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.