This became a fundamental point. The most dreaded
of predatory animals in the Middle Ages were the wolves. Driven
from the hills and forests in the winter by hunger, they not only
devoured the flocks, but sometimes came into the villages and
seized children. From time to time men and women whose brains
were disordered dreamed that they had been changed into various
animals, and especially into wolves. On their confessing this,
and often implicating others, many executions of lunatics
resulted; moreover, countless sane victims, suspected of the same
impossible crime, were forced by torture to confess it, and sent
unpitied to the stake. The belief in such a transformation
pervaded all Europe, and lasted long even in Protestant countries.
Probably no article in the witch creed had more adherents in the
fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries than this. Nearly
every parish in Europe had its resultant horrors.
The reformed Church in all its branches fully accepted the
doctrines of witchcraft and diabolic possession, and developed
them still further.
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