11. Donatien Alphonse Francois and Renee-Pelagie Cordier
Donatien Alphonse Francois is better known by his inherited title, that of the Comte (Count) de Sade, though his forebears had taken to using the title Marquis in lieu of Conte by the time of his birth in 1740. De Sade was a writer and philosopher, as well as a politician, whose licentious behavior and prose led to his titular name being the root of the word sadism. He carried his beliefs expressed in his work into his personal life, his wife, Renee-Pelagie Cordier becoming, according to his political enemies, his procurer (in company with his mother-in-law) of prostitutes and eventually other young women and girls.
An Amoral Life (To Say the Least)
De Sade lived a life of amoral licentiousness, aided and abetted by his wife as well as by her sister, her mother, and other women whom he met between his many stays in French prisons and dungeons. Eventually, he was declared insane. At one point in the 1770s, he kept six young children as prisoners in his chateau, with the knowledge and support of his wife. While imprisoned, de Sade wrote many of his plays and treatises, most of which retain the power to shock over two hundred years after they were written. Renee died in 1810, de Sade four years later. The number of crimes committed by the pair, including rape, torture, kidnapping, pederasty, and more, remains unknown, but descriptions of his fantasies are readily available in his many published works.
