The Trial of a Lycanthrope: A Mini-Essay

     In 1603, Jean Grenier, a fourteen-year-old servant, made a startling confession to the citizens of Landes, France: during his transformations into a wolf, he had stalked, killed, and eaten several local children. The declaration prompted his immediate trial, where he was charged with lycanthropy and sentenced to a life-long incarceration at the Basilica of Saint Michael in Bordeaux.[1] Grenier’s indictment, though, was not an isolated incident. In fact, France alone witnessed several cases of lycanthropy during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries: in 1521, three suspects professed to being part of a wolf pack terrorizing the city of Poligny; in 1573, Gilles Garnier, a citizen of Dole, was accused of possessing a wolf-like appetite for human flesh; and, in 1598, a Parisian man was tried after being found naked and covered in hair at a brutal crime scene.[2] In each instance, lycanthropy was ruled as the cause for the crimes. For contemporary society, where werewolves have become the glitter-coated pets of jejune teen novels, this concept seems rather bizarre; however, at the time of Grenier’s conviction, lycanthropy was a frightening concept which prompted serious discussion by learned individuals throughout Europe.
     In 1580, Jean Bodin, a French political philosopher, wrote his examination of witchcraft and demonology titled De la Démonomanie des Sorciers. Utilizing examples from history and the Bible, Bodin devoted an entire chapter to lycanthropy. During his examination, the author proposes that the material transformation of man into wolf is a product of the Devil, who lulls the lycanthrope into a dreamlike state and imposes a hallucination onto the victim’s body to deceive both him and any observers.[3] Through this demon-delusion, Bodin maintains, the Devil can manipulate the werewolf to do his devious biddings. Although it was controversial during the time of its publication, Bodin’s argument was one of many emerging during the era. From Henri Boguet’s Discours des Sorciers (1590) and Claude Prieur’s Dialogue de la Lycanthropie (1596) to Le Sieur de Beauvoys de Chauvincourt’s Discours de la Lycanthropie (1599) and Jean de Nynauld’s De la Lycanthropie (1615) numerous works materialized during the latter part of the sixteenth century which, akin to Bodin’s text, upheld that lycanthropy was a deception of the Devil.[4] It was this definition, in turn, which was employed by the courts during earlier cases as a means to judge and execute Gilles Garnier, the three individuals from Poligny, and countless others. In retaliation to this malicious perception, physicians such as Reginald Scot and Johann Weyer claimed lycanthropy was not a demon-delusion, but an illness of Melancholia attributed to excess black bile.[5] In 1584, Scot published The Discoverie of Witchcraft, which – along with Weyer’s De Praestigiis Daemonum in 1563 – stressed the need for compassion and healing in cases of lycanthropy and condoned the persecution and death, particularly that of Garnier, which had run rampant as a result of Bodin and his peers.[6] By the start of the seventeenth century, as Grenier’s trial attests, the opinion of Scot and Weyer had made a slight impact, with the Higher Court electing to sequester the criminal to a monastic life rather than burn him at the stake like his predecessors.

Works Referenced

Frost, Brian. The Essential Guide to Werewolf Literature. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 2003.

Gee, Joshua. Encyclopedia Horrifica. New York: Scholastic, Inc., 2007.

Midelforty, H.C. Erik. A History of Madness in Sixteenth-Century Germany. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1999.

Otten, Charlotte, ed. A Lycanthropy Reader: Werewolves in Western Culture. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1986.

Summers, Montague. The Werewolf in Lore and Legend. 1933. New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 2003. 

Wiseman, S.J. “Hairy on the Inside: Metamorphosis and Civility in English Werewolf Texts.” Renaissance Beasts: Of Animals, Humans, and Other Wonderful Creatures. Ed. Erica Fudge. Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2004. 50-69.     

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[1] Summers, 231-234.

[2] Gee, 30.

[3] Wiseman, 58.

[4] Frost, 30-31.

[5] Midelforty, 169.

[6] Otten, 102.