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Chapitre d'ouvrage Année : 2024

La rumeur de Nantes. L’interminable histoire des crimes de Gilles de Rais

Résumé

Rumours and secrets – swirling, persistent, endlessly variable – have fol- lowed the history of Gilles de Rais, lord of Machecoul and Marshal of France. They have passed down from the 15th century to modern times, playing a role in the transmission of his story perhaps even greater than the supposed scale of his victims and the unspeakable horror of his crimes: magic, heresy, sodomy, murder of children, and lèse majesté.Vague rumours and unspeakable crimes go hand in hand, one invoking history, the other exciting the imagination. His trial in 1440 began with rumour and hearsay, already portending an uncer- tainty that would not be resolved. It is those rumours, clinging through the centuries to this infamous event, transmitted orally and through a variety of documents, which demonstrate the extraordinary flexibility of the story, end- lessly repeated, of the crimes of the cruel lord of Machecoul. His conviction and execution did not put an end to the questions first posed by his contem- poraries. The combination of his secretive trials, confessions of sadistic acts, and difficult-to-find archival sources, have continued to sustain the rumours, encouraging invention and fiction. Moreover, each generation has made its own use of the history of de Rais, imprinting its own preoccupations on the story. Chroniclers from the 16th to the 18th centuries did not exhaust the uncertainties and mysteries, and even historians, fiction writers, and play- wrights of our modern era seem incapable of coming to terms with his story of horrors, of concluding his trials, and putting an end to the rumour.

Domaines

Histoire
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Dates et versions

halshs-04425666, version 1 (30-01-2024)

Identifiants

  • HAL Id : halshs-04425666 , version 1

Citer

Jacques Chiffoleau. La rumeur de Nantes. L’interminable histoire des crimes de Gilles de Rais. Agostino Paravicini Bagliani. «Dicitur». Hearsay in Science, Memory and Poetry, Micrologus (XXXII), Sismel - Edizioni del Galluzzo, pp.435-565, 2024, [Micrologus XXXII]. ⟨halshs-04425666⟩
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Dernière date de mise à jour le 28/04/2024
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