icted; that fifteen days
after the same festival of All Saints, being again in the shape of a
wolf, he devoured a boy thirteen years of age, having previously torn
off his leg and thigh with his teeth, and hid them away for his
breakfast on the morrow. He was, furthermore, indicted for giving way
to the same diabolical and unnatural propensities even in his shape of
a man, and that he had strangled a boy in a wood with the intention of
eating him, which crime he would have effected if he had not been seen
by the neighhours and prevented.
Gilles Garnier was put to the rack, after fifty witnesses had deposed
against him: he confessed everything that was laid to his charge. He
was, thereupon, brought back into the presence of his judges, when Dr.
Camus, in the name of the Parliament of Dole, pronounced the following
sentence:--
"Seeing that Gilles Garnier has, by the testimony of credible
witnesses, and by his own spontaneous confession, been proved guilty of
the abominable crimes of lycanthropy and witchcraft, this court
condemns him, the said Gilles, to be this day taken in a cart from this
spot to the place of execution, accompanied by the executioner (maitre
executeur de la haute justice), where he, by the said executioner,
shall be tied to a stake and burned alive, and that his ashes be then
scattered to the winds. The Court further condemns him, the said
Gilles, to the costs of this prosecution."
"Given at Dole, this 18th day of January, 1573."
In 1578, the Parliament of Paris was occupied for several days with the
trial of a man, named Jacques Roller. He, also, was found guilty of
being a loup-garou, and in that shape devouring a little boy. He was
burnt alive in the Place de Greve.
In 1579, so much alarm was excited in the neighbourhood of Melun by the
increase of witches and loup-garous, that a council was held to devise
some measures to stay the evil. A decree was passed, that all witches,
and consulters with witches, should be punished with death; and not
only those, but fortune-tellers and conjurors of every kind. The
Parliament of Rouen took up the same question in the following year,
and decreed that the possession of a grimoire, or book of spells, was
sufficient evidence of witchcraft; and that all persons on whom such
books were found should be burned alive. Three councils were held in
different parts of France in the year 1583, all in relation to the same
subject. The Parliament of Bourdeaux is
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