“’Was he softened, weakened by his nights of debauchery, terrified by the audacity of his own sacrileges, ravaged and torn by remorse?  Was he tired of living as he did, and did he give himself up, as so many murderers do, because he was irresistibly attracted to punishment?  Nobody knows.  Did he think himself above the law because of his lofty rank?  Or did he hope to disarm the duke by playing upon his venality, offering him a ransom of manors and farm land?

“One answer is as plausible as another.  He may also have known how hesitant Jean V had been, for fear of rousing the wrath of the nobility of his duchy, about yielding to the objurgations of the Bishop and raising troops for the pursuit and arrest.

“Well, there is no document which answers these questions.  An author can take some liberties here and set down his own conjectures.  But that curious trial is going to give me some trouble.

“As soon as Gilles and his accomplices are incarcerated, two tribunals are organized, one ecclesiastical to judge the crimes coming under the jurisdiction of the Church, the other civil to judge those on which the state must pass.

“To tell the truth, the civil tribunal, which is present at the ecclesiastical hearings, effaces itself completely.  As a matter of form it makes a brief cross-examination—­but it pronounces the sentence of death, which the Church cannot permit itself to utter, according to the old adage, ‘Ecclesia abhorret a sanguine.’

“The ecclesiastical trial lasts five weeks, the civil, forty-eight hours.  It seems that, to hide behind the robes of the Bishop, the duke of Brittany has voluntarily subordinated the role of civil justice, which ordinarily stands up for its rights against the encroachments of the ecclesiastical court.

“Jean de Malestroit presides over the hearings.  He chooses for assistants the Bishops of Mans, of Saint Brieuc, and of Saint Lo, then in addition he surrounds himself with a troop of jurists who work in relays in the interminable sessions of the trial.  Some of the more important are Guillaume de Montigne, advocate of the secular court; Jean Blanchet, bachelor of laws; Guillaume Groyguet and Robert de la Riviere, licentiates in utroque jure, and Herve Levi, senescal of Quimper.  Pierre de l’Hospital, chancellor of Brittany, who is to preside over the civil hearings after the canonic judgment, assists Jean de Malestroit.

“The public prosecutor is Guillaume Chapeiron, curate of Saint Nicolas, an eloquent and subtile man.  Adjunct to him, to relieve him of the fatigue of the readings, are Geoffroy Pipraire, dean of Sainte Marie, and Jacques de Pentcoetdic, Official of the Church of Nantes.

“In connection with the episcopal jurisdiction, the Church has called in the assistance of the extraordinary tribunal of the Inquisition, for the repression of the crime of heresy, then comprehending perjury, blasphemy, sacrilege, all the crimes of magic.