Saggio sulle perversioni di Gilles de Rais e Giovanna d'Arco. ( )

Gilles de Rais, Marshal of France and compatriot of Jeanne d'Arc, was also one of history's most sadistic serial murderers. He killed, or caused to be killed, over 140 young children, whom he brutalized, assaulted, and murdered in the most hideous fashion. This book consists of an essay by Bataille, a chronology of the life of de Rais, and translations (by Pierre Klossowski, brother of the painter Balthus,and a decadent author in his own right) of court documents pertaining to his prosecution.

Gilles de Rais was (according to common opinion, which Bataille appears to question) the source of the Bluebeard legend. Of noble birth, he massacred children and attempted, in an effort to replenish the riches he had depleted through debauchery, to conjure demons. His trial and execution, it seems, relate less to these crimes than to his ill-conceived attempt to re-possess property from a powerful noble and ecclesiastical family which he had sold to cover his debts.

Bataille sees de Rais as a gullible, bloodthirsty fool, manipulated by charlatans, whose role as a man-at-arms was being marginalized by changes in medieval French society. Like latter-day serial killers, his emotional responses are limited to self-pity and fear of his own death and damnation. Concern for the impoverished children he murdered seems not to have affected him in the least, and his judges perhaps only marginally more.