Olaus Magnus

Olaus Magnus (born Olof Månsson; October 1490 – 1 August 1557) was a Swedish writer, cartographer, and Catholic clergyman. Quotes In Prussia, Livonia, and Lithuania, although the inhabitants suffer considerably from the rapacity of wolves throughout the year, in that these animals rend their cattle, which are scattered in great numbers through the woods, whenever they stray in the very least, yet this is not regarded by them as such a serious matter as what they endure from men turned into wolves.On the feast of the Nativity of Christ, at night, such a multitude of wolves transformed from men gather together in a certain spot, arranged among themselves, and then spread to rage with wondrous ferocity against human beings, and those animals which are not wild, that the natives of these regions suffer more detriment from these, than they do from true and natural wolves; for when a human habitation has been detected by them isolated in the woods, they besiege it with atrocity, striving to break in the doors, and in the event of their doing so, they devour all the human beings, and every animal which is found within. They burst into the beer-cellars, and there they empty the tuns of beer or mead, and pile up the empty casks one above another in the middle of the cellar, thus showing their difference from natural and genuine wolves. ... Between Lithuania, Livonia, and Courland are the walls of a certain old ruined castle. At this spot congregate thousands, on a fixed occasion, and try their agility in jumping. Those who are unable to bound over the wall, as is often the case with the fattest, are fallen upon with scourges by the captains and slain. Historia de Vent. Septent. Basil. 15, lib. xviii. cap. 45. Translated by Sabine Baring-Gould, The Book of Were-Wolves (1865) ch. 5, pp. 53-4 External links Category:1490 births Category:1557 deaths Category:Authors from Sweden Category:Clergy from Sweden Category:University of Rostock alumni