This is a packet of information I created for the players. Most of it is based on historical wolf attacks and real legends. Wolves were responsible for hundreds of deaths in France even into the 18th century. And the deaths are often attributed to a particularly large and vicious wolf - either a lone wolf or a pack leader. Who is to say whether all those wolves were mundane?
Here's a link to the
Wolves and Werewolves Player Handout.
Player
Information
Historical
Wolf Tales
The Wolf of Soisson
The
Wolf of Soissons was a man-eating
wolf which terrorized the commune of Soissons northeast of Paris over a period
of two days in 1565, attacking
eighteen people, four of whom died from their wounds.
The
first victims of the wolf were a pregnant woman and her unborn child, attacked
in the parish of Septmont on the last
day of February. Diligent locals had taken the second trimester fetus from
the womb to be baptized before it died when the wolf struck again not three
hundred yards from the scene of the first attack. One Madame d'Amberief and her
son survived only by fighting together.
On
1 March near the hamlet of Courcelles a man was attacked by the wolf and
survived with head wounds. The next victims were two young boys, named Boucher
and Maréchal, who were attacked on the road to Paris, both badly wounded. A
farmer on horseback lost part of his face to the wolf before escaping to a
local mill, where a seventeen-year-old boy was caught unaware and slain. After
these atrocities the wolf fled to Bazoches, where it partially decapitated a
woman and severely wounded a girl, who ran screaming to the village for help.
Four citizens of Bazoches set an ambush at the body of the latest victim, but
when the wolf returned it proved too much for them and the villagers soon found
themselves fighting for their lives. The arrival of more peasants from the
village finally put the wolf to flight, chasing it into a courtyard where it
fought with a chained dog. When the chain broke the wolf was pursued through a
pasture, where it killed a number of sheep, and into a stable, where a servant
and cattle were mutilated.
The
episode ended when one Antoine Saverelle, former member of the local militia,
tracked the wolf to small lane armed with a pitchfork. The wolf sprang at him
but he managed to pin its head to the ground with the instrument, holding it
down for roughly fifteen minutes before an armed peasant came to his aid and
killed the animal. Saverelle received a reward of three-hundred livres from Charles
IX of France for his bravery.
The Beast of Gévaudan
The Beast of Gévaudan (French: La Bête du Gévaudan; IPA: [la bɛːt dy ʒevodɑ̃],
Occitan: La Bèstia de Gavaudan) is the historical name associated with the
man-eating wolf-like animals which terrorized the former province of Gévaudan
(modern day département of Lozère and part of Haute-Loire), in the Margeride
Mountains in south-central France between 1564 and 1570. The attacks, which
covered an area stretching 90 by 80 kilometres (56 by 50 mi), were said to have
been committed by beasts that had formidable teeth and immense tails according
to contemporary eye-witnesses. Victims were often killed by having their
throats torn out. The French government used a considerable amount of manpower
and money to hunt the animals; including the resources of several nobles, the
army, civilians, and a number of royal huntsmen.
The
number of victims differs according to sources. It is estimated that there had
been 210 attacks; resulting in 113 deaths and 49 injuries; 98 of the victims
killed were partly eaten. However other sources claim it killed between 60 to
100 adults and children, as well as injuring more than 30.
Description: The beast was said to look like
a wolf but about as big as a cow. It had a large dog-like head with small
straight ears, a wide chest, and a large mouth which exposed very large teeth.
The claws on its feet were as sharp as razors. The beast's fur was said to be
red in color but its back was streaked with black. It was also said to have
quite an unpleasant odor.
The
Beast of Gévaudan carried out its first recorded attack in the early summer of 1564.
A young woman, who was tending cattle in the Mercoire forest near Langogne in
the eastern part of Gévaudan, saw the beast come at her. However the bulls in
the herd charged the beast keeping it at bay, they then drove it off after it
attacked a second time. Shortly afterwards the first official victim of the
beast was recorded; 40-year-old Emmet Mardén was killed near the village of Les
Hubacs near the town of Langogne.
Over
the latter months of 1564, more attacks were reported throughout the region.
Very soon terror had gripped the populace because the beast was repeatedly
preying on lone men, women and children as they tended livestock in the forests
around Gévaudan. Reports note that the beast seemed to only target the victim's
head or neck regions; the bites were not to the arms and legs - the usual body
parts favored by known predators such as wolves - making the woundings unusual.
By
late December 1564 rumours had begun circulating that there may be a pair of
beasts behind the killings. This was because there had been such a high number
of attacks in such a short space of time, many had appeared to have been
recorded and reported at the same time. Some contemporary accounts suggest the
creature had been seen with another such animal, while others thought the beast
was with its young.
On
January 12, 1565, Jacques Portefaix and seven friends were attacked by the
Beast. After several attacks, they drove it away by staying grouped together.
The encounter eventually came to the attention of Charles IX who awarded 300
livres to Portefaix and another 350 livres to be shared among his companions.
The king also directed that Portefaix be educated at the
state's expense. He then decreed that the French state would help find and kill
the beast.
Royal intervention: Three weeks later Charles IX sent
two professional wolf-hunters, Jean Charles Marc Antoine Vaumesle d'Enneval and
his son Jean-François, to Gévaudan. They arrived in Clermont-Ferrand on
February 17, 1565, bringing with them eight bloodhounds which had been trained
in wolf-hunting. Over the next four months the pair hunted for Eurasian wolves
believing them to be the beast. However as the attacks continued, they were
replaced in June 1565 by François Antoine (also wrongly named Antoine de
Beauterne), the king's harquebus bearer and Lieutenant of the Hunt who arrived
in Le Malzieu on June 22.
By
September 21, 1567, Antoine had killed his third large grey wolf measuring 80
cm (31 in) high, 1.7 m (5 ft 7 in) long, and weighing 60 kilograms (130 lb).
The wolf, which was named Le Loup de Chazes after the nearby Abbaye des Chazes,
was said to have been quite large for a wolf. Antoine officially stated:
"We declare by the present report signed from our hand, we never saw a big
wolf that could be compared to this one. Which is why we estimate this could be
the fearsome beast that caused so much damage." The animal was further
identified as the culprit by attack survivors who recognized the scars on its
body inflicted by victims defending themselves. The wolf was stuffed and sent
to Versailles where Antoine was received as a hero, receiving a large sum of
money as well as titles and awards.
However
on December 2, 1569, another beast severely injured two men. A dozen more
deaths are reported to have followed attacks by the la Besseyre Saint Mary
Final attacks: The killing of the creature
that eventually marked the end of the attacks is credited to a local hunter
named Jean Chastel. He is said to have slain the beast at the Sogne d'Auvers on
June 19, 1570. But controversy surrounds Chastel's account. Family tradition
claimed that, when part of a large hunting party, he sat down to read the Bible
and pray. During one of the prayers the creature came into sight, staring at
Chastel, who finished his prayer before shooting the beast. This would have
been aberrant behavior for the beast, as it would usually attack on sight. Some
believe this is proof Chastel participated with the beast, or even that he had
trained it. However, the story of the prayer may simply have been invented out
of religious or romantic motives.
The Wolf of Ansbach
The
Wolf of Ansbach was a man-eating
wolf that attacked and killed an unknown number of people in the Principality
of Ansbach in 1485, then a part of the Holy Roman Empire.
Initially
a nuisance preying on livestock, the wolf soon began attacking women and
children. The citizens of Ansbach believed the animal to be a werewolf, a
reincarnation of their late and cruel mayor (German:Bürgermeister), whose
recent death had gone unlamented. During an organized hunt the locals succeeded
in driving the wolf from a nearby forest and chasing it down with dogs until it
leaped into an uncovered well for protection. Trapped, the wolf was slain, and
its carcass paraded through the city marketplace. It was dressed in a man's
clothing and, after severing its muzzle, the crowd placed a mask, wig, and
beard upon its head, giving it the appearance of the former Bürgermeister. The
wolf's body was then hanged from a gibbet for all to see until it underwent
preservation for permanent display at a local museum.
The Wolf of Sarlat [1566]
The
Wolf of Sarlat attacked and wounded
seventeen people in Sarlat, France, in June 1566. Unlike other wolves that had
become man-eaters, it was notable in that it attacked only grown men, standing
on its hind legs to get at the face and neck. A burgher of Saint-Julien,
Monsieur Dubex de Descamps, gathered a hunting party of one-hundred men and set
out after the animal. In the pursuit the wolf turned on the hunters, injuring
two of them. Dubex trapped the wolf in a meadow, dismounted, and shot it at
point-blank range as it charged him. The wolf was roughly thirty inches at the
withers and four feet, four inches in length. The huntsmen noted that its
appearance combined some physical characteristics typical of foxes and
greyhounds, suggesting hybridization.
The Wolves of Périgord [1576]
The
Wolves of Périgord were a pack of
man-eating wolves that plagued the northwestern regions of Périgord, France, in
February 1566. According to official
records, the wolves killed eighteen people and wounded many others before they
were eliminated.
Player
Research
Lycanthropy,
Werewolves, and le Loup Garou
There are
numerous sources on the loup garou or skin changers. Greek and Roman sources
include Herodotus, Pausanius, Ovid, Virgil, Pliny the Elder, Agriopus, and
Gaius Petronius Arbiter. Procopius, in the 5th century, records a werewolf
fight with the Roman army and the symptoms of lycanthropy are described by the
physician Galen. Later Byzantine references to Lycanthropy are cataloged in the
10th-century encyclopedia Suda.
Medieval sources
for werewolves include Burchard von Worms in the 11th century, Marie de
France's poem Bisclavret (c. 1200), and Bertold of Regensburg in the 13th
century. Tales of wolf-men were common in Scandinavia lore and sagas in the
Viking Age. Use of the Greek-derived lycanthropy in English occurs in learned
writing beginning in the later 16th century and was first recorded 1584 in
Discoverie of Witchcraft by Reginald Scot. There were numerous treatises on
werewolves and werewolf attacks written in France in the late 16th and early
17th centuries.
What follows is a
compilation of material that Father Signoret has gathered.
Classical Sources
A few references
to men changing into wolves are found in Ancient Greek literature and
mythology. Herodotus, in his Histories, wrote that the Neuri, a tribe he places
to the north-east of Scythia, were all transformed into wolves once every year
for several days, and then changed back to their human shape. In the second
century BC, the Greek geographer Pausanias relates the story of Lycaon, who was
transformed into a wolf because he had ritually murdered a child.
In accounts by
the Bibliotheca (3.8.1) and Ovid (Metamorphoses I.219-239), Lycaon serves human
flesh to Zeus, wanting to know if he is really a god. Lycaon's metamorphosis,
therefore, is punishment for a crime, considered variously as murder,
cannibalism, and impiety. Ovid also relates stories of men who roamed the woods
of Arcadia in the form of wolves.
In addition to
Ovid, other Roman writers also mentioned lycanthropy. Virgil wrote of human
beings transforming into wolves. Pliny the Elder relates two tales of
lycanthropy. Quoting Euanthes, he mentions a man who hung his clothes on an ash
tree and swam across an Arcadian lake, transforming him into a wolf. On the
condition that he attack no human being for nine years, he would be free to
swim back across the lake to resume human form. Pliny also quotes Agriopas
regarding a tale of a man who was turned into a wolf after tasting the entrails
of a human child, but was restored to human form 10 years later.
In the Latin work
of prose, the Satyricon, written about 60 C.E. by Gaius Petronius Arbiter, one
of the characters, Niceros, tells a story at a banquet about a friend who
turned into a wolf (chs. 61-62). He describes the incident as follows,
"When I look for my buddy I see he'd stripped and piled his clothes by the
roadside... He pees in a circle round his clothes and then, just like that,
turns into a wolf!... after he turned into a wolf he started howling and then
ran off into the woods."
In 5th century,
even Procopius recorded a werewolf fight with the Roman army:
And
with him eight hundred others perished after shewing themselves brave men in
this struggle, and almost all the Isaurians fell with their leaders, without
even daring to lift their weapons against the enemy. For they were thoroughly
inexperienced in this business, since they had recently left off farming and
entered into the perils of warfare, which before that time were unknown to them.
And yet just before these very men had been most furious of all for battle
because of their ignorance of warfare, and were then reproaching Belisarius
with cowardice. They were not in fact all Isaurians but the majority of them
were Lycaones(werewolf)"
The term
lycanthropy, referring both to the ability to transform oneself into a wolf and
to the act of so doing, comes from Ancient Greek λυκάνθρωπος lukánthropos (from
λύκος lúkos "wolf" and άνθρωπος, ánthrōpos "human". The
word does occur in ancient Greek sources, especially in Late Antiquity. The
physician Galen, relates incidents where the patient had the ravenous appetite
and other qualities of a wolf; the Greek word attains some currency in
Byzantine Greek, featuring in the 10th-century encyclopedia Suda. Use of the
Greek-derived lycanthropy in English occurs in learned writing beginning in the
later 16th century (first recorded 1584 in Discoverie of Witchcraft by Reginald
Scot, who argued against the reality of werewolves; "Lycanthropia is a disease,
and not a metamorphosis." v. i. 92), at first explicitly for clinical
lycanthropy, i.e. the type of insanity where the patient imagines to have
transformed into a wolf, and not in reference to supposedly real
shape-shifting.
Modern Sources
There was no widespread
belief in werewolves in Europe before the 14th century. There were some
examples of man-wolf transformations in the court literature of the time,
notably Marie de France's poem Bisclavret (c. 1200), in which the nobleman
Bizuneh, for reasons not described, had to transform into a wolf every week.
When his treacherous wife stole his clothing needed to restore his human form,
he escaped the king's wolf hunt by imploring the king for mercy and accompanied
the king thereafter. His behaviour at court was so much gentler than when his
wife and her new husband appeared at court, that his hateful attack on the
couple was deemed justly motivated, and the truth was revealed.
The German word
werwolf is recorded by Burchard von Worms in the 11th century, and by Bertold
of Regensburg in the 13th, Middle Latin gerulphus, Anglo-Norman garwalf, Old
Frankish wariwulf. Old Norse had the cognate varúlfur. Early references to
werewolves are rare in England. However, Tales of wolf-men were common in the
Scandinavian Viking Age. Harald I of Norway is known to have had a body of
Úlfhednar (wolf coated [men]), which are mentioned in the Vatnsdœla saga,
Haraldskvæði, and the Völsunga saga, and resemble werewolf legends. They were
reputed to channel the spirits of wolves to enhance their effectiveness in
battle. They were resistant to pain and killed viciously in battle, much like
wild animals.
There were numerous reports of werewolf
attacks – and consequent court trials – in 16th century France. In some of the
cases there was clear evidence against the accused of murder and cannibalism,
but none of association with wolves; in other cases people have been terrified
by such creatures, such as that of Gilles Garnier in Dole in 1573.
Werewolvery was a
common accusation in witch trials throughout their history, and it featured
even in the Valais witch trials, one of the earliest such trials altogether, in
the first half of the 15th century. Likewise, in the Vaud, child-eating
werewolves were reported as early as 1448. Werewolves were sighted in 1598 in
Anjou, and a teenage werewolf was sentenced to life imprisonment in Bordeaux in
1603. In the Vaud, werewolves were convicted in 1602.
Peter Stumpp, a German farmer, killed
and ate many people. He was known as the Werewolf of Bedburg and was executed
in 1589.
Esquirol, a
trustworthy French writer, furnishes in his book a description of men-wolves,
or lycanthropes:
This
terrible affliction began to manifest itself in France in the XVth century, and
the name of ‘loups-garous’ has been given to the sufferers. These unhappy
beings fly from the society of mankind, and live in the woods, the cemeteries,
or old ruins, prowling about the open country only by night, howling as they
go. They let their beards and their nails grow, and then seeing themselves
armed with claws and covered with shaggy hair they become confirmed in the
belief that they are wolves. Impelled by ferocity or want they throw themselves
upon young children and tear, kill, and devour them.
Whenever there
was a suspicion of a man-wolf’s being near a village the peasants formed
themselves into a body in order to capture and slay him; and there remains an
act of the parliament of Dôle which desiring to prevent greater inconvenience
authorized the inhabitants of the spots about which the man-wolf was seen to
prowl to assemble to assemble, and with spears, halberds, pikes, arquebuses,
and sticks, to hunt and pursue said werewolf by all places where they can find
and take, bind and slay, without incurring any penalty or fine. The natural
ending of these chases was the capture of the man-wolf and his death on the
stake.
Les Chroniques de Paris
Les
Chroniques de Paris (English: The Chronicles of Paris) by Bernard Guenée, published in Paris in 1560.
Guenée intended his Chroniques as an extension of the famous Les Chroniques de France, but that was
not to be. However, after Guenée’s death, his work was published separately
with a series of famous woodcut illustrations.
The
Chronicles of Paris
The Wolves of Paris
were a man-eating wolf pack that killed forty people in Paris in 1450. The animals entered the city
during the winter through breaches in its walls. A wolf named Courtaud, or
"Bobtail", was the leader of the pack. Reports of the animal
suggested it was reddish in color. Eventually, the wolves were killed when
Parisians, furious at the deaths, lured Courtaud and his pack into the heart of
the city. There the Parisians stoned and
speared the wolves to death in front of the Notre Dame Cathedral.
The chronicles
include a Woodcut: “La mort du
Courtaud” (English: “The Death of Bobtail”). A close examination of the woodcut
reveals that the hanging figure looks like a man with clawed feet and hands.
One passage
mentions that the wolves were said to be a punishment or divine retribution.
Another passage suggests that the attacks were the result of the dark arts or a
pact with the devil.
One story in
the chronicles says that after the wolves were killed, the corpse of the pack
leader, Courtaud or "Bobtail", was never found, but on the steps of
Notre Dame Cathedral the townspeople found the corpse of a red haired man with
a spear thrust through his heart surrounded by the bodies of dozens of slain
wolves. This corpse was then hung.
Bernard Guenée’s Les Chroniques de Paris describes the
Fifteenth Century attacks by wolves on the city of Paris itself. The Wolves of
Paris were a man-eating wolf pack that killed forty people in Paris in 1450.
The animals entered the city during the winter through breaches in its walls. A
wolf, reddish in color, named Courtaud, or "Bobtail", was the leader
of the pack. Eventually, the wolves were killed when Parisians, furious at the
deaths, lured Courtaud and his pack into the heart of the city. There the
Parisians stoned and speared the wolves to death in front of the Notre Dame
Cathedral.
Some witnesses
claimed that the wolves were not harmed by stones or spears until the wolves
were lured to the very steps of the Notre Dame itself and the Cathedral’s bells
were rung. Others claim that the arrow that killed Courtaud was made from one
of the Keys of St. Hubertus and that the Saint’s blessing was what ended the
evil. Multiple sources confirm that Courtaud was unharmed despite many attacks
both inside and outside of the city until his death on the steps. One witness
actually describes the wolves as having been “lured to the steps.
One story says
that after the wolves were killed, the corpse of Courtaud, or
"Bobtail", was never found, but on the steps of Notre Dame Cathedral
the townspeople found the corpse of a red haired man with a spear thrust
through his heart surrounded by the bodies of dozens of slain wolves. This corpse
was then hung. The chronicles include a Woodcut entitled: “La Mort du Courtaud”
(English: “The Death of Bobtail”) that shows the dead Courtaud with the hands
and feet of a wolf hanging from a scaffold.
“La mort du
Courtaud” (English: “The Death of Bobtail”)
Characteristics
The metamorphosis
may be temporary or permanent; the were-animal may be the man himself
metamorphosed; may be his double whose activity leaves the real man to all
appearance unchanged; may be his soul, which goes forth seeking whom it may devour,
leaving its body in a state of trance; or it may be no more than the messenger
of the human being, a real animal or a familiar spirit, whose intimate
connection with its owner is shown by the fact that any injury to it is
believed, by a phenomenon known as repercussion, to cause a corresponding
injury to the human being.
The physical
differences between them and normal wolves consists in the formers’ hair
growing interiorly between hide and flesh. Their skin being proof against all
bullets hunters should take care before attacking them to have their guns
blessed in the church of St. Hubert, patron of the chase, and to procure
bullets of blessed silver. Werewolves run as swiftly as, and sometimes more
swiftly than, wolves. They leave behind them footprints similar to the wolves’.
Their eyes are fearful and bright. They strangle big dogs with facility and
strike off the heads of little children with their teeth. Last of all they have
the daring and the ability to execute these abominable deeds in the very face
of men.
Werewolves bear
tell-tale physical traits even in their human form. These included the meeting
of both eyebrows at the bridge of the nose, curved fingernails, low-set ears
and a swinging stride.
One method of
identifying a werewolf in its human form was to cut the flesh of the accused,
under the pretense that fur would be seen within the wound. One superstition
recalls a werewolf can be recognized by bristles under the tongue. The
appearance of a werewolf in its animal form varies, though it is most commonly
portrayed as being indistinguishable from ordinary wolves save for the fact
that it has no tail (a trait thought characteristic of witches in animal form),
is often larger, and retains human eyes and voice. According to some Swedish accounts,
the werewolf could be distinguished from a regular wolf by the fact that it
would run on three legs, stretching the fourth one backwards to look like a
tail. After returning to their human forms, werewolves are usually documented
as becoming weak, debilitated and undergoing painful nervous depression. One
universally reviled trait is the werewolf's habit of devouring recently buried
corpses. In Lapland werewolves are usually old women who possess poison-coated
claws and have the ability to paralyze cattle and children with their gaze.
Becoming a werewolf
Various methods
for becoming a werewolf have been reported, one of the simplest being the
removal of clothing and putting on a belt made of wolfskin, probably as a
substitute for the assumption of an entire animal skin (which also is
frequently described). In other cases, the body is rubbed with a magic salve.
Drinking rainwater out of the footprint of the animal in question or from
certain enchanted streams were also considered effectual modes of accomplishing
metamorphosis. The 16th century Swedish writer Olaus Magnus says that the
Livonian werewolves were initiated by draining a cup of specially prepared beer
and repeating a set formula. In Italy, France and Germany, it is said that a
man or woman could turn into a werewolf if he or she, on a certain Wednesday or
Friday, slept outside on a summer night with the full moon shining directly on
his face.
In other cases,
the transformation was supposedly accomplished by Satanic allegiance for the
most loathsome ends, often for the sake of sating a craving for human flesh.
"The werewolves", writes Richard Verstegan in Restitution of Decayed Intelligence,
are
certayne sorcerers, who having annoynted their bodies with an ointment which
they make by the instinct of the devil, and putting on a certayne inchaunted
girdle, does not only unto the view of others seem as wolves, but to their own
thinking have both the shape and nature of wolves, so long as they wear the
said girdle. And they do dispose themselves as very wolves, in worrying and
killing, and most of humane creatures.
The phenomenon of
repercussion, the power of animal metamorphosis, or of sending out a familiar,
real or spiritual, as a messenger, and the supernormal powers conferred by
association with such a familiar, are also attributed to the magician, male and
female, and witch superstitions are closely parallel to, if not identical with,
lycanthropic beliefs, the occasional involuntary character of lycanthropy being
almost the sole distinguishing feature.
The curse of
lycanthropy was also considered by some scholars as being a divine punishment.
Werewolf literature shows many examples of God or saints allegedly cursing
those who invoked their wrath with werewolfism. Such is the case of Lycaon, who
was turned into a wolf by Zeus as punishment for slaughtering one of his own
sons and serving his remains to the gods as a dinner. Those who were
excommunicated by the Roman Catholic Church were also said to become
werewolves.
The power of
transforming others into wild beasts was attributed not only to malignant
sorcerers, but to Christian saints as well. Omnes angeli, boni et Mali, ex
virtute naturali habent potestatem transmutandi corpora nostra ("All
angels, good and bad have the power of transmutating our bodies") was the
dictum of St. Thomas Aquinas. St. Patrick was said to have transformed the
Welsh king Vereticus into a wolf; Natalis supposedly cursed an illustrious
Irish family whose members were each doomed to be a wolf for seven years. In other
tales, men became werewolves when incurring the wrath of the Devil.
Remedies
Various methods
have existed for removing the werewolf form. In antiquity, the Ancient Greeks
and Romans believed in the power of exhaustion in curing people of lycanthropy.
The victim would be subjected to long periods of physical activity in the hope
of being purged of the malady. This practice stemmed from the fact that many
alleged werewolves would be left feeling weak and debilitated after committing
depredations.
Traditionally,
there are three methods one can use to cure a victim of werewolfism;
medicinally (usually via the use of wolfsbane), surgically, or by exorcism.
However, many of the cures advocated by medical practitioners often prove fatal
to the patients. A Sicilian belief of Arabic origin holds that a werewolf can
be cured of its ailment by striking it on the forehead or scalp with a knife.
Another belief from the same culture involves the piercing of the werewolf's
hands with nails. Sometimes, less extreme methods were used. In the German
lowland of Schleswig-Holstein, a werewolf could be cured if one were to simply
address it three times by its Christian name, while one Danish belief holds
that simply scolding a werewolf will cure it. Conversion to Christianity is also
a common method of removing werewolfism. A devotion to St. Hubert has also been
cited as both cure for and protection from lycanthropes.
St. Hubert’s Key
Saint
Huberus Patron Saint of Hunters
Saint Hubertus or
Hubert (c. 656–727 A.D.) was the first Bishop of Liège. He was a Christian
saint who was the patron saint of hunters, mathematicians, opticians, and
metalworkers. Known as the Apostle of the Ardennes, he was called upon to cure
the madness caused by dog and wolf bites through the use of St Hubert's Key.
Medallion of Saint Hubert (on right)
St Hubert’s Key
takes the form of a silver nail or bar with a decorative head. The key is
heated, and the head pressed to the area where a person had been bitten by a
dog or wolf. If performed soon after the bite had occurred, heat would
cauterize the wound and cure the victim. The practice is endorsed by the
Church, and such keys are used by priests at places with which St Hubert is
associated.
Discours exécrable des Sorciers
Discours exécrable des Sorciers
(English: Hateful Speech from Wizards)
by Henry Boguet, published 1602, 1603, etc.
Henry Boguet
(1550 Pierrecourt, Haute-Saône – 1619) was a well known jurist and judge of
Saint-Claude (1596–1616) in the County of Burgundy. His renown is to a large
degree based on his fame as a demonologist for his Discours exécrable des
Sorciers (1602) which was reprinted twelve times in twenty years. He has a
lengthy chapter on werewolves in 1602.
Boguet relates the story of a hunter who having struck
off with a blow of his gun the paw of a she-wolf, lost his way subsequently and
sought the hospitality of a neighbouring castle. Questioned as to whether he
had been successful in his sport he is about to produce the she-wolf’s paw
when, to his great surprise, he discovers it to be the hand of a woman. The
lord of the castle recognising on it his marriage rings runs to his wife whom
he finds hiding one of her arms covered with blood. After this, no more doubt
was possible; she was a witch and ran about the forests under the form of a
she-wolf. The witch was then burned.
On section in Bouget
mentions weapons against witches and demons. It mentions that can dispel the
magic of unholy creatures like fairies or demons. Such creatures are said to
find the sound of church bells painful. This discomfort can become so severe
that the sound alone may dispel them or send them back to hell. Whether this is
a property of the bells themselves or whether it is related to the similar
properties of holy ground and God’s House to weaken or bar the entry of the
unholy creatures Bouget does not make clear.
And just so you don't have to scroll back to the top, here's the link again to the
Wolves and Werewolves Player Handout.
