The She-Wolves of Jülich

In 1591, Augsburg publisher Georg Kress issued a sensational broadsheet, "The She-Wolves of Jülich," claiming 300 female werewolves terrorized the Duchy of Jülich after making a pact with the devil, with 85 burned at the stake in Ostmilich on May 6, 1591. The account, accompanied by a woodcut of women and wolves committing acts of violence, alleged cannibalism, infanticide and demonic communion, and claimed the women confessed to 94 murders—outdoing the 16 murders attributed to the era's best-known werewolf, Stubbe Peter of Bedburg (1589). Historians note no trial records or names of any of the women survive, and even Stubbe Peter's existence lacks birth, trial or execution records, suggesting the stories were largely fabricated. The tale reflects a late-16th-century boom in lurid "news" broadsheets, driven by anxieties around the Inquisition and Reformation and publishers' appetite for increasingly fantastical diabolical tales. The Jülich women reportedly targeted tradesmen and butchers, killing livestock and horses, undermining the city's socio-economic stability. What to watch: scholars continue to mine such broadsheets for insight into how early modern werewolf narratives were constructed and disseminated.