Perversion the Social Relation

of*James PenneyMeet Gilles de Rais"Sodomite," pederast, infanticidal criminal, and enthusiast of the blackarts, Gilles de Rais is the most infamous monster of French cultural history.A nobleman and warrior of the early fifteenthcentury, Gilles distinguishedhimself in battle, most notably alongside Joan of Arc during theHundred Years War, earning the prestigious title of Marshal of France atthe precocious age of twenty-six. Orphaned at eleven, Gilles became oneof the richest and most powerful men in all medieval Europe upon thedeath of his grandfather and guardian, Jean de Craon. The transcripts ofthe trial of Gilles de Rais, preserved through the centuries in a Nantes archive,convey the testimonies of dozens of witnesses who claim that themembers of Gilles's entourage kidnapped, over a period of about eightyears, more than a hundred adolescent and préadolescent children, almostexclusively boys, whom Gilles then submitted to disturbing ritualsof erotic torture, then summarily murdered by strangulation, decapitation,or dismemberment.Not surprisingly, during the centuries after his execution at the stakefor the crimes of heresy, sodomy, and invocation, Gilles de Rais becamethe stuff of folkloric legend, frightening countless generations of Bretonschoolchildren through his figurationin the Bluebeard tale, which nonethelessholds few resemblances to the facts the trial documents relay.1 After Voltaire, in his Essai sur les mœurs, expressed doubt aboutGilles's guilt, early twentieth-century historians, most notably Salomon