October 8, 2025 • 40 mins
Peter Stubbe or Peter Stumpp, also known as the Werewolf of Bedburg, was part of a case in Germany where the concepts of witchcraft and lycanthropy were interconnected.
Research:
- Baillie, Nathan. “Monstrous Lessons: Peter Stumpp, the Werewolf of Bedburg.” University of Saskatchewan Undergraduate Research Journal Volume 9, Issue 2, 2024.
- Baring-Gould, Sabine. “The Book of Were-wolves: Being an Account of a Terrible Superstition.” London. Smith, Elder and Co. Cornhill. 1865. https://archive.org/details/thebookofwerewolvesbarin/
- Barker, Sara. “Time in English Translations of Continental News.” News Networks in Early Modern Europe. Brill. Via JSTOR. https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1163/j.ctt1w8h1ng.21
- Beck, Melinda. “Before America Had Witch Trials, Europe Had Werewolf Trials.” History. 10/15/2021. https://www.history.com/articles/werewolf-trials-europe-witches
- Crabb, Jon. “Woodcuts and Witches.” The Public Doman Review. 5/4/2017. https://publicdomainreview.org/essay/woodcuts-and-witches/
- Davidson, Jane P. and Bob Canino. “Wolves, Witches, and Werewolves: Lycanthropy and Witchcraft from 1423 to 1700.” Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts, 1990, Vol. 2, No. 4 (8) (1990). Via JSTOR. https://www.jstor.org/stable/43308065
- de Blécourt, Willem. “Monstrous Theories:: Werewolves and the Abuse of History.” Preternature: Critical and Historical Studies on the Preternatural , Vol. 2, No. 2 (2013). Via JSTOR. https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5325/preternature.2.2.0188
- Dinwiddie, Gerda, trans. “The Execution of Werewolf, Peter Stump: A Translation.” Dana K. Rehn. https://danakrehnblog.wordpress.com/2021/05/22/the-execution-of-werewolf-petter-stump/
- Dinwiddie, Gerda, trans. “Truthful and Frightening Description of the many Sorcerers or Witches: An English Translation.” Dana Rehn. https://danakrehnblog.wordpress.com/2022/01/02/truthful-and-frightening-description-of-the-many-sorcerers-or-witches-an-english-translation/
- Priest, Hannah. “The She-wolves of Julich.” History Today. Vol. 65, Issue 6. June 2015.
- Summers, Montague. “The Werewolf in Lore and Legend.” Dover Publications. 1933. https://archive.org/details/TheWerewolfInLoreAndLegend/page/n273/mode/2up
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V.
Speaker 1 (00:14):
Wilson and I'm Holly Frye.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
We have done several episodes about witch trials that took
place in Europe and North America during the early modern period,
especially in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. So that includes
our episodes on the Varda witch Trials of Norway in
sixteen twenty one, Matthew Hopkins who framed himself as witch
(00:36):
Finder General in East Anglia in the sixteen forties, and
the trial of Goody Garlic on Long Island in sixteen
fifty seven. There are some really old episodes by prior
hosts on the infamous Salem witch trials that started in
sixteen ninety two as well, and of course there is
our very recent episode on Alice Kittler involving the first
(00:59):
person to be burned and at the stake for witchcraft
in Ireland in thirteen twenty four, so that was really
centuries before these kinds of trials really peaked. We also
have a past episode about someone who was tried for
both witchcraft and lycanthropy that was Jiles Garnier, known as
(01:19):
the werewolf of dol who was convicted in fifteen seventy three.
We are talking about another convicted werewolf today, that is
Peter Stuba or Peter Stump, also known as the werewolf
of Bedburg. And these two Peter Steub and Gil's Garnier,
they were not isolated cases. The concepts of witchcraft and
(01:43):
lycanthropy were interconnected during this period. Cultures all around the
world have stories and legends and folklore about people who
can't shape shift into animals or animals that take on
human form. This episode is not a remotely comprehensive overview
of this kind of shape shifting or even of where
(02:05):
wolves in general. This is just focused on Western Europe,
specifically in what is now Germany and the surrounding area
in the early modern period. Uh Also, this episode is
grizzly and disturbing. The charges against Peter Stump included things
like gruesome murders and cannibalism and incest and rape, among
(02:29):
other things. If there's anything that you might want to
be warned about, it's probably in here. Honestly, spiders, there's
no spiders. I exactly was thinking spiders and I was like,
there's no spiders, no snakes either, or ragnophobes are safe.
Speaker 1 (02:47):
But what we are going to start with is wolves. Today,
in Europe and North America, it is extremely rare for
a person to be attacked by a wolf, especially in
the wild. The biggest exceptions involves wolves, including rabid wolves
and attacks involving people who are out with their dogs.
The dogs are really what the wolf is seeing is prey,
(03:08):
not the person. Wolves can sometimes pray on livestock, but
they prefer wild animals like deer and elk, and the
very large majority of livestock deaths in these parts of
the world are not predator related. But none of that
was true in early modern Europe. Wolf attacks on livestock
and on people, especially children, were a much bigger issue.
(03:32):
We talked about this a little bit in our episode
on the Beast of Jevaudant, which was about a series
of animal attacks in eighteenth century France, and we ran
that as a Saturday Classic in October of twenty nineteen.
Speaker 2 (03:45):
There is some speculation about why wolves seem to have
been a bigger threat to humans during the early modern period,
even when they didn't have rabies or some kind of
other disease affecting their behavior. One the period of regional
cooling known as the Little Ice Age, which was well
underway by the start of the sixteenth century. This led
(04:07):
to longer winters and cooler temperatures than some parts of
the world, including parts of Europe, so wolves usual food
sources might have been more scarce, leading them to feed
on more livestock, which put them into closer contact with humans.
Another possibility is warfare, with wolves scavenging bodies from battlefields.
(04:29):
This isn't about developing a so called taste for human flesh,
but about wolves becoming more habituated to people and human environments.
In today's world, at least in North America, we see
this kind of habituation more with bears, when people either
feed bears on purpose or don't take steps to keep
their food in garbage away from bears, but it is
(04:51):
the same basic idea, wolves starting to see humans as
potential food sources rather than as something to stay away from,
eventually leading.
Speaker 1 (05:00):
To confrontations between the two. In a world where wolf
attacks were more common, people were also more focused on
them and worried about them, which probably led to a
perception that they were even more frequent than they really were.
Speaker 2 (05:15):
Like I said at the top of the show, there
are stories of people turning into or being turned into,
various animals, including wolves, all across legends and folklore all
around the world. Other ideas that were related to that,
but a little more disconnected, are things like Germanic and
Norse peoples wearing wolf skins in battle, with the idea
(05:37):
that they would bestow a wolf like ferocity on them.
In medieval Europe, those kinds of ideas combined with the
fear of wolves and wolf attacks, and all of that
coalesced into the idea of the werewolf.
Speaker 1 (05:53):
A werewolf was not just a person who could transform
into a wolf, but someone who became a wolf and
then did monstrous things. Sometimes these monstrous deeds were carried
out only when they were transformed, but it could be
all of the time, regardless of whether they were in
the shape of a wolf or a human. If a
community started experiencing a lot of livestock deaths or animal attacks,
(06:17):
people might blame a werewolf for them, not just a
regular wolf. Where wolves were associated not just with gruesome
attacks on people and animals, but also with other crimes
like rape and cannibalism and with sins like gluttony and lust,
and wolves were also connected to the idea of witchcraft.
(06:38):
There were stories about witches enchanting wolves so that they
could ride them or use them as beasts of burden,
and stories about witches transforming themselves or other witches into
wolves for that same reason, But that kind of transformation
wasn't quite the same thing as being a werewolf. A
witch was someone who was believed to be magic to
(07:01):
harm people, and similarly, a were wolf was someone who
was believed to be transforming into a wolf in order
to do harm. So witches only became were wolves if
they were hurting people while they were transformed, not if
they were just kind of running around in wolf form
or carrying other witches on their backs. Most of the time,
(07:22):
people who were accused of witchcraft were women, but people
who were accused of lycanthropy or lycanthropy and witchcraft together
were more likely to be men. One notable exception is
the she wolves of Yulish, who were described in a
broadsheet by George Cress of Augsburg. This broadsheet said there
were three hundred female were wolves in what is now
(07:45):
northwestern Germany who terrorized and slaughtered men and boys until
eighty five of them were captured and burned at the
stake on May sixth, fifteen ninety one. No records of
this trial have been unearthed, and there are no individuals
women named in the broadsheet, so it is possible this
was fictionalized or heavily embellished based on a smaller incident.
(08:08):
We're going to return to the idea of sensationalized broadsheets later.
Speaker 2 (08:13):
Generally speaking, while there were people who criticized these ideas
and dismissed witchcraft as superstition or nonsense, a lot of
people in this time and place did believe that witches
and witchcraft were real. There were manuals about how to
identify witches and extract their confessions and execute them, and
(08:33):
they took for granted that witchcraft was a real phenomenon.
But there was more debate about where wolves. One idea
was that witches really were doing nefarious magic, but where
wolves were a delusion brought on either by the witch
or by the devil. So a person was deluded into
believing that he could turn into a wolf, or the
(08:56):
people of a community were deluded into believing that there
was a where in their midst. Other accounts treated like
anthropy as a real phenomenon, and there were some common
themes among them. Often a magical item caused the transformation,
usually either a belt or a girdle or an ungwent.
(09:16):
A few accounts described the skin of a wolf being
used for this purpose. Most of the time, whatever it
was came from a man in black, or from a demon,
or even the devil himself, who gave someone the object
or the knowledge of how to make it. Sometimes this
was a gift or something that was part of a bargain,
and sometimes it was a curse. Or sometimes the person
(09:40):
thought it was going to help them, but then it
turned out to be more of a curse. These intersecting
ideas of witchcraft and lycanthropy led to werewolf trials that
were very similar to the witch trials that were happening
at the same time in the same regions of the world,
and they're sometimes framed as where wolf witch trials. For example,
(10:02):
in Bethson, France, in fifteen twenty one, shepherds Pierre Bougat
and Michel Verdon claimed to have made a pact with
demons for food and money and protection for their flocks.
In exchange, they said they were given an ointment that
would turn them into wolves and were made to hunt
and eat children. They were both convicted and burned at
(10:23):
the stake. Gilles Garnier, who we covered on the show before,
was found guilty of both like anthropy and witchcraft in
fifteen seventy three after a series of killings in dul France,
and they were similarly burned to death. Aenri Bougett, who
was Grand Judge of the Saint Claud region of franche
Comte in what's now eastern France, carried out a whole
(10:45):
series of trials for witchcraft and like aanthropy in the
fifteen nineties, and he sentenced the convicted were wolves to
being burned alive.
Speaker 1 (10:55):
Peter Stump's conviction for lycanthropy took place in what is
now Germany in fifteen eight and we're going to get
into that after we pause for a sponsor break.
Speaker 2 (11:13):
We don't really know much about Peter Stump, since various
sixteenth century accounts of him do exist, but they really
don't go beyond the werewolf stuff. There's no birth record
for him or records of life outside of this context.
There are also a lot of different spellings of his name,
(11:33):
which isn't really unusual for the time, especially considering that
some of these documents only survive as translations. In the
words of Montague Summers in his nineteen thirty three book
The Werewolf Quote, one of the most famous of all
German werewolf trials was that of Peter Stump or Stump Stube,
Stubb a Stub, as the name is indifferently spelled, and
(11:56):
there are other variants, who was executed for his horrible
crimes at Bedburg near Cologne on thirty first March fifteen ninety.
Speaker 1 (12:06):
Uh. I don't know where.
Speaker 2 (12:08):
Montagu Summers got that date of March thirty first, fifteen ninety.
Most other sources say this was in October of fifteen
eighty nine. Some of them specifically say October thirty first,
fifteen eighty nine, and that includes something that Summer's reprints
in his book immediately after saying that it was in March.
Some version of Stump may or may not have even
(12:31):
been this man's actual surname. A broadsheet that was published
in Nuremberg in fifteen eighty nine does not name the perpetrator,
but is clearly about this story. It describes a farmer
who had a belt that let him turn into a wolf.
He attacked another farmer while in wolf form, and that
farmer fought back, cutting off the wolf's paw. The wolf fled,
(12:56):
and when the.
Speaker 1 (12:56):
Farmer told a neighbor about what had happened, he pulled
out the paw evidence he was telling the truth. But
the paw had transformed into a human hand. When the
werewolf was apprehended in his human form, his missing hand
became part of the evidence against him. Various sources draw
a connection between the missing hand and the name Stump,
(13:17):
but some accounts of this don't mention a missing hand
at all. Today, the longest and most detailed contemporary account
of this is a true discourse declaring the damnable life
and death of one stubiped, a most wicked sorcerer who,
in the likeness of a wolf, committed many murders, continuing
(13:38):
this devilish practice twenty five years, killing and devouring men,
women and children, who for the same fact was taken
and executed the thirty first of October last past in
the town of Bedburn, near the city of Colin in Germany.
This document was translated from High Dutch meaning German and
(13:58):
printed in fifteen ninety, and there are no known copies
of the original German text today. It's the same one
that Montague Summers reprinted in its entirety in his Werewolf book.
We are going to tell Peter's story as it was
described in this text and point out some moments where
other accounts have different details. The pamphlet describes Stoba Peter
(14:21):
as growing up around Bedburg, which is west of Cologne.
From his youth he was quote greatly inclined to evil
and the practicing of wicked arts, even from twelve years
of age till twenty, and so forwards till his dying day.
Peter wanted magic, necromancy, and sorcery, so he acquainted himself
(14:41):
with quote many infernal spirits and fiends, insomuch that forgetting
the God that made him and that Savior that shed
his blood for man's redemption. In the end, careless of salvation,
gave both soul and body to the devil forever for
small carnal pleasure in this life, that he might be
famous and spoken of on earth, though he lost heaven.
(15:02):
Thereby the devil.
Speaker 2 (15:05):
Had a ready ear for quote, the lewd motions of
cursed men. So the devil promised to give Peter whatever
his heart desired during his mortal life. Peter desired neither
riches nor external outward pleasure, but quote, having a tyrannous
heart in a most cruel, bloody mind. He only requested that,
(15:25):
at his pleasure he might work his malice on men, women,
and children in the shape of some beast, whereby he
might hew, without dread or danger of life, an unknown
to be the executor of any bloody enterprise which he
meant to commit. The devil saw Peter as quote a
fit instrument to perform mischief, as a wicked fiend pleased
(15:48):
with the desire of wrong and destruction. So the devil
gave Peter a girdle that would turn him into quote
a greedy, devouring wolf, strong and mighty, with eyes great
and large, which in the night sparkled like unto brands
of fire, a mouth great and wide with most sharp
and cruel teeth, a huge body, and mighty pause. When
(16:10):
Peter removed the girdle, he would go back to his
human form, as though nothing had happened. This account describes
Peter as very happy about this development. Since he was
already inclined to blood and cruelty, he quote proceeded to
the execution of sundry most heinous and vile murders, for
if any person displeased him, he would incontinent thirst for revenge,
(16:35):
and no sooner should they or any of theirs walk
abroad in the fields or about the city, but in
the shape of a wolf, he would presently encounter them
and never rest until he had plucked out their throats
and tear their joints. Asunder, Peter had already been prone
to cruelty and violence, and being given this girdle fed
(16:57):
those tendencies, so over time he died a real lust
for blood. He would also put on a quote comely
habit and walk through the towns where the friends and
relatives of his victims lived. He would observe them and
also pick out people who appealed to him so he
could stalk and murder them. Later, this included finding attractive
(17:19):
women who he would rape before killing them. This account
of Peter's life as a werewolf is truly horrifying. Quote,
thus continuing his devilish and damnable deeds within the compass
of a few years he had murdered thirteen young children and
two goodly young women, big with child, tearing the children
(17:41):
out of their wombs in most bloody and savage sort,
and after eat their hearts, panting hot and raw, which
he accounted dainty morsels and best agreeing to his appetite. Moreover,
he used many times to kill lambs and kids and
such like beasts, feeding on the same, most usually raw
and bloody, as if he had been a natural wolf, indeed,
(18:05):
so that all men mistrusted nothing less than his devilish sorcery.
Speaker 1 (18:10):
Peter also committed incest with his daughter, Beale, who he
fathered when he was quote not altogether so wickedly given
she was thought of as beautiful and graceful, and commended
by all who knew her. Beale had a child as
a result of this assault. Peter also committed incest with
his sister, and he had a relationship with a woman
(18:33):
named Katherine Trumpon, who was described as his gossip. At
the time, the word gossip had several meanings that it
does not today, including godparent, godchild, and chummy friend, and
one broadsheet describes Katherine as Peter's godmother. Katherine Trumpin is
described as quote a woman of tall and comely stature,
(18:54):
of exceeding good favor, and one that was well esteemed
among her neighbors. And for seven years Peter also kept
company with a quote she devil, a wicked spirit in
the form of a beautiful woman, sent by the devil,
who knew that Peter would not be able to resist her.
Speaker 2 (19:13):
Multiple sixteenth century documents describe Peter Stump by various spellings,
as living as a werewolf for about twenty five years,
during which time he killed sixteen people, thirteen of them children,
as well as various livestock. Some accounts say the adults
were two women and a man, and others say they
(19:33):
were two men and a woman. But when he put
on that comely habit and appeared around town, people were
not suspicious of him. We'll talk about how he was
eventually apprehended after a sponsor break. In addition to his
(19:57):
daughter Bille, Peter Stump had a son. It's not clear
who the son's mother was from the accounts that I read,
but Peter is described as calling this boy quote his
heart's ease. Peter seemed to take more delight in his
son than in almost anything else, but that anything else
was violence, rape, and murder. One day, father and son
(20:19):
were walking in the woods together and the son went
ahead to answer the call of nature. While he was gone,
Peter turned into a wolf, and then he encountered his
son again. While he was still in wolf form, Peter
was insensible and killed his son and ate his brain.
Then one day Peter was in his wolf foreman came
upon some children who were playing in a meadow near
(20:41):
some cattle. Peter attacked one of the little girls, trying
to grab her by the neck and drag her away,
but she was wearing a coat with a very high
stiff collar and he couldn't bite through it. She started
screaming and the cattle stampeded, thinking the wolf was trying
to take one of their calves. The little girl is
escaped and the stampeding cattle drove Peter away. This little
(21:04):
girl was related to Measter Tice Urtine, a brewer who
lived in London and had already gotten some letters from
other people around Bedburg about the murders and livestock killings there.
Family wrote to him about this attack, as well other
people in London and people living elsewhere in Germany. Had
also heard about the deaths of people in livestock around
(21:26):
Bedburg and about various unsuccessful efforts to try to catch
the culprit keep everyone safe. This included people raising mastiffs
and other large dogs to try to protect themselves. The
assault on the children who were out with the cattle
led to a bigger hunt for the culprit. A true
discourse declaring the damnable life and death of one Stoob
(21:49):
of Peter presents the turning point in this search as
the moment that God allowed some hunters to see Peter
in the act of removing his girdle and changing from
a wolf to a nicely dressed man carrying a walking
stick as he made his way to town. The hunters
walked home with him to make sure he was a
(22:09):
real person and not a delusion or some other fantastical occurrence,
and once they were sure that Peter was real, they
captured him and took him before the magistrates. Peter was
put to the rack that's the torture device that slowly
pulled a person by their wrists and ankles until their
joints dislocated.
Speaker 1 (22:29):
Some accounts make.
Speaker 2 (22:30):
It sound like he confessed under torture but a true
discourse declaring the damnable life and death of one step
but Peter describes him as fearing torture and voluntarily confessing
his whole life, including all the murders, and getting the
werewolf girdle from the devil seemingly before actually being tortured.
Peter was condemned to death for these crimes. His daughter Belle,
(22:54):
who you'll recall was a victim of incest, and his gossip,
Catherine Trompkin, were both found to be accessories to the murders.
Judgment was pronounced on all three of them on October
twenty eighth, fifteen eighty nine. In the words of the
True Discourse quote Stuba, Peter, as principal malefactor, was judged
(23:14):
first to have his body laid on a wheel and
with red hot burning pincers in ten several places, to
have the flesh pulled off from the bones. After that,
his legs and arms to be broken with a wooden
axe or hatchet. Afterward, to have his head struck from
his body, then to have his carcass burned to ashes. Also,
(23:36):
his daughter and his gossip were judged to be burned
quick to ashes the same time, and day with the
carcass of the aforesaid Stuba Peter. And on the thirty
first of the same month they suffered death accordingly in
the town of Bedburg, in the presence of many peers
and princes of Germany. Afterward, a tall pole was erected
in the town of Bedburg with the wheel Peter had
(23:58):
been broken on, mounted horizontally at the top. On top
of the wheel was a wooden likeness of a wolf,
and above that was Peter Stuff's head. Sixteen pieces of
wood were hung around the edges of the wheel for
the sixteen people that he had confessed to Killing's kind
of monument was, of course, partly a warning to other werewolves,
(24:20):
and the True Discourse described itself as quote a warning
to all sorcerers and witches which unlawfully follow their own
devilish imagination to the utter mind and destruction of their
souls eternally, from which wicked and damnable practice. Elsewhere, this
document says it is quote published for example's sake, and
(24:40):
lastly to censure thereof, as reason and wisdom doth think convenient,
considering the subtlety that Satan useth to work the soul's destruction.
Four people witnessed to the document as true. Those were Tysartine,
William Brewer, Adolph State, and George Bories Quote, with diverse
(25:00):
others that have seen the same. Multiple broadsheets and pamphlets
relating this story and illustrated with woodcuts were printed in
Germany in fifteen eighty nine and fifteen ninety. A lot
of them share the same basic details about a werewolf
near Bedburg who killed sixteen people and committed incest with
his daughter, and whose execution involved a wheel, hot pincers
(25:23):
and beheading. Some of the broadsheets used the same woodcut
illustration which focused mainly on the execution, including Peter Beeale
and Catherine being burned at the stake, and showing the
pole topped with the wheel a model of a wolf
in Peter's head. In addition to being published around Germany,
these were translated into other languages and printed in other
(25:45):
parts of Europe, including the English translation of the True
Discourse that we have been reading from. These pamphlets and
woodcuts were connected to the witchcraft and lyke aanthropy trials
that were happening across Eureupe. More broadly, Johannes Gutenberg had
developed his movable type printing press and what's now Germany
in the mid fifteenth century. While this was not the
(26:08):
world's first printing press or the world's first use of
movable type, it had a dramatic impact on print culture
in Europe. It became so much easier to print and
distribute broadsheets and woodcuts like these. Since these works were
made to be sold, they were often heavily sensationalized, and
(26:29):
they leaned into people's fears. They also incorporated moralistic themes,
like associating were wolves with carnality and lust. The she
Wolves of Yulish broadsheet that we talked about earlier framed
the she wolves as bad mothers and by extension, as
bad women, since one of them had a son who
was able to find and use her werewolf belt, and
(26:51):
she left him alone while she ran around in wolf form.
In addition to the broadsheets about Stupid Peter by many
similar names, and other purported werewolves and witches, there were
also books and broadsheets about how to identify and hunt them.
These all fed into each other, with reports of witches
and werewolves leading to new broadsheets describing gruesome crimes and
(27:16):
grizzly executions, and those broadsheets and other print materials circling
back to reinforce the idea that witchcraft and lycanthropy were
ongoing threats. Broadsheets also reinforced the idea of what witches
and werewolves looked like and what kinds of crimes they committed,
and how they could be identified and how they could
(27:37):
be executed to make sure that they would not be
supernaturally returned to life. The story of Peter Stumf appeared
in other contexts as well. For example, Richard Rowlands also
known as Richard Verstigan, published an etymological dictionary called A
Restitution of Decayed Intelligence in sixteen oh five. Here's it's
(27:59):
defaults of the word werewolf quote. The were wolves are
certain sorcerers who, having anointed their bodies with an ointment
which they make by the instinct of the devil, and
putting on a certain enchanted girdle, do not only, unto
the view of others, seem as wolves, but to their
own thinking, have both the shape and nature of wolves,
(28:21):
so long as they wear the said girdle. And they
do dispose themselves as very wolves in worrying and killing,
and most of human creatures of such sundry have been
taken and executed in sundry parts of Germany and the Netherlands.
One Peter Stump, for being a werewolf and having killed
thirteen children, two women and one man, was it Bedburg,
(28:43):
not far from Cullen, in the year fifteen eighty nine,
put unto a very terrible death. The flesh of diverse
parts of his body was pulled out with hot iron tongs,
his arms, thighs and legs broke on a wheel, and
his body lastly burnt. He died with very god great remorse,
desiring that his body might not be spared from any
(29:03):
torment so his soul might be saved. The werewolf, so
called in Germany, is in France called Lupegaru. For centuries
after this, Peter Stump was one of the go to
illustrations for what it meant to be a were wolf.
Because I was looking for stuff on him, I found
so many Like into the sixteen hundred, seventeen hundreds, eighteen hundreds,
(29:26):
anytime there was mention of a werewolf, it was like, yeah,
like Peter Stump That's a great example. Because these broadsheets
and other works tended to be very heavily sensationalized, and
the people creating them often copied from one another, it's
hard to know what was really going on in and
around Bedburg in the late sixteenth century. Peter Stump confessed
(29:47):
to murders and to incest, but he also did so
either under torture or under the threat of torture, and
he did also confess to being able to turn into
a wolf, so it's hard to take that confession just
at face value. It is possible that he really was
a serial killer who did murder numerous people, including children.
(30:07):
It's also possible that the real culprit was someone else,
or that at least some of those killings were really
wolf attacks, or that the number of deaths was a
lot smaller than what was described in these broadsheets and pamphlets.
We mentioned earlier that wolf attacks could be connected to warfare.
The purported were wolf activities around Bedburg partially coincided with
(30:31):
the Cologne War of fifteen eighty three to fifteen eighty eight,
which was connected to the Reformation and counter Reformation, and
to wider conflicts in Europe. Back in fifteen fifty five,
the Peace of Augsburg had been negotiated to try to
end conflict between Catholics and Lutherans in the Holy Roman Empire,
which covered a lot of what is now Germany and
(30:53):
adjacent areas. One provision of this agreement was that any
ecclesiastical prince who converted to Protestantism had to give up
his lands and his office. In fifteen eighty two, the
Archbishop Elector of Cologne converted to Calvinism and refused to
surrender his land and title. In addition to violating the
(31:14):
Peace of Augsburg, this threatened to give Protestants a majority
in the College of Electors. So this was seen as
a major issue, and it led to five years of fighting,
with cities and towns besieged and plundered until the conflict
finally ended in a Catholic victory.
Speaker 1 (31:30):
This fighting would have caused the kinds of conditions that
were connected to spikes in wolf attacks, as well as
the uncertainty, unrest, and fear that were connected to reports
of witchcraft and lycanthropy. The witch trials of the early
modern period were of course also interconnected with religion. The
same printing technology that was being used to produce all
(31:53):
these broadsheets about witches and werewolves was also being used
to print religious materials. The flourishing print culture of the
era was a critical part of the Reformation and the
Counter Reformation and all the upheaval that were associated with them,
and that upheaval was again part of what fed into
(32:13):
these witch and werewolf panics. The resulting witch and werewolf
hunts also had explicitly religious underpinnings beyond the idea that
the devil was involved. As examples, Matthew Hopkins, the Witchfinder General,
was the son of a Puritan clergyman, while Malleus Maleficarum
or Hammer of Witches was one of the era's best
(32:35):
known treatises on witchcraft, and it was written by Catholic
clergymen who had been inquisitors the inquisitions investigations into heresy
and blasphemy also included investigations into alleged witchcraft.
Speaker 2 (32:50):
Yeah, there was a lot going on. Like we haven't
even mentioned the second plague pandemic which was also happening
at the same time, also causing a lot of chaos
and death and uncertainty. Long story short, this is a
really gruesome story, but also a really gruesome story that
was part of a century's long moral panic that played
out alongside these multiple intense social and cultural and religious
(33:15):
changes in strife. That's the Werewolf story for today. Do
you have listener mail to go with it? I do.
I have listener mail that is from Noel. They wrote
and said, Dear Holly and Tracy. In your recent awesome
Eponymous Diseases episode, you read a listener mail asking for
research tips in the Age of AI and had an
extended discussion about finding reputable sources. I know y'all love libraries,
(33:38):
so I just wanted to note that, depending on where
a person lives, they may be able to access peer
reviewed articles through their local library. Libraries in some major cities,
including New York City and Boston, offer access to databases
like jastore. I know not everyone is going to want
to read or be able to easily read something out
of a medical journal, but research on history, for example,
was a bit more accessible, and obviously print books and
(34:01):
libraries are safe from LMS for now. I look forward
to your show every week for pet tax I have
attached to a photo of my seven year old golden doodle
Tater Tot who still acts like a baby, and my
five year old cats, Mira long hair and Jojin short hair.
The former is our homes resident monarch, while the latter
is a gremlin, but a cuddly one. Warmly Noel, Thank you, Noel.
(34:25):
These are some cute pictures.
Speaker 1 (34:27):
Baby.
Speaker 2 (34:28):
We have a dog in a vest sitting on a beach,
looking happy well, curly hair and dog. Three animals, two
cats and a dog taking up the entirety of a bed.
We have a kitty cat sitting in the bathtub. That
happens at our house, not as much anymore. Our cats
used to like to play around the shower curtain and
kind of duck back and forth out of there and
(34:49):
pounce on each other. And a kitty cat in a basket.
Thank you Noel for these adorable pictures. Yeah, so, the
answer for information about finding reputable sources was kind of
in the context of like, you're on the Internet. You're
surrounded by things like TikTok and YouTube videos and Wikipedia
and chat GBT, like, how do you find reputable information?
(35:13):
A question about more formal academic research would have totally
different answers. Boston Public Library does have jastore access. Anyone
in Massachusetts can get a Boston Public Library Digital Library card.
I don't actually use Boston Public Library for Jaystore because
I have jastore access through other means. But yeah, even
(35:37):
if the library doesn't have jastore specifically, most of the
public libraries that I have been part of do have
some EBSCO and Gale databases that have access to some
other peer reviewed journals, and I feel like that is
the most useful when somebody is doing like a formal
research project, like a school project, or if you are
(35:59):
writing a novel and you want to make sure that
your novel is historically accurate, that kind of peer reviewed
stuff might be good for informing that. It's not so
much what I would recommend if like you're just trying
to get quick answers to something on the internet, which
is sort of how I interpreted the original question that
we were responding to. And I also, at this point
(36:22):
in my life, I don't actually advocate most people trying
to read the journal articles about things like vaccine research
and medical developments and stuff like that, because a lot
of those papers really do need background information and expertise
(36:48):
to really understand and make sense of and at this point,
I've seen so many blog posts and news articles and
whatnot where folks have really misinterpreted things that are normal
in the field of something like medical research, have like
(37:11):
interpreted that as scary just because of not having the
background information and context to interpret things and to understand
like why things in research papers and big studies and
things like that are framed in the way that they are.
Every once in a while, I will see a bunch
of like very scary headlines about like study fines alarming
(37:39):
levels of arsenic in sugar snappiece that's made up, and
there will be just a whole big kind of panic
in the media about the sugar snap piece, and then
a couple of people who do have that background and
the kind of research that the paper was reporting will
read it and go, Okay, that that's really not with
(38:00):
this is saying that three hundred percent increase is from
a tiny amount almost too small to be measured, to
a larger amount that is still so small that it
can almost not be measured. There's been a big like
do your own research kind of vibe and a lot
of things related to healthcare, and I think a lot
(38:20):
of that has fed into misinformation about healthcare spread by
people who just don't have the background to be able
to read and understand and correctly interpret those kinds of documents. So, yeah,
there are tons of resources available. Holly and I are
(38:41):
big advocates of going to the library. A lot of
libraries still have reference librarians of some sort who can
help people find accurate information. Sadly, we already do have
print books being entirely written through large language models that
are making their way into print. That does seem to
be more of an issue with people ordering things off
(39:03):
of something like Amazon and getting something that was clearly
written by a chatbot, more so than things that have
been curated into a library collection, because typically the librarians
who do that work know what to look out for. Yeah,
collection development is an entire field. Yeah, we love the library.
(39:26):
I love the access. I think I have three different
library cards. It might be four.
Speaker 1 (39:31):
Now.
Speaker 2 (39:32):
There's the library card for the library network that I
live in. There's Boston Public Library because I live in Massachusetts.
There's another library network for the place that I lived previously,
which is also one that, like the card number is
still active, but it's still accessible to other people who
live in the area, and then membership library that I
(39:52):
pay for, and then the library where my husband works.
A wealth of library resources. I love library. So those
are additional tips for other kinds of research. If you
would like to write to us about this or any
other podcast, or at history podcast at iHeartRadio dot com
(40:13):
and you can't subscribe to our show on the iHeartRadio app,
anywhere else you'd like to get your podcasts. Stuff you
Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V.
Speaker 1 (00:14):
Wilson and I'm Holly Frye.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
We have done several episodes about witch trials that took
place in Europe and North America during the early modern period,
especially in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. So that includes
our episodes on the Varda witch Trials of Norway in
sixteen twenty one, Matthew Hopkins who framed himself as witch
(00:36):
Finder General in East Anglia in the sixteen forties, and
the trial of Goody Garlic on Long Island in sixteen
fifty seven. There are some really old episodes by prior
hosts on the infamous Salem witch trials that started in
sixteen ninety two as well, and of course there is
our very recent episode on Alice Kittler involving the first
(00:59):
person to be burned and at the stake for witchcraft
in Ireland in thirteen twenty four, so that was really
centuries before these kinds of trials really peaked. We also
have a past episode about someone who was tried for
both witchcraft and lycanthropy that was Jiles Garnier, known as
(01:19):
the werewolf of dol who was convicted in fifteen seventy three.
We are talking about another convicted werewolf today, that is
Peter Stuba or Peter Stump, also known as the werewolf
of Bedburg. And these two Peter Steub and Gil's Garnier,
they were not isolated cases. The concepts of witchcraft and
(01:43):
lycanthropy were interconnected during this period. Cultures all around the
world have stories and legends and folklore about people who
can't shape shift into animals or animals that take on
human form. This episode is not a remotely comprehensive overview
of this kind of shape shifting or even of where
(02:05):
wolves in general. This is just focused on Western Europe,
specifically in what is now Germany and the surrounding area
in the early modern period. Uh Also, this episode is
grizzly and disturbing. The charges against Peter Stump included things
like gruesome murders and cannibalism and incest and rape, among
(02:29):
other things. If there's anything that you might want to
be warned about, it's probably in here. Honestly, spiders, there's
no spiders. I exactly was thinking spiders and I was like,
there's no spiders, no snakes either, or ragnophobes are safe.
Speaker 1 (02:47):
But what we are going to start with is wolves. Today,
in Europe and North America, it is extremely rare for
a person to be attacked by a wolf, especially in
the wild. The biggest exceptions involves wolves, including rabid wolves
and attacks involving people who are out with their dogs.
The dogs are really what the wolf is seeing is prey,
(03:08):
not the person. Wolves can sometimes pray on livestock, but
they prefer wild animals like deer and elk, and the
very large majority of livestock deaths in these parts of
the world are not predator related. But none of that
was true in early modern Europe. Wolf attacks on livestock
and on people, especially children, were a much bigger issue.
(03:32):
We talked about this a little bit in our episode
on the Beast of Jevaudant, which was about a series
of animal attacks in eighteenth century France, and we ran
that as a Saturday Classic in October of twenty nineteen.
Speaker 2 (03:45):
There is some speculation about why wolves seem to have
been a bigger threat to humans during the early modern period,
even when they didn't have rabies or some kind of
other disease affecting their behavior. One the period of regional
cooling known as the Little Ice Age, which was well
underway by the start of the sixteenth century. This led
(04:07):
to longer winters and cooler temperatures than some parts of
the world, including parts of Europe, so wolves usual food
sources might have been more scarce, leading them to feed
on more livestock, which put them into closer contact with humans.
Another possibility is warfare, with wolves scavenging bodies from battlefields.
(04:29):
This isn't about developing a so called taste for human flesh,
but about wolves becoming more habituated to people and human environments.
In today's world, at least in North America, we see
this kind of habituation more with bears, when people either
feed bears on purpose or don't take steps to keep
their food in garbage away from bears, but it is
(04:51):
the same basic idea, wolves starting to see humans as
potential food sources rather than as something to stay away from,
eventually leading.
Speaker 1 (05:00):
To confrontations between the two. In a world where wolf
attacks were more common, people were also more focused on
them and worried about them, which probably led to a
perception that they were even more frequent than they really were.
Speaker 2 (05:15):
Like I said at the top of the show, there
are stories of people turning into or being turned into,
various animals, including wolves, all across legends and folklore all
around the world. Other ideas that were related to that,
but a little more disconnected, are things like Germanic and
Norse peoples wearing wolf skins in battle, with the idea
(05:37):
that they would bestow a wolf like ferocity on them.
In medieval Europe, those kinds of ideas combined with the
fear of wolves and wolf attacks, and all of that
coalesced into the idea of the werewolf.
Speaker 1 (05:53):
A werewolf was not just a person who could transform
into a wolf, but someone who became a wolf and
then did monstrous things. Sometimes these monstrous deeds were carried
out only when they were transformed, but it could be
all of the time, regardless of whether they were in
the shape of a wolf or a human. If a
community started experiencing a lot of livestock deaths or animal attacks,
(06:17):
people might blame a werewolf for them, not just a
regular wolf. Where wolves were associated not just with gruesome
attacks on people and animals, but also with other crimes
like rape and cannibalism and with sins like gluttony and lust,
and wolves were also connected to the idea of witchcraft.
(06:38):
There were stories about witches enchanting wolves so that they
could ride them or use them as beasts of burden,
and stories about witches transforming themselves or other witches into
wolves for that same reason, But that kind of transformation
wasn't quite the same thing as being a werewolf. A
witch was someone who was believed to be magic to
(07:01):
harm people, and similarly, a were wolf was someone who
was believed to be transforming into a wolf in order
to do harm. So witches only became were wolves if
they were hurting people while they were transformed, not if
they were just kind of running around in wolf form
or carrying other witches on their backs. Most of the time,
(07:22):
people who were accused of witchcraft were women, but people
who were accused of lycanthropy or lycanthropy and witchcraft together
were more likely to be men. One notable exception is
the she wolves of Yulish, who were described in a
broadsheet by George Cress of Augsburg. This broadsheet said there
were three hundred female were wolves in what is now
(07:45):
northwestern Germany who terrorized and slaughtered men and boys until
eighty five of them were captured and burned at the
stake on May sixth, fifteen ninety one. No records of
this trial have been unearthed, and there are no individuals
women named in the broadsheet, so it is possible this
was fictionalized or heavily embellished based on a smaller incident.
(08:08):
We're going to return to the idea of sensationalized broadsheets later.
Speaker 2 (08:13):
Generally speaking, while there were people who criticized these ideas
and dismissed witchcraft as superstition or nonsense, a lot of
people in this time and place did believe that witches
and witchcraft were real. There were manuals about how to
identify witches and extract their confessions and execute them, and
(08:33):
they took for granted that witchcraft was a real phenomenon.
But there was more debate about where wolves. One idea
was that witches really were doing nefarious magic, but where
wolves were a delusion brought on either by the witch
or by the devil. So a person was deluded into
believing that he could turn into a wolf, or the
(08:56):
people of a community were deluded into believing that there
was a where in their midst. Other accounts treated like
anthropy as a real phenomenon, and there were some common
themes among them. Often a magical item caused the transformation,
usually either a belt or a girdle or an ungwent.
(09:16):
A few accounts described the skin of a wolf being
used for this purpose. Most of the time, whatever it
was came from a man in black, or from a demon,
or even the devil himself, who gave someone the object
or the knowledge of how to make it. Sometimes this
was a gift or something that was part of a bargain,
and sometimes it was a curse. Or sometimes the person
(09:40):
thought it was going to help them, but then it
turned out to be more of a curse. These intersecting
ideas of witchcraft and lycanthropy led to werewolf trials that
were very similar to the witch trials that were happening
at the same time in the same regions of the world,
and they're sometimes framed as where wolf witch trials. For example,
(10:02):
in Bethson, France, in fifteen twenty one, shepherds Pierre Bougat
and Michel Verdon claimed to have made a pact with
demons for food and money and protection for their flocks.
In exchange, they said they were given an ointment that
would turn them into wolves and were made to hunt
and eat children. They were both convicted and burned at
(10:23):
the stake. Gilles Garnier, who we covered on the show before,
was found guilty of both like anthropy and witchcraft in
fifteen seventy three after a series of killings in dul France,
and they were similarly burned to death. Aenri Bougett, who
was Grand Judge of the Saint Claud region of franche
Comte in what's now eastern France, carried out a whole
(10:45):
series of trials for witchcraft and like aanthropy in the
fifteen nineties, and he sentenced the convicted were wolves to
being burned alive.
Speaker 1 (10:55):
Peter Stump's conviction for lycanthropy took place in what is
now Germany in fifteen eight and we're going to get
into that after we pause for a sponsor break.
Speaker 2 (11:13):
We don't really know much about Peter Stump, since various
sixteenth century accounts of him do exist, but they really
don't go beyond the werewolf stuff. There's no birth record
for him or records of life outside of this context.
There are also a lot of different spellings of his name,
(11:33):
which isn't really unusual for the time, especially considering that
some of these documents only survive as translations. In the
words of Montague Summers in his nineteen thirty three book
The Werewolf Quote, one of the most famous of all
German werewolf trials was that of Peter Stump or Stump Stube,
Stubb a Stub, as the name is indifferently spelled, and
(11:56):
there are other variants, who was executed for his horrible
crimes at Bedburg near Cologne on thirty first March fifteen ninety.
Speaker 1 (12:06):
Uh. I don't know where.
Speaker 2 (12:08):
Montagu Summers got that date of March thirty first, fifteen ninety.
Most other sources say this was in October of fifteen
eighty nine. Some of them specifically say October thirty first,
fifteen eighty nine, and that includes something that Summer's reprints
in his book immediately after saying that it was in March.
Some version of Stump may or may not have even
(12:31):
been this man's actual surname. A broadsheet that was published
in Nuremberg in fifteen eighty nine does not name the perpetrator,
but is clearly about this story. It describes a farmer
who had a belt that let him turn into a wolf.
He attacked another farmer while in wolf form, and that
farmer fought back, cutting off the wolf's paw. The wolf fled,
(12:56):
and when the.
Speaker 1 (12:56):
Farmer told a neighbor about what had happened, he pulled
out the paw evidence he was telling the truth. But
the paw had transformed into a human hand. When the
werewolf was apprehended in his human form, his missing hand
became part of the evidence against him. Various sources draw
a connection between the missing hand and the name Stump,
(13:17):
but some accounts of this don't mention a missing hand
at all. Today, the longest and most detailed contemporary account
of this is a true discourse declaring the damnable life
and death of one stubiped, a most wicked sorcerer who,
in the likeness of a wolf, committed many murders, continuing
(13:38):
this devilish practice twenty five years, killing and devouring men,
women and children, who for the same fact was taken
and executed the thirty first of October last past in
the town of Bedburn, near the city of Colin in Germany.
This document was translated from High Dutch meaning German and
(13:58):
printed in fifteen ninety, and there are no known copies
of the original German text today. It's the same one
that Montague Summers reprinted in its entirety in his Werewolf book.
We are going to tell Peter's story as it was
described in this text and point out some moments where
other accounts have different details. The pamphlet describes Stoba Peter
(14:21):
as growing up around Bedburg, which is west of Cologne.
From his youth he was quote greatly inclined to evil
and the practicing of wicked arts, even from twelve years
of age till twenty, and so forwards till his dying day.
Peter wanted magic, necromancy, and sorcery, so he acquainted himself
(14:41):
with quote many infernal spirits and fiends, insomuch that forgetting
the God that made him and that Savior that shed
his blood for man's redemption. In the end, careless of salvation,
gave both soul and body to the devil forever for
small carnal pleasure in this life, that he might be
famous and spoken of on earth, though he lost heaven.
(15:02):
Thereby the devil.
Speaker 2 (15:05):
Had a ready ear for quote, the lewd motions of
cursed men. So the devil promised to give Peter whatever
his heart desired during his mortal life. Peter desired neither
riches nor external outward pleasure, but quote, having a tyrannous
heart in a most cruel, bloody mind. He only requested that,
(15:25):
at his pleasure he might work his malice on men, women,
and children in the shape of some beast, whereby he
might hew, without dread or danger of life, an unknown
to be the executor of any bloody enterprise which he
meant to commit. The devil saw Peter as quote a
fit instrument to perform mischief, as a wicked fiend pleased
(15:48):
with the desire of wrong and destruction. So the devil
gave Peter a girdle that would turn him into quote
a greedy, devouring wolf, strong and mighty, with eyes great
and large, which in the night sparkled like unto brands
of fire, a mouth great and wide with most sharp
and cruel teeth, a huge body, and mighty pause. When
(16:10):
Peter removed the girdle, he would go back to his
human form, as though nothing had happened. This account describes
Peter as very happy about this development. Since he was
already inclined to blood and cruelty, he quote proceeded to
the execution of sundry most heinous and vile murders, for
if any person displeased him, he would incontinent thirst for revenge,
(16:35):
and no sooner should they or any of theirs walk
abroad in the fields or about the city, but in
the shape of a wolf, he would presently encounter them
and never rest until he had plucked out their throats
and tear their joints. Asunder, Peter had already been prone
to cruelty and violence, and being given this girdle fed
(16:57):
those tendencies, so over time he died a real lust
for blood. He would also put on a quote comely
habit and walk through the towns where the friends and
relatives of his victims lived. He would observe them and
also pick out people who appealed to him so he
could stalk and murder them. Later, this included finding attractive
(17:19):
women who he would rape before killing them. This account
of Peter's life as a werewolf is truly horrifying. Quote,
thus continuing his devilish and damnable deeds within the compass
of a few years he had murdered thirteen young children and
two goodly young women, big with child, tearing the children
(17:41):
out of their wombs in most bloody and savage sort,
and after eat their hearts, panting hot and raw, which
he accounted dainty morsels and best agreeing to his appetite. Moreover,
he used many times to kill lambs and kids and
such like beasts, feeding on the same, most usually raw
and bloody, as if he had been a natural wolf, indeed,
(18:05):
so that all men mistrusted nothing less than his devilish sorcery.
Speaker 1 (18:10):
Peter also committed incest with his daughter, Beale, who he
fathered when he was quote not altogether so wickedly given
she was thought of as beautiful and graceful, and commended
by all who knew her. Beale had a child as
a result of this assault. Peter also committed incest with
his sister, and he had a relationship with a woman
(18:33):
named Katherine Trumpon, who was described as his gossip. At
the time, the word gossip had several meanings that it
does not today, including godparent, godchild, and chummy friend, and
one broadsheet describes Katherine as Peter's godmother. Katherine Trumpin is
described as quote a woman of tall and comely stature,
(18:54):
of exceeding good favor, and one that was well esteemed
among her neighbors. And for seven years Peter also kept
company with a quote she devil, a wicked spirit in
the form of a beautiful woman, sent by the devil,
who knew that Peter would not be able to resist her.
Speaker 2 (19:13):
Multiple sixteenth century documents describe Peter Stump by various spellings,
as living as a werewolf for about twenty five years,
during which time he killed sixteen people, thirteen of them children,
as well as various livestock. Some accounts say the adults
were two women and a man, and others say they
(19:33):
were two men and a woman. But when he put
on that comely habit and appeared around town, people were
not suspicious of him. We'll talk about how he was
eventually apprehended after a sponsor break. In addition to his
(19:57):
daughter Bille, Peter Stump had a son. It's not clear
who the son's mother was from the accounts that I read,
but Peter is described as calling this boy quote his
heart's ease. Peter seemed to take more delight in his
son than in almost anything else, but that anything else
was violence, rape, and murder. One day, father and son
(20:19):
were walking in the woods together and the son went
ahead to answer the call of nature. While he was gone,
Peter turned into a wolf, and then he encountered his
son again. While he was still in wolf form, Peter
was insensible and killed his son and ate his brain.
Then one day Peter was in his wolf foreman came
upon some children who were playing in a meadow near
(20:41):
some cattle. Peter attacked one of the little girls, trying
to grab her by the neck and drag her away,
but she was wearing a coat with a very high
stiff collar and he couldn't bite through it. She started
screaming and the cattle stampeded, thinking the wolf was trying
to take one of their calves. The little girl is
escaped and the stampeding cattle drove Peter away. This little
(21:04):
girl was related to Measter Tice Urtine, a brewer who
lived in London and had already gotten some letters from
other people around Bedburg about the murders and livestock killings there.
Family wrote to him about this attack, as well other
people in London and people living elsewhere in Germany. Had
also heard about the deaths of people in livestock around
(21:26):
Bedburg and about various unsuccessful efforts to try to catch
the culprit keep everyone safe. This included people raising mastiffs
and other large dogs to try to protect themselves. The
assault on the children who were out with the cattle
led to a bigger hunt for the culprit. A true
discourse declaring the damnable life and death of one Stoob
(21:49):
of Peter presents the turning point in this search as
the moment that God allowed some hunters to see Peter
in the act of removing his girdle and changing from
a wolf to a nicely dressed man carrying a walking
stick as he made his way to town. The hunters
walked home with him to make sure he was a
(22:09):
real person and not a delusion or some other fantastical occurrence,
and once they were sure that Peter was real, they
captured him and took him before the magistrates. Peter was
put to the rack that's the torture device that slowly
pulled a person by their wrists and ankles until their
joints dislocated.
Speaker 1 (22:29):
Some accounts make.
Speaker 2 (22:30):
It sound like he confessed under torture but a true
discourse declaring the damnable life and death of one step
but Peter describes him as fearing torture and voluntarily confessing
his whole life, including all the murders, and getting the
werewolf girdle from the devil seemingly before actually being tortured.
Peter was condemned to death for these crimes. His daughter Belle,
(22:54):
who you'll recall was a victim of incest, and his gossip,
Catherine Trompkin, were both found to be accessories to the murders.
Judgment was pronounced on all three of them on October
twenty eighth, fifteen eighty nine. In the words of the
True Discourse quote Stuba, Peter, as principal malefactor, was judged
(23:14):
first to have his body laid on a wheel and
with red hot burning pincers in ten several places, to
have the flesh pulled off from the bones. After that,
his legs and arms to be broken with a wooden
axe or hatchet. Afterward, to have his head struck from
his body, then to have his carcass burned to ashes. Also,
(23:36):
his daughter and his gossip were judged to be burned
quick to ashes the same time, and day with the
carcass of the aforesaid Stuba Peter. And on the thirty
first of the same month they suffered death accordingly in
the town of Bedburg, in the presence of many peers
and princes of Germany. Afterward, a tall pole was erected
in the town of Bedburg with the wheel Peter had
(23:58):
been broken on, mounted horizontally at the top. On top
of the wheel was a wooden likeness of a wolf,
and above that was Peter Stuff's head. Sixteen pieces of
wood were hung around the edges of the wheel for
the sixteen people that he had confessed to Killing's kind
of monument was, of course, partly a warning to other werewolves,
(24:20):
and the True Discourse described itself as quote a warning
to all sorcerers and witches which unlawfully follow their own
devilish imagination to the utter mind and destruction of their
souls eternally, from which wicked and damnable practice. Elsewhere, this
document says it is quote published for example's sake, and
(24:40):
lastly to censure thereof, as reason and wisdom doth think convenient,
considering the subtlety that Satan useth to work the soul's destruction.
Four people witnessed to the document as true. Those were Tysartine,
William Brewer, Adolph State, and George Bories Quote, with diverse
(25:00):
others that have seen the same. Multiple broadsheets and pamphlets
relating this story and illustrated with woodcuts were printed in
Germany in fifteen eighty nine and fifteen ninety. A lot
of them share the same basic details about a werewolf
near Bedburg who killed sixteen people and committed incest with
his daughter, and whose execution involved a wheel, hot pincers
(25:23):
and beheading. Some of the broadsheets used the same woodcut
illustration which focused mainly on the execution, including Peter Beeale
and Catherine being burned at the stake, and showing the
pole topped with the wheel a model of a wolf
in Peter's head. In addition to being published around Germany,
these were translated into other languages and printed in other
(25:45):
parts of Europe, including the English translation of the True
Discourse that we have been reading from. These pamphlets and
woodcuts were connected to the witchcraft and lyke aanthropy trials
that were happening across Eureupe. More broadly, Johannes Gutenberg had
developed his movable type printing press and what's now Germany
in the mid fifteenth century. While this was not the
(26:08):
world's first printing press or the world's first use of
movable type, it had a dramatic impact on print culture
in Europe. It became so much easier to print and
distribute broadsheets and woodcuts like these. Since these works were
made to be sold, they were often heavily sensationalized, and
(26:29):
they leaned into people's fears. They also incorporated moralistic themes,
like associating were wolves with carnality and lust. The she
Wolves of Yulish broadsheet that we talked about earlier framed
the she wolves as bad mothers and by extension, as
bad women, since one of them had a son who
was able to find and use her werewolf belt, and
(26:51):
she left him alone while she ran around in wolf form.
In addition to the broadsheets about Stupid Peter by many
similar names, and other purported werewolves and witches, there were
also books and broadsheets about how to identify and hunt them.
These all fed into each other, with reports of witches
and werewolves leading to new broadsheets describing gruesome crimes and
(27:16):
grizzly executions, and those broadsheets and other print materials circling
back to reinforce the idea that witchcraft and lycanthropy were
ongoing threats. Broadsheets also reinforced the idea of what witches
and werewolves looked like and what kinds of crimes they committed,
and how they could be identified and how they could
(27:37):
be executed to make sure that they would not be
supernaturally returned to life. The story of Peter Stumf appeared
in other contexts as well. For example, Richard Rowlands also
known as Richard Verstigan, published an etymological dictionary called A
Restitution of Decayed Intelligence in sixteen oh five. Here's it's
(27:59):
defaults of the word werewolf quote. The were wolves are
certain sorcerers who, having anointed their bodies with an ointment
which they make by the instinct of the devil, and
putting on a certain enchanted girdle, do not only, unto
the view of others, seem as wolves, but to their
own thinking, have both the shape and nature of wolves,
(28:21):
so long as they wear the said girdle. And they
do dispose themselves as very wolves in worrying and killing,
and most of human creatures of such sundry have been
taken and executed in sundry parts of Germany and the Netherlands.
One Peter Stump, for being a werewolf and having killed
thirteen children, two women and one man, was it Bedburg,
(28:43):
not far from Cullen, in the year fifteen eighty nine,
put unto a very terrible death. The flesh of diverse
parts of his body was pulled out with hot iron tongs,
his arms, thighs and legs broke on a wheel, and
his body lastly burnt. He died with very god great remorse,
desiring that his body might not be spared from any
(29:03):
torment so his soul might be saved. The werewolf, so
called in Germany, is in France called Lupegaru. For centuries
after this, Peter Stump was one of the go to
illustrations for what it meant to be a were wolf.
Because I was looking for stuff on him, I found
so many Like into the sixteen hundred, seventeen hundreds, eighteen hundreds,
(29:26):
anytime there was mention of a werewolf, it was like, yeah,
like Peter Stump That's a great example. Because these broadsheets
and other works tended to be very heavily sensationalized, and
the people creating them often copied from one another, it's
hard to know what was really going on in and
around Bedburg in the late sixteenth century. Peter Stump confessed
(29:47):
to murders and to incest, but he also did so
either under torture or under the threat of torture, and
he did also confess to being able to turn into
a wolf, so it's hard to take that confession just
at face value. It is possible that he really was
a serial killer who did murder numerous people, including children.
(30:07):
It's also possible that the real culprit was someone else,
or that at least some of those killings were really
wolf attacks, or that the number of deaths was a
lot smaller than what was described in these broadsheets and pamphlets.
We mentioned earlier that wolf attacks could be connected to warfare.
The purported were wolf activities around Bedburg partially coincided with
(30:31):
the Cologne War of fifteen eighty three to fifteen eighty eight,
which was connected to the Reformation and counter Reformation, and
to wider conflicts in Europe. Back in fifteen fifty five,
the Peace of Augsburg had been negotiated to try to
end conflict between Catholics and Lutherans in the Holy Roman Empire,
which covered a lot of what is now Germany and
(30:53):
adjacent areas. One provision of this agreement was that any
ecclesiastical prince who converted to Protestantism had to give up
his lands and his office. In fifteen eighty two, the
Archbishop Elector of Cologne converted to Calvinism and refused to
surrender his land and title. In addition to violating the
(31:14):
Peace of Augsburg, this threatened to give Protestants a majority
in the College of Electors. So this was seen as
a major issue, and it led to five years of fighting,
with cities and towns besieged and plundered until the conflict
finally ended in a Catholic victory.
Speaker 1 (31:30):
This fighting would have caused the kinds of conditions that
were connected to spikes in wolf attacks, as well as
the uncertainty, unrest, and fear that were connected to reports
of witchcraft and lycanthropy. The witch trials of the early
modern period were of course also interconnected with religion. The
same printing technology that was being used to produce all
(31:53):
these broadsheets about witches and werewolves was also being used
to print religious materials. The flourishing print culture of the
era was a critical part of the Reformation and the
Counter Reformation and all the upheaval that were associated with them,
and that upheaval was again part of what fed into
(32:13):
these witch and werewolf panics. The resulting witch and werewolf
hunts also had explicitly religious underpinnings beyond the idea that
the devil was involved. As examples, Matthew Hopkins, the Witchfinder General,
was the son of a Puritan clergyman, while Malleus Maleficarum
or Hammer of Witches was one of the era's best
(32:35):
known treatises on witchcraft, and it was written by Catholic
clergymen who had been inquisitors the inquisitions investigations into heresy
and blasphemy also included investigations into alleged witchcraft.
Speaker 2 (32:50):
Yeah, there was a lot going on. Like we haven't
even mentioned the second plague pandemic which was also happening
at the same time, also causing a lot of chaos
and death and uncertainty. Long story short, this is a
really gruesome story, but also a really gruesome story that
was part of a century's long moral panic that played
out alongside these multiple intense social and cultural and religious
(33:15):
changes in strife. That's the Werewolf story for today. Do
you have listener mail to go with it? I do.
I have listener mail that is from Noel. They wrote
and said, Dear Holly and Tracy. In your recent awesome
Eponymous Diseases episode, you read a listener mail asking for
research tips in the Age of AI and had an
extended discussion about finding reputable sources. I know y'all love libraries,
(33:38):
so I just wanted to note that, depending on where
a person lives, they may be able to access peer
reviewed articles through their local library. Libraries in some major cities,
including New York City and Boston, offer access to databases
like jastore. I know not everyone is going to want
to read or be able to easily read something out
of a medical journal, but research on history, for example,
was a bit more accessible, and obviously print books and
(34:01):
libraries are safe from LMS for now. I look forward
to your show every week for pet tax I have
attached to a photo of my seven year old golden doodle
Tater Tot who still acts like a baby, and my
five year old cats, Mira long hair and Jojin short hair.
The former is our homes resident monarch, while the latter
is a gremlin, but a cuddly one. Warmly Noel, Thank you, Noel.
(34:25):
These are some cute pictures.
Speaker 1 (34:27):
Baby.
Speaker 2 (34:28):
We have a dog in a vest sitting on a beach,
looking happy well, curly hair and dog. Three animals, two
cats and a dog taking up the entirety of a bed.
We have a kitty cat sitting in the bathtub. That
happens at our house, not as much anymore. Our cats
used to like to play around the shower curtain and
kind of duck back and forth out of there and
(34:49):
pounce on each other. And a kitty cat in a basket.
Thank you Noel for these adorable pictures. Yeah, so, the
answer for information about finding reputable sources was kind of
in the context of like, you're on the Internet. You're
surrounded by things like TikTok and YouTube videos and Wikipedia
and chat GBT, like, how do you find reputable information?
(35:13):
A question about more formal academic research would have totally
different answers. Boston Public Library does have jastore access. Anyone
in Massachusetts can get a Boston Public Library Digital Library card.
I don't actually use Boston Public Library for Jaystore because
I have jastore access through other means. But yeah, even
(35:37):
if the library doesn't have jastore specifically, most of the
public libraries that I have been part of do have
some EBSCO and Gale databases that have access to some
other peer reviewed journals, and I feel like that is
the most useful when somebody is doing like a formal
research project, like a school project, or if you are
(35:59):
writing a novel and you want to make sure that
your novel is historically accurate, that kind of peer reviewed
stuff might be good for informing that. It's not so
much what I would recommend if like you're just trying
to get quick answers to something on the internet, which
is sort of how I interpreted the original question that
we were responding to. And I also, at this point
(36:22):
in my life, I don't actually advocate most people trying
to read the journal articles about things like vaccine research
and medical developments and stuff like that, because a lot
of those papers really do need background information and expertise
(36:48):
to really understand and make sense of and at this point,
I've seen so many blog posts and news articles and
whatnot where folks have really misinterpreted things that are normal
in the field of something like medical research, have like
(37:11):
interpreted that as scary just because of not having the
background information and context to interpret things and to understand
like why things in research papers and big studies and
things like that are framed in the way that they are.
Every once in a while, I will see a bunch
of like very scary headlines about like study fines alarming
(37:39):
levels of arsenic in sugar snappiece that's made up, and
there will be just a whole big kind of panic
in the media about the sugar snap piece, and then
a couple of people who do have that background and
the kind of research that the paper was reporting will
read it and go, Okay, that that's really not with
(38:00):
this is saying that three hundred percent increase is from
a tiny amount almost too small to be measured, to
a larger amount that is still so small that it
can almost not be measured. There's been a big like
do your own research kind of vibe and a lot
of things related to healthcare, and I think a lot
(38:20):
of that has fed into misinformation about healthcare spread by
people who just don't have the background to be able
to read and understand and correctly interpret those kinds of documents. So, yeah,
there are tons of resources available. Holly and I are
(38:41):
big advocates of going to the library. A lot of
libraries still have reference librarians of some sort who can
help people find accurate information. Sadly, we already do have
print books being entirely written through large language models that
are making their way into print. That does seem to
be more of an issue with people ordering things off
(39:03):
of something like Amazon and getting something that was clearly
written by a chatbot, more so than things that have
been curated into a library collection, because typically the librarians
who do that work know what to look out for. Yeah,
collection development is an entire field. Yeah, we love the library.
(39:26):
I love the access. I think I have three different
library cards. It might be four.
Speaker 1 (39:31):
Now.
Speaker 2 (39:32):
There's the library card for the library network that I
live in. There's Boston Public Library because I live in Massachusetts.
There's another library network for the place that I lived previously,
which is also one that, like the card number is
still active, but it's still accessible to other people who
live in the area, and then membership library that I
(39:52):
pay for, and then the library where my husband works.
A wealth of library resources. I love library. So those
are additional tips for other kinds of research. If you
would like to write to us about this or any
other podcast, or at history podcast at iHeartRadio dot com
(40:13):
and you can't subscribe to our show on the iHeartRadio app,
anywhere else you'd like to get your podcasts. Stuff you
Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Stuff You Missed in History Class News
Hosts And Creators
Holly Frey
Tracy Wilson
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