Thiess of Kaltenbrun was an old man in 1691, when he entered the historical record. Old Thiess lived in Livonia, then part of the Swedish Empire (did you know there was a Swedish Empire?), now ecompassing parts of southern Estonia and northern Latvia. He was not a wealthy man, nor by most measures a very historically significant one; we know little about his life, and would know nothing at all had he not been accused of being a werewolf.
“Accused” is not the right word. Thiess, without torture or duress, freely and enthusiastically admitted to the court that he was in fact a werewolf. The record of the trial and the subsequent judgment survives, and is remarkable both for its singular weirdness and because Thiess’ driving concern seems less to avoid legal punishment than to clear up some misunderstandings the nature of werewolves. The existence of such things were admitted by some scholars at the time, but they were held to be demonic in nature: werewolves, like witches, made pacts with the Devil and were given their powers in return. Not so, says Thiess; in fact, his primary job as a werewolf was going into Hell and fighting wizards.
To be fair, he was a retired werewolf, having given it up some ten years before he was brought before the court. And he was fairly harmless about it, if not downright benevolent. Much of Thiess’ time in wolf form was spent running around the country with other lycanthropes, stealing and eating small animals and livestock. It’s hard to gauge the tone and attitude of the judges from the trial records, but it seems often to be some combination of wry amusement and total disbelief, such as when they ask Thiess how he uses knives and forks to eat those when he had wolf paws (he didn’t; he ripped off chunks with his teeth). Other times they’re more probing, like when they insist that the devil must have attended these feasts of stolen livestock, just as he was said to attend witches’ sabbaths.
But Thiess denies this. In fact, he says, one of his chief activities as a werewolf was forcing his way into hell and upsetting the devil:
[The werewolves] sometimes quickly run in [to Hell] and snatch something, then run back with it as if fleeing. If they are caught, the guards appointed by the devil strike them with long iron goads they call canes [ruten] and they hunt them down as if they were dogs, for the devil can’t stand them.
Satan also had very large hellhounds which he would send out in pursuit of the werewolves, although the latter always escaped. Thiess’ motives for doing this are entirely selfless: he is fighting sorcerers.
Q: If the devil can’t bear them, why do they become werewolves and run to hell?
A: It happens for this reason, that they thereby might drag out of hell the things the sorcerers brought there: animals, grain, and other produce. In the previous year, he and the others had delayed and they did not come into hell at the right time when the gates were still open, so they couldn’t carry off the grain blossoms and the grain the sorcerers had taken inside, and we had a bad year for grain. But this year, he and the others did the right things at the proper time. The witness himself brought out of hell as much barley, oats, and rye as he could carry. Therefore, this year we have all kinds of grain in abundance, although more oats than barley.
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