A CHAMBER OF HORRORS.
Pierre Bourgot and Michel Verdung—’Me Hermit of S. Bonnot—The Gandillon
Family—Thievenne Paget—The Tailor of Châlons—Roulet.
In December, 1521, the Inquisitor-General for the diocese of Besançon,
Boin by name, heard a case of a sufficiently terrible nature to produce
a profound sensation of alarm in the neighbourhood. Two men were under
accusation of witchcraft and cannibalism. Their names were Pierre
Bourgot, or Peter the Great, as the people had nicknamed him from his
stature, and Michel Verdung. Peter had not been long under trial,
before he volunteered a full confession of his crimes. It amounted to
this:—
About nineteen years before, on the occasion of a New Year’s market at
Poligny, a terrible storm had broken over the country, and among other
mischiefs done by it, was the scattering of Pierre’s flock. “In vain,”
said the prisoner, “did I labour, in company with other peasants, to
find the sheep and bring them together. I went everywhere in search of
them.
“Then there rode up three black horsemen, and the last said to me:
‘Whither away? you seem to be in trouble?’
“I related to him my misfortune with my flock. He bade me pluck up my
spirits, and promised that his master would henceforth take charge of
and protect my flock., if I would only rely upon him. He told me, as
well, that I should find my strayed sheep very shortly, and he promised
to provide me with money. We agreed to meet again in four or five days.
My flock I soon found collected together. At my second meeting I
learned of the stranger that he was a servant of the devil. I forswore
God and our Lady and all saints and dwellers in Paradise. I renounced
Christianity, kissed his left hand, which was black and ice-cold as
that of a corpse. Then I fell on my knees and gave in my allegiance to
Satan. I remained in the service of the devil for two years, and never
entered a church before the end of mass, or at all events till the holy
water had been sprinkled, according to the desire of my master, whose
name I afterwards learned was Moyset.
“All anxiety about my flock was removed, for the devil had undertaken
to protect it and to keep off the wolves.
“This freedom from care, however, made me begin to tire of the devil’s
service, and I recommenced my attendance at church, till I was brought
back into obedience to the evil one by Michel Verdung, when I renewed
my compact on the understanding that I should be supplied with money.
“In a wood near Chastel Charnon we met with many others whom I did not
recognize; we danced, and each had in his or her hand a green taper
with a blue flame. Still under the delusion that I should obtain money,
Michel persuaded me to move with the greatest celerity, and in order to
do this, after I had stripped myself, he smeared me with a salve, and I
believed myself then to be transformed into a wolf. I was at first
somewhat horrified at my four wolf’s feet, and the fur with which I was
covered all at once, but I found that I could now travel with the speed
of the wind. This could not have taken place without the help of our
powerful master, who was present during our excursion, though I did not
perceive him till I had recovered my human form. Michel did the same as
myself.
“When we had been one or two hours in this condition of metamorphosis,
Michel smeared us again, and quick as thought we resumed our human
forms. The salve was given us by our masters; to me it was given by
Moyset, to Michel by his own master, Guillemin.”
Pierre declared that he felt no exhaustion after his excursions, though
the judge inquired particularly whether he felt that prostration after
his unusual exertion, of which witches usually complained. Indeed the
exhaustion consequent on a were-wolf raid was so great that the
lycanthropist was often confined to his bed for days, and could hardly
move hand or foot, much in the same way as the berserkir and _ham
rammir_ in the North were utterly prostrated after their fit had left
them.
In one of his were-wolf runs, Pierre fell upon a boy of six or seven
years old, with his teeth, intending to rend and devour him, but the
lad screamed so loud that he was obliged to beat a retreat to his
clothes, and smear himself again, in order to recover his form and
escape detection. He and Michel, however, one day tore to pieces a
woman as she was gathering peas; and a M. de Chusnée, who came to her
rescue, was attacked by them and killed.
On another occasion they fell upon a little girl of four years old, and
ate her up, with the exception of one arm. Michel thought the flesh
most delicious.
Another girl was strangled by them, and her blood lapped up. Of a third
they ate merely a portion of the stomach. One evening at dusk, Pierre
leaped over a garden wall, and came upon a little maiden of nine years
old, engaged upon the weeding of the garden beds. She fell on her knees
and entreated Pierre to spare her; but he snapped the neck, and left
her a corpse, lying among her flowers. On this occasion he does not
seem to have been in his wolf’s shape. He fell upon a goat which he
found in the field of Pierre Lerugen, and bit it in the throat, but he
killed it with a knife.
Michel was transformed in his clothes into a wolf, but Pierre was
obliged to strip, and the metamorphosis could not take place with him
unless he were stark naked.
He was unable to account for the manner in which the hair vanished when
he recovered his natural condition.
The statements of Pierre Bourgot were fully corroborated by Michel
Verdung.
Towards the close of the autumn of 1573, the peasants of the
neighbourhood of Dôle, in Franche Comté, were authorized by the Court
of Parliament at Dôle, to hunt down the were-wolves which infested the
country. The authorization was as follows:— “According to the
advertisement made to the sovereign Court of Parliament at Dole, that,
in the territories of Espagny, Salvange, Courchapon, and the
neighbouring villages, has often been seen and met, for some time past,
a were-wolf, who, it is said, has already seized and carried off
several little children, so that they have not been seen since, and
since he has attacked and done injury in the country to some horsemen,
who kept him of only with great difficulty and danger to their persons:
the said Court, desiring to prevent any greater danger, has permitted,
and does permit, those who are abiding or dwelling in the said places
and others, notwithstanding all edicts concerning the chase, to
assemble with pikes, halberts, arquebuses, and sticks, to chase and to
pursue the said were-wolf in every place where they may find or seize
him; to tie and to kill, without incurring any pains or penalties. . .
. Given at the meeting of the said Court, on the thirteenth day of the
month September, 1573.” It was some time, however, before the
loup-garou was caught.
In a retired spot near Amanges, half shrouded in trees, stood a small
hovel of the rudest construction; its roof was of turf, and its walls
were blotched with lichen. The garden to this cot was run to waste, and
the fence round it broken through. As the hovel was far from any road,
and was only reached by a path over moorland and through forest, it was
seldom visited, and the couple who lived in it were not such as would
make many friends. The man, Gilles Garnier, was a sombre, ill-looking
fellow, who walked in a stooping attitude, and whose pale face, livid
complexion, and deep-set eyes under a pair of coarse and bushy brows,
which met across the forehead, were sufficient to repel any one from
seeking his acquaintance. Gilles seldom spoke, and when he did it was
in the broadest patois of his country. His long grey beard and retiring
habits procured for him the name of the Hermit of St. Bonnot, though no
one for a moment attributed to him any extraordinary amount of
sanctity.
The hermit does not seem to have been suspected for some time, but one
day, as some of the peasants of Chastenoy were returning home from
their work, through the forest, the screams of a child and the deep
baying of a wolf, attracted their notice, and on running in the
direction whence the cries sounded, they found a little girl defending
herself against a monstrous creature, which was attacking her tooth and
nail, and had already wounded her severely in five places. As the
peasants came up, the creature fled on all fours into the gloom of the
thicket; it was so dark that it could not be identified with certainty,
and whilst some affirmed that it was a wolf, others thought they had
recognized the features of the hermit. This took place on the 8th
November.
On the 14th a little boy of ten years old was missing, who had been
last seen at a short distance from the gates of Dole.
The hermit of S. Bonnot was now seized and brought to trial at Dole,
when the following evidence was extracted from him and his wife, and
substantiated in many particulars by witnesses.
On the last day of Michaelmas, under the form of a wolf, at a mile from
Dole, in the farm of Gorge, a vineyard belonging to Chastenoy, near the
wood of La Serre, Gilles Gamier had attacked a little maiden of ten or
twelve years old, and had slain her with his teeth and claws; he had
then drawn her into the wood, stripped her, gnawed the flesh from her
legs and arms, and had enjoyed his meal so much, that, inspired with
conjugal affection, he had brought some of the flesh home for his wife
Apolline.
Eight days after the feast of All Saints, again in the form of a
were-wolf, he had seized another girl, near the meadow land of La
Pouppe, on the territory of Athume and Chastenoy, and was on the point
of slaying and devouring her, when three persons came up, and he was
compelled to escape. On the fourteenth day after All Saints, also as a
wolf, he had attacked a boy of ten years old, a mile from Dôle, between
Gredisans and Menoté, and had strangled him. On that occasion he had
eaten all the flesh off his legs and arms, and had also devoured a
great part of the belly; one of the legs he had rent completely from
the trunk with his fangs.
On the Friday before the last feast of S. Bartholomew, he had seized a
boy of twelve or thirteen, under a large pear-trees near the wood of
the village Perrouze, and had drawn him into the thicket and killed
him, intending to eat him as he had eaten the other children, but the
approach of men hindered him from fulfilling his intention. The boy
was, however, quite dead, and the men who came up declared that Gilles
appeared as a man and not as a wolf. The hermit of S. Bonnot was
sentenced to be dragged to the place of public execution, and there to
be burned alive, a sentence which was rigorously carried out.
In this instance the poor maniac fully believed that actual
transformation into a wolf took place; he was apparently perfectly
reasonable on other points, and quite conscious of the acts he had
committed.
We come now to a more remarkable circumstance, the affliction of a
whole family with the same form of insanity. Our information is derived
from Boguet’s _Discours de Sorciers_, 1603-1610.
Pernette Gandillon was a poor girl in the Jura, who in 1598 ran about
the country on all fours, in the belief that she was a wolf. One day as
she was ranging the country in a fit of lycanthropic madness, she came
upon two children who were plucking wild strawberries. Filled with a
sudden passion for blood, she flew at the little girl and would have
brought her down, had not her brother, a lad of four years old,
defended her lustily with a knife. Pernette, however, wrenched the
weapon from his tiny hand, flung him down and gashed his throat, so
that he died of the wound. Pernette was tom to pieces by the people in
their rage and horror.
Directly after, Pierre, the brother of Pernette Gandillon, was accused
of witchcraft. He was charged with having led children to the sabbath,
having made hail, and having run about the country in the form of a
wolf. The transformation was effected by means of a salve which he had
received from the devil. He had on one occasion assumed the form of a
hare, but usually he appeared as a wolf, and his skin became covered
with shaggy grey hair. He readily acknowledged that the charges brought
against him were well founded, and he allowed that he had, during the
period of his transformation, fallen on, and devoured, both beasts and
human beings. When he desired to recover his true form, he rolled
himself in the dewy grass. His son Georges asserted that he had also
been anointed with the salve, and had gone to the sabbath in the shape
of a wolf. According to his own testimony, he had fallen upon two goats
in one of his expeditions.
One Maundy-Thursday night he had lain for three hours in his bed in a
cataleptic state, and at the end of that time had sprung out of bed.
During this period he had been in the form of a wolf to the witches’
sabbath.
His sister Antoinnette confessed that she had made hail, and that she
had sold herself to the devil, who had appeared to her in the shape of
a black he-goat. She had been to the sabbath on several occasions.
Pierre and Georges in prison behaved as maniacs, running on all fours
about their cells and howling dismally. Their faces, arms, and legs
were frightfully scarred with the wounds they had received from dogs
when they had been on their raids. Boguet accounts for the
transformation not taking place, by the fact of their not having the
necessary salves by them.
All three, Pierre, Georges, and Antoinnette, were hung and burned.
Thievenne Paget, who was a witch of the most unmistakable character,
was also frequently changed into a she-wolf, according to her own
confession, in which state she had often accompanied the devil over
hill and dale, slaying cattle, and falling on and devouring children.
The same thing may be said of Clauda Isan Prost, a lame woman, Clauda
Isan Guillaume, and Isan Roquet, who owned to the murder of five
children.
On the 14th of December, in the same year as the execution of the
Gandillon family (1598), a tailor of Châlons was sentenced to the
flames by the Parliament of Paris for lycanthropy. This wretched man
had decoyed children into his shop, or attacked them in the gloaming
when they strayed in the woods, had torn them with his teeth, and
killed them, after which he seems calmly to have dressed their flesh as
ordinary meat, and to have eaten it with great relish. The number of
little innocents whom he destroyed is unknown. A whole cask full of
bones was discovered in his house. The man was perfectly hardened, and
the details of his trial were so full of horrors and abominations of
all kinds, that the judges ordered the documents to be burned.
Again in 1598, a year memorable in the annals of lycanthropy, a trial
took place in Angers, the details of which are very terrible.
In a wild and unfrequented spot near Caude, some countrymen came one
day upon the corpse of a boy of fifteen, horribly mutilated and
bespattered with blood. As the men approached, two wolves, which had
been rending the body, bounded away into the thicket. The men gave
chase immediately, following their bloody tracks till they lost them;
when suddenly crouching among the bushes, his teeth chattering with
fear, they found a man half naked, with long hair and beard, and with
his hands dyed in blood. His nails were long as claws, and were clotted
with fresh gore, and shreds of human flesh.
This is one of the most puzzling and peculiar cases which come under
our notice.
The wretched man, whose name was Roulet, of his own accord stated that
he had fallen upon the lad and had killed him by smothering him, and
that he had been prevented from devouring the body completely by the
arrival of men on the spot.
Roulet proved on investigation to be a beggar from house to house, in
the most abject state of poverty. His companions in mendicity were his
brother John and his cousin Julien. He had been given lodging out of
charity in a neighbouring village, but before his apprehension he had
been absent for eight days.
Before the judges, Roulet acknowledged that he was able to transform
himself into a wolf by means of a salve which his parents had given
him. When questioned about the two wolves which had been seen leaving
the corpse, he said that he knew perfectly well who they were, for they
were his companions, Jean and Julian, who possessed the same secret as
himself. He was shown the clothes he had worn on the day of his
seizure, and he recognized them immediately; he described the boy whom
he had murdered, gave the date correctly, indicated the precise spot
where the deed had been done, and recognized the father of the boy as
the man who had first run up when the screams of the lad had been
heard. In prison, Roulet behaved like an idiot. When seized, his belly
was distended and hard; in prison he drank one evening a whole pailful
of water, and from that moment refused to eat or drink.
His parents, on inquiry, proved to be respectable and pious people, and
they proved that his brother John and his cousin Julien had been
engaged at a distance on the day of Roulet’s apprehension.
“What is your name, and what your estate?” asked the judge, Pierre
Hérault.
“My name is Jacques Roulet, my age thirty-five; I am poor, and a
mendicant.”
“What are you accused of having done?”
“Of being a thief—of having offended God. My parents gave me an
ointment; I do not know its composition.”
“When rubbed with this ointment do you become a wolf?”
“No; but for all that, I killed and ate the child Cornier: I was a
wolf.”
“Were you dressed as a wolf?”
“I was dressed as I am now. I had my hands and my face bloody, because
I had been eating the flesh of the said child.”
“Do your hands and feet become paws of a wolf?”
“Yes, they do.”
“Does your head become like that of a wolf-your mouth become larger?”
“I do not know how my head was at the time; I used my teeth; my head
was as it is to-day. I have wounded and eaten many other little
children; I have also been to the sabbath.”
The _lieutenant criminel_ sentenced Roulet to death. He, however,
appealed to the Parliament at Paris; and this decided that as there was
more folly in the poor idiot than malice and witchcraft, his sentence
of death should be commuted to two years’ imprisonment in a madhouse,
that he might be instructed in the knowledge of God, whom he had
forgotten in his utter poverty.[1]
[1] “La cour du Parliament, par arrêt, mist l’appellation et la
sentence dont il avoit esté appel au néant, et, néanmoins, ordonna que
le dit Roulet serait mis à l’hospital Saint Germain des Prés, où on a
accoustumé de mettre les folz, pour y demeurer l’espace de deux ans,
afin d’y estre instruit et redressé tant de son esprit, que ramené à
la cognoissance de Dieu, que l’extrême pauvreté lui avoit fait
mescognoistre.”