A History of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages; volume III

by Henry Charles Lea

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]

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’Hôpital, 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 pronounced 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-Étienne, 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 assumed 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 pronounce 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]