The second sentence was in similar language, concluding, however, as follows:
“Thou, Gilles de Retz, hast shamefully committed crimes with infants of one or the other sex; thou hast committed sacrilege; hast violated the immunities of the Church; by these crimes, thou hast incurred the sentence of excommunication and all other punishments fixed by law; and thou art, by consequence, to be punished and corrected according to thy salvation and the will and exigencies of law and the holy canons.”
All Gilles’s fears returned when he realised that he was to be convicted of heresy and condemned to excommunication. Falling on his knees, tears in his eyes, trembling, he humbly pleaded and begged the judges to lift from his life, now so near ended and so worthless, this excommunication. After consultation together, it was determined by the Bishop and the Vice-Inquisitor to grant this prayer, and the decree of excommunication was annulled in the usual form. Gilles was admitted to the administration of the Holy Sacraments, and permission given him to commune with the faithful. Gilles immediately demanded the appointment of a priest to hear him in confession, that he might profess his penitence and receive absolution from his sins, and the Frère Jean Juvenal, a Carmelite of Plouarmel, was designated for that purpose.
So terminated the ecclesiastical trial of Gilles de Retz. It commenced on the 17th of September and lasted one month and eight days. It ended in his conviction of the only crimes of which the ecclesiastical court had jurisdiction, to wit, heresy, apostacy, and invocation of demons. The sentence was excommunication, which, we have seen, was lifted, and the final outcome of this trial was the repentance of Gilles de Retz.
Now we turn to the process instituted by the civil tribunal for the trial of Gilles upon other charges than those of which he was convicted by the ecclesiastical court. The usual close of the sentence of an ecclesiastical court, wherein the accused was charged with other crimes than those with which the court had jurisdiction, would be: “Go in peace, the Church can no longer defend thee, she delivers thee to the secular arm” (bras séculier). But this declaration was not made; it was useless, for it was well known to the judges that the civil court had already been organised and had taken cognisance and jurisdiction of the various crimes of Gilles, such as had been charged and so well proved before the ecclesiastical court.
CHAPTER VI
The Trial before the Civil Court
Trial before the Civil Court—Depositions—Conviction and Sentence