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The Werewolf from Mythology to the Middle Ages by Alexander Young 1873
The idea of a person being transformed into a wolf, either to gratify a taste for human flesh, or in punishment by the gods for some great offense, has come down to us from ancient mythology. But the belief in such a creature, combining human intelligence with wolfish ferocity and demoniac strength, was especially strong and prevalent in the middle ages, though it is still cherished by peasants in secluded parts of Europe. It has undoubtedly been confirmed by the dreadful instances of homicidal insanity, sometimes accompanied by cannibalism, which reveal the bestial appetites and passions that dominate humanity in what we call abnormal conditions, but which savants tell us are only a recurrence to the primitive types of our race.
The story told by Ovid in his "Metamorphoses," of Lycaon, King of Arcadia, who, to test the omniscience of Jupiter, served up for him a dish of human flesh, and was punished by being transformed into a wolf, is one of many similar illustrations of this idea in classic fable. Mr. Cox, in his "Mythology of the Aryan Nations," maintains that the wide-spread superstition of lycanthropy, or wolf-madness, arose from the confusion of the word lukos, bright, applied to Jupiter, and lukos, the Greek name for wolf. But, though this theory illustrates by the myth of Lycaon the origin of the Arcadian legend, it fails, as Professor Fiske has shown, to explain all the features of the were-wolf superstition, or to account for its prevalence.
Doubtless the doctrine of metempsychosis, or the transmigration of the soul into the body of a brute, was the basis of the myth. There was a certain grim justice in the old idea that human beings assumed after death the natures which their lives resembled; that, while the lofty soul was elevated to the condition of the Deity, the savage and bloodthirsty man was transformed into a wild beast, and drunkards and gluttons became swine. Thus primitive man invested the lower animals with his own characteristics, and, regarding the body as the mere garment of the soul, thought it might change its vesture even in this life. The class of creatures in whom he recognized his relatives were those represented by the totem, or symbol of his family or tribe. In the forces of Nature he discerned the influences of the bestial world, the storm-wind howling at night being a monstrous wolf ravening for prey, who yet was no earthly creature, but the personification of some tempestuous god.
But there was a basis of truth on which the were-wolf superstition rested. One element of it is seen in the celebrated "Berserker rage," a murderous frenzy, which at times possessed the old Norse freebooters. The craving for blood and rapine, stimulated by their ravages in sunnier climes, was developed at home into a strange homicidal madness. When the fit was on them, they would go forth at night, dressed in the skins of wolves and bears, and crush the skulls or cleave the backbones of belated travellers, whose blood they sometimes drank. In their frenzied excitement, they acquired superhuman strength and insensibility to pain, and, as they rushed about with glaring eyeballs, gnashing their teeth, foaming at the mouth and howling like wild beasts, it is not strange that the terrified peasantry should have regarded them as veritable were-wolves. Great exhaustion and nervous depression usually followed these attacks of frenzy, and which, according to the Norse historians, was extinguished by baptism. Verbal peculiarities assisted the growth of the were-wolf superstition—the word vargr signifying in Norse both a wolf and a godless man; and, as an utlagh, or outlaw, among the Anglo-Saxons, was said to have the head of a wolf, it is easy to see how the stories of outlaws, whom the law doomed to live like wild beasts, away from the haunts of men, should have been connected with accounts of their transformation into wolves.
The way in which these changes were said to have been effected, illustrates the curious character of the superstition in different countries. A Swedish tradition relates the adventures of a cottager named Lasse, who, having gone into the forest to fell a tree, neglected to cross himself and say his Pater-noster. By this neglect, a troll was enabled to transform him into a wolf. His wife, who mourned his loss for many years, was told by a beggar-woman, to whom she had given a kind reception one Christmas-eve, that she would probably see her husband again, as he was not dead, but was roaming the forest as a wolf. As she was in her pantry that evening, laying aside a joint of meat for the next day's dinner, she saw a wolf standing with its paws on the window-sill, looking sorrowfully in at her. "Ah," said she, "if I knew that thou wert my husband, I would give thee a bone." At that instant the wolf-skin fell off, and her husband stood before her, in the same old clothes which he had on the day of his disappearance. In this story we see the Christian view of the were-wolf as the creation of an evil spirit—the witchcraft delusion in its early stages. The saints were believed to have a power similar to that of their evil adversaries. Vereticus, King of Wales, was said to have been transformed into a wolf by St. Patrick, and another saint doomed the members of an illustrious family in Ireland to become wolves for seven years, prowling among the bogs and forests, uttering mournful howls, and devouring the peasants' sheep to allay their hunger.
The doubts of incredulous persons as to the possibility of such a transformation, were said to have been dispelled in one instance by the servant of a nobleman's wife in Livonia, who, to convince her of the truth, left the room, and, as she looked from the window, a wolf was seen running across the country. The dogs followed him, and, in the fight which ensued, tore out one of his eyes. Next day the slave appeared as usual before his mistress, but with only one eye. Though imprisoned in a lupine form, the unfortunate victims were believed to retain their human consciousness and even voices, and to yearn for an alleviation of their condition. John of Nuremberg relates that a priest, while travelling in a strange country, lost his way in a forest. Seeing a fire not far off, he went up to it, and was surprised to see a wolf seated over it. The wolf addressed him in a human voice, telling him not to be alarmed, for he was of the Ossyrian race, a man and woman of which were doomed to spend a certain number of years in lupine form. At the end of seven years, if they lived so long, they could return home and resume their former shapes. He then entreated the priest to visit and console his sick wife, and administer the last sacraments to her. The priest hesitated at first about accompanying the wolf to his den, but consented on observing that he used his front paws as a human being does his hands. All doubts as to its true nature were removed when he saw the she-wolf peel off her wolf-skin, exhibiting the features of an aged woman.
The belief in these transformations in the middle ages derived a new and terrible significance from its connection with witchcraft. To the ancients the subjects of such metamorphoses were regarded with superstitious reverence. Divine natures were believed to assume earthly forms. But these mythological conceptions were degraded by the medieval Christians into diabolical influences. The Church, jealous of miraculous powers exercised beyond its pale, denounced the were-wolf as a devil. Thus the person suspected of beast-metamorphosis ran the double risk of losing both his soul and his life, of being anathematized by the clergy, and then burnt at the stake. Ignorance of the phenomena of mental disease led to a belief that its victims were ministers of the Evil One, and even mere eccentricity was often fatal to its unfortunate possessor. These ideas were strengthened by some terrible instances of homicidal insanity, some of which were accompanied by cannibalism and lycanthropic, or were-wolf hallucinations, and were often ascribed to demoniac agency.
One of the most celebrated of these cases was that of Gilles de Laval (Gilles de Rais), a distinguished nobleman of Brittany, in the early part of the fifteenth century, who, in reward for his brilliant military services, was made a marshal of France by Charles VII. After having distinguished himself in statesmanship and war, the trusted counsellor and friend of the king surprised every one by suddenly retiring from public life to his estates in the country. One of his principal residences was the Castle of Machecoul, a gloomy fortress, which was vigilantly guarded by his retainers. Strange stories were told in the surrounding country of dark deeds done within its sombre walls. No one except the servants had entered the castle and come out alive. Yet the marshal seemed deeply interested in religious observances, and the ceremonies in his gorgeous chapel were said to be very imposing. But at night, when the windows of the castle were lighted up, a fierce red glare was sometimes noticed in the casement high up in an isolated tower, from which heartrending cries burst upon the stillness of the woods, and were answered, as the peasants said, by the howl of some hungry wolf.
The drawbridge of the fortress was lowered on certain days at fixed hours, when the servants of the Marechal de Retz distributed clothes, money, and food, to a crowd of mendicants. Children were often among the beggars, and it was noticed that the servants tried to induce them to go into the kitchen for some promised dainty. Those who yielded to these solicitations were never seen again.
At last the indignation of the people burst forth. They charged the marshal with murdering their children and sacrificing them to the devil. These accusations were at first ridiculed by John V., Duke of Brittany, the kinsman of De Retz, who would have taken no serious notice of them had not an investigation been demanded by one of his nobles, and strongly urged by the Bishop of Nantes and the illustrious L'Hospital, grand-seneschal of the ducal dominions. Thus importuned, the duke reluctantly signed a warrant for the arrest of Sire de Retz and his accomplices, which was presented at the gate of the castle by Jean Labbe, sergent d'armes, at the head of a band of twenty men selected for their pluck and daring. When summoned to surrender, the marshal, on learning that the leader of the troops was Labbe, turned pale, crossed himself, and declared it was impossible to resist Fate. It appeared that one of his astrologers had told him years before that he would one day pass into the hands of an abbe, and he had hitherto supposed that the prophecy signified he should become a monk.
Several of the marshal's associates escaped by flight, but two remained with him. On his way to Nantes, under guard of the duke's soldiers, an eager crowd assembled to view the cavalcade. They looked on in silence, till a woman's voice sadly cried, "My child! Restore my child!" when the thronging multitude uttered a wild howl, which followed the prisoner to the gates of the Chateau de Bouffay, where he was confined. The people of Nantes were very much excited, and it was feared that the criminal would escape the punishment he deserved through the influence of the duke, his kinsman, and be only obliged to surrender some of his lands. But the Bishop of Nantes and the grand seneschal were so persistent in their demand for a thorough investigation and a public trial that the duke at last consented, and appointed a commissioner to make the preliminary examination. He was instructed, however, to be as lenient as possible, and not allow the matter to be pressed. But the revelations made during the investigation were of such a character that it was impossible to gloss over or suppress them. Numerous witnesses testified that children had been enticed, under various pretences, into the castle, and had never afterward been seen. Some were led away by an old hag; others were inveigled by the armed retainers of the marshal. Pontou prevailed on the mother of one boy to let him go to Machecoul and be educated as a soldier, but two years had passed and no tidings of him had reached her. The number of these mysterious disappearances was too large to be accounted for on any theory consistent with the innocence of the accused. One witness deposed that the valet of Roger de Brigueville, an associate of the Sire de Retz, had told him he knew of a cask secreted in the castle, full of children's corpses.
Notwithstanding the overwhelming evidence against the marshal, which the commissioners presented to the duke, he still hesitated to proceed against him, when he was surprised to receive a letter from the accused confessing his crimes, but urging in extenuation of them his faithful attention to religious duties. After expressing repentance, the marshal supplicated permission to expiate his sins in the retirement of a monastery. He also indicated his intention of distributing his property among the poor. The letter, which was a strange medley of religious raving and insane cunning, was read by the duke to the President of Brittany and to the Bishop of Nantes, who were horrified at its tone, and protested that De Retz could not now be allowed to escape trial by the impious device that he suggested. They had, in the mean time, discovered numerous traces of human remains in the Castle of Machecoul, but were prevented from making a thorough examination by the persistent opposition of the duke. His hesitation to proceed against his kinsman, notwithstanding the advice of his principal officers, led the Bishop of Nantes to declare that, unless the case was brought into a secular court, he would summon the criminal to appear before an ecclesiastical tribunal. This resolution of the bishop obliged the duke to consent to a speedy trial by the civil authorities.
The marshal appeared in court dressed in white, with the exception of his gorgeous pourpoint, in token of his repentance. He did not look like a cruel man, but had rather a melancholy and phlegmatic expression of countenance. But a closer observation showed a nervous quivering of the mouth, spasmodic twitchings of the brows, and a strange and sinister appearance in the eyes. At times also be ground his teeth convulsively, his lips became contracted, and again his eyes would appear fixed, sunken, and staring, and his complexion turn livid and cadaverous. These phenomena, which were ignorantly ascribed to demoniac agency, were symptomatic of a frenzy like that which attacked the old Norse freebooters.
The charges having been read, the prisoner resolutely denied being guilty of the atrocious crimes of which he was accused, and was remanded to prison. Henriet and Pontou, his retainers, then gave a minute account of the manner in which the children were murdered, and their remains disposed of. The marshal massacred them himself, with every variety of cruelty, and experienced intense pleasure in witnessing their agonies when tortured by his servants. After literally weltering in the blood of his victims, he was invariably seized with remorse, which, however, did not prevent him from continuing to gratify his dreadful cravings. He made one of his followers read to him accounts of the crimes of the most debased of the Roman emperors, as recorded by Suetonius and Tacitus, to stimulate his murderous passion, and said it gave him greater pleasure to hack off a child's head than to assist at a banquet. The bodies of the unfortunates were burned in the great fireplace in the chamber in which they were invariably murdered, and their ashes thrown into the moat. This testimony of his accomplices was confirmed by the circumstantial confession of the marshal, who, finding further evasion useless, acknowledged having committed about eight hundred murders in seven years.
All attempts to secure his pardon having failed, the Sire de Retz was executed in conformity with the sentence of the ecclesiastical tribunal, ratified by the secular court which had first tried him. He and his accomplices, Henriet and Pontou, were hung over piles of fagots, tar, and brushwood, the flames of which enveloped their swinging bodies, on the 26th of October, 1440, in the presence of a vast concourse of spectators. He exhibited on the scaffold the same outward manifestations of religious feeling which had characterized his conduct during the trial, and made an address to his accomplices and the crowd, expressive of his contrition, and hope of eternal glory. While the ashes of Henriet and Pontou were cast to the winds, the body of the marshal was removed, before the fire had consumed it, to the Carmelite monastery of Nantes, where his obsequies were celebrated with great pomp. The facts of the case have been set forth in the histories of Michelet and Martin, as well as in the work of Mr. Baring-Gould.
In the mania of De Retz, the propensity to murder was not accompanied by cannibalism. But there were numerous instances in the middle ages in which these cravings were combined. Such was the case of a tailor of Chalons, who was sentenced by the Parliament of Paris, in 1698, to be burned alive for lycanthropy. He used to decoy children into his shop, or waylay them in the woods at dusk. After tearing them with his teeth and killing them, he dressed their flesh like ordinary meat, and devoured it with great relish. A cask full of bones was found in his house, but the number of his victims is unknown.
Frequently the murderer and cannibal was the victim of hallucination, as well as of an insane appetite, and believed himself to be transformed into a wolf. This delusion existed in the case of Peter Burgot, a shepherd of Besancon, who, having lost his sheep in a storm, recovered them, as he thought, by the aid of the devil, whom he agreed to serve, and was transformed into a wolf by being smeared with a salve. He confessed that he and his companion, one Michel Verdung, used to make were wolf runs through the country, killing and often eating the children, and even grown people, whom they met. On one of these raids, a boy whom he attacked screamed so loud that he was obliged to return to his clothes, and smear himself again, in order to assume his human form and escape detection.
It was seldom that the true condition of these victims of mental disease was even dimly appreciated by their judges, although death may have been more merciful than confinement in the mad-houses of those days. Yet Jacques Roulet, after being tried and sentenced to death by a criminal court, had his punishment commuted by the Parliament at Paris to two years' imprisonment in one of these institutions, in order, as the decree recited, that he might be instructed in the knowledge of God, whom he had forgotten in his extreme poverty.
He was a wretched beggar, whose idiotic mind was completely mastered by a cannibal appetite. The first knowledge of his depraved taste was obtained by some countrymen, who, while passing a wild and lonely spot near Caude, found the bloody and mutilated corpse of a boy of fifteen. On their approach, two wolves, which had been rending the body, ran into the thicket. While following their bloody tracks, the men came upon a half-naked man crouching among the bushes. His hair and beard were long and straggling, and his nails, which were the length of claws, were clotted with flesh, blood, and shreds of human flesh. Roulet (for it was the beggar) freely acknowledged that he had smothered the lad to death, and would have devoured the body completely had it not been for the arrival of the men. The wretched man proved to be miserably poor, and had been lodged, out of charity, in a neighboring village, from which he was absent eight days before his apprehension. He told the judges, at the trial, that he transformed himself into a wolf by using some ointment which his parents had given him, and said that the wolves, which had been seen leaving the corpse, were his cousin and his brother, his companions in mendicity. It was proved, however, that they were away at the time. There is no doubt that Roulet killed and ate the child, as he had done several others, in the belief that he was a wolf; and his subsequent appearance and actions showed the low stage of his intellectual and moral development.
Another case of cannibalism and werewolf hallucination was that of Jean Grenier. A party of village girls, in the south of France, while chatting merrily together, noticed that the sheep which they were tending suddenly took fright, while, at the same time, one of the dogs growled savagely. On seeking the cause of the disturbance, the girls dis
covered a strange-looking boy, about thirteen years old, sitting on a fir-log in a little hollow near by. He had red hair, thickly matted, which hung over his shoulders and covered his narrow forehead; sunken eyes, that glared with mingled ferocity and cunning, and a dark, olive complexion. His large, brutal-looking jaws projected forward, and his strong canine teeth protruded beyond the lower lip when the mouth was closed. The tattered clothes that he wore showed his abject poverty, and revealed also the emaciation of his limbs. As the girls stood around him, he frightened them terribly by saying that he was a werewolf, who had eaten many a maiden, and would devour one of them at sundown. Terrified by his dreadful stories and threats, even more than by his horrible appearance, his ghastly leers and howls of merriment, the girls soon ran away from him.
Not long afterward, a little girl of thirteen, who had been in the habit of tending sheep with Jean Grenier, who had often frightened her with his were-wolf stories, came home without her flock, and in great alarm. She told her parents that she had been attacked by a creature resembling a wolf, with red hair; its head smaller and its body shorter and stouter than that of this animal. By a vigorous use of her shepherd-staff she succeeded in beating the creature off, and fled home. As several children had mysteriously disappeared of late, suspicion fell upon Jean Grenier as the assailant whom the excited fancy of the little girl had turned into a wolf. Being brought before the Parliament of Bordeaux, he stated that, two or three years ago, he had been introduced to the devil in the depths of the forest, who made a compact with him, and presented him with a salve and a wolf-skin. Since then he had roamed about the country as a wolf after dark, resuming his human shape by daylight. The account of the number of children he had killed corresponded with the evidence of their parents, and it was proved that he had eaten the bodies of his victims. On one occasion he took advantage of the absence of the family to enter a house and drag a baby from its cradle. At another time he was only prevented from killing a little boy by the interference of a man, who, on being examined, confirmed the truth of his confession. Though Grenier himself undoubtedly believed that he was transformed into a wolf, the only witness who corroborated his statement in this respect was the little girl who used to tend sheep with him. It is to the credit of the court that they rejected the popular superstition, and, instead of punishing the wretched boy as an agent of the devil, pronounced him an imbecile, who was irresponsible for his acts; lycanthropy being a mere hallucination, its victim was not a proper subject for the criminal law. Grenier was sentenced to perpetual imprisonment in a monastery at Bordeaux, so that he might receive moral and religious instruction. The monks could hardly have welcomed him as a promising pupil, for, on his arrival, he ran frantically about the cloister and garden on all-fours, and devoured with eagerness a heap of offal which he found there. Seven years afterward he was visited by the celebrated expert on insanity, Delanere, who found him very shy and unwilling tp look any one in the face. This savant noted his deep-set, restless eyes, long and protruding teeth, and feeble mind. Grenier told him his story, which coincided with his former statements, and said he still felt a craving for raw flesh, preferring that of little girls, which he considered delicious, and, were it not for his confinement, should taste again. He died soon after Delancre's visit, at the age of twenty.
These examples of murderous mania and cannibalism in by-gone ages arc sufficiently horrible to read about, but they lack the fearful interest which invests similar horrors in more recent days. In the year 1849, at the little hamlet of Polomyja, in Austrian Galicia, surrounded by great forests of pine, a white-bearded, venerable man sat at the door of a rude church asking alms from the poor wood-cutters who make up the population. The beggar, whose name was Swiatek, eked out his subsistence by the charity of the kind-hearted villagers and the sale of small pinchbeck ornaments and beads. One Sunday after church, as he was eating a crust of bread and some meat in the hut of a hospitable Mazurd, his attention was attracted by a bright little girl of nine or ten, who was playing with several other children. He gave her a ring with a piece of colored glass set in it, which delighted the child, and told her he found it under a big fir near the churchyard, where, if she went alone, she would find others among the tree-roots. Soon after the children scampered off into the wood, the old beggar left the house, thanking his host for their hospitality. The bright little girl, an orphan whom they had adopted, was never seen again. ,
Some time afterward, as some children were returning home from school, they saw one of their companions, a little boy, talking with a man among the pine-trees. They called to him to go along with them, but, after waiting till they were tired, went back without him. He was never seen again. Not a great while later a servant-girl disappeared from a village about five miles from Polomyja. She had been sent to a cottage among the woods with some groceries, and, at nightfall, her master and some of his neighbors went in search of her. They traced her footsteps where they left the beaten track, among the thick woods, with those of another person, on the powdered snow, but lost sight of them under the clustering pines. Next morning a heavy fall of snow had obliterated all traces of the missing girl. She, too, was never seen again.
In the winter of 1849 a little boy, who had been sent to a well to draw water, suddenly disappeared, but his pitcher was found at the curb. As the wolves were supposed to be particularly ravenous at this time, these mysterious disappearances of children were charged to them, and several were killed by the exasperated villagers. But, in May, 1849, the terrible secret leaked out. The innkeeper of Polomyja, having missed a couple of docks, suspected the old beggar Swiatek to be the thief. To satisfy himself, he determined to visit the mendicant's cottage. The fragrance of roast meat which greeted his nostrils as he approached, confirmed his suspicions. As he threw open the door he saw the beggar hide something under his long clothes. The innkeeper at once seized Swiatek by the throat and charged him with the theft, when, to his horror, he saw the head of a girl of fourteen drop from beneath the pauper's clothes.
On the arrival of the neighbors soon afterward, the old beggar, his wife, his daughter, aged sixteen, and his son, a boy of five, were locked up. The hut was then thoroughly examined, and the mutilated remains of the poor girl discovered, part being partially cooked. At his trial, Swiatek stated that he had killed six persons, who had been eaten by himself and family, his children, however, asserted that the number was much larger. Their testimony was confirmed by the discovery, in his house, of the remains of fourteen different suits of clothes. It appeared that Swiatek's first indulgence in human flesh was in 1846, when he found, amid the charred ruins of a Jewish tavern, the half-roasted corpse of its proprietor, who had perished in the flames. The half-starved beggar could not resist the desire to taste of it, and, having done so, the unnatural craving impelled him to gratify his depraved appetite by murder. Such was the indignation against him, that it was feared he would be torn in pieces by the populace when he was brought to trial, but precautions to insure his safety were rendered needless by his hanging himself the first night of his confinement from the bars of the prison-window.
About the time that these atrocities were brought to light, the perpetrator of outrages of a hardly less revolting character was discovered in Paris. His victims, however, were not among the living, but the dead. He was not a were-wolf, but a human hyena. This person, whose experience shows that the stories of ghouls in Oriental romance had a foundation in fact, was sometimes seized with an irresistible desire to enter cemeteries and rifle new-made graves. He proved to be a French officer named Bertrand. With retiring habits, and feminine delicacy and refinement, he was beloved by his comrades for his generous and cheerful qualities, but was nevertheless subject to fits of depression. The mania which resulted in his graveyard spoliations, was originally caused by over-indulgence in wine. He was tried by court-martial, and sentenced to a year's imprisonment.
It is a pleasant thought that the werewolf has ceased to prey on the lives of men, that the light of science has dispelled the gloomy superstition which doomed so many monomaniacs to the stake. But it may well moderate our pride in the nobility of human nature to reflect that the terrible outbursts of homicidal insanity, which people our lunatic asylums, are often due to a neglect of moral restraint in natures not naturally depraved. The Marshal de Retz stimulated his murderous desires by gloating over the atrocities of the Roman emperors, whose cruelties were intensified by the horrors of the gladiatorial shows. The demoniac passions of the human hyena, Bertrand, were excited by excesses in drink. Even the most petty covetousness has sometimes led to the perpetration of fearful crimes. In 1862 a pauper named Dumollard was guillotined in France for the murder of six poor village girls, having attempted to kill several others. He did not have a special relish for blood, but assassinated his victims solely for the sake of their garments. The dread of the criminal law keeps many persons from indulging their passions who in former ages could have gratified them with impunity. There is no more important duty for our reformers than to take care that vice and ignorance do not produce those were-wolves of modern civilization who gnash their teeth and glare at us from behind prison-bars or the grated windows of lunatic asylums.
The idea of a person being transformed into a wolf, either to gratify a taste for human flesh, or in punishment by the gods for some great offense, has come down to us from ancient mythology. But the belief in such a creature, combining human intelligence with wolfish ferocity and demoniac strength, was especially strong and prevalent in the middle ages, though it is still cherished by peasants in secluded parts of Europe. It has undoubtedly been confirmed by the dreadful instances of homicidal insanity, sometimes accompanied by cannibalism, which reveal the bestial appetites and passions that dominate humanity in what we call abnormal conditions, but which savants tell us are only a recurrence to the primitive types of our race.
The story told by Ovid in his "Metamorphoses," of Lycaon, King of Arcadia, who, to test the omniscience of Jupiter, served up for him a dish of human flesh, and was punished by being transformed into a wolf, is one of many similar illustrations of this idea in classic fable. Mr. Cox, in his "Mythology of the Aryan Nations," maintains that the wide-spread superstition of lycanthropy, or wolf-madness, arose from the confusion of the word lukos, bright, applied to Jupiter, and lukos, the Greek name for wolf. But, though this theory illustrates by the myth of Lycaon the origin of the Arcadian legend, it fails, as Professor Fiske has shown, to explain all the features of the were-wolf superstition, or to account for its prevalence.
Doubtless the doctrine of metempsychosis, or the transmigration of the soul into the body of a brute, was the basis of the myth. There was a certain grim justice in the old idea that human beings assumed after death the natures which their lives resembled; that, while the lofty soul was elevated to the condition of the Deity, the savage and bloodthirsty man was transformed into a wild beast, and drunkards and gluttons became swine. Thus primitive man invested the lower animals with his own characteristics, and, regarding the body as the mere garment of the soul, thought it might change its vesture even in this life. The class of creatures in whom he recognized his relatives were those represented by the totem, or symbol of his family or tribe. In the forces of Nature he discerned the influences of the bestial world, the storm-wind howling at night being a monstrous wolf ravening for prey, who yet was no earthly creature, but the personification of some tempestuous god.
But there was a basis of truth on which the were-wolf superstition rested. One element of it is seen in the celebrated "Berserker rage," a murderous frenzy, which at times possessed the old Norse freebooters. The craving for blood and rapine, stimulated by their ravages in sunnier climes, was developed at home into a strange homicidal madness. When the fit was on them, they would go forth at night, dressed in the skins of wolves and bears, and crush the skulls or cleave the backbones of belated travellers, whose blood they sometimes drank. In their frenzied excitement, they acquired superhuman strength and insensibility to pain, and, as they rushed about with glaring eyeballs, gnashing their teeth, foaming at the mouth and howling like wild beasts, it is not strange that the terrified peasantry should have regarded them as veritable were-wolves. Great exhaustion and nervous depression usually followed these attacks of frenzy, and which, according to the Norse historians, was extinguished by baptism. Verbal peculiarities assisted the growth of the were-wolf superstition—the word vargr signifying in Norse both a wolf and a godless man; and, as an utlagh, or outlaw, among the Anglo-Saxons, was said to have the head of a wolf, it is easy to see how the stories of outlaws, whom the law doomed to live like wild beasts, away from the haunts of men, should have been connected with accounts of their transformation into wolves.
The way in which these changes were said to have been effected, illustrates the curious character of the superstition in different countries. A Swedish tradition relates the adventures of a cottager named Lasse, who, having gone into the forest to fell a tree, neglected to cross himself and say his Pater-noster. By this neglect, a troll was enabled to transform him into a wolf. His wife, who mourned his loss for many years, was told by a beggar-woman, to whom she had given a kind reception one Christmas-eve, that she would probably see her husband again, as he was not dead, but was roaming the forest as a wolf. As she was in her pantry that evening, laying aside a joint of meat for the next day's dinner, she saw a wolf standing with its paws on the window-sill, looking sorrowfully in at her. "Ah," said she, "if I knew that thou wert my husband, I would give thee a bone." At that instant the wolf-skin fell off, and her husband stood before her, in the same old clothes which he had on the day of his disappearance. In this story we see the Christian view of the were-wolf as the creation of an evil spirit—the witchcraft delusion in its early stages. The saints were believed to have a power similar to that of their evil adversaries. Vereticus, King of Wales, was said to have been transformed into a wolf by St. Patrick, and another saint doomed the members of an illustrious family in Ireland to become wolves for seven years, prowling among the bogs and forests, uttering mournful howls, and devouring the peasants' sheep to allay their hunger.
The doubts of incredulous persons as to the possibility of such a transformation, were said to have been dispelled in one instance by the servant of a nobleman's wife in Livonia, who, to convince her of the truth, left the room, and, as she looked from the window, a wolf was seen running across the country. The dogs followed him, and, in the fight which ensued, tore out one of his eyes. Next day the slave appeared as usual before his mistress, but with only one eye. Though imprisoned in a lupine form, the unfortunate victims were believed to retain their human consciousness and even voices, and to yearn for an alleviation of their condition. John of Nuremberg relates that a priest, while travelling in a strange country, lost his way in a forest. Seeing a fire not far off, he went up to it, and was surprised to see a wolf seated over it. The wolf addressed him in a human voice, telling him not to be alarmed, for he was of the Ossyrian race, a man and woman of which were doomed to spend a certain number of years in lupine form. At the end of seven years, if they lived so long, they could return home and resume their former shapes. He then entreated the priest to visit and console his sick wife, and administer the last sacraments to her. The priest hesitated at first about accompanying the wolf to his den, but consented on observing that he used his front paws as a human being does his hands. All doubts as to its true nature were removed when he saw the she-wolf peel off her wolf-skin, exhibiting the features of an aged woman.
The belief in these transformations in the middle ages derived a new and terrible significance from its connection with witchcraft. To the ancients the subjects of such metamorphoses were regarded with superstitious reverence. Divine natures were believed to assume earthly forms. But these mythological conceptions were degraded by the medieval Christians into diabolical influences. The Church, jealous of miraculous powers exercised beyond its pale, denounced the were-wolf as a devil. Thus the person suspected of beast-metamorphosis ran the double risk of losing both his soul and his life, of being anathematized by the clergy, and then burnt at the stake. Ignorance of the phenomena of mental disease led to a belief that its victims were ministers of the Evil One, and even mere eccentricity was often fatal to its unfortunate possessor. These ideas were strengthened by some terrible instances of homicidal insanity, some of which were accompanied by cannibalism and lycanthropic, or were-wolf hallucinations, and were often ascribed to demoniac agency.
One of the most celebrated of these cases was that of Gilles de Laval (Gilles de Rais), a distinguished nobleman of Brittany, in the early part of the fifteenth century, who, in reward for his brilliant military services, was made a marshal of France by Charles VII. After having distinguished himself in statesmanship and war, the trusted counsellor and friend of the king surprised every one by suddenly retiring from public life to his estates in the country. One of his principal residences was the Castle of Machecoul, a gloomy fortress, which was vigilantly guarded by his retainers. Strange stories were told in the surrounding country of dark deeds done within its sombre walls. No one except the servants had entered the castle and come out alive. Yet the marshal seemed deeply interested in religious observances, and the ceremonies in his gorgeous chapel were said to be very imposing. But at night, when the windows of the castle were lighted up, a fierce red glare was sometimes noticed in the casement high up in an isolated tower, from which heartrending cries burst upon the stillness of the woods, and were answered, as the peasants said, by the howl of some hungry wolf.
The drawbridge of the fortress was lowered on certain days at fixed hours, when the servants of the Marechal de Retz distributed clothes, money, and food, to a crowd of mendicants. Children were often among the beggars, and it was noticed that the servants tried to induce them to go into the kitchen for some promised dainty. Those who yielded to these solicitations were never seen again.
At last the indignation of the people burst forth. They charged the marshal with murdering their children and sacrificing them to the devil. These accusations were at first ridiculed by John V., Duke of Brittany, the kinsman of De Retz, who would have taken no serious notice of them had not an investigation been demanded by one of his nobles, and strongly urged by the Bishop of Nantes and the illustrious L'Hospital, grand-seneschal of the ducal dominions. Thus importuned, the duke reluctantly signed a warrant for the arrest of Sire de Retz and his accomplices, which was presented at the gate of the castle by Jean Labbe, sergent d'armes, at the head of a band of twenty men selected for their pluck and daring. When summoned to surrender, the marshal, on learning that the leader of the troops was Labbe, turned pale, crossed himself, and declared it was impossible to resist Fate. It appeared that one of his astrologers had told him years before that he would one day pass into the hands of an abbe, and he had hitherto supposed that the prophecy signified he should become a monk.
Several of the marshal's associates escaped by flight, but two remained with him. On his way to Nantes, under guard of the duke's soldiers, an eager crowd assembled to view the cavalcade. They looked on in silence, till a woman's voice sadly cried, "My child! Restore my child!" when the thronging multitude uttered a wild howl, which followed the prisoner to the gates of the Chateau de Bouffay, where he was confined. The people of Nantes were very much excited, and it was feared that the criminal would escape the punishment he deserved through the influence of the duke, his kinsman, and be only obliged to surrender some of his lands. But the Bishop of Nantes and the grand seneschal were so persistent in their demand for a thorough investigation and a public trial that the duke at last consented, and appointed a commissioner to make the preliminary examination. He was instructed, however, to be as lenient as possible, and not allow the matter to be pressed. But the revelations made during the investigation were of such a character that it was impossible to gloss over or suppress them. Numerous witnesses testified that children had been enticed, under various pretences, into the castle, and had never afterward been seen. Some were led away by an old hag; others were inveigled by the armed retainers of the marshal. Pontou prevailed on the mother of one boy to let him go to Machecoul and be educated as a soldier, but two years had passed and no tidings of him had reached her. The number of these mysterious disappearances was too large to be accounted for on any theory consistent with the innocence of the accused. One witness deposed that the valet of Roger de Brigueville, an associate of the Sire de Retz, had told him he knew of a cask secreted in the castle, full of children's corpses.
Notwithstanding the overwhelming evidence against the marshal, which the commissioners presented to the duke, he still hesitated to proceed against him, when he was surprised to receive a letter from the accused confessing his crimes, but urging in extenuation of them his faithful attention to religious duties. After expressing repentance, the marshal supplicated permission to expiate his sins in the retirement of a monastery. He also indicated his intention of distributing his property among the poor. The letter, which was a strange medley of religious raving and insane cunning, was read by the duke to the President of Brittany and to the Bishop of Nantes, who were horrified at its tone, and protested that De Retz could not now be allowed to escape trial by the impious device that he suggested. They had, in the mean time, discovered numerous traces of human remains in the Castle of Machecoul, but were prevented from making a thorough examination by the persistent opposition of the duke. His hesitation to proceed against his kinsman, notwithstanding the advice of his principal officers, led the Bishop of Nantes to declare that, unless the case was brought into a secular court, he would summon the criminal to appear before an ecclesiastical tribunal. This resolution of the bishop obliged the duke to consent to a speedy trial by the civil authorities.
The marshal appeared in court dressed in white, with the exception of his gorgeous pourpoint, in token of his repentance. He did not look like a cruel man, but had rather a melancholy and phlegmatic expression of countenance. But a closer observation showed a nervous quivering of the mouth, spasmodic twitchings of the brows, and a strange and sinister appearance in the eyes. At times also be ground his teeth convulsively, his lips became contracted, and again his eyes would appear fixed, sunken, and staring, and his complexion turn livid and cadaverous. These phenomena, which were ignorantly ascribed to demoniac agency, were symptomatic of a frenzy like that which attacked the old Norse freebooters.
The charges having been read, the prisoner resolutely denied being guilty of the atrocious crimes of which he was accused, and was remanded to prison. Henriet and Pontou, his retainers, then gave a minute account of the manner in which the children were murdered, and their remains disposed of. The marshal massacred them himself, with every variety of cruelty, and experienced intense pleasure in witnessing their agonies when tortured by his servants. After literally weltering in the blood of his victims, he was invariably seized with remorse, which, however, did not prevent him from continuing to gratify his dreadful cravings. He made one of his followers read to him accounts of the crimes of the most debased of the Roman emperors, as recorded by Suetonius and Tacitus, to stimulate his murderous passion, and said it gave him greater pleasure to hack off a child's head than to assist at a banquet. The bodies of the unfortunates were burned in the great fireplace in the chamber in which they were invariably murdered, and their ashes thrown into the moat. This testimony of his accomplices was confirmed by the circumstantial confession of the marshal, who, finding further evasion useless, acknowledged having committed about eight hundred murders in seven years.
All attempts to secure his pardon having failed, the Sire de Retz was executed in conformity with the sentence of the ecclesiastical tribunal, ratified by the secular court which had first tried him. He and his accomplices, Henriet and Pontou, were hung over piles of fagots, tar, and brushwood, the flames of which enveloped their swinging bodies, on the 26th of October, 1440, in the presence of a vast concourse of spectators. He exhibited on the scaffold the same outward manifestations of religious feeling which had characterized his conduct during the trial, and made an address to his accomplices and the crowd, expressive of his contrition, and hope of eternal glory. While the ashes of Henriet and Pontou were cast to the winds, the body of the marshal was removed, before the fire had consumed it, to the Carmelite monastery of Nantes, where his obsequies were celebrated with great pomp. The facts of the case have been set forth in the histories of Michelet and Martin, as well as in the work of Mr. Baring-Gould.
In the mania of De Retz, the propensity to murder was not accompanied by cannibalism. But there were numerous instances in the middle ages in which these cravings were combined. Such was the case of a tailor of Chalons, who was sentenced by the Parliament of Paris, in 1698, to be burned alive for lycanthropy. He used to decoy children into his shop, or waylay them in the woods at dusk. After tearing them with his teeth and killing them, he dressed their flesh like ordinary meat, and devoured it with great relish. A cask full of bones was found in his house, but the number of his victims is unknown.
Frequently the murderer and cannibal was the victim of hallucination, as well as of an insane appetite, and believed himself to be transformed into a wolf. This delusion existed in the case of Peter Burgot, a shepherd of Besancon, who, having lost his sheep in a storm, recovered them, as he thought, by the aid of the devil, whom he agreed to serve, and was transformed into a wolf by being smeared with a salve. He confessed that he and his companion, one Michel Verdung, used to make were wolf runs through the country, killing and often eating the children, and even grown people, whom they met. On one of these raids, a boy whom he attacked screamed so loud that he was obliged to return to his clothes, and smear himself again, in order to assume his human form and escape detection.
It was seldom that the true condition of these victims of mental disease was even dimly appreciated by their judges, although death may have been more merciful than confinement in the mad-houses of those days. Yet Jacques Roulet, after being tried and sentenced to death by a criminal court, had his punishment commuted by the Parliament at Paris to two years' imprisonment in one of these institutions, in order, as the decree recited, that he might be instructed in the knowledge of God, whom he had forgotten in his extreme poverty.
He was a wretched beggar, whose idiotic mind was completely mastered by a cannibal appetite. The first knowledge of his depraved taste was obtained by some countrymen, who, while passing a wild and lonely spot near Caude, found the bloody and mutilated corpse of a boy of fifteen. On their approach, two wolves, which had been rending the body, ran into the thicket. While following their bloody tracks, the men came upon a half-naked man crouching among the bushes. His hair and beard were long and straggling, and his nails, which were the length of claws, were clotted with flesh, blood, and shreds of human flesh. Roulet (for it was the beggar) freely acknowledged that he had smothered the lad to death, and would have devoured the body completely had it not been for the arrival of the men. The wretched man proved to be miserably poor, and had been lodged, out of charity, in a neighboring village, from which he was absent eight days before his apprehension. He told the judges, at the trial, that he transformed himself into a wolf by using some ointment which his parents had given him, and said that the wolves, which had been seen leaving the corpse, were his cousin and his brother, his companions in mendicity. It was proved, however, that they were away at the time. There is no doubt that Roulet killed and ate the child, as he had done several others, in the belief that he was a wolf; and his subsequent appearance and actions showed the low stage of his intellectual and moral development.
Another case of cannibalism and werewolf hallucination was that of Jean Grenier. A party of village girls, in the south of France, while chatting merrily together, noticed that the sheep which they were tending suddenly took fright, while, at the same time, one of the dogs growled savagely. On seeking the cause of the disturbance, the girls dis
covered a strange-looking boy, about thirteen years old, sitting on a fir-log in a little hollow near by. He had red hair, thickly matted, which hung over his shoulders and covered his narrow forehead; sunken eyes, that glared with mingled ferocity and cunning, and a dark, olive complexion. His large, brutal-looking jaws projected forward, and his strong canine teeth protruded beyond the lower lip when the mouth was closed. The tattered clothes that he wore showed his abject poverty, and revealed also the emaciation of his limbs. As the girls stood around him, he frightened them terribly by saying that he was a werewolf, who had eaten many a maiden, and would devour one of them at sundown. Terrified by his dreadful stories and threats, even more than by his horrible appearance, his ghastly leers and howls of merriment, the girls soon ran away from him.
Not long afterward, a little girl of thirteen, who had been in the habit of tending sheep with Jean Grenier, who had often frightened her with his were-wolf stories, came home without her flock, and in great alarm. She told her parents that she had been attacked by a creature resembling a wolf, with red hair; its head smaller and its body shorter and stouter than that of this animal. By a vigorous use of her shepherd-staff she succeeded in beating the creature off, and fled home. As several children had mysteriously disappeared of late, suspicion fell upon Jean Grenier as the assailant whom the excited fancy of the little girl had turned into a wolf. Being brought before the Parliament of Bordeaux, he stated that, two or three years ago, he had been introduced to the devil in the depths of the forest, who made a compact with him, and presented him with a salve and a wolf-skin. Since then he had roamed about the country as a wolf after dark, resuming his human shape by daylight. The account of the number of children he had killed corresponded with the evidence of their parents, and it was proved that he had eaten the bodies of his victims. On one occasion he took advantage of the absence of the family to enter a house and drag a baby from its cradle. At another time he was only prevented from killing a little boy by the interference of a man, who, on being examined, confirmed the truth of his confession. Though Grenier himself undoubtedly believed that he was transformed into a wolf, the only witness who corroborated his statement in this respect was the little girl who used to tend sheep with him. It is to the credit of the court that they rejected the popular superstition, and, instead of punishing the wretched boy as an agent of the devil, pronounced him an imbecile, who was irresponsible for his acts; lycanthropy being a mere hallucination, its victim was not a proper subject for the criminal law. Grenier was sentenced to perpetual imprisonment in a monastery at Bordeaux, so that he might receive moral and religious instruction. The monks could hardly have welcomed him as a promising pupil, for, on his arrival, he ran frantically about the cloister and garden on all-fours, and devoured with eagerness a heap of offal which he found there. Seven years afterward he was visited by the celebrated expert on insanity, Delanere, who found him very shy and unwilling tp look any one in the face. This savant noted his deep-set, restless eyes, long and protruding teeth, and feeble mind. Grenier told him his story, which coincided with his former statements, and said he still felt a craving for raw flesh, preferring that of little girls, which he considered delicious, and, were it not for his confinement, should taste again. He died soon after Delancre's visit, at the age of twenty.
These examples of murderous mania and cannibalism in by-gone ages arc sufficiently horrible to read about, but they lack the fearful interest which invests similar horrors in more recent days. In the year 1849, at the little hamlet of Polomyja, in Austrian Galicia, surrounded by great forests of pine, a white-bearded, venerable man sat at the door of a rude church asking alms from the poor wood-cutters who make up the population. The beggar, whose name was Swiatek, eked out his subsistence by the charity of the kind-hearted villagers and the sale of small pinchbeck ornaments and beads. One Sunday after church, as he was eating a crust of bread and some meat in the hut of a hospitable Mazurd, his attention was attracted by a bright little girl of nine or ten, who was playing with several other children. He gave her a ring with a piece of colored glass set in it, which delighted the child, and told her he found it under a big fir near the churchyard, where, if she went alone, she would find others among the tree-roots. Soon after the children scampered off into the wood, the old beggar left the house, thanking his host for their hospitality. The bright little girl, an orphan whom they had adopted, was never seen again. ,
Some time afterward, as some children were returning home from school, they saw one of their companions, a little boy, talking with a man among the pine-trees. They called to him to go along with them, but, after waiting till they were tired, went back without him. He was never seen again. Not a great while later a servant-girl disappeared from a village about five miles from Polomyja. She had been sent to a cottage among the woods with some groceries, and, at nightfall, her master and some of his neighbors went in search of her. They traced her footsteps where they left the beaten track, among the thick woods, with those of another person, on the powdered snow, but lost sight of them under the clustering pines. Next morning a heavy fall of snow had obliterated all traces of the missing girl. She, too, was never seen again.
In the winter of 1849 a little boy, who had been sent to a well to draw water, suddenly disappeared, but his pitcher was found at the curb. As the wolves were supposed to be particularly ravenous at this time, these mysterious disappearances of children were charged to them, and several were killed by the exasperated villagers. But, in May, 1849, the terrible secret leaked out. The innkeeper of Polomyja, having missed a couple of docks, suspected the old beggar Swiatek to be the thief. To satisfy himself, he determined to visit the mendicant's cottage. The fragrance of roast meat which greeted his nostrils as he approached, confirmed his suspicions. As he threw open the door he saw the beggar hide something under his long clothes. The innkeeper at once seized Swiatek by the throat and charged him with the theft, when, to his horror, he saw the head of a girl of fourteen drop from beneath the pauper's clothes.
On the arrival of the neighbors soon afterward, the old beggar, his wife, his daughter, aged sixteen, and his son, a boy of five, were locked up. The hut was then thoroughly examined, and the mutilated remains of the poor girl discovered, part being partially cooked. At his trial, Swiatek stated that he had killed six persons, who had been eaten by himself and family, his children, however, asserted that the number was much larger. Their testimony was confirmed by the discovery, in his house, of the remains of fourteen different suits of clothes. It appeared that Swiatek's first indulgence in human flesh was in 1846, when he found, amid the charred ruins of a Jewish tavern, the half-roasted corpse of its proprietor, who had perished in the flames. The half-starved beggar could not resist the desire to taste of it, and, having done so, the unnatural craving impelled him to gratify his depraved appetite by murder. Such was the indignation against him, that it was feared he would be torn in pieces by the populace when he was brought to trial, but precautions to insure his safety were rendered needless by his hanging himself the first night of his confinement from the bars of the prison-window.
About the time that these atrocities were brought to light, the perpetrator of outrages of a hardly less revolting character was discovered in Paris. His victims, however, were not among the living, but the dead. He was not a were-wolf, but a human hyena. This person, whose experience shows that the stories of ghouls in Oriental romance had a foundation in fact, was sometimes seized with an irresistible desire to enter cemeteries and rifle new-made graves. He proved to be a French officer named Bertrand. With retiring habits, and feminine delicacy and refinement, he was beloved by his comrades for his generous and cheerful qualities, but was nevertheless subject to fits of depression. The mania which resulted in his graveyard spoliations, was originally caused by over-indulgence in wine. He was tried by court-martial, and sentenced to a year's imprisonment.
It is a pleasant thought that the werewolf has ceased to prey on the lives of men, that the light of science has dispelled the gloomy superstition which doomed so many monomaniacs to the stake. But it may well moderate our pride in the nobility of human nature to reflect that the terrible outbursts of homicidal insanity, which people our lunatic asylums, are often due to a neglect of moral restraint in natures not naturally depraved. The Marshal de Retz stimulated his murderous desires by gloating over the atrocities of the Roman emperors, whose cruelties were intensified by the horrors of the gladiatorial shows. The demoniac passions of the human hyena, Bertrand, were excited by excesses in drink. Even the most petty covetousness has sometimes led to the perpetration of fearful crimes. In 1862 a pauper named Dumollard was guillotined in France for the murder of six poor village girls, having attempted to kill several others. He did not have a special relish for blood, but assassinated his victims solely for the sake of their garments. The dread of the criminal law keeps many persons from indulging their passions who in former ages could have gratified them with impunity. There is no more important duty for our reformers than to take care that vice and ignorance do not produce those were-wolves of modern civilization who gnash their teeth and glare at us from behind prison-bars or the grated windows of lunatic asylums.
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