The fear of wolves pervaded many different aspects of regional cultures. In the first canto of Dante's Inferno in the Commedia the wolf appears in one of the oldest and most durable associations in its history as a symbol of greed and fraud.

In the eighth circle of Hell, Dante finds those condemned for "sins of the wolf": seducers and hypocrites, magicians, thieves and liars. In Norse mythology, Fenrir the wolf was the bad guy, eventual slayer of Odin. 

In the laws of the Franks, the Normans, Cnut, Edward the Confesser and Henry I, 'wolf' or 'wolf's head' meant 'outlaw'.  Occasionally in medieval Europe, a wolf would hang next to a condemed criminal on the gallows.