Ailuromancy

Perhaps the most mystical animal, cats are estimated by one anonymous expert to be around 300% more magical than the average mammal. Consequently, there has been a prolonged superstition around cats which stretches back throughout their whole history alongside humans and has manifested in many different ways. Spooky and spine-tingling events seem to follow our relationship with cats throughout the ages and exploring them we can learn something about the way our species interface with each other, and the ‘brain’ of human society. In contrast to the well-known sacred treatment of cats in ancient Egypt – which was not without its pitfalls - Medieval Europe was a hotbed of superstition and suspicion about the real motives of cats.

In our minds, the oppressive foggy darkness of Medieval Europe emanates a gothic atmosphere which is easy to imagine superstitious beliefs taking hold within. Post-Roman Europe could be imagined as a totalitarian theocracy; its population living within a hierarchical society under the domination of the Roman Catholic or Eastern Orthodox Church, with the Pope inheriting the title of Supreme Priest - Pontifex Maximus - from the Emperors of the Roman Empire. In this regard, the head of the Church inherited overall spiritual authority over the people of Christendom –largely based in the land of the former Roman Empire. In this way, a great degree of physical power was allotted to the Pope, who laid a claim of spiritual authority over so many kingdoms that all but the most powerful rulers could hope to defend themselves from the forces the Pope could array against them in a Crusade – if they demonstrated disloyalty to the spokesman of God on Earth.

However, despite the power of the Church in this period, it is important to note that Christian theology did not penetrate as deeply into the folklore of Europe as one might assume, using a typical 'top-down' perspective. Despite the relative power of the Pope, there was a great limit before widespread literacy and early mass communication technology such as the printing press, to the transmission of ideas across a population. While essentially all citizens who were able attended Church on Sundays, the use of Ecclesiastical Latin would have also served as a barrier to the understanding of many common people of the ‘do’s’ and ‘don’ts’ of Christian doctrine. With this considered, it is easier to understand why so many pre-Christian folkloric beliefs continued after the Christianization of Europe. The totalitarian theocracy that many imagine was more of a factor than a characterization of daily life for common people. While the Pope’s power has great he mostly dealt with elites on the international political level, and the great grinding infrastructure of the Church was reactively mobilized against heresy, conduction inquisitions in certain areas based on damning reports – it did not filter out a myriad of technical 'heresies' from the beliefs of the population. Even in the early modern period - which is understood to begin in the middle of the second millennium - clergymen were astounded to find people who believed in spirits who lived in their local river, varying ideas of what heaven was like, and many other folkloric variables built on top of their Christian faith.

With this understood its no wonder the amount of spooky and strange beliefs that circulated the towns and villages of medieval Europe about all manner of things. For example, belief in unicorns was widespread all through the Middle Ages and into the Early Modern period. The throne of Denmark was constructed out of ‘unicorn horn’ in 1672, and powdered unicorn horn was sold as medicine as late as 1741. This magical substance making up the creatures’ horn was known as ‘alicorn’, a market which was sadly slandered in the 1600s as physicians such as Ole Worm determined it to be a false product derived from narwhal and other types of animal tusk. The medieval merchant and explorer Marco Polo who famously travelled along the Silk Road from Venice to the empire of Kublai Khan, sighted unicorns for himself. He wrote describing them as "scarcely smaller than elephants. They have the hair of a buffalo and feet like an elephant. They have a single large black horn in the middle of the forehead... They have a head like a wild boar’s… They spend their time by preference wallowing in mud and slime. They are very ugly brutes to look at. They are not at all such as we describe them when we relate that they let themselves be captured by virgins, but clean contrary to our notions." Curiously Polo describes in detail that their horn is not used 'to attack' but instead this beast kneels on its victims and 'lacerates' them with a spiky tongue. It is interesting to speculate about Marco Polo’s meeting of the 'unicorn'. It's evident from his travels and the way he earned the favour of the Khan that he was a very intelligent man. Perhaps he learned from locals after immediately assuming the rhinoceroses could be unicorns that they were normal non-magical animals but kept this idea in the text for the extra 'clout' from his European audience, or even convinced himself these bulky beasts were unicorns after returning to Europe and describing them to people. However, he decided upon writing them in this way, perhaps this text of the late 1200s contributed to the European belief in unicorns continuing as awkwardly late into history as 1741.

Medieval European beliefs about cats are incredible in their range and ambition. A whole magical field known as ailuromancy existed based on using the behaviour of cats to predict the future and tap into other magics which they were assumed to harness. Some of these ‘cat reading’ beliefs are quirky and seemingly innocent such as the belief that ‘if a cat washes behind its ears, it will rain’, but some have potentially deep and dark implications for those who believed them, such as ‘if a cat leaves a house for good, illness will always reign there’. The darkest beliefs about cats came from their association with witchcraft and ultimately, the devil. This probably came from the nocturnal aspect of the cat, combined with its seemingly magical abilities – the supple movement and ‘flight’ of a cat could be seen as having an eerie quality to it, combined with eyes that flash in the night. Activity at night should not be underestimated as a factor. In the medieval mind the fact that you would often discover cats ‘going about their business’ at night after seemingly acting lazy and aloof all day, staring at you with glowing eyes, could be very worrying. This was a world which swung on the agricultural rhythm sleeping and rising early and getting up to mischief at night was inherently creepy for many people. In a world in which animals were sometimes put on trial for crimes as if they had human minds with free will, this was not guaranteed to be understood as a morally neutral 'evolved behaviour' as it would be today. The fact cats have some wildness left in them was met with suspicion by some – like the heretic, the cat is of the ‘other side’, but living with us tame people, as if one of us, but not.

Pope Gregory IX reigned at a time of increased paranoia about rising heresy in Christendom. Honorius III and Innocent III, the last two Popes before him, had both called crusades, and the popular imagination of the devil had grown from an almost comedic vagrant type character to something hideously powerful, and ever-present on – even master of – the earth. By this point, cats had gained an association with the three worst fears and anxieties of the medieval population – Jews, Satanists, and Satanist Jews; as well as with loose women and witches which are likely runner ups. Based on an account by Conrad von Marburg who was in charge of purging Germany of heresy, Gregory IX sent a letter titled the Vox

‘‘When any novice is to be received among them and enters the sect of the damned for the first time, the shape of a certain frog [or toad] appears to him. Some kiss this creature on the hindquarters and some on the mouth, they receive the tongue and saliva of the beast inside their mouths. Sometimes it appears unduly large and sometimes equivalent to a goose or a duck, and sometimes it even assumes the size of an oven. 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 remain only skin drawn over bone. The novice kisses him and feels cold, like ice, and after the kiss, the memory of the Christian faith totally disappears from his heart. Afterwards, they sit down to a meal and when they have arisen from it, the certain statue, which is usually in a set of this kind, a black cat descends backwards, with its tail erect. First, the novice, then the master, then each one of the order who are worthy and perfect, kiss the cat on its buttocks. Then each returns to his place and, speaking certain responses, they incline their heads toward to cat. "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.’’

This ‘Papal Bull’ (so-called because the Pope’s official letters were fixed with a wax bull seal) has been rumoured to cause a widespread cat genocide, with some theorists even claiming that this is the reason why Europe was hit so badly by the black death. Fortunately, this theory seems to have been mainly for the purpose of writing clickbait articles, as it makes little sense and is not supported by any historian I’ve seen. The Vox in Rama was not released or distributed to the public and did not come with any demands for cat oppression. However, the fact that this story was formed and deemed believable shows us how fully the spooky association of the cat had ingrained itself into society. Jews and witches – both groups suspected of devil worship - were rumoured to send cats on missions at night to do their bidding and even cast spells for them. A Scottish ailuromancy ritual known as taghairm involved burning a cat alive on a spit, provoking the devil to bargain with the human, granting special magical favours in return for an end to the cats suffering. It was also believed that Jews staged mock crucifixions using cats. Shockingly, the creepy thing about this to the medieval audience was not the torture of the animals at all – cat burning was relatively common in medieval France and Belgium as a spectator event – this was an anti-Christian version of something relatively normal, and thus creepy to this audience.

Although we can dredge up many horrible beliefs and practices about cats from this era, it might soothe your mind to reflect on how none of these ideas was universally held. This is a period in which very little of the population has a literary 'footprint' and so beliefs are approximated by historians from a relatively small array of sources. While it is easy to imagine everyone as a hive mind, as I mentioned earlier concerning the influence of the Church on belief, people did not really function in that way. There's no doubt that even in the Middle Ages there were many cat lovers in Europe. The cat population survived the period. If you still feel miffed about medieval moggies, check out the poem Pangur Bán. It is written by a Medieval Irish monk about his cat Pangur, who keeps him company while he works as a scholar. Very cosy.

Composed by,

William Price, Undergraduate of History from the University of East Anglia