Perversion the Social Relation

Confessions of a Medieval Sodomite 131respect to his crimes; it is also what should turn our attention to that aspectof his confession that points to the specificity of his relation to thesociosymbolic Other. At no point did Gilles waver from the inclusion ofhimself in the set of believers blessed by God's favor. Though the luxuryof his enormous feudal privilege no doubt played a significant role inthe adamancy with which Gilles espoused this position, the fact remainsthat not once during his confession did Gilles consider himself, as wellas the crimes he committed, as either in some manner alien to the humanfabric, or as beyond the reach of God's forgiveness. This strange complicitybetween his compulsion to narrate the crimes and his convictionin the clemency of God begins to demonstrate what we will later qualifyas the perverse structure that characterizes the confession. Additionally,it also points to the ethical ambivalence of Gilles's discourse: on the onehand, Gilles underlines that the enormity of his perversion is simply anintensified version of a perversity of universal human reach but, on theother hand, fie also gives evidence of the ethical short circuit that distinguisheshis brand of criminality from the hysterically transferentialresponse of the trial audience to his confession.Before advancing to a more technical exploration of Gilles's perversionand the trial audience's response to it, let us firstconsider in greaterdetail the main characteristics of the confession itself. It is crucial tonote, for example, the manner in which Gilles's insistence on emphasizingthe potential human universality of the dark forces that motivatedhim link up with the trial audience's counterintuitive empathy with thecriminal. While the apparatus of the Inquisition attempted to displayGilles in all his horrific glory as a means of gaining public sanction forits acts of capital punishment, Gilles reveled in his own spectacularization,all the while premising his confession on the hypothesis that anyone,in the proper circumstances, could be led to commit crimes as unthinkableas his own. Whatever evil force compelled him to perform thehorrific infanticidal acts lies dormant, he implied, in each of his confession'sauditors. Witness the transcription of Jean Petit, notary public,who recorded as follows this crucial aspect of Gilles's testimony:The said Gilles de Rais, the accused, voluntarily and publicly, beforeeveryone, confessed that, because of his passion and sensualdelight, he took and had others take so many children that he couldnot determine with certitude the number whom he'd killed and