Gilles de Rais

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Count Gilles de Montmorency-Laval, Baron de Rais (* 1405 ? At Champtocé Castle near Angers , † October 26, 1440 in Nantes ) was a French military leader , Marshal of France , alchemist and serial killer . He came from the Laval line of the famous French Montmorency family . The celebrated hero of the Hundred Years War , comrade in arms of Joan of Arc , is notorious as one of the greatest serial killers in history because of the high number of his victims and served as the narrative model for the legend of the Bluebeard .

Life

origin

Gilles de Rais was the elder son of Count Guy de Montmorency-Laval and Marie de Craon, the daughter of Jeans I. de Craon and his wife Maria de Châtillon, and also the adopted son and heir of his uncle Thibaut de Montmorency-Laval and his Wife of Jeanne de Rais. Gilles' mother Marie de Craon and his father Guy de Laval died young and in quick succession in the course of 1415. Guy de Laval feared that his two sons Gilles and René might come under the tutelage of Jean de Craon, the maternal grandfather, whose immorality he feared. His last will, which was clearly against it, was ineffective, and the brothers were placed in the care of their grandfather.

After the plans to marry a Norman nobleman had failed, Gilles married his cousin Cathérine de Thouars († 1462), daughter of Count Miles II de Thouars Seigneur de Pouzauges, de Tiffauges, de on November 30, 1420 in Chalonnes-sur-Loire Chabanais et de Confolent and the Beatrix de Montejean. She was a very distant descendant of the brother of Guy de Thouars, Regent of Britanny, and Constance de Richemont, Duchesse de Bretagne. The marriage produced a daughter.

Rais' greatest possession was the barony of Retz , located south of the Loire on the border with Brittany , which was elevated to a duchy and a peerage in the 16th century . Gilles became part of the Montforts and supported Johann VI. , Duke of Brittany, against the rival House of Penthièvre. He was involved in the release of Duke Johann from captivity of Olivier de Blois , Count of Penthièvre, and was rewarded for this with extensive estates, which were then converted into monetary payments by the Breton parliament.

Military successes

In 1426 Gilles de Rais set up seven companies of armed men and took part in the war against the English under Artur de Richemont , the newly appointed Constable . After he had won several awards, he was chosen to accompany Joan of Arc to Orléans . He subsequently remained her protection officer and fought at her side first in Orléans , then also with Jargeau and Patay . He advocated further military ventures against the English before the Dauphin's coronation . After the Dauphin on July 17, 1429 in Reims as Charles VII. Was crowned king, this Gilles appointed on the same day the Marshal of France . After the storming of Paris the king granted him the privilege to line his coat of arms with the coat of arms of France, the fleur-de-lis . However, this right was never confirmed.

De Rais spent the winter in Louviers (now the Eure department ) in Normandy . It is not certain whether he intended to free Jeanne d'Arc , who was imprisoned in Rouen . After Jeanne's death at the stake in Rouen in 1431, Gilles retired to his estate near Nantes .

Coat of arms of the Gilles de Rais

Although Gilles de Rais was one of the richest men in France at the time, his fortune dwindled over time. He had spent enormous sums in the service of the king and maintained a courtly circle of knights , squires , heralds and priests that corresponded more to the court of a king than that of a baron. He ran an open house and showed himself to be a generous patron of the arts, literature and music . His library contained many valuable works. He himself was a skilled illustrator and bookbinder and had a great passion for the theater . He hosted many large theatrical performances in which he himself appeared as an actor. It is even said that the 1420 Angers Passion Festival was organized by himself to celebrate his wedding. The first edition of the play Le mystère du Siège d'Orleans (“The Secret of the Siege of Orleans”) was probably written under his guidance and contains many details that testify to a close relationship between the author and the Virgin.

Because of his financial difficulties, de Rais began to dispose of land and sell his goods below value. This approach gave his heirs sufficient cause for legal disputes for years to come. The Duke of Brittany and his Chancellor Jean de Malestroit, Bishop of Nantes, were among the beneficiaries of this sale . Finally, de Rais' relatives turned to Charles VII in 1436 , who forbade further sales. Duke Johann VI. opposed this decree and denied the king the right to issue decrees of this kind for Brittany. In return, he appointed de Rais governor of Brittany and confirmed him as his brother in arms.

The crimes of the Gilles de Rais

Gilles de Rais now hoped to regain his wealth with the help of alchemy . He spent enormous sums on necromancers who were supposed to harness the devil for his goals. On the other hand, he tried to ward off evil through generous charity and glorious worship. The practices of which he was guilty do not seem to have caught the eye of the aristocrats of his or her rank, even though he had many accomplices and had long been suspected by the rural population. His wife, who may have been familiar with his crimes, left him in 1434/1435, and when his brother René de Suze conquered Champtocé Castle, where the first murders took place, all traces of his crimes were still found there. But “family considerations” undoubtedly forced silence.

De Rais' servants abducted children, especially boys, whom he tortured and then murdered in his castles of Champtocé , Machecoul and Tiffauges . The number of his victims is given in the church investigation protocols as 140, but it is reported that there were far more. His amazing inviolability came to an end in 1440 when he came into conflict with the Church over an act of violence combined with sacrilege and a violation of the immunity of the clergy . He had sold Saint Étienne de Malemort to Geffroi le Ferron, the treasurer of Duke John VI. Due to a disagreement regarding the transfer of property to Geffroi's brother Jean le Ferron, who was a priest, Jean was ambushed and captured in the church at the instigation of Gilles de Rais while he was reading Pentecost.

De Rais continued to oppose the Duke, but was reconciled with him again in Richemont. Nonetheless, he was arrested in the autumn and summoned before the court of Bishop Jean II de Châteaugiron of Nantes on various charges, including mainly heresy and murder. Since the ecclesiastical court did not have jurisdiction over the murder charge, de Rais refused to accept his verdict on October 8th. Under threat of excommunication , he then confirmed the testimony of the witnesses and secured absolution through a confession .

He was found guilty of apostasy and heresy by the inquisitor and of vice and iniquity by the bishop. On October 21st, he was forced to give a detailed confession through threats of painful questioning . At the same time, the President of the Breton Parliament, Pierre de l'Hôpital, held a secular trial, on whose guilty verdict de Rais was hanged on October 26, 1440 with two of his accomplices and not, as it is often said, burned alive .

Given his own repeated confessions, there seems no reasonable doubt that he was guilty. But the numerous process irregularities and the fact that the necromancer Francesco Prelati and other accomplices got away with it, plus the financial interest of Duke John VI. of its ruin, leave some doubts about the correct implementation of the process, which, along with that of Joan of Arc, was one of the most famous and most widely observed processes in France in the 15th century.

The case files are still in the national libraries in Paris and Nantes .

At the church of Saint-Étienne-de-Mer-Morte there is a plaque with the inscription:

"Gilles de Raiz, Maréchal de France, pénétra en cette Église le jour de la Pentecôte 1440, en armes, à la tête de ses routiers pendant la grand-messe. Il s'emparait de Jean Le Ferron, clerc tonsuré, qu'il enfermait en sa forteresse toute proche. Jean de Malestroit, Évèque de Nantes, le citait à comparaître devant son official par mandement du 15 septembre. Jean V, Duc de Bretagne, faisait arrêter Gilles dès le lendemain. Il avouait ses crimes. Jugé, condamné, il fut mis au gibet en Prairie de Biesse à Nantes on October 26th 1440. »

“Gilles de Raiz, Marshal of France, entered this church on the day of Pentecost 1440 during high mass in arms at the head of his companions. He brought Jean Le Ferron, a clergyman, under his control and imprisoned him in his nearby fortress. Jean de Malestroit, Bishop of Nantes, summoned him by order of September 15th. Johann V, Duke of Brittany, had Gilles taken prisoner the following day. He confessed to his crimes. After he was judged and condemned, he went to the gallows on October 26th 1440 on the Biessewiese near Nantes. "

reception

Artist's impression of Gilles de Rais by Éloi Firmin Féron from 1835. Authentic contemporary depictions are not known.

Gilles de Rais is believed to be the starting point for the Bluebeard legend , although the correspondence between the two stories is rather vague.

In his novel Là-bas , the author Joris-Karl Huysmans has the story of Gilles de Rais researched and retold by the main character of the novel.

Georges Bataille describes in his work Gilles de Rais, Life and Trial of a Child Murderer, the mass murders using the protocols of the secular and ecclesiastical trial.

In her study of Hans Henny Jahnn's romantic trilogy Fluß ohne Ufer , the literary scholar Nanna Hucke proves that the protagonist Gustav Anias Horn was modeled on Gilles de Rais.

The British extreme metal band Cradle of Filth released the concept album Godspeed on the Devil's Thunder in 2008 , which Gilles de Rais has as the overarching theme.

In their song Into the Crypts of Rays, the Swiss avant-garde death metal band Celtic Frost address de Rais' deeds.

Kristine Tornquist and François-Pierre Descamps wrote a chamber opera on the story of Jeanne d'Arc and Gilles de Rais entitled "Jeanne and Gilles" for the Sirene Opera Theater in 2018 .

literature

  • Georges Bataille : Gilles de Rais - life and trial of a child murderer. Translation by Ute Erb. 7th edition. Merlin Verlag, Gifkendorf 2006, ISBN 3-87536-042-7
  • Matei Cazacu: Gilles de Rais . Paris 2005, ISBN 2-84734-227-3
  • Aleister Crowley : Gilles de Rais. The banned lecture . With an interview, published in The Oxford Mail in 1930 . English German. Edited and translated by Michael Farin and Roland Hepp. belleville, Munich 1988, ISBN 3-923646-02-X
  • Tennille Dix: The black baron: the strange life of Gilles de Rais . Indianapolis 1930
  • Philippe Reliquet: Knights, Death and the Devil: Gilles de Rais or the magic of evil . Artemis, Munich and Zurich 1984

Web links

Commons : Gilles de Rais  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Matei Cazacu: Gilles de Rais . Tallandier, Paris 2005, pp. 11, 23-25.
  2. ↑ Iwan Bloch : The Marquis de Sade and his time. Heyne 1978, pp. 271f., Refers to: Albert Eulenburg : Sexuelle Neuropathie. Leipzig 1895, p. 116.
  3. ↑ Nanna Hucke: “The Order of the Underworld.” On the relationship between author, text and reader using the example of Hans Henny Jahnn's “River without Banks” and the interpretations of his Deuter . Full text as PDF
personal data
SURNAME Rais, Gilles de
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Rais, Gilles de Montmorency-Laval, Baron de (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French military leader, Marshal of France, serial killer
DATE OF BIRTH uncertain: 1405
PLACE OF BIRTH Champtocé Castle , near Angers
DATE OF DEATH October 26, 1440
Place of death Nantes