Europe's inner demons

Clement, already harassed beyond endurance over the Templars, gave way at once. He instructed the archbishop of Sens to arrest Guichard, and in very curious terms: in addition to maleficia and attempted poisonings, the bull mentions that Guichard had “committed other fearful and sacrilegious crimes”.

⁽¹⁵⁾ In this the king’s hand is clearly visible; for such wording left the accusers free to produce further charges as required, without having to obtain further authority from the pope. In fact the royal officials were closely involved in the affair from the start. In flat disregard of canon law, they removed Guichard from the archbishop’s custody and placed him in the royal prison at the Louvre. The first formal version of the charges was prepared by a royal official, Hengest, bailli

of Sens, who also supplied the witnesses. And on 6 October 1308, the day before the enquiry opened, Guichard’s crimes were proclaimed at an assembly held in the king’s garden; it was the same device as had been employed against Boniface VIII and against the Templars.

The enquiry was carried out by a commission consisting of the archbishop of Sens and the bishops of Orléans and Auxerre. The case had grown remarkably during the six months since the hermit first told his story. Now it appeared that Guichard had boasted, repeatedly and in various places, that unless Queen Joan restored him to favour he would destroy her. To this end, like a man plunging into an abyss of evil, he summoned a woman who had the reputation of a fortune-teller and sorceress. She advised him to invoke the Devil; so he applied to a Dominican friar, Jean de Fay, who was skilled in that art. When the Devil duly appeared, Guichard did homage to him. In return, the Devil gave him the necessary instructions: to make a waxen image, to baptize it with the queen’s name, to prick it with pins and, if that proved insufficient, to throw it in the fire.⁽¹⁶⁾

The charges were presented in the form of twenty-three separate items; Guichard denied each one of them, and repeated the denials under oath, standing before the Scriptures, his hand on his heart. Whereupon the commission proceeded to hear the witnesses. There were eight of them, but only three had anything interesting to say: the hermit, who repeated his original story; and Guichard’s chamberlain and the fortune-teller, who had some curious details to add.

The chamberlain, called Lorin, told two contradictory stories.⁽¹⁷⁾

 First he said that he had sometimes seen Guichard get up at night, but had assumed that he was off to see his mistress, in the same building. Later he remembered that he himself had, on each occasion, accompanied Guichard to the room of Jean de Fay; he had also seen the bishop and the Dominican leave the palace together, disguised as peasants and carrying a box. Less thoroughly coached than the Templars, Lorin also revealed what lay behind his evidence. After being arrested by the king’s soldiers, he had been kept in chains for a fortnight. When the bailli Hengest first interrogated him, at Troyes, he had repeatedly denied that he had ever seen the bishop go out at night. But then Hengest had had him stripped naked and suspended, spread-eagled, in mid-air from rings in the walls; until, almost dead with pain, he had told the story required of him, and sworn to its truth.

In the case of the fortune-teller, an indigent woman of thirty-two called Margueronne de Bellevillette, the mere threat of torture was enough to extract an appropriate statement.⁽¹⁸⁾ In exchange she was allowed not to incriminate herself. Nothing more was said about her having urged Guichard to make contact with the Devil — on the contrary, she now figured as an unwilling witness of the contact. Summoned to the episcopal palace, she had been unable to suggest how the bishop could regain the favour of Queen Joan. But instead of being sent packing, as might have been expected, she had been allowed to loiter. She heard Guichard deep in conversation with the Dominican, who began to read from a book of spells. After some time she saw, to her horror, a form like a black monk descend from a window high up in the wall, flying, without a ladder, until it came to rest by the bishop and the Dominican. The form had horns on its forehead, and Margueronne decided it must be the Devil. It addressed the friar: “What do you want of me, you who tire me out so?” — “The bishop here has been asking for you.” — “What does he want?” — “He wants you to make his peace with the queen.” — “If he wants me to make his peace with the queen, he must give me one of his limbs.” Then the bishop intervened to say that he would think it over, and the Devil withdrew by the same window, as it were flying and beating its wings. That the compact was indeed made, with fatal results for the queen, was indicated by the evidence of the other witnesses.