Perversion the Social Relation

148 James Penneywhich underscores the dimension of Gilles's perversion that solicited thetransferential identification characterizing the public's response:After having exhorted them thus, Gilles got down on his knees,folding his hands together, begging God's mercy, praying to Himto be willing to punish them not according to their misdeeds, but,being merciful, to let them profit by the grace in which he put histrust, telling the people that as a Christian, he was their brother, andurging them and those among them whose children he had killed,for the love of Our Lord's suffering to be willing to pray to God forhim and to forgive him freely, in the same way that they themselvesintended God to forgive and have mercy on themselves. Recommendinghimself to holy Monsignor Jacques, whom he had alwaysheld in singular affection, and also to holy Monsignor Michel, beggingthem in his hour of great need to be willing to help him, aidhim, and pray to God for him, despite the fact that he had notobeyed them as he should have. He further requested that the instanthis soul left his body, it might please holy Monsignor Michelto receive it and present it unto God, whom he begged to take itinto His grace, without punishing it according to its offenses. Andthe said Gilles then made beautiful speeches and prayers to God,recommending his soul to Him. (279; 337)The climactic moment of the Gilles de Rais trial brings to its point ofgreatest intensity the complicity between, on the one hand, Gilles's perversedesire to sacralize himself while theatricalizing to the utmost hiscriminality and, on the other, the efforts of the institutional apparatus ofthe church to consolidate its political power under the guise of an ideologyof faith. As far as Gilles is concerned, his final discourse betrays theproperly perverse short circuit through which his crimes are performedas a means of establishing his innocence before the eyes of God. It is preciselyby becoming guiltier before the divinity, by performing the mosttaboo actions according to church doctrine, that Gilles secures his innocence,and therefore his salvation. Gilles performs his crimes, in otherwords, in order to secure the guilt from which he will then be able tobeseech God for forgiveness. In ethical terms, Gilles performs evil as ameans of safeguarding the good—in this case his favor with respect toGod's grace; he distinguishes himself through evil in order to benefit all