The same observations might be made regarding what was known as lycanthrophy, which always arose among the possessed and sorcerers; that is to say crazy people, especially those of the monomaniac type, accused themselves and others with imaginary crimes, in confessions made to judges. As an example, we can cite the case of the peasant, spoken of by Job Fincel, and also one mentioned by Pierre Burgot, of Verdun, who did not hesitate to assert themselves to be guilty of lycanthrophy. They were burned alive at Poligny, but the remains of the five women and children, whose flesh they pretended to have devoured, were never found. In order to transform themselves into wolves, they claimed to use a pomade given them by the Devil; and, while in a certain condition, they copulated with female wolves. Jean Wier has written long essays on this last case of lycomania, and thinks the malady of these two men was due to narcotics, of which they made habitual use; but Calmeil is inclined to consider, that in a general manner, lycomania is a partial delerium confined to homicidal monomaniacs. This appreciation of the case seems justified by the similar one of Gilles Gamier, who was convinced that he had killed four children, and eaten their flesh. He was condemned to be burnt at the stake at Dole, as a wehr-wolf, (loupe garron), and the peasants of the suburbs were authorized by the same order to kill off all men like him. But we must not conclude from this particular instance, that a general law existed on the subject.
In 1603, the Parliament of Bordeaux, thought itself liberal in admitting attenuating circumstantial evidence, in the case of a boy from Roche Chalais, named Jean Grenier, who was accused of lycanthropy, by three young peasants. In the trial, no attempt was made to find evidence, the accused confessed all that was desired, and he was sentenced to imprisonment for life, before which verdict was announced, the Court said, that having taken into consideration the age and imbecility of this patient, who was so stupid that an idiot or child of seven years would know better, it added mercy to the judgment.”
He was then one of the imbeciles of the village, such as we see in asylums for insane, whose presence we rid ourselves of by isolation in charitable institutions.
At the same epoch, in the space of two years, 1598 to 1600, we can count the number of poor wretches of the Jura, whose poverty compelled them to beg nourishment, and who were almost all condemned to death as Demonidolators and lycanthropes. Ready and only too willing to leave this world, these poor people answered all questions as to accusation in the affirmative, and went to death with the greatest indifference. The infamous prosecutor, Bouget, who was sent into the Jura as a criminal agent, boasted that he had executed alone more than six hundred of these innocents.
The Inquistorial terror then reigned supreme; and it was only with extreme difficulty, at that time, that a poor idiot, named Jacques Roulet, condemned to death as a lycanthrope by the criminal Judge of Angers, was placed in an asylum for idiots, by order of the Parliament of Paris; this, too, in the seventeenth century.
THE HYSTERO-DEMONOMANIA OF THE CLOISTER.
The demonomaniacal hysteria of the Cloister, of which we have enumerated a few examples of a most remarkable kind, was present, in the Middle Ages, in the form of an epidemic neurosis, characterized by complex disturbances of the nervous system between the life of relation and of organic life; that is to say, by functional symptoms dependent on the general sensibility of the organs of sense, the active organs of movement, and the intelligence. In our observations we shall consequently recognize:
Hyperæsthesia and spasm of the stomach and abdominal organs, in the hallucination of poisoning by witches.
Hyperæsthesia of the ovary and the uterus and vagina, from the hallucination of painful cohabitation with incubi.