The Saint and The Sinner: Joan of Arc vs Gilles de Rais

Gilles de Rais, medieval noble and alleged serial killer, was once a war hero who fought beside Joan of Arc. In 1440, a missing boy in Nantes led investigators to the baron’s estates, where rumors of vanished children surrounded one of the richest men in France. This dark history podcast episode follows his rise from hero of Orléans to infamous killer, walks through the trials and testimony, and asks how his story helped shape the later Bluebeard legend.

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Episode Sources (No Order):

Primary records & contemporary compilations

• Ecclesiastical & secular proceedings (Nantes, 1440) – translated excerpts (indictment; Henriet & Poitou confessions). Famous Trials (Douglas O. Linder) hosts faithful English translations from published French editions:
  • “Indictment of Gilles de Rais.”
  • “Confession of Henriet (valet of Gilles de Rais), Oct. 23, 1440.”
  • “Confession of Poitou, Oct. 1440.”
  • Joan of Arc documentary corpus (for Orléans, Reims, and related 1429–31 material):
  • Joan of Arc: By Herself and Her Witnesses, ed./trans. Régine Pernoud—English ed. (uses trial & chronicle testimony).
  • “Letter to the English” (22 Mar 1429), English translation from Quicherat, with notes; Joan of Arc Archive.
  • “Royal Financial Records for Twenty Harkebusiers at Orléans, 1429” (payments record translated from Journal du siège d’Orléans); Joan of Arc Studies – Primary Sources Series.
• Hundred Years’ War treaties
  • Treaty of Troyes (1420) – translation and analysis (Anne Curry, University of Southampton).

Scholarly syntheses & reference works

• On Gilles de Reis (biography & trial analysis)
  • Benedetti, Jean. The Real Bluebeard: The Life of Gilles de Rais (1971). English monograph; accessible via Internet Archive.
  • Ross, Lia B. “Deviancy in the Late Middle Ages: The Crimes and Punishment of Gilles de Rais.” In Crime and Punishment in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Age (De Gruyter, 2012), pp. 359–402.
  • (For historiography & cultural afterlives) Brill chapter overview touching Gilles and late-medieval context.
• On Joan of Arc, Orléans campaign, and sources
  • Pernoud, Régine. Joan of Arc: By Herself and Her Witnesses (reliance on primary testimony; context for 1429 campaign and Reims).