Gilles de Rais

She is a saint.

Lord Gilles de Rais was a real person.

A piece of shit that's been kidnapping children? Yeah.

And he was the bodyguard of Joan of Arc.

I'm trying to get hold of it all, said Cotgrave.

From what you say, I gather that the true evil differs generically from that which we call evil? quite so there is no doubt an analogy between the two a resemblance such as enables us to use quite legitimately such terms as the foot of the mountain and the leg of the table and sometimes of course the two speak as it were in the same language the rough miner or puddler the untrained undeveloped tiger man heated by a quart or two above his usual measure comes home and kicks his irritating and injudicious wife to death he is a murderer and gilles de rais is a murderer but you see the gulf that separates the two The word, if I may so speak, is accidentally the same in each case, but the meaning is utterly different.

It is flagrant hobson-jobson to confuse the two, or rather, it is as if one supposed that juggernaut and the argonauts had something to do etymologically with one another.

And no doubt the same weak likeness or analogy runs between all the social sins and the real spiritual sins, and in some cases, perhaps, the lesser may be schoolmasters to lead one on to the greater, from the shadow to the reality.

but the sinner is sometimes a murderer.

Gilles de Rais is an instance.

So you see that while the good and the evil are unnatural to man as he now is, to man the social, civilized being, evil is unnatural in a much deeper sense than good.

The saint endeavors to recover a gift which he has lost.

I'm Dan Cummins, and today I will be sharing the story of Locusta of Gaul, someone we admittedly don't know a lot about, but someone also often referred to in numerous sources as the world's first documented serial killer.

Others, of course, also share that title, such as previous Suck subject Gilles de Rais, a 15th-century French knight who once fought with Joan of Arc.

He may have been the victim of a witch hunt, also may have been a prolific killer of children.

Uh, what about Locusta, a woman who lived well over a thousand years before Gilles de Rais in the first century CE? Could she have also been the victim of a witch hunt? Or is it pretty likely that she did kill a bunch of people in ancient Rome? But even if she did kill a bunch of people, was she an actual serial killer or more of an assassin, a hired gun? Let's travel back to ancient Rome to meet the infamous poisoner, the mysterious woman known to history again as Locusta of Gaul, to try and find out.

Words and ideas can change the world.

I hated her, but I wanted to love my mother.

Introduction.

History of Gilles de Laval.

The Castle of Machecoul.

Surrender of the Marshal.

The Bishop of Nantes.

The history of the man whose name heads this chapter I purpose giving in detail, as the circumstances I shall narrate have, I believe, never before been given with accuracy to the English public.

The name of Gilles de Laval may be well known, as sketches of his bloody career have appeared in many biographies, but these sketches have been very incomplete, as the material from which they were composed was meagre.

M. Michelet alone ventured to give the public an idea of the crimes which brought the Marshal of France to the gallows, and his revelations were such that, in the words of M. Henri Martin, this iron age, which seemed unable to feel surprise at any amount of evil, was struck with dismay.

The battlefield.

Gilles de Rais in 15th century France.

Ah, yes.

This is a trajectory that I really struggle to wrap my head around.

They trouble me not.

It is of no importance." indeed my entire tragedy seems to be grotesque and nothing else for as a result of my having suffered myself to be thrown into a trap and i sit in the lowest mire of melbolge between gilles de retz and the marquis de sade in certain places no one except those actually insane is allowed to laugh and indeed even in their case it is against the regulations for conduct otherwise i think i would laugh at that for the rest do not let any one suppose that i am crediting others with unworthy motives they really had no motives in life at all motives are intellectual things they had passions merely and such passions are false gods that will have victims at all costs and in the present case have had one wreathed with bay now i have plucked the thorn out that little scrawled line of yours rankled terribly i now think merely of your getting quite well again and writing at last the wonderful story of pray remember me to your dear mother and also to aleck the gilded sphinx is i suppose wonderful as ever and send from me all that in my thoughts and feelings is good and whatever of remembrance and reverence she will accept to the lady of wimbledon whose soul is a sanctuary for those who are wounded and a house of refuge for those in pain do not show this letter to others nor discuss what i have written in your answer Tell me about that world of shadows I loved so much, and about the life and the soul tell me also.

I am curious of the things that stung me, and in my pain there is pity.

Yours, Oscar End of section Robert Ross to Moore A. D.

to somebody that's attached to the Duke of Brittany.

So the Duke of Brittany is the big overlord and Gilles de Rais is an overlord within that space.

But he sells one of his castles or one of his possessions to somebody attached to the duke.

This person then gives it to a relative and Gilles Deray then decides, actually, I want this place back.

few

years? Yeah, I mean, Joan of Arc, obviously, Saint Joan of Arc, she's, you know, very deeply religious.

It seems that Gilles de Rais is deeply religious as well.

I mean, we know about his special chapel to the holy innocents as well.

Wow, yeah, you're in one of the hearts of it, probably there in New York still.

Yeah, I really would be interested in, I didn't know, and see, now you're telling me something that I didn't know either, that I didn't know Crowley gave a lecture on Gilles de Rais at Oxford, and because...

Yeah, you can

look...

There was something different and distinctive here, after all.

Of course, the usual gory commonplaces were present—Landrieu, Dr. Crippen, Madame de Meurs, Rizzio, Lady Jane Grey—endless maimed victims of war and revolution, and monsters like Gilles de Rais and Marquis de Sartre.

But there were other things which made him breathe faster, and stay till the ringing of the closing bell.

The man who had fashioned this collection could be no ordinary mountebank.