Discover how being a werewolf could mean a lot of things

Dr Jameson Tucker, Lecturer in Early Modern European History 1500-1700, explores the changing representation of werewolves in history
British London satire caricatures comics cartoon illustrations: Werewolf of Anarchy

Werewolf | In folklore, a werewolf (from Old English werwulf 'man-wolf'), or occasionally lycanthrope (from Ancient Greek 'wolf-human') is an individual who can shape-shift into a wolf, either purposely or after being placed under a curse or affliction (often a bite or the occasional scratch from another werewolf), with the transformations occurring on the night of a full moon.

Werewolves in early modern Europe didn’t just change shape from man to wolf, they also changed their shape in the popular imagination from place to place and time to time.
Being a werewolf might involve battles on the astral plane, it might involve a drunken trick-or-treating spree, or it might indeed involve turning into a monster and eating some people.
There was a lot of debate in the period about whether people ‘really’ could turn into werewolves, or whether those who claimed to do were in fact deluded, as Michael Lynn has written about.
Some authors of the time tried to square the circle by arguing that werewolves only appeared to turn into wolves – rather than really doing so. Either way, some of these people committed real crimes including murder, like Jean Grenier in France or ‘Peter Stubbe’ in Germany; some of them were sent to medical facilities instead of being executed.
A German woodcut of a werewolf from 1722.
In Livonia, on the Baltic Sea, there was a case (detailed in a famous book by Carlo Ginzburg) where a man called Theiss was tried for heresy in 1692. He claimed that he had transformed into a wolf to battle the devil’s witches and protect the year’s harvest from them; he and his fellow werewolves also raided the countryside roasting and eating livestock.
Meanwhile, in Guernsey, we can see through the early modern period a different sort of ‘werewolfing’– something that to modern eyes looks a lot like trick-or-treating. Youth gatherings in Guernsey were noted for their dirty songs, roaming the countryside stealing fruit and dressing up (in animal costumes, cross-dressing, and in masks) and begging for food and drink.
A really excessive night out, Ogier argues, could be described as ‘werewolfing’, and he shows an example of one case that looks a lot like a ‘charivari’ (a European and North American folk custom designed to shame a member of the community), from England or France.
Being a werewolf could mean a lot of things!
 
What made people in early modern Europe believe (or not believe) in witches, ghosts and werewolves? How were heretics, religious minorities and the poor viewed and treated? What social and political forces were in play in this period?
Studying the 'Other Voices - Marginalisation in Early Modern Europe' module in BA (Hons) History allows you to investigate and analyse the identities, processes, and structures that contributed to the formation of in-groups and out-groups in early modern Europe.

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Witch burning in the County of Regenstein, 1550
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