Werewolves are rampant throughout folklore – insatiable, uncontrollable beasts doomed to bear their ugly mugs and terrorize humanity, even if the human inside didn’t consent to what was happening. Belief and stories of werewolves are common across all corners of the globe, from the Turkish Kurtadam to the Mexican Nahaul.
The French werewolf epidemic, which between 1520 and 1630, resulted in the execution of more than 30,000 individuals was the result of a link forged between the werewolf and a new, more aggressive attitude toward witchcraft arising in ecclesiastic councils taking place in Basel Switzerland in the 1430s. The first regions in France to begin prosecutions were therefore naturally those adjacent to Switzerland. Many there were overseen by Henry Bouguet, a judge who tried approximately 600 witchcraft cases in the locality. Today is the anniversary of the death of one such werewolf
One case judged by Bouguet is that of Gilles Garnier. Gilles Garnier (executed 18 January 1573) was a French serial killer, cannibal, and hermit convicted of being a werewolf. He was alternately known as “The Hermit of St. Bonnot” and “The Werewolf of Dole”. Our source for his life and crimes is another contemporary pamphlet, printed at Sens in 1574. Garnier’s case is interesting in that he brought home human flesh from his werewolf attacks for his wife to enjoy.
Garnier was known as an ugly reclusive hermit shunned by others living outside the town of Dole in the Franche-Comté Province in France. He had recently been married and moved his new wife out to his isolated home, an inaccessible, turf-roofed, and rudely constructed hovel near Amanges, France. Being unaccustomed to feeding more than just himself, he found it difficult to provide for his wife, causing discontent between them.
During this period several children went missing or were found dead, mutilated, and even torn apart. Rumors began to bubble up and, when enough children went missing, it wasn’t believed to be bad luck – these disastrous deaths had to come from a werewolf. In fact, sightings of a strange wolf-like creature lurking around farms were reported.
The authorities of the Franche-Comté province issued an edict encouraging and allowing the people to apprehend and kill the werewolf responsible. One evening, a group of workers travelling from a neighboring town came upon what they thought in the dim light to be a wolf but what some recognized as the hermit with the body of a dead child.
According to his testimony at trial, while Garnier was in the forest hunting one night, trying to find food for himself and his wife, a spectre appeared to him, offering to ease his troubles and gave him an ointment that would allow him to change into the form of a wolf, making it easier to hunt.
Garnier confessed to having stalked and murdered at least four children between the ages of 9 and 12. In October 1572, his first victim was a 10-year-old girl whom he dragged into a vineyard outside of Dole into the adjoining Bois de la Serre. There he stripped her naked, strangled her, and ate the flesh from her thighs and arms. He then removed some more of her flesh and took it home to his wife, Apolline, to eat.
Weeks later, Garnier savagely attacked another girl in more or less the same place, biting and clawing her wounding her in 5 places, but was interrupted by passersby and fled. The girl succumbed to her injuries a few days later. In November, Garnier killed a 10-year-old boy, again cannibalizing him by eating from his thighs and belly and tearing off a leg to save for later. He strangled another boy but was interrupted for the second time by a group of passersby. He had to abandon his prey before he could eat from it.
In 1572, he brutally attacked an unknown boy who was passing by and tore him in half by biting and tearing at his belly. In 1573, he strangled a girl, ate her flesh, and tore away her left leg and took it to his wife. His next crime proved his eventual undoing: having killed another young boy and dragged him to the woods, Garnier was surprised at his intended meal, and after retreating a distance resumed his human form, leading to his identification.
Disgusted by the remains of half-eaten children in the district, the Parliament of Franche-Comté issued a decree in 1573 which demanded that werewolves be hunted down by locals and brought to trial. However, it was not these huntsmen who caught Garnier but a group of workers who incidentally came across the hermit crouched over a dead child one night after returning from work. They initially thought the figure in the shadows was a werewolf, but as the light from their torches illuminated it, they identified Garnier. Acting quickly, the men caught Garnier and took him to the magistrates at Dole.
Garnier was tortured to extract a confession. He explained that he had spent much of his life as a hermit in the St Bonnot woods. He married in 1572, and fathered children, but struggled with the new task of feeding more than one mouth. Desperately foraging one night in the woods, a specter appeared to him and gave him a special ointment that would transform him into a wolf. Gilles accepted this strange gift from a stranger being because Gilles was often starving. He was growing older and without stable employment, he found it harder and harder to provide enough food for him and his wife.
However, when he applied the ointment and became a werewolf he lost his faculties and could not control his rage and hunger. He confessed to killing two girls and two boys and eating their flesh. He even claimed he brought some of their remains home with him to feed his wife. Some claim these confessions were to stop the torture being enacted upon him, other tellings of the tale say the man willingly confessed to his purported crimes.
Gilles was found guilty of both witchcraft, since he utilized magical ointment, and lycanthropy, since he had turned into a werewolf (willingly). The court, hearing his confession, sentenced him to be burned at the stake. On January 18, 1573, Garnier was burned at the stake.
his trial was done by the secular authorities and not by the Inquisition, as superstition was not judged by the Inquisition. More than 50 witnesses deposed that he had attacked and killed children in the fields and vineyards, devouring their raw flesh. He was sometimes seen in human shape, sometimes as a “loup-garou”.
Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilles_Garnier, https://historycollection.com/12-real-werewolf-cases-throughout-history/4/, https://occult-world.com/garnier-gilles-1873/, https://www.astonishinglegends.com/astonishing-legends/2020/6/9/the-werewolf-of-dole
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