In 1612, a judge in Bordeaux, France called Pierre de Lancre wrote a book about bad angels and demons, Tableau de l’Inconstance des Mauvais Anges et Demons. Within it can be found the extraordinary case of Jean Grenier. 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.
In the spring of 1603, there spread through the St. Sever districts of Gascony in the extreme south-west of France a veritable reign of terror encountered by La Roche-Chalais, a small barony in France’s Dordogne region. From a number of little hamlets and smaller villages young children had begun to mysteriously disappear off the fields and roads, and no trace could be discovered. In one instance even a babe was stolen from its cradle in a cottage whilst the mother had left it for a short space safe asleep, as she thought.
The consternation was at its height when the local magistrate advised the Judge of the Barony de la Roche Chalais and de la Chatellenie that information had been laid before him by three witnesses, of whom one, a young 13 year old girl named Marguerite Poirier of the outlaying hamlet of St-Paul, in the Parish of Esperons, swore that on full moon she had been attacked by a savage beast, much resembling a wolf. The girl stated that one midday whilst she was watching cattle, a wild beast with rufulous fur, not unlike a huge dog, rushed from the thicket and tore her kirtle with its sharp teeth. She only managed to save herself from being bitten owing to the fact she was armed with a stout iron; pointed staff with which she hardly warded herself. Moreover a boy of some 13 or 14 years old, Jean Grenier, was boasting that is was he who attacked Marguerite, as a wolf, and but for her stick he would have torn her limb from limb as he had already eaten three or four children.
Marguerite Poirier was the first to bring him to the attention of her parents. She stated that Jean Grenier had repeatedly frightened her and other girls by threatening to eat them. 18 year old Jeanne Gaboriaut came forward with information about a conversation she had previously conducted with him. One day when she was tending cattle with Jean Grenier in her company (both being servants of a well-to-do farmer of Saint-Paul Pierre Combaut), he coarsely complimented her as a bonny lass and vowed he would marry her.
When she asked whom his father was, he said: “I am a priest’s bastard.” She remarked that he was shallow and dirty, to which he replied: “Ah, that is because of the wolf’s-skin I wear.” Grenier was described as having thickly matted red hair falling over his shoulders, pale eyes, and large hands with long, black nails pointed like a bird’s talons. His most peculiar characteristics, however, were his large canine teeth that protruded from his overhanging, lower jaw.
He added that a man named Pierre Labourat had given him this pelt, and that when he donned it he coursed the woods and fields as a wolf. There were nine werewolves of his coven who went to the chase at the waning moon on Mondays, Fridays and Saturdays, and who were wont to hunt during the twilight and just before dawn. He lusted for the flesh of small children, which were tender, plump and rare. He said that he was hungry when in the wolf’s shape, so he often killed dogs and lapped their hot blood, which was not as delicious to his taste as that of young boys, from whose thighs he would take great bites.
At first the parents disregarded their daughters’ stories as youthful fantasy. However, this changed when Marguerite Poirier was attacked by Grenier one day, and was only able to fight him off after a vicious struggle. After this, the case was taken to the authorities. This caused a general fear to spread in the area, for it had been reported that several young girls had recently vanished mysteriously.
These informations were logged on May 29th, 1603. Jean Grenier was arrested and brought before the Higher Court on the following 2nd June, when he freely made a confession of the most abominable and hideous werewolfery, vicious and monstrous crimes which were in every particular proved to only be too true.
“The charge of Marguerite Poirier is correct,” the thirteen year old boy is recorded as having said. “My intention was to have killed and devoured her.” He acknowledged that, by the blow of a priest, he had lied. His father was Pierre Grenier, nicknamed “le Croquant”, a day laborer of the hamlet of Saint-Antoine de Pizon, which is situate toward Coutras rather than a “priest’s bastard.” He had run away from his father, who had beaten him and whom he hated, and got his living as best he could by cowherding. The teenager made a full confession without the need for torture. Grenier denied none of the charges and elaborated fully on his crimes.
One evening while herding cows, a youth named Pierre de la Tilhaire, who lived at Saint-Antoine, one evening took him into the depths of a wood and brought him into the presence of the lord of the Forest. This lord was a tall dark man, dressed all in black, riding a black charger. He saluted the two lads, and dismounting he kissed Jean, but his mouth was colder than ice. Presently he rode away down a distant glade.
Three years later, and on a second meeting he had given himself to the Lord of the Forest as his bond-slave. The Lord had marked both boys on each thigh with a kind of misericorde, or small stiletto. He had treated them well, and all swigged off a bumper of rich wine. The Lord had presented them each with a wolf-skin, which when they donned, they seem to have been transformed into wolves, and in this shape they scored the countryside.
Grenier soon joined the wolves to run through the country by the light of the moon wearing the wolf’s skin. His first kill was on the first Friday of March 1603, when he killed and ate a little three-year-old girl named Guyonne. He went on to describe many similar attacks that were corroborated by witnesses and victims. One report said that he admitted eating more than 50 children.
He had attacked the child of Jean Roullier, but there came to the rescue the boy’s elder brother, who was armed and beat him away. Young Roulier was called as a witness and remembered the exact place, hour, and day when a wolf had flown out from a thicket at his little brother, and he had driven the animal off, being well armed. The different areas where Grenier had done his dark deeds were identified, and it was discovered that the times where he stated they happened did indeed coincide with parents reporting their children missing. As hideous as his claims were, Grenier did seem to be telling the truth.
The court ordered Pierre Grenier, the father, who Jean had accused of sorcery and werewolfism, to be “laid by the heals”, and a cry was made for Pierre de la Tilhaire as well. The latter fled, and could not be caught, but Pierre Grenier, on being closely interrogated proved to be a simple rustic, one who clearly knew nothing of his son’s crimes. He was released not long after.
Two physicians examined him but came to differing conclusions. They both judged him “melancholic” or mentally ill, but one saw evidence of a devil’s mark and witchcraft as well. The judges, too, could not make up their minds. Some supported a death sentence based on the boy’s confession, others could not believe he was telling the truth.
The inquiry was relegated to the Parliament of Bordeaux, and on the 6th of September 1503, President Dassis pronounced sentence upon the loup-garou. The utmost clemency was shown. Taken into consideration his youth and extreme ignorance Jean Grenier was declared mentally unfit.
The judges concluded that Grenier had been possessed by a demon, resulting in lycanthropy. Jean Grenier was ordered to be strictly enclosed in the Franciscan friary of St. Michael the Archangel, a monastery of the stricter Observance, at Bordeaux to be watched over by monks for the rest of his life. He was warned that any attempt to escape would be punished by the gallows without hope of remission or stay.
Jean Grenier was even examined by the infamous Pierre de Lancre; the man who single-handedly initiated the Basque Witch Trials, –a witch-hunt that killed over 600 men and women in France, almost a century before the Salem witch trials took place in colonial Massachusetts. He also wrote several popular volumes of religious anti-witch guides, and witch-hunting books.
Pierre de Lancre, who has left us a very simple account of the whole case, visited the loup-garou at St. Michaels in the year of 1610 and described him as “lean and gaunt, with glaring deep-set black eyes, long sharp fang-like teeth and claws for hands with horrid crooked nails. He would fall upon ‘all fours,’ and moved with greater ease then than when attempting to walk upright. His mind was completely barren; he seemed unable to comprehend the smallest things.” He still insisted that he was a lycanthrope. It was then that Grenier related the whole story to the judge, as it was when he first gave his testimony to the courts years before. The judge recorded everything faithfully. He loved to hear and talk of wolves but was very shy, and unwilling to look anyone in the face. The fathers remarked that at first he rejected simple plain food for raw meat and offal.
In the years since his trial, Grenier claimed that “Lord of the Forest” had visited him twice, promising him that he would soon be free again to spread terror across the country as a wolf. This never happened as shortly after the judge’s visit, Grenier, clearly suffering from a psychological disorder or disease, died shortly afterward in 1611.
We probably know more about the Grenier trial than about any other case that came before the Bordeaux Parlement in its long and illustrious history. The palace that housed the Parlement went up in flames in the early eighteenth century, taking its records with it. The teen wolf case, however, was sensational enough that three separate attempts to excerpt or summarize it were made shortly after the trial’s conclusion. The most extensive account of the Grenier trial is contained in a manuscript that belongs to the Bibliothèque nationale de France in Paris. MS Français 13346 is described as containing Mélanges théologiques, a mix of theological texts. For the most part, they belong to the late seventeenth century.
Sources: https://notevenpast.org/primary-source-when-harry-met-a-werewolf-manuscript/, https://www.werewolfpage.com/myths/grenier.html, https://www.hypnogoria.com/html/jeangrenier.html, https://gaslight.mtroyal.ca/JGrenier.htm, http://www.werewolfpage.com/myths/grenier.html, https://www.werewolves.com/real-cases-of-lycanthropy-jean-grenier/, https://historycollection.com/12-real-werewolf-cases-throughout-history/8/
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