Gilles de Rais

Gilles de Rais inherited vast estates across Brittany, Anjou and Poitou, and in 1429 he joined the French royal army as a captain during the Hundred Years' War. That year he was elevated to Marshal of France after campaigns that included Joan of Arc, though little evidence survives of any close bond between them. By the 1430s he had withdrawn from the war and begun selling his lands to finance what his family called ruinous spending. In July 1435 King Charles VII placed him under interdict. Five years later he assaulted a cleric inside a church and seized a castle, violating ecclesiastical immunity. Arrested in September 1440, he faced parallel trials - one ecclesiastical, assisted by the Inquisition, for heresy, sodomy and the murder of 140 or more children; one secular, for the attack and crimes against "several small children." He was hanged and burned on 26 October 1440 with two servants. Most historians accept his guilt, though some urge caution with confessions extracted under inquisitorial procedure, and medievalists note the need to weigh testimony against the role of rumor and the judges' own expectations.