ABSTRACT
In 1612, a published pamphlet recounted a story about religious conflicts in the city of Onnau in Westphalia and their outcome. 1 The Zwinglian majority of the town forced the Lutheran parson to step down and to leave the pulpit to a Zwinglian preacher. As a consequence of this decision, Protestant believers were excluded from their church and from listening to sermons. But, as the pamphlet recounts, one Sunday morning in church, as the Zwinglian congregation was listening to its new preacher, a black raven flew into the town, landed on top of the church, and after a while, crashed through the window into the church; once near the pulpit it transformed itself into a tall black man, with two long horns and a long black cape. The man tore the preacher's cloak into a thousand shreds and threw them into the audience. He then stuck out his long, red tongue, and, spitting fire against the pulpit with an incredible roar which could be heard all over the town, he left the church, again through a window. The people fled from the church, deathly pale. They realized that they had acted wrongly against the Protestants, and the authorities decided to reinstate the old parson immediately.
