The horrific crimes of the 15th century French aristocrat Gilles de Rais are well known to the general reader, but aside from this image of Gilles de Rais or 'Bluebeard' as he came to be known in French literature. (1) They have several aspects to them which are not so widely known.
In the first instance there are some grounds for doubting Gilles' actual crimes in that the ecclesiastical court that tried him (and recommended his case to the secular court for sentencing [i.e. for his execution]) was not exactly disinterested and the actual reason for bringing him to court (his violation of a Church's sanctity by seizing a priest during mass with that priest having cheated him out of a piece of property) (2) was obviously nothing more than a pretext. The case itself seems to have a sub-text of political motives; hence the pride of place of the charge of heresy and not child murder/witchcraft in the original indictment relating to the Duke of Brittany and the Bishop of Nantes' attempts to extract land from the increasing bankrupt Gilles. (3) Hence Gilles' offer of large bequests to the church and request to join the Carmelite monks (4) can be interpreted as an attempt to buy his way out a political trial and preserve an inheritance for his daughter.
In the second Gilles only confessed - such as his confession may be termed one - when he was told he would be tortured if he did not do so. (5)
In the third Gilles' victims were universally young and male: those female victims we have allegations of his killing are from dubious testimony, because the testimony is non-specific while that related to some of the boys that went missing is. (6)
This lends itself to seeing Gilles as a homosexual paederast (also pointed to by the fact that he only ever had one daughter with his wife [who had at least one child we know of with her second husband)]and seems to have been away from her whenever possible) with strong religious convictions. Gilles - for want of a better term - was really a bit dim and easily lead by others as is shown by the fact that nobody at the French court thought Gilles a political or social threat when he was appointed as a Marshall of France. (7)
This stands in stark contrast to the usual portrayal of Gilles as a genius whose mind was unable to find its niche, (8) but on closer inspection we find that this is a supposition based on the fact that we know that Gilles - in an age before books were common - had a copy of Ovid's 'Metamorphoses', Suetonius' history of the Caesars and two copies of St. Augustine's 'City of God'. (9)
However, a simple fact is overlooked in that supposition: Gilles was a very ostentatious individual (10) and books (especially rare ones) were an expensive luxury. (11) It does not necessarily follow that because Gilles owned copies of some rare books that he was a rootless intellectual.
Indeed, the odds are that it was an ostentatious display because in the first instance Gilles never pursued any higher education what-so-ever (he hated his two ecclesiastical tutors for a start and so bad was their relationship that he hunted one of them down twenty years after the fact). (12) While in the second had Gilles been a genius - or even highly intelligent – then if he did what was alleged and he confessed to doing; he would have realised that he didn't need all the sorcerers and alchemists he acquired and could have pursued his own alchemical researches using just occasional advice and his own reading.
That he felt he needed large doses of outside help from a whole range of charlatans and snake oil salesmen (13) and furthermore that he strongly believed in their rather obvious deceptions (such as a sorcerer entering a haunted wood at night of the new moon only to make lots of loud noises to indicate he had summoned something) (14) suggests quite strongly that Gilles was less a medieval Einstein and more the village idiot given control of the village.
It is important to understand this lack of intelligence because it in part potentially exonerates Gilles from some of the blame for the crimes which he probably committed at least some of, (15) in that - as Bataille has pointed out - (16) Gilles likely fell under the spell of his longest alchemist companion named Francois Prelati.
Prelati, as Bataille argues, is likely the key agent in Gilles' downfall as he appears to have seduced Gilles and introduced him to paederasty as well as the various types of sadistic sexuality with which Gilles is now closely associated. The thing about Prelati is that he escaped the trial of Gilles - in spite of being directly responsible for the alleged murder and sexual molestation of hundreds of male children - with only a life sentence which he then absconded from only then to seduce another lord who wished to dabble in alchemy and the occult, becoming arrogant once again, being captured and then put to death. (17)
Now in coming to Prelati we come to the convergence of our description of the crimes of Gilles and the jews in two separate issues. The first is in what Gilles was specifically trying to do (create a new source of revenue for himself by cracking the secrets of the art of alchemy) and the second is why he was specifically trying to do it in the first place.
Let’s return to Prelati now for a moment to observe that we know precious little about him other than he had allegedly been a cleric at one time (18) (although I doubt this and would suggest it more likely that Prelati was assuming the air of clerical honours after being well-schooled) and that he was an Italian. (19)
Now for all that Prelati was obviously something of a con artist: I don't doubt that he did genuinely believe (at least partly anyway) in the possibility and plausibility of what he was trying to do (i.e. transform base metals into 'prima materia' and then transform them back into valuable metals such as gold and silver). However, to do such experiments and test his theories he needed rich sponsors with a slightly gullible streak willing to part with large sums of cash in order to obtain the rare ingredients needed for such experimentation.
The ideas however that formed much of what Prelati was doing are heavily derived from elements of jewish magic - specifically the Kabbalah - which had begun to significantly penetrate the thinking of Western occultic masters and adepts at around this time. (20) Specifically one of the most significant borrowings from jewish magic was the direct invocation of demons as deliberate agents who could be bound by the will of a sufficiently skilled conjurer to do their persona bidding (21) as opposed to the value-neutral 'spirit invocations' that were common in traditional European magic. (22)
Christian and traditional European ideas about magic of course fused with these jewish borrowings to create the demons as significant entities of themselves as opposed to the evil entities who could be controlled of jewish magic (usually for use in divination) (23) and the spirits of the ancestors and the Gods who were invoked in traditional European magic.
The merger comes from the jewish habit - as shown most tangibly by the use of 'Ba'al' (lit. 'Master') in the Old Testament to describe a whole range of different gods and deities - of assuming that any god or metaphysical entity other than Yahweh was actually just an evil spirit who was worshipped by deluded individuals and nations fusing with the Christian belief in a literal 'evil one' (i.e. the devil) making an 'evil spirit' rather more than a wandering enemy of God's creation, but rather a member of the devil's highly organized legion of the damned.
We can see that the demons that Prelati and others alleged they had raised (including the devil himself on several occasions) were essentially taken almost directly from jewish concepts of magic and had been given a Christian veneer by apportioning them a place within the Christian intellectual cosmogony.
However Christian the devil might at first appear to be in large measure the devil Gilles knew, and indeed that we still hear of today, wore a kippah, a tallit and conversed in Hebrew.
The demonology of the jews and Kabbalistic ideas about the mystical importance of individual characters and names (although these did have precedent in European magic their use was substantially different and their power understood differently when compared to the jewish versions) is visible to us through the importance attached to such things by occultists and alchemists in the medieval era.
When we add that we know that this specific kind of 'agent magic' (i.e., jewish demonology which developed from jewish angelology) sprung from the jews in southern Italy our interest must be tweaked. (24) This is even more interesting because southern Italy was one of the greatest jewish centres of Gilles' day (25) (the jews having been officially expelled from France in 1306) and Prelati, of course, just happened to come from Italy.
We also know that jews were - shortly before Gilles' time - coming north into the regions previously cleansed of their jewish inhabitants (26) and that this means that Gilles' agents - who were scouring southern Europe (specifically Italy) for skilled occultists and alchemists - (27) would have run into a large number of jewish occultists and alchemists or at the very least many of those who had been trained and inspired by them.
Prelati is an obvious candidate for at least being inspired by jewish magic or magicians in his quest for the 'prima materia'. We cannot say whether Prelati was himself of jewish origin or not with no evidence to do so, but it is clear that if he wasn't jewish: he was probably deeply inspired by the magical ideas of the jews.
One particular idea that seems to have dominated Gilles' thought is the concept of spiritual transgression in that we are told that Gilles would do anything Prelati told him to in order to affect the desired result except for one thing: sell his soul to the devil. (28) This wasn't through a lack of Prelati's encouragement to do so, (29) but because Gilles was deeply religious in a way that I would opine is very difficult for the modern secular man to comprehend.
In Prelati's suggesting, encouragement and management of Gilles' alleged crimes we should see a man who wanted to get to the 'prima materia' no matter what and Gilles was in many ways the ideal candidate to help him do that as he was deeply in debt to moneylenders and was willing to do practically anything to get his fortune back so he could pursue his expensive habits again. In essence Gilles was Prelati's experiment to see if human sacrifice, sodomy, torture and fornication could actually summon the devil and please him sufficiently to give Prelati the secret to alchemy (which the devil was presumed to know). (30)
In Prelati we can see the evil mastermind behind Gilles' crimes and also a man who deserved a far more painful death than he; in fact, received. The question of his jewishness may be impossible to prove either way, but it is no accident that a plethora of writers on Gilles have mentioned that jewish magic, and specifically the Kabbalah, was key to the intellectual system that underlay Gilles' alleged crimes. (31)
Having illuminated the jewish influence on the crimes themselves it remains for us to look into the second half of the equation as to what drove Gilles to do what he allegedly did.
That is really very simple: Gilles was a spendthrift par extraordinaire and in spite of being one of the richest subjects of the French crown. He managed to bankrupt himself in a few short years by his habit of giving large sums of money to almost random individuals, settling parts of his estates on other individuals and spending outrageous sums on making war on the English crown (specifically in service to the French crown through the agency of Jean d'Arc) as well as on theatre productions and religious services/paraphernalia.
By the beginning of his crimes (when he resigned as a Marshall of France) in 1432 Gilles was all but broke and had begun borrowing from moneylenders as well as selling off estates to other lords queueing up to buy them at bargain prices (Gilles was desperate for ready cash after all and as soon as he acquired it, he had usually squandered it). (32)
The interesting question in that is: who were the moneylenders?
Since the moneylenders at this time were usually Christian monastic institutions and we have no record that I have seen or heard of of Gilles borrowing from such institutions (I suspect he would have found it immoral to do so due to his excessive religiosity): it is reasonable to assume he had found some other stream of credit. Gilles' known contact and predilection for Italy suggests a very obvious candidate in the jewish moneylenders who were famously operating throughout Italy in spite of the attempts by the Papacy to outlaw them. (33)
If Gilles did borrow (at least in part) from jewish moneylenders - as we may speculatively but reasonably suggest - then it also gives us the vector for how he and his agents located occultists and alchemists in such numbers as to be able to judge those thought most skilled and employ them. The reason for this is rather simple in that many jews in the medieval period as well before and after often had a formal occupation - such as money lending - and also had a separate religious life, which could for the more mystically inclined easily include engaging in jewish magic and teaching non-jews bits of said magic for a price.
This completes the riddle of Gilles then as it gives us both the key origin of the magical ideas, he thought he was experimenting with and also the medium through which those ideas were introduced to him as well as locating the partial agent of Gilles' financial desperation in one group of people: the jews.
This then turns the famous scholar of jewish magic Joshua Tractenberg's argument that the activities of Gilles de Rais informed Christian charges of witchcraft, sorcery and devil worship against the jews on its head. (34) Instead, it places the crimes of Gilles de Rais in a background of increasing financial desperation - partially caused by the jews - and the concomitant desperation to find the magical secrets - garnered ultimately from the jews - of transmutation of base metal into gold.
It is then clear that the jews bear at least some of the responsibility for the murder of the several hundred male children allegedly tortured, sodomized and butchered by Gilles de Rais in the name of magical experimentation and his own flagging fortunes.
References
(1) Georges Bataille, Richard Robinson (Trans.), 2004, 'The Trial of Gilles de Rais', 1st Edition, Amok: Los Angeles, p. 17
(2) Ibid, pp. 62-63
(3) A. Vincent, Claire Binns, 1926, 'Gilles de Rais: The Original Bluebeard', 1st Edition, A. Philpot: London, p. 164; vis-a-vis Robert Moore, 2012, 'The War on Heresy: Faith and Power in Medieval Europe', 1st Edition, Profile: London
(4) Candice Black (Ed.), 2012, 'Satanic Alchemy: Atrocities of Gilles de Rais', 1st Edition, Sun Vision Press: Washington D.C., pp. 63-65
(5) Bataille, Op. Cit., p. 22; Vincent, Binns, Op. Cit, pp. 174-175
(6) Implied by Ibid., pp. 34-37; also Black, Op. Cit., pp. 43-44; 60-61
(7) Ibid, p. 31
(8) Tennille Dix, 1931, 'The Black Baron: The Strange Life of Gilles de Rais', 1st Edition, Eveleigh Nash: London, pp. 34-35
(9) Black, Op. Cit., p. 82
(10) Bataille, Op. Cit., pp. 47-52
(11) Black, Op. Cit., p. 155
(12) Bataille, Op. Cit., pp. 25; 98-99
(13) Black, Op. Cit., pp. 15-16; 108
(14) Ibid, p. 16
(15) Jeffrey Burton Russell, 1974, 'Witchcraft in the Middle Ages', 1st Edition, Cornell University Press: Ithaca, p. 263
(16) Bataille, Op. Cit., pp. 23; 32
(17) Ibid, p. 23
(18) Black, Op. Cit., pp. 14-17
(19) Ibid., pp. 17; 36
(20) Russell, Op. Cit., p. 262
(21) Joshua Tractenberg, 1939, 'Jewish Magic and Superstition: A Study in Folk Religion', 1st Edition, Behrman's Jewish Book House: New York, p. 26
(22) On this see Bengt Ankarloo, Stuart Clark (Eds.), 2002, 'Witchcraft and Magic in Europe: The Middle Ages', 1st Edition, University of Pennsylvania Press: Philadelphia
(23) Tractenberg, Op. Cit., p. 26
(24) Ibid, pp. 72-73
(25) Robert Chazan, 2006, 'The Jews of Medieval Western Christendom 1000-1500', 1st Edition, Cambridge University Press: New York, pp. 119-120
(26) Ibid, pp. 121-122
(27) Black, Op. Cit., pp. 15-17
(28) Ibid, pp. 37-38
(29) Vincent, Binns, Op. Cit, pp. 136-137
(30) Bataille, Op. Cit., pp. 59-62
(31) Vincent, Binns, Op. Cit, p. 128; Dix, Op. Cit., p. 56; Black, Op. Cit., p.15
(32) Ibid, pp. 97; 111; 121; Bataille, Op. Cit., pp. 14; 44; 47-52
(33) Chazan, Op. Cit., pp. 121-124
(34) Tractenberg, Op. Cit., p. 9