Thought for the Week

I discovered the following interesting tidbit in Harry E. Wedeck's A Treasury of Witchcraft (Gramercy, New York, 1994) on page 179. It is an extract from a Renaissance document, a compendium of evil, as it were:

At Bamberg, Peter Stumpf was condemned to death for intimacy with a succubus for more than twenty-eight years. This demon had given him a girdle. When he put it on, it appeared to him and to others that he had changed into a wolf. He tried to devour two of his daughters-in-law.

Francesco Guazzo, Compendium Maleficarum, 1608.

My wife's father is a Stumpf, hailing originally from Thüngersheim on the Main, not too far from Bamberg, which could mean that this werewolf girdle is still in the family. Perhaps I can borrow it!