What happened
Gilles Garnier was a recluse living in poverty with his wife in an area called Saint-Bonnot near Amange, not far from Dole. In 1573 children in the area went missing or were found dead. The provincial authorities issued an edict allowing local people to hunt down and kill the “werewolf.” One evening workers returning from a neighbouring village saw in the dim light what they took for a wolf – though some of them recognised the hermit standing over a child's body. Under torture Garnier testified that a spectre had appeared to him in the forest and given him an ointment that let him change into a wolf and hunt more easily. He confessed to killing at least four children aged 9 to 12. More than fifty witnesses said they had seen him in human or wolf form. On 18 January 1574 he was burned at the stake.
Witnesses
The workers who caught him and more than 50 witnesses heard by the court in Dole; the case was described in printed sentences and pamphlets of the time.
Explanations and hypotheses
Behind the Garnier case there were most likely real, brutal crimes against children, and Garnier is now described as a serial killer. The wolf-transformation element comes from confessions extracted under torture and reflects contemporary ideas about witchcraft; courts of the time often attributed unexplained killings to werewolves. Real wolves may also have been responsible for some attacks. Dates in the sources vary (1572–1574).
Disputed A likely explanation exists, but some of the facts are still disputed.
Sources
- Arrest memorable de la Cour de parlement de Dole, donné à l’encontre de Gilles Garnier, lyonnois, pour avoir en forme de loup garou devoré plusieurs enfans (Benoist Rigaud, 1574)
- Luc Jaccottey, Brigitte Rochelandet, L’ermitage Saint-Bonnot à Amange : l’habitat de Gilles Garnier brûlé comme loup garou à Dole en 1574 (Archéopages, n° 25, 2009)
- Montague Summers, The Werewolf (Kegan Paul, 1933)
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