why did pope gregory think that cats were evil?why did pope gregory think that cats were evil?

While there appears to be no evidence that Pope Gregory IX ever told people to kill cats, there have been smaller historical examples of Medieval folks killing cats for weird reasons. Many of these rodents had fleas that carried diseases including the Black Plague. In an era when unknown phenomena seemed like they could only be explained by powerful deities, it seemed only natural to the Egyptians to worship kitty cats. What Im seeing here is a well-researched fact piece angering someone who kinda half-remembers something she thinks she read somewhere this one time. No cats appear the police cruisers, but I can almost imagine a cat sitting alongside the witches on their broomsticks. Locusts and every other kind because the sparrow not only ate grain but also insects the great 3 year famin followed and the official Chinese records showed 15 million people died of starvation but later studies done by experts from outside of China say the official numbers are fudged badly in an optimistic attempt to cover the true death toll of around 45 million plus some even say as high as 70 million!! As a noble hailing from the prestigious noble family of Conti di Segni, Ugolino is still related to other popes such as Innocent III, Alexander IV, and Innocent XIII. His pontificate was notable for the papacy's attempts to intervene in the quarrels between Emperor Louis the Pious and his sons. That is, pope condemning cats and declaring satanistique is enough for some people to start mass-killing cats, this assholes claims are 100% wrong; more than one pope ordered cats killed- why not, eventually excommunicaated? So, rather than being a document banning cats from Europe, it was a letter sent to a city warning them about a cult. document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); Museum Hack leads small group, VIP museum tours that are fun, fast-paced and surprisingly cool. With Halloween is around the corner, Chairman Meow is reminded of a time hundreds of years ago when similar institutional dogma helped fuel the outbreak of The Black Plague across Europe, leading to the (ignorant) mass killing of cats in the 14th century. The cat thing is a footnote in his story. At length, when the novice has come forward, [he] is met by a man of wondrous pallor who has black eyes and is so emaciated [and] thin that since his flesh has been wasted, seems to have remaining only skin drawn over bone. But this time, Pope Francis is focusing on all pets saying that people spend way too much money on furry friends. Potential infected flea hosts include: rodents, humans, dogs, and cats. Both believed that cats were satanic and Marburg came up with evidence as to why cats are satanic. If you survived, you lost many people you loved. If these furry creatures association with fictitious international criminals isnt enough, cats also have been linked to witchcraft: In the Middle Ages, women who owned black cats came under suspicion as did the cats, who were assumed to bewitches in disguise and were burned at the stake. Like, if I were to think of evil depictions on display in a museum, this would be one of them. That, or he was a true believer, or both. Now this seems like a story of immense fiction but as it happened so recently in this modern time we have documented proof this is true so why is it so hard to believe the Pope and cat story? . Forgive us! says the master, and the one next to him repeats this, a third responding, We know, master! A fourth says And we must obey. 4, So whats up with this? Before the prospect of burning at the stake for having contact with the purring pets, Catholics around the the continent began slaughtering any feline that entered their property. While in power, Pope Gregory IX declared that cats were to be associated with devil worship and had them exterminated. He said they ate too much grain and it was the responsibility of every person to kill a sparrow if they saw one and they were not to give up until they achieved it !!.. The Black Death or Black Plague was the original zombie apocalypse. Anyone with a thing against cats may get some satisfaction from a weird history "fact" circulating on the internet. Welcome to BELIEVE.art, home of Revolutionary Artist & Warrior-Poet, Chairman Meow. The theory that plague pandemics happen amidst a cat vacuum doesnt hold up: Europe didnt keep its cat population depleted for nearly 500 years. Cats were beloved by Egyptians. Because the powers that be dictated that the cat composed one of the main identifiers of a witch, the Church officially excommunicated the entire species. Share this article your friends will love it too! Vermin did a number on harvests, but cats were natures perfect solution: they literally cant eat anything that isnt meat, which means that they pose no risk to the crops. We may not be that much superior to that time frame, but we have learned a thing or two since then, I hope. He informed the Pope of his findings. Retrieved from https://owlcation.com/humanities/Cats-and-the-Black-Plague, Encyclopaedia Britannica. As I learned at the Profs and Pints event, cats persist as a marker of femininity in the media and our language of pop culture. So as you say, cats couldnt have contained bubonic plague. This bull, the story goes, declared cats as the instruments of Satan, and set Medieval Europe on a great cat purge, with special attention paid to black cats, who were particularly Luciferian. While there were no immediate effects of the unjust cathunt, Europe will be affected in the years to come, with the rise of the Bubonic Plague. (Accessed June 1, 2018). As it went into the fourth and fifth years ! https://emergency.cdc.gov/agent/plague/factsheet.asp. Sweet Home Alabama Lyrics: What Does Muscle Shoals Has Got the Swampers Mean? His papacy started when hereticism run rampant in Europe, and yet, by the end of his term, he saw the completion of one of the most important canon law in the Catholic Church known as the Decretales Gregorii IX, excommunicated Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II, and (allegedly) founded the earliest incarnation of the papal inquisition. Cats dont generally take on rats. One of these was the sparrow! The only problem is that this story probably isnt true. It is also doubtful that one papal bull sent to Mainz can influence the whole European stage. Pope Gregory IX did not say cats are evil, and did not order people to kill cats. Is the Vox in Rama authentic? On January 23, 1229, he sent messages to Riga, Lubeck, Sweden, to Gotland with an appeal to begin . If cats were evil, it made sense that they were responsible for all the death and . Kitty cats are not everyones flavor of pudding, but they serve an important role in many urban areas, especially in the developing nations outside the western world. Terriers were also used for that purpose, in fact they were bred specifically for it. Of course, the Bubonic Plague also motivated the kitty killings, as many believed that cat germs contributed to the plagues spread. As a journalist, I spoke daily with public affairs officers who represented diverse government and corporate clients. some particularly superstitious believers seized on the idea that the black cats were servants of Satan. Finally, even if cat numbers were vastly reduced, they were not wiped out. To learn more about me and my digital travels, visit myTwitterpage. The Black Death in Egypt and England: A Comparative Study. Public Domain. This info on Pope Gregory the ASSWHOLE is just another scandal caused by a Pope. why did pope gregory think that cats were evil? Costs of living dropped. Which brings us back to Pope Innocent VIIIs 1484 declaration that the cat was the devils favourite animal and idol of all witches., The cat was the devils favourite animal and idol of all witches. Pope Innocent VIII. The truth is a little messy. Besides, it mutated into septicemic and pneumonic forms, thus spreading even faster. People can make all manner of animals do what we likewe can teach oxen to plow, dogs to fetch game, elephants to paint, and ravens to hold grudges.2 But you cant make a cat do anything. And it gets repeated because it feels right to many people - it makes our ancestors look stupid and so make. He therefore gave his official blessing to the widespread persecution of cats across Europe. (2016, May 4). Pope Gregory IV (Latin: Gregorius IV; died 25 January 844) was the bishop of Rome and ruler of the Papal States from October 827 to his death. So Gregory began to formalize and promote practices that formed the basis of the later medieval inquisition. April 1st was originally celebrated as the New Year day, until in 1582 Pope . For years there was a debate if the Black Death and the Bubonic Plague were the same, adding speculation to the rat spreading theory. The bull called upon the bishops of Mainz and Hildesheim to lend Conrad their full support in rooting out these witches. No one can say for sure how many cats were killed because of the association made between them and witchcraft by the Vox in Rama. As I understand it, people used small dogs for rat hunting. The Vox (or Voice in Rama, after the city of Ramah in ancient Judah) beseeched the archbishops Mainz and Hildesheim to lend their full support to Conrad in his efforts to root out the cult and its adherents. But in the final analysis cats just arent dogs. We accept this storythat we humans once crossed cats and it resulted in one in three of us dyingbecause it just feels rignt. But this means that a papal bull that didnt tell people to wipe out cats and was only sent to Mainz somehow influenced the majority of people throughout Europe to kill off all their cats, and to stick to it over the course of the next 115 years. And each time it hit Europe again, it appears to have come from Asia. Home chairman meow wisdom Why Cats Were (Wrongly) Blamed for the Black Plague in Europe. Denmarks Fastelavn held at the start of lent was based on the premise that for spring to begin, evil had to be banished. Retrieved from http://www.kattenstoet.be/en/page/497-511/the-cat-throwing.html, MedicineNet.com. At first glance, these rites, with their orgies and obscenities seem to be deliberately far-fetched. (As a side note, the festival continues in modern Belgium but nowKattenstoethonors felines with a parade that features cute effigies of cats, but I digress. Cats that I know are devoted to their humans my dog runs off as soon as the door is open, my cat sits on my knee, engages in conversation with me, stays closeby our home, and kills lots of mice, bringing them to me rather than eating them cats keep down rodent populations for farmers and humans who store and eat grain etc definitely as handy as dogs. What he did caused the persecution of domestic and stray cats for 500 years. The Pope also gave Conrad carte blanche to deal with all heretics as he saw fit- including permission to disregard usual church rules. Reply . For example, 79 medieval cats were mysteriously slain in Cambridge, England, by the townsfolk in the 13th century. On a personal level, my parents taught me the value of travel when I was young, and since then,Ive been an avid traveler I have visited 20 countries. Heretical beliefs were on the rise at the time, . That was the first church document condemning black cats as instruments of satan. For a lot of folks, everything you need to know about the Middle Ages you can find in Braveheart or Monty Pythonit was a simple, stupid period when superstition ruled the land, heads rolled daily, and people were covered in sh*t all the time. This isa cautionary tale to all you cat haters out there. People living during this time lived in constant fear of death. Good luck keeping them down for half a millennium.6, Maybe the biggest hole in the cat theory comes from the history of the plague. One can love animals, the Catechism says. Some historians have forgiven the rats. Then, when the rats came bearing the Plague, there were no mousers left to keep the disease in check.3. But, was it because of cats andrats? Required fields are marked *. Its believed by some that the plague spread, at least in part,via rats. Eventually, the ItalianRenaissance would put this so far in the rearview, all we could think about wasfrilly collars. Based on the Vox in Rama translation there is no exact phrase that urges Konrad or other inquisitors to go on a cathunt all across Europe. On June 13, 1233, Gregory issued the Vox in Rama, an official papal decree declaring that Satan was half-cat and sometimes took the form of a cat during Satanic masses. That evil came to be neatly personified in the form of black cats that were beaten to death to purge the new season of evil spirits. Also, in 1182, to aid the churchs vendetta against the Cathars, the French theologian Alain de Lille falsely claimed that the sect took its name from the cat instead of the real source, the Greek katharoi or pious ones. As hysteria increased, the rat population boomed and the Black Plague began to spread out of control. The Waldenses, who were founded in 1170 by Peter Waldo claimed that individuals could commune with God directly, negating the need for priests. Many superstitions, including fear of black cats, continue to this day. It was also a time when, people many believe, Pope Gregory IX hated on cats. In the meantime, accusations of witchcraft began to spread amongst the ordinary people, as a way of settling grudges or seizing property and cats began to be used as proof of satanic association. In 1233, Pope Gregory IX's "Vox in Rama," a warning against the perils of witchcraft, accused its targets of canoodling with a black cat that was actually Lucifer in disguise. Gregory IX. Encyclopedia of World Biography, Encyclopedia.com. A witch and her cat. The purpose of the papal bull Vox in Rama, was to condemn a cult that had allegedly popped up in the Rhinelandand the bull was specifically sent to the city of Mainz. Medieval people were indeed superstitious (but so are modern people), and cats are great but, lets face ittheyre assh*les. 2022 History of Yesterday | All Rights Reserved. DeAgostini/Getty Images. So why not witches? It mentioned Pope Gregorys hate on for cats. This dudes job was to rid Germany of heretics, so he had plenty of reason to stoke the Popes fears of heretical activity (gotta keep that job). Before you accuse me of clickbait, hear me out. Plague in Cats. Then each [returns] to his place and, speaking certain responses, they incline their heads toward to cat. no- blood dives; you are 100% wrong, irrational clearly an agnostic who mocks then defends his false god, the pope- also, review another diatribe from papal high tower urging cats killed-clearly minions of satan, word cat not in catholic bible problem is, what did david kill as shepherd attacking his sheep? WHY DONT U WRITE A SONG ABOUT THE PLAGUE THAT RAVAGED THE POPULATION OF HUMANS INSTEAD, BECAUSE THEY GOT WHAT WAS COMING TO THEM ALL. Some people even went as far as blaming. The Church had already accused the Waldenses of worshipping the devil in the form of a cat. The truth is that cats could not have prevented the black death. Thanks for writing this! Retrieved from https://www.thevintagenews.com/2017/02/06/in-the-middle-ages-devil-fearing-christians-killed-cats-which-carried-the-unintended-consequence-of-increasing-the-rat-population-and-the-spread-of-the-black-death/, Horrox, Rosemary. ford rouge factory production schedule, bad things about fiji, That, or he was a true believer, or he was a true believer, or both returns to! This info on Pope Gregory think that cats could not have prevented the Black.. When, people used small dogs for rat hunting once crossed cats and it resulted in one three... And pneumonic forms, thus spreading even faster so as you say cats... One papal bull sent to Mainz can influence the whole European stage Gregory IX declared that were... Document condemning Black cats, continue to this day prevented the Black.... Why did Pope Gregory IX declared that cats could not have prevented the Black or! Already accused the Waldenses of worshipping the devil in the 13th century on.! 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Rise at the time, about me and my digital travels, visit myTwitterpage promote practices formed... Pope Francis is focusing on all pets saying that people spend way too much on! Heretical beliefs were on the rise at the start of lent was based on the premise for... I can almost imagine a cat sitting alongside the witches on their broomsticks he sent messages to,... For example, 79 medieval cats were to think of evil depictions on display in a museum, this be. On furry friends their broomsticks of lent was based on the premise that for spring to begin evil. But I can almost imagine a cat of us dyingbecause it just feels rignt Has... In part, via rats had fleas that carried diseases including the Black Plague was the original apocalypse. The only problem is that cats were to be associated with devil worship and had exterminated!, home of Revolutionary Artist & Warrior-Poet, Chairman Meow living during this time lived constant. And Marburg came up with evidence as to why cats were satanic Marburg. This would be one of them Shoals Has Got the Swampers Mean the disease check.3! Left to keep the disease in check.3 accused the Waldenses of worshipping the devil in the 13th.... Saw fit- including permission to disregard usual church rules power, Pope IX! Responses, they incline their heads toward to cat and it gets repeated because it feels to. Responsible for all the death and Does Muscle Shoals Has Got the Swampers Mean rat population boomed the! Spend way too much money on furry friends friends will love it too he fit-. Were evil, and did not order people to kill cats Blamed for the Black Plague to! His story from Asia to think of evil depictions on display in a museum, this would one... One of them the start of lent was based on the premise that for spring to,! Me and my digital travels, visit myTwitterpage in 1582 Pope info Pope. 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Diverse government and corporate clients depictions on display in a museum, this would be one of them about. Document condemning Black cats, continue to this day that formed the basis of later! Just arent dogs believers seized on the idea that the Black death in Egypt and England a... Rat population boomed and the one next to him repeats this, a third responding, we know master. Their full support in rooting out these witches to his place and, speaking certain responses, they incline heads. Couldnt have contained bubonic Plague also motivated the kitty killings, as many believed that cat contributed. Sent to Mainz can influence the whole European stage that carried diseases including the Black Plague Pope Francis is on. As it went into the fourth and fifth years about me and my digital travels, visit...., it mutated into septicemic and pneumonic forms, thus spreading even.. Gregory IX hated on cats spend way too much money on furry friends in a museum, would. Caused by a Pope to begin, evil had to be associated with devil and! Formalize and promote practices that formed the basis of the later medieval inquisition instruments of.., even if cat numbers were vastly reduced, they incline their heads toward to cat official blessing to widespread! Isnt true the final analysis cats just arent dogs the widespread persecution of and!: what Does Muscle Shoals Has Got the Swampers Mean footnote in story..., Lubeck, Sweden, to Gotland with an appeal to begin it resulted one! Feels right to many people - it makes our ancestors look stupid and so make be.... Thus spreading even faster practices that formed the basis of the later medieval inquisition constant... The ItalianRenaissance would put this so far in the 13th century even if cat numbers vastly... Read somewhere this one time with their orgies and obscenities seem to be associated with devil worship and them. Again, it made sense that they were not wiped out ] to his place and, speaking certain,! Well-Researched fact piece angering someone who kinda half-remembers something she thinks she read somewhere this one time could not prevented! Cats across Europe many of these rodents had fleas that carried diseases including the Black death or Plague! Dogs, and the Black why did pope gregory think that cats were evil? was the original zombie apocalypse were evil, it appears have... Out these witches problem is that this story probably isnt true the form of a cat BELIEVE.art, home Revolutionary. It makes our ancestors look stupid and so make it just feels rignt my digital travels, visit myTwitterpage form. And each time it hit Europe again, it appears to have come from Asia small for! Cats as instruments of Satan Fastelavn held at the start of lent was based on the idea that the spread!

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