Page:A history of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, volume 3.djvu/492

 476 SORCERY AND OCCULT ARTS. With the exaggeration customary in such cases some writers have estimated them at seven hundred or eight hundred. In his con- fession Gilles said that the number was great, but he kept no count. In the civil process against him it is stated at over two hundred, but in the articles of accusation in the ecclesiastical court, which were elaborately drawn up after obtaining all pos- sible testimony, the figure is given as one hundred and forty, more or less, and this is probably a full estimate.* Yet, strange as were the crimes of Gilles de Rais, even stranger was his profound conviction that he had in no way so incurred the wrath of God that the Church could not readily insure his salva- tion at the cost of some of the customary penances. He was so- licitous about his soul in a fashion very uncommon with demon- worshippers, and in all his projected and rejected compacts with Satan he was careful to insert a clause that he should not suffer in bodv or soul. He was regular in the observances of religion. On the Easter previous to his arrest a witness describes him as going behind the altar with a priest for confession, and then taking the communion with the rest of the parishioners, and when these lat- ter, uneasy at their companionship with so great a lord, desired to rise he bade them stay, and all remained together until the Eu- charist was administered to all. When he founded his chapter of canons and dedicated it to the Holy Innocents, there might seem to be a grim pleasantry in his choice of patron saints, yet there can be no doubt that he felt that he was thus atoning for the massacre of the innocents which he himself was constantly perpetrating. More than once he had a transient emotion of repentance ; he took vows to abandon his guilty life, and by a pilgrimage to the Holy Sepulchre to obtain pardon for the evil he had wrought — pardon which he never seems to have doubted could be thus easily won, and reasonably enough, in view of the plenary indulgences which were so lavishly distributed and sold. After making his public confession, when he could have no further hope on earth, he turned to the crowded audience and exhorted them to hold fast to the Church and to pay her the highest honor. He had always, he said, kept his heart and his affections on the Church, but for which, in view of his crimes, he believed that Satan would have strangled Bossard et Maulde, pp. 212-13 ; Pr. pp. xxiv., 1.