The Dedalus Book of Medieval Literature

by Brian Murdoch

The rope, the wood, the sword, the flame did take from you,

  with axe and horse, your great pride at the last, Sir Hugh.

  A rope, because of the dragging; wood, because he was hanged; the sword, because he was beheaded; flame, because he was disembowelled and his intestines were burned; an axe, because he was chopped into quarters; and a horse, again because he was dragged through the streets.

  On the same day, Simon de Reading was also dragged through the streets and hanged on the same gallows as was used for Hugh, but ten feet lower.

  Sir Thomas de la Moore

  The Life and Death of Edward II

  Now began the arrangements for the final persecution of Edward, a persecution to the death. First of all he was locked securely in a chamber in which, over a period of many days, he was nearly brought to suffocation from the stench of corpses in the room beneath; the intolerable stink from that place was the greatest suffering he had ever borne, and one day Edward, the servant of God, complained from a window to carpenters who were working there. His oppressors saw that death could not conquer such a strong man just by a stench, and on the night of September 21, when he was in bed, he was suddenly taken by surprise and held down and suffocated with bolsters and with the weight of more than fifteen strong men; then, with an iron rod which had been heated until it was red-hot, they burned his intestines by passing it down a tube into his insides through his back passage, taking care that no wounds were visible on the royal body in places where one might look for wounds – for if manifest wounds were found by some friends of justice, his murderers might be made to submit themselves for punishment. And so the strong warrior was overcome, and emitted cries that could be heard inside and outside Berkeley Castle, enough to make known the extent of the violence at the death of the victim. Indeed, the cries of the dying man led many in Berkeley, including some of the castle guards (as they themselves said) to compassion and prayer for the immortal soul of the dying man. Thus can the world turn its hatred upon a man, just as it did before to his master, Jesus Christ; the leader was shunned by the kingdom of the Jews, while His disciple was robbed of the kingdom of England, but received into the heights of the angelic kingdom.

  Persecution by Isabella and by the Bishop of Hereford (so that it might look as if they had clean hands and pure hearts) outlawed and drove into exile the perpetrators, Thomas de Gournay and Sir John Maltravers. Three years later Gournay, hiding out as a fugitive in Marseilles, was recognised, captured and brought back to England to receive his punishment, and was beheaded at sea, for fear that he might accuse the nobles and great prelates and others in the kingdom of involvement in his crime, and of having given their assent. The other one, however, Maltravers, remained in hiding for a long time in Germany.

  Pedro the Cruel

  Medieval kings attracted some interesting soubriquets; the Carolingians produced Lewis the Pious, Charles the Bald, Charles the Fat and others. But a king probably had to make a real effort to get the title ‘the Cruel,’ and King Peter or Pedro IV of Castile (1334–69) seems to have merited it more than many others (although ‘Vlad the Impaler’ is another name to conjure with). H. J. Chaytor said in 1929 that Pedro’s character ‘can be most charitably summarized as the outcome of homicidal mania.’ Pedro’s story is also surprisingly modern in that his regime was propped up by foreign governments, England amongst them, at least for a while. The great French history by Jean Froissart (1337–1410), from which these extracts are taken, was translated into English by John Bourchier, Lord Berners (1467–1533), although his text now needs translating, even if it has its high moments, as when Pedro’s half-brothers are ‘right sore displeased and good cause why’, after he had slaughtered their mother. Incidentally, ‘Bastard’ in this context is entirely technical and without opprobrium.

  Jean Froissart

  The Chronicles

  I, 229f.

  At that time there was a King in Castile called Don Pedro, a man full of arrogant opinions, crude and rebellious against the commandments of Holy Church. He wanted to subdue all neighbouring Christian kings and princes, especially Pedro IV of Aragon, a good, true Christian prince, and had taken from him part of his realm, with a view to taking the rest of it as well. Furthermore, Pedro of Castile had three illegitimate brothers, which his father, King Alfonso XI, had had by a lady called Eleanor de Guzman, known as la richa Doña. The eldest was called Henry, the second Don Tello, and the third Sancho. King Pedro hated them and would not allow them in his sight, and many a time he would have struck off their heads if he had been able to capture them. But they had been loved by King Alfonso, their father, and in his life he gave Henry, the eldest, the county of Astorga, but King Pedro, his half-brother, had taken it from him, and therefore they were permanently at war with each other. Henry the Bastard, however, was a very brave and valiant knight, and had been at war in France for a long time, and had served the French king, who loved him dearly. It was rumoured widely that King Pedro had put to death the mother of the three brothers, and they were rightly very angry about this. Beside that, he had put to death or exiled various great lords of the realm of Castile, and was so cruel and without shame that all his men feared, distrusted and hated him as far as possible. Also he had caused the death of the good and holy lady to whom he was married, namely the Lady Blanche, daughter of Pierre, Duke of Bourbon, cousin to the French Queen and to the Countess of Savoy; this death much angered her family, which was one of the noblest families in the world. Furthermore, it was also rumoured amongst his own men that he had made an alliance with the Emir of Granada, the Marinid Sultan and the Emir of Tlemcen, all of whom were God’s enemies and unbelievers. Because of this, some of his own men were afraid that he would cause damage to his own country by violating God’s churches, for he was already beginning to misappropriate their rents and revenues and to keep some of the prelates in prison in a tyrannous fashion, on account of which daily complaints were made to our Holy Father the Pope, asking him to find some remedy for all this. The Pope agreed readily to these requests, and swiftly sent messengers into Castile to King Pedro, commanding him to come in person at once to Rome without delay, to cleanse and purge himself of such villainous deeds as he was guilty of. However, King Pedro was full of pride and presumptuousness, and would neither obey nor come there, but dealt shamefully with the papal messengers, which incurred the wrath of the Church and of our Holy Father the Pope. Thus this evil King Pedro persevered still in his obstinacy. Therefore, the Pope and the Curia took counsel as to how they might correct him, and there it was decided that he was not worthy of the name of king, nor should he hold any kingdom. And in full consistory in Avignon, in the chamber of excommunication, he was openly declared to be reputed to be an unbeliever. It was considered that he should be constrained and corrected by a group of companions then in the realm of France. Then the King of Aragon, who hated the King of Castile, was sent for, and also Henry the Bastard of Spain, that they should come to the Pope at Avignon. And when they arrived, the Pope made Henry, Bastard of Spain, legitimate and lawful ruler of the realm of Castile, and Pedro was cursed and condemned by sentence of the Pope …

  As I have shown before, this King Pedro was much hated by his own men throughout all the realm of Castile because of his incredibly cruel acts of punishment and for his destruction of noble men in his kingdom, men whom he put to death and slew with his own hands. Because of this, as soon as they saw his brother Henry enter the realm with a great force, they rallied to him and received him as their lord, and rode out with him, and caused cities, towns, boroughs and castles to be opened to him, and everyone did homage to him. And so the Spaniards cried with one voice: ‘Long live Henry! Death to Pedro!’ […]

  Gilles de Rais

  Gilles de Rais was born in 1404, became a Marshal of France, and assisted Joan of Arc against the English. St Joan was executed in 1431 (although Gilles was associated in 1439 with a false Joan, who claimed to have escaped the flames). Gilles is best known, however, for his abuse and murde
r of a large number of children in the 1430s. Records of the trial of what we would now call a serial killer make thoroughly unpleasant reading, and only extracts bear translation. Most of it cannot and should not be read for entertainment of any kind, so concentration here is on the details of his inept and apparently not very successful attempts to invoke demons, rather than his murders of children and his unnatural vices. He was tried for religious and secular crimes, confessed, and declared himself penitent. The real number of his victims is unknown – around two hundred? He was hanged, but his body was saved from being burned, and he was buried (by several noble ladies) in Nantes. He lives on as one of the prototypes for the Bluebeard story, although devil-worship and child-abuse are not really part of that legend, even if murder is.

  Documents of the Trials of Gilles de Rais

  Confession of Gilles de Rais

  Saturday, October 22, 1440

  The aforesaid Gilles de Rais, the accused, confessed voluntarily and in public that he, for his own private delectation, had taken or arranged to have taken such a large number of children that he no longer knew the precise number, and that he killed them or had them killed, and had committed upon them the sin and vice of sodomy; and he said and confessed that he had, in a most culpable fashion … inflicted on these children various kinds and fashions of tortures, either himself or in the company of his associates, notably the following: Gilles de Sillé, Sir Roger de Briqueville, Henriet and Poitou. They had beheaded the victims with knives, daggers and axes, or had beaten them on the head with batons or other objects, or had hanged them with cord on beams and thus strangled them … [Gilles] opened their bodies cruelly, and … took pleasure and laughed with the aforesaid Poitou and Henriet, after which he had the bodies burned and reduced to ashes by these two men. Interrogated as to where and when he perpetrated these crimes, and how many there were, he answered: primarily in the Castle of Champtocé, in the year when his grandfather, the Seigneur de la Suze, had died, and that this was where he killed or had killed very many children – the number of which he was no longer certain. And he had committed with them the aforementioned and unnatural crime of sodomy … Later, at Nantes in the house which he owned at that time called La Suze he killed, had killed, burned and reduced to ashes a number of children – again he did not know how many – having abused and polluted them, committing with them as before the unnatural crime of sodomy. These crimes were committed entirely for his own wicked pleasure and evil delectation, for no other purpose or intent, and with the counsel of no other person, but following only his own imagination.

  Furthermore, the aforesaid Gilles said and confessed that a year and a half past, Eustache Blanchet arranged for M. François Prelati to come from Florence, in Italy, to Gilles, the accused, with the intention of practising diabolical invocation; also that this François had told him that he had found a means in the country which he came from of conjuring up a certain spirit, which then promised him that it would arrange for François to be visited by a demon named Barron, as often as he desired.

  And thus Gilles said and confessed that the aforesaid François did indeed carry out various acts of invocation on his orders, either in his presence or when he was absent, and that he, the accused, had been with him for three of these invocations, once at Tiffauges, once at Bourgneuf-en-Rais, and he was unable to recall where the other one took place.

  Gilles … confessed that to carry out these diabolical invocations they traced signs on the ground in the form of a circle or a cross, with letters. And the aforesaid François possessed a book which he had brought with him from Italy (he said), which contained the names of various demons and the magic words needed to conjure them up, although Gilles could remember neither any of the names nor any of the spells. François had had the book in his hands for the whole two hours of these invocations and conjurations. Gilles affirmed that he, the accused, had never seen or observed a single demon to which he could talk, something which had annoyed him considerably and made him feel cheated.

  However, the accused said that during one of the invocations done in his absence, the aforesaid François had, so he told him on his return, seen the demon called Barron and had spoken with him, and the demon had said that he would not appear to Gilles, the accused, because he had not kept his promises. Hearing this, the accused had charged François to ask the demon what he wanted from him, and he had assured him that he would give him whatever he asked for, apart from his soul and his life, provided that the devil would then agree to give him what he wanted. The accused added that his intention was to ask for knowledge, power and wealth, and to return to the way he was at the beginning of his power and wealth. A little afterwards, François told him that he had spoken to the demon again who, among other things, had demanded that Gilles de Rais give him various limbs from children. After this Gilles gave the aforesaid François the hand, heart and eyes of a young boy, to offer to the demon on his behalf …

  Deposition of Henriet Griart

  Monday, October 17, 1440

  … when asked what he had done with the bodies and clothes of the murdered children, he replied that he had burned them in the rooms of the accused, Gilles de Rais. Asked how, precisely, he had done this, he said that he had burned the clothes one piece at a time in the fireplace of the aforesaid rooms so that the smell would not be noticed. And to get rid of the bodies, they would lay out great logs, and put the bodies on top of them, then lay sticks on top again, and burn them in that fashion. Asked what he did with the ashes or remains of these burned corpses, he replied that they were hidden in secret places in the rooms where the aforementioned crimes had been committed, or that they were sometimes put into the latrines, or into ditches, or other suitable places …

  He swore under oath that Catherine, the wife of a certain painter named Thierry, then living in Nantes, had procured and delivered to him her own brother, so that he could take him to Gilles, the accused, in the hope that he might join the chapel school. Henriet went on that he had taken him to Machecoul and into the chambers of Gilles de Rais, and after handing over this child, the accused, Gilles, had made the witness, Henriet, swear that he would never reveal any of his secrets. Asked where he took this oath, he answered that it was in the Church of the Holy Trinity at Machecoul. Asked when, he said that it had been about three years previously, and he also said that after he had handed over the aforesaid child, he had then gone to Nantes, where he had stayed for three days before returning to Machecoul. And when he got back, he searched for the child, but failed to find him, and discovered that the child had, like all the others, left this world. The other witness, Corrillaut (known as Poitou) told him that the accused, Gilles, had killed the child with his own hands; and just like all the others, it had served his libidinous purposes …

  He swore further that he had at Machecoul seen a young and beautiful boy, page to François Prelati, whose throat had been cut – he did not know by whom, since he had been away at the time. He also swore that Gilles had a sword, of a type called braquemard in French, with which he would decapitate or disembowel children … He swore further that he had heard Gilles, the accused, say that he had been born under a particular astrological configuration which meant, he said, that no-one could know or understand the perversions or illicit acts that he could be guilty of …

  He also swore that once in the presence of the accused, Gilles de Rais, and of Eustache Blanchet and of Corrillaut-Poitou, François Prelati had drawn with the point of a sword a great circle on the floor of the great hall in the castle at Tiffauges, and in the four sections had drawn a cross and other signs, on the orders of Gilles, and that then he, Henriet, and the others named had brought in a large amount of charcoal, incense, a magnet, torches and candles, an earthenware pot and other things, which Gilles and Prelati had placed in various parts of the circle. They lit a fire in the pot, then Gilles lit another in the entrance doorway of the hall, and put further signs there and on the walls of the room near the second fire. And then Prelati o
pened four windows in the form of a cross … Then, on the orders of Gilles, the witness and the others withdrew to an upper chamber, taking leave of Gilles and Prelati, who stayed in the hall alone. Gilles formally forbade the witness to reveal anything of what had gone on … Later they had heard Prelati speaking in a loud voice, but the witness declared that he had not understood anything that was said. Then the witnesses had heard a noise like a four-footed animal going through the room … Asked when this had been, Henriet replied that it had been at night, from just before midnight to about one-thirty … The witness also swore that Gilles de Rais and François Prelati were alone at Machecoul for a period of five weeks, in a locked room at the castle, a room for which Gilles never let the key out of his sight; and the witness had heard that in the room a figure of a hand had been found, fashioned in some kind of iron. Still under oath, he added that the accused, Gilles, took into his room at the castle in Tiffauges … the heart and hand of a young boy who had been killed on Gilles’ orders (or perhaps by Gilles himself), and had put them in a jar covered with a cloth … Asked what had been done with this heart and hand, he replied that he was not sure, but that he thought that Prelati and the accused had used them during diabolical invocations, and that they were offering the heart and the hand to the demons they had called up.

  Two depositions from witnesses

  André Bréchet, of the parish of Ste-Croix in Machecoul, declared under oath that about six weeks earlier he had been on watch at the castle of Machecoul, and just after midnight had fallen asleep; and that when he was asleep, a little man whom he did not recognise came along the road he had been watching, held a naked blade at him and said ‘you are dead.’ Nevertheless, the man did nothing to him, but went on his way, leaving André in a cold sweat through fear. The next day he met Gilles de Rais coming to Machecoul. After this, he never dared keep watch there again … [Various witnesses] declared under oath that one day after Easter last year they had heard Guillaume Hamelin and his wife Ysabeau complain bitterly about the disappearance of two of their children, who were missing. Afterwards they never heard that the children had ever been found or seen again.