Case file · Witch trials
Thiess, the werewolf who fought for God
In 1691 an old Livonian peasant named Thiess told a court at Jürgensburg that he was a werewolf who went to Hell three nights a year to fight witches and the Devil and bring back stolen grain.
1691 CE · 56.98, 25.27 · status: official
The account
He called werewolves 'the hounds of God' and insisted they served God, not Satan. The judges, who wanted a confession of a devil's pact, got none; he was flogged and banished. Historian Carlo Ginzburg compared the case to the Friulian benandanti as a trace of an older agrarian shamanism.
The sceptical view
The trial record is real; the beliefs are Thiess's own and say nothing about actual transformation.