Chapter VI: Sorcery and Occult Arts (4)

While Bishop Ledrede was busy at this good work a trial occurred in England which illustrates the difference in efficiency between the ecclesiastical methods of trial by torture and those of the common law. Twenty-eight persons were accused of employing John of Nottingham and his assistant, Richard Marshall of Leicester, to make wax figures for the destruction of Edward II., the two Despensers, and the Prior of Coventry, with two of his officials who had tyrannized over the people and had been sustained by the royal favorites. Richard Marshall turned accuser, and the evidence was complete. The enormous sums of twenty pounds to Master John and fifteen pounds to Richard had been promised, and they had been furnished with seven pounds of wax and two ells of canvas. From September 27, 1324, until June 2, 1325, the two magicians labored at their work. They made seven images, the extra one being experimental, to be tried on Richard de Sowe. On April 27 they commenced operating with this by thrusting a piece of lead into its forehead, when at once Richard de Sowe lost his reason and cried in misery until May 20, when the lead was transferred to his breast, and he died May 23. The accused pleaded not guilty and put themselves on the country. An ordinary jury trial followed, with the result that they were all acquitted. A similar case came to light at Toulouse in June, 1326, when some sorcerers were discovered who had undertaken to make way with King Charles le Bel by means of figurines. They were promptly despatched to Paris, and the matter was taken in hand by the secular court of the Châtelet. It had all the resources of torture at its command, and its speedy and vigorous justice undoubtedly soon consigned them to the stake, although Pierre de Vic, a favored nephew of John XXII., who had been inculpated in their confessions, was pronounced innocent. It was probably not long after this that a similar attempt was made on the life of John XXII., though the culprits escaped until 1337, when they were tried and executed by Benedict XII. To shield themselves they implicated the Bishop of Béziers as their instigator.[499]

Yet organized persecution seems to have died away with the withdrawal of sorcery from the jurisdiction of the Inquisition by John XXII. in 1330, while the stimulus which his proclamations had given to the trade of the magician continued to extend it and render it profitable. The tendency of popular thought is shown by the attribution, in some places, of the Black Death to the incantations as well as to the poisons of the Jews. Such an expedient as that of the Council of Chartres in 1366, which ordered sorcerers to be excommunicated in mass every Sunday in all parish churches, would only serve to impress the popular mind with the reality and importance of their powers. During this period the study and practice of magic arts were pursued with avidity, and in many cases almost without concealment. Miguel de Urrea, who was Bishop of Tarazona from 1309 to 1316, was honored with the title of _el Nigromantico_, and his portrait in the archiepiscopal palace of Tarragona bears an inscription describing him as a most skilful necromancer, who even deluded the devil with his own arts. Gerard Groot himself, claimed by the Brethren of the Common Life as their revered founder, was in his youth an earnest student of the occult sciences, but during an illness he solemnly abandoned them before a priest and burned his books. Many years later he turned his knowledge to account by exposing a certain John Heyden, who had long practised on the credulity of the people of Amsterdam and its vicinity. On his coming to Deventer, Groot examined him and found him ignorant of necromancy and its allied arts, and concluded that he operated through a compact with Satan. Not willing to incur the irregularity of shedding blood, Groot contented himself with driving him away, and then, on learning that he had settled at Harderwick, wrote to the brethren there giving them an account of him; but the whole affair shows that such persons could count on practical toleration unless some zealot chose to set the laws in motion. The extent to which this toleration was carried, and the limitless credulity to which the popular mind had been trained are shown in the accounts given by grave historians of the feats of Zyto, the favorite magician of the Emperor Wenceslas, who, in spite of the repeated condemnation of magic by the Councils of Prague during the latter half of the century, reckoned among his evil qualities a fondness for forbidden arts. When, in 1389, he married Sophia, daughter of the Elector of Bavaria, the latter, knowing his proclivities, brought to Prague a wagon-load of skilful conjurers and jugglers. While the chief of these was giving an exhibition of his marvels Zyto quietly walked up to him, opened his mouth, and swallowed him entire, spitting out his muddy boots, and then evacuated him into a vessel of water and exhibited him dripping to the admiring crowd. At the royal banquets Zyto would bother the guests by changing their hands into the hoofs of horses or oxen so that they could not handle their food; if something attracted them to look out of the window he would adorn them with branching antlers, so that they could not withdraw their heads, while he would leisurely eat their delicacies and drink their wine. On one occasion he changed a handful of corn into a drove of fat hogs which he sold to a baker, with a caution not to let them go to the river, but the purchaser disregarded the warning and they suddenly became grains of corn floating on the water. Of course such a character could not end well, and Zyto, when his time came, was carried off by his demon. Not only are all these marvels recorded as unquestionable facts by the Bohemian chroniclers, but they are conscientiously copied by the papal historian Raynaldus.[500]

Although Gregory XI., in 1374, had authorized the Inquisition to prosecute in all cases of sorcery, in France the Parlement included the subject within its policy of encroachment upon the ecclesiastical jurisdiction. In 1390 an occurrence at Laon, where a secular official named Poulaillier arrested a number of sorcerers, gave it occasion to intervene. As Bodin says, at that time Satan managed to have it believed that the stories of sorcery were false, so the Parlement stopped the proceedings, and thus having its attention drawn to the matter, decreed that in future cognizance of such offences should be confined to the secular tribunals, to the exclusion of the spiritual courts.[501] Secular judges, however, were ready to treat these cases with abundant sharpness. A case occurring at the Paris Châtelet in 1390 has much interest as affording us an insight into the details of procedure, and as illustrating the efficacy of torture in securing conviction. Except as regards the use of this expedient, now universal in all criminal cases, we see that the process is much fairer to the accused than that of the Inquisition, and we observe once more the ineffaceable impression produced by torture, which leads the despairing victim to adhere to the self-condemnation conducting him inevitably to the stake. Marion l'Estalée was a young _fille de folle vie_, madly in love with a man named Hainsselin Planiete, who deserted her, and, about July 1, 1390, married a woman named Agnesot. Eager to prevent this, if her confession is to be believed, she had applied to an old procuress named Margot de la Barre, for a philtre to fix his wandering affection, and when this failed Margot made for her two enchanted chaplets of herbs, which she threw where the bride and groom would tread on them during the festivities of the wedding-day, assured that this would prevent the consummation of the marriage. The plot was unsuccessful, but Hainsselin and Agnesot fell sick, leading to the arrest of the two women.

On July 30 Margot was examined and denied all complicity. She was promptly tortured on _le petit et le grand tresteau_--which I conjecture to mean, the former, pouring water down the throat till the stomach was distended and then forcing it out by paddling the belly; the latter, the rack. This reduplicated torture produced no confession, and she was remanded for further hearing. August 17 Marion was taken in hand, when she denied, and was similarly tortured without result. On the 3d she was again examined and denied, and on being again ordered to the torture, she appealed to the Parlement; the appeal was promptly heard and rejected, and she was tortured as before, then taken to the kitchen and warmed, after which she was tortured a third time, but to no effect. On the 4th she was brought in and refused to confess, but the indefinite repetition of torment without prospect of cessation had produced its effect on body and mind; the torture had been pitiless, for she is subsequently alluded to as much crippled and weakened by it, and when she was again bound on the _tresteau_, and the executioner was about to commence his work, she yielded and agreed to confess. On being unbound she detailed the whole story, and in the afternoon, on being brought in again, she confirmed it "_sans aucune force ou constrainte_." Then Margot was introduced, and Marion repeated her confession, which Margot denied and offered the wager of battle, of which no notice was taken. Margot then asserted her ability to prove an alibi on the day when she was said to have made the chaplets. The parties whom she named as witnesses were looked up for her and brought in the next day, when the evidence proved rather incriminating than otherwise. Marion was then made to repeat her confession, and not till then was Margot tortured a second time, but still without result. On the 6th Marion was again made to repeat her confession, after which Margot was brought in and bound to the _tresteau_. Marion's youthful vigor had enabled her to endure the torture thrice. Margot's age had diminished her power of resistance, and the two applications sufficed. Her resolution gave way, and before the torture commenced she promised to confess. Her story agreed with that of Marion, except in some embellishments, which serve to show how thoroughly untrustworthy were all such confessions, of which the sole object was to satisfy the merciless ministers of justice. When she enchanted the chaplets she invoked the demon by thrice repeating "_Ennemi je te conjures au nom du Père, du Fils et du Saint Esperit que tu viegnes a moy icy;_" then an "ennemi," or demon, promptly appeared, like those she had seen in the Passion-play, and after she had instructed him to enter into the bodies of Hainsselin and Agnesot he flew out of the window in a whirlwind, making a great noise and throwing her into mortal fear. The evidence was thus complete, and there would seem to be nothing left but prompt sentence, yet the tribunal manifested commendable desire to avoid precipitate judgment. Assessors and experts were called in. On August 7, 8, and 9 Marion was thrice made to repeat her confession, and Margot twice. On the latter day a consultation was held, and the decision was unanimous against Margot, who was pilloried and burned the same day; but three of the experts thought that the pillory and banishment would suffice for Marion. Her case was postponed till the 23d, when another consultation was held; opinions remained unaltered, and as the majority was in favor of condemnation the_prévôt_ condemned her, and she was burned the next day. Both the victims may have been innocent, and the whole story may have been invented to avoid the repetition of the intolerable torture; but, inevitable as was the result under the conditions of the trial, the judges manifested every disposition to deal fairly with the unfortunates in their hands, and could entertain no possible doubt as to the reality of the offence and of the apparition of the demon as described by Margot.[502] It is necessary to bear this in mind when estimating the conduct of the judges and inquisitors who sent thousands of unfortunates to the stake in the next two centuries, for offences which to a modern mind are purely chimerical, for, according to the jurisprudence of the age, no evidence could be more absolute than that on which rested the cruelly punished absurdities of witchcraft.

Simultaneous with this case was the burning of a sorceress named Jeanette Neuve or Revergade, August 6, 1390, in Velay. Although she was tried and executed by the court of the Abbey of Saint-Chaffre, this was in its capacity as _haut-justicier,_ and not as a spiritual tribunal. A century later we should have found the case embroidered with full accounts of the Sabbat and of demon-worship, but the time had not yet arrived for this. Jeanette was a poor wandering crone who had come to Chadron, within the abbatial jurisdiction, and earned a livelihood by curing diseases with charms, to which she usually added the prescription of a pilgrimage to some shrine of local renown. She must have gained reputation as a wise-woman, for the Sire de Burzet, quarrelling with his wife and desiring reconciliation, came to her for a philtre. She gave him a potion of which he died, and her fate was sealed.[503]

About this period may be dated a fresh impulse given to the belief in sorcery, whose continued growth during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries was destined to produce results so deplorable, and to present one of the most curious problems in the history of human error. The first indication of this new development is found in the action of the University of Paris. September 19, 1398, the theological faculty held a general congregation in the Church of St. Mathurin, and adopted a series of twenty-eight articles which thenceforth became a standard for all demonologists, and were regarded as an unanswerable argument to sceptics who questioned the reality of the wickedness of the arts of magic. The preamble recites that action was necessary in view of the active emergence of ancient errors which threatened to infect society; the old evils, which had been well-nigh forgotten, were reviving with renewed vigor, and some positive definition was required to guard the faithful from the snares of the enemy. The University then proceeded to declare that there was an implied contract with Satan in every superstitious observance, of which the expected result was not reasonably to be anticipated from God and from Nature, and it condemned as erroneous the assertion that it was permissible to invoke the aid of demons or to seek their friendship, or to enter into compacts with them, or to imprison them in stones, rings, mirrors, and images, or to use sorcery for good purposes or for the cure of sorcery, or that God could be induced by magic arts to compel demons to obey invocations, or that the celebration of masses or other good works used in some forms of thaumaturgy was permissible, or that the prophets and saints of old performed their miracles by these means which were taught by God, or that by certain magic arts we can attain to the sight of the divine essence. These latter clauses point to a dangerous tendency of coalescence between the arts of the sorcerer and of the theurgist, and indicate that in the higher magic of the day there was a claim to be considered as penetrating to the ineffable mysteries which surrounded the throne of God; in fact, these adepts declared that their arts were lawful, and they sought to prove their origin in God by pointing out that good flowed from them, and that the wishes and prophecies of those using them were fulfilled. All this the University condemned, and while on the one hand it denied that images of lead or gold or wax, when baptized, exorcised, and consecrated on certain days, possessed the powers ascribed to them in the books of magic, on the other hand it was equally emphatic in animadverting on the incredulity of those who denied that sorcery, incantations, and the invocation of demons possessed the powers claimed for them by sorcerers.[504]

Like all other efforts to repress sorcery, this of course only served to give it fresh significance and importance. The declaration that it was erroneous to doubt the reality of sorcery and its effects became a favorite argument of the demonologists. Gerson declared that to call in question the existence and activity of demons was not only impious and heretical, but destructive to all human and political society. Sprenger concludes that the denial of the existence of witchcraft is not in itself heresy, as it may proceed from ignorance, but such ignorance in an ecclesiastic is in itself highly culpable; such denial is sufficient to justify vehement suspicion of heresy, calling for prosecution, and we have seen what was the significance of "vehement suspicion" in inquisitorial practice.[505]

With popular credulity thus stimulated, the insanity of Charles VI. afforded a tempting opportunity for charlatans to market their wares. In 1397 the Maréchal de Sancerre sent to Paris from Guyenne two Augustinian hermits who had great reputation for skill in the occult sciences, and who promised relief. They pronounced the royal patient a victim of sorcery, and after some incantations he recovered his senses, but it proved only a lucid interval, and in a week he relapsed. This they charged upon the royal barber and a porter of the Duke of Orleans, who were arrested, but nothing could be proved against them, and they were discharged. For months the two impostors led a joyous life with ample fees, but at last they were compelled to name the author of the sorceries, and this time they had the audacity to pitch upon the king's brother, Louis of Orleans himself. This grew serious, and on being threatened with torture they confessed themselves sorcerers, apostates, and invokers of demons. They were accordingly tried, condemned, degraded from the priesthood, and mercifully beheaded and quartered. Undeterred by this example, in 1403 a priest named Ives Gilemme, who boasted that he had three demons in his service, with some other invokers of demons, the Demoiselle Marie de Blansy, Perrin Hemery, a locksmith, and Guillaume Floret, a clerk, offered to cure the king, and were given a trial. They asked to have twelve men loaded with iron chains placed at their disposal; these they surrounded with an enclosure, and, after telling them not to be afraid, proceeded with all the invocations they could muster, but accomplished no results. They excused their failure by alleging that the men had crossed themselves, but this availed them nothing. Floret confessed to the Prévôt of Paris that the whole affair was a deception, and on March 24, 1404, they were all duly burned. It was probably this case which induced Cardinal Louis of Bourbon, in his provincial synod of Langres, in 1404, to prohibit strictly all sorcery and divination, and to warn his flock to place no trust in such arts, as their practitioners were mostly deceivers whose only object was to trick them out of their money. Priests, moreover, were strictly ordered, as had already been done by the Council of Soissons the year before, to report to the episcopal ordinaries all cases coming to their knowledge and all persons defamed for such practices. Had this policy been carried out, of treating sorcerers as sharpers, and of instituting an episcopal police to replace the Inquisition, at this time rapidly falling into desuetude, it might have averted the evils which followed, but the well-meant effort of Cardinal Louis was followed by no results. The belief in sorcery continued to strengthen, and when Jean Petit undertook to justify Jean sans Peur for the assassination of the Duke of Orleans, it was almost a matter of course that he should accuse the murdered prince of encompassing the king's insanity by magic, of which the most minute details were given, including the names of the two demons, Hynars and Astramein, whose assistance had been successfully invoked.[506]

In England, sorcery, as we have seen, had thus far attracted little attention. Even as late as 1372 a man was arrested in Southwark with the head and face of a corpse in his possession, and a book of magic was found in his trunk. Tried before the Inquisition he would infallibly have confessed under torture a series of misdeeds and have ended at the stake; but he was brought before Sir J. Knyvet, in the King's Bench. No indictment even was found against him; he was simply sworn not to practise sorcery and was discharged, but the head and book were burned at Tothill at his expense. To the fair and open character of English law is doubtless to be attributed the comparative exemption of the island from the terror of sorcery, but when, at last, persecuting excitement arose in the Lollard troubles, the Church used its influence with the new Lancastrian dynasty to suppress the emissaries of Satan. In 1407 Henry IV. issued letters to his bishops reciting that sorcerers, magicians, conjurers, necromancers, and diviners abounded in their dioceses, perverting the people and perpetrating things horrible and detestable. The bishops, therefore, were commissioned to imprison all such malefactors, either with or without trial, until they should recant their errors or the king's pleasure could be learned respecting them. The placing of the matter thus in the hands of the Church, and depriving the accused of all legal safeguards, is most significant as a recognition that the ordinary forms of English law were not to be depended upon in such cases, and that public opinion as yet was too unformed for juries to be trusted. Under the regency the royal council seems to have assumed jurisdiction over the matter. In 1432 a Dominican of Worcester, Thomas Northfield, suspected of sorcery, was summoned before it with all his books of magic. A few days later it heard the celebrated Witch of Eye, Margery Jourdemayne, with the Dominican John Ashewell and John Virby, a clerk, who had been confined at Windsor under charge of sorcery, but they were discharged on giving bonds for good behavior. The Witch of Eye did not fare so well when, in 1441, she was implicated in the accusation brought against the Duchess of Gloucester, of making and melting a wax figurine of Henry VI. The duchess confessed and escaped with the penance of walking bareheaded thrice through the streets with wax tapers of two pounds each, and offering them at the shrines of St. Paul's, Christ Church, and St. Michael's in Cornhill, after which she was imprisoned and finally banished to Chester. Her secretary, Roger, was hanged, drawn, and quartered, and Margery was burned--the whole affair being political. A similar endeavor to take political advantage of the belief in sorcery occurred in 1464, in connection with the marriage of Edward IV. and Elizabeth Woodville, when his constancy to her was attributed to the magic arts of her mother, Jacquette, widow of the Regent Bedford in first marriage. Jacquette did not wait to be attacked, but turned upon her accusers, Thomas Wake and John Daunger, who had talked about her using leaden images of the king and queen, and had shown one of them broken in two and wired together. They disclaimed responsibility, and endeavored to shift the burden each on the other; but in 1483 Richard III. did not fail to make the most of the matter, and in the act for the settlement of the crown described Edward's "pretensed marriage" as brought about by "sorcerie and witchcraft committed by the said Elizabeth and her moder, Jacquette duchesse of Bedford." Thus England was gradually prepared to share in the horrors of the witchcraft delusions.[507]

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Perhaps the most remarkable trial for sorcery on record is that of the Maréchal de Rais, in 1440, which has long ranked as a _cause celébre_, although it is only of late that the publication of the records has enabled it to be properly understood. The popular belief at the time is indicated by Monstrelet, who tells us that the marshal was accustomed to put to death pregnant women and children in order with their blood to write the conjurations which secured him wealth and honors; Jean Chartier alludes to his putting children to death and performing strange things contrary to the faith to attain his ends, and in the next century Gaguin speaks of his slaying children in order with their blood to divine the future.[508] Curious as is the case in many aspects, perhaps its chief interest lies in the psychological study which it affords as an illustration of the extreme development of the current ecclesiastical teaching with regard to the remission of sins.

In the France of the fifteenth century there was no career more promising than that of Gilles de Rais. Born in 1404 of the noble stock of Montmorency and Craon, grandson of the renowned knight, Brumor de Laval, grandnephew of du Guesclin, of kindred with the Constable Clisson, and allied with all that was illustrious in the west of France, his barony of Rais rendered him the head of the baronage of Britanny. His territorial possessions were ample, and when, while still a youth, he married the great heiress, Catharine de Thouars, he might count himself among the wealthiest nobles of France. His bride is said to have brought him one hundred thousand livres in gold and movables, and his revenue was reckoned at fifty thousand. At the age of sixteen he won the esteem of his suzerain, Jean V., Duke of Britanny, by his courage and skill in the campaign which ended the ancient rivalry between the houses of de Montfort and de Penthièvre. At twenty-two, following the duke's brother, the Constable Artus de Richemont, he entered the desperate service of Charles VII., with a troop maintained at his own expense, and he distinguished himself in the seemingly hopeless resistance to the English arms. When Joan of Arc appeared he was charged with the special duty of watching over her personal safety, and, from the relief of Orleans to the repulse at the gates of Paris, he was ever at her side. In the coronation ceremonies at Reims he received, though but twenty-five years old, the high dignity of Marshal of France, and in the September following he was honored with permission to add to his arms a border of the royal fleurs-de-lis. There was no dignity beneath the crown to which his ambition might not aspire, for he maintained himself so skilfully between the opposing factions of the constable and of the royal favorite, La Trémouille, that when the latter fell, in 1433, his credit at the court was unimpaired.[509]

He was, moreover, a man of unusual culture. His restless curiosity and thirst for knowledge led him to accumulate books at a time when it was rare for knights to be able to sign their names. Chance has preserved to us the titles of St. Augustin's "City of God,"--"Valerius Maximus," Ovid's "Metamorphoses" and "Suetonius," as fragments of his library; and on his trial one of the reasons he gave for liking an Italian necromancer was the choice Latinity of his speech. He delighted in rich bindings and illuminations. On one occasion he is described, but a few months before his arrest, as engaged in his study in ornamenting with enamels the cover of a book of ceremonies for his chapel. Of music and the drama he was also passionately fond. In these pursuits he was a fit comrade for the good King René, as in the field he was the mate of Dunois and La Hire.[510]

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 passions 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 asserted 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 horsemen 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 passion for theatrical displays. The drama of the age, though rude, was costly, and when he exhibited freely to the multitude 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 principal were Roger de Briqueville and Gilles de Sillé. 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, René de la Suze, and his cousin, the Admiral de Loheac, captured and garrisoned the castles of Champtocé 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 noble, 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 lusts, 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 Champtocé was about to be surrendered to the duke, the bones of about forty children were hastily gathered together and carried off; when René 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 appetites 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 appetite 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 assumed 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 assistance 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 naïve 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 glass 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 Hôtel de la Suze were apt to disappear unaccountably. His confidential servants, Henri Griart, known as Henriet, and Étienne 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 God; 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 Sillé, 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-Sèvre. 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 God 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 massacre 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 God to give you patience and knowledge: be certain that if you have patience and hope in God we shall meet each other in the great joy of paradise. Pray God for me, and I will pray for you." There was none of the agonizing doubt that racked the tender conscientiousness of the Friends of God, no mental struggle, but the calm assurance, 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 assail 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-Étienne 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 entitling 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 horsemen to Saint-Étienne, left them in ambush near the castle, and with a few followers went to the church where Jean was at his devotions. Mass 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 reassured. 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-Étienne, 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 lust 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 Sillé 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 assert 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]