Perversion the Social Relation

Confessions of a Medieval Sodomite 153Brittany, and Jean de Malestroit, archbishop of Nantes, both of whom,not coincidentally, acquired a significant portion of Gilles's propertyduring the years leading up to the trial—delayed for so long the organizationof their investigation because several years had to pass from thetime of the emergence of the initial evidence of the crimes before theseauthorities could no longer profit from Gilles's moral and financial selfdestruction.32 Given the intensely polemical nature of much of the criticismconcerning the trial's political aspects, it is necessary to point outwhat should be obvious, namely that the identification of the politicaland ecclesiastical elites' interest in delaying Gilles's arrest and orderinghis execution need not lead us to the conclusion that there was a massive"conspiracy" against Gilles, that his trial was a hoax. As JacquesHeers has succinctly put it, "Villainous judges are perfectly capable ofrecognizing true crimes." 33Viewed against the backdrop of this dark political intrigue, Gilles'sarticulation of his radical evil, so naively and unselfconsciously enunciated,acquires an unanticipated dimension of heroism when juxtaposedwith the manipulations of the church authorities and the astoundingcomplicity of the trial audience. In fact, the ultimate paradox of thecase of Gilles de Rais might be that the confession of his perversion—the uncensored transparency of his self-delusion and morbid criminality,as well as the lucidity with which he makes available to us the perverseshort-circuiting of subjectivity that characterizes his psychic structure—providesus with the tools required to bring to light the cynicallyneurotic perversity of the church's and the public's investments in hiscrimes.Notes1 Thomas Wilson provides a useful overview of the relation between the facts of thetrial and the development of the Bluebeard motif in Breton folklore. Leonard Wolfelaborates on the differences between the events of Gilles's life and their distorted representationin the Bluebeard tradition (Leonard Wolf, Bluebeard: The Life and Crimesof Gilles de Rais [New York: Clarkson N. Potter, 1980]).2 Reinach's article "Gilles de Rais" is the best known and most influential attempt torehabilitate Gilles de Rais through the argument that the trial was the instrumentof a political conspiracy that entirely fabricated Gilles's crimes (Salomon Reinach,"Gilles de Rais," Cultes, mythes et religions 4.8 [1912): 267-99). None of the recent