Perversion the Social Relation

Confessions of a Medieval Sodomite 133of virtue during their youth and childhood." 10 How is it possible to explainthis theatrical transformation of Gilles from a detestable, homicidalmonster to a sublime conduit of moral pedagogy more crediblethan the authorities of the Inquisition themselves? And how do we cometo terms with the transference of the audience with regard to Gilles—the means, in other words, by which he is attributed with moral knowledgein the very presence of the ecclesiastical authorities whose judicialpowers were at that moment in full display? To the extent that the Gillesde Rais phenomenon schematizes the dependence of religious hegemonyon a surreptitious transgression of dogma, what was the nature and importanceof the transferential identification of the trial's audience withGilles? Did this transference, more specifically, constitute a subversionof the ideology of Christian faith, and hence of the church's politicalpower, or was it rather an act of complicity on behalf of the generalpublic in the church's cynical participation in the perversion of its mostsacred beliefè? And finally, is it possible to conclude, from the evidenceprovided by the trial of Gilles de Rais, that there is a certain complicity;between perversion and hysterical neurosis that lends itself to the formationof a group dynamic especially conducive to political manipulation?How, more specifically, did the church authorities take advantage of thiscomplicity? Before grappling with these questions, however, let us firstbring further detail to our view of Bataille's interpretation of the trial asa means of establishing a context for the present intervention.The Tragedy of History According to Georges BatailleGeorges Bataille's introduction to The Trial of Gilles de Rais presentsthe criminal as a grotesque monster who personifies the tragedy of asocial class decadently abusing its privilege and discovering itself outmodedby the remarkable forces of a nascent bourgeois humanism. Bataille'sinterpretation situates the importance of the trial entirely withinthe particular historical circumstances of the transitional period of earlyfifteenth-century France. In its quest to consider the case amid the multipleand conflicting historical forces of this moment, Bataille's text failsto ask a number of important questions. In spite of its careful and suggestiveanalysis of the historical context of the trial, Bataille's introductionmay too easily be summarized by the following historicist thesis,which, though certainly not incorrect, remains nonetheless unsatisfying: