Metamorphosis and Metaphysics:

An Exploration of Man and Beast, Good and Evil, Christian and Pagan through

Dichotomous Werewolves of the Middle Ages

By

Kaitlin Rae Leathers, B.A.

A Thesis Submitted to the Department of English

California State University, Bakersfield

In Partial Fulfillment for the Degree of Masters of English

Spring 2016

Copyright

By

Kaitlin Rae Leathers

2016

Metamorphosis and Metaphysics:

An Exploration of Man and Beast, Good and Evil, Christian and Pagan through

Dichotomous Werewolves of the Middle Ages

By Kaitlin Rae Leathers

This thesis or project has been accepted on behalf of the Department of English by their supervisory committee:

Committee Chair v

Table of Contents

Introduction 1

I. Wolves, Werewolves, and the Devil: The Wolf-Haunted Middle Ages 5

A Word to the Wary: Werewolf in Language 5

Scriptural Depictions of Wolves and Werewolves 8

The Devil Incarnate 10

Limitations of the Devil’s Power: The Illusory Werewolf 11

II. Of Men and Beasts: Evolving Perceptions of Humanity and Animality 18

Man against Beast: Philosophies of Anthropocentrism 19

III. Of Men and Wolves: A Merging of Beasts 31

Wolves and Outlawry 34

Wolves and Pagans 36

The Mesopotamian Shepherd’s Tale 38

Werewolves of Classical Antiquity 40

Werewolves of the North: Úlfhednar and the Völsunga Saga 50

Werewolves of the Celts 54

IV. Christianized Werewolves of the Twelfth Century 58

Gerald of Wales and the Werewolves of Ossory 60

The Christian Werewolf in Marie de France’s “Bisclavret” 64

Concluding Thoughts and Further Study 68

Bibliography 71

1

Metamorphosis and Metaphysics:

An Exploration of Man and Beast, Good and Evil, Christian and Pagan through

Dichotomous Werewolves of the Middle Ages

Introduction

My interest in portrayals of werewolves in the Middle Ages first began as an interest in medieval monstrosities and, particularly, tales of human-animal metamorphosis. Stories such as these strain the boundaries between man and beast, and in doing so, prompt important existential and theological questions and expose a variety of fears and anxieties harbored by mankind.1 The longest-lived and most familiar representative of human-animal metamorphosis in Western thought is, of course, the werewolf. Such a bold claim is defended by both Brian J. Frost and

Montague Summers. “[O]f all the half-human monsters in myth, fiction, and reality,” Frost argues, “the werewolf dominates, both in its dreadful lore and in the depths of loathing its diabolical practices can inspire” (3). In his substantial study of the werewolf in the folklore and legends of various regions of the world, Summers attests to the murky history of the werewolf when he acknowledges that belief in the protean creature is “as old as time and as wide as the world,” and “[his] ultimate origins … are indeed obscure and lost in the mists of primeval mythology” (1). The history of the werewolf certainly is enigmatic. Tales of men who become wolves under various circumstances have existed in numerous cultures across the globe for an

1 Throughout this thesis, I refer to all of mankind collectively, as opposed to signifying man or woman. In addition, I often utilize the word man in reference to all human beings. This is not to say that men alone were werewolves; both men and women have been known to become wolves, although male werewolves were more pervasive and popular in the eras covered. 2

indeterminate length of time, perhaps as long as men and wolves have lived side-by-side, competing for food and territory. According to Kirby F. Smith, “[i]f we ask why [the] story of the Werwolf … extend[s] so much farther than others of the same nature, at least one practical answer is suggested: The wolf himself is one of the most widely diffused animals … Wherever man, in his wanderings, has penetrated there he has found, and fought, his ancient enemy”—the wolf (2). The wolf alone is tremendously symbolic, associated with death and ferocity, criminals as well as kings, and both ignorance and intelligence. When the imagery of the wolf is combined with man to create a man-wolf—a werewolf—things become rather complicated, and possible interpretations of his identity and function in the human imagination are endless.

In their introduction to The Monstrous Middle Ages, Bettina Bildhauer and Robert Mills stress that monsters of the Middle Ages—the werewolf included—“are not meaningless but meaning-laden; the monstrous is constitutive, producing the contours of both bodies that matter

(humans, Christians, saints, historical figures, gendered subjects and Christ) and, ostensibly, bodies that do not (animals, non-Christians, demons, fantastical creatures and portentous freaks)”

(2). Bildhauer and Mills contend furthermore that monsters of the medieval world are

“polysemous entities” that appear in a variety of circumstances and serve many purposes, making it impossible to reach any singular, definitive conclusions about them (6). As a literary figure, the werewolf is omnipresent and primeval, his first appearance extending backward in time over four millennia; as such, enigmatic and varied images of werewolves are firmly embedded into man’s deepest memory, and legends about them reveal ancient customs, prejudices, and anxieties harbored by mankind. The multiplicity of the werewolf and his dual states of being—his existence between the worlds of the human and the animal, the civilized and the savage, the Christian and the pagan—make him an entity filled with meaning during the 3

Middle Ages, a time between the ignorance of the Dark Ages and the illumination of the

Renaissance, and he reveals the very real Christian fear of losing humanity and divinity by devolving into bestiality, by succumbing to the same animalistic anarchy that governs wild beasts and godless heathens. To achieve fullest understanding of medieval werewolves and the fear and loathing they inspired, it is necessary to consider the implications of various dichotomies that exist within them; as such, this thesis explores to some degree the philosophical and historical underpinnings of each component of the dichotomous werewolf—man, beast, wolf, outlaw, pagan, Christian—in order to deconstruct his images in medieval thought.

In this thesis, I explore philosophical influences underlying various portrayals of werewolves in language, religious texts, law, and myth, discussing depictions from the earliest in antiquity—the first in The Epic of Gilgamesh in ancient Mesopotamia—through the end of the

Middle Ages, paying particular attention to uniquely Christian werewolves who emerges in what

Caroline Walker Bynum coined as the “werewolf renaissance of the twelfth century” (94). It is necessary to first establish an understanding of the werewolf as he appears in orthodox Christian thought of the Middle Ages. To accomplish this, in the first chapter, “Wolves, Werewolves, and the Devil,” I divulge the earliest appearances and usages of the word werewolf in the English language, provide etymological context, and offer definitions of the medieval werewolf and his practices. This initial chapter is primarily devoted to discussion of early medieval portrayals of wolves and werewolves in Scripture and other religious writings, which establish the predominant medieval Christian view of the werewolf as an agent of evil, a bondslave of the

Devil. In the second chapter, “Of Men and Beasts,” I explore the origins of medieval perceptions of humanity and animality in the philosophies of Classical antiquity, focusing particularly on

Stoic principles which seem to have been most influential to philosophers and theologians of the 4

Middle Ages. In the third chapter, “Of Men and Wolves,” I discuss man’s relationship with wolves in nature and the various ways in which the two were merged together to create images of werewolves. This chapter provides insight to the Germanic custom of labeling outlaws as wolves or werewolves, and it also fosters understanding of the ancient Teutonic traditions in which men ritualistically transformed themselves into wolves—a custom that very likely contributed to Christian prejudices against pagans and to medieval representations of werewolves as evil entities. In the final chapter, “Christianized Werewolves of the Twelfth

Century,” I offer analysis of sympathetic werewolves and juxtapose these to pagan werewolves discussed in the previous chapter. By the end of this thesis, it is my hope that the reader departs with a fuller knowledge of the origins of werewolves in Western thought, the multitude of meanings they have acquired throughout their development, and the ontological fears they embody: the fear that man is not unique to the animals around him—that the beast is not what he becomes, but what he has always been.

5

I

Wolves, Werewolves, and the Devil: The Wolf-Haunted Middle Ages

As explored briefly in the introduction, the werewolf is a dualistic entity in many respects, and fittingly enough, the werewolves of the Middle Ages are primarily divided into two kinds. The first and most prominent kind of werewolf in the Christian Middle Ages is depicted by the medieval Church as a malicious, blood-thirsty killer whose most close affiliation is with the Devil himself. The second kind is the werewolf found in romances of the twelfth century which paint the metamorphic creature as a man, first and foremost, who retains his mental faculties although his physical body is transformed by nature, curse, or betrayal into a wolf’s shape. Both of these, however, find their roots in ancient portrayals of werewolves in Classical antiquity and Germanic pagan traditions. Prior to delving into an investigation of the history of werewolves in primeval myths and mores, it is important to first be acquainted with the most predominant Christian view of werewolves during the Middle Ages and to extend backward from there, with this foundational knowledge in mind. This chapter, then, explores the demonic, monstrous werewolf of the Christian Middle Ages through his initial and influential representations in language, Scripture, and ecclesiastical works.

A Word to the Wary: Werewolf in Language

The duality of the werewolf—his existence as both man and beast—is immediately evidenced in the very words used to identify him. The word werewolf, alternately spelled werwolf, is a compound of the Old English word were or wer, meaning man, and wolf or wulf

(“werewolf | werwolf, n.”). In her examination of the werewolf in early English texts, Charlotte

F. Otten explicates that the “English usage [of] the word werewolf antedates [use of] the [Greek] 6

word lycanthrope by about five centuries” (5). Lycanthrope or lycanthropos (λυκάνθρωπος) is, like the English werewolf, a compound of wolf, λύκος (lýkos), and man, άνθρωπος (ánthropos).

In the original use of the word, lycanthropes are individuals suffering from the psychological disorder, lycanthropy, defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as “a kind of insanity described by ancient writers, in which the patient imagine[s] himself to be a wolf, and ha[s] the instincts and propensities of a wolf … and exhibits depraved appetites, alteration of voice, etc., in accordance with this delusion.” In modern use, however, lycanthrope is often synonymous with werewolf, since their components of man and wolf are the same. For the purpose of this thesis, the word werewolf will be used most frequently. Both segments of the English werewolf—were and wolf—are found in all Teutonic languages. The former, wer or were, is cognate with the

Latin vir, the Gaelic fear, the Welsh gŵr, and the Sanskrit vīra (qtd. in Summers 4). The latter component, wolf or wulf, is found with the same orthography in a variety of Germanic languages, including Old Frisian, Dutch, and German, and is cognate to Old Norse ulfr—Swedish ulf and

Danish ulv—and Old German wulfaz (“wolf, n.”).

In his A Restitution of Decayed Intelligence, published in 1605, the Anglo-Dutch antiquary named Verstegen, or Richard Rowlands, provides an etymological explanation of the word werewolf and its components:

Were-wulf. This name remaineth stil knoun in the Teutonic, & is as much to say

as man-wolf, the greeks expressing the very lyke, in Lycanthropos.

Were our ancestors vsed somtyme in steed of Man … But the name of man is now

more knoun and more generally vsed in the whole Teutonic toung then the name

of Were. (qtd. in Summers 3) 7

This account is corroborated by British philologist Professor Ernest Weekley who adds that were

“should be wer, a word of wider diffusion in the Aryan languages than man or gome” (qtd. in

Summers 4). Weekley also specifies that the word were “died out” in early Middle English, surviving only in the form of wergild or man-price (4).2 After the disappearance of were from regular English vernacular, Middle English writers misinterpreted the meaning of the word and replaced the vowel of the first syllable, resulting in ware—a remnant of the Old English transitive verb warian, “to guard, take care or charge of,” and its compound form bewarian, “to defend” (“ware, v.1”). Confusion caused by this misinterpretation may be observed in Edward of

Norwich, Duke of York’s late medieval treatise on hunting, produced around the year 1425 with the title, The Booke of huntynge or Master of game. In the seventh chapter, “Of ye Wolf and of his nature,” the Duke understands the word werewolf to mean a particularly malevolent wolf one should be wary of. The passage reads: “Þer beth some [wolves] þat eten children and men …

And þei be cleped werewolfes, for men shulde be were of hem” (“werewolf, n.”; qtd. in

Summers 12). This interpretation of the werewolf as a conventional yet particularly ravenous wolf continued at least until the late sixteenth century, as evidenced through George

Turberville’s The Noble Art of Venerie or Hunting, produced in 1576, in which he appears to cite

The Booke of huntynge: “Some Wolues … kill children and men sometimis […] Such Wolues are called War-wolues, bicause a man had neede to beware of them” (qtd. in Summers 52).

2 According to The Oxford English Dictionary, the term wergild was used “[i]n ancient Teutonic and Old English law [in reference to] the price set upon a man according to his rank, paid by way of compensation or fine in cases of homicide and certain other crimes to free the offender from further obligation or punishment” (“wergild | wergeld, n.”). This is particularly interesting with the knowledge that outlawed criminals came to be associated with the werewolf, as will be explored in a section of Chapter III. 8

Scriptural Depictions of Wolves and Werewolves

This idea of a werewolf as a wolf to “beware of” originates in much earlier, biblical representations of the wolf. In fact, the very first appearances of the werewolf in the English language are not, as one might assume, in fantastical literature featuring men who devolve into ravenous wolves, but they appear almost exclusively in doctrinal ordinances and Scripture. The earliest appearance of the word werewolf is found in Old English, in the laws of King Cnut, ruler of the Anglo-Scandinavian Empire from 1016 to 1035, in his Ecclesiastical Ordinances XXVI:

Thonne moton tha hydras beon swydhe wacore and geornlice clypigende, the

widh thonne theodsceadhan folce sceolan scyldan, thaet syndon biscopas and

maesseproestas, the godcunde heorda bewarian and bewarian sceolan, mid

wislican laran, thaet se wodfreca werewulf to swidhe ne slyte ne to fela ne abite of

godcundse heorde. [Therefore must be the shepherds be very watchful and

diligently crying out, who have to shield the people against the spoiler; such are

bishops and mass-priests, who are to preserve and defend their spiritual flocks

with wise instructions, that the madly audacious were-wolf do not too widely

devastate, nor bite too many of the spiritual flock.] (qtd. in Summers 4)

Initial use of the word in English certainly does not coincide with the modern Western concept of werewolves as men who—by magic, curse, or nature—transform themselves into wolves. In this passage, the word werewulf is, in fact, used as a synonym for the Devil. This passage was undoubtedly influenced by the longstanding Christian tradition of casting wolves as symbolic representatives of the Devil, demons, and wicked men. In a twelfth-century bestiary, The Book of

Beasts, the entry dedicated to the wolf describes the Devil’s semblance to it: “The devil bears the 9

similitude of a wolf: he who is always looking over the human race with his evil eye, and darkly prowling round the sheepfolds of the faithful so that he may afflict and ruin their souls” (59).

The image of the biblical wolf is best depicted in the New Testament, in the famous fifteenth verse of the seventh chapter in the Gospel of Matthew in which symbolic wolves and shepherds vie for the souls of men. This passage reads as follows in the Latin Vulgate, the version most likely to have been known by King Cnut in the early eleventh century3:

Attendite a falsis prophetis, qui veniunt ad vos in vestimentis ovium, intrinsecus

autem sunt lupi rapaces. [Beware false prophets, who come to you in the clothing

of sheep, but inwardly they are ravening wolves.] (qtd. in Summers 7)

The Vulgate translation of Matthew 7:15 experiences no significant alterations in succeeding translations. Between the years c. 1382 and c. 1395, John Wycliffe, an English philosopher and theologian, produced a translation of the Vulgate in the Middle English vernacular, making the text accessible to the common English laypeople (Dekkers i). In the Wycliffe version of the bible, Matthew 7:15 reads: “Be ye war of fals prophetis, that comen to you in clothingis of scheep, but withynneforth thei ben as wolues of raueyn” (653). In the 1611 King James version of the bible, the verse reads similarly: “Beware of false prophets which come to you in sheepes clothing, but inwardly they are rauening wolues.” These very slight modifications do not alter the original intent of the verse, which is to urge good Christians to defend themselves not against the threat of real wolves, but against figurative wolves who are, in reality, deceitful and wicked men who conspire to corrupt and mislead the faithful and to commit sins against the Church.

3 The Latin Vulgate translation of the Hebrew bible was commissioned by Pope Damascus I in 382 CE, and its translation was begun by Saint Jerome shortly thereafter. After its publication, the Vulgate became widely circulated and was to become the version of the bible most frequently used in the thirteenth century, becoming known as the “versio vulgata” or “the version most commonly used” (“Vulgate”). Surely, the Vulgate was known by King Cnut, a devout Christian whose reign was more than half a century after its publication. 10

This scriptural portrayal of heretical men as wolves in league with the Devil became so powerful in the Middle Ages, that even the famous fourteenth-century author, Geoffrey Chaucer, makes reference to the connection in the “The Parson’s Tale” of The Canterbury Tales.

Beginning around line 765, the Parson compares to devilish wolves the “conquerours” and

“tirauntz”—conquerors and tyrants—who pillage and extort the Church and its congregation:

“And, as seith Seint Augustyn, ‘They been the develes wolves that stranglen the

sheep of Jhesu Crist,’ and doon worse than wolves. / For soothly, whan the wolf

hath ful his wombe, he stynteth to strangle sheep. But soothly, the pilours and

destroyours of the godes of hooly chirche ne do nat so, for they ne stynte nevere

to pile” (Chaucer ll. 768-769, 296).

That is to say, those who commit wrongdoing against the Church—the plunderers and destroyers—are the Devil’s wolves whose greed for the possessions of the Church is never satisfied. These gluttonous wolves are clearly inspired by the scriptural wolves earlier mentioned, and are, with most certainty, metaphors for immoral men.

The Devil Incarnate

Perhaps the scriptural tradition of using the word wolf to specify men is precisely the cause for King Cnut to have instead utilized the word werewulf in his ordinances. Unlike the biblical wolves that are symbols of morally corrupt and heretical men, King Cnut refers to the

Devil directly through werewulf, as evidenced in his use of the singular, nominative, definite article se [the], as in, “se wodfreca werewulf [the madly audacious were-wolf]” (qtd. in Summers

4). By addressing a singular entity as the enemy of bishops and mass-priests—“biscopas and maesseproestas” (4)—King Cnut refers to the ultimate force of evil in the Christian belief 11

system, Lucifer.4 Through ascription of the word werewulf to the Devil, a word denoting a man in the form of a wolf, there is recognition of the inherent wickedness of the werewolf who—if he is not the Devil himself—is fundamentally connected to him. In the medieval mind, the werewolf, like the Devil, was thought to possess the ability to change his shape,5 and by hiding his true nature—whether it be the man or the beast—the werewolf matches the Devil in his deceitfulness and desire to corrupt and destroy mankind. Through an association with the Devil in the Ecclesiastical Ordinances, the word werewolf acquires a connotation of greater evil than the wolves of Scripture that serve as metaphors for heretical, wolfish men, and instead of urging members of clergy to beware of wolves and heretics, the passage cautions against the very real threat of the Devil who preys on mankind with the intent to corrupt and add to his ranks.

Otten perceives the unusual adoption of the word werewulf in legal texts in lieu of the scriptural wolf as extraordinary, since it serves as evidence that “Satan [was] seen as enlisting humans as allies and servants, adding them to his demonic hosts” (6). Otten insists, furthermore, that the use of the term werewolf in reference to the Devil “is a covert acknowledgement of

Satan’s capacity to change humans into werewolves”; while “Satan is the specific source of evil[,] werewolves are his captive agents” (6, 7). The most orthodox view of werewolves in the

Christian Middle Ages may be described, then, as men who submit themselves to the Devil and willingly do his bidding while in the guise or shape of wolves—“the instigation to werewolfism is Satan’s, but the human will collaborates in the spiritual metamorphosis” (6). Otten proceeds to

4 “The Greek word for wolf, lukos, is so close to the word for light, leukos, that the one was sometimes mistaken for the other in translation … In Latin, again, the word for wolf, lupus, and that for light, lucis, are as close and suggest [an] … association: that with the Devil. Lucifer (a contraction of lucem ferre, literally, ‘to bear light’) was called the Son of the Morning … and the wolf of the Middle Ages was, of course, ‘the devil devourer of man’s soul’” (Lopez 210). 5 Like the werewolf, the Devil is a shapeshifter, known to transform into various animals, including the serpent, the goat, the pig, the hare, the horse, the dog, the wolf, and others. 12

claim that the bishops and mass-priests mentioned in the ordinances of King Cnut are being

“warned about the subtle, undetectable transformations threatening the spiritual life of the flock”

(6). If Otten’s assertions are true, then King Cnut’s reference to the Devil as werewulf would have only served to reinforce preexistent folkloric superstitions which portray werewolves as paranormal, transformative beings, which certainly would not have hindered the propagation of belief in such men who, through the Devil’s aid, underwent metamorphoses into rapacious wolves, to maim and murder his kinsmen and their livestock.

Limitations of the Devil’s Power: The Illusory Werewolf

According to predominant philosophers and theologians of the Middle Ages, however, the Devil’s power is limited, and he compensates for his deficiencies through trickery. Due to their close association with the Devil, werewolves were often connected to or supposed to be deceptive witches and sorcerers, since these were also thought to gain inhuman power from unholy sources. Richard Rowlands, whose etymological account of the term werewolf was earlier provided, offers a definition of the creature in popular medieval superstition, which reveals the tools and methods used by enchanters to effect illusory wolfish transformations:

The were-wolves are certaine sorcerers, who hauing annoynted their bodyes, with

an oyntment which they make by the instinct of the deuil; and putting on a

certaine inchanted girdel, do not only vnto the view of others seeme as wolues,

but to their oun thinking haue both the shape and nature of woules, so long as they

weare the said girdel. And they do dispose theselues as very wolues, in wurrying

and killing, and moste of humaine creatures. (qtd. in Summers 3) 13

Application of ointments, salves, and unguents procured from the devil and donning enchanted girdles6 are only two of the many modes by which sorcerers and sorceresses initiated their transformations, some of which will be elaborated later. However, it must first be clarified that the type of transformation Rowlands speaks of is not a true, physical transformation, but an illusory one in which a man, by the work of the Devil, only seems to be a wolf to both himself and to others. To believe that a man may be altered physically was blasphemous to the medieval

Church, since, according to the most influential theologians in the first century, the Devil does not possess the ability to truly transform the bodies and minds of men into beasts.

In the fourth century, Saint Aurelius Ambrosius, better known as Saint Ambrose, concluded that “those made after the likeness of and image of God cannot be changed into the forms of beasts” (qtd. in Sconduto 17). In the fifth century, Saint Augustine of Hippo contended the same, specifically aiming to invalidate the transformative power of the Devil and his demons.

In the eighteenth chapter of the eighteenth book in Augustine’s De Civitate Dei or The City of

God—estimated to have been published in the year 426—the illustrious philosopher and theologian states:

[D]emons … do not create real substances, but only change the appearance of

things created by the true God so as to make them seem to be what they are not. I

cannot therefore believe that even the body, much less the mind, can really be

changed into bestial forms and lineaments by any reason, art, or power of the

demons. (563-564)

6 “The wolf-girdle passed into common tradition, and was in the opinion of the vulgar perhaps the most usual way (after the magical ointment) of shape-shifting” (Summers 112). 14

It can be assumed that the Devil is included among the demons Augustine refers to, since he specifies that only God possesses true creative faculty. Any werewolf transformation, then, must be the false trickery of the Devil and his demonic allies. In the fourth chapter of The Werewolf in

Lore and Legend, entitled “England and Wales, Scotland and Ireland,” Montague Summers cites

“an old Poenitentiale Ecclesiarum Germaniae” which discourages belief in werewolves:

Hast thou believed what some were once wont to hold … [that] by a magic spell

… certain men will they are able to transform themselves into wolves, and such a

one of this kind is called (teutonica) ‘Werewulff’ … If thou hast believed that

Man made in God’s Image and Likeness can be essentially changed into another

species or form by any power save that of Almighty God alone, thou must fast

therefor ten days on bread and water. (185)

In the Poenitentiale of Bartholomew Iscanus, Bishop of Exeter, dated c. 1161-1162, a similar clause appears amidst a collection of superstitions condemned by the Church, requiring penance of those who “believe that a man or woman may be changed into the shape of a wolf or other beast” (qtd. in Coulton 34). These passages serve as further evidence of the Church’s stance on werewolves and, for that matter, metamorphosis of any kind.

To believe that the physical bodies of men might undergo genuine transformations into those of wolves was to participate in a superstition that was wholly and resolutely condemned by the medieval Church, since to give credence to such a belief is to “[doubt] the omnipotence of

Almighty God, … to wonder whether the powers of evil might not wellnigh match the powers of good, and thus [to presume the Devil is] able to perform diabolic miracles and marvels in [spite]

… of the Supreme Deity” (Summers 5). Yet, the purpose of the passages addressed above is not to question the existence of such creatures—Summers asserts they “[do] not for a moment imply 15

any doubt as to the reality of the demon werewolf” (5)—but simply to encourage a correct and orthodox view of werewolves as individuals who are not tangibly transformed, but only appear to be so through the glamor of devils. Indeed, as Barry Holstun Lopez affirms that “werewolves were a stark reality in the Middle Ages. Their physical presence was not doubted” (227).

Ecclesiastical conceptions of werewolves as deceitful entities in affiliation with the Devil persist throughout the Middle Ages and appear in various momentous texts, including the infamous fifteenth-century witch-hunter’s bible, The Malleus Maleficarum—The Witches’ Hammer.

The Malleus, a treaties on the recognition of witchcraft and the trial of witches, received credibility under a Bull of Pope Innocent VIII in 1484, in which Innocent delegates the authors,

Heinrich Kramer and James Sprenger, “as inquisitors of [the depravity of witches] throughout

Northern Germany” (viii). Kramer—the assumed primary author of the text—cites the work of

Augustine directly, indicating that according to the saint, “the transmutations of men into brute animals, said to be done by the art of devils, are not actual but only apparent” (62). Additionally,

Kramer cites Summa, V, 5, in which Saint Antoninus, Archbishop of Florence, “declares that the devil at times works to deceive a man’s fancy, especially by an illusion of the senses” (62).

Building upon this, Kramer argues that “the devil can, by moving the inner perceptions and humours, effect changes in the actions and faculties [of men], [whether] physical, mental, [or] emotional,” and “the apparent shape of a beast only exists in the inner perception, which, through the force of imagination, sees it in some way as an exterior object” (63). In his assertions,

Kramer adheres to the centuries-old orthodox teachings of the medieval Church which assert that metamorphosis is not actual, but a deception of the Devil and his horde.

This manner of thinking did not, of course, detract from the existence of so-called werewolves. Men who suffered from delusions of transforming into wolves were very real, and 16

their brutal conduct demonstrated to their fellow men just how easily the boundaries between man and beast could deteriorate. Otten calls attention to the great number of real-life incidents of werewolfery in the medieval period, mentioning that “the trial records of cases of lycanthropy

[clinical werewolfism] contain detailed accounts of rape, incest, murder, savage attacks, and cannibalism” (51). There existed disturbed men who suffered, or at least claimed to suffer, psychotic episodes in which they believed they had been transformed into ravenous wolves and, while in that delusional state, committed horrific crimes against humanity. During the late

Middle Ages and early Renaissance, countless men and women confessed to have, under the influence of the Devil, taken the forms of wolves to slake an unquenchable thirst for blood—to appease unnatural, ravenous appetites. The images of wolves and werewolves that permeate the

Scripture, ecclesiastical ordinances, and texts like The Malleus Maleficarum—the ones which teach that wolves and werewolves are underlings of the Devil—perhaps even contributed to the creation of a paradigm through which the disturbed or their inquisitors might construct fanciful interpretations of ghastly crimes in which the offender was not himself, but one of the Devil’s ravening werewolves. Such explanations would likely have been easier to stomach than those in which horrific acts of brutality are committed for no just cause and without any evil influence.

In any case, in the eyes of the medieval Church, imaginary werewolves functioned to rationalize the inhuman actions of men, and due to the proliferation of certain depictions in

Scripture, the wolf was no longer a wolf, but an imaginary creature that embodied all that was wicked and detestable within man. In this vein, the aforementioned environmentalist, Barry

Holstun Lopez, asserts that “[men] create wolves[, and] … throughout history man has externalized his bestial nature, finding a scapegoat upon which he could heap his sins” (203,

226). In the Middle Ages, man sought to rid himself of impure, detestable qualities—“his sins of 17

greed, lust, and deception” (226)—by unloading them onto the wolf. According to Lopez, the wolf “came to stand more and more for the bestial, for the perverse, for evil in every form … [It was] a terrible creature that preyed on everything human and … engaged in a level of violence and sexual depravity that had not the remotest connection with any animal but man himself”

(230). Wolves became the externalization of “all that was base in man, especially [his] savagery and lust” (227). By projecting his undesirable qualities onto wolves and by, in turn, hating them, man was actually participating in the expression of self-hatred. Anxieties stirred by stories of werewolves, therefore, were not exclusively connected to the Devil and his demons; they were also associated with the notion that a man might lose his humanity—his rational mind and God- given soul—through exhibition of certain behaviors perceived to be bestial. To foster better understanding of werewolves in the Middle Ages, it is necessary to elaborate upon these identity- related anxieties and to investigate man’s perceptions, definitions, and expectations of both himself and the beasts around him.

18

II

Of Men and Beasts: Evolving Perceptions of Humanity and Animality

To best comprehend the implications of a dimorphic entity like the werewolf in the

Middle Ages—one who moves between states of humanity and animality with fluidity—it is necessary to understand evolving perceptions of both man and beast as well as those features delineating the two. In her remarkable book, The Beast Within: Animals in the Middle Ages, which comprehensively illuminates different kinds of relationships held between humans and animals during the medieval period, Joyce E. Salisbury reiterates time and time again that man has defined and continues to define his humanity against his perceptions and definitions of animality. Due to dramatic changes these definitions underwent during the Middle Ages as a result of growing philosophical and theological inquiry, the marvel of human-animal metamorphosis became a topic of great interest and speculation. Medieval werewolves readily expose those fluctuating perceptions of humanity and animality affected by ideologies both innovative and ancient. Through fantastical stories of men devolving into ravenous beasts, medieval man explored and evaluated his own humanity as well as his understanding of the animal, and what he found was troubling to him. According to Salisbury, “separation [of the species] seemed to be slipping away” in the Middle Ages; man was beginning to see the animal within himself (140). This roused anxieties that man could, potentially, become an animal through spiritual, behavioral, and physical deterioration into bestiality, and the very idea was highly threatening to Christian notions of human divinity and province.

Medieval Christian perceptions of humanity and animality were largely inherited from the philosophies of the ancient world. Ideological frameworks that aided to define the rigid 19

boundaries between man and beast in the Middle Ages originate in the severe dogmas of the

Stoics from whom early Christians borrowed tremendously. Theologians and philosophers of the

Middle Ages, including Saint Augustine and Saint Thomas Aquinas, studied these ancient principles, accepted what they deemed agreeable to Christian doctrine, and reformed or contended those that did not. The medieval adoption of Classical ideologies that separate man and beast through various unshared qualities ultimately contributed to the formulation of a uniquely Christian anthropocentric worldview—one which survived well into the Middle Ages and long thereafter. Philosophies inherited from Classical antiquity that reinforce ideas of human supremacy are essential to depictions of medieval werewolves who inhabit both the human and animal realms. This makes the philosophical development of the human-animal divide in

European thought a subject most worthy of investigation.

Man against Beast: Philosophies of Anthropocentrism

To one of the earliest and most influential Presocratic philosophers, the differences between man and beast—particularly when it came to the soul—were not so distinct.

Pythagoras—who is estimated to have lived between c. 570 and c. 490 BCE—gained his credibility from the Neopythagoreans who contended that he was the first man to call himself a philosopher, a lover of knowledge; he was, in the Neopythagorean view, “the source of all true philosophy, whose ideas Plato, Aristotle, and all later Greek philosophers plagiarized”

(Huffman). While the former half of the Neopythagorean claim which positions Pythagoras as the first philosopher is difficult to prove, the latter—that the philosophies of Pythagoras were influential to future philosophers—is certainly true. Pythagoras was regarded by subsequent philosophers and scholars as an expert on the fate of the soul after death. He was a firm believer in metempsychosis—or reincarnation—in which human souls may be reborn as various forms of 20

life, including animals (Huffman). This means that the souls of humans and animals were interchangeable; the souls of men could be born into the bodies of beasts and vice versa. Two of

Pythagoras’ most recognized doctrines are “that the soul is immortal and that it transmigrates into other kinds of animals” (qtd. in Huffman). According to Carl A. Huffman who specializes in studies of the Classical world, Pythagoras was likely to have “used the Greek word psychê to refer to the transmigration of soul, since this is the word used by all sources reporting his views.”

Because Pythagoras did not record his own philosophies, scholars must rely on his successors to elaborate upon his doctrines, including his ideas about the psychê.

Pythagoras’ successor, Philolaus, for example, uses psychê to refer to “the seat of emotions … located in the heart along with the faculty of sensation” (qtd. in Huffman). The psychê is, furthermore, non-exclusive to human beings; it is something both men and beasts share. The psychê was thought to contain an individual’s personal identity, using the “pattern of emotions” that establishes their personality (Huffman). The supposed ability of Pythagoras to remember his own previous lives suggests that “personal identity was preserved through incarnations” and “could well be contained in the pattern of emotions that constitute a person’s character and that is preserved in the psychê” (Huffman). This means that in the Pythagorean line of thinking, the possibility of a man becoming an animal, even a wolf, while retaining his sense of self was not an entirely implausible phenomenon. The retention of the psychê, of personal identity, in metempsychosis may be extended to the concept of metamorphosis. Through the

Pythagorean notion that the psychê persists after death and is then reborn into another form of life, it may be reasoned likewise that the psychê might endure bodily transformation from one form into another. The soul or psychê is the constant, the anchor, while the body manipulates around it. This constancy of the soul is significant when considering the phenomenon of human- 21

animal metamorphosis that occurs in werewolf legends, especially those in the twelfth century, in which the human soul survives repeated transformations between human and animal forms.7

While both humans and animals were thought to equally possess the psychê, an inevitable distinction between man and beast was made by Philolaus who expanded upon his predecessor’s philosophy, specifying that psychê does not include the nous—the intellect—a distinctly human faculty that is not shared with animals (Huffman). This means that while humans and animals share the capacity to feel sensations like pain and pleasure, they do not share in intellect or rationality. From this point forth, as Stephen T. Newmyer suggests, “the question of the presence or absence of a rational element in the animal soul was a matter of fundamental importance”

(“Speaking of Beasts” 102). The concept of man as more than an animal, having departed from the rest of creation by possession of unique mental faculties, became the orthodox opinion in

Greek thought, and its impactfulness on the whole of Western philosophy is astounding

(Renehan 240). The idea of man as the rational animal, or animal rationale, remains pervasive in

Western society, and its purpose, as Newmyer argues it, is “to relegate non-human animals to a position forever below that occupied by human beings,” which ultimately contributes to the perpetuation of an ideological framework in which a callous and shamefully “condescending attitude toward other species” is deemed permissible (“Paws to Reflect” 111). Although often mistakenly attributed to Aristotle, the true origin of the phrase “rational animal” in reference to man is, according to Renehan, “no longer discoverable,” but it was of great popularity among the

Stoics and may in fact be a Stoic invention (241).

7 According to Myra J. Seaman, “[f]or medieval audiences the flexibility of the physical form was not matched by a dangerous fluidity of mind or nature. Instead, certain identities remain stable at the ‘core’ of the external, shifting body” (254). 22

Like many other Classical Greek schools of thought, the Stoics did not question that animals possessed souls; they did, however, maintain that animal souls were imperfect and could never accomplish the same perfection as the human soul, since they lack the essential component which allows for reason (Newmyer, “Speaking of Beasts” 102). According to Stoic principles of the soul, every soul, whether human or animal, is composed of eight parts. The first seven comprise the “irrational parts of the soul: the five senses, the capacity for utterance, and the capacity for reproduction,” and the eighth is an enigmatic constituent referred to by the Stoics as the “governing principle” (102). While the first seven parts of the soul are shared by men and beasts, the eighth part is different in humans and animals. While the governing principle in human beings eventually develops “into the faculty of reason,” the governing principle in animals never develops into higher intelligence; it “suffices only to allow them to exhibit such behaviors as might be classified as impulses” (102). While the eighth part of the soul allows man to be governed by his rationality, animals are only capable of being governed by their instinctual urges. This Stoic tradition of stressing rationality as the governing element of humans and instinct as the governing element of animals is, according to Newmyer, “kept alive in Christian thought from Augustine through St. Thomas Aquinas” whose philosophies and influence on medieval thought will be explored later (101).

While intelligence is certainly one of the most predominant features demarcating the human-animal divide, it is certainly not the only attribute claimed by philosophers of antiquity to signal man’s uniqueness and superiority to common beasts. As Renehan remarks, “[a]gain and again Greek writers point out that man is unique in some respect[, and t]hese special characteristics are of the most varied sort, ranging from peculiarities of hair and smell to a participation in the Divine” (246). In his study of these “distinct properties of man” in ancient 23

Greek sources, Renehan discovered a topos in which these anthropocentric views manifest themselves—one he refers to as the “man alone of animals” topos (Newmyer, “Paws to Reflect”

111). Renehan describes this topos as the repeated use of a very common phrasal cue in the writings of ancient Greek philosophers to signal “distinct properties of man [with the phrase]

‘man alone of animals is / has …’ or, alternately, to remark ‘it is a unique characteristic of man

…’” (247). Through this topos, Greek philosophers sought to isolate mental faculties like intelligence, reason, logic, and so forth, which were believed to be performed more effectively by humans than other species. According to Newmyer, the first occurrence of the topos may be attributed to Hesiod, in his assertion that “only man has an understanding of justice since Zeus did not plant the concept in animals” (112). The topos occurs again in the work of Aristotle in which he maintains that “while other animals may manifest such traits as shyness, pride or affection, only man is a deliberative animal” (112). According to Plato, “only man alone of animals can reflect … he alone has understanding” (Renehan 247). The topos eventually broadened beyond the mental faculties, however, and “expanded to include anatomical, physiological and behavioral characteristics which were likewise judged to be unique to humans,” resulting in, as Newmyer refers to it, a “bewildering array of [uniquely human] characteristics” (111).

In some instances, certain bodily features of man, like his possession of hands or ability to walk upright, were taken as evidence of his “superior intellectual powers” (112). Newmyer remarks that a variety of emotional states were “likewise claimed by one ancient authority or another to be unique to humans, including grief, joy, anger, aggression and anxiety” (113). Even man’s convention of wearing clothing was viewed as a virtue elevating man and suggested the crude and inferior nature of animals. According to Salisbury, “only humans were self-conscious 24

enough to clothe themselves” (147). While men and women of the human race adorned themselves in clothing to cover their nakedness—their “shame”—animals existed in a state of inherent nudity and thus were without embarrassment.8 Perhaps most lauded of the features distinguishing man from beast—the one which most clearly demonstrated his higher intelligence and superiority to animals—was his propensity for language.

Renehan remarks that “[a]n appreciation of rational speech … in its external manifestation, was particularly characteristic of Greek thought … It is by virtue of speech … that

[men] stand apart from animals” (248). Human language—man’s ability to speak and to be understood, to communicate complex thoughts with his fellow men—was, to the philosophers of ancient Greece, an obvious exhibition of human rationality. In ancient ideology, the human capacity for complex language was one of the most fervently defended evidences of human uniqueness and superiority to animals. The assertion that man alone of creation is gifted with speech only served to widen the gap between man and beast—one which “animals could never cross” (“Speaking of Beasts” 101). According to Newmyer, some of the philosophers of the

Classical world used man’s possession of language to “maintain that the boundary between animalkind and humankind [was] fixed and unbridgeable,” since “[l]anguage was viewed … as an external manifestation of the rational faculty” disallowed to animals (101). Newmyer cites the work of psychologist Joseph Mortenson concerning animal thought in which he remarks that

“language is the most highly regarded human trait. Man is the speaker, the listener, the reader, the symbol-user” (qtd. in Newmyer 100). This linguistic aspect of the “man alone of animals” topos deprives animals of meaningful speech, since language is a product of rationality. Since

8 Clothing is of particular import in werewolf literature, since metamorphosis into a wolf is often initiated by the removal of clothes, and to regain human form, the werewolf must redress in his original garments. 25

animals do not possess the rationality necessary to produce comprehensive language, it was a standard belief among the Stoics that “animal utterances do not arise from rationality” at all

(103). In his philosophical discussion of the animal, De animalibus, Philo—the late first-century

BCE Greek philosopher—defends the Stoic position on the utterances of animals, contending

“that the sounds which animals utter have no more meaning than do the notes of a flute or of a trumpet, which sound like a human voice but signify nothing” (103).

Philo’s understanding of animal utterances survives through the Middle Ages and is disturbingly akin to certain beliefs about animals that emerge in the sixteenth century—in the so- called Age of Reason. Salisbury indicates that some followers of Descartes callously beat dogs and chastised those who felt pity for them; “They said the animals were clocks; that the cries they emitted when struck, were only the noise of a little spring which had been touched, but that the whole body was without feeling” (2). The animal’s inability to communicate its thoughts and feelings in a fashion comprehensible to humans was perceived by the Stoics as merely a consequence of possessing an imperfect soul, and this seeming imperfection “had enormous moral … implications” for the Stoics and for those who followed them (Newmyer 103).

Furthermore, because common beasts were thought to be incapable of reason, speech, and feeling, man was not obliged to feel kinship or love for them (103). Due to this absence of kinship and common feeling, man was entitled to use and abuse animals as he saw fit; there was no empathy for the animal. The lessons of Aristotle, for example, “taught explicitly that plants and animals exist[] for man’s benefit” alone (Renehan 253). With this manner of thinking, man became detached from animals, and the space between himself and the rest of creation grew.

Many of these Stoic and late Classical ideologies that elevate man and degrade beasts were adopted by the medieval Church who saw them to be agreeable with the Scripture. In 26

Christianity, upon his creation, man is supreme of all animals. This is evidenced in Genesis 1:28 in which God gives Adam and Eve dominion over the earth and all its creatures:

God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and

replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and

over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.

(KJV)

This notion of divine human dominion over animals—his ownership, mastery, and control of them—was integrated into an ecclesiastical law in the eleventh century which stated “that as man had dominion over animals, it was forbidden for animals to have any advantage over humans … people were to be feared by animals, not to fear them” (Salisbury 12). According to Salisbury, the human-animal relationship of dominion was “best articulated by Thomas Aquinas in his

Christian summary of human knowledge” (12). In this summary, Aquinas provides three reasons for man’s mastery over animals: the first, that “nature has an observable hierarchy, and man’s position on the top of this hierarchy automatically gives him mastery of all that is below;” the second, that “as the ‘order of Divine Providence’ says that higher things govern lower, man as the image of God must govern;” and the third, that “as man has reason … he must rule those beings that have only prudence in regard to particular acts” (12-13). These three defenses of human superiority and dominion over animals were argued by Saint Thomas Aquinas to explain man’s right to slaughter animals as he pleased, since the “[lives] of animals … [were] preserved not for themselves, but for man” (13). Animals were property; their only use in the medieval world was to provide men with materials, labor, and status, and they were treated in accordance with the law as inanimate objects (13). According to Lopez, in the Middle Ages, “[a]nimals were worth thinking on only as food and clothing, as a source of economic gain, as beasts of burden, 27

or as symbols … [T]he animal was an object, like a stone” (214). Through man’s closeness and likeness to God and his ordained supremacy to animals, influential Christian philosophers of the early Middle Ages stripped from creatures of the earth not only their freedom, but also their divinity and even their very souls.

In his research, Renehan establishes that “[t]he Christians went beyond earlier thinkers by applying [the] ‘man alone of animals’ [topos] to specifically Christian religious beliefs” (250).

Christian philosophers of the early Middle Ages not only upheld the Stoic tradition of stressing animal irrationality and imperfection, but also maintained what Renehan deems the “most awesome claim in the entire ‘man alone of animals’ series”—“that man alone is, in one sense or another, divine … [and] is, in essence, an imitation of the deity” (251). While Presocratic philosophers like Pythagoras made little distinction between the souls, or psychês, of men and beasts, later philosophers gradually revoked those features of animals that made them akin to man, and by the early Middle Ages, Christian philosophers and theologians were eager to deny that animals were in possession of souls and were especially zealous in their rejection of the notion that beasts had the same access to eternal life as man. As Salisbury indicates, “[f]or medieval thinkers, animals would not participate in the resurrection; there would be no animals in heaven,” and, according to Saint Thomas Aquinas, “in that renewal of the world [paradise] no mixed body will remain except the human body” (4).

In these words of Aquinas, we are confronted with yet another delineation of man and beast, one which was often used by Christians of the medieval world and even still, to this day, to distinguish human divinity and animal otherness: his likeness to the deity. Through Genesis

1:27, man confirms his closeness and resemblance to God: “God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him” (KJV). The Christian Genesis contrasts greatly with the 28

ancient Greek creation myth in which Zeus ordered Prometheus to “fashion men and animals” from clay (Salisbury 3). Displeased to see that Prometheus had created so many animals, Zeus

“told [him] to refashion some of [them] into men … ‘and so it came about that those who were not from the beginning fashioned as men have the shape and appearance of men, but the souls of wild beasts’” (qtd. in Salisbury 3).9 According to Salisbury, this ancient Greek creation myth evidences that the “differences between the species were illusory” in the pagan world (3). In the early Middle Ages, Christians were quick to admonish pagan beliefs that allowed such fluidity between the species and replaced them with ones that coincided instead with the concept of divine creation. They upheld that the differences between humans and animals were both spiritual and physiological, and because creation was understood to be a divine faculty allowed only to God, there could be no intermingling of the souls and shapes of men and beasts. An imperfect animal soul could not dwell within a divine human body.

Salisbury designates that Christian “definitions of animals often focused on physical appearance,” since man was, according to the Scripture, created in the image of God (3). In the thirteenth century, Albert the Great catalogued a variety of differences between man and beast, and among these are distinctive bodily characteristics of both. In speaking of beasts, quadrupeds specifically, Albert reasons that “[a]ll such creatures are prone to the ground … because of the weight of their head and the earthly character of their body, they tend to bear themselves in a horizontal plane, their innate heat being inadequate to maintain them in an erect posture” (4).

Through this passage, it is made clear that animals were, even by stature, below man. They were closer to the ground, to the earth, to their baser natures; they were bound to their corporality, to

9 This Greek creation myth is especially significant to Classical werewolf tales in which animal metamorphosis the beast within man by externalizing his inward nature, as is the case in the brief tale of King Lycaon featured in Ovid’s Metamorphoses. 29

sensation, as opposed to the intellect and spirit, as men are. This “heat” which Albert speaks of seems to contribute to the lowly stature of beasts, and it also deprives them of their ability to reason. While animals were thought to be cooler in temperature, humans were thought to be hotter, which not only allowed them to stand upright, but also allowed for the conditions necessary for rational thought. Animals were, by their very physiology, deprived of rationality.

Among other physiological distinctions made between man and beast—some of which, like the possession of hands, were earlier mentioned—men of the Middle Ages pointed to excessive hairiness as a defining factor of non-human creatures. Observations of such attributes belonging to animal bodies were written into medieval bestiaries, with the addition of certain behavioral characteristics specific to animals.

One such bestiary, produced anonymously in the twelfth century and entitled The Book of

Beasts, catalogues certain animals and offers descriptions of their behaviors as well as some of the superstitions associated with them. Within the first few pages of the bestiary, a generalized definition is provided in which animals are distinguished by their violence and lack of order:

They are called Beasts because of the violence with which they rage, and are

known as ‘wild’ (ferus) because they are accustomed to freedom by nature and

are governed (ferantur) by their own wishes. They wander hither and thither,

fancy free, and they go wherever they want to go. (Book of Beasts 7)

According to this description, beasts are characterized by ferocity and freedom. Unlike civilized men, animals wander about the wilderness without restriction. Animals were perceived to be borderless creatures who dwelt in the uncivilized forests, on the fringe of human society, with an apparent lack order and control. However, depictions such as this—of beasts who are wild and rage with violence, who are free and wander wherever they wish—are rather obscure and seem 30

to be suggestive of more than mere beasts. They are descriptions that may be applied to certain human subjects as well, such as how “we disparagingly call someone ‘bestial’ or ‘an animal’ if we believe his or her behavior is not up to ‘human’ standards” (Salisbury 1). Such ambiguous descriptions that were first intended to delineate man from beast in the Middle Ages instead accomplished the opposite—they blurred the boundaries between them. This is particularly true of the twelfth century in which tales of hybrid monstrosities and werewolves appear in plenty.

Indoctrination of the various prescriptive animal and human features mentioned throughout this chapter certainly not only served as grounds for the debasement of non-human entities throughout Classical antiquity and the early Christian Middle Ages, but also allowed for the dehumanization of men who did not adhere, whether physically or behaviorally, to hegemonic understandings of human bodies and behavior. Since man has for thousands of years attempted to narrow his definitions of humanity, it would stand to reason that any human being who voluntarily or obligatorily defied these definitions could potentially be likened to a beast.

Individuals who presented unusual physiology—for instance, excessive hairiness, deformity, or bodily defect—or exhibited behavior uncharacteristic to man, including baseless violence, depraved lust, or mental infirmity, were at risk of being associated with the animal rather than the human. In this way, tales of human-animal hybridization and metamorphic creatures like the werewolf came to exist, and their presence in both the worlds of men and beasts threatened the rigid separation of the species established by some of the most influential minds of the Classical and medieval periods. Such tales conveyed the anxieties man associated with a loss of humanity through deterioration into bestiality—a decay which threatened his uniqueness as a species as well as his divinity and closeness to God. More and more, medieval man began to see the animal within himself, but it was not just any beast who stared back at him—it was the wolf. 31

III

Of Men and Wolves: A Merging of Beasts

Longer than any other beast in Indo-European history, the wolf has terrified and intrigued mankind, and as such, he has borne a bewildering array of identities forged by the minds of men.

Although his numbers have dwindled in the northern regions of Europe on account of the profound hatred he inspired, the wolf was, in the Middle Ages, a haunting fiend whose presence was inherent to the dark, foreboding woods that covered most of the continent; “[h]e dwelt in the heart of those impenetrable forests … his veritable strongholds” from which, despite man’s efforts, “he could not be dislodged” (Summers 22). Summers elucidates that “[f]or long centuries throughout all Europe there was no wilder brute, no more dreaded enemy of man than the savage wolf, whose ferocity was a quick and lively menace to the countryside” (22). According to

Summers, it was customary for monarchs to hunt the wolf for sport, “and [they] legislated and offered rich rewards for his destruction. But for many a hundred years and hundred years again did the wolf deny all attempts at extirpation” (22). This particular depiction of the wolf establishes him as a creature of defiance and tenacity, yet he is so much more. The wolf who exists in the human imagination is multidimensional, both hated and admired for various qualities and detriments perceived in his character, and diverse images of the wolf, as Lopez asserts, “[are] rooted in the bedrock of the soul” (226). The minds of men delight in metaphors and symbols through which “the universe [is sorted out] in an internal monologue,” and the wolf, perhaps more than any other creature, has been subject to such imaginative devices (Lopez 226).

For as long as they have coexisted in the natural world, man has perceived in the wolf qualities of unbridled ferocity, strength, endurance, and cunning; he was admired for his physical 32

prowess and proficiency as a hunter, yet the same attributes made him feared, made him threatening and detestable to man. According to Lopez, fear and hatred of the wolf likely began

“when man turned to agriculture and husbandry, to cities” (233). In agricultural civilizations, the wolf posed a grave threat to the lives and livelihoods of men, since he was notorious for savaging valuable livestock kept for material goods, food, and wealth and was even known to maraud and prey on mankind when his survival necessitated such abnormal behavior. Otten reports that in

Geneva, in 1148, “there was seen a wolf of unusual size, which killed thirty persons of both sexes and various ages,” horrifying the community (79). Many other accounts of wolves’ brutality toward mankind are textually documented throughout the Middle Ages and reveal the genuine threat the wolf, as a natural predator, posed to man. Medieval man’s legitimate fear of being consumed was at the forefront of his antagonistic relationship with the wolf, and this fear was only intensified by the superstition that wolves could “acquire a taste for human flesh”

(Salisbury 54). Evidence of this belief may be drawn from a number of sources, but most profound is the claim made by Edward, Duke of York, in the early fifteenth century. “When

[wolves] feed in the country of war,” the Duke asserts, “they eat of dead men … and man’s flesh is so savory and so pleasant that when [wolves] have taken into man’s flesh they would never eat flesh of other beast” (qtd. in Salisbury 54).

Conversely, the flesh of wolves was not consumed by man for the reason that “carnivores are too much like humans in their function as hunters, and thus to eat them would be too much like cannibalism”—a practice met with horror and abhorrence by most human beings, whether ancient or modern (Salisbury 50). Wolves, by this logic, would also have been participating in cannibalism when they consumed the flesh of men, since both man and wolf were equals as hunters and eaters of meat. It was even contended in the Middle Ages that the wolf deliberately 33

engaged in cannibalism when he scavenged on the bodies of men, since they were confident that the wolf was self-aware enough to understand his actions—that he willfully defied the laws of nature by consuming an equal, if not higher lifeform in the chain of being. Such beliefs that hold the wolf to the moral standards of man further obscured the lines between human and animal.

Again, the wolf, a beast with whom men should share no semblance, is made eerily akin to man.

Despite the enmity he had for the wolf during the Middle Ages, man could not help but to perceive his own likeness in the animal. Karen Kennerly provides an astute depiction of the wolf and his connection to mankind, which reads as follows: “Wolf, the … Bestiary creature of fang and paw, unbeautiful and all too fathomable, is most unloved in the pantheon of animals,” and yet “[h]e is … the creature most like [man]” (6). According to Kennerly, the wolves of fiction and fable are the allegorical creatures most representative of mankind, and Lopez interprets this as a suggestion that “to love what [is] good in the wolf [is] really to express self-love, and to hate what [is] evil in the wolf [is] to express self-hate” (227). Kennerly observes that the wolf, like man, is “[o]ut of phase with himself … defeated alternately by hubris and naïveté” (6). Like the men who covet and revere higher intellect and rational thought—divine faculties that most certainly distinguish man from beast—the wolf of fable is “paranoid … that others do not value his intelligence” (6). This humorously relates yet another way in which the fabulous wolf is comparable to man, his introspection and anxiety about his intelligence defying the previously explicated boundaries between man and beast in which the latter category was supposed to lack the appropriate components of the soul and the necessary physiological conditions to foster intelligent thought in the first place.

Indeed, the wolf is often thought to possess certain qualities—like intelligence and sociability—which, according to antiquated assessments of humanity and animality, are virtues 34

belonging to man alone. In more ways than one does the wolf trespass the long-established borders between the worlds of beasts and men, but—as discussed in brevity in the previous chapter—men were all too capable of crossing these boundaries as well. Through the exhibition of behaviors that were deemed bestial or “wolfish,” outlaws and pagans effectively became wolves, which would brand them—linguistically—as werewolves or man-wolves. Like the wolf, these criminals and heathens were perceived as enemies to the medieval Church—their seemed wickedness and rusticity menacing to Christian piousness and civility. Depictions of werewolves in the Christian Middle Ages were thus demonstrative of the Church’s abhorrence for the werewolves who were, in actuality, outlaws and pagans.

Wolves and Outlawry

In accordance with legal traditions traceable to the myths of Classical antiquity and even beyond, “as far back as in Hittite law of the thirteenth century [BCE],” men who committed heinous crimes in medieval Europe were exiled from human society, banished to live like wolves in the forests (Guðmundsdóttir 282). However, it was not only through proximity that outlaws were made similar to wolves, but also through the terms used to identify them. Warg, the anglicized version of Old Norse varg, is a term meaning wolf which—unlike the Old English wolf or wulf used to designate the animal—was predominantly used in reference to outlaws for the reason that “the outlaw, like the wolf, lived in the forest and might be killed with impunity by anyone … the outlaw [was] treated like a wolf because he act[ed] like one” and acquired appropriate labels derived from wolfish terms for the same reason (Gerstein 132). In the epic poem, Beowulf—one of the most significant surviving Old English works of literature—the term warg appears in epithets used to describe the infamous antagonists, Grendel and his mother. The two are often referred to in wolfish terms that mark them as beasts and outlaws. In line 1267, 35

Grendel is called “heorowearh hetelic” (“savage outcast”); his mother, in line 1506, is called

“brimwylf” (“she-wolf of the water”) and, in line 1518, “grundwyrgenne” (accursed female of the deep); and it is indicated in line 1358, that the two dwell in “wulfhleoþu” (“wolf-inhabited slopes”). Textual evidence for the use of warg in association with outlaws and criminals is not limited to works of fiction, however; it is also found in very real Teutonic laws and decrees of medieval Europe. Most illustrative of the medieval view of outlaws as wolves is the following thirteenth-century pronouncement in Anglo-Norman law:

qe es adunc le tiegne lem pur lou e est criable Wolvesheved pur ceo qe lou est

beste haie de tote gent; e des adunc list a chescun del occire al foer de lou.

[that henceforth he be held to be a wolf and is to be proclaimed “wolf’s-head”

because the wolf is a beast hated by everyone; and henceforth it is up to everyone

to kill him for the price of a wolf.] (qtd. in Gerstein 132)

According to Gerstein, this law that equates outlaws with wolves “may have been taken literally enough in England to give rise to the custom of bringing the heads of wolves and outlaws to the shire authorities to receive the same bounty for each” (132). In her study of the werewolf in medieval Icelandic literature, Aðalheiður Guðmundsdóttir mentions a similar Old Icelandic10 decree that was preserved in a manuscript belonging to the same century as the Anglo-Norman law mentioned above. The Old Icelandic code of law, Grágás, states: “morð vargr sa en menn hefir myrða [‘murder vargr the one who has murdered men’]” (282).

10 According to Jesse L. Byock, “Old Icelandic is a branch of Old West Norse that developed in Iceland from the Old Norse speech of the first Viking Age settlers” (22). The North Germanic language (Proto Old Norse) split into the West Old Norse and East Old Norse varieties. West Old Norse then split into Old Icelandic and Old Norwegian, and East Old Norse split into Old Danish and Old Swedish. These languages are often referred to as Old Norse, collectively, and will occur as such in this thesis on occasion. 36

The term vargr, Guðmundsdóttir explains, was a term meaning wolf that was more commonly used by Germanic peoples to denote the outlaw—“those who had forfeited their rights to participate in human society” (282). The use of vargr in reference to outlaws gave rise to an enormous variety of other related terminology in Old Norse, including vargdropi or vargdragi (“son of an outlaw,” literally “wolf cub”), vargrækr (“who is to be hunted down as a wolf,” “expelled like a wolf”), vargtré (“wolf-tree,” “gallows”), and a multitude of others to the same effect (Guðmundsdóttir 283; Zoëga 472). Although the words used to designate outlaws as wolves were originally metaphorical in nature, with the use of such terminology, boundaries between outlaw and wolf—man and beast—became more and more obscure in the medieval world. Lopez tells that “on the perilous roads [in the] dark woods travelers feared being waylaid by either highwaymen or wolves, and the two often fused in the medieval mind: the wolf and the outlaw were one, creatures who lived beyond the laws of human propriety” (208). According to

Otten, when used in association with criminals, the word werewolf was “a powerful moral metaphor … a linguistic attempt to face the unfathomable”; man projects “what is sub-moral, sub-rational, sub-human, that is, multiple murders, sexual attacks, cannibalism, torture, sado- masochism, Satanism” into the word werewolf, associating such behavior with beastly man- wolves instead of human men (2). This mingling of man and wolf—wolf and murderous outlaw—undoubtedly contributed to the ubiquity of wicked, heathen werewolves in the Middle

Ages who were perceived to embody such behaviors as those explicated above.

Wolves and Pagans

Images of the wolf that have been discussed thus far are those primarily constructed by

Christianized, agricultural societies—ones that desperately strained to uphold the stringent division of man and beast, to remove themselves from their pagan pasts, and to demonize the 37

wolf. To these societies, the wolf was the other—the Devil, the outlaw, the heathen. However, in societies where men bore a closer relationship with the animal world, where hunting and warfare were intrinsic to life, the wolf was looked upon favorably. This is affirmed by Lopez who tells that “[i]n a hunter society … the wolf [was placed] in a pantheon of respected animals” (233).

Certain Indo-European lýkocentric11 clans associated themselves with the wolf, drawing upon his power in ceremony and battle through imitating his behavior and donning his skin. Warriors of such societies frequently imagined that they, themselves, were wolves—“hunters for whom both animals and humans were legitimate prey”—and some even claimed to be descended from wolves (Wyatt 73). Surely these pagan, wolfish clans who oftentimes participated in barbaric and hedonistic rituals—ones in which their men dressed themselves in wolfskins and freed themselves to madness, engaged in rapacious and violent behavior, offered to their heathen gods both animal and human sacrifices, and indulged in sexual promiscuity—were met with the same revulsion and loathing by civilized Christians as was the wolf.

The pagans, like wolves, were perceived as both enemies of God and as a threat to

Christian values and ways of life. Through the expression of wolfish behavior, pagan men became wolves—effectively making them man-wolves or werewolves. The following sections will explore this theme in the legends and literature of Classical antiquity and medieval

Scandinavia and Ireland. Prior to delving into tales of uniquely Christian, noble, and sympathetic werewolves that emerge in the aforementioned romances of the twelfth century, it is first necessary to acknowledge their predecessors—the primeval werewolves of heathendom who

11 Lýkocentric was coined for the purpose of this thesis from the Greek word for wolf, λύκος (lýkos). This term is an adjective utilized with the intention of conveying the meaning of “wolf-centered” (e.g., communities that respect or deify the wolf, using it totemically and imitating its behavior, are lýkocentric). Comparable to anthropocentric (human-centered), theocentric (God-centered), ecocentric (nature-centered), etc. Also lýkocentrism, n. 38

were utterly contrary in nature to the sympathetic werewolves of Christendom, marked by ferocity and godlessness rather than temperance and piety. The inherent connection between werewolfism and paganism must be considered when interpreting tales of medieval werewolves, since all werewolves prior to the Christian Middle Ages were pagan, and this undoubtedly contributed to the medieval association of wolves and werewolves with demons and heretics.

The Mesopotamian Shepherd’s Tale

To begin, it seems only appropriate to address the very first instance of a man transformed into a wolf in literary history. The Epic of Gilgamesh, an epic in the Akkadian language that recounts adventures of the Macedonian king of Uruk, was written on eleven clay tablets over four millennia ago—between c. 2150 BCE and c. 1400 BCE. On the sixth tablet,

Gilgamesh recounts the brief tale of a shepherd who was struck and transformed into a wolf by the goddess, Ishtar, who was once the shepherd’s lover:

You loved the Shepherd, the Master Herder,

who continually presented you with bread baked in embers,

and who daily slaughtered for you a kid.

Yet you struck him, and turned him into a wolf,

so his own shepherds now chase him

and his own dogs snap at his shins. (“Tablet VI” ll. 56-61)

According to some scholars, including Leslie A. Sconduto, this is the first appearance of a werewolf in literary history. Whether it may be considered so or not, in so few lines, the shepherd’s tale presents several narrative elements that appear in subsequent stories of werewolves, including even those of the twelfth-century “werewolf renaissance.” One such narrative element is the transformation of a man into a wolf at the hands of a fickle woman. In 39

the werewolf romances of the twelfth century, the hero is always depicted rather similarly to the

Mesopotamian shepherd. He is an innocent victim who suffers emasculation through the treachery of a woman he loves and trusts, and in the form of a wolf, he is made an outcast of his society—just like the shepherd who is chased by his own dogs and kinsmen. In the case of the shepherd, however, much more is lost than just manhood and kinship. According to Karen Sonik,

Mesopotamians viewed metamorphosis—“radical physical transformation from one category of being to another (as from human to animal)” (386)—and death as very similar, if not the same, phenomena in which the original being is completely lost; it was “a permanent change in form, the shifting from one class or category of being to another […] and the transgressing of the very firm borders delimiting each of these, is to be understood as the complete effacement of what had previously existed, so that nothing of the original remains in the new form” (391-392). In the tale of the shepherd, it may be assumed that his radical transformation from human to animal is one marking his death—his body and mind altered irreparably when he is changed into a wolf.

Another element of this narrative, which is perhaps of more importance here, is that the shepherd’s metamorphosis into a wolf is initiated by a pagan goddess. The pantheon of gods and goddesses in pagan traditions were viewed by Christians as false gods, devils who trick mankind to worship them. Although it is impossible that Christians of the Middle Ages would have had direct access to The Epic of Gilgamesh, since it was only uncovered in the nineteenth century, they likely would have had the same reaction to the text as they did to others featuring similar metamorphoses that were available to them from Classical antiquity, like Homer’s The Odyssey from the eighth century BCE in which the Greek goddess Circe transforms the companions of

Ulysses into beasts. Saint Augustine even references The Odyssey in his De Civitate Dei or The

City of God in which he refutes pagan beliefs through Christian ideology. Such marvels as 40

human-animal metamorphoses extant in ancient texts were, according to Augustine, “great delusion[s] worked by the demons” (563). If the Akkadian Epic of Gilgamesh were available to

Christian scholars during the Middle Ages, the transformation of the shepherd likely would have been met with the same disapproval as were those metamorphoses featured in The Odyssey; the metamorphosis of the shepherd into a wolf would most definitely have been deemed the false illusion of a pagan deity—a demon in the Christian view.

Werewolves of Classical Antiquity

While the existence of factual metamorphoses in which one living being is physically or spiritually altered into something else entirely—whether man, beast, or otherwise—was wholly rejected by theologians and scholars in the Christian Middle Ages, the Classical world was alive with stories that tested such existential boundaries. Sonik observes that in the literature of

Classical antiquity, “physical transformation is pervasive: the boundaries between gods, humans, monsters, and animals, and occasionally plants and inanimate objects as well, are transgressed with ease in the service of seduction, punishment, escape, and reward” (385). Joyce E. Salisbury similarly attests that “[t]ransformations of humans into animals permeated the Classical texts with such ease that they reveal a belief in a universe in which boundaries were much more fluid between species and categories than we have seen since” (140). It is in this species-fluid world that the first images of familiar, rapacious werewolves are born into Western imagination, and it is from these images that the Christian Middle Ages created their own werewolves.

In the Classical world, pagan wolf cults that fueled myths of werewolves were rather common. The Dacians, prehistoric inhabitants of an area once known as Dacia in Eastern

Europe, are noted by folklorist Jan Luis Perkowski to have “ritually transformed their young warriors, through imitation, into the totemic wolf by wearing a wolf pelt and behaving in an 41

appropriately rapacious fashion” (363). In the fifth-century BCE, Herodotus similarly mentions that the Neuri, a tribe comprised of Scythians and Greeks, were known to become wolves for a brief time every year, only resuming their human forms after having existed as wolves for a few days (Higley 347). Lopez remarks that “[t]he Neurians were hunters who probably had a totemistic relationship with wolves and wore wolf skins in an annual ceremony” (233). In the fourth chapter of The Histories, Herodotus provides an account of the Neurians that, according to

Lopez, “is commonly cited as evidence that early on there was a race of werewolves” (233). In this account, Herodotus indicates that “[t]he Neurians are a people who may well possess magical powers [and] according to both the Scythians and the Greeks who live in Scythia, every

Neurian becomes a wolf for a few days … then reverts back to his original form” (300-301).

Transformations of the Neuri were initiated by magic and were temporary, as is true of most voluntary transformations in Classical antiquity. Another example of such a transformation is mentioned briefly in Virgil’s eighth eclogue from c. 37 BCE. The narrator states: “By [the aid of herbs and poisons culled in Pontus,] I have oft seen Moeris turn wolf and hide in the woods”

(81-83). Like the Neurian werewolves, Moeris is a sorcerer or magician, but while the Neurian methods of turning wolf are unclear, Moeris is specified to use a certain herb to initiate his change. Furthermore, unlike the permanence of change witnessed in the earlier mentioned

Mesopotamian shepherd’s tale, the wolfish transformations that the Dacians, Neurians, and

Moeris undergo are voluntary, periodic, and impermanent—elements that would appear in werewolf tales for centuries to come. Another similarity between these accounts is that there is no mention of brutality or wrong-doing committed by the Neurian werewolves or Moeris.

Indeed, Moeris demonstrates the most passivity, merely concealing himself in the forest when he becomes a wolf. The infamous Arcadian werewolves, on the other hand, were not so benign. 42

The myth of the first Arcadian werewolf, King Lycaon, survives most famously in a collection of Greek myths gathered and transcribed by the Roman poet, Ovid, who lived during the reign of the first Roman emperor, Augustus, at the start of the Common Era. Ovid’s rendering of the legend of Lycaon is regarded by Montague Summers as the first true werewolf tale in literary history—one which “takes us back to remotest antiquity, to the days before a flood covered the world, the age of the Giants and the Titans” (136). Lycaon is presented in

Ovid’s Metamorphoses as a cruel king who is visited by the human incarnation of Zeus, king of the gods. Unconvinced that his guest is truly who he claims to be, Lycaon devises a plan to test his omniscience in which the flesh of a butchered hostage is mingled with other meats and served at supper. By Lycaon’s logic, if his guest unwittingly participates in the greatly abhorred act of cannibalism, then he is not truly king of the gods. Zeus, however, is fully aware of Lycaon’s deceit. Appalled and enraged by the extent of Lycaon’s barbarity, Zeus unleashes his fury and transforms Arcadian king into a savage wolf. The myth tells that even a powerful ruler such as

Lycaon can be reduced by his cruelty and viciousness to the level of a mere beast—a wolf— resulting in his dethronement and expulsion from human society.

Lycaon’s transformation into a ravenous wolf is artfully depicted in Miller’s prose translation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses and reads as follows:

The king himself flies in terror and, gaining in the silent fields, howls aloud,

attempting in vain to speak. His mouth itself gathers foam, and with his

accustomed greed for blood he turns against the sheep, delighting still in

slaughter. His garments change to shaggy hair, his arms to legs. He turns into a

wolf, and yet retains some traces of his former shape. There is the same grey hair, 43

the same fierce face, the same gleaming eyes, the same picture of beastly

savagery. (19)

In this passage, it is clear that Lycaon loses several significant aspects of his former self in his degeneration into bestiality, including essential human features and abilities that were employed by Classical philosophers to distinguish man from beast. Lycaon most certainly loses his bipedalism and human hands, and he also loses one of the most lauded of human abilities—his speech. If we are to follow the Stoic philosophies that equate man’s ability to speak and to be understood with higher intelligence and humanity, then Lycaon has most certainly lost all of the above in becoming a wolf.12 There are, however, certain aspects of Lycaon’s human self that are preserved in metamorphosis, including some physical features—his grey hair, fierce face, and human eyes13—but perhaps more importantly, Lycaon retains the same savageness he possessed as a man: “with his accustomed greed for blood he turns against the sheep, delighting still in slaughter” (19).

Lycaon’s retention of his characteristic bloodthirstiness shows a certain fluidity of being that is consistent with Presocratic philosophies of the continuity of the soul in which the souls of men and beasts are similar—if not the same—and are interchangeable; through metempsychosis or reincarnation, a man might literally become a beast and vice versa. In addition, if one recalls the Pythagorean philosophies of the soul earlier discussed, the personal identity of an individual

12 There are other tales of metamorphosis in Ovid’s collection that hint at the retention of the human mind after physical change into an animal. Although the animal man becomes through metamorphosis may lack the faculty of human speech, his mind is trapped within. This occurs in the tale of Actaeon and Artemis (Diana), in which he is transformed by the goddess into a stag. When Actaeon sees himself in a stag’s shape, he tries to say, “‘Oh, woe is me!’ … but no words come. He groans—the only speech he has—and tears course down his changeling cheeks. Only his mind remains unchanged” (Ovid 137-139). It may be reasoned that Lycaon, too, retains his original mind in metamorphosis, but we cannot say for certain. 13 According to Lopez, “[t]he Bella Coola Indians believed that someone once tried to change all the animals into men but succeeded in making human only the eyes of the wolf” (4). 44

was believed to be stored in the psychê—which was, in essence, the soul—and was preserved in this way through metempsychosis or reincarnation. If, in his wolfish state, Lycaon is portrayed as a bloodthirsty killer, then it is because—in his soul—he was one already. This assumption is supported by Salisbury who stresses that in such Classical myths as the one of Lycaon,

“metamorphosis usually occurred because people exhibited the characteristics of an animal to an extreme degree. The transformation only made manifest the bestial nature that had been within”

(140). Otten similarly attests that “[h]umans who become werewolves in myths and legends … are involved in moral metamorphoses: a process that … reveals the degradation that comes to those who deliberately choose to exhibit bestiality,” which makes “[t]he werewolf myth … a profound insight into human life” (223). Because of “[his] bestiality and cannibalism,” Otten explains, “[Lycaon] was justifiably transformed into a wolf” (223). To reiterate, the Arcadian king becomes a wolf because, at his core, he was one already.

Although the tale of Lycaon is widely accredited to Ovid, legends of the bloodthirsty

Arcadian king and the pagans who dwelt in Arcadia—a region that occupies the central highlands of the Peloponnesian peninsula of Greece—are much older. In the eighth book of his

Description of Greece, devoted to the region of Arcadia and its inhabitants, the second-century

Greek traveler and geographer known as Pausanias provides conjecture as to when the historical

Lycaon might have lived. According to Pausanias, Lycaon lived in the same era as the founder of

Athens, King Cecrops, in the sixteenth century BCE (Summers 134). While Ovid’s adaptation of the legend of Lycaon may enjoy the most dramatic appeal, Pausanias provides an account of the

Arcadian king based in mythology, and he offers additional information about the founding of

Arcadia, a land considered by some to be the cradle of human life. Those who dwelt in Arcadia were thought to be “the oldest of all races, elder brothers of the sun and moon” (136). According 45

to Pausanias, Lycaon’s father, Pelasgus, “was the first man who lived in [Arcadia]” and was the son of Mother Earth (qtd. in Summers 134). Although Pelasgus was a prolific ruler himself, his son, Lycaon, surpassed him in ingenuity. Lycaon built the city of Lycosura on Mount Lycaeus, and he gave Zeus the surname Lycaean (134).14 Lycaon’s provision of a surname for Zeus was likely in opposition to Cecrops, “who gave to Zeus the surname of Supreme [and refused] to sacrifice anything that had life” (qtd. in Summers 134). Lycaon, on the other hand, was not opposed to human sacrifice—a factor which led to his transformation into a wolf. Pausanias relates a rendering of the legend of Lycaon, indicating that the king of Arcadia “brought a human babe to the alter of Lycaean Zeus, and sacrificed it, and poured out the blood on the alter; and they say that immediately after the sacrifice he [Lycaon] was turned into a wolf” (qtd. in

Summers 134). Pausanias confesses that he, himself, believes the tale, since “it has been handed down among the Arcadians from antiquity, and probability is in its favour” (qtd. in Summers

134). In fact, Pausanias believed that werewolfism was still prominent in regions of Arcadia during his own time, testifying that “from the time of Lycaon downwards a man has always been turned into a wolf at the sacrifice of Lycaean Zeus” (qtd. in Summers 134).

While the punishment of Lycaon is to exist permanently in the shape of a wolf—a state that better suits his inward nature—permanence of transformation certainly is not a factor in all

Classical werewolf tales. Unlike the Mesopotamians who understood metamorphosis from one form of life to another as the total annihilation or death of the original entity, without any chance for redemption, the Greeks and Romans viewed metamorphosis as flexible and even reversible, provided that certain limitations were observed. Pausanias designates that the transformations of

14 These various names invoked by Lycaon were derived from the Greek word for wolf, λύκος (lýkos), from which, according to Augustine in The City of God, “the name Lycæus appears to be formed” (563). 46

Arcadian men into wolves at the sacrifice of Lycaean Zeus are not permanent, “for if, while he is a wolf, [man] abstains from human flesh, in the ninth year afterwards he changes back into a man, but if he has tasted human flesh he remains a beast for ever” (qtd. in Summers 134).

Conditions of werewolfism among the Arcadians is elaborated upon by the first-century Roman naturalist, Pliny the Elder, in his Natural History. In the thirty-fourth chapter of the eighth book in Natural History, Pliny speaks of the Arcadian werewolf, citing the work of Evanthes:

Arcadians have a tradition that someone chosen […] by casting lots among the

family is taken to a certain marsh in that region, and hanging his clothes on an

oak-tree swims across the water and goes away into a desolate place and is

transformed into a wolf and herds with the others of the same kind for nine years;

and that if in that period he has refrained from touching a human being, he returns

to the same marsh, swims across it and recovers his shape, with nine years’ age

added to his former appearance. (59-61)

In this account, the Arcadian werewolves must abstain from consuming human flesh for the nine years spent as a wolf in order to regain their humanity. An additional stipulation to the restoration of their manhood was that the Arcadian werewolves had to don themselves in the very same clothing they had hung on an oak tree nine years earlier. If the Arcadian werewolves achieve both of these conditions, they return to their former selves, visibly aged by the nine years spent as a wolf. These two factors made the legend unbelievable to Pliny, although he was disposed to believe most incredible stories he heard. “We are bound to pronounce with confidence,” declares Pliny, “that the story of men being turned into wolves and restored to themselves again is false—or else we must believe all the tales that the experience of so many centuries has taught us to be fabulous” (59). Pliny’s skepticism toward this legend of the 47

Arcadian werewolves is somewhat significant, since according to Stephen T. Asma, “Pliny accepted almost everything that was reported to him” (34).

It is difficult to discern if what made the legend incredulous to Pliny is that the Arcadian werewolves seem to have aged nine years when they return to their original selves or that they donned the same clothing they had hung on an oak nine years earlier, but whatever the case may be, Pliny’s account of the Arcadian werewolves presents a motif that appears in momentous werewolf tales throughout the Middle Ages—that werewolf transformations necessitate nudity.

As mentioned previously, the custom of wearing clothing is counted among the many behavioral characteristics discerned by Classical philosophers to be uniquely human. By feeling the need to conceal his nakedness—by feeling shyness or shame—man is differentiated from the rude beasts who roamed about, untroubled and unabashed in their natural states. This implies that through the removal of his clothing, man becomes more natural, more animalistic; by this logic, little more than a few layers of fabric prevent all of humanity from becoming beasts. Regardless, undressing is a very common preliminary step to becoming a wolf in most werewolf tales, just as redressing is a typical step to recovery of humanity. This common motif in werewolf literature may be attributed to these ancient tales of Arcadian werewolves who undress and hang their clothing on an oak tree prior to transformation and who must then retrieve the same clothing to regain their humanity. Indeed, legends of the first Arcadian werewolf, Lycaon, and those who follow him were precursors to ensuing literary werewolves, and they are also supposed to have inspired a certain pagan ritual—the Lupercalia—that endured longer than most other pagan traditions in the early Christian Middle Ages.

The ultimate origin of the legend of King Lycaon and the Arcadian werewolves may be attributed to “the worship of [Lycaean Zeus] on Mount Lycaeus” by “the cult of a wolf-clan” 48

(140). According to Summers, the “Arcadian priests [of this clan] were deeply versed in black magic,” and in the cult of Lycaean Zeus, “the human sacrifice, the killing of babes, the

Werewolfism, and in fact every detail may be exactly paralleled in the worship of the Satanists”

(143); pagans of any kind were Satanists in the Christian view. These “satanic” rituals of the

Arcadian wolf cult are recognized as the origin of the Roman Lupercalia, which was, as William

M. Green attests, “among the most long-lived of pagan institutions,” lasting nearly until the end of the fifth century, “long after the old pagan worship was legally suppressed” (60). Even

Augustine concedes that the Roman Lupercalia was “sprung of the seed of the [Arcadian] mysteries” (563). Green informs that “[t]he god of the Lupercalia is given many names—Faunus,

Pan, Lupercus, Lycaeus, Inuus—even Bacchus and Juno are mention,” and the festivities often included animal sacrifice and nudity (64). The gods of the Lupercalia were viewed by Christians as “demons [who] were wholly evil” and the practices of the Luperci were observed as “demon- worship and magic arts, which were regarded as one and the same thing” (65). According to

Green, “a number of sources indicate that the Lupercalia was, in a wider sense, a festival of purification,” and its purpose was “to repel the powers of evil and so to liberate the powers of good, thus promoting the fertility at once of man, of beast, and of the earth” (62-63). However, regardless of the benevolent intentions of the Lupercalia, the fact remained that it was a pagan institution. The gods worshipped by the Luperci were regarded as demons by Christians, and their rituals were perceived as animalistic and barbaric. According to Green, such “[pagan] worship appeared in a typically indecent form, such as aroused the ire of the Christian moralists from St. Paul to St. Augustine,” and by the end of the fifth century, “Pope Gelasius … converted the pagan festival [Lupercalia] into the Feast of the Purification of the Virgin (Candlemas)” (69,

60). Gelasius “declare[d] that no one baptized, no Christian, should be defiled by the pagan 49

rites,” which would include, we are to assume, the totemistic rituals of wolf cults who, by certain rites, became wolves (69).

Barton Kunstler indicates that the rites performed by wolf cults, whether Indo-European or otherwise, tend to “follow a general pattern”:

A group of men gather in the wild and abduct the initiate or some chosen victim.

They then mutilate the initiate, or murder, sacrifice, and cannibalize the victim …

A frenzied dance or metamorphosis into werewolves seizes those partaking of

human flesh. In some cases, homophagy is followed by a period of exile in the

wild. (193)

According to Kunstler, the purpose of such a ceremony is “to turn the initiate into a werewolf, so that he becomes a skilled warrior, and to create a mystical bond of communion—so necessary to a successful fighting force—among all sharers in the cannibal feast” (193). Kunstler further explicates that during these rites, “participants don wolf or other animal pelts” (193). These practices are observed in several of the aforementioned pagan wolf cults, and perhaps the

Arcadians are the ones who adhere most closely to the pattern. The Arcadians were infamous for offering human sacrifices to Lycaean Zeus, and they subsequently partook of the sacrificial victim’s flesh. Afterward, they were thought to become wolves and even participated in conditional exile after eating human flesh; they hung their clothes on an oak tree and disappeared across a body of water for nine years, only returning if they managed to abstain from consuming human flesh during their time as wolves—to prove themselves worthy of humanity. Both the

Neurians and the Dacians were also known for their totemic relationship with the wolf and their ritualistic werewolfism; they, too, follow the pattern in which their young warriors are initiated through ceremonies necessitating wolfish behavior and the wearing of wolfskins. And certainly, 50

the Dacians, the Neurians, and the Arcadians were not the only Indo-European pagan groups notorious for becoming wolves. Perhaps even more famous than these for their werewolfery and general bestial shapeshifting are the Northmen.

Werewolves of the North: Úlfhéðnar and the Völsunga Saga

According to Summers, “[s]o immense is the wealth of tradition concerning shapeshifting

… in the ancient Sagas of the North that it becomes difficult in a strictly limited space even to indicate some of the better-known and most striking of these histories” (242). In the Northern pagan tradition, men who could transform into beasts were said to be eigi einhamir, “not of one form” (242). Although tales of shapeshifting were vast and diverse in the North, according to

Guðmundsdóttir, “much prominence is given to two kinds of shapeshifting: the ability to change into either a bear or a wolf … [and] the latter seems to have been more popular” (277). The werewolf in Scandinavian myth was generally a man who took the physical form of a wolf by donning a vargshamr—a term literally translated as wolf-skin but may also be interpreted as wolf-shape (Guðmundsdóttir 284, 279). Werewolves in the Old Norse sagas were called

úlfhéðnar15—wolf-skins—and they often appeared in connection with the famed berserkir— bear-shirts (Simek 338, 35). Both the úlfhéðnar and berserkir were warrior cults dedicated to

Odin—or Òðinn—“the father of the gods … the god of the dead, of war, of magic … of ecstasy”

(240). In the thirteenth century, Icelandic historian and poet Snorri Sturluson provided an account of these animalistic warriors: “Odin’s men went (into battle) without armour and were as wild as dogs and wolves. They bit their shields and were stronger than bears or bulls. They killed many men but they themselves were unharmed either by fire or by iron; this is what is called

15 According to Summers, “the werewolf himself was commonly known as vargr” (242)—a term explained earlier as a word meaning wolf which came to specify outlaws. The lines between wolf, outlaw, and werewolf seem to be indistinct, and the terminology can be somewhat troublesome. 51

berserk-fury (berserksgangr)” (qtd. in Simek 35). According to Rudolf Simek, this berserksgangr or berserk-fury “bears all the traits of ecstatic states of consciousness: insensitivity to fire and pain … are phenomena known from shamanic trances” (35). In such states, Odin’s warriors “howled like wild beasts, foamed at the mouth … and made terrible havoc in the ranks of the foe” (Summers 243). These warriors who were thought to take on the forms of ferocious predators and were in the service of Odin were well-respected figures in the

Norse sagas, and one of the most legendary of them was Ulfr Bjalfason who appears most famously in Egil’s saga.

According to Summers, Ulfr was given the name Kveldúlfr, the “Evening-Wolf,” for his ability to take on the shape of a wolf during battle; he was an úlfhéðinn (243). Summers indicates that “[w]hen the werewolf fit came over him [Ulfr] and his companions their exploits were bloody with the most ferocious savagery” (243). Other accounts of úlfhéðnar are mentioned in the Vatnsdœla and Haraldskvæði, but the Northern saga best known for its werewolves is the thirteenth-century Völsunga saga. Guðmundsdóttir indicates that the saga of the Völsungs

“stands apart from other Icelandic sources in that the werewolf motif occurs throughout the narrative, such as in the origin and descent of the Völsungs (also called Ylfingar—‘Wolflings’),

[and] their brotherhood, kinship, and identification with wolves” (284). In the fifth chapter of the saga, a “large and grim-looking” she-wolf comes from the woods and devours nine sons of King

Völsungr, and this she-wolf is later speculated to be the mother of King Siggeirr who has,

“through witchcraft and sorcery,” transformed herself into a wolf (“Saga” 41, 42). The most famous occurrence of the werewolf motif in the Völsunga saga, however, is in the story of

Sigmundr and Sinfjötli. 52

Sigmundr, the tenth and only surviving son of King Völsungr, finds himself taking refuge in the forest with his son, Sinfjötli. The story begins with the pair stumbling upon the home of

“two enchanted king’s sons” who slumbered, heedless to the father and son who trespassed there

(Guðmundsdóttir 284). The story tells that “[a] spell had been cast upon them [the two slumbering men]: wolfskins hung over them in the house and only every tenth day could they shed the skins” (“Saga” 44). Sigmundr and Sinfjötli don the enchanted wolfskins, and they live in the forest as wolves for ten days. During their time as wolves, they communicate in wolf- language, howling to one another, and “[t]hey agreed then that they would risk a fight with as many as seven men, but not with more, and that the one being attacked by more would howl with his wolf’s voice” (“Saga” 44). Of course, being young and haughty, Sinfjötli takes on eleven men at once without signaling to his father. Enraged by his son’s arrogance, Sigmundr bites him in the windpipe, inflicting a deadly wound upon him. Luckily, the raven—one of Odin’s messengers—delivers a leaf to Sigmundr that heals Sinfjötli’s injury (Guðmundsdóttir 284). At the end of the ten days, Sigmundr and Sinfjötli are relieved to take off the skins, and they promptly burn them so no one else might stumble upon them.

According to Guðmundsdóttir, the emphasis of the tale “is on Sinfjötli’s development, which seems in most respects to reflect the consecratory rites of archaic peoples” (285). Indeed, the tale features an initiation rite in which a young warrior—Sinfjötli—is exiled from civilization for a period of ten days, which is unarguably parallel to the rites of the Dacians, the Neurians, and the Arcadians of the Classical world—each becoming wolves and each withdrawing from human society for varying periods of time. Guðmundsdóttir claims that Sigmundr purposefully takes his son, Sinfjötli, to the forest “to accustom him to hardship” (284). Furthermore, in order for Sinfjötli to become “a fully trained warrior (Völsungr) [he] must come to know his animal 53

nature, the wild animal within him” (284). The wild animal within the Völsungs is, of course, the wolf. Guðmundsdóttir elaborates that the Völsungs may be viewed as úlfhéðnar—a wolf clan of warriors who worship Odin and treat the wolf totemically (285). Guðmundsdóttir posits that the

Völsungs’ “approximation to wolves and their wolf nature [is] perhaps a way to bring themselves closer to and identify themselves with Òðinn, their ancestor,” since “the wolf is Òðinn’s animal

… the appropriate symbol and agent of the god of war” (285).

In the sagas of the North, man borrowed the forms and traits of beasts—he was invigorated with their force and endowed with their strength and swiftness (Summers 242). As

Summers so fluently expresses, “[h]e follows the instincts of the beast whose body he has made his own, but his own intelligence is neither clouded nor snuffed. The soul remains unchanged, and hence the mirror of the soul, the eye, can by no art be altered” (242). Summers’ account of

Northern human-animal metamorphosis reveals that it is both similar and dissimilar to those earlier mentioned. While it is explicated here that shapeshifters of the North retain their human minds and souls in transformation—as is evidenced by their unchanged eyes—it is less certain whether the same can be said of the werewolves in Classical antiquity. For instance, the eyes of

King Lycaon are said to remain the same after transformation, but it is unclear whether his mind is the same as it was when he was a man; we are not privy to that information in the narrative.

What is certain about Lycaon, however, is that he, like the metamorphic Northmen, “follows the instincts of the beast whose body [becomes] his own” (242). The same may be said of the other wolf clans mentioned to this point—the Dacians, the Neurians, the Arcadians—each participating in wolfish behavior, and some even donning wolfskins as the Völsungs are wont to do. Guðmundsdóttir even designates that the tale of the Arcadian wolves “closely resembles an episode found in the Norwegian Konungs skuggsjá from the thirteenth century” (291). More 54

interconnected than these, however, are those werewolf tales belonging to the same Germanic roots, and this includes a plethora of legends relating the adventures of Celtic werewolves.

Werewolves of the Celts

In her study of the werewolf in Germanic lore and legend, Guðmundsdóttir reveals parallels between tales of Celtic werewolves—“which refer to events dating from between the seventh and thirteenth centuries” (292)—and those found in Icelandic sagas. Among the common motifs mentioned by Guðmundsdóttir are “the symbolic association of hounds and wolves with warriors … [and] a saint who punishes people by turning them into wolves” (292).

John Carey, whose work Guðmundsdóttir references, claims that because “direct evidence for werewolves in Scandinavian sources is scarcely earlier than the thirteenth-century Völsunga saga,” the aforementioned werewolf motifs likely appeared in Irish sources first and “probably influenced the Scandinavian” (292). Guðmundsdóttir argues, however, that “the werewolf motif is already found in older Eddic material, and it is possible that Norse Vikings influenced the

Celtic tradition, especially since the richest werewolf tradition in Ireland lies around Ossory, whose rulers had close contacts with the Vikings” (292). While this certainly may be so, the tradition of werewolves in Ireland runs deep—as deep as the tradition in Scandinavia, as far as anyone can tell—and it is, therefore, impossible to know for certain whether these particular motifs began in Ireland or with the Viking invaders. As Summers indicates, “evidence of werewolfism in Ireland is of immemorial antiquity and persists through the centuries” (205), and the Irish certainly had their own werewolves.

Like the Arcadian werewolves whose forefather was King Lycaon, the werewolves of

Ireland have their own originator, Laignech Fáelad. The surname Fáelad originated from

Laignech’s propensity to take on a wolf’s shape, but the term was also associated with the 55

activity of “wolfing,” or acting wolfishly. According to Summers, werewolfism “was believed for the most part to run in families,” and Laignech Fáelad’s is described as follows:

Laignech Fáelad, that is, he was the man that used to shift into fáelad, i.e. wolf-

shapes. He and his offspring after him used to go, wherever they pleased, into the

shapes of the wolves, and, after the custom of wolves, kill the herds. Wherefore

he was called Laignech Fáelad, for he was the first of them … to go into a wolf-

shape. (205)

Like wild animals, Fáelad and his kin were characterized by their freedom and rapaciousness, and they—just like many of the other Indo-European wolf-clans—emulated the wolf. Catherine

E. Karkov indicates that the wolf in Ireland is traditionally associated with warriors and outlaws, and the fían—plural fíanna—were both (99). According to Karkov, the fían was a wild group of hunters, bandits, and mercenaries who “liv[ed] on the fringes between nature and society” (99).

Men of the fían were called fénnid, “a term virtually interchangeable with díberg (outlaw or brigand),” and when they engaged in “warring, hunting, or pillaging … [they] were said to be fáelad (wolfing), to be i conrechtaib; a rechtaib na mac tire (going into wolf shapes), or to be hunting fo bés na mac tire (in the manner of wolves)” (99). The fénnid are said to have— similarly to the wolf cult and clans mentioned previously—participated in wolfish behavior “as a means of initiatory and totemic rites” (Zanten 52). Fittingly, one of the monikers used to describe warriors like the fénnid was luchthonn or wolf-skin (Karkov 99), which—as one might recall from the previous section—is parallel to the Norse úlfhéðnar in both meaning and association. Furthermore, like the Völsungs and several other Indo-European wolf-clans earlier mentioned, the Irish fénnid participated in warrior bands—the fían—in fulfilment of “a socially endorsed rite of passage” in which “landless, unmarried, unsettled, and young men given to 56

hunting, warfare and sexual license in the wilds outside the túath [society]” until such a time as they inherit land and settle down, which enables them to “pass from the fían to the full membership of túath” (99).

Karkov attests to the long history of these outlaw wolf-warrior bands in Ireland, indicating that legends of fíanna “go back at least as far as the seventh century, and thus occur in some of the earliest surviving Irish literature … preserved primarily in the Finn cycle of tales

(fíannaigecht), and in the Dinnshenchas (the ‘lore of place-names’)” (99). Yet, scholars who have devoted time and study to these Old Irish tales have little doubt that the fían “had a firm basis in reality,” that these bands of wolfish warriors “were a very real presence and a threat within pre-Conquest Irish society” (Wyatt 70; Karkov 100). According to David Wyatt, “[f]ían warriors were potentially dangerous to the settled community … so they spent much of their time in the wilderness forming microcosmic societies with their own hierarchy and moral codes”; furthermore, their proximity to nature and their remoteness to human society were thought to connect them to “supernatural forces, which provided them with knowledge and super-human capabilities” (72). In appearance, the fénnid were often “disheveled or naked,” and this was thought to be emblematic of their lack of concern for social mores and status while also reemphasizing their “close affiliation with nature” (72). Again, man in his most natural state—in his nakedness—is made one with the animal, and so being, he echoes the baseness of beasts.

These lýkocentric fraternities—the Dacians, the Neurians, and the Arcadians of the

Classical world; the Völsungs and úlfhéðnar in the North; the fían in Ireland—each of them shared in a symbolic relationship with the wolf whose strength and cunning were traits greatly admired and highly coveted by such societies of warriors and hunters. Each of them partook in an ancient Indo-European tradition of ritualized lupine transformation, and it may be said with 57

certainty that these were not the only cultures of their kind. Men of this ilk recognized the animal within themselves—the wolf—and they did not fear it or try to eliminate it, but rather, they allowed it freedom; they welcomed and cultivated it ceremoniously. These men communed with their inner beasts and let rise to the surface the instinctual, passionate, aggressive parts of themselves that “civilized” human society so often strains to subdue. In these cultures, young men had to learn to live with the wolves within themselves before they could be integrated into human society; they had to become beasts before they could become men. Strikingly similar components of these lýkocentric cultures’ legends and customs point to an older Indo-European tradition of ritualistic werewolfism practiced in a world where man and beast were not yet so remarkably different—in a world where “a belief in a continuum of life … linked human and animal” (Salisbury 141). These must not be overlooked, since they are all met with similar hostility by Christians of the Middle Ages, and distinct motifs from nearly all of these pagan werewolf legends rear themselves in tales of werewolves devised by medieval Christians.

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IV

Christianized Werewolves of the Twelfth Century

Pagans, both ancient and extant in the medieval period, were known by Christians of the

Middle Ages for their rapaciousness, bestiality, and godlessness; not only were they subhuman, but they were heretics as well. Tales of human-animal transformation that arose in and around these pagan societies emphasized “the emergence of animal traits at the expense of the human,” and they revealed “an awareness of the animal … within [man]” (Salisbury 141). Through metamorphosis, the beast latent within man was allowed freedom, and his “external appearance changed … to make visible [his] interior animal-like characteristics” (143). According to

Salisbury, philosophers of the early Middle Ages were “too concerned with separation of species

… to integrate these [pagan theriomorphic beliefs] into their world-view,” and “early church fathers were vigorous in their denial of the possibility of such shape shifting” (141). Christian theologians like Augustine viewed the lupine metamorphoses of pagans—the Dacians, Neurians,

Arcadians, and so forth—as illusions, deceptions of treacherous “demons” rather than instances of true bodily alteration. “Therefore,” proclaims Augustine, “what men say and have committed to writing about the Arcadians being often changed into wolves by the Arcadian gods, or demons rather … if they were really done, may, in my opinion, have been done in the way I have said”— through the illusions of demons masquerading as gods who, in these guises, “beguile [men] into worshiping many false gods, to the great dishonor of the true God” (564, 565). The ritualistic madness induced by hedonistic ceremonies like Lupercalia and the “berserker rage” that overwhelmed warriors of lýkocentric wolf-cults were, according to Asma, “precisely the sort of effect that evil spirits enjoy, and such confusion … is what led pre-Christian pagans to 59

erroneously believe that people could actually transform into animals” (115). However, the medieval Church’s rejection of metamorphosis by no means eradicated belief in werewolves, and in fact, accounts of werewolves became increasingly popular throughout the Middle Ages.

Indeed, most God-fearing Christians of the Middle Ages readily accepted that werewolves were alive and well, living among them. “Werewolves were,” as one may recall, “a stark reality in the Middle Ages,” and “[t]heir physical presence was not doubted” (Lopez 227).

According to Salisbury, in the twelfth century there was “a significant turning point in medieval perceptions of metamorphosis” (142). During this time, Ovid’s Metamorphoses became remarkably popular, and Salisbury recognizes this renowned text as the medium through which

“pagan ideas of metamorphosis reentered European consciousness” (142). The phenomenon of metamorphosis became a common motif in medieval literature, and this, according to Salisbury,

“surely contributed to a reconsideration of the possibility of shape shifting” (142). The most significant factor that bolstered belief in factual metamorphoses of men into wolves was, of course, the weakening boundaries between man and beast. Metamorphosis of the Middle Ages was regarded as “the degradation of the human into the bestial” in which physical transformation exposed the animal within man (143). Man could, through his actions, descend into bestiality;

“the beast inside [could overwhelm] the human qualities of rationality and spirituality, leaving only the animal appetites of lust, hunger, and rage” (143).

In the twelfth century, nothing was quite as it seemed, and it is during this period in time that the most influential pieces of medieval werewolf literature emerged. Yet, these werewolves were unlike those observed in antiquity and paganism; they were altered to adhere, to some extent, to Christian notions of metamorphosis. In Christian tales of werewolves, “the exterior changed to reveal some animal-like characteristics of the human, but the human essence, the 60

interior, remained unchanged,” since the human mind and spirit can by no earthly power be altered (Salisbury 143). Salisbury remarks that this view was “consistent with the patristic position that humans [could not] be changed into animals,” and it, therefore, allowed for an amended belief in creatures like the werewolf that conformed, to some degree, to Christian dogmas (143). In this way, images of the “sympathetic werewolf”—a man whose mind becomes confined by curse or coercion within the body of a wolf—emerged in medieval thought (145). It may be argued that this motif is nothing new, and I concede, it certainly is not—Sigmundr and

Sinfjötli, the father-son pair from the Völsunga saga, are said to have retained their human minds in the bodies of wolves—however, while the werewolves that emerge in the twelfth century may maintain some of the same qualities as their pagan predecessors, they are Christianized, and as such, they function to critique pagan belief systems and to demonize their gods.

Gerald of Wales and the Werewolves of Ossory

One such werewolf tale that is highly revealing of Christian assessments of pagan werewolfism is a narrative by Giraldus Cambrensis, Gerald of Wales, which appears in his

Topographia Hibernica, or Topography of Ireland, of the late twelfth century. The tale takes place sometime between 1182 and 1183, and it begins with a priest and his young companion traversing a forest between Ulster and Meath. When night fell, the priest and his companion made camp, and as they sat by the fire, they were approached by a wolf who spoke to them in

English, beseeching the two men to not be alarmed or afraid. The two men looked on with amazement as “the wolf reverently called upon the Name of God” (qtd. in Summers 207). The priest then charged that “by Almighty God and in the might of the Most Holy Trinity,” the wolf would do them no harm, but would rather divulge what manner of creature he was—he who had 61

the ability to freely converse in human language (qtd. in Summers 207). The wolf replied as follows:

In number we are two, to wit a man and a woman, natives of Ossory, and every

seven years on account of the curse laid upon our folk by the blessed Abbot S.

Natalis, a brace of us are compelled to throw off the human form and appear in

the shape of wolves. At the end of seven years, if perchance these two survive

they are able to return again to their homes, reassuming the bodies of men, and

another two must needs take their place. (qtd. in Summers 207)

The priest followed the wolf to where his mate lay dying, and the she-wolf, upon seeing the priest, “thanked him very courteously and gave praise to God Who had vouchsafed her such consolation in her hour of utmost need” (qtd. in Summers 208). The priest gave her “all the last rites of Holy Church,” and the she-wolf beseeched him to “administer to her the crown of all, the

Body of the Lord” (qtd. in Summers 208). The priest was disinclined to grant her this request, since her humanity was in question; however, “to remove all doubt, [the he-wolf] us[ed] his claw as a hand … [to draw] off the pelt from the head of the [she-wolf] and folded it back even as far down as the navel, whereupon there was plainly to be seen the body of an old woman” (qtd. in

Summers 208). It is evident from this passage that the human is merely hiding beneath a wolf’s pelt, which is reminiscent of the pagan wolf cults who dressed in wolfskins during their ceremonies. Portraying the Ossory werewolves in such a way illustrates that the human cannot truly be altered into a wolf’s shape, although it may appear to be so on the outside.

Upon seeing the form of a human woman lying before him, the priest “hesitated no longer but gave her Holy Communion,” and after this was done, the he-wolf refitted his companion’s pelt to look as it had before (qtd. in Summers 208). Before parting with the he- 62

wolf, the priest asked if the foreign invaders of Ireland—the English—would continue to possess the land, and the wolf replied with a very Christian view:

On account of the sins of our nation and their enormous wickedness the anger of

God … hath delivered them into the hands of their enemies. Therefore so long as

this foreign people shall walk in the way of the Lord and keep His

commandments, they shall be safe and not to be subdued; but if … it come to pass

that through dwelling among us they turn to our whoredoms, then assuredly will

they provoke the wrath of the Lord upon themselves also (qtd. in Summers 209)

If one recalls the long tradition of werewolves in Irish paganism earlier discussed, this portrayal of Irish werewolves as men who became wolves not of their own volition, but by their sinfulness and their denial of the Christian God, is rather telling of the Christian influence in Ireland.

According to Rhonda Knight, Gerald’s Topographia Hibernica “provides both textual and iconographic depictions of England’s first colonial mission into Ireland ... [and] represents

Ireland’s colonial situation through many genres, including natural history, ethnography, mirabilia, miracle stories, mythology, and history” (55). The tale of the werewolves of Ossory is, as Knight suggests, one in which wolves symbolically accept humanity through a sacrament reserved for humans—the Holy Communion—yet it is much more than this. The same act may be understood as the Christianization of the pagan “wolves” of Ireland, and this interpretation is even more compelling when one reflects on the long history of werewolfism in Northern Europe, a tradition no doubt in effect upon the arrival of Christianity in Ireland. Certainly, if Christians were to witness these “transformations” of men into wolves, they would be inclined to construct fanciful accounts like the one told by Gerald of Wales. In his version of the legend, the people of

Ossory were cursed by Saint Natalis for their wickedness; however, in a variant of the tale, dated 63

a bit later, around 1250, the Irish were transformed into wolves not by Natalis, but by Saint

Patrick himself. This version illustrates the conflict between colonial Christianity and native paganism a bit more clearly, since it tells of the initial encounter which led to the curse of werewolfism being laid upon the natives of Ossory. The segment of the tale in which Saint

Patrick confronts and curses the Irish “wolves”—pagans—reads as follows:

It is said that when the holy Patricius was preaching Christianity in [Ireland],

there was one great race more hostile to him than the other people … And these

men tried to do him many kinds of injury. And when he preached Christianity to

them as to other men … [they began] to howl at him like wolves. But when he

saw that his message would succeed little with these people, then he became very

wroth, and prayed God that He might avenge it on them by some judgement, that

their descendants might for ever remember their disobedience. (qtd. in Summers

205-206)

We see here that these men behaved wolfishly; they howled as wolves at Saint Patrick when he attempted to preach the word of God to them, and they are said to have been disobedient—like defiant wolves rather than compliant dogs. The tale explicates that due to their rebelliousness and their mockery of this eminent holy man and his Christian teachings, the people of this tribe— assumedly the natives of Ossory—become cursed by God at the behest of Saint Patrick; “for it is said that all men who come from that race are always wolves at a certain time, and run into the woods and take food like wolves; and they are worse in this that they have human reason” (qtd. in Summers 206). Just the same as the account of the werewolves of Ossory in Gerald of Wales’

Topography of Ireland, this version relates that the descendants of the accursed become wolves every seventh year and are men for six years between, but some become wolves for seven years 64

all at once and never become wolves again in the entirety of their lives (206). It is apparent that the threat of foreign paganism—of foreign wolves—was looming over Christian nations. At the beginning of the fifteenth century, the Book of Ballymote offers a compilation of genealogical, historical, and legendary accounts, and a passage therein indicates that “‘the children of the wolf’ in Ossory could transform themselves and go abroad to devour people” (206). So, the threat of the werewolf—of the pagans in Ireland—was imminent and transmissible.

The influence of aforementioned pagan werewolf traditions is easily recognizable in these legends of the werewolves of Ossory. The circumstances of the Irish clan are nearly identical to those of the Arcadians who become wolves by casting lot—presumably due to a curse handed down from the originator, King Lycaon—and must remain as wolves, outcast from their society, for nine years prior to returning to their former selves. The distinguishing factor, which must be kept in mind, is that these werewolves of Ossory were cursed by a saint—a holy man—instead of a pagan god. The metamorphoses, then, would be factual, since God was the one who carried out the change, and He alone was thought to possess the ability to manipulate his creations into alternate forms; all other transformations—ones performed by pagan gods, or devils—were false illusions. This undoubtedly further stimulated a belief in factual werewolves during the Middle Ages—men who, by their defiance of God and his earthly shepherds, became wolves as punishment. The longstanding tradition of pagan werewolfism was then transformed into an evil phenomena.

The Christian Werewolf in Marie de France’s “Bisclavret”

According to Summers, “it was often believed [in the Middle Ages] that if any person had been denounced from the alter and remained impenitent, refusing to make restitution and confess, the curse of the werewolf fell upon him,” and “[i]n Normandy any man who was 65

excommunicated became a werewolf for a term of three or seven years … during which he was obliged to haunt certain ill-omened and accursed spots” (Summers 222). This legend is one that certainly mirrors several of those previously discussed, albeit with a Christian lens, and it is one that was undoubtedly known to Marie de France, a famous poet of the twelfth century, who was, herself, born in Normandy. When she wrote the Breton lais that brought her fame, she is supposed by scholars to have been living in England; even still, the myths of werewolves in any region of Northern Europe were in abundance, and it would have been nearly impossible for

Marie to have been ignorant of them. It is in Marie’s lai of the bisclavret that the most famous of twelfth-century sympathetic werewolves appears.

Marie immediately provides some indication that she had been well-aware of tales of rapacious werewolves in Europe, and she additionally recognizes their legitimacy, indicating that

“in times gone by / —it often happened, actually— / men became werewolves, many men, / and in the forest made their den” (ll. 5-8). “A werewolf,” Marie proceeds, “is a savage beast; / in his blood-rage, he makes a feast / of men, devours them, does great harms, / and in vast forests lives and roams” (ll. 8-12). Yet, Marie’s protagonist—the bisclavret—is not akin to these savage beasts; he is of a different breed. “Let us leave all that,” she entreats her audience, “I want to speak of Bisclavret” (ll. 13-14). According to Alfred Ewert, the word bisclavret derives from the

Breton bleis lauaret, or “speaking wolf,” and Marie’s use of this terminology distinguishes her hero from the common werewolf, the savage “garvalf” described in the initial lines of the poem

(qtd. in Marie 49). The bisclavret, as Marie defines him, is a nobleman who is compelled by nature to become a wolf for three days of the week. His werewolfism is constitutional, a part of himself; there is no indication that he is one of the accursed werewolves so often spoken of in medieval literature and legend. To enact transformation, the bisclavret must become naked—a 66

motif undoubtedly derived from the tales of Arcadian werewolves who hung their clothes on an oak tree prior to their wolfish transformations—and in order to recover his human form, the bisclavret must—like the Arcadians—don the same clothing he left behind.

Although it is not explicated that the bisclavret’s werewolfism originated as a curse, it certainly becomes one when he entrusts his beloved wife with his secret and is, in turn, betrayed by her. “I become a bisclavret,” he divulges to his wife, “in the great forest I’m afoot, / in deepest woods, near thickest trees, / and live on prey I track and seize” (ll. 63-66). Disgusted by her husband’s secret way of life—that he routinely strips naked to become a beast and inhabits the forest as a wolf—the wife of the bisclavret steals away his clothing, the only means by which his humanity might be restored, and she then flees with her illegitimate lover. The bisclavret does eventually recover his human form through the aid of the gracious king who recognizes the human qualities of intelligence and obedience in the bisclavret. When the noble man-wolf is first pursued by the royal hunting party, instead of fleeing, he runs straight to the king and kisses his boot in an expression of his subservience; through this action, he earns the monarch’s esteem and mercy. “This beast has mind,” the king exclaims, “it has intent” (ll. 154-157). Through his gentleness and recognition of the king’s sovereignty, the bisclavret’s life is spared. Eventually, the tame bisclavret’s uncharacteristic behaviors of violence toward his treacherous wife and her lover reveal the wolf’s true identity as a nobleman, and his humanity is returned.

To some scholars, the lai of the bisclavret is suggestive of an innovative perspective of humanity and animality during the Middle Ages—one that draws from pagan ideas of metempsychosis and of the beast inherent within man. This interpretation coheres with

Salisbury’s assertion that “in the twelfth century we acknowledged we are animals” (x). This, however, is not a new development; in hunter-gatherer societies, man knew he was no better or 67

worse than the animals around him, and he admired predatory beasts like the wolf—he invoked its strength, speed, and cunning in battle and bloodsport—long before the twelfth century and long before the philosophers who stressed man’s uniqueness and divinity. In the twelfth century, man only recovered perhaps a fragment of his decayed connection to the creatures around him; yet, dogmas that encouraged the separation of man and beast remained most prominent in medieval thought, and these have so deeply embedded themselves into Western consciousness that they survive even in the twenty-first century. In any case, the tale of the bisclavret and other anecdotes of intelligent werewolves that arise during the twelfth century are not indications of man’s sudden realization that he, too, is an animal; they instead emphasize the inalterability of the human mind and spirit, the impossibility of humans becoming animals. According to

Caroline Walker Bynum, “[these] accounts of the romance writers and marvel collectors … resist the suggestion that a human self slips into complete bestiality when its shape or skin or species changes” (96). In literature of the twelfth century, as Bynum stresses, “[w]e find deep resistance to severing of body and soul, to metempsychosis” (98), and the werewolves of this century

“manage to maintain in their wolvish bodies a rational mentality and human comportment”

(Seaman 251). The physical state of medieval werewolves is not symptomatic of inward corruption—as was the case in the legend of the Arcadian king, Lycaon—but rather, it “offers

[man] the opportunity to reveal his true (human) nature” (251). Even in the bodies of wolves, the human is emphasized rather than the beast, and therein lies the distinction between werewolves of the twelfth century and those in paganism; rather than emphasizing the mutability of species, the continuity of the human mind and soul are stressed.

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Concluding Thoughts and Further Study

Medieval depictions of werewolves appear in great number and in a variety of sources, and although the origins of the werewolf are obscure—“lost in the mists of primeval mythology,” as Summers puts it (1)—the elements that influenced his representations may be traced through time and across cultures to discover the functions he served in each. He is a figure of manifold purpose and definition throughout the Middle Ages and even prior, in ancient time.

The dichotomous nature of the werewolf is immediately evident in the words used to describe him: werewolf, lycanthropos—the man-wolf. Yet, half of him was not always a man. The earliest surviving account of werewolf in the English language reveals that it was a term used to denote the Devil; in the ecclesiastical ordinances of King Cnut, men were warned to be wary of the master of evil—“se wodfreca werewulf”—who seeks to corrupt and enslave mankind (qtd. in

Summers 4). This, of course, originated in Scripture—from passages that demonize the conventional wolf through symbolic analogies; biblical wolves are heretics and wicked men who prey on priestly shepherds’ congregations—their flocks. In turn, werewolves became demonic entities, kindred to the Devil and his ilk.

Legends of wicked medieval werewolves and hatred of the beastly other were undoubtedly fueled by an anthropocentric worldview inherited by Christians of the early Middle

Ages from their predecessors in Classical antiquity. Although many distinctions are made between man and beast, these are perhaps the most influential and enduring: that man alone of animals is rational and that man alone has soul. Any man who did not adhere to orthodox ideas of humanity, originally prescribed by ancient philosophers and sustained by medieval Church fathers, were beasts. Medieval man’s conception of wolves was molded according to rigid 69

definitions of humans and animals, and Christians of the Middle Ages were condescending toward those societies that breached the boundaries between the species and instead upheld a system in which man and beast were not so dissimilar. In these societies, certain animals—like the wolf—were respected and revered, and there was a certain level of fluidity between the species—men could become wolves. The werewolf is hated because he exemplifies inhuman characteristics and demonstrates just how easily a man might lose his senses and become a beast.

The “werewolves” of paganism—men who emblematically transformed into wolves through ceremony and ritualistic exile—undoubtedly did exhibit certain behaviors and qualities—which sometimes included cannibalism, among other wolfish conducts—that would have been deemed bestial by civilized, Christian men of the Middle Ages, but this bestiality was not necessarily derived from some supernatural source; rather, it was an externalization of the beast these pagan cultures knew to be inherent within man—the one that medieval Christians refused to recognize. Christians of the Middle Ages could not reconcile the fact that men, created in the image of God and endowed with soul and rationality, could—themselves—be animals and could commit heinous crimes against their fellow men without the involvement of some diabolical influence. In this way, werewolves of the Middle Ages were scapegoats through which man rationalized human savagery and corruption as well as the abnormal appearances and behaviors of those who did not wholly adhere to Christian notions of humanity and civility.

Due to the multiplicity of the werewolf and the abundance of interpretations that may derive from his portrayals in fiction, there are innumerable avenues for future research. Initially,

I had desired to address depictions of the werewolf in not only Classical and medieval sources, but in both Victorian and modern literature as well, as a kind of survey. For the sake of brevity and for the purpose of this thesis, I chose to limit my studies. The scope of this thesis may be 70

expanded, however, and ontological perspectives of humanity and bestiality in later centuries may be juxtaposed against those already examined. Of particular interest to me is the werewolf in Victorian literature, since the ethnocentric fear of the other is especially perceivable in depictions of werewolves in this period; he is the expression of colonial anxieties—the fearsome, beastly other. Philosophical works of Derrida, Foucault, and Nietzsche present more modern theories associated with change and the human identity, and these would be invaluable in the study of later literary werewolves. In addition, it would be fascinating to broaden this research to generalized bestial transformations. I am excited by the prospect of investigating the true origins of human anxieties associated with human-animal metamorphoses. Is fear of such phenomena inherited through ancient legends and superstitions? Or is it an inherent, polygenetic fear that man is not unique to the creatures around him—that he is and always was an animal himself?

Through comparative study of disparate portrayals of werewolves that originate in different centuries and in societies with conflicting systems of belief, the various ideologies and apprehensions embedded in these representations are exposed, and the werewolf may be appreciated as more than a simple beast meant to horrify and amaze; he is, rather, a multifarious figure whom, under scrutiny, may spur any number of interpretations. Ultimately, however, one may discover that beneath all the glamor and convoluted analyses, the werewolf—who is simultaneously beast and man, who dwells in the liminal space between fiction and reality—is inseparable from man. Despite all of man’s efforts to expunge the bestial parts of himself and to impose these upon conventional wolves and supernatural werewolves, the beast remains within him, within us all. To fear the werewolf is to fear the indwelling beast—the one that has always been. This is what we may learn from the werewolf: that he is us, and he was all along.

71

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