Read Online The Complete Idiot's Guide to Werewolves by Brown Robert - Free Book Online
Authors: Brown Robert
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Africa, the word “bouda” has come to mean “were-hyena.”
• A bruxsa, or cucubuth, is a creature that is both werewolf and vampire, though opinions differ on which came first.
• Were-cats, popularly referred to by some enthusiasts as bastets, have some things in common with werewolves, but the two are not at all the same.
• The Lion Men of Tanzania were the unfortunate victims of a religious cult.
• In Asian lore, were-tigers are often believed to be evil sorcerers.
Part 2
A History of Werewolves
Werewolves have a long, turbulent history. In the eyes of the medieval church and other religions, wolves became the epito mic symbol of evil. They were mercilessly hunted, and when they could not be caught, innocent people sometimes paid the price as “werewolf scapegoats,” executed to appease the mob. In France, werewolves were long considered a very real threat to human existence, agents of evil whose sole purpose was to bring harm.
Chapter 6
Werewolves on Trial
In This Chapter
• The crimes and execution of convicted werewolf Peter Stubbe, also known as the Werewolf of Bedburg
• The presidential decree that saved the “seventh sons” of Argentina
• The famous werewolf trials of Gilles Garnier and Antoine Leger
• The trial of the Gandillon family, also known as the “Werewolves of St. Cloud”
• The unusual Benandanti tale that was told to the courts by Theiss, an accused Russian werewolf
The idea of a person being placed on trial for being a werewolf may sound rather ludicrous. However, just a few centuries ago this was a real part of the human world. Between the eleventh and nineteenth centuries, a number of people were tried for, and found guilty of, lycanthropy. Most of them were executed, often in terribly gruesome ways. Many today believe that these werewolf trials of the past were nothing more than cases of murder or undiagnosed madness. Some believe that, in the minds of medieval people, branding a criminal a werewolf was simply a way of explaining how a human being could be capable of committing the most unspeakable of crimes such as rape, murder, infanticide, incest, and cannibalism. What follows is a basic collection of the most famous—or, rather, infamous—accounts of these werewolf trials.
Peter Stubbe: The Werewolf of Bedburg
Among the multitude of so-called “werewolf trials” that occurred between the fourteenth and nineteenth centuries, perhaps the most well known is the 1589 trial of a German farmer named Peter Stubbe. (His first name is sometimes seen spelled Peeter and his last name Stub, Stumpf, or Stump.) Much of what is currently known about this alleged incident of lycanthropy is based on a combination of hearsay and a lone secondary account published in a London pamphlet (likely based on information gleaned from the tattered remains of the official documents, most of which were lost when many German church registers were destroyed between 1618 and 1648 in the violence of the Thirty Years War). However, Stubbe is known to have spent the majority of his life as a farmer somewhere near the village of Bedburg, just outside Cologne, Germany.
The Savage Truth
The only surviving documentation of the Peter Stubbe incident is a pamphlet published in England on June 11, 1590. The story was transcribed by George Bores. The pamphlet proclaims that Bores “did both see and hear the same” as what is in his account. Considering that the date of publication predates the Thirty Years War (when the German records were destroyed), it’s entirely possible that Bores’s work is based on the lost church registers. However, this cannot be verified.
Little can be confirmed regarding just how Stubbe found himself in the position in which he was apprehended. According to the record of the incident, a werewolf (or an unusually large wolf) was sighted wearing a belt (though some sources call it a girdle) around its waist. How it was discovered or why it was in the area is
• A bruxsa, or cucubuth, is a creature that is both werewolf and vampire, though opinions differ on which came first.
• Were-cats, popularly referred to by some enthusiasts as bastets, have some things in common with werewolves, but the two are not at all the same.
• The Lion Men of Tanzania were the unfortunate victims of a religious cult.
• In Asian lore, were-tigers are often believed to be evil sorcerers.
Part 2
A History of Werewolves
Werewolves have a long, turbulent history. In the eyes of the medieval church and other religions, wolves became the epito mic symbol of evil. They were mercilessly hunted, and when they could not be caught, innocent people sometimes paid the price as “werewolf scapegoats,” executed to appease the mob. In France, werewolves were long considered a very real threat to human existence, agents of evil whose sole purpose was to bring harm.
Chapter 6
Werewolves on Trial
In This Chapter
• The crimes and execution of convicted werewolf Peter Stubbe, also known as the Werewolf of Bedburg
• The presidential decree that saved the “seventh sons” of Argentina
• The famous werewolf trials of Gilles Garnier and Antoine Leger
• The trial of the Gandillon family, also known as the “Werewolves of St. Cloud”
• The unusual Benandanti tale that was told to the courts by Theiss, an accused Russian werewolf
The idea of a person being placed on trial for being a werewolf may sound rather ludicrous. However, just a few centuries ago this was a real part of the human world. Between the eleventh and nineteenth centuries, a number of people were tried for, and found guilty of, lycanthropy. Most of them were executed, often in terribly gruesome ways. Many today believe that these werewolf trials of the past were nothing more than cases of murder or undiagnosed madness. Some believe that, in the minds of medieval people, branding a criminal a werewolf was simply a way of explaining how a human being could be capable of committing the most unspeakable of crimes such as rape, murder, infanticide, incest, and cannibalism. What follows is a basic collection of the most famous—or, rather, infamous—accounts of these werewolf trials.
Peter Stubbe: The Werewolf of Bedburg
Among the multitude of so-called “werewolf trials” that occurred between the fourteenth and nineteenth centuries, perhaps the most well known is the 1589 trial of a German farmer named Peter Stubbe. (His first name is sometimes seen spelled Peeter and his last name Stub, Stumpf, or Stump.) Much of what is currently known about this alleged incident of lycanthropy is based on a combination of hearsay and a lone secondary account published in a London pamphlet (likely based on information gleaned from the tattered remains of the official documents, most of which were lost when many German church registers were destroyed between 1618 and 1648 in the violence of the Thirty Years War). However, Stubbe is known to have spent the majority of his life as a farmer somewhere near the village of Bedburg, just outside Cologne, Germany.
The Savage Truth
The only surviving documentation of the Peter Stubbe incident is a pamphlet published in England on June 11, 1590. The story was transcribed by George Bores. The pamphlet proclaims that Bores “did both see and hear the same” as what is in his account. Considering that the date of publication predates the Thirty Years War (when the German records were destroyed), it’s entirely possible that Bores’s work is based on the lost church registers. However, this cannot be verified.
Little can be confirmed regarding just how Stubbe found himself in the position in which he was apprehended. According to the record of the incident, a werewolf (or an unusually large wolf) was sighted wearing a belt (though some sources call it a girdle) around its waist. How it was discovered or why it was in the area is
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