He prayed for leave to make confession of his crimes, and to have the Bishop of Saint-Brieuc assigned for that purpose.
It was agreed that the judge, Pierre l’Hospital, the President of Brittany, should sit with the Bishop to hear the proposed confession, and that the session should be held at two o’clock that afternoon. Gilles agreed to this, as he would have agreed to anything else, and he promised to make a clean breast of the whole affair. But as an evidence of the terror with which he contemplated the torture, he demanded (this seems to have been his only condition) that his examination and confession should be taken in a hall as distant as possible from that of the torture. The court agreed to this proposition at once, and the two officials named were assigned the duty. The secretaries, or clerks of the court, acting respectively for these high functionaries, were Jean Parvi for the ecclesiastical court, and Jean de Touscheronde for the civil court.
It is said that Gilles’s confession before these two representatives of the ecclesiastical and civil powers was made in public, where everybody who desired could enter and hear. This confession of the same day is headed, in the records (archives), extra-judiciare, for what reason is unknown; but, as there was a fuller, and apparently a judicial, confession made by him the next day, which will be given at length, the confession extra-judiciare is omitted, the incident only being mentioned.
The President of Brittany, Pierre l’Hospital, undertook the interrogation of Gilles. He took up first the crimes against the infants, their abduction and murder, and went through that with great minutiæ, pushing it to all details; then the same with regard to sorcery and the invocation of demons; the bloody sacrifices that had been offered to the Evil One, as had been in evidence so many days. Pressed to tell where this commenced, Gilles said it was at the château of Champtocé, that the time was so long ago that he had forgotten and was unable to identify it, except that it was in the year in which his grandfather, Jean de Craon, had died. “Who gave to you, and how did you get, the idea of committing these crimes?” “No one; my own imagination drove me to do so. The thought was my own, and I have nothing to which to attribute it except my own desire for knowledge of evil.”
It appears, from the report of the case, that the President of Brittany did not believe these statements of Gilles’s to be possible. He was so much astonished to hear this declaration that he pushed the examination with great detail, and insisted upon fuller and more specific answers. He approached Gilles sometimes from the legal side, sometimes from the ecclesiastical; sometimes he threatened him with the punishment of the secular arm, at other times he pleaded with him and held out the offers of pardon from the Lord Jesus Christ; and by virtue of all these, he besought Gilles to go back over the words which he had spoken, to make a truthful and honest avowal of the causes which had led him to the commission of these frightful crimes.
There were three languages employed in these proceedings; probably all three were spoken by the higher orders: the Latin by the ecclesiastical authorities, and that language was employed by the ecclesiastical court; then the French language, which was foreign to Brittany, but which probably Gilles and all those concerned in the trial understood; while as for the common people, doubtless their knowledge was confined to the Breton language. The confession of Gilles, reduced to writing by the clerk’s secretary, not verbatim, nor pretending to be so, but to have been written out only in substance, as is done in the case of testimony before an examiner or notary who employs longhand.
While the President was pushing this investigation and cross-examination so far, to the visible annoyance and great trouble of Gilles, he cried out in French: “Alas, Monseigneur, you torment yourself and me also, both of us, unnecessarily!” “No,” replied the President of Brittany, “I do not torment myself; but I am astonished at what you have said, and I am scarcely content with it. My only desire is to have you tell the truth concerning the causes which I have so oftentimes asked you.” Responded Gilles: “There is no other cause; I have told you the truth and everything as it happened; Je vous ay dit de plus grans choses que n’est cest cy, et assez pour faire mourir dix milles hommes (I have said to you all things as they are, and enough to kill ten thousand men).” Then the President gave over interrogating him, and accepted his declaration as true. He was sent back to his chamber, and his accomplice, François Prelati, the Italian priest, chemist, and alchemist, was brought out.
Transcription of opposite page, being sample (photograph by the author) of a Latin manuscript of the Record in the process against Gilles de Retz, from the Archives of Loire-Inférieure, Nantes, a page of his (extra-judicial) confession.
“hoc facere illo anno quo defunctus avunculus suus dominus de la Suze decessit.
“Item, interrogatus per ipsum dominum presidentem quis eundem reum advisavit, consuluit vel instruxit ad predicta facinora facienda, respondit quod hec de se ipso imaginatus fuit, cogitavit, fecit, et perpetravit, nemine consulente seu advertente aut ipsum ad hoc introducente, sed ex proprio suo sensu et capite ac pro complicencia et delectacione suis libidinosis explendis, et non pro quacumque alia intencione seu fine, predicta peccata, scelera et delicta fecerat et commiserat. Et, cum dictus dominus presidens, admirans, ut dicebat, qualiter ipse reus hec premissa scelera et delicta de se ipso et nemine instigante fecisset, ipsum reum iterum summasset ut ex quo motivo seu intencione et ad quem finem dictorum puerorum occisionem, cum eis commixtionem seu pollucionem, et ipsorum cadaverum combustionem, et reliqua scelera et peccata predicta fecisset, vellet ipse reus, ad sue consciencie, ipsum verissimiliter accusantis, exonerationem, et pro venia clementissimi Redemptoris inde super commissis facilius obtinenda, plenius declarare: tune idem reus, quasi quodammodo indignatus super tam sollicita et exacta inquiscione dicti domini presidentis, dixit eidem verba que secuntur gallice: ‘Helas, Monseigneur, vous vous tourmentez et moy avecques’: cui reo dicenti dominus presidens ita dixit gallice: ‘Je ne me tourmente point, mais je suis moult esmerveillé de ce que vous me dites et ne m’en puis bonnement contenter. Ainczois, je desire et vouldroye par vous en savoir la pure verité pour les causes que je vous ay ja souventes foiz dictes.’ Cui domino presidenti ipse reus tunc respondit, hec dicens gallice: ‘Vrayement, il n’y avoit autre cause, fin, ne intencion que ce que je vous ay dit: je vous ay dit de plus grans choses que n’est cest cy, et assez pour faire mourir dix mille hommes.’ Qui quidem dominis presidens tunc omisit ipsum reum.”
Facsimile of folio page from archives of trial at Nantes.
Confession of Gilles de Retz.