4 - The Devil's Disciple

Amid the increasing conflict between godliness and deviltry, witchcraft unquestionably attained the ultimate in horror through the machinations of Gilles de Laval, Seigneur de Rais, who at the age of thirty-six completed a career of wanton lust, cruelty and mass murder that stands practically unparallelled. Gilles de Rais, as he was officially known, was not motivated by political hate, vengeance, nor even a fanatical cause. His sole aim was to amass wealth without end by offering the bodies of countless tortured victims as a sacrifice to a Satanic Majesty in whose existence he ardently believed.

Far from outwardly betraying himself as the monster that he was, Gilles de Rais impressed the public as the magnificent seigneur that he was supposed to be. For years, he completely covered his unspeakable excesses; and as both a soldier and a scholar, he rated with the best in France. Craftily, he chose associates who, like himself, were outwardly cultured but inwardly calloused; and his only weakness was the fact that although he was unquestionably the instigator of the hideous ceremonies in which they joined, he naively let them play upon his own gullibility. As a result, he was duped into perpetrating further and unnecessary outrages that they turned into profit for themselves.

Gilles de Laval, later de Rais, was born in the year 1404, in the -midst of the period when, as already mentioned, witchcraft was figuring heavily in high places. But important persons who resorted to it were usually seeking to overthrow some existing power; or openly grasping so much wealth that they excited the envy or cupidity of those higher up. At the same time, they were frequently lax in religious observances and therefore reluctant to appear in social circles where their piety might be questioned.

In short, once their ambitions were recognized and feared, they were open to charges of treason by the government, and to charges of heresy by the ecclesiastic councils. Either crime could be charged against anyone using witchcraft, or even countenancing it, which accounted for all the trumped up charges against over-ambition in that period. But Gilles de Rais met the requirements of both state and church, giving each far more than they either demanded or expected. His security lay in the fact that he was obviously ruining himself through reckless squandering and extravagance, which would eventually reduce him to a helpless nonentity. Hence, he was able to pursue the most horrendous career on record, in the foolish belief that it would turn out all the grander.

Born of noble lineage, Gilles was the grandson of a famous knight who inspired him to deeds of valor which, for a time, appeased his wildly sensual nature. Among his vast holdings was the barony of Rais, from which he took his title. When only sixteen, he helped release his overlord, Duke John of Brittany, from rival hands and was rewarded with more lands. At the same age, he married wealthy Katherine of Thouars, whose immense dowry added that much more to his exchecquer.

In 1426, de Rais raised seven companies of soldiers and was assigned to accompany Joan of Arc when she set out to free France from the English. Later, he became a Marshal of France, but by 1432, after the death of his grandfather, he began to retire from military life to enjoy his vast possessions which included the castles of Champtoce, Tiffauges, and many lesser strongholds. Two hundred horsemen accompanied him as a bodyguard and in Orleans, he spent 80,000 crowns in four months, with his retinue taking over all the inns in town.

He produced immense theatrical extravaganzas, all free to the populace, as were the great banquets that followed. But he did not neglect the nobility and clergy. Rather than rouse Duke John's envy by all this pomp, de Rais increased his friendship by selling him choice estates at bargain prices. He gained the good will of John de Malestroit, Bishop of Nantes, by giving vast sums to charity and splendid church rites. De Rais' private chapel was attended by a chapter of thirty canons with choir and service fit for a cathedral.

Apparently, Gilles de Rais was so inculcated with the religious doctrines of the period that he felt capable of choosing between God and the Devil as tangible realities. So he cannily concluded that no matter how much he paid to church and state, the Devil could match and double it, or perhaps triple it, or even quadruple it, if properly evoked. And in a secret sanctum in the dungeon of the Chateau de Tiffauges, de Rais did indeed evoke the Devil. The ruins of these sordid surroundings were vividly described by Montague Summers, one of the most notable modern writers on the subject of witchcraft and demonology:

At Tiffauges today, from the lonely broken arches of the Chapel, one may pass through a cellar door into the crypt below, which dates from the eleventh century. Of no great size and low-sprung, the solid roof is transversed by heavy, yet not ungraceful, semicircular arches supported by massy pillars whose capitals are relieved with carved lozenges and croziers. The place is gloomy and but a wan, watery daylight seems to filter in, showing the rough broken floor, in one corner of which gapes the naked opening of some oubliette or little well, down which, no doubt, were thrown the dead bodies of the children offered upon the altar-stone.

In such a setting, Gilles de Rais was aided and abetted in his devil worship by two renegade churchmen, Antonio Francesco Prelati and Gilles de Silles. He depended upon several confidential servants to kidnap youthful victims for Satanic sacrifices and also to quash rumors regarding their disappearance. Meanwhile, the hidden crypt was functioning as the center of hideous, sacrilegious rites, which, according to Montague Summers, were probably performed in the following manner:

One can well picture the scene illumined only by two black candles, reeking of bitumen and pitch, and by the faint flicker of the rushlight set upon the ground. The silence is broken but by the hoarse blasphemy of the acolyte as he responds in a low tone to the hurried mutter of the young priest clad in the strange vestments of his infernal cult, the mock chasuble of murrey, the hue of dank clotted gore, marked with the inverse cross. The sacred words of power are spoken with a sneer. The golden chalice is raised in hideous parody; the keen knife flashes with swift light; a moment more and the fresh blood gushes into the sacramental cup, from the gaping throat of the youth lying fettered there; poor blood commingles with the saving Blood of God, and as the film of death closes over the agonizing eyes of his victim, Perlatti calls aloud upon Apollyon, the Prince of Darkness, to accept the sacrifice, to manifest and show himself gracious unto his faithful worshippers, granting their desire.

According to one well-authenticated report, Gilles de Rais made his first great stride toward irrevocable perdition when he inherited another castle containing a library with books written in Latin. These profusely illustrated books related the lives of the early Roman emperors with special emphasis on their vices. After reading and viewing these samples of imperial debauchery, de Rais decided that since he was of equally high estate, he was entitled to similar privileges. But those early emperors were pagans, and thus lost souls regardless of their morals, or lack of them. In contrast, de Rais would be taking a real risk if he emulated them.

So he calculated that risk and took it. So depraved were his desires that he tortured the victims whom he outraged and gloated as he watched their death agonies. According to some estimates, their number ran into the hundreds, for the greater and more wanton the slaughter, the more de Rais proved himself a true disciple of the Devil, whom he was ready to accept as master.

To that end, de Rais wrote out pacts in his own blood, and he was said to have used the blood of many victims to inscribe red-lettered pages of conjurations calculated to bring the Devil himself.

De Rais actually counted on the Devil to provide him with needed riches, and to that end he reserved the choicest victims of his lust as human sacrifices on the Satanic altar where Prelati, de Silles, and other specialists in evil, performed their diabolical rites. They not only went along with whatever de Rais wanted; they tended to increase the tempo of his monstrous urges, for as Gilles' financial status reached a precarious stage, the greater their priority became.

Fundamental to all this was the fact that de Rais retained the right to buy back any of the holdings that he was selling off so cheaply to Duke John and others. Always, he was anticipating vast wealth to arrive from infernal sources overnight; but finally, he was willing to settle for anything. The main reason why de Rais had chosen Prelati to conduct the diabolical rites was because the renegade supposedly had a familiar demon of his own, called Barron, whom he could summon almost at will. So de Rais ordered Prelati to evoke his familiar and let Barron listen to a request for gold that de Rais would make in person.

Prelati went through all the required formalities, but Barron failed to appear while Gilles de Rais was around, so Prelati promised to summon the familiar privately and put in the request himself. He did so and came to de Rais with the enthusiastic report that Barron had delivered a quantity of gold ingots that were stacked about Prelati's apartment; but, in accordance with demoniac procedure, they were to be left untouched for a specified number of days.

Gilles de Rais tried to wait it out, but couldn't. He ordered Prelati to unlock the apartment before the appointed time. The door, when opened, revealed the golden glitter that de Rais had hoped to see, but moments later, Prelati, who had entered first, came rushing out, warning de Rais back and barring the door from the outside, just in time. Prelati, it seemed, had practically stumbled over a huge green serpent that Barron had installed as guardian of the gold; and he had almost fallen prey to its deadly fangs.

De Rais wanted to enter the apartment with a crucifix to drive away the serpent, but Prelati warned him that it might cause Barron to stay away as well. So they waited until the stipulated day and found that the guardian serpent was gone, but that the gold ingots had been turned to tinsel, which crumpled under touch. But gullible Gilles, far from suspecting that Barron was a product of Prelati's fertile imagination, kept begging the renegade to let him sign blood pacts pledging direct obedience to the demon in return for gold that would remain real long enough for him to pay off his most pressing debts.

Prelati insisted that Barron would first have to be reconciled by a major sacrifice, so de Rais supplied a glass receptacle containing a child's heart, hands, eyes and blood as a special offering to the offended demon. Further rituals followed on a more gruesome scale than ever, but before Barron could be sufficiently appeased to deliver, Gilles de Rais came to the end of his rope; not just figuratively, but literally as well.

Gilles' wife had left him soon after he had launched on his monstrous career and the disappearance of so many children from the neighborhood of his various castles during half a dozen years had excited increasing rumors. Finally, one of his confidants, who had not been taken into his diabolical rites, became suspicious and fled from the Castle of Tiffauges.

Thus a case was building up against de Rais when he made the mistake of using force to take back a castle he had sold to Duke John's treasurer. This caused the rift that the duke had long awaited and Gilles de Rais was soon brought to trial, both in ecclesiastical and civil courts, where a formidable list of forty-nine counts was brought against him. As more and more evidence was produced, de Rais lost his haughty composure and admitted his guilt. Then, after two of his servants testified that they had counted the heads of nearly fifty children as his victims and followed with first-hand descriptions of his orgies, de Rais, under threat of torture, made what was claimed to be a full confession.

Brought before his judges, he added abundant details of his atrocities, graphically reenacting his sadistic outrages and gloatingly recalling his monstrous motivations. According to accounts, his listeners sat in stunned silence while de Rais completed his tale; then, reversing his manner entirely, he delivered an impassioned plea to the parents of those he had so cruelly slain, begging them to forgive him and pray for him.

Though sentenced to be burned for his crimes, Gilles de Rais was first hanged; then his body was dropped from the gibbet into the flames, from where it was promptly reclaimed by his relatives and given an honorable burial. Apparently he died in the firm belief that his gruesome confession had expiated all his crimes and sins, which had at least a touch of warped logic, considering that the Devil had totally rejected his overtures and refused him aid that he should have rightfully or wrongfully received.

But the populace thought differently. During the centuries that followed, the children of Brittany were taught never to loiter around castle gates nor follow in the wake of an elegant parade of cavalry. Legend related how Gilles de Rais had originally worn a ruddy beard, but year by year, its redness gradually disappeared, until of all things, it finally turned blue, which could only have happened if all the blood had been drained from it — by the Devil.

From that conjecture developed the fanciful tale of Bluebeard, a very tame character compared to his prototype, Gilles de Rais. All that Bluebeard did was chop off the heads of seven wives, who by his standards, may have properly deserved it for letting their curiosity get the better of them and looking into a room which each had been instructed never to unlock. But it was a tale good enough to frighten children far from Brittany through many successive generations and discourage them from prying into places where they had no right to go.

The case of Gilles de Rais stands as a landmark in the annals of witchcraft because it shows the fantastic limits to which such beliefs could go. Whether or not all the charges against him were true is open to debate, but the people who accepted them as fact began to wonder, not why Gilles de Rais had done what he had, but why he hadn't gotten away with it. The courts that convicted de Rais did not dismiss the Devil as non-existent, for if they had, they might have had to declare de Rais innocent. So the net result was twofold:

People in high places didn't blame the Devil for not coming to the aid of Gilles de Rais; they blamed Gilles de Rais. Maybe he had used the wrong approach, squandering his money on the Devil, who didn't need it. Maybe they could do better in a more subtle way, particularly if they dealt more sharply with the in-between operators, like Prelati and de Silles, so they did.

Those of lesser personage, however, were in their heyday. Every creepy little witch or warlock who was trying to invoke the Devil's aid, but couldn't, due to lack of finances, now was sure that finance wasn't needed.

As for Gilles de Rais, this much might be said in his behalf, even though he in no way deserved it: For the dozens, and perhaps hundreds, that he wantonly sacrificed to witchcraft, there were to be not only hundreds, but thousands, and, by some estimates, hundreds of thousands sacrificed for the same reason. Maybe Gilles de Rais triggered it; maybe he didn't. Anyway, it happened.