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ff+. warr,io,r'stood tall and proud as he

I wrapped the wolf skirr alound his battle-

I hardened body. Caught up in the frenzv ofJ- his clansmen, an uncontrollable fury over-

took hinr, and he threw back l.ris head and howledat the pale moon of the pre-dawn slqz. The spirit ofthe wolf consurned hirn until he ceased to be aweak human but possessed the bestial rage andbrute strength of a far greater creature. He becamemore than courageous; he became indestructible,immune to the danger posed by the feeble arrowsof his enerny.

With a n.rigl.rty roar the beast-warrior chargedfearlessly over the grassy knoll, leading theonslaught agairrst the wolf clan's mere mortaladversaries. He brandished his axe and sharpenedhis teeth against the rnetal of his shield, preparedto Lrse every weapon at his disposal. Against such a

demented attack, the enelny never stood a chance.When going into battle, the warriors of ancient

Norse societies believed that, by donnir.rg the hideof an animal, they took on the spirit of the beastwhose skin they wore. l'his conviction rnade thernmost formidable in cornbat, and the adrenalinerush may have made thern oblivious to both dan-ger and physical pain. This superhunan surge ofenergy elnpowered them to continue fighting evenafter being wounded.

Warrior and ProtectorOver the ages many impressions of wolves havecontributed to the legend of the werewolf, as wellas the wolf warrior. George Gutsche, professor ofSlavic studies at the Llniversity ofArizona, teachesa class on the folklore surrounding varnpires andwerewolves, and he explains that wolves are theideal role models for warriors because of theirpositive characteristics.

"Wolves have admirable features," clarifiesCutsche. "They are social, and family andgroup/pack oriented; they are quick and powerful;they are brave and stlong by extension; they aregood fighters. fror warriors, they are excellent rolemodels, fierce and fearsome, quick and brave."

But perceptions of the wolf are not limited to theaspects of the fearsome predator; the wolf is con-versely perceived as protector and nurturer.Roman legend tells us that Rorne itself was builtLrpon the very spot where, as an abandoned infant,the founder of that ancient city was suckled by a

she-rvolf. While the truth of this remains indoubt, docr,rn'rented evidence does exist of manv

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Fear and LoathingEuropean beliefs in the werewolf were not con-fined to the pages offictional works. Because thebelief in the paranormal was fervent in the MiddleAges, wherever crimes were committed ortragedies occurred, people were likely to blame a

supernatural creature. One of the most famoushistorical examples of the rvolf as a supernaturalbeast occurred in Ansbach, Germany, in 1685. Awolf was believed to be responsible for a slew ofdeaths not only of domestic animals but also a

number of the town's women and children. Pre-

sumed to be the reincarnation of the town's hatedBurgermeister in werewolf form, the people ofAnsbach chased the wolf to the bottom of a well.The townspeople killed the wolf and then dressed

the corpse as the Burgermeister and hanged it ineffigy

The most common historical image conjured bythe word "werewolf" is perhaps not the wild ani-mal, such as the werewolf of Ansbach, but that ofthe macabre werewolf trials that culminated in thesixteenth and seventeenth centuries. These were-wolves were unlike the literary werewolf of theearlier centuries. They were renowned not as tragicheroes but rather as devil-worshipping shapeshifters, monsters who roamed the countryside ina bloodlust, falling on hapless victims to rip outtheir throats and eat their flesh. As punishment fortheir ghastly crimes, these convicted werewolveswere frequently subjected to such tortures as therack and the wheel. Some suffered a gory skinremoval in the search for their fur, which wasbelieved to have been worn on the inside of thewerewolf's human skin. In the end, thev wereburned at the stake in the ultimate price for theirevil deeds.

To understand how the mighty werewolf wastoppled from his place as a noble hero in poeticliterature to the lowly position of Satanic flesh-eater, the modern reader must turn his attentionto the medieval and later Papal Inquisitions.Some time around 1485 the Roman CatholicChurch gave its endorsement to a handbookknown as the Malleus Maleficarum, which dealtwith the identification and punishment ofheretics. This handbook asserted the existence ofwerewolves as well as witches, and it gave theInquisitors the free reign they needed to deal withthese alleged heretics as they saw fit. By the mid1600s in France alone over 30,000 werewolveshad been successfully convicted and sentenced todeath with the full support of the church.

One of the more famous of the condemnedwerewolves was the hermit Cilles Carnier, convict-ed in 1573 ofkilling and eating several children inthe Frenche-Comte region of France. Another leg-

endary case was that of Jean Grenier, a 14-year-oldboy who in 1603 voluntarily confessed to killingand eating his young victims while ir-r the form ofa werewolf. These are iust two cases that exemplifiimany of the werewolf trials of this infamous peri-od. Both Garnier and Grenier were probably guiltyof murder and cannibalism, but in retrospect,

Opposite page: The Werewolf, art by Lucas Cranach the elder, 1472-1553, (German).Top: Werewolf (lycanthrope), from 16th century Greek manuscript De Animalium Pro-prietate Libellus. Location: Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, Venice. Bottom: Wolfamong demons - Hartmann Schedel. (1440-1514). Location :The New York PublicLibrary, New York, NY.

The New York P!bl c Library / Art Fesource.

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their confessions as werewolves are highly suspect.Carnier was in all probability a wretched symbol ofhis times, a starviltg peasant who succumbed tocannibalism as a means of survival. The youngerCrenier more likely suffered from a form of insani-ty that caused him to believe that he shape-shiftedinto a werewolf.

Numerous records tell stories similar in nature tothat of Garnier and Grenier, in which the accusedwerewolves may have committed actual crirnes, buttheir existence as werewolves was likely confessedeither under torture or due to mental illness. Serialkilling and cannibalism were frequently regardedhistorically as the actions of werewolves, because

the crimes seemed to defz rational explanation

Blame the WerewolfAccording to

CeorgeC utsche,

it is difficult forpeople in primitive cultures

to believe that the human elementcould be respor.rsible for the most heinous

crimes. "A bunch of gruesome murders?" Gutscheasks, clarif ing, 'A wolf or wolfman did it. It could-n't be human. Real human beings are not thatvicious. "

In the throes of the medieval witch hunt hysteria,however, anyone rnight be accused of being a were-wolf for myriad reasons, whether he committedany real crimes or not. Sorne of these minor rea-sons rnight include having excessive hair, certainskin conditions, elongated incisors, or other physi-cal characteristics deemed wolf-like. If any rragedyoccurred, from the failing ofcrops to the death ordisappearance of a neighbor, any person bearing a

wolf-like countenance might be accused by thetown. Anyone unfortunate enough to exhibit theslightest case of mental disturbance could beaccused and subsequently tortured into confessionas a werewolf. As was often the case in any Inquisi-tion, the accused might have possessed land orwealth that was coveted by the church or one of itspriests, thus marking him as a possible heretic andsusceptible to papal invesrigatiolr.

Wolf advocate and werewolf author Gina Farago(Iry Cole and the Moon) explains thar rhe were-

The Ascendancy of ScienceBy the end ofthe seventeenth century the hereticwerewolf began to fall out of fashion. After thisperiod the alleged rverewolf was frequently deemeda case of mental illness and the courts of the eigh_teenth and later centuries were prone to treat theaccused as such. As societies'beliefs in the suoer-natural began to wane, the werewolf returned safelyto the pages of literature, albeit with less nobilitythan in previous centuries. The legacy of this periodis the undignified image of the werewolf as an ahe-gorical warning against lewdness, as in the caution-ary tale of "t.ittle Red Riding Flood. " In the wake ofthe Papal Inquisitions, the image with which we areleft is the "big, bad wolf" caricarure creared to warnyoung girls of the dangers ofren lurking behind theseemingly innocent facade of a wolf in sheeo'sclothirrg.

Or, perhaps the irnage of the werewolf has comefull circle. -foday's literary werewolf reflects all thequalities of the ancier.rt wolf-warrior, the tragrchero, and the bloodthirsry beasr combined inloone multi-faceted creature who is able to evoke awide range of emotions. According to Farago, "Thewerewolf's character has evolved into somethinglethal but beautiful, compassionate but merciless,gentle but ferocious, an outlaw with a moralcode-a complex, oftentimes paradoxical creatureof extreme intelligence. "

When viewed in this light, perhaps the fall of themedieval werewolf merely paved the way for thecreature to rise up once again as the most signifi_cant figure to emerge from the legends of old. -

- \ wolf was rargeted during the Inquisitionffi-$ Itecarse the ireature was an easy scapegoatfor the fears of the time. Farago points out

that the power of the medieval churchallowed it to capitalize on the perva-sive fear of the irrational. "What bet-

-J ter way to tame your populace," Fara-go asks, "than to propagate morefearful superstitions and then kill

them for it?"

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