A History of Love and Prejudice

One of the most pervasive myths about the Middle Ages is the claim that cats were treated horribly during that era. Of course, the image of black cats suffering in the flames alongside their witch owners provides a compelling representation of the so-called “Dark Ages.” However, like many other myths, the idea that medieval people universally hated cats does not hold up under the scrutiny of historical sources. These sources, in fact, reveal evidence of tenderness, care, and genuine curiosity with which Europeans treated cats of all breeds and colors. Through these sources, I aim to demonstrate that the notion of widespread demonization of cats in the Middle Ages doesn’t hold any more water than the contemporary belief in a flat Earth.

But first, let’s take a closer look into the demonization itself: it was during the medieval period that black cats began to be associated with evil forces. The most well-known example of such superstition is Pope Gregory IX’s Papal Bull Vox in Rama, issued in June 1233, which was aimed against the heresy of Luciferianism. The bull described an initiation ritual that involved kissing a giant black cat under its tail—a variation on the theme of worshipping Lucifer, with whom the cat was identified.

Due to this association of black cats with demonic influence, historian Donald W. Engels concluded that the spread of the plague in Europe was caused by the mass killing of cats. Supposedly, many cats were put to death, leaving no one to catch the rats that were considered the main carriers of the plague.

Indeed, from the late 15th century, after the publication of Malleus Maleficarum (The Hammer of Witches), large-scale witch hunts began, with cats (particularly black ones) being considered their essential companions. This belief was likely fueled by cats’ nocturnal lifestyle. Nighttime activity, as with owls and frogs, was seen by medieval theologians as evidence of connections to evil forces, which were believed to manifest primarily at night.

However, there was no widespread mass killing of cats in the Middle Ages. The closest historical event to the myth of a “great cat massacre” actually occurred in the early modern period, not the medieval one, as described by historian Robert Darnton. In Paris, on the Rue Saint-Séverin in the late 1730s, printing apprentices, furious at the appalling conditions of their lives, captured, beat, and eventually hanged their masters’ cats. The cats suffered because their owners had provided them with a much better standard of living than the poor apprentices had. This “great massacre” was confined to a single street and, as far as I know, was the largest such event recorded by historians.

The “cruel” Middle Ages are often contrasted with cat-loving ancient Egypt, where the goddess Bastet, with her feline head, and cat mummies, now showcased in the great halls of museums, are commonly cited.

But recently, I came across a record from 899, widely shared online, from the diary of the 17-year-old Japanese Emperor Uda, who wrote about his black cat. “My cat,” Uda wrote, “moves silently, without making a sound, like a black dragon above the clouds.” On one occasion, the emperor addressed his beloved pet with these words, “You possess the forces of yin and yang and have a body that is the way it should be. I suspect that in your heart, you may even know all about me!” To this, Uda noted, “The cat heaved a sigh, raised his head, and stared fixedly at my face, seeming so choked with emotion, his heart so full of feeling, that he could not say a thing in reply.”

These words are filled with love and gentle irony. They show that in the Middle Ages, the emotional bond between cats and their owners was not so different from today, even though this example comes from an Asian source. Moreover, evidence of affection for cats can also be found in European texts from that period.

Let’s start with encyclopedias, whose authors attempted to organize and explain the world around them. In his multi-volume Etymologies, Isidore of Seville sought to explain the nature of things through their names. He links different names for cats to certain traits, “Common people call it the cat (cattus) from ‘catching’ (captura). Others say it so named because cattat, that is, ‘it sees’ — for it can see so keenly (acute) that with the gleam of its eyes it overcomes the darkness of the night. Hence ‘cat’ comes from Greek, that is. ‘clever’“

Thomas of Cantimpré, in his encyclopedia De Natura Rerum, describes cats as follows: “It is very easy for people to provoke them to play; they delight in flattery. They love warm places, where they sometimes burn their fur out of sheer laziness. They have long fur on the sides, and its removal leads to a loss of courage. They are happy when touched by a human hand, and they express their joy by singing… The cat is spoiled by such an amount of love for it.”

Bestiaries—medieval collections of stories and legends about animals, birds, plants, and even stones—visualize the descriptions from encyclopedias. They depict cats with mice in their paws, grooming themselves and even wearing crowns. All these depictions are not much different from modern Instagram photos.

As we can see, much of what was written about cats was based on observations of their natural behavior. Unlike lions, cheetahs, dragons, or unicorns, cats were an integral part of everyday medieval life. The same monks who wrote encyclopedias and adorned manuscripts also kept cats, even allowing them near their most precious possessions—books. There is ample evidence of this, the most striking being the paw prints left in manuscripts.

In an English copy of the aforementioned Etymologies by Isidore of Seville, one can see the prints of dirty cat paws. Judging by their placement, the cat walked onto the page (the first print is very clear) and then made itself comfortable there—this is evident from the subsequent smudged prints on the page. Interestingly, the material of the manuscript allowed for these marks to be erased, but the monk chose not to—perhaps leaving them as a fond memory of his beloved pet.

In contrast, a 15th-century treatise from the Dubrovnik State Archive bears traces of how a cat first stepped into ink and then walked confidently across the pages of the manuscript. This confirmation of cats’ love for interrupting our work was discovered by historian Emir O. Filipović. He didn’t expect his finding to cause such a stir, but mentions of the cat’s paw prints in the treatise quickly spread across the internet—from Twitter to personal blogs. The story was even picked up by well-known online publications, including The Guardian, The Atlantic, and Smithsonian Magazine. For some, this discovery was a revelation: the cats lying on keyboards in today’s photos have direct predecessors in the Middle Ages!

Cats were not only physically present in manuscripts but also appeared in miniatures (illustrations) and marginalia (drawings on the edges of pages). The most popular motif of cat “iconography” in marginalia was a scene where a monkey feeds a cat. Artists often depicted these scenes as a parody of nativity images: a kitten swaddled in a manger while one or a pair of monkeys hover above it.

Cats also made their way into the workspaces of saints. In a 16th-century Book of Hours from Bruges, while Saint Matthew is writing the Gospel, a cat sits behind him with a silent reproach in its eyes, evidently waiting patiently for the work to end so that its owner might finally feed it.

The love for cats among monks and nuns was sometimes so intense that it provoked criticism. The Dominican friar John Bromyard, in his 14th-century sermon, addressed the monastic elite, reproaching them for their excessive fondness for cats. He wrote, “Cats, as the learned doctor says, can indeed rid our homes of parasites, but as life has shown, they cannot be trusted. I once heard of a fool who found that mice were eating his cheese in a wooden chest; so he placed a cat in the chest to protect the cheese. But what did the cat do? It ate not only the mice but also the cheese.”

So, was love stronger than prejudice? Despite the superstitions and myths about cats that formed on the pages of medieval encyclopedias, treatises, papal encyclicals, and eventually in popular oral culture, there is more evidence of love for cats. One only needs to look at the miniatures in medieval Books of Hours, where cats and their owners are depicted in affectionate embraces. This love for “dragons above the clouds” in the Middle Ages united East and West, clergy and peasants alike, just as it unites us today. The notion of unrelenting cruelty towards cats in the Middle Ages is more of a myth than a historical reality.