The Therian Timeline

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The New Science 1600 - 1660

The Thirty Years War, brought about by tensions between Protestant and Catholic powers, decimated Europe. Colonialism expanded and China and Japan showed new strength.

From this period of religious dessent rose modern science. From the execution of Giordano Bruno to the scientific investigations of Galileo and the development of the scientific method by Sir Francis Bacon and advances by people like John Napier, William Harvey, Rene Descartes, Blais Pascal, and Cristiaan Huygens, the Aristotlean world view was beaten into submissiion by this new world view.

During the 1600s at least 31 men and women were tried for causing damage to property, livestock, and other people as Werewolves in Livonia (modern Estonia). (Noll, 1992, p 87)

1601 John Deacon and John Walker publish Dialogicall Discourses of Spirits and Divels which includes a philosophical dialogue between Orthodoxus, Lycnthropus, and Physiologus in which Lycnthropus is convinced that he does not really turn into a wolf. (Otten, 1985, 103-104, 129-133)

1603 Jean Garnier is tried and sentenced to life in monastery as a Werewolf. The court found that he was mentally incompetent and was, therefore, not culpable. He lived until 1610. (Douglas, 1992, pp 180-183, Otten, 1986, pp 51, 62-68)

1607 A translation of Simon Goulart's Admirable Histories, by Grimestone, appeared in London. In it, he gives a medical critique of lycanthropy including an instance in which he personally observed a case. (Otten, 1986, pp 41-44)

1610 Two women are condemned at Liege as Werewolves. (Douglas, 1992, p 323)

1621 Robert Burton's includes a description of lycanthropy as a form of depression. (Otten, 1986, pp 45-46)

1663 Robert Bayfield includes a brief section on "wolf-madness" in his A treatise De Morborum Capitis Essentiis & Prognosticis (Otten, 1986, p 47)

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Selma, AL 36701
wolf@theriantimeline.com