if the peasants still gathered in holy places in nature to worship Pagan gods and perform sacrifices. In 1667-68, the Church Commission performed an investigation in Southern Estonia and reported that in almost every parish, there were Pagans who gathered in holy Pagan places or houses and celebrated Pagan gods to whom they drank and performed rituals under the supervision of certain men and women who acted as Pagan priests and priestesses. Many peasants were hostile toward Christianity and refused to go to church. This Paganism was a cause of great dislike by the Christian German clergy and the German landlords, who referred to the Pagan priests and priestesses as wizards and witches and used the witch trials to exterminate Paganism and enforce Christianity upon the peasantry. The witch trials See also Werewolf witch trials The population of Livonia did believe in sorcery as such, but seldom in witchcraft as it was defined in the modern Christian demonology of the time. People were normally accused by their neighbors for having caused harm on them, their animals or their farm by the use of enchanted food or drink. People in general does not appear to have believed in the Devil's Pact and neither the accusers, witnesses or the accused normally mentioned Satan at all until they were interrogated by the authorities, who used torture to adjust the confessions of the accused witches to modern demonology and the Devil's Pact and Sabbath of Satan described in the witchcraft handbooks of the continent. While the belief in Satanic witchcraft was rare among the peasantry, however, the belief in werewolves were strong and accusations was directed toward people accused of having harmed others while in their wolfe-shape: these form of accusations were also transformed in to witch trials by the authorities, who adjusted the confessions of the accused to fit the modern Christian witchcraft ideology. Torture was commonplace in Baltic witch trials, as was the ordeal by water, and the method of execution was to be burned alive at the stake, only in rare cases commuted to being decapitated beforehand. The name of the accused are seldom documented, but the majority appear to have been elderly people of the peasantry, often cunning folk or their relatives. Men appear to have been accused about as often as women and in some regions even more often: of the 206 accused in Estonia were the gender is