THE WERE-WOLF IN THE MIDDLE-AGES.
Stories from Olaus Magnus of Livonian Were-wolves—Story from Bishop
Majolus—Story of Albertus Pericofcius—Similar occurrence at
Prague—Saint Patrick—Strange incident related by John of
Nüremberg—Bisclaveret—Courland Were-wolves—Pierre Vidal—Pavian
Lycanthropist—Bodin’s Stories—Forestus’ Account of a
Lycanthropist—Neapolitan Were-wolf
Olaus Magnus relates that—“In Prussia, Livonia, and Lithuania, although
the inhabitants suffer considerably from the rapacity of wolves
throughout the year, in that these animals rend their cattle, which are
scattered in great numbers through the woods, whenever they stray in
the very least, yet this is not regarded by them as such a serious
matter as what they endure from men turned into wolves.
“On the feast of the Nativity of Christ, at night, such a multitude of
wolves transformed from men gather together in a certain spot, arranged
among themselves, and then spread to rage with wondrous ferocity
against human beings, and those animals which are not wild, that the
natives of these regions suffer more detriment from these, than they do
from true and natural wolves; for when a human habitation has been
detected by them isolated in the woods, they besiege it with atrocity,
striving to break in the doors, and in the event of their doing so,
they devour all the human beings, and every animal which is found
within. They burst into the beer-cellars, and there they empty the tuns
of beer or mead, and pile up the empty casks one above another in the
middle of the cellar, thus showing their difference from natural and
genuine wolves. . . . Between Lithuania, Livonia, and Courland are the
walls of a certain old ruined castle. At this spot congregate
thousands, on a fixed occasion, and try their agility in jumping. Those
who are unable to bound over the wall, as; is often the case with the
fattest, are fallen upon with scourges by the captains and slain.”[1]
Olaus relates also in c. xlvii. the story of a certain nobleman who was
travelling through a large forest with some peasants in his retinue who
dabbled in the black art. They found no house where they could lodge
for the night, and were well-nigh famished. Then one of the peasants
offered, if all the rest would hold their tongues as to what he should
do, that he would bring them a lamb from a distant flock.
[1] OLAUS MAGNUS: _Historia de Vent. Septent_. Basil. 15, lib. xviii.
cap. 45.
He thereupon retired into the depths of the forest and changed his form
into that of a wolf, fell upon the flock, and brought a lamb to his
companions in his mouth. They received it with gratitude. Then he
retired once more into the thicket, and transformed himself back again
into his human shape.
The wife of a nobleman in Livonia expressed her doubts to one of her
slaves whether it were possible for man or woman thus to change shape.
The servant at once volunteered to give her evidence of the
possibility. He left the room, and in another moment a wolf was
observed running over the country. The dogs followed him, and
notwithstanding his resistance, tore out one of his eyes. Next day the
slave appeared before his mistress blind of an eye.
Bp. Majolus[2] and Caspar Peucer[3] relate the following circumstances
of the Livonians:—
[2] MAJOLI _Episc. Vulturoniensis Dier. Canicul._ Helenopolis, 1612,
tom. ii. colloq. 3.
[3] CASPAR PEUCER: _Comment. de Præcipuis Divin. Generibus_, 1591, p.
169.
At Christmas a boy lame of a leg goes round the country summoning the
devil’s followers, who are countless, to a general conclave. Whoever
remains behind, or goes reluctantly, is scourged by another with an
iron whip till the blood flows, and his traces are left in blood. The
human form vanishes, and the whole multitude become wolves. Many
thousands assemble. Foremost goes the leader armed with an iron whip,
and the troop follow, “firmly convinced in their imaginations that they
are transformed into wolves.” They fall upon herds of cattle and flocks
of sheep, but they have no power to slay men. When they come to a
river, the leader smites the water with his scourge, and it divides,
leaving a dry path through the midst, by which the pack may go. The
transformation lasts during twelve days, at the expiration of which
period the wolf-skin vanishes, and the human form reappears. This
superstition was expressly forbidden by the church. “Credidisti, quod
quidam credere solent, ut illæ quæ a vulgo Parcæ vocantur, ipsæ, vel
sint vel possint hoc facere quod creduntur, id est, dum aliquis homo
nascitur, et tunc valeant illum designare ad hoc quod velint, ut
quandocunque homo ille voluerit, in lupum transformari possit, quod
vulgaris stultitia, _werwolf_ vocat, aut in aliam aliquam figuram?”—Ap.
Burchard. (d. 1024). In like manner did S. Boniface preach against
those who believed superstitiously in it strigas et fictos lupos.”
(_Serm_. apud Mart. et Durand. ix. 217.)
In a dissertation by Müller[4] we learn, on the authority of Cluverius
and Dannhaverus (_Acad. Homilet._ p. ii.), that a certain Albertus
Pericofcius in Muscovy was wont to tyrannize over and harass his
subjects in the most unscrupulous manner. One night when he was absent
from home, his whole herd of cattle, acquired by extortion, perished.
On his return he was informed of his loss, and the wicked man broke out
into the most horrible blasphemies, exclaiming, “Let him who has slain,
eat; if God chooses, let him devour me as well.”
[4] De {Greek _Lukanðrwpía_}. Lipsiæ, 1736.
As he spoke, drops of blood fell to earth, and the nobleman,
transformed into a wild dog, rushed upon his dead cattle, tore and
mangled the carcasses and began to devour them; possibly he may be
devouring them still (_ac forsan hodie que pascitur_). His wife, then
near her confinement, died of fear. Of these circumstances there were
not only ear but also eye witnesses. (_Non ab auritis tantum, sed et
ocidatis accepi, quod narro_). Similarly it is related of a nobleman in
the neighbourhood of Prague, that he robbed his subjects of their goods
and reduced them to penury through his exactions. He took the last cow
from a poor widow with five children, but as a judgment, all his own
cattle died. He then broke into fearful oaths, and God transformed him
into a dog: his human head, however, remained.
S. Patrick is said to have changed Vereticus, king of Wales, into a
wolf, and S. Natalis, the abbot, to have pronounced anathema upon an
illustrious family in Ireland; in consequence of which, every male and
female take the form of wolves for seven years and live in the forests
and career over the bogs, howling mournfully, and appeasing their
hunger upon the sheep of the peasants.[5] A duke of Prussia, according
to Majolus, had a countryman brought for sentence before him, because
he had devoured his neighbour’s cattle. The fellow was an ill-favoured,
deformed man, with great wounds in his face, which he had received from
dogs’ bites whilst he had been in his wolf’s form. It was believed that
he changed shape twice in the year, at Christmas and at Midsummer. He
was said to exhibit much uneasiness and discomfort when the wolf-hair
began to break out and his bodily shape to change.
[5] PHIL. HARTUNG: _Conciones Tergeminæ_, pars ii. p. 367.
He was kept long in prison and closely watched, lest he should become a
were-wolf during his confinement and attempt to escape, but nothing
remarkable took place. If this is the same individual as that mentioned
by Olaus Magnus, as there seems to be a probability, the poor fellow
was burned alive.
John of Nüremberg relates the following curious story.[6] A priest was
once travelling in a strange country, and lost his way in a forest.
Seeing a fire, he made towards it, and beheld a wolf seated over it.
The wolf addressed him in human-voice, and bade him not fear, as “he
was of the Ossyrian race, of which a man and a woman were doomed to
spend a certain number of years in wolf’s form. Only after seven years
might they return home and resume their former shapes, if they were
still alive.” He begged the priest to visit and console his sick wife,
and to give her the last sacraments. This the priest consented to do,
after some hesitation, and only when convinced of the beasts being
human beings, by observing that the wolf used his front paws as hands,
and when he saw the she-wolf peel off her wolf-skin from her head to
her navel, exhibiting the features of an aged woman.
[6] JOHN EUS. NIERENBERG _de Miracul. in Europa_, lib. ii. cap. 42.
Marie de France says in the _Lais du Bisclaveret:_—[7]
Bisclaveret ad nun en Bretan
Garwall Papelent li Norman.
* * * *
Jadis le poet-hum oir
Et souvent suleit avenir,
Humes pluseirs Garwall deviendrent
E es boscages meisun tindrent
[7] An epitome of this curious were-wolf tale will be found in Ellis’s
_Early English Metrical Romances_.
There is an interesting paper by Rhanæus, on the Courland were-wolves,
in the _Breslauer Sammlung_.[8] The author says,—“There are too many
examples derived not merely from hearsay, but received on indisputable
evidence, for us to dispute the fact, that Satan—if we do not deny that
such a being exists, and that he has his work in the children of
darkness—holds the Lycanthropists in his net in three ways:—
[8] Supplement III. _Curieuser_ und nutzbarer Anmerkungen von Natur
und Kunstgeschichten, gesammelt von Kanold. 1728.
“1. They execute as wolves certain acts, such as seizing a sheep, or
destroying cattle, &c., not changed into wolves, which no scientific
man in Courland believes, but in their human frames, and with their
human limbs, yet in such a state of phantasy and hallucination, that
they believe themselves transformed into wolves, and are regarded as
such by others suffering under similar hallucination, and in this
manner run these people in packs as wolves, though not true wolves.
“2. They imagine, in deep sleep or dream, that they injure the cattle,
and this without leaving their conch; but it is their master who does,
in their stead, what their fancy points out, or suggests to him.
“3. The evil one drives natural wolves to do some act, and then
pictures it so well to the sleeper, immovable in his place, both in
dreams and at awaking, that he believes the act to have been committed
by himself.”
Rhanæus, under these heads, relates three stories, which he believes be
has on good authority. The first is of a gentleman starting on a
journey, who came upon a wolf engaged in the act of seizing a sheep in
his own flock; he fired at it, and wounded it, so that it fled howling
to the thicket. When the gentleman returned from his expedition he
found the whole neighbourhood impressed with the belief that he had, on
a given day and hour, shot at one of his tenants, a publican, Mickel.
On inquiry, the man’s Wife, called Lebba, related the following
circumstances, which were fully corroborated by numerous
witnesses:—When her husband had sown his rye he had consulted with his
wife how he was to get some meat, so as to have a good feast. The woman
urged him on no account to steal from his landlord’s flock, because it
was guarded by fierce dogs. He, however, rejected her advice, and
Mickel fell upon his landlord’s sheep, but he had suffered and had come
limping home, and in his rage at the ill success of his attempt, had
fallen upon his own horse and had bitten its throat completely through.
This took place in the year 1684.
In 1684, a man was about to fire upon a pack of wolves, when he heard
from among the troop a voice exclaiming—“Gossip! Gossip! don’t fire. No
good will come of it.”
The third story is as follows:—A lycanthropist was brought before a
judge and accused of witchcraft, but as nothing could be proved against
him, the judge ordered one of his peasants to visit the man in his
prison, and to worm the truth out of him, and to persuade the prisoner
to assist him in revenging himself upon another peasant who had injured
him; and this was to be effected by destroying one of the man’s cows;
but the peasant was to urge the prisoner to do it secretly, and, if
possible, in the disguise of a wolf. The fellow undertook the task, but
he had great difficulty in persuading the prisoner to fall in with his
wishes: eventually, however, he succeeded. Next morning the cow was
found in its stall frightfully mangled, but the prisoner had not left
his cell: for the watch, who had been placed to observe him, declared
that he had spent the night in profound sleep, and that he had only at
one time made a slight motion with his head and hands and feet.
Wierius and Forestus quote Gulielmus Brabantinus as an authority for
the fact, that a man of high position had been so possessed by the evil
one, that often during the year he fell into a condition in which he
believed himself to be turned into a wolf, and at that time he roved in
the woods and tried to seize and devour little children, but that at
last, by God’s mercy, he recovered his senses.
Certainly the famous Pierre Vidal, the Don Quixote of Provençal
troubadours, must have had a touch of this madness, when, after having
fallen in love with a lady of Carcassone, named Loba, or the Wolfess,
the excess of his passion drove him over the country, howling like a
wolf, and demeaning himself more like an irrational beast than a
rational man.
He commemorates his lupine madness in the poem _A tal Donna_:—[9]
[9] BRUCE WHYTE: _Histoire des Langues Romaines_, tom. ii. p. 248.
Crowned with immortal joys I mount
The proudest emperors above,
For I am honoured with the love
Of the fair daughter of a count.
A lace from Na Raymbauda’s hand
I value more than all the land
Of Richard, with his Poïctou,
His rich Touraine and famed Anjou.
When _loup-garou_ the rabble call me,
When vagrant shepherds hoot,
Pursue, and buffet me to boot,
It doth not for a moment gall me;
I seek not palaces or halls,
Or refuge when the winter falls;
Exposed to winds and frosts at night,
My soul is ravished with delight.
Me claims my she-wolf (_Loba_) so divine:
And justly she that claim prefers,
For, by my troth, my life is hers
More than another’s, more than mine.
Job Fincelius[10] relates the sad story of a farmer of Pavia, who, as a
wolf, fell upon many men in the open country and tore them to pieces.
After much trouble the maniac was caught, and he then assured his
captors that the only difference which existed between himself and a
natural wolf, was that in a true wolf the hair grew outward, whilst in
him it struck inward. In order to put this assertion to the proof, the
magistrates, themselves most certainly cruel and bloodthirsty wolves,
cut off his arms and legs; the poor wretch died of the mutilation. This
took place in 1541. The idea of the skin being reversed is a very
ancient one: _versipellis_ occurs as a name of reproach in Petronius,
Lucilius, and Plautus, and resembles the Norse _hamrammr_.
[10] FINCELIUS _de Mirabilibus_, lib. xi.
Fincelius relates also that, in 1542, there was such a multitude of
were-wolves about Constantinople that the Emperor, accompanied by his
guard, left the city to give them a severe correction, and slew one
hundred and fifty of them.
Spranger speaks of three young ladies who attacked a labourer, under
the form of cats, and were wounded by him. They were found bleeding in
their beds next morning.
Majolus relates that a man afflicted with lycanthropy was brought to
Pomponatius. The poor fellow had been found buried in hay, and when
people approached, he called to them to flee, as he was a were wolf,
and would rend them. The country-folk wanted to flay him, to discover
whether the hair grew inwards, but Pomponatius rescued the man and
cured him.
Bodin tells some were-wolf stories on good authority; it is a pity that
the good authorities of Bodin were such liars, but that, by the way. He
says that the Royal Procurator-General Bourdin had assured him that he
had shot a wolf, and that the arrow had stuck in the beast’s thigh. A
few hours after, the arrow was found in the thigh of a man in bed. In
Vernon, about the year 1566, the witches and warlocks gathered in great
multitudes, under the shape of cats. Four or five men were attacked in
a lone place by a number of these beasts. The men stood their ground
with the utmost heroism, succeeded in slaying one puss, and in wounding
many others. Next day a number of wounded women were found in the town,
and they gave the judge an accurate account of all the circumstances
connected with their wounding.
Bodin quotes Pierre Marner, the author of a treatise on sorcerers, as
having witnessed in Savoy the transformation of men into wolves.
Nynauld[11] relates that in a village of Switzerland, near Lucerne, a
peasant was attacked by a wolf, whilst he was hewing timber; he
defended himself, and smote off a fore-leg of the beast. The moment
that the blood began to flow the wolf’s form changed, and he recognized
a woman without her arm. She was burnt alive.
[11] NYNAULD, _De la Lycanthropie_. Paris, 1615, p. 52.
An evidence that beasts are transformed witches is to be found in their
having no tails. When the devil takes human form, however, he keeps his
club-foot of the Satyr, as a token by which he may be recognized. So
animals deficient in caudal appendages are to be avoided, as they are
witches in disguise. The Thingwald should consider the case of the Manx
cats in its next session.
Forestus, in his chapter on maladies of the brain, relates a
circumstance which came under his own observation, in the middle of the
sixteenth century, at Alcmaar in the Netherlands. A peasant there was
attacked every spring with a fit of insanity; under the influence of
this he rushed about the churchyard, ran into the church, jumped over
the benches, danced, was filled with fury, climbed up, descended, and
never remained quiet. He carried a long staff in his hand, with which
he drove away the dogs, which flew at him and wounded him, so that his
thighs were covered with scars. His face was pale, his eyes deep sunk
in their sockets. Forestus pronounces the man to be a lycanthropist,
but he does not say that the poor fellow believed himself to be
transformed into a wolf. In reference to this case, however, he
mentions that of a Spanish nobleman who believed himself to be changed
into a bear, and who wandered filled with fury among the woods.
Donatus of Altomare[12] affirms that he saw a man in the streets of
Naples, surrounded by a ring of people, who in his were-wolf frenzy had
dug up a corpse and was carrying off the leg upon his shoulders. This
was in the middle of the sixteenth century.
[12] _De Medend. Human. Corp_. lib. i. cap. 9.