A History of The Inquisition of The Middle Ages Volume III Part 15

Yet the life which promised so much in camp and court was blighted by the fatal errors of his training. The death of his father while he was a child of eleven left him to the care of a weak and indulgent grandfather, Jean de Craon, whose authority he soon shook off. His fiery nature ran riot, and he grew up devoured with the wildest ambition, abandoned to sensual excesses of every kind, and with pa.s.sions unrestrained and untamable. When on trial he repeatedly addressed the wondering crowd, urging all parents to train their children rigidly in the ways of virtue, for it was his unbridled youth that had led him to crime and a shameful death.[511]

Although, in the charges preferred against him, his aberrations are said to have commenced in 1426, he himself a.s.serted that the fatal plunge was not made until 1432, after the death of his grandfather. About that time he began to withdraw from active life, and after 1433 he is no longer heard of in the field, although the war of liberation offered its prizes as abundantly as ever.[512]

Then commenced a strange and unexampled dual existence. To the outward world he was the magnificent seigneur, intent only on display and frivolity. His immeasurable ambition, diverted from its natural career, found unworthy gratification in making the vulgar stare with his gorgeous splendor. He affected a state almost royal. A military household of over two hundred hors.e.m.e.n accompanied him wherever he went.

He founded a chapter of canons, with service and choir fit for a cathedral, and this was his private chapel, likewise attached to his person, costing him immense sums, including portable organs carried on the shoulders of six stout serving-men. Not less extravagant was his pa.s.sion for theatrical displays. The drama of the age, though rude, was costly, and when he exhibited freely to the mult.i.tude spectacular performances, there were immense structures to be built and hundreds of actors to be clad in cloths of gold and silver, silks and velvets, and handsome armor, the whole followed by public banquets to the spectators, in which rich viands were served in profusion and rare wines and hippocras flowed like water. These were only items in his expenditure; his purse and table were open to all and his artistic tastes were gratified without regard to cost. In one visit to Orleans, where his retinue filled every inn in the city, he was said to have squandered eighty thousand gold crowns between March and August, 1435. This ruinous prodigality was accompanied with the utmost disorder in his affairs. It was beneath the dignity of a great seigneur to attend to business, and all details were abandoned to the crowd of pimps and parasites and flatterers attracted by his lavish recklessness, among whom the princ.i.p.al were Roger de Briqueville and Gilles de Sille. Gold must be raised at any price; his revenues were farmed out in advance, the produce of field and forest and salt-works was disposed of at low prices, and he soon began to sell his estates at less than their value, usually reserving a right of redemption within six years. In a short time he is estimated to have consumed from this source alone not less than two hundred thousand crowns. Already, in 1435 or 1436, his family became alarmed at his mad career; they appealed to Charles VII., who issued letters, in accordance with a legal custom of the time, interdicting him from alienating lands and revenues, and all persons from contracting with him. This was published with sound of trump in Orleans, Angers, Blois, Machecoul, and elsewhere outside of Britanny.

Within the duchy, Jean V. prohibited its publication. Notwithstanding his surname of le Bon and le Sage, he was a greedy and unscrupulous prince, who, as one of the chief purchasers of the marshal's estates, was interested in the ruin of his subject. He continued to secure profitable bargains, subject always to the right of redemption, and manifested for his dupe the greatest friendship, appointing him lieutenant-general of the duchy, and entering into a brotherhood of arms with him, while privately mocking and ridiculing him as a fool. As a last resort, Gilles's younger brother, Rene de la Suze, and his cousin, the Admiral de Loheac, captured and garrisoned the castles of Champtoce and Machecoul, but in 1437 and 1438 Gilles retook them, with the aid of the duke, to whom he had sold the former.[513]

Such was the external life of Gilles de Rais, to all appearance that of a liberal, pious n.o.ble, whose worst foible was thoughtless extravagance.

Beneath the surface, however, lay an existence of crime more repulsive than anything chronicled by Tacitus or Suetonius. There are some subjects so foul that one shrinks from the barest allusion to them, and of such are the deeds of Gilles de Rais. For the sake of human nature one might hope that the charges which brought him to the gallows and stake were invented by those who plotted his ruin, but an attentive examination of the evidence brings conviction that amid manifest exaggeration there was substantial foundation of fact. Ordinary indulgence having palled upon the senses of the youthful voluptuary, about the year 1432 he abandoned himself to unnatural l.u.s.ts, selecting as his victims children, whom he promptly slew to secure their silence.

At first their bodies were thrown into _oubliettes_ at the bottom of towers in his ordinary places of residence. When Champtoce was about to be surrendered to the duke, the bones of about forty children were hastily gathered together and carried off; when Rene de la Suze was advancing on Machecoul, the same number were extracted from their hiding-place and burned. Scared by this narrow escape from detection, Gilles subsequently had the bodies burned at once in the fireplace of his chamber and the ashes scattered in the moats. So depraved became his appet.i.tes that he found his chief enjoyment in the death agonies of his victims, over whose sufferings he gloated as he skilfully mangled them and protracted their torture. When dead he would criticise their beauties with his confidential servitors, would compare one with another, and would kiss with rapture the heads which pleased him most.

Not Caligula, when, to gain fresh appet.i.te for his revels, he caused criminals to be tortured by the side of his banquet-table, or Nero, when enjoying the human torches illuminating his unearthly orgies, found such delirium of delight in inflicting and in watching human agony.[514]

While such were his recreations, his serious pursuit was the search for the philosopher's stone--the Universal Elixir which should place unlimited wealth and power in his hands. To this end his agents were on the watch to bring him skilled professors in the art, and he served as the dupe of a succession of charlatans, whose promises kept him ever in the hope that he was on the point of attaining the fulfilment of his desires. He never ceased to believe that once, at his castle of Tiffauges, the operation was about to be crowned with success, when the sudden arrival of the Dauphin Louis forced him to destroy his furnaces; for though, as we have seen, alchemy was not positively included in the prohibited arts, its practice was ground for suspicion, and Louis, even in his youth, was not one to whom he could afford to confide so dangerous a secret. This confident hope explains the recklessness of his expenditures and his careless alienations, in which he retained a right of redemption, for any morrow might see him placed beyond the need of reckoning with his creditors. Yet, as already stated, although alchemy a.s.sumed to be a science, in practice it was almost universally coupled with necromancy, and few alchemists pretended to be able to achieve results without the a.s.sistance of demons, whose invocation became a necessary department of their art. So it was with those employed by Gilles de Rais, and no more instructive chapter in the history of the frauds of magic can be found than in his confession and that of his chief magician, Francesco Prelati. The latter had a familiar demon named Barron, whom he never had any difficulty in evoking when alone, but who would never show himself when Gilles was present, and in the nave accounts which the pair give of their attempts and failures, one cannot help admiring the quick-witted ingenuity of the Italian and the facile credulity of the baron. On one occasion, in answer to Prelati's earnest prayer for gold, the tantalizing demon spread countless ingots around the room, but forbade his touching them for some days. When this was reported to Gilles he naturally desired to feast his eyes upon the treasure, and Prelati conducted him to the chamber. On opening the door, however, he cried out that he saw a great green serpent as large as a dog coiled up on the floor, and both took to their heels. Then Gilles armed himself with a crucifix containing a particle of the true cross, and insisted on returning, but Prelati warned him that such expedients only increased the danger, and he desisted. Finally the malicious demon changed the gold into tinsel, which, when handled, turned into a tawny dust. It was in vain that Gilles gave to Prelati compacts signed with his blood, pledging himself to obedience in return for the three gifts of knowledge, wealth, and power; Barron would have none of them. The demon was offended with Gilles for not keeping a promise to make some offering to him; if a small request were made it should be a trifle, such as a pullet or a dove; if something greater it must be the member of a child. Children's bodies were not scarce where Gilles resided, and he speedily placed in a gla.s.s vessel a child's hand, heart, eyes, and blood, and gave them to Prelati to offer. Still the demon was obdurate, and Prelati, as he said, buried the rejected offering in consecrated ground. Gilles has had the reputation of sacrificing unnumbered children in his necromantic operations, but this is the only case elicited on his trial, and the number of times it is brought into the evidence shows the immense importance attached to it by the prosecution.[515]

It was impossible that a career such as this could continue for eight years without exciting suspicion. Though for the most part Gilles selected his victims from among the beggars who crowded his castle gates, attracted by his ostentatious charities--children for whom there was no one to make inquiry--yet he had his agents out through the land enticing from parents the offspring whom they would see no more. Two women, Etiennette Blanchu and Perrine Martin, better known as La Meffraye, were the most successful of these purveyors, and it came to be noticed that when he was in Nantes the children who frequented the gates of his Hotel de la Suze were apt to disappear unaccountably. His confidential servants, Henri Griart, known as Henriet, and etienne Corillaut, nicknamed Poitou, when they saw a handsome youth would engage him as a page without concealment, ride off with him, and he would be heard of no more. It is rather curious, indeed, how tardily suspicion was aroused, for up to within a year or two of the end there were mothers who had no hesitation in confiding their children to the terrible baron. At his castles of Tiffauges and Machecoul there was little disguise. He was _haut-justicier_ in his lands: between him and his villeins there was, as de Fontaines says, no judge but G.o.d; they could not fly, for they were attached to the glebe, and they could only rest silent in dread suspense as to where the next bolt would fall. Even as far off as St. Jean-d'Angely, Machecoul had the name of a place where children were eaten, and at Tiffauges they said that for one child that disappeared at Machecoul there were seven at Tiffauges. Yet so far was the truth from being guessed that the story ran among the peasantry that Michel de Sille, when a prisoner with the English, had been obliged to promise, as part of his ransom, twenty-four boys to serve as pages, and that when the tale was complete the disappearances would cease. Still suspicion grew. One of the marshal's confidants, though not fully initiated in his secrets, a priest named Eustache Blanchet, grew alarmed and ran away from Tiffauges, taking up his residence at Mortagne-sur-Sevre. Here he learned from Jean Mercier, castellan of La Roche-sur-Yon, that in Nantes and Clisson and elsewhere it was public rumor that Gilles killed numbers of children, in order with their blood to write a necromantic book which, when completed, would enable him to capture any castle and prevent any one from withstanding him. This grew to be the popular belief, as recorded by Monstrelet, and so impressed was Blanchet's imagination with it that, after his return to Tiffauges, at Easter, 1440, just before the catastrophe, when Gilles invited him and another priest into his study to exhibit to them his ornamentation of the binding of the ceremonial book of his chapel, some sheets of paper written in red, lying on the desk, convinced him that the popular report was true. In this little scene, the contrast between the peaceful artistic labors of the marshal and the dread conjurations supposed to be written with his own hand in innocent blood, is a type of his strange career.[516]

What was the number of his victims can never be known. With the exaggeration customary in such cases some writers have estimated them at seven hundred or eight hundred. In his confession Gilles said that the number was great, but he kept no count. In the civil process against him it is stated at over two hundred, but in the articles of accusation in the ecclesiastical court, which were elaborately drawn up after obtaining all possible testimony, the figure is given as one hundred and forty, more or less, and this is probably a full estimate.[517]

Yet, strange as were the crimes of Gilles de Rais, even stranger was his profound conviction that he had in no way so incurred the wrath of G.o.d that the Church could not readily insure his salvation at the cost of some of the customary penances. He was solicitous about his soul in a fashion very uncommon with demon-worshippers, and in all his projected and rejected compacts with Satan he was careful to insert a clause that he should not suffer in body or soul. He was regular in the observances of religion. On the Easter previous to his arrest a witness describes him as going behind the altar with a priest for confession, and then taking the communion with the rest of the parishioners, and when these latter, uneasy at their companionship with so great a lord, desired to rise he bade them stay, and all remained together until the Eucharist was administered to all. When he founded his chapter of canons and dedicated it to the Holy Innocents, there might seem to be a grim pleasantry in his choice of patron saints, yet there can be no doubt that he felt that he was thus atoning for the ma.s.sacre of the innocents which he himself was constantly perpetrating. More than once he had a transient emotion of repentance; he took vows to abandon his guilty life, and by a pilgrimage to the Holy Sepulchre to obtain pardon for the evil he had wrought--pardon which he never seems to have doubted could be thus easily won, and reasonably enough, in view of the plenary indulgences which were so lavishly distributed and sold. After making his public confession, when he could have no further hope on earth, he turned to the crowded audience and exhorted them to hold fast to the Church and to pay her the highest honor. He had always, he said, kept his heart and his affections on the Church, but for which, in view of his crimes, he believed that Satan would have strangled him and carried him off, body and soul. This trust in the saving power of the Church gave him the absolute confidence in his salvation which is not the least noteworthy feature in his strange character. When, after he and Francesco Prelati had corroborated each other's confessions, and they were about to part, he embraced and kissed his necromancer with sobs and tears, saying, "_Adieu, Francoys, mon amy_; we shall see each other no more in this world: I pray G.o.d to give you patience and knowledge: be certain that if you have patience and hope in G.o.d we shall meet each other in the great joy of paradise. Pray G.o.d for me, and I will pray for you." There was none of the agonizing doubt that racked the tender conscientiousness of the Friends of G.o.d, no mental struggle, but the calm a.s.surance, born of implicit belief in the teachings of the Church, that a man might lead a life of unimaginable crime and at any moment purchase his salvation.[518]

How long Gilles might have continued his devastating career it would be hard to guess, had it not suited the interest of Duke Jean and of his chancellor, Jean de Malestroit, Bishop of Nantes, to bring him to the stake. Both of them had been purchasers of his squandered estates, and might wish to free themselves from the equity of redemption, and both might hope to gain from the confiscation of what remained to him. To a.s.sail so redoubtable a baron was, however, a task not lightly to be undertaken: the Church must be the leader, for the civil power dared not risk arousing the susceptibilities of the whole baronage of the duchy.

Gilles's impetuous temper furnished them the excuse.

The marshal had sold the castle and fief of Saint-etienne de Malemort to Geoffroi le Ferron, treasurer of the duke--possibly a cover for the duke himself--and had delivered seizin to Jean le Ferron, brother of the purchaser, a man who had received the tonsure and wore the habit of a clerk, thus ent.i.tling him to clerical immunity, even though he performed no clerical functions. Some cause of quarrel subsequently arose, which Gilles proceeded to settle in the arbitrary fashion customary at the time. On Pentecost, 1440, he led a troop of some sixty hors.e.m.e.n to Saint-etienne, left them in ambush near the castle, and with a few followers went to the church where Jean was at his devotions. Ma.s.s was about concluded when the intruders rushed in with brandished weapons, and Gilles addressed Jean: "Ha, scoundrel, thou hast beaten my men and committed extortions on them; come out or I will kill thee!" It was with difficulty that the frightened clerk could be rea.s.sured. He was dragged to the gate of the castle and forced to order its surrender, when Gilles garrisoned it and carried him off, finally imprisoning him in Tiffauges, chained hand and foot.[519]

The offence was one for which the customs of Britanny provided a remedy in the civil courts, but the duke zealously took up the cause of his treasurer and summarily ordered his lieutenant-general to surrender the castle and the prisoners under a penalty of fifty thousand crowns.

Indignant at this unlooked-for intervention, Gilles maltreated the messengers of the duke, who promptly raised a force and recaptured the place in dispute. Tiffauges, where the prisoners lay, was in Poitou, beyond his jurisdiction, but his brother, the Constable de Richemont, besieged it, and Gilles was forced to liberate them. Having thus submitted, he ventured in July to visit the duke at Josselin: he had some doubts as to his reception, but Prelati consulted his demon and announced that he could go in safety. He was graciously received, and imagined that the storm had blown over. So safe did he feel that while at Josselin he continued his atrocities, putting to death several children and causing Prelati to evoke his demon.[520]

While the powers of the State thus hesitated to attack the criminal, the Church was busily preparing his downfall. He had been guilty of sacrilege in the violence committed in the church of Saint-etienne, and he had violated its immunities in the person of Jean le Ferron. Yet, in that cruel age, when war spared neither church nor cloister, these were offences too frequent to justify his ruin, and in the earlier stages of the proceedings they are not even alluded to. On July 30 Jean de Malestroit, in whose bishopric of Nantes the barony of Rais was situated, issued privately a declaration reciting that in a recent visitation he and his commissioners had found that Gilles was publicly defamed for murdering many children, after gratifying his l.u.s.t on them, of invoking the demon with horrid rites, of entering into compacts with him, and of other enormities. Though in a general way synodal witnesses were quoted in substantiation of these charges, only eight witnesses were personally named, seven of them women, all residents of Nantes, whose subsequent testimony shows us that they had lost children, whose disappearance they thought they could connect with Gilles. The object of this paper was doubtless to loosen the tongues of those to whom it might be shown, but whatever diligence was used in gathering evidence was fruitless, for when the trial opened, two months later, but two additional witnesses had been procured, of the same indecisive kind as the previous ones. The only charge they made was the abduction of children, and this was in no sense a crime within the competence of the ecclesiastical court. Evidently the awful secrets of Tiffauges and Machecoul had not leaked out. It was necessary to hazard something, to strike boldly, and when Gilles and his retainers were in the hands of justice its methods could be relied upon to procure from them evidence sufficient for their own conviction.[521]

The blow fell September 13, when the bishop issued a citation summoning Gilles to appear for trial before him on the 19th. The recital of his misdeeds in the previous letter was repeated, with the significant addition of "other crimes and offences savoring of heresy." This was served upon him personally the next day, and he made no resistance. Some rumor of what was impending must have been in the air, for his two chief instigators and confidants, Gilles de Sille and Roger de Briqueville, saved themselves by flight. The rest of his nearest servitors and procurers, male and female, were seized, including Prelati, and carried to Nantes. On the 19th he had a private hearing before the bishop. The prosecuting officer, Guillaume Capeillon, cunningly preferred certain charges of heresy against him, when he fell into the trap and boldly offered to purge himself before the bishop or any other ecclesiastical judge. He was taken at his word, and the 28th was fixed for his appearance before the bishop and the vice-inquisitor of Nantes, Jean Blouyn.[522]

The records are imperfect, and tell us nothing of what was done with the followers of Gilles, but we may be sure that during this interval the methods of the inquisitorial process were not spared to extract information from them, and that it was spread among the people to create public opinion, for already, by the 28th, some of the sorrowing parents who came forward to confirm their previous complaints a.s.sert that since La Meffraye had been in the secular prison they had been told that she said their children had been delivered to Gilles. At this hearing of the 28th only these ten witnesses were heard, with their vague conjectures as to the loss of their offspring. Gilles was not present, and apparently the result of the torture of his servants had not yet been satisfactory, for further proceedings were adjourned till October 8.[523]

In the succeeding hearings the rule of secrecy seems to have been abandoned. There evidently was extreme anxiety to create popular opinion against the prisoner, for the court-room in the Tour Neuve was crowded.

On October 8 proceedings opened with the frantic cries of the bereaved parents clamoring for justice against him who had despoiled them and had committed a black catalogue of crimes, which shows that since their last appearance their ignorance had been carefully enlightened. Like the chorus of a Greek tragedy, the same dramatic use was made of them on the 11th, after which, as the object was presumably accomplished, they disappear.[524]

At the hearing of the 8th the articles of accusation were presented orally by the prosecutor. Gilles thereupon appealed from the court, but as his appeal was verbal it was promptly set aside, though no offer was made to him of counsel, or even of a notary to reduce it to writing. If anything could move us to commiseration for such a criminal it would be the mockery of justice in a trial where, alone and unaided, he was called upon to defend his life without preparation or the means of defence. He doubtless was guilty, but if he had been innocent the result would have been the same. Yet the trial was not carried on "_simpliciter et de plano_" according to the forms of the Inquisition. There was a semblance of a _litis contestatio_. The prosecutor took the _juramentum de calumnia_, to tell the truth and avoid deceit, and demanded that Gilles should do the same, as prescribed by legal form, but the latter obstinately refused, though summoned four times and threatened with excommunication. The only notice he would take of the proceedings was to denounce all the charges as false.[525]

It was worse at the hearing of the 13th, when the accusations had been reduced to writing in a formidable series of forty-nine articles. When the bishop and inquisitor asked him what he had to say in defence, Gilles haughtily retorted that they were not his judges; he had appealed from them and would make no reply to the charges. Then, giving rein to his temper, he stigmatized them as simoniacs and scoundrels, before whom it was degradation for him to appear; he would rather be hanged by the neck than acknowledge them as his judges; he wondered that Pierre de l'Hopital, president or chief judicial officer of Brittany, who was present, would allow ecclesiastics to meddle with such crimes as were alleged against him. In spite of his reclamations the indictment was read, when he simply denounced it as a pack of lies and refused to answer formally. Then, after repeated warnings, the bishop and inquisitor p.r.o.nounced him contumacious and excommunicated him. He again appealed, but the appeal was rejected as frivolous, and he was given forty-eight hours in which to frame a defence.[526]

The charges formed a long and most elaborate paper, showing by its detail of individual cases that by this time Gilles's servitors must have been induced to make full confessions. For the first time there appear in it the sacrilege and violation of clerical immunity committed at Saint-etienne, and the charge of child-murder only figures as an accessory to the other crimes to which it was connected. Everything, however, that could be alleged against him was gathered together, even to inordinate eating and drinking, which were a.s.sumed to have led to his other excesses. His transient fits of repentance and vows of amendment were utilized ingeniously to prove that he was a relapsed heretic and thus deprived of all chance of escape. In the conclusion the prosecutor apportioned the charges between the two jurisdictions. The bishop and inquisitor conjointly were prayed to declare him guilty of heretical apostasy and the invocation of demons, while the bishop alone was to p.r.o.nounce sentence on his unnatural crimes and sacrilege, the Inquisition having no cognizance of these offences. It is worthy of note that there is no allusion to alchemy; apparently it was not regarded as an unlawful pursuit.[527]

It is not easy to understand what followed. When two days later, on the 15th, Gilles was brought into court he was a changed man. We have no means of knowing what influences had meanwhile been brought to bear upon him, but the only probable explanation would seem to be that he recognized from the details of the charges that his servants had been forced to betray him, that further resistance would only subject him to torture, and, in his earnest care for the salvation of his soul, that submission to the Church and endurance of the inevitable was the only path to heaven. Still, he could not at once summon resolution to incur the humiliation of a detailed public confession. While he humbly admitted the bishop and inquisitor to be his judges, and on bended knee, with tears and sighs, craved their pardon for the insults which he had showered upon them, and begged for absolution from the excommunication incurred by contumacy; while he took with the prosecutor the _juramentum de calumnia_; while in general terms he acknowledged that he had no objection to make to the charges and confessed the crimes alleged against him, yet when he was required to answer to the articles _seriatim_ he at once denied that he had invoked, or caused to be invoked, any malignant spirits; he had, it is true, dabbled in alchemy, but he freely offered himself to be burned if the witnesses to be produced, whose testimony he was willing to accept in advance, should prove that he had invoked demons or entered into pacts with them and offered them sacrifices. All the rest of the charges he specifically denied, but he invited the prosecutor to produce what witnesses he chose, and he (Gilles) would admit their evidence to be conclusive.

Although in all this there is a contradiction which casts doubt upon the frankness of the official record, it may perhaps be explained by vacillation not improbable in his terrible position. He did not shrink, however, when his servants and agents, Henriet, Poitou, Prelati, Blanchet, and his two procuresses were brought forward and sworn in his presence; he declined the offer of the bishop and inquisitor to frame the interrogatories for their examination, and he declared that he would stand to their depositions and make no exceptions to them or to their evidence. It was the same when, on the 15th and 19th, additional witnesses were sworn in his presence. The examinations of these witnesses, however, were made by notaries in private. The depositions made by Henriet and Poitou, which have been preserved to us, are hideous catalogues of the foulest crimes, minute in their specifications, though the ident.i.ty between them in trifles, where omissions or discrepancies would be natural, strongly suggests manipulation either of witnesses or of records. That of Prelati is equally full in its details of necromancy, and raises at once the question, not easily answered, why the necromancer, who had richly earned the stake, seems to have escaped all punishment; and the same may be said as to Blanchet, La Meffraye and her colleague, and some others of those involved. It is worthy of note, that in these confessions or depositions the customary formula that they are made without fear, force, or favor is conspicuous by its absence.[528]

At the hearing of October 20 Gilles was again asked if he had anything to propose, and he replied in the negative. He waived all delay as to the publication of the evidence against him, and when the depositions of his accomplices were read he said he had no exceptions to make to them; in fact, that the publication was unnecessary in view of what he had already said, and what he intended to confess. One would think that this was quite sufficient, for his guilt was thus proved and admitted, but the infernal curiosity of the jurisprudence of the time was never satisfied until it had wrung from the accused a detailed and formal confession. The prosecutor, therefore, earnestly demanded of the bishop and inquisitor that Gilles should be tortured, in order, as he said, to develop the truth more fully. They consulted with the experts and decided that torture should be applied.[529]

The proud man had hoped to be spared the humiliation of a detailed confession, but this was not to be allowed. On the next day, October 21, the bishop and inquisitor ordered him to be brought in and tortured.

Everything was in readiness for it, when he humbly begged them to defer it until the next day, and that meanwhile he would make up his mind so as to satisfy them and render it unnecessary. He further asked that they should commission the Bishop of Saint-Brieuc and Pierre de l'Hopital to hear his confession in a place apart from the torture. This last prayer they granted, but they would only give him a respite until two o'clock, with the promise of a further postponement until the next day, in case he confessed meanwhile. When the confession made that afternoon, under these circ.u.mstances, is officially declared to have been made "freely and willingly and without coercion of any kind," it affords another example of the value of these customary formulas.[530]

Before the commissioners he made no difficulty of accusing himself of all the crimes wherewith he stood charged. Pierre de l'Hopital found the recital hard of credence, and pressed him vigorously to disclose the motive which had led to their commission. He was not satisfied with Gilles's declaration that it was simply to gratify his pa.s.sions, till he exclaimed, "Truly, there was no other cause, object, or intention than I have said. I have told you greater things than that--enough to put ten thousand men to death." The president pressed the matter no further, but sent for Prelati, when the two accomplices freely confirmed each other's statements, and they parted in tears with the affectionate farewell already alluded to.[531]

There was no further talk of torture. Gilles was now fairly embarked in his new course. Apparently resolved to win heaven by contrition and by the a.s.sistance of the Church, this extraordinary man presents, during the remainder of the trial, a spectacle which is probably without an example. When, on the next day, October 22, he was brought before his judges, the proud and haughty baron desired that his confession should be read in public, so that his humiliation should aid in winning pardon from G.o.d. Not content with this, he supplemented his confession with abundant details of his atrocities, as though seeking to make to G.o.d an acceptable oblation of his pride. Finally, after exhorting those present to honor and obey the Church, he begged with abundant tears their prayers, and entreated pardon of the parents whose children he had murdered.[532]

On the 25th he was brought up for sentence. After the bishop and inquisitor had duly consulted their a.s.sembly of experts, two sentences were read. The first, in the name of both judges, condemned him as guilty of heretical apostasy and horrid invocation of demons, for which he had incurred excommunication and other penalties of the law, and for which he should be punished according to the canonical sanctions. The second sentence, rendered by the bishop alone, in the same form, condemned him for unnatural crime, for sacrilege, and for violating the immunities of the Church. In neither sentence was there any punishment indicated. He was not p.r.o.nounced relapsed, and therefore could not be abandoned to the secular arm, and it was apparently deemed superfluous to enjoin on him any penance, as a prosecution had been going on _pari pa.s.su_ in the secular court, of which the result was not in doubt. The ecclesiastical court had dropped the accusation of murder, after it had served its purpose in exciting popular odium, and had left it to the civil authorities to which it belonged. In fact, the whole elaborate proceedings were a nullity, except so far as they served as a shield for the civil process, and as a basis for confiscating his estates.[533]

After the reading of the sentences he was asked if he wished reincorporation in the Church. He replied that he had not known what heresy was, nor that he had lapsed into it, but as the Church had declared him guilty, he begged on his knees, with sighs and groans, to be reincorporated. When this ceremony was accomplished he asked for absolution, which was granted. It shows the deceptive nature of the whole proceedings, and how little the bishop and inquisitor thought of anything but the secret object to be attained, that although Gilles was condemned for heresy, he was absolved without subjection to the indispensable ceremony of abjuration, and his request for a confessor was promptly met by the appointment of Jean Juvenal, a Carmelite of Ploermel.[534]

From the Tour Neuve, where the ecclesiastical court held its sittings, Gilles was at once hurried before the secular tribunal in the Bouffay.

It had commenced its inquest on September 18, and had been busily employed in collecting evidence concerning the child-murders, besides which, its presiding judge, Pierre de l'Hopital, had been present at much of the ecclesiastical trial, and had personally received Gilles's confession. It was thus fully prepared to act, and indeed had already condemned Henriet and Poitou to be hanged and burned. When Gilles was brought in and arraigned he immediately confessed. Pierre urged him to confess in full, and thus obtain alleviation of the penalty due to his sins, and he freely complied. Then the president took the opinions of his a.s.sessors, who all voted in favor of death, although there was some difference as to the form. Finally Pierre announced that he had incurred the "_peines pecunielles_" which were to be levied on his goods and lands "with moderation of justice." As for his crimes, for these he was to be hanged and burned, and that he might have opportunity to crave mercy of G.o.d, the time was fixed for one o'clock the next day. Gilles thanked him for the designation of the hour, adding that as he and his servants, Henriet and Poitou, had committed the crimes together, he asked that they might be executed together, so that he who was the cause of their guilt might admonish them, and show them the example of a good death, and by the grace of our Lord be the cause of their salvation. If, he said, they did not see him die they might think that he escaped, and thus be cast into despair. Not only was this request granted, but he was told that he might select the place of his burial, when he chose the Carmelite church, the sepulchre of the dukes, and of all that was most ill.u.s.trious in Brittany. As a last prayer, he begged that the bishop and clergy might be requested to walk in procession prior to his execution the next day, to pray G.o.d to keep him and his servants in firm belief of salvation. This was granted, and the morning saw the extraordinary spectacle of the clergy, followed by the whole population of Nantes, who had been clamoring for his death, marching through the streets and singing and praying for his salvation.[535]

On the way to execution Gilles devoted himself to comforting the servants whom he had brought to a shameful death, a.s.suring them that as soon as their souls should leave their bodies they would all meet in paradise. The men were as contrite and as sure of salvation as their master, declaring that they welcomed death in their unbounded trust in G.o.d. They were all mounted on stands over piles of wood, with halters around their necks attached to the gallows. The stands were pushed aside, and as they swung the f.a.gots were lighted. Henriet and Poitou were allowed to burn to ashes, but when Gilles's halter was burned through and his body fell, the ladies of his kindred rushed forward and plucked it from the flames. It was honored with a magnificent funeral, and it is said that some of the bones were kept by his family as relics of his repentance.[536]

Under the Breton laws execution for crime entailed confiscation of movables to the seigneur justicier, but not of the landed estates.

Condemnation for heresy, as we have seen, everywhere carried with it indiscriminate confiscation and inflicted disabilities for two generations. Gilles was convicted as a heretic, but the secular sentence is obscure on the subject of confiscation, and in the intricate and prolonged litigation which arose over his inheritance it is difficult to determine to what extent confiscation was enforced. Some twenty years later the "Memoire des Heritiers" argues that death had expiated his crimes and removed all cause of confiscation, which would seem to indicate that it had taken place. Certain it is that, to a.s.sist the Duke of Brittany, Rene of Anjou in 1450 confiscated Champtoce and Ingrandes, which were under his jurisdiction, and ceded them to the duke to confirm his t.i.tle. Charles VII., on the other side, had already decreed confiscation in order to help the heirs.[537]

No disabilities were inflicted upon the descendants, and the house was still regarded as eligible to the n.o.blest alliances. After a year of widowhood, Catharine de Thouars married Jean de Vendome, Vidame of Chartres, and in 1442 Gilles's daughter, Marie, espoused Pregent de Coetivy, Admiral of France and one of the most powerful men in the royal court. He must have considered the match most desirable, for he submitted to hard conditions in the marriage contract. He resolutely set to work to recover the alienated or confiscated lands, and succeeded in gaining possession of some of the finest estates, including Champtoce and Ingrandes, though his death at the siege of Cherbourg, in 1450, prevented his enjoying them. Marie not long after was remarried with Andre de Laval, Marshal and Admiral of France, who caused her rights to be respected, but on her death without issue in 1457 the inheritance pa.s.sed to Gilles's brother, Rene de la Suze. The interminable litigation revived and continued until after his death in 1474. He left but one daughter, who had been married to the Prince de Deols in 1446; they had but one son, Andre de Chauvigny, who died without issue in 1502, when the race became extinct. The barony of Rais lapsed into the house of Tournemine, and at length pa.s.sed into that of Gondy, to become celebrated in the seventeenth century through the Cardinal de Retz.[538]

Admitting as we must the guilt of Gilles de Rais, all this throws an uncomfortable doubt over the sincerity of his trial and conviction, and this is not lessened by the fate of his accomplices. Only Henriet and Poitou appear to have suffered; there is no trace of the death-penalty inflicted on any of the rest, though their criminality was sufficient for the most condign punishment, and the facility with which self-incriminating evidence was obtainable by the use of torture rendered unknown the device of purchasing testimony with pardon. Gilles de Sille, who was regarded as the worst of the marshal's instigators, disappeared and was heard of no more. Next to him ranked Roger de Briqueville. It is somewhat mysterious that the family seem to have regarded this man with favor. Marie de Rais cherished his children with tender care. In 1446 he obtained from Charles VII. letters of remission rehabilitating him, which he certainly could not have procured had not Pregent de Coetivy favored him, and the latter, in a letter to his brother Oliver, in 1449, desires to be remembered to Roger.[539]

If the student feels that there is an impenetrable mystery shrouding the truth in this remarkable case, the Breton peasant was troubled with no such doubts. To him Gilles remained the embodiment of cruelty and ferocity. I am not sufficiently versed in folk-lore to express an opinion whether M. Bossard is correct in maintaining that Gilles is the original of Bluebeard, the monster of the nursery-tale rendered universally popular in the version of Charles Perrault. Yet, even without admitting that the story is of Breton origin, there would seem to be no doubt that in Brittany, La Vendee, Anjou, and Poitou, where the terrible baron had his chosen seats of residence, he is known by the name of Bluebeard, and the legend--possibly an older one--of cruelty to seven wives, has been attached to him who had but one, and who left that one a widow. Tradition relates how the demon changed to a brilliant blue the magnificent red beard that was his pride; and everywhere, at Tiffauges, at Champtoce, at Machecoul, for the peasant, Bluebeard is the lord of the castle where Gilles ruled over their forefathers. Even yet, when the dreaded ruins are approached at dusk, the wayfarer crosses himself and holds his breath. In one ballad the name of Bluebeard and of the Baron de Rais are interchanged as identical, and Jean de Malestroit, Bishop of Nantes, is the champion who delivers the terrorized people from their oppressor.[540]

Another phase of the popular belief in magic is ill.u.s.trated in Don Enrique de Aragon, commonly known as the Marquis of Villena. Born in 1384, uniting the royal blood of both Castile and Aragon, his grandfather, the Duke of Gandia and Constable of Castile, destined him for a military life, and forbade his instruction in aught but knightly accomplishments. The child's keen thirst for knowledge, however, overcame all obstacles, and he became a marvel of learning for his unlettered companions. He spoke numerous languages, he was gifted as a poet, and he became a voluminous historian. The occult arts formed too prominent a portion of the learning of the day for him to neglect them, and he became noted for his skill in divination, and for interpreting dreams, sneezes, and portents--things, we are told, not befitting a royal prince or a good Catholic, wherefore he was held in slight esteem by the kings of his time, and in little reverence by the fierce chivalry of Spain. In fact, he is spoken of in terms of undisguised contempt, as one who with all his acquirements knew little that was worth knowing, and who was unfit for knighthood and for worldly affairs, even for regulating his own household; that he was short and fat, and unduly fond of women and of eating. His astrological learning was ridiculed in the saying that he knew much of heaven and little of earth. He left his wife and gave up his earldom of Tineo in order to obtain the mastership of the Order of Calatrava, but the king soon deprived him of it, and thus, in the words of the chronicler, he lost both. After his death, at the age of fifty, in 1434, the King Juan II. ordered all his books to be examined by Fray Lope de Barrientos, afterwards Bishop of Cuenca, a professor of Salamanca and tutor of the Infante Enrique. A portion of them Fray Lope burned publicly on the plaza of the Dominican convent of Madrid, where the marquis lay buried. He kept the rest--probably to aid him in the books on the occult sciences which he wrote at command of the king.

Don Enrique evidently was a man of culture despised by a barbarous age which could see in his varied accomplishments only the magic skill so suggestive to the popular imagination. He was no vulgar magician. In his commentary on the aeneid he speaks of magic as a forbidden science, of whose forty different varieties he gives a curious cla.s.sification. The only one of his writings that has reached us on a topic of the kind is a treatise on the evil eye. In common with his age he regards this as an admitted fact, but he attributes it to natural causes; and in the long and learned catalogue of remedies employed by different races from ancient times, he counsels abstinence from those which savor of superst.i.tion and are forbidden by the Church. Had he seriously devoted himself to the occult sciences he would scarce have written his "Art of Carving," which was printed in 1766. In this work he not only gives the most minute directions for carving all manner of flesh, fowls, fish, and fruits, but gravely proposes that there shall be a school for training youth of gentle blood in this indispensable accomplishment, with privileges and honors to reward the most efficient graduates.

Yet of this unworldly scholar, neglected and despised during life, popular exaggeration speedily made a magician of wondrous power. His legend grew until there was nothing too wild to be attributed to him. He caused himself to be cut up and packed in a flask with certain conjurations, so as to become immortal; he rendered himself invisible with the herb Andromeda; he turned the sun blood-red with the stone heliotrope; he brought rain and tempest with a copper vessel; he divined the future with the stone chelonites; he gave his shadow to the devil in the cave of San Cebrian. Every feat of magic was attributed to him; he became the inexhaustible theme of playwright and story-teller, and to the present day he is the favorite magician of the Spanish stage.

From this example it is easy to trace the evolution of the myths of Michael Scot, Roger Bacon, Albertus Magnus, Pietro d' Abano, Dr.

Faustus, and other popular necromantic heroes.[541]

CHAPTER VII.

WITCHCRAFT.

While, as we have seen, princes and warriors were toying with the dangerous mysteries of the occult sciences, influencing the destinies of states, there had been for half a century a gradually increasing development of sorcery in a different direction among the despised peasantry, which, before it ran its course, worked far greater evils than any which had thus far sprung from the same source, and left an ineffaceable stain upon the civilization and intelligence of Europe.

There is no very precise line of demarcation to be drawn between the more pretentious magic and the vulgar details of witchcraft; they find their origin in the same beliefs and fade into each other by imperceptible gradations, and yet, historically speaking, the witchcraft with which we now have to deal is a manifestation of which the commencement cannot be distinctly traced backward much beyond the fifteenth century. Its pract.i.tioners were not learned clerks or shrewd swindlers, but ignorant peasants, for the most part women, who professed to have skill to help or to ban, or who were credited by their neighbors with such power, and were feared and hated accordingly. Of such we hear little during the darkest portion of the Middle Ages, but with the dawn of modern culture they confront us as a strange phenomenon, of which the proximate cause is exceedingly obscure. Probably it may be traced to the effort of the theologians to prove that all superst.i.tious practices were heretical in implying a tacit pact with Satan, as declared by the University of Paris. Thus the innocent devices of the wise-women in culling simples, or in muttering charms, came to be regarded as implying demon-worship. When this conception once came to be firmly implanted in the minds of judges and inquisitors, it was inevitable that with the rack they should extort from their victims confessions in accordance with their expectations. Every new trial would add fresh embellishments to this, until at last there was built up a stupendous ma.s.s of facts which demonologists endeavored to reduce to a science for the guidance of the tribunals.

That such was the origin of the new witchcraft is rendered still more probable by the fact that its distinguishing feature was the worship of Satan in the Sabbat, or a.s.semblage, held mostly at night, to which men and women were transported through the air, either spontaneously or astride of a stick or stool, or mounted on a demon in the shape of a goat, a dog, or some other animal, and where h.e.l.lish rites were celebrated and indiscriminate license prevailed. Divested of the devil-worship now first introduced, such a.s.semblages have formed part of the belief of all races. In Hindu superst.i.tion the witches, through the use of mystic spells, flew naked through the night to the places of meeting, where they danced, or to a cemetery, where they gorged themselves with human flesh or revived the dead to satiate their l.u.s.t.

The Hebrew witch flew to the Sabbat with her hair loosened, as when it was bound she was unable to exercise her full power. Among the Nors.e.m.e.n we have seen the _trolla-thing_, or a.s.semblage of witches, for their unholy purposes.[542] In the Middle Ages the first allusion which we meet concerning it occurs in a fragment, not later than the ninth century, in which it is treated as a diabolical illusion--"Some wicked women, reverting to Satan, and seduced by the illusions and phantasms of demons, believe and profess that they ride at night with Diana on certain beasts, with an innumerable mult.i.tude of women, pa.s.sing over immense distances, obeying her commands as their mistress, and evoked by her on certain nights. It were well if they alone perished in their infidelity and did not draw so many along with them. For innumerable mult.i.tudes, deceived by this false opinion, believe all this to be true, and thus relapse into pagan errors. Therefore, priests everywhere should preach that they know this to be false, and that such phantasms are sent by the Evil Spirit, who deludes them in dreams. Who is there who is not led out of himself in dreams, seeing much in sleeping that he never saw waking? And who is such a fool that he believes that to happen in the body which is only done in the spirit? It is to be taught to all that he who believes such things has lost his faith, and he who has not the true faith is not of G.o.d, but the devil." In some way this utterance came to be attributed to a Council of Anquira, which could never be identified; it was adopted by the canonists and embodied in the successive collections of Regino, Burchard, Ivo, and Gratian--the latter giving it the stamp of unquestioned authority--and it became known among the doctors as the _Cap. Episcopi_. The selection of Diana as the presiding genius of these illusory a.s.semblages carries the belief back to cla.s.sical times, when Diana, as the moon, was naturally a night-flyer, and was one of the manifestations of the triform Hecate, the favorite patroness of sorcerers. Under the Barbarians, however, her functions were changed. In the sixth century we hear of "the demon whom the peasants call Diana," who vexed a girl and inflicted on her visible stripes, until expelled by St. Caesarius of Arles. Diana was the _daemonium meridianum_, and the name is used by John XXII. as synonymous with succubus. In some inexplicable way Bishop Burchard, in the eleventh century, when copying the text, came to add to Diana Herodias, who remained in the subsequent recensions, but Burchard in another pa.s.sage subst.i.tutes as the leader Holda, the Teutonic deity of various aspect, sometimes beneficent to housewives and sometimes a member of Wuotan's Furious Host. In a tract attributed to St. Augustin, but probably ascribable to Hugues de S. Victor, in the twelfth century, the companion of Diana is Minerva, and in some conciliar canons of a later date there appears another being known as Benzozia, or Bizazia; but John of Salisbury, who alludes to the belief as an ill.u.s.tration of the illusions of dreams, speaks only of Herodias as presiding over the feasts for which these midnight a.s.semblages were held. We also meet with Holda, in her beneficent capacity as the mistress of the revels, under the name of the Domina Abundia or Dame Habonde. She was the chief of the _dominae nocturnae_, who frequented houses at night and were thought to bring abundance of temporal goods. In the year 1211 Gervais of Tilbury shows the growth of this belief in his account of the _lamiae_ or _masc_, who flew by night and entered houses, performing mischievous pranks rather than malignant crimes, and he prudently avoids deciding whether this is an illusion or not. He also had personal knowledge of women who flew by night in crowds with these _lamiae_, when any one who incautiously p.r.o.nounced the name of Christ was precipitated to the earth. Half a century later Jean de Meung tells us that those who ride with Dame Habonde claim that they number a third of the population, and when the Inquisition undertook the suppression of sorcery, in its formula of interrogatories, as we have seen in the preceding chapter, there was a question as to the night-riding of the good women.[543]

Thus the Church, in its efforts to suppress these relics of pagandom, preferred to regard the nocturnal a.s.semblages as a fiction, and denounced as heretical the belief in the reality of the delusion. This, as part of the canon law, remained unalterable, but alongside of it grew up, with the development of heresy, tales of secret conventicles, somewhat similar in character, in which the sectaries worshipped the demon in the form of a cat or other beast, and celebrated their impious and impure rites. Stories such as this are told of the Cathari punished at Orleans in 1017, and of their successors in later times; and the Universal Doctor, Alain de Lille, even derives the name of Cathari from their kissing Lucifer under the tail in the shape of a cat.[544] How the investigators of heresy came to look for such a.s.semblages as a matter of course, and led the accused to embellish them until they a.s.sumed nearly the development of the subsequent Witches' Sabbat, is seen in the confessions of Conrad of Marburg's Luciferans, and in some of those of the Templars.