The folkloric bestiary is always popular when it comes to having fun scaring yourself. This is evidenced by the release of a film (Netflix) and its fun version (Canal+), “Loups-Garous”, inspired by the board game of the same name.
However, lycanthropes have not always been considered friendly fantasies. In the 17th centurye century, religious and judicial authorities considered the phenomenon with the greatest seriousness. In Bordeaux, the archives keep track of the trial of three men suspected of turning into “malbeests”, of roaming the countryside in the form of wolves and devouring children and animals.
The case gave rise to a scrupulous investigation, an initial judgment then an appeal trial. The oldest document to refer to it is contemporary with the facts. This work published in 1612 by Pierre de Lancre – advisor to the king in the Parliament of Bordeaux and witch hunter – is entitled “Tableau de la inconstancy des bad angels et demons”.
In the chapter entitled “On lycanthropy and the change of man into a wolf and other kind of animal”, de Lancre recounts how “he [lui] fell into hand the arrest of the werewolf who ran in this country of Guyenne and the jurisdiction of La Roche-Chalais [Dordogne] and in that of Coutras”, pronounced by the first president of the Court of Parliament of Bordeaux, on September 6, 1603.
This text reveals a wealth of details. “It seemed very necessary to me to put down here the main points, taken word for word from the procedure,” specifies the advisor. Here are the facts: at the end of May 1603, “ [l]he ordinary judge of the châtellenie of La Roche-Chalais was informed by the public prosecutor that a wild beast had been seen in the village of Paulot, parish of Esparon, which looked like a wolf and had lunged in broad daylight about a young girl called Marguerite Poirier.
Nothing fantastic. Except that “in this same village, a young boy of 13 to 14 years old claimed that it was he who had thrown himself at her, transformed into a wolf, and that he would have eaten her if she had not defended herself with a stick, as he had eaten, he said, two or three children or girls.”
The investigation
This admission triggers an investigation which has nothing to envy of ours in its procedural scruples. We hear the victim, 13 years old, who explains that she used to herd cattle with this young boy, named Jean Grenier. Who “told him very often that he became a wolf when he wanted, that he had caught and killed dogs, had eaten a piece of them and drunk the blood, but that it was not good like that of the young children.”
“He would have eaten her if she had not defended herself with a stick, just as he had eaten two or three children or girls”
She describes the beast that attacked her as “bigger and shorter than a wolf, with red hair.” Another witness, Jeanne Gaboriaut, 18 years old, says that Jean Grenier told him about “wearing a reddish wolf skin”, thanks to which he can change into an animal. It would have been given to him by a certain Pierre Labouraut, “a man who wears a chain around his neck that he gnaws”, in “a large and black house” where the flesh of people being roasted is burning.
This is enough to arrest the teenager. We discover that he is the son of a plowman named Pierre Grenier, living in Saint-Antoine-de-Pizon, in the jurisdiction of Coutras. Confronted with the testimonies, he confesses even more. Recounts that, three years earlier, a boy named Pierre du Tilhaire “told him that there was a gentleman in the forest of Saint-Antoine who wanted to speak to them”; and that this “gentleman dressed in black and mounted on a horse […] kissed them with an extremely cold mouth.” They later saw the man again, who “marked them both on the buttocks with a brooch”, of which he keeps a round mark in the shape of a seal.
His confession multiplies the details of his misdeeds: changed into a wolf, he allegedly ate an infant found in the cradle in a house in a village in La Double; devoured a young shepherdess in a black dress in Saint-Antoine, as well as another young girl near a stone quarry, two weeks earlier. And would have been put to flight by villagers in other places.
The confirmed facts
He also incriminates his own father, who three times allegedly helped him change into a wolf by applying grease given to him by “the gentleman from the forest”. In matters of witchcraft, notes Pierre de Lancre, “the simple testimony of a son against his father is admissible”. Grenier father is arrested. Young Tilhaire too.
“Parents of children eaten confirm locations, time circumstances, words said, nature of injuries…”
The investigation does not stop there. In “second information”, we hear “the parents of children eaten by werewolves […] which confirm the places, circumstances of time, the words said, the nature of the wounds…” And further indicate that the malebeest would have chosen “the most delicate and the fattest” of the children.
Confrontations and searches are organized. Reconstructions on site too. They are conclusive. Yes, a child ate well at such a place. Yes, we put a wolf on the run in another, as described by the suspect.
Jean Grenier’s mother-in-law even indicates that she left the father’s home after seeing him “put dogs’ feet and small children’s hands out of his throat.” Jean then confesses that his father also turns into a wolf, that they devoured a goose herder together two years earlier. But now, “he runs alone”, without his father.
This is a well-conducted investigation. “It remains to be seen whether this transformation from man to beast is real and what punishment should be ordered against werewolves,” asks Pierre de Lancre. This is lost, in the pages that follow, in endless developments which summon mythology (Circe), the classics (Democritus, Pliny), the science of nature, the saints of the Church or the inquisitor Torquemada.
The judges’ dilemma
Because the transformation poses a religious problem, and therefore legal. This point of law is addressed in a second document, published a few years later: “The Conference of French Law and Roman Law”, by the jurisconsult Bernard Automne, lawyer at the Parliament of Bordeaux (third edition, 1629).
In the first instance, Automne recounts, the judge of Coutras sentenced the teenager, “to be hanged and strangled, then his body burned and burned to ashes”. And asked that Tilhaire and the father be subjected to questioning and torture to find out the truth. The case is, however, appealed to the Court of the Parliament of Bordeaux.
“One can be sick with a disease called lycanthropy, but this child is not sick”
She orders that two town doctors examine the self-proclaimed werewolf. Experts are clear: “You can be sick with a disease called lycanthropy, but this child is not sick. » One of the people in the know even maintains that the entire content of the trial “is nothing but fables”. This is also what the father has been proclaiming from the start: his son “is an idiotic and dazed child who is the laughing stock of everyone”.
If it was not lycanthropy, what transformed the child into an animal, as witnesses confirm? It is “the evil one” who, “illuminating men”, made him believe not only that he had been changed into a wolf and inspired his misdeeds, but also “deceived the eyes together of those who see them”. All were victims of an evil spell.
“Simple mythomaniac”
The jurisprudence of the time is clear: “In France, sorcerers, magicians and those who communicate with the devil are hanged and then burned,” recalls Automne. Some of the judges, moreover, “opted at death”. But the court and its first president, Guillaume Daffis, issued a lenient judgment, condemning Grenier fils “to serve in a convent as long as he lives”. He died there in 1610, not without de Lancre visiting him there, finding him still “convinced of his exploits” and devoting mortal hatred to his father.
This is what a third, more recent document dedicated to our werewolf tells us: the 1930 edition of “La Revue de folklore français”
Pierre Saintyves (real name Émile Nourry), bookseller, publisher, folklorist and lecturer in anthropology reproduces Bernard Automne’s text. And, in his comments, he explains the difficulties posed by the affair “to the credulous de Lancre”: “As the great theologians, for metaphysical reasons, do not admit that man can transform into a wolf”, he considers that the devil gave him this appearance, in his eyes and in those of witnesses, “either by covering his servant with a skillfully sewn wolf skin, or by condensing the atmospheric air into a sort of garment…”
For his part, Saintyves considers Grenier as “a simple mythomaniac”. And relies on the explanation of Dr. Louis-Florentin Calmeil (“De la Folie”, 1845), according to whom: “The story told by this imbecile is modeled on that of the lycanthrope of Angers and of many others […]. This child had early on had his head filled with the crudest paints. » As for the real victims: “The wolves committed terrible devastation in the region [on est au plus fort du petit âge glaciaire, ndlr]. Grenier had certainly heard the names of individuals who had endeavored to steal their prey from the wolf.
A conclusion more in line with our explanation grids, in this case, where we are surprised to see the beginning of a scientific approach coexist in the investigation, with the unreserved acceptance of the existence of lycanthropes. But our ancestors were no more stupid than us. And perhaps we will be surprised in 400 years to find ourselves very methodical in our delusions.
Related News :