The Lives and Crimes of Gilles De Rais and Elizabeth Bathory, 1405-1614 ______
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SCAVENGERS OF HUMAN SORROW: THE LIVES AND CRIMES OF GILLES DE RAIS AND ELIZABETH BATHORY, 1405-1614 ____________________________________ A Thesis Presented to the Faculty of California State University, Fullerton ____________________________________ In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Arts in History ____________________________________ By Damian McCoy Thesis Committee Approval: Professor Jochen Burgtorf, Chair Professor Lynn Sargeant, Department of History Professor Nancy Fitch, Department of History Fall, 2015 ABSTRACT That members of the nobility in pre-modern Europe were occasionally cruel is no secret. However, the French marshal Gilles de Rais (d. 1440) and the Hungarian countess Elizabeth Bathory (d. 1614) represent something more than nobles behaving badly. They are two of the earliest documented “serial killers,” but despite of what is known about them, their motives have remained unclear. Using an interdisciplinary and comparative approach for analysis, Gilles de Rais and Elizabeth Bathory are revealed here as more complex than previously thought. Firstly, primary sources ranging from trial records to letters provide the necessary historical background. Secondly, modern scholarship supplies the psycho-criminological methods, helps contextualize pre-modern violence and society, and shows the impact of Gilles’ and Elizabeth’s and their victims’ social status, associations, and gender. Lastly, movies, television shows, and song lyrics show how Gilles and Elizabeth continue to be immortalized even centuries after their crimes. Gilles and Elizabeth killed because they were serial killers, but the social climate of their times effectively enabled them to do so. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT ................................................................................................................... ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ............................................................................................. v INTRODUCTION ......................................................................................................... 1 Overview ............................................................................................................... 2 Definitions ............................................................................................................ 4 Sources and Scholarship ....................................................................................... 5 Methods ................................................................................................................ 10 Chapters 1. A LOOK AT THE HISTORICAL RECORD ...................................................... 13 The Marshal’s Inquisition ..................................................................................... 14 No Due Process for the Countess ......................................................................... 28 The Apologists ...................................................................................................... 40 Contextualizing Violence and Society .................................................................. 59 2. FROM INNOCENT CHILDHOOD TO SAVAGE ADULTHOOD ................... 65 The Black Knight Rises and Falls......................................................................... 65 Cruel Intentions..................................................................................................... 76 The Irrationality of the Fairer Sex ........................................................................ 86 The Monster and the Maid .................................................................................... 90 The Thirteenth Caesar ........................................................................................... 92 The Aging Virgin-Widow ..................................................................................... 99 3. THE SILVER SCREEN AND THE HEADBANGER’S BALL ......................... 108 Into the Crypt of Rays ........................................................................................... 110 Eternal Life and Beauty ........................................................................................ 118 The Woman of Dark Desires ................................................................................ 123 Bluebeard Lives On .............................................................................................. 127 Heavy Metal Mentality ......................................................................................... 131 CONCLUSION .............................................................................................................. 137 iii BIBLIOGRAPHY .......................................................................................................... 140 Primary Sources .................................................................................................... 140 Secondary Sources ................................................................................................ 141 iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS For always being there to reassure me that I will finish, and for engaging in long discussions about my thesis, I owe Dr. Jochen Burgtorf a great deal of gratitude. It has been my pleasure working with you these past four years. Thank you for being a great friend and a positive influence in my academic career. A special thanks to Kyle Walker for taking some time out of his busy schedule between fatherhood and teaching to provide valuable input on my research and writing. Also, I would like to thank Dr. Lynn Sargeant and Dr. Nancy Fitch for showing a genuine interest in my research and sitting on my thesis committee. A heartfelt thanks goes to the late Dr. Gordon Morris Bakken for the passion he instilled in me and all of his students. Thanks to my friends, Mark Gentile, Kyle Duncan, and Luis Alvarado, for asking me to discuss my research during those periods of high anxiety; it helped more than you know. And to my boss, Alex Bernauer, who has always remained patient and flexible with my schedule as I balanced my career and education. To Daphna, my fiancée, I do not know where I would be if you were not such a patient and gentle soul. Thank you for always supporting my endeavors, and for never complaining when I had to shut myself in for long weekend sessions of studying and writing. Last but not least, my mother, Frances, has been the most loving parent anyone could hope for. Thank you for never doubting me and for guiding me down the right path in life; I am proud to be your son. v 1 INTRODUCTION This project came to me unwittingly and years before I decided to pursue higher education. It was my love of Heavy Metal music that led me to its more extreme subgenres, such as Death Metal and Black Metal. Soon I found that I was immersed in a world filled with intense pagan and satanic imagery, historical overtones, and themes of violence and blood. After cycling through many bands that were, admittedly, too raw or noisy even for a most vehement metal fan such as me, I stumbled upon the pivotal Swedish Black Metal band called Bathory.1 It was not because the music was particularly good; in fact, it took many years to acquire such a taste. But, the name struck me as something that stood apart. Bathory was a name I had never heard before, bearing in mind that I was not yet the student of history that I became in later years. It was then that I encountered Elizabeth Bathory, the band’s namesake. Her story was so fantastic that I thought it could not possibly be real. This led me down a research path that I would not return to for over ten years. I did not realize at the time that my late-night web crawls—at this point in time, the internet was nothing like it is today—would culminate into an interest in serial killers, and more specifically, their association with the very music I loved to listen to. Years 1 It should be noted that Bathory was at the forefront of the Black Metal movement, in essence, giving birth to the more extreme sound later characterized by band such as Mayhem, Burzum, Emperor, and Darkthrone. In later years, Bathory progressed into a subgenre of Black Metal called Viking Metal, which focused on Scandinavian roots rather than satanic imagery, death, and gratuitous violence. 2 later, I was a lowly community-college student without a major and no real plan for the future. During studying I listened to Heavy Metal, as I often had for concentration; it was at that point when I was reacquainted with Bathory (the band) and had happened to be enrolled in a western civilization course that covered the ancient period on through the Middle Ages. I wondered; were there any medieval serial killers? There must have been; and so I searched and found the horrifying tales of Gilles de Rais. I remember thinking that these two specimens were quite a pair; though, at the time I still had not declared a major or conceived of a research project that combined my interests of Heavy Metal and studying serial killers. Oddly enough, it was a simple hobby that introduced me to the field of history. While not for everyone, the music is, at least in part, responsible for this project. Heavy Metal guided my studies from lower division on through graduate school; it became both a muse for reading and writing, and an outlet to vent the frustrations of the former. In grad school this project became more relevant to my interests as I pieced together what I perceive to be an original approach. Much has been written on Gilles de Rais and Elizabeth Bathory individually,