From Carlo Ginzberg’s The Night Battles: Witchcraft & Agrarian Cults in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries:
The accused, a certain Thiess, an old man in his eighties, freely confessed to his judges that he was a werewolf (wahrwolff). But his account seriously differs from the concept of lycanthropy which was widespread in northern Germany and the Baltic countries. Thiess related that he once had his nose broken by a peasant of Lemburg named Skeistan, who at that time was already dead. Skeistan was a witch, and with his companions had carried seed grain into hell to keep the crops from growing. With other werewolves Thiess had also gone down into hell and fought with Skiestan. The latter, armed with a broom handle (the traditional symbol of witches) wrapped in the tail of a horse had struck the old man on the nose.
This was not a casual encounter. Three times each year on the nights of St Lucia before Christmas, of Pentecost, and of St John, the werewolves proceeded on foot, and in the form of wolves, to a place located ‘beyond the sea’: hell. There they battled the devil and witches, striking them with lon iron rods and pursuing like dogs. Werewolves, Thiess exclaimed, ‘cannot tolerate the devil’. The judges, undoubtedly astonished, asked for elucidation. If werewolves could not abide the devil, why did they change themselves into wolves and go down into hell? Because, old Thiess explained, by doing so they could bring back up to earh what had been stolen by the witches – livestock, grains, and the other fruits of the earth…
At this point the judges asked where the werewolves went after death. Thiess replied that they were buried but that their souls went to heaven. The judges were visibly shaken. They insisted that werewolves served the devil. The old man emphatically rejected this notion: the werewolves were anything but servants of the devil. The devil was their enemy to the point that they, just like dogs – bceause werewolves were indeed the hounds of god – pursued him, tracked him down and scourged him with whips of iron. They did all this for the sake of mankind. The Livonian werewolves were not alone in their fight with the devil over the harvests. German werewolves did so as well, although they did not belong to the Livonian company and they journeyed down to their own particular hell. The same was also true of Russian werewolves…
The parish priest was summoned, who scolded him and called on him to abandon the errors and diabolical lies with which he had tried to cover up his sins. But this too was useless. In a burst of anger Thiess shoted at the priest that he was tired of hearing all this talk about his evil doings: his actions were better than the priests, and morever he, Thiess, would neither be the first nor the last to commit them. The old man remained steadfast in his convictions and refused to repent.
