#jean grenier

[mv11]

نحن لا نختار العزلة

بل نكتشف أننا لطالما كنا فيها

We do not choose solitude we discover that we have always been in it

غرانييه

[jamesstoorie]

"As he thrust his face into mine, fangs bared, I thought he was about to attack me. Rip me to pieces like those boys from folklore who believed they were werewolves".

Ah, so they compare me to my hero, Jean Grenier? I am flattered, but although our stories are similar they are not the same. MiStoorie stands in a field of its own.

MiStoorie: The Autobiography Of A Feral Child by James Stoorie…available now!

[archivist-crow]

Jean Grenier (1603) - Thirteen-year-old werewolf of Landes in southern France.

The case of Jean Grenier became one in the most famous and most-discussed episodes of lycanthropy in Europe. It began one spring afternoon with two girl shepherds. They came upon an odd-looking boy who was sitting on a log. His long red hair was thick and matted, and he had an olive complexion. He was emaciated, but his eyes were bright and fierce and he had prominent canine teeth that protruded over his lower lip when his mouth was closed. His hands were excessively large and powerful-looking. His fingernails were black and pointed like the talons of a bird. His clothing was in tatters. He was given to bursts of maniacal laughter.

He introduced himself as Jean Grenier, the son of a priest, and he demanded to know which of the girls was prettier, for he would marry that one. He said he looked the way he did because sometimes he wore a wolf-skin. The wolf-skin had been given to him by a man named Pierre Labourant, who wore an iron chain about his neck, which he gnawed, and who lived in a hellish place of gloom and fire.

Grenier said that Labourant wrapped the wolf-skin cape around him every Monday, Friday, and Sunday, and for about an hour at dusk every other day. This transformed Grenier into a werewolf. He told the girls:

I have killed dogs and drunk their blood; but little girls taste better, their flesh is tender and sweet, their blood rich and warm. I have eaten many a maiden, as I have been on my raids together with my nine companions. I am a werewolf! Ah, ha! If the sun were to set I would soon fall on one of you and make a meal of you!

The girls fled.

Meanwhile, a 13-year-old girl, Marguerite Poirier, who lived near the village of St. Antoine de Pizon, was well acquainted with Grenier, for she tended sheep with him. He often frightened her with his wild and gruesome stories of being a werewolf and killing and eating dogs and girls. He claimed to have eaten many girls, whose flesh he preferred to dogs, and he described two incidents to Poirier: One girl he nearly devoured, and threw the remainder of her corpse to a wolf that arrived; the second girl he bit to death, lapped up her blood and ate every bit of her except for her arms and shoulders.

One day Poirier had an experience that terrified her so much that she abandoned her flock and ran home. She was tending the sheep alone when she was suddenly attacked by a wild beast that tore her clothing with its fangs. She beat it off with her shepherd's staff. It sat up on its hind legs like a begging dog, and gave her a look of utter rage. It resembled a wolf but was not a wolf: It was shorter and stouter, with a stumpy tail, small head, and red hair.

The villagers were alarmed at this report, for several little girls had gone missing. Poirie's account and her descriptions of Grenier and his stories caused an investigation to be mounted. Grenier was arrested.

It was revealed that he was not the son of a priest, but was the son of a poor laborer in the same village as Poirier. Three months earlier, he had left home and did odd work and begged. He had taken several jobs tending sheep, but had been dismissed for neglecting his work. He said that when he had been 11 years old, a neighbor had taken him deep into the woods and introduced him to Monsieur de la Forest, a black man who signed him with his nail and gave Grenier and his neighbor an ointment and a wolf-skin. From then on, Grenier had run about as a werewolf.

He admitted attacking Poirier, intending to kill her, but she fended him off. He said he had killed only one dog, a white one, and had drunk its blood. He had wounded another dog, but was chased off by its owner. He described killing several children:

* an infant he dragged from its cradle and devoured and shared with a wolf

* a girl shepherd he tore with his teeth and nails, and ate

* a child by a stone bridge he assaulted

Grenier said that he went out hunting for children when commanded to do so by the Lord of the Forest, who was his master. When so ordered, he rubbed the ointment on his body and left his clothes in a thicket. He preferred to go out in the daytime when the moon was waning, but sometimes went out as a wolf at night. The Lord of the Forest had forbidden him to bite the thumbnail of his left hand, and to always keep it in sight when he was in wolf form. This nail was longer and thicker than his other nails.

According to Grenier, his own father also had a wolf-skin and ran with him on one occasion when he killed and ate a girl who was tending geese in the village of Grilland. His stepmother left because once she had seen him vomit the paws of a dog and fingers of a child.

Many of the details given by Grenier in his testimony matched details of known attacks and wounds. However, the only witness who corroborated his assertion that he transformed himself into a wolf was Poirier.

When confronted with his father, Grenier wavered but then stuck to his story. There was no other evidence against the father, who was dismissed by the court.

The president of the court opined that Grenier was merely a feeble-brained imbecile who had hallucinations, and that he was not under any influence of the devil. The court sentenced Grenier to life imprisonment at a monastery at Bordeaux, where he was to receive religious instruction.

At the monastery, Grenier ran about on all fours and ate bloody and raw offal. Seven years into his confinement he was visited by the noted demonologist Pierre Delancre. By then, both his appearance and his mind had greatly deteriorated. He told his complete story to Delancre, and insisted that the Lord of the Forest had visited him twice at the monastery but he had driven him off with a cross.

Soon after Delancre’s visit, Grenier died, at age 20.

Text from The Encyclopedia of Vampires, Werewolves, and Other Monsters (Checkmark Books, 2005) by Rosemary Guiley

[ma-pi-ma]

Paura d’attaccamento degli altri a sé e ricerca di questo attaccamento.

Costante: la debolezza + il desiderio = la fuga.

Jean Grenier

[elizabethanism]

Camus on Proust:

“He’s truly a creator. [...] In fact, very often one leaves him with a slight bitterness. You find and feel so many things that you end up thinking: ‘Everything is said. There’s no need to go back to it.’”

— from a letter to Jean Grenier (tr. Jan F. Rigaud)

[jhesite]

"Society has requirements so cruel for people who have to work - that is almost everybody - that their only hope (except of course the one of an uprising) is to fall sick. We can be surprised of the high number of illnesses and accidents overwhelming us. It is that the humanity weary of its daily work find only this miserable refuge from the illness to save what remains of its soul. The illness for a poor, is the equivalent of a trip, and the life of hospital, it's its life of luxury. If the rich people knew this, they wouldn’t permit to the poor to be sick."

Les îles, Jean Grenier

[antronaut]

Les Îles

[thememoriesofthedead]

31 DAYS OF HORROR: CHAPTER 9

A Brief History of Lycanthropy & Jean Grenier: A 17th Century Werewolf

Werewolves have long since plagued Medieval European folklore with tales of creatures of a bestial nature residing deep within the very hearts of men. Historical accounts from the Medieval and Renaissance periods have documented fierce encounters with a shape-altering creature that preys upon and devours the flesh of men and cattle alike. This creature is often described as being similar to a wolf in appearance, whilst retaining the mentality of a man. This creature appears in various cultures throughout Europe and the Middle East; forming associations with the Roman god, Jupiter, the Neo-Babylonian King, Nebuchadnezzar, a young Spanish Prince, and simple townspeople alike. Due to this creature's affinity with both man and wolf, the terms 'lycanthrope' and 'werewolf' were defined to describe such a formidable creature. The word lycanthrope is formed from the Greek words 'lykos' meaning wolf, and 'anthropus' meaning man, literally meaning wolf-man. Whilst the word werewolf derives from the Latin word 'vir' meaning man, literally meaning man-wolf.

A short account in 17th Century South-West France retold by Sabine-Bearing Gould depicts a young werewolf as follows: During the springtime, three young village girls were tending to their sheep by the sand dunes bordered by both a forest and the ocean, when they noticed a sheep not too far from their location retreating from a depression in the land as if frightened by something. The three girls immediately ran towards the depression where they discovered a young boy of roughly thirteen years. "The appearance of the lad was peculiar. His hair was of a tawny red and thickly matted, falling over his shoulders and completely covering his narrow brow. His small pale-grey eyes twinkled with an expression of horrible ferocity and cunning, from deep sunken hollows. The complexion was of a dark olive colour, the teeth were strong and white, and the canine teeth protruded over the lower lip when the mouth was closed. The boy's hands were large and powerful, the nails black and pointed like bird's talons. He was ill clothed, and seemed to be in the most abject poverty. The few garments that he had on him were in tatters, and through the rents the emaciation of his limbs were plainly visible."During a brief exchange of words between the two companies, the young boy, naming himself as Jean Grenier, reveals that he would take great delight in devouring one of the girls, causing them to retreat without hesitation. Grenier describes his ability to transform freely from boy into wolf via the use of a wolf skin and salve: A layer of salve is applied to the skin to which the wolf skin is applied and wrapped around the body, allowing the user to transform into the likeness of a wolf.

Folklore has presented particular inconsistencies between tales and narratives surrounding the history of the werewolf, but similar questions often arise when questioning the nature of the transformation. May the transformation of man into wolf be at his own will? or be it that he is a lunar slave to the celestial beauty of the full moon? thus causing the transformation of man into wolf to be beyond his conscious control and psychological well-being. Or is that the bestial nature of the wolf that resides deep within all of mankind is able to surface through the conscious efforts of the mind and its will?

For this piece of text I actually stole the words, in a manner of speaking, from my younger-self who wrote about this topic in my dissertation. This fact aside, I've always found werewolves to be one of the most interesting treasures of the folkloric world. To live in a world where the fear of werewolves was very real interests me greatly, that coupled with the werewolf's unusual relationship with the full moon creates an interesting blend of unique traits that had forged a well-renowned character into the pages of Medieval history.