that he was notoriously extravagant, having neither sense nor understanding, since in effect his senses were often altered, and often he left very early in the morning and wandered all alone through the streets, and when someone pointed out to him that this was not fitting, he responded more in the manner of a fool and madman than anything else.”
1
He was, moreover, conscious of this monstrous character. He said he had been “born under a constellation such that no one could understand without difficulty the illicit things he committed.” One participant in these horrors heard him say “that there was no man alive who could ever understand what he did.” Now he was moved by his planet to act as he did …
He doubtlessly developed a superstitious image of himself, as if he were of another nature, a kind of supernatural being attended by God and by the Devil. A victim of the profane world, of the real world, which had loaded him with advantages at his birth, but which had not supported him in the end. He was persuaded that the Devil, at his first beckoning, would run and fly to his aid. Through crime, as well as through a lasting devotion, he had a feeling of belonging to the sacred world, which might in no way refuse to support him. The Devil would make good the wrongs he had suffered, which in truth had come from his own imprudence! But this recourse to the Devil ended by impoverishing him; it left him at the mercy of charlatans who exploited his credulity. His tragedy is that of a Doctor Faust, but an infantile Faust. Before the Devil, in fact, our monster trembled. Not only did the Devil — our criminal’s last hope — leave him trembling like a leaf, but Gilles de Rais was ridiculously, devotedly afraid of him. The Devil reduced him to begging. The monster was covered in blood, but he was a coward.
With astonishing impudence, Rais imagined saving himself to the end, despite his abominable crimes, and escaping Hell’s flames, which for him were the object of a coal-seller’s implicit faith. Even though he invoked the demon and expected from him the reestablishment of his fortune, up to the end he was naively a good and devout Christian. A few months before his death, still free, he confessed and approached the Sacred Altar. He even had a feeling of humility on this occasion; in the church at Machecoul, the common people moved aside, leaving room for the great lord. Gilles refused, asking the poor folk to stay beside him. This was a moment when anguish perhaps took him by the throat, when he wanted to renounce his orgies of blood. He decided then to go abroad, to go crying in front of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem.
He dreamed of the endless voyage that would save him … But he contented himself with the intention. He was hardened, and during his last days of freedom he again began cutting children’s throats.
This bedlam is not contrary to the truest Christianity, which is always — be it frightening! be it Gilles de Rais’! — ready to forgive crime. Perhaps Christtianity is even fundamentally the pressing demand for crime, the demand for the horror that in a sense it needs in order to forgive. It is in this vein that I believe we must take Saint Augustine’s exclamation, “Felix culpa!,” Oh happy fault!, which blossoms into meaning in the face of inexpiable crime. Christianity implies a human nature which harbors this hallucinatory extremity, which it alone has allowed to flourish. Likewise, without the extreme violence we are provided with in the crimes of one Gilles de Rais, could we understand Christianity?
Perhaps Christianity is above all bound to an archaic human nature, one unrestrainedly open to violence? In his mad Christianity, no less than in his crimes, we see one aspect of the archaism of a man who, “leaving very early in the morning, wandered all alone through the streets …”
Bluebeard and Gilles de RaisIt does not seem to me that Christianity above all requires the rule of reason. It may be that Christianity would not want a world from which violence was excluded. It makes
allowances
for violence; what it seeks is the strength of the soul without which violence could not be endured. Gilles de Rais’ contradictions ultimately summarize the Christian situation, and we should not be astonished at the comedy of being devoted to the Devil, wanting to cut the throats of as many children as he could, yet expecting the salvation of his eternal soul … Whatever the case, we are at the antipodes of reason. Nothing in Gilles de Rais is reasonable. In every respect, he is monstrous. The memory that he left behind is that of a legendary monster. In the regions that he inhabited, this memory is in fact confounded with the legend of Bluebeard. There is nothing in common between Perrault’s Bluebeard and the Bluebeard to whom the populations of Anjou, Poitou, and Brittany later attributed the castles of Machecoul, Tiffauges, and Champtocé. Nothing in Gilles de Rais’ life corresponds to the forbidden room or the stained key of the legend, nothing to Sister Anne’s watch at the top of the tower … In any case, we cannot expect any logic in the materials of legend. With little significance beyond the transfer of a real person into a legendary being — in conformity with a monstrous past that memory paints darker and darker — Gilles de Rais’ castles and crimes were attributed to Bluebeard in popular imagination. We need not trouble ourselves here with what was, in its various, occasionally contradictory versions, the story of Bluebeard.
2
It hardly matters, in particular, to know whether the origin of the character goes back to Brittany. Michelet and some others believed so. But in speaking of Gilles de Rais, we need only consider the tradition concerning him. Abbot Bossard, from whom we have the most serious work on the criminal, wanted to establish this tradition and knew how to give it the precision it could eventually be given.
allowances
for violence; what it seeks is the strength of the soul without which violence could not be endured. Gilles de Rais’ contradictions ultimately summarize the Christian situation, and we should not be astonished at the comedy of being devoted to the Devil, wanting to cut the throats of as many children as he could, yet expecting the salvation of his eternal soul … Whatever the case, we are at the antipodes of reason. Nothing in Gilles de Rais is reasonable. In every respect, he is monstrous. The memory that he left behind is that of a legendary monster. In the regions that he inhabited, this memory is in fact confounded with the legend of Bluebeard. There is nothing in common between Perrault’s Bluebeard and the Bluebeard to whom the populations of Anjou, Poitou, and Brittany later attributed the castles of Machecoul, Tiffauges, and Champtocé. Nothing in Gilles de Rais’ life corresponds to the forbidden room or the stained key of the legend, nothing to Sister Anne’s watch at the top of the tower … In any case, we cannot expect any logic in the materials of legend. With little significance beyond the transfer of a real person into a legendary being — in conformity with a monstrous past that memory paints darker and darker — Gilles de Rais’ castles and crimes were attributed to Bluebeard in popular imagination. We need not trouble ourselves here with what was, in its various, occasionally contradictory versions, the story of Bluebeard.
2
It hardly matters, in particular, to know whether the origin of the character goes back to Brittany. Michelet and some others believed so. But in speaking of Gilles de Rais, we need only consider the tradition concerning him. Abbot Bossard, from whom we have the most serious work on the criminal, wanted to establish this tradition and knew how to give it the precision it could eventually be given.
Bossard did his job so well that since his work, we can say that wherever he lived, Gilles de Rais was identified with Bluebeard. It is striking, even in a sense troubling, that such a diabolical memory would have found so suitable a popular countenance. Is history effectively incommensurate with legend, which alone has the power to evoke that which, in crime, is not reducible to the limits of the familiar world? In attaching significance to the horror and excess in the figure of Gilles de Rais, we cannot do better than to attribute it to the name of Bluebeard, as the poor country folk did. I will not return to the specific facts before having insisted on one aspect which I should like to reveal as a primary truth: what interests us in the character of Gilles de Rais is gender-ally what binds us to the monstrosity that a human being harbors since tender infancy under the name of nightmare. I spoke, to begin with, of the “sacred monster,” but formerly and more simply, the poor folk called him Bluebeard …
Here is what Abbot Bossard was able to gather around 1880, methodically enough, from local tradition: “There is neither a mother nor a wet nurse,” he tells us, “who, in their account, mistakes the places where Bluebeard dwelled: the ruins of the castles at Tiffauges, Champtocé, La Verrière, Machecoul, Pornic, Saint-Étienne-de-Mermorte, and Pouzauges, all of which belonged to Gilles de Rais, are noted as the spots where Bluebeard lived.”
3
Abbot Bossard occasionally shows his naïveté, but on this point he wanted to proceed attentively. “Numerous are the old people we interrogated in the proximities of Tiffauges, Machecoul, or Champtocé; their accounts are unanimous; it is indeed the lord of Tiffauges, or the lord of Machecoul, or the lord of Champtocé, who was or is still for everyone the real Bluebeard.” He finally says: “With the secret intention of shaking their conviction and troubling their belief, how many times did we try to confuse their memories and make them adopt an opinion that was not our own! ‘You’re mistaken,’ we said, ‘Bluebeard wasn’t lord of Champtocé, nor lord of Machecoul, nor lord of Tiffauges.’ To some we said, ‘He dwelled in Mortagne or Clisson’; to others, ‘Champtoceaux’ ; to others finally, some well-known ruin in the area. Everywhere, it was the same surprise at first, followed by the same air of disbelief and same response: that Bluebeard dwelled, for the people of the Vendée, at Tiffauges; for the people of Anjou, at Champtocé; for the people of Brittany, at Machecoul … We have listened to people over ninety years old; they affirmed that their accounts came from old people before them. In speaking only of the region of Tiffauges, whose traditions we are familiar with above all, the terrible baron lives there still; no longer, it is true, with the original features of Gilles de Rais, but with the somber and legendary physiognomy of Bluebeard. One day, while walking among the ruins of the castle on the broken dike of the pond of La Crûme, at the foot of the big tower, we came upon a group of tourists sitting on the grass, in the middle of which was an old, native woman talking about Bluebeard. This woman is still alive; she was born within the walls of the fortress, where her family dwelled for three centuries, until 1850, at which point she retired to the village. Her sister, even older than she, has since confirmed all the information that we received that day, even the most precise details … Bluebeard had been the lord of this castle; her parents had always told her so and on the faith of their immediate ancestors — ‘And hold on,’ she suddenly added, ‘let me take you to the very room where he usually cut the infants’ throats.’
3
Abbot Bossard occasionally shows his naïveté, but on this point he wanted to proceed attentively. “Numerous are the old people we interrogated in the proximities of Tiffauges, Machecoul, or Champtocé; their accounts are unanimous; it is indeed the lord of Tiffauges, or the lord of Machecoul, or the lord of Champtocé, who was or is still for everyone the real Bluebeard.” He finally says: “With the secret intention of shaking their conviction and troubling their belief, how many times did we try to confuse their memories and make them adopt an opinion that was not our own! ‘You’re mistaken,’ we said, ‘Bluebeard wasn’t lord of Champtocé, nor lord of Machecoul, nor lord of Tiffauges.’ To some we said, ‘He dwelled in Mortagne or Clisson’; to others, ‘Champtoceaux’ ; to others finally, some well-known ruin in the area. Everywhere, it was the same surprise at first, followed by the same air of disbelief and same response: that Bluebeard dwelled, for the people of the Vendée, at Tiffauges; for the people of Anjou, at Champtocé; for the people of Brittany, at Machecoul … We have listened to people over ninety years old; they affirmed that their accounts came from old people before them. In speaking only of the region of Tiffauges, whose traditions we are familiar with above all, the terrible baron lives there still; no longer, it is true, with the original features of Gilles de Rais, but with the somber and legendary physiognomy of Bluebeard. One day, while walking among the ruins of the castle on the broken dike of the pond of La Crûme, at the foot of the big tower, we came upon a group of tourists sitting on the grass, in the middle of which was an old, native woman talking about Bluebeard. This woman is still alive; she was born within the walls of the fortress, where her family dwelled for three centuries, until 1850, at which point she retired to the village. Her sister, even older than she, has since confirmed all the information that we received that day, even the most precise details … Bluebeard had been the lord of this castle; her parents had always told her so and on the faith of their immediate ancestors — ‘And hold on,’ she suddenly added, ‘let me take you to the very room where he usually cut the infants’ throats.’
“We climb the formerly steep hill, diminished today by the rubble of collapsed towers; she leads us directly to the foot of the dungeon and points with her finger to a small door very high up in the corner of two immense stretches of wall: ‘There’s the room,’ she says. — ‘But once again, who told you?’ — ‘My old parents always said so, and they knew it well. A stairway led up to it in the old days, and I’d often climb it when I was young; but today the stairway is collapsed and the room itself is almost filled by the walls and vault caving in.’”
It thus seems that in the people’s memory, Marshal de Rais existed in the form of a monster called Bluebeard. Sometimes this Bluebeard is a Gilles de Rais whose name alone has changed. Sometimes the Bluebeard of the most common legend bleeds onto Gilles: “The people of the Vendée,” Abbot Bossard repeats, “imagine that the funereal room where the seven wives of Bluebeard were hanged still exists in a hidden spot of the castle at Tiffauges; only the steps of the stairway leading to it have collapsed with time, and woe to the curious tourist who stumbles upon the ruins by accident! He’d fall instantly into a deep abyss where he’d die miserably. In the evening, the common folk avoid these fatal ruins, haunted as on the worst days by Bluebeard’s restless and evil shadow.” Nevertheless, the classic legend seems only secondarily associated with this tradition in which essentially only the name of the character was changed. “At Nantes,” Abbot Bossard says again, “the little expiatory monument piously erected by Marie de Rais at the place of the execution of her father was known and designated only as Bluebeard’s monument. The old people in proximity of Clisson have told us how, while passing before this little edifice during their childhood, their parents would tell them, ‘this is where Bluebeard was burned’; they did not say ‘Gilles de Rais.’” As if so excessive a story was unable to have anything but a monster as its protagonist, a being outside common humanity for whom the only appropriate name was one charged with legendary miasmas. Bluebeard could not have been one of our own, only a sacred monster unbound to the limits of ordinary life. Better than the name of Gilles de Rais, that of Bluebeard lengthened the shadow that the poor folk’s imagination harbored.
4
Glaring Truth4
…
In accordance with the peoples of the Vendee and Brittany, who quickly stopped seeing what it was in Gilles de Rais that distinguished him from Bluebeard and naïvely confused the two, I at first wanted to describe the legend, the legendary monster, the fantastic being who exceeded accepted bounds.
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