Was Gilles de Rais Innocent?
The short answer to that question is a clear “NO.” Yes, it is quite possible that Rais did not kill as many children as the 140 claimed in his indictment. The fact is the exact number of children murdered will never be known and could be substantially less than that.
But the notion, pushed now by a surprising number of modern-day conspiracy theorists, that Rais and his accomplices killed not a single, solitary child flies in the face of a mountain of evidence. Yes, as these proclaimers of innocence point out, none of that evidence is physical. Prosecutors introduced no bones of children, no bloody knifes. But medieval trials differed from modern trials in almost too many ways to count, and no one at the time would have expected such physical evidence to be produced at a time when oaths were seen as a near guarantee of witness truthfulness. Today, of course, any serial killer’s trial would likely include DNA evidence, blood evidence, photographs, and many other types of evidence simply unavailable in 1440.
What we do have is a lot of damning testimony by a lot of witnesses. First, we have the testimony of dozens of parents, relatives, and neighbors of children who went missing. Yes, none of those witnesses actually saw any child murdered by Rais or his associates. But some of those witnesses placed a child in the hands of a valet of Rais, such as Peronne Loessart who presented detailed testimony about reluctantly turning her 10-year-old son over to Rais’ valet Poitu after receiving money and a promise that her son would be educated. Other witnesses last saw a child being led away by confessed procurer of children for Rais, Perinne Martin. Multiple witnesses law saw their children as they left to seek alms at Rais’ castle. The testimony, gathered over weeks in an inquest, is, taken as a whole, compelling.
When it comes to murder and torture, the real guts of the crime, the evidence is even more hard to disbelieve. Not only do we have the detailed eyewitness testimony and confessions of Rais’ valets, Poitu and Henriet, which show the full depth of Rais’ depravity, but we have additional testimony from Rais’ conjuror, Francois Prelati, as well as his priest, Eustache Blanchet, that point strongly to multiple murders of children at the hand of Rais. And, if that wasn’t enough to satisfy doubters, we have not one, not two, but three emotional and detailed confessions from Rais himself.
The conspiracy theorists suggest that the confessions of Rais should all be discounted because they were made only after a threat of torture. That is true. But that hardly makes them less believable, especially the third and last confession, which was the most emotional and gratuitous and—it seems upon a fair reading—from the heart.
Moreover, what Gilles de Rais and in his valets revealed in their confessions was so shocking, so over-the-top in its depravity, so sadistic, that it is almost impossible to imagine any medieval schemer, anxious to take Rais’ property upon his death, coming up with such strange accounts of murders in an attempt to frame the pure-as-the-driven-snow Gilles de Rais. The pleasures, if one can call them that, of Rais had never been put down on paper before, and wouldn’t again before the writings of Marquis de Sade.
How is it, then, that these arguments for Rais’ innocence continue to multiply? Is it because revisionist history is a thing these days, and revisionists understand that claiming a standard account of history got it wrong will get a lot more attention than one that provides additional support for the previously accepted story? That might be part of it. Is it because trials invariably include at least some conflicting evidence and it is easy to seize on that and make a case the verdict was wrong? (Just looking at famous American trials, we saw many people make cases for the innocence of Sacco and Vanzetti, Bruno Hauptmann, Alger Hiss, AIM activist Leonard Peltier, and O.J. Simpson. All were guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.) That might also be part of it. It can be fun to play with disputed facts in a trial and make a case that a jury or judge got it wrong.
Finally, in the case of Gilles de Rais, it should be noted that his story was a French story and France happens to be the site of perhaps the most famous wrongful conviction of all time, that of Alfred Dreyfus in 1994. I recount that story of a trial-gone-wrong elsewhere on my website. The Dreyfus Affair, as it is known, inspired a number of French writers (for example, Salomon Reinach and Fernand Fleuret) to look back in French history to see what other famous trials might have produced wrongful convictions, and for some the trial of Gilles de Rais became their target. Outside of France in the early 20th century, a couple of noted non-historians, including Margaret Murray and occultist Aleister Crowley, joined the chorus of dissenting voices.
Margot Juby argues in her book, The Martyrdom of Gilles de Rais (2018), that Rais was framed
That, as I see it, is the big picture here. But let’s now turn to a few of the principal arguments made by those who suggest Rais was innocent. There are far too many to swat down all of them, and any lengthy analysis of the claims would bore readers, so I will keep my comments brief and focus on just a few main claims.
- In 1992 the writer Gilbert Prouteau published a book imagining a modern re-trial of Rais and then, as a publicity stunt, arranged for a mock trial of Rais. The mock trial produced a verdict of “Not Guilty.” But no one participating in the trial thoroughly researched primary documents and the defense attorneys fabricated evidence for the event. Prouteau himself called the mock trial “an absolute joke.”
- Some of the key figures in Rais’s trials , such as John V., the Duke of Britanny, and chancellor Jean Malestroit, the Bishop of Nantes, stood to gain property if Rais were convicted and executed. This fact seems to be at the heart of many conspiracy claims. But, as John Adams pointed out to jurors in the Boston Massacre trial, “facts are stubborn things.” And here, as pointed out above, the massive accumulation of facts from the witness testimony and confessions strongly suggest that the two trials were not some sort of complicated plot concocted by the Duke and the Bishop. A fair reading of the primary sources suggests that if not for his privileged status and family connections, Rais would have been prosecuted earlier and less reluctantly.
- Authorities were really most outraged by Rais’ dealing in occult matters and practicing sodomy, and it was those unconventional practices that got him convicted. It is certainly true that medieval Catholic authorities found invocations heretical and sodomy an abominable practice in the eyes of God, but that fact only gets one so far. Again, it is undeniably true that Rais was a homosexual and a pedophile. But he was more than that? What happened to all those children he sodomized if he did not kill them and admire their “beautiful heads”?
- The story of Gilles de Rais became conflated with that of Bluebeard, the serial wife-killer of literature to the extent that some people came to attribute the thoughts and actions of Bluebeard to Rais. Gilles de Rais is not Bluebeard. He wasn’t even the inspiration for the Bluebeard story. All true; all irrelevant.
Finally, a shout-out to Wikipedia, which gets the Gilles de Rais story right, a rarity among the sites that a Google search for “Gilles de Rais trial” pulls up. (DOL)