The Man-Eating Wolves of Renaissance Italy

May 5, 2015

In 1516, the town of Varese Ligure in north-eastern Italy experienced an “invasion of wolves.”  Antonio Cesena (b. 1507), a local canon and historian, recorded in his Relatio dell’origine et successi della Terra di Varese (c 1550s) that “a great fear arose about wolves [that] began a new and unaccustomed war, not against herds and …