Despite the triumph of Christianity in cities and towns across northern Europe, local beliefs remained tenacious in the countryside. The religious customs of rural people often combined elements of Christianity with homegrown traditions, all of which appeared unorthodox in the eyes of church authorities. Such was the case of the cult of Saint Guinefort, a holy greyhound renowned as a healer of children. In the early thirteenth century, Guinefort was worshipped as a saint in the region around Lyons, France. When news of this cult reached the ears of the Dominican friar Stephen of Bourbon (1180–1261), he investigated the case. Where the local peasants found a shrine that brought hope of healing for their children, the friar discovered—much to his horror—the deceptions of a demonic influence.
Insulting to God are superstitions that attribute divine honors to demons or to any other creature, as idolatry does, and as wretched women do by magic who seek cures by worshipping elder trees or by making offerings to them, by scorning churches or the relics of the saints, by carrying their children there or to ant hills or to other sites to obtain healing. They did so recently in the diocese of Lyons, where, when I was preaching against magic and hearing confessions, many women confessed that they had brought their children to Saint Guinefort. And since I believed that this was some legitimate saint, I asked and at last I heard that he was a certain greyhound, who died in this way. In the diocese of Lyons, near the town of the nuns called Villeneuve, in the territory of the lord of Villars, there was a certain castle, whose lord had a wife and a little boy. When the lord and lady had left the house, and the nurse had done likewise, the boy was left alone in his room. A giant serpent entered the house and made its way to the child’s room. Seeing this, the greyhound, who had remained behind, quickly followed the serpent, and pursued it beneath the cradle, which fell over as they fought. The dog bit the serpent, which defended itself likewise by biting the dog, but in the end the dog killed it and flung it far from the cradle of the child. This left the cradle stained with the serpent’s blood, as well as the ground and the dog’s mouth and head. The dog stood near the crib, badly wounded by the serpent. When the nurse returned and saw the commotion, she believed that the child had been killed and devoured by the dog. She screamed with great lament. Hearing this, the boy’s mother likewise rushed in, saw the same scene, came to the same conclusion, and likewise screamed. The knight did the same; arriving there, he believed the same thing, so he drew his sword and killed the dog. Then, coming upon the boy, they found him sleeping peacefully and unharmed. Looking about, they found the serpent disfigured by dog bites and dead. Realizing the truth and grieving that they had unjustly killed the dog that had done them such a useful service, they cast his body into a well that lay before the gate of the castle and they dropped a great pile of stones upon him and planted trees next to it as a memorial of the event.
After the castle had been destroyed by divine will, the estate was abandoned by its owner and deserted. Hearing about the dog’s noble deed and how it was killed although innocent for a feat that should have been praised as worthwhile, people from the countryside visited the site, honored the dog as though he was a martyr, and prayed for their illnesses and their necessities. They had been seduced by the devil and deluded in that place again and again, so that through this he could lead them into error. Women especially who had weak or sickly children brought them to the place and in a certain town a few miles away they met an old woman who taught them to perform the rite and to make offerings to demons and to summon them, and she led them to the place. When they arrived, they offered salt and certain other items, and they hung the child’s clothes upon bushes all around and they fastened a needle into the wood that had grown over the place. They passed the naked child through an opening that was between the trunks of two trees, the mother standing on one side holding the child and casting him nine times to the old woman who was on the other side. They summoned by the invocation of demons the fauns that lived in the forest of Rimita, so that they might take away the sick and weak boy (whom they said belonged to the demons) and bring back to them their rightful child, plump and fat, alive and well, whom the fauns had previously carried off with them. And, after they had done this, these murderous mothers took the child and placed him naked at the foot of a tree in a cradle with straw. They lit two candles the length of your thumb at both ends, from a fire which they had brought there and fastened them on the trunk overhead. They withdrew a little way away so that the candles could burn down and so that they could not hear or see the wailing child, and thus these burning candles consumed many children with fire and killed them, as we discovered there from some others. Indeed, a certain woman told me that, when they had summoned the fauns and withdrawn, she saw a wolf (or a devil in the form of a wolf) come out of the forest and steal up to the child, whom it would have devoured if she had not been moved by motherly affection to prevent it from doing so. If they returned to the child and found him still alive, they carried him to a nearby river with rapids called Chalaronne and immersed him nine times. Only an especially hardy child would evade death on the spot or immediately thereafter. So we went to that place, summoned the local people, and preached against this practice. We ordered the dead dog to be dug up and the grove to be chopped down and burned together with the bones of the dog. And I placed an edict from the lords of the land concerning the taking or reclamation of the bones by anyone who came to the place for any such purpose.