The Lives and Deaths of Medieval Cats

Mass burnings, hangings, bell-tower-throwings, it was no pleasure cruise being a cat in medieval Europe

Cat, around 1300AD. Peterborough Psalter and Bestiary, f. 197v — Unknown Artist — Stanford Library

The year is 1648. In England, the Long Parliament passes the Vote of No Addresses, ushering in the second phase of the English Civil War. In the Northern Pacific, Semyon Dezhnyov crosses the Bering Strait for the first time. In the Holy Roman Empire, the Peace of Westphalia is signed, finally ending the Thirty Years’ War.

In France, Louis XIV, the Sun King, prohibits the traditional Saint John’s Eve mass-burnings of cats.

The road to cat oppression

Cat, late 19th — Unknown artist — Catalog Photo, Public Domain

Up until the Late Middle Ages, our little feline friends were treated kindly. Their natural talent at pest-hunting made them indispensable in the haylofts of the European countryside. Monasteries and convents used them to protect their beloved manuscripts from rats.

While the Catholic Church did not have, at the time, a positive opinion on our four-legged companions, considering them satanic creatures, it was the renewal of pagan rites following the Black Death that propelled the…