CHAPTER VI
SOME FAMOUS PROSECUTIONS
THE societies of the elder world perished through the materialistic egoism of castes, becoming petrified on their own part, isolating the common people in a hopeless reprobation and reserving the reins of power to a small number of the elect, so that it was deprived of that circulation which is the principle of progress, motion and life. Power without antagonism, without competition and hence without control, proved fatal to the sacerdotal royalties. The republics, on the other hand, perished by the conflict of liberties which, in the absence of all duty, hierarchially and highly sanctioned, are speedily converted into so many tyrannies in rivalry with one another. To find a stable point between these two abysses, the idea of Christian hierophants was to create a society pledged to self-sacrifice by solemn vows, protected by severe rules, recruited by initiation, and, as sole depositary of the great religious and social secrets, making kings and pontiffs without being itself exposed to the corruptions of empire. Such was the secret of that kingdom of Christ Jesus which, without being of this world, ruled over all its grandeurs. The same idea presided over the establishments of the great religious orders which were so often at war with secular authorities, whether ecclesiastical or civil. A similar realisation was also dreamed by dissident sects of Gnostics and Illuminati, which claimed to pin their faith on the primitive Christian tradition of St. John. A time came when this dream was an actual menace for the Church and the State, when a rich and dissolute Order, initiated into the mysterious doctrines of the Kabalah,1 seemed ready to turn on legitimate authority, on the conservative principles of the hierarchy, menacing the entire world with a gigantic revolution. The Templars, whose history is understood so little, were the terrible conspirators in question, and it is time at length to reveal the secret of their fall, so absolving the memory of Clement V and Philip the Fair.
In 1118 nine crusading knights, then in the East—among whom was Geoffrey de Saint-Omer and Hugh de Payens—dedicated themselves to religion, placing their vows in the hands of the patriarch of Constantinople, which seat had always been hostile, secretly or openly, to that of Rome since the days of Photius. The avowed object of the Templars was to protect Christians on pilgrimage to the holy places; their concealed end was to rebuild the Temple of Solomon on the model foreshewn by Ezekiel. Such a restoration, predicted formally by Judaising mystics of the first Christian centuries, had become the secret dream of the Eastern patriarchs. So rebuilt and consecrated to the Catholic worship, the Temple of Solomon would have been in effect the metropolis of the universe. East would prevail over West and the patriarchs of Constantinople would seize the papacy.1
To explain the name of Templars adopted by this military Order, historians assume that Baldwin II, King of Jerusalem, gave them a house in the vicinity of the Temple of Solomon. But they are guilty of a serious anachronism, since at that period the edifice in question had not only ceased to exist, and not only was there no stone of Zerubbabel's Second Temple left upon another, but it would have been difficult to indicate the site on which they stood. It is to be concluded that the House allotted to the Templars by Baldwin was not situated in the vicinity of Solomon's Temple but of that place on which these secret and armed missionaries of the Eastern patriarch designed to rebuilt it.
The Templars took for their scriptural models the military Masons of Zerubbabel, who worked with sword in one hand and trowel in the other.2 Hence sword and trowel became their insignia when at a later period, as we shall see, they concealed themselves under the name of Masonic Brothers. The trowel of the Templars is fourfold; the triangular blades are disposed in the form of a cross, constituting a Kabalistic pantacle known as the Cross of the East.3
The inmost thought of Hugh de Payens, in establishing his Order, was not precisely to serve the ambition of the patriarchs of Constantinople. At that period there was a sect of Christian Johannites in the East who claimed to be alone initiated into the inner mysteries of the Saviour's religion; they claimed also to know the true history of Jesus Christ. Adopting some part of the Jewish traditions and Talmudic accounts, they regarded the facts in the Gospels as allegories, of which St. John had the key. The proof was his saying that if all things done by Jesus were recorded, “I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that should be written.” They held that such a statement would be ridiculous exaggeration unless it referred to allegory and legend, which can be varied and prolonged to infinity. As to the actual historical facts, the Johannites recounted what follows.
A young girl of Nazareth, named Miriam, betrothed to a young man of her own tribe, named Jochanan, was surprised by a certain Pandira, or Panther, who entered her chamber in the garb and under the name of her lover and by force fulfilled his desires. Jochanan, becoming acquainted with her misfortune, left her without compromising her because as a fact she was innocent; and the girl was delivered of a son, who received the name of Joshua or Jesus. The infant was adopted by a Rabbi named Joseph, who carried him into Egypt, where he was initiated into the secret sciences, and the priests of Osiris, recognising that he was the true incarnation of Horus so long promised to the adepts, consecrated him sovereign pontiff of the universal religion. Joshua and Joseph returned to Judea, where the knowledge and virtue of the young man excited very soon the envy and hatred of the priests, who one day reproached him publicly with the illegitimacy of his birth. Joshua, who loved and venerated his mother, questioned his master and learned the whole history respecting the crime of Pandira and the misfortunes of Miriam. His first impulse was to deny her in public when he said in the middle of a marriage-feast: “Woman, what is there in common between you and me?” But afterwards, realising that an unfortunate woman must not be punished for having suffered what she could not prevent, he cried: “My mother has in no wise sinned, nor has she lost her innocence; she is virgin and yet is mother: let the twofold honour be paid to her. As for me, I have no father on earth; I am the son of God and humanity.”
We will not proceed further with a fiction so distressing to the hearts of Christians; let it suffice to say that the Johannites went so far as to make St. John the Evangelist responsible for this spurious tradition and that they attributed to the apostle in question the foundation of their secret church. The grand pontiffs of this sect assumed the title of Christ and claimed an uninterrupted transmission of powers from the days of St. John. The person who boasted these imaginary privileges at the epoch of the foundation of the Temple was named Theoclet. He was acquainted with Hugh de Payens, whom he initiated into the mysteries and the hopes of his supposititious church;1 he seduced him by ideas of sovereign priesthood and supreme royalty; in fine, he designated him his successor. Thus was the order of Knights of the Temple tainted from the beginning with schism and conspiracy against kings. These tendencies were wrapped in profound mystery, for the Order made profession externally of the uttermost orthodoxy. The chiefs alone knew whither it was tending, the rest following in good faith.
To acquire wealth and influence, to intrigue on the basis of these and at need fight for the establishment of Johannite dogma—such were the means and end proposed by the initiated brethren. “Observe,” they argued to themselves, “the papacy and rival monarchies engaged in the work of haggling, selling one another, falling into corruption and tomorrow perhaps destroying one another. All this indicates heritage for the Temple; a little while, and the nations will demand sovereigns and pontiffs from among us; we shall be the equilibrium of the universe, arbiters and masters of the world.”
The Templars had two doctrines; one was concealed and reserved to the leaders, being that of Johannism;1 the other was public, being Roman Catholic doctrine. They deceived in this manner the enemies that they hoped to supplant. The Johannism of the adepts was the Kabalah of the Gnostics, but it degenerated speedily into a mystic pantheism carried even to idolatry of Nature and hatred of all revealed dogma. For their better success, and in order to secure partisans, they fostered the regrets of every fallen worship and the hopes of every new cultus, promising to all liberty of conscience and a new orthodoxy which should be the synthesis of all persecuted beliefs. They went even so far as to recognise the pantheistic symbolism of the grand masters of Black Magic, and the better to isolate themselves from obedience to a religion by which they were condemned beforehand, they rendered divine honours to the monstrous idol Baphomet,2 even as of old the dissenting tribes had adored the Golden Calf of Dan and Bethel. Certain monuments of recent discovery and certain precious documents belonging to the thirteenth century offer abundant proof of all that is advanced here. Other evidences are concealed in the annals and beneath the symbols of Occult Masonry.
With the seeds of death sown in its very principle, and anarchic because it was heretical, the Order of Knights of the Temple had conceived a great work which it was incapable of executing, because it understood neither humility nor personal abnegation. For the rest, the Templars, being in most cases without education and capable only of wielding the sword successfully, possessed no qualification for overruling or for binding at need that queen of the world called public opinion. Hugh de Payens did not possess the depth of view which distinguished at a later period the military founder of a militia not less formidable to kings. The Templars were Jesuits who failed. Their principle was to become rich in order to purchase the world, and, as a fact, they so became, for in 1312 they possessed in Europe alone more than 9000 manors. Wealth was also the rock on which they broke; they became insolent and permitted their disdain for the religious and social institutions which they hoped to upset to appear in public. Everyone knows the answer of Richard Cœur de Lion to the confidential priest who had said to him: “Sire, you have three daughters who cost you dearly and of whom it would be to your great advantage if you were set free: they are ambition, avarice and luxury.”…“That is true,” said the king. “Well, well, let us marry them. I give ambition to the Templars, avarice to the monks and luxury to the bishops. I am certain in advance of the consent of all the parties.”
The ambition of the Templars proved fatal to themselves; their projects were divined and anticipated. Pope Clement V and King Philip the Fair gave the signal to Europe, and the Templars, caught, so to speak, in a net, were arrested, disarmed and cast into prison. Never was a coup d' état accomplished with such appalling uniformity. The entire world was dumbfounded and awaited the strange revelations of a prosecution which was to echo down through the ages. But it was impossible to unveil before the people the plan of the Templar conspiracy; to do so would have initiated the multitude into secrets reserved for masters. Recourse was had therefore to the charge of Magic, for which accusers and witnesses were both forthcoming. The Templars, in the ceremony of their reception, spat upon the image of Christ, denied God, gave obscene kisses to the Grand Master, adored a brazen head with carbuncles for eyes, held commune with a great black cat and had intercouse with female demons. Such are the items put forward seriously in the act of indictment. The end of this drama is familiar; Jacques de Molay and his companions perished in the flames, but before dying the grand master of the Temple organised and instituted Occult Masonry. Within the walls of his prison he founded four Metropolitan Lodges—at Naples for the East, Edinburgh for the West, Stockholm for the North and Paris for the South. The Pope and King perished speedily in a strange and sudden manner.1 Squin de Florian, the accuser-in-chief of the Order, was assassinated. In breaking the sword of the Templars it was converted into a dagger and their proscribed trowels henceforth were utilised only in the erection of tombs. Let them pass at this point into darkness, wherein they took refuge while maturing their vengeance. We shall see them reappear at the great epoch of the Revolution and we shall recognise them by their signs and by their works.
The greatest magical prosecution to be found in history, after that of the Temple, was the trial of a maid who was, moreover, almost a saint. The Church, in this case, has been accused of subservience to the base resentment of a vanquished party, and it has been asked earnestly what anathemas of the Chair of St. Peter fell upon the assassins of Joan of Arc.2 To those who are really unacquainted, it may be said at once that Pierre Cauchon, the unworthy Bishop of Beauvais, struck suddenly with death by the hand of God, was excommunicated after death by Callixtus IV, his remains being taken from consecrated ground and cast into the public sewers. It was not therefore the Church which judged and condemned the Maid of Orléans, but a bad priest and an apostate.
Charles VII, who gave up this noble girl to her destroyers, fell afterwards into the hands of an avenging providence; he died of self-starvation, through dread of being poisoned by his own son. Fear is the torment of the base. The king in question gave up his life to a courtesan, and for her he burdened with debt a kingdom which had been saved to him by a virgin. Courtesan and virgin have been celebrated by our national poets—Agnes Sorel by Béranger and Joan of Arc by Voltaire.
Joan perished in her innocence, but the laws against Magic were vindicated soon after in the case of one who was chief among the guilty. The personage in question was one of the most valiant captains under Charles VII, but the services which he rendered to the state could not counterbalance the extent and enormity of his crimes. All tales of ogres and Croquemitaine were realised and surpassed by the deeds of this fantastic scoundrel, whose history has remained in the memory of children under the name of Blue Beard. Gilles de Laval, Lord of Raiz, had indeed so black a beard that it seemed to be almost blue, as shown by his portrait in the Salle des Maréchaux, at the Museum of Versailles. A Marshal of Brittany, he was brave because he was French; being rich, he was also ostentatious; and he became a sorcerer because he was insane.1
The mental derangement of the Lord of Raiz was manifested in the first instance by sumptuous devotion and extravagant magnificence. When he went abroad he was preceded invariably by cross and banner; his chaplains were covered with gold and vested like prelates; he had a college of little pages or choristers, who were always richly clothed. But day by day one of these children was called before the marshal and was seen no more by his comrades; a newcomer succeeded him who disappeared, and the children were sternly forbidden to ask what became of the missing ones or even refer to them among themselves. The children were obtained by the marshal from poor parents, whom he dazzled by his promises, and who were pledged to trouble no further concerning their offspring—these, according to his stories, being assured a brilliant future.
The explanation is that, in his case, seeming devotion was the mask and safeguard of infamous practices. Ruined by imbecile prodigality, the marshal desired at any cost to create wealth. Alchemy had exhausted his last resources and loans on usurious terms were about to fail him; he determined therefore to attempt the last and most execrable experiments of Black Magic, in the hope of obtaining gold by the aid of hell. An apostate priest of the diocese of Saint-Malo, a Florentine named Prélati, and Sillé,1 who was the marshal's steward, became his confidants and accomplices. He had espoused a young woman of high birth2 and kept her practically shut up in his castle at Machecoul, which had a tower with the entrance walled up. A report was spread by the marshal that it was in a ruinous state and no one sought to penetrate therein. This notwithstanding, Madame de Raiz, who was frequently alone during the dark hours, saw red lights moving to and fro in this tower; but she did not venture to question her husband, whose bizarre and sombre character filled her with extreme terror.
On Easter Day in the year 14403 the marshal, having communicated solemnly in his chapel, bade farewell to the lady of Machecoul, telling her that he was departing to the Holy Land; the poor creature was even then afraid to question, so much did she tremble in his presence; she was also several months in her pregnancy. The marshal permitted her sister to come on a visit as a companion during his absence. Madame de Raiz took advantage of this indulgence, after which Gilles de Laval mounted his horse and departed. To her sister Madame de Raiz communicated her fears and anxieties. What went on in the castle? Why was her lord so gloomy? What signified his repeated absences? What became of the children who disappeared day by day? What were those nocturnal lights in the walled-up tower? These and the other problems excited the curiosity of both women to the utmost degree.4 What, all the same, could be done? The marshal had forbidden them expressly even to approach the tower, and before leaving he had repeated this injunction. It must assuredly have a secret entrance, for which Madame de Raiz and her sister Anne proceeded to search through the lower rooms of the castle, corner by corner and stone after stone. At last, in the chapel, behind the altar, they came upon a copper button, hidden in a mass of sculpture. It yielded under pressure; a stone slid back and the two curiosity-seekers, now all in a tremble, distinguished the lowermost steps of a staircase, which led them to the condemned tower.
At the top of the first flight there was a kind of chapel, with a cross upside down and black candles; on the altar stood a hideous figure, no doubt representing the demon. On the second floor they came upon furnaces, retorts, alembics, charcoal—in a word, all the apparatus of alchemy. The third flight led to a dark chamber, where the heavy and fetid atmosphere compelled the young women to retreat. Madame de Raiz came into collision with a vase, which fell over, and she was conscious that her robe and feet were soaked with some thick and unknown liquid. On returning to the light at the head of the stairs she found that she was bathed in biood.
Sister Anne would have fled from the place, but in Madame de Raiz curiosity was even stronger than disgust or fear. She descended the stairs, took a lamp from the infernal chapel and returned to the third floor, where a frightful spectacle awaited her. Copper vessels filled with blood were ranged the whole length of the walls, bearing labels with a date on each, and in the middle of the room there was a black marble table, on which lay the body of a child murdered quite recently. It was one of these basins which had fallen, and black blood had spread far and wide over the grimy and worm-eaten wooden floor.
The two women were now half dead with terror. Madame de Raiz endeavoured at all costs to efface the evidence of her indiscretion. She went in search of a sponge and water, to wash the boards; but she only extended the stain and that which at first seemed black became all scarlet in hue. Suddenly a loud commotion echoed through the castle, mixed with the cries of people calling to Madame de Raiz. She distinguished the awe-striking words, “Here is Monseigneur come back.” The two women made for the staircase, but at the same moment they were aware of the trampling of steps and the sound of other voices in the devil's chapel. Sister Anne fled upwards to the battlement of the tower; Madame de Raiz went down trembling and found herself face to face with her husband, in the act of ascending, accompanied by the apostate priest and Prélati.
Gilles de Laval seized his wife by the arm and without speaking dragged her into the infernal chapel. It was then that Prélati1 observed to the marshal: “It is needs must, as you see, and the victim has come of her own accord.”…“Be it so,” answered his master. “Begin the Black Mass.”…The apostate priest went to the altar, while Gilles de Laval opened a little cupboard fixed therein and drew out a large knife, after which he sat down close to his spouse, who was now almost in a swoon and lying in a heap on a bench against the wall. The sacrilegious ceremonies began.
It must be explained that the marshal, so far from taking the road to Jerusalem, had proceeded only to Nantes, where Prélati lived; he attacked this miserable wretch with the uttermost fury and threatened to slay him if he did not furnish the means of extracting from the devil that which he had been demanding for so long a time. With the object of obtaining delay, Prélati declared that terrible conditions were required by the infernal master, first among which would be the sacrifice of the marshal's unborn child after tearing it forcibly from the mother's womb. Gilles de Laval made no reply but returned at once to Machecoul, the Florentine sorcerer and his accomplice the priest being in his train. With the rest we are acquainted.
Meanwhile, Sister Anne, left to her own devices on the roof of the tower and not daring to come down, had removed her veil, to make signals of distress at chance. They were answered by two cavaliers accompanied by a posse of armed men, who were riding towards the castle; they proved to be her two brothers, who, on learning the spurious departure of the marshal for Palestine, had come to visit and console Madame de Raiz. Soon after they arrived with a clatter in the court of the castle, whereupon Gilles de Laval suspended the hideous ceremony and said to his wife: “Madame, I forgive you, and the .matter is at an end between us if you do now as I tell you. Return to your apartment, change your garments and join me in the guest-room, whither I am going to receive your brothers. But if you say one word, or cause them the slightest suspicion, I will bring you hither on their departure; we shall proceed with the Black Mass at the point where it is now broken off, and at the consecration you will die. Mark where I place this knife.”
He rose up, led his wife to the door of her chamber and subsequently received her relations and their suite, saying that his lady was preparing herself to come and salute her brothers. Madame de Raiz appeared almost immediately, pale as a spectre. Gilles de Laval never took eyes off her, seeking to control her by his glance. When her brothers suggested that she was ill, she answered that it was the fatigue of pregnancy, but added in an undertone, “Save me; he seeks to kill me.” At the same moment Sister Anne rushed into the hall, crying: “Take us away; save us, my brothers: this man is an assassin!”—and she pointed to Gilles de Laval. While the marshal summoned his people, the escort of the two visitors surrounded the women with drawn swords; and the marshal's people disarmed instead of obeying him. Madame de Raiz, with her sister and brothers, gained the drawbridge and left the castle.
On the morrow, Duke John V invested Machecoul, and Gilles de Laval, who could count no longer on his men-at-arms, yielded without resistance.1 The parliament of Brittany had decreed his arrest as a homicide, the ecclesiastical tribunal preparing in the first place to pronounce judgment upon him as heretic, sodomite and sorcerer. Voices of parents, long silenced by terror, rose upon all sides, demanding their missing children: there was universal dole and clamour throughout the province. The castles of Machecoul and Chantocé were ransacked, resulting in the discovery of two hundred skeletons of children; the rest had been consumed by fire.
Gilles de Laval appeared with supreme arrogance before his judges.2 To the customary question, “Who are you?” he answered: “I am Gilles de Laval, Marshal of Brittany, Lord of Raiz, Machecoul, Chantocé and other fiefs. And who are you that dare to question me?” He was answered, “We are your judges, magistrates of the Ecclesiastical Court.”—“What, you my judges! Go to, I know you well, my masters. You are simoniacs and obscene fellows, who sell your God to purchase the joys of the devil. Speak not therefore of judging me, for if I am guilty, it is you, who owed me good example, that are my instigators.”—“Cease your insults, and answer us.”—“I would rather be hanged by the neck than reply to you. I am surprised that the president of Brittany suffers your acquaintance with matters of this kind. You question that you may gain information and afterwards do worse than you have done.”
But this haughty insolence was demolished by the threat of torture.1 Before the Bishop of Saint-Brieuc and the President Pierre de l'Hôpital, Gilles de Laval made confession of his murders and sacrileges. He pretended that his motive in the massacre of children was an execrable delight which he sought during the agony of these poor little beings. The president found it difficult to credit this statement and questioned him anew. “Alas,” said the marshal abruptly, “you torment both yourself and me to no purpose.”—“I do not torment you,” replied the president, “but I am astonished at your words and dissatisfied. What I seek and must have is the pure truth.” The marshal answered: “Verily there was no other cause What more would you have? Surely I have admitted enough to condemn ten thousand men.”
That which Gilles de Laval shrank from confessing was that he sought the Philosophical Stone in the blood of murdered children, and that it was covetousness which drove him to this monstrous debauchery. On the faith of his necromancers he believed that the universal agent of life could be suddenly coagulated by the combined action and reaction of outrage on Nature and murder. He collected afterwards the iridescent film which forms on blood as it turns cold;2 he subjected it to various fermentations, digested the product in the philosophical egg of the athanor, combining it with salt, sulphur and mercury. He had doubtless derived his recipe from some of those old Hebrew Grimoires which, had they been known at the period, would have been sufficient to call down on Jewry at large the execration of the whole earth. Persuaded, as they were, that the act of human impregnation attracts and coagulates the Astral Light in its reaction by sympathy on things subjected to the magnetism of man, the Israelitish sorcerers had plunged into those enormities of which Philo accuses them, as quoted by the astrologer Gaffarel.3 They caused trees to be grafted by women, who inserted the graft while a man performed on their persons those acts which are an outrage to Nature. Wherever Black Magic is concerned the same horrors recur, for the spirit of darkness is not one of invention.
Gilles de Laval was burned alive in the pre de la Magdeleine, near Nantes; he obtained permission to go to execution with all the pageantry that had accompanied him during life, as if he wished to involve in the ignominy of his punishment the ostentation and cupidity by which he had teen so utterly degraded and lost so fatally.1
1 This must be understood in the general sense of the Secret Tradition perpetuated in various forms through Christian times. The Templars had no concern in the secret schools of Jewry. On the basis of the official process which resulted in their condemnation, they have been accused of Black Magic, Sorcery and of entering into a league with the Orde, of Assassins.
1 I have dealt with the claims of this speculation in my Secret Tradition in Freemasonry, vol. i, pp. 300 et seq.
2 The reference is really to the fourth chapters of the apocryphal Book 0} Nehemiah which is the Second Book of Esdras, and to the Masons of Nehemiah. not of Zerubbabel. The latter was concerned with the building of the Second Temple and the former with that of the walls about Jerusalem Half of the young men did the work of restoring the fortifications and half stood in readiness to fight The builders also were girded with a sword about the reins. The sword in one hand and trowel in the other is a symbolical expression.
3 It is obvious that the arrangement of four triangular blades in a cruciform pattern would constitute an ordinary Maltese cross or cross of the Knights of St. John. This was an Assyrian emblem in pre-Christian times.
1 The blasphemous fiction is well known and its root is in the Sepher Toldos jeshu; it is inaccurate to call it a tradition; more properly it is a lying invention. I have failed to discover a source for the Thcoclet story. but it is barely possible that it may have risen up within the circle of Fabré Palaprat's Ordre du Temple.
1 In the year 1844 Jacques Matter made a special study of the accusations against Knights Templar in his Histoire Critique du Gnosticisme, vol. iii, pp. 315 et seq. He states that the alleged preference of the Templars for. St. John's Gospel is nowhere attested by the history of the Order. They were not therefore tinctured by remanents of Paulician Gnosticism, as it is not likely that they would be.
2 Elsewhere Éliphas Lévi says: (a) That the hypothetical idof Baphomet was a symbolical figure representing the First Matter of the Magnum Opus, which is the Astral Light; (b) That it signified further the god Pan, which may be identified with “the Christ of dissident sacerdotalism”; (c) That the Baphometic head is “a beautiful allegory which attributes to thought alone the first and creative cause”; and finally, (d) That it is “nothing more than an innocent and even a pious hieroglyph”.
1 The suggestion is that they were summoned by Jacques de Molay to appear before the Divine Tribunal within a year and a day, there to answer for their injustice, and that they died within the time mentioned, which does not happen to be true.
2 The revision of the process which condemned the Maid of Orléans was begun by Charles VII himself in 1449. In 1552 twelve articles were drawn up, designed to exhibit its illegality and injustice. For political reasons, meaning the relations between France and England, the mother and brothers of Joan were made plaintiffs at Rome, and Pope Calixtus V appointed a commission. In 1456 the commission pronounced its judgment, reversing and annulling the first process on the ground of roguery, calumny, injustice, contradictions and manifest error in fact and law.—La Magie et ¡a Sorcellerie on France, vol. ii, pp. 514-518.
1 It has been suggested that the charge of sorcery covered a political conspiracy for his destruction and was of the same value as the same charge in respect of the Knights Templar
1 Francesco Prelati seems to have been a magician by profession, and as regards Gilles de Sillé, it is said otherwise that he was a priest of St. Malo.
2 This was Catherine de Thouars, and it was to her that the bulk of his fortune was due. He is said to have been one of the richest nobles in Europe
3 It will be understood that what follows is merely romantic narrative. See Gilles de Rais, dit Barbe Bleue, by Bossard et Maulde.
4 The account at this point represents the admixture of the Blue-Beard or folk element and may be read in conjunction with Perrault.
1 It does not appear that Francesco Prélati and Gilles de Sillé were brought to account subsequently
1 He was really cited to appear before Jean de Malestroit, Bishop of Nantes and Chancellor of Brittany. He obeyed this summons.
2 The records say that he was insolent at the beginning but soon changed his methods, and the confession which he made involved two of his servants, named Henri and Poitou.
1 It was the servants of Gilles de Rais who accused him under torture.
2 This explanation is absolutely supposititious, there being no tittle of evidence for the existence of such a process in the records of Black Magic. It is of course possible that some readers may ascribe secret sources of information to Éliphas Lévi. Speaking generally. Black Magic and the synonymous white variety were concerned little enough in alchemical processes, good or bad. Their amateurs and adepts sought enrichment by the discovery of buried treasures with the assistance of demons; they sought also to communicate with evil spirits who could bring gold and precious stones from the mines, or who could themselves accomplish transmutation.
3 It is just to say that Gaffarel wrote in defence of the Jews and to clear them of many accusations besides those made by Philo. His thesis was that many things were falsely imposed upon them.
1 His fate was shared by the servants already mentioned, who are said to have been his accomplices